The Troubadour Podcast

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How do you tell a child that he is dying?This poem terrified me. It made me never want to have a child. What if this were to happen to my child? Literature cannot solve all of our problems, but it can be a salve to many of them. In talking to my old high school friend, Dr. Lamar Johnson, about this emotional issue, I came to appreciate the grandiosity of life and our role in society. Dr Johnson is a pediatrician who has to think about how to deliver terrible news to people. How do you cope? How do you convey this experience? For me, it was a cathartic moment. That's poetry.Dr. Johnson and I conversed with the verse. And we also talked more broadly about life, philosophy, how to tell the truth, race relations, culture and oh so much more.

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A Physics teacher and I converse with William Ernest Henley's beautiful poem, Invictus.We converse in depth with this poem and I learn a lot from Alex.One big question we cover is "what is a terrible event that has occurred to you and how did you overcome it?"

A Physics teacher and I converse with William Ernest Henley's beautiful poem, Invictus.

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This was my first LIVE IN-PERSON interview and I had a blast. I hope Jake had a blast too!We talked about a lot. Our poem was "A Poison Tree" by William Blake. (yaaay JAKE chose BLAKE!) We opened the discussion with some spiked egg-nog and the mass exodus from blue states to red and then discussed why Jake, like myself, is a poetry hater.Then we dug deep to investigate why this poem in particular spoke to a cloistered West Texas boy.We got into the problems with building your life around a fake persona, the masks we wear and how they destroy us, the destructive power of repression and even some movie recommendations.*Full disclaimer: Listening to this I must apologize to Jake because I was quite loopy. I was at the beginning stages of a fever and had only gotten around 4 hours sleep the night before. In a desire to be at the top of my game I downed two caps of dayquil a few hours before his arrival. Oh then I drank a red bull right before he arrived. Oh and then we had bourbon... So if I'm more loopy than normal, now you know why.

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Tonight I read "Twas the Night before Christmas." Why did the Protestant Reformers, The New England Puritans and the Communist Soviets all HATE Christmas and St Nick? They squashed it and did all they could to bury it. Yet in America it took hold and morphed into something special.Often, to understand an idea we must see what happens when our enemies destroy it. This does happen in history. This is not a podcast about the war on Christmas. Instead, it is an episode about how the magic was taken away, and how I hope to help you bring it back.

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On this mini episode I read the classic Ogden Nash Christmas poem about the mischievous Jabez Dawes. Don't be an uncivil mean little brute like boy Dawes!

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We all know that person. That person, who, no matter what you do, they just will not stop smiling!Brad Beck is one of those people. He's a career salesman, and he's made a mantra out of optimism. In fact he changed his title from "National Sales Manager" to Director of YES! And that really speaks to the soul of Brad Beck.Brad and I are not psychologists any more than we are literature experts. We're salesmen. We may not have all the theory, but Brad has spent a great career as a full time salesman, and he'll tell you that no character trait is more important to a salesperson than optimism.In fact, he believes it's the most important traits in humans. This is where we have a great conversation about optimism, what it is, how to use it, but most importantly, when you should be negative. We discussed the value of negative emotions and the danger of being overly optimistic.This was a fun one for me and I hope you enjoy it too!

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Feminists today are attacking one of my favorite songs. They are also making up nonsensical words like "rapey."In this conversation my friend Amy Chou and I converse with both the song Baby it's Cold Outside and the classic poem by William Blake "The Garden of Love."Feminists should stay away from this one.

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Poem: "Gunga Din" By Rudyard KiplingGunga Din is a "blackfaced crewman" who brings water to British troops in "Injia" If any of those words seemed racist and offend you, by god you had better run for the hills! That is only the beginning. Just Google these two words "Racist Poetry," And Gunga DIn is one of the top poems selected by El Google.If words can "trigger" someone and make them uncomfortable or even violent, then almost all of the words in literature and poetry must be condemned. This is a poem that may trigger some people. It may make you uncomfortable. But progress by its nature requires discomfort. We cannot grow our muscles by sitting in a locked room staring at a wall and protecting our arms "The metal is too harsh!"In this story, a soldier tells the tale of a water bearer he met in India, while the British soldiers were battling some native savages. Go on the journey of discovery with this soldier as he begins to question his own assumptions. Perhaps, you will question yours too.

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Today my friend Chase Abendschein and I talk about the poem The Road Not Taken, which is one of those poems that people who know a little bit about poetry love to school others on. "ACTUALLY that poems is about..." Chase is a salesmen, like a super salesman. He works in global enterprise sales, meaning he sells to major major corporations. But he loves this poem and he enjoys poetry. He's not trained in it, as I'm not trained in it. So we go off on some ridiculous tangents that I hope you'll enjoy.The HighlightsBelly ScratchersBilly Goats, Beers, and kissing babes at the tops of mountainsFree will and DeterminismChris Farley and Patrick Stewart (?) on SNLAnton Chigurh and Twoface from "No Country For Old Men," and "The Dark Knight"Bananas and strippersThe narrative voice of Robert FrostThe life choices we make and how to feel good about themBill Bradley and Bill Braskey (SNL again...)And throughout we are conversing with the verse by Robert Frost.Lots of fun and ridiculousness peppered with deep insights about an iconic poem.Enjoy!