TrueLife - Dr. David Salomon - My Library Is My Lab

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.comhttps://cnu.edu/people/davidsalomon/Dr. David A. Salomon holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Connecticut and an MA from the City University of New York. A specialist in the literature, religion and culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance England, he most recently spent thirteen years as a professor of English at the Sage Colleges in Troy and Albany, NY. During his time there, he also served as chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages, director of general education, director of study abroad, chair of the Faculty Development Committee, faculty advisor for the student newspaper, and was the founding director of the Kathleen Donnelly Center for Undergraduate Research. He joined CNU as the inaugural Director of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity in September 2017.His book on the medieval glossed Bible was published by the University of Wales Press in 2013. In 2015, he co-edited and co-authored a monograph, Redefining the Paradigm, which discussed new models for faculty evaluation to improve student learning. His new book, The Seven Deadly Sins: How Sin Influenced the West from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, was published by Praeger in April 2019. He has published essays on everything from medieval mysticism to anger in the Bible, and has given presentations on teaching and faculty evaluation models at conferences, such as the Teaching Professor and the annual AACU Conference. A native of Bronx, NY, he and his wife Kelly and daughter Phoebe now reside in Newport News, VA. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. It is the one and only Dr. David Solomon. And we are reunited and it feels so good. Dr. David Sullivan, I'm so happy to be back with you. I'm excited for today's show.

And for those people who may live under a rock or in an ivory tower or could be on a high horse, would you be so kind is to maybe explain to them who you are? Sure. Well, thanks, George, and thanks for having me back. It's good to see you again after a bit of a break. I am currently the director of undergraduate research and creative activity at Christopher Newport University in Newport, Newport, Newport, New York. I've been in higher ed for something like 33 years or something.

Professor of medieval literature, religion, and culture. And I, from New York City originally, written a bunch of books. Most recent book is a book on The Seven Deadly Sins. And spring is here. Well, spring is here, but in Virginia already, it seems like summer today. Today and tomorrow we are in the mid-80s. It's a little bit crazy. It's already getting a little humid, so it makes me worry about what the summer is going to be coming on here.

But it's a very strange situation. The weather has just been going up and down here. It's supposed to be, I think it's supposed to be 85 tomorrow. And then on Friday, I believe it's supposed to be 59. Wow. So it's just nuts. I mean, there's no normal for the weather anymore. Yeah, it almost seems like the patterns are sort of, you know,

the same as our world, is the weather as everything else. Yeah, I mean, you know, people will say, you know, oh, well, that's, you know, that's normal for here. And I'm like, well, there is no more normal because the patterns have just shifted and nothing's predictable anymore. It seems when it comes to the weather. I mean, you know, regardless of where I've lived in the country, people have always said, if you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes. And everybody thinks they own that. And then you move someplace else and they say it too. And you're like, yeah, they say that. everywhere.

Oh, it's classic. Yeah, it's interesting, too. Not only our weather patterns changing, but the landscape of our country is changing. And, you know, I was digging into your last couple blogs, and it seems like the idea of libraries are changing. You know, first, first we have Alexandria, and then we have Vermont.

Yeah, it's been a big radical shift. and it seems to have happened overnight almost. You know, I mean, we started with e-books, gosh, close to 30 years ago. Yeah. I can remember when the first e-book reader came out. It was sold at like office. I can't remember what it was called. The Rocket Book was called.

And it bombed. It was expensive. And, of course, there weren't a lot of texts that were even available for it. they tried to make it look like a book. I remember had a little handle on the side that you held while you were reading, but it wasn't very good. And, of course, now, you know, with the explosion of the Internet since then, the availability of e-texts, now it's just a given.

And more and more, especially in the education world, when the administrators and the bean counters that I love so much sit down to look at their spreadsheets and figure out where can we cut oftentimes it's the library that gets cut because they say well we don't need to buy books you can just have e-books and they're cheaper and some of that statement is true sure some is not

you know I know that that consistently we do surveys of college students and asking them what they prefer. And as far as I am aware, each year that we've done that survey nationwide for the last two decades, students still say they would prefer actual physical books. They don't want to use e-books. Now, personally, as an old book guy, I hate e-books. I can't stand them. I like the tactile physical nature of a printed book. along with, you know, a lot that comes with that, which we can talk about. And you don't get any of that from an electronic text because they're all Vanella. They look the same.

Yeah, that's a great point. In fact, there's a quote that I want to get into the tactile understanding and the way we handle books and the way we interact with them. But before we go there, there's a quote that I pulled out of your blog that I thought was that really kind of hit me hard. and I think the audience would really enjoy it. And then I wanted to get your opinion on it is, modern education is not just the acquisition of information and facts, but the synthesis of that information to create knowledge and understanding. Can you unpack that a little bit more?

I mean, it's pretty clear, but I think you can... I think that's so important. I mean, you know, as we have progressed in the Internet age, information is just available to our fingertips. I mean, basically, you know, just using my phone, I can access essentially, you know, any information that I want and easily find the answer to questions of fact. But really, education and the idea of becoming an educated person is not just about wrote memorization of facts. it's about taking those facts and synthesizing them into knowledge. And knowledge is an incredibly personal thing.

So, you know, for example, I mean, you know, George Washington was the first president of United States as a fact, right? I mean, everyone has access to that. It's the same fact regardless of who you are. Now, what I do with that fact personally, when I integrated into my knowledge and understanding of the history of the U.S. and the break. from Britain and what was going on in the world and in Europe at the time of the revolution. And then what Washington did as a president and I mean, I automatically jump and think about

his farewell address, which is so important. That's all personal. That's me. And that experience of synthesizing those different pieces that I know is creating a new knowledge base for me. You know, I use this phrase a lot with my students when it comes time for them to do research. I direct the Office of Research and Creative Activity. And I really talk about the fact that what they're engaged in is the development of new knowledges. And I use the plural there intentionally. It's not new knowledge. It's new knowages.

We've got lots of different ways of looking at things. And everybody's knowledge. is different. It's a very personal experience. And so I really do believe that education is about that synthesis. You know, we all went through school and had to memorize things for tests, right? I mean, I can remember in high school, you know, I had a yellow legal pad just like this one, right? And before my test on photosynthesis, I laid on my bed and drew out the CREB site. over and over again because I was going to have to do that on the test. What's the Krebs cycle?

Now, that's fantastic. That was many years ago. I couldn't remember the Krebs cycle now if you've held a gun to my head because I don't remember it. Because when you memorize things, it doesn't make them part of who you are. It's not knowledge. I memorized it. And then I, you know, I spat it back up on the test. and then, you know, to use to continue the digestive metaphor,

and you leave the exam empty because you threw up what it is that you learned. You didn't make it your own. You didn't digest it. Yeah. And education is about the digestion part. And so I think the mistake that's made oftentimes when we think about moving to a world in which e-texts, for example, are the norm is that a lot of the experience of reading an e-text is quite different from the experience of reading a printed physical text. And we've got studies that show this.

That it's a different kind of experience. I mean, I'm reading this book right now. And, you know, if I open it up, I mean, first of all, you know, I've got my own underlining and notes all over the place. And I couldn't do that on an e-text. And I also have the tactile thing. I mean, I bought this book used. Somebody else owned it before me. And, you know, in a couple of places that person had written their own notes.

Yeah. I know nothing about them. I don't know, you know. And, you know, I always joke with students when they buy used textbooks. And they rely on the stuff that's already been highlighted. I say, you know, don't rely on it. The guy who owned the textbook before you may have failed the course. But the experience of.

reading this i mean i started this book and then i had put it back on my shelf and i picked it up yesterday again to finish it and i had my card in here where i had left off and i'm picking up where i'd left off but there's something just about the the physical tactile experience of holding a printed book and i'm not fetishizing it or maybe i am i don't know But there's something about that, which to me is superior from reading something on a screen. And, you know, I can talk about it in a million different ways, and I don't know if I can put my fingers directly on what it is. Yes, some of it is, you know, old man nostalgia that, you know, yeah, I want printed books. I mean, if you see my physical library is huge.

and it's important to me because as I think I mentioned in that in that blog piece my library is my lab I'm not I'm not a lab scientists lab scientists have their lab space they work in a lab and that's where they conduct their experiments I do that in my library in my office surrounded by my books and oftentimes that will mean you know going and pulling something off of a shelf because something struck me and I'm drawing a connection between one thing and another, which may be completely unrelated, but in my mind, which is operating almost like a hypertext link, I'm clicking on something and it's like, oh, what about that? You know, I remember that happening quite vividly when I was finishing writing a monograph a couple of years ago

on faculty evaluation in higher education. Rivening stuff. Riveting stuff. It'll make a great movie, George, you can see. And I was right, and they had said, the person who had asked me to do the project said, write the introduction and write the conclusion, and then edit what's in between.

Somebody had written the intervening chapters. And so I started writing the, I think it was the conclusion. And I was just sitting at my computer. you're just sort of riffing on everything. I'm bringing in Aquinas. I'm bringing in undoy. I mean, I'm whipping everything in.

And then for some ridiculous reason, Winnie the Pooh came to mine. And so I went to my shelf and pulled off my copy of Winnie the Pooh and checked because I was thinking about something that had triggered that. And I looked and there was the perfect thing said by Winnie the Pooh

that I dropped into this essay. I don't think that would have happened if I didn't have my physical books around me. It's a great point. Sometimes I think that the book is the final manifestation of the work. And if you are unable to hold that final copy, that tangible thing, then part of it is still in translation. You know what I mean? Like if you just see it on the screen, it's even if it's an author's full work, like to have the actual book is to have the idea fully formed, I think. Well, it also, but it also piggybacks on the, on the whole question of how do we define reality, right?

I mean, I will often say, you know, if the text is on the screen, it's not real. Yeah. Because there's nothing tangible about it. I can pull a plug out of the wall and it's gone. Yeah. You know, I can't do that with my books that are sitting on the shelf. They're going to be here. They're here whether I'm here or not.

And so it's just a different point of view about what does it mean for something to actually be. a thing to be real. You know, I know that what I do now is, I mean, yes, I mean, I write exclusively on the computer. I don't write out longhand. My handwriting is horrible. After so many years, my fingers will cramp up. And, I mean, the only thing that I actually write out longhand is when I grade papers, I do that longhand.

But I now, when I grade longer papers and projects of my students, I am actually grading and writing notes on the. physical paper, but I also have open on my computer a document and I'm writing longer notes to them on that page, which I'll print off and attach then at the end. But it's just about, there's something about process. I mean, you know, I will compose what I'm writing on the computer, yes, but I almost always do editing after I print off a copy and edit with a pen. and then go back and make those changes on the screen. I rarely edit on the screen.

And I'm sure it goes back. And again, this is a generational thing, right? I mean, we grew up writing on a typewriter. Right. I mean, you hit that key and boom, you know, the key came down and smacked against the ink. And the ink made an impression on the paper. And it was a physical thing. Yeah.

It was a physical manifestation of the idea was now on the page, printed, and it became real. And I think there's still something to that. And again, I say maybe it's generational. I don't know. I don't think my students today operate in the same way. In fact, they're encouraged now to not print anything at all in the name, well, the name of sustainability. Right. where we asked them to submit their work online on learning management systems on platforms.

And I still ask them to do that, but I also do ask them to print off a copy because I have to read it that way and make notes on it. So it's an interesting time kind of that we're kind of sitting on the crux, I think, between two very different generations when it comes to this. You know, we tell students now don't bring a printer with you. Because they get some print money and they can print remotely on printers that we have in the library when they need to print something. So most of them don't even bring a printer with them. I mean, I could not imagine having my computer not having it connected to a printer. Yeah. Yeah, it really is fascinating to think about the way in which we not only produce information,

but we consume information. It just seems to be accelerating like everything else. Sometimes I wonder, you know, it got me thinking when we, let me try to get the right words for a minute. It almost seems like the digital libraries. Like if we look at Google or these search engines as a digital library, it almost seems like the computer is sort of conditioning us to learn the way, or retrieve information the way it retrieves information. You know, when a computer just goes through stuff,

finds a keyword, and then brings something up. And it seems that when you go to a library, whether it was through the old Dewey Decimal System, or whether it was through walking to a bay or a rack of books and then looking through something. And a lot of times when you do that, you would find a different book that you pulled out that would interest you.

Exactly. Yeah, whereas the Google or these new types of virtual libraries, they just pull information that is, of somewhat of a segregated area and give you something that you made. Like I heard a great quote that I think is that is perfect for this. It says Google can give you 100,000 answers. A librarian will find you the right answer. Right, right.

No, absolutely. I mean, it's the difference between a kind of hunt and peck method and, you know, going directly to the thing. You know, I have students in one of my classes do a library assignment where I give them a call number of a book. And they have to go and find the book and then look on the shelf and look at all the books that are around it. And they write a reflection on what they found. And usually I try to target it at what their major is.

So I'm directing them to go to the area where books in their major would be. And almost always they're like, I never knew we had X, Y, or Z. It's like, because they don't scan shelves. They don't go to the library anymore. I mean, you know, we have a decent collection in our library here. But I think, you know, our circulation numbers are terrible. I don't know what the students are actually using of our printed materials because most of everything else, they're accessing it online merely because it's easy.

Yeah. I can access it easily online from my dorm room. I don't have to go to the library. You know, one of my favorite stories about that is when I was in graduate school at the University of Connecticut. And the Yukon Library has, well, I think they've changed it now. They've modified it. But at the time, it had an entry, a main level that you walked into, which was just the entry. And then you took an escalator up to the first floor, which is where the reference section was.

And I remember quite vividly one year standing up on that first floor and it was commencement weekend. And a student had brought her parents into the library to show them around. She was graduating. And she stopped me and asked, you know, where's the escalator down? Well, there was no escalator down. It was only an escalator up. You either took the stairs down or the elevator, which proved one thing. She'd been at Yukon for four years and had never been.

really used the library because she didn't know that. And I thought that was just horrified, you know, that somebody, that a college student could go through four years of college and not use the physical library. So I force my students to do it now. And I'm sorry, you know, I have to force them because otherwise they're not going to do it. But it's almost like saying, you know, well, you've got diabetes. I'm going to force you to take your insulin. Yeah. it is good for them. I mean, my students this semester, I required that they had to get at least one thing on a

library loan because the topics they're working on it, we don't have the books for that stuff. And I don't want them only finding their information online. And so they were required each of them to at least request one into library loan for their paper and send me the screenshot of the request. And I think, you know, I'll ask them at the end of the semester whether they found that beneficial.

But most of them, I don't think, had used them to library alone before. And these are mostly sophomores and juniors. It's interesting. You know, I think it speaks volume. I think libraries are a good map of how a scholar thinks. Like, you know, you go in, it's classified in a certain way. You go up to the, like you said, you go up and you can take a snapshot of everything around you. That's kind of the same way your brain works.

when you're thinking about an idea, and then all of a sudden the idea broadens out to all these other things. It's the same way the bookcase is set up. But when you go online now, right? I mean, I wonder if I brought you into my library, my office and the other places where I've got books, because they're not all in here, even looking at what I've got,

if you would be able to sort of figure out who I am. Oh, guaranteed. And the way you think, like, oh, I see. well, he has Canterbury Tales over here with T.S. Eliot, you know, or Paul Bellanays. Oh, he must think this and then maybe move over this way, or at least I can make some speculations of that. And that's a fun thing to do. It's like being in someone's head. Yeah, I mean, I do think there is something to that. And I've always been baffled for my entire life when you go to visit somebody's home and they don't have bookshelves.

But there are a lot of people who don't, you know. I know. And I think that's probably a growing thing now because of the availability of e-texts and e-books and the ease with which you can get them. And I think that's probably the case. I think I've told you the story before. I mean, when I taught in South Dakota, which was in the early 2000s, I had a colleague who said, you know, most of these kids grew up in a house where they had three books,

the Bible, the Sears catalog, and the TV guide. You know, that was the only thing they had in the house. that's really kind of amazing. You know, I mean, I did not grow up in a house with intellectuals. My parents were high school educated. My father valued books, and we did have books on shelves, you know, and he was always reading. So there was a value that was clearly appointed to the printed book.

And, you know, I can remember going into bookstores with him and looking around back when, you know, bookstores were a lot more accessible and frequent than they are now. What's the bookstore situation like in Hawaii? I'm curious. Well, it used to be borders and Barnes & Noble and a few small ones. But after borders went out of business, then it pretty much collapsed everything into the world of Barnes and Noble.

And we have, and even some of their smaller Barnes and Nobles that were like little satellites, those close down. And so now you just have the bookstores at like the big malls and and in some ways they've taken the place of the library because you'll see people in their reading. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and that's been for a long, long time. I mean, I had a bookstore in the 80s and we used to have people coming in all the time who would, you know, my kids got to do a project on, you know, dinosaurs. What kinds of books do you know, it was when people started buying books rather than going to the library for them. So, you know, I saw that that firsthand. But yeah,

I mean, it always amazes me that, you know, you go into these large cities or these college towns and there are no bookshops. And I don't really understand that because that is not the case in Europe. Where any, you know, I mean, in the UK, any dinky little town you go into out in the countryside, you know, they've got, they've got three things. You know, they've got a general kind of general store that's got everything. They've got a pub and they've got a bookstore. And that actually is not hyperbolic. That's true. And here, that's not the case.

I mean, here I am in Newport News, Virginia. And, you know, my university is here, which has an undergraduate population of 5,000. We have a community college in Newport News, which also has a fairly large enrollment. We have the College of William and Mary, which is 20 minutes away in Williamsburg. And in Newport News, there are two bookstores. There's a Barnes & Noble, and there's a second in Charles, which is another chain that sells secondhand. And that's it. And I get frustrated with the Barnes & Noble because they've changed their whole tack, and they're not really in the book business anymore. I don't know what business they're in. They depleted what they even stock.

You know, you go in looking for something that just seems like to me as a bookstore guy, you know, is a stock item. You should have a copy of this on the shelf. And no, we can special order. Right. Everything is always we can special order for you. Yeah. Right. Or you can, you know, or you can, you can order it online. We see that with everything now, right? You know, you're going to buy a dress shirt, you know, oh, you know, we don't have that size, but we can order it for you online. It's like, but if I wanted to order it online, I wouldn't come into the store. I want the experience of being here. And I'm not getting that.

And so, you know, when I'm traveling and, I mean, I can't walk past the bookstore without going in. Because I just, I think it's just a vital part of the local culture to have a good bookstore. Yeah. It's the, it's the, I haven't really been to Europe as an, as since like the age of, in my 20s. However, I, what do you think it is? Is it the culture? Is it the backbone of the community? Is it the storytelling?

Or what is it, what's different about the local communities there versus the cities over here? I mean, I think a lot of it obviously is cultural. I think a lot of it is also that they have a different perspective on education than we, do. Education in the U.S. has really transformed in the last 50 years and not for the better. Yeah. You know, our culture, I mean, all of the, you know, our culture puts down higher education in particular. I mean, look what's going on in Florida. Look what's going on, you know, throughout the country with attitudes towards higher ed. It's always been a kind of anti-intellectual take. And you don't see that.

in the UK. I mean, I'm always struck when I'm traveling in the UK that if you're on the tube in London, people are sitting there reading books. You know, and not junk. They're reading like, you know, Dickens. And I just, I'm always struck by that because you do not see that here.

And so I do think it's highly a cultural issue, but it also is just a different view. viewpoint of education and the fact that the U.S. has become so anti-intellectual in the last couple of decades. And I should say part of that is our own damn fault in education, right? We did that. We marginalized ourselves. You know, you mentioned that phrase earlier in the ivory tower. I mean, you know, we marginalized ourselves. So if we want to be relevant, well, we damn well got to be relevant and how do you do that? Well, it's through the development of, and I've written about this in other places, the public intellectual, which largely we have lost in many ways in the last

couple of decades. We have a few people who still kind of fill that role, but not nearly as many as once did in this country, who really kind of bridged the world of education, which was looked at as you know, elitist and popular thought, and they were able to have one foot in both. You know, my students always shocked when I, when I show them the picture of Robert Frost on the cover of Life magazine. You know, a poet was on the cover of Life magazine. Now, of course, I got a first, I got to explain to them what Life magazine is, but that's all other issue. But to talk about how these thinkers were part of the popular landscape. And that isn't, necessarily the fact today. I mean, you know, I would think probably, you know,

you can mention Stephen Hawking and people know who he is. Maybe people like Neil deGrasse Tyson. And, you know, and there, these are the important figures who are bridging the gap. I mean, mentioning those two in particular between the world of hard signs. Is still there? Oh, I lost you just for a little glitch right there. Yeah. And explaining it to the public so that the public actually Oh, I lost you again. Sorry. We're having a Wi-Fi issue, I think.

Should be okay now, I think. So, you know, and so as I say, you know, to say that we live in an anti-intellectual society, I mean, in many ways, I look at education and I blame us. And I say, well, we did it to ourselves. I don't, like, I, I semi-agree with that.

I don't think it's, so much the educator as it is the institution of, you know, we need a, here's a, here's a one of our guests put this up. And I think that while he's talking about bookstores, I think that this applies to education as well. And he says, I think the pace of life of the culture in the U.S. has pushed us faster away from bookstores. You could put education in there as well. Also, the cost of doing business at the state of commercial real estate move to conglomerate. Like that is a huge, like incentive structure. And, you know, cost, uh, a now, And these ideas that really have nothing to do with the state of education.

You had spoken earlier about a degree in humanities doesn't really begin to pay off. You don't see the benefits of that until people begin to grow and understand. And sometimes it seems that maybe another way, maybe there's difference between learning and having something develop inside of you. Sure. Yeah. I mean, certainly, you know, the cost-benefit analysis drive. so much of this. Yeah. And, and, you know, it drives most of us crazy when we see those, those surveys and those polls come out and say, you know, if you get a degree from this

institution, you're going to be a high earning. It's like, what? That's not the goal of education. Right. That's vocational training. Yep. And we, in many ways, have, you know, strange, bizarre way, collapse them when it comes to the four-year, institutions of higher learning in the U.S., it's become more and more driven by, well, what can I do with the degree when I get out? How much money can I make? Yeah. And it's why we have had, you know, this great decline in people majoring in areas in the

humanities because it's difficult. You know, I can manage, I can major in biology. And what am I going to be when I'm done? I will be a biologist. Okay. I can major in English. What am I going to be? An Englishman? No. It just doesn't work that way. And so, you know, it doesn't translate in the same sense. But the cost-benefit thing is a killer. And certainly, you know, as that person mentioned, I mean, the cost, I mean, real estate and, you know, right now we're looking at, and this is the other thing that I try to convey to students when we talk about this,

they think, oh, tuition's so expensive. Yes, it is. It's ridiculous. It's completely out of control, I think, across the board. But they think their tuition money is paying for my salary. The tuition money is not paying for my salary. The tuition money is paying for physical plant and services. And because we have had to force to become more competitive because there are fewer students,

our college campuses have become like resorts. Yeah. You know, and it's all about, well, what services can we offer? And, you know, how nice is your dining hall? It's that. It's about, you know, what does the campus look like? Oh, it's a beautiful campus. You know, but that's, that doesn't mean anything about what you're doing.

But the cost of doing this business has become really prohibitive. I mean, I think that all the institutions that I've taught at through my career, as far as I have understood it, being on the inside, the highest expenditure out of the budget each year is physical plants, paying for heating and cooling, to maintain buildings. That's the cost, and it shouldn't be. But it is because we've got this kind of out-of-wack idea about what we're doing. You know, there's a reason why in the Middle Ages in Europe, they wore those heavy robes that we now wear for as regalia commencement.

Now, they wore them to teach in. The buildings were damn cold. They didn't have any heat. You know, they were drafty and they were cold. And so they taught in those robes. That's where it came from. And students wore them do. But now we're just, we want to be comfortable, right?

And so our college campuses are like resorts. And I mean, you can go and visit them online and you'll see it even more so because, of course, the online thing, you're seeing an ad. But in many cases, it's not far from what it really is when you go and visit and you're on the ground. You know, I mean, we have, we have multiple dining halls. The food choices are like you're, it's like you're on a cruise. and the other services that we offer. I mean, you know, if you hear people on tours on our college campuses and listen to what's being pointed out to them,

I can guarantee you that 75% or more has got little to do with academics. It's about the buildings and the services that are offered. The fitness center, you know, things like that. Now, those should be very, value added, but they're not. Now they've become the thing. Yeah, you know, when you put it like that, it's, there's no, it makes sense why we see education where it is, you know, when you have, you know, I read an article that said some of the Ivy League's going for 90,000. My daughter's private school is $30,000 a year. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's interesting because you, you have to

start at, instead of asking the question, how much money am I going to make after leaving here? Maybe you should be asking the question, like, what kind of people are we attracting here? You know, you know, history and biographies and so many of the stories I love are rife with people who didn't belong in some places, but out of, but had a talent for something or a vision of something or an ability to see things different than something. And sometimes it seems we're excluding the very people we need in order to make things work. But that's because the very idea of what this should be has shifted, right? I mean, you know, oh for the days

when it was it was a sign of privilege that you had a high school diploma. Right. Now, I mean, people, you know, most people are expected to have a master's degree in something. Right? I mean, it's, it's, it's become the value of the degree has been, has been lowered.

Yeah. And that's that's a dangerous thing. I mean, I started to see that in the 1980s when we had schools that had become MBA mills, right? In the 80s, everybody who worked in the business world had to have an MBA. And so colleges became MBA mills. They were just churning them out. And it just, it devalued the degree. And now, you know, I don't want to insult anybody who has an MBA and worked hard for it. But I mean, you know, MBAs are a dime a dozen now. Whereas it used to be, you know, oh, you have an MBA. that was impressive.

When we devalue it by allowing or inviting everyone to the party, I don't think that that's doing us a good thing in the end. And what I'm getting at is, I've been saying this in my entire life since I started teaching in the 1980s, not everyone should go to college. But our public school systems really drive that home. in most cases, right? I mean, most high school curricula are labeled as college prep. And if you don't go to college, then, you know, what are you going to do? Well, there are plenty of jobs and plenty of

vocations that you can go into that don't require a college degree. But increasingly, because, again, we devalued the degree. Now, in many cases, you've got to have a college degree. I was talking to somebody the other day about something. We were talking to about a job that somebody, a relative of hers, was trying to get, I forget what it was. And I said, well, why doesn't she go for it? I mean, she already worked at the company. She wanted to move up. And she said, well, she doesn't have a college degree. You need a college degree to do what that, I mean, that job. Come on. You know, but it's supply and demand, right? I mean, we glotted the market with people who have college degrees. And so what that does,

I mean, I'm no economist, but it devalues it, right? Yeah. Even in primary schools, it seems to me like the standardization of education has made it less than exceptional. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I think that what's going on at the elementary school level at the moment is frightening. Criminal.

Yeah. I mean, I was going to say startling. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. I mean, the homogeneity of the thing that, you know, it should all be the same. And so everyone's going to learn the same thing and come out of it being able to pass the same test. That just is, I mean, it's completely antithetical to our attitudes about individualism. Yeah.

And, you know, I mean, I mean, you probably do too, George, but I remember vividly certain, you know, I remember all the teachers I had in elementary school, but I remember certain things that I was taught by certain ones of them, which has stuck with me my entire life. And I don't know if they're getting that anymore because teachers today, elementary school teachers, right up through high school and the public schools, are so locked into doing what the state and the local school boards dictate.

There's not much freedom for them to do what they want to do and be creative as teachers the way that, you know, my teachers were when I was in elementary school. I couldn't imagine that those folks would be able to do it now. And it's, and it's, it's indicative of the, the burnout rate, right, of those teachers, that they just can't stick with it. I mean, we had teachers when, when I was in elementary school, that was their entire life. You know, they taught for 40 years. I don't think teachers make it that long. these days. The burnout rate is is pretty high.

And most often it doesn't have, if you talk to teachers about it, it doesn't have a lot to do with teaching. It's the administrative hassle. That's what's getting them. That's what's burning them out. Yeah. I guess if there was like,

if I, excuse me, if I, sometimes I like to imagine what the future could be like. And when I look at, at all the circumstances that are happening, maybe while we seem to be heading towards crisis, there's room for opportunity. And it seems that maybe there could be a return of school for the scholar, you know, because we are turning out all these things. They're just not working.

We're asking the wrong questions and the standardization. And you're beginning to see like these green shoots of some charter schools here or even you coming online and talking to people. Like, You're influencing people that may not have access that other people do have access to. And that is lighting a fire in the minds of the youth of today that they can go and learn and check things out. So maybe what we're seeing is sort of a renaissance of the scholar back to the school. What do you think about that? I hope so. You know, you and I are always the pessimist, optimist here.

You know, you're the optimistic guy sitting in Hawaii and I'm the pessimistic juvenile. the Bronx. And so we're like it's like point counterpoint, right? Um, but I mean, I hope it's going to come to that. I don't know. Um, I mean, it's not looking good. You know, the way that, that that politics in particular has, has infiltrated the world of education is, it's killing it. It's killing it. And, uh, you know, I don't see that changing anytime soon. I wish it would. Um, But I don't see it changing anytime soon. It seems to be getting worse. And it's just, again, you know, I keep coming back to this beating a drum, but it's the anti-intellectual attitude of the culture.

You know, the fact that, and I don't mean to constantly be comparing us to places like the UK, but the fact that most towns don't have a local newspaper anymore. Yeah. You know, and if you go to London and you want to go and buy a newspaper, there's like 10 different papers to pick front on a daily basis. Here, you know, oftentimes if I'm traveling and I want to get a local newspaper and I stop into a 7-Eleven or whatever the local convenience store is, they don't even sell newspapers. That, or magazines for that matter, right? Yeah. That just is not a good, and as we were saying before, no bookstores, right? That's just not a good indicator.

I think that, I think the reflection of what your local culture is, is there a local newspaper? Do you have a local bookstore that's decent, right? And what is the artistic community like in your area? Right. And yes, you know, the science nerds will say, oh, well, that's all, you know, about the humanities. But the fact of the matter is that even Elon Musk, the hated Elon Musk and Bill Gates, when they published that piece last week, that letter that said that they thought we needed a five-year pause on artificial intelligence, on AI, they expressed there. and Gates has said it often, the importance of the humanities and the sciences working together.

So, you know, I always tell my, you know, the sciences tell you that you can do it. The humanities tell you whether you should. And in our race to make a buck, the whether you can do it trumps whether you should. just do it. It's going to make a dollar. Right. And that's just that's a sad direction for us to be headed. Um, it, it is. I mean, I hope that it's going to change. Um, I don't see it changing at the moment and I don't see indications of it. I mean, again, you know, with what's going on in certain areas in this country. I mean, you know, Florida is the easy one to point to. Um, it's just a, that's just nightmarish what's going on down there. It really is. I mean, and I've gotten a lot of friends who are in higher ed at various institutions in Florida.

And they've been telling me what's happening. I mean, one of my good friends got a memo from the governor's office telling him that he needed to do a, quote, audit, a DEI audit of his email. Any email that he had had in exchange with anybody about related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, they wanted a copy of it. I mean, you know, hello, can you get Big Brother on the phone? I mean, it's just, that's just crazy. I mean, what about academic freedom and intellectual freedom? That's just, it's gone out the window here. And in the name of what?

In the name of, it's political. It's all political. It's all political. It's interesting to me. Like, sometimes I think the answers to our problems lay in the language that we use. Like when I when I think about university, isn't that the antonym of diversity? You know, how can you have diversity in a university? Shouldn't everybody come to the university and be under this banner and then argue about things in a form that's exciting and people can learn?

Instead of it being like, okay, you know what I mean? Like it's the anthem or universe. Like how can you have both? Well, we talk, I mean, I talk all the time about liberal arts education. I mean, liberal and liberal arts education is about free thinking. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you are, and I tell my students, I say, you know, getting a liberal arts education is encouraging you now to do free thinking, to think for yourself. And they're like, well, wait a minute.

And I say, well, because before this, you've been under the influence of other factors, your parents, maybe a church. You know, you've been under the influence of other entities that had power. an authority over you. Now you're at university studying the liberal arts and we're saying, okay, be a free thinker now. Think for yourself. Figure out what it is that you believe. Don't just tack on to what other people believe who have told you that that's what you should think. And, you know, that's why the liberal arts are so damn important in education. That is what many of the players that we're talking about would rather get rid of because they don't want people to be able to think like that. They want them to follow the party line and just tow the line and whatever it was that they have been told.

You know, it's like going back to the early Middle Ages before the age of print when, you know, most people couldn't read. Only person that could read would be the priest. The priest would read you the Bible and interpret the Bible for you because you couldn't read. read it. And, you know, it was a way of the church having authority over its members. And then once the Reformation hits, as a result of the printing press, you know, people are saying, well, you know, hey, I can read this book too, right? And come up with my own interpretation. Yeah. Of course, the Catholic Church said, no, we don't like that because that just means that, you know, we have to give up our authority over you. And we're talking about the same thing today

with liberal arts, right? I mean, you know, I think a liberal arts education is probably the most important thing we have. I really do. I mean, yes, if you want to go and learn how to fix air conditioners, we can send you someplace to do that, and that's great. We need people who can fix air conditioners. Don't get me wrong. But if you want to become a highly educated person, the liberal arts have got to be the integral component of that education. Right. Yeah. So on a on a related note, you know, there's a group of people like these accelerationists that are saying the opposite of Elon Musk and Bill Gates, but they're doing it in a way that's like, yeah, let's accelerate this whole thing and just blow it up. Let's see what happens.

Yeah. You know, might it be that both things lead to the same thing? Like if we just go down the path that we're on now or let's say we put a pause to to AI and things like that. Might that just prolong the authoritarian and continue to muck us down where if you take the acceleration route, hey, let's just speed it up and it will show society that we need the liberal arts.

In fact, it will give birth to a more robust study of the liberal arts. What do you think about that? You may be absolutely right. I mean, I had an advisor in graduate school who said that he didn't think anybody should write about Shakespeare for five years. Actually, I think he said 10 years. Because there was just so much out there about Shakespeare,

we needed time to read it all and catch up. And I think that that's partially what we're talking about here is the acceleration, the speed with which we live in our society does not give us the opportunity to thoughtfully consider things. Yeah. You know, it's that whole, again, it's that whole, you know, just because we should doesn't mean we, just because we can, doesn't mean we should, right? Just because we can have driverless cars, doesn't mean we should have driverless cars. Just because, you know, we can have AI available to everybody doesn't mean we should.

And it's the humanities that that does that if we should question. That's where we work that out. But, you know, the other side. of campus works much faster than we do. Because, you know, I can't think as quickly as a microprocessor, right? I mean, you know, quite honestly, right? I mean, they can do things with incredible speed. And, you know, that's wonderful for them.

But when it comes to questions that deal with issues related to morality and ethics, as so many of these questions do, it takes time to reflect on that and to work it out. That's why, you know, when you read a philosopher's work, it's never a good idea to read one piece in isolation because you really need to read the breadth of what it is that they're trying to say because their opinion and their attitude about things probably changes through their lives and through their work. And it's important for us to see that. Yeah, it reminds me when I was little. My grandpa used to say, if you want a new idea, read a really old book.

And it seems to me like if you just look at the path that we're on, maybe this is part of the course. Maybe this is something that we always do as a species is that half of us go way out on this limb of like, this is where we're going. And it seems like they're so far ahead. But those of us that are studying the humanities or the philosophers, like, nah, I think I'm going to stay this. And then the bridge falls off or it's a dead end and they got to retrace their steps. And we're like, oh, yeah, by the way, now we're 10 steps ahead of you because we've been studying on this path. And it's interesting to think like that maybe this is a way for part of society to forget

so that other people can discover. I hope so. I hope so. The only problem is that the people who were going so fast out there, they're chasing a dollar. Yes. And that adds a really ugly aspect to all of this, doesn't it? Sure. And that's part of the problem here, right?

Is that when you introduce capitalism to all of this now, it changes the whole complexion of the discussion. In some ways, I think that they're devaluing the dollar. Like, if you, like, they're fundamentally changing the idea of what money is. And it seems to me it has a discount rate. Like, you know, if we just, if we pan back for a minute and we take the observer view instead of the subject or object view, it seems to me that there's a new currency evolving. And it's the currency of dopamine. It's the currency of likes. It's the currency of views.

And if you look at the people that are dropping out of the workforce, like, why would I do that? Like, I would just rather live in my parents' house and do nothing than go be a slave over here. Like, and they're creating these new. ways of working and connecting with people. And that's kind of what money is as a way of connecting people, right? Yeah. No, I think you're right. I mean, there certainly are new economies, I think, that are growing out of all of this that will be really interesting to see how it pans out. I don't know. I don't, you know, again, you know, economics certainly not my area. But I think that that does, you know, there is a future where economies are going to look quite.

different from what they do now for a variety of reasons least of which is as you say you know people saying you know i don't want to do that i'm not going to i mean you know we talk a lot here i don't know what the the employment situation is like in hawaii but i mean here i mean you know businesses have signs out that they're desperate to hire people yeah absolutely and and you know everybody says well it's the effect of covid and i'm like well but covid was two years ago and people got to work don't they yeah what are they doing I don't know. I don't know.

And there's a good. You go into some businesses, especially restaurants, right, where they can't get weight staff. Yeah. And they've got like half the restaurant is cordoned off because we don't have staff. Yeah. And so we, you know, they're open tables, but we can't see you because we don't have staff.

I see that more and more. And not just here. I encountered that in England last summer. they're having a tremendous problem with employment over there and underemployment when it comes to these businesses that were trying to get back on track, a lot of them in service industries where they just don't have the employees.

I mean, we went into a restaurant after restaurant where literally half the restaurant was empty and we wanted a table and they said, well, we're booked for tonight. I said, what do you mean you're booked? Half the restaurants have, we don't have staff. Like, how can that be when the government comes out and says, oh, we have record, you know, there's, there's no jobs and this is a great unemployment rate.

Low unemployment, yeah. Like, these things don't add up. Yeah, I don't, I don't, again, I'm no economist, that's for sure. So I don't understand the way those numbers are reported. Right. And what they mean. And I'm sure there's some, some, something going on with the data that's making it look a certain way.

But, I mean, you know, I think just about anybody would agree that, you know, if you walk into any, any, store or any place where services are offered, they're understaffed. You know, my daughter works for Starbucks here locally. And, you know, they're constantly down one or two people. And, you know, she's always saying, you know, people can't get mad at us. We're doing the best we can. We're understaffed. Now, that's become the catch-all excuse for everything now, too, is, oh, well, we're

understaffed. I mean, in some cases, it's true. I don't know why. Yeah, we were speaking a little bit before the show started. I work at a trucking company, and they laid off 30% of the people, but they didn't lose 30% of the volume. You know, it's, but so if we take this back a second, you know, maybe what you're teaching right now is becoming more important than it has in a long time because people are paying attention. And the studies that you have learned, the areas where you're a scholar at, they see. speak to this idea that was before productivity.

They speak to a different time. And maybe these are the lessons that the people need to relearn so that we can move forward. And you're a huge part of that. Well, I hope so. I mean, that's what I've tried to do my entire career, my entire life. You know, I've often said, I mean, you know, doing what I do, this isn't a job. This is my life. It's more than just a job.

And I think that, you know, if we can get people involved in discussing and thinking about these big ideas, that would really be a nice step towards getting out of this situation that we're in. And, you know, then we can be as optimistic as George. Yeah. It reminds me of the, you know, I want to be like Mike. We got, you know, I want to be like George. Nobody wants to be like David. I want to be like George. I want to be like George.

It takes both of us. It takes both of us to sit down in life. Yeah, yeah. What about that? What about that? You know, I, um, it's beautiful. I love talking to you. And I think you're an incredible human being.

And I love what you're doing. And I love reading your books. And for those people that are watching right now, the latest book, the Seven Deadly Sins, we did quite a bit of coverage on there. And I would highly recommend. in anybody who's found anything remotely interesting about this conversation to pick up David's book. His links will definitely be in the show notes down there. I think you've got another book coming out too, don't you?

Yeah, working on a new book on Angels and Demons and Pop Culture and working on a project currently, which is going very slowly, which is kind of a discussion between St. Augustine and Carl Jung. So looking at how the two of them really had a lot in common and a lot to agree about. That sounds fascinating. I can't wait to learn more about that. Wow. Well, as I'm getting ready to land the plane here, before I let you go, would you be so kind as to tell people where they can find you, what you have coming up, and what you're excited about?

Yeah. So my website is David A. Solomon. It's s-l-O-M-O-N.com. And you can find the links to the books and links to my blog and consulting and media appearances, all the good stuff that I've done with George is there. And what I am looking forward to, well, we are coming towards the end of the academic year. So it's always a time of excitement on campus as we come closer to commencement and seeing our students graduate and go on,

which is always a good feeling and somewhat bittersweet as an educator to see them go. But that's always an exciting thing. And most looking forward to, two days after I have to read almost 800 names at commencement, I will get on a plane with 16 students, and we will go to London for two and a half weeks to do a course on the museums of London. Maybe this time, if everybody doesn't get sick, we can do a, we can do a podcast from London Museums over here. We were going to do that last summer and then I and six students got COVID and we were stuck in a hotel in Swansea Wales for a week. So yes, yes.

We definitely should try to do that this year. I would like that. Me as well. Well, I'm Dr. David Solomon, leader, mentor, author, educator, all around amazing human being. Thank you so much for being here. It was a real pleasure. And I know we got the Passover holiday coming up and everyone's going to be taking some time off. So in a couple weeks, we'll reconvene and we will go back at it and try to solve the world's problems again. Sounds good to me. Thanks so much.

Of course. Aloha, everybody.