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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
You Know the Rules. You Just Can't Explain Them.
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What happens when you grow up learning every rule of survival — but nobody ever taught you how to actually connect with another person?
R.A. Thompson, author of Unbreakable Origins: Stair Pits, pulls back the curtain on the stories, characters, and hard truths behind the book — and what they reveal about how we communicate, cope, and grow today.
In this episode:
The mother character — complex, layered, and impossible to look away from
Seeing protection and harm living inside the same person
The stepfather figure and why he moves the whole story
The uncle as a blueprint for humor, attention, and chaos
How kids absorb the rules of life before they have words for them
Learning to talk by watching commercials, sports, and reruns
Conversation as a game of building — not spiking your favorite topic
Growing up without peers and finding real connection late
Emojis, hieroglyphics, and what we're losing in modern communication
Tattoos as grief markers, value reminders, and daily accountability
Dopamine, curiosity, and why everything connects if you keep learning
Why the current version of you has to change for a better life to show up
Who do YOU think should play the mother? Drop your casting pick in the comments — we want to hear it.
📖 Get the book — darkly funny, raw, and impossible to put down:
👉 www.unbreakableorigins.com
"I laughed and nearly cried in the same breath." — Michelle H.
Subscribe for new episodes every week. If this resonated, share it with someone who still knows how to have a real conversation.
[00:00:00] Childhood Rules And Isolation
[00:04:59] Casting The Story And Stepfather Impact
[00:12:21] The Uncle Who Taught Humor
[00:23:40] The Savant Friend And Belonging
[00:32:47] Maps Commercials And Modern Talk
[00:48:12] Tattoos As Memory And Meaning
[00:58:52] Dopamine Learning And Reinventing Yourself
[01:05:44] Closing Notes And Auditions
You're looking at things when you're a kid. There's rules, and you know the rules, but you can't explain them. Can people in your age group have in-depth conversations about something without referencing something that they saw that was powered by electricity? Do you have any capacity to ever do anything, or do you live in a totally atomized state where it's you and a bunch of information that means nothing because you can't do anything with it? Imagine, if you will, an author so desperate for attention, he pretends to smoke a fake cigarette. This is a byproduct of the Stare Pit Zone. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome back to another non-suited episode of Stare Pits the Podcast. Uh, I'm here, of course, with Max. Max, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_03I'm doing great, sir. I mean, yeah, what is this, the third, third one in a row with no suit?
SPEAKER_00It's kind of that situation that um my wife went to the um, she went on a trip and I don't know where the dry cleaner is. So I could probably find it lazy.
SPEAKER_03I love it. It just it just shows you're you're really starting to settle in to the podcast. You're starting to get more relaxed, you're starting to, you know, you know, unbutton your shirt, unwind a little bit, just talk, just have conversations, right? Rather than be be so buttoned up, even though you do look great in a in a in a nice suit. What I see there is a pattern on this nice uh this nice shirt you have today. I know if you're watching on YouTube or anywhere else, if you can see Robert, he's got a good pattern on here. What is it exactly? I can't. I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00I I like this shirt because if I drink something and I spill, it just kind of fits in.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00You know, you wear something without that, and then it's like, my God, you're a slob on this. It's like a little bit abstract. So I don't know what I don't have the glasses that allow me to see, but it looks like it just looks like, you know, it looks like a bunch of stains on your shirt.
SPEAKER_03So then it just fits in perfectly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it works perfectly with it. Okay, great. So I had a question for you on it that I'd kind of like to get your thought on today. Um when in writing the book, you know, there's characters in it that are pretty decent. Let's go through a couple of the characters and tell me you know, well, let's just try to say, you know, if you look at it, who do you think are your top two or three favorite characters in the book? And three isn't as many.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Um I think my favorite character in the book would be Z Z Z or your mother. Um not because of, of course, the way that she, you know, raised you or acted with you, but simply because of kind of the way that you describe her, right? You do a great job of of kind of balancing the fact that, yep, she was an alcoholic, she wasn't really a present mother, she cared about very materialistic things or your stepfather more than yourself, but also you kind of weave there too into the product of hey, part of it's not her fault, right? You don't put all the blame on your mother, you don't blame your mother for how you turned out, right? And you even present part of the book as, hey, some of the things that my mom did that are going to be perceived as bad, ugly, poor parenting, from your estimation, she did it in order to kind of protect you and shield you from your stepfather. Is that kind of correct?
SPEAKER_00I I believe that there's a lot of that in there. Okay. And I look at the things that I I did get from my mother. Like my mother and I played started playing Scrabble at a very, very, very young age. And that got me into loving words. I mean, I have a total fixation on being able to play basically two, three, four, five-letter words. I'm pretty good at that. Uh, I never recognized Wordle would eventually become a thing, and then I would be able to show my incredible skill in that, where I can determine what words are. Um and she taught me how to swim, which is something I've enjoyed my whole life. Um So I think in a lot of ways, yeah, she the she did a lot of things that were I can now see as being fundamental. They weren't the things that maybe traditional mothers did, but it was one of those things on it. So let me ask you then the follow-up question on it is um if you were going to cast it as a movie, who would you have to play my mother? And so at the time she would have been 30, like late 30s is what or no, misspoke. Late 20s is what she would have been.
SPEAKER_03Late 20s.
SPEAKER_00Late 20s, early 30s.
SPEAKER_03You know, I won't lie to you, the very first person that came to my head was Scarlett Johansson.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay. A lot of it because of she plays the role of like, you know, traumatized, dramatic, you know, woman in a pretty in a pretty fair stance, I feel like, just based off her, you know, not only her role in Avengers and all the, but specifically her solo film Black Widow, right? Where she's taken as a young kid, stuck into the red room in Russia, you know, you know, traumatized and beat to death to be trained into an assassin, right, right? And then has to kind of untrain herself once she gets out of there and becomes an Avenger and does all those types of things. And so just watching her in that movie, I can see her playing this role of, you know, a mother who neglects her son and doesn't do traditional childbearing, as you said, but in her head is able to justify it as well. A lot of this I'm doing to protect him from drunk stepdad, from these different things in the world that are gonna hurt him. I know that what I am doing is hurting him, but I can justify it in a way that that I know that what I'm doing is right. And I feel like you know, she could play a pretty good, uh, a pretty good drunk woman as well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I thought about her different points. I think that by the time, well, unless it depends upon how many people wind up following this, buying the book, and then we can force it being in to turn into something, she's gonna be too, she's gonna age out of the role. For sure. So who's somebody, because like I don't know younger people on it. Who's somebody that's younger that could play the role, do you think?
SPEAKER_03That's a great question. I'm not um uh I'm trying to think of of younger actors, younger actresses um who could play a role like this off the top of my head that I wouldn't actually know their names. Um you didn't come prepared to did not. I did I I did not come just like I didn't come prepared to know the the towns that start with a D, you know, the the capitals that that have city within their name, one residing in in our fair state here in Utah, Salt Lake City. There's a lot of you show me every single every single episode. I'm not prepared for what's coming down the pile.
SPEAKER_00Your your performance review is dangerous and close. So if you would in the comment section, like to add in who you think could play my mother. Of course, you'd have to read the book, but at some point it'll be good to you. If you did, you can come back and post-edit it. And then also if you'd like to apply to become co-host, it's you know, send your audition tapes. So that would be it. Yeah, just a couple things. The seat's getting warm here. I'm just saying, you know, we are it's it's a production business.
SPEAKER_03The seat is getting warm. I'm I, you know, I'm I'm I'm feeling like uh uh you know Mike Tallman with the Steelers, Brian Dable with the New York Giants, where it's like, hey, we play good football at times, but not producing the results we need.
SPEAKER_00So that means it's starting to heat up. Goal is to win them all. Yes. So if I can ask you the same question about my stepfather, you're you're gonna probably blow up on that one, too. Probably. Um But so then just so without going into the playing that part on it, what what would you say would be what's your thought on being able to play my stepfather out then? What what are your takes on him?
SPEAKER_03Um when it comes to who I would think or just just the role of him in general?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just the role, yeah, just the role of him in general. There's no reason to force you to name actors. Yeah. Um because it would be undoubtedly be Robert Downey Jr. Would it be anybody that wasn't an Avenger in any of these things?
SPEAKER_03You know, um I like I I I want to give you an I want to give you an answer. I want to I want to give you an actor who how old was your stepfather at the time?
SPEAKER_00Same age.
SPEAKER_03Okay, late 20s?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, late 20s, early 30s.
SPEAKER_03Late 20s, early 30s. Um the problem, I see a lot of movies, but I don't know a lot of actors' names.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03Is the names that are that aren't Robert Downey Jr., Christian Bale, you know, you know, some of some of my favorite favorite actors and movies of all time. But like you said, they'll they'll age out by the time that this becomes some sort of film. Um, but uh, you know, of course, the role of your stepfather would be very intriguing too. I mean, you look throughout the bowels of history at the different drunk stepfather roles that have been played, right? That almost seems to be the most critical role anytime that that is in a film. Okay. And and you can disagree with me or correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost seems to be kind of the thing that shapes the main character. It's never the mother who is who's the one who gave birth to the kid, whether that's a male or a female who's the main character. It always seems to be the impact that the stepfather has, whether it's super positive or whether it is super negative. Anytime a stepfather role is played, they seem to be kind of the the key turner, if you will, into kind of the trajectory that main character is going to go.
SPEAKER_00No, I totally agree with that. It's one of the great things about lions and wolves, where when the new alpha comes in, they just kill all the other ones off. I mean they make it much cleaner. That's why they don't have a lot of great literature.
SPEAKER_03The Lion King, though.
SPEAKER_00Not written by a lion.
SPEAKER_03That is fair.
SPEAKER_00Okay, just in case you're wondering, was not written by a lion. Duche, sir. Duche. Just saying.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00That's my other one of the horrible things that I have is that whenever somebody tries to come up with a clever line like that, I always feel c obligated to top them. And I I feel bad that I did it to you, but no. Not bad enough to stop.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no. And you and you shouldn't feel bad at all. Um but this is your podcast. Oh, it's true. It is in the world, your rules. I'm simply trying to abide by it. That's it.
SPEAKER_00Potentially soon to be an ex-host. Absolutely. You still have a little bit of part on there, but we'll just see. Um, I I think that you're right on my stepfather. Did you ever see the movie This Boy's Life? No. Excellent movie. Has a very young Leo DiCaprio in it. Um, Helen Barkin and uh De Niro as his uh particularly pathetic uh stepfather. And in that, De Niro comes across as being um arguably some of his best work. Um he comes across as being totally useless and pathetic and and mean. I think that well, let me ask you this is um is YYY, my stepfather, uh, is he is he funny in it at all? I mean, is he cruel? I mean, he's cruel and he's mean at times. Does he come across as funny?
SPEAKER_03I I've I don't see any humor in in him. The mo the most humor I see comes from my second favorite character, which would be your uncle. Um the reason he's my second favorite character, a lot of it has to do with the fact that I know you personally and the way you write about him. I'm like, that's where Robert got that. A lot of your mannerisms and a lot of the way that you act and kind of not present yourself, but but there's there's little things within your personality that I now know you acquired from your uncle by reading this book, because he seemed to have you know rubbed off a lot of his little personality things on you in a positive way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I agree that. And I like the way that you're trying to keep your job by saying knowing me personally, trying to suck up to me. I I recognize everything that you're doing there. And that's good. Anyone else that wants the job, sucking up to me, really important. Um but no, but I I think that you're right. I think that um my uncle had a personality, just a way with things that he could look at anything and immediately find the funniest, most obscure thing about it, or just twist it in a way that would make no sense whatsoever. Yeah. Except for it was extremely funny. And he could develop a bit and then modify it, and he had that friction point between totally annoying and hysterical, and the guy danced the line perfectly. And my mother couldn't stand being around him. Uh my aunt couldn't, no one really could stand to be around him. Um because he would either be drinking and then that got to be really scary and awful because you figured, well, is the guy gonna pass out, or is he gonna drive and get another DUI or whatever's going to happen? Or he would just do something that was incredibly funny, and you recognize that you weren't gonna ever get anything out of him except for extremely funny. But I think it's that perfect example of um when you look at people that are alcoholics, they have a desire to be the center of the universe. And the way my uncle could become center of the universe was by just being funny, was just his job was to lampoon the everything that was out there. And yeah, I think uh what I did learn from him was that everything is funny, or that everything could be funny, or it does you no good to be uh angry or pissed off at things. I mean, it's not gonna get anywhere.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, he I mean he seems seems to be able to find the humor in everything, naturally witty, sarcastic, um, you know, able to kind of tell that very dry humor, as you kind of describe him as, where he's able to, you know, tell a joke and keep it going, but half the time people don't know he's joking because he holds a straight face. I've seen you do all those types of things. So I I see a lot of a lot of your mannerisms, your characteristics in the way that you write about him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, and he was he's my favorite person to write about because I think he was that brilliant moment where all of a sudden you're hanging out with somebody and you kind of get what they're doing. And it was an example of his imprints on me. Could I reflect those back to him? It's an example of you did it this way, watch, I can do it this way, you could do it this way, watch, I could do the same thing. And he appreciated it. There was a real sense that even among his kids, um, when he wound up producing children, they were all held to my standard of well, how come you don't do anything like your nephew? I mean, you're not you're not as funny as your nephew. And it's you know, it's an unfair burden to them because they had parents that love them, and I had somebody that provided me an out. So I was much more clinging to him on that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And it also seems like he was very naturally intelligent as well. It just kind of that alcohol and addiction kind of got in his way a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think that the whole group was probably very intelligent, but I think there is a difference where you if you look at like con if you look at conversation as a game, so let's say conversation is a game. If you you and I will talk about something, so I'll say something, you respond to it, I respond to that, you respond back, back and forth. Again, if you're looking for a job, it's a key thing there. But if every time you know you said something, I decided that I would talk about polar bears. It's at a certain point you can't have a conversation with me because everything is going to ultimately be about polar bears, and we can only have a discussion about how big and how white they are, and you know, what it would be like if one attacked you, or what it would be like to be a seal, or you know, they have buses in Mantoba, I think, that have grates around the outside of them, so you could go see them, and when they attack, they can't come in. Um so there's a limit, and they at one point were used in Coca-Cola ads. I think that's everything that I know about them. Yes. So there you reach a certain point where you can't, you know, how is you know, how are you today? Fine, but not as well as a polar bear. Okay. How are, you know, what'd you do today? Well, I didn't see a polar bear. Okay.
SPEAKER_03You can tie that in just about everything, huh?
SPEAKER_00Ties into everything. Yes. You know what else ties into everything? Polar bear. Could tie you up and eat you. Yeah. Just like that. And it's a lot of fun to play the I'm just no matter what you say, I'm just gonna spike polar bear on your head. Yeah. And if we ever wanted to have a really bad podcast, we could do that for two hours. I bet you people would really turn in. Yes. And most of them would be criminally insane. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And and I'll I doubt you'd run out of content.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, I can't. I can run them forever. I'm particularly good at being able to track anything to it. It's not that hard. For sure. You just count the words off, and every 12th word has to be polar bear. Gotcha. Yeah. So it's really pretty simple. Um it's kind of like this magic trick. Um it's um, but yeah, I I think that when you're you're looking at things when you're a kid, there's rules and you know the rules, but you can't explain them. So you'll like sports is a good example. When when you were playing ball or something within your family with your brothers and sisters, there was probably a point where you knew that you could physically dominate them, but if you did, they would never play again. So you had to let them you had to let them win.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. And there no one ever said that. You just knew that you had to let them win.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think when I grew up, there wasn't a lot of people to have conversations with. It wasn't a situation where I could say, this person is good, this person is bad, or to talk about anything. It did me no good to talk to anybody. It was much better just to kind of hide. And so I kind of learned to read, or I uh I had a lot to read, but I learned to talk by reading. So I learned sentence structure on that. And I had adult-only sentence structure. And I didn't have child sentence structure. I couldn't use the word thing three times in a sentence because it would drive me insane. And you know, like the insanity that you would have if you wanted to go against a polar bear, which was like huge. So, um see, wanted to suppress it because I wanted to show you that I could do it. Yes, thank you. But if you look at that, what when you were growing up when you're learning kind of the unofficial rules of society, how did you learn like the rules of society?
SPEAKER_03Um, that's a good question. I guess I'd probably just say trial and error.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, trial and error or imitation trial and error.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of it was was you know testing things out within, you know, my family dynamic, within my close friend group, things like that, you know, because you know, in the world that I lived in, especially in the you know, in the the macho sports world and things like that, there's always a hierarchy.
SPEAKER_00Right, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Right? We all we we all peg ourselves, you know, in in in different slots um when it comes to you know a almost a ranking system, right? I grew up around, you know, ultra competitive. Competitive, all my friends, every friend I've ever had, ultra competitive, you know, very athletic, all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of, you know, almost a, you know, in a little bubble outside of society, because it's almost not real life from the standpoint of, you know, you know, absolutely how competitive and and and and you know, and driven all those things that we were. Because it was it was it was to an extreme extent. But from an also standpoint, you step back and you're like, that is real life. Yeah, it's very competitive. You have to be driven to find success. You have to overcome challenges, right? Which is what sports is as well. And so I guess now that I'm sitting here kind of, you know, deciphering it myself, a lot of the way I was able to learn the rules of life is through sports and and through through growing through at a young age, getting into competitive, organized team sports and learning kind of the hierarchy, the competitiveness, the drive, you know, that failure hurts and failure is gonna come, but you can also survive that, right? Kind of like your book talks about, right? From a more extreme position, of course. Um, and so yeah, that that's a lot of how I was able to learn um uh um how to kind of the rules of life and things like that. Um, for you, growing up the opposite way, not growing up around a lot of kids your age, a lot of people your age, like you said, it was always adult conversations, and half the time the the adult was half coherent because of because of the substance abuse issues. At what age do you feel like you finally connected with people your own age? Where you could finally sit and have a conversation with people your age, not anyone older than you. Because I assume when you were younger, you had a hard time just sitting and playing with toys, sitting on the floor and playing with toys with kids your own age, because you know, at seven, eight, nine years old, you already had to fend for yourself. Yeah, you already had an adult mindset at a very, very young age. So, at what age do you think water found its level and you were able to communicate normally with your peers?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think that's a really good question. I don't believe that I really had a friend that I would consider to be an equal for a long time because I could do things for people, or I could avoid them, or I could entertain them. So, like the the roles that I would play, I could be funny and I could be invisible. Those were the two roles that I could play particularly well. And there was no real need to talk to anybody because there wasn't anybody to talk to that was my age because I had nothing to talk about. And there was a kid when I was well, now of course they would call it special ed, but back then they called it retard class. So in starting in third grade, I got dumped into retard class. And there was a kid in the class whose um was like Rain Man. He was like a total savant where he could multiply a seven-digit number times a seven-digit number in his head and give you the answer in a couple of seconds. I mean, you couldn't today you'd be hard pressed if I was going to give you seven, you know, dictate to you seven digits times seven digits and the time that you could enter it into your phone and then turn it sideways and then count sideways to figure out if it was billions or trillions for to come up with the number, by the time you could come up with that, he would have given you the answer.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And he was I I don't know if I'm a great example though, because I am particularly slow when it comes to even putting in my numbers into the calculator, let alone doing it in my head.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, it's terrible. So it's no, I I can do math largely because of him. Yeah. He was somebody who I tried to compete with. And when I was in retard class in third and fourth grade, he taught me calculus and trig because he knew it. Yeah. And he was like, okay, well, there was nobody to talk to, so he would talk to me. And the teacher we had would subscribe to mathematical journals, and he would read them, and then he would do the math, and he would find errors, and he would write back the things that he did. That's one of the things he did that was pretty cool. The other thing that he did that was really cool is he thought that he was Batman. Okay. So he would much much the same way that I would, you know, could drop polar bear into anything. For sure. Yeah. No, he would just occasionally wander around and just would say, I'm Batman.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00And just he would drop it at any given point. And Batman back then in the 60s was on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Okay. So Thursday morning he'd come into school and he would say, Well, kind of in his Bruce Wayne voice, well, you know, Batman's Batman's in a lot of trouble, but I'm I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure he's going to get out of it. We we just have to we just have to believe that he's gonna get out of it. And it would be, okay, it's a TV show, and no one should be that emotional about you know Adam West possibly, you know, having to do something. And then on Thursday, well, I told you Batman would do it. He's very powerful. You know, and well and it was the whole answer was, well, okay, and you know, did Alfred bring you to school today, my friend? Yes. So it wasn't like you'd have a real relationship with him. He was so into math at that time that uh he was not allowed to read to try to get him to do something else. He couldn't read uh math journals. So he would get the newspaper and they would read the sports section, and all he would do was compile statistics and keep the complete statistical record of everything that was happening on whatever sport happened to be at that time. So it was he just I mean he cheated into it, which I just so spectacular. Yeah. And then when he got tired of being Batman, I think they they did something to him. Then he thought he was, I kid you not. No, this sounds like it's ridiculous. Sounds something that my uncle would say. But then he thought that he was a um a green pussy cat from uh Mars.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. And that's what he was for a while. Interesting. And then sounds like there was a couple reasons why he was in uh he was he was there, but he, you know, he and he wound up getting a I mean, he wound up doing a whole bunch of stuff. Once he got, once he was allowed to do just do math, yeah, he was spectacular. For sure. The problem was if he had to talk to somebody else, just was not there at all. Gotcha. You could have great conversations about Batman, but other than that, there wasn't a lot you could talk about. Yeah. And so the quote friend or contemporary friend that I had, I think I got when I was like 20 years old. Uh, I was working in as managing record stores at that point, and I hired a guy who uh was in fact born on Juneteenth of all days. Oh, wow. Okay, it's good, yes, and along with other people on that day would have been Garfield the Cat. Really? It's the day that Garfield the Cat first dated you. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Wow. What is that? The fact that you had that fact queued up and ready to go.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're black. I have to do things to talk to you. Oh, I yeah, I appreciate it. I mean, I mean You're from Houston, dude.
SPEAKER_03I can't I mean Juneteenth in Garfield. Yeah, no, it's right there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Lou Gehrig was also born on that day. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so there's a bunch of people born on that day. But it's just not only that, it's a whole thing. Gotcha. But um, but anyway, he uh he is probably the smartest, one of the funniest people that I've ever known in my life. And he and I had done a lot of the same stupid things in our life that kind of gave us this immediate bond. And he was the first person that I could 100% riff with and could riff right back with me. And we had invented at one point um what would now be considered video games, but this would be like 77-78. Okay. We got a piece of graph paper and we used quarters for centers, nickels for uh forwards, and dimes for guards. And then we would have the rating of the player on the head for offense and tail for defense. Yeah. And then you would move them, and as in a randomizer to try to figure out how the game would work, we would open a random page in the phone book and use the last two digits of a phone number as whatever percentage it was. Wow. And then so it took us about a month and a half to play three minutes of the game. But we had to come up with but you know, you but you're like how many pieces could you move these people? What could you do? Yeah, how could you come up with it? We built all these charts out, and people would look at us and say, Well, what in the hell are you guys doing? And so we're making, you know, if we if computers would have been far enough, we'd have been so far ahead of that, it was ridiculous. But he was the first person that I could ever deal with it, but also he was um totally on the spectrum, and I understood being on this, I mean, being on that spectrum, I was a lot closer to humanity and to real things than he was. So I was kind of a bridge, but that would have been the first person I ever really talked to, and then I think the second would probably be my wife.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00But I would say the majority of things that I've done throughout my life have been I understood I understand the role of teacher, I understand the role of helper, and I can play those parts pretty well. I can understand the part of how to be funny, I can play that well, but the rest of them I don't do particularly well because I'm kind of bored and I don't know what to do. And no, seriously, I mean that's just it. So I, you know, I I won't break something down, I'll look at it and try to on those slides, it's kind of there, but I don't it was always difficult for me to figure out well, what would you talk to somebody about? I could do something that was funny or clever, but in honesty, just to have a non-funny or clever conversation, yeah. It just, you know, it's about as didn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_03It was kind of a waste of time.
SPEAKER_00It's like, you know, like do you know where the capric the tropic Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer are?
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_00Do you know what they're used for?
SPEAKER_03Is that like the the signs or whatever? No. The zodiac signs or whatever.
SPEAKER_00No, no, they they they happen to be on there, but no, this is what they were. Was so you have the equator. Okay. Right? So the tropics of cancer and Capricorn are above and below it.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And as the earth rotates during the summer, the sun will get as high as the Tropic of Cancer. Okay. And then it will come back down. And when it when it crosses the equator, that's when it goes from winter to spring or spring to summer in the lower. And when it hits the bottom one, that's their summer or our winter. So it's the high and the low point that the sun will hit on the planet. Yeah. For those of you playing at home, that's geography is very important if you want to send that job. But anyway, um, which is a better question than asking you this: that there's there's four state capitals that aren't connected by the interstate highway system. So I recognize you. We don't even want to go down the road.
SPEAKER_03There's no reason to go through it. I can make an attempt at at the other questions you asked so far. No, I I truly like I mean.
SPEAKER_00Caleb, what about you? Can you get one? No. Honolulu is actually connected by the interstate highway system. They got federal money to connect the highway to the hotels.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um is oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00We'll talk about it.
SPEAKER_03One of them's gotta be in the south.
SPEAKER_00No. Okay. I have no idea. Anchorage is Anchorage isn't the capital, but you're correct. Uh Juno. Juneau is, yes, Juno is not. Yes. Shut my mouth here. Yeah, so Juno, yeah, yes, very good. Okay. So we got one. That's good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You on, yeah. The what is what did you call it? The interconnected highway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, interstate highway system. The interstate highway system, yeah. Couldn't tell you it all. Yeah. So that's uh so this is another one of my personal favorite jokes. Yeah. Is the capital of Kentucky pronounced Louisville or Louisville?
SPEAKER_03You know, from I always called it Louisville, right? But then I I meet people from Kentucky and they're like, it's Louisville.
SPEAKER_00Actually, it's Frankfurt. But that's that's okay.
SPEAKER_03Cut that, Caleb. Cut that. Okay.
SPEAKER_00That's our next clip.
SPEAKER_03I'm tired of being humiliated on the show. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00See, for your birthday next, you're getting a map. No, it's oh dude, I'm getting the whole thing. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Um, might as well just give me a nice globe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, right?
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, the thing I've learned more, I've the I have learned on this show more than anything else. My geography and my I can't remember what that class is called. I know it's not just called geography, but like you have to do with the state capitals and all that. That shh, brother. I I need to refresh myself when it comes to or learn them in the first place. Because apparently I never learned them. And if I did, I did not retain them at all. So, you know, I I've loved learning about your story, the book, all this stuff. I just learned that wow, my geography is really bad. It's well, that's been my biggest takeaway.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, I would say that's that's true, but but I love you and I care about you. Thank you. Eventually I'll shame you into learning it. So it doesn't work. You'll get there.
SPEAKER_03It is working.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna get there too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm gonna put this book down and pick up uh uh, you know, a a world uh, you know, just a book about the world. Yeah, and the the world roads everything behind the capitals, everything I'm gonna I'm gonna come back with different, you know, facts about each capital. That's great. Okay, like I mean, you know, each state bird, the state flowers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's we're gonna get there at some point.
SPEAKER_00Generally, that's nothing to do with geography, but it's it's good.
SPEAKER_03But hey, it has to do with the state.
SPEAKER_00Hey, that's true. It has to do with the state. You have to get there somewhere. No, but that's great. No, the um when I was a kid, that would, you know, a better friend of mine than any human was hours spending looking at, you know, Rand McNally maps. And you would just look at them. And then if I got it, used to be you could go to gas stations, you get these fold-out maps, and you get them for free. Yeah. So you get the fold out map, it was great. And then if you went to AAA, you they had them for all states. So I would get like a map from St. Louis, yeah, and I would immediately just memorize what were the biggest streets in St. Louis in case I ever got there. And you would just learn, or like I would look and try to see, like in Minneapolis, I'm a smoke in St. Paul, Robert Avenue crosses Thompson Street.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_00Something I always looked for. And so my thought was I would buy all four corners and then just erect statues to myself. Yes, yes. You know, so um St. Paul, don't ever let me become a city commissioner. It's gonna not work well for you. But um, but no, but you know, I but that's that's what you would do. You would just kind of look at it, then you'd see, well, like this is a common name, or there's you know, a street was named after somebody. Well, who was that person? And then you'd look up who that person was, and then you'd have all this weird little knowledge about something.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I um that was the hard part for me, was learning how to talk, learning who to talk to. And my solution to it was trying to take what I learned that was in book form and then condensing that down into human form or into conversational form. And for me, the um the answer was commercials. Okay. Because you could watch a commercial and the conversations that they had many times are very, very stilted, but they led the conversation in a natural way. And so I just learned to talk by watching commercials. I mean, I learned more things about how things worked from commercials than I did from anything else. And it's a weird thing, but that was, you know, I can name you all sorts of commercial actors.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but or you'd see the same guys playing many parts. It was spectacular. But they were that was the big hit. And then a huge piece of it was when I started watching like reruns of television shows, a lot of times they would have the commercial built into the show. So, like in the Jack Benny show, all of a sudden, like there would be four guys would come walking by and they would um wind up singing like the theme song for a cigarette. And it was like anytime you saw four guys, well, you know what tastes great. I don't even have my cigarette today, I should have brought it in with me. I didn't, I feel bad for it, for my friends, my fans, that. But um, you do all of a sudden get this commercial right in the middle of it. And it was like, wow, you know, you didn't want to go to, you know, you didn't want to cut away. We're just gonna build it right into the show. And it's kind of this, and then the thing that's kind of funny about it is years later, um, every sports team built that into it. Where all of a sudden, you know, the we're now at the, you know, McDonald's arena, you know, and we're playing on the Jack in the Box two for a dollar taco court.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And everything has whatever it is, is all thrown into it. And um they just took that from old television. It was kind of weird how they threw it in there, but getting revenue on it. But I think I think that's it's an interesting thing on how people deal with it. And then, you know, you kind of even look at younger people today, where if you look at it back in the day, you had like hieroglyphics, you know. Somebody would write something or somebody would etch something onto a wall that they thought was important. And we look at it today and we think, well, that's really, really primitive, that's interesting. But the answer is the amount of time it took that person to create it is significant. And we have no idea. I mean, we uh we uh assigned to it a very simplistic, unimportant element to it. Well, it's from the past, it's cool. What did it mean? Oh, well, you know, it meant tiger, or you know, it meant what it meant, dinosaur, it meant whatever it was. And we don't know. And at the time that had to be so important because the amount of time they would spend just trying to get enough food to feed themselves and their family, that it wasn't a lot of time to etch things on, you know, on stone walls. And we went from hieroglyphics to sounds to words to sentences to paragraphs to books to all sorts of things. And now with like emojis, we're going back to hieroglyphics. That we're gonna reach a point where there's more communication done by emoji than there is by words. And with that, what's what's that sense of isolation? You know, where you're gonna sit down with somebody and you know, you're gonna go you know, oh yeah, well, I like you and I think that you're funny.
SPEAKER_01You know.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, that's great, you know. And what what what is that point? If we reach that point where the the sophistication of communication has totally it's gone away. And I think that for me in writing the book there was an element of that where I'm trying to condense everything down to a digestible just a digestible piece that you could throw into it. But at a certain point I kind of I'd like to read something that actually had more than four words in it, you know, more than four word sentences. And and I write a lot of short sentences, but uh the I think it's so interesting on how how it's followed on that. I mean, do do you do you find in your generation from the depth of conversation or the depth of ways that things work when you were a kid growing up versus the way that people talk Talk now. I mean, do can people can people in your age group have in-depth conversations about something without referencing a social influencer or without rent without referencing something that they saw that was powered by electricity?
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's very hard to do, I think for my generation at least. To talk about something that I I mean, you know. Yeah, I mean, um unless maybe it, you know, it involves I mean, I don't know if you, you know politics, right? Yeah. Generated by electricity. Or and and so there's a lot of, you know, there are in-depth conversations still to be had, but they're conversations that no one wants to have. Right. Right? Politics, religion, race, those types of things.
SPEAKER_00States that have the most other states touching them. What was that? States that have the most other states touching them geography. Yeah. Right. No one wants to.
SPEAKER_03But hey, with Apple Maps, none of us need an atlas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. We're not going there. Why do we care?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, there there are there are in-depth conversations to be had by my generation, but they're few and far between. Absolutely. And it is, it is kind of difficult even to um find people who will want to sit in front of you for an hour and look at you in the eye and have a conversation without, you know, constantly going to the phone. And because of something, it's that because they they have some FOMO, they feel like they're being left out with the with the worldwide news and all these sorts of things. Um, because everybody wants to be kept so up to date on everything.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that though a little bit counterintuitive on it that you would think if you're driving that much information from your phone that you'd have enough things to talk about? Yes. But you know, but is what you're talking about, oh, my friend just ate a pancake. Well, you know, how how big was it? Huge. Yeah. You know, absolutely. Yeah. And it's so I I find that amazing that the amount of information that people have access to, yet they can't they can't talk about anything, you know, or they they have no first hand experiences on something. Yeah. You know, like I think uh in one of the previous podcasts, you know, I went home and talked to my wife for a while about, you know, your description of wandering around in the northern part of Utah and in cowboy boots as a little boy wandering around. And I thought that just so amazing that somebody would do that on that giant piece of land and being able to make it work. And it's I don't know, it's different. And yet, you know, you look at that conversation. Do you have that with anybody else? I mean, does that ever come up in a real world situation?
SPEAKER_03It's rare.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Definitely rare that that type of of you know that my adoption story, right? And and the the you know, going in depth and and details of of how I end up here in this chair, um, you know, come to pass. And so, yeah, like it definitely comes up every once in a while, but you know, it it takes a a specific person to to share those kind of things with, right? Certain people, because I know in my head, I'm like, you know, I don't really feel like I have too many productive things to say. And so I I sit in different crowds and stuff, and people are like, Max, you're really quiet. Max, you're the and I'm like, I only talk when I feel like I have something to contribute to the conversation. I don't feel like I need I need to fill dead air with sound simply because someone or or people feel uncomfortable, right? If I feel like I have something to contribute to the conversation, absolutely I'll I'll speak. But there are times where I'm like I have nothing to to add to this, and so and so I'll sit nice and quiet and twiddle my thumbs in the corner.
SPEAKER_00Um Do you know that that was the actual basis of the TV show Mr. Ed? No. Do you know what Mr. Ed was? I believe so. What do you think it was? I know there was a horse named Ed. Yes, and he was Mr. Ed.
SPEAKER_03He wasn't Ed Mr. Ed. It was the horse, yeah? Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00So the theme song of Mr. Ed, because back in the in the day, you would have the premise of the team the TV show would be sung as the theme song.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So a horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, of course, unless, of course, the horse is the famous Mr. Ed. You know, and you know, there was another piece of it is Mr. Ed will never speak unless he has something to say.
SPEAKER_02Hey. Okay.
SPEAKER_00And then they would bring it back. So the whole answer was that Mr. Ed would talk to Wilbur, and then he wouldn't talk to anybody else. And then Wilbur kind of thought that he was mildly insane and there were some problems with it. Yeah. But the even the whole idea, when you look at the opportunity of how to be able to speak and how to listen, so you've heard of Groucho Marx, correct? Yes. Okay. So Groucho Marx was a comedian, part of the Marx brothers. So this guy was uh a waiter in Southern California. And he's listening to Groucho talk to somebody else about a series of movies that were called Francis the Talking Mule that was about Francis, who was a talking mule. And um so Francis had a couple of guys that were in the military, but Francis would only talk to those people. It was kind of a silly little story about Francis doing it was kind of a comedy. And um so this guy hears Groucho saying how the those movies were great, that maybe they could make a comeback. The other guy was saying they were really corny, it wouldn't work. Groucho said, Yeah, you need something a little bit more sophisticated. So the guy goes home as being a waiter, goes home and writes the treatment for Mr. Ed out. That Mr. Ed is a horse by a guy that's an architect, and he he has an office that's also kind of where Mr. Ed's barn is, and Mr. Ed talks, and they're able to deal with things, so it kind of goes back and forth. So he quits his job that morning, he quits his job as a waiter, comes back knowing that Groucho had lunch there on virtually every day, sits down at Groucho's table, and pitches him Mr. Ed. Groucho's going, Yeah, that's a great idea. Groucho doesn't recognize him as the waiter, he's just a guy. You know? Groucho says, How do you get the horse to talk? And the guy hadn't thought about that. And he goes, What we do is we'll put peanut butter on his gums up here. And the horse will try to get it out and it'll look like he's talking. Wow. Groucho goes, yeah, that's brilliant. We'll do it. Guy went from being a waiter to being a producer of and Mr. Edwards hit TV show went for a long time. Yeah. Um and went to being a producer on a TV show, just like that. You know, and it's the and I think part of that is listening to conversations, being able to have conversations, being able to work through making something happen. And there's that idea of not wanting to speak just for the sake of speaking, but at the same point possibly having the capacity to join in a conversation about something. And you're right, you don't want to talk about politics or religion the whole time. Surprisingly, some people won't talk about polar bears for more than, you know, maybe three, four sentences a year, which is total waste. True. But it's um that idea of how do you actually do you have the capacity to have a conversation. And without the capacity to have a conversation, do you have any capacity to ever do anything, or do you live in a totally atomized state where it's you and a bunch of information that means nothing because you can't do anything with it. And it's like the difference between like you know, dolphins are supposed to be so smart, but a dolphin really can't do much of anything. An octopus, on the other hand, with its tentacles, can actually do things. Like an octopus can watch another octopus do something and actually have that behavior immediately recreated. And an octopus changes its environment where a dolphin exists in its environment. And, you know, the dolphinists are gonna come in here and complain about it, but it's a crappy football team and it's a glorified animal that you know, it's a mammal that doesn't walk. I mean, dude, let's just get real. Yeah. So I mean, it's like second tier. For sure. You know, who wants a blowhole? It's stupid. So I have noses. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I just I wonder about, and and and so that that kind of brings up to my other thought that what I thought about that was are tattoos then the way that you have something that you can talk about your past to somebody, your past or your goals or your dreams, or whatever it was. It's a chance for you to talk about something without having to have a an awkward conversation thing that's the simple question you can ask. Do you have cats? Really, so do I. What do you have? What do I have? What do you have? What do I have? And that's a way of exp of developing your past or being able to explain your story to somebody. Is that the purpose that they fill in in your generation? Is that why they're important?
SPEAKER_03I would say that's part of it. Absolutely. I know for me, you know, not only are, you know, of course they're a conversation starter and they tell a story, but they're also um uh um daily reminders to me. Um, which because apparently the the metaphorical and and literal physical scars from my past um were not enough. Right. Um, you know, you mentioned in in in I think the first podcast episode, one of my tattoos is is MC with the Roman numerals three, right? So I can remember how important my name is and and how how grateful I should be that that my adopted parents decided to not only adopt me but pass me the family name, right? Um another one of my tattoos is is my all-time favorite quote, which says, The greatest level of hell is coming to the end of life and having to look potential in the eye and say, I'm sorry, I was afraid. Right? Um, because apparently I need a daily reminder that to the failure is not in not reaching your potential. The failure is not even making the attempt to reach your potential. So I have that tattooed on me. Another one is um uh an African proverb which says the axe forgets, but the tree remembers. Okay. I interact with a lot of people every single day and and and throughout my weeks and and years, and and I it's a reminder to me that hey, I might not remember how I treat everybody, but everybody will remember how I treated them. And so I need to be more conscious in the moment when I'm with somebody about how I'm treating them because they will remember. I might not, right? I mean, you know, an axe cuts down a thousand trees, but a tree is only cut down by one axe. So they'll always remember that, right? Um, another one of my tattoos is um uh is is a an outline of a very specific crown um on my forearm. It's the crown that's uh from my all-time favorite book, Where the wild things are. Okay, the main character's name is Max. And my mom grew up reading that that book to me. And and at some some some point, you know, it's about the little kid who was who you know gets sent to his room without dinner because he's in trouble, and then he pretends he's off in a magical land with these wild things, and and he's the king of this land, he can do whatever he wants, and then he ends up missing his family and coming home. And, you know, at times because of my adoption and things like that, right? And just just the life that I lived, um, you know, because I I I still struggled with the pain of as a young kid of not fully being accepted, you know, by my birth mom who gave me up in those things. At some times, I wanted to just sail away and go to a different place and be where the wild things are. And also helped that, of course, the main character's name is Max, right? That's easy. Um, and then uh one of my tattoos is is is my my youngest brother's initials. Um, he passed away the in the in the at the end of June last year, and so you know that's something, of course, I'll never ever forget, but it was something where, you know, I I wanted to to not only honor him, but also a reminder to me that, hey, you know, I was not the best big brother growing up. And I and I and I I had the opportunity to do a lot better with him, and I chose not to, thinking, hey, I have time.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_03That tattoo is a reminder to me that hey, we don't have the time that we think that we do. Right, absolutely, right? Take advantage of every single moment that you have. Um, and then my last tattoo says, Um uh, Victory has defeated you. Um, a a quote from my all-time favorite movie where The Dark Knight Rises, where where Batman, Bane is talking to Batman as he's beating the shit out of him, and he's saying, Victory's defeated you, where you know you had you had great victories in the past, but you rested and celebrated those victories for so long that it led to your next defeat. So all my tattoos are are are because apparently I'm I'm too dumb to just have those reminders in my head every day or to jot them in a journal or whatever. I needed them imprinted on my skin in order to look in the mirror every single day. Oh yeah, chase your potential. Oh yeah, be a better big brother. And hey, by the way, you don't have the time with people that you think that you do. Oh, hey, by the way, you had a good victory yesterday, you celebrated it yesterday. Let's get back on things today, right? So they're they're they're physical reminders to me that hey, you know, just be better in life today than you were yesterday.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that's the I think that's the right answer for everybody. And I just but I just I often found it an interesting thing. If I was ever gonna get a tattoo, I think it would probably be something simple, like do you want fries with that? Because, you know, if you don't say that at McDonald's, you'll be fired. Absolutely. You know, so that was the other thing. Yeah, you know, would you like something else? Yes. But no, I couldn't I could never figure out what I would get as a tattoo. And but I do find it just it's an interesting thing, the whole the whole concept of having ink to be able to deal with that. And it is there's a I think there's just a friction point in generations where at some point it all of a sudden became cool to do, and then there's the other phase of like, well, that's something you would never do. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, so I think it kicks over that point.
SPEAKER_03La last question for you today, Robert, that I that I have is you know, it is obvious how intelligent you are. Okay, you were able to, you were able to write a book, you know tons of of of interesting, you know, you know, facts and tidbits across the spectrum, okay, when it comes to anything, when you're having a conversation with somebody, you are able to provide a fact that maybe not a lot of people know in that conversation, no matter what it is. So, what I will what I want to know, and I'm sure the people sitting at home want to know, you have to have a love for for learning and a desire for knowledge. Okay, did that come from simply you have a love for learning and a desire for knowledge? Or did that start as kind of a default mechanism because of the environment you grew up in, because it was all adults, you a young kid needing to survive. Was that part of your survival technique? Was hey, let me soak up and learn as much as possible about as many different things as possible in order to simply survive? Because at seven years old, you recognized, oh, I'm gonna have to raise myself. I'm gonna have to fight for myself in this world because I don't have two coherent parents who are gonna be able to do that. Where did like where did your learn your love for learning and desire for knowledge stem from? A need or simply a love?
SPEAKER_00I think it's I think it comes back to the way that we're designed. I think it's the genius of creation. Where what happens is when you when you do something in your brain, when you do something in your brain and you're successful in it, and you're actually given rewards for it, you get a dopamine hit and you feel happy. Well, that dopamine legitimately goes to your brain and it coats those particular parts of your brain so that you then they'll grow faster. And I think for me, when I first learned that I could do math, that I learned multiplication tables. I mean, I knew multiplication tables before I could add. And it was the the dopamine hits that I got from learning those things that just allowed me to look at that. And I think that the other piece was that growing up and you're reading encyclopedias, you recognize that everything is connected. Like if you're reading about Thomas Jefferson, and then later on you're reading about, you know, the Louisiana Purchase, and you recognize at that point, oh, the Louisiana I know that Thomas Jefferson did that. And all of a sudden it's like, wow, everything is connected. And so uh as a result, I think I have a one of the types of functions that your brain plays is that how many different things are connected to each other. And I think I do I do that particular type of thinking particularly well. So if somebody tells me something, I can pull something out of it that's similar to it or might be similar to it. And it's something that's either I'll contribute to the conversation or it's a particularly funny joke to me at some point. You know, where it's like you don't well, like you know, the joke that we had, I think, in the first podcast, it's why I love the Lenny Bruce joke so much, was the you know, the similarity between football players and prostitutes. Yes. You have to go back and watch the first one to get that, but it is pretty funny. Um so I think that idea of once you see that it works, and then you see with that you can do other things. That intelligence and knowledge is the it's the fuel to anything that you're going to do because it allows you to experiment, it allows you to break out of whatever you're doing and to do something else. That on that pursuit of additional knowledge or information, by definition, takes you out of that bubble. And I think that the thing that people don't understand is um we have to die. The the the person, in order for you to be successful, the person that you are has to die to become the next person. And the problem is no one's willing to let the success that they have today die and dissolve in order to turn that into a more successful thing in the future. And as a result, we get locked into what we can do, kind of like you're, you know, you're defeated by victory. Well, you're very successful at doing this, but what else can you do? I mean, do you have, you know, do you have any new friends? My friends are all moving away. Okay, you know, are you married? No, I'm I don't have an intimate relationship with anybody. Do you make any progress in your job? No, I'm doing the same thing. Okay, but you're really good at what you do. Yes. Yeah. Okay, well, how's that working for you? And the answer is you you shouldn't be good at what you're doing. You should be constantly trying to strive to do more than what you're doing. And that by doing that, there's a natural joy in that pursuit and understanding of what it is that you're doing. And I kind of think that if there's, you know, addition to the rather flip flippant answer of what is the book about, it's about get over yourself. The other answer to it is get over yourself. But as opposed to being get over yourself as in you think that you're, you know, perfect and whatever, the answer is get over yourself, get over this version of yourself and become the next version of yourself. And that the next version of yourself is infinitely more interesting because that's the one that will achieve something. You've already achieved whatever this version of yourself is, you've already achieved that level of competency or you know, you're already the apex predator of this level of yourself. So what do you do? You have to take on something else, and in that you will become a better person. You'll be able to serve others.
SPEAKER_03Chase something greater, right? Yes, that's truly right. Stair pits out now. Okay. Look to purchase and buy this great book by uh the author R.A. Thompson. Thank you again, sir, for giving me the opportunity to sit down as your uh, you know, you know, your random guest uh that happens to show up on every
SPEAKER_00You're just now you're trying to get me into giving you to renew. Just, I mean, dude, just be fired and accept it. I mean, dude, there's thousands of other jobs. Absolutely. I'm not even trying. I might keep you around. We'll see. Okay. Tune in next week, see if Max is here, but by all means, send audition tapes. Uh, tell me about yourself, your capacity to suck up for me. We'll get you there a lot more. I want to say I hire on merit. I don't. That's just really what it comes down to. Perfect. Anyway, no, but thank you, Max. It's wonderful. Have a good day.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, sir. Bye.