 Ken Stearns, welcome. Yeah, thank you Megan. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you reached out on LinkedIn, which I look at periodically. It's like somebody sent you a message. And there was a message from you saying... It's like a real message. Yeah, coming to town. And I was like, oh, there's mostly spam on there. Yeah, it's mostly spam and people trying to outsource work. But you're coming with this calendar here. Yes. And tell me a little bit about what this calendar is. So I'm using the paper calendar to kind of visualize the cities where I'm going to go. And then by each four-day segment in each city, I can have an idea when the interviews are, when I have a rest day, when I should be working on some of the summaries, some of the literary stuff I have to do, the writing around the production. Okay. So when you reached out, you said you were part of this thing called The Jar, the podcast. And you're going to 111 cities. Yep. So I created a concept for a podcast that was hopefully going to kind of be my third act. So I'm coming off a career change. I lived in Asia, worked in Asia for 20 years. Okay. Came back to the U.S. in January. I had written a book, kind of a spiritual book called Dear God. And it was Letters to God, where I was asking questions around life topics. Yesterday, today's, tomorrow's, so your past, your future, acceptance, compassion, forgiveness, love, karma, service, prayer, hope and faith. Okay. So these are 12 topics. And I took the 12 topics, made 444 questions. Cool. Yeah. So I run around the country with 444 questions on the cards like this. Okay. And I commissioned, from a glass artist, I commissioned 4 jars. So we have giant jars like this. They're this big. Yep. Beautiful glass jars. We put these 400 questions in. And then, Megan, you interview yourself. Okay. I'm a facilitator. I pull a question out. So you pull a question out like that. And I read it for the audience. And then you share what your answer is, what your, what your life experience is related to that life topic, human topics, I mean, acceptance, compassion, forgiveness. These are things we should be talking about. Yep. And one of the, kind of one of the things that's coming out of it, it's quite interesting. You know, it's a bell curve, humanity is a bell curve. And most of us are in the middle on, on all the important things in life. About how to treat each other, about how to be a person, how to be a human, really important stuff. But somehow the conversation is driven by fringe on whatever side, whatever the pole or opposite. Those are the ones shooting missiles over the rest of us. And we're all kind of just going, really? Do we have to play these kind of games? Yeah. And we have so much in common, but we start out a lot of things in life now talking about what we don't have in common. And then trying to make that an issue. It's been a side result of the jar. It's more of an observation that the work that we're doing in the project is, is important because it is bringing real, the real important topics to the surface and finding out what you think about it. No judgment, just real people, real conversation. So I was introducing, so 111, where have you been so far? So I started in Olympia, Washington. Okay. On April 4th. It was just out there. Yeah. Seattle. Had some great interview. I met some like amazing people. Yeah. And I've just been doing. Is that where you live? Is that where you originate from? I'm from Chicago originally. Okay. So I lived in Chicago a long time and then as a kid and lived as an adult, a young adult in LA, and then lived as a maturing adult in Asia. And so I just did this, you know, all the way up and down the north. And so now I'm here, you know, I'm getting up to the coast. I'll be top of Maine next week. And then I'll go down. Starting in Olympia and you've been traveling in a car. Montana, Utah. And a van. A van. I have a van. I drive the van and it keeps my supplies because I'm field recording. Okay. Everything is done. And every day I'm in a new location recording and interview. So I need a lot of equipment. I've got a lot of stuff. So I don't live in the van, but I use hotels. And so I've been driving the van and just driving. How many states that is now? I'm not keeping track of the states. I'm in my 32nd city and I've done about a hundred interviews. How many days? April. You started in April. So 32 cities since April. Wow. Yeah. Every four days. So what you see in the map is. Do you feel like your soul is still behind you? Or do you feel like a whole human being still? I'm present. Okay. Yeah. I'm living a pretty intentional life, very intentional at the moment. And I'm present. It's very cool. And are most of the people that you're talking to in the middle of that bell curve that you're talking about? Or have you been to both sides? I've had quite a few that are actually been on the fringe in a way. But somehow are in that middle now. The interesting thing is the strength of humanity is unbelievable. I'm just blown away by how strong people are. How cruel humans can be to one another. The stuff I've seen, I've seen a lot of trauma, physical trauma, sexual trauma, mental trauma, a lot of drug addiction to cope with that. A lot of things that happen to people as children that impact them all the way trying to fix that, address that all the way through life. But everybody that's sitting down with us that's following up on the conversations are on the right road. Yeah. If you look at their map they've been on, some of it's pretty scary. I'm a lot of great normal people. People have had regular childhoods and everything. But a lot of people I've met are now on the right road. So it's really, that also kind of feels good. Because I get to see the destruction of the road they were on. And then you see them, I got the map out, the compass, and they're going on the right path, including the one this morning. It's a great inspirational, what people can overcome. You talked about, you spent, this is your third chapter. So you lived in Asia, which is a big place. Yep. Where in Asia? So I lived in five countries. Okay. I lived in Hong Kong for about 12 years. That was my first place. That's a place where a lot of companies have home offices. Got it. And so you stay in the home office and support different countries. So you might have a country operation. So that's kind of like your regional office. So you were living and working there? In Hong Kong and traveling around Asia. And then I lived in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and India for about another 10 years. 12 years in Hong Kong and 10 in another four countries. And what was your re-entry? So then you came back to the United States. Yeah, I came back, yeah, straight here in January. So kind of left a corporate life then and started the jar. So you were doing the insurance work in Asia? Yeah. That was what you were doing? Yes. You were doing this insurance work and then you came back here? Yeah. To start this. To kind of retire from corporate life. Got it. Wow. Interesting. So my exit strategy was just retire from corporate life and to see where this leads me. Yep. So I'm really a writer, a speaker, the podcast, the host and creator, and then a lyricist. I've also written a few songs. So do you think about also, do you think about the audience for your, are you thinking about like who's your intended audience or who you want to pay attention to this? Yes and no. I didn't set out to, I didn't want this to be built for somebody else. You know, really wanted, I believed and had an idea that the questions would allow people to tell their story. And I'm not a good, I'm not an interviewer. So I'm not a professional interviewer. So I had to kind of come up with some way to do it and to be unique. Yeah. And I thought the questions would allow me that kind of that grace to figure out how to be an interviewer and get good at it. And also kind of the odd thing is that along that creative process, I'll have 444 people, unique individuals. But I'll put them all through the same set of questions. Yeah. And out of that comes this light, like a spectrum of humanity. Yeah. Right. I mean, there's really, each interview is about 90 minutes. Yeah. And you know, it's kind of funny you're showing me your archiving. Yeah. And I was just chatting yesterday and saying, you know, what a tremendous resource we're building. Yeah. Of all these different people from all different walks of life, all across the country, all different ages, all different, and there's no filter on. Yeah. We're not curating the guests. Yeah. When I was introducing you to them. We're taking them as they come. Staff. I said, do you, it reminds me a little of Studs Turkle working. Do you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Oh, that takes me back. Yeah. I was a fan of Studs too. Yeah. I used to, okay, I'll have to go back and look. Yeah. And I'm sure, you know, we're all like the appropriation of everything, right? You know, it's just that whole life stuff and somehow I'm doing something a little bit different, but not 100% new. Yeah. Well, do you want to give us an example of some of the questions that you have here? Sure. And then I'm curious about you answering. Oh, me answering my own questions. Yeah. If you pick a question and answer it. I did have somebody actually on one day I was interviewing somebody who was a school teacher. And after about the fifth or sixth question, she said, this is really uncomfortable. Always in control. Yeah. And I always know the answer. Yeah. And I always know the question I'm going to ask. And now here I am. I have no idea what question is coming and I don't know what the answer is going to be. So, yeah. So some sample questions. And again, so these are in a jar, sitting in the jar and people pull them out at random. Yeah. And so it's an hour and about an hour because we have some intro and exit parts, about an hour of the jar of interacting. Yeah. And this one is, what does karma mean to you? Okay. And so I can, you know, a little bit cheating too because I wrote the questions and most of them I, some of them I remember, not all of them exactly. And karma for me really is an energy. It's created by thoughts, by actions, you know, everything I believe has some kind of energy. And so for me, karma is an energy. And it's just a, it's a physical form almost of a non-physical thing. Can we humans actually comprehend fully what space we occupy in the universe? Oof. No. No. I mean, I could go on and quite often- You could. You may be wrong. But no. Yeah. No. Okay. There's another universe. Does God have faith in us? In some of the words, we have God in prayer in there and these can be interchanged with, you know, creator or intelligent life or intelligent design, blah, blah, blah. We can, different words so people can get comfortable. But does God have faith in us? It's interesting, for me, an interesting question too because I wrote a song around faith. It was the first, the first letter I wrote was faith. It was probably based on my mom's tremendous faith, which kind of confounded me. But actually kind of thing in the end it is like prayer for me, out of this comes a prayer question, was all about actually, you know, we do what we do. We have our own free will. And faith is really just faith in our self in the end and doing what we know we need to do. Does that make sense? I'm going to articulate that very well. Is there a question that you found comes up when you turn over in most, like, is there a question that everybody always draws this question on or? It's kind of hard to say because I have quite a few questions that I liked and I wrote because there's only 12 topics. So there's a lot of slices. Yeah, there's some redundancy. It can feel redundant. But questions can often be quite close and they're good because you answered it this way and now we'll get a slice of it this way. It forces a person to kind of examine another side. A lot of black and white questions. One's black, one's white, the mirror image. A lot of sunset questions and sunrise questions still. Like life and end of life? Just the emotion, no, the feeling. When you see a sunrise, where's your favorite place for a sunrise? Metaphorical. And then how about a range like some examples of a range of difference? Are there surprises? Like, wow, people answer this question in really different ways. The first day and then that first week, I was completely confounded because people answered, they read the question different than I wrote it. Intentionally wrote it. So I didn't expect that. Obviously I should have expected it, right? That's a pretty obvious one. But it just blew me away. And over time, I'm even more surprised because there's more facets. Even the way they articulate the question, or even two people, like I did an interview yesterday with two people and one person read the question and the next person read it and a different word jumped out to them as being the keyword. So yeah, a lot of facets to the questions, especially the way I write. You know, there's... What can you do to help the next person you meet feel the warmth of your open heart? So you have to kind of start putting yourself and just different people pick up different parts of each question. The facets is what a word someone described to me. Oh, it has many facets. So do you feel... I would feel as a human, right? We're... We have this community around us and it lends us a certain sort of predictability, safety and comfort. And you're like chucking that to the wind. Because you're not traveling in your RV to see the sights and still containing... So to meet that many people and to make that many connections, what's the impact of that band for you? It's changing me for sure. It's going to change me. There's a lot, I think, on reflection. Because I'm still in the moment... I'm still in a bit of PTSD, right? I'm still in the whole... I'm still in the middle of the trauma. And I'm hearing a lot of... So I'm hearing a lot of stories. So I've got to use some techniques and manage the emotional part to not be connected to people. Because I'm really easily connected with people and make a strong personal connection, to their story or the trauma they go through. But it's working out okay. I'm actually pretty surprised. I think in the beginning I was a little bit worried when I started hearing some of the stories I heard. And now that I've gotten... I'm getting used to it. I'm getting good at it. I think I'm getting much, much better at it. But it has made me an incredibly... Let's say... I give people a lot of grace. Almost everybody I look at now... I look at people completely differently, honestly. I know there's no judgment. I used to look at someone you see their shoes or their clothes. And you just make some kind of a... Well, we always kind of make just some goofy fill in the blank, right? It's just a natural human nature. I would hope. At least I was hoping I'm a normal human. And you just make your own judgments. And now I look at people and I just wonder what the story is. It's a really weird... How do you... How can you share that? That seems like an important thing. I was just telling somebody earlier... I have a 19-year-old turning 20. Maybe he's turning 20. I shouldn't know that. And we were talking about road rage. We were talking about driving. How important it is. And I said, I have a mantra. Because in order to have compassion, you have to have a story. To understand that person's... So I have a mantra. To avoid road rage, my mantra is like they're on the way to the hospital to have a baby. Perfect. So it's like you get cut off in traffic by the Tesla. You get cut off in traffic by the truck driver. Whoever it is, they get somebody in the car. They get to the hospital. They go in somewhere in a hurry. If you hate babies or you don't want breeders, you can say they're on the way to the animal hospital with the dog. With the cat. Yeah, with the dog or the cat. So you tell a story which immediately allows you to have compassion. And then once you have compassion, you can't engage. Yeah, you can't be mad at somebody. Absolutely if you have compassion. So where do you go in your building of this? How do you transmit that experience to other people? How do you teach what you're learning? And I don't know yet. This kind of ties, for me, it ties into the question, what am I going to do with this? What's the purpose? Okay, yeah. For me, it's a real simple, it comes into that stream, into that lane of what am I going to do with this? What's the point? And I'm on that path. I'm doing what I'm doing. And somebody said the other day, the path will rise to meet you. It's kind of an Irish. I guess it's an old Irish saying. Oh yeah, may the road rise up to meet you. Yes, that's it. And the wind be at my back. So I got the wind at my back right now and I'm running on the road and it's great. And the path is there and I'm kind of just riding the path right now. Cool. And I've got another, how many cities left? Another 70 cities left, something like that, 70, 80 cities. And another 300 people. So you're going to go from here up to Maine and then down the coast. Down the coast. Follow the sun. Follow the sun, down the coast. And then a little bit of squiggly to hit some of the states on the coast, right? So you're going to feel, have you felt already the cultural differences? Already the cultural difference. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, coming into the Midwest was different. Yeah. So coming really out of that west, you know, big sky country, mountain loggers, you know, cattle ranchers, nobody, I drive for like two hours on the road and not see a human. It's wild. Yeah. And then get to the Midwest, different people, my people, I'm a Midwesterner. And then I'm here on these coasts. Yeah. Northeast. Yeah. And... And people. Yeah. In their heads. And New Englanders. New Englanders. And New Englanders. So this is going to be, look, every state's different, right? Yeah. And even town to town. I mean, I learned that about Asia. Yeah. You know, there's no such thing as Asia. Yeah. I mean, even Vietnam has got ten cultures inside. Yeah. You know, one country's got a lot going on. Yeah. So even every state's going to have quite a bit. But generally... Are you going to go through New York? I mean, oh, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Okay. Do you get to treat each borough as a separate city? Yeah. I know. Like, I don't know where I'm going to go. I have some friends, some grade school friends that are there. Okay. In the city. Okay. And so I think I'm going to connect through them. Which borough are they in Manhattan? In Manhattan. Yeah, yeah. The city. I've got a brain surgeon buddy, a very smart kid from, you know, back in the day. Yeah. And he's got some connections. And I'm going to kind of follow that. So I've been doing a bit of that. I just stayed with a friend from Asia in his place in New York in Cooperstown. Okay. So I was in Cooperstown and stayed with a friend. And that was great. And I got to hang out with the friends at night. And then, you know, during the day I was doing my thing. Yeah. Doing my thing. And how are you finding people besides... Is it moon? We do a lot of Facebook. Okay. So a couple of... I kind of laugh. I pick them up in bars. Yeah. So I pick people up in bars. And I have my question of the day. And we, you know, you might be sitting there having dinner. And, you know, I'll just kind of interrupt and say question of the day. And, you know, we have a chit chat. And sometimes people like that's fascinating. And I can, you know, and next thing I know I'm at your house for dinner the next night. Yeah. Do an interview. Yeah. It's really wild. Open, you know, an open heart, right? You know, if you're just an open person and you got kind of that, you know, not that right vibration. Yeah. It happens. It's happening to me right now. And it's different. It's definitely something unusual. Just, I just, this morning I was just talking to the fireman. And, yeah. So I was at Starbucks. So I go into Starbucks, going to grab a coffee. Whole load of guy, you know, whole load of just studly looking fire dudes are behind me. And they're standing there. And you know, I turn around and pull out. We're waiting guys. Question of the day. And the one guy had a faith question. He came up to me. He said, we talk about stuff around the kitchen table every night. And he's like, this question. He goes, the stuff we see in the day, what we see every day. And he's like, we are challenged. You know, just humanity. Yeah. Just the EMT interviews I've had are. So was that, so you came to us here today. So right today, if you're watching this, it is, it's Thursday, September 1st. Yeah, 1.30. Yeah, 1.30. And you came from another interview this morning. Yeah. And that was, can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So a lady, a bit outside of town, actually another next town over. Okay. And she found us on Facebook. Yeah. And she reached out. We had a discussion and agreed to the time and everything and met her at her place. So drive out there and set up. And wow. Abused by her father sexually from a young age of four remembers everything. The mom situation, not pretty mom was a boss of the house. They were poor. Things got, you know, quite ugly. Obviously it's not, it's not a very pretty situation. And eventually got out of the house. It's kind of a storied background. It's quite a complicated story. But ultimately, ultimately reconciled with the father. Yeah. A long story, but the father came, came around and came out as who he was to his church, to his, to his, but she never knew, which is the interesting part. She didn't know that, but he came clean. And ultimately, when he died, she's now actually, she found out a lot of this as he was before he passed away. And they had, they started to have a relationship. A wreck. She's like, I was about to have a relationship with this person, my father. And, and wasn't, you know, loved him. Still has, I mean, it's, you know, it's hard, complicated stuff. It's her father. She loved him. She wanted that to be right. Yeah. And, and then he had a massive heart attack and died. Yeah. This, I mean, you, you could tell that, but it sounds to me, and I can see the image of the jar. Yes. Your logo, your logo, which is up there. Yeah. We're sitting here with the jar. And it's almost like people are putting their stories into this jar. And you're carrying them around. It's, you know, more than this, because, and even when you reached out, I was like, there's something, you know, he's, there's this, he's wants to draw out the stories. It is interesting that people are contacting you to tell you these things. Vulnerably. Yeah. I mean, she, there was nothing that was off the table. I mean, she shared everything from her personal, a lot, and there's, it's a complex story. It's long and winding and complex. But the, and even in the end, I mean, interesting, I'm meeting a lot of unique people. She's an empath. Yeah. And she speaks to people on both sides of the spectrum, you know, people here today and people who have gone. And she said, I now have a stronger relationship with my dad. Yeah. After. He's come to her a few times and they've had conversations. Do you have a team? You have a team supporting you? A team behind me. Yeah. So a team remote. Yeah. Through. Keeping you safe. Kind of keeping me on the right and helping with set up the interviews. Yeah. So there's two things I need help on. One is the, is the details of the people. Because that's quite a bit of work to dialogue and agree location, answer people's questions because it's, you know, you wouldn't normally just jump in and sit down with some strange guy with a bunch of questions. So we have, I have my, ironically, it's my daughter. I say ironically, but a fun story, but she's become my, my really number one is help, help support person on that. And then I have a person, technical person on the quality of the podcast. Great. So the audio because it's field recording. And I know pretty little about field recording. So you can upload, share those. I upload it. And where do people watch it? They can watch it, listen to it. Yeah. You can see us. You can find us on iTunes. That's our most popular place that people find us. We're on Spotify. And it's either called the jar or the jar podcast. We're also have some, if you want to get an idea really like a quick up, say up to speed on what we're doing. Yeah. You can find us on YouTube. We did about 12 video series. Like a, like what a Netflix show would look like. So if we were to do, if you were to, if Netflix is listening or, or iTunes or, or anybody else who you want some original series, you go find our, our YouTube. And that is exactly what we're doing. It's, it's a, it's me doing an interview, maybe about six minutes of a few interviews. Yeah. And then it's about six minutes of the team or me talking. Yeah. And it's me in the van. Self-funded. I mean, so you're not, you're not, you don't have a Netflix or an iTunes or an Apple behind you, right? Yeah. No. You're doing this on your own. Self-funded right now. Yeah. You know, this is my, it's like a business. If I was to come back and open up, you know, I don't know, an ice cream store or something, I'd spend a lot of money getting resources put together and invest that money. Yeah. And so that's what I'm doing here. And I think we're going to have you interview one of our field producers here. Okay. We've brought somebody to, so you can. We found a victim? You found a victim. Hopefully he's not a victim. He's very open-hearted and Travis is going to sit down and talk with you. Oh, that's great. So folks can listen, introduce you, introduce what you're doing. Yeah. And then hopefully folks could follow up and find the, find the show. Yeah. With Travis. And I did see, I mean, I saw the whole list of shows that you have right now. Yeah. Ready. Which is kind of amazing. Quite a few still to produce, to put live. Yeah. So that's, so I think we'll, is there anything more that you feel like you want to make sure folks know about what you're doing, you know, where you are? Yeah. I think that's, I mean, I think it's, you know, we're looking for guests. You know, we're always, the looking for guests is there all the time. So I'm here in, I'll be in Maine, New Hampshire, Maine, and then dropping down to Massachusetts, Delaware, down in the New York area, Philly, New York, and then down to Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky. So if you're in that path, go find us on Facebook. It's a great place to find us. Cool. Great. And with my daughter, the producer. Got it. And get us, get you on the show. Cool. Well, this is a neat, this is a really neat project. Thank you. It's a, it's a gift to yourself. It is a gift to myself. And a gift to the people that you meet with. Yeah. Because the ability for people to tell their stories and be heard is really important. So thanks for coming in and doing this. Thank you, Megan. Thanks for, yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thanks for watching. And again, if you want to find out more, you can look up thejar.live and learn about Ken's project and maybe sign up to be interviewed. Yeah, or refer a guest who is great. Yeah. Thanks very much. Okay. Thanks again. Take care.