Wearing Pink Salmon and Creating Wisdom from Knowledge

What if the real education you needed never happened in a classroom and the lessons that stuck came from hunger, failure, and watching adults do everything wrong? We dig into a blunt framework that cuts through self-help fluff: knowledge plus experience equals wisdom. From getting kicked out of schools to reading nonstop, R.A. Thompson explains how a head full of facts can still leave you helpless until life forces you to apply them.

Then we turn to modern learning and technology: smartphones, instant answers, and the trap of unlimited information with zero depth. We ask why curiosity feels eclipsed, why memorization is disappearing, and why enthusiasm without knowledge turns into burnout. Along the way, we keep it honest and funny, from bright pink shirts to chicken coop bits to the absurdity of building “smart underwear” instead of solving real problems.

Find Stair Pits here:
www.unbreakableorigins.com

[00:00:00] Knowledge Plus Experience Equals Wisdom
[00:05:58] Education At Home And In School
[00:09:19] Hunger Shoplifting And Practical Wisdom
[00:20:30] Social Skills Silence And Gibberish
[00:32:44] Failure Biographies And Trusting Experts
[00:48:33] Phones And Information Overload
[01:02:05] Quick Math And Book Plug

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

At that point, I did come up with a theory, and that was kind of based on my shoplifting experience, was that knowledge plus experience equals wisdom. When I look at most of my life, I went through a real bizarre pace where I knew a lot of things, but I had absolutely no experience. And it kind of led me to the idea that the only real people you can learn from are people that are horrible at things because they'll tell you what not to do, and people that are very good at things because they'll tell you what to do. And the problem is everybody in the middle, it's hard to determine what percentage of what they're telling you has any value. Imagine, if you will, a time and a place where children were no longer the focus of a family, where your own pleasure dictated everything that you did and everything that you wanted. Welcome to the Stare Pit Zone. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to another exciting episode of Stare Pits. And now my beloved co-host, Max Christensen.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Thank you for having me on today, Robert. I appreciate it. I'm glad I've I finally upgraded from the title of guest to co-host. It's not in a pleasure, sir.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yeah, well, no, it's it's totally my pleasure to actually have you here. I mean, without you, I'd be sitting here standing by myself, and I'd have to talk to the plant in the background, which is, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah. Well, and the plant might be more interesting and look a little better than I do, but it can't respond. So that's the one downside there.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah. Condition my parole, I can't look at plants that well. It's just, you know, one time you slip and you fall, and people get into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

It it gets in there. Um You're looking nice today, okay? The first time for those of you watching on video, first time he's taken off the suit. A little relaxed today. The the the hot pink shirt, some nice pants, good shoes. Well, what was the wardrobe change today for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Uh failure to successfully interact with the dry cleaner. Okay. So that's what it was, yeah. So it was uh I could have conceivably worn another suit, but I didn't want to confuse people to make them adjust the color balance on the machine. So I decided I would just wear uh this shirt. And I think as I've told you before, um it's not pink, it's salmon.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

You have told me that multiple times. But again, football players, CTE brain don't remember a lot. Or you just don't pay attention. That too. Just don't care enough. Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

That's really what it is. See, now I could cry and just say I need a no-co-host.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yes, that is true as well. But no, I like the look. It's fantastic. Um, and appreciate you uh dressing down to my level today. So that means at some point, maybe next episode, I need to show up in a suit to match what you're gonna bring back since you have now stooped low enough to dress like me.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Oh no, I don't think it's that elephant. I mean, this is as you know, this is my uniform of the day. Yes. I mean, I uh I fell in love with uh Patagonia, uh great sponsor who isn't pay anything beyond it. But uh no, Patagonia stand-up shorts, which eventually I have to get you a pair of because once you discover them, yes, they're by far and away the best shorts you can get. They last forever. I've heard they're not bad. And they're comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yes. And you wear a lot of bright-colored shirts, a lot of bright, a lot of bright-colored polos. Tell us the the little backstory behind that concept because it's not many people see white guys in their late 60s rocking the style and the pizzazz that you have to just pop when it comes to your bright-colored shirts.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Well, part of it is my general fear of sudden onslaught Alzheimer's, where if I were to wander out into the desert, you know, and just going out there and dying, I guess the first question is would my wife look for me? The second question is if someone were to look for me in the salmon shirt, I would be easily identified.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

So that's one of the pieces to it. It just makes it that much better. So um, and then it also started out with uh one of the people I helped as a young person once suggested that I needed to have a pink shirt. And I told her that there's no way that I would have one, and then she had babysitting money and she bought me a pink shirt. So I wore it, and uh, she told me if I got five compliments, then I'd have to keep it and wear it all the time. And I got like a ton of compliments that I was wearing a pink shirt or salmon, as it would be correctly identified. Yes. So uh then I got it, and then I bought a second one, and then I bought a third one just so that I would never run out of them. And this one, sadly, is dangerously near the end because living down in uh southern Utah, the sun has gotten to it to the point that it's no longer as vibrant pink as I would like it to be. But it does allow me to um to wear it. And since most people don't wear pink shirts, it's weird. Oh, you're wearing a pink shirt, really?

unknown 5:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Yeah, thanks. Yes, and and you have a lot of fluorescence in your wardrobe. Oh no, they're all annoying. Pinks, purples, yellows, greens. It's fairly impressive.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah, no, I do. And in fact, if you're ever watching a uh Las Vegas Raider football game on television, I'm the only person that wears a bright yellow shirt that you can see at the uh Raiders sideline at the south end of the field at the 30-yard line extended. That's me. In fact, someday I plan on giving that shirt to somebody, have them take my place. Yes. I'll go out and commit murder, and then I'll say no, I was in the game.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

You have a airtight alibi built in, baked in, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yeah, we'll have to cut this part of the as soon as we do it, keep this podcast at home, boys and girls, because if it happens, this one's gonna this one's gonna ghost.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Which hey, that's that leads into our topic of today, which is education.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Okay. You were just able to educate a lot of people on how to get away with murder, okay? It takes some time to build an alibi, it takes consistency, okay? But you can get there at some point, all right? But education general, right across the board, when it comes to you know, your home life, which is what stair pits this book, which is why we're sitting here. That's what it's all about, okay? Your education at home, your education in school, your education in the world, right? Three different pillars which really shaped you. Some mattered, some didn't. Okay. Talk to me a little bit about what you felt was the most important educational spot out of those three, whether it's what you learned in the world, what you learned in your home, what you learned in the classroom, which one think do you think had the biggest effect on you, either positively or negatively?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

I I think that it it even comes before then. I think the idea is is design that you know form follows function. And I think that when I look at when I look at most of my life, I went through a real bizarre pace where I knew a lot of things, but I had absolutely no experience. I mean, like I could recite chapter and verse about, you know, the Fourth Crusade was an attempt to, you know, recapture the Holy Land, and they used the Navy of Venice to try to get the uh to try to get the crusaders, you know, to the Holy Land to retake it. Well, generally kindergarteners, first graders really don't want to discuss that. It's weird. They don't they don't care at all. Nothing. Zero. Zip, zilt, not a.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Yeah, not not not a lot of people sitting around the the lunch table talking about the Treaty of Versailles. No one talks about it.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah. People can't even, you know, the the idea of Westphalia means nothing to them. Yes. So as a result, I knew a lot of stuff, but it provided absolutely no value in my life, but yet I didn't know what else to do. So I continued just to read and memorize things. And ultimately, I think what comes about is if you're not doing anything, there's no reason to learn. You know, if all you're going to do is sit and wait to be entertained by something, um, all you need to be is patient. And not even really patient anymore. Back in the day, you had to be patient because a community might have four or five television channels, two or three, maybe four or five television channels that you might be able to watch, and then you had to choose the least boring of the five to watch. And then just sit like that. And occasionally, when they had a commercial, go to the bathroom and then come back, so there's no way to tape it or anything. And I think that when I started to recognize that I knew things, but I didn't have any experience. And so in the first book, it kind of talks about the first time that I kind of applied something, and our family spent more money on well, cigarettes and liquor than we did on food. So a lot of the times I'd be very, very hungry. And what I figured out was that I was when I would walk home from school, sometimes I didn't have clothes that didn't p perfectly fit. So I would stop at this little grocery store along the way and just try to get warm on the way home. When I was in there, I noticed that other little kids would be following their parents around in the store. And sometimes mom would feed them grapes or would feed them a piece of banana or something like that. And how and how old were you at this time? Twenty-seven. No. It was um No, I wasn't. I was younger than that. Okay. I was in second, I was in third grade. Okay. So um the I was in third grade and I'm looking at it and thinking, well, that works. You know, so what I would do is I would just kind of follow maybe two or three steps behind a woman that was shopping, and I would just eat produce. I would just get like a small thing of grapes and I would eat the grapes, or I'd get a banana and I'd eat the banana or whatever it was. And I would just follow somebody a little bit behind them all the way around the store. And if she like needed help picking something up and putting it in her cart, I would just do it for her. And then I'd go follow somebody else. But um, I would just graze the store. And like I'd go and I might get a package of bologna or a package of cheese or something like that, and open it and eat that, and it was great. And it was all of a sudden I had taken an observation and I had an experience of looking at what was there, and I kind of created a piece of wisdom. I mean, it's criminal wisdom, it's not quite as good as my murdering wisdom that I have with shirts, but I was able to determine that the things that I knew had actual practical application. And then that just kind of like supercharged everything in my mind from that point was that everything that I learned had to have some value someplace else in the world. I mean, that I wasn't learning things in the abstract. I was learning things because they might accidentally be useful at some time. And when I look at when I look at people who are in school, in high school, in college on it, I'm constantly amazed that they're not thrilled to be there and to go into class. And I think that there's a almost a stigma that learning is a punishment. That you know, to go to class to actually have somebody take time out of their day to tell you of something that might be real or might have value at some point in your life, and that if it doesn't immediately appeal to them, then what in the hell are you doing? And for me going to school, I uh well, I was sufficiently kicked. Well, I was kicked out of virtually every school that I ever went to. The only school that I wasn't kicked out of was uh my final year in what would have been high school, and they put me in an alternative high school, and I really couldn't be kicked out of it.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

And what what were you generally getting kicked out for?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Uh extremely bad behavior. Okay. I mean, when I was um when I was in second grade, you know, one of my stepfather's great uh criticisms of me was that I failed second grade, which is true, I did. And um, but I had no interest in anything that they were I mean, I didn't care about anything that they were teaching me. Everything that they were trying to teach me, I legitimately already knew. I could write cursive. I knew my multiplication tables through 25 through 25. I'd read more books than were in the classroom at that time, and there was nothing for me to do. I mean, legitimately nothing to do. I felt myself getting increasingly stupid every day that I went there. The only interesting thing was back then we used to have space launches, and they would put everybody into a room, they'd bring in a black and white television, and we would all watch, you know, a spaceship go up. And that was pretty cool. But other than that, I didn't care. And ultimately, uh the last three months, four months of school, uh the principal had given up on me, the teachers had given up on me, everybody had pretty much given up on me. And I would just take a radio and I would sit out on one of the picnic table lunch things that they had, and I just listened to the radio all day and read. And that's what I did. And I, you know, and I would read textbooks, I would read biographies, I'd read whatever I got my hands on.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

And I enjoyed it. And occasionally the, you know, the secretary, the principal's secretary would come out and just see if I was there. And um, you know, and she would smoke and stare and look at me, and I would like stop reading and stare and look at her, and we would just kind of like lizards, and then, you know, she'd, you know, leave and then I would go back to reading or whatever it was. But during that time, I learned like everything that was a top five, you know, top ten, top 40 single for sure got it down cold. And uh then surprisingly, that school didn't want me back for third grade. So they sent me to a different school where they had, you know, retard class where I then spent third through eighth grade. And it was uh the good thing about it was the teacher that was there didn't care what I did. I mean, he had people that had actual real problems, and he had no idea why I was there. Um I knew why I was there because I, you know, I guess my behavior didn't tip the boat there, didn't move the needle at all. I was just a kid that did whatever he wanted. The other people actually had more problems on it. So I was just allowed to do whatever I wanted, which was great. Um, it was great in that I learned more. I mean, I read more, it was great. Uh it was a disadvantage in that I never learned any real social skills on how to interact with people. But at that point I did come up with a theory, and that was kind of based upon my shoplifting experience, was that knowledge plus experience equals wisdom. And I couldn't tell you directly how many feet to fall behind somebody in a store to pretend that you were with them and then just being able to eat free. But I knew the distance where if somebody walked by and saw me eating grapes or saw me eating strawberries, that the woman in front of me in her cart would have to have grapes or would have to have strawberries, or she'd have to have carrots, or she'd have to have something that she was buying. And it was sold by the unit, not by the pound. And I figured all that out, and it was great. So I could eat. I mean, I could walk around that store every day for 15, 20 minutes and eat.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

And that's how you fed yourself. That that that's how you ate during the days. You didn't have a lot of uh food at home with the cigarettes and the alcohol kind of being the primary uh source of where your money went, your family's money went.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Yeah, lettuce toast, eggs. That was it, pretty much. Occasionally we'd get. Do you know what scrapple is?

SPEAKER_02 17:33

I've heard of it, but I can't remember exactly what it is.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

So in the evolutionary scale of, and Kale, this is, and please forgive me, Kale, but I know that you're a vegetarian on this. Yeah, but the sadness of it is this. And don't look it up because this will just it will ruin your life. But yeah, no, more so. So if you were to look at it, that you would have pet food, what would go bargain pet food, slightly better pet food, premium pet food, scrapple spam food that humans might eat.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Gotcha. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

So it's just that friction point between pet food and spam. Okay. And it's like a derivative meat byproduct that has virtually no value other than the fact that it's crunchy and very greasy. And um it has an odd color that kind of looks like rotting flesh. Boy, Caleb's never gonna eat for the rest of his life. I'm sorry. I'm probably turning Max into a vegetarian as we speak.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Hey, I mean, I mean, it it sounds like we all need to sit around uh uh a table one day and and maybe that's the next podcast. Oh, yeah. We dress up in suits, you bring some scrapple, oh yeah, we eat scrapple as we talk about the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

No, dude, it just it's not even it's not even that that sounds it to me.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

That almost sounds so interesting. I want to try it.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Oh no, you the the answer is this it's much the same way that swallowing your own tongue sounds really interesting. It's just that you know why?

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

All right, it's fair, yeah. But no, it's it's one of those, it's not going to work, you know. Um but yeah, it was just absolutely terrible. Or we might get like a piece of baloney or something like that with it. So yeah, being able to, you know, being able to throw down, you know, six, seven hundred calories wandering around a grocery store was a huge, I mean, just absolute amazing hit on that.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Almost life-saving.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

It really was, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

I mean, and it and it sounds like your your education there in the simple grocery store is you had to decipher, okay, what woman has what thing in her cart, okay, she has, you know, a unit of carrots, a unit of grapes, some bananas. So I'm able to eat that if I walk behind her and sit here and do this. That's a lot of logistics. Oh no, for a second grader, third grader that's that's sitting outside school every day listening to the radio and reading, yeah, has to learn on his own.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Well, yeah, it's like, and surprisingly, they don't teach you any of that in school. Shocker. It seems like it's a total failure of the public education system. But um, but no, but you learn something that all of a sudden, you know, has practicality to it. And then from that, it just occurred to me that I needed to start combining the things that I knew with things that I could do. And that got me into trying to like I didn't have a lot of interaction with people. I really didn't, other than my teacher in second grade, I really didn't sec, well, I've misspoken my teacher from like third grade through eighth grade. I hardly talked to anybody other than him during that whole time. And um if people even remotely asked me questions, most of the time I would just kind of stare at them blankly like I didn't speak English.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Which I've seen that happen still to this day.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yeah, no, I'm really good at it. You know, it's I just sit there and we'll just kind of give them the Yes. And eventually people get tired. You can wait them out. If you don't say anything, you can just wait them out. And you know, and then if that even something comes out of it, you can kind of go poof day, and then they you know, don't they won't talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

No.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

No, pretty much almost immediately. And then later as a teenager, I developed it into my personal favorite thing is just ask me a question.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Robert, where'd you get that shirt from?

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Uh Sefa Kuronka Besiki. My ability to speak gibberish in nondescript language is spectacular. Impressive. It really is. And I learned that because I saw a film like for For instance, the Welsh speak Welsh. I mean, in English, but they have their own weird little language. And then there's Gaelic, which is equally impossible to understand. Yes. And I saw a film that had somebody speaking Welsh, and I couldn't believe that that was a language. Because, like, you know, when you're looking at movies when you're growing up, you'll see like movies, you know, German or Italian or French or something that has a Latin base. So you can kind of get the sequencing of the vocabulary, the sequencing of the syllables, and it kind of makes sense. But all of a sudden, when you get into like these non-Latin-based languages, then it's like, you know, it just makes no sense to you whatsoever. And part of it is just making sure that there's no continuity in any sound. And then people can't talk to you. It's great.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

See, another wise piece of education. Oh no, just coming out of this podcast episode. It's it's it's quite impressive.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah. Work on your gibberish skills, boys and girls.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

It's really important. Talking about your home life a little bit more when it comes to the education side, okay? You got a lot of negative education and saw a lot of bad habits in the home. Were there can you sit here today at 67 years old, right? Right, yes. Can you sit here at 67 years old and think about are there any is there any good education that you took away from anyone in your home life, whether that's your mother, father, stepfather, goggy, or great your grandmother. But goggy as you call her in the book. Did you learn any did you get educated in a good way by any of those people in your immediate life growing up in your home?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

I think one of the things that probably served me the most was my uncle was extremely funny. I mean, he was absolutely brilliantly funny. And the time, the limited time that I spent around him, uh I learned to be funny. And he would um he was a drunk, but he was just tremendously entertaining, incredibly funny. And I remember it's in the book on there, at one point we were sitting down and we were at uh my great-granddad's house at Auntie's house, and Peter and I were just there, and Peter looks at me and goes, and I'm like, what? And I'm like, what? And we spent like close to two hours learning how to speak cow.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

And that was it. So we just kind of like, you know, go through the entire and Peter, like I do a good cow. Peter does a spec Peter did a spectacular cow. And he'd like throw a head move in it every now and then, just kind of to let you know that there were flies or something, he could kind of deal with it. And I remember just sitting there and like no words spoke. And if I tried to move back and it wasn't right, and it's like eventually, you know, I couldn't nearly get that deep as a young man.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

But I'm like, no, it's a cat. And you know, and so you know, it turned into this thing that was just spectacular. Yeah. And that's um what did it? I mean, it taught me a number of things. It taught me number one how to teach, it taught me how to make animal sounds, it taught me how to waste a tremendous amount of time in a relatively short period of time. Um but it was entertaining. You know, I mean, it was just it was somebody actually teaching me somebody, taking time to work with somebody and trying to deal with it. But again, if you're trying to look at then how you have an interaction with another human after learning to speak bovine, and you're you know, your opening gambit was, you know, well, say something to me.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

I like your shoes say, Robert.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Yeah, not a real conversation keeper goer. Kind of right there, yeah. I mean, it's all I mean, Moo is a little bit more insulting than just speaking non-existent languages and then going forward and oh and have to go. But um, yeah, it was I learned that from him, which I think had incredible value. Um he taught me how to add lib on things. He taught me how not to laugh when you're telling a joke. Um all sorts of things. My auntie, my great-grand aunt, I mean, she I didn't recognize it until much later, but she taught me how to sacrifice. I mean, she made incredible sacrifices for everything. I didn't recognize it. I misinterpreted sacrifices just giving me things. Um and then in looking at if you look at it, the concept that form follows functions and that things that work have a tendency to work, you know, and there's a flow and there's an elegance to it. And when I look at the things that my mother and stepfather did that rarely, if ever worked, um it's in the second book, but it's extremely funny. My uh stepfather decides that we're going to um raise dogs. So uh we drive up to Petaluma and we buy a dog. We bring the dog back home. Now, the dog being a male dog was never going to produce puppies. Folly one by him. Just genius on, you know, so there's just I mean, it was spectacular. And his idea was that we would um put the dog out to stud. Okay. And that we'd somehow get a stud fee. Like a horse. Exactly. So the puppy farm, the stud fee never worked, surprisingly. We did wind up getting a second dog. We had one uh we had one litter of dogs. We had five puppies. We sold four, we gave one of them away. Never worked. But I kind of knew it wasn't gonna work from the beginning. I mean, there was no I mean, I could just tell right off the fact that, you know, wasn't entirely certain how biology worked, but I pretty much knew that, you know, male dogs couldn't have children.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

And uh but when you're looking at something like that, you learn a tremendous amount, you know, and that idea of what could work, what should work, what might work, you don't know. But you can definitely tell what things will fail from like the get-go. And I think that was the big piece for me was um no one ever um progresses without failing. Nobody ever nobody ever successes their way to success. Everybody fails their way to success. And the more you fail, the more you learn how to succeed because you understand where that friction point between reality and what you believe, you know, the wider that gap gets, the more likely you are to fail. And so for me, it was the more things I could learn about how other people did things, it was better. And that got me into an entire phase of just reading biographies. The only thing I wanted to do was read biographies. I wanted to see how successful people did things. Because that was something I didn't have access to. And so I would just read, oh, well, how, you know, what did, you know, what happened to Henry Ford? Oh, well, that's interesting. You know, what happened to Louis Pasteur? Oh, that's interesting. And I would just read, didn't matter who it was, I would just read, it didn't bother me at all. I would just simply read the biography. And that gave me all sorts of ideas about, well, what worked and what didn't work. And then watching my parents, it was better. And then watching just other people, the hard part was trying to balance in what other people did versus what my parents did. What my parents did was wrong. What other people did might be right or it might be wrong. And it kind of led me to the idea that the only real people you can learn from are people that are horrible at things because they'll tell you what not to do, and people that are very good at things and because they'll tell you what to do. And the problem is everybody in the middle, it's hard to determine what percentage of what they're telling you has any value.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

So as a result, there's the um the self-sort, and I think it also led to a big piece of my not talking to people ever. Was if I couldn't determine that you were particularly good at something, there was no reason to talk to you because I didn't want to try to break down what percentage of truth and what percentage of, you know, fantasy you were living in. How delivery.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

If someone didn't bring value to you or could show you something really good or really bad, and they just weren't interesting enough to create that conversation with because you weren't learning.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Yeah. And that's what it kind of kicked off, and it wasn't there. And I had no idea, you know, you have no idea at that time what's there. And it's the other thing that kind of struck me on it was well, let me ask you this. When when you were a kid, you know, you talked about um, well, it's funny because I told my wife yesterday we were talking about being a little kid wandering around, you know, northern Utah in cowboy boots, crying, trying to figure out how you got there. And my wife said, Oh, well, so that explains everything why you and Max are friends. I said, Yeah, because I never was in Utah and I've not really owned cowboy boots. But other than that, the story's pretty much the same. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Yeah. So um good, yeah. But that that idea of when you were trying to look at your involvement in living in Utah and trying to justify, like, I'm here. What is my creation myth? How did I, you know, how did I get here? And I mean, how what was what were the tenets of your of your creation myth in Utah? I mean, you had to have you had to create something, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was it was more than anything just um kind of like I said last time, trying to justify my existence. Or at least proving to myself, my birth mom, who has never been in the picture, um, and just everybody else in my life that I was worth having an existence. And so, yeah, it was it was me kind of creating a microcosm, creating a vacuum um within myself where it was okay, I need to do something that shows I am tangibly successful. Okay. And sports was so easy to fall into simply be simply because it there's so obviously a winner and there is a loser. You are either a starter or you ride the bench. Like, like, so you're you're either good enough to play or you're not. You're either winning the games or you're losing them. So that was a very easy concept for me to kind of show, which again is is is is a toxic way to prove someone's value, right? Based on a a team sport, not even individual. I mean, if I was out there playing golf or if I was swimming, I'd have a little bit more justification behind, okay, this is my self-worth. But the fact that I was I was laying it at the feet of of four other teammates in basketball and 10 other teammates on one side of the football when I was when I was playing in high school, um, that that kind of determined my self-worth. But a lot of it also was, okay, am I a starter? Am I playing well? Am I putting up good stats? Am I putting up good numbers? That always to me was kind of was kind of proof of okay, like, can I justify, you know, my existence or was my birth mom right all along to give me up because I'm not worth anything. I'm not worth her time. Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

As being someone that's tried to teach Max how to play golf, as I told you, the best thing is just stay with bowling or tiddlywinks. Yes. You you might have different callings, you know. But no, but it's a difficult game. Um but no, I but uh but I was looking for even something slightly different than that. Like I would try to make up reasons for like why my stepfather was the way that he was, because there was no rational reason for him to be that way. And the fact that he didn't like me was kind of a given, or the fact that I provided no immediate bump to him was kind of a given. But there had I would try to come up with all these other foundational pieces of who and what, you know, of why I was there, or like why my mother was so interested in having me back in her life, but then, you know, didn't want me there, or you know, ignored me. And it was it required um well, it's so I mean, but b based on that idea. I mean, like I remember you said the fact your mother didn't want you for some reason. But I mean, did you ever explore or try to fill in a backstory on that? I mean, being a rational person, being somebody who's pretty systematic, you had to have some backs, you know, or at different times different backstories on how that happened, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Yeah. So so for me it was it was it was almost opposite of you, where where you said you you were trying to figure out why your stepdad was the way that he was. For me, like I said, I I always when anytime bad or negative things would happen to me, I'd look internally and I'd say, okay, what is it that I did? Right. I mean, I remember again being six years old, being like, okay, not even thinking there was something that had to do with my birth mom or her story or her struggles. It was all, okay, what did I do? Okay, I I always try to lay the negative or bad at my own feet first, break all of that down before I ever get to the other person or the people. Usually I can build a story or create a story within breaking down my own self as to why that happened, right? That was the the one question I've ever asked in my life that I couldn't find an answer to was why did my birth mom give me up?

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Right. And I went through, I broke down every single scenario for 18 years of okay, what could I have done? Because for me, it's always this is a me, this is a me thing, this is a me problem, right? I it interesting enough, I never looked at it as, oh, this was a problem that my birth mom had, whether it was alcohol or drugs, or she just she already had two kids, couldn't take care of a third. Like I it was never I never looked at it like what was her situation that made that made her give me up. It was always, what did I do? Right. And so so so yeah, I'm almost almost opposite of of your standpoint, which I don't think I don't think either one is bad. Yours is much more, you know, um, I guess I talk about how I'm such a logical person. Yours is much more logical than mine when it comes to at least that scenario of both of us being young kids, and you look at it as okay, why does my stepdad not like me? What why is he the way that he is, right? And I'm looking at it, okay, why am I the way that I am and what did I do as a six-year-old?

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Right. And so it's so I'm I'm almost opposites that way. But uh uh yeah, for me, it wasn't it was was never until I was in my early 20s, so a couple years ago, where I finally started to break it down of, huh? Maybe it was something that had to do with her and not something that had to do with me.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Yeah. I wonder how much of that, too, is that you were involved in a functional family. I mean, you had a family where mom and dad loved each other, mom and dad obviously loved other people, mom and dad had an obligation to um to reflect God's love to try to do something. They took on responsibilities. So maybe I I maybe I do see that as being a real difference because in your universe there's craziness here, but consistency here. You're brought into it. So therefore, you know, this had to be bad. You were selected for something and now you're brought in. And maybe it was, you know, they had five black kids and they didn't want to just they wanted to have an extra one for some reason. So what the hell you're on sale. You'll take that one. He's big. You know, we're not buying that one by the pound. Yeah, yeah. Throw that one in, we got a deal. Yeah, yeah. Throw that one in, we got a deal. But um, but no, but it's like I think about that, like in mine, where there was a lot of bouncing back and forth between different people. And each environment that I lived in was so unrelated to any other environment that I had lived in, that it was um more kind of like a Disneyland of weird parenting, where you would be like in Frontierland and, you know, Future Land and Pirate Land or, you know, whatever it would be, fantasy land. You'd go through all these different places. And it didn't have it didn't have an underlying theme or an underlying piece to it. So I spent a lot of my time just trying to imagine what was the purpose of it. And I think that's why I kept trying to read things. I kept trying to find something, anything that could possibly connect, couldn't, you know, try to connect the pieces. Like, was this was what my parents doing rational? Well, it was nothing like anything on television or nothing like anything I'd ever seen in a movie. So either the movies and television were wrong or my parents are wrong. And then when I would look at other people, it would be either all the other people are wrong or my parents were wrong. And then I looked at the previous experiences that I had with other people that tried to raise me, and it was, well, were they wrong or were my parents wrong? And in each situation, the parents wrong box was checked. And then it it's like a scientific thing. You know, it's like, well, okay, what they're doing is wrong is everything that they're doing wrong. You know, or is there wrong with right? And it was much easier to determine that everything they did was wrong. And so whatever they said, I would just immediately take the other side of the trade. You know, whatever they said, that's really interesting. Now I'm just gonna do the opposite. And with that, I would try to imagine ways that I could maybe do something at some point. You know, it would be like, well, maybe I could do something, maybe I can't, or or just how does it work? And I ran through a huge weird phase of like I felt that the public education system was so far beneath what I could do that I was being made stupid by going to public school. Um the level of what I now would maybe understand would be creativity was something that um was under well, just nobody knew what to do with it. Um and my obsessive compulsiveness was also extremely unwelcome. And so it it wasn't it it's like I didn't fit. And as a result, it was much easier to just, well, you know, I'll come up with other things of how it might work. But I used to live in constant fear of how will I feed myself? What will I do? How will I ever get a job? You know, it was never clear to me what would be out there. And my fallback on it was, well, I just need to know more things. At some point, the stuff that I know will be valuable. That's impressive.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

That's very impressive.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Well, let me ask you this. What would you say if you had to go through and look at a couple of things that at the time when you learned them that or I shouldn't say learned at the time that they were introduced into your life that you probably thought were, you know, as valuable as like peanut shells on the floor. And there are no peanut shells, you should have known that when I pointed there, you didn't have to look. That's great acting for those of you watching at home. Um, but no, it's um but you know, something as useless as something on the floor, and then later on actually wound up being important or real in your life. What would can you think of any examples of that?

SPEAKER_02 45:16

That's a great that's a great question. Um you know. Probably I would say the concept of relationships in my life, all different types of relationships, romantic and not. Um my father's a great businessman, um, Max Jr. And he um he always taught us, especially me specifically, that um uh relationships are the most important thing in life, right? Both if you want to be successful in business, if you want to be successful in life in general, right? Life is more meaningful when you have true, trusting, real relationships. And for me, early on in life, that didn't make a ton of sense because for me, two parts of my life when I was very young were okay, I realized that my birth mom doesn't want me, so who in this world would ever want me? Okay, so a lot of um self-worth and value issues, of course, as I've proven throughout my story. And the second thing is okay, my birth mom does not want me. Who in this world can I trust? So, and I still to this day battle trying to lean on other people outside of myself, right? Building those honest, trusting, true relationships instead of just saying, hey, my success will be made through me and me alone, because I'm the only person that I can trust. I'm the only person that that um you know I want to put through the ringer and run through this and do all those type of things. Learning to have so it was so in my younger life, that was kind of the peanut shells on the floor. Was was I my dad's telling me this? I'm thinking, yeah, right. My own birth mom didn't want me. So who in this world, one, would want me, and who, and two, who can I trust? So I have to do it on my own. Right? And now, sitting here at 28 years old, I'm like, that is the most important thing in life. The only thing we take with us after we die is the relationships that we have and the memories that we carry. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Right? So you could say those are the most two, those, those are the two most valuable things that we can have and and and create in this life. And so for me, now I'm sitting here and I'm like, yes, that is all I want to do is continue to form relationships and genuine relationships with people, not simply just handshake, I take your money, you take mine, you know, we scratch each other's back that way, but but honestly, you know, you know, genuine and true relationships with people, because that is what adds value to life, and it makes life a little easier when you're not having to carry the yoke, carry the weight all by yourself, which is what I try to do for so many years.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

No, I I totally see that piece because I think it is there is a difference of being able to look at it that way. I think my way of looking at it was different, where I didn't see um my aunt had a relationship with me that was um she sacrificed for me, but it wasn't, you know, there wasn't anything there. I mean, her job was I will provide for him, right? And that's it. I mean, I love him, I'll provide for him, but there wasn't any poison me against my mother, against anything else that would happen, and she wasn't sure how long, you know, I was going to be in the game with her, so she was doing the best she could, but there wasn't anything there. My uncle, I think, liked the fact that I would laugh at the stuff that he did, and I learned to play straight man to him, and I learned how to, you know, decid to I could be straight man to him. I could also riff on things, and he could be a straight man to me. And um it's well, like a good example of like my uncle's like the moment that I recognized that I could do comedy, and the moment that I recognized that I could think about things was um my uncle would always tell me that uh I was born in in a chicken coop. Okay. And that, you know, and that my mother came and didn't want me to be pecked to death by the other chickens, so she rescued me, and then I just kept following her around, that she never wanted a kid, that she was just rescuing this odd-looking person that was born in a chicken coop. And it, you know, I'd cry and I'd be upset about it because it was like possibly true. You know, it bothered me. So he would go through this thing, and one day when I was in like fourth grade, um he's going through the whole chicken coop thing. And I asked him, you know, is a chicken coop the most disgusting and vile place to be born? And he goes, Oh my God, yes. I mean, just the I mean, the chickens just crap all over the ground, and then things come, and then they go through the chicken crap, and then the bugs, the chickens will eat the bugs. So it's the, you know, it's a self-fulfilling thing that the chicken's crap, it attracts bugs. The chicken eats bugs, they crap more. So it's not even real crap, it's like bug crap. And, you know, and I'm just and he's just going on on this whole bug crap rip, you know, and it's like, that's what you did. And that, you know, he goes, Have you ever noticed it like a lot of times you kind of lean forward at something you kind of learned from the chickens? You know, and he goes, just it's I mean, it's all over you. I mean, you're gonna be pecked to death at some point. That was his whole gig on it. He just he's riffing on the chickens. And I said, So, you know, but it is the most humble pathetic place. And he goes, Yes, it is the most humble pathetic place. And I said, So does that mean that I'm the Messiah that the Jews are looking for? And he's drinking and he stops mid-drink, and he's got like a smile, but he had taught me before that you just don't smile when the joke is there. You have to continue the bit.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

So he's like, you know, a little bit too long drinking, puts it down, and he goes, Yeah, could be. Should probably treat you better. Yes. And it was, you know, and and then at that point, it's like he and I had this entirely different relationship where he would walk me through the concept of a bit that he was doing, and he would kind of give me a behind the scene way of how he would look at things. And that was like the first time that I had like an interaction with somebody where um like in French, I think it's called coup fou ray, or like counter touch, counterpunch. And he it's like all of a sudden at that point I thought, well, yeah, I can do this. You know, I can do things that other people can't do. And um, and all of a sudden I recognize that like there was a creative piece to it. And then after that, all I ever looked for was just, you know, what is this, you know, what is this trying to do? What is this saying that it's trying to do? And how much of that, if you're doing, you know, a Boolean circle, how much of that is overlap? And it became like a brand new game for me. And I I mean I still play that to this day. When I look at things, it's like, well, wow, okay, well, what makes you think that's going to work? You know, or is there anything in that that might lead to making you believe that that would work? Wow. And so it was I think when you're looking at education, I think that the the thing is we're learning or we should be learning something every day. And if you're not learning something every day, it's because you take too many things at very low resolution. I mean, you're not looking at your problems with enough resolution to see what's in them, what's happening, what the inner relationships are. And as a result, you're just, you know, well, that that can't be solved. Well, it can be solved. You may not like the solutions, but it can be solved. And sometimes it's easier just to to have that as a problem than it is to have that as a solved problem. And I think there's there's almost an example that the desire to the desire to see or to imagine what's beyond the horizon has been eclipsed. You know, that if you want to know what the weather is like in, you know, Shreveport, Louisiana, we just have to dig out our phones and look at it. We don't even have to do that. I mean, I can speak into my watch and ask what's the weather in Shreveport, and we could know and we could say, well, that's great. Well, I mean, whoopee. You know, but I mean, versus actually wondering what it is in Shreveport and then maybe trying to do something that might accidentally lead us to determining it. It's too easy to get that information. And the problem is we have tons of information and we have no knowledge. And since we have tons of information and no knowledge, there's no chance in hell of ever getting any experience because you're not going to do something without knowledge. You're not going to really try it. So as a result, you've reached this entire kind of intellectual pablum zone where if you look at like between the power of our two cell phones that we have sitting here, that's more computing power than NASA had when they were sending guys into space. Yeah. And what do we use it for? I mean, I check sports scores, I check stock prices, I look at things in the news that might be relatively interesting, and when I forget what time I'm supposed to be here, I text you. Right? So those are the things that I use it for. Now I've never tried once to use it to, you know, cure cancer. For sure. But that being said, you know, you look at other people out there that are trying things. Did you see this thing that somebody the other day made a quote smart underwear? And the purpose of this was to determine how many times people fart in a day. Interesting. Now, you have scientists out there that were thinking, how many times do people fart? Or is there a cure to cancer? Which one should we work on? Yeah. Right, okay. Well, I mean, today those people should be mocked. Right, I mean, sincerely. I mean, right, I mean, you know, it's like, well, what did your dad do? Uh nothing. Really? Nothing at all. No, he's um um he was eaten by a dragon. Um he drowned. Really? I who's the guy's with your mom? Oh yeah, that guy. Nothing. What's your last name? Not Williams. Yeah. Because yeah, do you want to I mean, do you want to I mean and what kid grows up, you know, when I grow up, yeah, what the world needs, you know, but God love him. I mean, but but at least you gotta give the guy credit. He something I don't want to say attracted him, but there was something that perhaps led to that person thinking that that was a good idea or a good waste of time. Um, and maybe there's some great value that comes into it, other than the people that will ever listen to this podcast and see the bit. That it's nothing. I mean, but um but I look at it in terms of what do we create, what do we do with all the information in our hands, because we don't have to work for it, it has no value. Yeah. And because there has no value, it's just dismissed. And I was talking to a younger person I knew the other day, and they live in California. And I said, so, you know, it's kind of I was using the example of learning how to do things. I said, it's like the question, you know, what is the capital of California? And she thinks for a couple of minutes and she goes, it's Sacramento, right? And it's like, well, yes, it's Sacramento, and you are in California and you've lived in California your whole life, and you're 22 years old and you don't know what the capital of California is. Yeah. Okay. What do you know? Yeah. I mean, I was just so tempted to start asking her questions about things. You know, she's never gonna get who the 13th president of the United States is. She's never do you know who it is? No. Millard Fillmore. Okay. Separation public school system right there. That's what it is. Yes, right. But anyway, but the um but I looked at that and all I could think about was okay, you have a cell phone, you use the cell phone, and you don't have what what in the hell do you do with it? Yeah. And I think that because information is so free at this point, people perceive that there's no value or that they can always get it. And then without a value in harvesting information, that there's no knowledge, and then, you know, if you look at it, I mean, it's probably another example, and this is something I really do believe in, is that knowledge plus enthusiasm is equal to success. Yeah. And if you don't have knowledge because you don't value information, then all you have is enthusiasm. And enthusiasm is the you know, equivalency of lighting yourself on fire, you know. And I look at the people that are, quote, influencer millionaires, you know, on being able to deal with that. If they truly wanted to be, you know, recognized or remembered, yeah, light yourself on fire.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

And you'll get more hits. I mean, you'll be dead, but the fact is you'll get more hits. You will go out as a massive martyr on being able to deal with that. The problem is about the fifth or the sixth person that does it, just no one gives a shit anymore. Did you see the way that Randy burned to death? Yeah, it wasn't anything like Ed. Oh my god. Ed was a much better burned to death. You know, but but but the fact that we even that we would even go down that path is there. And I think I I kind of think that that's really the difference to it is that well. Well, I mean that's a really good question. And the difference, you know, and the difference in our ages on the 40 years difference in our ages on it. How many how many things do you think you have like legitimately memorized?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:41

Not that many, because I don't have to. Yeah. Um, because I, you know, by the time I was in the eighth grade, I had an iPhone in my hand. And so there there was no there was no point to outside of if I needed to memorize something to regurgitate on a test. Right. Just walking around in life, yeah. There's no point for anybody to memorize anything except to to impress another person. Yeah. Simply because like you said, the the computing power that we have walking around in our pockets, um we we've almost peaked as a as a society now, as human beings, where technology is making us dumber and and lazier than than than in your time per se.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

So like if I were to ask you what's like seven times eight minus nine, you couldn't give me that answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

Seven times eight, fifty-six, minus nine, uh, forty-seven.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:31

James Kowser's number.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Wow. Who wrote the forward in the book? Two stair pits. What a way to put a bow on everything. Again, time is a flat circle here on the Stare Pits podcast. I know we we're about out of time today, but R.A. Thompson, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on as an esteemed guest or co-host. We're still playing around with that title, but I do want you to know, I want to end on this. Um, I don't know if you know this about me. I am actually a chicken farmer here in St. George. I take care of about 20 chickens here in St. George, and so I can vouch that a chicken coop is the most disgusting place on the planet, at least currently, that I'm aware of. Okay. And chickens are disgusting too. They smell terrible. They live in their own poop. The food they eat is disgusting. But somehow, somehow, they're delicious. They're eggs, they are delicious. No, no, they are delicious. And they're the eggs that they produce turn out make everything you gotta go through to take care of a chicken and the awfulness that it provides, and they're mean too. Yeah. So that's that's another problem. Is they're just mean, but their eggs are so good. Yeah. I know you don't love eggs. I mean, you talk about that in the book. Yeah. Okay, stair pits available for purchase now, all right. But uh, yes, chicken coops, bad places to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

So, does that mean that you're trying to like go on the theory now that you're John the Baptist? Is that what you're trying to work on?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

I could be the forerunner.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

Yeah, that's what you're trying to say. You're just gonna try to run it. I mean, dude, I can't imagine that you're just trying to just suck up to me at that level. Um any of you at home want to become a co-host on it. Again, send your resume. And just, I mean, wait for somebody else. Let somebody else say that you are. Don't don't try to suck up to the job that much. It's really kind of embarrassing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

This but thank you. This title will be available on LinkedIn as soon as the show ends. Yeah, thank you guys for tuning in, both on video and on audio. We appreciate it. Stare pits out for purchase now.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:35

Have a good day. Thank you, Max.