On this week's episode, the boys discuss the quarantine of the podcast's newest member, Gerald, as well as a bourbon pairing with Four Roses and American Rebel Robusto. They also discuss Gerald's recent book purchase, and Gerald's new book obsession.
00:00:00.000Hey, before you enjoy this installment of Ash Wednesday—or you may not enjoy it, frankly, I don't care—this is actually the last installment of Ash Wednesday that you'll see here on the YouTube, because usually it's behind the paywall for Mug Club members, and this is Mug Club Quarantine Month, so sign up at lidoofcreditor.com slash mugclub if you want these shows that you've been enjoying this month every day.
00:00:21.000Well, you get to continue enjoying them every day.
00:00:23.000Otherwise, you'll still get to We've got a clip here and there.
00:00:26.000So ladderwithcredit.com slash Mug Club, enter in the promo code QUARANTINE, you'll get $30 off.
00:00:31.000We hope that we've been here for you during this quarantine.
00:00:35.000And as we move forward, after all of this is said and done, we hope that you join us.
00:03:27.000One thing that I've really picked up on is how well paced it is.
00:03:30.000A lot of times when you go back to a lot of classics you sort of They don't have the same kind of end on a question kind of chapter structure and that kind of thing, but it's so well-structured and so well-written.
00:03:43.000It's written from all these different perspectives, and it's basically a bunch of journals.
00:03:48.000It's written with the structure of being a collection of journals at the end of this kind of saga that happens.
00:04:09.000Yeah, but this one, tone-wise, I've also been really struck by how, really, how Christian the book is.
00:04:16.000I hadn't really thought about it before.
00:04:18.000It was actually recommended by Doug TenNapel, a friend of Mr. Garrett's here, and he had told me that that just really Yeah, I don't want to sort of, I mean obviously it's...
00:04:41.000You know, this reminds me of something people often talk about.
00:04:44.000We may have talked about this a little bit here on the show, I think we have, which is, you know, people would criticize the creator of the Doom video game series to say, oh, it's celebrating demonology and Satan, etc.
00:04:56.000But the guy who actually created it was like, um, have you played the game?
00:05:23.000I think whether it's reading or video games or any type of media, you have to expose children in an appropriate way and in an appropriate context.
00:05:32.000So, I definitely understand that point.
00:05:34.000But, again, in terms of pro or anti-demon, I think both Dracula and Doom fall clearly on the anti-demon side.
00:05:52.000So the last book that I finished was 21 Rules for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari.
00:06:00.000He has three books that deal kind of with the beginning of humanity.
00:06:04.000It's called Sapiens, and then he has a couple other books as well, but this one talks about a lot of really important things that are affecting the world right now and have been affecting us recently.
00:06:14.000Including the rise of biotechnology and AI, and kind of how is the world going to deal with it?
00:06:19.000And I really found it to be not just, you know, your page turner is the imagery, like every page is a new idea.
00:06:25.000Paragraph to paragraph is new and interesting ideas about how we will think about the time in which we currently live.
00:06:32.000Because people will say, oh, you know, you ask a question, oh, how many years from now will it be until a vehicle is deciding whether or not to kill a human being or not?
00:06:39.000People will say, oh, one year, five years, ten years.
00:06:47.000A vehicle chose to kill its own occupant rather than go on a sidewalk to avoid a collision where it would have hit some other people.
00:06:53.000And so we're already in this world, and it's talking about, you know, what are we going to do when we have a class of individuals who are not trainable to keep up with the changes in technology, and how will we deal with that?
00:08:18.000So, is there any counterpoints in there?
00:08:19.000Are there like any moments where like, yeah, you know, socialism is great, but only if you were at the very top of the food chain.
00:08:26.000Well, it doesn't just make the case that socialism is bad.
00:08:31.000It talks to you about what socialism does and in some ways lets you go, okay, do I want that or do I not want that?
00:08:37.000But then it says, well, these are the consequences of doing that.
00:08:40.000And you do walk away knowing, okay, well, if socialism happens, I need to be at the top.
00:08:47.000It's like a multi-level marketing scheme is good as long as you're at the top, you're fine.
00:08:51.000If you're somebody else down on one of those leg things that they talk about, it sucks.
00:08:54.000And then the next one, so it kind of follows right in this one, is called Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder, which is a new edition for the 21st century, so there's some updating to it.
00:09:04.000And it's great, like fundamental economic principles, but also talking about some of the current things that we've seen.
00:09:10.000So I'm in a financial kick right now for some reason.
00:09:13.000George Gilder also has a great book called Life After Google.
00:09:48.000He predicts that companies will move away from the free service but paid advertising model, so like interruption ads, or moving more towards subscription services, which is basically what Mug Club is.
00:10:13.000I've got to say this because our conversations off-air have been a lot about the forgotten depression.
00:10:20.000It's really funny because I'm scrolling back through and I think about a year and a half ago I read a book by James Grant called The Forgotten Depression all about 1921 and what happened and what didn't happen.
00:10:28.000Did you realize it was in that moment that Audie Wade was just cribbing that book and having conversations?
00:13:26.000It's going to challenge your beliefs, especially a Christian, in our interpretation of where In our understanding and belief about where humanity came from.
00:13:37.000I have the book, I haven't read it yet though.
00:13:40.000There are a lot of things in there where I am equally, so every morning I'd read first websites that are of beliefs that typically are the ones I don't hold.
00:13:52.000And I start from there and then I go to the other side.
00:14:17.000I'm right there, just, you know, buckets of sodium.
00:14:22.000I literally go get a pretzel from down the street at a cart and I eat the pretzel and I lick the salt off and then I read CNN.
00:14:28.000So reading Sapiens was in a similar way because there are some very interesting sociological points but also just from a biological standpoint and going through what I consider to be easy to read, straightforward, full of citation, Position on the history of sapiens, of homo sapiens and the other types of human life.
00:16:20.000Thank you for that recommendation, Edward Thorpe.
00:16:23.000When you mentioned earlier that you had read Lord of the Rings multiple times, are there, I want you guys to think and I'll give you mine, books that you've read multiple times?
00:16:31.000And I will tell you one of the books that I've read multiple, multiple, multiple times is Ender's Game.
00:16:36.000So I've read almost every book in the entire series and I've read Ender's Game now north of 26 times.
00:17:56.000Every sentence you go, wow, I never thought about anything that way.
00:17:59.000And then you go back to it later and you don't remember any of it because everything was so brilliant that it basically just washes over you and you forget all about it.
00:18:07.000So it's the sort of thing that you have to reread.
00:18:09.000I've found that with Chesterton a lot.
00:18:10.000But yeah, I'm pretty much always reading that one or always listening to it.
00:18:18.000All right, so we do have another topic, so we're gonna move on to that one.
00:18:22.000And our next topic is, if you could only listen to two albums for the rest of your very short coronavirus life, what would those two albums be?
00:19:06.000Coldplay is like, you know, I got my 80s stuff, which for some reason I love, even though I didn't love it when I was, you know, in the 80s.
00:19:13.000I went back and started liking it, so it's kind of funny.
00:19:25.000Ladies and gentlemen, in an effort to contain the Coldplay virus, I will be locking the doors and burning this entire studio to the ground.
00:21:47.000Gerald, every time I think there's no way that Gerald can become more racist, then all of a sudden I imagine that... There's a 25% chance!
00:21:56.000I just imagine that little music video where... I mean, I can't even remember what the song is now, but I think it's Lil Jon.
00:22:03.000Where there's a dancing Asian guy and he's humping the air so hard he slams through the ground and the whole video is like people dancing even more and slamming through more floors of this apartment building down and down and down and down and that's you.
00:22:48.000And here's the thing that came to my mind when I was thinking about this criteria is There are a whole range of emotions that music helps to either bring you into or to help you out of.
00:23:35.000When I was in college, I worked at a company that was in the firearms industry, and I had a gentleman who I worked for in a particular department who told me he had been given... It's very vague, all of this.
00:23:46.000A particular company and a gentleman in a particular department.
00:23:50.000I'm just going to let it ride, aren't you?
00:23:51.000I had a lot of respect for him, and I thought he had really good focus at work, etc.
00:23:56.000And I just asked him, I was like, hey, what are you always listening to every day?
00:24:00.000And he said, I'm listening to this one album called December, and it's just instrumental Christmas and hymn music from the winter holidays and Christmas holidays.
00:24:10.000And he's like, here, let me give you a copy.
00:24:13.000And I still have the same copy that he gave me, though I've now downloaded to put it on my phone.
00:24:17.000But whenever I need to crank out work, I put on this instrumental Christmas music all year round, and I just get in the zone.
00:24:25.000Like, if I had a montage, instead of Eye of the Tiger, it would be this December album.
00:24:36.000I used to listen to Coldplay, no lie, counting cash.
00:24:39.000Because I used to run a racetrack up in Ohio, and I would count $20,000 to $30,000, and it would take like seven or eight hours to allocate it to the right places.
00:24:47.000Drug money is what it sounds like, I know.
00:24:48.000But I would listen to Coldplay, and so now when I listen to it, it doesn't distract me at all.
00:24:52.000I can do whatever work or whatever focus that I need to, so that's my version of yours.
00:24:56.000I will say, though, Gerald, as a lawyer, I'm not your lawyer, but I would recommend that you not talk about your money laundering.
00:25:48.000Super excited to hear all the different comments we could have from people, so go ahead and post at S Crowder.
00:25:54.000Tell us about your albums that you're listening to, and if you had only two that you could listen to, go ahead and tell us all here at the show.