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- [00:17]
A
Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Scott Keith. I am joined today by my son and theologian philosopher Caleb Keith.
- [00:26]
B
Hello, Caleb. Hello.
- [00:28]
A
My good friend, Dr. Adam Francisco. Historian, really. Theologian. He doesn't like to admit it. Hi, Adam. Hello.
- [00:36]
C
How are you?
- [00:36]
A
I'm good. And the newest member of the Thinking Fellows podcast, Bruce Hillman. Hi, Bruce.
- [00:44]
C
Hi.
- [00:44]
D
Good to be here.
- [00:46]
A
Bruce has joined the staff at 1517 as a scholar in residence. I believe I'm very bad at titles, so I believe that's your title, is that correct?
- [00:55]
D
I think so too.
- [00:56]
A
Yeah.
- [00:57]
D
I'm not entirely sure. I think that's it.
- [00:59]
A
He works with Adam in our sort of fledgling department of academics or academic department or whatever we decided to call it.
- [01:07]
C
He tried to negotiate for Big Cheese, just couldn't do it.
- [01:12]
A
Didn't work. Scholar in residence, moving forward. This is basically going to be the new cast of the Thinking Fellows, right, Caleb?
- [01:23]
B
I think so, yeah. We'll still have some guests from the fellowship, I think, but yeah, I think we're gonna work on this for back to four people. Back to four. You know, I was hesitant to do remote recording, but I've slowly caved.
- [01:39]
A
Covid broke him like it broke many people on many things.
- [01:44]
B
Yeah. I'd prefer to force Bruce and Adam to move to California, but, you know, you can only do so much.
- [01:50]
A
You can only do so much. You can only force so many people to move to the most expensive state in the union.
- [01:54]
B
Yeah. How would you like to come get paid the same in tax, twice as much?
- [01:58]
A
How'd you like to come get paid the same and have every dollar you get be worth 20? $20 or what? 20 less?
- [02:04]
C
Yeah. Just for the record, Illinois is worse. Illinois is worse than California in terms of taxes.
- [02:10]
B
Really?
- [02:11]
A
Yeah.
- [02:11]
C
I believe we pay almost three times more in property taxes. It's insane. That's why my blood pressure is so high. I think that. And there are other reasons if we're.
- [02:20]
D
If we're doing the one up game. New Jersey has the highest property taxes.
- [02:25]
C
Oh, really?
- [02:25]
B
Income tax, Bruce. Right.
- [02:27]
D
I'm sorry, no income tax. No, no. I think. I think overall California, like, if you add it all up, is probably worse. And I'm always amazed growing up on the east coast, like, when I see your gas prices, I'm just amazed. Like, horrified and amazed.
- [02:39]
A
Yeah, we are. We are the same.
- [02:40]
D
How much higher? They always are.
- [02:41]
A
I have this very, very nice truck. It's like five years old now, but I still love it to death. And I got it because it was a diesel truck. And it could tow a lot of things and had lots of power and asked me how much I've driven it in the last six months. Almost zero, because diesel has been right around $7 a gallon out here. And so it's a very nice truck that sits on my driveway.
- [03:07]
C
I remember those days when I was buying my truck shortly after you bought yours, and you were giving me all sorts of grief because I didn't get the diesel, including things like, I don't.
- [03:17]
A
Know, memes, like, nice little truck.
- [03:20]
C
Trucks don't have spark plugs or whatever it is that.
- [03:23]
A
Yep, I was doing that. Oh, that's for sure. So the idea today, usually for this show as it falls in the year, is to do kind of our do you hate or love New Year's resolutions? Thing. And I'm just. Was a little bored of that, so I decided to sort of take control of this podcast today. And I listen to a lot of podcasts in my week. I'm a. I am a podcast addict, I would say. Yeah. And just there's so much information in them. And it's one of the things I really love about podcasts is that you can get, like, all sort of sides of the perspective. You don't have to just listen to podcasts with which you 100% agree. And so you can.
- [04:06]
B
You almost never do.
- [04:08]
A
Yeah, I don't. And so you can kind of get all this, like, all over the place. But I was listening to one of them, and they sort of have a cast of four people, much like we do. And the main host just sort of asked them a bunch of, like, random questions about 2022 that they kind of had to answer on the fly. And it was actually one of the. In my opinion, I've really liked their show. It was the best show of the year. And so since all good ideas ought to be stolen and copied, I decided that we should probably steal and copy that idea. And I would lead us through the questions. And so how I'll do this is I'll just ask the questions, we'll go around the table, and then we'll end with me, and I'll give the right answer.
- [04:48]
B
What's. What's the order of the table?
- [04:50]
A
I'm just going to go to you, and then as it is on the screen, then the Bruce and to Adam and then back to me.
- [04:55]
B
Okay.
- [04:56]
A
Okay. All right, so here we go. What were the sort of best books you read this year? You don't have to have, like. You don't give me 10, Bruce, but if you if you want to give three, three or four, that's fine, but you have to at least give me two because I want one sort of in our field, theology, philosophy, history, whatever. Ish. And one, just sort of hopefully you read a normal book this year. Like a book that's not like Luther's 10 reasons for loving your wife or something like that. All right. Hopefully you read a normal. Yeah, so hopefully you read a normal book this year and you can give me one. Everybody can look at their list.
- [05:45]
B
I'm like doing it right now.
- [05:46]
C
Yeah.
- [05:47]
A
And give me. And then you can also add into there if you want to sort of the worst book you read or. And. Or tried to read this year. So are you ready, Caleb? You do kind of have to give a Y on all these two, otherwise it will be just not entertaining.
- [06:05]
B
Okay, so you want me to give a theological one first?
- [06:07]
A
Sure.
- [06:09]
B
I'm gonna go with Kilcrease's book, Justification by the Word.
- [06:13]
A
That's the one I was gonna go, but that's fine.
- [06:15]
B
You said you'd pick the right one, so I guess I picked the right one. I guess the reason I would go with that is I've read less sort of new theological books this year than I have and previous years. What I did read, I mostly went back and was reading some Melanchthon again. And I feel like that's low hanging fruit to just pick an old Melanchthon translation that nobody's gonna be able to get. So Jack's book was sort of like an original systematic. That was very enjoyable. I felt like it was in the thread and the theme of other Lutheran works that it. And sort of maybe confirming my biases a little bit, but from somebody who hasn't always had 100% disagreement or agreement with other teachers I've had. I found a lot in it that was confirming some of the stuff that I read and deal with with Paulson in Outlaw God all the time. And so it was a good book. And I think it was like very lay accessible too. People could read that. And then non theological, probably Conservatism by Yorami.
- [07:31]
A
That's a good book.
- [07:33]
B
The reason I choose this, I talked about it briefly on some past episodes. But the reason was I did not agree with the entirety of the book. It challenged me. But I agreed with some of the like the main problem that he identified and addressed, which was conservatives having sort of a quote unquote conservative philosophy of politics in their mind, but then living like. And teaching, especially teaching their children that it's okay to live and behave like a liberal. So, you know, praising sort of liberal ideology in media or, you know, allowing it to sort of be the prevalent joke or cultural subcontext of your life while then getting really mad at liberal politics.
- [08:22]
A
Yeah, it was a very good book. I'm always surprised at the number of times you'll say to me, oh, I just finished this book. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I just read that too. And we didn't talk about it, like, while we were reading it, but we ended up reading. We should share sort of like Kindle and Audible accounts, just make it easier. But no, that's a good book. I agree with that one. Any book you read that you just really didn't hit for you this year.
- [08:45]
B
Um, there's probably a couple I just didn't finish and that might be the. I'd have to go through the list. I. I tend to just drop them out of my. Yeah, I do that too, mind. Um. Oh, gosh, I didn't finish a couple. Oh, Chesterton dude.
- [09:05]
A
Yeah, Chesterton. Be a tough read.
- [09:07]
B
I tried to. To listen to three different Chesterton Orthodoxy, the Man who Is Thursday Everlasting Man. I don't remember what the third one was, and I didn't end up finishing any of them. They. I just. It just wasn't connecting for me. And the more I was sort of in it, the more I was surprised that this would be sort of the. One of the underpinning foundations for Lewis.
- [09:35]
A
Yeah, it's funny, I often find Chesterton better in sort of individual statements than, like, harder to consume the entire work. So. Yeah. All right, great. All right, Bruce, you're up.
- [09:50]
D
Yeah, so I read. Actually, it was. It wasn't published this year, but it was called A Conflict of Visions, Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell. And what I liked about this book was his thesis at the beginning, or his observation that he. That he recognized one day sort of thinking about things and then sought to try to answer this observation, try to figure out where it originated from and why it had happened. And that observation was, I thought, pretty profound. Like, I hadn't. Like, once he said it, I was like, oh, I see that too. But I had never seen it before. Which was. He asks a question in the introduction. Why do people on different ends of the ideological spectrum? It doesn't even have to be left and right. I mean, that's obviously one divide, but on any divide, the same people line up on the same sides over all sorts of different issues. And he couldn't Understand why? So, for example, if you're someone who's like pro life, then on the majority of other issues, not just political issues, like the majority of issues on life, when they do all the surveys and like you'll find most of the same people on your side of all those other issues that don't seem to have anything to do with an abortion issue.
- [11:07]
A
Yeah.
- [11:07]
D
And people who are like, maybe more.
- [11:10]
A
Like taxes and gun control, the military.
- [11:13]
D
Role, family role of view of science. Whether you trust global warming or not. Like the whole thing. Like, you all these people have all these issues that don't have anything in common, but they're all on the same side of the aisle all the time. Why? That was his question and he started or he goes through this in various different kind of looks at it like from different angles. And he just starts to observe that behind all this is two essential different worldviews that are operative in people. And there's really only. Well, I shouldn't say that in the west there are mostly two, but he admits there are others. But that the dot there are two dominant ones and their views of human nature. And so he says what you think of human nature will. Will most likely determine how you land on everything else. Everything, like everything else. Thanks.
- [12:05]
A
I think I agree.
- [12:06]
D
If you think that people are mostly evil, then I forget the term. He has like, names for these things, and I can't remember them because I read it. I read it like in like January of last year. But basically you're a capitalist. Like, you might not believe in capitalism, but you share that. You share that anxiety that because people are evil, the best thing you can do is use evil because it's. It's not going away. Like, it's a default. So what you have to do instead. Notice this isn't a religious view. It's just a view of like, human nature. So greed is a bad thing. It's an evil soul says, but you have to take that evil, you have to take that greed, and you have to harness it in a way that can produce the most good. This is the capitalist model.
- [12:54]
C
Yeah.
- [12:55]
A
And the most services for the most.
- [12:56]
D
People, you just accept it's bad. But, like, that's the way things are. So we got to work with what's going on.
- [13:01]
A
Don't motivate somebody to make better mousetrap and to be innovative and invent new things that make life better for everybody because they'll make money in doing so.
- [13:10]
D
Yeah. And because of this, human nature is fixed. And so. So says these people genuinely believe no matter how good you make the world, people will always be bad. So that shapes the way they see issues. Because they never believe you can get to a utopia. They never believe that human nature will evolve.
- [13:27]
A
And then the other one is more utopian about people and the world. Right.
- [13:32]
D
Yeah. Society has a moral imperative to improve people because they can be improved. And they can't do it by themselves. They need society to do it. So that could be government, but it also could be like the family.
- [13:45]
A
Educational systems.
- [13:47]
D
Yeah, like the whole thing. And then he says there's like, blends. Like, he thinks Marxism is the blend. Because Marxism, he says, is a view where you start with the default of human nature being fixed because you have like, the bourgeois and the proletariat. And they're in a fixed system and they gotta. But you evolve to a point. So we're not in that point now, but you evolve to the point. So anyway, I thought it was a really keen observation on understanding polarization and why issues are important. But actually behind these issues is a view of the human person and the human person's potential that is driving a lot of the conflict that we see in the world. So I appreciated that.
- [14:29]
A
Do you have another one or one that you didn't like so much?
- [14:35]
D
There's a lot of. There's very. I don't really like. Dislike books. Most of the time I just find them boring or not boring. Like, I have this weird thing when I start reading a book, it rarely will I not finish it. Like, I feel like the book will beat me. It's like a weird psychological thing. You're not gonna beat me. Like, I'm gonna get through this for how horrible you are. So I will push through a book, but another one I really like total non fiction, but was great, was called Rivertown A Year. I think it's called A Year on the Yangtze River. And I forget the author's name. You could look it up. But basically this guy joined like the Peace Corps. And he went to China with his friend in the Peace corps in the 80s, when China was in this transition of. He was one of the first Westerners allowed in. He was a kid. He was a college kid. And he moved to this river town on the Yangtze, which had like 200,000 people, but was considered like a village in China. And deep, deep into China and just talks about this small period of time in Chinese history where you still had, like, a peasantry and you had all the problems with leftover from the Cultural Revolution in Mao, and yet they're industrializing. They're beginning to open up. Nixon had already gone to China. This is 10 years before. And it's just a gripping story. It's just a great story about what China's really like without. I mean, obviously the politics are there. He talks about the Chinese Communist Party all the time and how they're involved in everyday life. But it's not the political China we read about on the news. It's the China of the poor people.
- [16:12]
A
Yeah. Just.
- [16:12]
D
And how they were treated.
- [16:14]
A
Yeah.
- [16:15]
D
And just. It's such a shocking different way of life and a different worldview. And he takes you through his shock all the way into the. He ended up living in China for, like, 10 years and becoming a journalist and everything else. And he's written a bunch of books on China. But it was just. It was a good, like, it's time for bed. I need to read something. And just kind of kept me up.
- [16:37]
A
That's when I turned on documentaries. All right, Adam. Thanks, Bruce.
- [16:42]
C
Well, I have to say, I went to on my Mac here, our text exchanges, Scott.
- [16:47]
A
Yeah.
- [16:48]
C
And. Because I know there's been times where we've like, hey, you should look at this book. And I'll like, no, I just read this. This is great. And boy, oh, boy, that would be an interesting thing to publish. Just all our text messages.
- [16:59]
A
Let's not do that.
- [17:01]
B
The intellectual diversity, I'm thinking, fellows, is just incredible.
- [17:04]
A
I can't like the hr.
- [17:07]
B
This isn't an echo chamber at all.
- [17:09]
C
HR would be very busy. Boy. Because I was going through it, because I was trying to remember some of the books that I read, because I can't remember much, but a couple things. One is, I think you turned me on to this, Scott. Alison McGrath's biography of C.S. lewis. I know there's two of them. I can't remember which one I read. It's the thicker one. That was real fun. Not just because it gets you into Lewis and his friend's life and correspondence and so on, but it also, the way McGrath writes. He's a good writer generally, but that book in particular kind of takes you to Oxford, a little bit of Cambridge. And I liked it. There's another book called Oxford Revisited I read. Maybe not this year. I can't remember how long ago it was, but that's.
- [17:56]
A
There's.
- [17:57]
C
There's. As much as living in the UK was kind of, especially post September 11, 2001, was irritating. You know, my first day in Oxford, I remember there's an effigy of George Bush marched down the street and they lit it on fire. Oh gosh. And just. It was like that. Right. But there was something very, if you will, romantic about.
- [18:19]
A
There is something very romantic about Oxford.
- [18:21]
C
Oxford and just that intellectual life there. And so it's a difficult place to.
- [18:26]
A
Leave once you're there.
- [18:27]
C
Yes, yeah, yeah. And it just sticks with you. It's not like. Like Concordia Irvine, where you and I went for undergrad and so did. So did Caleb is a wonderful place. But I don't think about it the way I think about Oxford. So that was good. I read two. Well, yeah, two kind of cultural political books. One is Roger Scruton's Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. And I think the subtitle is something like Thinkers of the New Left. And I had read it before a couple years back and reread it again because of some research I'm doing that was really good. It's a very difficult book but very good in and getting. If you don't want to read all these hundreds of primary sources, a secondary source description of the way people like Foucault and I think Sartre goes back to Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre and I don't know about a dozen thinkers of the so called New Left, you know, these pretty radical progressivists that have a bit of Marxism in their thinking and postmodernism and so on. Along with that, culturally was Carl Truman's book. There's one that Rises the Modern Self, which is a pretty heavy tome. And then he produced not an abridged version but a much more user friendly version called Strange New World. And that was very helpful the way that Bruce read that book on by Thomas Sowell. It really was very helpful in understanding the. The pretty radical shift worldview that's taken place in the last, I don't know, 20, 30 years where the self. It's no longer the case that we. We try to conform ourselves to nature or to somebody's expectations or tradition or some objective truth or whatever. But it's basically the we now. Well, not we, but many people make the world themselves based on the way they feel. And in particular Truman goes into like the gender issue and other things. That was kind of helpful. I highly recommend Truman's book for there's even study questions at the end of every chapter. And I think online you can go and watch some videos and whatnot. Yeah. In terms of bad books, I usually, unlike Bruce, I put books down if.
- [20:53]
A
They stink, if they're stinkers, it's a stinker, it's gone.
- [20:57]
C
And I'm trying to think.
- [20:58]
B
Admitted to Bruce that Chesterton defeated me.
- [21:04]
C
Let me actually one more book that I highly recommend. I listened to a podcast interviewing the father of Michael Mansour. There's a naval ship named after him. He was a team guy, a Navy seal who was it in Ramadi, I think, jumped on a grenade. And the podcast interview with his dad was just. I mean, I. You know, even the hardest of men. For example, Jocko Willink was interviewing him, who is an absolute monster in the best sense of the term, was. You know, you could tell they're crying at the end. So I read the book that his father helped write to commemorate his son. It's called Defend Us in Battle. That, you know, just way outside of theology, although Michael Mansour is quite a devout Roman Catholic, so there's a little bit of stuff in there, but that will make you mourn, I guess, the loss of men like that, common men like that in our culture. Just. Just an incredible story. So he was. I think he was the first Medal of Honor winner in the. The War on Terror. If I'm not interested.
- [22:20]
D
That wasn't a bad book. You liked that book?
- [22:22]
C
I liked that book, yeah. Yeah. Liked it a lot. It was hard to get through, just because, I mean, it's. It's hard. Bad book, though. I'm trying to.
- [22:33]
A
You don't have to have a bad one. I was just asking if you did have a bad one.
- [22:37]
C
Yeah, I know there are some stinkers that I put down. I just can't remember the titles. That's how bad they were.
- [22:43]
A
All right.
- [22:44]
C
I tried to read some Marx. I had to put that stuff.
- [22:47]
A
You can put that as a bad book. Anything by Mark. Bad book. Bad book.
- [22:52]
C
Yeah, it's a collection of essays or a collection of stuff he wrote. I think it's called Revisionism on Revisionism or something like that.
- [23:01]
B
I'm scared that if we say Karl Marx is a bad book, banned books is going to have Karl Marx as.
- [23:06]
A
Their next.
- [23:09]
B
Donovan's, like, challenge accepted.
- [23:10]
A
Oh, gosh. All right.
- [23:13]
C
Yuck.
- [23:14]
A
So back when we were talking a bunch of Lewis stuff, and then in preparation for Here We Still Stand, that's coming up in 2023 and the Academy that's coming. I went through the book by Lewis Marcus, the Myth Made Fact, and it was very good. It does a lot of sort of the. I'm trying to say this. How would you say this on lay level, the perspective that Lewis has when writing, especially fiction, as informed by his sort of specialty in the greats. Right. The sort of World of the classics and classical literature and classical myth and that type of thing. So Planet Narnia by. Why am I missing the name, Adam?
- [24:11]
C
Michael Ward.
- [24:12]
A
Michael Ward, you know, does very similar type of things, but from like a medieval. Lewis's sort of perspective on medievalism and that type of thing. And it's very good too. But this just hit with me better, kind of hit the mark a little better if I. If I were to say anything about the planet Narnia. It's tries to be very on the nose, like this is this and that is that, and this is definitive and. And Marcus is a little less definitive in just trying to sort of give you sort of an overarching picture of influence. And it's also written like a study guide so you could use it in a class. It's got questions for students at the end and that type of thing too. So that's kind of cool. That's going to be my one sort of like In Our World book. Outside of that, Adam recommended this author, Amity Schlase to me. And the one book that I picked up on that was a biography of Calvin Coolidge. It's called Coolidge. I very much enjoyed it. I did not know much about Calvin Coolidge before reading the book and afterwards would say that, you know, he was a more influential president than I sort of ever thought or would have known prior to reading that. The other one that really sort of rocked my world that I would recommend to everybody who's sort of interested in some of the cultural stuff that's going on in our society right now, is by Jonathan V. Last called what to Expect when no One's Expecting. It was as far as like books that influenced me in 2022, number one, you kind of take all of these things that you're worried about in culture and I believe that Jonathan Last will convince you that they are none of them worth worrying about unless you are really worried about the lack of children. So. And it's just. And it. It's not just. It's not on a moral front. It's not on. It's is. If you. If I were to boil it down, it's on an innovation front and a statistics front. Yeah, and it's really on an innovation front. In other words, if you appreciate your 21st century and all of the technology and innovations that have, you know, that we have right now, you have to see that those were brought about because we had so many people and because it's only a very small percentage of people that invent and Innovate, the fewer people you have, that percentage doesn't change. Right. So you have 7 billion people on the planet. One percent of those are inventors and innovators. That's a much higher number than if you get down to only having 5 billion people on the planet and still only have 1% that are ventures and innovators. And it's this innovation that keeps solving problems that we have that make it so that we don't have our needs and even our wants fulfilled. And the fewer people you have, as time goes on, you really can regress technologically too. So it's interesting that way. His conclusion is, you know, one that I think isn't too unexpected, so I won't spoil it too much, but very good. I very highly recommend it to anyone. So that's books. Good job, guys. All right. That took longer than I thought it was. I have like 10 questions. We'll probably only do two.
- [27:37]
B
You know, we can do whatever. We can actually go long. I've been looking at listen through rates and it doesn't matter if we go long.
- [27:43]
A
Okay.
- [27:43]
B
So thank you to the people who listen.
- [27:45]
A
All right, this next one will be a little more in depth too. But the other ones can just be like they're. Some of them are a little more fun. But this one. What is the best or. And I'll say and or worst thing that happened in 2022? I don't just mean in your own life. That's a different question. I mean like lots of weird stuff happened in 2022. What's the sort of like best worst.
- [28:12]
B
Whoa. So I start this assumes that you.
- [28:16]
A
Keep up with, you know, the news at all.
- [28:18]
B
Okay, so not a personal thing, right? Because I should say the birth of my son. But that's like we. I have a category for personal, so that's fine. So it's coming up non personal thing. Elon Musk purchasing Twitter is.
- [28:34]
C
I could have anticipated how saucy.
- [28:37]
B
How saucy. Yet it like as just a cultural political thing. The weird upstair that it's caused the. The watching like conservative pundits online and let's just say influencers all of a sudden being able to claim Elon Musk who have been trying to flame him for making electric cars for 10 years. It's just hilarious that Elon's their guy.
- [29:06]
A
And then on the flip side, the people that loved him for making electric cars flaming him because now think people think he's a conservative. That is funny.
- [29:12]
B
Just some of the funniness of chaotic neutral well, and some of the chaos of, like, he's taken the helm and he just does things. So just boots certain people off Twitter and puts certain people back on and just does things by fiat. It's. It's amazing to watch somebody have the power to do things by fiat since everything's been democratized, like, everything's been democratized for so long, while also him claiming to be a champion of democracy. Right. So he famously puts this poll up there. Should I step down as the head of Twitter? To which 70% of people say yes. And it's. It's amazing. The, The. It's just one of those ones where, you know, whether you loved him or hated him, you know, it's fun in the way that, like, Trump 2016 was fun, where it's like, the world's kind of burning and it's. And it's funny.
- [29:59]
A
Crack a beer, get a lawn chair, and watch it happen.
- [30:02]
B
Now, the good news about Elon taking out for Twitter is it's a little less, I think, impactful for more people's lives than something like a president, or at least they think, you know, tangibly. But.
- [30:15]
A
Or at least. Maybe it ought to be.
- [30:16]
B
Maybe it ought to be. But, yeah, to me, it's just one of those ones where, like, it made the Internet fun again for a little bit, and it's amazing how much it distracted the news on the left and the right for two months.
- [30:27]
A
Yeah. All right, Bruce.
- [30:32]
D
Well, one of the good things was it was the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth ii.
- [30:37]
A
Our resident Anglophile people probably don't know the Queen died.
- [30:42]
D
Yeah. And I do think this is actually more significant than some people think, because, I mean, just on a surface level, first of all, it's really a symbolic moment of the end of the greatest generation who's still left. There's not many of that generation left. And she kind of embodied some of the more positive attributes of that. But I also thought that it was sort of a symbolic end of Christian Britain and the Christian west as far as a cultural enterprise. And, you know, when Charles gets coronated later in the year, the new year, that ceremony has not changed since its origins, since, you know, Norman times. And the whole point of the coronation is that the king or queen, the monarch is God's chosen. So here, billions and billions of people are going to turn into a ceremony to watch, which will be steeped in every single way in Christian symbolism and Christian liturgy. And, like, it'll be the most religious thing anyone has ever watched. And yet it'll go over the Heads of almost everybody. And it's sort of a token of a, of a bygone age because you know, Charles is the, you know, wants to be the king of all faiths instead of the defender of the faith. And so there'll be hurdles to go through. But for anyone, anyone like is there anyone left who thinks like Christianity still is a cultural like thing that, that isn't lost yet? I feel like that this was the final symbolic end of what's been happening for a long time and now we're in a world where Christianity can be used as a token but it's not really understood and probably would be better to be dispensed with. That's. So I felt that her, her death was symbolic in many ways.
- [32:33]
A
Yeah, I actually, I think I agree. Yeah. All right, Adam, tell us about Queen.
- [32:39]
C
Well, what's that?
- [32:41]
A
So tell us about Queen Elizabeth.
- [32:44]
C
I don't know anything about her.
- [32:45]
A
Okay.
- [32:47]
C
She's dead. Sadly, I guess. I don't know.
- [32:53]
D
There's like a quick enough cover.
- [32:56]
B
Go ahead.
- [32:56]
C
I mean the obvious ones are things like the easing of COVID stuff and inflation and I, and I don't know that this is all, is as huge of a deal, but I still think about it quite a bit. It's the invasion of Ukraine.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah, I mean somebody had to say that one, right?
- [33:14]
C
Yeah, I mean sort of like obviously it was a big deal, but I mean if this, if it continues to escalate and it's weird because it'll escalate a little bit and then you don't heal a little bit and then, you know, I just think, you know, with an 18 year old son who's just itching to, you know, do something who's a little bit like his dad and impulsive, I, I just, I worry about, I usually don't think about international things anymore now that Islam is no longer on the radar, but now it's like, well this, this could get really ugly and China, you know, tensions with China and so on. So yeah, I don't study it enough to, to say anything more, but I do know it's, it could drag us into another war and that would be awful.
- [34:02]
A
Yeah, I agree. I'm going to go with the announcement regarding sort of cracking the nut of nuclear fusion that came out a couple weeks ago.
- [34:12]
C
Yeah.
- [34:13]
A
One of the other books I read this year was a book by Alex Epstein called Fossil Future. And the conclusion of that book is kind of scary too because it's just, he just does the math and he's very good at it on whether or not we can actually sustain our current lifestyle if we keep abandoning fossil fuels in favor of alternative energy like wind and solar without a deep, deep investment into nuclear. And the conclusion is no. And so, you know, because I'm. I am a guy who likes modern conveniences quite a bit, and available energy is, I think, a really good thing, and that this one seems to have the potential just because of how safe it is, how productive it is, how little waste it produces to really. I'm going to say this so naively. If they can figure it out, be apolitical. I know, I know that was stupid. But it should be able to be because all of the sort of objections, if you can figure out fusion, go out the window. Now, the one thing that I did kind of think of in this is that they need to do this at scale. They need an element called helium. I think it's helium three. This element. They only know of one place where they can gather mine this element very consistently, which is on the moon. And so in my mind, I created this hilarious picture of, like, Elizabeth Warren calling Elon Musk into a hearing to answer for his crimes against democracy on Twitter and him leaving that hearing and going down the hall where some other sort of Republican senator was offering him another $10 billion to send one of his rockets to the moon to mine helium 3. And that this is all happening to him in the same day in our sort of, like, topsy turvy clown world. I could see both of those things happening, and I thought it was kind of comical. So, anyway. All right, Great. All right. This is gonna be a hard one for Adam, but probably easy for the rest of us. Favorite TV show and why.
- [36:42]
B
Whoa. Favorite TV show.
- [36:45]
A
If it could have come out or been somewhere around that, like, I know you were watching Little House on the Prairie with your kids this year. That's, you know, the 70s and 80s.
- [36:53]
B
And I had watched it as a kid, so it doesn't.
- [36:55]
A
Maybe one closer to 2022. If you can't do it, I'll go to Bruce. Bruce watches tv, I think.
- [37:03]
D
For a show this year, though.
- [37:05]
A
Why is it so easy for me and so hard for you guys?
- [37:07]
B
This is hard. I didn't. I watched, like, a lot of meaningless, like, competition TV mostly. So that's. And I wouldn't say it's good, so it's just, like, mind numbing. I mostly watch YouTube.
- [37:19]
D
You know what? You know what I remember now? A squid game. I know everybody watched squid game, but.
- [37:24]
A
I actually watch it.
- [37:25]
D
Okay. So incredibly, incredibly Violent. I mean, one of the most violent things I've ever seen. And so just anyone who hasn't seen it and is like, maybe I'll watch that, just know that going into it.
- [37:35]
C
I've never even heard of this thing.
- [37:37]
D
So this is a Korean.
- [37:38]
A
I said this to be hard for.
- [37:39]
D
Adam, and actually, most of the shows I watch now are like Japanese, Korean, or Chinese shows on Netflix because, like, the plots and the writing is just better. Like, the American shows are all predictable, and they're not. They just don't tend to like them anymore. So I. I kind of watched Squid Game before it really became this big thing. And I won't tell the whole plot because we won't have time, but it's a Met. It's a. It's a living metaphor story about, like, capitalism and power in the worst. In, like, the worst ways of capitalism and power. Like, when. When capitalism gets put into a monopoly and. And no one else can play the game. And if they do want to play the game of capitalism, they sort of have to give up more than the people who are playing it at a higher level and don't have to risk as much. And it's a. It's a study in human nature under pressure and why people make the decisions that they make as well acted. It's well shot, but it's one of the only shows I've ever watched. I was literally nervous and on the edge of my seat watching some of the episodes. Like, I really. I got into that one, but it's not for the children. Like, you can't. It's not a family show at all.
- [38:53]
A
All right, Adam, before I give the right answer. Good.
- [38:58]
C
Good question. I don't really watch this, but I hear a lot of it in the background. Cocomelon and Baby Shark.
- [39:05]
D
Oh, my gosh.
- [39:05]
B
I was gonna say I could do kids tv. I could say Bluey. I actually, yeah, I could elaborate on that one.
- [39:11]
A
I. I elaborate on Coco Melon and Baby Shark.
- [39:15]
B
No, I'm on the one my kids watch.
- [39:17]
A
Okay.
- [39:19]
C
You turned me on to Yellowstone a while ago.
- [39:21]
A
All right. That's right.
- [39:23]
C
I got through the first season. Kind of. You know, I fall in and out of sleep in anything. Right.
- [39:30]
A
So this is just not a fun game with you ever.
- [39:33]
C
I'm sorry. I'm trying to. There was something, though, that I really got into. I'm starting. Oh, it's the Jack Ryan series. I think it's Amazon Prime.
- [39:40]
A
It's new out right now. I haven't started it yet, but. And there's A new season now.
- [39:45]
C
Well, like. Like with what happened with Yellowstone and everything else I watch. I'm in the second episode and I've restarted it several times because I can't. I just can't, you know, after all.
- [39:54]
A
Right. And so Yellowstone is the right answer. Right answer with a follow up. But you could have two follow ups to this. 1883, which came out much earlier in 2022, which is a Yellowstone pre story, was very good, if not sort of a little annoying with the story of the daughter and her over narration, which is just not. Just get through it. Get through the over narration by the annoying daughter and you'll be okay.
- [40:24]
C
1883.
- [40:25]
A
1883. I guess you could count it in 22. They just started releasing another pre story called 1923, which stars Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Sort of.
- [40:37]
C
It's all connected to Yellowstone, though.
- [40:39]
A
It's all kind of the pre story of how the Duttons, who are the main characters in the current Yellowstone, got the ranch 100 years ago that they're trying to so desperately to keep in modern times.
- [40:48]
B
They're doing a movie now with Harrison Ford.
- [40:51]
A
Yeah, no, there's a show. It's on right now. It's called 1923.
- [40:54]
B
Oh, okay.
- [40:55]
A
Yeah, Very good. I mean, there. There were a couple of, I think, would you call them like docudramas about sort of the modern sort of female millennial con that I did watch this year. I think one of them is the Dropout about the Theranos scandal, which is pretty good. And the other one is like, just call me Anna or something like that, which is a little weirder. They're both kind of hard to watch, but I feel like if you do watch them, you'll have a little bit better idea, if not sort of Hollywood ized of what these things were all about and sort of these kind of like modern cons, like tech cons and sort of millennial cons are going on.
- [41:44]
D
I was wondering what you meant by. I didn't know if you meant like if they were female, like cons from Star Trek.
- [41:48]
A
I didn't know con artist type stuff. In a lot of ways, I was.
- [41:53]
D
Trying to fit in my head. I was like, like con. Like, how does con. Like, she's a female con. She's really.
- [42:00]
C
I was thinking like Genghis Khan.
- [42:01]
A
It's how these people. Not Bruce. Bruce understands stuff. But Adam, come on. The. The. There's like a trend of this stuff. Like even the We Work documentary with Jared Leto was sort of like that to how These people, these sort of like elder millennials, have managed to get people to give them millions, if not billions of dollars.
- [42:27]
B
Nothing.
- [42:28]
A
For basically nothing.
- [42:29]
B
Yeah.
- [42:29]
A
For like, they're basically not doing anything, and people just keep handing them millions and billions of dollars.
- [42:35]
B
I think part of that is there's the stuff, like, we talk about FOMO a lot. Not on the thinking fellows, but, like, people talk about fear of missing out and the. All the money that came from the 90s Internet boom.
- [42:48]
A
Yeah.
- [42:48]
B
Like, where Elon Musk has all his money from. Right. Everybody's thinking that startups were going to be that next. Sort of like you get in on them on the ground level and. And every mil. You know, like every hustle millennial had one of these. And. Yeah, I don't. I'm not.
- [43:07]
A
Some point. I mean, not to be too. It's kind of like the fire one too. At some point, like, with these people that are getting this money, realize that what they're doing is all like a con, and they just keep, like, they keep rolling with it, you know, until the con crashes. And in some case, like in the case of the Theranos one, she goes to jail. In the case of the Wework one, you know, he actually pulled his own, like, silver, really platinum parachute and got out while it crashed, but he got out with billions of dollars and so interesting stuff. Okay, next one. What time. This is good. This is an easy one for me. This is also going to be very hard for Adam. I feel like Bruce will have it and Caleb will have it. Favorite movie.
- [43:49]
B
Favorite movie.
- [43:51]
D
Totally easy one this year. Like that. This past.
- [43:54]
A
Yes.
- [43:54]
D
Yeah.
- [43:55]
B
What came out this year, man, I. Now I know what it feels like when I drop topics on you guys. Without.
- [44:04]
A
We can let Bruce go if.
- [44:05]
B
Yeah. Do you know.
- [44:08]
D
I feel like I haven't watched a good movie in, like 10 years. Like, there's like. Like, there's like. I watch a movie like everybody said, oh, Maverick. Maverick. Maverick.
- [44:18]
C
Oh, don't even go there.
- [44:20]
D
No, I hated it.
- [44:21]
A
Oh. Oh, my gosh. Okay. That's the right answer, by the way. It's Top Gun Maverick. Okay. Okay.
- [44:28]
B
Now I'm seeing why it was just unbelievable plot.
- [44:31]
D
Like the first.
- [44:32]
A
That is. That is just wrong.
- [44:35]
B
Can I just. Okay, I'll talk about the movie that made me. Like. Okay, I watched a lot of these. Now that I'm seeing this. And it's. Bruce is right. The problem is they're just not great. But. Okay, so let's talk about Batman.
- [44:50]
D
Oh, Batman.
- [44:52]
A
Batman Thinker.
- [44:53]
B
Let's talk about The Batman.
- [44:55]
D
I liked that one.
- [44:57]
B
The Batman is a lot.
- [44:58]
A
Adam's about to take a nap.
- [45:00]
B
The Batman is a lot more fun when there's not a Gen Xer telling you it's bad in your ear. Okay.
- [45:05]
A
It's horrible.
- [45:06]
B
No, I, I, it could have. There were things about it that was obvious that it could have been better. I liked the long detective noir part of it.
- [45:16]
D
I liked it. It was more true crime.
- [45:17]
B
Yeah, me too.
- [45:18]
A
Did you like the chase scene with the Batmobile? That had nothing to do with anything and didn't need to happen and resulted in nothing except for you got to see a chasing.
- [45:28]
D
Every Batman movie has been the same. So I like that they tried to, like, just do something different.
- [45:32]
B
Yeah, I did too. And I actually, I like Robert Patterson as a young Batman.
- [45:37]
A
I didn't mind him. That wasn't the issue.
- [45:40]
B
You know, I liked the slow moving from scene to scene. I liked the steady, like, walk that they put through it. There are.
- [45:49]
D
I still didn't like the movie overall. Like, I still. It's not a great movie.
- [45:52]
B
No, it's not a great movie. And honestly, the, the weakest point was, like, the Riddler was a millennial, and they made it all about that. Right? And like millennial trauma and how Bruce's trauma was stayed by him having money.
- [46:04]
A
This is all part of what made the movie horrible.
- [46:05]
B
So without. But like, there were some things that could have been a good movie. It was downplayed by maybe what Bruce was talking about with TV about this reoccurring American storytelling. Western storytelling is now about finding the ways in which some people were wronged and the. And how capitalism, disadvantage, like, disadvantaged them and advantaged.
- [46:26]
A
Which is what made Top Gun Maverick great because it just was a movie that you could sit around and enjoy and have some good feels about, good feelings about, have some sad feelings about. It just, it took. What is a movie supposed to do at the end of the day? 1. Entertain you, of course. But a really good movie will sort of take you out of all of your worries about the actual world for a while and just sort of suck you into the movie and what's going on in the movie.
- [46:53]
D
But it was. It wasn't a good movie that did that. It was that. It was the evil of nostalgia that did that.
- [46:59]
A
It was a good movie that did that did that. And it accomplished that. It accomplished it for me for sure. And it might have been some nostalgia. Nostalgia is not always evil.
- [47:11]
D
I don't know about that.
- [47:13]
B
Whatever.
- [47:13]
C
I'm just gonna stay all quiet on The Western Front. Okay.
- [47:17]
A
Tried to watch that. Just could not get into it.
- [47:20]
C
Yeah.
- [47:21]
A
It reminded me of watching 1917 with you, and I. I thought to myself, I sure hope Adam's not watching this, because he's gonna have a little bit of that PTSD again.
- [47:31]
B
Well, yeah. Yeah.
- [47:34]
D
I don't even remember. Like, there's just. I don't know. When was the last. I'm trying to think of even. What was the last movie. That was a great movie.
- [47:41]
B
I mean, yeah, like, great Maverick for me. The last great movie I saw was John Wick 2, I think. Like, I love that movie. Good, but not great.
- [47:54]
C
Is there a fourth coming up?
- [47:55]
B
Yeah, the third one is good, but not great. The first one is great. The second one remains great, but, yeah, okay.
- [48:04]
D
I think I just like TV better now. That for TV is so, like, higher production value and the stories are longer.
- [48:11]
A
Well, I agree with that. With the exception of the fact that, like, Marvel went from making pretty good movies. I don't want to get into it with Caleb. Whether or not when they started going down.
- [48:20]
D
I'm gonna agree with you here. I'm gonna agree with you.
- [48:22]
B
Endgame is where they start.
- [48:23]
A
Whatever. I said, I didn't want to disagree with Caleb on when they started going downhill. But then they move into TV shows, and they just can't help themselves but make bad ones. Like, yeah, with few exceptions. And they. I mean, Disney's doing the same thing to the Star Wars. It's like the TV shows just keep getting worse and worse, in a sense, and. Or was. Okay.
- [48:47]
B
They started on a high note.
- [48:48]
A
Obi Wan was horrible.
- [48:50]
D
Mandalorian was good.
- [48:51]
B
Mandalorian was the high note, but it's been sort of like a down from there.
- [48:55]
A
Makes me really worried about the Ahsoka Tanu that they're doing, but whatever. All right. Did anyone make resolutions last year?
- [49:05]
D
Can I just say I hate New Year's with, like, a high passion?
- [49:08]
A
Yeah, we do, too. That's kind of the irony of this question.
- [49:10]
D
I only stayed up for New Year's probably three times in my life. I don't. I have no understanding of this holiday at all. Like, I don't even like staying up late. I'm a morning person. I have no idea why people think it's fun to stay up.
- [49:23]
A
No, it's really not a year.
- [49:25]
D
We'll be here for a whole year. I don't understand resolutions. Everyone just.
- [49:28]
A
We don't either, but we make fun of them sometimes by making them also.
- [49:32]
D
Okay, so you. You've. You are all on the same page with this.
- [49:34]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I said I'm bored of doing the resolution show because every year.
- [49:38]
D
I just hate New Year's.
- [49:39]
A
We come and get grumpy about New Year's and resolutions.
- [49:42]
D
Yeah.
- [49:42]
A
Did anybody make one, though?
- [49:44]
B
I know. I mean, I made like some throughout the year that I. All I failed to keep. That had nothing to do with New Year's.
- [49:50]
A
All right, so it's phrased another way then. Did anyone do anything sort of big in 2022 that you kind of really impressed yourself by doing that you didn't think you were going to do?
- [50:03]
B
Yeah, I. I did a century, a solo century on my road bike up here in Big Bear. That was supposed to be a preparation for a hundred mile mountain bike race that I didn't end up doing.
- [50:18]
A
Right.
- [50:19]
B
The century surprised me because I've gotten close in the past to solo centuries. I've done like solo metric centuries and I worked up with a very little training period from just recreationally mountain biking the last couple years to doing some small races. And by small, I mean like 7 mile mountain bike races. So not very far to then some 14, 15 mile ones to then, hey, I'm going to do a hundred miles. And the thing that surprised me about it, that made it hard, was I've had chronic pain this year and in my back that's been very difficult and I. I complain a little bit about, but I try not to and I've tried to not let it stop me doing things. And that day, the morning I did the sentry, I woke up in the like the worst pain I had had in six months. And I finished it anyways solo with like nobody helping me. Nobody to.
- [51:20]
D
You did 100 miles in a day?
- [51:22]
B
In six hours?
- [51:23]
A
Yeah, it's really, it's actually really possible at.
- [51:28]
B
At 8,000ft elevation.
- [51:30]
C
Yeah.
- [51:30]
D
Holy cow. That's definitely impressive and something to be proud of.
- [51:33]
B
Yeah. And it was very hard. My at around. I think I actually called you in my AirPods at around mile 80. My back was hurting so much. I like, I just really, really wanted to stop.
- [51:46]
D
And you didn't have like the cheater bikes like William Shatner that has the motor in it.
- [51:51]
A
No cheats, no cheater bikes. Ask Adam about what we think about electric bikes.
- [51:55]
B
Yeah, I can't say it.
- [51:57]
C
I can't say it. You get us in trouble. I did not. Just for the record, I did not get a motorized bike.
- [52:04]
A
I.
- [52:05]
C
For our listeners, I asked Scott whether I should get one because I thought sounded like A good idea. I could commute to work back when I worked in River Forest. And he said only certain kinds of people get those bikes.
- [52:16]
D
So I said, okay, this sounds reminiscent of the diesel truck comment that was made.
- [52:21]
A
It is probably by me in the butt in five years.
- [52:24]
B
So I was really disappointed I didn't.
- [52:26]
A
Scott riding to work on electric bike.
- [52:31]
B
So I was really disappointed that I ended up not doing that race because of my back. But I was really surprised I was able to actually do that solo century.
- [52:41]
A
So anyone else?
- [52:43]
D
How did you word that question?
- [52:45]
A
I just. Did you do anything? Sort of, you know, that you impressed yourself, you did it. You didn't think you were going to do it, you didn't know you're going to do it and you did it.
- [52:55]
D
Oh, I will never impress myself. I'm too much of a neurotic person to ever impress myself. I want to say I will always think I could have done that that way better or that was the worst thing I ever did. I don't know.
- [53:05]
A
Okay.
- [53:05]
D
I can never answer that question either way.
- [53:08]
A
It's a insight into your. Who you are. Bruce.
- [53:12]
C
I want to say I quit Higher ed. Oh, that's not a. That seems like it might be an easy thing. It is not an easy thing if you've been doing it for 20 some odd years or. I think so. That was.
- [53:26]
B
I'm.
- [53:26]
C
I don't know if I'm proud of myself, but I'm pretty happy about it.
- [53:30]
A
I'm proud of you.
- [53:31]
C
I did get a purple belt in jiu jitsu. Just to throw in a little jiu jitsu talk here.
- [53:36]
A
That's.
- [53:36]
C
I mean, for, for those in the. The game, that's not. That's a. Kind of a milestone.
- [53:41]
A
That's good.
- [53:41]
B
Nice.
- [53:42]
A
Congrats.
- [53:43]
D
That's pretty awesome.
- [53:45]
A
I kind of. I wouldn't say I had a resolution this year, but I was resolved to.
- [53:53]
B
That's funny. That's what I was going to name this episode if I was hosting it.
- [53:57]
A
I was resolved to get back to a level of fitness that I've had for most of my life and have not had for the last six years and then kind of had off and on for like the five years before that and to keep it. And it was, I will say making that sort of decision at 50 was harder than I when I made it at like 28 and then harder when I had made it again like at 40. And you're 50. I know.
- [54:33]
C
I'm sorry.
- [54:34]
A
So it was. It was difficult and it still is difficult. It's still like a daily sort of thing that I think about and now get accused of overdoing. Overdoing it the other way. So. Yeah, and I. I raced a mountain bike triathlon, which I used to do all the time in my 30s and was quite good at in my 30s and did one this past year. And I can honestly say I. For only giving myself sort of five wink weeks to get spooled up for it, I did very well and I've lost a bunch of weight this year and very happy about that. So, yeah, in that sense, it was a. Got back on the mountain bike, started running again, got in the pool again, and just before the year ends, I'm finally getting to get to be somewhat competent on a snowboard, so.
- [55:30]
C
Nice. Yeah, you're like half the man you used to be in terms of your weight.
- [55:34]
A
The man I used to be.
- [55:37]
C
That's an exaggeration.
- [55:38]
A
But it's not too far off.
- [55:40]
C
It's pretty impressive and I envy it from afar.
- [55:44]
A
Wow. Thank you. It was. If it was. It's. It's tough and it's one of those things that kind of gets into your head too. So anyway. Okay. Not a resolution. Not a resolution. But what sort of. Either general or what sort of is there? Not general. We're going to go specific. Is there sort of one specific thing, kind of big thing, little thing you hope to accomplish in 2023?
- [56:15]
B
Hope to accomplish.
- [56:17]
A
I go first.
- [56:18]
D
This is easy. This is easy for me just because of the recent move to 15, 17 from pastoring after 16 years at my church. So, I mean, I'm just. I'm excited about getting bored and learning the ropes and trying to just tap into my creativity again and. And to just do some of the things that I haven't been able to as a pastor just because of time constraints and other responsibilities and time to write.
- [56:47]
A
You have time to write now?
- [56:49]
C
Yeah.
- [56:49]
D
Yeah, I'm really excited.
- [56:51]
A
Time to write, time to read, time to think. You have all these things now. Great. Want me to go?
- [56:57]
B
Yeah, you go.
- [56:58]
A
I, for the first time in a very long time, am inspired to start working on a book that I've been thinking about for like five years and wrote the outline to and sort of have started a bibliography on a research bibliography on. And I'm going to dive into it. This isn't like collected essays like I did after being dad or like a spool up of my dissertation or anything. This is like a. Another actual. Hey, have an idea for a book.
- [57:30]
C
That's great.
- [57:31]
B
So that's good. I Think mine is, I lose track of the years so badly, but I think the podcast network is gonna be four, five this. It'll be five years old this year. And over those five years, we went from four shows to over 20 now.
- [58:05]
C
And.
- [58:07]
B
That is more growth, just shows wise, not to mention listeners, than I imagined when I first proposed that 15, 17 build a podcast network. And that growth is gotten ahead of.
- [58:24]
A
Me a little bit.
- [58:25]
B
And so my goal is to bring some stability and organization back to the network across the 20 something shows. It's a good goal then, that the network is doing very well.
- [58:37]
A
That's what happens with rapid growth, is it tends to get ahead of you and then you try to like catch up to it and then it happens again and it gets a little bit ahead of you and then you catch up.
- [58:45]
B
And every time I catch up, I think we end up saying yes to another project or two or, or three. And the thing is, is the, the audience is there to say yes to good, well structured ideas and projects. It just doesn't help with stabilizing.
- [59:06]
A
Yeah, no.
- [59:07]
B
And so that's, that's my goal. My goal is to. And it might not seem unstable, I guess, from the outside, I don't know, but is to stabilize the inside of the podcast network.
- [59:17]
A
Cool.
- [59:17]
B
2023.
- [59:18]
A
All right. Adam, did I give you time to think of something?
- [59:22]
C
I mean, I just want to survive.
- [59:24]
A
Yeah.
- [59:25]
C
I do have a. A book, actually. I've got like three that I've been working on over the years and I'm gonna finish one this year, but I'm not going to tell you what it is until I don't want to.
- [59:34]
A
I didn't give. I didn't give any substance either. That's all right.
- [59:36]
C
Yeah.
- [59:37]
A
General. There's a book out there I do hope to get.
- [59:40]
C
I'm not going to try to lose weight the way you did. I am going to try to get in better health.
- [59:45]
A
I do.
- [59:45]
C
You know, we've talked about all this jiu jitsu I do, but I need to get back on the fitness cardio training, baby. Yeah, My body's kind of messed up from all the choking and breaking and stuff, so I need to. Maybe some yoga. I'll do some yoga too.
- [60:01]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's right. All right. This is the last one. It's sort of just. You can be as smooshy as you want, but just like not a resolution, Bruce. Not a resolution, but just general kind of hopes for 2023. Adam already said just survive. We'll take that as is general hopes.
- [60:20]
B
For 2023, some of them are already coming true. I had a really cool year with my kids this year. So my third child was born in 2022 and when we were, when he was three months old we did that big road trip to Arkansas for the Here We Still Stand conference and then back which was like big mountain bike trip and stuff like that. So it was amazing. No, he did great. Like we slept in a tent on top of a trailer the whole time. Little baby was. Babies don't care as long as they have their mom. I think he's pretty great. And I have a pretty awesome wife, so who, who like pretty much puts up with the demands of babies on a road trip. So. Which was cool. So I think my hopes are a lot for Edmund because he and his, you know, Emerson Esther are moving a lot and so I want to get him going as much as we can figure out how to.
- [61:22]
A
Time to get him on a snowboard.
- [61:24]
B
Time to get him on his snowboard. He's 11 months old. Yeah. So his, his brother was biking at 2 so he could be as well and stuff. So just some two wheels, no training wheels.
- [61:36]
A
Two years old.
- [61:36]
B
Yeah. I want to figure out some of the adventure stuff we did with the time off that I had again this year. But funny enough, you know, everybody was surprised when we did it with three month old. It's actually going to be harder with like a 18 month old. I think a lot harder. And so that my goal is to like try to figure out a way to do that that isn't miserable for the baby and my wife because that was, it was honestly amazing. We got to experience so many different places and, and someone and do a.
- [62:07]
A
Lot of mountain bike trains too. It was crazy.
- [62:10]
B
And I just, I want to do something like that again. I haven't quite figured out where or what or when yet though.
- [62:18]
A
Cool. Bruce.
- [62:20]
D
I feel like after hearing all of you guys I need to do something in like the phys Ed genre. But I also know I'm not going to.
- [62:31]
B
So it's the only thing that stops me.
- [62:34]
D
So yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't have anything. I'm just going to literally just gonna drop dead. One day that'll be out. There'll be no slow demise.
- [62:44]
C
A week later they'll start smelling you.
- [62:47]
D
I've always, it's morbid, maybe callous humor but people at the church I worked with all the time, they always would say like, well how do you want to know if you can go out anyway? How Would you want to go kind of half joking, half serious. And my dream would be like, I'd reach for a book, my bookcase would fall on me. That would be the way I'd want to go. Maybe that could be my resolution.
- [63:08]
A
You know, off mic. I have a story about that.
- [63:13]
D
But no, I think for me, just, you know, I, I've been at 16 years at my church and just love my church family. I just got kind of tired and exhausted, years of doing ministry. And so now I'm transitioning here into my role. 15, 17 and excited about that. But it's, it's going to be a big change. So I'm, it's kind of, I'm looking forward to that. I'm anxious about getting into that new rhythm and what that will look like, but it's like an anxious slash excitement. So I think I'm also moving. I'm moving like 20 minutes from where I am right now. So that's not a huge change, but it will be a different area. So, yeah, I think adjustment, just adjustment.
- [63:56]
A
Is my, my year, Mine's kind of simple in a way. I kind of have what I always wanted. My entire family lives up here on the mountain and I am. Grandkids are coming, just like in that lecture I gave several years ago. My daughter's pregnant, will be due in June, I think.
- [64:19]
C
Nice.
- [64:19]
A
And as wonderful as that is, there's a lot of sort of like negotiating and sort of dynamics that go into that too. You know, you've now added not only like your mom and your kids, but your mom, your kids, their spouses, and now their children. And there's just sort of a lot of like moving parts that go in with that. And just my kind of hope is now that we have it, that we sort of all appreciate it enough to want to work on keeping it. So.
- [64:54]
B
Yeah, that's good.
- [64:56]
C
I have a. I got one more to add. You know, I think we've talked about this a bit, but the boys that we have are going to be going home to their mother soon. And the big hope is that it will be though it's going to be different for them, a smooth, as pain free of a transition as possible.
- [65:13]
A
Yeah, Amen.
- [65:14]
C
That they'll, they'll thrive after that, but we'll see.
- [65:17]
A
Amen. All right, well, thank you for listening to the Thinking Fellows podcast. Thank you. Fellows podcast is part of the 1517 podcast network. You can find that out by going to 1517.org and clicking podcasts, I assume or something like that. Yeah, that'll work. By the time this comes out, we'll be in the New Year. So I'm not even going to hit you up with the end of the year giving drive. So have a great day, a great week, and a happy New Year.
- [65:45]
B
Bye.
- [65:45]
A
Bye.
- [65:45]
B
Bye.
- [65:56]
A
Sa.