 Welcome to Forty University, back to a favorite book of mine, back with my friend Richard. We're talking about the Gerald Munders book, Earn What You Deserve, How to Stop Underearning and Start Driving. So how can someone figure out if they're an under-owner? This is something that is self-diagnosed. There's no necessarily objective third-party test where a doctor is going to tell you that you're an under-owner, but for me I think the easiest way to figure out if you might have some sort of addiction operating in your life is looking at where your life might be unmanageable. So if you're consistently not earning enough money to meet your needs, then it seems to me that your life is likely unmanageable with regard to earning. And if you're consistently running out more debts than are in your best interests, then your life seems to be unmanageable with regard to deading. If you are consistently having chaotic and distracting and disruptive and degrading relationships, then your life is probably unmanageable with regard to relationships and there's maybe some sort of process addiction with regard to relationships. So here's one little section of this book by Gerald Munders that I love, Earn What You Deserve, How to Stop Underearning and Start Thriving. Pain is the messenger. It tells you that something is wrong. So that's one more concise way of saying what I was saying. Look for where your life is unmanageable and if your life is unmanageable, you likely have some sort of addiction operating there. What do you think, Richard? Well, some people like pain. So that doesn't always work for everybody, but sooner or later the pain will get amped up enough to where they might want to deal with it. But certainly in the AA big book, there are stories of people who, nothing helped them. They just kept going. But yeah, I would say yes. But the average person, that idea that my life is becoming unmanageable in some way that's really uncomfortable, yeah. I would say that is how, that's a good way to recognize that something needs to be done. If your foot's throbbing, you probably would go to the doctor. I'm saying if you had a pain in your side that just wouldn't go away, you probably would go to the doctor. But it's funny when it comes to emotional pain, we have different levels of willingness to deal with that because it depends on what you consider normal. I'd heard about under-owners anonymous and debtors anonymous and financial under-owners anonymous for years before I ever showed up. I first went to a 12-step program for issues related to sex and love addiction, but my computer broke down in May of 2015, six months after I bought this brand new computer. And so I had evenings free. And so I'd been talking about checking out under-owners anonymous and debtors anonymous. But now I finally had a free evening. So I drove down to Highland Park and checked out a meeting. And I walked into the room and it was a really nice place. It was a classy church in Highland Park, which is a nice neighborhood in Los Angeles. And I liked the feel of the people. And then it was a vision meeting. So very early on in the meeting, we all got to share 30 seconds on our vision. And that was incredibly exciting. So I started feeling energy flowing into me. And then as the meeting progressed and I heard the steps and the tools, I thought I can do this. And so that was exciting. So the shared focus of attention with the room. I liked the room. I was able to relate to what people were sharing. I was getting a sense of energy. I was getting a sense of community and realizing, hey, every day, pretty much, I can go to a debtors anonymous meeting or an under-owners anonymous meeting or a financial under-owners anonymous meeting, some sort of 12-step program dealing with finances. So I have found my tribe. I have found a community. And there are people here that I like. There was one guy I met on early on who was a standup comic who I'd met at a previous engagement that had nothing to do with 12 steps. It was a Jewish engagement. And he was reading a political book that I liked. So he was a guy that I liked on many different levels. So I like the people on many different levels. I saw I could make friends in the program. I saw that I feel comfortable with the community in the program. And I listened to the steps and the tools in the program. And I say, hey, this can work for me. So this gave me a sense of energy. And then with the energy, I immediately went out and here's where my ego served me. I wanted to show people how I was implementing the program to turn around my life and my shares. And so I immediately went out looking for a better job. So my sense of enthusiasm for the program was infectious for other people. And then I was able to learn from their experience. Yeah, we were all crazy, but we were crazy in different ways. It's not like there's just one way to underrun. So that's a little bit about how I came to realize I had a problem with underwriting. How did you realize you had a problem with underwriting? OK, well, my first program was actually debtors anonymous. And I went to my first debtors anonymous meeting in October of 1999. And the catalyst for that was I was $70,000 in credit card debt. I'd been working with a business. And I was using my credit card to fund their business because I was supposedly a partner, but there was the lack of clarity about that. And it became clear that the debts were all mine. And that wasn't a workable situation. So my life was very unmanageable at that moment in time. And it's so funny. And I don't even know where this came from. It was just some people call it a debt shot. Some people just would say, hey, when the student is ready, the teacher shows up. But I thought to myself, there must be a 12-step program for this problem. And I went to the phone book. And once you know it, I opened up. There it is, debtors anonymous. And so I called up, and I got this lovely, lovely woman named Tina, Tina D. And she talked to me about the program. And I showed up at my first meeting. And the experience that I had was I was in a lot of pain. My wife was furious. My mom was upset because I'd used one of her credit cards too. I mean, it was really, in the big book, they talk about self-will running riot. Well, certainly I had done that. I wanted to have that business work at any cost, and quite literally. So, but I was operating in ways that were sabotaging what I was doing. And so it really came to a head like that. So I'd go to my first meeting. And I'm just, you know, I'm just really in pain. I'm uncomfortable. I'm feeling isolated. I'm feeling angry and scared and just all those things. And I just start listening to people. And, you know, the things they were talking about made so much sense to me. It was like when I came in there, you know, my whole mind was a swirl of darkness. And all of a sudden it was like little lights get shined on into that darkness going, oh, that's what that is. Oh, that's what that is. All of a sudden I had a name or something that I never had a name for before, but it hadn't been operating in me that I really didn't even know. But all of a sudden I got this framework for, oh, I can do this. And I, you know, I got a great job like within a couple of weeks. And it was one of the best jobs I'd ever had. And, you know, that process continued for a while. And so that was my first exposure, a 12 step. Under earners anonymous, you know, it would be nice if we just got well and that was the end of it. And I know a lot of people come into program thinking, oh yeah, I've worked the steps and non-cured. And I've talked to lots of people and had lots of experience with others that go, well, that approach really doesn't seem to work. It seems to work is that what they described in the big book that this is a blueprint for living. And that you practice these principles in all your affairs. And really for me, that's gonna be true for the rest of my life. And the people that I know who are successful in program. And even people who are not necessarily in program but who are successful in life have a very similar attitude about that as I knew. This is how it works. This is what I know to be proven though I've tried other things. I'm just gonna stick with that. I'm just gonna keep going with that. I'm gonna keep trusting that. But as far as meeting people that I related to, yeah, it was just, it was a real pleasure to just be around people that I could talk to the stuff about this stuff with that would, first of all, would listen. That was one of the difficulties in church that I found is that you could talk about this a little bit but if you talked about it too much people didn't wanna hear it. They kinda tune you out and go, well, just ask God to help you or we'll pray over you and everything will be okay. One thing I know is that there are times in life where you cannot pray your way out of something you behaved your way into. You really have to change the way you behave. And my experience is that I needed help doing that. And even though, let's say for example, in debtors anonymous, about eight years into that I got a credit card, I maxed it out again. So it's like, I fell off the wagon and but learned from that that, now what I say is I never met a credit card. I didn't max out. And I know we were talking the other day you talked about something I recoil from. Well, that's definitely something I recoil from. And that's a healthy response. But in terms of debtors anonymous in terms of under earners anonymous brother you got really clear. I got that statement that you get from the social security administration about what your social security benefits will be. And it lists how much you earn every year for your working years. And I looked at that and they added it up and I swallowed hard and I went, oh my gosh, I'm an under earner. And so I started going to UA meetings after that. So my first money related 12 step program was debtors anonymous. And there are more debtors anonymous meetings and under earners anonymous. It's a much bigger fellowship. My first under earners anonymous meeting I walked in to the room and met some guy who I would see repeatedly in the program or here on the phone who was incredible high achiever. And I mean, the things that this guy has accomplished you would never think he was an under earner but had a very interesting life story. The first speaker was amazing. A guy who graduated from like premier university and was doing very exciting things that have a lot of prestige. And then 10 years later he was doing completely menial work. And often he'd run into people that he used to know in a pristine when he was on top of the world. And like he's thinking like what the hell happened? And his girlfriend got him into under earners anonymous. So the first lead speaker was incredible. And then I remember there was this like really cute girl in the meeting and she was wearing this really short skirt. And so I was thinking to myself, what am I gonna learn of a spiritual nature from this cute girl in a short skirt? And she was like sitting in an elevated part of the room. She was like sitting on the stage. And I'm like, I'm looking at this girl. I'm even seeing quite a lot of her legs. And when it came time for her to share, it was amazing share. She talked about the stench of under earning and how she can now pick up the whiff of under earning on people and unless they're in recovery, she just runs from it. I've never forgotten her share. And I've completely written her off because she was cute and wearing a short skirt. And so I then discovered these amazing phone meetings in under earners anonymous, which was just a wonderful supplement to my life. And so I start getting on phone meetings. I start hitting a daily meeting, either debt is anonymous or under earners anonymous or some other 12 step program related to these issues. And it took me about three years to get a sponsor. I initially allowed my favorite 12 step phone meeting under earners anonymous phone meeting to sponsor me. And I just get on that meeting every day and I'd write down things that I learned from that meeting and then implement them. And I think most people who entered 12 step recovery, we are not so thrilled about getting a sponsor because we have issues with authority. Like if we didn't have issues with authority, we wouldn't be under earners. And so eventually I heard someone talk who I respected. So I heard various people say they're open for sponsorship but I didn't particularly respect them. But once I heard someone who I respected, then off I went and eventually I got two different sponsors, three different sponsors in the program. So I learned significantly from each one of them. What was it like for you getting a sponsor? Now, in UA, let me speak to that experience. I wanna mention just one thing that's so fascinating. This is one of the things I liked about Gerald Mundus' book. And it's probably worth noting this book was written in 1995, which was four years before I even got into debtor's anonymous. Interesting point. But I like, he says to under earn is repeatedly to gain less income than you need or then would be beneficial, usually for no apparent reason and despite your desire to do otherwise. I'm not, I do wanna get to the question as I'm not deflecting, but I think that definition is actually important because one of the things that I noticed in meetings is that that definition doesn't always get made very clear. I think it's not clear to a lot of people in the fellowship. Now, I happen to think that that's one of the roles of a sponsor is that with a sponsor you get this one-on-one relationship where they know you, they get to know your stuff and they get to call you out on your stuff when you might not otherwise be willing, which I hadn't done many times. My journey to a sponsor in UA went something like this. The first couple of years, I had a couple of what we call action partners that's someone you meet with on a determined and regular basis and you talk about what's going on and you promise to do certain actions and then you'll follow through on those actions or not and if you don't follow through, you say, hey, I didn't follow through and I'm gonna recommit to that and do that so it's like an accountability partnership and I had a couple of those and those were helpful and I went to meetings, but I wasn't what would have suggested actively seeking sponsorship. As a result of that, I had what I would consider as a profound bottom in program. In other words, I hit a situation where my earning just went down and down and down. I sabotaged a major client due to the mechanics of how I thought about people and how I thought about earning and how I thought about myself and it really got my attention. So at that point, I started going to the, they have a basic recovery meeting, back to basics they call it and that's actually based on the Alcoholics Anonymous back to basics program, which was actually a program compiled by a guy named Wally P and he's out of Arizona and he was an historian for Alcoholics Anonymous and he went back and he just kind of researched the history of AA and what he found is they had these beginners meetings and before you could actually go to an open AA meeting, they had to go through these beginners meeting and in fact, you were assigned two guys who would take you to those meetings and then once you attended those four, basically they have four one-hour meetings that went through all the 12 steps. It was not really working the steps per se, although you did have an experience of that but it was more like an orientation like, this is what the program is. Kind of like, this is the program, the whole program and nothing but the program so that there was no clarity around that or so there was no, rather no, there was no mistaking what the program was and so I, and UA actually has a series that it has those meetings. There was one that met once a week and so I attended that and I've had a group of people that a couple of women and another guy and we worked together and we kind of liked that and this one guy said, hey look, let's try something. I did this meeting format every day for 90 days and my life changed dramatically. So we actually started to do that and actually there's a meeting, a basic recovery meeting that meets four days a week and go through the steps once a week in that same basic, back to basics or basic recovery format and that meeting still going on six years later. It's a great little meeting but in the course of that, I wanted to form an action group with one of the people from that and somebody else and I was just talking one and another and I asked the guy, hey, you didn't want to be a part of the action group and I said, well, what do you think? Would you be willing to sponsor me? And it wasn't necessarily that I liked anything that he had. I just liked the fact that it was another guy. UA tends to be somewhat estrogen heavy as they say. And so I asked him and we kind of danced for about a month before he committed and he wanted to get to know me, wanted to see if I followed directions. He asked me to do some things and I went ahead and then I did them and I wanted to, I knew I needed to have someone sponsor me. I knew I needed to work through the steps really carefully and really thoroughly, which I had done in a variety of different ways, both in Elinon and in debtors anonymous, but I just knew I needed to do that in a fresh way and in a deeper way. And what's interesting is that, this wasn't something that I was, that I heard his shares and was attracted to, although I hadn't actually heard him on meetings and I've come to think of it, I did usually like where he was coming from, but I didn't necessarily connect the two of them at first. But what's interesting is my issue with authority stems directly from my dad and this guy, man, it's like having my dad sponsor me, because he would say some of the kind of stuff my dad would say like, he'd just be kind of, he'd just been kind of hard-nosed on stuff, but it was what I needed. And in particular, it was what I needed because so many of my under-earning issues, and for me, the kind of root of my under-earning is a fear of responsibility. That's really what it turns out that it is. And that was connected to this fear, discomfort and lack of connection I had with my dad, who, as in most young men's life, was a symbol for me of what responsibility looks like. And he made it look really unpleasant and really not fun at all. That was the way he played it out in his own life. So that was the example he had. So it wasn't particularly attractive to me to be responsible. But so I found my sponsor, we took about two and a half years to work through the steps and I completed the steps and now I sponsor people all the time. I basically take a very similar approach to when I sponsor people. I don't agree right away. I get to know somebody. I actually have them sign an agreement that they said, that says, you're gonna work all steps when you get to the fourth step and things start to get kind of rough. You're not gonna tap out. You're gonna stay involved. After you're done, you're gonna be willing to sponsor other people in program. And there's some other things there, but that's basically the gist of it. I remember one program, I was so desperate for a sponsor. I asked this woman, psychic, if she would sponsor me. And she said, well, let's pray on it for a week. And so I came back a week later and said, yeah, I'm eager to do the work. And she said, well, I don't think we're a good fit. So a psychic turned me down. I mean, that's, can you believe a psychic turned me down? I even turned to a psychic for sponsorship in one program and she turned me down. Wow. I mean. Well, some days, sometimes rejection is protection, right? Yes. I mean, another sponsor, I had to get up at 4 a.m. That was the only time that she had available. So for about nine months every week, I was getting up at 4 a.m. to talk to her. And we weren't exactly fond of each other, but we got through the steps. Let me read an excerpt here from this excellent book by Gerald Mundus, Earn What You Deserve, How to Stop Under-earning and Start Thriving. It's the unofficial book of programs like that as anonymous, under-earners anonymous and financial under-earners anonymous. So the first step in freeing yourself from under-earning is to accept responsibility for the problem. This does not mean it is your fault. So I tell my sponsors, you don't have to beat yourself down for being an under-earner. You didn't ask to be an under-earner. And thank you, Josh Randall for the $10 Super Chat. My name is Josh and I am a fully recovered under-earner. Congratulations, Josh. But I emphasize to my sponsor, you don't have to beat yourself down because you're a porn addict. You don't have to beat yourself down because you have an addiction, right? You didn't ask for this addiction. Now it is your responsibility to get healthy so that you stop damaging yourself and other people, but you don't have to feel ashamed that you're an under-earner. You did not choose to be an under-earner. And this is not a condition that you wanted. It's not a condition that you deliberately bought upon yourself. And you may be completely justified in thinking that you were neglected or your abuse somehow as a child, that you were inculcated with all sorts of self-destructive habits. Essentially, any addiction means that your reward system in your brain is not working right. And recovery in any program essentially means that you're rewiring your brain so that your responses to stimuli are responses that serve you rather than hurt you. And so you learn to recoil from your acting out in addiction, as you would from a hot stove. So if you're an alcoholic, the thought of taking a drink of alcohol, you should recoil from that as though you're about to touch a hot stove. If you're an under-earner, you should recoil from the prospect of taking a day off work to do something that's not gonna bring you in any income. If you need the money, if you have debts, then that type of behavior is under-earning. And just running the prospect through your mind should cause you to recoil. I remember in my 20s, I got terribly depressed because I'd run certain prospects through my mind and I realized that I'd give everything away for sex. That there was nothing that I held higher than sex. The possibility of sex with a beautiful woman and I would dissipate everything, give away everything, sacrifice everything. And it was just incredibly depressing to me. So now when I still run all sorts of scenarios through my head, but it's really a depressing experience because when I run through these scenarios that would involve acting out in my addiction, these scenarios are repellent to me as if we're touching a hot stove. Anything I just said you want to comment on, Richard? Yeah, I know we've talked about this other times before. Really what we do is we rewire. I like to describe it that we're retraining our instincts which the big book says our instincts are good, they're God-given, they're a great thing, but they can get distorted and most of the problems we have are because those instincts are operating in a way other than they were designed to help us or benefit us. They've been co-opted by some other idea about what's important. Of course, you have to retrain that. That's not something you just wave a magic wand and it goes away. Now, earlier we mentioned that this recoiling from under-earning and I love the clarity with which he defines this. He says, if you're earning less than you need and that's a recurring pattern, that's under-earning. It's very clear. It's not all the other things that surround that. Although here's how he says that there are many issues related to the problem of under-earning, but they're not the problem itself. The beginning of wisdom goes an old Chinese epigram is to call things by their right name. To under-earn is to gain less money than you need. Other issues which contribute to under-earning or result from it are part of the syndrome of under-earning, but that clarity is really important and alcoholic is like, yeah, I don't take that first drink. For me as a debtor, yeah, I don't use a credit card. Period, I recoil from that. It's just not something I do. It's not in my book, quite literally. And when you hang out in the rooms a lot, you see not everybody comes to that conclusion right away. It'd be nice if they did, it'd be nice for them if they did, but the truth is, I've seen plenty of people and my wife's also in the beverage program. She's in a, people come in and out, they come in, they're sober for six weeks or six months and they go out again, then they come back again, they go out again, because they really haven't got this clear recoil, really established. And everyone's a little different. Everyone takes time to establish that. My wife was fortunate. She hasn't had a drink in 17 years. So she hasn't really gone through that. And of course, it's one day at a time and we do have to do it one day at a time. I think it's a funny trap about things like that is that one of the things that when you're stuck in a compulsion, it's like, I like doing this thing. Like if you're an alcoholic, you like drinking. Frankly, I like charging stuff in a car because I get what I want when I want it. I don't have to do the hard work of working for it or talk to other people about what I should do with this financial situation. Maybe I didn't want to deal with those discomforts or people just don't want to deal with whatever it is is painful or uncomfortable. And then they go, okay, well, I want to stop this but I'll stop tomorrow and I'll just do it today. And that can go on for 20 years. So it's really that clear. I'm not doing this one thing just for one day at a time. Just for today, I'm not going to do the same because that's the trap. It's like, I really want to do this. I should stop and should, you know, as something should as more of an obstacle than it is, than it is a benefit. Should is usually an indication that we have a conflict. Well, I should do this but I really want to do this. And so the should is what we rationalize. So we feel that we're good people but we do what we want to do anyway. And so I think a lot of times when an addict continues in a pattern, even though they want to quit they're shouldn't all over themselves. Well, I shouldn't be doing this. I should stop doing this. But so I think that clarity of what the threshold is is so important. It's so important to have that threshold be really clear. It helped me to picture my various addictions as a sword above my neck that could effectively cut off my head. I remember losing my temper when I was driving and realizing afterward that I could have easily, you know, provoked a deadly situation. So under running can kill you. It can make you live and work and travel in very unsafe parts of town. It can lead you into destructive relationships with people that can alienate those around you because no normal sane person wants to hang out with an under owner. So this was one of the most painful parts of my recovery with regard to under running was just recognizing the full extent of the damage left behind in my life because a sane person is not going to want to be connected or hang out with an under owner. You would recoil from an under owner as if from a hot stove. And so seeing the extent of my dysfunction over the course of my life and then all the opportunities that were then missed because no sane person is going to want to hang out with an under owner. Any thoughts, Richard? Yeah, my sponsor actually said that to me. You know, I was talking about a situation and said, yeah, they could smell your under running. It's exactly what he said. And yeah, that's true. People always know what's going on with us. They sense it. They may not be able to articulate it. They may not be able to call it by a name. They may not even be consciously aware of it, but they pick up on it and they always do. And that can be any number of things, not only under earning. I think that applies to everything. But since we're having a conversation about under earning, it definitely applies to under earning. Here's an excerpt from this Gerald Mendes book, Own What You Deserve. Underowners evade, avoid and deflect money like running backs, hurtling toward the goal line of poverty. Touchdown. Do not say no to money. Do not evade it. Do not avoid it. Do not deflect it. Let money into your life. Talk about money that meets the two criteria of money that is not debt and money that is not less than you need. Don't go out and work for $3 an hour. If it satisfies both of these criteria, then do not say no to it. And one of the ways that we frequently say no to money is by not following up. And another way that we say no to money is when we're given an opportunity that isn't exactly what we seek. So I remember various people have approached me to counsel them. I have no training in counseling, but so I just evaded, evaded. No, I can't counsel you. But then when we change the terminology to coaching, it's like, oh yeah, I can coach you. I can coach you. I coach people in my Alexander Technique practice for $100 an hour. So if you want me to coach you in some area of life that you think I know something about, yeah, I'll coach you for the same fee that I teach Alexander Technique. So we often evade money by not following up. We evade money because the opportunities are not what exactly we expected. We don't think, oh, this is not in my very narrow frame. So I knew somebody who was not interested in any earning of money, there was not Bible-based counseling. And there's not a huge market for Bible-based counseling. So people often think, oh, unless I'm making this money a particular way, then I'm not interested. Any thoughts, Richard? That's, I love that. Because that's really indicative of what addicts do in general. They're unwilling to accept life on life's terms. In other words, whatever the idea they have in their head, that's what they operate from. That idea that we have in our heads, that idea I had in my head, many years ago, I was delivering newspapers, just after I graduated college. And I had this one customer around, it was a music editor. Okay, very well known music editing company. They're still around to the evening today. That was more than 40 years ago. And they liked me and I liked them and the guy said, hey, why don't you come and work for us and I'll teach you how to be a music editor? Now, the under-earner kicked in at that point. Somehow or the my reality, my reality said, wait a minute, that would be betraying my employer. What? But that's what I thought. And I literally, I didn't even, I didn't discuss it. I didn't do anything. I just went, oh, that's not a good idea. And just moved on. I have to say, and it does say in program, we neither regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. But when I revisit that, that incident every once in a while, I go, yeah, that's really not something I wanna do again. You know, I really wanna stay open to when somebody suggests something to me, you know, rather than idea deflected, which is kind of a term we use, you know, as a symptom of under-earned that we deflect ideas that are presented to us, that might actually be very good. Most of the time, most of my experience with what's happened in life is the things that happen to me for me that are good, usually don't show up the way I think they should, the way I think they will, or in anything like that. It's that willingness to, you know, be relational, to listen to what people are saying, to talk it over with other people and just kind of get a sense of, oh, what's really going on with this before I make any decisions about that? That's something that program has definitely taught me. Because I know that between my ears, that's a really dangerous neighborhood. If I hang out there, I will get mugged and robbed. That's what's gonna happen. So, you know, and that deflecting of opportunities that present themselves, because they don't fit the picture we've constructed of who we are or the picture we've constructed of what life is, that's ultimately unhealthy. Although, obviously a neuroscience will tell us we do construct our view of reality from all the feedback we get. Nevertheless, we're also responsible for making sure that that's actually aligned to what's actually going on around us and what's actually beneficial to us in order for our own survival. Now, someone could be an itinerant street preacher. They might be 33 years of age. They might be living with their family. They might just be devoting all their life to preaching on the street and developing, say, disciples. And they may simply bring in enough money to pay their basic needs. That does not inherently mean they're an under-owner. They're under-earning if their insides vastly discrepancy from their outsides, if they're engaging in self-destructive behavior, if they're unnecessarily hurting other people, then these would be signs that you've got some sort of compulsion going on. But if you're living an upstanding life and you may be living at home and you may be devoting your life to street preaching or to painting or to all sorts of activities that have no prestige. But if you're generally a blessing to people who are encounter you, if you are at ease with yourself, if you're not hiding things, if you're making a contribution to the world, you're not necessarily an under-earning. You could be a playwright earning $22,000 a year and living with your grandparents and you're not necessarily an under-earner if you are leading an upright life where it's not a life that's filled with dirty shameful secrets. Any thoughts, Richard? Well, I want to break, because we're really looking at Gerald's book, I want to bring it back to the definition of under-earning. And let's go back to this guy who's in some kind of ministry. He lives with his grandmother. He earns $22,000 a year. However, he has food on the table, all his bills are paid, he has clothes to wear. And basically all of his material needs are met on a regular basis. And I'm going to repeat what Mundus's definition of under-earning is. To under-earn is repeatedly to gain less income than you need or then would be beneficial, usually for no apparent reason and despite your desire to do otherwise. Now, for no apparent reason and your desire to do otherwise, those are really big indicators right there. If you think about that, you want to do more, you try to do more. In fact, some under-earners work really hard and they still don't earn enough. They're working 60 hours a week and they work three jobs and they still don't earn enough. That's under-earning. And I love the way he describes it, that you can earn what you need in a humane way. I like that description of it. It's very helpful. But some of the things you were describing before don't really count as under-earning in the strictest sense. And again, I think it's actually valuable to have that clarity, to have the clarity that under-earning is not earning enough money to meet your needs. And I used to say at one point, under-earning is just deading in slow motion because sooner or later, if you under-earn, you will get into debt sooner or later. And if you have the inclinations I did, you'll get a credit card and go, whoopee, I can take care of all this now. And that did not serve me. And it was not helpful to the people around me either. So here's another passage from Gerald Mundus. Active under-earning involves doing something that results in under-earning from quitting a job, to setting low fees, to turning down work. And thank you, Josh, for the $10 Super Chat. Big book fear mini-step. We ask God to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be. This has been a superpower for me. Yes, there is a lot of energy and power that comes from aligning with God, with higher power. And I find it useful to use different names, to use different words, because if I hear the same thing over and over again, it tends to lose its meaning. So I've heard all my life about developing a relationship with God. I've heard it so often that it ceased to have meaning for me. So I like the different language of having a relationship with reality. And I believe in God, I believe in a personal God, I believe in a transcendent God who's described it in the Hebrew Bible. But I like different approaches to the divine. So it could be, I have friends who are atheists, and if they decide to define God as the best part, the best in themselves and in other people, like as long as it's higher than you, it can work. But let me get back just a little bit here from Gerald Mundus. Active under-earning involves doing something that results in under-earning, from quitting a job, to setting low fees, to turning down work. With my sponsors, the primary issue, as I understand it, is that they are simply not very interested in working. That they want to work on their book, they want to work on their, I don't know, stand-up routine, they wanna be thought leaders. They're not particularly interested in being of service to anyone else. They wanna be famous, they wanna be rich, but they're not particularly interested in being of service. They're just not particularly interested in being a worker among workers. Any thoughts, Richard? Yeah, that's a big one. I'll relate to it first, just from my own experience, as someone in program, what I wanted from being famous or being rich was to write all of the relational wrongs that I had. In other words, I sort of had this conversation going on in my head whenever somebody would belittle me or betray me or abandon me, or do something that took the relationship apart in a way that was uncomfortable or painful to me. I just sort of, without even really thinking, I said, one day, when I'm rich and famous, you'll be sorry that you did that. You'll be sorry you're treating me that way. And I'll run into you and you'll ask for help and I'll go, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, or something along those lines. And at some point, and I saw this by seeing it and other people would also recognize it in myself, a lot of times when people are pursuing something like that, like a vision that isn't necessarily healthy for them or isn't necessarily producing what they want, it's because they're hiding from something that they're not willing to deal with. And this is a rationalization that allows them to feel good about themselves. Well, I'm doing this, I'm really a good person. It's just if only the world would acknowledge that and start paying me for that. And if I keep at it, they will eventually. And you can kind of go that track with it. But what I've noticed in program is that as I've, as I work the steps, my willingness to become a worker among workers or even to see myself as that, or even to see that we're all pretty much in the same boat when it comes to being in the human condition. Some people earn more than others, but that really isn't the issue. And in fact, there was something he said about time. Let me grab that. Lissy was a family, he said, first, begin by recognizing that your time as the time of a human being is neither more valuable nor less valuable than your partner's time. Your earning power per hour or day may be different, but the absolute value of that hour or day as a unit of time is not. Your time as the time of a human being is worth exactly the same as your partner. One hour equals one hour, regardless of who works it or how much he or she can command for it on the market. And I think that kind of gets down to that, whereas if you, for example, think, well, if this guy makes more money than me, so he's better than me. And I don't want to ask for his time because he's time to be valuable in life. Well, that's not true. That's, in essence, what he's saying. So... I don't want to spend too much time on religion, but let's do two minutes. Judaism, Christianity, you have, I think, contrasting attitudes towards wealth. There's very little praise of the state of poverty. In Judaism, there seems to be considerable praise for the state of poverty in Christianity. Of course, in the popular mind, Jews and Christians are thought to have somewhat different attitudes towards money. You highlighted a passage here from Gerald Mundus, which I'll read aloud. Many venerable spiritual traditions, at least in some of their teachings, suggest that eschewing money possessions and other things of this world can be beneficial and is perhaps even necessary to spiritual development. On the other hand, every tradition places great value on helping to eliminate poverty or the ravages of poverty from the world, which would hardly be the case if poverty were in itself ennobling or beneficial. So you want to take a couple of minutes to talk about Christianity's relationship to money? Well, I'm not sure I'm an authority on that, but... You highlighted it, so I'm giving it to you. You highlighted it. Well, what I highlighted was this idea that some people have that money is the root of all evil. I'm sure you've heard that statement. A million, billion times. Okay. That is actually misquoting what the apostle Paul said. He didn't say that money is the root of all evil. Now, if that were true, if that was a Christian understanding that money is the root of all evil, then yeah, you should absolutely recoil from money because if that's the root of all evil and you don't want anything to do with it. And that would be go look at a guy like St. Francis and say, well, yeah, of course, that's what we should all do. But the thing for St. Francis is, as Gerald Mundus points out, he had money. He came from a very wealthy family and he said, I don't want to do this because I don't like the kind of life it has me leave. I just don't want to do that. And he's actually, that sort of parallels Buddha in that tradition as well. It was also from a very, very wealthy family and decided, well, I didn't want that. No, that's very different. But what the apostle Paul said, he said, now, godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into this world and that certainly carry nothing out. Having food and clothing with which we can be content. And that means just being grateful for, to me, that means be grateful for what you have. Okay, but those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. That's what he said. Now, that's very different than that money is not inherently evil any more than a gun is inherently evil. A gun is dangerous when it's in the hands of a dangerous person. When it's in the hands of a law officer, you know, it's a tool for bringing order. When it's in the hands of a soldier, it's a tool for defending, you know, or in a homeowner when someone breaks into his house. But in the hands of a serial killer, well, yeah, it's gonna be a very evil thing but it has nothing to do with the gun itself. The gun is neutral. Money is precisely the same way. It's neutral, but it will reflect and does reflect who you are. I've said this many times to sponsor you as money is a magnifier. It makes you more of whatever it is you already are. I think that's true. That insight really came out of working with a lot of, I spent a number of years as a contractor and I had the opportunity to work with a lot of wealthy people. So I saw firsthand how people with lots of money, what they're like, how they dealt with money and how they dealt with other people. And I saw some wealthy people. Got one guy I worked with as a big commercial real estate owner, great guy. You know, he was tough but he always had your back. He paid you well, he treated you fairly but he expected you to be accountable. And he was very straightforward about that. And, you know, but he would, I saw him many times go out of his way to protect somebody who's getting themselves into trouble. Now that may be motivated by some self-interest but he was the oldest of, he was the oldest of five family members. So I think he had the big brother syndrome he was trained to that at an early age. But I saw people like, you know, one another fellow who made horror films. This guy was just not a nice person at all. He had gobs and gobs of money but he was just a horrible human being and he wasn't very happy either. Okay, let me move on. Yeah, but just the way I'll just capstone that real quick. My conclusion is money makes it more of whatever it is you already are. Money isn't the problem. You're the problem. Okay, here's another sentence from Gerald Wunders. Much of your under-earning is resorted from distorted attitudes and perceptions you have about money, about yourself and about yourself in relationship to money. So when you have distorted attitudes and perceptions, life is going to let you know because you're not gonna be very successful and you're not gonna be very happy. So you really want to have a relationship to reality. So that you respect reality and that you're not at war with reality. And when you're continually failing in one area of life it's because there is something that's interfering with your relationship to reality. So for example, it's very common in the workplace that people resent authority because the boss reminds them of their father or it's common that people look for much more in the workplace than the workplace really should be giving you. Some people try to meet their social, sexual, romantic and relationship needs in the workplace. And it's not necessarily the place to meet those needs and in the pursuit of those needs in the workplace they blow up their job and sometimes even blow up their career. So let me just reread the sentence from Gerald Wunders. Much of your under-earning is resorted from distorted attitudes and perceptions you have about money about yourself and about yourself in relationship to money. Richard. Absolutely. You know, I'm kind of looking at this section. We talked about this painter Charlotte who worked part-time as a data processor and she experienced agony each time she made an appointment for a prospective client to view her artwork. Would look as if she were begging for money. She felt the client would be contemptuous of her work. Think she was incompetent, reject her. She knew she would be humiliated and I built a paint for days. There would be no money. She would have to give up painting altogether and have a full-time job. All this went on in Charlotte's head. Yet her emotions and response to her thoughts were as searingly painful as if such events actually happened. So how we perceive what's going to happen, I love this quote from Mark Twain. He said, because he really, he pins it. Says, during my life, I have suffered many terrible things, a few of which actually happened. And so, and I think, so to me, from that, the relationship to reality is crucial. It's everything. And what I, certainly what program teaches me is that reality is not necessarily my idea of what things are. It's me having some ideas about things and then talking it over, reasoning it out with other people and listening. Listen to, you know, if you meditate to do that, if you pray, listening to that, listening to what the God of your understanding, how that comes back to you in the context of that. Not just going about what's going on in your head. Like this woman, Charlotte, we just read that little section up. Because that's what she's doing. She's living in her idea of what things are and that's not reality. That's what causes all of these problems is the disconnection from reality in the sense of how we're related to other people, how we're related to the world around us and what we think about it, how we're related to the people in our lives, even how we relate to ourselves or how we relate to our idea of who God is. If you think God is a cosmic bully who's out to get you, you're not going to have a very happy life. So publishes weekly in their review of this book, said, in what looks like padding, Gerald Mundus presents an adaptation of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't regard this section of the book where he recapitulates the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous but applies them to under-earning. I don't find it padding at all. I find it really useful to hear different language, different approaches, different examples to bring the 12 Steps to life. So I love this section, adapting the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to under-earning. I didn't find it padding at all. For me, it helped to bring the 12 Steps alive. And this is a very good example of ways that people can take things that they hear in AA or some other 12 Step program and then add to them. So there is a great deal of resentment among some 12 Steps about anyone who takes things that they learn from a 12 Step program and then adds to it and then publishes it as a book or as a program. Russell Brand did this with his thing. He's got some sort of 12 Step related book or program and people go, oh, you're violating the traditions. And no, you're not violating the traditions. If you take the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and then you add to them, you give your commentary on them. You adapt them to something new. You bring something to the table. You are a content maker, not just a content taker. Then by all means, go out, take the 12 Steps and apply them to some new area of life or apply them in a new way. And by all means, write a book on it or start a website on it or study a podcast on it or whatever you wanna do. This is something that is a benefit to the world and when someone learns something and debt is anonymous and then goes out and they add to that and they get a book or they develop a course from that, they're not violating the 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous or whichever 12 Step program. Now, if you start charging money for sponsoring people, yeah, then you're violating the traditions. We don't charge money to sponsor people, but if you build upon the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and you bring something to the table, by all means, write a book on it and present it to the public. Any thoughts, Richard? Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I saw that quote and I thought about that. I came to the same conclusion that you did, although by a slightly different route. I spent a lot of time in debtors anonymous in world service, like going to the conferences and being involved in that. And Gerald Mundus' name did come up a number of times. His books came up a number of times and they were never accepted as literature for debtors anonymous. They were never voted in as literature. And I think there tended to be this understanding that, yeah, the tradition is Alcoholics Anonymous or Debtors Anonymous or Under-Earners Anonymous. There are no dues or fees for membership and basically we shall remain forever non-professional, but our service centers can employ special workers. Now that has to do with the fellowship specifically. That has to do with like Alcoholics Anonymous, they don't charge for sponsoring. They don't charge for doing any of the tools in the program that we depend on, like action meetings or pressure relief meetings or goals pages meetings or going to meetings or anything like that. They're self-supporting through their own contributions, but there's no dues or fees. You're not required to do anything. And that was a decision to just trust higher powers leading by not bringing in things like money, property and prestige. Now looking at Gerald Mundus, he wanted to sell books, but he also used what he learned from Debtors Anonymous and from Under-Earners Anonymous. And by the way, when Gerald Mundus passed away last year, there was a note, an obituary on the Under-Earners website thanking him for his contribution to the program because really coming back and reading this book about under-earning is very informative to anybody who's working the program of Under-Earners Anonymous. It really is. His experience mostly and bringing the steps into it absolutely makes sense. It's not an adjunct, it's not a tag me and not at the end, just for some, you know. Padding. Well, padding is just for some spurious reason, you know. I'll just throw that in there because it sounds like a good thing to do because I think it should be there. No, no, it's really saying, yeah, we've been talking about this all along. Here's the steps and here's my commentary on the steps. And I think that's, I got a lot out of it. I enjoyed it tremendously. Yeah, to get some, go ahead and finish your thought. And I also know that, you know, it's unfortunate that he took everything he learned and put it in a book and then didn't continue in the fellowships. I sort of think that's unfortunate, but I think that may be as much the fellowship as Gerald himself. I didn't know him personally, so I would refrain from commenting on any of that. I just know what I experienced in terms of the perspective about him among, you know, the people who were in leadership in both those organizations. Yeah, I mean, there was probably an element of him feeling less and less comfortable and dead as an Artemis. Also, a lot of people go into a fellowship and they get what they need and they also give something back and then they move on. That there's this misconception that you need to be in meetings for the rest of your life. That's not necessarily true. There may be a fellowship where you need to be in regular meetings, but you may not need to be in meetings for the rest of your life in every fellowship you go to. There may be a fellowship you go to for three meetings. There may be a fellowship you go to for three months. There may be a fellowship you go to for a year, but you may very well then move on and you may find ways to give back. So there are all sorts of people who've benefited from a 12-step program. They no longer attend that program or have anything directly to do with it. In fact, almost all the founders, all of the founders of Underowners Anonymous but one are not participating actively in the program. And that's fine. I mean, they did something beautiful for the rest of us. They helped get this thing going and they got some benefit, I assume, from it and then they moved on with their life. I know a lot of other programs. People come in for six months a year, get what they need and then they move on and that's fine. So for a sense of history, I think Alcoholics Anonymous started something like 1937. Debt is Anonymous. Alanon started in the 1950s. Debt is Anonymous and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous started around 1971 and Underowners Anonymous started in 2005. This book by Gerald Mundus, Earn What You Deserve was published in 1994 and Financial Underowners Anonymous started something like 2012. So just a brief overview of the history there. Let me read a little bit more from this book. Did you want to add something, Richard? No, that's really good to kind of put that, to have that timeline perspective is actually very helpful. Okay, so there are all sorts of exercises in this book which I found useful and one of them is to write about ways that you have actively or passively under-earned. And what I found so helpful was connected with this. I said, you may find it easier to write down ways that you notice people around you under-earning. So I know for me, I find it a lot easier to spot these things in other people than in myself. So just writing down ways that I notice people around me, the ways that I know people I know under-earned, just writing that down helped to clarify and to make more obvious ways that I have been under-earning. So it's a great exercise, you know, write down all the ways that you see under-earning going on in the people around you and then you'll find a lot easier to write down ways that you have actively or passively under-earned over the past 12 months. Any thoughts? You spot it, you got it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, back to the, you know, how long people stay in program. I just wanted to touch base on that, just touch back to that for a moment. The gal I talked to, Tina D, when I first went into debtor's anonymous, she's no longer in program. She basically, you know, and for me, you know, my program is, you know, it's a living thing. You know, it has, you know, I spend more time in meetings at other times, I spend more time sponsoring at other times, you know, I balance between my life at church, that part of my spiritual life and this part of it. I'm on a spiritual path. In other words, and this is part of the framework of that spiritual path. When the big book says we practice these principles in all of our affairs, and because the framework that it provides is a way that life works, whether we're in the fellowship, like you say, for six months or for 60 years, and there's everything in between, as I'm sure you know, it depends on the individual and what they're doing. So a lot of people stay in program because they like giving back to other people and it's a great way and a great place to do that. And they just, you know, that seems to be where their higher power seems to be leading them and that's great. But, you know, if it leads somebody else somewhere else, so long as they are, you know, retaining the value that they got and then passing that on to other people, which I think is the key to it. You really have to pass it on to other people. In order to retain it. And I think that's really key. Okay, let me read a few more exercises from the book. Yeah, write down all the ways other people are under-earning. Say they set low fees, they insist on getting things their own way, they employ unproductive people, and then add every other way that you can think of claiming that emotional problems prevent one from working, arguing constantly with coworkers and supervisors, not honoring commitments, then there's another list you can do, seven things you can do to change your emotions about money, list seven things you can do to change your emotions about money, let your imagination run free. You don't have to do any of these things, just show yourself that there are ways that you can change. Some of these ways will be more desirable than others, then write things I could do to change my beliefs about money, write down 10 things you could do to change your attitudes about money or about your relationship to money. Write about 100 ways I could bring more money in. Write about a description of your ideal relationship with money, not what you think an ideal relationship ought to be, but what it would be for you. And this clarity can help you with your choices. If you've been under-earning for a length of time, a fair amount of what fills your life, such as clothes, kitchen equipment, furniture, will be worn out, floored, and second rate, so start going through your belongings, pick a drawer, a bureau, a closet, an entire room in your apartment, and evaluate every single article within that space from an old tie to a TV set, ask yourself, do I need this? Do I enjoy this? Do I take pleasure from it? Does it bring me joy? So some useful exercises in this book. Any thoughts on any of that, Richard? There were quite a number of them. There was one where he talks about that kind of meditation about who I am and going through that step by step. I looked at that and I went, that's really helpful because we get so attached to the things that we think are important and we use those to define who we are. And that doesn't, in my experience, that really isn't very helpful. I haven't found that to be helpful. And there's this one meditation where he says, you know, who am I? And you answer quickly, well, I am Richard. He says, well, you know, I'm not Richard. That's just an end that people call me by. That's not the I who asked me this question. And it goes to this long meditation about that. And I found that particularly helpful because the more that I'm attached to what I think I should be or what I, you know, or what I think I'm gonna get, and I mean by attachment, not that I don't want those things, I do, but if I have this kind of relaxed attachment to those things or a relaxed relationship to them, that's not an attachment. I go, well, if that happens, that's good. If it doesn't, then maybe there's something better. I think that was a particularly useful tool that I saw in the book. And there was a number of others. I like where he talks about emotions and that, you know, I say to a lot of my sponsors, emotions are like the weather. They come and go, you know, and we tend to, I know when I deal with people who are new in program or even people who struggle in program, you know, their emotions run them. I'm thinking of this one guy that, son of a very famous television personality, I won't tell you the name, but if I told you the name, you'd know exactly what I was talking about. And his emotions drove him. Everything was based on how he felt, you know, and because he thought those emotions were real. And one of the things he says, here's what he says, allow yourself to experience the emotion purely, completely, without resistance, be the emotion, be fear, be self-loathing, feel it completely, be with it, let it be within you. And just prior to that, he says, you know, most emotions, when you've experienced them purely like that, they last for about a minute or two, and then they're gone and onto something else. I think that's a fascinating insight. I know in the notes I sent you, I said, you know, I don't know if you remember that scene in Batman Begins, where he's in the cave and all these bats are swirling around him and he's just like, I'm letting it in. He's just letting, the thing he dreads the most, just swirl around him and he's just taking a deep breath and letting it happen and letting it be. And he's just, that was such a vivid picture of what dealing with emotions can be like. You know, some people will say, I have emotions, but for a lot of people, their emotions have them. And I think what I like in there is he has several things that really are great tools to kind of detach from that in a very useful and productive way. So I was surprised by how much work my sponsors gave me on step one. I came into the program thinking that step one, step two, step three is something we can just breeze through and make a sense to. So step one, we admitted we were powerless over under-owning that our lives had become unmanageable. And then they gave me all these assignments. I had to come to terms with how under-owning has crippled my life, how it damaged my relationships with family, with friends, with romantic relationships, how I'd consistently sabotaged myself and other people at work, just the full extent of the wreckage that I'd left behind with my under-owning was incredibly sobering. I wanna read a little bit from Gerald Mundus here on step one. This is immediately offensive to nearly everyone, powerless, nonsense, unmanageable, says who. And yeah, I was completely repelled by this idea of admitting a powerlessness and admitting that my life had become unmanageable because I grew up where I kept hearing that I could do anything that I set my mind to. And that was always my self-image that if I simply set my mind to something, I can accomplish it. So Gerald writes, I was repelled by this step first when it had the word alcohol in it, later when it contained the word debt, still later when it had the word under-owning. Pious to fly in the face of most of what we've been taught. Where's self-reliance here? Where's strength? Where's willpower? Where's self-confidence? Where's pride? Where's near everything we so desperately need that we've prided ourselves on? That we'd be told we must have to survive that many of us have worked so hard to achieve in ourselves. The first words in A.A.'s book, 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, right after the first step is given are, who cares to admit complete defeat, practically no one? Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. So how in the face of this can we set aside our initial revulsion long enough to take another less emotional look at the step to see if it might mean something other than what we first think? There might be a way we can work with it. So the first word in this step, first of all, I didn't take Step 1 seriously until I was more than a year into another program because I was so repelled by Step 1 and I thought Steps 2 and 3 were not very interesting. So you don't have to accept Step 1 to go to a meeting. Like you can get a lot just going to meetings without accepting Step 1. If you just keep plugging away eventually, I think you can come to peace with Step 1. So the first word in this step is we. So we means that you are not alone. That means that other people have the same pain, the same despair that people have been here before you, that they are here with me now and that you do not have to try to free yourself from this problem alone. And to admit to the problem requires nothing more than to acknowledge that it exists and that you stop trying to deny or justify it. So powerlessness, this has a sickening horrible ring. My reluctance to admit such a thing was caused by the fact that we're at true and mean that I was weak and capable. My situation hopeless that I was condemned to go on under-earning forever to live in poverty and deprivation. What else could being powerless over under-earning possibly mean? Any thoughts on Step 1, Richard? I'm actually gonna share something that he said because it's a step one is about just surrendering everything you've been doing because it doesn't work. And it's the admission of that. And so he says, resistance to surrender, which stems from fear is based largely on a misconception of what the word means. If you're like most people, you interpret surrender as meaning a loss of freedom to feed weakness. One of its primary definitions is to give something up in favor of something else. The problem I think for a lot of people is just lack of imagination. They can't imagine anything other than what they've been doing. So they don't wanna give it up because they think they'll die if they do or something akin to that. But from a spiritual standpoint in a lot of ways, the idea that you're in control is an illusion. We have no control. I have no control over what anybody does or how anybody acts or how anybody thinks or how anybody feels. And I certainly know very early on, before recovery, I operated as if I did have control as if I could make people do stuff and that they ought to do it and then they should be doing it. If they weren't, there was something wrong with them. And that notion is very distorted. But that's precisely the thing that has to be surrendered. The idea that we have some kind of power that we can exercise. And the power I have is to do something about my behavior, about my thinking, about how I respond to people. I do have something to do with that. And I think this whole notion is captured in the serenity prayer. And in other words, when we first hear that, I have to completely give up. And I'm just gonna fall apart and collapse into a puddle and I'm just completely admitting defeat and yet that's what they said they have to do. But the serenity prayer puts it in perspective. God granted me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, which is just about everything. We have to accept life on life's terms. The courage to change the things that I can, which implies that there are things that we actually can do. But here's the crux of the matter, the wisdom to know the difference. And that's, I believe, what program teaches us how to do. It's to know the difference on a very deep and intuitive level. You know, we find ourselves in truly understanding how to handle things that used to baffle us. That's one of the ways that that shows up. So let's talk a little bit more about step one, one step one exercise I did that was useful to me is I took the 12 symptoms of under-earning and then look back at my life through the prism of the 12 symptoms. And I was able to come out with about eight-page essay and I saw how under-earning had pervaded my life. Also, I wrote about how under-earning had affected my romantic relationships, how it affected my relationships with my family, with my spiritual and religious community. And I looked at ways that I continually sabotaged myself at work. For example, I like to say provocative things. I like to wind people up. I like to stir them up. I like to make jokes. I like to say things that really tasteless and offensive. And that has gone all through my work career and not done me any favors. So I'm just curious, anything you can share from your own step one experience? Well, you know, I've had in my lifetime a lot of step one experiences. And not all of them were in program. The one that comes to mind right now, I was part of a theater repertory company and I was an actor. And I was in a scene study class and I was doing this scene and the teacher asked me, why are you doing that? And I started explaining things and then she kept pressing and pressing. And I came to this point where I just stopped dad and I said, I don't know. And she picked up on it immediately. It was that in the whole room, let's like fell completely silent because you could feel it. I have never heard an actor say that with such clarity and humility in my whole life. But they didn't know. They always have to have an answer for something. And that was me. I always had to have an answer for something which was really a form of having power. If I have an answer, I have power. If I don't have an answer, I'm powerless. But that was actually the first time that I can recall a very specific incident where I was just in a group of people that some of you wanna impress your teacher and you said, I don't know. And it was powerful. It was powerful for me and it was powerful for everyone there. But it was interesting. The power wasn't in me. I was completely powerless and I was admitting it. And so there's a paradox with that. Okay, let me read a little bit here more from Gerald Mundus. My reluctance to powerlessness was caused by the fact that were it true and mean that I was weak incapable of my situation hopeless. That I was condemned to go on under-earning forever to live in poverty and deprivation. What else could being powerless over under-earning possibly mean? But here lies the paradox. If I truly am an under-earner, a compulsive one, then the only way I can ever become free of the compulsion is to admit that it's there and that I'm powerless over it. So I always hated this idea of admitting powerlessness but then I just pragmatically found that it seemed to work for a lot of people. And when you admit powerlessness, you're not saying, oh, I didn't have any responsibility. You're responsible. You don't blame yourself for having a compulsion but you're responsible and so it's up to you to do something about it. So if you're type one diabetic, you don't blame yourself for having diabetes but unless you get the insulin every day, I think at least three times a day, you're gonna be in deep trouble. So you then hate yourself for being a type one diabetic but it's your responsibility to make sure you get the insulin three times a day. So if I am truly an under-earner, then the only way I can ever become free of the compulsion or the tendency or the impulse is to admit that it's there and that I am powerless over it. If I deny that I'm powerless, then I'll keep trying to prove that I do have power over it that I can overcome it by sheer strength and character of force of will. So I've always tried to overcome things by just sheer force of will and often it's been much more effective to simply give up doing things the way that I wanna do them and say, okay, what I'm doing isn't working and then start taking direction. So usually somebody's life improves once they start attending a 12 step program because they become willing to take direction whether it's from the group or from the book or the literature or from a sponsor or from an action partner when we're failing continually in one area of our life and then we become willing to take direction usually things start to go better. Any thoughts, Richard? It's interesting that you pointed out the type one diabetic. I know someone who's a type one diabetic and I often use this very example in talking about step one. Very angry about it really was very rebellious about the fact of the things that they had to do in order to treat that and they had children and this individual basically would allow their blood sugar to go low because they just had this idea of how it should work and they were known by the local paramedics. Like once a month, they'd be called out because this person had gone so low that they were in physical danger that you could have died and they had to come back and get some treatment so that they would literally come in and in that condition, this individual was like a Jekyll and Hyde. And the thing about type one diabetes is it's exactly that you didn't choose it. This person did not choose to be a diabetic but for a long time, they refused to take responsibility for it and to this day, two of their three children will not speak to them because of the experiences they had with this individual who would not take responsibility for something that they didn't choose but nevertheless was there in their lives. And so, and I think that's the beauty of the way that 12 step proposes that alcoholism is a disease is a disease over which you're powerless because if it's a disease over which you're powerless then like you said, you either choose to accept the responsibility for that condition not that you chose it but that you still have to deal with it but I think that the disease part of it really is tied in with rationalizations. We think we can control it. We think that we should be better than that. We think that, oh, I'll just do it today and then I won't do it again tomorrow or we think, oh, if I just do this, this and this then I'll be okay and you condense yourself but before you know it, you're doing it again. It's admitting that you can't control it. And again, I bring it back to me personally. I tried after I got into the program after having run up credit cards, I said, oh, I can control this. No, I can't. No, I can't just for whatever reason that's not something I'm gonna be able to do. I recoil from it like you say is from a hot fire because I'll get burned if I don't do that. And so I'm powerless over that and I have no problem admitting that. Okay, here's a section on step one from Gerald Mundus that you highlighted. Resistance to surrender, which stems from fear is based largely on a misconception of what the word means. If you were like most people, you interpret surrender as a loss of freedom as a defeat or as weakness but one of its primary definitions is to give up something in favor of something else. Do you wanna talk more about that? Yeah, yeah, I shared that earlier and that's really the key. And that's really step two and three is in favor of something else. I give up my desire for using a credit card or my compulsion to under earn or my compulsion to drink or use drugs or have sex or whatever it is, I need to replace it with something. And when we're in the midst of addiction you usually most addictions are medicating pain. Usually they're medicating the pain of relationships that are not going well. I see this over and over with people I sponsor and I certainly had that experience myself. My first marriage lasted seven years and two months and about four years into it I started doing drugs because the marriage just wasn't working. Now I was the source of why it wasn't working as was my wife, the two of us were the source of the problem. But I was in pain. And so what I was seeking to do was medicate that pain in the simplest, most expeditious way available to me which at that point seemed to be drugs because it numbed the pain. But what really needed to change was how I approached everything. And when I did that, I stopped generating the pain. So I was able to do something else but it was that progression of surrendering what I thought was gonna help me. Coming to believe that there was a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity or a healthy way of living. And then making a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood God or that power greater than myself. And that's what he's saying here but one of its primary definitions rather is to give something up in favor of something else. And we become habituated to certain things whether they're the behaviors or relationships or whatever and we don't wanna give them up because we don't know what's gonna take their place. But it's that willingness to trust that something else is gonna take its place and then start looking for it and starting to recognize that we're going to find that. And that's what program, when you have a community of people who have already done that before and they can tell you something about what you can replace it with and they can tell you their experience about what happened when they let go of the thing that they were hanging onto for dear life. And all of a sudden we're able to grab onto something that really actually made their lives significantly better than the thing that they were hanging onto. So that's one of the most powerful things in 12 Steps is the community. And you said it earlier, it's a we program. We admitted we were powerless over under earning or whatever and that our lives had become unmanageable. We and there are no, there's not like in any of the steps that we've been through is all we. And it's all about that community of that healing community that allows you to be transparent with what's going on with the people who've been where you're suffering right now and to hear, yeah, I suffered and here's how I stopped suffering. And you can see your way, you can see your way on that same, you can see the road that they went down and you can also get on that road and they can help you. I think that's the real power of 12 Steps is the community. Okay, sorry, sorry. Any final passages that you want to discuss or any final words, Richard? Well, let me toss that back to you. Okay, so. I think the great book, I think anybody who's in 12 Steps could benefit from reading it. Yeah, so here's a phrase that you often hear in 12 Steps and in meetings and it's also in this book, stick with the winners. So this means stick with regard to 12 Steps, it means stick with people who are working in the program. So don't spend time with people with active addictions going on who don't want to find recovery or don't want to do the work. So I think it's important to stick with the winners. I'm quite careful about who I allow into my life and there are certain people who call me who I've stopped returning their calls because they're stuck in something that's above and beyond my ability to help them with. Also, I don't work harder with sponsors and they're willing to work for themselves. So I try to operate my life on this philosophy, stick with the winners. Any thoughts on sticking with the winners, Richard? Yeah, you have to. You know, when it comes to sponsoring, it's the responsibility of my sponsor. It's got a lot of words that rhyme there. It's their responsibility to work their program. And, you know, I'm not going to call them. If they don't call me, I'm not going to go chasing them. They have to show up for their own recovery. I'm not there to fix them. I'm not there to save them. I'm there to share my experience, strength, and hope. And hopefully, in sharing my experiences transparently and as openly as I can, they'll be able to understand their own recovery and teach them how I learned to do things differently than I was doing when my life was fallen apart and unmanageable. And, you know, what I did, how I did it. And, you know, I really stop sort of giving people advice. It's not my role to tell people what they should do. I do ask questions and I am usually, if someone asks me, well, what would you do? If I have a direct experience, I might share that with them. Sometimes I might not. I'm very cautious about the influence that I might have on someone who might be vulnerable. It's essential that to recovery, that a person take responsibility for their own actions. That is what they haven't been doing on some level that got them into program. So it's really foundational that they learn how to do that and overcome the obstacles they might have to doing that. And I believe that's what the steps does or that's what they do. Okay, Richard, that's great. I've got another interview coming up in a few minutes. So thank you so much for coming by and talking about this great book with me. Always appreciated. Look forward to getting to this again sometime. Okay, sounds good, Richard. Take care, my friend. You have a beautiful afternoon. Take care now. Bye-bye. Okay, I've got another interview coming up in about 15 minutes. Let's hear something here from Yale University, the ring of Gaijee's morality and hypocrisy. The next lecture is about the question of the challenge that Glaucon posed in the story of the Ring of Gaijee's. The question is, what sort of motivation do we have for acting morally? And what expectations should we have with respect to those around us about whether they act in that way for reasons intrinsic to moral motivation or simply because they wish to appear a particular way? So what I want to start by doing is to tell you a little bit about the extraordinary person whose dialogue the Republic we read excerpts from today. It's hard to overestimate the influence of Plato on the Western intellectual tradition. There is no educated person in the Western world in the last 2,500 years who wasn't influenced in some way or another by the thoughts and by the framework of understanding that Plato provided for us some 2,500 years ago. Plato was an extremely interesting figure. He was born into an aristocratic family in Athens. Some think that he was descended from one of the Athenian kings, but regardless it's clear that the family of which he was a part were among the leaders of Athenian political society. Several of his uncles had been part of a coup in the government that took place several years before Plato came to maturity. And the expectation of people like Plato was that they would go into civic service, government, public leadership. It was as if he were a Kennedy or a Bush or a Clinton. He came from a family with a long history of political engagement and the assumption was that he would become politically engaged himself. But interestingly, for reasons about which there are great speculations, Plato came under the influence of a man about 30 years his elder named Socrates, who in the portraits that we have of him looked remarkably like Plato himself. Socrates was a gadfly. He wandered around Athens and asked people to reflect on their commitments. Asked people to think about what the nature of fundamental things like justice and truth and reality and friendship and love and honesty were. He asked people to reflect on common opinion and to ask themselves what of the things that they believed were well grounded and what of the things that they believed were simply matters of received opinion. And in part because of his provocation, Socrates was sentenced to death in 399 before the Common Era. When Plato was roughly 30 years old, Plato attended the death of his great teacher. And he describes the story of the trial at which Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens in an extraordinary dialogue known as the Apology. And the legacy that the Apology provides is something like the legacy that the Gospels provide for the life of Jesus. It's a story of a person willing to die for the sake of principle in a way that became a trope for Western civilization. So in an extraordinary painting, which you can see if you go to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, there is a depiction of the death of Socrates. And here is Socrates drinking from the chalice of Hemlock, which is to put him to death. Here are his disciples, including Plato, calmly at the end of the bed, and Crito holding his leg. Up the stairs here, which you can't see, are some other figures leaving. But what's extraordinary about this picture is that it was painted in 1787 by one of the artists involved in the French Revolution. It was in fact displayed to Thomas Jefferson, who admired it greatly. One of the striking things about its composition is that in some ways it echoes Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting. So I read an interesting essay in the New York Times today. Does the job of talk show sidekick even make sense anymore? So Andy Richter reinvigorated the thankless, tired role. Now that Conan is going off the air, it's time to reevaluate work that was often admired in stereotypes. So I'm thinking about Andy Waski. Andy Waski had this fairly successful channel, and then JFKRP came along and took the channel to new heights. And Andy Waski became a sidekick on his own channel. And Andy didn't like that, and so he blew things up. JF went on to form his own channel, but it's not been nearly as successful as what he did with Andy Waski. And I think the dynamic with Waski was an important part of the show's success. So I think both Andy Waski and JF have suffered from that breakup. And then when I brought Kevin Michael Grace onto my show, I inadvertently became the sidekick. I mean, Kevin would, Kevin's a force. I mean, Kevin has so many ideas. Kevin has the ability to set the temperature on a show in a way very few people can do. Most people in radio or on live streams, most people are reactors. They're people who read the temperature. That's what I do. But Kevin Michael Grace is that rare man who can set the temperature in a room. And he would come on. He'd have all these powerful opinions. And I became tongue-tied. I just didn't have anything to say most of the time. Like Kevin would work his heart out. He'd give thought after thought after thought. And then I'd have nothing. And then I'd just say, okay, let's move on. So I inadvertently became a sidekick on my own channel. And that sees working for me. So Kevin's gone on to do perhaps as well as he was doing on my show. And I've gone on to do my own thing. So my viewership is about one quarter of what it used to be when I had Kevin Michael Grace on the show. But I'm much happier doing my own thing. So here's the New York Times today. Several years ago, Conan O'Brien's talk show did a bit about Andy Rector. He's the sidekick for getting how to do a sidekick job after a summer break. A woman from Human Resources had to remind him, you need to make the host believe in the irrational fantasy that he is the funniest person in the world. She instructs him laugh first, think later. So in the long rich history of making fun of talk show sidekicks, this was not particularly biting, not as scathing as Phil Hartman's Ed McMahon impression on Saturday Night Live or as bleak as the moment on the Larry Sanders show when the buffoonish second banana hank Kingsley responds to his producers telling him he doesn't suck by saying, this one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me. So what made the jokes about Andy Rector so gently absurd is that no one has more persuasively counted the popular image of the sidekick as a pathetic sycophant. As Conan O'Brien finishes his run on late night on June 24, a few days ago, he leaves behind a massive legacy, a comedically ambitious fixture on late night, the nearly three decades who influenced the generation of oddball comics. And yet one of the most impressive accomplishments of his work belongs to Andy Rector, reinvigorated the role of the traditional sidekick. So while Andy Rector expanded and refined the job, he also earnestly performed the old school work of nightly sidekicking, laughing at the jokes, making the host look good without sacrificing his own voice and his own dignity. No mean feat since the relationship between host and sidekick has long been defined by a vast disparity in power. If the host is the king of this court, the sidekick is in the jester. So much as the flatterer, the yes man, the official doormat. The job has always been to set up jokes, but just as often to be one. Now this tired, often thankless work may be headed toward obsolescence. I need a sidekick. It's difficult to pinpoint the first sidekick, but the founding mother is surely Dagmar, the stage name of actress Jenny Lewis, who appeared on Broadway Open House, the predecessor to The Tonight Show. With Jerry Lester as host, her main job was to get ogled and to be the object of leering double entendres. Despite this limited portfolio, she became a sensation, which led to difficulties on the program end to the demise of the show, the first of many sidekicks taking the blame for a program's failure. The list of fired sidekicks is Long Magic Johnson's The Magic Hour. One of the most notorious bombs in TV history went through several sidekicks in a few months, including one at Craig Schumacher, dismissed during a commercial break, Regis Philbin, the sidekick to Joey Bishop in the 1960s actually quit on air in an odd act of talk show repentance, confessing that he'd hurt the show enough. Decades later, he revealed that Bishop forced his exit to create a spectacle to goose ratings. It did not work. So, how has Stern went on The Magic Show? Thank you to everybody. Can't you do something about it? Okay. Thank you. All the credit. Thank you so much, everybody. First of all, I want to thank you. Shut up. You better take control of this crowd, Magic. First of all, I want to just thank the losers for doing such a wonderful performance. And thank you for allowing this on television. It's very rare that they would allow this on any television. I'm not even sure this is television. All right, we'll just start with everybody. Introduce them. All right, all right. Down there is... You've been talking about me so much, man. Let's get right to it. First of all, I've been in the talk show business for a while. You are a master of the basketball court. No one denies this. You've ever seen me? I've played basketball against midgets and lost. So I would never tell you what to do in basketball. But first of all, what I think you got to do is the show needs some work. It does need some work. I think Sheila will admit that. First of all, Sheila, the first night you came out, you're showing your breasts. You were showing some leg. Tonight, you dress more conservative than Magic. I'm really sure. Well, you know she can't rip off her top. She can rip off her top. She used to be with Prince. He was ripping her top off every night. What else? What else? All right, the thing you need to work on, in my estimation, seriously, is that you've got to stop trying to talk like the white man. Buddy, I read a fascinating article about you that they got a hold of you and gave you a speech coach. And they gave you a, what other kind of coach? An interview coach. An interview coach. For crying out loud. Anybody can interview. It's very simple. But what they're doing is they're tripping you up. Everybody's anti-Ebonics. I say, let it fly. How it's done on The Magic Show, that's July 2, 1998. Craig Shoemaker was Magic Johnson's first sidekick on that show. You know, I have like a, and you may hate this, but I have, I'm kind of obsessed with failed talk shows. And I didn't realize until yesterday, and I'm going like, of course you do. I'm watching your old interviews and stuff you've done on other radio shows, just to, you know, kind of, and I was like, holy shit. And I don't know if you know this, but did you know that Craig was the original co-host of The Magic Johnson Hour? You know what? If I knew that, I forgot it. I don't think I ever knew that. So I heard, I mean, and the story about like, you know, how you were put in a position to fail is just great. I heard the story, but would I? Do you have this thing that you're in this business because you want to basically get even with the girls that wouldn't go out with you? Do you have any of that going on? Sure, I have only that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so understand that I got that show and that was my get even. That was my get even. All the 13 girls that shot me down for the prom. This was my moment. I had a national TV show. What year? This is 97. It's only on one year. It was 90. I remember the show. I remember Magic Johnson had a show. It was barely on a month. Now, did you, you didn't last the run though. You want to hear the story? Yeah. I want to know how you got fired. I want to know how you got fired. I'm going to tell you. OK. So back to the New York Times here. The early tonight show Sidekicks became major stars, but eminently deferential ones when Jack Parr walked after in 1960, broadcast in protest of being censored as Sidekick Hugh Downs nimbly took over, finished the show, but was careful never to sit in the host's chair. No Sidekick looned larger in the public imagination than Ed McMahon sat next to Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show for more than three decades. Ed knew his job was to laugh at every punch line, never upstage the host, and occasionally set up jokes. Sidekick could be funny, but not too funny. My talent is making it seem like I have no talent. He wrote in a memoir and he did this well. Ed McMahon was the butt of jokes just like Dagmar, including many making him out to be a cartoon of the Irish drunk. So let's get a little bit more here from Howard on The Magic Hour. What's that? Call you Irvin. Either or. I'll call you Irvin, because everyone else calls you magic. Irvin, what you need to do, my brother, is to really get down with it. Everyone's trying to get you to talk like the white man. I think this show should loosen up and you talk ebonics all you want. Okay, all right. I know what I'm saying, because it's ridiculous. I see you having trouble out there because everyone's confusing you. What, now who is this speech coach? Because this guy ought to be hung from the rappers. I said we'd bring him out here and hang him. He's screwing you up. What is the name of this gentleman? I want to know the speech coach. His name is Arthur. Arthur, what the hell are you doing, imagine? Man's getting out here trying to talk like the white man. Listen, you're a black man. I grew up in the black neighborhood. I'm blacker than you are. Trust me. I'm the black. So they give me the show. Craig Sheermaker. They said, this was exciting. I wasn't gonna be Ed McMahon, ha, ha, ha. I'm the comedian that he laughs at. He gives me set up jokes. I thought it was a pretty cool premise. Instead of him doing a monologue, I do the monologue to him. So they basically had tester shows where you guys had chemistry. And it went really well. And I got the part. And so a whole bunch of other comics. That part was good. It's kind of you getting to do a show and magic is there to be the sort of name value and what draws people in. Name value draws people in and I get to tell the jokes. But they panicked and they brought in writers from the Tonight Show. Not the Leno Tonight Show, the Johnny Carson, and the guy literally had a mullet cut in a member's only jacket. By the way, folks, if you're out there and wearing a member's only jacket, I mean to offend you. But this is in 97 where it was like, there's no irony to it. It's just. Joe Durk. It's Joe Durk. That's my head writer. And I literally, he said these words to me. I said, you can't make me tell these jokes. He said, you have to tell the jokes. I called him Sling Blade at that time. Sling Blade was out. I jutted out jaw. That's how he talked. I said, Sling Blade, you can't make me tell these jokes. I'll get booed. He says to me, hmm, a boo is as good as a laugh. Hmm, Johnny, Johnny loved to be booed. I go, Johnny Carson loved to be booed. He had a whole shtick about it. I'm not Johnny Carson. No one knows who I am. You can't make me tell these jokes. Do you remember any of the jokes? Oh, I'll tell you what it was. Well, Jim, as a standup, do you think boo laughter, it's all the same as long as they're reacting? No, I really wish it was. So what was one of the jokes? I'll tell you. So Sling Blade also writes the intro. So I'm backstage making a list of all these girls I hope are watching. Oh, Linda Scott, you made out with Ricky Audemire at the prom and you were my date. I'm thinking, you're going to see me now. I'm about to come in to start them. Right. Here's the intro. Place is going nuts, urban crowd. That means black. And I'm white. And Sheila is the band leader. Place is going, are you ready for magic? Everybody's going crazy. And it really was that. It's still on YouTube. They're going, are you ready for magic? Everybody's going crazy. I love it. So here's the intro that Sling Blade wrote for me for magic to say. All right, everybody, let's get the show started with my co-host. Now, here's a guy nobody would shower with. Craig Shoemaker. Now, I'm backstage going, I don't think I'm coming out to that. I thought, let's retake this. That was magic's intro for you. For you. I had just won all these awards. And that was it. So he goes, here's a guy nobody would show up. Craig Shoemaker. So I come out, by the way, I have a horrible walk that I'm paranoid about. It's a bouncy walk. And I'm trying not to walk. I don't look like a cripple. Can you say that? Anyway, so I get out to the couch. And this is the opening line. He says, mostly urban crowd. I'm white. And my setup is, and Sling Blade wrote this joke for me to say. Hey, Craig, how about that bull's game? Magic? I haven't seen a beating like that caught on tape since Rodney King. OK, you see a reaction. Wow. And this is 97. Like, it's a sensitive. I am telling you, I thought there was a collective gasp you could have heard here in New York from Paramount Studios. It was literally like this. Wasn't it boo? It wasn't a boo. It was a boo. Like that? It was silent. So you got something, actually, not a laugh, not a boo. Worse than either of ours. Worse than either. Like, like, resuscitate. Did magic know that joke was coming? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know this. He was known for the assistant basketball, but this was his response. Oh, Craig. You are bad. Remember, he goes, remember about it. That was Craig, not me. He'd treat me right in a wood chipper. He's his cist man. And then I told Joe about a celebrity. He didn't want to look at it. Oh, Craig, you are bad. Now, he's not going to come on the show. And I'm sitting there thinking, that's not the reason. I'm telling you now, frame me out. Come on. I don't think Magic Johnson's coming in. You think he's standing in the kitchen? He might have, like, he might be a goof. No, no, because I mean, I've spoken to the publicist a bunch of times leading up to this, and I just think he's running late. How late is he going to run? I want to go. I want to go home. A lot of people don't understand our schedule. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like Gilbert. Hey, Gilbert. Oh, it is Magic Johnson. Hi, I'm Magic Johnson. How are you, sir? You're the most successful black businessman. Yeah, I'm the most successful black businessman in the world. I'm ready to conquer the television again. You're going to do another talk show. Yeah, because I feel that my talent, my strength, is in talking. Now, why didn't the last show work? Well, I think the Jews. The Jews? What do the Jews have to do with your show now? Well, the Jews be running the networks. And you think they were teamed up against you? Yeah, they'd be teamed up against the colored man. Well, every time a brother tries to get ahead, you feel the Jews knock them down. The Jews be knocking them down every corner. But if they run all the television shows, where are you going to put your show? Well, I was going to put myself on one of them non-Jew networks. What, what, a BET? Yeah, BET, because that's where the quality network would be happening. And would you invite Gilbert Gottfried on your show? Well, I can't invite him on, because he's no good Jew. I don't want you to know Jews on your show. Already people are not having on. Gilbert Gottfried, Alan King. Right. Are you a Jew? Yeah, Tova Feltcher, I ain't having on. Would you have Dracula on that show? Oh, Jay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't hung in the same thing as being a Jew. All right, so obviously, obviously, you're very better. Yeah, yeah, I am. How are you, Gilbert? Hey, I heard a rumor about you. Uh-oh. Tell me if it's true or false. Yes. Did you're getting married? No. OK, once I forgot that my interview is really scheduled for tomorrow, that's embarrassing. OK, so we'll just do a little bit more here from the New York Times. So Troy Patterson pointed out that Chelsea Handler and Jimmy Kimmel both relied on small Hispanic men working blue collar jobs as supporting players. Talk Show host was a family. The host is the patriarch, so relegating minorities to the lower state of psychic never receive much blowback. Current popularity of the white network host black band leader pairing evokes the sentimental racial politics of the buddy cop genre of an earlier era. And what to make of the near total absence of female side kicks while there's Robin Quivers on the Howard Sturge show that you rarely hear laments over this disparity may speak to the low status of the job, a sensitivity to the power dynamics of comedy increase. The traditional sidekick seems counterproductive. Anything that looks like punching down is not going to make the host appear better. Audiences are quicker to see cruelty in the way that Johnny Carson ribbed Ed McMahon. That abusive subtext was always baked into the host sidekick relationship. That's why most of the really funny sidekicks in the last half century have been fictional or outright spoofs. Andy Richter notably played it straight. He was part of an explosion of comedic talent. He emerged from Chicago improv houses in the 1980s. His strength was in creating comedy on the fly and playing scenes with intelligence, even when doing something extremely stupid. So Richter added pinpoint ad-lib, stole scenes, built on the jokes. He performed the nuts and bolts of the job, set up the host, laughed a lot, but not when something wasn't funny. And Richter gave as good as he got. So when he was a guest and Chelsea Handler poked fun at his weight, asking whether he floated on water and he didn't play along, he pushed back with a joke. Do you think maybe it's that cast iron heart? So Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter shared a smartly silly sensibility, but they're very different personalities. Conan O'Brien is at heart, a Sherman feeding off the crowd, constantly riffing, deflecting, trying voices, insult humor, self-markering, letting a raging insecurity drive his humor. Andy Richter is a more patient presence, standing the ship, often indifferent to the crowd. He's careful to be generous to guests and to shift into elusive language when jokes get dicey. Other than that, Andy Richter does not pander. So here's a little bit more of Howard here with Gilbert Godfreyd. Yeah, go ahead and get out of here. And then when I went in, I saw Gilbert sitting with her. So he's got a girlfriend. And you're still not sure he didn't hire an actress. Yeah, right, you'll be like, oh, Mr. Johnson. Both magics should be here at the same time. We can see if we can tell the difference. Yes. Would he recognize you, Gilbert? Magic Johnson, would he know who you are? I was never on this show. I don't know. Yeah, you could have saved the show. Yeah, yeah. Same way you saved the Alan Thicke show. Yes, take it at night. If they had hired Gilbert to be. The sidekick? Hello there, Magic. Oh, that would have been funny. You could be Dracula Godfreyd. Yeah. Hey, Mr. Johnson, who is her next guest on the show? Pushy and obnoxious? Yes. Oh, yeah, Shevech Nere. Gilbert Godfreyd, I'm sure, has a slew of plugs. Oh, yes. I'll find them during the commercial break and come back to them. But Gilbert, you're not even close to getting married? You've been with this girl a long time. What's going on? Oh, no, I play the field. Would you be married in a temple? Oh, yes. And what would be the special prayer? Oh, I think it would go like this. And then you'll be saying any real words. Why wasn't he hosting the Sexiest Bachelor? Yeah, were you involved with the Sexiest Bachelor? Did you watch that on TV? No. You don't have a TV? No. All right, we'll be right back. OK, here's Howard on the magic show July 2, 1990. I like his Black manual ever meet. OK. And I'm telling you right now, when I lived in Roosevelt, Long Island, which is a black ghetto, everybody, Eddie Murphy comes from there. Everybody talk like this. This is the way I talk when I'm around. I was a big marble mouth. But you know what? It was fascinating because I was one of the people. And I believe you should go to that. I know you want to go to that. Well, you know what? Why does everybody have to understand every word you say? Who cares what you got to say? No, I understand it. No difference. Who cares what you got to say? This is Craig Schumacher. Because it's a talk show, but he had a little difficulty in that area. Michael Clark Duncan was in Armageddon. And he's reading the cue card going, now, up next from the movie, Armageddon Don. Now, here he is from Armageddon, Armageddon Craig. How you say that word? I say, just say, end of the world is the end of my life. Did that make air? Or did they edit it out? No, I think that made it to the air. No, I'm a good dude to Don. Did you have a good relationship with him or no? Well, you know, he's a nice guy and everything. But he mostly was in his dressing room. So if you saw him now, would you guys talk over the old days, or would you just? Well, I don't know about that. I haven't seen him. I go to the Lakers games. I'm really tight with the owner. And so I go to the games. But we've sort of never really crossed paths. I'm not really sure he would know who I am. It didn't last very long. It didn't seem like he did a ton of work for his show, magic. Like, it seemed like he's reading his teleprompter. He's doing what the writers tell him. And that's why there's a guy like Craig there, because you're there to do the heavy lifting. Well, it's funny you would have that observation. One of the things I observed was he really, you know, to host a talk show, you really have to be pretty broad. Have a broad spectrum in your life of things that you read and things like that. So they sort of had to make him fit. They fit him into that square peg or whatever. And so they said, you have to be a family man. So you know, it's a guy who lived the life in Los Angeles. That's not a family man life. So he would say stuff like, they would have a coach on the side and he would go, now Sheila E, that's a really nice dress. And they're going, family man, family man. And my wife Cookie would look good in that dress. As he's gone. But she didn't look good in that, why don't you? Anyway, so. How long did you last? I last, well, day three. Magic says, we'll be back after this. And apparently that didn't include me. They came up and they whispered in my ear, you're going to be off the couch now. And back to this New York Times article, a key aspect of Andy Richter's success is that Conan O'Brien carved out room for him to take center stage. This is a radical break from tradition. O'Brien is clearly fine doing the laughing, not just the jokes. He was a host happy to play the sidekick. Others have followed suit. Seth Meyers regularly plays the straight man to his writers in the running segment, jokes Seth can't tell, which helped launch the talk show career of Amber Ruffin. Jimmy Fallon has put the spotlight on his announcer, Steve Higgins. James Corden begins shows surrounded by writers and production people. But it's hard to see any non-musical sidekick today playing his bigger role in the comedy of the talk show as Andy Richter did. Is Richter the last great traditional talk show sidekick? Maybe. It's hard to imagine another star performer whose main role, the eyes of a casual viewer, is to sit near the host and go for at his jokes. So the talk show has always been a more collaborative genre than the common wisdom suggests. Instead of being all about the person behind the desk, maybe shows need to make the case for sharing the comedic wealth. I understand this though, I understand this. Now we can't be talking slang on TV all the time. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You can use a little bit of it. Of course you can. A little bit of it. No, it would be great. Not all the time. Who are you afraid of? Listen, white America, who gives a rat's ass about white America? Where I see it, there's plenty of black people around. Plenty of Spanish, what is she Lee anyway? I don't even know, she's Milano or something. Everybody, you walk around the halls, you try to figure out what race everybody is. I don't even know. But what I'm saying, he's got enough Hispanics, he's got blacks, he's got a lot of white kids who try to talk all black. I'm saying it enough for those people. We got Jay Leno and Letterman. They're all talking white. Those guys went to the finest schools. You gotta get on there and just mix it up. Where are you from? Women at the pool parties. Were they this good? Because I have to get over there. Oh, are you at the pool party? He's going back to, yes, I'm trying to bring him up to now. Playmate, wait till Cookie watches this show. Don't trouble him. I thought it was something else. Cookie is Magic's wife. And what happened to Jessica Hans Cleavage? It was here? It's the magic show. It's the magic. Magic makes everything disappear. OK, Howard, hold it. OK, everybody. Now, I got to interview Karen. You don't have to interview her. Just get a close-up on her chest. Show them that. I would remember. You know, you're a very beautiful woman. There's no doubt about it. But we got to go to commercial. We'll be right back with more with Karen after the show. You see it in the money or what? You can decide about it. You do like men with short hair? Short hair. Bubble butts. With what? Bubble butts. Bubble butts. Bubble butts. That means common magic. That means tight. Tight, tight, firm button. OK. Blue eyes. Blue eyes. Oh, Howard, Howard, Howard. What type of butts you got? Yeah, what kind of butts you have? I got the flattest ass you'll ever see. And let me tell you something for your mother. Believe me. Yeah, you got something to wrap. Now, a lot of these girls, you know how. You know the scene. You got tons of girls. Who are you kidding? You know. You got to have some money. You got to be a basketball player or some kind of asset. How would I make my own money? Who are you dating now? Who's your boyfriend? I make my own money. Who's your boyfriend? I just had $100,000 and $115,000 car. Really? Yeah, I'll tell you how rich magic is. He opens up movie theaters in black neighborhoods. Nobody does that. Yeah, you're mine. Where'd you get that idea, man? You ever got to the movies in a black neighborhood? All the time. Now listen to me. Wait a minute, wait a minute. This is my turn. You got to quit saying now. That was in the past. What are you talking about? Cookie and I. It's just Cookie and I now. You talk about it. What is up with you and Cookie? You talk about it. What is going on? I love her. And what's going on in the bedroom? Tell everybody right now, imagine. That's going to get the ratings. They already know. Really? Yes. So you got to wear a rubber, right? Of course. We have safe sex and we enjoy each other. And Cookie puts out? I have sex with her mind, body, everything. Really? God has blessed me. Yeah. We got a surprise for you. A surprise camera. OK, Gilbert Gottfried. Right back, hopefully, with Magic Johnson. Or Gilbert. I just filled up. Oh, there he is. Hey, how are you doing? Well, hey, I was OK. Because I was ready for my return to the television. All right. I can't wait to see how you change when he's in. Oh, yes. You have the biggest entourage. There's a huge group of people. They couldn't make this happen. Who are these people that travel with you? Even when you went to the bathroom, there's a guy guarding the door. No, don't even try that. Oh, come on. It's true, Robin saw it. Now, don't put it on me. I didn't say a thing. Robin came in and reported to me. Let me tell you what happened. I bought a lot of my staff. It's here from Los Angeles. And then Darren Prince, who brought me here. Who is this staff? I mean, I read in the paper today. They're saying you are the greatest African-American businessman that has ever lived. Wow. I have a live. Wow. I have a live. Not you, Gilbert. Gilbert is ready to accept the honor. I don't think that ever live. I think that I'm just trying to build quality retailers and bring them to our community, build jobs, build companies to provide jobs for African-Americans. I thought you were very brave opening up movie theaters in Black neighborhoods. No, it's not about being brave. Oh, yes, it is. I grew up in a Black neighborhood. And I'm going to tell you something. How do you keep them from shooting the screen? I can't say yes. In my neighborhood, seriously, I'm going to be honest. In my neighborhood, Roosevelt, which is a problem area in that there's a lot of economic depression and stuff. Roosevelt is Long Island. Long Island. And we had a little movie theater there. And all the kids used to take the BB guns and shoot the screens up. And the screens, as you know, are very expensive. That's not a cheap thing to screen. So the movie theater would close down. They'd get a new screen in the movie theater. And then the kids would shoot it up again with the BB gun. And then sometimes those real bullets would fly. They'd finally close, right? I probably didn't have any great customer service. No, well, I would go. Yeah, I mean, this shooting to the screen, that's just classic underwriting behavior.