Episode 108: Education

0:09 Welcome back to another episode of A Record of My Father. Today we're going to be talking about education, how it took my dad nine years to get an undergraduate degree and me, I think it took 5 or was it 4? I don't really know. I don't really remember. I think it took some kind of hiatus somewhere. That's that's a sign of a good education when you can't remember how long you went. Right. I mean, I don't remember the first four years or points. You know, there's just points and the, the, the crazy drunkenness and all that kind of stuff like that, you know, but it was, I mean, I was Community College. Me as well.

0:51 Me as well, but I. Look at, So I guess one of the things I think about education is like, where did it come from? Why, why did we, the Browns, my mother and father's kids decide that we want to go to school? We were in a blue collar neighborhood where it was sort of like maybe 25% went to school and they would go to the Community College, if that, you know, but they'd all get out and get a job and they would work as a manager, a giant and you would make a, you'd make a good living. You could buy a house, have 3.7 kids, you know, and, and, and go, a lot of people could do that, you know. So it, it was, it was seen as four years of or two years of different.

1:33 But my parents were weirdly highly educated. My mother had a master's and, or I don't know if she had a master's or not. She, she went to William and Mary extended for something in the horticulture. She had a degree from tech class 49, one of the, the first women to graduate in from the horticulture area, which is a really interesting thing. My dad had a degree from I know, I, I, it's really kind of fuzzy. He had a master's and he had an undergrad. He went to Boston College, he went to Harvard and he went to Alabama. And I don't know what he got from where. And he was working on his doctorate and he was writing this stuff. But I mean, he was like a, you know, 16th century English history guy.

2:19 So it's like, yeah, that's going to go really, really far unless you want to teach 16th century English history because that's what he was doing. Is doctor it on? You're like. What? What? Well, that's so funny because I ended up being an English major. I think that's the funniest part. And I think that that's really funny that I ended up. Shocker when it came to reading. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, Yeah, Yeah, He was a photographic memory guy. I've never had the photographic memory guy reading to me. It's something that just kind of occurs in your subconscious, in your daily life. You start doing things differently, right? You start activating different synapses. I think I. Think your nephew? Well, would be your It's my mother's sister's son. What would that be to whatever that is to you, great aunt, uncle or something.

3:10 He had a he went to Yale, a doctor worked at NIH was like one of the number one people in the world on HI on hepatitis, the AB CS of hepatitis. He's like top two, top three spoke all over the world. Dude like almost developed what turned out to be somewhat of a cure, but it either kills you or cures you, which is, you know. A lot of more like that. That's what they call it. Hey, drink this medicine. Yeah, you did well. We we didn't promise anything. Hey, drink this. You're cured. Wow. You get to live. You know, it's kind. Of like during the Civil War when they said, well, we're just going to cut your ankle off 'cause you got shot in the foot, we're just going to cut it off and good luck, Good luck. Speaking of Civil War, you know what? I watched the four hour director's cut of what was it, Dances With Wolves.

4:02 Yeah, you. Feel like you're smarter than me now. I feel like I really am coming into my white man nature now as a an elderly 26 year old. I feel like you really kind of come into yourself when you watch that Kevin Costner movie paired with Mel Gibson's The Patriot. No, I've actually never seen that. I've never seen the Patriot, but I have seen Apocalypto. I watched that the other day. Wow. Yeah, I saw pieces of it and. That's amazing. That's an amazing movie. That's that's the world building, right? There, maybe I shouldn't have been hammered so you know. That's a really good movie. Yeah, Really, really good movie.

4:45 We were talking about education. So what is what? Let's let's run through our formal education. High school graduated high school. I think so, yeah. I think I. Went to Community College, went to Nova. I mean, I applied to regular colleges and and I didn't have any, you know, when I graduated high school, people had guidance counselors and they would go to them and they would tell them how to apply to schools and get grants and things like that. I didn't know that. No one told me that I had to figure out on my own. And this is to let you know before the Internet. So you had to go somewhere and say, hey, how do you apply to a school? And then you had to head up the wherewithal to call the school and say, well, how do I need to get an application?

5:28 And then you would have to write the school for an application. This application would come to you and you'd fill it out. And I remember I only filled out one. I filled out Mary Washington's college because that's where my brothers went. And that's where the scale was like 100 guys, 2700 girls, what's not to like? And it was just a drunken party for four years. So I was like that. That's where I want to go. That'll just continue my life. But I didn't get in. And I, and I remember I filled out the application and, and when I and it came to the essay, they wrote optional. And I never had any idea that you really didn't. You if you didn't write an essay, you you weren't getting in. Yeah, that is not an optional essay for a lot of the people to think it is, that is.

6:13 I don't know why they would even put that in there, but the thing. Is is that if? I was, if I was like, I didn't know. And that's what's so weird because I think like the the coaching that you had. Was. Off the charts and the coaching that I had was 0. And I think like, I mean, even in high school, your guidance counselor was helping people, putting them into this way to file and supply to all the schools. Oh yeah, it was the, the whole Common App thing, 'cause that's kind of foreign to to people that once you get on that website, you're like, what is this? But it's really just a, a giant application for all of the things. And then I remember doing it again when I applied to UVA, and it was funny 'cause I really didn't even need a counselor then, 'cause I I just knew how to do the Common App from high school.

7:05 So I just redid it, basically. That's cool, yeah. And then the whole thing too was, well, what is it? The Yeah, well, that's the whole thing is about institutions for colleges in the US if you have like a 25, you could go anywhere you want really, 'cause they really want you, their your money at the end of the day, they don't care. They made it seem like this. I think. That was thing that was impossible to get into a college and I'm like no, like the 85% of the colleges in the US, you can be Dumber than a box of rocks and they they will let you in 'cause you will pay them money to. Let you. So then that throws that goes to the things like, well, why go if you're not going to?

7:46 I mean, when you go to college, I, I'm, I think that a lot of people think, oh, I mean it in my era, we went to college to learn something, to get a job and to get a job that would pay better than what I was currently doing. I mean, that was when it came right down to it. That was the nuts and bolts. It didn't matter. I wasn't exploring myself. I wasn't like trying to figure things out. I in the beginning, but it was weird because when I went through Nova, I, I actually, I, I took, I, I took this, I took journalism first because I really like journalism. But you know, being a journalist major and you're a freshman doesn't mean anything because you're going to have to take English, You're going to have to take, you're going to have to take science, you're going to have to take math, You're going to have to take all these different things. 2 levels of this one level of foreign language 1. You know, you had to take all that happy horseshit for the first, you know, year and a half anyway. So I was taking the electives and each time and then I would take like a journalism course.

8:42 And then that was the, the one piece of advice that my father gave me was there are 8000 new journalist jobs a year and there's 64,000 people graduating with a journalist degree. How good are you? And, and I was like, fuck that. And then and then, but we're, but, but there are a lot of people being incarcerated And I was, and I, and, and I really thought that was kind of cool because I said, wow, man, can I imagine running a prison? That would be neat. So I started taking correctional counseling of all weird things. And also, I happen to be on probation in high school and I got to know the system and I didn't think that the system was really good. And I thought that possibly, you know, you, there were things that you could do to change it.

9:25 I don't, you know, being being wide eyed, bright eyed and bushy tailed to think that I could change things to for the better because you know, I was on probation for indefinite a period of time, which is a little over 2 years, 2425 months, which is just from 10th grade, the almost graduating. I had to be in, I had to be in my house at 10:00. I had to, I couldn't work certain hours, I couldn't, I had to check in weekly. I had to. And if I didn't check in, if I didn't do any of these things, then all of a sudden it would ramp up. There's one more step up. But it was just, it was, you know, nobody. Love Probation.

10:07 I mean, I'm a fan, but at the same time, what was I thinking? Well, a lot of times do you think about current state of colleges in the US and the high interest rates and what have you? And it almost seems like it's going back to what it used to be in the 1700s, where it was a break for men, but before they went to work, there was kind of a nice break for rich men to, to take, you know, a little relaxation period. Well, you, you for me and, and, and the way I look at it, I mean, I went to Community College for from 78 graduated high school. I was in Community College that fall and I was in Community College until, let me see, 83. So what is that?

10:54 Five years, 7879808182836 years, 5 1/2, something like that. And then 83, the fall of 83, I went to Nova. I mean, no, not Nova. I got accepted ODUI applied because somebody was going there and I said I'm going to eventually I got to get a four year degree and I went and got the four year degree when I pulled the concrete story where I had to fire the guy that that really set me off. And then I went and got my advanced or regular college degree, which is in business. And I focused on business probably the last year and a half of Community College, taking business classes and learning more about business, learning more about marketing, learning more about things like that, because I think that that that's how you'll make a living.

11:41 And that's what, and it gave me a really good groundwork and I went to Ode Dominion and it gave me a really good, what do you call it? It gave me like the four pillars of business, you know, marketing foundation, a really good foundation because it, it, it taught me a little about finance and numbers and accounting. It taught me about marketing and sales. It taught me about product. It taught me about management and how to manage people and how to drive things and how to pull the whole picture together to look at it to make it go forward. You know, it didn't teach me about strategy. I learned, I mean, I learned a lot from people that I work with later on what they said. And, and, and the one thing is, is that is whatever kind of a person I am, I think I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty receptive to something that you say.

12:28 If you say something that's better than what I think I'm doing now, then I'm that I'm that I'm willing to try it. I will question you until I believe you. So the people are like, don't be frightened. When I question, it's like I'm questioning because I'm like, hey, that sounds like a good idea. What about? Just think about this. Yeah, I did that, and this is the answer. What about this? Yeah, I'm like, well shit, I'm going to try that, you know? Skepticism is is something that also comes from education, I think. Very, very, very heavy. I mean, my, my parents were, you know, as I said, they were probably the, they had told us from being little kids that we would not be ignorant and that we would go to school. Oh my God, I can't believe they're, you know, and they had a, they had kind of a snobby view in the neighborhood they lived in, which is kind of interesting that, you know, Hey, I, I live in the same neighborhood and house that you do, but I'm smarter than you and you're just like, well, I don't know if that really works out that way that is. Funny that it's it's an impoverished community and yet the with their advanced degrees early. But we're not dumbasses, right?

13:42 And you are not dumb. But you. But you don't. When you're in it, you don't see it. You don't, you don't, you know when you're in, when you're when you're, when you're drowning, you're not looking at the woman that's topless. You know what I mean? You know, you're, you're trying to great analogy or something like that. And it was. The the LBJ thing that he said, it was also about low socioeconomic communities and we were middle. We were, I would say we were lower middle class. I mean we. Lived in class. We had food every we wouldn't know we had. I shared bedrooms with both brothers until they moved out to college. I always had, I always had a roommate from growing up. I mean, originally I shared it with my sister until that seemed to be weird. You know she's getting boobs.

14:26 You got to get the hell out of that room, boy. But LBJ said something whatever of if you teach a community racism, you can rob them blind or something like that, and I thought that was really interesting. And I think that I see a lot of people fear education because they believe that people are feeding ideas to your kids, to these people that are receptive for ideas. And we were certainly when I went to ultimen and when I went to Nova, I was absolutely receptive to new things that were different than what I was taught before. However, I was skeptical. That was me as well. I questioned the institution the entire time because during COVID they ramped up the tuition rate. They made it more expensive at UVA while I was on zoom and. They said we're going to teach you less. We need building maintenance and I'm like building maintenance for what?

15:21 Like I don't, I don't really understand this. I honestly got I'm a kind of a harbinger of that university for that reason. But they also started a brand new project where they tore down the library for the next like 3 years. Which is the weirdest time in the world to do it. And I was like, why would you, this is like 4 times more difficult. You need like all those like certifications of like testing or some of the PCRS after the workers go home or whatever. And so why are you doing this? This is crazy. And then, and then I graduated and I was like whatever, OK, like I don't know, I did it. I got the piece of paper that's worth $100,000 or whatever. And then I was like, well, I made, made you guys happy. So.

16:02 But I also wanted to go there. No, this was your, that was your choice. You completely, 100%. I remember you came back from Denver, you went to school at Nova and you're like, I'm going to go and you told me that you're going to go to UVA in two years. And I was just like. I think like in a year, I think it was for. A year, you said a year, something like that. And I was just like, OK, and I mean you were very and I and I was like, OK, encouraged, you got it. You got to take a shot, you know, you got to apply, and the fact that you applied didn't apply it anywhere else. I will say that I feel a lot more intelligent that I went to college.

16:42 I feel like there's a certain level of wanting to search for reading. Reading specifically is actually changing life. That's really changed my life. I don't think I would have read nearly as much as I do now if it weren't. For how many? How many books you read? It's now. What month is it? I don't know. It's 7. It's July. 10. You've only read 10 this year. Only 10. It's really low. Wow, it's really low. This. Year, I mean, you read about 30. How many did you read last year? All OH. 40 or 30? It was like 35 or 40 last year, yeah. But I mean, this year you're not reading, you're not reading comic books, are you? No, no. You count that as a book, see, Because I would if I did comic books, I I had like a lot. Well, I count magazines.

17:22 Magazines count. Magazines count with photos. I read. Geographic. Counts I used to I mean in business, I would read hundreds of articles every year, hundreds and I mean between newspapers articles, a little shorts on what's happening in the industry, studies, I'd read anything about data, stuff like that. But I would never like, hey, this is 150 page dissertation or 250 pages on blah, blah, blah. And I would just like I would tilt, you know, and I've really been maybe it's I'll blame it on my ADHD or. The phone is bad, dude. The phone is bad. Yeah, I lose. That phone isn't really bad.

18:04 Yeah. Oh my God. That encourages you more and more to run away from it and not. But I think that, you know, the fear of education is that people are putting ideas in your head when in reality I think that they're just exposing people to many different ideas. I'm sure there's people out there that are trying to cram shit in your head and make you believe things. I mean, we have two different parties that are doing exact that all day every day, and they're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on trying to make you believe X or Y, you know, or hate X or hate Y or love X. Or I remember when the the Federalist Society approached me during the the whatever it is, what is it called? The club fair?

18:45 And I was like, what is this? And then people said they were Nazis. And I was like, OK, but I had no idea what it was. And I don't really. I kind of go through life a little boring to a lot of situations. I think like that. Well, I think that that, that, that at your own peril, you know, if you don't, if you, if you, if you don't know what's happening with the government and society, then if I mean, I guess you could in essence evolve on your own separately and have your pretty life and not be affected if you had, if you had the economics and if you had but you just, I mean, you know, you like. Expats that move to like Malaysia or something or coastal.

19:31 Yeah, but if you move. Into a, but if it gets into. A fear then they'll just take those citizenships away. Fair, you know, and I mean we've already seen threatening to take US citizenship away from people and you're like that's that's I mean citizens, not not people that were immigrated or not people that whatever, but just take it away, you know, but we'll see we'll see. You know, this is a lot of people are very optimistic that the pendulum will swing. I, I have doubts with seeing that the, the, the recent budgetary increases to one particular police force went up twentyfold. And I think that that's going to really tell what's going to happen in society, you know.

20:16 But as we were talking about. Education. I got to talk to you about, I remember the teachers at Nova seemed like they, well, one, they had more teaching hours in general of the ones that were at UVA, right? They taught high school and they, they would go teach college at night. And there was a certain level of whether it was for money or whether it was for the joy of teaching. I think it's probably more of the money. But at the same time, they were just way more skilled as teachers than they were at Nova. Because in Nova you have one teacher, right Or not Nova UVA at 1 so. You're saying that the Nova teachers were more skilled? Oh, by far. And UVA, easily. Because at UVA you had a teacher, right? And then you had them teach this giant class once a week, Once, not twice a week, probably.

21:02 And then you'd have him and then somebody that's one year older than you called the TA teach the rest of the class, which I just thought was the laziest thing in the world. And I'm, so I'm paying for more a school, right? I'm paying for 10X, allegedly a better school, but the better school is twice as lazy. So I don't really. And this is where everybody nowadays is like, well, there's no trust in the university system. Like, you know what? There really isn't because you, you pay a lot of money to go there. And then it's not even the teachers teaching you, it's the fucking students. Well, it's just crazy. Like that's so ridiculous. Yeah, that, that. Really pissed me off. That really, really pissed me off. Did you ever ask him about that?

21:43 No, no, I never did. I just accepted it and said. Because I see, I've never understood the whole idea that that and I think that they farmed it to the Tasmania more and more. When I went to Old Dominion, I would tell you I never had ATA, OK. So this is a new. Not one class, not one class, every single class was taught by the teacher. And I remember my father telling the story said, you know, I went to Alabama and I went to Harvard. You know what the difference was? The in Alabama they were using. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. History, 16th century, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were talking about the author and talking about what he meant. When we went to Harvard, the author was teaching the class. You're like, oh, OK, he probably knows what he meant. So.

22:27 You had a, you have a different, a different viewpoint. But of course this isn't. This is in the freaking 30s and 40s, so. That was similar to when I had this poetry professor named Mark Edmondson, and he had gone to Harvard at the same time Robert Frost was teaching there. And so he got to see Robert Frost. He got to see who else was it, Elizabeth Bishop. And then also, oh gosh, WH Auden. So did he just see him in a book or did he actually meet him? He met them in New York and he would see them in New York all the time. And yeah, no, it was. It was interesting to hear about his experiences of actually seeing these people 'cause they seem mythological when you, when you're taught to them well, about them.

23:12 Because I remember learning about Robert Frost. It was like, Oh yeah, 1810 or something. No, it's not. No, it's weird. Time registers. Very. Well, I mean, when your when your mother and I went to the UK and Paris and Amsterdam and did our big trip there. We met Chaucer. We were on the train and we were going down and we saw Canterbury and we heard it. And I told her I read Canterbury Tales in high school and then we need to stop there and we just stop because we had a 15 day trip that was picking shoes as you go. And we stayed there and we walked through Canterbury. And I remember there were like all these things that were like that I remembered from reading the Canada. It was a book like this that you know, and it was, and we, it was like 11th grade English and we went into it in great detail.

24:00 And I would say, and Chaucer was the author and, and, but I think it was written in 1400s or thirteens or something like that. I don't remember what what what century it was written in. Yeah, I think it's. I was making a joke. I think it was funny, yeah. No, I did not enjoy that 'cause they made us read it in the original Middle English. And I'm just like, I don't understand this. He's like, why don't you understand? I'm like, 'cause it's not my language. And that was also TA that taught me that book. And, and I'm just like, and the guy too was like, I was a biochemist, but I understood the importance of English and how I needed to get a doctorate in English literature. And I was like, he's just the most pretentious asshole I've ever heard, but that's what you got. You got a lot of that from there. There's a lot of pretentiousness. Yeah.

24:45 Well, at least I can identify to myself to some degree, but I make jokes about it all the time. But I feel like the majority of people that go there cannot identify it within themselves. I feel like they're very bad at it. One was Canterbury Tales written. That's actually a good question. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, great. University, UNESCO, World Heritage, like 1387 to 1400. There we go. Yeah, we were right. Very cool. Yeah, that was very neat. Anyway, as far as education goes, I think about I, I was never taught by ATA when I was an Old Dominion. Some of my classes were. The cool thing was is we were actually taught by people that did it.

25:27 I had a real estate class and the guy, the real estate teacher, really. Really easy going person who I felt like I really learned a lot from him and basically he was teaching him how to sell real estate. And he goes from beginning to end of the process. You write a, you write a you, you, you sales contract, purchase contract for a house. You also you, you find, you actually do the loan document for the mortgage you. I mean, it was, it was actually like one of those few classes that I can look back on and say he actually showed me shit that I could. Actually use. That actually sounds useful. Yeah, I have, you know, and. It was like, but no one taught that stuff.

26:09 It'd be like if you were to teach me finance, I learned I had securities 485 where we where we learned about the beta and securities and betas. What you want is securities that have beta. So that one goes up one point when the market down opposite. You know, it's it's it's it's a very you know what I said? I can't remember. I was going to say I can still see the book. It was a brown book. It was, and it's like the Bible for securities and people learn about bonds and, but what the, how they affect in stocks that, but actually, no one ever showed us how to like buy a stock or buy it, you know, or what will you do or you should have a balance there.

26:57 You know what? I know what a ladder portfolio is. I know what a balanced portfolio is. I know what all these different things are. But whether or not you should trust analysts, whether or not you should, you know, what is the what is the point of listening to JP Morgan's analysts when you know, if you start to look at analysts, like 78 or 82% of their recommendations are all buys? That's pretty funny. Well, think about it. What That that, That's weird. Why would that be? You know, I mean, there's just so many weird things and then some of them just won't deal with certain types of securities. You know, they just won't do it. You're like, well, well, but that what, what's that mean?

27:37 You know that those are the kind of things I think that would have been really, really good. I had another one that was really, really good, a professor. And this is one of the things that I credit, I credit my marketing professor, I credit and I credit my finance 420 something professor with helping me start a business and understand a business. Because I remember the, the head of marketing, he was like an old guy and he was one of those people in the class was, I think it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 8:00 AM Horrible, horrible time, you know, cuz you're usually just still hungover. And it happened to be, and I remember it rained every day. We went there and you know, and I'm in Norfolk, so it's like 45° and pouring rain and I'm a mile and 1/2 from the campus. So I have to ride my bike.

28:25 OK. And now I'm 22, I'm on a bike at 7:30 in the morning, riding to school, hungover as the worst dog in the world, thinking like, is it worth it? And then I go there. But the things I learned from him was just like the basics for business. You know, you can't, you can't just build a product and assume people come. You have to sell it. You have to find people. You have to find a market. You're going to go after, you're going to you're going to have to. And when you find the market, you're not just going to be able to call up Bob Johnson, say Bob, come by my shit. You're going to have to sell him with marketing. And then this product that you make here, you're going to have to sell it for less than you make it. And you better be very careful on how you figure out what those costs are that go into making it, because it isn't just the raw materials, it's the whole story. And this is, and this is marketing and he's telling me this stuff.

29:17 And it's like that resonated with me. And then I had my finance guy who was, he was a really, I mean, these three people were really wealthy or you know, they were, they were like they were, they didn't have to work. They, the other one guy owned his own real estate practice and had like 30 people working for him. The other one, the finance guy owned like 7 hotels downtown and he was buying different buildings. And he came to his class and his class was basically, hey guys, you know, when he comes in and he's just, he's just brutal when it comes to if you make a mistake, there's no, I'm sorry, there's you made a mistake, you get punished.

30:01 There's no, you know, you don't get to through the door. You know, if you're, if you're, if you get only paid if you win the win it, then you wouldn't get paid if you're in second place. So he's very much like that. I mean, he's not wrong though, right? He's not. No, he's absolutely right. You know, that's, I mean that when you, when you read the story of Bill Gates saying, you know, there's your parents aren't there to take care of you, you know, it's like, and he was that way and this is an 85, you know, but he gave us a company that he wanted to buy and he said, I want to buy this company. Here's all the financials to the company. And he gave us these and he didn't tell us the name of the company. He didn't tell us the location, but he gave us all sorts of internal stuff to it. He said, I want you to tell me whether or not it's a good decision.

30:49 And if it is a good decision, what should I pay? And I mean, like, think about that. You're in college and you're evaluating whether or not the guy spends 5I mean in college. Think about that. They gave us this opportunity to evaluate business, to spend millions of dollars to do this and he trusted us. I mean, I don't know if he trusts this or not, but he might have just been, he might have been just blowing wet sand and he did it all the time. But I mean, what a great way to grab 25 or 30 different aspiring minds and give them a case that you will actually execute on or not based on what they say. And I'm just like, and he of course had his own guy do it too. And it's like, well, you aligned with it or you didn't align with it, or you brought up things that he didn't say. And it was just like, and it was all in the presentation. I mean, he, he, they were on the ground floor. I remember wanting to buy a block downtown in Norfolk for self storage and self storage now is everywhere. Self storage is huge now.

31:55 There's no such thing as self storage and people were like why wouldn't you? Why would people stuff their their stuff from their house in some weird square? Pragmatically, yeah, they would just throw their stuff away, right? Why would you ever? Yeah, well, I mean a. Lot of people love just tiny doohickeys that just resonated with them. They remember the one time that they were a kid or something. Like that, remember that Norfolk has a huge naval population and people are coming and going all the time. Didn't even think about that. Right. And that was sort of the key. It had nothing to do with you and me saying, hey, I bought too much shit that I don't need and I can't figure out how to give it away.

32:38 I want to stick it in a box until I die and let my kids take care of it. No, it wasn't that, which is what a lot of people do, but or you know, but it was, it was about military and we were calculating the amount of people that came in and out of there. There was like, you know, and how long they typically stayed was 18 months. So they were they had A and you can only get a one year lease. So they have a two year lease. So they're for the last six months. They have to store their stuff somewhere before it goes before they leave. I mean, so many different things, you know, and then it was whether or not they would sell it and you would figure that out and it was just like, wow. And whether or not it was going to be a flat or it's going to be a multi level, you know, do you do a do a self storage that you drive into and it's just one single or do you do a self storage or it's four stories high like downtown McLean where you can put six times the amount or four times the amount of spaces with not four times the cost and not.

33:39 I always love space storage wars when people are too poor to pay for their storage lockers and then somebody goes in there and they basically hawk their memories, and I think that that's pretty interesting. That hurts me. I mean, that's kind of a nice little thing about capitalism. Right. But I think, I think that a lot of that is just fake. Oh yeah, I'm in ATV show for sure. But they do sell storage units all the time. There's this one guy I've been seeing on Instagram that has bought a storage container with a bunch of the artwork that somebody had over the course of like 20 years. And there's like about 100 and 5200 canvases that are painted in there.

34:25 And he bought it. And I'm like, wow, that's that's crazy to think about. Like that's somebody's life's work that's in there that you now own. I don't know. Maybe they died though. I don't know but. Oh, they died. I guess that's I would, I would, I would want to track their heirs. That would be kind of my thing. I'd look for the signatures, right? But even though the signatures are like doctor's notes and that you have no idea what it really says, right? Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes people sign the back of the painting in real and then they paint it and they're whatever, Salvador Dali painting type thing. Things that. People will do. Remember the museum that we went to on on Barcelona, outside of Barcelona? Yeah, that was the. Dalai Museum The Dalai Museum, the largest.

35:07 One on the face of the Earth, I. Mean, I think about that was where he lived, though, Yeah. And he was buried in there. That was amazing. That might be the best museum I've ever been to in my life. Have you ever been to a better one? OK, I like the Cody Museum. Oh, that was really that wasn't forgot about that one. Yeah, that one was really cool. That was out in the Midwest and it was nothing but guns. You ever go to the the Roswell Museum? It's a UFO museum and. No, you went to that which thing it. Was funny as hell. It was really, really funny because there's a UFO ologists that are like kind of self-proclaimed academics of UFOs, and I think that that's really, really, really good. There's, there's two others that I would put in contention, DRC, which is in Paris.

35:51 I went there and I mean, it has like scream, it has it, it has all of the greats that you would think from Gauguin to Monet to, I mean, just one after the other. And you're just like, it just blows your mind that you're looking at paintings that you've seen 10,000 times, like the painting behind you on the wall of Squidward. Maybe MoMA, because I saw the water lilies in MoMA and I also saw Starry Night as well. I saw Starry Night there. Yes, saw that. And then yeah. So I got to say the MoMA I think was probably the best thing. Yeah, that's what I'm, that's what I'm saying, Dorsey.

36:32 I think that's the moment. That's what we're talking about. The same one. Were you in New York? No, this is new. York. Oh, no, that's New York. Yeah, New York may have had them on loan because I saw water Lilies in Paris and they had a full circular museum. Yeah, that was the same. Thing at the moment panels, it was just. I think they made a room for the the water lilies at the moment, but also the History Museum in New York is by far the best History Museum of. The lost. Yeah, no, it's it's incredible. Night at the Museum is a great movie. I didn't like the Guggenheim. But it's fantastic. I've never been. What was that? The well, it's just like the spiral that goes up to the top and it has different arts and it's. Mostly it's like the Hirshhorn or something. It's.

37:13 More modern, modern Y stuff. And I didn't, you know, it was like. Palm Springs. Piles of junk in the middle of the room made to be something and it just didn't, it didn't resonate with me because I'm like, I'm very, I'm quick to judge, but also quick to love when it comes to art. And I mean Lisbon, we went there to a museum and I would tell you amazing when we went there, Jim and I went, when we went to, it's Portugal, Lisbon. We're walking along and we go to and it's, and it's like we got 3 museums and let's go to modern art. We go to modern art walking in. And I never thought anything, Andy. I always thought like whatever, Campbell that's. Kind of where I'm at.

38:01 I until I walk in and I see Marilyn Monroe and it just knocks me off my socks. It just like it just it, it moved me, you know, and that's what art does. I mean that that's what it does for me. I can't say what it does for other people. Other people may look at statues. I've never gotten anything out of. I went to who's the guy that did all the stone statues? It's a really big dude. Michelangelo. No, yeah, I've seen his work. But I I did. Da Vinci kick out of. That Da Vinci, there's a really well known one. He's in Venice. I've seen his, I've been to the studio there, and it was very he did the Thinker. Was that not Davinci?

38:47 No, no. Who did The Thinker? Let me see who did The guy that looks like he's sitting on a toilet. Yeah, yeah, I know who you're talking about it. I just don't. Doesn't ring a bell. I'm not a big sculpture guy. Yeah, neither am I. Even though it's incredibly difficult work, Oh my God. Yeah, you think about it and you're like, how? Did the dis. I don't understand how you smooth it like then let's. Rodan, August, August Rodin. That's the one that I'm looking at right there. I saw that, you know, that was out. It was just like, really, really wow. You mean see the stuff and it's like, how long did you work on that to make that happen?

39:27 Oh, I guess the Acropolis is cool. Remember the Acropolis? Yeah. I mean, there's so many different things. I mean, and and I think, do you think that you have more appreciation for art because you're you you've been through education? I don't know. I. Guess I would say so for certain aspects of art. Definitely things that I. Understand it more. I don't really care about classics and what have you. But then there's they were like, oh, this is the first time this sort of narrative has ever been spun like this. I'm like, oh, interesting. And it's really, it's interesting how we consider influential things in the world to be the most important, where it's like, I don't know. It's kind of like when you go back and you remember the good old days, right? The good old days in your life, But you don't know that you're in the good old days until they're over.

40:09 And that's the same thing with art, is that you go back and then you're like, well, this was the good old Daisy influential periods, right? Right, which is, what's his name? Picasso's Blue Period. We saw that downtown at the Phillips. That was really good. What are you with us? What? Did I see the other day the red, the red something? What was it not bask? Yeah, was. It passo. It's all red. No, the guy that did the dancers in the circle. The dancers in a circle. Yeah, of hands the dancers in a circle. Yeah. I can't remember what his name was, but I was like, this is a a kids drawing.

40:50 I don't know. I mean, you just said how just serious he was. Yeah. He was it. I I I remember. Exactly what I'm talking. About he was in, not in MoMA. It's not say son either. What? Let's not say son. Suzanne No. It's not him, it's who was. It remember the ones we saw in Turkey. The ones in Turkey, What do? You mean the the dancers in a circle? Oh, the whirling dervish was really good. That was crazy. Yeah. Painting Matisse. There we go, Batisse.

41:33 I'm not. I'm not a fan at all. No, I didn't. I didn't get a whole thing. I mean, dance and then, oh, you did a lot of those. There's a couple of them that are really friendly and happy where they show people at bars and parties and things like that. Who does that? I can't remember that, but I saw a bunch of his paintings and he recognized his name. It's like Fernando Picasso, El Dorado, Gauguin, something like that. I don't know, he's really good. But when I think, I think, I think we're, we're, we're straying a little bit from education to art and. I mean, museums is education, public education. I think that's, I mean for me and it's when we, when we think about education, it's like I graduated from college and I used a lot of that, my business degree and many, many different ways.

42:20 There's parts I didn't use. But The thing is, is like, I took English class, you know, when I got out of college, Well, the weirdest thing in the world that happened to me, I started reading classics. I that's strange. And I, and I read many, many. I did what you did where I was reading like 10 or 15 books a year that were all classics and I would just go and I would go like, okay, the Red Badge of Courage. I never read that. I'm gonna read that. Okay, I never read. And it was all the ones that you would think about Dracula. I'm gonna read that. Lame is I'm gonna read that. I mean, the jungle, I'm gonna read that and. That was great up in Sinclair is most important American author that time. And there were there were ones that were, I remember England, there was 1 something in the park. There was this the house that was in a park and it was these three women.

43:08 And it was one of the one of the woman authors. And I just never got it. And just like this is boring as shit. That was kind of what I'm reading now, Middlemarch by George Eliot. I'm like, why did I do this to myself? Yeah, yeah. And when you just go in there and you just want to cut your hands or your throat, it's. Kind of what it feels like because The Jungle is interesting, because it's a socialist manifesto paired with a really great narrative. And that's why I think that that's probably the most important book of all time. It's because when you say socialism, Americans become afraid. But if you pair it with the narrative to show that it's the accurate price of consumption or of consuming goods, then you get a little understanding that maybe the European guy that came here to start a new life and he's dying of starvation is kind of impacted by the price of goods. So I don't know.

43:56 I think that that's an interesting way to do it. When I think about that, when I think about the jungle, when I probably read it 3035 years ago, I still have like a visual of the meat house where they, they brought the animals in and they, they sliced off the great parts. And then the stuff they dumped on the floor that went through the hole down to the next level. And that's where they made whatever. And then they dumped that stuff on the floor and shoveled it in and it fell down to the next through and went to the next floor. And that team of butchers made it something else. And then the next floor and the next floor and the next floor and at the bottom was like, you know, whatever stuff that they couldn't.

44:48 I remember that. I remember walking to work through the muddy streets. I remember him trying to get to his, his apartment because his apartment was a behind other people's apartments. So he had to cut through, cut through rooms to get to his apartment. And it was just, and it was very odd for me. And I'm like, and that that's what I thought. Like, you know, when you think about being poor, that's when I was like, well, he, he lived indoors, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't the. Guy, that was the whole thing that when they're getting milk from the the grocery store, 'cause the the Jungle really established the FDA in the US.

45:28 That was the whole thing that happened after and their daughter dies because they bought the wrong milk at the grocery store that was cut with mercury and it was blue, and then she died. And then that's just a matter of fact. That's just a fact that happened. And then it's like, wow, well. I mean, pre 50s, pre polio, pre vaccine people, kids, you know, you'd expect one to die. That was sort of like one of the litter was going to get whacked. That's why that too. Especially when you're unfettered capitalism resulting in crazy products that are just cut five ways from Sunday and you see hurt people. There are a lot of people.

46:17 And it's like, wow. But anyways, as far as education, when you think about it, you there's like this line of demarcation when you get out of college and it's like, I mean, I feel like I've learned a lot educationally. I've taken courses, short courses, I've taken like one hour seminars and all this kind of stuff. And when I go every year when I would go to the various association meetings, they would always have Cle continuing legal education. I've actually taught continuing legal education multiple different times. I, I would do a case, I would do a story on not a story. I would do a class on 10 KS, which are annual financial statements for public companies. I do it on queues, I do it on the 34 Act, I've done it on the 40 Act, I've done it on Williams Act, I've done it on, I mean, just every area of securities law, you know, not every area, many of the areas and it'll be the areas from the 90s because a lot of them don't apply today.

47:15 When you think about that, the way that the forms have changed the years, but no one would know what I'm talking about because it's all gobbledygook to anybody that's outside of the securities industry. But anyway, that has been my education. It's gone. I've, I've, and now I'm retired and I'm like, and my education now is like, what the fuck, you know, it's like, what am I going to do? And I came across something because I wrote AI wrote a strategy or wrote a plan of the things I want to do over the next five years. And I it was last year and it was like get healthy, do this, do this and that all these things be less of a drunk. How's that going? Actually pretty good, pretty good and your skin looks. Really good. I really messed up my my body in the spring of this year and I'm paying for it now and I'm I'm going through trying to get back to where the good old days January.

48:05 You know, so the weird thing about health is you don't know you're unhealthy until it's too late, isn't? It well, I wasn't. I mean, I was, I would say that I was not, I, I was just starting out in the year I was going to, I was feeling I was going to have a better year. And, and in the last three years, each and every year I did more, I averaged like 10,000 steps. I averaged like 11,000. I averaged 12/5. And this year was going to be the 13th because I would amp it up because one of the things I have a buddy of mine that works out all the time. He's really, really in great physical shape and he's late 50s, you know, Mr. Strongman and, and he always said the words keep moving.

48:46 So for me, I try to lift weights, I try to do that stuff, but also it's like keep moving and and but you. Know The thing is the new smoking as they say yeah. Yeah. But that being said about education, about trying to do it and trying to continue classes and things like that and trying to learn things because, but I need to learn things in a more of a compact way. And so I've applied. I applied for Stan Stanford. Well, I wanted to learn about artificial intelligence and it's something that I've really kind of had because in my industry, it's my industry started out in the paper, then it went online, then it went, then it went to the Internet and then it went, the different technologies have been algorithms that allow you to pull certain data points and 10:10 X better algorithms.

49:30 And then now there's actually question asking and answering, which is artificial intelligence that I want to see how it all works, how it all shakes out. So I started looking around like where would be the best place to learn about and how can you learn about it? And you can take like a dozen seminars online and do everything like that. I'm saying and, and frankly, I'm just a lazy person and I know that I cannot self apply. I've never been able to do online learning. I've never been to do anything like that. I have to go in person. So I applied to Stanford business education, executive education program. It's happens in October. It's only for like 6 or 7 days, but it's on site, it's in Stanford, and I think that in San Francisco, the center of where AI is today is growing. When you think about chat, BDT and all the people, that's where it's happening, that this is where I'm going to get a true feel for what it is and how it is, I think. What it is you could tell us I.

50:27 Don't know what I can do with it. I really don't know. I mean, I'll, I'll tell us that You what? I'm sorry. You can tell us if Skynet's going to take over. Yeah, probably. I think it will open. AI just had a $200 million deal with the US military. Pretty cool, right? Pretty awesome. I can't wait to be killing robots in 20 years. I'm so excited. Well, I mean. If it's even that long from now, it's probably 10 years out, maybe 5. Well when you do a search now on Google it it gives you a summary in AI. What robot war when we're going to? Robot, war robot. And so here's the thing, what's it giving you that summary from in? Itself. Yeah, but it's but it. But did somebody pay it to give you that type of a summary?

51:09 Because it's not. Like question actually. It's not like these people aren't beyond being sponsored to say a particular message, you know? Yeah, where it's curating the message from that is actually funny. Right. Let's get the 10,000 things that people would ask questions of this, and then let's figure out to make curate messages that are this way. Interesting. Yeah. Very weird. I think it's. Great, you know, we're getting, we're, we're, we're when we think about, I mean, when you think about what's the future of education, you see people, you know. People are going to stop going to college. I feel like that that's going to happen because you have a low literacy rate, a lower literacy rate than 10 years ago in the US and I think people are you think are going to become increasingly more question yeah, 56%.

51:56 Now I can't read about 6th grade reading level. What was it before? 46. Oh, 46 to 56 mean more people can't. OK, I had it weird. I had it weird because one of the things I was looking at is they have this thing nationally. And it's one of the things that we say about ourselves that we're everybody's stupid. We're 700 than this and that and the other. And there's something called the a caps or not the Mcats, but it's a PAP or something like that. And it's it's this International Association that grades countries on how their population is, what level they are intellectually. And one of the things it does is like we're we're third and mad.

52:41 But out of what though? Like out of the whole country or out of? No, out of the world, so not, but the world. So see, now when you start to look at us, if you were to compare us to Tongo or, or to compare us to Peru or to Ghana or to New Zealand or to India, I mean it it when you start to look at it, we're, we're not as bad, but for the money that we have, we should be much, much further bad. Oh, I completely.

53:23 And that's the thing. And instead of relying on intelligence, we rely on brute force or. That is kind of the way the the system has been made. And well, the SAT is derived from World War 2, which is crazy. Yeah. From separating people into different kind of classes or whatever or whatever. Have you? Yeah. What I mean, that's when you start to realize that when it it's not the same. And I, and I can tell you when I applied to college, if I had had a little more money, I'm sure that my parents would have told me how to apply. So I could have gone to different schools. They would have told me that I had to fill out the essay. They wouldn't have said it was optional. I don't know why they say it's optional. I think they do that to weed people out from the initial process, but.

54:17 If you think about it, it's like they weed. They weeded me out because I didn't know, and it wasn't because I was stupid, it was because I never had anybody tell me. Hey dude, don't. Don't walk across when it's a red light you dumb ass. Well, if you want to talk about gatekeeping in society and. Just simple. And it wasn't you. Know, and you think about it and it's like, wow, what it made me kind of go like, hey, Garfield guidance sucks. That's my high school guidance. They, they, they never helped me with anything ever in any direction about anything. Never. And people say, well, you didn't go to them. And it's like, well, they're the counselor. Aren't they supposed to read?

55:00 They should have made an appointment or something with a student to talk to them about what their future life was going to be. I mean, you know, Valerie, when she went to her counselor, they're like, well, you know, you can get a job as a secretary, you know, but you're going to have to you better take typing, you know, and are you on birth control? That's the that's what they're asking her. Are you on birth control? You're thinking like, that's great birth control and you can be a typist. That was it, you know, that was the whole thing. And I don't know if that's what the everybody pushed. I don't know how it was, but it was kind of interesting that you figure out like, wow, they, you know, talk about sending a message.

55:41 You know, we talk about teachers directing you and stuff like that. And oh, they're, they're trying to change our children. It's like, no way. They didn't have the the ones I know all my nieces and nephews that are all in it. They just want to. They want the kids to learn how to add. Just being able to know how to read is the important. Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest things that, you know, would be the difference. I mean, that's, I mean, that's one of the reasons one of the charities that I support is Bluto Library Projects and they build libraries in Africa, in Zambia, Zambia, Zambia, Zambia.

56:24 They build libraries there for children to learn how to read. Yeah, the difference. Yeah, the difference between reading and not reading or knowing how to read is economic prosperity. Oh. Yeah, 100%. That's where it's at. And it's like, if you think about it, it's like, Oh my God, that's like probably it's, if you look at The Economic Times, it's like, wow, you've, you got 5% of the population that can read and wow, they, they know how to manipulate the other 95%. But that. Seemed to be how it goes, doesn't it? But the kids, but the kids and, and, and that to me is like really, really worthy because, you know, they, they, it, it gives them a central location and, and they had a, they have a huge pool of orphans in Africa and a lot of different nations because they, they had the, the AIDS epidemic that wiped out just droves of people, you know, But that, that's such another happy note.

57:25 You know, then we think about the different things in education. What would you do to further education? What are you going to do going forward that's going to further your education? I told you about the Stanford thing. Further my education specific. Yeah, what are you doing? What are you? Doing When I get back from this Mongolia thing, I want to start taking community classes. Community class or Community College classes can't even talk. You know, I go to USC. Drawing specifically, why would I go to USC when it's three times more expensive and further away than the Community College? And I think it would be just as good. And I don't want, like, can you even go to USC to just take classes? I don't think you can. Yeah, you can. Can you really? You have to be accepted, though.

58:07 That's the thing. I don't know. I feel like you're just making stuff up now. You're right. Yeah. Because you have to be actually enrolled as a student, I think. I don't think. You can. You don't think you can take class take occasional classes. You audit classes. I think that's what Community College is for. I guess you can audit. College is great that way. I love that because it's so easy, in and out and all that kind of stuff. How do you you want to apply? Yeah, it could be $5. Yeah. OK, you're in. You're accepting. Exactly. Yeah, It's going to take a couple drawing classes. I think that would be really cool, yeah. I love to pound it, but I got to tell you, I learned math. I learned psychology. I learned a lot about the prison system. I learned a lot about writing.

58:49 I mean, I wrote so much in Community College. What else? I learned that I can't take classes online. I learned. That. I need to show up. I'm I'm, I'm, I'm a learner if I'm in the room, I'm not a learner if I'm not. That's just that's the way I. I learned punctuality on turning in assignments. That was what we learned. Yeah. And then I learned that it doesn't matter because I yeah, that was kind of shitty early. And I would get AB minus BB plus whatever A, and then somebody would turn it in even after the semester was over and would get a better grade than me. And I then decided that college doesn't matter and all of that.

59:31 These are the grades. Know that you can turn something in whenever you please. Well, see, I remember. Because I did these assignments for history, specifically history one O 1 or something and you were supposed to turn them in every Friday. I think it was about 9 Fridays in a row. And it was like a summary of what you needed to do in order to or like what the, I don't know what the your labs was or something. Your labs. I don't know, it was just like what you got from the reading. And this one guy was like, do you think I can turn them in all right now? And I was like, I don't think so. But I think he ended up being allowed to turn them in like weeks after the semester is over.

1:00:14 I'm like, this is if, like he's going to go through his whole life now doing that, being late to submitting assignments and well, he's he's. Learned how to schmooze and get something. Yeah, so that's how I learned. That a lot of people do that. Doesn't matter. Like, I don't know. The gift of GAP? Well, no, it only matters to those that don't question authority, right? Yeah, exactly. Because he questioned and he went after it and he tried to change his personal situation and he was successful, you know? That's a fairpoint. Yeah, so it's not really, even though you want a lazy fuck, you have to say to yourself like teacher bad. Yeah, that's what I would say. I would say teacher. Bad. Every single one of them. That's every single one.

1:00:54 Whether they were in Community College or UV eights didn't seem to matter at all. Well, I don't know. I think I mean the weird thing for me is that going through high school and having like a 1.6 GPA and then going to Community College and having a three two and then getting into Old Dominion and or two nine. It wasn't because I, I, I would just not stop going to a class and, and, and Community College and just get an F and then not even think about it until I realized that, hey, that affects your GPA, you dumb ass. Anyway, I get out of school and I'm looking at my grades and I'm like a I'm about a three O like that.

1:01:34 And, and, and then I'm but I'm a 3-4 if I only looked at certain classes, like finance classes. So I put that on my resume. And I mean, I think about it to this day that that was one of the lines. Attained 3.4 GPA in finance directed classes. You know, that was one of my selling points when I applied for jobs and I and I was thinking like, and I think about the grades today and I'm like, you know, are the are. The Anybody's looking at your thing once I got into UVAI still cared, but not as much. Not as much. Nearly. Because I was like, I did. I did the thing. I got in here, and then I still was on the Dean's list or something for a couple semesters in a row.

1:02:16 But then when it became the TAS that were just absolutely pulling my pants down and ruining me, I decided to say fuck it. And I was just like, whatever, Yeah. I mean, that's kind of sad. That's sad that that. Was like, really screwed me over a lot. And then when the normal teachers would grade my papers, they were where they should be, like B + A or something like that. Yeah. And the TAS always just were coming up with a reason to just shit on you. Yeah. And it's 'cause what do you think? They just say that because master's power, General. What power? Yeah, I think so. I think it was. I think it was. Yeah, but if you're nice to them and bought them beers and stuff like that, you would have got hired. They were all pretentious as hell too. See.

1:02:57 So you didn't know how to crazy, You didn't do what the one guy did that said he got to turn his stuff in late because he knew how to kiss the right right ass or write the right check. That's true. Say the right things. It's funny that that salesmanship is a way to. It's almost like a skill that you learn in college. It absolutely is and and it's a way to never really. Thought about that. It's a great way to avoid responsibility, OK? Oh, 100%. It really, it really is, which good, bad or indifferent, you can say what you want, but if you look at it, if you're a really good salesperson, you can avoid responsibility. And but if you're a really good salesperson and you're responsible, Oh my God, you're the home run, you know?

1:03:37 Exactly. Yeah. Well, on that note, what do we have for time here? Oh my God, you, you guys are gabbing by. We're gabbing our education. That's why this. Will be the longest episode we've done in a while. Yeah, it's like 700 hours, man. No one's going to listen to this thing. Nobody's going to listen to it. Nobody ever does, all right. We'll talk and learn, man. Thank you guys for listening. As always, take classes, take classes, expand your horizons, do some push ups. We'll. Learning. Learning isn't always about being able to apply it that day for monetary gain. Oh, very. That's a great piece of advice right there. All right, see you later. How are you?