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- [00:01]
Tommy Mischke
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with a name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. Coming to you from the bleak, barren tarmac of University Avenue, hidden away deep in the studio I like to call the old outpost, ready to deliver something of worth, something of meaning. My name's Mishke. It's story time. Or if not story time, the time to tell stories about stories. Hang in there. You'll understand. Wanna athri. Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm holding a book in my hands with the title the Story of Stories. The Million Year history of a Uniquely Human art, Storytelling. But it's not what you think. What one learns reading the story of stories is that we're all storytellers. And we're telling stories every day. Most of the day we're thinking of stories, we're remembering stories, we're passing along stories. What you learn in the story of stories is story itself is the fundamental human experience. It's as natural to us as and as common and as ubiquitous as breathing itself. We are born storytellers. We live our lives telling stories, taking in stories, thinking about stories. And what's truly profound about what I learned in the story of Stories is that our very language was born from a need to tell stories. We didn't first get our language and then decide to tell stories. We developed our language from a yearning to tell stories, beginning with the very first night we sat around a fire a million or more years ago. The Story of Stories. Kevin Ashton is the author. He's also the author of how to Fly A the Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery. He's written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Daily Telegraph, Politico. He lives in Austin, Texas. Welcome to the program, Kevin.
- [03:01]
Kevin Ashton
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a real pleasure in your
- [03:04]
Tommy Mischke
book, the Story of Stories. Story as a phenomenon in the human experience is the fundamental human experience. Some people write books on consciousness, some people write books on cells. Story is also just this building block of who we are.
- [03:24]
Kevin Ashton
That's where all the science is pointing. Now the big question for a long time has been how and why did language evolve? And it seems that the sequence was early humans learned to build fires. They were sitting around their fires and they wanted to socialize in some way. And making vocal sounds Was the only way to do that. So to facilitate storytelling, Language eventually evolved.
- [03:53]
Tommy Mischke
If I think about a million years ago, that's about when we discover how to create and utilize fire. Is that right? About a million years ago.
- [04:04]
Kevin Ashton
The general feeling in archeology Is that somewhere between 500,000 years ago, 1.5 million years ago Is probably when people started learning to control and build fire.
- [04:17]
Tommy Mischke
So you have humans using their voice Primarily for some mating call, Some way to attract a mate, and warning of danger, Language used in a very rudimentary way. And fire all of a sudden enters the picture, which means in the dark at night, you can be up, you can be out, you can be sitting around these flames, and somehow, because there's not a whole hell of a lot to do in the darkness, and a mating call and a warning just doesn't cut it anymore. You're looking to do more than that.
- [04:56]
Kevin Ashton
I don't think there were stories before fire. Fire forged stories.
- [05:01]
Tommy Mischke
It's extraordinary that a technology like that can be behind stories. The idea being that it created an environment where someone would want to tell a story. You couldn't tell the story by pointing to things. You needed to use the voice in that darkness, Even with the glow of the flames. And this desire to use this time for something other than mating calls and warning Creates the first rudimentary words and the beginning of trying to tell something about one's life.
- [05:38]
Kevin Ashton
Yep. We see the fireside behavior Of a million years ago Being very, very similar to the fireside behavior of today. We know what it's like to sit around a night fire with our friends. We know what that experience is like.
- [05:55]
Tommy Mischke
After reading your book, the story of stories, I found myself wondering if it would be true to say, prior to fire, we're not really human. To be human today, again, according to your book, Is to live all day, every day in the world of stories. If we don't have stories, if we're just vocalizing a mating call and a warning, we're an animal.
- [06:21]
Kevin Ashton
I mean, that's a really interesting point. I think you're right. It kind of clicks into place. Certainly for me and for most people, it's like, oh, yeah, I do spend a lot of time Listening to podcasts, Looking at things on the Internet, Watching tv, watching movies, having conversations where either I talk about something that happened to me or somebody is talking about something that happened to them, you start to really see it for the first time. The homo sapien is a storytelling species.
- [06:47]
Tommy Mischke
These are some of the things I learned from your book. 99% of what we all know about the world has come from a story someone has told us. Most of what we all know we have not experienced directly. The vast majority we have not. We have been told stories. And probably the people who told us those stories were also told those stories. One thing I realized and sat and thought about for a long time after reading your book is who I am as a person is a story. When I think about who I am personally, what I will begin to do is tell a story without that story. I'm just a breathing entity here, feeling the present moment, but with no sense of identity. The moment I begin to think of who I am, identity wise, I begin to tell a story. And that story is everything. When it comes to my thinking of who I am and who my friends are and who my family is, there's a story around it and that's how I get a sense of them.
- [07:57]
Kevin Ashton
Yeah, I think the first time you hear it, it's maybe like, oh, but it kind of fits once you start to think about it. Most of what we know, you know, Donald Trump is president, man landed on the moon. There's a place called Western Australia. So much of what we know we haven't experienced directly.
- [08:17]
Tommy Mischke
And when I think of the moon landing, I don't think of a craft sitting on the moon. What I think of is a story. I think of a president who said, by the end of the decade, we're going to put a man on the moon. I think of news anchor Walter Cronkite breathlessly describing the moment, almost unable to get through it. He's so moved by it. I think about their return. I can picture the applause, admission control when they splash down. There's a whole story when you say moon landing. And what I learned in your book is my brain wants that story. It wants a pattern. It doesn't want individual, separate facts. It wants them organized into a story.
- [09:04]
Kevin Ashton
It.
- [09:05]
Tommy Mischke
Even if I'm looking at a shopping list, if I'm handed someone's grocery shopping list, my brain will begin to tell a story about them almost immediately as I run through the list of what they're buying. Yeah, you mentioned there are 7,000 languages on Earth right now, and every one of those languages developed to include sentences that all feature a subject, verb and object. It was as though if we were going to develop language, we were all going to develop it for the same reason. With subject, verb and object, we are telling a story, even in the most crude form. Someone walks into a coffee shop and I'm sitting at a Table reading a newspaper, and I look up, I'll already start to form a story about who I think they are, what I think's happening with the exchange. As they get their coffee, someone comes in to meet them. I tell a story to myself of what's going on here. I don't just let it happen. And I realized this after reading your book, that I'm never just letting something happen. And I think you would argue my brain doesn't want me to. My brain wants a story.
- [10:21]
Kevin Ashton
The security blanket that comes free with our big brain is the ability to really fabricate meaning, to make things make sense, to make things feel predictable, to feel part of a pattern, which gives us a sense of safety, you know, and, you know, if you think about what am I going to wear to a job interview, what am I going to wear on a date, what am I going to wear to have my Christmas family photograph taken, or whatever, that's. That's also us trying to control the story that other people tell about us.
- [10:53]
Tommy Mischke
It's also the story we're telling about ourselves. Because as we pick this out, this particular item to wear, we're saying, even if it's subconsciously, I wear this because I'm the kind of person who would wear this and would never wear that. The person who would wear that other thing is this kind of a person who's had this kind of a life and is into this kind of a thing, and it's story after story after story. And the thing I learned in your book is these things are happening so unconsciously and so routinely that we're not even aware of it. And this is why I want to pass along something to you that was a great revelation for me in reading the Story of Stories. I've been doing radio and now podcasting for 30 years, over 30 years in total. And anytime anybody's written about me or spoken about me or I'm being introduced somewhere, I've heard I'm a storyteller. I would always think when I'd hear that, who the hell are they talking about? Mark Twain is a storyteller. Garrison Keillor is a storyteller. I honestly never thought of myself that way, ever. I was recently interviewed within the last six months by someone who was arguing with me about this. As I said, I don't consider myself a storyteller. They were almost getting upset with me. And I realize now why. I didn't consider myself a storyteller because I was a fish being asked if I'm aware of water. The thing I Learned in your book is everybody's a storyteller. And I think what I was intuitively aware of was I wasn't doing anything differently than anybody else was. No matter where I am, if I'm with my friends, hanging out with other people at work. Everybody's always telling a story. And I didn't understand why they were isolating me as a storyteller. Every human being is a storyteller. Now, if they had wanted to say to me, I kind of like the way you put your words together, well, great, I get that. But I didn't feel different from anyone else. And I didn't understand why I was being put in that category. Do you understand that?
- [13:05]
Kevin Ashton
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think people get a little confused. When I talk about what we all tell stories. Because there is this other way of understanding stories that, like, storytelling is something authors do or, you know, not something everybody does. But when your kid comes home and tells you about their day. They're not telling you a story. But they are. You know, there are good stories and better stories. There are everyday stories and classic stories. There are perhaps more explicit stories. But, yeah, we're all telling stories. And it's pretty hard to argue against that. Whether it starts with once upon a time. Or, you know, it was a dark and stormy night or, I had a good day today. These are all part of the same spectrum of storytelling.
- [13:50]
Tommy Mischke
You go on a first date. You ask each other about yourselves. Immediately, stories begin to be told. This is who I am. Well, I grew up here and had this for a brother and sister. And we were poor when we were younger. But my dad eventually got this promotion. Later, you're telling a story. Is it a story someone wants to record and play for the world? No, but it's happening continually, day after day after day. And it's happening because that's what our brains want. You talk about songs as stories. And you talk about how the brain likes patterns. And stories have patterns. Heroes and villains almost always in there somewhere. If it's any kind of memorable story. Someone to blame for something bad happening. And someone who you can count on to help things not be so bad. Our brain wants that, too.
- [14:44]
Kevin Ashton
And then there's also the fact that every story ever told is about human beings. It doesn't matter whether it's, you know, Zootopia 2 or Mickey Mouse or whatever it is. These are human beings. They may sort of reskinned slightly to look like animals or something. But all their behavior is very human. We're only really interested in stories about Humans, and most specifically we're interested in stories about ourselves. Typically, if you watch a story again, whether you realize it or not, you are relating to the hero. You're identifying with the hero. You are probably hoping that you would behave as the hero behaves. And the villains are the people we boo and hiss.
- [15:25]
Tommy Mischke
No matter what the entity in the story, if it's a key part of the story, we give it human attributes.
- [15:32]
Kevin Ashton
Yeah, we can't really relate to anything that has any kind of agency without, without making it seem human, like, which is why you listen to people talk about their cats or their cars or, you know, Mother Nature, the man in the moon. You know, the minute we try and understand something well enough to predict it, we tend to sort of humanize it because that's the only real sort of motive we can understand, is to be human, is to have human goals.
- [16:02]
Tommy Mischke
You hear people talk about their cats. Everything they talk about is the way you would talk about a person. In fact, I've never met anybody with a pet who talks about them like an animal, like a real animal. If I was going to name a car dealership, there is one name I would go with above all others. Fury. That is simply the best name for a car dealership ever. Tommy and Jimmy Leonard's mother named it Way, way back in the early 1960s, there was a fictional horse written about a black stallion called Fury. Tommy and Jimmy Leonard's mother said, that's what we're going to name the dealership. What is the logo today for Fury Motors? That black stallion, that glorious sign high in the sky in South St. Paul, in Waconia, in Forest Lake, in Stillwater. Beautiful brand new cars. Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Ford, Buick, gmc. Used cars in every make and model. There's only one car dealership I'll ever do ads for. Fury Motors. Hi ho Silver. Want you to do something for me. I want you to call MSP, get a $49 tune up on your furnace. Eunice Wallace, Mr. And Mrs. I want you to do something for me. Want you to call MSP. That $49 tune up on your furnace is what you need. I want you to call msp. You heard about him from Mishk, but you gotta call em soon if you want a Weber grill for free. He you call Minneapolis St. Paul Plumbing, Heating and Air MSP. You get a $49 tune up on your furnace and you qualify for a drawing where you could win a brand new Weber grill from Fratelloni's Hardware. You gotta call him before the 17th of April not that many people will be in this drawing. You could take care of your furnace for a lousy 49 bucks and be grilling all summer long. So remember, I want you to call msp, tell em you heard about him from Mishke. I just never thought about these things quite as much as I found myself thinking about it after reading the story of stories. Another thing that fascinated me, going back to this idea of villains and heroes. I go for walks a lot down by the Mississippi. I'll pass people who are deep in conversation, seven times out of 10 they're talking about someone who bothers them, annoys them in some way. A boss, a co worker, a family member. They're working something out with the other person they're talking to. And it's clear in the nine seconds I pick up that the person who's doing the talking is, is the hero, the good person, and the other person is the one making their life harder. So when I heard that in all stories, almost all stories, there are heroes and villains in some way, to some degree. Someone coming home from work, talking about an experience on the road with someone who cut them off, that's the jerk. I'm the innocent soul trying to get home. I'm the heroic person just trying to live my life and put up with these guys who are making my life miserable. Social media, it's all villains and heroes. That's all it is. And I'm realizing how sort of sad that is.
- [20:08]
Kevin Ashton
We are the villains in our villains stories.
- [20:12]
Tommy Mischke
Pardon me?
- [20:13]
Kevin Ashton
We are the villains in our villains
- [20:16]
Tommy Mischke
stories, but we don't acknowledge that.
- [20:19]
Kevin Ashton
No. We see the world as a place where we are always good and anything bad that happens is always somebody else's. Again, this is the story shaped brain attributing villainy and heroism. One of the things that's actually very helpful is to try and catch yourself doing that. Because the reality is nobody thinks they're the villain. Everybody thinks they're the hero. So if you really want to, you know, walk a mile in somebody else's shoes or understand what it's like to be the other person, you have to try and imagine what story they're telling themselves. They're not saying I was a jerk today, they're saying I was a hero today.
- [20:59]
Tommy Mischke
In Chicago, in a survey, people generally agreed that 70% of drivers in that city are terrible drivers. And 80% of the people surveyed said they're the good drivers. The math doesn't work out there. You wrote that when we attribute credit or blame, we generally have three choices in any story, we can blame ourselves, we can blame somebody else, or we can blame a non human external force. Geography, physics, probability. But our brains like to reduce it to a simpler equation. Our brains want it to be. If an event's outcome is good, then we or people just like us with whom we identify caused it. And if an event's outcome is bad, then others, specifically people unlike us, caused it. That is the social media story today in this world. That is a definition of it right there. But what fascinated me was when you went further and said the external forces get little to no attribution unless we humanize the external force. And this again fascinated me, the idea that we have to make everything in a story human. So in other words, God was responsible and we humanize God. We make God into a human type entity that did this. So it's either my fault, the other person's fault, or God's fault. But when it's God's fault, it's not some energy force that is separate from what we think of as human. It's a very human type God. If it's the Fates, if we say the Fates are responsible, we anthropomorphize them. We certainly know what the Greeks did with gods. So our story shaped brain wants even an external force to be human in some way or have human qualities.
- [23:01]
Kevin Ashton
Yeah, I always try and be sensitive when we kind of get to this discussion because I want to be very respectful of everybody's faith. But yeah, God certainly acts as a general purpose agent for anything we can't explain.
- [23:15]
Tommy Mischke
I'm not saying anything positive or negative about attributing something to a God. I'm fascinated by the way that God will be made human. And I don't know why that's necessary.
- [23:30]
Kevin Ashton
Well, we know what it's like to be a human. We don't know what it's like to be, I don't know, solar radiation. So by humanizing, by making things basically like ourselves, that is a way to comprehend.
- [23:47]
Tommy Mischke
There was an example you provided that solidified for me this idea that we will humanize anything. It was a test that was done with people where all they looked at on a screen was the movement of, of a dot and a triangle around a square box. And there was just this random movement for a while, I don't know how long, couple minutes they watched it. And then they were asked what they just witnessed, what they just saw. 99% of the people involved told this elaborate story about a man and a woman and another woman getting involved there. And There being some sort of conflict. Nothing of the sort was happening. But they made it that because the only way they knew how to tell this story was to make everything they were looking at human. And they didn't even know what they were being tested for.
- [24:42]
Kevin Ashton
And if you watch the video, which is easy to find on YouTube or something, you can immediately see what they were seeing. And it's actually hard to see it any other way. One of the fascinating things about this is how primal that story is. Right? It's a mating story. It's a story of code, conflict over mates.
- [24:58]
Tommy Mischke
Is it a story about mating? I don't think it's a story about mating. It isn't a story at all. We just made it a story. We decided it had to be because we have to have the story. You know, I was just looking at a quote from Jung. Unrelated just happened to be something that I came across today. It says the purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. And you can't have meaning without a story. If we have to have meaning, we have to have a story. And if we need that as badly as we need food and water and air, then it's utterly fundamental. Which helps you understand why I laughed at the notion that I'm a storyteller. Your book helped me understand the ubiquity of this experience. Will you tell the story? 1954. This gentleman who is in a black music club in Memphis, and the sheriff comes in to escort him out.
- [26:02]
Kevin Ashton
Sammy Lo Bianco. The story of Samuel Bianco and his friends is in 1954, living in Memphis. He's 19 years old. He and his friends get dressed up and they go to a little club on the outskirts of town. They walk there to see a band called the Midnighters. And the Midnighters have a big hit record at that time in 1954. It's called work With Me Annie. And so they're sitting there at this club. They're drinking Cokes, they're having cheeseburgers, they're watching this. This band play. It's, you know, it's a small place, small stage, very intimate. And, you know, a police officer of the Memphis Police Department comes in and walks over to them and says, do you want me to escort you all out of here? And the reason is that Sammy and his friends are white, and the Midnighters are a black band, and the club they're in is a black club. They're the only white people there. And, of course, this is segregated America. The segregated South. But the interesting thing about segregation is Sammy and his friends were not breaking any laws. What they were breaking was. Was kind of a social contract. They were supposed to be ashamed of listening to black music and ashamed of being a place full of black people and probably afraid as well. And of course they weren't, because they were growing up in this age of polyvinyl singles and jukeboxes and soon, transistor radios, and they'd grown up on the streets of Memphis, where black music was all around them. So this is. This is really the first American generation of white kids who are into black music, and they don't care that it's black music. And this is terribly threatening. White people and black people shall not intermingle. And they say to the police officer, no, we're going to stay and watch the Midnighters. That's an act of defiance. We're not leaving. We don't care that you think we should leave. We're not leaving. We want to watch this band.
- [28:05]
Tommy Mischke
What I never would have thought before your book, though, was that the reason they're not leaving is because they're telling a different story. There is a story in the head of the police officer. It's a story far bigger than just, you shouldn't be in this club. It's a story of how things are and how things should be and what we need to do to operate in a civil white society. We don't want to be too close to these people. If the officer could have pulled these guys into a classroom, he would have taught them this whole story, and they would have said, you know, we got a different story. Let me tell you the story we have. And what I didn't think about before is it's always the story you're telling yourself.
- [28:49]
Kevin Ashton
This is a fascinating thing always in society, but it's very clear in America today that we have this war of stories.
- [28:57]
Tommy Mischke
And there is this view that there's the right story and the wrong story. One of the things I loved from reading Joseph Campbell was it's everybody else's religion that's the myth, not yours. Yours is going to be the true story. And then all the other ones are a myth, a nice little story they tell themselves, but that's not actually true. Ours is the true one. Well, currently on Earth, there are obviously thousands of different religion out there, and everybody is pretty sure that they have the market on the truth. And then the others have interesting stories they tell, and maybe everybody's got a piece of the truth, But I'm not sure that we have the story much of anywhere. And as I said, I think earlier in this discussion, it's getting worse. The villains are being talked about with more vitriol and the heroes are being patted on the back as here to save the day. And who those people are depend on where you just went with your little smartphone again. The book is the story of the million year history of a uniquely human art. Kevin Ashton, the author I wanted to ask you about the LEGO experiment. This goes back to the idea of how much meaning plays a role in our life. The American story today, when it comes to quote, unquote, the American dream, is getting wealthy and famous somehow. Certainly getting wealthy, certainly finding that magical formula that brings the money rolling in and gets you that beautiful house and that nice yard. The LEGO experiment speaks about something else that's important. Can you talk about the LEGO experiment?
- [30:38]
Kevin Ashton
People were divided into two groups, and both groups were asked to make little LEGO toys. And they were paid a little bit less for the second toy and a little bit less for the third toy. And at some point they were making the toys for, you know, 10 cents each. One group kept making toys for a long time, even when they're only getting paid $0.10 and one group didn't.
- [31:02]
Tommy Mischke
And here was the difference. The group that stopped when the pay got too low stopped because after every toy they built, the toy was taken apart. The group that continued even after the pay got ridiculously low was a group that watched each of the toys they made displayed. They displayed them on this desk. Seeing them displayed, seeing their creation, one after another there to be looked at, gave it meaning. And they kept going long after the other group quit. The other group saw no meaning in what they were doing. And you go on to say that multiple tests in this area reveal the same thing over and over again.
- [31:52]
Kevin Ashton
One of the conclusions from experiments like that, which I think is pretty well replicated in social psychology and behavioral science, is that we are more motivated to do things that seem meaningful than we are to do things that seem rewarding once our basic needs are taken care of. What motivates most people is meaning, which is really interesting in a capitalist economy like ours, because most of the work we are asked to do is actually not that meaningful. And so what you see is employers rewarding people to compensate for the lack of meaning and trying to kind of contrive meaningfulness out of the fact that they make widgets so that some guy can get rich. The reality is, given the choice, most people would rather spend their time and energy doing Something meaningful than something that is rewarding beyond what their basic needs are.
- [32:47]
Tommy Mischke
If we know, and we do seem to know this, that there is a figure, it's a very low figure in terms of an annual salary, that beyond that number there is no extra happiness coming from an additional 10 grand, 20 grand, 100 grand, 200 grand. Your needs are covered, you're not struggling, you're able to eat, you have a roof over your head, you have clothes. You're able to go through a day without struggle. Additional money is not bringing additional happiness. Now, as rare as it is to hear that discussed, and I do not hear that discussed very often in this country, it's more rare to hear how important meaning is over money, feeling some sense of fulfillment in this world as you go through your life, I can tell you I never hear that. I never hear that. I hear people talk about wanting to get a raise, wanting to get a promotion. If they get this much money, they'll get a nicer place than they have now. They'll move into that neighborhood that they like better. But I don't hear them saying, I want to find a job with meaning. Because I have learned that that's going to be the most important to me. Assuming I'm going to be paid enough to eat, have shelter and have clothing. I just never hear that. And what a fundamental part of the human experience to not have talked about routinely.
- [34:10]
Kevin Ashton
That's the most dangerous idea in America, what you just said. You've only got to look at how much time and money is invested in making us disbelieve that, making us feel guilty for believing that. To see how unnatural it is to pursue reward instead of meaning. We all need to spend more time giving each other permission to live that way.
- [34:31]
Tommy Mischke
And within that meaning, there will be a story. Which story is it going to be? One thing that just popped into my head right now and I haven't thought about it in a long time. I was a minister I knew who worked in hospice facilities. And there was a 47 year old man who was dying of cancer and he was profoundly depressed. And the minister would go in to try to talk to him and he wouldn't talk. He just stayed under his blanket. In fact, every time the minister went in, he was in a grave already. He was all the way under the blanket, as if buried. And then one day the minister walked by and the guy was up and he was visiting with another guy from down the hall. They were having a great time. Maybe they were playing chess or checkers or something, but he was all happy and smiling. And later the minister pulled him aside and asked him what had happened, what had changed. And the guy actually said. He actually said to the minister, I realized that other life that I wanted. Watching my daughter graduate from high school, living a long time being an old man with my wife. That's not my story. That's not my story. That's all he realized. And it's such a profound thing. It's a shift that maybe even people listening to this don't fully grasp. I had to think about it for a long time before I got it. When I first heard it, I didn't know what the hell that meant. I get it now. The idea of learning what is your story. His story on this earth was to have this life that is unfolding this way and is going to end in this manner.
- [36:12]
Kevin Ashton
I have a tattoo on my arm which is a quote from Thelonious Monk, most like himself. My realization is that the highest calling we can have is to try and be most like ourselves. And that does mean that our story is not going to be somebody else's story. It's not going to be anybody else's story. It's figuring out what our story really is and trying to live that as best we can.
- [36:36]
Tommy Mischke
I hope you're proud of the work you did and I sure hope a lot of people read it. The story of stories, the million year history of uniquely human art. You won't think about yourself the same way afterward. The world, your friends and family, your day, the human experience. You won't think of it the same way afterwards. It'll open up a lot of wonderful perspectives. It certainly did for me. So, Kevin Ashton, thank you so much.
- [37:04]
Kevin Ashton
Thank you. Great job. That was a really interesting conversation, interesting questions. I really enjoyed it.
- [37:09]
Tommy Mischke
I delighted in it as well. Best of luck to you going forward. Hope to run into you again somewhere down the line.
- [37:14]
Kevin Ashton
I would like that.
- [37:15]
Tommy Mischke
Bye. Bye. I've been doing ads for North American Banking Company for quite a few months. And I wonder if you people think about your relationship with the businesses you deal with, who you do business with and why. I like to have a feeling associated with the different places I do business with with North American Banking company. It's that idea of the old neighborhood bank. There are six of them in the Twin Cities and six only. And they bring back something that has been lost, certainly lost with the big national banks. That feeling of the local neighborhood bank where they know you, where they care about you beyond dollars, where they enjoy visiting with you, where when it's Time to get a loan. They want you to get the loan. They want to work with you to get the loan, help you with it. A home loan, a business loan. Where knowing you matters when it comes to getting the loan, that it's not just about numbers. Yes, they have all the bells and whistles the national banks have. The national banks have no advantage whatsoever. But the national banks have lost their soul. North American Banking Company Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender. I've sent a lot of people to the well Shire, the Wellshire Memory Care center of Bloomington and Medina. And I swear I honestly believe I've done each of them a favor. If you have a relative dealing with dementia or Alzheimer's, a grandparent, a parent, a spouse, there is a place that is the state of the art in the country today. A place designed with nothing else in mind but memory care. A place designed for the four different stages of memory care. I talked to so many people who were disappointed that their family member at some assisted living facility was placed with people who have dementia and Alzheimer's and are at a completely different stage of that disease. Their parents might forget words, but to put them with people who had completely forgotten who they were didn't make any sense. There are stages and there's a way to treat people at those different stages. The Wellshire has mastered this. Four different households, the most well appointed facility you'll ever encounter in Bloomington and Medina. All right, storytellers, I'm gonna make a call. I'm gonna spin that magic wheel and see which listener name pops up. What? Cliff. There's a listener named Cliff and based on this area code, he's way up in northern Minnesota. Do you folks want me to call Cliff from northern Minnesota? I think you do. I think you do.
- [40:53]
Cliff
Hello?
- [40:53]
Tommy Mischke
Cliff.
- [40:55]
Cliff
Tommy Mischke. What are you up to?
- [40:57]
Tommy Mischke
I'm doing a show.
- [40:59]
Cliff
You are?
- [41:00]
Tommy Mischke
Yeah. I'm in the middle of one of my shows. What are you in the middle of?
- [41:05]
Cliff
Cooking. Supper.
- [41:07]
Tommy Mischke
What are we having tonight, Cliff?
- [41:09]
Cliff
Well, we're gonna make a little Mexican.
- [41:11]
Tommy Mischke
You're gonna make a little Mexican person? Is that legal?
- [41:15]
Cliff
No, I'm just gonna make tacos.
- [41:17]
Tommy Mischke
I see. Are you the chef around your neighborhood?
- [41:21]
Cliff
Usually.
- [41:22]
Tommy Mischke
Do you know, I've never made anything in my life.
- [41:25]
Cliff
Really? Well, how do you eat?
- [41:28]
Tommy Mischke
Go to a deli or. My wife makes it. Wonder what I'd be like on the old frontier. Remember that young guy who went up into Alaska and lived in that school bus?
- [41:39]
Cliff
Vaguely.
- [41:40]
Tommy Mischke
He starved to death. This was a guy who thought he had it down. He Thought he knew how to live up there. He starved to death. How long do you figure I would last?
- [41:54]
Cliff
You ever know that Prinicky guy? Have you ever saw his videos? Lived in a cabin that he built all by himself in Alaska, and he lived there for like 40 years or something.
- [42:04]
Tommy Mischke
30 years. It was Twin Lakes. And you obviously don't listen to my show regularly because we just talked about him a couple shows ago.
- [42:12]
Cliff
You know, I. I do listen to your show, but he's part of my algorithm on social media. I see a lot of panicky stuff.
- [42:21]
Tommy Mischke
My theory that I posited on a recent show was that he had a gigantic ego.
- [42:29]
Cliff
Maybe.
- [42:30]
Tommy Mischke
You know why I think that?
- [42:32]
Cliff
I'm not sure.
- [42:33]
Tommy Mischke
Why does a guy spend 30 years filming himself? Come on.
- [42:39]
Cliff
Yeah, I guess.
- [42:40]
Tommy Mischke
I guess if you sat with a camera every day turning it on yourself, going, look what I'm doing now. After a while, people would unload on you saying, who cares? Sure, Dick happened to be interesting, but the point was, he thought he was interesting. He thought he was really interesting. He thought he was about the most interesting thing going.
- [43:02]
Cliff
I would agree with that. Now. Now that you put it that way, I don't even like it when these kids nowadays, they always got to take a picture of themselves for no reason whatsoever other than, here I am. Well, you know what? Big deal.
- [43:16]
Tommy Mischke
Now, unfortunately, with Dick, it was kind of a big deal. But it doesn't change the fact that he thought he was a big deal. What happened to humility? Let someone else call you a big deal and decide to film you. You're supposed to be saying, oh, I'm just Dick Prinicky. I'm nothing special. No need to film me at all. I just living out here in the wilderness. But instead he goes, people long after I'm dead are gonna watch what I could do, and they're gonna marvel and think, there was one hell of a cool son of a bitch.
- [43:45]
Cliff
Now that you put it that way, I guess Tommy, that's why. That's why you've been on the radio for so long and why I just sit here and I cook supper, you know, because. I mean, I find him pretty interesting guy, but now I know exactly what you're saying. Pretty full of himself.
- [44:05]
Tommy Mischke
I hate to take the guy down a notch, but we have to just be honest about what we see in front of us. Now let's talk about your life. Cliff is such a great name. When was the last time you ran into another fella named Cliff?
- [44:19]
Cliff
There is one guy up here on the Iron Range He's a beer distributor, Actually, I've seen him when he comes into the local place that I like to go.
- [44:30]
Tommy Mischke
There's a beer delivery guy in northern Minnesota named Cliff. I think there has been one of those since the 1800s.
- [44:38]
Cliff
Very possible.
- [44:40]
Tommy Mischke
I just got done interviewing a guy who talked all about stories and how story is the fundamental human experience. We spend our lives telling stories, repeating stories, thinking about stories. We hang out with our friends and we tell stories. We drive through the streets of town thinking about stories. Most everything we know about the world we learned from someone telling us a story. We didn't experience it ourselves. I just got done talking to a guy about the whole idea of stories. The very first time we needed language, it was because we desperately wanted to tell a story. So we learned words. We wanted words. We didn't first learn words and then want to tell a story. We wanted to tell a story, so we learned words. Up until then, all we had were little mating calls and warnings. So I want to ask you, in this world of stories, what's your story?
- [45:33]
Cliff
Well, my story is 45, almost 46 years ago. I was born, grew up in northern Minnesota. And I guess lived through a lot of different things. And now I sit here in the year 2026, wondering, Do I even have a story? But for 22 years of my life, I was a police officer. Where were you a cop in northern Minnesota? I want to say the city, or what my wife is saying. Just say the city, damn it.
- [46:07]
Tommy Mischke
Yeah, why don't you just say. Why don't you just say it?
- [46:09]
Cliff
Well, there was a couple of cities I worked in. Biobic. You know where that's at?
- [46:14]
Tommy Mischke
Boabbick?
- [46:15]
Cliff
Yep. Yeah. And then Gilbert for a short period of time.
- [46:19]
Tommy Mischke
Okay.
- [46:20]
Cliff
And then I rounded out the rest of my career in the fine city of Hibbing.
- [46:25]
Tommy Mischke
If you'd only come along a little earlier, you could have pulled over Bob Dylan. Wouldn't that have been fun to pull him over for? Whatever. I mean, you could pull him over for singing or something.
- [46:35]
Cliff
I would pull him over for singing. Tommy, if you'd have continued with what you were doing singing, you probably could have had a more illustrious career than Bob did.
- [46:43]
Tommy Mischke
Bob did all right for himself.
- [46:45]
Cliff
He did pretty damn good. But you should have stuck with it.
- [46:48]
Tommy Mischke
What town were you raised in?
- [46:50]
Cliff
I grew up on the country, on a lake.
- [46:54]
Tommy Mischke
What'd your old man do for a living?
- [46:57]
Cliff
He worked in one of the mines.
- [46:58]
Tommy Mischke
Worked in the mines. Worked in the mines. You lived out on a lake? And every now and then, a Guy named Cliff came by with some beer. What was the reason your parents gave for naming you Cliff?
- [47:11]
Cliff
Only Clifford, not Clifford. Yeah, I've never gotten that answer. Yeah, and my wife just reminded me that it's not Clifford, it's just Cliff.
- [47:19]
Tommy Mischke
Really, it's not Clifford, it's just Cliff. Did they give you a middle name?
- [47:24]
Cliff
Elliot.
- [47:25]
Tommy Mischke
I'll tell you something. You ought to pick up a guitar. Cliff Elliot is a good stage name for a singer songwriter. Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from Boabac, here's Cliff Elliot.
- [47:40]
Cliff
Well, I'm not from Bawabic. It just worked there for a short period of time.
- [47:43]
Tommy Mischke
But have we determined what Bawabic means, translated?
- [47:48]
Cliff
You know, I heard this before, but I know you're going to remind me. This is an Ojibwe word for sure.
- [47:55]
Tommy Mischke
Translates to iron. Bawabic was the very first incorporated town on the Mesabi Iron Range.
- [48:03]
Cliff
How about Keewatin? That's another Ojibwe word. Keewatin's only about four or five miles away from where I live currently.
- [48:11]
Tommy Mischke
Name stems from the Ojibwe word for northwest wind.
- [48:17]
Cliff
Well, we get a lot of that up here, for sure.
- [48:21]
Tommy Mischke
I like these names. Biwabic, Keewatin. What was the highlight of your police career?
- [48:28]
Cliff
Getting out of it about two and a half years ago.
- [48:32]
Tommy Mischke
It was that bad?
- [48:34]
Cliff
Yeah. It's not my favorite subject in the world. I know it's interesting to a lot of people if you have a job that they want to make TV shows about. It's probably interesting to people. But I lived it, so I don't care to experience it too much more.
- [48:52]
Tommy Mischke
How rough was it in small towns? I mean, didn't you have a life a lot like Andy Griffith?
- [48:58]
Cliff
We were not Mayberry.
- [49:00]
Tommy Mischke
I thought Hibbing was Mayberry.
- [49:03]
Cliff
Pretty far from it.
- [49:04]
Tommy Mischke
Let me guess. The big problem was meth.
- [49:08]
Cliff
Yeah, there was a lot of that. A lot of that. Heroin was a big problem. Started to see that towards the end of my career, which is kind of weird because heroin, you didn't hear about it for a long time. Heroin, junkies. But that became like a more popular drug than the other ones until people started dying.
- [49:28]
Tommy Mischke
I know a St. Paul cop who just got off the street because he was, as he put it, tired of tackling naked people on drugs.
- [49:37]
Cliff
There was some of that even. Even in Mayberry, there were some of that, for sure.
- [49:43]
Tommy Mischke
And now you spend your days cooking?
- [49:46]
Cliff
Cooking. Every Wednesday night. I have a bowling team. Bowling team. And we have a lot of fun during the winter up here.
- [49:55]
Tommy Mischke
What year Is it Cliff and his bowling league? Cliff the beer delivery guy? If I lived in northern Minnesota, it would be 1955 every day.
- [50:08]
Cliff
That's where I would have liked to probably reside. Looking back on history, that kind of might have fit my style.
- [50:17]
Tommy Mischke
The idea that I would need to go back to 1955 would be absurd. What possibly goes on in your life as you go to your bowling league, as you talk to Cliff the beer delivery guy? What possibly goes on that makes it any other year?
- [50:34]
Cliff
Not much. These days, I don't have to go drive around in a squad car and take care of business on the streets like I used to. Right now, I kind of intentionally make my life 1955. Tell you what else I do on Thursdays, I go meet some guys in a garage that's got some living quarters in it, and we play cards. The game is called smear, but it's
- [50:59]
Tommy Mischke
a card game, so that's also been done since about 1840. I just don't think there is anything in your life that should have you wishing for anything but 20, 26.
- [51:11]
Cliff
Well, maybe you're. You know, you're a pretty good therapist, Tommy. You know that?
- [51:16]
Tommy Mischke
We spend too much time not appreciating what we have and longing for things that we'll never get.
- [51:23]
Cliff
Yeah, I agree with you on that.
- [51:25]
Tommy Mischke
You know what Paul Harvey said many years ago. He, of course, is dead now, but. You remember Paul Harvey, don't you?
- [51:32]
Cliff
I sure do.
- [51:33]
Tommy Mischke
Not exactly a modern man. Kind of a throwback of a guy, right?
- [51:38]
Cliff
Mm.
- [51:39]
Tommy Mischke
Here's what he said. Often every tomorrow has been better than ever. Yesterday, every day for him, was better than the day before. And he didn't even mean personally. He meant in this world of ours. There's a book I ought to send you. It came out several years ago, and it's a guy who did research on the world, and he found out in all the major categories of what determines whether this is a good time to be alive or not. Rapes, murders, violence, wars, starvation. Now is better than any time in human history going back to the beginning. Here's something to consider. Take the 1940s. On this planet, we were perfectly okay as a planet having a war where 50 million people died. 5,0 million by the 1960s. There's no way in hell we were going to tolerate those kind of numbers. But we were going to tolerate 58,000Americans in the 1960s, before we really, really got sick of a certain war. 58,000. Now imagine today how many would die before America would say, get the hell out of there. We don't want anything to do with that war. It would be a very low number. Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, said, a sign of a civilized world is tolerating less and less death. Think of the numbers we lost in the Civil War if we want to keep going back to the good old days.
- [53:21]
Cliff
600,000Americans.
- [53:23]
Tommy Mischke
It was a butcher shop. So for some reason, I do think we're becoming more civilized with each passing decade. And I do think Paul Harvey was right. Now, there was an old jazz musician named Artie Shaw who used to say something very different from Paul Harvey. Artie used to say, and I quote, nothing gets better. Yeah, well, he was kind of going down a road that a lot of old guys go down, which is you grow up and you see a world a certain way, and we're not really built for change. And the change happens so fast now that just about the time we get used to something, it disappears. And we're not good with that. So eventually we get really tired of endless change. Mahatma Gandhi said, there has to be more to life than speeding it up. It's a little hard on the brain, no doubt about it, which is why you're bowling and playing cards.
- [54:27]
Cliff
Simple stuff. I like simple, Tommy.
- [54:30]
Tommy Mischke
I like simple, too. I've got a little cabin in a small town in Wisconsin on a river. I don't even want plumbing. I have an outhouse. I have a pump out in the yard. I haven't changed it in decades. I like it just like that. And when I go into the little town two miles down the road, to me, it's 1955 there. I can't tell much difference outside of the cars. Looks like 1955. If I go into a bar, I can't tell by the dress that it's not 1955. If I start talking to a guy, if he doesn't pull out his phone, I can't tell that it's not 1955.
- [55:05]
Cliff
That's my life in a nutshell, Tommy.
- [55:07]
Tommy Mischke
As my stepfather said to me one time, I'm glad you found a woman willing to put up with that.
- [55:15]
Cliff
She's born and raised up here, too.
- [55:17]
Tommy Mischke
That's the way you got to find them. You got to get. You got to get one of the locals. I got one of the locals.
- [55:23]
Cliff
City slicker.
- [55:24]
Tommy Mischke
But it was a city slicker in a town I knew. You know, my old man got my mom from Central Minnesota to St. Paul by saying the where we're going is more like where you are than it is like Minneapolis. And what did my old man do? He came to a little neighborhood in St. Paul and he bought the local newspaper, the little community newspaper. So he created a little small town in a city, and he lived his life in this little community with this little paper, raising eight kids and more or less built for my mother. That small town world he pulled her out of in central Minnesota. You can create any world you want. That's the thing we ought to teach more people when we're raising them, is you can create any world you want. There was an old man one time who was hearing someone say to him, you can't live in the past, Bob. And Bob said, yeah, you can. You could just buy old stuff and put it in your house. You walk into my house right now, it looks like 1947. Looks like Kerouac's getting ready to take his road trip. That's because I just bought stuff from then. You can create any world you want. You really can. How long you two been married?
- [56:40]
Cliff
25 years we've been together, but we did a 13 year test drive before we actually got married. So what's that make it, 12 years? It'll be 12 years in May since we've been blissfully married. To give her some credit, there's a song that I occasionally play for Jerry Rafferty, song right down the line. Because she stuck through a lot of bullshit with me.
- [57:09]
Tommy Mischke
Jerry Rafferty. This is what we got from Jerry. You know I need your love. You've got that hold over me. Long as I got your love you know that I'll never leave. When I wanted you to share my life I had no doubt in my mind. And it's been you, woman right down the line.
- [57:27]
Cliff
You got it.
- [57:28]
Tommy Mischke
I know how much I lean on you Only you can see. The changes that I've been through have left a mark on me. You've been as constant as the northern Star. The brightest light that shines. It's been you, woman, right down the line.
- [57:43]
Cliff
That explains it better than I can put it that way.
- [57:47]
Tommy Mischke
That's what songs are for. Well, I'm gonna let you go. I have appreciated visiting with you.
- [57:52]
Cliff
If you ever want to BS again, you know my number.
- [57:55]
Tommy Mischke
I got your number. I'll hang on to it. All right, Cliff. Thanks again.
- [57:59]
Cliff
All right, my friend.
- [58:00]
Tommy Mischke
So long.