Quintus Curtius

This is a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Haunted Palace."

A reader asks a question. He has just been assigned to a new position of great responsibility. The previous occupant of this position was a man much older than he. Our friend feels slightly intimidated and inadequate for the new job. To complicate things, the previous holder of the position has not helped our friend, and has implied that he's too young. Our friend asks for some advice.

A young woman from a conservative culture asks a relationship question. She is very fond of her boyfriend, an American man. She wants to move things in the direction of marriage, but the young man is ambivalent. He keeps putting her off. She wants to know what she can do to deal with the situation.

A reader asks a question about the 1982 movie "First Blood." Why, he asks, was Sheriff Teasle so hostile to John Rambo? What could have been his reasons? We offer some explanation. We then move into another related subject: an opossum in my backyard, and how I dealt with it.

We should periodically "revisit" things that once meant something to us years earlier. Every 7 to 10 years or so, we grow significantly in outlook, perspective, and attitude. Things that once meant something to us, may mean something very different to us years later. This holds true of books, movies, individuals, and many other things. To measure how far you've progressed, revisit old things, and see how much you've changed. I discuss two movies, and how my view of them has changed in the intervening decades.

Some guys think that they need to wait for some magical confluence of circumstances to exist before they can pursue their goals. The world doesn't work like this. Sometimes you have to announce yourself, declare your purpose openly, and let your will shape the environment to your own purposes. You're never going to receive anyone's permission. We use the example of Charles De Gaulle in 1940.

Our minds often play tricks on us. We come to believe things are much worse than they really are. Once we get through what we're worried about, we realize that things were not as bad as we thought--and we also realize that things ended in a way that was different from what we expected.

At the end of the movie "The Maltese Falcon," Sam Spade explains his personal code to Mary Astor. He tells her, "When your partner is killed, you're supposed to do something about it. It doesn't matter what you thought of him. You're supposed to do something about it..." When problems exist, you have to do something. Running away to live a life of narcissism and selfishness is not what men do. This applies to our personal lives, our work lives, and the problems that face our nation. If a problem exists, you have to deal with it. Because if you don't, no one else will.

This podcast is a reading of the text of the Declaration of Independence, one of the keystone documents of the American Revolution.

One of John Paul Jones's leadership principles was this: don't accept "half-confidences" from people. This means that if you are in charge, you have a right to expect people to give you a reasonable chance at doing the job. If you are being constantly questioned, undermined, micromanaged, and doubted, then your superiors or your people are not giving you their full confidence. You need to take steps to assert your control.