An Army of Normal Folks - Chris Ullman: Whistling Happy Birthday To 700 People (Pt 1)

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Chris is a 4-time international whistling champion who’s whistled for Presidents and 60,000 people. But what makes him an Army member is how he whistles happy birthday to 700 people every year!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know, at the typical college graduation, the speaker will at some point say, now go change the world. And I just cringe when I hear that. And it's well intended, but I work in an investment firm, so I'm all about odds. And what are the odds of success? And that's how I advise my clients. If you do X, the odds of success are either high or low and If someone said to me go change the world the odds of success are

very infinitesimal infinitesimal But if they said go touch the heart or the life of the person sitting next to you or down the hall The odds of success are a hundred percent, or down the hall, the odds of success are 100%. So I'm going with the odds. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur,

and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part unintentionally led to an Oscar for the film about our team. That movie's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never gonna be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.

That's us. You and me just deciding hey you know what maybe I can help. That's what Chris Ullman, the voice you just heard, has done. Chris is the four-time international whistling champion. Yeah, you heard that right. There is such a thing. And it's gotten him whistling in some places that he could have never imagined, such as the Oval Office and the Tonight Show. But what makes him a member of the Army is how he whistles happy birthday

to over 700 people every single year. I cannot wait for you to meet Chris right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hi, I'm Bob Pipman, Chairman and CEO of iHeart Media. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reach the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chris Ullman, welcome to Memphis. Bill, amazing to be here with you. Oh, amazing to be here with you. We interview a lot of people, but never the international world, whistling four times. Four and four time. Well, hopefully you will recover after this experience.

So can you? Okay, for everybody listening, we have Chris Ullman, who is from Alexandria, Virginia, and he is the four-time international whistling champion. He's a member of the Whistler's Hall of Fame. He's a husband and a father. He has serenaded, and we'll get to these stories, he's serenaded presidents in the Oval Office. He's been on The Tonight Show, The Today Show.

He's performed the National Anthem at several major league and college sporting events. He's performed with 10 symphony orchestras, including the National Symphony Orchestra, and he's whistled in front of 60,000 people before. And maybe more impressive than all of that, he calls 700 people a year and whistles Happy Birthday to them.

And he is the author of Find Your Whistle, Simple Gifts, Touch Hearts, and Change Lives. So while this is going to be fun and we're gonna whistle while we work today, there's a there's a ministry behind Chris's simple talent that we're gonna get into and so thanks for flying down here this morning. Well I am really delighted and excited to talk about whistling. It's a it's a fun activity and happy to share some tunes with people and I'm real excited to be here.

First, whistling, why? Where'd that come from? Tell me about Bub. Bub, all right. So, Bub is my late father. He died around five years ago, and he was a really good whistler. And he wasn't a champion,

meaning he hadn't competed in any competitions, but he had a very sweet and beautiful kind of tone to his whistling. And he specialized in Gilbert and Sullivan songs. So he'd whistle all the time around the house. And there I was five years old and you know I was listening for a few years but not able to do it. And then finally I was able to put the three parts together. Lips, tongue, air. Lips, tongue, air. And if you're a lip whistler as I am versus being a tongue whistler

Which is no lips you'll notice but for a lip whistler you you've got to get your lips into a nice little round hole And then you have to get your tongue in the right position which is on the bottom of your mouth not on the top So the air is traveling over your tongue And then the tongue regulates pitch, you know, high, low, and then air. You have to blow air, but you have to be very gentle about it. So I was thankfully able to take those three variables, kind of mix them up a bit until I got the right combination to make the sound. So that's how I started whistling, and it was pretty anemic at first and no one said I was particularly good for a long time.

Did you just irritate people all the time with your bad whistling as a child? Well thankfully my mother, God bless her, she's going to be 88 soon, she was amazingly tolerant of the whistling. She would have to be. Because my wife does not like whistling very much today. Your wife doesn't like it. That's pretty funny. So I rarely whistle in the house today. So when I'm whistling those happy birthdays, I inevitably go in the basement to whistle them for people,

so she doesn't have to hear it. She's had enough of whistling. It's interesting, I do speeches all over the place and for the last three years Lisa's like I hear you talk enough I'm not going anymore. So I I think I think your wife just is sick of hearing you like my wife sick She's very supportive. She went to many whistling competitions over the years. So there I'm able to whistle So to kind of get out the basic sound and then as with most things in life, it's like, what do you do with it? So my first objective was to just get better, which means develop new techniques, develop my range and my ability to stay in the right key and have good intonation, which is make

sure your pitch is spot on. So the way I did that primarily was through by whistling two hours every day from 13 to 16 years old. You whistled two hours every day. Every day for, I had a paper route and I would whistle the whole time. And again, from a quality standpoint, so my customers would say, heard you coming.

They never said anything about, wow, that was good. But there, so all right, so now I'm actually developing a repertoire, I whistled almost exclusively classical music as a child, so like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Brahms and all that kind of stuff. Da, da, da, da, that's start? Yes, Beethoven's fifth, exactly. And then in college I started whistling in talent shows, at first people were like that's really freaky. We don't want you

And what I've learned through you know 50 years of whistling is that it's very binary There are people who say that is the coolest thing ever like give it to me, baby And then there are other people who like oh get away from me And now thankfully the latter category is is relatively small But you know in my book find your whistle I have these amazing stories of people who like lit up right away when they heard it and And said I want to hear that and tell me your story and then other people went screaming in the other direction and I Could tell you a few of those stories but but then then I graduated from college I moved to Washington DC and I start whistling at open mic nights hang on blues club in

Washington DC for for those I actually had two people asked me this this morning does this guy whistle for a living like no he does not whistle for a living he's a normal dude with a job went to DC and had a life Right. My kids don't think I'm normal, but I'm relatively normal. Yeah. Yes Here's the funniest thing ever is that here I'm whistling I'd won championships and I decided to make a CD So I hired a full symphony orchestra and I record the CD of classical music So I hired a full symphony orchestra and I record the CD of classical music

Then I go to my boss and I say David I am Going to get some attention for this CD. I just want you to know I'm committed to the firm And he very deadpan and he says to me, I'm not worried. We pay you more than you'll ever make whistling. Yeah And so it's you really can't make a lot of money as a whistler. So I've had this wonderful career in communications in Washington, DC. I worked in the White House. I worked on Capitol Hill at an investment firm for 18 years. And I've had this whistling overlay.

So there's like this little parallel life of being a whistler. And then the whistling kind of dips into my day job Over the years and so, you know one time I was just summoned to the Oval Office to whistle for George W Bush with 15 minutes notice. I it's just bizarre. I totally bizarre and So somebody that knew the president said, you know, we got the international whistling champion working in the White House That is exactly what happened. So in Bush goes, bring them out.

That's right. That's exactly what happened. And so I had whistled happy birthday for the president's chief of staff, Andy Card. And then apparently he then told the president, we got this freaky guy who can whistle on the staff. I had never met him before. And then I walk into a staff meeting with Mitch Daniels. You've probably heard of him. He was the president of Purdue University,

the governor of Indiana after the White House. And I walk into the staff meeting and Mitch says, meeting canceled, Ullman, you stay. And that's usually a bad sign when you're a spokesperson. It means you said something stupid to a reporter and you're about to get fired. So I was bracing- You're about to whistle your butt

right out of the White House. That's right. Or butt into the Oval Office. So I said, what's up Mitch? And he said, get your jacket. We're going to the Oval to whistle for the President. I'm like, what? Come on. So I run to my office and I call my wife and I say, Chris, her name's Chris also. So it's Chris and Chris. Anyway, I say, Chris, I'm going to the Oval Office to whistle for the president She's like can I come I say no gotta go. Sorry okay, so then Mitch and I go to the Oval Office and I serenade the president for like 20 minutes and while I'm in there the vice president comes in the

The White House counsel there were 20 people in the Oval Office by the time we were done. He had a great time I had an amazing time. What did you whistle for him? I Whistled dueling banjos, you know from that great movie Deliverance. Are you kidding me? With my boss we did a duet that was kind of freaky I did the William Tell Overture, which is otherwise known as the Lone Ranger song That goes on and on and on I would expect George Bush would have loved that one he did well I mean kind of I I did say I didn't say it was the William Tell Overture I just said it's the Lone Ranger song and he's like perfect do that one for me

and then I I Ranger song and he's like perfect do that one for me and then I Concluded with battle him of the Republic which I'd never whistled publicly before I had whistled it on my own probably during my paper route and Then like on the fly. He just said alright I got to go got to go do the nation's business whistle one more for me And I thought hmm like what is a great song to like end an Oval Office gig with? And I said, well, Battle Hymn of the Republic, of course. So I did that and it, you know, it gives me a shiver to this day that, and this is this whole notion of

how do you take a simple gift? Like I'm not curing cancer. I'm not rowing across the Atlantic. I'm not climbing Mount Everest blind. I just whistle. But I can take this super simple gift and then touch this the most powerful man in the planet and touch his heart in just a little way and give him a little respite, a little joy for 20 minutes. And so that experience has stuck with me and I know it stuck with him because I met him probably like 15 years later and he remembered that experience Yeah, I remember reading that when you walked in to the Oval Office, which got to be nervous

I mean, it's the Oval Office It's the president and dude has an unlit cigar and his feet kicked up on his desk and he's like hey dude whistle It was it was really kind of freaky I was a little nervous but I didn't have enough time you know what happens in life is like you have this big exam in a month and you like you're worried about it or a big presentation at work I had 15 minutes notice and half of it was trying to figure out what am I gonna whistle so I walk in the oval and there he is kicking back feet up on the desk on lit cigar and he sees me jumps up and he comes around and he

Says he shakes my hand. He said he said who taught you how to whistle. He said do you need some water? Do you need you stand? You said what's going on? And I say mr. President. I'm moist and puckered. I'm ready to go And he's like, all right, let's do it And then I was so happy you used my father's nickname, Bub, because when I was done whistling for the president, he said, I'm going to write your father a note. And he took out this presidential stationary and it says The President on it.

And he said, dear Bub, Chris came by the Oval to share his magic. We're happy to have him on the team. And my mother recently gave me that note. I haven't seen it in 20, you know, like 25 years. we're happy to have him on the team. And my mother recently gave me that note. I haven't seen it in 20, you know, like 25 years. And he- That needs to be framed and stuck somewhere important.

It's put it in one of those like lucite things. It's in our living room. And so he, Bush was thinking like that. He was a very nice man. I was really impressed with that. Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the greatest. Give us a little bit of that. All right. Well, it goes on and on. Well done.

Good. Thank you. Yeah, that was fun. That was really a. Awesome. Well done. Good. Thank you. Yeah, that was fun. That was really a great blessing. All right. So everybody in here, y'all just got what the president got. So you need to feel pretty, you know, elevated or whatever.

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All right. So another one that interests me is the Jay Leno show. Right? Yeah, that was, so I win. All right, so let me, I'm gonna talk about that, but. Keep going. The progression, no, no, no, this is perfect, but the progression, so I'm whistling talent shows, I go to blues clubs, and I'm learning how to do improvisational whistling, not just classical.

I whistle a lot of Grateful Dead, a lot of jazz and stuff like that. And then I'm on a hike in the Shenandoah National Park, which is in Virginia, and whistling, of course, hopefully not annoying too many people. And one of my friends says, you know, you're really good. You should do something with that. And this is 92, so there's no internet. So a friend says, if this competition, because I said, I think there's a competition,

if it exists, she said, I'll find it. So we get back from the hike, she goes to a library, finds interestingly, a directory of events, and is a book like 500 pages of all these national events in America. And sure enough, there is at the time the National Whistlers Convention,

a gathering of the best whistlers in the world in this little town in North Carolina called Lewisburg. Oh gosh, if you were gonna say Mount Airy, I was gonna have a hard time. Oh, it's right near, it's not far from Mount Airy at all. Which for everybody listening, Andy Griffith Show. Of course, yeah. Which may be the most whistled tune people my age would

That goes on and on too. I feel like Ron Howard ought to walk in right now. You should. Yeah. Yeah. So I compete in the competition. I win a small prize, which gave me hope. So what's interesting about when you are the Whistler in your town or at your job or at

your college, you don't know how good you are relative to other people. It's not until you go to a gathering of the best whistlers or swimmers or whatever that you actually see, how good are you? So I show up at this international competition and I thought, yeah, it was pretty good. But so I learned a lot that first year and then so I come back the next year 1994 and I win

The Grand Championship and that's where Jay Leno comes in So I I win this thing and I say well, it was really fun and how many people are in this thing? There are 30 adults. All right, and they come from just all over all over the world. I mean we had Japan Canada Australia England Germany US a lot of a lot of Canadians. They are very very cool. They're very they're good at hockey. They're good at whistling I bet you didn't know that part. Okay. I didn't enjoy the so the phone just rings totally off the hook It is radio shows and then a producer for the Tonight Show calls up says hey We want you to be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno I'm like

Can't be serious. No like we're very serious. Can you come here in like three days? so I fly to LA and I was on the Tonight Show it's on YouTube you can find all this stuff. Would you whistle for him? I whistled love struck, baby by Stevie Ray Vaughn with the Tonight Show band which was just an amazing experience Alan Alda for those people who remember mash he was a guest that night and then Michael Richards who was Kramer on Seinfeld He was a guest too, so I got to meet these famous people like who are you I'm like I'm the champion whistler They're like yeah, are you sure yeah? And then you know the today show calls

I'm on with Katie Couric and and then like all hell broke loose I am going on all around whistling and doing fun things and you know, just sharing my simple gift But of course, I still have a day job so I got to manage that day in and day out while having all this fun whistling and Yeah, it was it was amazing good experiences and since then you've won it three more times idea yeah one three more times and then I did try to win it a fifth time like be like Michael Jordan and come out of retirement I came in third and I thought you know or I'm gonna hang up my chapstick and you know

So now now I just whistle happy birthday and I do Talks on whistling and it's less about whistling and it's more about like what's your simple gift in life? And what are you gonna do with it? And well in yeah, go ahead I'm sorry in my book. What what I do is I try to I'm sorry. In my book, what I do is I try to focus on other people and say, all right, my gift happens to be whistling, but what's your gift? And how did other people in my life, how did their simple gifts touch my heart to try to give the reader a sense of what a whistle metaphor for gift can be? Because I've had people come up to me and say, oh, I can't whistle, and I say that's not the point. The point is, God gave you gifts, what are you doing with them? Have you developed them, and are you sharing them, and you know, trying

to make a little impact in, you know, your orbit. So, it's fun to have the international whistler on here to whistle the stuff that you've whistled, and we'll continue to whistle throughout our chat. But that's the part that struck me the most is that we talk about on an army of normal folks that magic happens when someone uses their passion and discipline and it intersects at opportunity. That's when magic happens in the world is when there's a gap in society, a hole that needs filling a need that needs filling. And then somebody that has a discipline, and I don't mean discipline, like doing the right thing.

I mean an ability and a passion that intersects with that hole. And they decide to engage. And, you know, a lot of people think about philanthropic endeavors and, and helping communities as being part of some large government NGO or some massive organization. But I will argue some of the best servant leadership you can do is oftentimes just down the hallway. And it's an army of normal folks is not about five people doing gargantuan work.

It's about millions of people doing small things and how that can change our culture. And that is why I love your story. When did you decide you were simply gonna call people on their birthday, 700 people a year, and just wish a happy birthday to put 20 seconds of joy in their life? That to me is the most beautiful of the whole part of the story. Well, Bill, I just love the way you phrase it

of how these kind of skills and interest meeting opportunity. And at the typical college graduation, the speaker will at some point say, now go change the world. And I just cringe when I hear that. And it's well intended, but I work in an investment firm, so I'm all about odds. And what are

the odds of success? And that's how I advise my clients, you know, if you do X are the odds of success and that's how I advise my clients you know if you do X the odds of success are either high or low and If someone said to me go change the world the odds of success are very infinitesimal infinitesimal but if they said go touch the heart or the life of the person sitting next to you or down the hall The odds of success are a hundred percent So I'm going with the odds. I'm gonna go and see how can I take that little gift and with some you know some effort and

See how I can effect change in just this tiny little way so with the to answer your question specifically, it was in the, I think like 94, 1994, so 31 years ago that I whistled the first happy birthday. And I remember it to this day, I was working on Capitol Hill at the House Budget Committee, and it was someone's birthday. And usually most people sing, and someone said,

hey, you're a whistler, you know, because I won the championship at that point. And so when you whistle happy birthday, I was like, I've never done that before. So I, you know, I did kind of a basic version of, you know, that kind of thing. And people like, yeah, it was great. And amazingly, I still whistle for the couple of people

who I worked with at that time to this day all these decades later Do you say hello or when they pick up the phone? Do you just start whistling? Oh my god I'm so glad you asked that question because most people when you get them live they groan And I'll explain why he's like I'll say hey, it's Chris calling, you know serenade you on your birthday. They're like, ah I'll explain why he's like I'll say hey, it's Chris calling, you know serenade you on your birthday like ah And now at first I with my feelings were hurt and then what I found out was that they wanted a recording of it So they could share with their friends So now I don't call anyone on their birthday I take my iPhone and there's a little voice memo and they do record a custom version for each person

so the typical thing is I'll say I'll say Bill it's Chris calling to wish you a happy birthday and here's a serenade to add to your merriment that is that's kind of my line and then I whistle this wildly complicated version of happy birthday because it's it's morphed from that simple version 30 years ago to fairly complex version today and then I just say, you know, God bless you. There you go. And then I texted to them and people love that far more. Yeah. The reason I ask is my fraternity roommate, Charles Feltcher, who does listen to the show occasionally, his father was a full board colonel,

and he was in ROTC, and there were many, many Sunday mornings, their PT was at 6 a.m., that he would enjoy all the trappings of what Ole Miss has to offer too late on Saturday night. And he would just go get dressed in his fatigues and pass out in my hatchback. And I knew he'd be there, so I would wake up at 5.15 in the morning, go down, drive my car to PT,

open the hatchback, spill him out on the floor, and he'd go run three miles. All right. That's a great way to get sober, huh? It is. So he hadn't done it in a while, but starting on the second year of my marriage, on just random times,

once he became in charge of a company, once he became major, the phone would ring at five in the morning, I'd answer it, and I wouldn't hear a voice, I would just get a bugle of Reveille in my ear, and then he would hang up and that was it but I knew it was Charles so I didn't know if maybe you ever did that on happy birthday with people that's why I asked if you actually introduced it so I have

never done I wish Charles would have done your method it's much better who's got a birthday in March when's it coming oh when's your birthday? March Wow happy birthday, what's your name? And well, what's your complicated happy birthday for all right? I would be honored for an you know They say what your whistle so we have to have a little sip. Yeah, how old are you in? Awesome all right here. We go. Hi, Ann. It's Chris Ullman calling to wish you a happy birthday. Here's a serenade to add to your merriment. I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a Happy birthday. I don't know how you do that with your mouth. That was a bunch of weird stuff going on there. There's a lot of weird stuff going on there. Yeah, that is. Well, there's this wah-wah thing I do and this had to do with like these funky techniques. So I referenced earlier that there's lip whistling, but there's tongue whistling. So no lips at all, but you can incorporate your lips by doing the tongue whistle, but going wah-wah. So if you literally say wah-wah while whistling, so I call it scat whistling. And so if I am doing say like a jazz tune, or if I have a repeated phrase in a song, you don't wanna do it the same way each time. You can go up an octave, down an octave, or do the scat whistling thing.

So it's the same notes, but a different kind of means of delivering it, and it just is a little more interesting. So, yeah. It's very interesting, it's cool. It's also cool to watch. You can also tell how hard you're concentrating because your hands are mimicking what your brain is telling your lips to do.

You can see that. That's a very good point. Yeah, I'm very into it. It's, you know, especially for Ann. And ultimately, like you say, why do I whistle happy birthday for people? When you think about what is one of the most important things in life, it is life.

And to be able to honor someone on their birthday is to say, I'm glad you were born and I'm glad you're here. And here's just like a little packet of love I'm gonna share with you. Yeah, not changing the world, just gonna make Anne feel special on her birthday. And the notes I get from people are astounding. And I don't do it for this reason,

but it warms my heart nonetheless. Is people say, my birthday is now complete, or I've saved every one of these things that you sent me over time, and you made my day. I'm like, oh my gosh, it just gives me a shiver of, you don't have to go try to save the world. You can just share that little gift with people. And if we had a million, two, three million army of normal folks just doing those things, imagine how those little things can massive walls. Absolutely.

We'll be right back. I've had several bosses in my career who have been very instrumental in my thinking about building bridges with people who think differently. I'll tell you a quick one, it's not whistling related, but it's all about reaching out to people who are different from you. And I think too often we stay in our own little camps. More and more recently. And this man, his name was Arthur Levitt, and he was the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the stock markets and protects investors.

And I worked for him back in the late 90s. And so he was a Democrat. But Phil Graham from Texas was the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and he's a good old boy Republican from Texas, and Arthur was a very patrician, modest Democrat from New York and he had to figure how does he relate to this Texan. So in his first meeting with him he walks in Graham's office and sees a picture of a Labrador retriever on Graham's desk. And Arthur loves Labradors and said to Graham, Senator, is that your dog? And he said, that's my dog. And he said, I love

labs too. And boom! They had a connection. And that simple connection was almost like the lubricant for a productive relationship for years. From people who had very differing viewpoints on things. Yes, and who could easily have just like ground against each other or it could have been a me versus you or my party versus your party versus saying how do we transcend the differences, humanize, which is really what the dog did. The dogs humanized the relationship that how bad could Phil be or Arthur be if they loved Labrador Retrievers.

And that enabled them to get stuff done for America. And we need more of that. Amen. We often say another, our regular listeners will have heard this a hundred times, but I don't care if you're black, white, Hispanic, Asian, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, agnostic, Jewish, Republican, Democrat, conservative, progressive, I'm trying to come up with all the categories here, but you get the idea.

If you, despite any of those categories or identities, are employing your passion and area of need and being successful and helping someone who maybe isn't as blessed as you, I don't care about the rest of that stuff, I can celebrate that in you. And stuff, I can celebrate that in you. And likewise, you can celebrate that in me. And that creates a foundation that we can now have

civil non-threatening conversations about stuff that matters. That, metaphorically, is the Labrador. Yeah. And I feel we're losing it. And I think the only way to bring that back is an army of normal folks that engage Respect and appreciate one another and from that foundation we can start having conversations about this crap

That's dividing us and it can be as simple as whistling. Mm-hmm Yeah, I love the way you phrase it and you know what I think is bottom-up, this has got to be bottom-up, if we're waiting for the folks in Washington or elsewhere to tell us how to behave or how to treat people, that's we're looking in the wrong direction. And I've tried to raise my children, I have three children, they're either right out of college or in college right now, to view every encounter with another person as an opportunity to learn, to grow,

and to not be scared of unfamiliarity, but to explore and ask questions. And God gave us two ears, one mouth, it's a nice ratio, ask more, talk less, and just be willing to learn. And, you know, it could be any of those differences that you pointed out, and rather than listening to what, you know, society or the haters have told us about different people, let's make our own judgments and let's transcend labels and focus on humanity. And it's amazing just the commonality you'll find with people that gets beyond all the labels and the isms and stuff like that.

It's beautiful. It's what we've got to do. Find your whistle. Simple gifts touch hearts and change lives. And I love the phraseology, find your whistle, obviously from a whistler. What this is, is a call to understand that you may never be the president of the United States. You may never start an organization with a thousand people in it, but every single one

of us, every single one of us has a gift and your charge is for us to find that gift and then employ it. Yeah, I want to tell a story about someone who has a gift of happiness and how he shares it with people. So the company I used to work at in Washington, I would drive into the parking lot every day and this young man from Ethiopia, he was a green card holder and seeking to become an American.

And I was just really amazed at how happy he was because garages, underground garages are either really hot in the summer, they're really cold in the winter, and they're always kind of dim. And no matter what the temperature was or the light level was, when I drove in there, he was like, Mr. Chris, good to see you.

How was your weekend? How's your family? And we formed this really special friendship. And when he became an American, I took my daughters to his naturalization ceremony Which was an amazing experience and if anyone's been to one you know that and if you haven't been to one you must go to see people of It's like skin color coloring

You know spanning the rainbow people all around America with some of their native clothes on the rainbow, people all around America with some of their native clothes on, like they want to be an American just like you. And you say, what an experience. So, here, so you hear it, you have the happy guy in the cold or the hot garage, and then I would take the elevator up, and I worked an investment firm where the founders were billionaires, literally, and you get out of the, you know, so you go, it's very metaphorical also. You go from, from hot and cold up and dark to the light climate controlled. And there's a billionaire, a billionaire, a billionaire. And you know, they're not particularly happy.

And I would say, how the heck is that possible? They have all that wealth. I'd say, well, it's not really about that. It's about this kind of intrinsic value. His name is Sala. Sala's appreciation for the gifts that God gave him and that he's gonna make the most of it. And he also said, and when I interviewed him for another book I wrote, he said,

I complain he doesn't get anywhere anyway, so why bother? And so I like, I totally agree. But that's his gift and he shares it with so many people and everyone who knew him was touched by his gift. That's his whistle was the- Simple happiness. Yes. Gratitude.

Yeah, it was really amazing. It's- You should have drug him up to the billionaires and said, Hey, would you sit and hang out with this dude for about 30 minutes? I wish I could show you at this moment, but at that book party for that other book that I wrote I have a picture of the parking attendant and

the billionaire holding my book at the party and it's it's amazing and Uh, yeah, he's really touched a lot of hearts And that concludes part one of my conversation with Chris Ullman. And you don't want to miss part two that's now available. Together guys, we can change the country. But it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting words. Okay.

I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. Part of the power of black queer creativity is the fact that we got us, you know? We are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

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