Bookworm Transcripts

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So I got a fancy new thing to show you, Mike.

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Ooh, let's see.

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And it's going to be a little unfortunate for the actual podcast, but I got this really

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cool thing that my wife made me, which is a leather cover for my lake term.

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And she actually made this, which is quite the thing.

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The part that I like about this, I'll probably hear some of that on the thing, is that it's

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got like a pin loop underneath of the clasp on the thing.

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Very nice.

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Very much a fan of this thing because she knows how obsessed I am about this.

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And I am attempting to see if I can get her to make some more of them so that she could

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sell them.

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That's why I'm bringing it up because she wants to know if people are interested in it.

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Yeah, Blake mentions like my wife has been posting it on Instagram and she's been working

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on it.

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So anyway, it's kind of a cool thing, but I'm pretty stoked about it.

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She's gotten very good at the leather craft, I will say.

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Until very, very excited to see her doing that.

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It's kind of fun to watch.

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But anyway.

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Yeah, I saw a couple of pictures come across too.

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This looks great.

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Yeah.

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I didn't see the finished product previous to the big reveal here, but that looks really

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nice.

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Yeah, it's fun.

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It's kind of cool.

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So I'm going to see if I can get her to make another one, put it up for sale.

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So what happens?

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So I'll let Carol and Blake know first, apparently.

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So there you go.

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You could do, there's a guy who wrote a book, The Antinet, I think.

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It's basically like an analog Zettelcaste book.

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And it's like 700 pages or something and you can only buy it directly from the guy who

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wrote it.

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Okay, yeah.

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It was recommended to us by somebody in the club.

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Okay.

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I bought the book, so I'm on this guy's mailing list now and he had a analog Zettelcaste and

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that he was selling to his email list.

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And it was the one and only.

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Like this is the only one that he was going to make.

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And he sold it for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, I forget what it actually went

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for because I had absolutely no interest in it.

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But it was interesting.

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The framing was like, this is the one.

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So if you want it, click here to sign up and then I'll let you know when it goes for sale

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and you got like an hour to get it, otherwise moving to the next person, you could do the

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same thing with this.

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I suppose we could.

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I know there's going to be like a minimum cost on it just because of like it's real

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leather.

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So the thing costs quite a bit.

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So just a forewarning, but it's pretty cool.

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Right.

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It's pretty cool.

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Let's see, I'm looking at our notes, Mike, and we have a very long list of follow up

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action items this time around.

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Yeah, I don't see anything on here, but I could have sworn you had one.

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So now I'm confused.

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Let me go back and, you know, we didn't capture anything last time.

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We must have, I remember reviewing that episode and publishing it last week while I was on

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vacation, which is part of the reason that I messed up the, the pro feed.

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Paul, sorry about that.

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Yeah, I remember we talked about how the action was really just rethink your creative process.

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But I, in back of my mind, I had this thing that you had one small action item, but no.

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Well, that was quick.

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It did good.

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All right.

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Awesome.

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Follow up complete check that brings us to today's book.

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That's okay.

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We're going to, we're going to need the extra time for this one.

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Possibly.

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Yeah.

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So this will be an interesting conversation and probably very animated at times.

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The future is analog.

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This is by David Sacks.

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He is also the author of the revenge of analog, which I read a few years ago.

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And this is, you think about it as kind of a, a debrief of the human experience of what

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it was like to go through lockdown during the pandemic and why some things worked and

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why some things didn't, probably a little more heavily waited on why things didn't

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go the way we thought they should.

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I found out by reading this that David Sacks is a little more opinionated about things

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than I recall from his other book that I've read.

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He's written, I think, four now.

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And this one definitely struck me as he has lots of opinions.

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The other is not so much.

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So is what it is.

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But what was your initial take on the book, Mike?

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Well, I have to say that I was really excited to read this one because the revenge of analog

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had been on my radar for a while.

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However, this was basically, and I told you so for everything that happened in COVID.

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And that was unfortunate.

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I kind of wish you would pick the other one.

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I will say the other one compared to this one, I really enjoyed the other one in a way that

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explained why in certain specific analog areas, why is writing with your hand a very different

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experience than writing with a keyboard?

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Why is a vinyl record a better sound than listening to a digital streaming service?

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And though the quality is technically worse.

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Like, why is that?

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Why do we want that?

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That was the revenge of analog.

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This is not that.

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If we just jump right into this, like in the introduction, he's basically pitching the beginnings

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of the COVID pandemic and how we were sent home.

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And then everybody had to quarantine how he went up to, I think it was his mother-in-law's

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leg home or his mother's leg home.

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I forget which one it was.

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They went north to this retreat home of sorts.

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And that's where they did their first stint of the pandemic in quarantine.

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And then basically what was the experience of going through these different areas?

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And he has the book laid out by going through an entire week, which is basically Monday,

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Tuesday, Wednesday through Sunday, and picks a different topic to discuss for each of those,

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which is kind of somewhat based on what you would typically do on that day of the week.

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So it's an interesting endeavor to work through all of this.

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One of the things that I wrote down from the introduction is he has some quotes and a little

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excerpt from what would be considered, I guess, a long essay called "The Machine Stops" by

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E.M. Forster.

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Have you read this?

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Do you know what this is?

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I have not.

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So I have this and I read this.

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It's probably been at least four years ago now.

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And it's a very quick read.

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I read it in one sitting.

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The premise of that particular essay, I'll call it, is that it is in the future when people

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basically create an entire machine that treats the air that they live in, it brings video

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feeds to them, it brings their food to them, it washes them, it does everything for them.

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And they live underground because the air above ground is unhealthy and everything revolves

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around this machine.

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The machine even fixes itself.

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If it has problems, it has these robots that come through and fix it.

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And over time, people are starting to try to escape it.

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And there are a few groups of people who are going up for air to try to acclimate their

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bodies to the real air so that they're not going to die if they escape to that.

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But basically at the end of the essay, the machine breaks down and stops working.

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And then the question is what happens?

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But he ends that essay with saying the machine has stopped, then what?

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And then what isn't explained?

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That's the end of the essay.

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Is the backdrop of going into this, that's the concept and the forward thinking ideology

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that he is pitching or has been pitched to us.

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That's the kind of the groundwork that he's laying out in this introduction.

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It's like this concept of we're going to build this digital future, this machine, if

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you will, that can do everything for us and make everything better.

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That utopia, is it something that we should strive for?

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Time we're done with this.

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We'll have a very clean answer to what his opinion is on that.

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Right.

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Remind that the description you were just sharing reminded me of Wally.

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I don't know if that's exactly what you're going for with that.

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But yeah, I think this is a bitter old man yells at cloud sort of situation.

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Yes, yes.

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So for context, I was excited about this book because I feel like we read The Shallows by

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Nicholas Carr and I made the same comment we read through that one that this just sounds

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like a lot of complaining.

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And yeah, there's problems with this stuff, but I don't think it's, I don't know, it just

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feels negative.

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Like I don't appreciate that.

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So David Sacks, Revenge of Analog, I was really excited about that.

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And then yeah, this ends up being like, these are all the problems with COVID.

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Like we all went through it.

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We understand the problems with COVID.

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No one is arguing at this point.

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Yeah, let's continue to just do things digitally.

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So it's kind of framed as like, I don't know if this is intentional or not, but like, yeah,

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I told you so, right?

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See how smart.

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Yeah.

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And it's, I don't know, it's unfortunate.

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I like the approach with the different chapters for the different sections.

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Not sure it actually works.

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Maybe by the end of the conversation, I'll have made a decision before we get into style

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and rating because each one of these, it feels like he's grabbing snippets of other

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books that we have read, which speak to these things.

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Like he talks about Cal Newport, slow productivity and the work one.

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He talks about, let's see.

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There were a couple other specific ones.

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He mentioned Sherry Turkle before, some like reclaiming conversation.

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He talked about blanking on the other ones.

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They were like three or four different ones.

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Basically, every time we went through a chapter, I was like, oh, he's referencing this other

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book that we read, which is like a deep dive on this, which is sort of what we just talked

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about in, I forget if there's a recent book where like, oh, we didn't really get deep

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enough yet.

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Slow productivity hasn't been written.

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Yeah, I realize that.

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But that's like a concept that Cal's been talking about for years with like the deep

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work and stuff like that.

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So I don't know.

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I guess it makes sense to tackle analog in all these different domains.

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But yeah, maybe we just jump into these one by one and maybe you can change my mind about

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some of this stuff.

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Fair enough.

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Yeah, so let's jump into the first one.

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And I'll do my best to kind of explain some of the background for each of these.

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But the first one is Monday.

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The thing that people do on Monday is they go back to work for the week, right?

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So he talks about work and working from home.

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And this I think could be interesting knowing that you work from home.

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I certainly do not.

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And I have worked from home extensively in the past.

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But what he gets at is that whenever people went into lockdown and went home to work,

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like people bought the cameras, they bought the microphones, they did all the things.

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But sitting on Zoom meetings all day long, technically you got productivity done.

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That was with a lot of stats.

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If you remember all the news articles, productivity has skyrocketed.

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The question mark that he poses is how are you defining that term?

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Because there are a lot of places that would say that their productivity has dropped, if

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not completely stopped.

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And that the technicality of getting things accomplished typically would include responding

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to Slack messages, doing email, and sitting on Zoom.

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That would qualify as getting work done.

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But the creative side of it, which we've talked about a lot lately, is the creative process.

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Areas where they had that as a focal point would just completely fail and had all sorts

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of issues.

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And he talks a little bit about why that is.

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But I'm curious what your thoughts are on Mike.

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Some of this is a big problem working from home is terrible concept.

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Knowing that you work from home, how did you take this, dare I ask?

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An introvert working from home.

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Let's frame that.

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Fair enough.

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So I recognize that there are issues with just being remote.

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And there are a lot of organizations that they were forced to go home.

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They had an office previously and they have to rethink how they do things.

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So that's a different conversation than a lot of the work experience that I have had,

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which has been primarily remote before the pandemic.

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So I appreciate the fact that some people had to just completely figure this out from

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scratch.

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That is where things went awry, I feel.

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I don't think it's necessarily impossible to have a productive remote work experience.

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I've been doing that for the last several years.

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Even the job I took with the day job now, that is completely remote.

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The thing when you're doing remote, though, is that you do still need to have, and I do

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emphasize need.

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If you are going to really function together as a team, you need human interaction.

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And so the way this has worked previously is every couple of months, a recorder with

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Asian efficiency, every cycle with Blonk Media, I would fly to the location and we would just

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hang out and do our quarterly planning.

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Like there's some work stuff that happens there.

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But the majority of it is just you build relationships with people and you can't really quantify

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how that helps all the other work that you do together.

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But it is necessary, I feel.

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I don't think you have to do it on a set schedule, but people, they do need that connection.

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When you don't have that and then you couple that with people who don't know how to work

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remote, you have a terrible situation.

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I remember working with Sean and doing a focus course call with some people and they were

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complaining about their working remote and their bosses basically, the way that they handled

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the situation was everybody worked remote and the C-level executives all had their eight

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hours of meetings every day and they required everybody to be there so that they were heard

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and then they logged off and they, "Okay, great.

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We got a lot done today and everyone else was freaking out because they were also expected

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to continue to do all the other, crank all the widgets that were required for their job."

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Now they had to learn how to do that off hours.

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So definitely like complete lack of empathy there in certain situations and I think the

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situation could facilitate that if you're not careful.

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That's really a working with jerks problem.

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Those were issues that existed before the pandemic and they just were hidden behind some

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analog process.

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I think anyone who's smart, who cares, is able to overcome those obstacles but that

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doesn't mean that that's a lot of people's experience.

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You're going to fall into that stuff if people don't care and a lot of people don't care.

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Yeah.

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I know that when we went into the lockdown period, I was one of those people that didn't

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really affect at all because I was at the church trying to build all the equipment and

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the gear for the live streaming and stuff which was the lifeblood of the church at the time.

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There was one particular day, I remember very vividly because my boss decided we were going

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to do our normal staff meeting like we did typically and so we jumped on Zoom and I was

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at the building, everybody else was at home.

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I still had a lot of stuff I needed to get done so I put in my wireless earbuds and then

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was sometimes in front of the camera, sometimes not but I left my mic on because there were

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ways I could mute and unmute it while I was moving around so if they asked me a question

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I could respond even though they couldn't see me.

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Blah, blah, blah.

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Everyone lasted like an hour and a half and you're instantly smiling because everybody

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knows an hour and a half on Zoom is torture and there were lots of, okay let's go around

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the room and like all of the pauses and the waiting and the talking was just, it was hard

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and I think everybody felt that and he gets into some of this here in this chapter just

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because there's a lot of stuff that happens in between like those Zoom calls like if you

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had like one a day it's probably fine.

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When it's all day then there's so much that you're not seeing and that you're not experiencing

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together.

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Like we're doing this recording over Zoom, right?

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So like I can see Mike, I can see his head, I can see his headphones, I can see some of

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what's behind him in a bookcase but I know what's to his left in that room because I've

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been in that room before but it's probably either clean or dirty or things have been

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moved around, who knows?

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Like things could be different than what I remember them as but he can see it right

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now, right?

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So like you can see that Mike but I can't see it so you couldn't reference something

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on say the table because I can't see it.

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It would be a whole process of you getting it to show it to me, right?

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So we don't have a truly shared experience because we're not in the same room.

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Like you have no idea that I have security cameras sitting on the floor in front of me

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but if you were in this room together you would know that instantly.

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Like that sort of thing changes the entire environment.

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So like yes we're on a video call together but you're only catching a very small subset

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of the communication and the experience together.

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That's the part that's missing.

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Now expand that to if you're in a creative work environment, silly dumb stuff like you're

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commute as much as we bemoan those is actually very valuable because you like he calls out

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you tend to see a lot of small things and they help inform some maybe decision making

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things that you're working through or it gives you an idea for a specific article or an architecture

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idea like it gives you a lot of ideas.

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So being able to go through some of those seemingly mundane processes that you feel

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like are a waste of time actually are helpful.

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We just don't necessarily realize that.

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To me that was a very important part of this particular chapter that and what was the other

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one the craft piece which he had towards the end of this.

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He started talking about like craft beer but ultimately like if you give people the concept

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was that if you give people the freedom and trust them to do their job help them to hone

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their craft they'll do a good job.

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But if you're constantly wanting to do check-ins and do meetings and constantly keep an eye

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on them and manage them and not give them that freedom then craft tends to fail or fall

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apart.

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So anyway work from home doesn't always work Mike.

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I feel like this one the book that we've covered that speaks to this topic is digital

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body language.

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Yeah that's true.

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Because you're right we don't have the shared context.

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I don't think that's completely necessary.

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What you really need is alignment on the rules of engagement and that's where like when you're

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coming from we used to meet in an office and now we're doing this virtually and what do

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we do.

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Like that's where you have the big gaps in the zoom call that lasts an hour and a half.

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But it doesn't have to last an hour and a half.

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I mean we do daily stand-ups with the day job and there is a very specific format that

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we follow.

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And even though we have 12 team members we're done in 15 minutes where people share this

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is what I'm working on.

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This is where I'm stuck.

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We discuss real briefly how we get that person unstuck.

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But everybody kind of knows like if I'm stuck with something that I'm waiting on Joe for

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I'm going to bring that up in the huddle and no one else is going to speak at that moment.

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Joe is going to respond and he's going to say this is where it's at or I will get to

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that right after the call.

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By end of day this will be done you know that kind of stuff.

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So it's sort of like dancing I guess.

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You got a there's give and take there.

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You have to recognize when it's your turn to do something and when it's not.

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And what he's describing painfully in all of these chapters is the video awkwardness

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of all these different situations.

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And he's right and a lot of them it's just like you can't do a book club virtually maybe

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you can because we do that.

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But like the one that he's describing where everybody is close friends and part of it

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is that they're enjoying some alcoholic beverages together.

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And so like that changes the interactions like of course that's something totally different

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than a video we stream on YouTube.

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But that's what you're after with that then yeah you have to take some some intention

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and consideration and crafting the environment where you want that sort of stuff to happen.

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Now that doesn't appeal to me at all to be honest.

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So I don't know he's bemoaning the fact that he's lost this kind of stuff.

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I'm like yeah it's cool.

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That's where I was with the work thing I'm like yeah actually there's a lot of benefits

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to working remote and I really enjoy those and I feel like I've been able to navigate

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that stuff.

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That's part of it is also like this is the new book right?

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And at this and this there's a lot of benefit to reading those timely books a lot of times.

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However this one just the exact moment that we're in and the process that he went through

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to write this and the fact that this is yet another book talking about how COVID ruined

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our lives like I'm ready to be done with this.

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Yes.

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And specifically as it pertains to work like can we just figure this out and move forward

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you know but it was what it was.

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It is what it is.

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Let's just move on please.

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And to be fair I didn't realize that was the whole point of this because everything that

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I had read or seen about this didn't touch that at all.

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So I was like huh we're really going to have an entire book debriefing the pandemic.

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I was not ready for that but that's what we got.

00:25:04

Let's go relive that again.

00:25:05

Yeah here we go.

00:25:06

We're going to go back in time and live all the horrible again.

00:25:10

That said let's go to school.

00:25:14

So the next day or chapter it's Tuesday where he talks about school.

00:25:21

And it's I would say pretty similar to the work conversation in that he's showing what

00:25:31

the experience was like for kids.

00:25:34

Because this is an area like in every chapter it's always talking about how there's like

00:25:39

this promise of a digital future that would then be better than where we're at right now.

00:25:44

So like that's always the pitch.

00:25:45

And that's been a big pitch in the world of education for a long time.

00:25:49

Like iPads for every student you know all of this digital you know learning from home

00:25:56

concept is something that's been pushed and advocated for for many years.

00:26:01

And covid kind of forced us to go full steam ahead on that.

00:26:05

Sent everybody home.

00:26:07

Parents had to get involved with their kids education on a daily basis when they were

00:26:13

not necessarily used to doing that.

00:26:17

And it's it's one where he's explaining that kids were then able to do school.

00:26:24

How did he put this kids were able to do school where how and whenever they wanted.

00:26:31

But my question whenever he made that comment was that who's going to teach the kids the

00:26:36

self discipline to do that.

00:26:39

Because you and I as adults struggle with that self discipline when we're working from

00:26:43

home.

00:26:44

He just finished a whole chapter on how that's hard to do.

00:26:49

To do the work from home thing all day every day.

00:26:53

And then he turns around and goes into the like kids can do this.

00:26:58

They don't have the experience or the learning to to know how to manage themselves in a way

00:27:04

to make that work.

00:27:06

So then he tells the fun stories of his son in kindergarten doing zoom for many hours

00:27:11

a day.

00:27:12

But I have no interest in helping a kindergarten or do school online for an entire day let alone

00:27:20

months on end like that just does not.

00:27:22

Yep.

00:27:23

That sounds terrifying to me.

00:27:25

So school at home.

00:27:27

No good.

00:27:29

Unless you homeschool.

00:27:31

It's true.

00:27:32

It's true.

00:27:33

The virtual school I should say maybe I should clarify that.

00:27:37

Yeah.

00:27:38

There you go.

00:27:39

Since we homeschool.

00:27:40

There's a ton to unpack in this tiny little chapter and he's not able to speak to all

00:27:46

of this stuff effectively just in the format that he chose.

00:27:50

So I recognize that.

00:27:51

I don't want to attack a whole bunch of things here.

00:27:55

But this one specifically I feel like I don't know.

00:27:59

I've got a real good picture in my head of what this was actually like.

00:28:03

One of my guys in my discipleship group is a teacher for fifth grade locally and he kind

00:28:13

of switched careers five or six years ago because he believed that he should have been

00:28:17

a teacher.

00:28:18

He's like he was working with the family landscaping business sitting in the school parking lot

00:28:24

because they were snow plowing in the winter watching the teachers go in.

00:28:27

He's like that should be me.

00:28:28

Went back to school.

00:28:29

Got his degree.

00:28:30

He's a teacher now and he's won last couple of years like the teacher of the county award.

00:28:36

He's really really good at it.

00:28:38

So when this happened like he was distraught because the school that he teaches at I mean

00:28:43

you've been in our area we're not like inner city or anything but the school that he teaches

00:28:48

at tends to be the school where there's a lot at risk kids.

00:28:52

So he knows that like these fifth graders that he has they're coming from broken homes.

00:28:56

A lot of them don't have dads at home stuff like that.

00:28:59

He's like that's not a good situation.

00:29:00

They can't be home alone all day every day.

00:29:05

They're not going to do well in that scenario that environment.

00:29:10

So he was doing everything that he could like he would drive to people's homes and talk

00:29:15

to him through the screen door you know as soon as he was able to do that like he was

00:29:20

going above and beyond working 18 hour days just to try to physically wherever and however

00:29:27

he could connect with his kids beyond the screen.

00:29:30

Right because he knew that the screen was not going to not going to translate.

00:29:36

Now that being said there's so I guess I say that to say like there are some problems

00:29:42

that go a lot deeper here than David Sachs talked about.

00:29:47

There are also he kind of touched on this a little bit but kind of glanced over it that

00:29:51

there are a lot of kids who don't have access to technology and they're the in the worst

00:29:57

of the worst environments and those are the ones who suffered the most.

00:30:01

One of the churches that I follow I've not actually been there but there's a church in

00:30:05

California called the Dream Center Matthew Barnett and they created this whole big open

00:30:11

air building during the pandemic and got a whole bunch of technology and so it's got

00:30:20

like one of those coverings so it's in the shade but it's outside so it follows protocols

00:30:25

and stuff and kids can just show up and do their school there right because they don't

00:30:30

have that sort of stuff at home.

00:30:32

I really appreciate people who are able to see the real needs of people like that you

00:30:38

know that the stuff with his with his son like that's funny right but it's really not

00:30:41

that big a deal compared to what other people have went through.

00:30:45

I also have experience with the family business and that's educational software for primarily

00:30:51

special education so he talks in this chapter about how a big part of learning is like this

00:30:57

social emotional learning and that he is 100% right on that.

00:31:03

The social emotional aspect actually is more important than the hard skill stuff that you

00:31:08

will learn in the classroom and that's what it was diluted down to when you all you had

00:31:14

was the virtual stuff.

00:31:16

However, the social emotional learning stuff this has always been an issue for a certain

00:31:22

percent of the population even when they were meeting together in person primarily the populations

00:31:28

that the family business served.

00:31:31

If you've got a lower functioning individual they typically don't have these social emotional

00:31:36

skills but these are the skills that they need to function independently how you're

00:31:40

going to learn those you got to learn those right.

00:31:43

So I mean we've got whole lines of products for the family business that are built on

00:31:48

this concept of video modeling right so there are certain populations that the only way they

00:31:54

learn these skills is through a screen because you can't put them in that situation they'll

00:32:00

freak out right but if you've got a lower functioning individual who is severely autistic

00:32:09

let's say right and they go into a grocery store to do their shopping the amount of noise

00:32:16

and everything that's going on there like that can cause a panic attack but if you can

00:32:21

practice that ahead of time you can go do what you need to do and you can be around

00:32:27

other people and you can interact and you can leave and go back home and that's a win

00:32:33

right so that's like we've got whole products that are kind of built on that model like

00:32:37

you can watch these videos you can understand the proper way to behave in a certain situation

00:32:42

and then when you see it you recognize it and it's generalizable transfers different

00:32:47

domains like that's a really powerful concept so again like there's a whole bunch here

00:32:55

I don't think he really spoke to it effectively the one tidbit I got from this is the thing

00:33:01

about Finland's education system I like this there are a couple this is good couple things

00:33:06

you see called out here but how and why it's always in the top in the world rankings not

00:33:10

maybe the the top but near the top their academic instruction starts later there's almost no

00:33:16

homework there's no standardized testing and teachers have autonomy they have the trust

00:33:21

of the organization that whatever they're going to do is going to be right for the kids

00:33:27

that's awesome I love that kind of stuff and that that's the thing that reminds me a lot

00:33:31

of homeschooling honestly I mean not that you have no process but that's the thing people

00:33:36

are always worried about is like well you're not a certified teacher how you're going to

00:33:40

make sure your kids have all these skills I'm like don't worry about it they're going

00:33:42

to they're going to be better off and that's hard for some people to understand yeah that's

00:33:48

that's tough for people to grasp it was uncanny to me how many people helped their kids with

00:33:54

the virtual school and then the next semester or the next school year started homeschooling

00:34:02

like just just done like if I'm gonna be teaching my kids anyway I might as well do

00:34:06

all of it like that was the mentality so it completely changed things for them I know

00:34:12

one of the quotes that he had in here I think it was his daughter said that the the digital

00:34:17

virtual school is all of the work and none of the fun because they just didn't have the

00:34:22

interactions with their fellow classmates and I know that like for a number of students

00:34:28

that's a good thing like they're in that category where like that was not a pleasant

00:34:34

experience so going home helps so there there are those but broadly speaking it became a

00:34:43

bigger issue which kind of leads us into the next piece here which is one Wednesday

00:34:49

where we talk about commerce this one actually opened my eyes a little bit to some things

00:34:54

that were going on that I don't think I really knew about like I knew some of it but not all

00:35:00

of it the biggest part of that he's talking about here and he kind of talks about this

00:35:05

in the school and you kind of alluded to it as well as like the divides that already existed

00:35:09

got exacerbated like they got even worse so like we were talking about the the divide

00:35:15

between the haves and the have-nots in school got even wider just because if you had good

00:35:22

computers and you had a good internet connection it would be like you could afford those things

00:35:26

well then that meant that you were in better place to do well with school but if you didn't

00:35:30

have the ability to afford that now it's an even bigger problem when you can't even connect

00:35:35

to the teacher at all and a similar thing happened in the world of commerce with small

00:35:40

businesses and big corporations the scale thing meant that Amazon and Walmart did wonderfully

00:35:47

well but your small mom and pop shops closed their doors because they can't make it and

00:35:57

you start to take that to like restaurants who were forced to shut their doors and started

00:36:05

using delivery services that were eventually taking advantage of them and taking all of

00:36:11

the profits and leaving them making food for them for free so all of this gets to be a

00:36:17

bigger and bigger problem on the overall economy just because whenever all of that starts to

00:36:23

go away like when your small mom and pops and your small little coffee shops and stuff

00:36:28

can't make it where do you go when you can meet with people like that like we we've pretty

00:36:33

much belabored this already we're going to continue to labor because it's what the whole

00:36:36

book's about it's like the connection with other people face to face is a big deal and

00:36:42

if you don't have places to do that it gets tough so this world of commerce one of the

00:36:49

notes I wrote down I'd never heard of this book was it bookshop my notes are a little

00:36:54

harder yeah I'd not heard of this I feel like I should have heard of this but it's it's

00:36:59

essentially a group that helps small book distributors book publishers drawn up like

00:37:05

local bookstores basically basically makes it easy for them to sell books online like

00:37:11

think of it that way and I feel like that's something I need to do some looking into it's

00:37:17

like huh why have I not heard of this but it would be a good thing to do anyway there

00:37:22

are all these places that are starting to and have been working towards the process of

00:37:27

helping you to support small businesses in your local community as opposed to supporting

00:37:31

the big mega corporations and it's those little companies those little groups that have a

00:37:39

much how do I say that they have a much better connection to their local community in that

00:37:47

like the example he gave of surfing in Toronto which just kind of messed with my head a little

00:37:52

bit like surfing in Toronto people do how yeah how do you do that he explains that later

00:37:58

on in a different chapter has to do with like high winds on a lake in winter basically

00:38:03

it seems like just did not sound fun at all but whenever he needed to get a wetsuit like

00:38:11

he did all sorts of research online and just could not figure out what it was he needed

00:38:15

to do he finally called a local surf shop which that again blew my mind that there's

00:38:19

a surf shop in Toronto and the guy walked him through like oh well if you're doing this

00:38:25

and this this is what you need this is your build here's what you need and it's like absolutely

00:38:30

I'm buying from you because that expertise piece is missing when you go online and you

00:38:35

don't get to have that personal connection that helps you work through those details

00:38:39

so I get that in some ways it's better to buy from bigger companies like I'm probably

00:38:47

not stopping my use of Amazon anytime soon but I also know that there are a lot of local

00:38:52

places that I frequent that have expertise that I need some help with so trying to support

00:38:59

them instead of the mega corpse can be a positive thing yeah I like the idea of being able to

00:39:05

shop online and support local businesses I've got an action item to check out bookshop

00:39:10

which I've looked at the website and I don't know looks looks interesting as long as the

00:39:16

book isn't twice as expensive right I'm right I'm gonna try to order one of the next ones

00:39:21

from this I looked up my next book on bookshop and it's not available there so that's not

00:39:28

an option but maybe down the road I'll use this site I also like to support local businesses

00:39:35

whenever I can I have never thought to myself well I'm gonna go buy a book at a local bookstore

00:39:41

as opposed to ordering it off of Amazon there are a couple local bookstores near me and if

00:39:47

I am in a place where there is a little bookstore like that that has things that I am interested

00:39:53

in I will tend to buy something there to support it I'm thinking of between the lines right

00:40:00

that's the name of the one in Woodstock that sounds right I think so I'll look it up and

00:40:07

I'll put it in the show notes I like that bookstore I'm the stuff that they have there

00:40:11

I could buy off Amazon but when I'm there I like to support the local bookstore I've

00:40:15

got a little pin on my backpack that says fight evil read books you know I bought that

00:40:20

at that book store but around me they're like I don't even know what they're because

00:40:26

there's there's typically different genres that are represented by these local bookstores

00:40:32

and none of them are really the ones that I'm interested at are near me so I tend not

00:40:37

to to go to those places but I will buy my pens or mandarism pens right you know during

00:40:45

the pandemic there were a couple restaurants that we really like that we tried to get food

00:40:48

from them frequently not because we needed to because we were so busy we had nothing

00:40:54

but time but we wanted to support them because people weren't eating in there anymore whole

00:40:58

big section of this chapter is how bad those third party delivery services were which I

00:41:04

kind of knew but like as a reader of that information what are you going to do with

00:41:09

that like you're going to go talk to your local company be like hey you shouldn't use

00:41:12

this you should use this other company they're well aware believe me yep they know what

00:41:18

the problems are and so I don't know like what's the tactical takeaway from this it's

00:41:26

probably just support your local business is regardless of who they use for their delivery

00:41:31

right yep so I don't know this is one I didn't other than checking a bookshop I'm

00:41:38

not quite sure what to do with this this information this one was one that I I don't

00:41:44

really have takeaways because this is something I've been doing for a long time by takeaways

00:41:49

I mean action items because I know that's like for example I tend to do a decent amount

00:41:56

of my own mechanic work on our vehicles right now I'm in the middle of a check engine light

00:42:01

issue on our truck and I know what the problem is I know what part I need because I was able

00:42:07

to get the code off of it all the things I could order it online and have it at my door

00:42:15

the next day but instead I'm I know that a local shop has the part because I called them

00:42:23

and I'm gonna go pick it up probably tomorrow but I want to do that because I know that the

00:42:29

guy the guys who work there can walk me through the stuff that I need to know and when I'm

00:42:35

doing that particular replacement it's not just a simple unscrew it screw it back in

00:42:41

and you're done it's a whole process I've got to go through to fix this and I'll do that

00:42:46

I just don't want to spend the $700 to have a shop do it when it can cost me 40 bucks

00:42:50

in parts like I just don't want to do it so I know that if I go shop at that place they

00:42:55

can walk me through their expertise becomes what I'm paying for I might pay a few dollars

00:43:01

more there than what I could get it for online it's totally worth it to me and that's just

00:43:07

one instance like I've got a big soundboard project I'm in the middle of I bought it from

00:43:12

our system from a local guy that I've worked with a number of times because he has the

00:43:17

expertise and I could get the same stuff maybe a little bit cheaper if I bought it myself

00:43:22

but again I'm getting his expertise in the process so to me like that's the piece that

00:43:27

sticks out like that that whole somebody who knows what they're doing and being able to

00:43:31

get access to them and their knowledge like that's that's a big deal in some arenas but

00:43:37

if it's something like this very specific book I need to get bought like whether I buy

00:43:44

it at a local place or not it doesn't really matter it's just pure price to me at that

00:43:48

point.

00:43:49

Isn't it obvious though when you want to go to those places and get the feedback because

00:43:54

I mean like the scenario for that for me would be like musical gear.

00:44:01

Oh yeah yeah.

00:44:03

The local place that everybody would go to even though it's not local is like guitar

00:44:07

center I hate going in there I would rather order something online than go to guitar center

00:44:12

but there is a local store that I love because the people there know their stuff and when

00:44:19

I wanted to buy a thin line telecaster because I wanted or no it was a acoustic sonic telecaster

00:44:29

because I wanted the ability to do acoustic and electric the guys there's like you really

00:44:33

don't want that that's not a very good guitar if you want acoustic it in a acoustic if you

00:44:36

want electric in an electric this one's bad at both it's like if you really want the

00:44:40

telly but you want to occasionally play acoustic this is what you do you buy the thin line

00:44:46

telly so you got the acoustic semi-hello body right and then you get a piezo pickup

00:44:52

and you plug it directly into an acoustic off board amp I was like oh that's amazing

00:44:58

that's such a great idea and that's that's what you're talking about but I feel like if

00:45:06

that's what you're after you know that when you see it and you're kind of attracted to

00:45:11

that kind of stuff you don't need a kick in the pants from somebody who wrote a book that

00:45:15

you read like hey you should really start looking for this stuff locally and maybe that's just

00:45:19

our perspective because that's our approach to these these books maybe that's not how most

00:45:23

people would read this book and be looking for that kind of stuff but yeah so that that's

00:45:28

the thing like as I read through this I'm like well I'm not gonna change anything because

00:45:33

I'm already sort of like doing this where it makes sense and yeah online is convenient

00:45:38

yeah a lot of scenarios I'm gonna continue to do that it's it's funny to me that you

00:45:43

bring up guitar center because I have a few musicians that talk about going there and

00:45:47

getting some feedback and picking up gear and stuff and I'm always like most of the time

00:45:53

when I go in there which is almost never anymore they they will tell me something and

00:45:58

it's like like in one particular case I had somebody recommend a specific basically it's

00:46:07

a ground lift box all it does is break ground so you get sometimes you get like buzzes in

00:46:13

the background a lot of times it's a ground loop and this basically breaks that for you

00:46:19

and he was pitching this box to me that would solve that problem it's like okay but it takes

00:46:26

power a ground fall issue doesn't need more power introduced to it it simply needs to

00:46:34

take a line in and a line out and then break one of them like that's all it needs to do

00:46:38

it doesn't have to have power so why would I need one with power and I got to looking

00:46:42

as like that one was more expensive so okay and then like that that just didn't make sense

00:46:49

to me so what I've run across is and I now know that that particular box and I'm not

00:46:52

mentioning what it is because you don't ever need it it it just doesn't work for any scenario

00:47:00

that it could possibly work for like there are many other ways that would do that a lot

00:47:03

better so I basically learned that whenever I go in there a lot of times I know more than

00:47:08

they do which is an unfortunate situation to be in so that's why I go to somebody that

00:47:13

has toured with a list singers and noses stuff very well way beyond anything I can comprehend

00:47:20

so he's the guy that I go to whenever I need some feedback if there's one thing that we've

00:47:26

learned the last couple years it's the importance of mental health and our overall state of well-being

00:47:31

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00:47:38

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00:49:11

one of the places that I tend to avoid though whenever I'm doing all of this is actually the city

00:49:16

which is where we're going next which is on Thursday is when we go to the city

00:49:22

and I had all sorts of qualms with this particular chapter did not like this one

00:49:29

at all and some of that might be because of the way he started this particular one but he ends up

00:49:35

talking about like smart cities and like this digital promise of everything fully connected

00:49:40

electric cars that are autonomous and stuff and although we think that's a cool thing we've learned

00:49:45

that you know the more that that type of thing happens it doesn't actually decrease

00:49:49

traffic it actually increases traffic just because of you know it makes it easy like take

00:49:57

uber for example like in theory it would mean fewer people have vehicles on the road because

00:50:02

they're leaving their cars at home but what actually happens is the uber drivers are just

00:50:07

they're not going to park somewhere and pay for parking so they just keep driving until somebody

00:50:11

pings them for another ride so there's actually more cars on the road because of that but he starts

00:50:18

this particular chapter and I wrote this quote down because it just it just bugged me and I'll

00:50:25

explain why after I read this but anyway he says that cities at their core are a critical mass of

00:50:32

brain power that naturally generates ideas innovation and energy by sheer physical proximity

00:50:39

and I don't think I would argue with him on that I would simply argue with the quality of all of

00:50:46

those things like what quality of ideas what quality of innovation what quality of energy are

00:50:51

you talking about when you're talking about people to people because yes there is a lot of

00:50:55

physical proximity but I'm saying this as a farm kid who grew up on many thousands of acres at my

00:51:05

disposal and not only seeing one house in like a mile radius like that was it and just having access

00:51:15

to tons and tons of open space where if you went outside you didn't hear an airplane you didn't hear

00:51:21

cars unless there was one that happened to be going by on the highway that was a half a mile away

00:51:27

like you just didn't hear that stuff and then whenever we moved to Minnesota we bought a house

00:51:35

in a little suburb in a little subdivision right like at like you do on a third of an acre and

00:51:43

over the span of like eight years like my stress levels just constantly went up and up and up

00:51:49

and I only know this because we eventually bought five acres and moved away from it and I know that

00:51:54

having moved like there's way more peace in my brain just because I'm not in all of that all the

00:52:01

time and there's not so much stuff in the background constantly now either that's the problem that

00:52:08

cities create or that's a disconnect between cities and Joe's personality like it's it's going to be

00:52:16

one of those two things I like to think it's the former a lot of people would tell me it's the latter

00:52:24

but regardless his whole section is talking about like what cities have to offer and how good that is

00:52:31

and every time he brought that up it just made me cringe is like no that's not good

00:52:36

maybe I'm just being an introvert who knows I don't know I feel like I see both sides of this for a

00:52:47

long time in college specifically I was pretty adamant that I wanted to live in a city

00:52:55

just because there is a different energy there there are different groups of people that assemble

00:53:04

in cities that you won't find other places but there's a lot of benefit from the large open spaces

00:53:15

as well kind of where I live now is neither of those things I've got the the the suburbs with the

00:53:26

people around here who typically don't care about Apple tech or productivity and like think I'm

00:53:32

weird because I make podcasts and when I worked online they didn't think I really had a job you

00:53:40

know so I'm kind of in like the worst sweet spot of those overlapping circles I guess but

00:53:47

I don't know I think you're right that there's a tone that comes across here that cities are great

00:53:54

and they are the genesis of every good thing that has ever happened in human civilization that's

00:54:00

not what he's saying but that's kind of how it comes across in a large part of this chapter is

00:54:03

really talking about urban planning yes which is kind of weird because unless you are in the city

00:54:10

you really don't have a whole lot of context for this now I've been to enough big cities I had to

00:54:17

go to Austin frequently I had to go to Kansas City you're close to Minneapolis like we have

00:54:24

experience right in those environments but I think there's a large large portions of the

00:54:29

population where like they've gone there a couple times and they just have no desire to go back

00:54:32

and I think that's completely fine so I guess if you're gonna if I'm gonna put on the perspective

00:54:38

of the wannabe city dweller from many years ago the urban planning stuff is kind of interesting

00:54:47

but even then like it's not doesn't really do it for me I do think it's it's interesting the whole

00:54:55

concept of the traffic that you were talking about like the Uber drivers like that's not an

00:54:58

issue where I live yeah Uber is around here but I remember several years ago coming back from the

00:55:04

airport and I'll just get an Uber and there's no cars there's service in my area but there are

00:55:09

no cars available it's not something you can rely on and even like Appleton the town that I'm in

00:55:15

it's maybe a hundred thousand people they just got those scooters the bird scooters because the guy

00:55:21

who invented the that company bird he's actually from Apple so okay yeah it's like a pet a pet project

00:55:28

right and I see this like this battle being played out locally because there's a whole bunch of people

00:55:35

who like they don't want to live in the city they drive their cars everywhere like you were

00:55:39

talking about they're like these scooters are in nuisance and they're right people take them

00:55:43

and they just leave them all over the place and people are zipping up and down the sidewalks with

00:55:47

them like I know somebody who got hit by one of those like people are stupid so yeah we don't

00:55:53

want these but then there are like the perspective he's taking with this as well you know these cities

00:55:59

are are built for these these cars but it'd be way better if everybody just lived in this area we

00:56:04

didn't have all the traffic and you could just use the scooters and get around to the different

00:56:07

places and wouldn't that be awesome like yeah I could kind of see that that too but it's not as

00:56:12

as simple I feel like as he makes it out to be in this chapter yep I think there's a lot more to it

00:56:20

I mean I get how people want to have a lot of tech in the cities but

00:56:25

seems like the more that you put into these digital things the more that like the companies

00:56:30

tend to collect on you and then they end up that power ends up somehow making its way back to the

00:56:36

government somehow not super thrilled with that particular component of it but I feel like this

00:56:42

one's just kind of weird like did he did he pick this one because there was another day he needed

00:56:47

to fill like I think it's just important to him sure that that's fair it seems it seems to be a

00:56:53

thing that's a big deal to him because he talks about all the big cities that he has lived in and

00:56:57

around and it's always been an important component to him so I get why he like I get why he chose that

00:57:05

because like that's something that's super important to him and like to me I'm just reading

00:57:10

that like I want nothing to do with this at all like I'm actually opposite I want to avoid this

00:57:17

so I am not the person I think I for that particular chapter I think I tend to skew that way as well yep yep

00:57:25

all right let's let's keep going it's now friday and let's talk about the culture and by culture

00:57:33

basically I think he just means live performances of any kind that's that's kind of the

00:57:40

main talking point through this that's that's fair chapter and maybe I gravitated and summarized

00:57:46

it that way just because like that's an area that I tend to do a lot of work in but he does talk about

00:57:52

how things like comedians or going to a live concert like these things are all very very different

00:57:59

like he uses the example of Hamilton like he got to see Hamilton right before lockdown

00:58:06

and then attempted to watch it on Disney plus have you watched this I watch it on Disney plus

00:58:12

yeah so this this is interesting because I remember Hamilton being all the rage and

00:58:17

it wasn't coming anywhere near me I couldn't take it's it wasn't even an option

00:58:23

you know so when everything got shut down and it went online I'm like oh hey cool we can watch it

00:58:28

yeah yep my my experience was that I had heard about it and that people were absolutely loving it

00:58:35

I looked up because like we're close to the Twin Cities surely it's going to come to Minneapolis

00:58:39

St. Paul somewhere and it uh it was coming but you could it was going to come twice I think whenever

00:58:47

I looked it up and you couldn't get tickets to the first one and the second one was like 18 months

00:58:51

out and they were going to be like close to $100 a ticket I was like that it's not my style like

00:58:56

it's way too steep for me but a free trial on Disney plus I will do for context here he was at

00:59:04

Hamilton yes it was during the intermission when the NBA season got canceled I remember that event

00:59:12

specifically like the teams came out they warmed up and then they just left yep and everyone was

00:59:18

like whoa what the heck is this so he's talking about how they're at this show storing intermission

00:59:25

everybody gets the message that the NBA season has been canceled and now they're going back in

00:59:30

to finish watching the show and that is the entry point into now everything is online correct so

00:59:37

I feel like he feels it more than we correct yeah I I know that you know first off Hamilton's a

00:59:45

great show if you haven't seen it I feel like you should go watch it on Disney plus and uh the

00:59:50

the thing that he gets into is how like these live performances that went online like people

00:59:56

that went to twitch or they went to like live streaming and like all of these things comedians it just

01:00:01

it wasn't the same because like they're performing in front of a camera and like I can tell you all

01:00:09

sorts of things that are wrong like you're in front of the camera you don't have the audience

01:00:12

in front of you you're feeding off of the audience there's also like take the Hamilton

01:00:17

performance like I know that whenever you're in a room like that it feels different not necessarily

01:00:24

because the cameras and the sound system and stuff are different but just literally because

01:00:29

the volume that they're able to crank those speakers is much higher than what you're going to be able

01:00:34

to do at home in 99 percent of cases like most people do not have a sound system that's going to

01:00:40

be able to rival that like we just had a comedy night at our church and watching a comedian live

01:00:48

in the room with him is very different than me watching it on youtube like I could watch the

01:00:54

exact same person I could watch somebody funnier than him and laugh more with him in the room than

01:01:00

I would with somebody else online we had a band that performed beforehand and it was full concert

01:01:06

level which is super fun for me but it's cranked up louder than normal whenever it's cranked up that

01:01:12

loud and he hits the kick drum it actually you like you feel it you don't just hear it you feel it

01:01:18

you don't do that at home like I yep I can crank things up at home but you're not going to generally

01:01:24

do that unless you have a crazy sound system at home I know you people are out there so like

01:01:29

it's just different and you also have like the shared experience if you're at a live concert

01:01:33

people start singing along with the music like you have this huge group of people around you

01:01:39

singing and you tend to join in well you can join in and sing when you're at home but you just hear

01:01:44

your own voice and for some people that's okay for a lot of people they don't like hearing

01:01:49

themselves sing so that's a bad experience so anyway I can go on and on about this one this one

01:01:56

kind of got me triggered a little bit but it's it's one that like yes it's very different live

01:02:01

than watching it online or watching a recording of something so I totally get how this could be a

01:02:10

bad experience trying to watch everything on a screen I understand that part of it and I agree

01:02:15

with it completely I mean I grew up playing violin I've played with different symphonies and

01:02:23

orchestras and there's just something about being in that place together doing the thing that yeah

01:02:29

you get to a whole nother heightened level of experience I agree so I agree with a lot of like

01:02:35

the performance aspects of everything that he's talking about here and how like when you're

01:02:39

watching something online the second you close the screen you're alone I know somebody who is in

01:02:46

the New Orleans area and during the pandemic they started just like doing this on a smaller scale

01:02:53

outside their their house yeah I heard about these things yeah rooftop jazz concerts yep

01:03:00

and he was doing them for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden the cops showed up and he

01:03:06

thought they were gonna get shut down and the cops were like this is really cool so they did it for

01:03:11

like a year and a half so that that's cool like those are the kind of things that that people need

01:03:18

to bring stuff together however that's like one avenue of this and like the fact that these Grammy

01:03:24

winning produce like musicians like it feels different online and it's not the same to them and they

01:03:31

miss the old thing that's not necessarily well I shouldn't say it's all it's not all bad right

01:03:37

the fact that you don't need to have an amazing band and have a contract with a producer in order

01:03:46

to make music and share it online is not a bad thing and like twitch streaming the stuff that

01:03:51

we're doing right now like there are hurdles that if we were doing this the old way and the people

01:03:56

in the big halls and things like that there are like hurdles that will never obstacles will never

01:04:01

be able to overcome in order to perform in those arenas so the fact that we can do it digitally

01:04:06

I think that's awesome and I think it makes it a lot more accessible for a lot of people who

01:04:11

don't have access to the resources that they need don't have the right people to open the

01:04:17

the doors for them in those those other types of scenarios so I don't think this is all bad I

01:04:22

think you got to see both sides of this however yes you should meet in person whenever you can

01:04:26

and one other thing with this which I I was really disappointed because this whole thing about like

01:04:33

it's different when you're there together that applies to church now there's a whole separate

01:04:38

section chapter seven Sunday soul where I thought he was going to talk about this but that's really

01:04:42

just get outside correct yes so there's like a whole chapter that should be written on that

01:04:49

specific piece of it I feel because I mean you work at a church you you ran the live stream

01:04:54

you would probably agree like it's different the religious experience is different when you

01:04:58

meet together as opposed to when you have to tune in because you're not feeling well and you don't

01:05:02

want to yeah bring stuff to the building right but bringing bringing yourself to the building

01:05:07

should be the default whenever possible yeah that's actually why like we I think I've got

01:05:12

everybody on board with us we actually treat our live stream as if it doesn't exist

01:05:17

a lot of churches will acknowledge like and thanks for those of you who are online joining us today

01:05:21

like we don't do that because I don't want you to be a first-class citizen if you're just on the

01:05:26

live stream because that doesn't count so you might be upset with me if you disagree with me on that

01:05:33

but frankly like that's not like you're missing so much of the actual point that I don't even

01:05:41

want to relationship there like it's there yeah exactly still do it every week I have a lot of

01:05:46

people that say that they start coming to the church just because they were able to watch the

01:05:49

live stream it's it's actually an anxiety thing I've found for a lot of people like we have a lot

01:05:55

of people who are brand new to the faith brand new to the church who can quote-unquote try church

01:06:01

if you will to figure out what is that service like and what do people wear because you can see a

01:06:07

few people and what is the pastor going to do when is the service over like how do I know when to do

01:06:14

what and people have a lot of anxiety over that type of thing and being able to watch a service or

01:06:19

to online before you come to the building for the first time seems to help people with that I don't

01:06:23

want to discount that I've got people who are shut into can't get out like I get that but when I

01:06:28

have people that say that well I just I was tired when I got up so I just made some bacon and eggs and

01:06:35

you know turned on the live stream and washed it at home like shame on you like that's

01:06:41

my point anyway I can get heated over that one let's go to Saturday because it's way more from

01:06:46

to talk about well real real quick the one last thing with this because I think this leads into

01:06:51

Saturday but like my my pastors have shared like because our church has had services on the local

01:06:59

television station for like 20 years right so occasionally they'll get people who pass away and

01:07:06

it's like who do you want to facilitate your your service and like oh my pastor is

01:07:10

my pastor is like I have no idea who this person is right it's the most awkward thing it's like

01:07:17

I'm supposed to do a eulogy for somebody that I've never actually met yeah right that relationship

01:07:22

component that is the height of the religious experience it's the community right so and that's

01:07:29

kind of ways talking about chapter five not at all ways talking about chapter seven so now let's

01:07:34

go to chapter six okay chapter six is conversation and he starts us off and there's a little bit

01:07:42

of a section here where it talks about like what is conversation it's a very brief part

01:07:47

but there's three components that he identifies and I've heard this in a bunch of different ways

01:07:52

sometimes it's three pieces sometimes it's five but in this particular case he's referring to

01:07:57

when you're having a conversation there are three components that lead to that conversation

01:08:02

being like three different levels of that one is the language you're using so like right now you

01:08:06

can hear my voice you can catch the tone of my voice that's the second one so you can hear the words

01:08:11

you can hear the tone with which I'm sharing these words but then the third one is body language

01:08:16

now if you are watching the live stream you can see kind of some of my body language as I'm saying

01:08:22

this but you can't see all of it so like I'm chest high on this right so it's a headshot so you're

01:08:28

not gonna see what am I doing with my feet right now you have no idea so you're not getting all

01:08:33

you don't know if Joe's wearing pants you don't know if I have pants on like just I just want to

01:08:39

point that out maybe I don't I came to church in my underwear that's a little weird that changes

01:08:45

the conversation if you're not wearing pants very true it's very true but I am at work and I work

01:08:50

at a church just you draw your own conclusions so body language is a big deal what somebody's wearing

01:08:58

you know how long is somebody's beard are they wearing glasses like these things all inform

01:09:02

our conversation and how we have that conversation with each other and being in the same physical

01:09:09

room in the same space does change things like maybe you both smell something maybe you both

01:09:16

like there's a sound that's in the background you know mics got his fancy microphone so if

01:09:20

something hits the room door he hears it but we don't if that happens here you would hear it

01:09:26

through my mic because this place is noisy so anyway like conversation is difficult to have even in a

01:09:36

video sense so much so that he even points out that he's not sure he would actually call it a

01:09:42

conversation he would just call it communication like you're not actually engaging in developing

01:09:46

empathy and and relationship with each other it's purely sharing of facts back and forth and I don't

01:09:53

know that I would say he's completely wrong I don't think he's necessarily happy about all of this I

01:09:59

think he's just jaded when he's writing this and maybe just taking it a little bit too far but

01:10:04

it's it's interesting to me that whenever you think about conversations and the good conversations

01:10:11

that you've had in the past like it's rare that I talk about like a most meaningful conversation is

01:10:16

one I had on the phone like that that doesn't seem to be the case in most scenarios it's usually a

01:10:22

I had lunch with this person and that was one of the best conversations I've had in my life

01:10:26

like that's typically what you would hear about so he does break it down a little bit in just saying

01:10:32

you know this doesn't necessarily always happen in a productive way when it's through a screen

01:10:37

which is fair I like the distinction I actually think it's pretty brilliant of the

01:10:48

communication virtually as opposed to conversation I think in most most scenarios that is accurate

01:10:58

however it's not again not all bad I remember during the the pandemic when people were really

01:11:08

wanting this this sort of thing we connected with JF and we played virtual yachty JF is nowhere near

01:11:17

me we were never going to do that you know personally but we were both craving it so we made it

01:11:23

made it happen during the pandemic where did FaceTime and opened up the board game table and

01:11:29

okay JF it's your turn I'll roll the dice for you which ones you want to keep you know not the

01:11:34

ideal version of yachty but it's definitely better than not playing yachty together right

01:11:39

so I think it's just finding the right situation technically deploying these these tools

01:11:46

again maybe if you're in a city and you just everyone that you care about is within walking

01:11:51

distance like this is this is the that that is a scenario that you could you could create I don't

01:11:59

know that it's not possible for me my parents are currently in Florida you know we were there

01:12:06

last week visiting them and it was great being able to be together but I'm not going to just like

01:12:10

not talk to them until they're back home right we're going to connect virtually because I care

01:12:15

about them so this this uh chapter is where he brings up the sherry charcoal stuff and that was a

01:12:22

great book I feel like you should go back and listen to that conversation rather than try to like

01:12:26

rehab it here the other thing I I got out of this one got whatever like he talked about the negative

01:12:35

aspects of social media talks about how clicks equal power and um I don't know that's

01:12:45

at this point something we've talked about a lot so it's kind of like well do we really have to

01:12:50

have this conversation again I'm willing to have that conversation again if there's going to be

01:12:54

something new here but there is nothing right here yeah uh maybe at some point we just you know

01:12:59

dissect the social dilemma because I feel like that's the best resource for this this kind of thing

01:13:04

but I don't know I guess that it's valuable to realize that online you hear about people but

01:13:10

rarely from them and you should look to connect with people with different viewpoints but I feel

01:13:15

like we're already like trying to do that that's been one of the takeaways for me from

01:13:19

bookworm honestly is like we read these books and they expose me to different ideas not things that

01:13:23

I would have naturally encountered in my day-to-day life otherwise and I'm like oh you know what I

01:13:28

should really consider that it feels weird it's awkward I don't agree with it I should lean into it

01:13:33

right even though it makes me a little bit uncomfortable and if you do that I feel like your online

01:13:37

experience ends up being a lot better I just want to point out that like the point you made about

01:13:43

you know when family is away because I have family it's a long ways away and phone calls and video

01:13:48

calls like they're great at filling gaps I think but we always know that that's what it's doing it's

01:13:54

filling a gap until we see each other face to face like that's the point good point and that

01:14:00

relationship is much deeper and extensive whenever we do meet in person and it can be extended and

01:14:08

have a little bit of an effect whenever you're doing all the video stuff like again that's definitely

01:14:12

something that can fill that gap but again it's not like if that's all you're given like and you

01:14:20

have none of the actual in-person at all ever like it gets tough so it's it's tough when it's not

01:14:29

just a gap filler it is the the end in itself but that's the the thing is like I don't know that

01:14:37

anybody after the pandemic is going to argue that every interaction should be virtual so this is a

01:14:46

weird time to be making this argument you know it feels like it made a lot more sense coming from

01:14:53

Sherry Turkel when we read reclaiming conversation before all all of this right well let's go to

01:15:01

Sunday where we don't talk about church at least not really he talks about soul and honestly I had

01:15:11

a hard time nailing down what he was getting at here because in my head like this is a layup like

01:15:19

this is an easy one I say that knowing that I'm a church person so it's like okay well this is

01:15:24

an easy thing and then he doesn't go there well he's Jewish so correct yeah so he talks about Sunday

01:15:31

being the day when people you know put on their exercise clothes and do a good workout or go on

01:15:38

hikes get outside this was an area that he seems to have not really struggled with a whole lot because

01:15:43

he did do he would disconnect so again you mentioned he is Jewish and has had this habit of disconnecting

01:15:52

on Sunday for a long time I guess for him it was Shabbat so it would have been Saturday I don't

01:15:58

remember what he said is it Sunday that he does that or is it Saturday good question I caught the

01:16:04

Shabbat but I didn't catch the specifics of when exactly it happened he said something about

01:16:10

making his holla bread on Friday going into Saturday but then he was on Sunday maybe he's

01:16:17

just making a cultural change for us anyway regardless he has a day when he disconnects and he turns

01:16:21

off his phones those computers all the things and they don't do tech and that is something that I know

01:16:28

I've done in the past it's actually kind of tricky for me working at a church because so many people

01:16:34

text or call me on Sunday morning when I'm there at work like doing running sound or something so

01:16:40

like I'm between services and they need to get ahold of me because printers busted so like stuff

01:16:44

like that does happen so I can't really do that on a Sunday morning but I definitely could do that

01:16:49

whenever I get home from church and shut things off and just be done then so like that's something

01:16:54

that I've got as an action item for the book is to do a tech shutdown on Sunday afternoon and

01:17:02

that's that's something that I know a lot of people do and have a lot of success with and it can be

01:17:08

super helpful so just kind of getting that break but again if we come back to the book he does talk

01:17:15

about how like nature being the true healer and going for walks going for hikes getting outside

01:17:22

no matter how cold it is I don't know how much snows in the ground like go outside it's okay

01:17:28

and it can be a bit of a healing process so again not really a religious

01:17:33

chapter like I was expecting yep agreed I agree with all the stuff about getting outside

01:17:41

that was something that I determined to do very early on in 2020 I think it was late March when I

01:17:51

decided I was going to get outside for either a run or a bike ride every single day and I did that

01:17:59

from the end of March until the end of October so rain or shine I either biked my bike route is

01:18:09

eight and a half miles or I went for at least a couple mile run I logged hundreds and hundreds of

01:18:16

miles that year and it did definitely have a big impact on my mental state so I think that

01:18:24

that is definitely a good aim however I don't know yeah not what I was expecting to check

01:18:32

me off yeah I did also have an action item though to unplug on the the Sabbath is how I put it

01:18:39

I don't think I'm gonna just completely turn stuff off we got multiple services

01:18:45

on Sunday that I am therefore in the morning and in the evening so it doesn't work for me to just

01:18:51

turn stuff off after I get home from the morning service because occasionally it's hey I need you

01:18:56

to preach for the evening service or something like that however there are focus modes and so

01:19:01

I am going to set up a Sabbath focus mode and only allow a few things through and I have a

01:19:11

I'm pretty confident that that will that will help a lot I don't get a ton of notifications

01:19:17

already but just whatever I can do to limit the noise here and and just on have that day where

01:19:25

you're just you're not connected to your devices people can get a hold of you if they absolutely

01:19:28

need to but setting up the boundaries there where only certain people can get through I feel like

01:19:36

that's going to be really healthy even if it doesn't result in a huge decrease in the number of

01:19:42

notifications that I'm receiving or anything like that yeah well that brings us to the conclusion

01:19:46

of the book and the the end of this I mean it's just that it's he's re-wrapping up things

01:19:55

and he kind of basically pitches it as we had this digital future that was pitched to us that had

01:20:02

all these answers and it failed us and just because something can be done this is actually a thing

01:20:11

that I've talked about in tech at church quite a bit it's like just because something can be done

01:20:15

doesn't mean it should be done and I regularly get into that conversation of you know can I

01:20:22

you know just because I can turn down the house lights on the congregation on a Sunday morning

01:20:27

I'm not going to because it's not something we should do like that's and I have all sorts of

01:20:32

rationale and reasons for that so we don't do that and just because I can do something doesn't

01:20:39

mean we're going to you know we could run with click tracks I know some churches do that for

01:20:43

their band so that everything can be perfectly in sync we don't and have no interest in that

01:20:48

and there's there's a whole bunch of these things like specifically with church and

01:20:52

production and stuff that I will not do because I think it takes away from the shared experience

01:20:58

on a Sunday morning so anyway that's a whole different thing all together but I did like that

01:21:04

phrase like just because something can be done just because you can put sensors underneath the

01:21:08

sidewalk to see how many people are walking on it doesn't mean it's something you should do

01:21:12

it's kind of weird to do that but people do it so anyway he's just wrapping up basically saying

01:21:18

this digital future that was so great and so grand it's not so great and so grand and because we

01:21:23

tried it out we kicked the tires in the car and took it for a test drive and I don't like it take

01:21:26

it back so that's that's kind of what he's saying yeah to which I would reply you're holding it wrong

01:21:32

uh I think there are ways to implement aspects of the digital future but it all

01:21:42

comes down to intention and it shouldn't be the default I agree with that there's a couple things

01:21:47

he said specifically in this last chapter which I think are good now recognizing what we missed

01:21:51

made us appreciate what we had more agree with that don't accept digital as the default setting

01:21:56

agree with that and the future is analog because we are analog I agree with that we're not going to

01:22:01

ever get rid of that that doesn't mean that there's no good that can come from it either though and

01:22:09

it's all packaged in this remember covid remember covid so you get this immediate visceral reaction

01:22:16

like oh yeah that was awful right we all understand that was awful and that's the

01:22:21

perspective he takes every chapter oh yeah that was awful I don't think it was all awful

01:22:27

I think you got to recognize the context and used sparingly intentionally in some other ways

01:22:36

some other scenarios could be a good thing doesn't mean that we should just automatically do that

01:22:42

though agree with that yep I'm with him all right you ready for action items let's do it I have one

01:22:50

and that is to do this tech shutdown like shutting off things or at least restricting them I guess

01:22:58

I kind of like your idea of setting up like the focus mode things I kind of already have that for

01:23:02

a Sunday morning because I get restriction and I have a bunch of that type of thing for when I'm

01:23:07

off work as well to kind of like so my boss isn't texting me and it's an issue he knows that by the

01:23:13

way I don't just do that blindly but anyway like the concept of shutting down some things but not

01:23:19

other things like we listen to music on Sunday afternoons like well I'm streaming that through

01:23:23

Apple music so I can't completely shut it all down because that's a very fun thing for us as a

01:23:28

family so trying to figure out what that means but I think you get the gist like I don't want to

01:23:33

be sitting there looking at my screen the whole time like that that's the part that I want to eliminate

01:23:38

right how about you yeah I agree with that and that's one of my action items as well as to

01:23:45

unplug on the the Sabbath as you kind of just talked about I do have that other one though to

01:23:51

check out bookshop I'm not committing to buying something off of there necessarily but I'm gonna

01:23:58

take a look at the the site and the service in which bookstores they support you know if I can

01:24:05

find a local one that I can buy from then that's cool and I think there's there's something we

01:24:10

said about just buying from a local shop even if it's not the one where you happen to be I know

01:24:15

Austin Cleon is really involved with is it book people like that's the one sounds right yeah

01:24:21

I know like when he came out with his latest actually not the latest one anymore I forget which

01:24:29

one it was but there was a thing that he did like through book people if you bought it through them

01:24:32

you got an autograph copy as opposed to just buying it off of Amazon is still available via

01:24:38

Amazon and other places but because he had a relationship with that local bookstore he was

01:24:42

able to sign a bunch of copies and then say hey you should really buy it from this place like that's

01:24:46

cool I like that but if it's more of a pain to get the books that I want to read I do that

01:24:54

frequently enough I'm not going to go out of my way to say that I did this well style and reading

01:25:02

for style I will say he he has an interesting style actually I think it's changed quite a bit

01:25:10

since the last book I read by him because I went back and looked at it a little bit just as

01:25:16

like did he used to do this but he didn't he's changed his style quite a bit but he has a lot of

01:25:20

scenarios where he's saying that and this was something that went wrong and then he has this

01:25:25

long list of things that are examples of that and it's not like four or five it's like 15 to 20

01:25:33

things that he lists and it's like an entire page worth of examples it's not necessarily bad it

01:25:38

just got to be like this is this is a lot like you're kind of upset right now I kind of wondered

01:25:44

if he was doing some angry writing when he wrote this because he's definitely like old man complaining

01:25:50

at times definitely what's going on so it's an interesting style again it's very story based so

01:25:59

it's I think an easy read as far as like is he all 100 right I think he's just upset that things

01:26:11

had to be done completely and 100 like working from home and being on zoom all day long yeah

01:26:18

that's that's terrible but doing a zoom call a day or every other day and then working from home and

01:26:26

being able to work on your craft that's not necessarily the same like that's not necessarily

01:26:32

bad but he kind of pitches it like all working from home is bad and then when you get to school like

01:26:38

all virtual school is bad well that's not necessarily true what if somebody's

01:26:42

working full-time and they're taking a couple classes at night but it's you know on-demand sort

01:26:48

of thing so they can do it when they have time like that's a different scenario you know yep

01:26:53

the commerce piece the culture pieces like conversation all of this stuff like you can do all of these

01:26:59

things in moderation digitally and it's okay and again it can fill a gap and I think you've brought

01:27:04

that up on almost every one of these mic and rightly so that there is a place for this

01:27:10

digitally and when it's taken in totality and it encompasses every component of it that's when it

01:27:17

gets to be a bit of an issue so I think he's kind of over reached in that just because the timing of

01:27:23

when this came out was very much pandemic on the heels of so it's not something that he's far removed

01:27:31

from and was writing in the middle of so I think it's kind of a a reaction book I don't think this

01:27:36

is going to age well some of these books that we read like these are perennial books they're

01:27:41

going to last a long time if you're going to read this one you're going to have to do it soon

01:27:46

so you don't forget some things you know if you wait a couple years it might get to be where it's

01:27:51

a bit too far removed maybe a couple years is too soon but you get my point as far as how to rate

01:27:56

this you know there's a lot of stuff in here that's like yeah I could see how I want that to be

01:28:02

analog and there's a lot of stuffs like I'm not doing that like I'm still gonna buy from Amazon

01:28:06

like I'm not gonna abandon that so I think at this particular point you're wrong Mike I'm gonna say

01:28:15

yes Mike's typing what he thinks I'm gonna rate it as in the in the notes I'm gonna put it at 3.5

01:28:23

you're close he thought I was gonna put it at 3.0 but that's what I had it originally I got

01:28:28

rid of it at 0.0 as you started to get more negative in your yes review so no I'm gonna put it at 3.5

01:28:35

I just think that you know it's overreaching in a lot of ways it's an interesting read and again if you

01:28:42

are into reading debriefs of worldwide pandemics this is a good book to pick up but

01:28:52

on at the end of the day you probably just need to listen to this episode and not

01:28:55

worry about the book what are your thoughts well I originally wanted to write it at 3.5 as well

01:29:04

because even though I have I have disagreements and issues with the perspective taken in a lot

01:29:11

of the different chapters he is a pretty good writer and it is an entertaining read it's very

01:29:17

one-sided you know his experience during the pandemic yeah he's talked to a lot of other people and he

01:29:22

brings in those other anecdotes but it's so story driven from his personal experience you can tell

01:29:27

that just by like the way that the chapters are set up and things like that that's not necessarily

01:29:31

a bad thing it's not for me though and as I was reflecting on this like what else would I recommend

01:29:37

over this bowling alone I feel like that speaks to a lot of these issues a lot better and has a

01:29:45

lot more research basis behind it and I can't remember exactly what I rated that book I don't

01:29:53

think I rated it super high but as I was reading this one I was like bowling alone is better

01:29:57

so I'm gonna rate this 3.0 I don't know it's a fine read I don't think I'm going to recommend

01:30:06

it necessarily to anybody I wish I had read the Revenge of Analog not just for this episode but

01:30:14

I wish I had that as context I wish I could line this one up alongside that one but in terms of

01:30:22

when should you do analog things when should you do digital things Chris Bailey talks about that

01:30:27

better and how to calm your mind in terms of the sociological what is this doing to us as a society

01:30:34

again bowling alone is better like I don't know where this one fits it just seems kind of weird

01:30:40

and I don't appreciate wrapping it all in the covid narrative honestly I mean

01:30:47

as he's writing it that's fine if I had read this six months ago a year ago does that change

01:30:56

my I've been asked myself does that change my interaction with this book I don't know that it

01:31:02

does but maybe so maybe some of this is just timing but yeah it it's okay you ranked bowling

01:31:12

alone at a 3.5 that's what I thought I rated it so okay and it's long it's not an entertaining

01:31:22

read but I think we read that one before covid and I feel like at this point probably we go

01:31:29

back and look at that kind of like how to read a book and we're like man there was a lot of

01:31:32

profound stuff in here he was right December 2020 okay so it was yeah it was in the middle of

01:31:39

it all that's right there was like an addendum sort of thing at the end those this is how this

01:31:43

applies to right to covid but I feel like that type of stuff about this is how it's just changing

01:31:48

communities that's more that whole perspective is more interesting to me than urban planning

01:31:57

okay let's put it on the shelf what's next Mike next is Master Your Motivation by

01:32:04

Susan Fowler recommendation by Martin so hopefully this one is good no I think it I think it will be

01:32:11

I've gotten a whole bunch of recommendations from people by the way since I've mentioned that I

01:32:15

wanted to read a book on motivation thank you for those I've bought several books on this topic

01:32:21

but yeah if you give me a good book recommendation I will buy it all right and then after that

01:32:27

I've selected the book 12 Rules for Life and Anadote to Chaos this is by Jordan B Peterson

01:32:35

have you ever heard of this book I have okay this is a lightning rod for controversy it is very

01:32:43

bookwormish yep yep so this is one that you know Jordan Peterson is one of those people that

01:32:52

people generally either love or hate very few people tend to be in that middle ground

01:32:58

and this book's been out for a little while and I think it was what is it 2018 is when it came out

01:33:05

so anyway I'm kind of curious it's kind of a philosophy take on a handful of things so it

01:33:12

should be interesting that'll be a fun fun conversation I have been kind of avoiding this one

01:33:18

intentionally however now that you've picked it I'm excited we're gonna get to talk about it

01:33:23

I'm not gonna lie this has been on my to read list for a very long time and I've had it show up

01:33:32

many many many times from recommendations from other people in the last probably four months

01:33:39

it's like I feel like maybe I should do this one now so some people may hate that we are doing

01:33:44

this book but I think it'll be an entertaining conversation regardless it's a long one though

01:33:50

with 400 pages yep so get cracking gap books I read three books last week whoa whoa yeah

01:34:00

most of them are pretty boring the most interesting one which is still going to be

01:34:04

pretty boring for a lot of people is this book called top grading by Bradford Smart it's essentially

01:34:11

a hiring process we just went through the hiring process at the day job so relevant to me but

01:34:18

I don't know it's it's kind of kind of interesting it's a very different take on the the hiring

01:34:23

process I'll summarize it for you soon I have to buy the book but in case you do on it buy it

01:34:28

they'll link a bit in the show notes essentially what you do when you talk to when you interview

01:34:32

people is you have you open it up with a threat of a reference check by saying it's part of our

01:34:36

process we require that you set up a conversation with one of your former managers or bosses

01:34:43

to verify that they will say the same thing about your work as you say whoa you don't actually

01:34:50

have to talk to them you just have to threaten that and you do it in a way that it's completely

01:34:55

legal and stuff like that but that immediately eliminates all the people obviously who are lying

01:34:59

on their resumes that might be just a brilliant thing right there interesting yep yep exactly

01:35:07

so it's a standard business book it's like 300 some pages and that's really all you need out of it

01:35:12

interesting cool well I have one gap book I'm in the middle of right now which is the cost of

01:35:21

discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer and I'm gonna go into too much detail here but I've got a friend

01:35:27

of mine that wanted to read it together so kind of have a quasi book club in person sort of thing

01:35:31

going his initiation not mine so anyway that's kind of what I'm in the middle of right now

01:35:37

nice all right so that brings us to the end of the show but I have a quick announcement before I get

01:35:45

too far into this and that's just that because we're in the middle of this migration of the bookworm

01:35:51

community from well to circle there's gonna be a post on the existing community probably in the

01:36:00

next couple days explaining the process but basically if you were a subscribing member

01:36:05

which we're very grateful to you for doing you're gonna get an invite to the new community which will

01:36:11

have basically a free trial for whatever time frame you have left on your existing subscription

01:36:18

and you just need to add a payment method to it in order for that membership to continue so you'll

01:36:24

get an email with all the stuff on that from us and invite with all the details just got to accept

01:36:30

it and do the stuff it's pretty simple so there'll be a post on the existing community about how

01:36:34

all that works and one on the new whenever you get there and then we'll do that migration so it

01:36:40

should be a pretty simple process if you have issues let us know I'm sure you will it'd be great so

01:36:46

again thanks to all of you who do that and I hope that's a simple process we'll be in a much better

01:36:50

spot once we get that all moved over so excited to have that underway so again thanks to all of

01:36:56

you who are paying members that link will stay the same for how to get their bookworm.fm/membership

01:37:02

I know that that's going to remain the same link so you can continue to go there to become a

01:37:08

subscriber and get all of Mike's book notes we're migrating all of that stuff over all of it comes

01:37:12

along for the ride thank you thank you thank you. The ad-free version maybe a bootleg version oh yeah

01:37:19

the bootleg that'll be entertaining all right so thanks everyone for hanging out today if you're

01:37:28

reading along with us pick up Master Your Motivation by Susan Fowler and we'll talk to you in a couple of

01:37:33

weeks.