Lessons From Hadestown

Imagine a world where the seasons are out of balance, where the warmth of spring is but a distant memory, and the cold grip of winter seems unending. In this world, we meet Orpheus, a dreamer with a song in his heart, and Eurydice, a pragmatic soul struggling to survive. Their love story is one for the ages, filled with passion, doubt, and the ultimate test of trust. But Hadestown is more than just a love story. It's a reflection on our own world, where the struggle for survival can lead to desperate choices and where the transformative power of art and music can inspire change. It also delves into the internal battles we face, where the voices in our head can work against us, sowing seeds of doubt and fear. Today, we're going to explore the themes of love and sacrifice as seen through the eyes of Orpheus and Eurydice. We'll discuss how their journey mirrors our own struggles with trust and betrayal, and how their story resonates with the challenges we face in our own lives, including the internal conflicts that can undermine our hopes and dreams. I'm Curtis. My romantic pal over there is Joe, and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Hello, Kurt. Not even my wife calls me romantic. Dude, that's funny right there. Do you have a favorite romantic movie?

I hate to admit it, but I really like those rom coms. I look for those sometimes. I really do. Wow. A favorite. Boy, you hit me. I was supposed to be giving you all the surprise questions.

Well, you're the one that hit me with this, so I have one. All right, I'll share with you.

Give me yours, and maybe I'll think of one.

The notebook.

Oh, wow.

It is a good movie, man.

That's interesting.

I like it because there's a sense of competition in there and just the whole theme of the movie, the ending, and how it all plays out. I don't want to. I don't want to spoil it, but it's a neat movie. It's a neat movie.

It's funny to say that, because we're gonna be talking about a show that I first saw on Broadway when I was a real beginner, and I didn't know much about Broadway shows. My daughter is a huge fan, and I really like going with her to New York City. I hadn't been to New York City much at all in my whole life, but I was really surprised at the themes and the. The way that some of these stories make you think. Not to mention the greatest talent and musical and acting. Funny you say that. I saw the notebook on Broadway, which was fantastic.

Oh, did you really?

Yeah.

I didn't know that. When did you see the notebook?

It wasn't that long ago. It was within the last year. And I wasn't really excited about seeing it. Although I gotta admit, I do like that romantic movie a lot. The thing that was really hard, Joe, for seeing this was the older characters who play and the way they do it on stage. I think they have three couples, really, that play the different stages of that story. But the woman who's struggling with dimension and in memory care, that hit a sore spot or what's the word? It was really tough on me because we had just been through that quite a bit with my mother in law this past year.

Right.

And she was so good as an actress and I don't know how she plays that part day after day with all the emotions that go through that show. But it was really fantastic. The music was great too.

Yeah. The. Of course, the movie's not a musical, right. But it's just such a good movie, man. I. My. My dad went through Alzheimer's and that was a really rough time with us, for us. But the movie itself is fantastic. Really is good. I didn't mean to throw you off there. I just thought you called me a romantic. And I'm thinking, okay, how can I fit that mold, at least for this moment? I'm a fan of the notebook.

I like it. I think it puts you in the mood for covering this. I'm not really covering Hadestown, but really, the themes, I think there's some just great themes that kind of struck me, and I'm going to go through those with you. And I know you always have great reaction to some of these things. Maybe some experiences from our life will bring into these too. But I'm going to key in on the two characters that are part of the love story. The fun part of this show was the original cast that we, both, my daughter and I saw this five times together. But we did see the original cast and it was fun that the two lead characters that play Eurydice and Orpheus, they were a couple or still are a couple.

Wow.

We're not just going to talk about the romantic story of it. I just got. Although Orpheus is the romantic in this show and you'll see some of the themes that I really liked his. I'll save his themes for the second part, but first I'm going to talk about a little bit about Eurydice, though. This is a greek tragedy. I don't know if you. Had you ever heard of it before.

Sure.

Okay. What was really fun, the woman who wrote this, Aeneas Mitchell, is connected to one of my good Disney friends, and I didn't learn this till afterwards, but he goes on tour with Annie DeFranco, musical artist. He does their merchandising for them and their record label was the first to produce the album Hadestown, which kind of a folky, New Orleans jazzy kind of music, which I really liked. I wasn't really interested in the music that was part of this, but she wrote that and then over time became this amazingly successful Broadway production.

So do me a favor, just a swag. Not necessarily related to the show, but I'm just curious, how many Broadway shows do you think you've been to in the past five years? When did you start this with your.

No, we probably started about three years.

Ago, maybe three years ago. Okay. I knew it was more than two.

Yeah.

So say three years.

I don't know, 15.

That's pretty awesome, man. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah, it's been great. Matter of fact, I'm going this weekend again. It's a Wizard of Oz weekend. Going to see the Wiz is back on Broadway.

Yeah.

Excited to see love the wizard of Oz story. Speaking of great stories with themes. And then it's wicked. Who's been playing there? I think Wicked is one of the longest playing on Broadway.

So are you going to see them back to back, or is the plan one day and one Friday and one Saturday?

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah, it's going to be a fun weekend. Mommy daughter holiday weekend in New York City.

Sounds like a blast.

All right, here's my first theme, survival in desperation. Euryssy. Her actions are driven by her need to survive a harsh and unforgiving world. Her decisions to go to Hadestown is born out of desperation and fear of starvation. This theme really hit me, Joe, because I could really emphasize with her situation, and sometimes, I don't know if you've ever had this, and I don't want to bring up, I don't want to dig too deep, but you see folks that make bad choices and you wonder, hey, if I were in that desperate situation, I think I can understand it when people do desperate things, if they have really desperate situations. I'm wondering, can you relate to that theme of people that do desperate things in desperate situations?

Gosh, who can't, right? I sure can. I can certainly relate. And I'll, if you don't mind, I'll share just a little story with you.

Yeah, absolutely.

I had a time in my life and I think we. I was a very young father and a young family and just trying to pull things together, and I needed a job really badly. I really needed a job. And I was approached by a guy who owned a jewelry store, and he needed a manager for this jewelry store. This guy who I knew very well was an absolute scoundrel. He would rob his mother, okay, but I needed a job, and he was willing to pay me a decent amount of money. He was renowned for just being a scoundrel for kind of common people and involved in nefarious activities. But I needed a job, dude. And I thought to myself, okay, I can take this job and just not let him rub off on me. I can take this job and commit to everything that I do, being on the up and up, and I was relatively, quote unquote, successful doing that. But looking back, I should have never put myself in that situation. And there were some things in that situation that I considered doing on his direction that I didn't do. But I came close, and I felt ugly for it, and I. Yeah, I moved from that situation.

It's such a hard thing. That's. I say, in her case, she's starving out in the cold. Orpheus kind of leaves her for a bit because he's working on a song. He's not paying any attention, and she ends up being romanticized by Hades and on her way to Hadestown.

Well, it's interesting because I can make that connection here, too, because I was a bit romanticized by this guy. I knew that he was, first of all, face to face personal interactions. He was generous and giving and empathetic at many levels. And I always looked at him as somebody that knew how to make money. Right. He knew how to make money.

It's.

He's the type of guy that if he was in a room with no money in his pocket and. And he was there with three people with no money in his pocket, and the other two people had $10 each. By the time he left that room, he'd have 30 and have no idea how he did it, and the other two would feel good about leaving the room with nothing.

Well, there's something to learn about that.

I realized that the math mistake was intentional. The. But my point is, he caught me at a time that I needed a job, and I justified it in many ways.

Reminds me of the one of my favorite movies. Speaking of romantic, here's one for you. A love story, too. Was Rocky. So many great things in Rocky?

Oh, heck, yeah.

He's working for that loan shark yeah, he's a. He's a docs of breaking knuckles.

Shark. Yeah. Yeah.

He never really liked it, though. You could really tell.

Absolutely.

That wasn't what he wanted to be doing.

Right.

Because he does get out of it as his boxing career takes off.

Yeah.

Love and sacrifice or.

Well, hold on, hold on. Let's back up a little bit.

Yeah.

What about your answer to that question? Have you ever been in a desperate situation? Or can you understand when it's. When. When desperate people do desperate things not.

To that level that she's at? We're talking about homeless, hungry.

Well, I wasn't homeless and hungry, but I was certainly wondering how long I had till I was sitting on my last cracker. Right.

I certainly had that fear when my third child was born and my wife was not going to work anymore and I was going to be the sole provider. I certainly had that kind of fear. Luckily, I never got desperate. Things, in the end, worked out and I made my way. We made it work.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think definitely the empathy. It's just that the feeling, these shows really surprised me that some of the themes and the feelings that I walk out and sometimes get a little bit emotional during these shows, certainly, which is great. That's what they're there for. Love and sacrifice. Eurydice, love for Orpheus is deep, but she's also a pragmatic. She sacrifices her own desires and dreams to ensure her survival, even if it means leaving Orpheus behind. Joe, can you think of any real life situations where love requires some sacrifice?

My gosh. I mean, every situation where love is involved requires sacrifice. Right? And I don't mean to be so general, but every situation, I think about your sacrifice to your kids, right? About your panic about raising these children and being the sole provider, and you had to sacrifice. Not only you put yourself on a good career path, and you found a good career path, but you probably had to sacrifice some situations where you didn't necessarily want to do x type of work, or you had to sacrifice some sleepless nights, or you even had to sacrifice for the sake of having a stay at home mom. Some of the luxuries that. That you could have afforded with a two income, being a two income family. So every situation with where love is engaged requires sacrifice. I think that's prerequisite for love.

I like your take on that. Yeah, it's so true.

So if you won't come up. If you won't come up with your examples, I'll come up with your examples.

I like that. Thank you. So much. I. You're really good at this, so I'm not going to try to outdo you. Choice and consequence Eurydice story emphasizes the importance of choices and their consequences. Her decision to go to Hadestown and the subsequent events underscore how choices, even those made out of necessity, can have far reaching impacts. It's really interesting to me. We always talk about we have choices, and they have more far reaching impact than we can think. Can you think of any choices you've made that have had far reaching impact?

Joe, this is a choice that's near and dear to my heart. Okay. And this is. I'm gonna. I'm gonna read my mail out loud with you a little bit. And with the.

I was afraid this episode might do.

That, and you might know this story, but I was a very young father, and however young you think, I was, probably younger. Okay. But I made a decision as a young father to take that role seriously. I don't know where it came from. I don't know. I don't know what. What clicked in my head, but I made a decision to take that role seriously and made some tough choices along the way. I had a brand new baby girl situation. Wasn't ideal, but I had no idea the impact that those choices were going to have from years and years ago. My oldest daughter is going to be 40 next year. So this was a long time ago, far reaching impact. And so I made a choice to become engaged and involved in my kid's life at a very young age and made some decisions that impacted that greatly. And today, through some of those. Those early decisions in my life right now, this young woman is president of the board of the United Way. She has her MBA. She has her doctorate degree, two amazing grandkids, and she is making an incredible impact, not only on their. On my grandkids life, but on her community. You should see some of the praises that I see her getting, and she's just very humble about it. She recently had dinner, her and my son in law, with the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, for work that she had done on projects that he finds of interest. And I can just name time after time. And the. The impact that she's making, Kurt, is 100% her doing. The impact that I made are those choices at a very young age to become engaged as a father and to make sure that she was on a certain path. Now, there was bumps and bruises and mistakes along the way, but, yeah, that's a. That those are some choices that have far reaching impact for generations to come. That's a very personal story for me, Kurt, and I didn't come to this expecting to tell that, and there's a lot to that story, but, yeah, thank you for.

That's extremely powerful, Joe. I can't. It's gonna be hard to top that for the rest of this episode. But I knew that about you, but I didn't know some of the more recent successes that she's had. That's really fantastic. Yeah, I'm not even going to try. I was thinking the story really talks about the negative things that you do that have far reaching impact. But I was thinking of a story when I had that fear of going into the boss's boss's boss to say I wanted a job that was computer related, something that I thought I could do. And that one day that I got the courage up to walk in there, started a chain reaction that put me on a path to do the work that I really ended up enjoying to doing different jobs, several different jobs. But that was if I were to point to a point in time where that action that I took or that choice that I made had a big payoff, that was probably the one. Definitely have the courage.

Yeah. Hindsight's always 2020, but you can certainly see. You can certainly look back and listen, dude, I've made some serious mistakes in my life, some mistakes that I'm quite honestly have had long term, far reaching impacts, impact to the negative and. But I'm not going to go through those. I'm. We. I'm not afraid of them, and we'll certainly talk about them at some other time. But those choices that we make long ago, if we have a little self awareness, we can look back and say, mandy, that put me on that path. I'm glad I went down that path.

Absolutely. Well, a different direction. But another part of eurydice is isolation and connection. She struggles with isolation. Her longing for connection are central to her character. Her relationship with Orpheus offers a glimpse of connection. But her isolation in Hadestown highlights the loneliness she feels. There are some great lyrics in this show. I know you like music, too, Joe, but this song and the woman who plays Eurydice in the original cast, Eva Noblezada, her voice is just stunning. My daughter and I just love her. We've seen it in another show. But some of these lyrics. In one of the songs she sings. I was alone so long, I didn't even know that I was lonely. I was out in the cold so long, I didn't even know that I was cold. You ever have that feeling you've been going down and you're in a rut. You don't even know you're in a rut. You're digging the china, and you don't even know you're digging.

Right.

Not only her isolation and loneliness, but isn't it so much better to open up even though you've been hurt before, you've been hurt by people? You can really open up to relationships. It can be scary, but the reward can be great.

It is. And this is interestingly enough, I. If I look at my personality, I don't have a hard time opening up. I don't have a hard time opening up once I meet a certain threshold of relationship. And that threshold can be fairly early if there's. If I sense it's safe. Right. But I'll be honest with you, Kurt, I tend to live my life out loud. Yeah.

This is more me than this is you.

Yeah. So what about you? How about a time when you had to open up to relationships where you felt maybe it was a little too vulnerable, but you knew that it was the right thing to do? And I don't know if this is what this is.

It's two things. I'm digging out two themes from here, but that's one of them, that if you go into a relationship with someone, maybe is this a guy thing where we don't want to get too serious?

There's a certain protective vulnerability that we avoid. Right. We certain. To protect ourselves. We avoid a certain level of vulnerability because of social status or fear of ridicule or there can even be a foundational, a deeper foundational meaning to it. I think that speaks to, like, pecking order in the tribe. If you show a certain level of vulnerability or even any weakness, whether it's emotion or fear or anything like that, you're not dependent on as somebody that that is a provider, and therefore, you're not seen as an important member of the tribe, and you lose that tribal protection, and you're easy to discard because you're not seen as a strong member of the tribe. And I think that's where some of these emotions come from. Just a complete guess.

I think I had a lot of ambition when I was younger. I didn't want to get tied up with somebody that was. They'd eventually have to leave us. Moving along. Oh, my gosh. I'm moving on to Orpheus, man.

I'm really taken aback by these lyrics that you read out. I was alone so long that I didn't know I was lonely out in the cold so long. I didn't know that I was cold, man. That's. That's powerful because I've been in situations where I didn't know I was even in this situation. Right. I didn't know I was experiencing these emotions. I didn't realize I was because I had become so used to the way things were. Have you ever had a time where you felt isolated and you didn't have much connection? You didn't feel much connection to the world?

I get. I relate to this again, going back to career stuff, when I was doing something I didn't like. I've been doing this so long, I just. I'm the kind of person to put my nose to the grindstone, go to work every day, and just do the job. And I don't like that at all.

Yeah.

Luckily enough, I didn't like it enough to reach out and get out of that rut, but that's where I relate to this.

Yeah. Good stuff, man. I love those lyrics. Strong.

Thank you. Yeah. I'm telling you, the lyrics in this show, in the music, really stunned me how good it was. Orpheus, the guy. So he's an idealist where I started to get the romantic pieces, actually, Joe, from this theme, he's portrayed as dreamy, idealistic. He's a musician who believes in the power of love and music to change the world. His unwavering hope and optimism drive him to write a song that he believes will bring back spring and end the harsh winter.

Sounds like a hippie.

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah. Heck, yeah. Sounds like a singer songwriter from the early seventies. Right.

Speaking of lyrics. What? Hermes is the narrator during the show, and there's a scene when Eurydice comes in for the first time, and Orpheus is just, like, looking at her, just stunned by her, like he already knows her. And Hermes says, you want to talk to her? And he says, yes. He says, go on. And he says, don't come on too strong. And the first things out of Orpheus's mouth is, come home with me. And she's like, who are you? So it was. It's a fun introduction to Orpheus and Eurydice.

Yeah. That is an interesting interaction because. So Orpheus is the dreamy, idealistic musician, right? So he's answering these questions about. About Eurydice, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so Eurydice. Excuse me, Eurydice. And I kind of know this guy, right? I know this guy that is the eternal optimist and thinks that everything's going to be okay. So let's jump right in. Yeah, I know that. I know that guy. And there's a part of me that likes that part of me and I can certainly appreciate it. It also sounds a lot like it's about 130 in the morning at a bar.

But yeah, actually, that's set in a scene that looks like a bar. That's funny. You say that.

And that is funny.

He does ask her to marry her in that first date, too.

That's funny.

She's like, he's crazy. But they. It quickly turns the romance. There's another great scene where Orpheus raises a glass and offers a toast to the whole cast. He says, one of my favorite themes, and matter of fact, I have the flask that comes from the show. And the quote is to the world we dream about and the one we live in now. That's his toast to everyone. I think it's pretty prophetic. It's the world we dream about and the one we live in now.

It's thematic. To what we have talked about a lot is understanding where you are in this life and looking forward to the world that you dream about, to the dreams and goals and aspirations that you have. So here is to the world we dream about. Right? I love that. And the one we live in now. Yeah. It speaks a lot about things that we talk about here, about looking towards the future but still taking care of the moment.

Love and devotion. His love for Eurydice is profound and all consuming. Orpheus. His devotion to her is central to the theme, showcasing the lengths he will go to save her, even venturing into the underworld. This song, wait for me, is so dramatic. It's such a great song. But he's willing to go to Hades to save Eurydice. I was thinking, joe, it's the July 4 weekend coming up here. I always think of our founding fathers and what they were willing to do just to die for us, to save their world or their kids world. But I think they were thinking about us, too. So what's the lengths that people will go to for people they love?

It's interesting that you bring up the founding fathers because while I wasn't thinking about it just now, I was talking about it earlier today, and I have a lot of favorite founding fathers. And I have one particular founding father that is my favorite. And it's interesting that we bring up founding fathers because he's in my quote for the week that said, have you ever, have you heard the whole speech of Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death?

No, I don't think I have.

It's powerful, man. You should just look it up on.

I love that, Joe. Thank you.

Look for somebody that's look for somebody that's acting in out. What do they call it?

YouTube.

Yeah, go to YouTube and maybe look up Williamstown, Virginia, and Patrick Henry. Give me liberty, give me death. It's a powerful speech, and he speaks to the world. He's willing to sacrifice for liberty, and that can be anything. Right? I'm glad you brought up our founding fathers because, of course, that that story and those stories are very near and dear to my heart. And we've talked a lot about the founding fathers. I invite the audience to go back and listen to our conversations with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton through chat GPT, which was pretty cool early in our chat GPT obsession days. And so when we think about the founding fathers, I think about the concept of give me liberty or give me death. I really invite you to go back and listen to that because it touches on this very subject, love and devotion.

I tied it to this, obviously, it was Orpheus who was saving Eurydice from Hadestown. Now he's naive and innocent. Orpheus naive tv navity, how do you say it?

Navita naivety, if you're french. And of course we hate the French.

Orpheus Navate is both his strength and his weakness. His innocent belief in the goodness of the world and the power of his music often blinds him to the harsh realities around him. Can you, Joe, achieve anything if you don't believe first?

The answer is no, right? I think the clear answer is no. So we were this past week at my job, we were putting together some initiatives for 2025, and the idea was, okay, what do you think? How do you think that the market will grow or recess in 2025? What markets do you think we're going to need to pull some levers on? And where do you think we have some opportunities? And so we put together a plan, and the question was, do you think these plans will work? And I thought if I didn't believe they would work, I wouldn't make the plan.

Good answer.

And that's what I said. I said that to the board and to the executive committee and, yeah. Do you think this will work? Can you achieve anything if you don't believe it first? I don't think it's possible. I think that there are, I guess you would call them spiritual or metaphysical laws of physics that say, in order to achieve anything, you got to believe it's possible, because if you don't believe it's possible, you won't even try to do it right.

I love this. His vision. We're gonna talk about his vision, too.

And I love being naive. Yeah, I love being naive. Can I tell you a quick story?

Sure.

You know, I've been involved in a handful of entrepreneurial ventures in my life, everywhere from bar ownership to. I had an insurance agency, and for a couple years, I owned a group of coupon magazines that mailed on the east side of Cincinnati. And my first month putting the magazine together, I was working with another, a mentor publisher that had done the same thing. And he and I were talking together, and I sought him out because I knew he had. He was successful in his field, and he was helping me along and helping me identify vendors and things like that. And so I just. I go all out and start selling these ads in a magazine that doesn't exist. Okay. Start selling coupon spaces in a magazine that doesn't exist. And I think that first month, I brought in $18,000 in revenue. Okay. Revenue has. Thats gross revenue, so costs come out of that and so forth. So I was talking to him, and he said, so how did you do? And I was just stupid. I was just completely dumb on what to expect. He said, so how did you do in selling ads, and how much did you collect? And I said, I think I did about $18,000. And he said, what? And he said, how much of that did you collect up front? I said, $18,000. What? And I. He said, I've never heard of such a thing. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. This is a true conversation. Maybe not verbatim, but the spirit of it. I don't know what you're talking about. He said, I've never heard of anybody doing that well in the first month of their business. And I said, I just. I didn't know what was.

What I could do was.

And I wasn't supposed to do right.

That's great.

And I didn't know that I could offer terms on payments, and. And I didn't know that I could offer half up and or half, half now and half when that publishes. I just thought, this ad is $495, and I just need you to write me a check for $495.

Oh, my gosh.

I love ignorance to a certain extent, and naivety and moving forward without the jaded perspective of life.

It's great story belief. It's all in what you believe. Doubt and insecurity.

I just didn't know any better. It was just ignorance. It was just naivety.

Love it. Despite his optimism, Orpheus struggles with self doubt and insecurity. This is one of my favorite themes of the whole show. This internal conflict becomes the most apparent during his journey out of Hadestown, where his fear and doubt ultimately lead to his tragic mistake. This is one of my favorite lines in the show. This is Hermes to Orpheus as he's leaving Hadestown. I'll tell you where the real road lies between your ears and behind your eyes. That's the path to paradise. Likewise, the road to ruinous. Can you relate to that, Joe?

We certainly talk about a lot about mindset, don't we?

Yeah. The way. That is such a great lyric. The path to paradise.

Yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you. This could almost be the quote of the week right here. I love this. I'll tell you where the real road lies between your ears and behind your eyes. That's the path to paradise. Likewise, the road to ruin. It can take us down either way. Right? All the books of wisdom, at some point in book and in the Bible, it speaks to it several occasions. But all the books of wisdom, from stoics to the Bible, all speak to this subject about checking how you think and what you allow yourself to dwell on and taking captive of your thoughts.

In the show, they do this very dramatically with the three fates. These are three lady singers. They have instruments. One line. They say, who are you? Who do you think you are? Like all of these voices in your head, they repeat to him as he's walking around long in the dark, trying to make it back out of Hadestown. Yeah, it is a tragedy, Joe, because I always laugh with my daughter when we go. Maybe this time he won't turn around. Because what Hades challenges Orpheus to do is to walk out of Hadestown with Eurydice behind him. But you can't look behind till you get out of Hadestown. And if you do, you lose her.

Oh, my gosh.

And it starts all over again.

He couldn't look behind and check.

Yeah. To see if she was following.

He had the trust that she was following.

That's right.

Oh, my gosh. What a powerful scene, man.

It's so good. Yeah, it's a greek tragedy. It's flowing with the seasons, the cold in the winter time, the heat of Hades. And then, you know, spring comes and. But, yeah, winter's coming back when he turns around. And they started all over again. All right, the last theme, vision and reality. Orpheus has the unique ability to see the world as it should be rather than as it is. This visionary aspect to his character highlights the tension between idealism and reality. Is it better to be pragmatic or an idealist? Orpheus inspires everyone, Hadestown to wake up, follow him and leave. So, yeah, his vision, though, and his optimism, he does that even though, through all his struggles. Can you really be a leader if you don't have this vision and positivity? Because that's what he does. He convinces everyone to leave Hadestown and get out of that horrible place.

How about you, Kurt? Do you think it's better to be a pragmatist or an idealist? To be pragmatic or to be an idealist?

I love the idealist every time.

Me, too.

I really do.

I have a friend of mine that we had a conversation about a month or so ago, and I'm not going to give you the. All the details about the conversation. What do they have to do with work? Co workers, and we're friends. And he, he said, man, you just go through. You just go through life thinking everybody's your friend. You just go through life thinking everybody's your friend. And, and, and I don't know how you just don't. Basically, I don't know how you just don't get screwed more often. And, and I said, I'm. And I said this. The times that I get screwed or the times that I lose because I'm an idealist, that's worth the price to pay to live my life this way. I know that as an idealist, that, hey, listen, it's funny because as an idealist, you're pragmatic enough to know that not everything's going to work out of. But you would rather live your life in a way as if it's going to. And that's the price to pay, right?

Yeah. I like that attitude a whole lot better. And you think of that movie, Rudy. I heard someone else mention it recently, too. It was funny that came up. And sometimes you watch that movie, and I could watch it every time it comes on. You feel a little sad for him because you're like, no way. This little kid, he's never gonna. If he can get to Notre Dame, he doesn't have the brains for it. He doesn't have the grades. He's a small little guy. He wants to play division one football on one of the greatest teams in all of the country, and you're like, dude, this is impossible. There's no way you can pull this off. But in the end, was it better for him to be the only one carried off of the Notre Dame. I think he's the only one who's ever been carried off of the home football field at Notre Dame.

Pretty awesome, huh?

And he only played the end of one game in his senior year, right?

And if you think about it, I'm sure he had no vision for this, but he made a career of it. He had this movie. He had the book. He had the book. He had the movie. He had all this stuff that grew from, that got fame and notoriety and the story and the motivational speeches that he's done and all. Everything that. Every way that he's been able to contribute to society from that moment, from that moment of idealism, I'm sure he didn't think that through. A pragmatic, naive. Pragmatic would have thought that through.

And they reminded him all the time, his father, his brother, friends. They told him to quit. What? He. They told him he's crazy, right? You never quit. I love that. Joe, thanks for. I really was looking forward to this conversation. I really enjoyed this show. I love the themes in it. Like I said, it's a surprise to me. I didn't know I would get this kind of reaction from going to Broadway shows. My daughter. I love the music, love the themes. Always get a little tear in my eyes sometimes, too. But thanks for indulging me.

Of course. This has been, this was a great conversation, man. Really pulled out some things in me that. Universal themes that you realize, man, either I have some work to do on. Although I consider myself an idealist, I do have some work to do. And I have to look back and recognize those little things in life that I did years ago that can make a difference and that made a difference and realize that I can start more little things right now that 30 years from now I can make a difference.

Yeah, take a chance. Love it. How about a win for the week?

So I don't know what to do with this win for the week, Kurt, because I want to make it into a whole show. Quite honestly, I want to make it into a resource. But I'm going to call this a win for the week for right now. And I don't remember if I mentioned this last time. I think I probably did. And I continued to develop this. I'm using chat GPT. We're both fans of the large language models, and chat GPT is my favorite. I'm a subscriber to chat GPT, and I use it every day. I use it especially every day now, because my win for the week is I have developed a fairly comprehensive journaling process using chat GPT. My struggle with journaling in the past has always been the effort involved in journaling. Right. I knew it was important to capture that information. I knew it was important to review it on a regular basis and to think through this stuff. And I had no problem with the thinking through and the reviewing it on a regular basis and looking back and understanding your successes and failures. But I had a problem with the writing it down part, the blank page.

Or I'm not sure how you're doing this. What are you doing?

Not the blank page, I'll tell you in a second, but just the writing down part. You write it down and your spelling, it might be a sloppy handwriting, and so you have to go back and you're not sure, even sure what you wrote. Not everybody might have this problem, or you think through a thought, and the process of capturing that thought on paper is so much when you really wanted to put it into a very succinct manner, but it took a lot of thought to get it out. So what I did is using chat GPT is I set up a system with chat GPT that it asks me questions that I want to include in my journal, stuff like, okay, how much do you weigh today? What exercise do you did? How are you feeling about this? What is your, what are you grateful for today? What could have made today better? What insights did you get from reading your book today? What insights did you get from reading the Bible today? Things like that. And it'll ask me those questions. I have a morning session and an evening session, and they'll ask me those questions. Then it will put it in my own voice, meaning it will write it down in the way I talk and the way I speak and the way I write, but with proper grammar and getting, and it gets rid of some of the clunky words and the double clutches and some of those vocal things that you're so good at editing out and that I'm so good at editing out on this podcast. But if you're listening to raw tape, as they call it, it might surprise you, right? I'm not nearly as articulate as I make myself out to be in the editing room. That said, this system, and I've only used it for about a week or so, but when I'm done with the day, I can tell it, create a PDF to capture this day, and it creates a PDF and I download the PDF, and that's my journal entry for the day. And it really does capture, it doesn't create a synopsis because I want it to capture all my feelings and thoughts and ideas and stuff like that. So it doesn't create a synopsis, but it cleans it up and puts it into a way that's easily read and easily understandable and easily actionable. Then the next step to this is it will start to recognize themes. And I'll ask it. I'll ask it. Can you tell me what my themes were for this week? What kind of stuff that I am I working on or struggling with? And this is something that we can really build on to eventually, it would say, you would say, okay, act as a personal coach in the spirit of Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar or whoever. Right. You can name your own personal coaches and from there you can say, okay, based on what? Based on my journaling, what three actions do you think I need to do this week to move myself in the right direction?

Wow.

It really can be powerful. So, I know I took a long time, and I apologize, Kurt, but my win from my win for the week is developing this journaling process using chat.

GPT, which is an ongoing process that you can improve on. Love it. So intriguing.

How about yours?

My wife sent me a text message with a Facebook post of a dog that was up for adoption. And you may know we've been without a dog for about three years when our last one passed away. And it's been, we've been talking about it, but she's been concerned with our 20 year old cat, who is set in his own ways. He's elderly and a little anxious. We were worried bringing in a dog, but I asked her, why did you send that to me? Are you serious? I inquired about the dog yesterday, went through talking to a couple of different people involved with the adoption we're bringing home. Sawyer. At some point, we saw in the middle of this, but we're adopting a dog.

Congratulations, man. That's pretty cool.

It's kind of a shocker to me.

What kind of dog? Is it? A rescue mutt? Or is it, do you know the breed or.

Yeah, he's a yellow lab. They say he's five years old, although they checked their references. And one of our friends, the woman that talked to my friend said, he's three years old, but we talked to his foster, who knows a lot about his history, and without getting into it, but he's not been mistreated, but he's being rehomed. And they were actually really concerned that he ended up with a good family, so made us feel good. I don't know yet, but he's going to come from Arkansas. They make a trip out to Connecticut once a week, and we'll have to meet up and adopt Sawyer. So more to come.

All right, man. Congratulations.

Very excited.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A new chapter.

A new chapter. A new pal to hang around with, right?

Yeah.

Share your morning walks with.

And he's a big guy. I think we both have to lose weight. He's 120 pounds and I'm double that. He's a big boy.

Funny. That's funny.

I'll show you pictures later.

Cool.

What's your resource for the week, hack?

This is an interesting resource, Kurt. This is an interesting resource. My daughter celebrated her 30th birthday this past week. So I am the father of 232 young women in their thirties. My oldest daughter will be 40 next year. But she was putting together, her and her husband were putting together an impromptu birthday party down at a local bar and grill here in Cincinnati. And she called me, like at the last minute, and she said, hey, dad, can you do me a favor? Can you get some old pictures of me and print them out and so I can put them together for, put them together for. Through the years poster board. And I said, sure. How many do you need? She said, I don't know, maybe a dozen. I said, man, that's tough to find a dozen pictures that kind of take you through the years. And she was sensitive that, hey, we have 3 hours before the party starts. And she asked, do you have a printer? I said, yeah, I have a printer, and I can do that for you. So I spent some time looking through these photos. That's a whole nother dynamic in and of itself when you start looking at old pictures of your kids, right? I know is I'm weeping through watching her swim and in the ocean with me on her shoulders and stuff like that, right? I'm going through these pictures and I'm really in time, the clock's ticking. And, and I'm thinking, I'm not going to get this done because I'm going through these photos and trying to print them up and putting them in just the right size. So I decided, you know what? I'm just going to see. I don't care if it cost me $50. I found 56 pictures, okay? 56 pictures. Yeah. They're all digital, right? They're all digital. And I found 56 pictures to print them up. And I was, I'm thinking, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna, I don't care. I'm running out of time. I still have to go buy the poster board. And all that other stuff, I'm running out of time. I'm just gonna get them printed up somewhere. I don't care how much it costs, 56 pictures. Maybe it'll cost me $50, a little under a buck a piece. All right, so I go online to walmart.com, because there's a Walmart right up the road, and I uploaded all my, all the, all 56 pictures. I did some online editing, and they have a reasonably good editing, quick and dirty editing process where you can size the pictures and make sure that everything is right size and recenter them and all that other stuff. So I did all that online, 56 pictures and went through each one and the whole process, from choosing the picture, from logging on to choosing the pictures to do some editing, the whole process, that whole process took me about 15 minutes. Okay. And I clicked and I ordered the 1 hour photo service where you go up and they send you a little text message and they tell you how much, they tell you how long you have, and of course that you have 59 minutes. You just ordered 59 minutes. They'll be ready about 20 minutes. I get the text that says they're, that says they're ready, and Walmart's just a few minutes up the road. 56 prints done in an hour, edited, beautiful, gorgeous prints. Right? How much would you guess?

I have no idea, Joe. How much?

$8.

Fantastic.

$8. I think there were $0.14 apiece, so about $8.

All that technology in on the computer for $8 and. Great. And, yeah, you don't have to use your ink and your printer.

I couldn't believe it.

You couldn't buy the ink probably for that much.

Yeah. And the time to take and cut the pictures and all that other stuff.

Four by sixes.

Yeah, four by six. Yeah, four by six.

Did you put them on a poster board?

Yep, put them on a poster board and got them, got the whole thing done. They took three poster boards, bought those at Walmart. As I was picking up the pictures.

She must have been impressed.

Yeah, she was. It's always good to impress your kid.

Yeah. Five times as much as what she asked.

Dude, I just couldn't believe it. So I print out pictures all the time and I use my, the printer behind me here. I'm not going, I'm not going to do it anymore. They're cheap. You can get, you can get, I think, five by seven prints for a little under a buck.

Right?

And I was like, the thing is, I was ready. I was okay, I don't care. I was ready to spend $50 for this. I don't care. $8. So my resource, Walmart photo printing services.

Good job, dad.

The one thing that I can say at Walmart that was made in America.

My resource. Maybe a lot of people know about this canva. I've been exploring canva.com, but for. I didn't realize that it had presentations, that you could build presentations there with lots of templates, animations. There's tons of videos on YouTube. I'm exploring this for some YouTube stuff that I want to do. I'm not that great. I'm so horrible at anything that's graphical. We'll see how I'd make out, but at least it makes someone who's bad at this. Maybe I can. Maybe it can make me look good. So I'm having fun with exploring canva this week and doing my presentation for YouTube.

I like canva. I know you use version is as powerful as you would need and very nice. Very nice. Yeah, I do like canva.

You might help me. I might show you what I'm doing. You may give me some help.

All right. All right. I have some skill in that world.

All right, let's finish up with our quotes for the week.

Well, I have a two for one quote, actually, and it comes from founding Father Thomas Jefferson. And if you've been a listener to the show and of course, heard that, I'm a fan of Thomas Jefferson. He's my favorite founding father. I like how he thought, and I like his vision, the small government vision for the country that he had. And I like this quote, although it's a little aggressive and not quite as mild as Thomas Jefferson tended to be. But these are two quotes in one, two separate quotes in one. And it actually speaks to the theme of Hadestown, too. A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. And as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical experience has shown that even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted into tyranny. I like that quote. I like it because it's number one. It's powerful. It speaks to the themes of our subject, right, about tyranny and about power and about those that have power, trying to control those that don't, that don't necessarily have the power. And that if we're not careful in time, by slow operations, power can be perverted into tyranny.

Yeah, it's really amazing to me, these founding fathers from 200 plus years ago, just the insight into something like this, the forms of government in our world, we can get information amazingly fast. How they knew about these things from the books that they read. But to know of all the different forms of government and the fact that they can get perverted, and the way that they put together our government, all the checks and balances and all the things that they did, it's fascinating to me. It seems to me how the foresight and just intelligence that they had and so many the founding fathers that put it all together. That's a great quote, Joe.

So when this show comes out, we've just celebrated 4 July yesterday, and I am so glad, despite leadership issues, current leadership, current former leadership, the direction we're headed, the economic issues that we're having, I am so glad that I'm a citizen of the United States of America.

Yep. It's a great experiment, as they say. Absolutely. Me too. I'll finish up. Yeah. And that was a theme that I didn't really get into, but Hades and his power and control over the people was a big theme in that show. The meanest dog you'll ever meet, he ain't the hound dog in the street. He bares some teeth and tears some skin. But brotherhood, that's the worst of him. The dog you really gotta dread is the one that howls inside your head. It's him whose howling drives men mad and a mind to its undoing. Another quote from Hermes in Hadestown.

Kurt, I have to see this show.

Have I inspired you?

The music, I'm sure I can. I don't know if it's only playing if it's only playing on Broadway, but it's on tour.

You can see.

Find an off Broadway production of it on some. Something on tour. I would like to do that.

Yeah, the tour is good. We've actually. The first time I saw it was on tour. And so if you do let him know I sent you, I'll tell him.

Yeah. Hey, Kurt told me to.

I've been there enough, told me to come.

I will definitely see this. This is there. You've been to a lot of shows, and there's been a lot of times that you've described the shows that you've been to. And some of them I said, yeah, that sounds cool. That sounds neat, Kurt, I really want to see this one.

All right.

Yeah.

Thanks, Joe. Thanks for all this conversation. I really appreciate your.

This was a good show, man. This was a really good show. I had the themes of this. The themes of this, of this production, meaning Hadestown, are spot on. The stuff we've talked about. Right. The stuff we explore. So really nice stuff. Thanks for bringing this up. I wasn't sure where you were going to go when we're going to talk about a Broadway play, but wow, dude, this was spot on. Yeah. So as we wrap up, our website is dudes in progress.com. dudes in progress.com. and if you want to reach out to us for any reason, if you want to talk about the show, comment about the show, maybe explore our coaching services, maybe you have a theme or a subject for the show that you want to talk about. We might even have you have a guest as a guest. We've had a few guests from our listenership now, and we might invite you to be a guest if you want to reach out to us. Dudes in progress.com. dudes in progress.com. and again, our website is dudes in progress.com. great show, Kurt. I appreciate you bringing this one to the table. As we go into this holiday weekend or as we've wrapped up the 4 July and heading into Saturday and Sunday, there's a lot of stuff in my life that I'm going to take some downtime this weekend to make progress on. Physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. There's some real planning I'd like to do to make progress, because progress. You don't want to. You don't want to. You don't want to be perfect, right? You just want to make progress. What is it that. That we've said before that we've heard before that. That perfection. Perfect is the enemy of great. So let's just make progress, because progress is better than perfection. We got to keep moving forward.

Yeah, Joe, have a great holiday. I got five days off, too. And happy July 4. And to our good friend Kevin Curtis Allen across the pond, happy treason day from your ungrateful colonists.

We're just gonna leave it at that. Dude, that was awesome.