An Army of Normal Folks - What A Pencil Can Teach You And Me

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

For Shop Talk, we dive into the origin story of a pencil and what lessons it has for An Army of Normal Folks. We bet you didn’t see that one coming!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, Bill Courtney. Welcome to the shop. That was an extended bell. Shop talk number 82. Alex. Hey, do you know any 82 numbers? Do I have any 82 numbers? No.

82. There's got to be a tight end that played that's really good at 82. Lynn Stallworth, maybe. John Stallworth. John Stallworth. John Stalworth. That's pretty good. That is good.

Yeah. And then I didn't know him, but I did know. John Stahl would play for Pittsburgh. He was a receiver. He's really good. And the one I did know also played for Pittsburgh. I don't know. Antoine Randallel L.

Antoine Randallel. But trust me, Stalworth, that's Hall of Fame stuff. He is a Hall of Fame. Yeah. Randall L not so much. Randall is just a neat name, I guess. It's a cool name. Yeah. How about we should come up with an all-name team, like Pac-Man Jones, precious, Oshawa, but my favorite Kool-Aid McKinsterie. Who names your kid Kool-Aid?

That's his actual name, not the adopted name? No, Kool-Aid McKinstree, Precious, Oshawa, and Pac-Man-Jones. Those are the three that come to the top of my mind. We'll come up with the all-name team. All right, today's shop talk number 82 is the eye pencil story. The eye, what? We are going to tell you the story, the story of a pencil and how it came to be. Yeah, I have done this before, and it is great, interesting, and I can't wait to do this. Yeah, it's... And the pencil is actually... Something as simple as a pencil, everybody that's touched it, where it comes from all of that to show connectivity.

I guess. Yes, the invisible hand, connectivity. All of the steps it takes to make something so simple work. Correct. Can't wait. So the eye pencil story, it's absolutely worth listen to

right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. It's 520. 23 p.m. One of your kids is asking for a snack. Another is building a fort out of your clean laundry. And you're staring at a half-empty fridge and thinking, what are we even going to eat tonight? Or you could just hello fresh it. With over 80 recipes to choose from every week, including kid-friendly ones, even for picky eaters, you'll get fresh ingredients and easy step-by-step recipes delivered right to your door. No last-minute grocery runs. No, what do we even have fridge staring? And the best part, you're in

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suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified. Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures. It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this.

It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product

with every sip you get a little something different. Visit gentlemen's cutbuburn.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentlemen'scutturbin.com. Please enjoy responsibly.

Hey, everybody. It's Chuck and Josh from the Stuff You Should Know podcast, and it's that time of year again when we knuckle down to do our annual holiday episodes. We collected our best past classic holiday episodes and compiled them into a 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist that the whole family can enjoy. That's right. Maybe you missed it the first time

we detailed the history of Beanie Babies, Monopoly, or Yo-Yo's, and a whole lot more. So listen to the 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Who would you call if the unthinkable happened? I just fell and started screaming. If you lost someone you loved in the most horrific way.

I said through y'all 22 times. The police, right? But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of? This dude is the devil. He's a snake. He'll hurt you. I got you.

I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is The Girlfriends, Untouchable. Detective Roger Goloopsky spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing black women across Kansas City, using his police badge to scare them into silence. This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down. I told Roger Golooski, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. Listen to the Girlfriends Untouchable on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So the perspective. Welcome back, Shop Talk No, 82. So the perspective of the way Leonard Reed wrote the eyepinsel story. is um the pencil is the first person in this thing and um Leonard reads writing it as if the pencil

wrote to him I think is that how that correct okay the pencil tells its own genealogy there you go the pencil tells its own genealogy but it's really interesting so stick with us you'll love it. I am a lead pencil, the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write. Writing is both my vocation and my avocation. That's all I do. You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting, and next, I'm a mystery.

More so than a tree or sunset or even a flash of lightning, but sadly, I'm taken for grand. by those who use me as if I were a mere incident and without background the supercilous attitude relegates me to the level of commonplace let me tell you something this dispensal has quite a vocabulary I know is it superfluous yeah this is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril for the wise G. K. Chesterson observed we are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders. I, pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and all, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me, no, that's too much to ask of

anyone. If you can become aware of the miraculousness, which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach you. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because, well, because I am seemingly so simple. Simple. Yet not a single person on the face of the earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when I realize that there are about one and one-half billion of mankind produced every year in the United States. Pick me up, look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye. There's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, and a bit of metal, and an eraser. Just as you

cannot trace your family tree back very far, so it is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background. My family tree begins with what, in fact, is a tree, a cedar of straight grain and growth in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication, the mining of ore, the making of steel, and its refinement into saws, accesses. motors. The growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong

rope. The logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raisings of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink. The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leonardo, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who constructs, and install the communication systems incidental thereto. These legions are among my antecedents. Consider the millwork in San Leonardo. Am I saying that right?

San Leonardo, yeah. The cedar logs are cut into small pencil-length slats, less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are the kil-dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. people prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tent and the kilns and displaying the heat, the light, and the power, the belts, motors, and all the things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors, yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of Pacific Gas and Electric Hydroplan, which supplies the mill's power.

Don't overlook the ancestors present and distant who have had a hand in transporting 60 carloads of slats across the nation. Once in the pencil factory, $4 million in machinery in building all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine, each slat is giving an eight grooves by a complex machine after which another machine lays lead and every other slat applies glue and places another slat atop. A lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this wood clenched sandwich. My lead, itself, it contains no lead at all, is complex. The graphite is mined in, where's it mine? Salem?

Ceylon. I don't know. Huh. The graphite is mined in another country. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped. and those who make the strings and the ties and the sacks of those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships, even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted my birth

and the harbor pilots. The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi, which is ammonium hydroxide, is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added, such as sulfinated tallow, animal fats, chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions, as from a sausage grinder, cut to size, dried and baked for several hours at 1850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness, the leads are then treated with a hot mixture, which includes candelia wax from Mexico, paraffam wax,

and hydrogenated natural fats. My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know, all the ingredients of lacquer, who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor are part of it? There are, why, even in the process by which lacquer is made, a beautiful yellow involved, the skills more persons than one can enumerate. Observe the labeling. That's a film formed by applying heat to a carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins? And what prey is carbon black? My bit of metal, the feral, is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheets brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my feral are black nickel.

What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my feral has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain. Then there's my crowning glory. And elegantly referred to in the trade is the plug. The part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. an ingredient called Fectis is what does the erasing. It's a rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, are the numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy and the pigment, which gives the plug its color, cadium sulfide.

Does anybody wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of the earth knows how to make me? Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry and far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation. This is an extreme position. I shall stand on my claim. There isn't a single person in all of these millions, including the president of the pencil company,

who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how, the only difference between the minor of graphite and Salem and the logger and organ is the type of know-how. Neither the minor nor the longer can be dispensed with any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field, paraffan being a by-product of petroleum. Here's the astounding fact. Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay, nor any man who makes the ships or trains or trucks, nor the ones who runs the machines that does the nerling on my bit of metal, nor the president of company

performs a singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in first grade. Indeed, there are some of among the vast multitude who never saw pencil, or would they know how to use one? Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this. Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items. There is, in fact, still more astounding the absence of a mastermind of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trade of such a person can be found. Instead, we found the invisible hand at work.

We'll be right back. Being a parent is basically a juggling act. Dinner, hockey practice, homework, a last-minute science project, and someone's always, always shouting for you from another room. So yeah, I'll take any shortcuts that actually works, and that's why I'm all in on Hello Fresh. Fresh ingredients, super easy recipes, and over 80 options every week, so everyone eats. No one complains, and I get to feel like I've got it all together, at least for dinner. And the best part, you're in total control. Skip a week, pause any time, pick what works for you.

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I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified.

Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures. It's about whether the promise of modern fertility care can be trusted at all. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant.

Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is gentleman's cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com or your nearest total wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com.

Please enjoy responsibly. Hey, everybody, it's Chuck and Josh from the Stuff You Should Know podcast, and it's that time of year again when we knuckle down to do our annual holiday episodes. We collected our best past classic holiday episodes and compiled them into a 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist that the whole family can enjoy. That's right. Maybe you missed it the first time we detailed the history of Beanie Babies, Monopoly, or Yo-Yo's, and a whole lot more. So listen to the 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Who would you call if the unthinkable happened? I just fell and started screaming.

If you lost someone you loved in the most horrific way. I said through you got 22 times. The police, right? But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of? This dude is the devil. He's a snake. He'll hurt you.

I got you. I got you. I got you. I got you. I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is the girl. Girlfriends, Untouchable. Detective Roger Galoopsky spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing black women across Kansas City, using his police badge to scare them into silence. This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down. I told Roger Galoopsky, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. Listen to the girlfriends, Untouchable.

on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That is the mystery to which I referred earlier. It has been said that only God can make a tree. Why do we agree with this? Isn't it because we realized that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We can't, except in superfluous terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree.

But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the lifespan of a tree? Such a feat is unthinkable. I, pencil, am a complex combination of miracles, a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to those miracles which manifest themselves in nature, and even more extraordinary miracle has been added, the configuration of creative human energies, millions of tiny know-hows configuring naturally and spontaneously in response to the human necessity and desire in the absence of human masterminding. since only God can make a tree, I insist only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being

than he can put molecules together to create a tree. The above is what I meant when writing. If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind as so unhappily losing. Four, if one is aware that these no-hows will naturally, yes, automatically arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand, that is, in the absence of government, or any other coercive masterminding, then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom of faith in free people.

Freedom is impossible without its faith. Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such as, for instance, as the delivery of males, most individuals will believe that these males could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here's the reason. Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to do all

of the things to male delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough no how to perform a nation's male delivery any more than any individuals possess them know how to make a pencil.

Now, in the absence of a faith in free people, and the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity, the individual cannot help but to reach the erroneous conclusion that male can be delivered only by the government, masterminding. If I, pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fairer. case. However, there's testimony galore. It's all about us, and on every hand, mail delivery is an exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile, or a calculating

machine, or grain combine, or milling machine, or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second. They deliver an event visually and in motion to any person's home when it's happening. They deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours. They deliver gas from Texas to one's range or furnish in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy. They deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our eastern seaboard halfway around the world for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street. The lesson Abda teaches this. Leave all creative energies uninhibited, merely organized society

to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Had faith that free men and women will respond to the invisible hand, the faith will be confirmed. I, pencil, seemingly simple though I am, all for the miracle of my creation as testimony that there's practical faith as practical as the sun the rain a cedar tree the good earth i remember reading that i think i read it in college he's either high school or college some professor had us read it it is uh oh you don't want me to get political but it does speak to how important our freedoms are how important freedom trade is because the pencil can exist without parts and places from all over the world tariffs.

And it also speaks to what an army of normal folks can do when energized and running things versus the mastermind of an all-too-powerful centralized government that somehow we convince ourselves we can't live without. The greatest line there is that we can deliver oil from the Persian Gulf to the eastern seaboard by volume cheaper than the government can deliver a one-ounce envelope across the street. That's that we have to get our minds around

what an army of normal folks left free to operate and do what they do can create against the backdrop of some all-powerful big brother. Yeah, I think it really makes the case for an army of normal folks. Obviously, he's mostly talking about the economy there, but I think the same thing with all of our social problems.

Sure, it's the same thing. It's absolutely the same thing. And even put the government aside, like my new colleagues will even often talk about, like, large, distant non-profits aren't likely going to solve these problems either. It's often going to be top down, too, if it's just a program, right? Whereas an army of normal folk, like a member in your local community helping out one other person, they're going to have way more knowledge about what that person needs, you know, versus some distant, you know, bureaucrat. Yeah, I mean, honestly, the etymology of a pencil is a bottom-up idea. it's all of these itty-bitty little sub-skill sets each person doing what they can not even understanding many of whom will not even understand that their work will lead to a pencil but doing what they can and all those little sub-skill sets coming together from from an array of different places that can that end up being a pencil The metaphor, I think, is if each of us in the Army could just do what we can, where we can,

we may not even can see what the big picture looks like down the road, but we're all vital and integral to the creation of a better society. I think it's good humility, too. I'm sure you had a similar realization, but somewhere around 22 or 25, I had the thought like, man, I know nothing. like there is just like so much to know out there and even this thought when you're reading it like thinking about your business out here

think about the tens of millions of people involved with creating all the parts in your facility right I mean it's incredible there's no way you could know all the knowledge related to that right I mean so it's good humility for us too I can't tell you how many times we have a piece of machinery grow broke and finding the replacement parts

involves four or five or six different countries to find all the parts that we have to get to put machines back together. And it is just like the pencil. And some guy making a set of bearings somewhere in Ohio that's going to go on a shaft created in Mississippi that's going to combine to a mechanical board, created by Fromm in Italy and then all of that assembled in Memphis to be put on a drive on a machine created in Quebec whose sole job it is to put strapping on a pack of lumber to keep the pack of lumber and the strap is

is extruded in India, that all is simply to put a band around a back of lumber. When you think about it, that's insane. But it's easy to do one thing well, and it's easy to love one person well. It's true. There's a million of us doing it. It's it. Can change the country. That's awesome.

So, yes, we just told a story about a pencil, but that story is a metaphor for so much more. And ultimately, the metaphor is each of us do really well what we can, where we are, and what we're passionate about, and create an army of normal folks. And even your little bits of work, you may not even see what the final product is or can even fathom what it could be. But the etymology of a pencil shows us that millions of efforts can make something incredible. So that's Shep Talk number 82. And we appreciate you joining us, Alex.

What do we got to do? If people like this, then you need to rate it and review it, join your podcast. Subscribe to the podcast. Join the Army of Normal Folks. If you live in these six places, Oxford, Memphis, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Wichita, Clinton, New York, join our local chapters. And if you want to start one, let me know. My email is Army at NormalFox. Fox. Us. Yeah, and if you have any ideas for people to interview on an Army normal folks

or an idea is for Shop Talk, please write us anytime at Bill at NormalFolks. Us, and hopefully it's good idea and we'll take it up. And I guess that's it. It's ShopTot number 82. Thanks for join us. We'll see you next week. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com or your nearest total wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older.

Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit Gentleman'scuturban.com. Please enjoy responsibly. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late.

He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause? Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's Chuck and Josh from the Stuff You Should Know podcast, and it's that time of year again when we knuckle down to do our annual holiday episodes.

We collected our best past classic holiday episodes and compiled them into a 12 days of Christmas toys playlist that the whole family can enjoy. That's right. Maybe you missed it the first time we detailed the history of Beanie Babies, Monopoly, or Yo-Yo's, and a whole lot more. So listen to the 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. It doesn't matter how much I fight. It doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get.

None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Who would you call if the unthinkable happened? My sister was y'all 22 times. A police officer, right? But what do you do when the monster is the man in blue? This dude is the devil. He'll hurt you. This is the story of a detective who thought he was above the law until we came together to take him down.

I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. I got you, I got you, I got you. Listen to the girlfriends, untouchable, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.