Sam's Series of Unfortunate Events [The Zero Dot Podcast #21]

And I talked to the lady and I'm like, hey, thank you so much for doing this.

I know it's a pain in the butt.

She says, I don't care.

Whatever.

I'm here.

I'm either here, I'm watching Netflix and...

and doing whatever, so I might as well be here.

You can just tell the pain and agony in her face.

I'm like, I just appreciate you being here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Get my stuff off, put it in the bag, keep it going.

They do a pat on me as they always do because I think there's something suspicious
happening in my groinal area.

Folks, there's nothing wrong with my groinal area, it's just a thing that happens from
time to time.

I'm used to it by now.

They do the whole thing.

Do I have your permission to?

Yes, yes, yes, whatever, just pat me down, just get it done.

I need to get out of here.

Grab my bag, get to the gate.

Per my time and what my phone says, the gate is about to board, so I'm about to miss my
flight, but I make it to the gate.

I get there, John and Daniel, and the whole corridor is filled with people, and the gate
hasn't even opened.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is Zero Dot Podcast.

My name is Sam, this is John, this is Daniel.

Here to remind you that when the chips are down, our resources are low, yet we are
connected all as one.

are strongest than we ever have been.

This is our place for solace, our place of recharging, our place to give ourselves the
energy we need to keep going down into the trenches.

And boys, it's been a week, hasn't it?

oh yes it has.

Today, I would like to speak to the viewers and encourage you, just for one day, to be
listeners.

Don't look at this.

Don't watch.

Just look away.

I have something in my eye and I'm gonna be like squinting and I got a hood up, so I'm
looking real palpatine-y, which I don't think is like a cool thing.

It sounds like teeny, like it'll be small.

It's no, it's just squinty.

I'll start, listen to the Dax side.

We can do that up a little bit.

uh

But if you want to be a listener, know, yeah, he's back.

He just came back.

He was bored.

You know, one of those.

So feel free to not look at my face today.

Look at Sam.

Look at Daniel.

How pretty.

We'll keep Daniel on the screen extra today because I'm going to be, I'm trying to not
squint, but I just, it's a squinty day.

Anyway, it's been a week.

I unfortunately don't have the budget nor the time to give you Palpatine lightning out of
your hands.

I wish, but just no.

If I did, you would have it.

I want that for you.

I just can't give it to you.

I'm so sorry.

be fair, and

Daniel's taking the bus on this one, he pitched it to me like, Sam, I really would like to
enhance our special effects budget from being zero to one dollar.

One dollar will give John Palpatine lasers and lightning and everything and all the whole
thing.

I'm like, nope, we can't, sorry.

I shut that down.

So that's my bad.

subscribed to our Patreon yet, for simply $3 a month, you can give one John Palpatine
Lizer eyes every day.

You'll do a real service to your community.

know.

Oh, sorry about the price of inflation.

That's the way Palpatine eyes don't come cheap, my friend.

Sorry, these are the rules.

But yeah, John, it has been a week and I don't know if you got anything, but I'd love some
good news if you have.

boy.

So I've been having a rough week, which is unrelated to the squinty eyes, but it's true.

And I was thinking my week is trash.

And then I thought, no, no, no, this man's week is trash.

and I, I read about this farmer.

This is real.

It sounds like I'm setting up a joke.

I'm not, um, I'm setting up a good thing, but it takes a second to get there.

So you have to take like 81 seconds or so.

So, there's this 80 year old farmer and he's in the UK.

All of my stuff's from the UK.

What a fascinating country.

uh And he's just hanging out doing farmer stuff and then and this is true and there are
pictures if you need to see them there were 200 tons of waste like roofing material

plumbing fixtures and construction cast-offs dumped onto his land just 200 tons of literal
garbage of trash thrown upon his land

It's upsetting.

uh Because it's so much trash.

It's like a tray.

It's crazy amount.

And if you said, well, I bet he went out there and picked it up with his farmer hands and
his farmer tools, I would say, no, he literally couldn't.

It is like a mile of trash.

Like it's just endless trash.

And the government said, hey, uh that trash got to go.

And he was like, why?

And they were like, there's rules about having trash on your thing.

He's like, that's fair.

Well, will you help me?

And they said, no, but we will charge you a $50,000 to get rid of it.

And he said, but I'm a farmer and cannot do that.

And they said, that's too bad.

And then another guy came along who I should give credit to because he's a cool guy for
doing this.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Oh, where's your name, sir?

Archie was his name.

He has a last name too.

And I would love to say it.

I'd feel better if I could, I'm going to hear him hang on Archie.

Archie Ford.

RC4, a 31 year old man who was a neighbor to the farmer wanted to help and he made a
campaign on Just Giving, which is a lot like other fundraising sites that I've heard of

before.

GoFundMe comes to mind.

And they made with 2000 donors enough money to clear up all the trash.

The community came through in a pinch.

There's a weird problem here that I learned about when I was reading this article that
some people are like not wanting to pay the fees to get rid of the trash for their

companies.

They're just hiring people to go throw it around, which is a shitty thing to do.

Privatized everything.

so icky.

But I'm glad to hear that people came through for this guy in the clutch.

And also frankly, there's awareness being made about this because that guy got put in a
brutal position.

And it really does show that like when you know the chips are down, the best people you
can have with people around you.

So an uplifting end to a very weird start of a story.

Sure, we need all that.

So we've been able to clear out some of this trash, or what's the progress?

What's the take?

Is it all gone?

Like, it's gone, wow!

That's kind of amazing.

It is.

I was really impressed.

got 2,000 people chipped in uh and they just, it's gone.

If you look at the pictures and we can link the webpage in the description, it's on the
goodnewsnetwork.org.

um It is like literal fields of just pallets and wood and just garbage.

It's more garbage than like you will believe.

It is a crazy amount of garbage.

For my listeners who I want to describe this to you like it not only does it long its
breadth all across this road right before you get some trees and some road it is deep it

is it's not just a little line of garbage it is Very very very deep.

I mean, I'm thinking you could shoot a film in this garbage and like make it look like a
dystopian nightmare That's how compelling that garbage is.

It's pretty gnarly and insane and after 2,000 people and how many man hours do we know how
long it took them?

No, I don't have it written down, but it obviously would have taken a shitload of time.

real.

Wow.

And the farmer's really picturesque too.

He looks exactly like you want a cool farmer to look.

He's at the bottom of the article, so shout outs to him.

Will Dickinson was the farmer uh and Archie, Archie, I only have Archie highlighted.

Archie Ford, Archie Ford was the neighboring individual who helped out.

um I'm trademarking it right now.

Not really a trademark, but Zero Dot People of the Week.

saying that's some Zero Dot stuff right there, and we appreciate that.

Big fan.

Way to go, Archie.

Big fan, excellent.

Well John, that makes me feel good.

It doesn't make me feel good that I had to be privatized.

It doesn't make me feel good that like, our governments or whatever have you aren't doing
some more about this.

But you know what?

Groundswell, people caring about their community, wanting to do the right thing regardless
if it costs us money, time and effort.

That always makes me feel good.

Yeah, I feel like sometimes the good stories that I have to share are a bit of a
challenging out of the gate, but like the one through line that I find myself coming back

to is that when people work together, we win.

Like it's just pretty consistent.

It's something that I'm very hopeful for in the future going forward is that when people
can get on the same teams, can like, you know, use our powers for good as it were.

Absolutely.

Well, that's some good stuff and that makes me feel good.

In fact, it makes me feel so good that I think maybe what I'm about to share, even though
it's not super great right now, maybe this can help give us a through line in ways we can

do a similar thing for folks.

And folks, um today I'm talking to you, to my travelers out there, those that are going on
the nice airwaves of the skies.

If you've been traveling since February 14th into now and...

Who knows, maybe by the time this episode gets published, miraculously gets changed.

But since February 14th, TSA, in case you don't know what that means, TSA is
Transportation Security Administration.

You the people that you have to scurry off and put your stuff in the bins and they scan
everything and you literally cannot get to your flight unless they securely scan you?

They have been unpaid since February 14th.

Not paid at all thanks to a government shutdown here in the United States affecting them
specifically.

Now, what does this mean for you?

Well, there's 61,000...

plus employees at work in TSA, which means that every person that has been working in TSA
since February 14th has been doing so with no money, no pay, no nothing.

And literally this week was their first big paycheck they were supposed to get and they
have not received a paycheck.

And that's really awful.

That's really upsetting.

I can tell you this because I'm going to talk a little bit more when we talk about our
main topic.

Literally a couple of days ago, I was in Minneapolis and I was told that over 300 people
in TSA had called out that day.

Because why would they work if they're not getting paid, right?

So, this is awful.

And I'm here to say that it really sucks that we, in the Americas especially, have to do
something about this.

But I think there's a few things we can do.

So first of all, if you're thinking, if these TSA workers aren't getting any money, can I
donate any money to them?

Turns out you can't because it gets into weird federal government sanctions and legalities
and things you can't do.

But if you wanted to give your TSA agent some money, which you can do and what people have
been reporting they've been doing when they have to travel in the great seas of our skies,

they've been giving gift cards and giving it to the supervisors who distribute to all the
team members.

So if you have it in your spoons to give a gift card to TSA agents, remember when you're
in that long line, those people are working right now for no pay.

We'd like to believe they're gonna get back paid, but we don't know that yet because of,
eh, reasons.

It's pretty awful.

Ugh.

God.

I don't know about you.

uh I get paid at my current job once a month.

um And as long as that paycheck comes in, I'm okay.

I can keep paying my bills and I'm fine.

And just to imagine that paycheck not coming in is sort of distressing, because I wouldn't
have the ability to, you know, be okay.

So...

Golly.

yeah, it is not only rough.

I did talk to one TSA representative this week uh I'm like, hey, thank you so much for
working.

I know this is really rough and says it's so cool We're doing that.

We're taking bets with each other when how long this is gonna last we think it's gonna be
about June And I'm like, that is awful.

That is atrocious uh And I also want to remind us all of something we've talked about
before but let me just say it one more time You can also bug your representative if you

are in the United States

There's a website house.gov representatives find your representative will drop the link in
the description for our producer Daniel put in the description of our video here But you

can also do that by literally bugging them because there's a bill that's being parlayed
right now It's not being signed and that's what's stopping everything right now So be sure

find who your representative is go down that channel bug them and see what you can do to
see if we can get something moving forward because again my heart goes out to these folks

who are literally doing this for free and Here's a crazy thing John going back to that
privatized sector

The airlines aren't doing anything about this.

And yet, I would think they'd want to because if no one can get through TSA, no one's
flying.

Nobody's flying.

2026 is a year of dealing with problems that are wildly short-sighted.

Like, just, I know how these are the challenges that we have, and yet they very much are.

my.

when 2026 happened, that we're like, well, this is definitely gonna be one of the years.

We can feel it.

We just could never have predicted what we'd been facing.

uh I know I couldn't have.

So this definitely was not on my bingo card for 2026.

When we got to the murder hornets, I was like, that's it.

Like, that's the dumbest one.

There's not gonna be a dumber one than that.

And I was so wrong.

I was so regretfully wrong.

No.

is the ceiling and nope.

if this might be some United States thing that I'm unaware of, please, if you would
elaborate upon murder hornets.

Oh, they were a footnote only in the 2020 escapades.

It was about July.

Remember how in 2020 every single thing went wrong?

remember March 14th, which fun fact is a day ago as I'm recording of this.

2020, I was at my cousin's play.

He was doing big fish and they were like, all right, no more anything.

No more anything.

Go home and you have to be from home.

And then my job was like, we don't really know what we're going to do now.

And everybody, you know, kind of scrambling.

And then...

Animal Crossing came out for Switch, which was pretty nice.

Other than that, just garbage.

And then in July, I remember they were like, there's now been an outbreak of what we're
calling murder hornets.

They're oversized hornets that are more likely to kill you with fatal stings.

And it was just sort of like, okay, the script writers really just fucking are throwing it
in here now.

this is...

So yeah, now if you...

Here, I'll give it a quick...

in 2021.

So it was the Asian giant hornet, was never meant, it was never meant to migrate to the
United States, but it did somehow because of reasons.

Somehow.

And they're called murder hornets because as John just said, they can actually kill you.

They don't just like sting you when it hurts.

Like they can kill you.

And so it was a whole big scare and an epidemic on.

so I thought it was a 2026 thing, but this was in fact a 2021 thing.

Yeah, because...

still murder hornets here in the United States.

We have not gotten them all.

We've not culled them.

They exist now.

They're in our ecosystem.

It's great.

Also, if you haven't seen one and you aren't a person who has like phobic stuff with these
kinds of things, they are worth a quick Google.

They're like as big as my hand and I am a six foot one man.

They're humongous.

is monster hunnery.

oh yes, super cool.

2025 actually.

Someone in Idaho died from it.

uh It can happen.

Just to put it out there, big insects, bugs, that's super cool in terms of looks cool,
interesting, fascinating.

Not the people dying thing.

Just to put that out there in case you thought that I was just like, infestation of murder
horn, it's killing people, cool.

No.

we're actually going to clip this segment right here and actually misinterpret it so that
people can comment on it and give us more engagement.

So people think Daniel really is pro murder hornets killing us.

the way it works.

Turns out I sent them.

You did, you did.

You did.

Are we commentary?

Are we satire?

Are we comedy?

We will not classify ourselves either way.

Imagine being held to one genre like some week show for babies.

Couldn't be me.

ha ha ha ha ha

Yeah, yeah.

Fun, fun fact for our Zero Dot listeners and viewers.

The way we classify our business is we are an entertainment company.

Because once you go down the path of like broadcasting, news broadcasting, you have a
totally different clearance of like a bunch of things you have to go through.

We share information we know, but at the end of the day, we're entertainment, but we are
here to help you kind of live a better life whatever way we can.

fun fact for our viewing and or listening public, when you when you register your podcast
on some services they ask you what genre you are and there are so many fun answers to this

question including culture.

Just all of it.

We just do culture here.

Like what about just culture like the thing in general does that make sense to you?

No.

No it doesn't.

It's just what a choice.

What an absolute choice.

be a podcast not about culture?

Like if we said, no, we're not doing culture, what's that?

It would be just reading facts.

Yeah.

You

Daniel's like, uh, I'm actually, I don't know what that means.

Boats are on water.

That's true.

You found a hole in my cultural podcast.

I can't recover from this.

Sorry.

the fact that when John said there's podcasts about culture, there are some people
Googling that right now because they think that means, oh, men and women of culture.

You know that person, you know that person.

Yeah, that's not what culture means in this context, but that would be funny.

yes, you are also a person of culture.

I truly do wish it was that.

We are not that fortunate.

you remember when we were setting everything up and we marked ourselves as like adults
content 18 plus and stuff because we were talking about, talking about like, you know,

grownup concepts and all this kind of stuff.

And we didn't really know.

And like we were swearing and we didn't really know what that meant.

And it turns out that we'd marked ourselves as like a porn podcast essentially.

And they were just like, they put loads of restrictions on us because they thought that we
were

doing a podcast about the naughty things.

When they did not explain that well whatsoever.

So for anyone out there looking to make an adult but not adult form of a podcast video,
anything, don't check that box.

Learn from our mistake.

Yeah, what that box

Yes.

For the record, this is a ton of fun and if you're thinking about doing it, you know, go
for it.

It's a blast.

We recommend it.

um It is really stupid on the way in.

You're going to deal with some shit that you're going to be like, well that, no, no, it
is.

It's that and it's angry at you and you have to deal with it now.

I'm so sorry.

uh

But yeah.

What a ride.

So, ah yeah, we've gotten some great news, John.

Unfortunately, I have some sad news report on the travel front, but again, we as human
beings, we can step up if we really want to.

Again, let me just repeat one more time, we're seeing a lot of reports of people literally
going to TSA and giving the supervisor a gift card, and that's distributed accordingly.

That's legally what they can accept.

And also, please talk to your House of Representatives contact.

Please talk to your folks.

I want these people to get paid.

You want them to get paid because, know.

Nothing would be worse if the airlines were like, well, we're just not going to do TSA for
a while and we just all go in and you never know what you're walking into with that front.

So that would be, that would be an adventure.

What?

I'm sorry.

It's just like, this is so stupid.

OK, hey, I made a country.

Cool.

What do you want to do?

Oh, not pay our airports.

Yeah.

Why is that your take?

I just hate people, you know, like I just don't want them to have money.

What are you going to do with it?

Oh, I don't know.

I just I just don't want them to have it.

I think they shouldn't.

But I'm getting that.

Does that make sense?

They don't deserve it.

I'm important.

What is this?

It's fine.

I love humans, man.

I love them.

They're amazing.

uh We get some weird shit.

it's a bumpy ride sometimes.

It's fine.

Humans are great, but the things that they think sometimes, and by they I mean us, like
I'm part of humans, like the things we rationalize, like no, this is okay, yeah, they

won't get paid for a little bit, but it's a worthy, it's worth it.

The ends justify the means, we say that a lot.

We say that a lot.

geez Louise, those memes.

Mmm.

You

I'm sure we could have done better.

don't know how.

mean.

oh

So with that said, John and Daniel, I thought we'd take a little break from the script
instead of talking about high and mighty concepts, but reinforcement concepts we've talked

about before, especially being empathetic, as well as when all the chips are down, do you
still keep moving and what's the result of that?

I thought I'd tell you a story about how my week has gone and it's gonna involve travel.

Let me kind of set the stage for you.

And John knows a little bit about this, Dan knows a little bit about this, because at one
point I was stranded in a little state called Minnesota for a little bit this week.

That was a fun time.

But let's set the stage.

for those of you that are listening in for the very first time, I am what you might call a
leadership consultant.

I'm a public speaker, motivational speaker.

I'm also a workshop facilitator of kinds.

And I had, I wouldn't say a busy week this week, but know, busier than most.

And let me walk you through what the week was supposed to look like.

So.

I was supposed to fly into Rochester, Minnesota on Monday.

Now John knows this, but I'll let you all know that Rochester, Minnesota is a very, very
tiny airport.

And the reason I'm flying into Rochester on Monday is because that's only a 30 minute
drive from where I need to be for my engagement.

If I flew into Minneapolis airport, that's about a two hour drive away from my engagement.

And I'm gonna work with these folks and talk them about how to engage and retain their
talent, know, retention.

as well as talk about the best practice for coaching individuals and making sure they're
gonna be set up for success and be the next generation of leaders.

That's my Tuesday class.

Then, Tuesday afternoon, about 6.30, I have a flight leaving Rochester, connecting in
Chicago O'Hare, landing in Philadelphia late that evening, but that's okay.

I'm gonna sleep in Wednesday in the morning.

I teach a virtual class uh in the afternoon from the comfort of my own home, the one that,
if you're my viewer, you can see right now where that is.

Talking about embracing change to some folks, again, I can't legally talk about, but folks
that really need to help with embracing change, with change management, all that good

stuff.

And then that afternoon, drive to New York for about two hours, grab a hotel, sleep a
little bit, wake up, and teach a super highly condensed class of targeted selection.

And targeted selection is basically the practice of hiring people.

It's a practice of behavioral interviewing.

It's a practice of finding the right people.

This is a workshop that we usually do across two days, but this client decided that they
wanted all in three hours.

And they wanted it twice.

One three hour session in the morning, one three hour session in the afternoons.

Super high fast, high paced.

We blaze through a lot of content really quickly, but we make the magic happen.

And then that night I can drive home Thursday night and be home.

That's how it was supposed to go, John and Daniel.

But I bet you can guess how I'm setting the story up.

That's not how it went.

So John.

yes, so good, so good.

So I mean, I get there on time on Monday.

Perfectly fine, I'm able to get to my hotel room, we're fine.

Tuesday I teach the class, it goes well.

By the way, the client that I talked to, a very rare thing in my world, John and Daniel,
but the client is also a fellow gamer, so we talked about gaming for a while, super fun.

This client told me that they don't play any of the Resident Evil video games, but they do
watch a streamer play all of the Resident Evil games.

And they've really enjoyed watching the streamer play the latest Resident Evil Requiem,
which I'm sure we'll talk about in the Patreon section of our episode, which by the way...

We have a Patreon if you're interested in that.

For $3.99, that's right, at the end of this episode, we have even more stuff we talk
about.

Nerdy stuff, weird stuff, reaction stuff, it's the show after the show.

Check us out at zero.media slash Patreon or Patreon slash zero.media.

I never get that right, but you can find us.

Our links are in the description.

$3.99, you get extended versions of our episodes.

You get them earlier on Mondays and all other fun stuff.

We'd love to have you join club Zero Dot.

If not, all good.

Yeah.

if you join our episodes, probably don't get this plurge about us, but it's okay.

It's fine.

It's alright.

it's one combination of those words that you said.

If you just try various combinations of those words, you'll stumble upon the Patreon at
some point.

Like a Resident Evil puzzle, just keep brute forcing it.

Eventually.

Yeah, yeah, you get that.

Yeah.

So this client, we're talking about video games and he's like, hey, I catch my flight, see
you later, bye.

I go to Rochester airport.

Now John, this airport is so small, there's only one flight leaving out that day.

One, just one, that's how small this airport is.

But I get there, I go to the bar, I grab a quick beverage, and my flight's supposed to
leave at 6.30, and I'm waiting, and I'm waiting, and I'm waiting, and I...

I don't have any indication that it's delayed yet, but we are definitely past the boarding
period of which the flight would start boarding passengers.

And finally, I get the notification that it's been delayed by 20 to 30 minutes, then 45
minutes, then an hour.

Okay, the problem is I have a connection in Chicago O'Hare.

So it's now making that connection incredibly tight, but per my data that I have on my
phone, because everything's communicated via a phone device of some kind, I'll be able to

make this connection ever so slightly.

By the way, if you don't know folks, on Tuesday of last week, there was a big storm coming
through Chicago.

Literally big giant balls of hail.

I'm using my hands right to describe it.

It is literally more than a softball size of hail.

It was breaking people's windshields.

It was ruining vehicles and houses.

It was a crazy storm.

So our flight was...

hail larger or smaller than a murder hornet?

Ooh, yes, larger, larger, larger than a murder hornet, for context.

No, you absolutely, absolutely, 100%, yeah, massive.

uh And so obviously it makes sense that the flight would get delayed of some capacity.

And eventually it gets so delayed that I'm now absolutely going to miss my connection.

And I get rebooked for a flight that's gonna leave from Chicago at like five in the
morning now.

So I'm gonna get to Chicago.

at midnight and then I have to figure out what I'm doing for a couple hours and leave from
Chicago at 5 a.m.

to arrive in Philadelphia.

At this point, John and Daniel, I call my boss and I'm like, hey, I probably can make it
to my home in like an hour before we have to do our virtual classroom session, but you

might want to sub me out for this because we're at risk.

And then it gets delayed again and again until the whole flight is canceled.

I'm not gonna get to Chicago O'Hare that night.

Here's the problem, John and Daniel.

This airport is so tiny, they can't rebook you for a later flight that morning, because
literally it's such a tiny flight that all the seats are always booked.

There's nothing to triage you.

It's just canceled.

Just, sorry, go fuck yourself, they say.

There are no rental cars because all the rental cars have been taken.

That's how tiny this airport is.

So I'm stranded in Rochester and I need to find a way to get myself to a hub airport to
get me where I need to be.

And on top of that, they're holding onto my luggage, so I have to wait another hour for
the person to give me my luggage until I can finally get out, leave the airport, et

cetera.

So it's like nine-ish o'clock at night.

I grab a personal Uber from where I'm at to somewhere eight miles away so I can grab
dinner at a place that someone recommended to me.

I'm only describing this part because you know how much that Uber cost to go eight miles?

I shudder to think.

$80 US dollars just to go eight miles.

That's how rural we are in this ecosystem.

But it's okay.

I'm gonna have a nice dinner.

It was recommended to me that I have a nice dinner.

I get into the Uber.

The guy, I'll save you the experience of that Uber driver.

There's another one I'm gonna talk about a little bit later.

I get into that Uber.

We get to the restaurant.

It's closed.

And it looks like it's been closed all day.

Even though I checked online that they would be open, by the time I got there, they're
closed.

During that time, I reroute my flight and I'm gonna fly out of Minneapolis, but that's a
two hour drive from where we are.

So I'm like, okay, I guess I'm not getting dinner tonight.

uh Uber driver, can I change my routing like right now in the app and can you take me to
Minneapolis?

And he says, fuck no, I ain't doing that shit.

Cool.

uh Hey, there's a gas station across the street.

Can you just drop me off there so I can figure out my stuff?

Yeah, sure, whatever.

Drops me off at the gas station.

I go into the gas station.

And there's nothing healthy at a gas station to eat.

So I just grab a protein shake and that's all.

That's my entire dinner for the night.

And the way this works, John and Daniel, is my Minneapolis flight leaves at five in the
morning, take me into Philadelphia.

It's a direct.

Okay, cool.

But I need an Uber.

I need some way to get there.

I see a bunch of rental car places where I'm at, but they're all closed at that point.

They're not open.

So I call an Uber.

I get a nice lady to come by, maybe 10 minutes later.

Very nice lady.

Put my luggage into her car.

And if you know anything about Uber, John and Daniel, when you select the Uber, you have
two options.

You say, what's your temperature you'd like it to be at?

And I usually say, I don't care.

Like, temperature's fine.

And the last one says, preferred or not?

And I always pick quiet preferred.

That lets the driver know, like, hey, I'd like it to be a little quiet.

I'd like it to be calm, while I'm either checking emails, maybe taking a quick nap, that
kind of thing.

I always have that by default.

I get into this Uber, John and Daniel, and the lady immediately starts blasting YouTube
music from her phone.

And it's incredibly loud.

Now, it was nice music, it was Iranian music, I didn't understand the language, but seemed
like it was all Iranian.

But not only that, John and Daniel, she sang along to all of the music for all two hours
of the drive.

What a vibe.

Now I want to tell you.

my.

of what's happening in my particular country, America is now at war with Iran, I just felt
like it would have been really inappropriate for me to tell her, hey shut down your

fucking Iranian music.

That just felt really bad to me.

And on top of that she seemed like she was having such a good time that you know if that's
how she gets to enjoy this two-hour ride, okay let you sing along blast this music the

entire time and have a good time.

Meanwhile I'm like

Ugh.

be okay.

It's gonna be okay.

I get to the airport, she drops me off.

And John knows about Minneapolis Airport.

There's like three different levels.

And in the second level, there's like a nice little seated area with cushioned lounges and
there's even plugs to plug in your laptop.

And I think to myself, this isn't my first rodeo.

I'll take a quick power nap, check a couple emails.

I'll set up our podcast for the next day because it was supposed to be published that day.

I'll do it right there from that lobby.

Take a quick power nap, be up around three, four in the morning, get ready for my

my uh flight to get to Philadelphia.

I literally get to the terminal.

I start unpacking my laptop.

I'm talking to Daniel actually about publishing the next week's episode and I get the
notification that my 5 a.m.

flight has been canceled.

The flight is now leaving at two-ish o'clock.

Thank you.

So now I gotta buy another Uber to get myself any hotel that'll take me somewhere for just
a couple of hours of sleep.

I make the choice to go to my favorite budget uh hotel, not because they're a good hotel,
they're awful, but because one of my favorite comedians has a fantastic story about this

one place and I just can't help the irony of it.

And I went to La Quinta Inn.

La Quinta Inn, that's L-A-Q-U-I-N-T-A.

And folks, if you're gonna go to the La Quinta Inn near Minneapolis Airport, I have no
problem saying this, it is one of the worst hotels you can possibly go to.

It is so bad, the front door doesn't work.

It literally says broken, not work.

You have to go around the back.

When you go around the back, it's a very shady entrance.

It's like a drug deal is about to happen when you go down that back entrance.

I go in, I check in, the guy, you know.

He doesn't care that I'm there, but he's like, just make sure you check out by 11.

I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever.

I just need a couple hours of sleep, a shower, and we'll be good to go.

I check into my hotel room.

It takes me another hour to finish publishing our episode from the last week.

That's about how long that process takes.

Also, the wifi was atrocious, so I had to hotspot my phone to make it all work.

It was a whole thing.

I get about five hours of sleep, and it's okay.

Five hours of sleep, we're okay.

I'm feeling all right.

I'm gonna go to the airport.

What can I do in a couple hours, hang out for a bit before my flight at two o'clock?

It's important to remind you that I've had a communication with my boss to let her know,
hey, this crazy thing happened.

I'm really sorry.

I can't make my Wednesday engagement it looks like.

It really seems like I can't make the engagement.

She gets a sub for me.

She's incredibly empathetic and apologetic.

I'm like, it's OK.

We'll make it work.

And I start texting my wife, and I say, hey, based on how this is all working out, I might
not get home Wednesday.

I might have to go right from Philadelphia and go to New York.

for my next engagement.

Wouldn't that have been fun?

That would have been great.

So I get to the airport, the flight's been delayed to about 3.30 now.

Okay, so I'm there at like 11 o'clock, I've got a bunch of time to kill.

I answer a bunch of emails, uh I write some things to people.

I actually send some notes to the other facilitator who took on my work that day to let
her know what to do for her session so she's prepared, a bunch of stuff.

I grab a nice donut.

There's a donut shop, they have a called a big ass cheesy jalapeno pretzel I had to try.

It was only okay, but I wanted to try because it had a cool name.

wanted to try.

Flight gets delayed again, and again, then gets canceled, then I get rerouted to another
flight that's leaving at around six o'clock.

And if we do it right, I will probably land in Philadelphia around 11 o'clock.

Grab a rental car, drive to New York, and have maybe a couple hours of sleep before I
gotta do my engagement, if I'm lucky.

We get on the plane, John Daniels.

We sit there for a long time.

But then finally we start getting off.

Oh, cool, we're getting on the tarmac.

We're about to take off.

We turn around.

We go back to the terminal.

We go back to the gate.

And the captain says, I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we actually have an issue with our
fuel.

We actually have too much fuel in the tank.

So what we need to do is give back some of the fuel to the airport.

And we need to find some paperwork, regulatory paperwork, to make this happen.

well, m we just need to wait for that paperwork to come through.

to give back to the fuel.

I'm like, none of this makes any fucking sense.

But okay, if you just get the fuel taken care of, I'll be happy, I'll be able to take off.

It's important to note that I've gone through TSA a couple times now, and again, as I told
you before in the beginning of this story, the TSA crew is skeleton.

Like, it is a skeleton crew, so it takes close to an hour and 15 minutes, an hour 20, even
when the line is incredibly small, just to get through TSA.

It's a nightmare.

This is gonna be important a little bit later.

So we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait.

And suddenly there's that nervousness that happens in the cabin.

Like everyone's like, what the hell is going on?

No one's telling us anything.

And the captain comes back on and says, okay, sir, the good news is, is that we went ahead
and regulated the flight.

got the paperwork, regulated the fuel.

We got the paperwork approved to send back some of the fuel.

So we're properly allocated for our flight.

Again, makes no sense to me, John.

I don't know what this means.

Maybe it's a weight class thing.

I couldn't tell you.

But then he says, but the bad news is that because we've taken so long, we have to let go
of the current flight attendant crew because of a regulatory union thing that we have.

So we have to let go of them.

And then we're now making a distress call now to see if we can get some emergency crew for
us.

We have about a 10 minute window.

And if that doesn't happen, we're going have to cancel the flight.

So they open the gate, they let the attendants off, and we're just sitting there waiting.

10 minutes later, says, yep.

So based on regulations, no one's responded to our distress call.

I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we're going have to cancel this flight.

And we de-planned from the plane.

That is fucking unreal.

So to recap, I've been de-planned from the flight now.

Before it was a gas regulation issue, now it's a flight attendant issue.

They have no flight attendants.

The whole thing's canceled.

I check with the attendant, the gate lady, and I'm like, is there any flights getting out
to Philly?

And this is through American Airlines.

Nothing.

Not a zilch.

I check all other airports.

Newark, JFK, LaGuardia, any in that area that can allow me to get a rental car and drive
to my location.

Pull up my phone.

There's one flight leaving Minneapolis to Philadelphia.

It leaves at nine o'clock at night.

It's a Delta flight and it's almost seven o'clock now.

We're now racing against time.

So I call my travel agent.

say, hey, travel agent, can you...

This flight's canceled.

Can you cancel it, refund it?

Can we get me on that flight?

Is there availability?

Says, yep, absolutely.

Okay, when am I gonna get that ticket in?

15 minutes.

Okay, cool.

Hang that up.

I talked to the gate lady.

Okay, I need my luggage now, yesterday.

Can you just give me the luggage here?

No, you have to exit the entire airport, go to baggage claim, grab your baggage, go right
back through TSA.

Okay, can you make sure you do it really quickly, really fast?

Yes, can you please describe your bag to me?

You can't just like locate it based on, yeah, sure, okay, here's what it looks like,
here's the bag, all that stuff.

I race down, I exit the airport where it says no return, knowing I have to do all of this
all over again.

I go to baggage claim, and there's a few of us waiting.

A few of us did the same thing, we picked up this Delta flight.

And the baggage claim isn't turning on, the baggage claim isn't turning on, there's
nothing coming through to baggage.

We are waiting, we are waiting.

I waited 45 minutes.

I was about to leave without my bag.

Finally it comes through.

My bag was the seventh bag to come through.

I know, because I was counting.

I got my bag.

I literally asked the guy, because at this point I'm disoriented, like, how do I get back
to where I was?

I need to get to this gate, whatever.

And I get three different directions from three different guys at Minneapolis Airport.

I won't name who they are, because they seem like nice people, but they all gave me wrong
directions until I finally found the right one going up the right stairs, et cetera.

We're fine.

to go through TSA one more time.

One more time.

And this time what's interesting is that, A, the line was very short.

We're talking 30 people max, but it still took about an hour and 20 minutes to get through
TSA because they only had one machine and like one guy doing three different jobs and one

lady doing one job.

And I talked to the lady and I'm like, hey, thank you so much for doing this.

I know it's a pain in the butt.

She says, I don't care.

Whatever.

I'm here.

I'm either here, I'm watching Netflix and...

and doing whatever, so I might as well be here.

You can just tell the pain and agony in her face.

I'm like, I just appreciate you being here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Get my stuff off, put it in the bag, keep it going.

They do a pat on me as they always do because I think there's something suspicious
happening in my groinal area.

Folks, there's nothing wrong with my groinal area, it's just a thing that happens from
time to time.

I'm used to it by now.

They do the whole thing.

Do I have your permission to?

Yes, yes, yes, whatever, just pat me down, just get it done.

I need to get out of here.

Grab my bag, get to the gate.

Per my time and what my phone says, the gate is about to board, so I'm about to miss my
flight, but I make it to the gate.

I get there, John and Daniel, and the whole corridor is filled with people, and the gate
hasn't even opened.

I get to the gate, I talk to the lady.

Hi, what's the status of things?

yeah, the plane doesn't come in yet.

so it's delayed, yes, but it's not showing that it's delayed, yes.

Okay, and they do that on purpose, by the way.

They actually, they can only have so many delays in a day that they actually get hit
pretty hard by something, like they get fined or something, I think.

They told me that, like there's a whole game that a lot of airlines play where they'll
delay certain flights, but they won't tell you this one delayed even though it actually

is.

Doesn't matter, okay.

Is it on its way?

Yes, apparently it's coming from San Jose del Cabo.

So it's international flight.

And on top of that, because it's international flight, John and Daniel, when it does
arrive, it arrives about 40 minutes later.

They deplane everyone, they clean it out, and then it has to go through extra regulatory
passes because it's an international flight.

It has to pass those passes.

So it's going to take a bit of time.

At this point in time, I call my boss.

I say, here's the situation.

By my calculation right now, if this

The goes off when they tell me it's gonna go off, which I have no guarantee it will.

If I get to Philadelphia airport and I get the rental car and I get to my location, I'll
make it 45 minutes before we start the workshop.

I will have literally no sleep.

And my boss is fantastic.

She's laughing, but she's also like feeling bad for me.

And she's like, I hate that you'd be in this situation.

That has to be awful.

She calls around, she gets someone who'd be willing to take the job on for me.

Lovely lady, lovely facilitator.

And she's like, Sam, those'd be a terrible situation.

And my boss says,

We'll call her name Janice.

I won't name her real name, but Janice.

Hey Janice, would you be willing to take this job for Sam?

says, I'd be willing.

I don't want to do it, but I'd be willing to do it because she has to prep in a very short
period of time for a class that I've been prepping for months now and do it a very

specific way and it's a customized course and everything else.

And my boss does this incredible thing where she says, well, it doesn't sound like you're
thrilled to do this, so you don't have to do it.

And she's like, thank God.

And then she comes to me on the phone and says, Sam,

You're within your right to cancel this gig right now.

You're within your right to cancel.

You've done a lot of hard work to try to get here.

You can cancel if you'd like.

And she asks me, am I doing?

And I said, honestly, I'm so tired.

I don't care anymore.

But I thought about it and I thought about it.

And I thought about it and I thought about it.

And I hung up the phone and I talked to my wife.

And she reminds me as well, Sam, you don't have to do this.

And I said, I think I have to.

She says, no, you don't.

Let's take the have to out of the equation.

What do you want to do?

And I said, I want to try to make this happen because I will not be able to live with
myself if there was even one.

Possibility I could have made it work because there's gonna be people traveling three
hours to come to this event and to tell them the things been canceled That's a waste of

their time and that's not fair to them So if I can make this happen, I want to make it
happen because I feel like I have a moral responsibility to make it happen I've said, okay

And I call my boss.

I'm like we're gonna make this happen I will text you the moment the plane is taking off
to let you know we are good to go for this Okay

As you can imagine, takes a long time.

People are de-planned.

We finally get on the plane.

It takes us a while to take off, so we're already delayed there.

But eventually, we start actually literally lifting off, and I start texting before I lose
all signal.

I text a quick message.

Taking off.

We're set to go.

Game on.

Quick flight, it's maybe two hours and 12 minutes.

I take maybe a 30 minute cat nap at some point during the time that I'm working.

I land.

We land at one in the morning.

I've got to get my baggage, grab the baggage, takes a long time for the baggage to come,
and then I've got to get to a rental car.

Now it's important for you to understand about this in the Philadelphia airport ecosystem.

Every airport does rental cars differently, but the way Philadelphia does it is that
there's a separate, totally different city block that is all just Philadelphia rental car

places within this big block of area.

And you have to get a shuttle to get there.

So I grabbed the first shuttle that I can.

It's for Avis.

I have no problem talking about Avis right now, because I'm not going to have very nice
things to say about some of these places, and this is one of them.

I get on the Avis shuttle.

It's pretty packed.

Takes us to the Avis place.

We get to the Avis rental car agency and there's already a line of 30 people deep.

The line is not moving.

And there's another 20 people behind me in this line.

And I'm like, I don't have time.

I cannot wait in this line to get a car.

So I take my luggage.

I'm hand holding this thing and I'm walking around and you can see every single one of
these rental car places.

But the problem is the way Philadelphia does this to prevent you from being able to go to
other places, it's all chain linked fences and it's all barbed wire.

You can't literally walk across the lot to get to a different rental car place.

They don't want you to do that.

So I'm like, okay, let me check.

I know where it is.

can see.

Enterprise is right there.

I'm a big customer of theirs.

I go to my Uber.

It's gonna cost me $112 to take me 0.6 miles.

$112 to take me from where I'm at in this parking lot, 0.6 miles, almost half a mile.

So what I do, I grab the luggage, I'm like, fuck that.

I exit out the rental car lot like you would with a car.

You know that place on the floor uh on the asphalt where it's like spikes that you're not
supposed to be able to go back?

I walked over that.

There was a police officer with his lights looking at me, didn't say anything about me.

I heard people behind me going.

What the fuck is this guy doing?

He's crazy.

Like he's just, and I'm walking on the street.

There is no sidewalk here.

Cars are blasting me by.

I'm like, I have to make this work.

I have to make this work.

And I'm looking, I'm trying to find the open and get to Enterprise.

I finally find Enterprise.

I get in, I walk.

There's maybe 12 people in this line.

Okay, I can do this.

And I notice behind me, maybe 10 people followed me.

They're like, oh shit, he might've had the right idea.

Like, let's follow him.

Like they didn't think it was, so I'm sitting in this line for 12.

Now, John and Daniel, I need to be prepared for this part because everything I've told you
so far has been 100 % true.

This will be true as well, but you will think this is not true, and I'm guaranteeing you
it is.

I go to the enterprise a lot, we slowly get through each person, each person, each person.

This is like 1.30, 1.40 in the morning.

They're 24 seven.

That's what their website says.

They're 24 seven.

It's an airport.

I get there.

This guy, I won't name his name because I don't want to be mean.

It says reservation.

I say, actually no.

And I pull out my driver's license and my credit card right away.

I'm like, I don't have anything, but can you just give me a car or whatever car you got?

I need to get out of here as quickly as possible.

I'm a, I'm a return customer.

I've, I've gone through enterprise and my log has like over 180 different times I've
rented through enterprise.

Like I'm a, good customer.

I'm a preferred member.

He goes,

I'm sorry, we're closed.

No fucking way.

No fucking way.

I'm close, that's what he says.

And I look behind me and I see there's a bunch of people.

It's now like 30 people deep now, because I guess they came from the Avis lot coming to
follow me.

What I should have done, John and Daniel, is said, do you mind telling those people that
it's closed?

Because they're in line thinking you're open.

Yeah, I'd have turned around and just said sorry everyone, he says they're closed, so.

I was at a breaking point.

I was about to be really mean, but instead I'm like, you're 24-7.

no, we're only open now for reservations.

Okay, I would like to make a reservation.

I'd like to book it.

I'd like to get the car.

I can't do that.

He says, come back in the morning.

I cannot.

I literally need to be in four hours.

I need to be somewhere and it's a two and a half hour drive.

We are wasting time.

I need to be here.

You know what he says?

I don't like to be a boomer about technology, this made me like real boomery about this.

He says, well, if you make a reservation online, we'll be forced to honor it.

So I whip out my fucking phone and I start popping in the dates and I put in my fucking
preferred ID number and all my account information and I'm starting to book it and he

moves on to other people.

He moves on to help other people.

I get it booked, it's ready to go.

And I wait.

And it takes 15 minutes for him to come back to me, because he keeps ignoring me at a
certain point.

He keeps like, helping other people.

And I'm finally, I'm like, hey, hey, I've got a reservation.

I'm pointing at my phone, I've got it.

And you know what he says?

No lie.

Oh, you got a reservation.

Okay.

Just like that.

Like he's disappointed.

Like he wanted me to just come back in the morning.

Like, no, I have no other option.

I have to get this car.

you know he was hoping when you heard like, you've got to do it online, if you're like,
not worth it, like not worth it and walk away.

I love, I know this isn't an ideal situation, but I love that moment for you of just being
like, no, I called your bluff.

I actually did it.

Come and help me.

So he gets it set up, takes him two seconds of course.

He walks me off the lot, he shows me, you can just take this Mitsubishi car right here.

And by the way, it's a piece of shit Mitsubishi.

It's one of those Mitsubishis that looks fancy on the outside, but you come in and like
it's crusted, things are falling apart.

The navigational dash doesn't work, so I wouldn't have a GPS on my way out.

And also it had only USB-A chargers.

Now this might seem like a first world problem, but I've been traveling a lot in my entire
life.

No rental car I've ever had in the past three years has USB-A anymore.

It's all USB-C.

So I've only been bringing USB-C cables.

I didn't have a USB-A cable.

And my phone has 30 % battery left.

And I thought about going back and going, this car is a piece of shit, get me a better
one.

But I'm like, I don't want to deal with this guy ever again.

This was my big mistake.

I was really kind of putting my life at danger a little bit, because this car was a
little, very rickety.

But I grabbed my phone and it's in my hand like this and it's on the driver.

So I'm like looking at it while I'm driving.

It's kind of a hazard.

I'm basically driving one handed the entire time, all two and a half hours drive to New
York.

And I make it.

I make it.

I get there at 4.45 in the morning.

If I'm lucky, I can get about 45 minutes of shut eye.

If I'm real quick, I dropped the car off to the hotel.

The hotel is across the street from where need to be so I can walk there.

And I'm going to name this person because she was fantastic.

I come in, her name is Elena.

says, Hey, I'm checking in for my room.

I know that

how this typically works in the hotel business is if you don't check in by midnight, the
system automatically clears you out.

So I know I didn't get a chance to call and I am so sorry, but the way my day has been,
just didn't even know what was gonna happen.

Can I just have a room?

I just need like two hours, just two hours, just a bed, a shower, that's it.

She finds me a room.

She's very nice.

Oh, and you know what?

I'm gonna get you the cheaper rate, because today's a cheaper day.

like, I don't care.

Whatever, I just need a room.

Just give me a room.

She's very nice.

And she's like, you know what?

Since you got in so late, let me give you extended checkout, if you'd like, like one
o'clock.

I'm like, that's so sweet of you, but that's not gonna help me.

I need to literally be out the door here by about 6.30.

She's like, what?

I'm like, yeah, I'm teaching an engagement across the street.

I'm doing a whole thing.

I just need a bed, a clean shower, and that's it.

And you could just feel the pain in her face that I was experiencing.

And at this point, I am shaking.

I'm wrought.

I have barely anything left to give.

And she says, there's a kitchen right across.

Anything you want, all of it, grab it, all me, okay?

You got it.

Anything you want.

I don't grab much, but I grab a couple of Diet Cokes, which are like eight bucks a piece,
because of course it's a fucking hotel, but she gives it to me.

Right.

I get set up, I do whatever.

I get myself ready, I'm like, oh.

What I do typically is just so know, John and Daniel, because you don't want things to
fail.

I usually have three alarms set when I have to wake up because you don't want one alarm to
fail.

So I set up three alarms.

And just to be safe, like, let me also call room service and have them have a wake up call
for me.

I get Alina again.

I say, hey, Alina, I'm really sorry.

Can I set up a wake up call?

Don't worry, Mr.

Kirk, I've already taken care of it.

You get some sleep, my friend.

And I got a little bit of, just a tiny bit of nudge.

night rest I

I get the wake up call, I get my alarms to go off, I wake up.

And you know that time when you sleep a little bit and you're actually feeling worse than
you did before?

It's that.

On top of that, I have the shakes.

Like I'm literally shaking.

My body is like just absolutely shaking.

I take a quick shower, it's hot, it refreshes me a little bit.

My eyes are totally bloodshot.

I barely have any energy left.

I get myself ready.

I checked to make sure that the podcast got published.

Hopefully, I think it did at that point.

No, it had done.

It had done before the day before.

um I get myself ready.

come out.

Elena's still there, because it's only been a couple hours.

Mr.

Kirk, could you get any sleep?

I'm like, just enough.

Just enough.

And my car was parked out outside, because she didn't know I was walking across the
street.

We've got your car ready for you, sir.

I'm so sorry to do this.

Elena, I am so sorry.

Can I keep the car here?

Because I just have to walk across the street and I'll come pick it up around three, four
o'clock.

This is absolutely Mr.

Kirk.

Don't worry.

We'll take care of it for you.

I walk across the street, I go to the business.

People have been waiting for me.

I'm not late, but people had been like ready and waiting.

People had driven three hours to be at this location.

They had been waiting for me.

I have a name for myself.

You'll have heard about this guy, Sam Kirk.

He's like one of the best whatever.

And the client who I meet is like, oh, Sam, so good to see you.

great.

Did you get a good night's rest?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

hope you know this about me, but I literally can't lie.

I really can't do it, but it's also in bad taste for me to complain about my day at this
point.

So I just simply pause and I go, I'm ready for today.

That's all I say.

And we get through it.

We get through both sessions.

Super lightning fast.

We power through it.

We get through them all.

um It's lightning fast.

It's energetic.

It's exciting.

People are laughing.

People are saying it's one of the best sessions they've ever had, et cetera.

I don't say that to globe, but just that's what their reactions were.

I don't let the client know what happened until about the lunchtime period, because at
this point in time, I am so tired, John and Daniel, that I'm like, I don't know if I can

drive home.

I think I need to get someone to pick up the enterprise and tow that away, take that to
enterprise, and I need to get a taxi.

And so I ask the client, like, do you have like a long distance taxi that you'd recommend
that I can pull up?

I don't care how much it is, $800, I don't care.

I might not be able to make it.

And he's like, oh my gosh, like, I tell him a little bit about how it happens.

Don't worry, we'll foot the bill for you.

We'll take care of it.

You do what you gotta do.

We wrap up the second class and I've got a little bit energy left and I feel pretty good,
I can drive.

I debrief with the person, we have a good conversation and I get in my car, my rickety,
cracky, crappy car, which by the way, the Philadelphia agent told me I have to drop off in

Philadelphia by noon the next day.

I'm not doing that, I'm gonna drop it to my local enterprise and be done with it.

I get home, maybe two minutes after I get home, my wife comes home with groceries, I help
her out and then I just completely conk out and I pass out.

I wake up the next day and I get a bunch of emails saying, Sam, you saved the day.

They said it was the best thing ever.

Super grateful, all that good stuff.

I'm not sharing the story to kind of say how great I am.

In fact, I'm not that kind of person.

I'm sharing the story because this was truly a zero dot experience.

And I want to share what I think was the only way I got through this experience because
let me tell you, man, I was at a breaking point.

I was, I was disheveled.

was destroyed.

The only thing that got me through this, John and Daniel was a couple of people's empathy.

My boss is empathy that Hampton employee, Alina at Teaneck, New Jersey, who gave me
empathy.

and my wife.

And my boss and my wife in particular who gave me permission say you do not have to do
this.

And I made the choice that I wanted to do it because I knew people were counting on me to
be there.

That's the only way I got through.

And there's one other thing, but I'll talk about that later.

And I'm proud of that and I'm grateful that I did it.

I don't know that I can ever do it again.

I've had a couple of scares like this before, but this was one of the more intense ones.

And I just want to point that out to our listeners and our viewers, what the power is in
empathy and what the power is in connecting with people and seeing people.

Because I'd had experiences as I detailed with everyone,

That enterprise agent can go F himself because I'm like, come on man, like I just need a
car.

You're making this harder for me.

Just giving people empathy gives you strength you didn't realize you had.

Man, that's powerful.

I am fucking amazed that you are alive.

That is crazy as fuck.

I notoriously have thought that the MSP airport, not too bad of an airport, but that is
about as bad as it gets, man.

That's every single thing.

At some point, this story, as a person who's talking to you today, knows that you in fact,
make it out of it, um like becomes comical.

Cause it's like, this cannot keep getting worse.

Like I've had a pretty fucked up week myself, but.

Honestly, you just blew out of water.

Holy cow, that's fucking bananas.

um And I'm glad to hear that the empathy, like, I literally can never talk about it
enough.

Like, it is one of the most healing things you can have as a human.

just having other people care about you and see you and get you, it just, gives you the
artsy way of saying it, the floofy way of saying it.

It's like, it gives you like an inner strength.

The other, the animal way of saying it is it kind of like,

It prevents your give up thing from going off like it.

That's really good, man.

I'm glad you had that help, also, I'm so sorry, what a fucking ride.

I'm grateful it happened.

But yeah, the empathy is huge again, because at a certain point it's just like, we talked
about this before, my big principle and so what?

Like, okay, you're gonna do this, you're gonna be miserable, you'll be frazzled and you'll
have no sleep.

You can still do it though, right?

So what?

Go do it.

Even though I had every out to not do it, which would have been a fair out, I could have
been like, you know what, I can't do it.

I just, couldn't within myself tell myself it's okay.

I'm like, no, there are people.

Yes, I had to travel far, they're traveling far.

They've heard about me.

They've been waiting months to see me and now imagine them having their plans get
canceled.

That's unfair to them.

um The other thing I want to talk about, which is the opposite side of the mental health
aspect, the empathy side, and I need to just call this out because it's true.

I've been focusing on my physical health for about seven, eight years now.

And I can tell you that if I hadn't been so focused on my strength training and my
endurance and my cardio, I would have absolutely collapsed and physically been unable to

do this.

I would have literally just passed out and couldn't have done it.

The fact that I was in pretty reasonably good shape allowed me to get through this piece
of it.

And to that I'm grateful, which again speaks to the fact of like doing something now to
help your future self out, even if you're not sure about it.

Like all those times I did that last set and I didn't want to do it, like, oh, I don't
want to do this last set, but you just did it anyway.

But this was what it amounted to.

And I tell my trainer this all the time.

My trainer, he knows my goal is to be capable.

My goal is not to be looking good in the mirror.

That's a nice side effect.

My goal is being capable.

this was, in one way it was like a proud moment of myself going, I was capable.

I did the thing.

That's good.

I'm, I'm glad to hear it.

feels good to be able to reflect on that.

Like one of the feelings that I really recommend people practice, like getting in touch
with is gratitude for your past self, because psychologically it's just a fucking home

run.

Like it helps your brain feel much better about things that otherwise would be very
painful at times.

Um, so I'm really glad to hear you tap into that.

I also just, man, I just know how fucking important physical health is as a person who's
been in various states of physical health over the past seven years.

From like couldn't stand through a shower to like closing in on my maxes again Like you
just feel more able to contend psychologically with the shit that you're dealing with

makes a huge fucking difference.

So Really glad to see that

And if I could wrap up the story, because I don't like stories being all about me, but I
want to make sure we walk away with something.

em I was grateful for the fact that I understood the gift of empathy and I lived in that
moment.

But when folks were not giving me empathy, I was very quick to discard them.

Like you are of no use to me.

You're not giving me empathy.

Let's move on and move the conversation.

And John, think you and I both have experience in our professions and otherwise.

We get hung up on the wrong people.

We get hung up on those people.

who aren't giving us empathy and we're looking for them to give us something and they're
not.

And we keep spiraling and it becomes this not a great situation.

And I'm grateful for the fact that I know that lesson early on from past experiences
because again, if I'd gotten hung up on some of these things, it would have really made me

go, well, it would have made me give up, but I knew not to give up.

And so I give everyone permission right now as they hear about the story.

Put your spoons where they give the energy back to you.

You know, in the world of nutrition, say, to love the food that loves you back.

In the exercise, learn to love the exercises that love you back.

In your people, learn to love the people that love you.

Very well put.

I wish I had something to add to that, I do think that really does kind of sum it up.

Involving yourself with the things that serve you and that help you be the best you
unarguable.

Hmm.

I think you did something that I really like.

I think really speaks to the whole focus on the try and focus on the things that are
giving back to you.

Don't get caught up on the on the negatives.

You're gonna get caught up in the people that aren't going to give you the empathy,
anything like that, which is it was part of the story.

So you had to touch on it.

This fine gentleman, shall we call him?

who made you go through the whole rigmarole of the reservation and he was butting heads
with you and meeting you with resistance.

And you very kindly said, I'm not going to name this person and I'm not going to focus in
on it and I'm not going to dwell on it.

It's relevant to the story, but you didn't give him a name, you didn't give him a focus.

Instead, the person that you did name, that you did choose to focus on and let everybody
know about and praise.

was the lovely employee at the hotel.

And I think that's really, really important.

And I love that you did that.

Very, very nice.

Yeah.

Daniel might like this then, because I forgot about this part.

When everything was done, I was done the engagement, I walked across the street back to
the hotel.

And I knew Alina would not be there, because it was, gosh, it's been like 16 hours at this
point.

She's on a different shift.

I'm like, hi, I need to pick up my car, but real quick, is there a supervisor on duty?

I want to give a compliment to one of your, about your staff members.

Oh yes, yes, I'm supervised.

She came in, and I'll be honest, I told you who her name is now, but I didn't know her
name at the time, that's how brain fried I was.

like.

There was a lady and I described her features.

She was on during this shift during this time.

that's Alina.

I'm like, let me tell you how incredible she was because I will never forget Alina.

I will never forget the kindness she had.

And she said to me, I'm so thrilled.

We take such pride in that.

And she gave me this little card and says, you don't have to, but every all staff members
here make a commission.

If you drop a nice review on their trip advisor.

And I did, went to advisor quick.

said, Alina, my, my guardian angel, which is not for bridge I use very often, but

was very grateful for that and I hope she gets that commission and I hope she knows she
made my day.

She made me get through that.

That was huge.

She sounds thoroughly deserving of it.

So I'm glad to and it is just like, you know This isn't a secret anybody who works in any
industry But like when people recognize you externally that is one of the most powerful

things you can have like it just makes a huge fucking difference.

So

Mm-hmm.

So thank you, Alina.

This one's for you.

to Alana.

Yeah, what a legend.

What an absolute legend.

Angie was awesome for getting through that.

Horrific.

that absolute series of unfortunate events.

Yeah.

painless.

It worked out because uh I slept 15 hours Thursday night into Friday.

And then we had to reschedule our session to Sunday.

I slept another 15 hours on Saturday.

Like I just slept.

was like.

You

Felt good, felt good.

ah Yeah, it was so bad, because I was so tired the one night at La Quinta Inn, that I'm
like, I might need to tell Daniel that I can't publish it until later.

But I'm like, no, our people need this.

We made a promise.

And I'm just soldiering through finger pecking.

Get this done.

Describe the description.

Make the keywords work.

I'll deal with the Spotify crap later, because Spotify does this thing where they don't
let you upload the video until after the audio is published and whatever.

yeah.

Just another fun quirk that we found of setting all of this up.

Yeah.

I'm grateful to you for getting all that done while also contending with everything else.

em Yeah, I do appreciate it very much, I appreciate you both very much.

I don't know, man.

I really want to lift up the homie.

I feel like Sam had a really good story today to share.

ah But I know Sam is a very, like, he does not want to do any self-aggrandizing, so I'll
do it for him.

What a fucking trooper, dude.

What a fucking stud.

That is not a thing everyone could have done.

And I feel like it is, as a person who had his own week that was just garbage and did not
have that perseverance, just, I don't know.

It's really impressive.

not in a like, you know, yay, you boo me just like way to go fellow human, like way to do
the thing,

Yeah, never, never yay this thing and boo this other thing.

Like you don't have to tear other things down to lift other things up.

Like you, you can just lift the thing up.

doesn't, whether the other thing is yourself or something else, it's something else.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I want to be clear if anyone hears this story and thinks that the message is I
just persevere not necessarily if I had the spoons to do what I did if I had reached a

point where I literally couldn't I would have made that different decision It's just more
like I had the physical spoons.

I was stretched to my limit and I made the decision to do it

And to clarify further, when he says he had the physical spoons, he means he had a case
full of spoons to like barter with.

It was, yeah, exactly.

Slightly unreasonable, honestly.

of spoons just clanging about trying to get to-

at TSA because of all those spoons just sets off the metal detectors.

It's terrible.

oh Because of you specifically.

Oh, here comes Spoon Man Sam again.

Fuck.

oh Yeah.

I would like to take a quick moment to shout out our Patreon members who pay us a little
bit of money every month and are super special because of that.

We have Robert Restant, we have David Rivera.

You are new.

Thank you for signing up.

We appreciate it.

Yeah.

William Kirk, JP, Aid, and God of Grunts.

If you would like to be in their esteemed company and you would like to help us out, help
us to create more things for you.

maybe pay us a little bit of money every month, we'd really appreciate it.

If not, no worries.

We will still get the most important things to you, regardless.

Thanks.

All right.

Before we wrap up today's episode, for those of you that don't know, you can submit your
questions to us at the at the zero dot podcast dot com or go to the zero dot podcast dot

com website and submit your questions there.

We're always keen to hear what you have for us.

We love to talk about them and make them the subject of many of our uh main episodes if
you would like.

And we got a submitted user question just a little bit ago.

And this question comes from anonymous user.

And the question is, what if I don't want to be in control?

And for those that are listening in right now, we've talked quite a bit about taking
control back in our lives for things that are taking control away from us, making sure we

focus on intrinsic value and intrinsic purposes versus extrinsic.

But this question asks, what if I don't want to be in control?

And John, I'd love to hear, I'd love to pay you a penny for your thoughts on that.

Keep your penny my friend.

I have many a thought and I don't come that cheaply First off, I'd say thank you to the
person who submitted the question and it's a really good question So there's a thing with

humans and control and that we need a degree of it and too much of it becomes problematic
There's a perfect little window where you want to have the right amount So for instance, I

want to be able to go somewhere of my own volition today I want to be able to choose like
what I eat or something like that I want to be able to feel safe and do things that make

me feel rewarded there's a thing for people who

feel like they have too much responsibility.

Fun fact, one of the first sidebar, whenever I say fun fact, it's not about to be fun.

uh one of, fun fact, one of the first existential crises you have as a person um is when
you are becoming an adult and you get the like, okay, so you're 18-ish, you're not going

to school, maybe you just graduated from college or whatever else.

And you're like, okay, now I'm going.

to do anything I want forever.

And you have too much.

There's too many choices.

Some people are parents, some people are leaders in businesses, some people are leaders in
local communities.

And there's just this piece of everyone turning to you and saying, hey, like, what are we
doing?

What are we doing?

What are we doing?

um I am a dungeon master.

I play Dungeons and Dragons.

ah And while I love doing that, it's a fun little creative social hobby.

It is people every week expecting you to be creative, have a thing set up, run the game,
et cetera.

um

I'm what's called a secondary leader.

So if no one's up to be a leader, then I'm the leader.

And I'm a person who has this too much control thing all the time.

I don't want to have this control.

So first of all, say completely valid, totally understandable.

What I would talk about is pairing that back a little bit.

So two things within two things.

uh A thing that I think is both, I don't know, dear viewer slash listener, I hope this
hits you well.

um We don't actually have control of anything.

So finding ways to help your brain say, okay,

What do I have to control?

And then what can I let go of is a big part of this.

At the end of the day, I'm in the market for a car because a while ago I bought a car, Kia
Soul 2014 edition.

an actual car?

I thought it was a lemon.

It's very lemon coated.

does leave a sour taste in my mouth.

I got it repaired and then a whopping three days later I had to get it repaired again
because it died on the road on the highway.

So it's been, know, I mean, not as fun as you're saying, but pretty fun.

I should stop using fun sarcasm, but I can't.

It's so fun.

Question mark.

But my point being like, I don't want to get screwed.

And maybe you looked at me you were like, that guy is a car guy.

He knows so much about cars, which is just.

just a fucking silly choice of you.

Now I'm not a car guy at all.

And I could get screwed by mechanic and they could say, well, you need this thing with the
boopometer.

I'd go, okay, well how much is that?

Like $50,000.

I'm like, okay, so I don't know what I'm doing.

But if I try really, really hard to exert total control on this, I'm going to drive myself
nuts and be fucking 8 % more prepared.

It doesn't really pay off the attempting to control ratio.

So letting go of some of that control there can be really helpful of saying like, well,
here's what I, the system that I recommend is

What is your value?

What is the action your value tells you to do?

So for me, my value would be like on freedom in this particular case.

And they would say, you need to just get a car, man.

Like you just got to do something.

Sometimes with control.

Um, and this is one that I want to speak to dear viewers, slash listeners.

I don't know this is your thing or not, but I feel free to send in more and specify, cause
I think we genuinely do want to help.

But, um, if your thing is control of people, such a common frequent flyer on my case of
professional, these people who come in who are like, I have this.

pain, I have to make sure my kid is okay, my spouse is okay, whatever else.

And there's this like, I don't I don't want to do this anymore.

It's too much work.

Letting go of that's really healthy.

So I'm going give you a little little pocket move.

I brought some on the show before but it's just it's so good for this.

It's called cognitive diffusion.

Diffusion takes two things and unfuses them.

It's not diffusion.

So you have a thought and you have a feeling.

They show up together, they lock in and the feeling makes the thought feel really true.

So for instance, you wake up, you're dog tired, you have a long day ahead of you think, I
can't fucking do this.

I'm not good enough.

I'm not strong enough, whatever.

And you go, whoop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

I'm noticing that I'm having a thought that I'm not good enough.

And I'm feeling that way.

And it kind of blends this false legitimacy.

In this case, we're going to use it to say, I'm noticing that I'm having a thought that I
have to control this.

And I'm going to let it go a little bit.

So final thing, and then I'm going to shut up for a second.

Let's see how I respond.

The question I believe the prompt was, what if I don't want to be in control?

I would just speak directly to that.

That's okay.

That's okay.

I think there's this pressure on us to like pursue control.

And I don't know, it kind of parallels the pressure of pursuing, having more things and
being bigger and better and stronger and faster.

There's actually a very healthy thing where people can say, you know, I'm good.

Like I don't, I don't need it anymore.

And if you, if you don't want to be in control because you're feeling burned out, that's
answer A, I've been kind of speaking to that, you know, first part.

But the second part is if you don't want to be in control, I just want to validate like
that is

totally appropriate.

Humanity is a team sport and having different people who can be in control at different
times makes a really big difference.

Giving people the opportunity to let things be in control.

So like, I feel a little uh retroactive guilt here because I didn't realize what kind of
shit Sam was going through.

And like I said, having a pretty tough week myself.

uh And I was just struggling to get myself into this chair.

And I turned over to Sam and Daniel on Friday to talk about scheduling the show.

And I said, you guys,

I don't know that I can do this.

I can try for like Sunday early spoiler alert.

That's when I recorded this.

out to Daniel for editing it late.

giving up that control felt like weird at first because I want to come through with the
things I say I can control, but I couldn't and letting other people drive the boat was

really, really helpful for me.

So if you're looking for a voice to just say it's okay, and then I would be happy to be
one of those voices, you definitely don't have to be in control.

It's certainly not a personality thing or thing to feel shame about.

I feel like

all the, you know, like go conquer the world young man kind of shit has really got into
our heads about what we're supposed to do.

And so far as pursuing that control, that's not even within that.

Right.

So I serve a lot of people as a therapist, including people who are like just super
powerful people, people with lots of money and responsibility and shit.

And one thing that they often tell me is they're like all day long, I work so hard to keep
all these gears turning.

When the weekend comes and my phone rings, I just, I just don't want to do it.

And there's a piece there about boundaries and not having control.

One of the things that I think is super helpful for anybody with any level of
neurodivergence, but also frankly, just people in general is having structured

unstructured time.

You just book time to not be in control.

You just book time to not do anything and just kind of let yourself coast a little bit.

Um, it can do wonders and it's so different than the reactionary version of it, which is
like, I don't want to do stuff.

I'm calling out today, which is not the same experience that can end up being sort of not
always healthy, whereas planning it ahead of time.

like taking the classic mental health day, if you will, that's actually very valid.

So I hope some of that spoke to what you're looking for.

And once again, thank you for the question.

If you have any further follow-ups, I'd love to hear them.

Other than that, I pass it back to Sam for any thoughts you may have.

Yeah, I think I agree with all of it.

Yeah, it's totally okay to not want to be in control.

It's totally fine if that's works for you.

I will offer one cautionary tale to be mindful of if we make the decision of, I don't want
to have any control over anything because I agree with John.

We don't really have control over anything.

Not really.

We can influence a few things here and there, but even then there's a very compelling
argument that we don't have free will.

Although we have to believe we have free will to keep moving on and all that stuff.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, all that good stuff.

But I would caution us on one thing.

If you make the decision that, I don't want to be in control, and so I'm going to let go
control completely, you now are falling down one path and one path which begets that all

the external factors in your life rules your life.

Whatever happens in front of me, that's what that's the reality that I face, which can be
incredibly meditative and it can be incredibly wholesome.

Except in some cases, I'd say about 50 % of cases, you've reached a place in your life
where you become incredibly frustrated and you don't know why.

because what happened is years ago you made this choice, I'm just gonna let the world
dictate where I go.

You if I can't get this job, that's the job that I get.

If I can't keep this friend, that's the friendship that I get.

This world, I get whatever the world gives me.

But then at some point the frustration might build and that's because we didn't give
ourselves the opportunity to go, okay, you made the choice to let go of control, but if

you'd taken the reins just a little bit, you might've been able to guide in a different
way and you might be more satisfied with that.

I say this to you in that way.

I would hate for any person on this planet

to be frustrated with their life and feel like they had no control over it.

I'd be really upset for anyone.

I'd be heartbroken for people that are miserable and unhappy because they're living a life
they didn't choose to live for themselves.

However, it's a totally different misery to have when you've made the decision to live the
life the way you wanted to.

And if things aren't going your way, that's one thing, but at least you're doing it your
way.

I was very fortunate in my young career to make that decision.

And it was a decision.

had to do a hard pivot.

I've had some successes, I've had some losses, but when I've had some losses, it's been
like, well, at least it's on my terms.

This sucks right now, but at least it's on my terms.

Whereas before, when I had some losses and I made the choice that the universe just gives
me whatever it gives me, I was even doubly frustrated and really angry and not happy.

So everything John said is absolutely correct, but I would just caution that when you make
that choice, which is totally valid, you can always take a course correction elsewhere,

start reining in a little bit.

making a couple of decisions that require some uncomfortable conversations and get you on
that different path if you so choose.

I would kind of bounce off that what Sam is saying.

There's a concept called the locus of controller.

If you're fancy and plural, it can be the low side of control.

And there's really, there's really just the two, you have an internal or an external locus
of control.

And what Sam is advocating for, and I'm putting words in his mouth, which is rude of me,
but I'm doing it.

So if I'm wrong, maybe he'll say something, but I don't think I am.

Is the, internal locus of control sort of, you know, gives you the old and vague.

It's like, I am the captain of my fate.

am the master of my soul.

I kind of choose what happens to me.

I'm in charge of my life turns out.

really, really healthy to have an internal locus of control.

Because even though, you know, the winds of fate do buffet us around, there's a level of
just like, you gotta believe in yourself.

It's a form of self-efficacy to think that you can have an impact.

um Sidebar, this correlates incredibly strongly with depression.

If you don't have, sorry, if you do have depression, um you have the opposite, which is an
external locus of control.

And your brain's like, I don't really have any fucking influence.

I just kinda like get rolled over and shit happens to me and shit sucks.

And I think I really wanted to kind of validate what Sam was saying.

That is a very painful and risky thing to have.

No one should feel bad if they feel that way.

That's completely understandable for a lot of people because the world will just frigging
kick you in the teeth.

He said with his car in the shop for the third time in a month, but like at the same time,
the reason that car got back to a shop instead of sitting in a lot is because I have good

friends and because I did a thing, right?

I'm not, I'm not a hero on that, but I'm glad I did something because I was beginning to
give up.

I was beginning to feel very powerless.

um Real quick thing though, just in case the slams.

with one of our listeners slash viewers.

um There is a thing that is an overly problematic internal locus of control.

So like I'll have these people who I work with, and I'm thinking of a specific woman in
general right now who I just fucking adore.

She's so great.

ah She's a super like high powered go getter, does a lot of like wonderful work in charge
of a zillion people.

And then she came to see me because her family stuff was hard.

Cause she was like, why are these kids this way?

Like, what am I doing?

And she's so kind.

um

But she just, she's taking responsibility for all of the things in her life and she has to
make sure everyone's okay.

And that is also a trap.

Cause if anyone who's raised a kid, I haven't, but I've worked with a zillion parents and
I was a child once.

You can be the best parent in the world.

You can give that kid perfect information and give them the perfect opportunities.

They're still going to do some weird shit.

It's not your fault.

That's okay.

So finding that balance between internal and external, though I would say favoring
internal.

is a really, really important thing.

And once again, I really am grateful for the question.

This is like a fun segment.

I don't know you can tell, but like I like doing this kind of thing.

So thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that write-in.

We appreciate it.

Spurs some good conversation.

Hopefully that helps out if you tuned in.

Mm-hmm.

it doesn't and you're like, that's not what I meant at all, you idiots, let me know,
because I would love to do a better job, please.

You stupid, stupid men.

yeah, yeah.

Let me know, let me know, let me know.

Just to remind everyone, if you are one of our lovely patrons, then you do get priority
when asking questions.

We will get to you first.

And if you want to, you can stick questions in the YouTube comments as well.

Doesn't have to be through the form.

We will find them wherever you put them

I gotta be real with you.

If you put it anywhere, we might not find it.

If you just like tuck it under your pillow and like a note, Daniel will do an inspection
of everybody's pillows he can get to, but like there's billions of people, so he might.

Yeah.

your pillow now, man, I don't.

It does feel like a lot to ask, frankly.

Just saying, you know.

Sometimes I don't get chance.

so I can sell in the black market.

I'm not looking for questions.

So if there's a question, I'll be like, eh.

Teeth, Tooth Fairy, got it.

For a moment, I just forgot that was a thing and I was like, what the fuck?

But no, that makes play, yeah, okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, teeth, got it.

I mean, why not?

But know, teeth, great resource to just harvest in case of the apocalypse.

You never know what'll be the bartering material of the future.

densest thing in our body.

It's harder than bone.

Yeah, they could be the new currency.

know, all these people who are fans of the Fallout franchise hoarding bottle caps turns
out it's teeth.

it's teeth.

since John talked about the couple of episodes ago that they're starting research to
regrow teeth, my god.

Yes.

Also, just because I'm a big giant nerd in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, teeth are in
fact currency for orcs.

That's canonically true.

So carry on with that knowledge in your heart.

We will always find a way to come back to 4K.

someway, we will.

Well, with that folks, that's been our show.

This is the Zero Dot Podcast.

Once again, it's been my pleasure.

Sam, John, and Daniel, always love chatting with y'all.

You can find us on thezerodotpodcast.com.

Everywhere podcasts are available.

We're also available on Instagram and uh not TikTok.

I'm looking at you and YouTube Shorts and YouTube all across the board.

We'd love to hear from you some of your questions.

Go ahead and go to our website at thezerodotpodcast.com.

Submit your questions to us.

uh

John and Daniel, it's been a week, but it's always a pleasure talking with you all.

I'll see you next time as we recharge as we go into the trenches.

I was my friend.

Until next time.

bid you adieu.