Advisory Opinions - Ben Folds Talks Creativity

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

For today’s episode, Sarah is joined by special guest Ben Folds, storied American singer-songwriter, musician, and podcaster. They discuss how failure is baked into doing science, how Folds’ song about the Mueller investigation is the perfect place to start for the law-curious, and the song-writing process. Show Notes: -Mister Peepers by Ben Folds -Still Fighting It by Ben Folds -A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons by Ben Folds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger. And this might be our most unique podcast, Sarah. It just might be. Now, full disclosure, I was in Northern California and could not join this interview, which I'm so upset about because it is with, drum roll please, Sarah, who is it with?

It's with Ben Foltz, you know, of Ben Foltz 5 and the like rock star Ben Foltz. Yeah. So this is the value we deliver to you here on the Advisory Opinions Podcast. We're going to deliver to you astrophysicists who explain to us the possibility of alien visitation to the solar system. We're going to deliver to you Olympic curling coaches. We're going to deliver to you rock stars or rock star singular. uh rock stars or rock star singular so how'd the conversation go and then we'll we'll roll right into it but i i i didn't get to listen how was it so first of all ben what is it now two

years ago wrote an awesome autobiography memoir type thing called uh a dream of lightning bugs and he has a new podcast called Lightning Bugs. So A, you should check out his podcast because it's very cool. It's sort of like our August, but like his whole podcast. So he's talking to people from music, science, like everything in between to talk about creativity and what that means in their area. And what their area says about what is creativity. So super cool. And so we decided to import a

little of that conversation into AO and about the law and what writing means and how you start thinking about your brief or presenting an oral argument to the judge. And he wrote this super neato song. It's, you know, it's my second favorite Ben Fold song about Rod Rosenstein and the whole Russia investigation. And so I wanted to talk to him about what that process was. I mean, he doesn't know anything about Rod or DOJ or what was going on in the Russia investigation. And yet he wrote this song and the lyrics were so fricking impressive and cool and neat. And, um, I will admit that we, when it came out, it was commissioned by the Washington post. And when it came out, um,

I sat in the press room with all of our beat reporters who worked down the hall from me. And we just sat there and listened to it and couldn't believe that a rock star wrote a song about our lives, what we did every day. And it's not even a close call, coolest moment of my life. Actually actually coolest, meaning like I felt the coolest, you know? That's fantastic. All right. Well, without further ado, let's roll with it. Joining us now is Ben Folds. That's right. The Ben Folds. Guys, his book, A Dream About Lightning Bugs, is... I'm not that into autobiographies because how well does someone really know themselves? Everyone's the good guy in their own story. None of that is true for this book. Ben Folds is not

a guy who is a rock star. He is a polymath who happened to find himself a rock star. And it makes the book incredible and so much humility. And as an, I don't know if it's fair to call it an offshoot, he has a new podcast, Lightning Bugs, Conversations with Ben Folds. And it's all about creativity, which is a little bit what we're going to talk about today. So, Ben, what epiphanies have you had about creativity? Let's just start there. Wow. Drop some knowledge on us. Yeah, drop some wisdom.

Get ready. Brace yourselves, people. You're about to learn something. That's right. No, I think it's, I really love, and I quote this all the time, even though I'm not sure exactly, I paraphrase this all the time, which is you never learn to write a book, just the one that you're on. And I think that's what, I think it's what happens with creativity. I think you make something and at some point you feel like you know something about making things, about creating something. Then once that's finished, you're back in the dark again.

So I think maybe it should be simultaneously inspiring and depressing to know that everyone who makes things goes through that. So at the point where you're sitting in dark, you're going to do something and you will have something at the end of it. But at this moment, you have nothing. And that's all we know. Something I love about your podcast. And by the way, I mean, to say that you're interviewing people widely, the guy who wrote Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, a particular favorite in my household, a woman who uses music therapy to help Gabby Giffords talk again, the guy who wrote the music for Pixar's Soul, one of the best movies I think of the last year, maybe the best. So something that's interesting that you've talked about is

how much creativity there is in science, and that actually we should all think of ourselves a little like scientists when it comes to creativity, which I think is neat because science is about failure. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little about the failure of creativity. Don't you love that too? I think that's why something about proper creative science is kind of melancholy and sad. And like, you just think lonely scientist chasing down this idea and this theory. And then the great accomplishment becomes disproving your own theory. At the end of the day, it's like, I've done it. I get my name on nothing, but now no one else has to go down this road

is, uh, is really taking one for the team. I have to say. But yeah, I love talking to the scientists. You know, one of them is not released yet. One of the podcasts is not released yet with Dan Levitin. And I was asking him about it. He is a scientist and a musician. He wrote, This Is Your Brain On Music. Neurologist, really, really interesting thinker. And I asked him about creativity and

science like you just did me and he said well you know there there are two sort of branches of it there are people who are in science because they basically are just following the the foot you know they're following the mold they're they're doing what they're told and then there are those who are having to you know create, problem solve, improvise. All these things are creative. And yeah, I mean, you got to be creative if you're going to move forward in anything. So I've been listening to, I was just listening to another podcast with Angela Duckworth, who wrote Grit, and she was talking to the guy who wrote Freakonomics. It's this great little conversation.

And they were sort of having this back and forth about whether grit is good or, in fact, people should quit more. And that quitting is also an outlet for creativity. And I'm wondering which side of that you fall on. Do people need to have more grit or should we, in fact be encouraging like kids, for instance, to quit things more? I'm on team, no team these days about any of those things. I think incremental, frustrating moment by moment, inch by inch, re-evaluating at every moment is the only way to get through. You know, it's good to think about those things like, ah, one needs grit and ah, one needs to quit. And, you know, at two o'clock, one may be true.

And at two oh three, the other may be true. And that's where we have to use our judgment and improvise. But I really do, you know, like when it comes to creativity, one of the things I think is unimpeachable about it, where maybe grit and quit may have, you know, may be temporary. Being able to improvise and create a solution for any moment is the way. So that brings us a little to one of your songs that you know I'm obsessed with. Although actually, it's not even my favorite song. We'll get to the other one later. About half of our listeners are lawyers.

The other are law interested. They're dabbling. They're law curious a little. And you wrote this song during the Mueller investigation. Uh, and it's a, it's a law song. It just is. And I want to read some lyrics. People need to go listen to this song.

It's called Mr. Peepers. Just go find it on Spotify or YouTube or anything else. Uh, it actually is just a beautiful song, both the lyrics and the music. Um, but here's, uh, the chorus. I will not sing it. Do you want to sing it? No, hell no. See, I like the way you turn that around. Okay, I'm not going to mess with you. Come on. All right. So it's about Rod Rosenstein. So they call him Mr. Peepers as the thugs all smash his glasses, going full Lord of the Flies, burning this island down to ashes.

What's the rule of law if we can't agree on what a fact is? There ain't nothing here to see, folks. Move along. Move along. It's incredible, I think, because you're capturing something really fundamental about the law and the rule of law. You're weaving in Lord of the Flies and the glasses. And I'm wondering, I mean, this was an incredible creative process, but it also brought in a whole lot of different genres, right? We have literature, we have law, we have history, we have patriotism in a lot of ways.

And so I'm curious, like, walk us through what that creative process was like for you. It was pretty crazy. I'm not a topical. Generally, I like when I'm writing to remain. I have a specific feeling of an idea that a character might, you know, a space, a character might inhabit. you know, a space of character might inhabit. And, um, I think I can, I can kind of like look back and, and because I've written songs for a long time and, and speak this way, but I'm sort of allergic to, to it, uh, as well. Like people say, I do this and I do that. I'm just kind of going by what seems to be my pattern over the years when I'm

writing, I'm just writing, you know, and, uh, and I go to much more sort of childlike space. So just bear that in mind as I break my own songs down. That's not the way you think when you're writing the song. This is what you think after. So with that, yeah, I usually write around a character. In this case, I had a very specific character and a very specific assignment from Washington post, which was, you know, it's like reportage on Rod Rosenstein at a moment where a month before that I had never heard of Rod Rosenstein. And suddenly he's starting to, uh, he started, I guess he's on tour and he's getting a hit song.

He's getting famous. He was breaking. Cause we know that's what he always wanted to do was get super famous. Yeah. Um, so what I had to do was research and my research was in the form of watching everything. Mostly I looked at his speeches, which were graduation speeches, interviews, things he said. I could get news pieces on his cases. I could call up the Washington Post and say, what was his time like in Baltimore?

And what's this case here? And where does he fall here? To try to get an idea of his character. Because I'm getting ready to write a song about his character nothing else all that other stuff is because of him the patriotism is i mean not that i'm not patriotic at all but it's because of him uh like like all those the the uh what a fact is rule of law he doesn't talk for three minutes in public without talking about the rule of law and the and and and even like the historic uh not just talking about 200 years history but back to greek history importance of that as a bedrock he was swimming in an ocean which was showbiz and i

joked about him being on tour and being famous. But how do you really speak to an audience and state your case or state a case or try to sit on the bedrock of rule of law when anything goes, when it's fake wrestling? How does one do that? So that was what I decided was the sadness in the song, was that you train your whole life for this moment. Now, go on stage multiple times, and you're acting with people who are actors, and you're just telling your truth. Here are the facts.

Those are the facts at this moment. But like, you know, in the House Intelligence Committee, they were allowed to go all fake wrestling on him. Like they were allowed to say things that no one would be able to say in a real court of law. If you if you swore an oath, you couldn't say those things. And they can they can frame it like that all they want to. And they know damn well he's bound by his profession. And not many people are as honorably bound to their profession as a good lawyer. So this is where I was coming from when I wrote it. I have some lamentable images that I felt were like collateral damage images. For instance, I wanted to use the Lord of Flies

because Mr. Peepers, glasses, bullies. But Rod Rosenstein did not strike me as the guy that necessarily gets bullied. But I saw him as representing a whole world of bureaucrats who you can say anything about them you want. You can get your own YouTube channel and say, the world is going to the bureaucrats are taking over all you want to. And the bureaucrats have to just sit and work. They're busy. They're busy making your roads work, getting the school policies sorted. They're busy doing things.

They're not in theater. They don't have a YouTube channel. So I felt like, you know, people need to take up. That's why the beginning says, God bless the bureaucrat and the lawyer too, because people always say in folk songs, God bless the farmers and people. And yes, God bless them all. But I wanted to say that because no one ever says that. God bless them all. But I wanted to say that because no one ever says that. I'm wondering, again, I just find the lyrics to this song so meaningful and really beautiful. The institution standing that we tried our best to trash it.

Aren't we all the keepers of this fragile young republic? And when all those Mr. Peepers fall, Lord help us all. How many drafts do you go through in writing a song like this? When you said those words, I remembered stacks of note cards that I had on my piano while I was writing that. Wow. on a lot of things because you know we're we're sort of when you're writing you can you can easily be impressed or seduced by something that sounds good you know something that that sounds wise or that sounds like a sonorous uh uh you know uh uh alliteration or something about it that feels or sounds good so that one i struggled with because because I wanted the tone to be just about, almost patriotic, like almost, but just still realism-oriented.

And a lot of times I think to do these things by awkward syllables. So I remember playing with slightly awkward syllables on the music so that it remained honest the way that we speak. We don't speak like we're speaking from a script. You know, we speak like I'm speaking now, which is what, you know, things fall on awkward beats. And if you want to make sure it feels real, I think sometimes it's good to slightly sabotage. So I remember having note card after note card where I was just changing ifs, ands, and buts all in it and trying to match the tone of it. That's the way I build the beat. So what's sort of weird about that to me, I guess, is like, okay, Ben Folds in the 90s,

I understand doing that. You're trying to make it. You're striving, man. You want to be what ends up being Ben Folds. But the Washington Post comes to you and asks for a song. I don't know. Can't you just phone that one in? It sounds like you put a lot of work into this. Were you just inspired or do you just put that much work into everything? I think I end up putting that much work into everything and anything that I do, unless I quit part of the way through. I mean, that can happen. My manager might have gotten a phone call from me three weeks in or something just saying, it's not something. I chased it down.

I've been researching Rosenstein, looks like a douche. I don't feel like doing it. I could have easily done that, but I got interested. And that is, I think, one of the main things I think I probably talked about too much in my book was just interest and following interest. It's like, I had to sit and live with this character. And I did enjoy learning something about his trajectory. And even when he would quote his wife and things that she said about her frustration of him, if he was in a private sector, would have been making a lot more dough at the time. And that's good for the family and everyone. They wouldn't have to live. I don't know if they like living in Baltimore or not. We didn't look at that, but, you know, certainly it's not always best for their life.

And so I just got interested the way you get interested in the story, you know. That's funny. I've been having this conversation with another new mom. Again, it's a little back to grit. And it's this idea of, are successful people pushing through hard work because that's who they are? Or actually, do they just find a lot of joy in the hard work? And so it's not unpleasant. That is for them part of the success, if that makes sense. I'm wondering which category you think you fall into. Well, I fall into both throughout every process. Because what happens is you have a moment of inspiration and you can see it, sort of. You can see something that you're working on being completed.

If you were building a house, it would certainly be like that. That's why I like watching the show Grand Designs. It's one of the only shows that we watch. It's just like, they just build houses. And it's funny because every time they start, they're so excited and they're in the middle of it. It's raining on their work and their contractors quit and it cost five times as much as I thought. And it's just the way life is. And so at that time, you're like, I quit. But something inside you will probably remember the inspiration that was. When I'm writing a song, at some point, I get moved by it.

I get some chills about it or something happens, but then that goes away and I've learned it. It ain't coming back. Probably now I have to like follow the scripture. Like I just have to go back to, to what the ancient said, you know, it's like the ancient version of me who said, there's the answer at the end of that house. And I just have to follow it until the light comes back out again. And so I think both happens. If you're someone that's just going to quit because you wake up in the morning and don't feel like it anymore, then you're probably in the wrong business. But I would equally be very suspicious if you wake up every morning high on your creative Jesus every

day and you're like, it's great. Everything I do is wonderful. At some point, you're going to be like, I don't trust someone making something that doesn't wake up every once in a while and say, oh God, this song, the things I do are terrible. I'm a fake. I should quit. Make myself sick. But you have to work through those things. You have to remember, well, that guy yesterday that was me was really pretty excited about this. It must be something there. And also that leads to another thing, which is when you are making decisions based on how terrible or great you feel about what you're doing, you're putting hard, solid bricks into the structure. So you better make sure that you're

not mentally ill at that point. You can't have a malady of your thinking at that point. You need to then tend to your, your, uh, you need to tend to yourself for a moment and make sure that you're not, you know, that you've rested, that you're okay at some point you need to do that because you don't want to go in working on something and sending it in a direction that wasn't right. And that doesn't mean, mentally it's the wrong word to have used, but it's like you don't want to be of impaired judgment. So you can be terribly sad, but know to use it. I've been writing for my career for about 20 years, speech writing, especially this has been true for me. Whatever the line that I am most attached to is the one that needs to go. The line

that I think is the very best one when I write it, I'm like, oh, nailed it, Sarah. That's right. High five yourself. That's right. And it's weird because it doesn't matter how many times, how many different speeches, like each time this will happen, I'll get to the end. I'll love that line. And by the time you get through all the editing and you really get to where you need to be, that line's got to go every time. And I'm, do you know when you've hit it or are you like me, where it's like, turns out, no, you didn didn't hit it i think that's normal and and and and and wise and shows discipline on your part what are the um is anything that those lines end up having in common like their fatal flaws that they sound super good and and and and you imagine

them being walt whitman what's that yeah they're all clever that's yeah so I think they're clever at the time and clever is actually usually a not helpful for an audience if that makes sense oh it does yeah yeah people absolutely so so they they're a little egotistical then those lines are a little more ego basis like you kind of imagine you imagine the applause there and stuff people yeah and it being quoted and stuff. Yeah. I'm showing off that I'm like witty or smart or erudite or something. Right. Like, and yeah. I've never thought about that. Yeah. That's, I think that's, uh, I think that's, that's smart. Now I would, um, I, maybe I would amend that just a little bit. And a little bit so it doesn't become a rule, which is one of the things that I would say you've done by eliminating it is you have acknowledged the importance of the overall piece over any one little moment of it.

over any one little moment of it. So as you've hit this point of maturity where the rubber's meeting the road and you realize this is going to come out of someone's mouth and hit the audience, I wouldn't say we panic, but suddenly we realize we're arrested with a little bit of apprehension and fear because it needs to work, I guess.

And it's like, oh shit, I have to survive here. And then when you look at it, you realize there's a log jam in a couple of places. And that line that you have put in there has not allowed you to do other things. It's hamstrung you. And so by losing that, the maturity of sacrificing that proves to me that you want nothing more now than to serve the speech rather than the speech serve you. And the reason I go through all that is because sometimes it was a great line. Maybe you can put it back in. But the willingness to take it out is almost like a maturity. It's like you have now grown up in the speech. We don't learn to write books. We learn to write the ones we're on. And you are now learning with each of these speeches how to write that speech. But if you took away from it as a rule, I always lose my favorite line,

that might be a bit much, you know, uh, but you also learn something about yourself because you learn what those lines have in common. And I would say I suffer from that too. Like I, you know, I would love to have a good quotable line or a moment that's like, you know, there's musical temptation all over the place. Like I could show this off. I could show this court off. I can do these things. And as you get to the end of it, you go, this has to work. And if you're not willing to take out that egotistical thing, because you think it's a weight bearing column, the only way to know if it's a weight bearing column is to take it out and see if it falls or call structural engineer. Oh man. That's so true that the,

the project has to be bigger than any one piece of it. I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's exactly what it turns out. Yeah. You have to grow it. When you're building it, you need some of these little, like it was load bearing when I started.

Yeah. Then when I actually finished the Coliseum, I didn't need that initial scaffolding anymore. Yeah, yeah. That ended up being like your Costco shit for the end times. That's right. That's right. Okay.

You said something in one of your podcasts that has been like, it's been rolling around in my head. Simple and easy are opposites. You said it with Mo Willems, the author of all the best children's books right now. All the best. He's so good. And I thought, wow, I've never heard it put that way. I think that is absolutely true in law. When you're making an oral argument. You have to make it simple. And that's the hardest part is to explain these complicated legal concepts in a way

that you don't have to be a lawyer to understand them. That's what the best lawyers are doing, even with other lawyers. And I thought- We can see people doing that badly, badly over and over again on Twitter. You're given a certain number of characters and you're told, and you think you can simplify it and that's supposed to be easy. And you just kind of want to go, God, there needs to be Twitter school. You need to learn how to speak before you start putting it through that cheese grater. Because if you say, you know, Sarah wears a Nike baseball cap, That's all you need to know. That's it.

That's all you need to know. All right. Is that true in music as well? Simple and easy or opposite? It is a lot of times. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is, um, well,, you don't want to conflate the two because it's very, very difficult and complex to whittle something down to what I would call specific, unambiguous poetry. I mean, it's like by being poetic, you're creating a very complex zip file. You want someone to be able to unzip that and not figure out how they sent all that information through the internet. You want to be able to pack it so tightly with one line that people will have the internal instructions to unpack it by way of association, tone, imagery, cadence, all those things. And to make a short message that is simple, carry that kind of zip file information is very complicated. And it's an intense algorithm which has to be addressed every single time

you try to speak simply or to present a simple oral argument or to take a song and do it in three chords. To make a song the truth in three chords is not a simple feat. And if anyone could do it, everyone would be doing it. But the simple songs, John Lennon's imagine or something, you know, they last for years and years and years and it's just three chords. And how was that arrived at? He tore a lot of hair out to arrive at that. Man, uh, for me, whenever I think of that, I think Galileo and yet it moves. It's four words and it encompasses like all of our scientific history of the world.

God, that is so great, isn't it? All right. I said that Mr. Peepers was my second favorite song. We're going to end on my favorite song. That is still fighting it.

It is my favorite song because at different points in my life, it has meant different things to me. And I think that's the best kind of song. Um, you know, you hear it first when you're a teenager and everybody knows it sucks to grow up. to grow up. Yeah. Yeah. You're totally getting me, my teenage angst. And when I found out that we were having a son, it was the first song that came on like Spotify. And I just cried. Good morning, son. I am a bird. I just was like bawling because I thought, oh my God, I am a bird. I just was like bawling because I thought, oh my God, my life is about to change. And it was a totally, it was such a different song. So my question to you is, for those who don't know, it's the opening. Good morning, son. I am a bird wearing a brown polyester shirt. You want a Coke, maybe some fries, the roast beef combos only $9.95 it's okay you don't have to pay I've got

all the change that's actually the line that I started crying on um but here's my question are you at Arby's yeah yeah where is it that much well you know I tried to well you can I mean look we could justify that line in a lot of different ways. I was in Australia when I wrote it. I don't know what the exchange rate was at the moment. Hey, could you send over about $9.95 right now in US currency? Because I think I got to buy an Arby's. I'm going to invest in some Arby's. You know, it's like that is a case of going with the subconscious in the weirdest way. Most of the time, I try to stay more in control of my imagery, but I couldn't even express it. I had this little, you know, we had twins, and there's this little boy, and he's not a person really yet. I mean, he's like a fetus living out in the world. It's like, he's just still just can't express himself, but you can see his eyes and stuff. What's he looking at? What's he thinking?

How much sense does it make? They know that, you know, he knows he's dependent in all ways, but doesn't know what it's like to not be dependent. And these images just came out and they were weird. I mean, that's just, that's weird stuff. And I did, I did, you know, really consider writing proper lyrics there, but they kept working for me. You know, like, like I could have said all, but you got to watch when you start preaching to people and you get very specific. Again, we talk about the, the, you know, sort of specific ambiguity of poetry and, um, that's just downright goofy. And I love that it, uh, that it, it got to you in some way because I,

I couldn't, I couldn't explain it. They're, they're, they're almost like outlier lines and in my music. And I don't normally just let something're almost like outlier lines in my music. And I don't normally just let something stick like that, which is like another thing, which is like this condition that I aspire to in a song, which is to have a Wichita lineman moment. Now you can't make those, you can't engineer those,

but be open to them and kids, law kids, you don't know the song, go back and listen. The Glen Campbell version is absolutely beautiful. And it's a Jimmy Webb song. And you just do not know why you're moved in the middle. The imagery is a guy, Wichita, he's out in the middle of nowhere. He's climbing up poles on the highway, much like Dick Cheney did back in the day. And he's just working. And I guess he misses his wife. But we don't really get to that until the middle end just comes out in one line. All of the random crap that got you there and the beauty of getting there is the way life is. And so if you start off a song and you go, one day you're going to have a child and he's going to come out and look at you like, yeah.

I mean, what could be said that's specific that's not going to put people off? The worst thing to do when you're a new parent is to have to hear from old parents anyway. They start telling you all the wrong stuff. You're going to need to do this and this, and that's a sign of this. You want to have this piece of equipment and you don't want to hear from parents. So I just got weird on that first verse. I'm glad it worked. No, it did. For me, it was the imagery of you've got this, as you said, like this like thing that barely exists. And you're pulling up into the drive-thru because you're like, I literally don't know what to do with this creature. And it's like you're with one of your buddies because it's like a human. So you're trying to like talk to them. And you're like, yeah, let's get the fries. Yeah, we'll get the roast beef.. Yeah, definitely roast beef combo. And then you're expecting your buddy to offer to pay because that's what people do when you pull up to the drive-thru.

And then you've got to keep talking to this little baby. And you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's fine. It's fine. I got this one. You'll get next. It's good. And even later on, you say, in 20 years from now, maybe we'll both sit down and have a few beers

and I can tell you about today. And that ended up being after 12 years. But you know who can, I'm joking. I'm joking. Yeah. It was after eight years. We sat down. Cracked open six packs. He had three. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. We split it. That's good. Good. No, that's really cool. I'm glad you thought about it like that. And that also suggests, you know, right after the drama of childbirth and having gone through all the swings and trials and tribulations of nine months, now you haven't slept in three days might be the best time to make someone cry with a verse. I think just about anything. I mean, I think just about anything.

I mean, just the joy of getting three hours of sleep every once in a while is enough to make you cry. I mean, you had twins, although I was a COVID birth and they didn't have a nursery. So there was no one took the baby. You were just with the baby. Oh, my. Yeah. You went right down to the river, popped it out of the river. Ben, I can't thank you enough for your time today.

This is an amazingly cool conversation about creativity. I think lawyers don't think enough about their jobs on the creative side. It's an incredibly creative focused job if I think you're doing it in a joyful way, in a happy way. All you're doing is making creative arguments on behalf of your client. Well, it's problem solving. Yeah.

It's improvising. It's creative expression. Even if you're not presenting arguments like they do on television in front of the jury, like it's one of those old movies. No matter what, you're still navigating unknown territory and you're using old tools. Oh, there's an old Napoleonic law. I think I'll be able to take that child right out of that state

and put them in this state. There's got to be, you know. But I bowed. I really, hats off to good lawyers like anything else. I bowed. I really, I hats off to, to, to good lawyers, like anything else. Um, you know, there are good and honorable, uh, people in each profession. And I always feel like people give lawyers a little too much shit. I think, uh, uh, one of my best friends is a, uh, family lawyer and, um, does so many good things for she, she changes's lives and so i'm down boy that is true and shout out to the family lawyers that is such a great point i mean we we uh we herald and

celebrate the rod rosensteins and the uh supreme court advocates and in truth uh it's family lawyers it's it's those folks um who who are making that daily difference and a huge life-changing difference in people's lives a lot of the time. So great. And the crusher, the guy that's on the billboard. It's like a personal injury lawyer. Hats off to those guys. They're just so fun. Well, they do make some great TV ads for us. Yep. All right.

And that has been Ben Folds. You got to check out his podcast, Lightning Bugs, Conversations with Ben Folds. And guys, you're going to love the book. Seriously. It's one of those great autobiographies. It's going to take you on

a bit of a surprise journey. Thank you. Good to talk to you. Thanks for having me. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos. She'll love looking back on your childhood memories and seeing what you're up to today. Even better, with unlimited storage and an easy-to-use app, you can keep updating mom's frame with new photos. So it's the gift that keeps on

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