Stair Pits
What happens when a kid who lost the parent lottery grows up to find success — and then decides to write the whole thing down? Stair Pits is the podcast where author R.A. Thompson and co-host Max unpack the stories behind the memoir Stair Pits: a darkly comic look at a childhood gone spectacularly wrong. Expect real talk, sharp humor, hard-won wisdom, and the kind of honest conversation you only get between two people who trust each other. New episodes regularly — grab the book at unbreakableorigins.com.
Stair Pits
Real Education Starts When You Decide To Teach Yourself
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
School is supposed to teach you how to think. So what do you do when it teaches you how to comply instead?
Robert and Max discuss what happens when a mind is hungry for knowledge but the school system feels like a dead end. Robert tells the story of walking into kindergarten excited and walking out convinced he would never survive 13 years of it, then explains how self-directed learning filled the gap. We get into the surprisingly practical mechanics of becoming self-taught: reading encyclopedias with a dictionary at your side, breaking big ideas into smaller parts, and using relentless repetition until concepts finally connect.
From there, we jump to one of the most unforgettable threads of the conversation: auditing classes at UC Berkeley and Stanford without being enrolled. He describes sitting through the same lecture twice, buying the textbook, going back again, and watching understanding stack up like bricks. That leads into a bigger discussion about invention, creativity, and why modern life gives us endless tools but not always the right focus. Along the way, we challenge the culture of performative success and ask what “heroism” actually means if fame is off the table.
Find Stair Pits here:
www.unbreakableorigins.com
[00:00:00] Kindergarten Shock And School Violence
[06:08:00] Why School Never Fit
[14:50:00] Deconstructing Ideas Through Reading
[24:20:00] Why Invention Matters
[32:41:00] Mentoring Athletes To Do School
[47:52:00] Wrap Up And Stair Pits
It within 60 minutes, I was hit by the principal of the school three times as a kindergartner on my first day, and all I could think about was, I will not make it 13 years in this. There's no way I could go through this. I'd reached a phase where I'd read so many books I couldn't stand it. I'd seen a bunch of movies and I'd gotten into watching television, and I recognized that I knew things, but I didn't know how or why people behaved. And today we think heroic is setting a world record or screaming or having a top-selling album or being a great athlete or screaming at somebody in Minnesota. Right, that's considered to be heroic. That's not heroic, that's being famous. Imagine, if you will, a child brought up without parents, but with adults in the house. You've entered the stair pit zone.
SPEAKER_00Ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost, welcome back to the Stare Pits Podcast. I am Max Christensen, just being a generous guest here on the podcast with the man himself, R.A. Thompson, the author of Stare Pits, which is the whole entire reason why we sit here today. We appreciate you watching, we appreciate you listening, and we appreciate you taking your hard-earned time and spending a little bit of it with us. RA Robert, how are you doing today, sir? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing fantastic.
SPEAKER_02I gotta see, I really like the fact that you uh got a really spiffy hat from what, an LPGA event you rolled somebody there? Is that what happened?
SPEAKER_00I played in it. Oh, you played it? No, that's good.
SPEAKER_02So you self-identify as uh a female golfer.
SPEAKER_00When it comes to sports, yes.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's a good idea, dude. You can pass it off.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_02No, no, that's it. And that cut kind of sells it perfectly, if you think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, I I realized that the the the competition uh in in the male sphere was I wasn't cutting it. Right. I mean, you saw me play college football, true, wasn't hanging in there, so might as well transition to uh to a different sport.
SPEAKER_02When um I used to watch Max at practice, and the offense uh threw a screen pass, Max was in the way, he intercepted it. And over the next six and a half minutes, he covered close to 25 yards and scored. And everyone was so happy. I mean, it was like this how could something that magnificent happy? And Max was just, please, please, you know, don't crowd the genius. But it really was one of the great moments, I think. You know, I've seen a lot of great sporting movies. Absolutely. That was perhaps one of the best.
SPEAKER_00Yes, well, and and what what you what you forgot to mention, just out of the kindness of your heart, is that uh the only reason I scored was because half the defense was pushing me to the end zone. I wasn't gonna get there by myself.
SPEAKER_02Well, most of the people were shocked that you were running. That was the episode. They kept waiting for your knees to blow out. So that was the whole thing. Exactly. Trying to get their phones and watch, watch the knees because it's not gonna be good. Yes, but no, yes, it was pretty spectacular, though. It really was. Everybody was very excited about it, and then Max spent the rest of the time with a pad trying to draw pictures of it to turn it into art. I mean, I don't did you ever sell any of those?
SPEAKER_00Or no, not yet. But I'm I'm actually trying to turn that into a TV series. No, no, yet the interception a live action of the little engine that could.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, yeah, that's it would be totally cool. It would be really it'd be spectacular.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely. Yeah, most of the the the back end of my college days, probably the last two or three years of my college career, were basically spent just trying to get to Saturday. Right. Right? Monday through Friday, irrelevant, okay? I'm cerebral enough to learn the plays. Like you said, just make sure your knees don't blow out. Yeah, okay. Don't make sure your shoulders don't blow out again. So they had both my shoulders replaced when I was in college. And uh, and yeah, so that that was the the majority of the time was hey, don't run too fast, don't try too hard. It's not Saturday, okay? Let's not out here, let's not be out here being a hero.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, there's no reason to go, you gotta play to your strengths, man. And that's what it is. You're a survivor. You know, that's really what it is. Yes. You got this much gas left in the tank downhill coast.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Let's really what's let's get to the gas station, let's get to the truck stop, and we'll deal with it from there. We'll refuel and go forward.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's one of the real secrets to life. Absolutely. Efficiency, a proper distribution or utilization of calories is the secret to life. I mean, what are the minimum amount of calories you can use to get something done? Uh-huh. That's the way you got to look at it.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yes. It's like I was trying to find the a happy medium of what is the least amount of energy it will take to still be efficient enough at my job to get it done.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No. And it worked perfectly. Max is actually quite a good player on it, and it was it was very enjoyable to watch. The other little thing that I loved the most about it was everybody would come to practice and would kind of sat and chat. Max would walk about 35 yards away from everybody else and would just stare at the morning sun, hoping to get warmth so that he could move. And then begrudgingly, he would go back and deal with the meatheads. And um I think on that team, wasn't your nickname Mr. Cause like what you were like 42? Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, it would be Mr. Uncle, Sir, Grandpa, sir, whatever. I mean, you know, for yeah. So it was because I mean the the the end of my career. Um I was 24, I believe, when I got done playing because of my because of serving an LDS mission before jumping to college. And I was playing with guys on the team who were 17 years old. I mean, so I played with guys seven years younger than me and were teammates, and so it wasn't it was an interesting dynamic for sure.
SPEAKER_02No, it was, but he was a great player on it, great team leader on it, you know. And again, people you know enjoyed his company, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, I appreciate that, man.
SPEAKER_02But they were scared of you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a little bit of both. Absolutely. Um wait, I thought I was gonna, we weren't even planning on opening the show like this. I thought I was gonna have to segue into okay, Robert, let's talk about school. But here we are, talking about school, my experience, you taught tech. You seem like you're a professional with this now, sir. I know you're you know you're not super experienced in the podcast realm, but here you sit on episode three looking dapper as ever, by the way. If you're watching on YouTube or watching on the video, got another new tie in here. Oh no, yeah, it's uh and yes, looking spectacular. Um, so yeah, let's talk about school. Okay. You you know weren't a savant in school per se, as the book talks about. Okay. You you often reference that you had to be put into retard class, not because you were an idiot, but just because of the way that you conceptualized things and kind of viewed different concepts through your specific lens. Okay, you're one of the few people on the planet that I know of who can hold a conversation about anything, okay? You are one of the smartest people I've ever met, yet didn't have the success in school, didn't graduate college. Did you graduate high school? Barely. Okay. So talk to me a little bit about your concept of of school, especially from a young age. Let's start there, right? The book starts with you at a younger age, okay. How did you view school or and and how did you get so cerebral from a young age? You mentioned in the first couple chapters of the book that you, you know, from the inception of you learning how to read, it started out as just flipping through psych encyclopedias. Where did that um curiosity come from to start doing that kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_02It's an interesting question. I think uh to give maybe a little bit of framework on it, and it's something that I kind of look at maybe backwards looking at it. My my general thought is when you look at children, children all they do from the time they're two till the time that they're 25 is learn. And the only question is what are they learning? And part of being sane is knowing what things to throw out. So, like, you know, we're sitting here and the things that I ignore are the beautiful plant behind you because it's not going to do anything. And I know that there's a plant there, but in my realization of the pl of this room, the plant has nothing to deal with it. And I think if you're brought up in a normal family, you're used to mom and dad and food and brothers and sisters, and you know, if you have a pet in the house and whatever is going on, that there's a universe a universe of consistency that you kind of have and take for granted, and then you learn things going from there. You learn, you know, what does mom do? What does dad do? What does a brother do? What does the neighbor do? What does you know the teacher do? What do the other kids do? And growing up, I never had that. I mean, I was kind of like I like to say I was a hostage gift for whoever happened to be taking care of me next, that there was no real sense that there was any specific interaction with any specific person. And my grandparents, my paternal grandparents, had me for about 10, 14 days just before I went into kindergarten. And they taught, well, from that couple of weeks, I learned multiplication, I learned how to read, I learned how to write, I learned how to use three primary colors in order to make all other colors. Uh, I learned the basics of physics. Um, I learned all 50 states and their capitals. And that was because my grandparents were teachers, were great teachers. And I was there and they had the little boy and they didn't know what to do with them. So they gave me things to do that kept me busy. And I had no idea that that was not normal because I'd never been around other children of my own age. So I just thought that all you have to do is acquire information. Like how much information could you acquire? And after I learned all 50 states, then they made me learn all major freeways, you know, that even number freeways go east-west and odd numbered freeways go north-south. So I had to learn, you know, where's 80, where's 70, 60, 50, 40, 10 going across, and then, you know, what are the highways going across the other way? And you had an atlas and they give it to you, and then you'd have to memorize, you know, if you were on, you know, if you're on highway 70, what states do you go through? And that was it. What's the biggest city you go through? And if I was right, you know, I got an MM. If I was wrong, I didn't get an MM. So after a while, I became really pretty proficient at those things. And then when I hit kindergarten, I had um I had no idea what to expect. I was kind of exciting about school, you know, I think, well, maybe this will work out, it'll be a really good gig. Uh I went in there and it was just so totally frustrating to me. I couldn't believe it. And in the book I talk about how, you know, I spent I was hit by the it within 60 minutes, I was hit by the principal of the school three times as a kindergartener on my first day, and all I could think about was I will not make it 13 years in this. There's no way I could go through this. And I think when school wasn't for me, school is much more of a prison kind of a situation that was there to retard my learning, not to enhance it. And so I just took it on myself that I like knowing things. And I liked that if I knew things and I could interact with humans, I could interact with adults, I could have conversations with them, and I could be somewhat useful. Unfortunately, I've had conversations with kids, um, you know, trying to talk to a fellow, you know, first grader about, you know, well, what do you think is, you know, name four cities in the United States that have that begin with the letter D. Okay. Well, uh, what do you mean? Never mind. You know, it's like you know, talking about. I don't know if I could do that.
SPEAKER_00I have a bachelor's degree in college. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's it. It's it's simple. Think of football teams and you'll get a couple of things. Okay, there you go. Yes. Yeah, so it is easier once you once you frame it correctly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, hey, I won't lie. The very first city I thought of was Denver.
SPEAKER_02Denver, right.
SPEAKER_00Let's close it. Tie to the Broncos. Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. That's one of those things. And then Detroit is another thing. There you go.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yep. There it is.
SPEAKER_02And then the other the other city in your home state.
SPEAKER_00Dallas. Cowboys. Worst team in America. That's right. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Trying to think of one more. Um. You know, being on the spot under these white lights. Oh no, it's a lot of things. Yeah, it's a lot of things.
SPEAKER_02Where were you on the where were you at six o'clock in the 1915?
SPEAKER_00I yeah, I would be I would be horrible and being interrogated. I would just, I wouldn't be able to hold anything back. Um let's see. It's the capital of Delaware. The capital of Delaware? Oh, I don't know that one.
SPEAKER_02Dover.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Wow. Look at that.
SPEAKER_02So just but you know, but so the answer is not only does it not work as you know a first grader, it doesn't work when you deal with well, it doesn't matter. We're trying. Max will get the question right from now on.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. I'll I'll do some pre-studying before uh before coming on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um we'll go up to you in the store. You're the guy that doesn't know the force and exactly.
SPEAKER_00That's the one singular clip that's gonna go viral from this whole thing. Yes, yeah, and then that's how I become famous or infamous either way. Yeah. Um you you mentioned uh getting an MM every time you got a question right. Okay. So let me ask you this Did did did that turn into kind of a a Pavlov's dog theory where now anytime any now any any any anytime anyone uh asks you a a somewhat cerebral question, your mouth starts to starts to water a little bit for an MM. Right.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I do like that. I mean, Lord knows that in the conversations that we've had, I I look at everything as a chance to deconstruct things. Yes. The second that somebody tells me something, the first thing that goes into my mind, and it's largely from teachers, I assume that the person doesn't know what they're talking about, and everything that they said is either wrong or a trap.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Because you know, paranoia is one of the great motivators in the world. It keeps you right out there. It keeps you sharp. Yeah, that's it. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely flinch. I thought you're gonna hit me, but I'm over it now. Um But no, the uh so to me it's that it comes down to deconstruction, right? I mean, w what is it at the end? You know, that there's a limited number of things. And how how and why was it constructed that way, and what was the hierarchy of thought that went into how something was dis constructed? And is there any validity to that particular blueprint? And it's just kind of the way that I looked at things. And it was part of it was I think when um my great-grandad gave me a set of encyclopedias. So all I would do as a little kid was read the encyclopedias, come to a word that I didn't know what it meant, look it up in a dictionary, and that meant that I had to look up additional words because those words didn't mean the words that were there. And I used to have like an alpha my alphabet written out, and then I would just try to learn how to say them by trying to go phonics on it. So I would try it with a short A and then, you know, whatever the thing might be. And eventually I'd come to the name on how to be able to say it, and then oh, I know what that word is, and then I would go with it. So like reading a page in the dictionary or reading a page in an encyclopedia at you know, between kindergarten and first grade might take three hours. But I got through three hours, I mean I got through the page. And then the we the thing that I learned was that, you know, if you're reading about Jefferson, you know, here, then later on you read about the Louisiana Purchase, and almost everything that you learned about Jefferson constitutes twenty percent of the Louisiana Purchase. And everything you previously learned about the Civil War also ties into the Louisiana Purchase. And pretty soon the idea is when I think of things, it has to relate to something else. And I try to think of all the different ways that it kind of just relates to things, and so um that was kind of the way that I thought about it. I didn't have you know any other kids to kind of change my thinking on it. And then when I would look at other people that didn't have the knowledge base or couldn't do free association, it was like, okay, why are you that way? How come you can't do that? And it was really a bizarre feeling for me because it was like we're all on the same planet, but we have absolutely nothing in common. And as opposed to trying to figure out what to do with the other people on the planet, I just went back to what I knew, which I'll just read more shit. Well, and that's what it kind of became into it. Or if we're gonna do the version of it, I just decided that I would just read more things.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah. As I mentioned beforehand, I was I was one of the lucky ones who on my well, I guess I didn't mention beforehand, I was one of the luck I was part of the lucky generation that got to play college sports through 2020, through COVID, which meant all the eligibility was screwed up, everybody stayed longer, all sorts of things. So I was one of the lucky ones who got to play six years of college football, which meant I was also one of the unlucky ones who had to take six years of college classes. Okay. You are part of a a distinguished group of Americans that became very, very successful in life, not only without a college degree, but without ever starting college. Okay. You've told me stories in the past about how, though, living in Northern California, you used to sneak into college courses at Stanford, at Cal, things like that. As someone who took college classes, they were not fun. What made you want to sneak in and still attend classes, even though you were never enrolled in Stanford or uh Cal Berkeley?
SPEAKER_02Well, it comes back to one of my personal favorite jokes, which is why did dogs list lick their testicles? Because they can. Okay. It's kind of tasteless, but we can cut that out. But it's still a good joke. Yeah, okay. So anyway, back to the dog thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um but to me, it was like there was nothing else to do. I mean, what was I going to do at that point? And I figured I could learn things. You know, I got to the point that I'd read so many books, I'd reached a phase where I'd read so many books I couldn't stand it. I'd seen a bunch of movies and I'd gotten into watching television, and I recognized that I knew things, but I didn't know how or why people behaved. And I knew how actors behaved, but I had no idea how humans behaved. And so I figured if I just would hang out, like at first I would just hang out on Berkeley, you know, on the campus, and you'd listen to somebody talk about how a class really blew their mind. And it's like, well, okay, when the guy was talking about a philosophy class. Well, I guess I'll go take a philosophy class. And I knew enough about, you know, the foundations of Greek culture that I could guess, you know, Plato and Socrates and a couple of other things. I mean, I could kind of piece that together. But I thought, well, that's cool, I'll just sit in on the class. And I sat in on the class and I got maybe 20, 30 percent of it. But I thought it was real interesting. So the class ended, and the same class was being offered in the same building in the same room. So I exited the classroom, the auditorium, and I just went right back in and watched it again. And that time I knew more. So at that point I had gotten about 60, 70 percent of it. And then I went to the bookstore and uh I got the book and I read the book. And then on two days later, I went back to class and I understood it. And then the more I understood it, the better it was, and then they would occasionally ask questions and I could answer the questions. Questions. And then from there I took a logic course. I started taking logic courses. And then I started taking pre-law, and then I took American history and then world history. And that's what I would do. And it was great because you just go into the class and sit and take it, and then you could get the textbook and you could read it. And if I showed up there at seven o'clock in the morning and I, you know, would go home 9:30, 10, greatest deal in the world, man. It was like reality television, the best reality television you could ever have. And every day I felt I was smarter. You know, I felt I was better at it. And when I finally got a license and could drive, I would go and spend, you know, three days at Berkeley and then three days at Stanford, and three days at Berkeley and three days at Stanford. And if I spent three at one, I'd spend two at the other. I just take classes. And it didn't bother me. Whatever the class was, I just take it. And at a certain point, I wished I could have turned in papers. I knew I could have passed the tests, but I wish I could have turned in papers. But, you know, I would just talk to people. And it would be obvious that I was younger or something than everybody else that was there. The only people would talk to me would be Asian students because I was about the same size and they were happy to see, you know, white dude that was small.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But, you know, we would talk about things and that would be about it. And that was spectacular. And the other guy that I had met there was um I had met a guy who was a junkie who had previously been a uh a professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri. He had made it to California, started experimenting with drugs, eventually got to the point that he was experimenting with heroin, became a junkie, and he would sit out in front of Rasputin Records and try to sell oranges that he stole to people so he wouldn't have to steal something else in order to shoot up. And I guess he was one of the people that kind of got me into thinking about just taking philosophy. So whatever I learned, it would be there. And I hung out with him for a few months and then he disappeared. I'm sure he died. But um, but that was kind of how I learned on it. And then going forward from that, um, I think to me, the idea of learning, you know, like we're talking on microphones, you know, you're wearing a beautiful LPGA hat. Um, we're looking at all the stuff that's here, right? I mean, stupid dude, you have a hat on that's obviously not yours, and I'm playing with a fake cigarette dude. We each have crutches. Okay, it's what it comes down to. But, you know, the the fact is all this stuff was invented. And if you look at the level of invention, right, that Julius Caesar to Abraham Lincoln, okay, what misspoke, Julius Caesar to George Washington, right? Those two guys both traveled the same way. There was no deviation in the way they traveled. They walked on foot, they rode a horse, they were in a horse-pulled carriage, they used a boat rowed by humans, and they used a boat powered by the wind. So for you know, that 1,500 plus years, nothing changed. I mean, that was it. People were born and they died. That's pretty much it. There's a little bit of art made, there's some poetry, song, some blah things on there, but virtually in terms of actual technological improvement, it wasn't there. And then all of a sudden, in the more modern age, I mean, the things that are in this studio, um, the majority of these things in this studio are younger than you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so how could that possibly happen? And the way it happens is people discover things. And I think that that's you know, if I when I look at the when I look at the book, when I started out trying to write the book, I thought about it in terms of, well, you know, uh I have a bunch of silly, kind of what I thought were funny stories and some other examples of how not to be a parent. And an initial thought that I had on it would be just how not to be a parent. Great idea for a book. Um It was like a website that I once thought of, like the idea of really bad advice. And people could go to it and you could put in your problem, and then the machine would give you really bad advice. And my really bad advice was get drunk was one of them. Get drunk and hit the person, and then get drunk and tell the person what you really think. Because those are basically the worst advice that you can give people. And I thought, well, I mean, it's pretty simple, but it's a one-joke thing. No one would ever laugh at it, nobody would ever use it. People that did use it then sue me. Wasn't going to work out. But um, but that idea that in today's world we have all these amazing event inventions, and it used to be the call to adventure was seeing what's on the other side of the hill, or what's down the river, or what's in the ocean. I mean, that was it. I mean, those were that was the call to adventure. What could you do? And they were stunning, they were amazing. You know, you had to have skill, you had to throw everything behind to all of a sudden find out what was on the other side of the hill, and then hopefully you'll be able to make it back. Right. Um today there's no risk. I mean, you don't you don't really have to risk, you can invent something. And the problem with it is people don't use the right focus, right? So if you look at the if you look at, let's say, scripture as an example, um the idea of the Good Samaritan is like maybe three or four verses maximum. And it's the story of somebody giving somebody water when they're suffering. Okay, and it shows that somebody giving water when they're su when they're suffering is a great story to begin with. And that if you're giving it to God and you're trying to alleviate God's pain, then that shows a compassion that you're trying to do something to a higher power, which you know is another story. But if you're just going to look at the simplest story of can you give water to people that are thirsty, or can you give comfort to people that are suffering? That's heroic. And today we think heroic is um, I don't know, setting a world record or screaming or having a top-selling album or being a great athlete, or, you know, screaming at somebody in Minnesota. Right. That's considered to be heroic. That's not heroic. That's being famous. And the reality is the most heroic thing is showing a child how to tie their shoes. The most heroic thing is sacrificing yourself so that somebody else can do something. Because if you look at it, in that person's in the in most people's lives, it goes like this you wake up and a bunch of shit happens, and maybe you have a treat, and then you're too tired to do anything, and you go to bed. Okay. And if you can take this into, you know, nothing happened and somebody, you know, said good day to me and smiled at me at Starbucks, and all of a sudden, you know, you're feeling like crap, and somebody said hi to you and smiled or said good day. Well, all of a sudden, in terms of the good things that happened in your life, you're like the Mount Denali or McKinley in the middle of a field that has nothing in it. Right? That's all that it takes. It takes very little to be a hero. But in the world of social media, we want to be the hero that did something amazing. We don't want to be the hero that did something simple. And the reality is being the hero that does something simple is the natural extension of reflecting God's love. And that none of us want to reflect God's love. We all want to be a hero. We all want to be special, we all want parades given to us for whatever the hell it is that we did. And the reality is we don't need parades. What we need to do are just the simplest best things. But nobody wants to do that. Everybody wants something much bigger. But the reality is small things make all the difference. And the less you do, the greater the impact. And the idea is not to bring grandeur to yourself. The idea is to allow the other person to go forward. And then just see what that person can do. And when I look at taking that back to school, um at one point I tried to take, I tried to learn German. And my reason for trying to learn German was I wanted to see if the words they used in World War II movies were actual words versus just sounds. So I learned that Bistürz für Gegen ohne Umweder are the prepositions that take the date of in German. I have no idea what that means, but I have it memorized. I could at one point I could also say, you know, the small girl has large breasts, the large girl has small breasts, or any combination of size of girl and breast, I could say that in German. I could also say Ture, which is door, and uh Wortstadt, which I believe is vocabulary. Wow. So my entire German vocabulary is things that have to do with the date of women and the size of their breasts, and that there are doors.
SPEAKER_00That's pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_02I don't think I would last long. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Let's jump on Duolingual before we venture over to Germany. Yeah, actually, yeah. Um you are living breathing proof that if you have any sort of well-rounded self-motivation and are able to apply yourself in life, you can be very, very successful without a college degree. Okay. You have been very successful, you've made a lot of money, you've been very successful in all aspects of your life. We mentioned on the very first episode, you and I met because you are a mentor to college athletes. Part of that is mentoring them and motivating them to go to class, to get a degree, to do these different things. How are you able to do that when you found so much success going the exact opposite route and know that that is a possibility? How are you able to then step into the shoes of young college athletes and look them in the eye and say, hey, you need to do this homework? Hey, you need to go to class, hey, you need to listen to your professor, hey, you need to pass this test. Hey, you need this piece of paper, this bachelor's degree that you may never use, but you need this. How are you how have you been able to adjust your lens to that standpoint?
SPEAKER_02One of the great things about being a human is it's much greater to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. So as a result, um if I try to get people to walk my path, they're gonna die. They can't do it. And so as a result, for them to say, look at what I can do means nothing. But on the other hand, if you can get them to accidentally do something and to get to the point that they might value learning or that they might accidentally see some value in learning, then that ultimately could do more. And so, whereas I personally think that two-thirds of the things that they learn are probably useless. And if you're not going into high-tech law science, what I mean, uh what are you really doing? I mean, in all honesty, the only thing you should take at that point is history so that you know what things don't work. And um maybe taping language so that you could say something other than dude. Right? I mean, you should have more than five words. Yeah. And so I think those are the things that makes it work. But I also think that the other thing is you have to recognize what selected genius you were blessed with. Um one of the great things about Max is uh Max can talk to people and he's engaging, he's friendly, he's kind, he actually gives a shit about the people that he talked to. I view virtually the other nine people on the planet as extremely noisy neighbors that keep me up at night. You know, it does all they're doing is it's just ruining my life. They're going the places that I want, so I have to wait in line. They're just slowing down what I want to do. And that's the selfish person of me speaking. But I think that you have to recognize what is the specific genius that you are granted. I mean, what piece of God's love were you blessed with that allows you to do something and then do it? I mean, it it doesn't mean do the thing that you love. It doesn't mean do the thing that you're you're it's easy for you or that you're initially good at, but do the thing that challenges you to become better than you are. And uh I think that's the piece that people don't get is that they're well, I don't want to do that, I don't like it. Well, you don't know if you like it or not because you haven't had any success in it. The second that you have success in it, you really, really, really like it. You know, the guy that goes out fishing and catches fish uh catches a fish the first time he casts loves fishing. The guy that goes fishing ten times and never catches a fish thinks that it's really, really, really stupid. You know, so that it just depends what what level of success did you have. And I don't I think that in trying to get people to go to school, when you look at people who were maybe given built-in excuses for not knowing things because they had other skill, trying to give them at least the discipline to do something that doesn't have an immediate payoff for them is a great gig. And I think the other thing that I like tremendously is that when people say, well, everything that they're learning has no value. And if you go back about six or seven minutes, I basically said that, and it's true. But at the same point, in most people's lives, you don't know what you're going to be doing. And as a result, if you don't know what you're going to be doing, the information that you develop today, you don't know the value of it, right? You don't know what it is. I mean, if somebody today, you know, like for instance, today, if you, you know, remembered all of a sudden that Dover was had something to do with Delaware, and you meet somebody tomorrow who's from Dover and you talk about it, and that guy, you know, says, Oh my God, you know, I was looking for a former D-Tackle, you know, to work in my company, and all of a sudden the guy gives you a great gig. Well, I mean, what was the value of knowing that Dover was the capital of you know, of Delaware? You don't know. Yeah. That's unlikely to happen, by the way.
SPEAKER_00Let's hope so. Yeah, well, probably it isn't. Even if you hang out in the Dover airport, it's not going to happen.
SPEAKER_02I mean, but but that idea that no one knows the value of the things that you learn. And then all of a sudden you learn something and it's like, wow, a miracle. And so that I think is the biggest piece is that you don't know what thing to pick up. You know, it's um we have no capacity. And since we don't know what we're going to be doing, we don't know where we're going, we don't know anything about it, our capacity to successfully identify the things in life that are meaningful are non-existent. I mean, you you have no concept. And so as a result, you should at least have some awareness, a little bit of awareness for everything. You know, like an example, um, I drink warm coffee out of a straw. And the reason that I do that is twofold. One, um, it looks cool. No, it doesn't. It might pretend it looks cool. But no, it's the the fact is that this way when I drink it, there's less of a chance that I'm gonna spill on my shirt, suit, or tie. Number two, then coffee now hits the back of my mouth and it doesn't further stain my teeth. Okay, so understanding how a straw worked, I mean, I wish I would have thought about it earlier, but I saved the further yellowing of my teeth. When the dentist looks at my mouth and he sees that, you know, the back, my molars, the inside of my molars just, you know, look like there's some decaying tusks, you know, on some prehistoric elephant. I mean, they're in good shape. They're just hideously coffee stained. And he goes, Well, what happened to your mouth? How come you're well because I drink coffee out of a straw? And he goes, Well, why do you drink coffee out of the straw? So the front of the teeth don't look as bad as the back. Well, that's a good idea. Well, yeah, of course it's a good idea. But the thing is, people don't they don't think about it in those terms. You know, it's like, what is the thing, what is the thing that you could do today that you could come up with that you could develop today that makes the world a better place? And it doesn't have to be big, it rarely is big. It's almost always little. And I think that's the that's the piece. And if you look at it like um in the book in the early stages, one of the more bizarre characters uh is Mrs. Blackman, my beloved babysitter. And Mrs. Blackman, um, although very, very bizarre, is arguably the person who provided me with life. And what she did was uh her idea of babysitting was she would take me to the zoo, and this is like kindergarten age, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten age, and she would drop me off at the Fly Shacker Zoo in San Francisco and told me just to walk past the ticket takers and go into the zoo. So I would go into the zoo and then she asked me, I could tell time, and she said at four o'clock, meet me out here and I'll give you a ride home. So she'd pick me up at the house to be babysat. She'd take me to the zoo, drop me off, and then at four o'clock, she would come back and pick me up and take me home. And my mother actually gave her an entertainment budget to somehow, you know, buy things for me or to do something. She just pocketed the money. But she told me she taught me basically that I could do things, that if nobody, if nobody is going to stop you, you can do things. And I could look at that, that she told me that, you know, it's okay to do the wrong things. Um the way I tend to interpret that as an adult is uh it taught me that not to accept the way that things are. There could be a better way. And that by de facto teaching me how to steal going into the zoo, how to steal admission, she taught me basically how to steal food when um we moved to uh Marin County, that the only way I ate was basically by stealing food. And without her, I never would have thought of how to do it. And so the weird negative thing that she did gave me a real insight in how to do things and how to look at other people doing it. So again, I don't think you I think the thing about the book that's interesting is that there's a bunch of characters that play little itty-bitty roles that basically don't do anything of real significance other than caring or giving person, giving someone an example of how to do something, and then letting that person do something with it. And I think it comes down to the concept of one of the most important lines in all of Scripture in the Old Testament is that we are created in God's image. And if God is a creator, therefore we are creators. And if we are not creating, then we are not doing what we were designed to do. And the question is, what are you creating? And you could be creating happiness, you could be creating a home, you could be creating support, you could be creating something. But if you're not creating something, then you will never be happy. You will never have a sense of fulfillment. You'll never have a sense of purpose. And I kind of think that's what it is. I mean, if there's a an undercurrent to the book, it's look at the weird things that people did that should have been utterly destructive, but they weren't, because people can't overcome things.
SPEAKER_00Last question for me today, RA Thompson, is this without the ability to apply self-teaching to your life as a young kid, where do you think you would be at today?
SPEAKER_02Um what do you call the slowest antelope? Dead food. Right? And that's what happens. It's like not all things last forever. I mean, nothing lasts forever. And I mean that nothing lasts forever. That doing nothing is something that lasts forever. Procrastination lasts forever. And I think without the ability to learn myself, I would have um well, I mean, during the time that I grew up, during, you know, just at the tail end of the 60s and the early part of the 70s, I mean messed up family abandoned the whole time, basically school dropout. Um, I mean, if I didn't learn to play guitar and grow my hair out and do this, I would have been dead. I mean, there's no, there's no, what was I going to do? You know, smart out kid. Um, so the answer is without it, I wouldn't have worked. But I think for all people, if you're not doing what you were designed to do, I mean, if um, you know, if if you have a um a Strativarious violin and you're using it to try to unclug your toilet, I mean, it doesn't last long.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so the answer is doing, you know, don't be scared to innovate, but don't be ridiculous in the way that you're trying to interview. I mean for innovate, don't do really stupid things. And I mean, I do a lot of stupid things, but I try to do stupid m marginal things.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Make have the have the makes be great and the misses be manageable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, non-terminal. Yeah. Yes. And I I think that that's kind of what it is. But but the answer is this: trying to come up with some we're now gonna go with a deep philosophical thing. Now watch this. This is really good. You know, Max, my young friend, it's almost as if we fail our way to success.
SPEAKER_00Boom. There it is.
SPEAKER_02There it is. Yep. But no, I think that's true.
SPEAKER_00I I agree with that.
SPEAKER_02Did you like the acting piece that we have?
SPEAKER_00100%. Yes. I think we we need to spin this podcast off into a Hollywood series. Yeah, no, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Is there like an Academy Award for podcasts?
SPEAKER_00I think they're they they came up with uh with an award this year, actually. They did. For like a it's uh it's uh yeah, a Grammy or an Emmy or whatever.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. I'm pretty sure I'll get it for that line because I I put a lot of thought into it. We'll submit this for next year. See what I did was I showed my neck like vulnerable. That's like body language. Absolutely, yeah. 100%. Anyway, but thank you very much, Max, for being here today.
SPEAKER_00No, R.A. Thompson, the author of Stair Pits Out Now. Okay, thank you so much for having me on again as an as a another guest appearance on your fantastic podcast. Really appreciate your time, sir.
SPEAKER_02Without you, just one guy in a chair. That is very true. Now it's two. Yes.
SPEAKER_00But hey, at least you're a good you're you're a good-looking dressed man in a chair.
SPEAKER_02I feel like I could sell a few more homes at this point. Wow, that would actually be pretty impressive. You know, you're gonna die someday. Okay, Dale.