Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How to Human with Carlos Whittaker

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Today, host Sharon McMahon welcomes back her friend, Carlos Whittaker, to Here’s Where It Gets Interesting. Sharon and Carlos talk about his new book, How to Human. Carlos wants people to pause and think, how do we human (used as a verb!) with intention and goodness? Carlos is a podcast guest favorite, and you'll hear why when you listen in to this conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woo-hoo! Hello friends, welcome. So excited you're here because I'm chatting with my very good buddy, Carlos Whitaker. So Carlos has a new book coming out called How to Human. And if you happen to see it at a bookstore or you go visit it on Amazon or barnesandnoble.com, you might recognize a familiar name on the front cover because right below Carlos Whitaker is a line that says forward by Sharon McMahon. So let's dive in and let's talk about how to human. I'm Sharon McMahon. So let's dive in and let's talk about how to human. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

We couldn't just let this opportunity pass, leave a new book coming out, How to Human. And I love that the subtitle is Three W to share life beyond what distracts, divides, and disconnects us. I love that. First of all, if people have not read it yet, which they probably have not, I'm one of the few who has had a chance to read it because it's not even out yet. It's not even out yet. I wrote the foreword to this book. I have written many recommendations for books that have been on back covers or websites or whatever, but I've never written a foreword before. Oh, wow. I want to let your listeners know that I actually just for the first time,

you'd written the foreword months ago, and I just read it before this podcast recording because I wanted to wait until I could see you. And it was everything I wanted it to be. It just was like my friend Sharon. It's just my friend, Sharon. And you've poured so much into just me as a human. And I just thought what better person to write it. So thank you. I'm glad that your words are going to live in my book. Long past we're on planet earth.

So thank you. That is, it's a sobering thought. That's a sobering thought. I recorded the audio version too. So when people listen to the audio book, they'll be able to hear both of us. That's right. That's right. That's right. Well, you have to be so excited for this book baby to finally be out in the world, even working on it for a long time. How does it feel to be like almost across the finish line? Yeah. You know, it feels, it feels amazing. Is there always a feeling of like trepidation when you get ready to release a book into the world where you feel like I hope it

lands? I hope people get what I'm trying to say. I hope people like it. Sometimes it even feels that way when you're just like publishing a post on Instagram, where you're like, that is not what I meant. What are you talking about? And then you don't have the opportunity to correct. Like you can't like immediately respond to every reader when you are getting ready to put a book out into the world. So I can imagine how that is like crossing fingers. Well, you know, it's, it's crossing fingers and it's getting to the place, Sharon, where you have to get it as an author. So confident in your own message for the right person, right? Like this book isn't going to be for everybody.

I talk about things in this book that I know are going to trigger people and people are going to be like, oh, no, I'm out. I can't. I just can't get down with this. And I know that. And so like as an author, knowing that the book's not for everybody, not everybody is going to be on this journey of trying to like reconnect with each other. I know it's not for them. Now that being said, yes, I feel completely naked the night before the book comes out. Like I'm just about to parade out in my 49 year old body for the world to see

and, and have them just kind of point and be like, Oh, you know, like, and so that's how scary it actually is. But luckily with what I have, my book launch team and I sent them all the book about two months ago for them to begin reading. And so I'm already kind of getting snippets of reviews and I'm seeing people posting their thoughts online, which for me is just, you want to send it to the people that love you first and like you. And so I sent my book to my friends and my advanced team. And so I'm starting to see reviews come in. And so, you know, I sent my book to my friends and my advanced team. And so I'm starting

to see reviews come in. And so it's just something that you've got to believe in. You know, when you hit publish on a post that, you know, Hey, probably not everybody's going to, going to agree with this, but you know, that you've written it for a certain person. And so I'm excited for that certain person to read it. And then hopefully that certain person gets to impact the people around them that may not ever get to read the book. I want to talk a little bit about, first of all, the title. What do you mean by how to human? What does that mean?

We're using human as a verb here. And we're not going to get into theology here because some people are going to be like, oh, the human condition is this and that. And I think at the end of the day, when someone reads the title, I wanted them to feel like, oh, you know what? We do need to figure out how to do this again. We do need to figure out how to do this intentionally. I feel like for a lot of people, they're just letting their emotions and reactions happen

to them as opposed to being in control of those going out. And so that's what the book is, is helping people get back to what I feel like we were all created to be. The goodness of who we are, I just feel like we all have that goodness deep down inside of us. And I tell one story in the book, Sharon, about, I tell a lot of stories in the book, but one about, and particularly 9-11 and how I just remember 9-11 was a moment in our country and around the world really, where this was pre-iPhones, this was pre-social media, and nobody went sprinting to their phones to write a two paragraph post on who they felt was at fault. What everyone did intrinsically

was sprint to help. Whether that's help a neighbor that maybe has a friend or a family member living in New York City. But I just remember we were together and that wasn't that long ago. And so I'm like, too much time hasn't passed. How can we get back to reminding ourselves what it looks like to truly human as a verb. One of the things you talk about all the time is this concept of don't stand on issues, walk with people. And I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about what does that mean to you? Because I can understand how people would feel like, but I want to stand on issues. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything, Carlos. I have issues that I want to stand on, but it doesn't mean don't have principles. It doesn't mean don't have things that are

wildly important to you. What does it mean? Get out of my DMs, Sharon. Get out of my DMs, please. You know what it means to me? It doesn't mean that I'm turning my back on my values. It means that I'm turning my face towards another human. And so just because you turn and you face somebody that you may vehemently disagree with, but you can agree with the fact that you are both humans walking this very complicated thing called life. It doesn't mean that you're leaving your values. And so when I say that, don't stand on issues. Walk with people.

Have an opinion on an issue. Yes, 100%. I mean, I have very strong opinions on issues. I have stated those opinions on Instagram. A lot of people know my opinions on issues. issues. I've stated those opinions on Instagram. A lot of people know my opinions on issues, but if I don't walk with people that I can learn from and be curious with, I don't feel like my opinion on that issue, especially because that issue is normally a person, right? So the issues that we have strong opinions about are people. They're not issues. I mean, they're actual humans.

So what I try to do every single time is when I have a strong opinion on something, I go and I find somebody that that opinion affects and I walk with that person. Now, does that mean that I'm going to change my mind on the issue? No, absolutely not. But what it does mean is I'm going to have empathy for the person that is underneath the issue. And I just feel like if we can just get back to walking with people as opposed to standing on issues, specifically for this podcast, I looked up this article that I had bookmarked and I'll send you the link for it, but it gives 11 political friendships that prove party lines don't have to divide Americans. And it goes through like Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan and how they would just go at each other, right?

But when Ronald Reagan got shot, Tip O'Neill was the first person next to his bedside that was praying with him. When Tip O'Neill passed away, Ronald Reagan was the one that poured the most money into his library at the university he was gonna be at. It just shows that we can actually walk with people and not stand on issues while believing very strongly on those issues. And that's all I'm

trying to get people to do is realize that we can actually walk together. So often today, I know you've encountered this and I see this literally every day. People feel like, yeah, but your beliefs about the issues, whatever it is, Like, yeah, but your beliefs about the issues, whatever it is, your beliefs about the issues are dehumanizing to me, or you're trying to take away my civil liberties, or what you believe is so antithetical to my being as a human that I don't feel safe interacting with you. I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. Let's say you're Jewish and somebody is deeply anti-Semitic

and is out there marching with skinheads and has a swastika as their bio picture. How would somebody, I'm just using this as one of zillions of examples, how would somebody be like, let me walk with that person when what they believe is so against who I am as a human being? I'd say a couple things. First of all, there are people that we will never be able to walk with. I need to say that first and foremost. There's going to be people that in order to protect your own mental health, in order to

maybe protect your physical health, right? Like I, Carlos Whitaker, am not going to walk as a black man to the KKK rally in South Georgia and go walk in there and be like, hey guys, what's going on? Like that is not what I'm talking about. Now, that being said, knowing that we've got to, even in our own families, like it's going to be important for us to maybe even sever some relationships in order to protect our family and in order to protect our mental health. That being said, there are going to be, for every single person listening, there are going to be some degrees of relationship that you can walk with. So you've got to really take inventory of the relationships and say,

you know, that one, I can't do that one, Carlos. Like that, that one's, I'm not gonna be able to do, but this person that drives me half as crazy and maybe is a little bit more accessible to me. My question is how are they ever going to change if nobody walks with them? So if we're just in this thing to like get in our silos and get in our bubbles and be like, you know, they're crazy. They're never going to change. Listen, this may be the Mr. Rogers in me, but I just think that there's got to be some of us that are called to walk with those that are super skeptical and even that may dehumanize us and look at us that way. Standing with issues and walking with people is great on a bumper sticker, but it actually

takes work. And so I'm not telling people that this is going to be easy, but it is going to take work and nobody is going to change. Not one single person is going to change. Not one single person is going to stop dehumanizing you and people like you unless somebody is willing to walk with them. That somebody may not be you, but I pray that somebody does it so that they can see the light.

How do we say, this is a person that I can walk with. This is not like, this is a hard pass. What actually is my responsibility? Who actually are the people that I'm supposed to be walking with? What advice would you give, let's say to me, what advice would you give to me, where I have people in my community and my DMS, whatever, who are saying things that are so sometimes so wild, that it is really difficult to understand sometimes to parse out, That it is really difficult to understand sometimes, to parse out, who am I supposed to engage with here? And who don't have to respond and interact in a conversation way. Sometimes all it takes to begin to plant a seed into somebody's heart that may be dehumanizing

to you is quite simple. It's the middle section of my book. It's see humans, right? So it's be human, see human, free humans. The see humans piece sometimes is all I do. Hey, listen, you are triggered because there's probably trauma somewhere in your story that is real to you. I just need to let you know that I see you. I'm not going to enter in a conversation with you. I'm not actually even going to walk with you in the way that maybe the language portrays, but I see you. And sometimes just them being seen is enough to plant a seed that's like, wow, this person that I just went at, this person that I just vomited all over, this person that I just threw fire on, smiled, looked at me and said, hey, listen, I see you. And sometimes that's all we can do. And sometimes that's the only thing we can do. So, you know, that, that's

my, again, as, as Sunday school of an answer is that, is that may feel sometimes it's the hardest thing to do to actually see people that are attacking you and see people, you know, because we don't have to go far for this. Like we can just go to our own families, right? Like I got ants that are on Facebook saying things that are dehumanizing to me, but I'm the closest to them. So I think to myself in our own families, like if we can just continue to see each other and that may be all that we can do, that may be all the strength we got is saying, Hey, I see you. And I see that there's pain and I see that there's emotion involved here. And I just need to let you know that I see that. That's it. That's all that you have to do. And sometimes that's all it takes to open up someone's

heart to a conversation, to change just a little bit. I tell a story in the book where one of my best friends on planet earth unfollowed me, stopped texting me all during 2020 because he said, I was talking about racism too much. I was talking about all these things. And I was like, well, I'm like, I'm your black friend, one of your best friends on the planet. And I go into this big thing where we have this big healing moment after this big conversation. But you know what I decided to do with him is in order to see him, I said, we can't talk about anything political. We can't talk about any of that stuff, but you know what we can do? We can buy season tickets to Nashville SC soccer game, sit next to each other and root for something together. That's what we're going to do. So I

bought him a ticket to Nashville SC, which is our professional soccer team. And I bought me a ticket for the whole season. And guess what? Every Saturday we are forced to come together and cheer for the same thing down on the field. And what has that begun to do? That's begun to heal our relationship and heal our heart. Are we talking about politics? No, we're talking about soccer. But sometimes we have to find something common that we can root for. And maybe that can be helpful as well. I think one of the important distinctions that you're sort of teasing out here is that when we say that you walk with people, people interpret that to mean you engage in arguments with people you disagree with. That's what they think it means to like, well, I'm going

to get in there and tell them why I believe what I believe and hope that they believe it too. Walking with people does not mean arguing with people. No, no, no. God, no, No, that is not what walking with people is. Oh my God, please. Nobody do that. And if you're doing that, that's not walking with people and that's not healthy for you. Stop it. What it does mean is exactly what you're saying, Sharon. I'm walking with my friend, Eric. We're walking together. We vehemently disagree on so many things, but we're walking together. We're not even talking about the things we disagree with, but we're building a foundation of relationship. So now there are some things that I am a little bit more actively engaged conversationally with some friends of

mine that I feel like are safer to maybe have some conversations with about some harder things. But this is one that I'm putting in a category of, we're not talking about this because that is not healthy for us, but we're not talking about this because that is not healthy for us, but we're still walking together. If somebody sees me walking with him and they think, oh my gosh, Carlos, well, do you know that that guy believes this? Do you know that that guy marched at this rally? Do you know that? Guess what? No skin off my back. If someone's going to judge me for walking with somebody that I may vehemently disagree with on opinions of mass scale, well, they can judge me on that. That's just something that I'm going to get judged on. But I don't feel like it's worth it to just cut off relationships that

may have been wounded because of the last couple years of political trauma that a lot of us have gone through. And I don't think it's worth it. I don't think it's worth it to lose those relationships when most of those relationships weren't built on politics. So why would we end those relationships off of politics? That's a good point. What is the foundation of this relationship? Is the foundation our shared political beliefs? No. Most of our friendships, like maybe I work with you, you know, and we became work friends. Maybe you're the spouse of somebody else that I know. Most of our friendships and our family relationships are not foundational.

Politics are not foundational to those relationships. And I, you know, I certainly have family and friends that say things that I'm like, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Like, that's my internal response where I'm like, oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And it actually requires sometimes a tremendous amount of discipline to be like, oh, interesting. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, God. That discipline.

That discipline and that Thanksgiving meal. Oh, interesting. As opposed to, what are you thinking? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Oh, that's interesting. Do you have any vacations? Totally. Yes. That is a skill set. Many of us need to build it. It is a skill. It's a skill that you can improve on. Some people are naturally more gifted at it than others, but it is nobody comes out of their mother knowing how to change the topic when something is getting

too heated. It's a skill that you can grow on. And I think that's a great point, that most of our relationships are not built on politics. But one of the things that I think is also very challenging for the average citizen of planet Earth to deal with today, which is something that has changed, even from, say, our parents' generation, or even from when we were children, which is this new concept of guilt by association. Just like what you were saying, where you feel like maybe you would get judged if you hung out with that friend who marched at a certain rally where you were like,

oh, gosh, no, I don't believe that at all. But people assume that because you follow them on Instagram, or you're seen at a soccer game, that you are giving your tacit approval to that person's beliefs. And social media has really fueled this. It's allowed us to see connections that other people have that we would never have known about before. I don't know your friend from the soccer game. I don't know him. has really fueled this. It's allowed us to see connections that other people have that we would never have known about before. I don't know your friend from the soccer game. I don't know him. You know what I mean? That doesn't affect me. I'm not there. But now with social media, we can now ascertain a lot of relationships that exist that we would never have known about before.

And there's this idea that you, Carlos, need to be accountable for what your friend Bob did on a certain day at a certain location. And I think people feel hesitant about engaging in relationships with people who believe something really different than themselves. How do you deal with that? Well, first of all, I'm just going to give, just be black and white with your listeners and say, if that is something that you are passionate about looking through who people follow and wondering if you can trust them based on who they follow. I need to remind everybody of the uncanceled culture. I am like the second, third,

fourth, fifth chance guy. Like I, that chance guy. That's who I am. It's in my DNA. But I know because of how social media is being built and how people are viewing things, there probably is going to come a time in a season where I will be canceled in some way, shape, or form by some group because of something that I've either liked on someone else's post or something that I have said. I know that that is a reality that is coming towards me because of how we're built. Now, last week, I liked a post, literally liked a post from a friend of mine who was a friend who I disagree with on a lot of things. And the post that I liked was about her house. It was about her house. It was like, it was like picture of her house and like, whatever. But she had said some things weeks before that was very hurtful to a large group

of people. And a lot of those people follow me. So literally, I mean, it was seconds, Sharon, after I liked that post that I don't even know how Instagram works these days, but apparently that is public knowledge when you like somebody's post. And suddenly I'm just getting DMS and how could you, and do you know what she said? And do you know it? And I actually had to spend a lot of times in my DMS, a lot of videos from Carlos to strangers saying like, Hey, listen, like I'm actually like, if you're going to judge me, I would just warn anybody listening to this, to never, never judge another person's humanity based on a relationship that you have no idea where that relationship was born or what that relationship even is. It's just a dangerous road to go down. And yeah, I just warn people against that.

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But most of all, the passion and care that goes into producing the local, high-quality milk we all love and enjoy every day. With 3,200 dairy farming families across Ontario sharing our love for milk, there's love in every glass. Dairy Farmers of Ontario, from our families to your table, everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. Buddy Milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. There's this woman whose life I'm very interested in, and she is really one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. And her name is Septima Clark. And I won't go into everything that she did and accomplished, but she was a teacher. And one of the

things that she said that always like sticks out in my mind is, I've learned that I can work with my enemies, because they may have a change of heart at any moment. And that speaks to exactly what you're saying, that how will they change if nobody is ever talking to them? How will they change if there's nobody reasonable in their life? Or near them. Or near them. Proximity. Or looking them in the eyeballs. Yes. How will anybody ever change if we reject them outright, which forces them to then retreat further into their own silos, their own echo chambers, their own dungeons of the dark web. How will they ever change if everybody rejects them out of hand and never says, hey, I'd love to go to a soccer game with you. I'd love to have you over for pie next week. How do we expect them to be better if we never

model that for them? They won't ever change. And I love that quote. It is so true. And proximity, there has to be proximity in order to really see somebody. You can't see somebody. I'm not saying see humans through binoculars. You literally can't see somebody unless you get close. And I know that's hard and not everybody is called to get close to everybody, but we are all called to get close to somebody that may disagree with us. And so who's that person? I've also been the friend that somebody has had to come to me that really didn't want to come to me and be curious about my beliefs and be curious about what it is that, and you know what it did for me? It opened my heart back up to them. And suddenly they showed me some things that I disagreed with that I actually was wrong about. Go figure.

We can actually be wrong ourselves. And so- No, not possible. I know. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. I mean, be careful. You start living this how to human thing, you may start actually changing your mind on a few things. No, also not possible. Nope, not possible.

Every opinion I have is already completely correct. Forever and ever. Forever. I am the arbiter of all wisdom and know all the things there are to know. No, I think that's true, though, that we're operating from an assumption, most of us, that our opinions are the correct ones. Right. Of course.

And it's other people that need to change, right? And sometimes it is. Sometimes it is. There's that adage about first remove the plank from your own eyeball before you start digging around for the speck in somebody else's. So I live in Nashville, Tennessee. And for the listener that follows me on Instagram or whatever, they know that I lean leftish, leftish. It's just kind of like where I lean, you know, in my centristness, I lean leftish. And there was an entire media company from Los

Angeles, a very conservative media company that moved to Nashville, Tennessee about a year ago. And they brought all their podcast hosts. They brought the whole thing and they landed right here. So I follow a lot of their hosts online on Twitter because I like to learn and I like to see what maybe people that think differently than me think. But there's one of them that's just really mean. And I was having dinner with my wife. This was two months ago at a sushi restaurant here in Nashville. And I look over to my left and I see said mean person sitting two tables across from me and my jaw drops. And I was like, oh my gosh, because I like, I follow this person every single day. I see jaw drops. And I was like, oh my gosh,

because I like, I follow this person every single day. I see what he says. I'm like, God, this guy's so mean. And so Heather's like, what are you doing? And I was like, oh my gosh, that's dah, dah, dah. Now my wife doesn't know any of this stuff. She doesn't know who these people are. She goes, so who is he? And I was like, yeah, like I just, you know, I follow him, but we disagree on a hundred percent of everything. And he's just so mean. And she goes, oh, well, hey, Mr. Don't stand on issues walk with people she literally says this my wife says this to me she goes you need to go pay for his meal and i was like excuse me she's like you're always telling and i was like babe no you don't understand no not this one like maybe another one this one's mean he's a meanie he's a bully. And so listen to this. I walk up to him and his wife and they're having a meal. And so I walk up and I was like, hi, my name's Carlos. That's all I say.

I don't tell him anything else. My name's Carlos. And I follow you on Twitter. And so he's smiling and his wife's smiling. And I was like, and actually, I disagree with 99% of what you have to say. And his wife immediately starts dying laughing. And he is a little bit like, uh disagree with like 99% of what you have to say. And his wife immediately starts dying, laughing. And he is a little bit like, Oh, is this guy going to cuss me out? Like what's happening? And I just said, but listen, I just want to say, I know you're new to town. If you ever need anything, you know, like Nashville is a really kind place and just welcome to town. Like, I just want to say welcome. And I'm glad you're here. You know, hopefully you have a great night. So I leave. I don't tell him I pay for his meal. I pay for his meal. I leave. Later that night on Twitter, he tweets out. This is crazy. This is

the meanest guy ever. He goes, guys, you'll never believe what happened. I was at dinner and this Obama loving liberal dude comes walking up to me and was the nicest guy I'd interacted with in a week. And he paid for my meal. His name was Carlos. And I just want to say, thank you, Carlos. I'm so touched. Right. And so like he tweets this out and he was overwhelmed and shocked that somebody would be kind to him that doesn't agree with most of what he says. And I'm telling you, if that wasn't proof being in the pudding, me and this guy, now I'm not going to say who the guy is, but me and this guy have had dinner now three separate times. We don't talk about, actually, we talk a little bit about some of the things we disagree with, but there's

been a relationship that was born out of kindness. And just like you're saying, tell me the name of the lady, the civil rights. Septima Clark. Septima Clark. Just like Septima Clark is saying. We would be, again, enemy is very loosely used here, but how will he or I ever see a change unless we are close in proximity to each other? And it was hard for me to do that first step, pay for his meal and say, welcome to town. But because of that, a relationship was born and maybe he's going to change something and maybe I'll change something too. Who knows? But at least I'm practicing what I'm preaching,

even though it's hard. I love that. Those things are not fruitless and the sole motivation cannot just be, well, I hope that he starts to love Obama. No, no. Like that can't be the motivation. No. I know some people come along some ideas like this and think it's just, it's too far gone, Carlos and Sharon. I don't know why you guys are talking about like that we can actually do this thing and stop viewing the other person as the enemy because they are the enemy and they're it's too far gone it's not i just don't think that it is who's um

the former speaker that cried during um nancy pelosi's who was that john boehner john boehner you know like i just again like i just look at that and i just think things have gotten so vicious and so gross so fast that we're still able to reach out and touch some really good things and some really good relation and some really good reminders. And, you know, that, that was something that when I watched, I just was touched by because I, he was, he's walking with people. He's walking with people while he has strong opinions and his job is to have strong opinions on issues. Right. And so if people like that can do it, we can do it. There was a time when George W. Bush was president, when Nancy Pelosi became

speaker of the house for the first time, and he was giving the state of the union address. And he was like, today, I get to say something that no other US president has ever gotten to say, you know, and he kind of turned and gestured to her and he was like, thank you, Madam Speaker, you know, like, because they're in the House of Representatives, she's there to represent, you know, she's here to welcome him to the House of Representatives. And of course, the entire Congress erupted in like, this is a first, this is a first, this is the first time we've had a female Speaker of the House. It's arguably, not even arguably, it is one of the most powerful positions in the United States. More powerful than the Vice President, more powerful than any position in the Senate,

perhaps second only to the President. The Speaker of the House is essentially the leader of Congress. And when you go back and you watch that clip of him, he's got his like, George W. kind of smirk on, you know, where he's like, thank you, man. Oh, yeah, you know, like he, he was real amused with himself that evening. And he could have taken a different tactic of like, all of these liberal Democrats, Madam Speaker Nancy Pelosi, barf, you know, he could have taken a different tactic and other people have taken different tactics. But in that moment, he chose differently. And I love to look back now on, you know, how history remembers people who have been generous instead of stingy,

how history remembers people who have walked with people instead of being like, I can't believe that we have this Catholic liberal woman sitting behind me. You know what I mean? History looks back on him far more kindly for that than it would have if he had chosen differently. History is filled with stories like that. It's filled with, as you mentioned, those strange bedfellows, so to speak, of relationships between people who were very, very unlikely. One of my favorites, I'm sure it's on that list, is Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy. I'm sure it's on that list. They're so different from each other, so wildly different. And it really amuses me because, of course, Ted Kennedy was the quintessential hard-drinking, womanizing New England Kennedy, right? You know, like the direct descendant of this political dynasty.

And Orrin Hatch is this kind of more mild-mannered member of the LDS community from Utah who's never had a sip of alcohol, but loves to write songs. Orrin Hatch loved to write songs. Did you know this about him? No, I did not know this. Yes, yes. Googling right now. Oh, yeah.

You will need to. It's on YouTube. Oh, my gosh. Orrin Hatch wrote many songs. Wow. And when Ted Kennedy was first diagnosed with a brain tumor, Orrin Hatch wrote him a song. But Orrin Hatch, again, Ted Kennedy is Catholic. Orrin Hatch was not.

They had very, very different viewpoints on how one should interact with the world, right? But when Ted Kennedy realized, I have a drinking problem, who had been walking beside him for literally decades. It was not the man who was like, forget Ted Kennedy. It was not those people who had the lasting impact on Ted Kennedy. Absolutely. I wrote a post a couple of days ago and you commented about how we're not going to, on our tombstones, it's not going to be written like our opinion on whatever budget item that was there was the lasting impact that we have on other people, you know, and that's, that's it. That's the goal. That's what we're shooting for. That's how to human that that is. So, you know,

you know, it's taken us 45 minutes, but we got to the definition of how to human we're there. How to human you, when we're done here, you need to Google Orrin Hatch, Ted Kennedy song. I'm in. Because you can hear it on YouTube. Sung by Orrin Hatch himself. I believe so. I believe so. Okay.

Yes. Fascinating. And Orrin Hatch was so earnest in writing this song. This song wasn't a joke. It was not a like, Ted Kennedy, we love you. Have a great day, buddy. It was not like that. Really? It was like it had. No. Oh. It's like a like, Ted Kennedy, we love you. Have a great day, buddy. It was not like that. Really?

It was like it had, no. Oh. It's like a legitimate song. Oh, I was thinking this is like a fun, oh my gosh. Mm-hmm. What? And a chorus, like a full, a full song. Full song.

Very, very full song. Not just a like Ted Kennedy, rah, rah, rah. No, like a full song. Wow. That he truly meant. You need to Google Orrin Hatch's songwriting proclivity because he has written many songs. I'm going to do that. And then I'm going to put it on my 2023 to-do list to write a song for three guys that I can't stand right now. So I'm pretty, pretty excited about that.

Ooh, ooh, yeah. Yes. Okay. Send me your demo. I'll send you my demo. I'll put it in the mail on cassette tape. It'll be there. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'll, I'll record the introduction. You do, you do that next up. You do that. You do that. Okay. One last thing. Yeah. What do you hope that the reader who reads your new book how to human what do you hope they take away from it what is the the wish of your heart that they would close the book and have learned x or feel y what what is your hope i hope that they close the book and they feel like i can do this i i hope that they close the book and they feel like I can do this. I hope that they close the book and they feel like, you know what? I can play my part in healing a landscape that is

traumatized and injured from the last three years. I believe with everything inside of me that you don't have to raise millions of dollars. You don't have to move mountains. It only takes one relationship repaired to start this revival of healing that I think is possible. And so that's what I hope. I hope that the reader thinks that, okay, Carlos, you're right. I can do this. I'm going to be who I was created to be. I'm going to see other humans around me and I'm going to do everything I can inside me to find a way to free them. I love that. Well, your book comes out January 24th and I cannot wait to see its success. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for being who you are. Love you. Love you too. Carlos's book, How to Human comes out January 24th, 2023. So you can either pre-order it now or buy it wherever you get books as soon

as it's available. You'll get to see my name on the front cover. I hope you'll love it. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. If you enjoyed this episode, would you consider sharing it on social media or leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform? All those things help podcasters out so much. The show is written and researched by executive producer, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, and Sharon McMahon. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. We'll see you again soon. you