Sam Kirk (00:00)
But when I say you need to find out why that doesn't come from a place of of any high and mighty, I was also driftless. I also was a wandering nomad. I didn't know what my purpose was. I remember just doing whatever my job wanted me to do because that's how I survive. Right. That's how I get a paycheck. That's how I have a roof over my head. You know, and if I just keep working really hard.

I guess eventually I'll have some kind of self-worth and I'll feel like I have a nice job title and I'll have money and it'll have meant something.

John (00:35)
I have some good news. That's how we start the show. So I'm gonna bring you some good news. I'm actually pretty pumped about this. But first, a tiny bit of bad news. They're out of the apple flavoring at Caribou Coffee because it was too popular. So I feel vindicated in getting as often as I have because I got to milk the joy of it as much as you possibly could. It was good news all along, tricked. Okay, so the good news that I have to share, it's gone.

Sam Kirk (00:38)
Yeah, tell me what's good man, it's been a week.

Wait, wait, we're out of it entirely across the

John (01:00)
It's gone. They underestimated how good it would be and now we just don't have it. So we're stuck with pumpkin spice, like just lame basic losers instead of, and it was a heck, was like caramel apple espresso, something, something. It was very good. Hence why it's gone. A moment of silence. Pour one out.

Sam Kirk (01:14)
Pour one out. Pour one out.

Daniel (01:15)
I will hear no, no,

I will not be silent and I will hear no bad words said about pumpkin spice. Is it basic? Yes. Does it make me incredibly white, as white as I could possibly be? I already am. More so than I already am, which is already 100%. It's amazing. I love it. I love it. And anyone who says a negative thing about pumpkin spice is kidding themselves.

Sam Kirk (01:24)
Mmm, yeah.

John (01:34)
I

Sam Kirk (01:41)
Okay, Daniel, I'm with you on this one. I'm also pumpkin spice person, but I did get into a fight with said campaign over the difference between pumpkin spice and just pumpkin. And not only that, but like you get canned pumpkin, that's all it is, just pumpkin. It tastes mostly like water, just water or fluff. And then, it has a flavor. No, it does not have a flavor. It's just water stuff.

Daniel (01:45)
It's so good.

Mm-mm.

John (01:54)
⁓ They are different.

Daniel (01:55)
They are different.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, just just like pumpkin pulp like yeah. Yeah. Yeah

John (02:02)
Yeah.

Daniel (02:07)
It's not...

It's not a strong flavor. It's not a big flavor. Yeah.

John (02:08)
It's.

Sam Kirk (02:11)
It's very faint. It's got something,

but I'm with you. I love the good old, whatever excuse you need to put to nutmeg in my things, I am that person as well. But I'm sorry, John. I'm gonna derail your comment. Yes, 100%.

Daniel (02:18)
Yeah man, cinnamon nutmeg star anise. Little bit of...

John (02:23)
No, no, no.

Okay, first off, are we saying star anise? This came up for me yesterday and I was like, that's how you do it, right? Like there's there's a pro, okay, cool, good, fantastic.

Daniel (02:32)
What else would we say? Start anise?

John (02:34)
A nice? I don't know, but I wanted to make a reference to this and I just, it's a nice, okay. That sounds like a name, that's nice. Okay. All right. So two things, very important things, and then actual things. Well, we'll see. Math stuff today. Pumpkin spice, nothing bad to say about it. As three white men in their 30s, we're all here to have really controversial and extreme opinions that no one will ever disagree with. So pumpkin spice, pretty good as it turns out, though it does vary from chain to chain.

Sam Kirk (02:37)
No, it's anise. It's anise. Yeah, star anise.

Daniel (02:37)
a nice

It's a nice.

Yes, yes hot takes

Yeah.

Sam Kirk (03:01)
There is the too sugary kind, there's the fake kind, there's bad kinds of anything, but pumpkin spice at its best? Yeah, it's great.

John (03:01)
Pumpkin is for dogs. For sure.

Well, and I would validate that, I don't know, I'm a bit of a heathen with a heathenness during the fall. Like give me the sugary kind. Like let me rot my teeth a little. Like I'm gonna be a good boy all spring, all summer. So let me just like be, you know, debauchery right now. If this is my sin, if this is my dark blasphemy, like let me have this. This isn't that bad.

Daniel (03:08)
So

Sam Kirk (03:15)
Okay. Okay.

I gotcha. I gotcha.

Daniel (03:22)
Mmm, the

dark blasphemy of pumpkin spice. That's, yeah.

Sam Kirk (03:28)
You know what, John, I'll give you that because my dark sin during this autumn season is like a porter or a dark, rich alcoholic beverage in the evening. So yeah, yours is healthier by definition. So sure, yeah, down the down for it.

John (03:35)
yeah.

⁓

God, I would kill for a porter.

Daniel (03:44)
What is this good news, John?

John (03:49)
good news? Did you want to for some reason do topic relevant to the show? Okay, we could do that.

Daniel (03:53)
Perhaps, perhaps I'm thinking about it.

John (03:56)
I

like this new taskmaster that's like, whoosh, like get back in line. This is good.

Sam Kirk (03:59)
Yeah, it's great.

Daniel (04:00)
Yeah,

John (04:01)
We'll get it right, this episode, it's gonna be the fun one, this is the fun one. This is the one where you decide you're in or you're out and we hope you decide you're in and if you don't, come back and watch it again until you do. Or just leave it on in the background. Anyway, some things that are good.

Sam Kirk (04:07)
That's true. That is true.

Daniel (04:07)
Yeah.

John (04:13)
I am, as evidenced by my hair, for those of who can see, I am sponsored by the 80s today. I am a tree-hugging hippie. I know the hippies were in the 80s, just roll with me on this. And the trees are doing okay. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has decreased by more than 30%. That's the largest drop in like 10 years. The world's biggest rainforest fighting back. And if you don't know about rainforests, first of all, go back to the 90s and buy some zoo books. But in addition to that, like there's so much natural diversity there. And that's just, that's a solid dub for the planet. And that feels really good.

Daniel (04:18)
Mmm.

Again.

John (04:42)
But what about people you say interrupting me and trying to celebrate rainforest facts? I still have additional good news courtesy of the Global Goals UK status report. In 2000, many years ago, a disturbing number of years ago, someday 25 years ago, over 2.2 billion people were living on less than $3 a day and that number has dropped by more than half. Extreme poverty has dropped from one in three people to less than one in 10 in a single generation. We can do it.

People get to live, it gets possible. Despite all the adversity and the challenges we're running into out there, there's some really, really good news for just the average quality of life for just Joe Human, and that's delightful. And then finally, bringing a little more thunder in the good arena. Since 2015, global school enrollment has increased by 50 million girls, with 5 million more girls completing each education level from primary to upper secondary. We're getting it equalized, we're kinda getting...

Daniel (05:18)
Hmm.

Sam Kirk (05:18)
That is

fantastic.

John (05:33)
Education for everybody because everybody has a chance to be a person and it's just, don't know, there is some hope out there. I know that occasionally it can be a dark day to turn on the internet and watch things and hear things and just wake up at all. But there's, you know, there's some good fight. We're seeing it. And it feels good.

Sam Kirk (05:47)
Man,

that does feel good. Thank you so much, John. Wow, I needed that reminder. know, I don't like to put lines in the sand for anyone, but I think if you're someone who just doesn't think education should be for everyone, I think that's a pretty good line to have. the fact that we're on team, everyone should have education, everyone. Give it to everyone. The world's a better place, but we just know a little bit more.

John (06:08)
Well, and you know, I'll be a spicy, a pumpkin spicy boy on that one. Like if you are someone who's like, education for everybody, like genuinely just like, why is that a threat? What feels bad about that? know, like people can make choices. Well, hopefully they make good choices. Hopefully you make good choices. Make some weird choices too, keep it fun. But knowledge is power, not just a cliche. Definitely cliche, but real.

Daniel (06:27)
Yeah.

Sam Kirk (06:31)
And John, you, me, and as well as Daniel, we've seen wonderful things from people who have been given those choices. So robbing people of that choice is nothing, doesn't help anybody. So that's good stuff.

Daniel (06:37)
Mmm.

John (06:41)
One of my

favorite things, and this isn't like a cookbook tip, an Intellectual Meat cookbook tip, it's just like a thing people should know about humans, but it's true in my opinion. Therapy of counseling is based on this. Humans are naturally self-actualizing. This is like a thing. Like if you put a human down, you're like, all right, what do want to do? They're going to succeed at it and pursue it by default. The obstacle is just stuff gets in our way. In therapy, townhards get shit out of the way. But like, if you give people access to knowledge, they will use it, they will learn, they will grow towards their natural specializations.

Daniel (07:03)
the end.

John (07:11)
People are built to succeed. There's a reason we want evolution. So like, hold that other species. Sorry, that didn't mean, I'm sorry. That was a cocky, arrogant winter moment for humans, like get fucked, humans rule.

Daniel (07:16)
Hold that evolution L.

Sam Kirk (07:16)
Mmm. ⁓

with that. John,

I like that's related to our episode today. I just have an inkling that might come up. Who knows? But I guess we'll find out, won't we? Who knows? All right. Well, that's some good news. I guess that's all there is going on, right? Nothing else. We're all good. Yep.

Daniel (07:27)
Hmm.

John (07:32)
Yeah, that's all I would, no more. No

Daniel (07:34)
Mm-hmm.

John (07:35)
challenges, please. In this court, we only do my side of the argument, nothing else, nothing, no challenges, unless, yeah, well that feels rude. I guess you can, if you want, if you'd like.

Daniel (07:35)
Nothing bad, surely.

Sam Kirk (07:40)
Yep. We'll just cut my part. Yeah.

I feel bad. You had some really good stuff. Okay.

John (07:48)
Well,

maybe on a scale from like good to like nightmare, we can do challenges, things that are worth talking about without going a like full like hellscape. Cool, let's do it.

Sam Kirk (07:54)
Yeah. Yeah, I think I can do that. OK, sure.

Yeah. So John and Daniel, you might be aware that I made a YouTube video late, late last year on the art of video games. And if you watch the whole thing and it's OK if you didn't. But one of the big things I talked about in that video as of the publishing of that video is that Nintendo Music is an app that Nintendo has published on cell phone devices everywhere to basically mimic that of Spotify and other apps. And my biggest criticism.

John (08:03)
Hell yeah.

Daniel (08:05)
Hmm.

Sam Kirk (08:23)
of that app is that as of the posting of that video, which was Christmas Day, or actually Christmas Eve, I think of 2024, Nintendo does not credit any of the artists, any of the composers, any of the engineers, any of the musicians, anyone that makes any of the music. Legally, they don't have to because Nintendo, when you work for Nintendo, they own basically everything, but they don't credit it, which is very weird when you come from like Spotify and Bandcamp and other apps where they credit all that stuff. I'm sad to say that as of the recording of this video,

Daniel (08:29)
Mm.

Sam Kirk (08:52)
That is still the case. They still do not credit anyone and their library has almost more than tripled since I last posted that video. So they've got all kinds of wonderful, beautiful, fantastic soundtracks from Breath of the Wild to Donkey Kong to Mario Kart to everything. And none of the original artists that composed, worked on, drafted, many of that stuff is there. And I think that is a crying shame for many, many, many, many reasons. However, I would offer this news to you to say, hey, we should just feel bad about this. I do think there's something we can do about it.

So if you are someone who enjoys the Nintendo app, I'm not here to tell you not to use the Nintendo music app. There are sources in which you can find the original recordings of these devices, whether it's on CD, whether it's on vinyl, and those applications, those modus operandi, we'll call them, do credit the artists in that capacity. So do your due diligence, find them. In fact, there's some YouTube soldiers out there that make it their mission to, whether legally or not, they post the music and they do credit all the musicians on that. So I would challenge every single individual, whether you are a video game music enjoyer,

to go ahead and do your due diligence and just be aware of the names and the people who make the thing that you love so much. And with that, I'd love to know, John and Daniel, what are some of your favorite video game soundtracks? If you have any. There's so many to pick, I know.

Daniel (10:04)
⁓ that is

John (10:04)
⁓

Daniel (10:06)
a monumentally large question, my friend. ⁓ no. Okay.

Sam Kirk (10:09)
I Just pick one or two.

John (10:09)
It truly is.

I will, there may be editing required, Daniel. We're gonna make this episode really hard for you. Just as a heads up, we made a pact that this is gonna be just fucking brutal. ⁓ I'm gonna start saying a useful thing and then just like break down and scat for no reason and then we'll go back to useful things. But while I've been saying this nonsense, I've also been processing album-wise, OST-wise, God, there are so many. First off, Pyre from Supergiant Games is uncontested the best.

Daniel (10:19)
Okay. ⁓

Okay, okay.

you

Aaron Korb,

legend.

John (10:40)
It's Darren Corb

can't miss. Darren Corb doesn't miss. He's so fucking good. Donkey Kong Country for Super Nintendo. Once again, just banger after banger after banger can't. Final Fantasy VI, insane, every character's theme. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's another one that's incredible. There's, what's, give me a moment and I will come back to you. I mean fucking, like Street Fighter, obviously I come from a place of extraordinary bias, but like Guile's theme is legendary for a reason. Ken's theme is legend, I watch it.

Sam Kirk (10:50)
That was David Wise who did a thonger country. David Wise did a thonger country, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

John (11:09)
This is a very intense sentence and I you to kind of strap in. I'm from a town called normal Illinois. They have a thing there. It's a circus for college students. They put it on every year. They did a whole thing with jumping off of trampolines to street fighter music. And they did Ken's theme and Giles theme, both of them actually. And it was incredible. Shout out to my friends who got married that worked in the circus together. Kate and Timothy. Yes.

Daniel (11:26)
Hmm.

Sam Kirk (11:29)
Yoko Shimomura, our hats off to you, my lady, who composed those two tracks.

John (11:35)
Near automata. I like, I literally will never stop doing this. There's there's so many that are insanely good.

Daniel (11:37)
⁓ it's good.

Sam Kirk (11:40)
Yeah. Well,

we'll have a time to talk about all the game soundtracks you like, but I just wanted to do that quick little highlight. Daniel, what's one or two on your plate?

Daniel (11:46)
Mmm

John (11:46)
technologies.

Daniel (11:49)
In terms of video game soundtracks, my, I would be remiss not to mention not only one of my favourite soundtracks but the soundtrack from my favourite game which is Bloodborne. Bloodborne is phenomenal, it is ridiculous how good every single piece of music in that game is. Big special shoutouts to Lawrence the First Vicar, beautiful, beautiful song.

Sam Kirk (11:58)
Hmm.

John (12:10)
Banger.

Daniel (12:12)
Maria of the Astral Clock Tower. So good. So good. I am generally just a fan of very large bombastic symphonic, you know, soundtracks. But there are, yeah, Final Fantasy X has a very special place in my heart. But I also really love just... I'll tell you what.

John (12:15)
Banger.

Daniel (12:35)
It's either got to be like big bombastic orchestral things such as Bloodborne, such as Final Fantasy X, that kind of deal, or the complete opposite direction, which is jet set radio and bomb rush cyber funk and just anything with the vibe, a bit of funk to it that is, you know, anything that'll get you grooving.

Sam Kirk (12:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I was about to say...

Daniel (13:03)
I is fun, like the old Ridge Racer games had so many banging soundtracks, just absolutely incredible. So rather than nailing down specific games, I think I'll just give a quick shout out to any game that has a soundtrack that is just...

cool soundtrack, you know, bummerish, side-funk, jet set radio. Persona 4 has a really, really great soundtrack and Persona 3 with a lot of good, good funky notes in there. Yeah, so good.

Sam Kirk (13:19)
100%.

John (13:29)
⁓ yeah, persona goes insane.

Sam Kirk (13:31)
Yeah, let me just say,

so for Bloodborne, it looks like we have a couple different composers for that. That's Yuka Kitamura, Chris Velasco, Sukasa Saito, Ryan Amon, and Michael Wandmacher. For Final Fantasy X, as you indicated, that's Noobl Iometsu. We all know that legend. For Bomb Rush and even Sonic Rush, well as Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future, Hideki Naganuma, fantastic.

Daniel (13:38)
Yes.

John (13:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Daniel (13:42)
Mm.

John (13:48)
The legend. The legend.

Daniel (13:49)
So good.

Naganuma. Yeah.

Sam Kirk (13:58)
And you mentioned Rid Racer, which is Shinji Hosoi, or Hosoi, that's how you pronounce it, I believe. He also did a lot of the soundtracks for the Street Fighter EX series, as well as Fighting EX Lair, one of my favorites. So great call outs there. I won't take up much more of our time, but I will say, you know, I've mentioned this before, but one of the great games that has changed my life and will always change my life. And one of the reasons is the soundtrack is Shadow of the Colossus. And the composer for that was Kau Otani. Just a perfect soundtrack in almost every way.

Daniel (14:01)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

John (14:23)
insane.

Daniel (14:26)
what a beautiful game.

John (14:27)
Yeah, yeah, that

game's story is told by its soundtrack. That's an incredible, incredible recommendation.

Sam Kirk (14:31)
100%.

Daniel (14:32)
It is. I want

to give one final before we move on, final shout out to the not Bond theme, perfect Bond theme, which is Snake Eater. The most perfect opening theme, a true theme song. It's so good. It's so good. It brings back so many memories whenever I hear it.

Sam Kirk (14:37)
Mm-hmm.

John (14:43)
⁓ true. That's just true. Correct.

Daniel (14:58)
The re-recording of it for the Delta remake is fantastic, but you'll never beat that original in my opinion. It's phenomenal. And I feel terrible that I cannot remember the name of the vocalist on that track, but she re-recorded it herself. ⁓ That's the one. She's still got it. Still got it. So good.

Sam Kirk (15:06)
Hmm

Cynthia Harrell.

She still does, she still does. ⁓

So based off that, I'll just say two more things. So yes, so Norihiko Hibino, he did a lot of the best music of MGS2, MGS3, and some MGS4 tracks before. There's a whole story behind this, it's awful, because he was not a Hollywood named composer. Hideo kind of pushed him out and focused more on Harry Greggs and Williams and other big movie producers. But the truth is, Norihiko is a jazz musician. He knows his...

Daniel (15:36)
Mmm.

John (15:38)
⁓

Daniel (15:46)
Hell

yeah.

Sam Kirk (15:47)
If you know what I mean, and he he made the snake eater theme he composed it He wrote the lyrics for it and everything on top of all the lovely little tracks He made as well so big shout to that and John you made one last recommendation We can't not talk about this Yuzo Koshiro my little my literal hero in every way the man makes 16-bit FM music sound like something out of your mp3 player. It's fantastic

John (16:02)
You know it. Yeah.

Streets of Rage 4, just fucking incredible. I bought that game twice and the second time the decision was based on, yeah, the soundtrack is that good, let's buy it. It's worth it. Also, I am legally required to say that if you bring up Bloodborne, I have to mention that Ludwig the Holy Blade is the best fight boss music in a video game. The end, no question uncontestable. It will change your life. God.

Daniel (16:30)
It's phenomenal. The transition at the midpoint is so good.

John (16:37)
That guy beat the brakes off me for like a day and I was just like, let's do it again. Like it was, my God. Shout out to blood guy for it. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Sorry. I just.

Daniel (16:41)
I wanna hear the song! It's so good! no, I lost again!

Sam Kirk (16:45)
Yeah.

And one last thing, since you mentioned Streets of Rage 4, Yuzo did a couple tracks for that game, but the main composer was a composer by the name of Olivier de Rivière, and his work was fantastic, especially the elevator theme. We all know the elevator theme of that game. That was all him, baby. So, So. Oh, it's great. It's it's tropia cell. We don't care. We love it. We love it. But yeah, so there's the bad news is Nintendo music.

John (16:54)
Yeah!

Fuck yeah, dude.

Mmm. Mmm. I love an elevator level in a beat-em-up, dude. my god.

Daniel (17:02)
Mm-mm.

John (17:09)
Ugh.

Sam Kirk (17:13)
They legally have the right to do all that and it sucks because we want to give credit to the human artists who make the human things we like. So please do that whatever way you can.

John (17:16)
Yeah.

Daniel (17:19)
credit people please.

John (17:21)
I have a crazy thought, which is if we credit the artists, they would maybe be able to succeed and then perhaps make more music in some way with the proceeds of their success. Yeah. Or an AI could do it and that'd be probably just as good with no downsides. So nevermind. Section canceled, moving on.

Sam Kirk (17:29)
WHAAAT

Daniel (17:30)
That sounds fake. Don't know about that.

Yeah, yeah, ⁓

Sam Kirk (17:39)
Yuzo Koshiro, that's actually his story. When he was a kid, he was a composer for a game called Nihon Falcom, and he made the soundtracks for Ys I, II, and III. They were very popular soundtracks. And then Ys owned the rights to all of his music. wouldn't credit him anymore. So he left. And that's why a lot of the music in the, almost every game you ever play that has Yuzo on it, his name appears on the title screen, because he's like, don't fuck with my music. Like, I'm making this music, it's mine. Good on him, right? Yeah.

Daniel (18:01)
Yeah, good on him, fair,

John (18:04)
Yeah, no, good.

Daniel (18:06)
Yeah.

Sam Kirk (18:07)
All right. We absolutely do. 100%. So that's bad. I I guess there's nothing else to talk about, Actually, Daniel, you've got something. You always have a beautiful mind about things. What do you got to level set with us? Because I just brought the mood down. I feel bad about it. Yeah, I should.

John (18:07)
We support artists here at ZeroDead.

I have... yeah, hopes.

Daniel (18:24)
You should.

I do have something beautiful, rather beautiful for you. Last time, I came out swinging with the T-Rex in a newsstand, which was great. Really, really enjoyed that. I've got news from Brazil, of all places, from Brazil. A gentleman by the name of Carlos Costa.

John (18:41)
great.

Sam Kirk (18:46)
All right, we love our Brazilians, let's go.

John (18:47)
Brazil.

Daniel (18:54)
which is a wonderful name. Apparently he to spend his summers with his grandmother at the movies, which is wholesome in itself, and he was reminiscing about walking into the dark theatre to watch a film that has a name that I am never going to pronounce in my lifetime. So just know that it was a Brazilian comedy from 1977.

There is not a chance I'm going to try and pronounce that. So apparently when he saw the giant screen, he was mesmerised and said to himself that someday he will have a movie theatre of his own. He will one day have a place to call his own where he can screen movies for himself and for his friends and for people who want to come and see good films. And he's only gone and done it. He's only gone and blumming done it.

So in 2022 is when he opened it. However, it's only really being picked up and reported on kind of now across the globe rather than just in Brazil. He opened his own cinema. It has 35 seats in there in Sao Paulo and he used his savings and his credit card to spend what equates to about $18,600.

⁓ US to renovate an old garage and buy some vintage wooden seats which he found in an old shuttered theatre in the countryside and repurposed them to put into his theatre. And it's just really really sweet to see that he kind of made good on his dream and so apparently there was a garage, garage however you want to say it, that was left idle during the pandemic.

And he took that space, again, running with the theme, same as last week, of spaces that no longer have life in them, no longer have a purpose. He's took that and he's created his own theatre and opened it up. And he works there by himself. He says it's not monetarily feasible right now for him to have employees. So he screens everything himself. He serves people. He makes the popcorn. He does everything on his own.

Sam Kirk (20:38)
Yeah.

Daniel (20:56)
which he says is okay because he loves being able to speak with the regulars who come and visit him and he likes to discuss the films with them and he probably wouldn't have it any other way. And apparently if you want to go to his cinema, to his theatre, he sells tickets as walk-ins at the door or to buy in advance you can message him on WhatsApp. Which is...

Sam Kirk (21:08)
you

Daniel (21:20)
cute and if you don't have WhatsApp where you're from it's essentially just a online messaging service. Yeah and I just thought it was really really sweet. He does everything himself and he's found a real sense of community in the three years that he's been open. I just thought it was really really sweet and really cute and

I someday would love to go and sit in his theatre and watch a film that I can't understand, but would have a great time nonetheless.

The theatre is called Cine LT3, or Cine LT3, so C-I-N-E. I'm probably butchering the pronunciation of that. And it's in Sao Paulo.

So Polo.

John (22:01)
portuguese is terrible it would be sine in a lot of languages so I don't know

Daniel (22:04)
See

Sam Kirk (22:06)
either.

Daniel (22:06)
no. Yes. Yes, please, please let us know, my ignorant, ignorant British self. But yes. Yeah, just.

John (22:07)
If you know, dear listener slash viewer, let us know, because we'd love to know.

Sam Kirk (22:14)
language is a dumb thing anyway. I say

John (22:17)
It's hard.

Sam Kirk (22:17)
that

as someone who speaks mostly English and knows English is one of the worst languages ever. I'm glad to say that.

Daniel (22:24)
Yeah, just lovely that a dream 50 years in the making finally came true and is not only making his life better, but is enriching the lives of those around him as well.

Sam Kirk (22:26)
Yeah.

feels like a great piggyback off of our episode before about optimism and the choice and making that choice and being ever the dreams of big dreams and we love that shit here. So that's awesome. Kudos to him. Carlos Costa is his name, I believe. Carlos Costa. Big shout out to you. Shout out to all the people supporting Carlos Costa. Shout out to Carlos for sticking to your dream and fighting the good fight. And you know, at a certain point, who cares if it's financially viable? You get the good vibes.

Daniel (22:49)
Yes, Carlos Costa.

Sam Kirk (23:02)
be a part of your community and be a steward for your community. And we are all about that here. So that's all.

John (23:07)
That is awesome. One of my favorite things in my life, professionally and personally, is just having a person geek out about their thing, just lean into it and celebrate it go full tilt. And that payoff is immense. The meaning in life, psychologically in your brain, doesn't come from dollars and cents. It comes from things that hit you in the spirit molecule, which we'll talk about another time. there's a level of, I felt shit and it means something and it's a big deal, especially with art stuff. yeah, 50 years.

Sam Kirk (23:35)
50 years Daniel did it. LM out.

John (23:35)
was a lot of years.

Daniel (23:36)
50,

yes, 50 years. So, yeah, 50 years later, he was able to open this theatre. And as you pointed out, people apparently often question him regarding the financial stability of his little setup, to which he says that...

John (23:38)
That's fucking bananas, man. That's awesome. Love. That's incredible.

Sam Kirk (23:39)
That's.

Daniel (24:04)
It's challenging, but he's happy doing what he loves. He loves cinema. And regardless of how long it stays open and regardless of how much it sets him back financially, he's going to do it. He did it and he's going to carry on doing it for as long as he can.

Sam Kirk (24:14)
Did it.

John (24:20)
So this is gonna be really tangential. Fun friend fact, I was one credit shy of a film minor. I'm a huge movie pretentious guy about that. I love movies and there's a lot to say about them. One of the things that I was going to bring up specifically in this context though, is that movies are meant as a social experience. Like I don't make a movie for just me. Maybe I do, you need to know about that. But mostly when we make films, it's to share a story with people and like going to movie theaters is a really special thing. It was like kind of an interesting thing during COVID, because you couldn't do it obviously over here in the States.

Sam Kirk (24:37)
Right.

Daniel (24:47)
you

John (24:48)
and there's a level of like going back and doing that. There's a communal joy to it. It's as dorky as clapping when the plane lands, but like you're supposed to feel shit with people. It's what makes movies special. So like if you have a group of 35 as opposed to just yourself on your couch at home, like that's participating in the art form in like the correct way from a film standpoint. Like there's movies that are meant to be seen on a big screen that lose a lot of effect that way. And celebrating that part of the art is really meaningful. I have goosebumps. I am a pretentious film guy and I just,

Sam Kirk (24:52)
there is.

Daniel (24:58)
Yeah.

Sam Kirk (25:07)
Right. Yeah.

John (25:13)
I just, don't know. That's a really touching story, Daniel. Thank you for sharing that. I love that.

Sam Kirk (25:17)
Great.

Daniel (25:17)
You

are welcome. It, as always, made me smile and hopefully made you smile as well.

Sam Kirk (25:25)
made me smile as well. Absolutely did. We need more of that. We need more of that.

Daniel (25:29)
Yes, more please,

more small Brazilian theaters, please. And other stuff. And other stuff as well, yes.

Sam Kirk (25:34)
Yes! I know the stuff, but that's awesome.

John (25:38)
Did

someone say fishing for engagement? Oh, it was me. Hey, if you have a thing that you love that you're doing that's awesome, tell us about it, because we'll talk about it on this show and we'll celebrate you. I'm serious. That's like a thing that we specifically want to do because that's what you should do in life is celebrate the homies and you're tentatively the homie. Unless your thing's like I've been just like kxxxxxx cats for no reason, which case you're a monster, stop doing that. no. Yeah. Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, if you're a cat murderer, this show's not for you. frankly.

Daniel (25:47)
Yeah, we will.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Kirk (25:59)
Yeah, we don't support that. And get away from my two cats, they're great. My two cats. ⁓ Yeah.

Daniel (25:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, stay far away from me.

John (26:08)
Get the fuck out, sorry. Not sorry, actually, you're a monster, stop doing that. Yeah, what the fuck is your deal?

Sam Kirk (26:09)
Yeah. And actually kind of question like, why are you enjoying our show if that's your vibe? You know, I'm not here to judge except

Daniel (26:09)
No.

Yeah.

Sam Kirk (26:15)
that

why is that? What are you doing?

John (26:17)
I'm

going to judge your piece of shit. You're like, yeah, no, this is a new show. Now we're anti cat murders and we're fucking pissed about it.

Daniel (26:19)
Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

I am strong on this stance. Do you pay us to watch these episodes on Patreon? If you murder cats, I don't care. So I do not want your dirty cat blood money. Get it away from me.

John (26:26)
100%.

Yeah, no, fuck you. I don't want your fucking cat money. Blood money.

Mm-mm.

Sam Kirk (26:39)
today's episode number five if we do our math, right? Unless Dana decides to make separate many episodes in between that I'm lying, but we're gonna say it's episode five They were talking about something that I think is kind of a nice Inflection point everything we talked about before we talked about the choice of optimism this stay away from toxic positivity The question that ends up coming up throughout all of this is you know when life gets really goddamn hard

How can you do this? How can you keep doing the good fight? And that's where our topic of today comes from, which is finding your why, which is something I'm incredibly sensitive to, something that I think is incredibly important. I think not enough time is spent on it. Unfortunately, a lot of people that talk about this thing of finding your why or your purpose or your modus operandi or whatever that is, end up weaponizing it in all kinds of horrible ways that I don't agree with at all. so, but today we want to talk about in real nuanced brass tacks ways.

you, the person watching or listening to us, can go down the path of exploring what your why is. You can live not just a better life, one that makes you happier, but makes you a better function of your community, and allows you to have less existential dread, which I think we all could use a little bit of, right, John?

John (27:48)
big time. Absolutely. Have a tight five on that. We'll come back to it.

Sam Kirk (27:51)
100%.

But John, I talk about, before we talk into finding your why, what are your thoughts when I say finding your why? Because I'm coming from a leadership consultant space, I'm coming from a value proposition space, I'm not coming from the mental health, although the mental health will be an aspect of it. When I say finding your why, what comes to mind for you?

John (28:07)
I have so many, I'm so excited to hear what you have to say about this. I do not want to monopolize time, so I'm gonna try to keep it brief. Daniel, get the whip ready, and not just for the fun reasons. first off, humans are quite diverse in what matters to us, and that's like one of the best things about being a human. And one of the things that's hard about being a human is you have all kinds of fun little brain stuff and interests and things like that. And.

You have to fit yourself into one of several models until you don't. And when you realize you don't, that's incredibly freeing. There's a whole thing we'll talk about, not just today, but on ongoing basis about authenticity and how much that matters. This is a big part of finding your why. The TLDR, and I'll get more into this probably even in this episode later, is one of the main theories that I espouse when I'm being a therapist is ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy. And a big piece of it in that is value, accordant, committed action. It's these are my values. This is what I do. the, this is the very TLDR version of it.

is if you act within your values, you're less likely to be disappointed, which is good because most of the time we kind of don't, we're just raw dogging it out here. I don't know what to do post college. I'm just like, I'm just going to do some stuff. Really, really fun. Me. So for a hot second before I realized I wanted to be like an ERP anxiety exposure therapist, I was going to be an existentialist therapist, which don't, the book is like bigger than my head. I have a big head, so not good. But right out of the gate, one of the things they talked about is the existential crises and the

first one? If you're an existential therapist watching this, first off you scared the shit out of me. also if you're with give the cat guy to get the fuck out of here. But one of them was like the crisis of freedom, which is very funny. And as an American, I feel like I'm not allowed to say that because you know, hey, freedom, pretty great. But if you have too much freedom, the brain's like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to make a choice. It's it's a whole thing. So

Values are the answer to this paradigm effectively. Like you want to know what matters to you and you're allowed to change your values over time. That's totally okay. I have a whole thing with James Clear's list of 50 core values and they can put that in the discreetly do somewhere. So I'll shut up for now, but values are centric to making decisions for healthy people. It's a huge fucking deal. And I'm so excited to say about the same.

Sam Kirk (30:03)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you'd probably agree, John, that, know, especially according to Gallup's 2025 poll from earlier this year, we have a record low employee job satisfaction level. have people just, I'm sure people you talk with, they're just constantly saying how they're directionless. They don't have a compass they're following on. People are trying to do whatever they can to latch onto something. And they're looking to the external world to give them some of that.

The truth is we just don't do a good job. Just generally, global, socioeconomically, we just don't do a good job talking about this more. We put you through the school system of your state or your government that gives you that. We tell you to get a good job. You must go through more schooling. In fact, that's 99 % of the narrative. Go get more schooling for the sake of better job to get more money. Very rarely is it an element of, what do you want to do? Or hey, what is your passion? And hey, money's not everything and all that different stuff.

There's a whole, young people especially today, if you're listening to us, you're navigating a really tough space that every generation had to navigate, but yours is probably the worst right now because if you're a young person today, and to you I'm thinking the 18 to 25 year old, you are literally, you have access to more audio visual information than any other generation before you ever had. And because of that, you have instructions for everything.

But the one thing we don't give you instruction on is how to find your why. You have instructions for everything else. You want to look up a YouTube video on how to do this, there's some YouTube video out there that exists. There's some diagram, there's a wiki, there's instructions, there's a standard of operating procedure, there's a work instruction. You can do anything and we give you everything. So not only do you have the tools to be able to navigate complex things to find the right solution to do what you want to do, but then it's like, okay, what's my purpose then? And we kind of just tell you to shut up about it. We ignore it. We say, it'll just come, it'll come naturally.

And some people decide they're just gonna let the environment tell them what to do. You know what, I'm just, I'm in this rural town in the United States of America. There's only a couple companies around me. I go to the company. I'll be a company man for the rest of my life. And I'll just let that be my life. And that's fine for some people. But if you are feeling like maybe that's not your lot in life, that's okay too. There's nothing wrong with you. The only thing that I would offer to you is that some work probably needs to be done about finding your why. Now, when I say finding your why, John, I'm not at all...

talking about some kind of messianic thing coming from the heavens telling you what to do. Although if that's how you feel about it, that's how you feel about it, totally valid. I'm talking about your why, meaning I know exactly in terms of what I'm good at, what I'm not so good at, what I enjoy doing, and what creates value for my community, and where that middle sweet spot is, and that whenever there's a hard decision I have to make, that's the direction I go in. More specifically, when you know what your why is, John.

John (32:24)
If only.

Sam Kirk (32:47)
you have an answer to a very important question. One of my favorite questions in all of existence. Unfortunately though, if you type up this question anywhere, you look up a social media post, you'll see some dude bro online telling you about how to be more productive, or some guy telling you you need to grit through it or grind through it, et cetera. And they use this question a lot and they weaponize it, and it's awful. But this question's actually incredibly empowering. Before I talk about what that question is, I'm gonna go through an example.

As you might know, I travel across the country, United States, as well as in Europe as well, talking to people and talking to young folks who want to be leaders for the next generation. It's one of my great privileges and lots in life. And two weeks ago, I was scheduled to travel about seven hours down the road, a couple of states down from where I live. live here in the East Coast. And the most unfortunate thing happened is that maybe 18 hours before I got sick. Not a fun kind of sick, not kind of a small little cold.

John (33:40)
Mmm.

Sam Kirk (33:41)
I happened to have evidence from my wife who got the illness a little bit earlier what that illness was going to look like and it was going to be a pretty nasty cold. We're talking fevers, we're talking chills, we're talking shakes, we're talking aches, we're talking cough, we're talking everything. Now it's 18 hours where I have to travel down the road to do a two-day engagement with some folks and talk to them about what it is to be a leader and give them tools they've never had before.

And I know it's coming and I'm starting to feel the ailments of this and it's not doing great. My cough is pretty loud, my throat's getting a little froggy and everything else. I'm at the upper echelon of sick. Now, I'm gonna tell you the spoiler, which is I went through it and I did the whole thing, but you might think to me, John, oh, you did that because you have like the at OG sense of like, you just gotta keep doing it. You gotta grit through it. And I'm here to tell you, no, I didn't do it because I wanted to grit through it. I didn't do it because I felt like I couldn't call out.

Although maybe I could have called out, but there's no one else to do the job if I were to say, I can't do it. Remember, this company flies other people from across the country to be at this location to come and see me. So if I can't make the gig, that's a big blow financially to a lot of different people. No, John. The reason I grit through it, the reason I took way more off the counter medication than I should have, and the reason I powered through it wasn't from some sense of gritting through it or some kind of sense of determination or that, you know.

John (34:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Kirk (34:56)
You know, I'm strong and you're not, none of that stuff. It's because I knew what my why was. And in that moment, when I'm feeling at the upper echelons of sick, not quite flu, but as close as you can get before you get to flu, because if I had the flu, I'm like, I can't do this, I don't want to spread it.

Ask myself a question.

I'm in a lot of physical pain, my fever hurts, my chest won't stop beating, my voice is going away but not quite gone, my cough is really bad, my headache is bad, I'm achy all over, I have the shakes. The question I ask myself, so what? Those two words, so what? And it could have gone either way. It could be, well, actually this is gonna prevent me from being able to do this, if I lose my voice I literally can't talk, okay fine.

But no, I still had my voice. It was just gonna hurt a lot. Let's get some extra throat lozenges. Let's take some extra DayQuil. Let's get some aspirin in you. Let's get every over-the-counter cocktail you can get without overdosing on you. Okay, now you're just in a lot of pain and you're sweating a little bit. Is that it? And you go down the rabbit hole of asking yourself this question over and over again. So what, so what, so what until you get to it's just gonna suck. Yeah, it's gonna suck, but this is exactly your purpose, isn't it? So.

When you have the so what question, you're basically giving yourself a place to ask yourself, is this worth me saying goodbye to this opportunity for me to do my purpose? Now for those of you listening to me, John knows this, but I'll just repeat myself. I know that my purpose, thanks to a lot of soul searching and working with wonderful psychological professionals analyzing my brain and my preferences and all this good stuff, which we'll get to a little bit later, my purpose in life is to bring people together.

John (35:59)
Mm-mm.

Sam Kirk (36:24)
and communicate to them in whatever way that I can that they are not alone and that their greatest resource is each other. And I knew in that particular moment for that two day workshop that I was the guy to do it. I knew that when during the middle of day one, I'm shaking, I'm on my second dose of Day Cool, I'm just trying to hide it. I've got a lav mic on me so it's super loud and doesn't affect my voice. And there's a gentleman who's twice my age saying of my generation that my generation is the lazy one. That's the problem.

My generation doesn't do the hard work and I'm shaking and I'm like, yep, yep, I totally hear exactly what you're saying, right? him not understand the irony of the situation, which is he's speaking to someone who's trying to communicate to him. I'm literally there when someone says to me, Sam, I don't have the time to be here. I was forced to be here in this workshop. I don't want to be here. I've got so many things. I've got four plants I have to work on. This is just beyond me. But it's on day two when I talk to the individual who's complaining about the younger generation saying, Sam, you've changed my view on everything. I now know.

There's stuff I can do in my last couple of years before I retire that I can help the next generation. And that guy who says it was totally beneath him, says, you know what, I learned something about myself. I learned that I carry myself with a weight that people think I'm unapproachable and I want people to approach me. You helped me see that. And countless other stories from this workshop. And I get people saying to me, you know, they say, oh my gosh, Sam, it was incredible, it was fantastic. And I revealed them at the last minute. I'm really glad because I'm really...

God damn sick. And like, I had no idea. And I'm like, okay, then I did my job. And then we finished the workshop. I don't have any brain cells left, John. I'm literally just getting in the car and driving the next seven hours. I don't have the GPS on. I don't have any music on. I'm just driving because I know any brain cell I use for any other thing, won't be able to make it. I get home, I barely say hi to my wife who's barely awake, and I literally conk out for 13 hours of sleep.

I say that not to flex. I'm not trying to say that I'm some brave, wonderful, amazing person. I'm saying that because to me it was so crystal clear what I had to do. There was no...

There was no opportunity for me to get out of that, even if I wanted to. I was going to miss an opportunity to make have a real impact for people because I knew what my why was. And I asked myself that wonderful question. So what? I say it's a toxic question because people use it to go, well, you know, so what? Just grit through it no matter what. Well, the truth is, if I had been so demonstrably sick that I couldn't speak or I had a significant flu of some kind, I would have had to do the hard thing. But it was the most correct thing to do. So what? That question. When we get that question.

gives us the ability to take the noise out and go, sometimes life's hard. Sometimes life punches us in the face. Sometimes that stuff happens. But if it's not gonna stop us from doing our why, then so what? Why are we, let's engage it, let's acknowledge it, but then let's move forward. And I talk to people of all different kinds of ages, mostly younger people now, and they don't know what that concept is.

For them, they get any kind of interface of interference, frustration, uncomfortability, and they think that's a showstopper. They often think anything is a showstopper. And I'm not here to lay blame or point fingers or anything, but a lot of this goes down to, okay, well, why is it a showstopper? I asked the question. I ask a different version of so what to them. And it turns out when you get down to it, they don't really know what they're doing. They're in the role that they're in because someone told them they had to be. They're doing this because their boss told them they had to do

John (39:17)
Mmm.

Sam Kirk (39:44)
Their father told them to it, their mother told them to it, their mother's a leader, their father's a leader, et cetera. And they've not done the work to ask themselves what their why is. Now I want to get into how you can find out a little bit about what your why is with absolutely no financial cost at all. But I will reveal that I'm a luxury, I'm a privileged individual. I've had the access to cutting edge technology and social sciences work with some psychologists who've done work with me to uncover what my why is so that way I'm in the best place I possibly can.

I know not many people can afford that or have access to that. So in a little bit, I'm going to offer a tool that can get you on the right path towards it costs you nothing. And if you want to explore that more, you can.

But when I say you need to find out why that doesn't come from a place of of any high and mighty, I was also driftless. I also was a wandering nomad. I didn't know what my purpose was. I remember just doing whatever my job wanted me to do because that's how I survive. Right. That's how I get a paycheck. That's how I have a roof over my head. You know, and if I just keep working really hard.

I guess eventually I'll have some kind of self-worth and I'll feel like I have a nice job title and I'll have money and it'll have meant something.

And at the end of our lives, one of the questions we have, two of them, is did I spend enough time with my loved ones? And the second one is did any of it mean anything? And I know for a fact I'm not gonna have a problem with either of those questions, but there was a time when I would have had a problem with that question. But I wanna pause there, John, because you've had so many, I know you had so many lightning thoughts before I dive more into how you can kind of.

John (40:56)
Yup.

Sam Kirk (41:07)
get started on uncovering your why why it's important. But what are your thoughts on?

John (41:11)
Well, first off, I want to say thank you for sharing and I appreciate your commitment to what you do. It is good. It's why we're all here today just to be blunt. Like Sam saw this vision and has been like, this is important. And I've been for one, so happy to join and Daniel hates it, but we won't talk about him right now. a couple of things, R E pain and, and the so what's I would go to that because I think Sam had hit on a f****g beautiful nail here, but I want to reiterate what he was saying and kind of help differentiate the point between pain versus suffering. ⁓

Pain in the therapeutic land is tied to productivity, not in like a like, you will produce for the man, but in a way of like, I'm growing from this. Like working out in the gym and not getting injured and it hurts and you're tired, but you feel good at the end. Yay, that's pain. Having an injury and re-aggravating it and making it worse and you can't work out in the gym, that's suffering, that's bad. Going through a breakup and we're like, fuck I'm sad, that's pain. Being like, why did I do this? I'm so fucking stupid. That's suffering. So when we say if it hurts, you want to pursue your value, do it anyway.

That's if it causes pain, if it's causing you suffering, that's different. Values have a relationship, and I don't want to steal Sam's thunder on accident here, but values have a relationship with sustainability. I believe in giving, it's a value of mine, but also like it do be capitalism out here. So I can't give as much as I would like to and finding ways to make that sustainable. So I do the thing that I believe in. I donate to the causes that I can be at my time, my money, et cetera, but not shaming yourself for not being 100 % value of court and all the time, because that is a terrible lot.

You cannot do it. You will burn out. You will run out of resources immediately So it's it's a stamina bar game for the video game people at home Like if you're swinging on your stamina bars lowering, it's okay to not act on your back It doesn't make you any less loyal to it. That's what Sam was getting I think when he was talking about the illness side of things like if he's too sick He doesn't do that even though it's highly value-accordant because it's just he couldn't do it So don't feel like you're inadequate in any way, right? And then I think also Sam's a bit about finding the value piece like I want to reiterate and I'll share my story later if there's time like

The second try to find the why, which rhymes, unfortunately. Like, that's a very valid thing. Everyone in my family's on their second career because our first one failed. And I very much am included. It's a story about trying to be a police officer, and I'll tell it to you today if we have time for it. So, spoiler alert, didn't work. Okay. No, thank you. I have so much more that I want to hear from this. Yeah, this is, don't know. Purpose and sustainability are so important. So important for humans.

Sam Kirk (43:24)
Yeah, that. Yeah, and a

great call out there. So another just just to give details to this puzzle here, I knew the following week I would be more or less off. So that's another reason why I went through it. If I had another gig that would have been either as hard or as worse, I might have had to make that tough call because sustainability is the practice, right? That's the other element. I know that I am my best.

I can only fulfill my purpose if I'm at a certain level of efficacy, value, et cetera. And if that would have gone too down below a certain threshold, then that would have also changed the decision making right. But again, to my point, my question about so what is not grit through it, it just makes things so simple. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna be in pain, but it's what I wanna do, it's my value, so we just gotta do it. Or.

this is going to be so much pain, it's actually going to do physical harm to me, it's going to be like, it's going to cause years off my life, or I can't speak anymore, or there's something else, or I might spread it, then yeah, of course, then we have to stop, because I want to keep doing this after this, right? It just simplifies so much of our life, and a lot of the people I talk to when I travel across the country and talk to people, they're lacking in this, and it's not your fault. That's the number one thing. It's not your fault that you don't have purpose. We have done a horrible job. I say we, because I say we have responsibility for everyone.

John (44:27)
No.

Sam Kirk (44:33)
But we just do not do a good enough job reinforcing this with you. I am so fortunate enough that along in my journey, I had a father who was a working man in the 60s and 70s, and he has a degree in philosophy. And he wanted to be a teacher. Do you know what he actually did? He became an insurance adjuster for the rest of his life. He became the vice president of claims. He didn't want to, but back in the 70s, not to get too into the history of things,

the affirmative action thing was going on. So if you weren't a female or if you weren't a person of color, you couldn't get a teaching job. If you were a white male trying to get a teaching job, it just wasn't possible. And almost all teachers around that area kind of know that. So he was stuck. So he had to go the second path in his life and not a choice that he's super fond of. And I'm so grateful that when he was raising me, he's like, I never want you to make that same choice ever.

And I'm so lucky I got to invert that because for the first 15 years of my professional career, I was doing the opposite. I hadn't found my why yet. So I'm like, I'll just do whatever the job takes me and whatever the paycheck is. I'll live in my car. I'll do whatever. I'll pay the bills, whatever it means. And if I had kept doing that, I probably wouldn't be alive today. And I don't recommend anyone does that. If you have the opportunity. That being said, we'll talk about this a lot more, but you're asking a very valuable question listener. I can hear it through your headphones. How the hell do I do this?

and I'm with you. First of all, there's a lot of great ways to do it. If you have access to a great community, great family members, generally speaking, someone who saw you during your formative years will kind of indicate to you what you're kind of more about than not. That can be a great way to kind of lean into that, but maybe you don't have access to that. Once again, I'm a big advocate for career counseling or looking into a psychologist or talking to them and giving them permission to do a psychoanalysis of your brain and doing all these tests on you. That can be a great way, but again, that's expensive and not everyone has access to this.

Some people like to do this thing called follow your bliss, which is follow the thing that you're passionate about, but the truth is, what you're passionate about versus what you might provide value to your community versus what you could actually bring money to the table with versus all other kings, they might not always align with each other. So if you follow your bliss, that's fantastic and I want you to keep doing it, but you might be trying to find a method, a path, some kind of thing that aligns with all of those because John's talked about this a little bit offline. I'm a big movie buff myself.

I'm an amateur film director, I'm a novelist, I do my own drawings at home, but I would never do anything commercial in that space. It would just be kind of a pleasure project for me, because that's not, it would be something that would give me a lot of satisfaction, but I'm not sure it would give satisfaction to the world, nor do I know that it would provide value to my family if I had to. So the question is, how do we find out what your value is and get you started on that? And here's your thought experiment. Let's imagine today you're thinking about this.

And in four days, you know for a fact that the world is ending. It's ending. The entire world, the sun is about to explode. There is nothing we can do. Everyone is scrambling and doing whatever they want to do for the next four days. Why do I say four days? Well, before you die, you're probably going to want to spend time with your family members, your loved ones. You're going to hold them in your crutches and tell them how much you love them and make those conversations and make those relationships. So let's make that the last day before the day ends, the world ends. And one day back before then.

You're probably going to want to scratch something off your bucket list. You have a bunch of things like, I've always wanted to do this. You know, I've only got so much money in my bank account, but I don't need a bank account anymore because who cares? I'm just going to climb Everest if I want to. That's probably going to be your second to last day event you're going to do. So we're going to take that off the plate. Then you got two more days left. Two more days is the day you find out, which is probably the time when you start making plans. But then there's this other day where it's before you make your last bid to meet your loved ones and friends. It's the last day before you go do that bucket list thing or multiple bucket list things.

John (47:52)
Hmm.

Sam Kirk (48:19)
There's one day where it's just like, you can do whatever the hell you want to do. And it doesn't matter if you're good at it. And it doesn't matter if anyone's going to see it. It doesn't matter if when you publish it on Instagram or do something on YouTube or show it to friends, if they like it or not. It doesn't matter. You just love the act of doing the thing. That act of doing the thing, regardless of what the end result is, might be the best first place to start thinking about where your purpose might be. It might be. And then ask yourself the question.

if you have the fortune, I'll say, of loved ones, friends, companions who tell you, you know what, when you're doing that thing that you like so much, you're either a different person or you know what, I like this version of you or people are gravitated towards you, et cetera. So I had the luxury of working with a psychologist and helping me work on this, but if I hadn't had that, what this would look like for me, my bucket list items would probably be doing a quick trip.

across the globe, maybe to China or Asia, Malaysia, or some place in Japan that it's on my bucket list. I can't do all of them in one day, but one of them I would do just really quickly. The day before the day the world ends, I'd spend time with my family, my friends, I'd call them, I'd hug them, I'd hold them, embrace them. There's that moment in that really terrible cheesy 90s disaster movie, Deep Impact, where they're hugging each other as the tsunami kills them. That would probably be what I would do. That's what most people would want to do. But then the time in which I would spend where I'm like, well, I got this one day I can throw away.

What would I want to do?

When I really think about it, I want to be sitting with complete strangers that I don't know. I want to talk to them, talk to them from a place of seeking an understanding and seeing if we could just be a little bit more connected with each other before the day is over. And I know this because A, I enjoy that. And B, I've gotten feedback from people, my spouse and other people who say every time you talk, Sam, people lean in because you're the kind of person who before you speak, you've spent a lot of time thinking about it and people resonate.

And so I'm like, hmm, is that a marketable skill? I don't know. That's where you take the next step and talk to someone who knows what fields and markets are available, et cetera. How could that help other people? You can start making it a pillar of your community. But I know for a fact that it's something I enjoy doing, regardless if I'm even any good at it. But I've got some small external feedback loop data telling me that there is some positive feedback loop that is doing something. And that could potentially set me on the right path. So before, I had a wonderful psychologist tell me, hey, Sam, you you gotta be.

You gotta be not just a public speaker, but a consultant for other people so that way they can go ahead and public speak the way you do so we can spread and help the world make a better place. That's what you gotta do. Before I spent lots and lots of money on that to have someone tell me all that, I could have done the same exact thought experiment and gotten somewhere very similar. So let me pause there, John, because I know you got other thoughts on that as I explain that little thought experiment to people.

John (51:08)
Well, I would take a second and celebrate a couple of things. I'm about to be real cheesy, but also like cheesiness is where the goodness is in life. So roll with me a little bit, dearest audience member. So a couple of things. But ⁓ there's a relief.

among the three of us who are doing this show and you dear listener slash viewer I hope you have this and if you don't I want to first of offer you a little assurance that doesn't mean you won't get there but we know what we want to do and who we are I'm 38 years old and I figured out what I wanted to do I don't know I'll be honest with you it was after grad school like I was not totally sure I was locked into the right thing at that point and even within that in my field you can't be a generalist sorry to your therapist to describe yourself that way you kind of can't do that

⁓ You got to figure out your thing thing within your thing but Knowing this about yourself is a really it's a very healing thing and you won't at first So say you're watching this and you're a youthful sprightly teenager first of all cool. Thanks for hanging out with us second of all like There's a lot of shit that gets in the way of knowing your values I was talking more about values later in the show if we have time I hope so, but one of the things that I wanted to get to is like finding your why is tied to your values and finding

your values is hard if shit gets in the way. A couple of things that block that. One is survival mode. know, the little hierarchy of needs and the bottom is like food and like air. And then it's like roof with locks on the door and all that other fun stuff. As those are depleted, you can't access your values because your values are like a high concept thing. If me and Timmy are like going out and I'm like, Hey, Timmy today, I'm going to go carpe the old DM. I feel good. I'm going to go help some people. And Timmy's like,

I got a fucking Arabic guy to get some food. Good luck, man. Like he's not going to act within his values. He's probably acting outside of his values, frankly, unless his values rob people, which is weird. But beside the point, and the main thing is like, it's okay if you feel detached from your values. You need to focus on healing and stabilizing yourself and get into that another time or even today a little bit. Values are, they're hard to reach when you're just trying to be okay. And that's all right. Also, your values will change because they're shaped by your community. There was a time when I was said with love for the people I was hanging out with.

It wasn't like the safest crowd I've ever been affiliated with. And we did some stuff that I'm glad didn't get documented. There was no, you know, YouTube's back in the day the same way there is now. and I remember going home after doing stuff with them and being like, is this me? Like, is this, do I do this? This feels kind of like, I don't want this to be who I am. And like, if you notice that feeling, what that's called is value discordance. you know what else there is talking about in the same breath?

Sam Kirk (53:15)
Ahem.

John (53:38)
Value sickness. So sometimes I'll talk with professionals in my line of work who are just a of all Phenomenal I am very lucky in that I have a great job and I I can say genuinely I can every client I have on the good depot I love my case that right now my job is like the best it's ever been but I'll work with some people who are just genuinely elite professionals and they will come to me and making oodles of money and having wonderful families and they'll they'll describe the sense of dissatisfaction and I'm like what is going on and at first pass it's like, you know, it's a clinical depression

Oftentimes it's a thing called value sickness insurance companies don't love that because you can't diagnose it. It's maybe z-code flavored but like the point being like if I go to this is like a Example, I'm making this up. isn't a person but I go to my job where I work for loan sharks and I make eight hundred thousand dollars a year and every day I'm calling scared people and be like hello Where the money at and they'll be like, I don't know and then I go home and I have all this money I sleep on my pillow made of money and I'm like I am a fxxx like I don't feel good

I've known people who haven't had that severe of jobs. I've known people who were making oodles of cash who were like, I'm going to stop this because it hurts. That's a very scary decision because you're trading in a survival mechanism, money for things that matter, purpose. that human brains want to do that, but it's very scary to go against your biology. It's very scary to say I'm turning down security for values. And I do not blame people who cannot do that at any point in their life. I am, like Sam, I'm quite privileged in many ways. One is that I had the opportunity to fail.

Like if I went for this and failed, didn't, like nobody died, I don't have any kids to feed. So I had some luxury there. There's more, but I think I'm gonna go back to Sam on this part, but that's where I wanted to go for now.

Sam Kirk (54:58)
100%.

Yeah.

And speaking about that, you know, I talked to many people. This is a common story here. They're making good money. Real good money.

They're unhappy, they're depressed, something's going on. Talk to them a little bit more. Yeah, I think I'm just not making enough money. you think you're not being rewarded for your value or that what's going on. No, I'm making enough money. Like I can buy anything I ever want. just, I feel like I need more money. And you go down the rabbit hole with them, you talk to them, and I'm sure John's talking to this person as well. They just don't know what their why is. They don't know. Because if you knew what your why, here's the last thing about your why.

It could be that your why really is about money and that I'm not gonna judge that element of it. But more times than not, if you know what your why is, money is the fuel to get you to do more of your why that you want. It no longer becomes, I do this thing for the money and then I get to do this fun thing on the side. No, the money fuels me to be able to keep doing more of the thing that I want to do. That's what it is. You get to...

you get to be in this wonderful place where you say, know what, there's such a thing as a cap. I don't need as much money as I need. Now the rest goes into savings. Again, these are the people that are making more money than they don't know what to do with, but that's how you start feeling about money. Money is 99.9 % of the time not your why. It could be for some people, I would say to the Warren Buffets of the world, maybe that's your thing, but for everyone else, I would say it's not really your why. Your why is something else. And it's supposed to fuel you. It's supposed to help propagate and allow you to do things.

But based on that, John, you said this wonderful thing about if you're in the survival mode of life, first of all, do whatever the fuck you gotta do to survive. Don't ever let me, John, Daniel, anyone tell you otherwise. You gotta do what you gotta do, right? And with the exception of killing people and doing something morally heinous, we've all had to do some things that we weren't happy about, but it had to put food on the plate. Like I'm not here to shame you on that one. What I would do though is if we were friends and we were homies and we were talking.

John (56:36)
Hang in there.

Hang in there.

Sam Kirk (56:56)
I say, hey man, how you doing? And you go, you know, surviving. I go, how can we change that to thriving? And of course, they're gonna come to me and say, I don't have the opportunity to thrive. Like I'm literally just living paycheck to paycheck, or I don't even have paychecks and totally get that. I've seen it more times than not. If you start going, okay, well if I don't spend any amount of energy time towards trying to get my life from survive to thrive, then nothing's going to ever change. And that effort needs to happen. And that's my encouragement to everyone.

regardless of where you are, socioeconomically or not. I was in a place where I thought it just wasn't possible for me to do what I actually love to do. I used to work in pharmaceuticals, pays really well. But then I didn't think I had any other skillset. Turns out you probably do, you probably have amazing skillsets, you're totally untapped, you didn't even know about it. That's another part of your why of what you explore. And people love seeing and paying back to people who they see are skilled.

We talked about this before. I think the recording was even going live. We just love this. Human beings just love it. When I hear someone talk and they know their stuff, I'm excited. When I go to a local shop and they hand make the bakery items that I'm gonna get, I love paying them a little bit extra because I know they're experts at what they do and what I'm getting is something special. We tend to want to keep back our financial stuff when we feel like it's just commercially made. It's made by a robot. It's not made with artisanal goodness of any kind. And we start...

John (57:59)
Feels good.

Sam Kirk (58:18)
treating everyone like you're not human. So again, my encouragement to everyone is when we go on Survive versus Thrive, do what you gotta do to survive. But again, give yourself, whether it's five minutes a day, 15 minutes a week, whatever you got, what is the thing you're doing to get yourself on the Thrive path? And I'll tell you for me, it took me about 18 months of being in Survive and just etching away at that Thrive until I finally got that opening to go there. But if I'd ever given up during that 18 months, I would have been screwed.

And it's not an easy choice to make, but I think it's the most important one because I believe every person listening to this and every person I talk to deserves to live a life well lived.

John (58:56)
Very well said. I would talk, if it's okay Sam, about a few points that I want to make, our ears. If you think you're going the right way, cut me off, we can move around. I want to talk about some other obstacles to finding your why, and then I want to talk about how therapists tell you to move towards your why, and there's some cool shit that I want you to know. It's stuff that I didn't know before I was a therapist. One other thing, if you've ever heard me talk, be it on this show or elsewhere, I do not give the impression of being shy.

⁓ I talk a lot, I have a big voice, I'm kind of a cartoony person, my hair is insane, that's ⁓ choice. I like to be expressive. That was not so for very long time. I was a deeply anxious person and I've always been a very successful kid, I'm pretty smart, I got straight As, so my parents were like, you're fine, I have good parents, but they did not realize the way fucking tangled mezz of anxiety I was for very long time. And I carried a lot of attitudes with me, like don't like people, I don't trust people, I don't feel safe, and I thought this was my personality.

I thought I was a little bit of a misanthrope because I was just like, yeah, no, people are assholes. It makes me think of those like the bumper stickers or the flags. like, that's what I do. I hate people and I read things. And it's just like, that's not you actually, dog. That's your anxiety. And as I worked on myself, sidebar, if you ever want to get like mentally healthy, go to therapy school, you will fucking learn about yourself. It'll help. Also just go through life. Also go to a therapist. Anyway, moving on. As I began to watch my shyness, which for the record is social anxiety,

fade away, I learned something about myself that would enable me to connect with my values. I think I want to talk about this whole, I'm so excited to share this with everybody. I think what I'll do is I'll share with you a couple of quick stories about my life growing up. So if you look up men named Merrick from my lineage, you will find one who didn't go to Purdue and become a pharmacist. I have no voice because I've been screaming at a Purdue game because that's what Merrick men do. So I have taken and dropped more chemistry than most of you have even.

signed up for it because I kept trying to do that because it makes good money. There's a level of like, that's what we do. we had Merrick's pharmacy was an Indiana Elkhart South bend. don't remember. She wanted me bad, bad grandchild, but I don't really fuck with chemistry like that. It doesn't really do that for me. What I learned in AP chem. And I wish this wasn't true, but the main thing I learned from AP chem is if you started iron and you read left to red, says Ficoni cousin, Gages Barker. So that's what I got from that class before I dropped it. That's not useful.

And then the things that I did value growing up, which was like, I remember I was laying on a, this is such a fucking emo high school thing, but like I'm laying on like a drive with some other Midwestern kids. We're looking at the stars. We're talking about the things we want to do. We're feeling connected. And I was like, this is it, man. Like this feels really good. Like I want to do this. And my mom was like, maybe you'll be a pastor. Little problem with me and religion. So they didn't quite work out how that's planned, but there were all these signs. And I remember saying like, but I can't make money doing this.

And that's the scary thing, right? It's because we're monkeys and we learned that money equals food in advance. So we're like, well, I got to make money. Money. I know this sounds like hippie shit and I look like a hippie and I am one, but money will come if you do the things that you like and it will come in different degrees. But also there's a level of like, if you find your value, you get a higher quality of life. Quality of life is worth more than money.

I could make more money by working a different job than I'm doing right now for a stone cold fact. I know how to do it. I know what job I would do, but I also every day I fill my cup with my clients and I'm so grateful for that. You deserve that. And if you don't feel like you do, don't panic. It's okay. So story time part two, I decided it can't be a pharmacist. What can I do? How can I help people? And I read this book called, I think it's blue blood. It's a great book. This guy went to Harvard and he became a cop. And I was like, cops are pretty cool. I've watched, I've watched a show about cops once.

I'd like to help people. I'm going to be a paladin, right? And go help people. To the police officers out there who doing a fine job and representing our country in a wonderful way, fucking love you. Thank you for what you do. It takes a particular good soul to be able to do this in the real capacity. And I sincerely mean it from bottom of my heart. I am not one of you. So I signed up for police officer job tryouts, which had a better name, I'm sure, in 2013, 2009. I don't know. I had an undergrad degree, not a grad degree, so 2009.

And it was, you had to do a written test and a bench press test and a sit up test and another one. written test. Once again, I'm kind of good at that. Sit up test. I've been kind of skinny my whole life. the bench press test was for men. was your body weight. One time of note, the John Merrick of that era had never lifted on a bench press before the dude in front of me is this little guy. He's building a brick house.

And he's like, yeah, I'm back from overseas doing black ops shit. The guy behind me is like out of a movie. He's like, yeah, I'm back on trying to get a job on the force to pay for my grandkids. And I was like, cool, I'm going to die. So I bench press. Well, he lowers the bar and I'm like, he's like, okay, you can lift it son. And I'm like, I can't. And he's like, ha ha. And I'm like, ha ha. I'm like, I actually can't though. And he's like, okay. And he picks it up and I walk out of there. And this is the worst part of story for me. No one made fun of me. No one said anything in 50 applicants in that gym. There was no one who did.

anything and I watched this dream die in my hands and I went to my car and I cried and I was like what the fuck am I gonna do and I went home and I got kind of a janitorial job then I got like a helping people job and I'm just doing this and I'm not I'm not doing well I'm not thriving at all and eventually I make sort of a gamble and I said I'm gonna go to grad school maybe I'll be a therapist and then I'll fast forward that tape but it ends up working out but even there and I'm a person who will report very happily that I do what I love

Like that was a guess. It's okay that the journey's hard. There are people who find their way to it just naturally. And for a lot of us, we just bonk our heads on shit till we get closer. And also in the context of depression and co-dependency and other shit that's happened to me, like there are things that bias your lens. So please, please give yourself some mercy and grace if you haven't found it yet. That doesn't mean you won't find it. For some people, like just to be blunt, like you need one of these. Like there's medication that will help your brain work so that you can actually do the things. And it's okay if you try stuff and fail. It feels like it's not.

but it often is the best way to learn. So I would talk about one more thing and then I'll shut up and give Sam the mic back. I do have like five more things, but I just did this one really quick. So you come to me and you're like, hi, John, I'm your client. I'm like, cool. You're like, you should probably wear like a tie or some shit for this. like, yeah, normally I would be during actual therapy. And you say, I wanna be, and then you have a fucking nutty job. You're like, I wanna be.

pop musician. I want to sing on stage. I want to be Taylor Swift, number two. And I'm like, that's fucking cool. Now, if I'm your homie, if I'm your dad, if I'm your cousin, whoever, I might be like, dog, that's a stupid idea. Like, that doesn't work. Like, you should give up on that. Therapists get trained to not say that. We get trained to say the following things. One, well, what makes you want to do that? You hear my therapist voice coming on. And I want to hear about the person I'm asking you really is what are your values? And if your values line up with it, what I as your therapist will do is I say, what's the first step towards it?

And then we just start taking steps because once again, humans naturally resolve. We naturally self-actualize. And I've had clients who've done this and I've had clients who've done this relatively successfully. I'm being obviously mega hippo anonymous on this cause duh. But like there's a level of if you keep trying, you will either do it and be like, this is my thing. Or you'll go, you know what? This is close to my thing. I can feel the value. Let me pivot. But we encourage you to swing for the stars here. Not because we're like delusional, you're going to make it, but because this is the path to self-actualization and that's okay.

Sam Kirk (1:05:46)
Okay.

John (1:06:04)
Failure is like part of growth. Any Dark Souls players listening to this is like, that's what you do. You go to the boss, you get shit stomped, you come back and you try again. Any fighting game player, more of the same, right? But we've internalized failure as money deficit, as death. And healing from that is hard. So it's a gradual process. I have some tools that I wanna make sure to talk about before the end of the show. But yeah, it's, don't be afraid to swing for your dreams. If people tell you it's cheesy, it is, but like once again, cheesy's not the enemy. Cheesy's on the good guy team. And you,

person, dear listener, you deserve to have a job that doesn't hurt you, that doesn't make you feel empty. It doesn't have to be your whole fxxxxxx consuming purpose, but it should touch it. It should touch it. And if it doesn't touch it because you're in survival mode and you're just like, I just got to put food on tables. That's what I got to do. Like, cool. Let's find you some purpose elsewhere. Maybe you go home and you make cool sxxx like this and you like, I don't know. You you, put stuff together. Somebody made that. That was awesome. Maybe you write some music.

Maybe you are starting your hang gliding company. don't, I don't know, but value sickness is real and human brains need purpose. have a whole thing that I'm going to do a four second speed along. can make this anything humans actually need spirituality. I don't mean religion. need shit to believe in and values driven purpose stuff touches this box for everybody, whatever you believe, whatever you care about in life being like, I'm doing a thing that matters to me is incredibly important professionally or

I have a job thing to say and a values thing to say, but I think I might shut up and let Sam drive the boat for a little bit because I run the risk of monologuing.

Sam Kirk (1:07:34)
No, it's all

good. It's all good. love that. I love your stories, John. And I think about my own story where at an early part of my life, I thought, you know, my purpose in life is to be a video game designer. And I applied to several video game companies. I even went through literally the last rung of hiring steps for a major video game company. I won't name who they are, but I can say they don't exist anymore. So went through everything, talked to the combat designer, talked to...

the lead narrative designers, they liked me a lot. One of the final steps is you invented a first person shooter level in Maya and talked about the narrative elements of it as well as how it could work in multiplayer if it had to get reworked for multiplayer. I was pretty proud of it, especially since they gave you like 48 hours max to work on it. That's all you had. You had to turn it in by 48 hours, very quick turnaround time. I got a wonderful piece of feedback.

And what I mean by that is it was like 20 pages of like critique on the level. And basically because of that, they're like, we don't want you. But if I could summarize the critique, it was basically this level feels like it came out of 1998 slash GoldenEye slash Quake 3 Arena, and we're more cutting edge than that. Now what's funny about this is that nowadays people would...

fucking love a level like that or a game designed like that, right? But at this particular time, it was like, nope, there are stages of video game design and we are well past this. This was during the day of like Call of Duty, Crouch to heal the red jelly on your face era of gaming. ⁓ And I made a level that was more, a little more open-ended. I actually quite liked the level. And I remember taking that setback pretty hard because I'm like, well, I guess I just can't be a game designer. I guess I'm just terrible. I guess I'm awful. And...

John (1:08:59)
⁓ yes.

Sam Kirk (1:09:10)
The lesson that's to be learned when you swing and you punch for the stars and you get hit, what people end up having is, what if I fail? Well, so what if you fail? It's a new data set. You now have new data. And a couple things I took away from that experience after I healed and I was pretty mad about it. One, do I really wanna work for a company where you only have 48 hours to design something and everything's under crunch? And at this point in time, crunch is very still much a big thing. I don't want that. Two, what did I love most about being a narrative designer for gaming?

I loved this. I loved how it could communicate to people in the same room in the couch and how fun how people could invent their own stories. I wasn't interested in making a corridor shooter. I was invested in making open spaces and all these weird things could happen. And that told me more as well. What I really want to do is I want to be part of the conversation when people have these experiences. And that led me down a path similar to where I am now, where I get to be part of people's conversations and talk to them and so forth. And all those data sets help.

get me in the right direction. So even when you get a failure, you get punched in the chin. Cool, new data, it sucks, stings, I'm with you. Sucks and I'm sorry. But you gotta get some of this stuff so it can get you in the right direction. Because I can tell you right now, if I actually went down game development, and maybe someday I will. Fun fact, I am a combat designer for an indie fighting game called Battle High San Bruno on Xbox Live 360. It's no longer there, but it was there for a little bit. It was $1. I am a combat designer there. I worked on that project for eight months.

So I have, did get to fulfill that part of my dream. But I got to learn like the thing that I thought I wanted wasn't actually what I wanted. What I actually wanted was something else. And I'm so grateful for that experience. And so I encourage that to everyone. So yeah, shoot for the stars. Do the thing. Make yourself look stupid and dumb. Go ahead and fail as much as you can without causing demonstrable financial monetary harm to yourself, right? Or any other kind of health harm to you. Do it, cause then you get punched, you get new data.

John (1:10:30)
That's awesome.

Sam Kirk (1:10:57)
Or maybe you succeed and you get other data as well. It's all good data and you get to learn from that. And I learned a lot from that experience and I'm super grateful for it. I wanna give John time for his little bits that he wants to talk about, but a couple things. I think this might relate to how Daniel might be thinking about things or holding us accountable here. Because I think there's someone listening to this podcast that might think to themselves, well Sam, what if my Y isn't anything fancy? What if it's just, you know, nothing? What if it's little something something? Or if Daniel gonna say something here.

Daniel (1:11:24)
no, just... can relate to that on some level. The why being just a little something. Just a little, you know, just a little... It's not grand. It's not some huge pine-sky dream or anything like that. It's just something little. It's just a little guy. It's just a little guy of a dream. you know...

Sam Kirk (1:11:46)
something little.

Daniel (1:11:51)
the little things that make you happy. And is that still valid?

Sam Kirk (1:11:56)
It absolutely is. There's a guy, there's a professor by the name of Arthur C. Brooks who teaches at Harvard. He's literally called the happiness professor. And he talks about the idea that oftentimes we have a choice in life. Do we want to be special or do we want to be happy? I'm not here to tell you that you have to make that choice, but I am here to say to you that there's nothing wrong with choosing not being special.

John (1:12:11)
Ugh.

Sam Kirk (1:12:18)
A lot of us feel equate valueness to being special. Like I need to do this thing, I need to be the best at it, I need to do X, Y, Z. And I'm telling you that's totally different from what your value is. And if your value is just, you know, being the person that's kind of the center of your community, that's just people can talk to and you you have no desire to make waves and but that you feel at home with that, whatever that is, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with choosing happiness and not being special as part of your value set.

And I think a lot of people misequate that. think people, when they hear the word value, they go, what's my big, giant capital mission in life? It doesn't have to be that. It's about finding what works for your biological, neurological preferences. It's about what gives you happiness and joy, but also gives happiness and joy to your community and in some way, either doesn't get in the way of your financial gains later on or helps propagate that in some capacity. So that's what I would say to that. But before we wrap things up and we will talk about why

So many more times, but I thought this would be just a good intro to that topic. John, what are your final thoughts on

John (1:13:18)
I have three sections of thoughts. And I would validate this is like one of my favorite episodes we've done. And it is frankly pivotal to a lot of things. I'm glad we did it this far into the show, because I'm glad we have like a little bit of flow here how we do things. we will be citing this and expanding on this in the future. I can tell you that right now. Because this is it. This is how you build.

your life and I'm telling you that from a point of clinical confidence and also like anecdotal like out the wazoo. The best part about being a therapist is you know so many people and you have so many stories all those questions you have in your early 20s or teens like am I doing things right? I know the answer to that just statistically I do and the news is incredibly good by the way like we're all on the same page. Okay so things that I want to share with you really quick.

There is a resource, it's a free tool. They changed it. I've been kind of tooling around with it while we've been talking today. Let me go ahead and share this now. this is the Onet Interest Profiler. This is absolutely free. ⁓ What you do is you hop online and you go to this site and you can, it says, think about what kind of a job you want to have and you get started.

And you just rate the things that it tells you to do on this scale. I'll give you a spoiler. Don't use unsure because it'll make you go back and change those. If you have to do it, that's fine. It doesn't matter. But some things are really important here. Number three here, do not think about the amount of education needed or how much money you'll make. That's the thing that gets in the way of finding your values. Um, but then you go to it and it's like, do you want to build a kitchen cabinet? So let me be honest with you guys. I'm not a kitchen cabinet guy. Developing new medicine. I would, I would like to, I don't have the education or knowledge to do so, but it sounds interesting. Like.

Sam Kirk (1:14:39)
Mm-hmm.

John (1:14:51)
Anyway, you kind of keep going from that capacity until eventually it kicks out a thing that we will call your reassex scores. R I A S E C. don't know if people say reassack out loud now that I'm saying it. I've only just been the person who's read it a million times, but that stands for realistic investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. and that you will get that. And this is, this is the sick part. I actually wish I had done a printout of this ahead of time for my own, ⁓ because it tells you what your scores are in these different areas.

tells you jobs that will fit those scores. And it tells you those jobs in four areas. There's the maybe five areas, but it's like zero training, a little bit of training, college degree, advanced degree. I think it was only four. Um, I score off the charts for social, even though I, some would say I'm an introvert. I don't really know what that means anymore, but there's a degree of just like my job should have people in it. If I do a job without people and it pays a bazillion dollars, I will rot from the inside out. Like I just, need that. I also, and this might be interesting to, I don't know someone.

I score really low on enterprising. I don't want to build an empire at all. That's part of why I've been so happy to be part of this project is I think Sam, if he took this test would kind of hit pretty hard on being an enterprise. I think he loves to build things. I'm a guy that loves to be a part of things, but I don't want to drive it. I hit very high on artistic as well. So if I had a job that was just salesy and talking to people, I'm checking one of the boxes. But part of what I love about therapy is it's half art and half science and being able to do the human, the art side of it and like using

The best thing in the fucking world is using an analogy where somebody's like, shit, like it feels away. It's actually really, really nice. Realistic, I wrote these down earlier and then I immediately did delete the tab, like, realistic is like you work with tools, right? Like the guy who wants to build a shed, that guy's gonna hit on realistic. And I know guys, one of my favorite folks that I know.

He's a mechanic and his thing he says is he's like, I just like turning a wrench like if that's like like catch I just like turning a wrench it feels honest to him. It just feels like I'm doing some actual work. If you hit that shit and you do my job, you will go fucking insane because you will be bored out of your fucking mind because all you do is talk. You don't have you have no tangible proof of anything and conventional is like an organizing one. Did I not cover it? Investigative is investigative is sciency not to be overly summative. People who want to like develop and learn and grow things. So it will also tell you and this is why I hype this up a little bit. It will tell you

A, the skills needed for that job, soft skills, hard skills, will tell you which states that job is growing in. It will tell you the average median and extended salaries for that job. will tell you if you need it, like it is an incredibly wonderful resource and it's massively underused. Apropos of exactly this topic, so not nothing. I've given this to many, people over the years that I've been a therapist and I've had two people do it specifically and be like, I'm going to be a tattoo artist. Like that's just hit for them. And they're both tattoo artists now. So that's ⁓ But it's a great tool. It's free. Use it. Love free things that are good.

Sam Kirk (1:17:31)
You all know that person, whether they're a tattoo artist, they're whatever job they are, who's like, they're one with themselves. They get it. They're with it. They're not trying to compete with anyone. They're just doing their own fxxxxxx thing. Wouldn't you want to be that person? Whatever that is. This is one of the first steps you can take. It's so cool to talk to someone who's like, they know exactly their lane they're in.

Daniel (1:17:41)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Sam Kirk (1:17:56)
They're happy to do it. And they want to hear about what your lane is and they're interested in it, but like, they're fine. They're, I'm doing my own thing. Like that gives you such a sense of peace. And I think everyone would want that. Everyone.

Daniel (1:18:04)
Yeah.

John (1:18:09)
that's a that's a hard degree as a person who I don't know if I exuded that but I feel that I I know what I'm doing. I want I don't want to do anything else I just want to do this forever. Maybe I'll make it I don't know shoutouts to the company I currently work for they're a great company But like that's a malleable piece for me. If like I were to move to Colorado or something. I don't know But this is my thing. So speaking of things look at this half boom done this Is core values list from James clear James clear author of atomic habits a great read if you ever have the time

And this is not all core values, but it's a list of common ones. Because sometimes I do this thing with my clients where I'm a dick and I'm like, Hey, what are your core values? What do you believe in? Like that's no one asks questions like that, sir. And I'm like, that's true. It's sort of an ambush question. And as you look through them, you might see some that you're going to go, that makes sense. For instance, creativity, banger value, huge fan. Faith. If you were a person for whom faith matters, banger value, very mandatory. This was a big one for me. And there's like a whole ADHD tangent that I'll spare you on here, but like.

If I'm not doing things that make me feel emotionally happy, I'm really sad and like it, fucks me up. I remember this is true. Uh, I was coming home from a Purdue game with my dad once I was a old teenager, like 17, 18, and I turned to dad and I'm like, Hey man, what's like some father? It was almost as cheesy. I was like, what's some like fatherly advice? Like what's like, what should I know to be happy? He's like, well, you just gotta love God and do work. And that's what matters. And I was like, I'm going to end it now then dude. Like I, I don't want to do any of that. Like, that sounds really scary. Me and God have a contentious relationship.

And work is pain because I have ADHD and don't know it yet at this point in my life. And all I want to do is be happy and play video games. Why am I a broken piece of shit? I'm not. But my brain operates differently than his does with happiness. My dad is a very functional man and he's very good at the things he does. And I love him. I him a lot. But we're very different men. We're very different men. And happiness to me is very important.

Sam Kirk (1:19:52)
Many people don't know what actual happiness means. And I don't mean to, that's a whole other topic, but people think happiness is dopamine-elated happy. And that's totally different constructs.

John (1:20:02)
Yeah.

No, good point. That's an excellent point, Sam. Humor is another one for me. And I'm not going to go through all my values. That's too long. But like, there's someone here that I wanted to highlight that I think are interesting. This one is

interesting. When I worked with certain people, certain populations, loyalty pops up a lot. And I have a whole, not even a tight five. I have like a incredibly long million years on this. Loyalty is a totally valid value.

If you're a person who comes from a family that's very tight knit and this means a lot to you, I'm not fucking with that. That's awesome. But for some people, some of the things that we've internalized as values end up being toxic. I've had people who stay in really dangerous bad things because they're like, yeah, but I value loyalty. And sometimes it's okay to explore that as a value shift. Similarly, people will, they'll will indicate like fame or reputation or successor values. Once again, I'm really not knocking on that. I know people who are very success driven and they, that's great. Love that for them. I have a buddy.

Francisco who is just like the man he just climbed all the corporate ladders in one capitalism He rules and he's genuinely he's a sweet guy. He's a good dude. He's very kind But for a lot of people as Sam was looting too earlier a lot of times those are what are perceived prerequisites to get to the things that you really matter which is probably connection or things along those lines because Money opens doors psychologically for us and we're like if I have enough money that I can have blank if you can get to that question if I have enough

Resources enough fame money, whatever I got blank. That's what you're looking for And also if your answer there is I want to feel safe and content Kind of a value kind of a sign that you might be in survival mode, which is fat, which is fair and valid So don't it's okay This is a fairly high concept episode for people who are just kind of getting through crunch time and that's okay You don't have to feel bad about that.

Sam Kirk (1:21:43)
John, you brought up a really good thing and

I want to ask the question. saw those list of core values. I think I know the answer, but I'll ask anyway. Is it possible that all those core values, all of them that you listed, I saw the screenshot of, that there's an upper limit where it could be toxic?

John (1:21:56)
I would tend to say so actually. In fact, I would confidently say so as I've had a more second to think about it. One of my biggest values is compassion. I believe in showing love to people. It's probably the single thing that drives me most of all. And it also can be wildly destructive evidence. See my relationships from ages 17 to 25 or so. Maybe it's just, it's not, yeah. So if you have a value and you and your value have been hanging out and you have some kind of bumpy spots in the road, that's okay.

Learning how to engage with your value and be appropriately connected with it matters a lot. Once again, I'm gonna reiterate, it's a high concept thing. Also, you'll have values that you might not understand until later. This is my example and why I want to talk about that. One of my values is beauty. And you're like, well, that's obvious you stood. Dumb joke aside, there's a level of, I like to see the beauty in the world. And it makes me feel like a really, you've heard a frisson? Does that ring any bells for anybody here?

For as long as, it's effectively like you get this like kind of goose bumpy chills feeling when you're like, wah! I can think it just emotionally hits so hard. Ever since was a child, I would like press my face up against the window in my backyard with room facing, it doesn't matter, but you could see planes and I would see a plane and I would think, my God, there's so many people on that plane that I don't even know. The world is so big. I wish I could know them. Someday I'll be on a plane flying over Illinois in the night. And like that fucking, that shit, those are real goosebumps right now.

Sam Kirk (1:22:54)
Yes, yes. Yeah.

John (1:23:18)
That is so powerful to me and the beauty of things like that, and I know that's cheesy as fuck, but like it's real, like that hits me that way. I was out at the Purdue game, some would call it the Minnesota game, Summit Minnesota, but there was a little child that like came up to me and was like, I like Minnesota more than Purdue. And like, I loved that child, even though they're wrong, but like it just, the beauty of this little enthusiastic child, like when my dog sees me in the morning, there's this long stretch and he talks to me in his Husky talk. These are moments, right?

Sam Kirk (1:23:38)
Yeah.

John (1:23:45)
Like that shit keeps me going. Beautiful shit keeps me going. And I would never have known that because when I was in my angsty phase, which is most of my life, I was like, I don't know, like fucking, I didn't have space for it yet. I wasn't healed. So end of tangent.

Sam Kirk (1:23:59)
there's a point when you find out pretty decisively where you are on the core values side of things. And then this common trap happens, which is you now make enemies with people who don't have the same ones as you. that's a mistake. Because when you talk about the beauty aspect, I also have a beauty element in my profile. love that stuff drives me, right? And sometimes that I've interfaced with people who don't have that, a glitch happens in my brain and I'm like,

You don't care about that stuff. You don't care about how amazing and incredible the world can be. like, isn't it amazing how these people can come together and like help save the world and like put efforts in? just they're like, whatever, what does that matter? Right. And when you know who you are, one of the facts you have to interface is that other people know who they are and they might be totally different than you, but they're totally valid. It's totally fine. And then unrelated, but someone unrelated. think I've said this before, maybe not recorded.

I've taken the Gallup Strengths poll almost every year and every single year. The top 35 strengths, it's two through 35 change a little bit, but number one's always the same and that is actually the first skill is learner. It's one of my number one skills is learning. love learning. But one of the preferences biases is authenticity is pretty up there. one of the, that's like how my profile is. I'm like in the top 1 % of authenticity. You think authenticity is great and it is, but there's a cost. It doesn't give you permission to be an asshole.

And sometimes when you're authentic, you have to be very careful how you communicate and say things to people because it will come across like you're being an asshole. So again, that's just another, another element to the facet here. But again, at this stage of the game, when we're talking about finding your why, your values, all that good stuff, if you're a person that doesn't know what they are, or you think you might know, but you're afraid to explore them, please explore them, find them out. You owe it to yourself to be the full human that you can possibly be. I would hate to talk to you in one of my workshops and you're 65 years old.

And all you're thinking about is retirement because you can't stand your job anymore and you can't stand the kids that are the generation before you or the generation before them or the generation before them. And you're trying to find meaning out of life. And you might be wrestling with the idea that maybe you didn't have meaning for your life. And I don't want to have that conversation with you now. I want you I want you now as a younger person to look at this and go, hey, let me do the work now. So that way, when I get to you at 65 says, yep, I've done a great amount of work. I know exactly what I did. And I'm looking forward to the next part of my venture. What can I do to help the next generation?

That's the difference between those two different types of people. And what we want is for everyone to start doing the work now. It's gonna make ourselves a lot, well, happier for the lack of a better word, but also just make the world a better place. And give it more, as John has said, beauty.

John (1:26:31)
There's a thing that's interesting where I also extraordinarily highly value authenticity. If people aren't authentic, I get a really weird Spidey sense of just like, what are you trying to sell me? Like, what's the game here? And me and Sam are pretty, we're buds, we're bros now. But when we first met, even though we have the same value, there was a glitch in my brain because I am a scalpel in some ways where Sam is like very to the point.

Sam Kirk (1:26:42)
Yeah.

John (1:26:53)
So I will take this very nice long roundabout path full of wines to get established rapport and comfort and stuff. And Sam's version of authenticity is like, well, I'm gonna waste my time doing that when I just give it to you. And it's the same fucking thing. We have the same exact value, but because of the approach, there was a level of like, I think we landed on, are we the same? Is this? And like, turns out great news, wonderful news. But sometimes you'll miss shot like that because your, whoop, like your guard will shoot up because of that thing Sam was talking about where it's perceived difference.

I guess the real takeaway that I want to talk about with this is like, this is also a crafting, like an ongoing craft thing. Like you will change these over your life and that's good. But the thing that Sam said earlier that this is, if you hear fucking nothing else from me, don't murder cats. But if you hear two things from me, don't murder cats and also know that when you get old, you will care more about the relationships you had than anything else that is unquestionably true.

And there's people who, when they get old, they're kind of like ready to go because they were like, yeah, no, I made a difference. I connected with people, the people that I knew I loved. They knew they loved me. I've done what I came here to do later. And that's awesome. They won humanity. They did the whole fucking game good to them. And people who are in the most distress, and I say this and I get like the bad goosebumps, but it makes me really sad. Like who are like, did I, did I do anything? Did I mean anything? Did I have any connections?

We're monkeys, we're a social species, we're supposed to do this. So even if you, listener, are a person who is hurt and you don't feel connection, that's okay. You deserve it and there are ways to it. Even if it's with just like a handful of people, that doesn't matter. That's totally fine. But don't, and I can't tell you your values, but I'm gonna, human connection is one of them to some degree. So you make your own choice, prove me wrong if you so need, if you can. But I do feel like,

Finding ways to share your values with other people is the best part about being alive. It feels fucking incredible. And if you'll pardon my incredible self-indulgence, it's why I'm so happy to do this show. I like to talk about helping people and connect with people. I get to do both here and that's just an absolute fucking joy. So thank you for watching and listening and thank you too for hanging out with me.

Sam Kirk (1:29:00)
Just to close things off, folks, here's your Zero Dot moment. Finding your why isn't about finding the perfect answer. Never has been. It's about asking the question, the important question, and you know what question that is over and over with honesty and authenticity and being true to yourself. And every time you ask, you get closer to yourself. That's what we're all about here at Zero Dot. Until next time, we'll see you next week for our next episode on cat murdering. Is that what we're doing?

John, is that our new mode?

John (1:29:27)
Yeah, that's the new thing. No,

Daniel (1:29:28)
Something

like that, yeah. We are now, yes. Yes, we are now entirely fixated on that, yes. ⁓

John (1:29:28)
we're anti-cat murder vigilantes. We find people and we skin them metaphorically and literally as per what they would do to cat. You know, it's a whole thing. It's gonna be a short-lived show. Yeah, we're going to prison. Someone's gonna die.

Sam Kirk (1:29:40)
It's a niche, it's a niche

within a niche within a niche niche, right? ⁓ Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel (1:29:43)
Yes.

John (1:29:43)
Give us feedback. If you like that,

can convert the show entirely. I'm ready to just do whatever you need. I'll sell out immediately. All of the value shit I've said lies.

Daniel (1:29:47)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Sam Kirk (1:29:50)
And speaking of feedback, if you have questions for us, You can find us on Blue Sky. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on YouTube. All places where podcasts are played. Let us know what you like, what you dislike. We'll probably ignore the stuff you dislike. You just keep doing it. But let us know anyway. We like being honest with ourselves, hence our authenticity aspect. And we'll see you next week.

Daniel (1:30:06)
Hmm.

John (1:30:10)
Bye. yeah.

Sam Kirk (1:30:10)
and we have a Patreon. you know, don't worry

Daniel (1:30:11)
Yes,

Sam Kirk (1:30:12)
about it. There's nothing special about the Patreon.

Daniel (1:30:12)
we have a Patreon. We are also showing in select Brazilian cinemas. We are not. Maybe one day, maybe one day. Let's contact Carlos,

Sam Kirk (1:30:17)
Yes.

Let's contact Carlos and see if he'll air one of our podcasts.

John (1:30:24)
be a banger.

want to let you know we've actually made the Patreon worse. If you recall last time I was telling you it's just a piece of shit. It's full of bloated adware now and malware and also like just unpleasant images that we will try to sear into your mind via strobe light. It smells bad in there because we left something and it's rotting and I can't find it anymore. But I talk like this in the whole Patreon so that might be false advertising. Don't do it. Don't. Don't fucking do it. Don't you

Sam Kirk (1:30:48)
Don't do it. Don't give us money.

Daniel (1:30:50)
Highly highly recommend

Sam Kirk (1:30:51)
Don't

Daniel (1:30:52)
against it

Sam Kirk (1:30:52)
access longer versions of these episodes. They're already too long as it is.

John (1:30:52)
Y-you.

Yeah, no, we can't shut up. You'll be rewarding our bad behavior and that would be just devastating for you.

Daniel (1:30:56)
Hmm.

Sam Kirk (1:31:00)
100%.