An Army of Normal Folks - God’s Billion Dollar Company That Gives Away 50% of Profits (Pt 2)

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Alan Barnhart is the CEO of Barnhart Crane & Rigging, which gives away 50% of its profits and he believes is God’s company. His personal commitment to earn a normal person salary makes Alan one of the most unique members of the Army.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with An Army of Normal Folks, and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Alan Barnhart right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real? You will use a suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole?

Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Sign Stuff. Join me or Hitcham as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Sign Stuff on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking.

It was very shocking. Like that could have been my daughter. Like you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to my friend Daisy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets.

Seven thousand bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery. It was my family's mystery. Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep. Until it's not. I'm Larisen Campbell and this is Under Yazoo Clay. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. I think I've read, and I'm going to mess this up, but I think I've read that podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think I've read and I'm going to mess this up, but I think I've read that you had like a financial advisor buddy that you told all about this and now he's doing something similar. Is that done? I'm a setup. We've told the story quite a lot.

Many people have done something similar. But there are, if it weren't that financial guy was just at my office. I just dropped him at the airport on the way here. The guy I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's weird. I mean, I had no idea. I swear, that was not a setup.

He's out of Houston. Yeah, so he has given a chunk of his company away and plans to give away more of it. It makes perfect sense. It's not crazy. Because of the way that we're owned, our tax bill's lower. But mainly, this transfer, the company can go on forever because it's not owned by an individual. We're trying to set all of the businesses, we have seven businesses now,

trying to set them all up to go on forever. And to have an impact on our employees, part of that $55 million goes to things we do for our employees. It's a relatively small part, but some money goes to, want to do something in each of the communities where we have an operation. We want to do something for our families, for our employees, and then we also want to do things for the most needy areas in the world. So that's that's our problem. So where does that leave you today? You're the CEO of a company that you don't even own any of.

But I would assume then that the days today are no different than the days 20 years ago, except you're probably not operating a crane anymore. But the point is. When we wrote that, when we signed those documents and gave away. How long ago, what year was that? This was 2008.

Okay. My balance sheet changed a lot that day. My personal balance sheet. I bet. My life didn't change at all. My motivation to work didn't change at all. We've quit saying we gave away the company. We just transferred the stock of the company. We still own the company from a stewardship standpoint. We're still trying to push this company to be great. We're trying to create great value for society. So I'm still working hard.

I'm actually about to transition out of being the CEO after 39 years. Have another guy that's gonna step in and do that relatively soon. What are you gonna do? I'm gonna keep working. I'm gonna be working for him. And I don't need money.

My lifestyle's pretty small. My salary's actually gone down over the years because all my kids are gone now. Yeah, that's right. When you go from 250 to a billion in sales, might as well get yourself a pay cut. Nice job, Alan. You are backwards, bro.

No, it's just, I just don't have the need. And I don't think that more money would make me any better off as a person. So I just have no, I don't think of money, I don't think we're built to be happy with money. I think contentment, the Bible says contentment is great gain and that's what we found. It's not been, it hasn't been some sacrificial, if this had been really hard, I think I'd have bailed out a long time ago. I think it's been, it's been an exciting, fun life and not sacrificial. And so it's, that's the God we serve. You know, He's worthy of our obedience completely. He's also a loving Heavenly Father that wants to give us good things.

And so it's, again, it's not been, please don't feel sorry for me at all. I don't feel sorry for you. I think you're out of your tree, but I'm kidding, you know I don't think that. But I do have a question. Your customers know this, don't they? Most of them don't.

We don't lead with this at all. Yeah, it would be. Your customers don't know this. No. Some might be listening today, but no. It's not something we lead with this at all. You customers don't know this. No. Some might be listening today. But no, it's not something we lead with. We want people to hire us because we're a great company, and we do work well, and we're honorable.

We don't want them to hire us because we give money away. We think that wouldn't be appropriate. So we don't lead with that at all. There are customers that learn of it. If you Google me, there's, my wife and I have a video where we're telling our story and so people, some people wanna check you out and they'll Google you and if they do,

what they'll find is several times where I've been telling the story. And so some of our customers do find out and some of our vendors do. But it's not something we lead with. So tell me about the Generous Giving thing. Sure. There's a group out there called Generous Giving that their whole purpose is to help

people discover generosity and the benefits of generosity. And so we connected with them pretty early on, but they do a thing called a journey of generosity. And I've been on a bunch of these, where you sit around for the day with about a dozen people or so, 15, and you talk about generosity, and you look at some Scripture, and you look at some stories of other people, and you just spend 24 hours together talking about generosity. And it's life-changing for people. And there's no asks. Nobody's...

No. generosity. And it's life changing for people. And there's no asks. No, no, that's part, you know, you can't pay to be part of it. And you can't, there's no asks. There's no expectations. This is a foundation that spends a big chunk of money saying, all we want to do is help people understand generosity because for two reasons. One, one is if people are more generous, that 3% will go up and more people can be helped. But I think the biggest reason is life change of the givers. And when people grasp generosity, it sets them free. And we found that in our case, we put constraints in our life financially and came to realize

that putting in constraints in your life leads to freedom. Living a life without constraints sounds like freedom, but in almost every area it leads to bondage. If you don't constrain yourself in how you act, and so we, you know, that's part of the message of generous giving is that generosity sets you free. You can end up a slave to the desire for more. Absolutely. Because there's no end to that. There is no end. That's infinite. Yeah. And when is enough enough? There's never enough till you say it's enough. And so if somebody's listening to us and they can just Google this thing.

Yeah. Generousgiving.org I think is, and there's on that there is, there's a video, they have a whole bunch of videos. There's a video of our story on there, but there's a video of probably 30 or 40 other stories. And they could connect on how to get involved in a jog, and I'd highly recommend it. Actually, Bill, that's how we found Brandon and Ashley Stathis.

That's it. So the people who, they were in Austin, and their group of friends came together and paid off their student debt. Yes, yes, that's the story. They were sitting here telling their story. They told you the story. Oh, yeah.

And I'm trying to book right now, she's agreed to do it, Renee Lockie. So she's the doctor who decides to live like a nurse, which I think is a great story to point out too, you don't have to have a billion dollar company to consider this, you could be a doctor and consider this. Absolutely not, I mean, I think generosity helps. I'd say

develop generosity if you're six years old or 86 years old. It is a great thing to develop. I mean, what I'm gaining from all this really is if you leave the 3% become the 10% or if you go from 3% to 15% or if you're an 8% and you go to 16%, you're going to get so much more out of what you give than the percentage that you raise. You can't out give God. It's giving sets you free. Holding what you have with an open hand and saying, this is not mine. I'm willing to deploy it in any way that you want me to. It sounds scary to people, but it's not. It sets you free.

And you don't have to be a billion dollar company owner and founder to go from 3% to 10%. No, the widow's might is a great example. I think God is not impressed with the commas and the zeros, you know, it's not that's not the issue I think there are lots of very generous people that are making 40 grand a year and given 10% and A lot of people at a zero and are given zero But and I think that those people that are making 40 grand

are happier. As I travel all over the world, I mean, I meet people that are making $3 a day and are happy. I don't think money is the answer to happiness. I think it's almost inversely proportional, but I think generosity is proportional to happiness. Steve's not the, or Alan, you're not the only 50% or two. I think it's just important to say, I mean, like the,

the green hobby lobby family, Steve Trice I've interviewed who does it too. There's a Jewish financier with a several billion dollar company and they're at 50%. So it's, I mean, there are other people doing this too. Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense when you you look at there's a huge tax benefit to giving and you know the to the now it's 60% but the first if you don't give you're gonna pay 40% or so in taxes so Uncle Sam is sort of subsidizing your gift by giving you

a tax deduction and so quit walking away from the opportunity. Yeah. And to wait until you die to give is really bad math because you, you don't get a tax deduction. You don't have to pay a state taxes, but you don't get so all your life you've been paying taxes on this money and then you give it away and don't get a deduction and you don't know where it's going and you, you're not around to see the blessing. I was gonna say the coolest part is you can be around to actually see the fruits of what you've done. And I think to start that when you're 10 years old and just you know some of the things I did when I was in high school and college you know sponsoring a kid in Zimbabwe or 15

bucks a month or whatever back then, shaped me. And I think to start at a very young age, my oldest son, when he went to college, he started doing a thing at his apartment where he'd invite people over for dinner and all they would have is a bowl of rice. And each person would bring five or ten bucks that they would have spent on dinner and they'd come and learn about a country where a bowl of rice would be their whole day's food. And then they'd pray for that group and they'd bunch that money together and then mow it off or whatever to an organization. That's cool.

It's really cool. I don't think it's changing that organization that much, but it's changing them. I think everybody can get in on this and I think it's a great benefit to everybody. It's just normal folks doing what they can. Normal folks, absolutely. I mean, I'm a very normal guy. I serve an extraordinary God and it's been a great pleasure to do it. We'll be right back. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.

And I was like, what? Like it was him? I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice. They put out something on social media so I'd get calls in the middle of the night all the time. It's like how do you think you going to get away with something like this? Like you killed somebody. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media

to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch.

Or if hypnotism is real? You will use a suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This means never work for you. What's a quantum computer?

It's not just a faster computer. It performs in a fundamentally different way. Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy to understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeart Video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide.

I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw ups.

It's the 1920s, Prohibition is in full swing, and a lot of people are mysteriously dying? Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing prohibition. She was a lone warrior. I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure? Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more.

Which she does, arguably a little too well. Find out more on season three, episode four of Snafu Formula Six. Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation. It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried, until they're not.

In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. 7,000 bodies out there or more. All former patients of the old state asylum, and nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery. But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets. Nobody talks about it.

Nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo Clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think. The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larysen Campbell. Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm gonna ask you a question. Where did your kids go to high school?

White State, excuse me, Houston. I went to White Station. Houston High School. Houston High School. Houston High School, which is for everybody, most of you not from Memphis, Houston High School is in the suburbs and it's a nice public high school out in the Germantown-Carrieville area,

which is east of Memphis and a nice suburb. Your kids, now kids are kids and I know what my kids wanted for birthdays and Christmases. And I also know the kind of trips my kids wanted to go on, like Disney World and all that stuff. And I gotta believe, you know, you can say what you want to, but the walls have ears in a family with six kids. And they gotta be picking it up.

And at some point, it's revealed to these kids and their teens that, hey, we don't live like my dad's got a $250 million business. And there's gotta be an evolution for your kids. And I just gotta know, did you ever feel pressure There's gotta be an evolution for your kids. And I just gotta know, did you ever feel pressure from them because you love them? Did you ever feel pressure to maybe heighten it up a little bit so maybe you could offer them

some opportunities that maybe you didn't have as a kid or maybe you just got sick of listening to them ask for more or something. You know what I'm saying? I did. I mean, we resisted the temptation to just get tired of it and just give them things we thought weren't helpful. You know, we taught them the theology of the Rolling Stones.

There's a song. The theology of the Rolling Stones? Rolling Stones. Okay, well there's something I wouldn't expect. There's a song that says, you can't always get what you want. And so I taught them that song as young kids, and they thought I wrote the song. Later they heard it on the radio and said, hey, Dad's song, look.

So there were times when we said, first they were young, and we grew up out in the country, and we home-schooled for for several years and we went camping and we just had a ball living out in the country. And that was enough until you're about cell phone age. We started getting older and cell phones come along and so we didn't want our kids to have cell phones for their protection. So when they got older, when they started driving, we let them have cell phones. But, and even that, we had to be careful, especially with the males, there's issues there, but we had to be careful. But my kids, you might think they'd be pissed off

about us giving away their inheritance. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, this thing, we never saw it as ours, and therefore they never saw it as theirs. They really adopted the same mentality. Yeah, well, they're not all exactly. I mean, they all are individual people, and as they're all on their own now,

some are very in line with what we do, some a little less so, but none of them resented. I mean, we had to say no a fair amount to them, but we also showed them the alternative. One of the things we spent a lot of money on is taking our kids around the world. So my kids have been to all over Africa, to India, to Israel and Egypt and Turkey and China,

and we took our kids all over the place and have them meet these amazing people. These weren't tourist trips. They were, we had a lot of fun, but it was, it was going to see some of the ministries that were involved in. And we also had these guys at our dinner table, a whole bunch, talking about what was going on in their country. And they come visit us. And my kids grew up hearing all these stories and meeting all these amazing people.

And so we didn't take the family to Disney World, but we took them on some really cool trips. And to take them to Disney World, you took them to the world. The world, the world, and meeting really cool people. And that's so much more fun. Now, we did special treats, too. That was one of our theologies was special treats. There's in the Bible, there's feasts and there's...

And so there's times we would go to the beach and we would... Just screw around at the beach. Go to Cracker Barrel on the way down there and go to get ice cream. And we didn't have cable TV, and so the kids, when they go to a beach and had Cartoon Network, it was like Nirvana. And so my wife did such a great job of teaching them contentment. And kids don't get contentment by getting what they want. They get contentment by enjoying what they have. And my kids learned that.

And I think it was a great gift to them. And we also taught them a work ethic. And we let them pay for half of their college. You let them pay for it. I love how you say that. Yeah. And some people would think of that as child abuse, but we think of it as- It's not. Do they have to get loans, or do they work, or?

If they got scholarships, that counted. We didn't let them do loans. That was our rule. Yeah. Lisa and I did the same thing. No kidding. It was, here's how much you're gonna get a year for college. Well, we knew that was not gonna cover college,

so we didn't do the half. We just put a number out there. But here's the thing, if you work hard enough and get a full ride, you're still gonna get that number. So I had one kid, I won't mention this one, they got such a good full ride and ACT score and everything that not only was it all covered, but at the end of each semester she had so much

scholarship money that they gave her a check back. And that's sweet. She still graduated with student debt. And we let her, in your words, we let her learn the pain behind that too. We let her have that. It's so great to let kids experience pain. I love the word that you used because so many parents want to say, I don't want my kids to go through what I had to go through.

I want to say, why not? It made you who you are. I mean, struggle and pain is a great teacher. And I think we rob our kids when we protect them from pain. Let them struggle. I can't stand the helicopter pain, iron sharpens iron, all of it. But that's so, they bought in by and large.

Yeah. Well, that's a miracle, getting teenagers to buy into anything. There was never any, there was some resentment when one kid wanted a Hummer and we're not gonna buy a Hummer, you know, or something like that, or I want a better phone. So there were human beings

and there was a few times where they were not happy, but there was not a deep resentment. Even when we gave the company away, my oldest son, who was old enough then to, he was maybe 16 or 18. He came and said, Dad, thank you for getting that done. Because if something had happened to you, this would have been a mess. And I'd have been in, you know, thank you for getting that

done. So none of my kids felt like we ripped them off by by giving away the company. And they're good kids. They you know, they've, they didn't grow up as rich kids, which I think is a great benefit to them But they they've had a I'm proud of all of them and you know some of them have struggled a lot made bad decisions We let them struggle They all do that. Yeah, they don't come out with an owner's manual. No no no you do the best you can Six yeah, and you love them all the same. What are their ages now? Oldest is 37 and youngest is 24.

Yeah, ours, we had four, have four, one, two, three, and four. One, two, three, and four? That's how old they were. Wow. I mean, now they're 29, 28, 27, 26, meaning there was no break. You were busy.

Yeah, yeah, well, it's funny. I'm glad you said that, because when you said you had six kids, I thought, well, there's one of the benefits of not making much money. You don't have much to do, except sit around the house and make kids. Two of ours are actually adopted, so. Well, that's still four.

Still four. Still four. So for perspective, when people hear billion dollar company, you have machines that the truck to transport them requires like hundreds of tires and stuff, right? Yeah, I mean our biggest cranes take about 80 truckloads to move from one place to another. I mean, they're big pieces of equipment.

80 truckloads to then assemble the crane. Yeah. So you take, you ship it in pieces because it's too big to ship over the road. And then you get to the job site and you put it together and it may lift. Oh man. It's all kinds of heavy stuff. So we're, we've done some stadiums. We did the, we had a big crane out at the stadium in Las Vegas. Um, what'd you do? What did you do on this? I've been in the stadium. Yeah, they were setting up. You talking about the new football stadium?

Felt me up, new football stadium. We were setting big trusses and big, you know, big, they wanted to do the steel and big pieces cause it's up high. So we did that. The Nashville- You're talking about the roof. Yeah.

So that kind of translucent roof, those diamond looking trusses that hold it up. You set those things up there. Yeah, there was other cranes too, but one of our cranes was out there doing that. We didn't do the work, we were just providing that crane. Similar in Nashville, the airport, they built a big terminal there

and we put a crane out there, but sometimes we do do the work. And so we go to a plant, we did a job in Detroit, taking down a big piece of duct work at a big steel mill there and takes a huge crane because you've got to reach way back with a heavy load. So we have a whole bunch. We have about 800 cranes, but that's those we're talking about the really big ones that

take those, those that many. You do something with nuclear or something. Yeah, we do a lot of work in the nuclear industry, removing and replacing components of old nuclear plants. All the nuclear plants are pretty old. They're built in the 70s, 60s, some of them, maybe the 80s would be the most recent. There's been just a couple built in the last 30 years,

and not very many at all. So they get old and they need to replace pieces, and they weren't really designed for that. So they have to get into tight places. And we have a bunch of engineers that build special tools. So we're not doing cranes so much, but we're doing special ways of getting in and picking up a heavy load and moving it out.

And we love those challenges where the customer says, this can't be done. There's no way to do it. And we said, let's. Tell me about the interstate underneath Seattle. Oh, the tunnel boring machine. Yeah, we. Oh, your eyes lit up when I said that.

That sounds like a fun toy. It was a huge job. It was, what did it tell us about it? So they were, they dug a tunnel. It's the largest diameter tunnel I think that's ever been dug. And it was like 60 foot diameter to be a 60 foot diameter all the way around. Wasn't oval.

It was a rat. It was round. Yeah. No kid. 60 foot. That's huge. 60 foot diameter. Big hole.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And so they, you know, they do, they're doing it horizontally, but they have to This machine that was I think it was built in China or Japan. Maybe Japan They shipped it over and we had to take these pieces some of them weighed a thousand tons and move them into the to the Where they're gonna start a thousand tons on the machine each each piece. Yeah, holy Smoke so we didn't use a crane on the machine? Each piece, yeah. Holy smokes.

So we didn't use a crane, we used a lift system for that because it would take a huge, huge crane to do that. But so we built, we have a lift tower system that picked these pieces up and rotated them 90 degrees and put them down in a hole. And you build this thing, it's like a train. I mean, it's the cutter heads up front, but then the drive mechanism

and then all the processing cars behind it. So when this thing is going through the rock and it's chopping up the rock to make the tunnel, where does the rock, does it have a conveyor belt that conveys it backwards? It does. It has a whole series of cars behind it that process all the stuff coming out. And then as you're going, you're putting concrete segments up to secure the roof. And so does it do that too?

It does that. So this machine is amazing. We do it's cutting rock and laying concrete, a buttress structure. Yeah. Like of a better word and full disclosure. All we did is picked up and pick the stuff up and set it in place. Somebody else designed the machine. Yeah. It was, uh, it was a very cool machine, but we were our part, like a lot of times our part is just to pick up the heavy pieces and put them in place. We don't build these machines. We don't. In that

case, we didn't operate the machine. Did you go look at it? Oh, yeah. It was cool. That had to have been pretty cool. That had to have been insane. All from a couple of 25 year olds who take over a small family business out of two bedrooms and the upstairs while their parents go sail the world. Wow. It is wild. It's a pretty cool story.

That's what you mean by an answer to prayer. Yeah. A lot of hard work. I mean that first year I probably worked 100 hours a day, a week. I mean it was... I know what that is. You're replacing mom and dad. My mom was harder to replace than my dad. We'll be right back. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok.

You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. And I was like, what? Like it was him? I was like, oh my god. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the

story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice. They put out something on social media, so I'd get calls in the middle of the night all the time. It's like, how do you think you're gonna get away with something like this? Like, you killed somebody. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers

turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you? Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real? You will use this suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. What's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff.

Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen? This is experimental. This means never work for you. What's a quantum computer? It's not just a faster computer. It performs in a fundamentally different way.

Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue. It's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy to understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Science Stuff on the iHeartVideo app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide.

I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levertown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu,

your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw ups. It's the 1920s. Prohibition is in full swing. And a lot of people are mysteriously dying. Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing prohibition. She was a lone warrior. I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure? Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent,

even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more, which she does, arguably a little too well. Find out more on season three, episode four of Snafu Formula Six. Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a

reputation. It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery. 7,000 bodies out there or more. All former patients of the old state asylum. And nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery. But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets.

Nobody talks about it. Nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think. The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larysson Campbell. Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So what'd your parents do when they got back from Salem? They came back into the company a little bit just on some special projects. My dad did, my mom did not.

And then they bought a couple hundred acres up in Shelby Forest and they live up, my dad just passed away about a year ago, but my mom still lives on that 200 acres and she's out working. She's almost 91 and she's the hardest working person I know. I went over the other day and she had her chainsaw out, 91 years old, cutting down trees. That's the stock I come from. Yeah. I also read that later they came to share your faith. They did. Both of them both embraced their faith later in life and became very generous in their own right and had just the benefit of being around generous people. You don't find many sad, generous people.

Generous people are fun to be around. And so they moved into those circles and connected with a bunch of other generous people. Generous people are fun to be around. And so they moved into those circles and connected with a bunch of other generous people and it really fulfilled their life a lot. I'll tell you something, Alan. When Alex and I were talking about you as a guest, you're obviously atypical in many, many, many ways, but you're also atypical for a guest for us

because most of our guests are, you know, really average normal folks who saw an area in need and filled a specific area in need and changed lives doing it. And we celebrate that, right? But you're a guy who hasn't just worked hard to do that. You're a guy who's worked hard to be an average normal guy. You're a guy who has turned his back on what societal preconceived notion is about success. And you illustrate what real success looks like. So many of your I

want to compliment you on that. I don't know how you handle compliments, or if you even get them like that before. But I want to say to you, that's, that's really inspirational. I mean, so many of your other guests, I think are are similar. Their production didn't come in the form of profits being generated, but they did come in the form of lives being changed. And so I think each of us using our skills and gifts to

serve others is a great way to live life. It doesn't suck something away from you, it gives you things. I read in Alex's prep for our interview that even in the Christian community, the average person only gives about 3% of what they make away and that includes diving. 3%. I think that's interesting because I recently learned from another guest, pretty much every single one of us in life before we die will either us or someone

extremely close to us will need blood. If you're having a routine operation, if you're having your appendix outs, you gotta have blood. If you're in a car wreck, you gotta have blood. If you're cancer, you gotta have blood. If you're diabetic, you're probably gonna need blood or platelets. If you have cancer, you're certainly gonna need

platelets and blood. If you're in the hospital older and you have some minor surgery, you're gonna need blood. If you're in the hospital older and you have some minor surgery you're gonna need blood. A hundred percent of us are going to need blood. Do you know what the percent of donors are that give blood in our population? Probably not even one. Three. Three percent. The same number. Interesting. That is fascinating. That is the same number. When I read that I I was like, wow, not only is it 3% of our money, it's 3% of something as easy as sitting down for an hour

and giving blood. It's probably also 3% of our time. Probably is. And so here's the call. We've been doing this now for a year and a half, two years. And we keep saying an army of normal, not government, not people on CNN and Fox, an army of average normal folks, seeing area need and filling it is what changes the world. And right now in money and blood, we're at 3%. Wow.

And yours is 50. I don't think we're gonna get people to think in terms of 50, dude, because you're weird. I hope more do. Maybe not everybody, but I do hope more do. But what if we could get it to 10?

That would triple our giving. Think of that. Be billions and billions. It would it would be forget the money. Think about the lives that would be changed. Absolutely. And not less significantly the lives of the givers that would be changed. Oh, absolutely. You know, I think the lives of the recipients could be changed. You know, giving away money is not easy. And you can do more harm You know, giving away money is not easy.

And you can do more harm than good by giving away money. It's not a given that every time you give money, it's a good thing. I think Christian welfare can be as damaging as government welfare in terms of some of the negative elements of that. So I think you've got to be careful in how you give money. And I think that's why some people don't give is because they don't know where to give and they've been disappointed or whatever and they get frozen.

I think that's true. Yeah. I think that's absolutely true. It's boiled down to the simplest metaphor. You walk in a grocery store at the corner of Poplar in Cleveland and the dude's standing outside and he's clearly homeless and you think he's probably got drug or alcohol problems and he wants five bucks because he says he's hungry. If I knew for a matter of fact that that five bucks was going to go in his belly and make his life that night a little warmer and a little more satisfied and a little fuller. I think I'd give the five bucks to everybody

standing on the corner, but what I worry about is he's gonna go buy weed or get drunk on it and worsen his life. That's what you're talking about. Now that is a metaphor. Expand that to $55 million. Yeah, it is. You gotta vet and be careful and make sure

that you're supporting good stuff. Yeah, and we would say we're not giving money, we're investing. We're investing in life change that these organizations, we're asking them to tell us what they're gonna do. We hold them accountable for it. We're looking for a return on our investment. Not a financial return, but a return.

You take a businessman's approach to your giving. Exactly, exactly. And we ask hard questions. If an organization doesn't want a partnership, if they want a donor instead of a partner, then we're not interested. So we ask them all kinds of hard questions. Sometimes the best thing we do for organizations is help them think through their strategy and ask them hard questions and give them no money. There's a lot I think, a lot of philanthropic organizations need business thinking. And I think business people need ministry thinking.

And I think we can help each other. So we're looking for partners. You ever heard of Slingshot? Yes. Yeah. Pretty awesome approach. I love those guys. Same idea. Yep. Slingshot, well, they kind of helped

make this interview happen. So Frank Smith, who's one of Alan's good friends, set up this interview. And Frank helped start Slingshot. Is that how it worked? Yeah. Well, there it is. Oh, we could have just called Alan.

He'd probably just shown up. So it's been all right, too. But thanks to Frank. Thanks to Slingshot. Slingshot's been a guest on the show before. Oh, been alright too. But thanks to Frank. Thanks to Slingshot. Slingshot's been a guest on the show before. Oh good, okay. Because as we talk about the sour me and normal folks engaging and everything else, it's important that we have data driven results and hold ourselves accountable to the work we're doing. Yeah. And I think for forgivers to find people like Slingshot to help guide them is really

wise. It is. Everything looks good on the video. Well, they're not handing out pamphlets that say how bad they are. That's for sure. I mean, some things are just pure charlatans and some are just mediocre and some are just not very good. And some are just mediocre and some you know just not very good and some are highly effective

some of those highly effective organizations are the worst at fundraising and So you got to go dig and find them, but when you can find somebody that you have a confidence in I think it's better to give to a fewer groups More deeply and and get engaged more deeply like you said partnerships. Yeah, you can become a partner Yeah more deeply. Like you said, partnerships. Yeah, you become a partner. Yeah, you ain't flying over a city in an airplane and throwing out hundreds. No, no. You know, I go to that Kroger you're talking about at Poplar in Cleveland. I go, that's on my way home and I go to that a lot. And somebody approaches, I don't give them money. And I will say, I've got grocery bags, is there any of this food that you want? I'll give you whatever this food you want. And they never want any of

my food. Yeah, but if you're hungry, please take whatever you'd like. And so, you know, to be a sometimes, sometimes saying no is the right thing. And it's hard. I mean, sometimes I do give money, but a lot of times I do not. I try to carry candy bars or whatever to... You could also say, hey man, my kids left. I took a pay cut. I can't afford it. I'm down to my last few bucks.

I'm struggling. Alan Barnhart, co-founder and CEO of Barnhart Cranon and Riggins, but most importantly, an absolute inspiration. And if this man can do what he has done, and we're working on 3% as a national average in our country, let's maybe use this story as an inspiration to maybe not get to 50, but certainly better than 3. Stop discouraging people from getting to 50.

So I'm not, I'm not discouraging anybody, but baby steps. Three to 50 is pretty tough, but three to 10, I think we can do. And that, that also includes your time, your energy, your effort. Everyone has a resource to give. And if you want to be a member of the Army of Normal Folks, let's get above 3%. What do you think, Alan?

Amen, amen. Amen. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Been a treat, really appreciate it. And George and I thank you for joining us this week. Don't we, George? Ring the bell.

Great. If Alan Barnhart has inspired you in general or better yet to take action by considering what lifestyle and generosity commitments you could make or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at Bill at NormalFolks.us and I promise you, I will respond. Won't I, George? Say it loud promise you I will respond won't I George say it loud I'll respond won't I okay good and if you enjoyed this episode share it with friends and on social subscribe to the podcast rate and review it join the army at normal folks dot us consider becoming

a premium member there any and all of these things will help us grow, an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Me and George, we want you to do what you can. We'll see you next time. Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite show. And we'll see you next time.

We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Hey there, Ed Helms here, host of Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw ups. It's the 1920s, Prohibition is in full swing, and a lot of people are mysteriously dying. Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrand is becoming increasingly desperate in forcing prohibition. She was a lone warrior.

I mean, how could Mabel not be feeling the pressure? Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, even Congress is full of hypocrites. So if Mabel is going to succeed in laying down the law, she needs to make the consequences for drinking hurt a lot more. Which she does, arguably a little too well. Find out more on season three, episode four of Snafu Formula Six. Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?

Why is my cat not here? And I go in and she's eating my lunch. Or if hypnotism is real? You will use this suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole? Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe. Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart Original Podcast, Sighin' Stuff. Join me, or Hitchamam as we answer questions about animals,

space, our brains, and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to Sign Stuff on the iHeart video app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like that could have been my daughter. Like you

never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it.

Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. Seven thousand bodies out there or more. A forgotten asylum cemetery. It was my family's mystery. Shame, guilt, propriety, something keeps it all buried deep until it's not. I'm Larisen Campbell and this is Under Yazoo Clay.

Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.