An Army of Normal Folks - We Have A Morality Problem. And We’re The Problem

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

In this Shop Talk, Bill and Alex break down the speech Bill gave at the West Tennessee Faith and Community Summit in Memphis, with the governor, the mayor, and a ballroom full of faith leaders in the room. Bill's argument: crime, homelessness, kids who can't read on grade level, and young people aging out of foster care aren't our problems. They're symptoms. The real problem is a morality problem, and it isn't with the poor or the disenfranchised. It's with the rest of us, who see the need, think "somebody ought to do something about that," and keep driving. Bill also explains what he was really trying to say to a room full of people who call themselves Christians: Jesus didn't spend his time in nice ballrooms with wealthy people, and if we're called to be Christlike, the work is elsewhere. Plus: why he walked off stage the second the speech ended (there was a fire at his lumber yard), and what happened in 1907. ARMY ACTIONS Subscribe to the podcast and rate & review us! Signup to join the Army, visit NormalFolks.org Follow us on social media @ArmyofNormalFolks Join or start an ANF local service club at https://normalfolks.org/service-clubs/ Take The 10 Level Challenge, "the hero's journey for service" at 10LevelChallenge.org In San Antonio, Lincoln NE, Sumner County KS, Huntsville AL, or anywhere in Oklahoma? People there want to start a service club and need members. Email [e-mail] and he'll connect you. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an Army of Normal folks, and welcome to the shop. It's a little weird because I'm wearing the same clothes as I did last week. It's because we're recording this on the same day, Guppal. Oh, is that why? Yeah, that's why. You're always bringing people behind the curtain, not necessarily. Feels a little weird. All right.

You would also not care about your appearance, though, and wear the same thing two weeks back to back. Absolutely. I absolutely do not care about my appearance. none whatsoever. Oh, we could tell. I married a hot wife. She loves me. She's good and she's fine with hat and these shirt and shorts. Plus, the way I work and stuff that's the way it is. We've got to move on. Here we are. This is Shoptaught number 119. And I can't believe we're doing, in fact, you probably ought to, I don't know. It's my idea. So it should be fair. Yeah, go ahead. It's a little weird. All right. Shop talk number 119 is actually about a speech I did win,

month in africa and may all right some big fancy the governor and a bunch of people were in memphis and they are the governor and the mayor had to listen to you that's ridiculous the mayor was on stage with me and had to sit next to me yeah i know well so anyway they were there and uh it was a it's a speech at the west tennessee faith and community summit where faith leaders in the community and and governors and mayors and people like that in the community get to together and they have a summit and whatever. And so I was asked to address it. And I did.

And we'll talk about what I had to say. Well, actually, watch and listen to your speech. Yeah. You're going to watch and listen to the speech. I'm told it was good. I don't know how to say it. I mean, people liked it. And then we're going to comment on it after.

You were the only person to get a standing ovation and you had the biggest rounds of applause. Not that it's all about that. But it was such a good speech, Bill. You should take this as a compliment. Just stop. You should take this as a compliment that I decided we should feature it on the shop talk. Just stop, Alex. You're embarrassing me.

All right. That's going to be shop talk 119. But first, what happened in 1909? Oh, you're close. 1919 years ago. Yeah, 1907. You're actually in the ballpark this day. The panic of 1907 rocked the U.S. financial system.

A severe banking and stock market crisis caused bank runs and threatening the American economy. J.P. Morgan personally organized a rescue. I was going to say that's when J.P. Morgan basically saved the United States financial system. And it led to the Federal Reserve being created in 1913. Yeah, that's very cool. And Oklahoma became the 46th state. Really? It wasn't until then. Yeah. On November 16th, Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed Oklahoma State.

I know what 49 and 50 was. And what was Oklahoma, 40 what? 46. I wonder what 47, 48 was. Probably something like Montana and Idaho or something. Yeah. We'll find that out next to Shop Talk. We'll find that out next to Shop Talk.

Yeah. Okay. So Shop Talk number 119 right after these brief messages, which we're going to, you're going to listen to a speech I did and we're going to comment on it. And the speech is. we have a morality problem and we're the problem. It was a speech we gave to the West Tennessee Faith and Community Summit. You like that title I came up with? I titled your speech. I didn't have a title. I know. So I just came up with that title. He basically just repeated what I said and called it the title. That's really impressive. But I made it interesting. It's a good title.

That is not interesting. It's what I said. There's nothing nuanced about it at all. Anyway, if this thing was a community summit organized by the Tennessee governor's community initiatives for the third time. Right after, well, if you quit interrupting me, right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

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I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted. controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us.

Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Proz Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

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Our town is small taters by most standards, right? but to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal?

A podcast about what happens. when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull-h-h-hue. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration.

Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to our town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Shop Talk 119, here is, what did you title on my speech? Here is my speech. We have a morality problem and we're the problem. Thankfully, you only have to listen to Bill for five minutes. It's not too painful, guys. What?

Thankfully, people only have to listen or watch you for like five minutes. It's not too bad. It's five to seven minutes, guys. That's not a third minute. I meant that as a joke, but you don't. Yeah, so listen to this, watch it. And we'll come back and comment right after a place. We talk about problems.

We talk about poverty. We understand that if a child doesn't read on third grade level, by the time he's in third grade, he's three times more likely to be incarcerated by his 18th birthday than somebody who can read. We talk about people aging out of foster care. We know that if you age out of foster care and are not adopted, you were six times more likely to be homeless by your 21st birthday than you're. are to be housed. We have all these problems. We talk about, we talk about crime. We know our city is four or five hundred officers short. Yet we argue amongst ourselves about the help that comes in that is helpful, but they're going to leave and we're still going to have a crime problem, but is that really the police's problem? We talk about these problems all the time with our

friends and at the kitchen table and certainly they're real, but I don't really think they're problems, I think there's symptoms of a greater problem. Now for me to stand up here and say what I'm going to say, it may hurt some people's feelings. It is an inconvenient truth as I see it as a man who's coached football in this city for 25 years and runs a business with 130 employees. But it is what I see. And I have to say it, or I'm wasting your time and mine here. We can heroically We continue to pluck drowning children out of the river as they pass by. But eventually we need to go upstream and find out why they're healthy. They're in the water in the first place.

We don't have a crime problem. We have a crime symptom. We don't have a homeless problem. We have a homeless symptom. We don't have those problems. We have a symptom. The problem we have friends is a morality problem. Now, in the largest majority, minority city, and

in the country for a white man to stand up and say that about this city, I have to be careful. Because I think in two minutes you'll understand where I think the morality problem is. If Christ came back today, friends, he wouldn't come here. Christ surrounded himself with the drugs of life, the stinky fishermen and the prostitutes. He did not show up where the nice people wearing good clothes hung out. If we are called as faith leaders in the business community, the philanthropic community, the government community be Christ-like, ask yourself, where are we supposed to be right now? The morality problem is not with the oppressed.

The morality problem is not with the disenfranchised. The morality problem is not with the poor. The morality problem is not with the homeless who was abandoned and never read to as a child and ended up aging out of foster care. The morality problem is here. When you drive over the viaduct and you peer down it and you see the disenfranchisement and the loss and the hopelessness and you think, my goodness, somebody had to do something about that one day, the morality problem is with your sentiment and your inaction. We have a morality problem in our city today. And it starts with us.

And I do believe there is an answer. It is simply this. what if you decide that you understand what your passions and your talents are and what you're good at and instead of driving by and thinking man government ought to do something about that some big 501c ought to do something about that how about you do something about that how about we simply engage our abilities and our passions at areas of need and one-on-one do you know there's 625,000 people in our city. There's 10,000 nonprofits. That is one nonprofit for every six people. If 30% of our citizenry is needy, that is one nonprofit for every two people, and we're still having these

meetings. Something isn't working, and what's not working is us. The individuals in the city that see need and walk past it and pass by it as if it's someone else's problem. And if you don't care about it from a from a realism standpoint you need to care about it from a pragmatic standpoint because if we don't fix it we're not going to have a tax base and this place is going to fall that's the business side the other side of it is this we are called to be Christ-like the need is in front of us where would Christ be today if he came back today and if you're to follow him and to be Christ-like you need to follow him to New Chicago or South Memphis because that's where the work is. Thank you.

So the funniest thing about it was I got a couple of texts from some friends that are an audience. They're like, dude, you mic dropped. And I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about that. I didn't like drop. I had to go. Actually, Kemp Conrad texted me that too. He's like, I was trying to talk to Bill after the speech. He didn't talk to me after speech. I would go on. Tell people why, though. We had a fire. Literal fire at your facility. We had a fire. We had a fire. We had a fire. at my lumberyard and I'm getting text like 10 minutes before I'm supposed to go up there. You need to learn about fire safety. That's two fires in a couple of months, Bill. What's going on here?

A lack of fire safety. So the thing was, I did not mean to Mike drop it. I was just gone. And you were like, rude. You didn't even stay for the mayor's speech. You just left. I didn't have time for the other speech or the governors or whoever else talk. But the thing was, you're the one that told me there's a standing ovation and a bunch of people standing up and clapping and hooting because i didn't even see that i literally walked behind that petition it was gone but that was the funny part because there was a literally before your speech started your guys had called you or texted you saying there's a fire yeah and there's nothing you just had to like go to the same thing i'm sitting there going okay well uh i'll i actually text back i said i'm leaving here in 15 minutes

i mean so anyway actually one of the only two or three times i've had to host the podcast is also when you had a fire i know it's weird Did you remember you had that one in the middle of the night? You didn't go home and Lisa was out of town. Yeah, that's right. You missed your alarm. So, the last, anyway. So here's the deal to the speech.

I don't care if you're Christian, Jewish, agnostic, Muslim, or whatever, I hope you listen. Because army of normal folks is, we specifically try very hard to make it nonpolitical. We try out very hard to make it open. to all folks from all races, thoughts, creeds, belief sets. I truly don't care who you love, who you marry, how you vote, who you worship, what you look like. Because I'm going to celebrate you if you're doing something good for someone in your community. And I think likewise, you can for anybody else doing the same work. So that's a preface to what I'm about to say. this thing was the faith in what's what was it called the faith summit yeah basically um

and i'm a christian so i'm sitting there thinking about this on i didn't write anything i was driving on the way to it i'm sitting there thinking about yeah i sent you ideas and you basically ignored it and did what you did i didn't like your idea i thought it was lame and not nuanced much like the title. I was thinking, you know, when do you have the governor and the mayor and a bunch of bigwigs in a room with a bunch of preachers and faith-based folks

and have an opportunity to call myself and everybody out in the room on our hypocrisy? And the hypocrisy is if we call ourselves Christians, we're called to be Christ-like. And I just don't think if Christ, if Christ were to show up today based on the past when he surrounded itself with fishermen's and prostitutes, I just don't think he'd show up in a beautiful ballroom with all these wealthy people and nice cars packed out front and ties and nice watches.

That's not where Christ found himself. And that's not what he, that, that's not the example he gave us. And so while fine to have meetings, the work is elsewhere. And likewise, we like to sit in rooms like that and talk about our problems and problems of crime and problems of a lack of education and problems that children don't read on grade level and problems in the foster care system. And to me, those are not problems. those are just symptoms. Yeah. The problem is we have a morality problem.

And I don't excuse the lack of morality where a child is abused in a home that's underserved or a kid gets to first grade and has never been sung a lullaby, read a bedtime story. And so they're behind the curve just on fanatics. And all of the other things that happen in lower income, struggling, underserved families

and those same types of communities. There is a lack of morality in that. And it would be foolhardy to just dismiss that fact. But I think that pales in comparison to the lack of morality when we have the governor and the mayor and all these high-falutin folks in a room talking about all the problems.

at a faith summit rather than digging in where the problems are. So I don't think the lack of morality is on the disenfranchised. I don't think the lack of morality is on the poor. I don't think when I say on. I don't think it's the fault of the poor or the disenfranchised or the underserved. I think the lack of morality is that we sit in room,

and fancy ballrooms with our fancy titles and talk about all the problems, and then don't actually go do something ourselves. I think that is morally reprehensible from a Christian standpoint, because if we're called to be Christ-like, that is not what Christ did. So I dropped that bomb on the room, and oddly, the people I was trying to bomb stood up and cheered, so maybe they didn't get it. I don't know, but there was the speech. So you can talk about it now.

But that's my explanation of what my tent was. Yeah. One of the interesting parts that you had in there was saying, we have a morality problem. And that's a tough thing to say in the largest majority minority city in the country. I said that's a tough thing for a white guy to say in the largest minority majority city in the country. It is. And then you turn the phrase into where the problem. But it was a really good intro into it.

Yeah, well, thanks. Every once in a while, I'll hit a beat. True. Every once a while. You know what they say about broken clocks? What? Even they're right twice a day. Maybe they're right twice a day.

That's right. That's the exact way. Unless it's a military clock, then it's only once a day. True. Okay, everybody. I hope you enjoy the beach. I can't stand people who use military time. You don't like that?

Yeah, do you have friends who use it? I mean, they served in the military, so it's kind of hard to say negative things. But, like, they enforce their military time on a, us. Yeah. No. I'm meeting you at 1700. But we need to get going.

It's 1318. Yeah, it's time. So I hope you enjoyed the talk. I hope you enjoyed the explanation of it. It's a little weird talking about my own talk. You just said 1318. You just threw military time on me.

Oh, you just thought that? That happened 12 seconds ago, Alex. Okay. I'd have 12 clicks ago, or I don't know if that's a quick. I look up at 5 a. I'm doing F3. Give me a break. So everybody, that shop talk number 119.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share our friends on our social. Share my speech. Shoot it out there. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, wake your neighbors, phone your kids. What else? Join the army at normalfolks.org. Join a service club. Yep.

We're out. Buy some merch. Buy some merch. Ten level challenge. Yeah. And if you're from San Antonio, Texas, Lincoln, Nebraska, Sumner County, Kansas, Huntsville, Alabama, or Oklahoma, or anywhere in Oklahoma, and you would like to join a service club.

There are people in each of those cities that are really interested in starting one, and they just need members. And so if you email Alex at. Alex at normalfolks.org. He will connect you with the people that are willing to step up and lead the club, and y'all got a Army of normal folks, service club going and do some good. So there it is.

That's shop talk number 119. Until next week, do what you can. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself

because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillard, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our hometown is not a test tube. 90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town. Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.

We need cities on a shining hill. This is Our Town, a podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to Our Town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.