427: Carlos Whittaker—How Fast is Godspeed?

Quick question, Chuck.

Yep.

How fast is God speed?

I have a sign.

I mean, do you want the real answer?

No, it was rhetorical.

I know you know the answer because we just learned it from our fantastic guest, Carlos Whitaker, who just left the studio.

Man, you guys are going to like this guy.

Congratulations on finding another winner and thank you.

Woohoo, man.

That's what I live for, Mike.

How'd you find him?

I just got an email from a publicist saying, hey, this guy wrote this book.

Never mind.

Yeah.

You didn't do anything at all.

Basically, you opened your email.

I did open my email, but then I investigated it.

And once I found out what his book was about, I was like, oh, I think Mike is going to like this.

You investigated it.

Isn't that today like saying, oh, let me do some research on that and Googling the thing?

Like, an investigation used to imply a certain level of diligence and, you know, deliberateness.

Oh, it was pretty deliberate.

I mean, I had to type in letters and then I had to hit enter.

And, you know, so.

This actually is somewhat relevant to the conversation you're about to hear because

Carlos Whitaker, what this guy did, first of all, as best I can understand it, he kind of runs a company that requires him to give lots of speeches and write many different books and

help people influence other people.

But

he's kind of a fixer/slash communicator slash consultant slash coach.

He just occupies that kind of real estate.

I think he's an author and a podcaster, is what I think.

And

he talks a lot.

And I think what he's trying to do is help people.

I think he's all about, you know, giving people interesting

things to think about.

Well, the world is full of those well-intended people, and I wish them all every success.

I'm not that interested in most of them, to be honest.

But this guy really interests me because he's written a book called Reconnected.

And

I just love the fact that his business is based on his relationship with hundreds of thousands of Instagram

followers.

He uses his phone all the time.

And what's the book about, Mike?

It's about putting your phone down for a long time and what happens to your brain if you share his level of

addiction is probably the right word.

Look,

if you know this feeling when you've got 50 unanswered emails, if you know the feeling of misplacing your phone, possibly losing it

and going on that panicked search for it,

if you've become addicted in any way, shape, or form, or overly reliant to any screen in your life, you're going to love this conversation because this guy was spending seven and a half hours a day

on the screens, which he...

Just on his phone.

I mean, just on other screens, I'm sure.

But you know how every week it gives you like, you've spent this much screen time staring at this thing.

Yeah.

Well, for him, it was like 49 hours a week.

Yeah.

Which is ultimately.

He's a full-time job with overtime.

He'll do the math for you.

And spoiler alert, you know, it's like 10 years of your life spent doing this.

You just spoiled it.

Yeah.

Spoiling it around.

All right.

That's why he says, thanks everybody for listening to this episode.

Hope you liked it.

No, it's terrific because he basically

identifies the most important tool in his life to his business

and then gets rid of it.

Yeah.

And not only does he put it down, he has to break himself of this thing.

And

so he lives with monks

and Amish

for nearly two months.

And

now his brain literally looks different.

in x-rays or CAT scans or whatever that thing was.

And he's got a new lease on life, and he's just so much fun to talk to and listen to.

And somewhat tragically, you know, he's out here.

You know what?

I'm not going to tell you why he's out here because you're about to hear it for yourself.

Yeah.

And a whole lot of other great stuff, including an answer to a question I had never bothered to pose before until meeting Carlos Whitaker.

How fast is God speed?

You're about to find out right after this.

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You walked in.

Yes.

I said, thanks for your time.

Thanks for coming.

Yep.

And you said, I was here anyway.

You know, I've been here for the last week.

I said, oh, what brought you to Southern California?

And

I can't get the sentence out of my head.

Yeah.

My grandmom's house burned down.

Grandma's house burned down.

Yep.

Yep.

It's such a simple sentence, filled with words I've heard all my life, but grouped up in the wake of this conflagration.

That really hits home.

When your nana's house goes up in flames.

Yep.

Is everyone okay?

Well, you know, I

mean, you've been living in it for the last, you know, how long it's been.

I've been only viewing it from across the country.

You're in Nashville.

I'm in Nashville.

And so it's my wife's grandma, Nani.

And,

you know,

we hung out today.

And

she's like,

I think, Mike, this is the most potent statement I've heard.

She said, people said that,

well, at least you saved your life.

And she's like, but we lost our lives.

And

literally, she's 90 years old, has lived in this little red house at the top of Altadena on Mendocino Street for 45 years.

Her entire world was her bed, that bathroom, all her wigs, and the little walk to the kitchen, and it's gone.

And so, like, how at 90 years old

do you process that?

And do you go there?

And she just is one day at a time.

And so, yeah, she's alive.

She's in the hospital because it was really stressful to her body.

So a couple days after she got out of the hospital, they were in the hotel with her son and his husband.

And,

you know, Nani needs to go to the hospital.

She's not waking up.

And so smoke inhalation?

I think it was stress.

I honestly think it was her body and the trauma of it all just was like, what the heck is happening?

And so

she was really confused for a few days and she's back.

And so we're just kind of trying to get her strong enough to go home.

So while this is happening,

you're monitoring from

Nashville.

Yeah.

And you came out a week ago.

So that was really, the fires were still burning.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

so i mean not to start off on a real somber note here's the kicker ready this is just kind of a season that my family's in right now um my wife's mother gets diagnosed with cancer six weeks ago

my wife decides to fly out here a week and a half ago to be with grandma whose house may burn down um house burns down then my wife loses her mother four days ago.

So

I'm sitting here letting you know that like It's funny.

My wife and I were just talking right now, just kind of like, you know, everyone has seasons of life, and there's like some seasons that feel like unrelenting, just like blow after blow after blow after blow.

This is the danger of asking questions.

How's it going?

Nice to meet you.

How's it going?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like our first conversation, I'm like, it is therapy.

It's like fourth session of therapy.

I'm all in.

But listen, I just, I want to let people know.

This isn't even what we're going to talk about.

But it's like, it's like, okay, her mom passes away.

Bridget passes away on a week ago, monday uh bridget's mom's house burns down two weeks ago monday and what my wife and i talked about all day long is all the little miracles that we've seen throughout the last two weeks yeah it's like we could be like god where are you but it's like oh i was here i was here i was here i was here

yes that's really the question and so man i don't know i i i sit in front of you uh grateful um for to celebrate a life well lived of my mother-in-law grateful that nani is kicking in the hospital uh And grateful that we have an opportunity to share, hopefully, some hope with people

that will listen.

And your dad.

And your dad.

Again,

a right hook.

You know, my dad's got dementia.

Yeah.

Lives across the street from me.

My wife and I, after

the, what's the name of your podcast?

Oh, whatever you want.

Well, whatever you want to call it.

What do you call it, Chuck?

The way I heard it.

The way I heard it.

Yeah, yeah.

After the way I heard it.

Right up there to your left.

Yeah, right up there to my left.

Look, if I look to my left, it's there.

Put his book up because I don't know what that's called.

There you go.

Okay.

Reconnected.

Yes, reconnected.

Listen, my wife and I were flying.

We're literally going to finish the way I heard it, get on a flight and fly to Auckland, New Zealand tonight.

And I had a week of fly fishing that I was going to go to.

But my dad, who lives in Nashville, who with my mom across the street from me, has dementia and he's just been going south.

And so we made a decision last night to go back home.

So we're not, we're not going.

Not to just make this thing a complete squirrel-free associative thing, but I listened to a pod.

It was the last conversation you had with your pop.

Oh, you did.

Before he turned the corner.

Yes.

And I thought it was one of the sweetest,

most decent

things, not to do.

Sure.

That's your business.

Yeah.

To share.

Yeah.

And listeners of this podcast know that I have my mom on at least

once a month.

Because selfishly,

I try to be a good son and I got to stay connected to her.

I also need content.

But I also know for a fact that

every time she opens her mouth, she says something that lands boom

to somebody and I hear from them.

So look, by way of preamble,

it is fortuitous that you're here in the wake of all these calamities.

Absolutely.

Your book is terrific.

Chuck sent me a copy.

I have it home.

I didn't bring it down.

Otherwise, I'd be waving around and pointing at it and making yummy sounds and whatnot.

But it is such a rumination on our times.

And when I think about

what you had to do to connect to

your grandmom.

Yes.

Right.

And I mean, it's also basic.

It's also primal, much like fire.

Yes, yes.

Right?

Yes.

And so here we are.

So many people, we're surrounded by people now who are grieving because they've lost a kind of connection to a gajillion different things.

Absolutely.

And they're being forced to ponder the connections that matter most.

Yes.

And into the midst of this comes this guy, Carlos Whitaker, who has written a book.

And you're a big Instagrammer.

I like to talk on my phone.

The fact that you went dark for, what was it, seven weeks?

Yeah, almost almost two months.

Right.

So you went,

you totally disconnected.

Completely.

Then you totally reconnected.

Yep.

And now,

just when you thought your book was done,

you're having to practice everything you preached.

Every single thing I preached.

Yeah.

You know, it's,

if you think about it, I did.

I had to, like, on purpose, go dark in order to really reconnect with the humanity that I feel like a lot of us have lost.

By no fault of our own.

Listen, we've been thrown around by society and culture the last, feels like freaking tsunamis left and right.

So so I unplugged and I go and I live with the monks and I live with Amish and I, you know, have my own micro dirty jobs moment, you know, shearing sheep and trying to figure all this out.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, like I feel so alive.

Like, why do I feel so alive without my screen, without, you know, the phone, with all these things?

And so initially I thought that this was going to be an experiment about screens and about our phones and why they're bad.

Like that's what I was like, I was like, well, let me get my brain scanned by neuroscientists before and after, go live with monks and the Amish.

And then I could talk about how why phones are bad.

But instead, it ended up being why it's beautiful on the other side of the phone.

And that's, I'm telling you, that's where I want people that either read the book or follow me on Instagram and all the things to be like, oh, no, Carlos is reminding me.

Even now in Altadena and in Southern California and with Hester Grammar, like, how can we reconnect with those that we need to be connected with?

And how can we make sure that these screens aren't the things that are tearing us apart and pulling culture apart and making everybody hate each other?

How can we use the screens to make it better?

Yes, totally.

That's it.

Not worse.

Yes.

Or not as a surrogate.

Absolutely.

I raised in 24 hours $110,000 for Heather's grandma to start rebuilding.

How did I do that?

With your screen.

With my screen.

So screens.

aren't bad.

Screens aren't good.

Screens, I tell people,

the screen, you're not addicted to your screen.

The screen is a needle.

A heroin addict is not addicted to the needle.

They're addicted to the drug that's going through the needle.

Are you either injecting goodness into your soul or evil into your soul?

Where are you pointing that gun?

Yeah.

You know, in the hands of the wrong person, there's never been a tool capable of greater mischief.

Yeah.

In the hands of the right one, never a tool capable of ensuring greater justice.

So, yeah, it's a tool.

I want to talk about all that, but

I'm reminded, I went about four months without eating any sugar.

Wow.

And then one day I had a strawberry

and my eyes crossed.

It was so freaking delicious.

It was so, and

right, so you realize there's sweetness in a lot of things,

but you've had so much of it.

Gosh.

over here that you can't taste it anymore where you're supposed to find it or where it might occur naturally.

This thing did not occur naturally, but it has occurred, and studies show you can't put the poop back in the goose.

It's true.

So let's start with you.

Okay.

How addicted were you?

Yeah.

And why did you decide to go culturally?

Yeah.

You know, whether you have an iPhone or a Google phone, every Sunday, we all get these notifications that come across our screen that say it.

Mike, you have averaged so many hours and minutes a day on your phone.

Now, what I used to do is I just swipe it away because I didn't want to look at it, right?

It'd make you nauseous.

And one Sunday, about two years ago, I saw it and it said, Carlos, you spend seven hours and 23 minutes a day on your screen.

And I was like, my God, that is awful.

Like, awful.

Is there like an explanation point or a thumbs up?

Or do they just deliver it?

Because I do the same thing.

I'm like,

I don't want to know this.

You don't want to know this.

You don't want to know this.

Yeah.

So, no, it just slides across.

It just tells you, it slides across.

And again, I swipe it away.

I never look at it.

But one Sunday, I was like, you know what?

I'm going to do the math.

Let me just do the math.

So pulled out my little calculator, entered in seven hours, 23 minutes a day.

And I was like, oh my gosh, that's 49 hours a week.

That's two entire cycles of the sun around this planet as we're spinning.

That's two days of the week.

Okay.

That's a job at a quarter.

Yeah.

Full time.

That I'm staring at my phone.

Then I was like, well, let me keep doing the math.

49 hours a week equals about 100 days a year.

So 100 days a year, I'm looking at my phone.

Then I kept doing the math and I was like, okay, how old's my dad?

He's 85 years old.

If I live to be 85 years old, I will spend over 10 years of my life.

looking at this phone.

And I thought to myself in that moment, I've got to do something.

Like, like I have to figure out what to do.

So that was the, that was kind of the moment, the Phoenix moment, the me going like, I've got to figure out what to do.

So I had an idea.

I was like, like, well, what if I, I don't know, go away to a cabin for a week or two and see how it feels?

That was the beginning of it.

But then I've got a neuroscientist friend of mine, as we all do,

of course.

And he told me, you're going to have to do this longer than two weeks to feel the effects of it.

So we ended up with about seven weeks.

And that was the beginning of it.

So I got my brain scanned before, got a spec scan on my brain, did a bunch of cognitive testing, and then lived with monks, lived with the Amish, never looked at the screen screen again.

Then I got my brain scanned at the end, got cognitive testing done again, again with a father with dementia.

That's a big, like, big brain thing for me, right?

I was really interested in that stuff.

And so in the middle, you know, did this living, but I'm telling you, Mike, it was

48 hours and then this experiment was no longer about a phone, right?

It was all about humanity and connection and all these incredible things that I think we've forgotten how to do because of these screens.

Now, do you think the fact that you knew there was a date certain when this experiment would come to an end

impacted the way you processed your feelings throughout the experience?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

I mean

the first process was 24 hours in, knowing I had

seven weeks left, I was terrified.

I can't do this.

Talk about the first 24.

Like

how does the uncertainty or the anxiety manifest?

So it is, there are, there were physical manifestations of anxiety that were culminating in my body.

When I say physical manifestations, I'm talking about heart palpitations.

My heart never palpitated, but it was like skipping beats.

It's like, what is happening?

Like, why is my heart?

Night sweats.

I felt like I had the flu.

you know, bones were aching, joints were aching.

And I literally thought I was sick, but it took about

48 hours.

And then probably morning three at the monastery, I woke up and it felt like an elephant had stepped off my chest.

Like I was like,

the only way I can explain it is I'm like, I developed asthma as an adult.

The first time I took an inhaler and like shook it up and took a hit out of it, and I went from like not being able to breathe to being able to breathe.

If you've ever had an asthma attack, that's what it felt like on that third day.

So it was, there was a lot of,

again,

night sweats, you know, heart palpitations, heavy chest.

I was literally coming off of a drug.

Was it

so like, I think I know what FOMA feels like, right?

I mean, it's like if you're used to checking the markets or if you're used to checking your news feed or all that stuff, I get it.

But there's something else that happens.

Like, I remember leaving my phone on a plane once.

Right.

And I mean, I went through the five stages of grief in about 10 minutes.

But I went back again and again and again and again and again.

And, you know, I think the most relatable thing, very few people listening to this, no matter how persuasive you are, are going to go off their screens for seven weeks.

Totally.

But everybody listening has lost their phones.

Yep.

What is going on physiologically

in my brain?

Yeah.

When I go from normal to like, like...

That level of panic

doesn't translate to any other item.

Anything else besides your phone?

Right.

Right.

Not even your wallet.

Right.

Yeah.

If I had $1,000 in my wallet and I lost my wallet, I would go about the business of grieving for a missing thousand bucks.

Yes.

Yes.

And my ID.

That's a pain in the ass.

But if I lose my thousand dollar phone,

I don't even know what to compare that to.

Yeah.

Well, I think so many of us have literally built our identities on

either what people think about us because of what we're displaying on our phones or

the FOMO that you're talking about, missing out on, right?

A lot of parents have trackers for their kids on their phone.

Life 360, right?

We've got these things, and suddenly I didn't know where my kids were.

I didn't know how fast my kids were going.

Did they make it to where, did Sohala make it to work?

And suddenly, it was actually, I think, again,

I'm still processing a year and a half later, but I think for me, what I was missing was this sense, a false sense of control that my phone gave me.

So suddenly I realized the phone isn't the drug.

Control is the drug.

And that's what I lost.

And suddenly, we feel out of control when we don't have these control devices.

Man,

that's a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, but again,

Do you get over

the worry for your kids?

You're isolated, too, right?

So, you're not in touch with your family.

I would call my wife every other day from the payphone on the monastery grounds.

So, that's how I would communicate for about five minutes a day just to kind of check in.

All right.

Yeah.

All right.

I want to know about the monastery, and I definitely want to talk to you about the monks, but this thing, I don't want to just breeze over it because

part of growing up for me, and I didn't realize it at the time, but you know,

my parents see you at 9.

Yeah.

Be home at 9.

Bro.

Okay.

What you do between, you know, 11 a.m.

and 9 p.m.

on a lazy Saturday in the middle of the summer, that's between you, your buddies, and your God.

Okay.

Try not to get arrested.

Try not to humiliate the family.

But we'll see you at nine.

Yep.

And that, and they were okay with that.

Yeah.

I don't know of any parent today who can do that.

I don't either.

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This is what you'll hear from parents.

You may have heard this.

It's a different world, Mike.

It's just a different world than it was.

It's like, oh, is it really?

I,

so I've taken all the tracking stuff off, off my phone, since I've been been back.

And I've talked to my mom.

So my mom's 72.

And she is, she's like, Godlitos.

I am so grateful.

I am so grateful that I did not know how fast you were driving when you were a teenager.

I am so grateful.

I did not know that you were at Sinead's house at 10 p.m.

instead of Peter Kim's house.

I am so grateful because she was,

Mike, I think that our souls and our psyche were not created with the capacity to know what we know.

I think we just know too much now.

Like, if you think about it, like, we weren't supposed to know everything that we know.

And I...

It's not even knowledge.

Right.

It's information.

Information.

There it is.

There's too much information out there.

And so why do we need to know every little thing?

So trust is now decaying in the fabric of relationships, in the fabric of family.

Suddenly, now there's no trust.

You know, I mean, we want to like go to 40,000 feet and just look at like the family in general and like the problems with it in America.

It's like, well, let's let's go all the way down to just trust in general.

You know,

let's let's see how much our kids feel trusted by their parents.

Here's the other kicker.

When I took my Life 360 off my phone, do you know that it wasn't my wife and myself that were more stressed out?

It was my 17-year-old daughter.

But dad, how am I going to know where you're at?

Yeah.

So suddenly, see, there's this.

She doesn't know any other thing.

She can't remember a time.

No, she can't remember a time.

So she's like, well, but if I, okay, so you're trusting me, but like, I like to know, dad, like, when you land in Nashville from a business trip, like, just makes me feel, and I'm like, man, Mike, we know too much.

We know too much.

And so, so I do think, I think there's got to be an undoing somehow of this.

And I mean,

it's hard.

It may even be impossible.

But when I was living with the Amish,

and,

you know, Farmer Willis would tell me to go to the feed store to pick up a part for his tractor.

And he'd shoot me off on his e-bike.

And I'd, you know, it's supposed to be a 15-minute e-bike trip away, but I'd get lost because I didn't have a map or GPS.

And I'd have to ask these Amish, you know, farmers, hey, which way do I get to?

And I was lost.

And I'd come back three hours later.

I was like, were you worried about me?

He's like, no.

Why would I be worried about you?

You'd make it back home.

And I, you know, so anyway.

How would we fight a war today?

When you think about the power of a letter,

right?

In the Second World War,

and you think about the way that patience was just, it was just required.

You must be this patient to live.

Well, today, I don't know how,

I don't know that there's any requirement for patience at all.

There's certainly not a requirement

for solitude.

Yeah.

Right.

And so like...

When those things start to evaporate, I mean, how, I don't know how soldiers can soldier.

I don't know how how explorers can explore.

Yeah.

I don't, I mean, like to

really go off the map into, you know, Hicksunt dracones, here be dragons, you know, no, you can't go there.

You're as long or go ahead as long as I can track.

Yes, totally.

Yeah.

Man, I, it just, that is the, that's the most horrifying thing.

If

your 17-year-old has a panic attack because she doesn't know where you are.

I hadn't even thought of it that way.

I'm always thinking thinking of the parents trying to let go, but we're raising a whole generation of kids.

That are addicted to,

I don't know, like a lack of,

just, again, just of always knowing.

Constantly informed.

Constantly informed.

And

what's your heartbeat?

How many steps you take today?

Everything.

Oh, I got my whoop on my wrist, right?

I mean, this thing,

this thing judges me every single morning I wake up, right?

Every single morning, I'm like, oh, I wonder what my sleep score was last night.

How much sleep last night?

Oh, I'm only 79%.

I was 84% yesterday.

That's why I feel horrible because I wasn't.

Come on, Carlos.

You know, like all of these things.

I just think it's information, information, information.

And, you know, you're talking about solitude a second ago.

We are literally, as human beings walking, Homo sapiens walking planet Earth, the first, almost all of us, right?

The first group of generations to ever have solitude be extinct from our lives.

Yeah.

Until the car radio was put into a car, you would have to travel from point A to point B if you're by yourself, and you always had solitude.

It's gone.

And so nobody even has the need for it anymore.

And one of the things I learned on my, on this experiment was how valuable solitude was, how valuable it was for me to not be informed, not gathering more information, not listening to all these incredible podcasts, but just being

still and silent.

And we're so scared of that these days.

God.

It's so true.

And we're becoming increasingly terrified.

There's something exponential.

It's like

imagine picking up a book and suddenly seeing the spaces between the words vanish, right?

Because we don't have time for spaces.

There's no time to rest.

But then all you're left with is

gobbledygook.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

You know, I hadn't thought about it, but you're you're right.

The radio going into the car.

That was it.

That was a game changer.

That was a game changer.

It was the moment we stopped being required to be in solitude.

Yeah.

I saw something on my screen the other day.

Of course, we're fine.

Said,

they're talking about the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Oh, wow.

And it was real, it was real.

I think it went like this: Knowledge is the understanding that a tomato is a fruit.

Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

That's true.

So good.

Yeah.

But the fact that that little truth bomb came through the very device that we're sitting here bemoaning,

I mean, obviously, you're up to your neck in irony every day.

Well, every day.

And again, I think the way that I push back against the irony is reminding people once again, because I'm making YouTube videos, I'm podcasting, I'm making all these videos that are helping people, right?

I have have a whole documentary.

I took a little camera with me on this journey.

So I took a little Sony camera with me on this journey.

And I think we've got a little clip here.

And so I self-film myself

doing this whole thing.

And so people can now watch a documentary about me living without screens on their screen, right?

So there's so that's your brain?

Yeah, that was my brain.

This was the monastery up in Val Yermo, California, the high desert of Southern California.

This is me living with them, you know, with Willis.

That you freaking out.

That's you lying up.

That's me saying goodbye to my family.

And so, like, it is

90 minutes of watching this man in his late 40s go through it, man, and learn a lot, you know, learn a lot of valuable lessons from the monks, from the Amish,

and talk about how this wasn't going to be an experiment of lack of technology.

It was an experiment about purpose and all these things that I found.

But did you know that before the experiment started?

Did I know what?

Did you know what it was really going to be?

No, no, it was 100%.

I was going to write a book about why phones are bad.

And you were going to be the lab rat.

I was going to be the lab rat.

I'm the perfect lab rat on my phone seven and a half hours a day.

And it ended up being all these beautiful things like wondering and noticing and savoring and getting lost and finding our way and all these things that we no longer use our intuition.

Like Yelp is like the intuition destroyer, right?

It's like, you know, you want to go to a Chinese restaurant?

Just drive by one.

And if it feels like, go in.

But no, instead, we like open up Yelp.

There's a guy named Bob from Minneapolis.

I gave it two stars.

He's not pleased.

And suddenly, Bob is in charge of my dinner tonight.

And I'm like, come on, like, we've literally lost the ability.

You know, the subtitle is How Seven Screen Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Art of Being Human.

And I just think that there's all these arts that we've lost-again, savoring, noticing, wondering, that I'm hoping I can help people get back to.

But they're all

probably not all, but rooted to some extent in patience and solitude.

Yes.

Have you read The Comfort Crisis by the way?

Not yet, not yet.

You're the third person this week to tell me about that.

Okay, yeah, because you guys are singing out of the same hymn book.

You know, Mike Easter talks about being dropped off essentially on a glacier

and waiting for the rest of his party to be ferried to him on a small bush plane.

And he's just there for the first time alone.

No service, no nothing.

Yeah.

And just between the totality of the environment,

360 degrees, fast, nothing but horizon.

Wow.

And nothing.

And he talks about the speed with which

boredom settled in.

And then this real discomfort with being bored and alone.

And

not like an apathetic kind of, gosh, this is, but like an agitated

pain that comes from it, that makes you pace and claw at the hair you no longer have.

But, right?

So, I mean, that is, that's that's new.

Oh, it was, and it was so new for me.

I mean, I just kept reaching in my pocket.

For the first four days, I would keep, I knew it wasn't in there, but I would reach in to pull it out so I could scroll TikTok.

It just wasn't there, and I had to be bored.

Like, do you know what it's like to six times a day go into the chapel with these monks that walk it freaking three miles an hour so slow, walk into this thing.

They're chanting in Latin.

I don't know what they're saying.

I was so bored those first few days.

And I was fighting, just like he says, I was fighting this.

I can't be bored.

I got to find something to not be bored.

And it's like, well, wait a second.

Why not?

Why can't we just be bored?

Or why aren't you curious enough to ask yourself, what is it that these cats are getting out of this ritual that I'm not?

Yes, totally.

What was the monastery and why just started with monks?

Yeah.

So St.

Andrew's Abbey, up by Palmdale, Lancaster, up in the high desert.

The monks, 20 Benedictine monks, they're Catholic monks.

My wife's father, before he passed away in like the late 90s, was a high-capacity volunteer at this monastery.

So when I was looking for a place to go, I was trying to find subcultures in America that weren't reliant on screens like I was.

So I thought, well, what about the monks?

The monks don't have phones, right?

Like, let's call them.

So my wife calls, I'll never forget, she has no speakerphone, calls the abbot, Abbot Francis, that was in charge of the

monastery when she was a little girl and would go up there with her dad.

Hey, Abbott Francis, this is Heather Barcum Whitaker now, but I don't know if you remember my dad.

And he's like, oh, remember Bill?

You're little Heather.

Oh, how are you doing?

Right.

And so I'm like, oh, it's a monk, a live monk on the phone.

This is so cool.

And then

he was like, oh, listen, call me on my cell phone.

So, you know, Heather hangs up.

And then I was like, wait.

He's got a cell phone?

Like, everything's already like failing in my head.

I'm like, so she calls him and he's like, my husband, she's like, my husband wants to stay at the monastery.

Can he do it?

Absolutely.

He can stay for two weeks.

Let's zoom first.

Yeah, let's zoom first.

So, so you know, it's, it's again, it's a beautiful oasis up in the high desert.

It's gorgeous.

I get there, I stay at a little hermitage at the top of the hill overlooking the abbey.

Uh, the monks, there's 20 of them.

Uh, many of them have been there 40 plus years.

Uh, they're all, you know, in their brown robes with their black belts, walking very slowly and

curiously.

Uh, they're all pretty old.

So, I'd say

that

the young monk was like 53, uh-huh.

and he literally was like, hey, he didn't know who I was.

And he's like, you've been here for four days?

Like,

are you, are you like, he was recruiting me.

Are you thinking of joining?

I was like, no, like, I'm married.

And he's like, we're looking for young monks, but people, there's a whole generation that doesn't understand the beauty of the practices that we observe.

Right.

And so, yeah, monks are having a marketing problem right now.

I'll tell you, and clearly, I'm part of it because it just occurred to me.

I have no idea what the, what the stepping stones are to get to monk them.

Totally, what do you got to do, right?

Where do you apply?

What do you, yeah, yeah.

If you, hey, listen, Google St.

Andrew's Abbey, they're looking for monks right now.

So, if you're listening to this, we got some openings.

We got some openings.

We got some openings for the monks.

But look, they're getting old, bro.

Like, as they disappear, you know, we want this monastic life to continue.

But the Benedictines are very purposeful and hospitality.

So, they host a lot of retreats.

They were, it was great.

I mean, I ate with them breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Silent breakfast, silent lunch.

You can only speak during dinner, during, excuse me, silent breakfast, silent dinner.

You can only speak during lunch.

So I am, I'm actually naturally an introvert, but

when you, at least I think, maybe you can help me with that.

But during lunch, man, I was talking like a mile a minute.

I was just like,

these monks were like, yo, chill.

So, you know, I'm with them eating, but it's quiet most of the day.

It was a lot, man.

It was a lot to process, but I'm glad that I started with the monks because I think had I started with the Amish and then gotten to the monks, it would have been harder.

I think going full force, 20 hours a day of silence with the monks, that was the hardest part of this whole journey.

Once I got to the Amish, it was like moving from a cave to Manhattan.

Because

I would think the monk experience, and tell me if I'm wrong, but that's very internal.

Yes, you got it.

This entire part of the experiment was everything that was happening inside of me.

Right.

Because my experience with the Amish and with the Mennonites,

them's with the folksy ways, as we like to say,

is very physical.

Very.

And very conversational.

And very, they visit, and it was a, you know, every meal was two hours long.

They talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Where the monks was very internal, very reflective.

Wow.

So, how long with the monks?

14 days.

Okay.

And so the real pain points were in the first three or four?

Pain points, first three, and then day four.

I got it.

Day four, I was like, I get why these dudes are doing this.

Like,

everything's taken care of.

They live in a brotherhood.

All their meals are taken.

They sing praises to God six times a day.

It's just, it's a beautiful way of doing it.

Did you make friends?

I made a lot of friends.

And my best friend I made there was Father Carlos, believe it or not.

And so he was the youngest monk.

So me and Father Carlos, we've become really good friends.

We text all the time.

Monks.

Wait a minute.

What?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We text all the time.

Little did I know that monks have phone problems.

So as I'm sitting there, okay, Mike, listen to this.

So

you're Father Francis.

Okay, you're the abbot.

You're sitting there.

I come in day five.

I'm like, you know, everything in my, I'm all in my head, right?

Because like I'm at a monastery and I'm like pouring my heart out.

I'm having this crisis of faith.

And I'm, and he's like, tell me, Carlos, he's got all these books behind him.

And I'm pouring my heart out.

And he's looking me deep in the eyes.

And then halfway through my little monologue to him where I'm crying, his phone goes.

and he reaches over and he goes, oh, excuse me, son.

Exactly.

I've got to take this.

Yeah, yeah.

And he looks for a second, about two seconds, and he puts it back down.

He goes, just like, he's like, anyway, continue.

And I was like,

did this monk?

Are you messing with me, father?

Did this monk, did this father just do that to me?

And then he starts laughing.

Oh, maybe I need to read your book.

But like, I don't know.

It was so.

It was so sad to me that it's even getting to the monks.

You know, like, even the monks have problems with this stuff, with not being,

I think what I learned there about that moment was I at that point had been spent, I'd spent six days.

There had never been a buzz or a ding on my person to remove me from the conversation I was in with the person in front of me.

So I'd never been like taken away to an alternate universe like he did.

He was.

So he literally left where we were.

Left me all alone, went somewhere, even if it was only for a moment, came back, but I'm like,

I've never left anybody yet.

And so that was one of the beautiful things about this whole thing: I was fully present in every single conversation.

Even if I didn't reach into my pocket to look at something that buzzed, when it buzzes on your person, your brain goes, Oh, I wonder who that is.

What time is it?

No, is it my kids?

You know, I never had that happen.

And so, yeah, it was beautiful.

It is one of the many unintended consequences of this tech, but it has turned us all into multitaskers by design.

Our minds can't help

because before we reach for it and before we look at it,

we must have posed a question to ourselves.

Absolutely.

Right?

We must be wondering, and we've trained ourselves to know that the answer,

the answer is there because 98% of the known information in the world is available to us.

Absolutely.

Oh, my gosh.

It's a torture.

I mean,

let me tell you when my first lesson at the monastery was about wondering and how shocking it was when I had a question.

I think the monks were walking in and out and I was like, I wonder why they go side by side.

So I reached in my pocket and I was like, oh.

And I started the sentence by saying, I wonder why.

They walk side by side.

And wondering, literally, I realized, is being killed by Google.

Like, we no longer wonder anymore.

You weren't really wondering.

No, no.

You just wanted to know.

Yes, yes.

So wondering actually happens after you say I wonder.

And this is what I try to tell people.

It's like, no, wondering isn't saying I wonder.

Wondering is what happens when you don't find the answer.

And so I had to spend seven weeks in wondering.

It was like I was living in 1985 again.

Like,

I remember walking in Turtles Records and Music when I was a senior in high school and seeing like a cutout of Mariah Carey.

And not knowing that.

I wondered about that too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And not knowing who she was.

And I was like, oh, my God, this woman is smoking.

I wonder if she'd call me.

Yeah.

And then I remember walking up going like, who is she?

And my friend Peter Kim was with me.

And I picked up and I was like, oh, Mariah Carey.

And then I like, I put the little demo CD.

Remember, you have to put the demo CDs in the thing, you put the headphones on.

And I listened for like, I don't know, 20 minutes.

I'm like, man, I wonder who she is.

And then I went to the front and I asked the person at the front, do you know?

Oh, no, we just got the CD.

And I was like, so I bought it and went home and listened to it.

And just I wondered for weeks who Mariah Carey was before I saw her on an MTV interview.

And

that's, again, once again, extinct.

As you may have heard me say several thousand times before, we need to close the skills gap in this country and we need to do it stat.

I hate to be an alarmist, but there are currently 7.6 million open jobs out there, most of which don't require a four-year degree.

And currently, 250,000 of those jobs exist within the maritime industrial base.

These are the folks who build and deliver three nuclear-powered submarines every year to the U.S.

Navy.

And there's a real concern now that a lack of skilled labor is going to keep keep us from building the subs that need to get built.

On the positive side, there's a growing realization that these jobs are freaking awesome.

I'm talking about incredibly stable, AI-proof careers, just waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and start a career with some actual purpose.

Additive manufacturing, CNC machining, metrology, welding, pipe fitting, electrical.

All of it is spelled out for you at buildsubmarines.com.

That's where all the hiring is happening and you really need to see it to get a sense of just how much opportunity is out there.

That's build submarines.com.

Come on and build a submarine.

Why don't you build a submarine?

That's buildsubmarines.com.

It's also a form of what I was saying before,

an exploration.

If you want to be an explorer, if you want to go on a journey, then you have to lose sight of the shore you left.

And that's what we can't.

Yes.

We just can't do it anymore.

That's so good.

Losing sight of the shore you left.

People are too scared to do that these days.

Remember the old song?

Because you just liken wandering to walking,

which I think is something, there's something about movement.

It's, oh, I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

Oh, there it is.

How Jesus the Savior did come forward to die for poor lonely creatures like you and like I.

Come on.

I wonder as I wander.

Yeah.

That's it.

That's so good.

But I mean, I talk to Chuck about this a lot because during the lockdowns, he and I, we were 500 miles apart, but doing these long walks every morning.

We catch up, talk about the podcast and so forth.

But when you're wondering,

thinking, contemplating,

and moving at the same time.

Yes.

You know,

there's something there.

I don't know what it is, but that's symbiotic.

Yeah, I mean, I believe it.

I think that if I look at the monks again, they walked everywhere they went.

They always walked.

They would have meetings walking.

By the way, why do they walk side by side?

Actually, I never looked.

I still wonder.

Chuck, Google, would you real quick?

Could you just Google

why monks walk side by side down the aisle?

Yeah.

Because, okay, so you can't Google the answer.

Right.

And you can't ask them because you're not allowed to talk.

Right, it's grand silence.

So I was literally stuck.

How many times with the monks are you just walking around, just biting your tongue?

Do you just want to, I mean, you can't, you literally,

you can ask Siri, which is bad enough, but now you can't even ask the only other human that you can see.

I know.

Listen, though, one of the times that I needed to talk to a monk was when I was walking down from my cabin to the chapel, and

I came face to face with a bobcat.

And

I just remember thinking, listen, I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

There's not bobcats, you know, hopping around.

So I'm thinking this thing's going to eat me.

I'm going to, and I was scared to death.

And I remember, you know, I threw a traffic cone at that bobcat and I go sprinting down after the bobcat runs, runs off, sprinting down to the uh the monk, I don't know, dorms or whatever they live in.

And I see a monk and I go running up to him and I was like, dude, there's a bobcat, and I realized he can't talk to me.

And so, like, I spill my guts, and I'm like, and he's just looking at me, and he just kind of shrugs his shoulders.

And I'm like, I'm just gonna have to wonder, you know, a lot of wondering, a lot of walking.

This is very confusing.

Like, are you allowed to communicate without talking to the monks?

Oh, like maybe like, like, could we.

I don't know.

I mean,

I lost my voice a week ago.

You did?

And oh, yeah, totally.

For the first time in many years.

So I'm mute, which is bad if you're me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm like in this endless game of charades.

Like, so are you able to do that?

Or is it.

Yeah, at that point, I'm just embarrassed, right?

Like, like, I'm like, are the monks talking about me behind my back?

So, you know, you're trying to like, I screwed up communion.

There's all kinds of things I was like doing Catholic wrong.

So like I, I was definitely trying to not like intrude on the, on the monks like vibes constantly, you know.

Did you feel like a guest there?

I'm sure you did at first, but did that

go away?

Yeah, it went away.

Because here's the thing, the monks, they have guests six days a week.

One day a week, they are alone without guests on the property.

And they let me hang out with them that one day, bro.

The beer that they brought out was way better than the beer that when the guests are there.

It's that strawberry.

I'm telling you, it just tastes, you're right.

It's like I got to taste true monk community.

So two days I was there.

I got to taste that during the two weeks.

And it was awesome.

I became really close with a lot of them.

So when did you leave them?

And what was that like?

And did you go straight to the Amish afterwards?

Yep.

So my wife comes and picks me up 14 days in.

And, you know, I needed a little wife time.

It was very beneficial for me and her, but me mostly.

Of course.

I don't want to pry.

Yeah, you know, it was great.

Needed that.

So it's like two weeks

with the monks.

She drives me to LAX, drops me off at LAX,

and I have all my suitcases and a paper boarding pass.

I don't know when the last time you traveled without your phone was.

Oh, but but but I like, I had to have a, I was like, will they still take this like as a form of getting on the airplane?

So yeah, paper boarding pass all the way.

I land in Cleveland, Ohio.

My friend Leanne, who hooked me up with Yamish, picks me up, but I don't have a way of like calling her when I land.

Every single thing.

Hold on a second.

Chuck's actually found something.

Why don't they walk side-by-by-I really haven't found anything.

I can't find the side-by-side thing at all.

I do have a question.

Can I use the restroom?

Yeah, sure.

Can I pee?

I don't see why not.

Is it possible?

Can we?

I'm wearing a stadium, pal.

I'm going right now.

I should have asked you that to begin with, but I didn't.

It's right around the corner.

Yeah, let's go.

I've drank a lot of water, and I've got so many good stories.

You're like, Jude, take your time, man.

Okay, cool.

Take your time.

All right, I'm looking for a side-by-side.

The closest thing I can find is why do they walk in circles?

There it is, right there.

Circumambulation.

The act of walking in a circle around an object of veneration is common to many of the world's religious traditions.

Buddhists circumambulate to show devotion, pay tribute, cultivate their minds, and accumulate merit.

Although the practice predates Buddhism, the Buddha mentioned it several times over his teaching career and said it purified negative karma and ensured a favorable rebirth.

Now, this is probably sacrilegious because we're talking about a Catholic order in a monastic situation.

And here I am quoting Buddha.

So see if you can stay in the

Catholic monks.

Yeah, Catholic monks,

not Buddhist monks.

Yeah, I wasn't specific.

But look, while we're waiting for Carlos to pee, folks, at least you learn something about why the Buddhist monks walk in a circle.

Why do Catholic monks walk side by side?

I spelled Catholic wrong.

Aren't you Catholic, technically?

No.

I was raised Catholic, but I'm no longer Catholic, technically.

Well, according to AI, Catholic monks often walk side by side as a symbol of community and equality, signifying that all members of the monastic order are considered equal in their shared life of prayer and service, walking together on the same path towards spiritual growth.

It also reflects a sense of unity and shared purpose with the monastery.

There it is.

I can't believe

we not only have an excellent answer to your question.

Great.

It was provided by AI.

You know what?

And accessed on a screen.

Of course.

Thank you, AI.

Thank you, screens.

What's the answer?

Well, the highlight is highlighted.

It's a symbol of community and equality.

That's why they walk through the eyes.

There it is.

And I believe that.

That feels right.

That feels good.

It feels right to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's a good transition because it's the community component.

What I took from the book really lives in the Amish more than anything.

Oh, wow.

So to sum up, monks, very quiet, a lot of solitude, but they still are on their screens.

Oh, yeah.

You're not, they are.

They are.

Yep.

And then on the way to the Amish, you go to the airport, but you can't call an Uber.

You can't coordinate with your pickup.

You're walking around like a schmuck with a paper ticket.

It's 1977.

It was.

And then I'm just standing there going like, well,

my wife told me before she dropped me off the LAX that Leanne was going to be here.

I wonder if she'll be here.

If she'll be here.

And then next thing you knew, I see this white convertible beetle with Taylor Swift blaring through the speakers and out jumps Leanne.

And she's like, oh.

And I was like, the relief of just seeing her, I was like, I didn't know if I was going to die in the airport, live here for the rest of my life.

Like, who knew?

And she picks me up and we hop in her car and we drive to Amish Land is what I called it, Mount Hope, Ohio.

Oh, so you're in Ohio?

Yeah.

So what airport were you in?

I went from Cleveland.

I went landing in Cleveland, and then she drove me to Mount Hope, Ohio.

And so, yeah.

A lot of Amish in Ohio.

A lot of Amish.

The largest population of new, of

the New Order Amish.

And then there's the low order, the higher order.

They live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but then in Holmes County, Ohio is the largest population of Amish in the country.

And that's where, that's where I lived.

Right there, it was a four-way stop, Mountain Hope, Ohio.

They've got the horse auction there, the post office, couple things, and then just a lot of farms.

It was, bro, I'm just telling you, I'm a city boy.

And to have, first of all, to have like a half black, half Mexican, shaved head, tattooed dude dropped in Mountain Hope, Ohio.

One of these things is not like the other.

Totally, totally.

And I'm like, oh my gosh,

I'm just already feeling, you know, and I walk in and Willis, Willis sees me, she drops me off.

And I mean, literally, I mean, this was just, it was, there's like, like, there's horse and buggies everywhere and she leaves and I'm standing there and no one's coming up to me and then I see there's there's a guy like

on his plow behind four horses like big Budweiser looking horses obviously like all the terms yeah yeah all the terms I'm using show that I'm not Amish okay and and right the the horses show up he hops off I'm just standing there with my lug and he just walks straight up to me he's like you must be Carlos it's like yes sir how'd you put that together there Columbo and he goes uh you're you're you're gonna need to put some farm clothes on.

And so I was like, yes, sir.

So immediately I go and I put on my, you know, my farm clothes.

And, bro, I spent the first day just watching this man farm.

I went to bed exhausted.

I was like, just watching a farmer farm was more exhausting ever.

Slowly but surely, he folded me in.

And by the end of it, I'm like, I mean, listen, I was walking around with like some sheep farming swagger by the end of these two weeks.

But tell me about the family first.

Yeah.

What are they called?

So

the Millers.

The Millers.

The Millers.

Yeah.

So you got Willis

and Kathy.

And they are, you know, the heads of the farm, of the Miller Sheep Farm.

Then they've got Krista, their daughter, who lives there who's Mennonite.

So again, right away I'm learning.

I'm like, okay, wait, what's the difference between a Mennonite and an Amish?

And Mennonites, basically,

they're like,

I don't know, I don't want to say liberal Amish, you know, but they

have...

They've been known to play a game of cards.

Yeah, you know, like they drive cars.

Like they're, you know, they're a little open, a little bit more open so um

uh crystal is there with them they've got diane who's still amish another daughter and and her husband so like what i quickly learned i was like wow there's a lot of like where's this shunning where's this shunning happening like i'm waiting for like wait you're not supposed to talk to her because she left the amish church no it's like where's the barn bracing yeah yeah

where's kelly mcgillis yeah totally all of the things i'm waiting for all the things to happen kelly my gillis and so so i'm waiting and i i'm just quickly there unraveling all of these beliefs I had about the Amish really quickly.

They're like, Carlos, like,

sure, there could be probably some shunning on some reality show you've seen on TV, but no, like we love each other.

We're here, you know, here for each other.

And so I just started learning.

I just started learning, at least with the

monks, there was a little bit of, you know, I'm living on the evangelical train.

I'm not like Catholic, right?

And so like there was a, but I just had more.

in common with the monks than I had with the Amish.

And so I didn't know a thing about the Amish.

And the family was amazing.

They run a sheep farm,

and so they've got about 200 acres, and they run the whole thing with their horses and plows.

And I spent the first seven days just waiting to cut the hay.

Like, I didn't realize that cutting the hay was such a big thing.

You know, I'm like, it's a thing.

Let's cut the hay.

Like, bro, it's time to cut the hay.

But no, it's like you wait and you wait and you got to wait for it to dry.

And, you know, oh, I don't want to leave out their dottie, their grandpa, who lives in the home 20 feet from their home, right?

And

all of a sudden, again, American subculture and society, I'm falling in love with just the intergenerational living that's happening with the Amish.

I'm like, man, we don't do this anymore in America.

Like, we don't live near our family and all these things for, again, no fault of our own, but maybe a little bit.

And so, like, I just fell in love with kind of how they did things, which is one of the reasons I moved my mother and father across the street from me in Nashville because I was like, I want some of this.

I want a little bit of this.

And conversely, I mean, just to make it a callback for a minute, if Dottie's house catches on fire, they run right across the lawn

standing by.

If Nuna's,

Nani's house catches on fire,

you got to get on a plane, you got to fly from Nashville, and next thing you know, you're in Southern California

for a week.

Yeah, yeah.

So

it's a different way of living.

I'm sure there's a lot of things.

If I would have lived there for a month instead of two weeks, I probably would have found more things I

maybe disagreed with because I'm sure there's a lot.

But I really loved the Amish.

I loved the way they did community.

I loved the way they did family.

They taught me a lot of lessons.

They were really open with me.

Believe it or not, Willis and I don't see eye to eye on a lot of things.

He's Amish and I'm not.

And we were able to talk about like really

what you would see on X or on Facebook polarizing topics

over a meal.

And

we would agree that we're probably not going to see this thing eye to eye.

But man, I really enjoyed the meal with him.

And I really enjoyed talking to him and learning and being curious.

I think that curiosity is one of the things that I've learned since I've left the monks and the Amish is really missing in.

America.

You know, people just aren't curious about each other's thoughts anymore.

They're curious about each other's beliefs.

And the way that Willis and his whole family were so curious about me

made me think I should probably be more curious about other people, too.

So, I mean, look,

I'm trying to think of the downsides of curiosity.

I mean, I know it killed the cat.

Right, right.

I mean, besides the cat.

Besides the cat, right.

I mean, look, the whole Discovery brand was rooted on, you know, one mantra: satisfy curiosity.

Wow.

That's what that was.

Yeah.

But

maybe there's a lesson here, too.

You used the word mission once or twice.

You know,

missions, notions,

endeavors,

they need constant care and feeding.

And

they need recalibrating.

And you got to check yourself a lot.

That's good.

Everything around you is always changing,

including you.

And so the next thing you know, and I don't want to put words in my friend's mouth, but John Hendrix, the guy who created the discovery channel yeah and started with that mandate you know satisfy curiosity he's still alive which means he was around to see a version of his notion pop up in a show called the amish mafia

which was an absolute turd and everybody knows it totally so it's like you know the it's like the way

a great idea can slowly become corrupted This is good.

Just like the frog in the boiling water.

There's so much inherently good about this infernal thing.

And

I'll let you riff in a sec on all of this, but

I think the point I want to try and make is that geography matters in this a lot, too.

Yes, yes.

And when you talk about that community in Ohio, and then you talk about your own life and your own grandmom, you know, 2,000 miles away from you and your wife,

part Part of what these screens try to do for people

is shrink their world so they can have a community like the Amish have as a default by nature of their geography.

And I think that's a, you know, a good and

noble endeavor.

But,

you know,

it's hard.

It's not happening.

These screens, as much as we want to say, and as much as it is a noble endeavor to say,

whatever app you develop is just going to bring us closer together.

I just,

bro, for two months, I'm the only person I know,

at least in my circle, that has not looked at a single screen for two months, right?

Like, I didn't look at a TV and Apple watch, an iPad, laptop, nothing.

And I became,

I think, the purest version.

of me I've ever been.

So pure.

The friend I was to the Amish, the friend i was to the monks um

was night and day compared to the friend i am to my friends that i text every once in a while um i i do believe that that these screens

can be an asset to community but that you're right like the amish

their geography matters the fact that they're together matters when

miss smith's barn burns down The reason they don't have cars is because they believe, they don't believe cars are evil.

They just think think that if we have cars, we'll be too far away from each other if something happens to help each other.

So cars will take us too far away.

So horse and buggies will keep us close enough to where when the bomb burns down, in three days we'll have it back up.

So one of the questions that they ask with any piece of technology they invite in is will this piece of technology bring us closer together or will it tear us farther apart?

Everything from a TV to a some of them have flip phones now.

Okay.

Amish have flip phones.

So they made a very conscious decision, okay,

if you own a business, looks like the businesses are failing because you can't communicate to your customers like you normally would and farming's not working anymore.

So we're gonna allow a flip phone to come in because we don't believe that the flip phone is gonna bring us farther apart from each other.

So

those are questions that I think we need to be asking ourselves when we add things into our lives, we install a new app on our phone.

Is this going to bring me closer to the community I'm in or tear me farther apart?

There's a book called The Lonely Century.

It came out maybe three or four years ago.

And it talks about how we are the most connected as a as humanity that we've ever been.

Never been more connected.

Never been more connected, but lonelier than we've ever been.

And so it's like, you just, you got to chew on that and you have to think about it.

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So

how then do you think about the reality for a lot lot of people today?

They are isolated and they're alone.

And if through their screens, their phones, they can find community, albeit a prophylactic version, a virtual version of a community.

But those communities feel awfully real.

Yeah.

And you can be shunned from those as well.

And that hurts, you know?

I don't know.

I mean, is there such a thing

for a lonely person as a community that's facilitated entirely by the screen?

I think it's a good first step to finding community.

I just would challenge anybody.

Listen, I'm not very dogmatic with a lot of things I think.

I feel like I'm a pretty open and curious person.

But

I just can't fathom

that

whoever you are that's listening to this, that's lonely,

can't take one step farther past whatever community you've created on your phone to have breath-to-breath conversation and community with people around you.

Again, maybe there's someone in an article that's listening to this right now that we, okay, there's going to be cases where this isn't the point.

I just think that we've all got to try our hardest to find breath-to-breath, face-to-face community.

The fact that I get to do this with you, like face-to-face and not on Riverside or not on Zoom,

the conversation would have been completely different.

It absolutely matters.

And I just think

I've got to keep reminding people that it matters.

What if,

in my alternative universe, the conversation would have been precisely the same?

The feeling would not have been.

Like a conversation, at least in hindsight, is a transcript.

Yeah.

So

we could say the same things and we could make the same points.

Yeah.

But the intangible thing,

this podcast was born out of the lockdowns.

At least this format was.

And it lived on Riverside.

Yeah, totally.

Out of necessity.

And then, you know, a funny thing happened, man.

Once we realized we weren't locked down.

Yeah.

Now it's a pain in the ass to get on the plane and come down here to do this.

But

man,

I know when I feel like I'm cheating.

I know when I feel like I took a shortcut.

And even though it's more efficient, those shortcuts do lead to long delays.

Yeah.

And you give up something in the bargain.

Sure.

This is probably a hassle for you, too.

I mean, actually, you were here anyway because

you had the great good fortune of having your Nana's house burned.

Right, right.

So I'm here.

But, right?

Yeah.

If a thing takes effort.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Then you have a basis for something in common.

And

we don't want effort anymore.

People,

I mean, Amazon, I've got a new app that I have on my phone called Amazon Prime Now.

Okay, so now there's three words.

Okay.

Three words.

Three words, Amazon Prime Now.

So first there was Amazon.

Oh, I can get the thing in five days.

Then there's Amazon Prime.

Oh, I can get the thing in two days.

Now there's Amazon Prime Now that tells me I can get the thing in three hours.

You can get it yesterday.

Yesterday.

I can get it yesterday.

Amazon yesterday.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think people want community like that.

I think think people want,

and I just don't think we can get it.

Dude, we're swiping left.

Yeah.

We're swiping right.

Yeah.

We're scrolling up.

Yes, her, maybe her.

Go ahead.

I'll do that.

Yeah.

What is it?

We're grinder this and to grinder.

Tinder that.

Tinder that.

That's what I meant to say.

Not grinder, folks.

Not grinder.

Never been a grinder.

First-hand knowledge, I don't know what's happening.

But no, yes, you're right.

I mean, it's,

and I mean, I even think to myself, so like my

instagram audience like we do a lot of good right my community i call them a community on instagram uh we've raised over 1.1 million dollars to help people in need over the last few years strangers i'm sorry i'm sorry

this is so stupid i'm an hour into this thing what do you do for money yeah

what do you what do you do

i um i i speak full-time so like like i i speak on corporate stages or faith stages um what the hell do you talk about i mean before you wrote this book what were you talking about?

So, this is my fifth book.

So, I talk about a lot of my books.

I got a book called Kill the Spider: How to Get Rid of What's Holding You Back.

That's a whole other podcast I'd love to come and talk about.

Fine.

You know, just stop cleaning the cobwebs, kill the spider.

I got a book called How to Human: Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects Us.

So, a lot of speaking I do.

I got some courses online that people, yeah, I got one called Human School that's coming out.

And yeah, you know, I write books, you know, so I write books.

So, people buy my books, helps feed my family, you know.

So, nah, bullcrap, there's more.

There's more.

Like, why do you, what, what's the,

like,

why do you

give a damn?

Yeah, yeah.

I think

I grew up, I mean, we're going there,

where I didn't have a lot of people that gave a damn about me.

And

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia in the 80s in a predominantly white neighborhood, that I was trying my hardest to fit in with my Gary Coleman afro, parted down the side, you know, left and right.

And I was trying, you know, all my friends put their hand to my afro and would like make their handprint and go, oh my gosh, this is so cool.

Look at your hair, you know, and what you're talking about, Willis, and the whole thing.

And I just, Mike, I've tried for so long to like,

I tried for so long to be included.

Tried my hardest to be included that like there's something in me that just wants everyone to feel seen around me.

And I know as I travel, like I just said, we raised $1.1 million for strangers in need.

It's because

people just feel invisible and I want people to feel seen.

And

ultimately, you know, I think the funnel is really wide

at the top part of everybody's kind of like, hey, everyone, come on into Carlos's world.

But I definitely think, you know, as the funnel gets closer to the bottom, I really, truly want everyone to feel seen.

And because I didn't feel seen for a long time.

How odd that in this same time where we are

undoubtedly more connected than we've ever been, we're also probably more invisible than we've ever been.

Oh, yeah.

What a trick.

What a terrible bargain we've made.

If in fact being seen and feeling validated is the goal.

What a terrible, terrible, terrible trip we're on, man.

When I showed up at this monastery with my 300,000 Instagram followers, going, Hey, I'll see you guys later.

Like, like, I see you guys, like, I know you're going to miss me.

I'll see you.

I mean, I know where we hang out every day.

I hit posts, everyone's like, hearting me, like, oh my gosh, where are you going?

No, no, no, no, no.

And then when I hopped back on eight weeks later and I realized

not a single person knew I was gone.

Like, there's someone to slide right in to take over over someone's attention.

What a terrible trick we've played on ourselves.

Jesus.

It's like a hyper version of life.

I mean, what really happens after our funeral?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like, what really happens?

The people who loved us most are sad and they walk around and they're sad for a while and people make the food and they eat the food and they

say some nice things about you.

And then there's a whole nother layer of people, your co-workers, your acquaintances and they come and they're like yeah that was man he was something he was something else and then man you know they go home and they're watching the wheel of fortune yeah yeah

or or whatever and then the next day and the next day yeah and pretty soon

you know you

life truly goes on yeah and

And it goes on so much faster in this hyper-real place that we've created.

So much faster.

I feel like such a, look, I've had a really uneasy relationship with social, and I want to ask you about this too.

I got, I don't know, nine, 10 million people on various channels.

And I take it seriously too.

I don't,

I mean, honestly, between us

and

everyone,

I think of them as my personal focus group.

My boss, really.

Yeah.

It's like, I'll tell you guys what I'm thinking.

Like, they chose the name for my show, for my book.

Yeah.

I do that.

Yeah.

But, but beyond that,

it is true.

If I don't post something on Facebook or Instagram for a few days,

I start to feel like I'm cheating.

And like,

there's a dog in the backyard.

It won't stop barking.

Yeah.

It's true.

So, okay, so they didn't miss you.

Yeah.

Did you miss them?

And what did it feel like to reconnect?

I missed them.

I missed the idea

of them missing me.

That's great.

I missed the idea of them missing me.

That's what I missed.

And so,

you know, seven and a half weeks later,

brain rescanned, tons of healing in my brain.

I don't even want my phone when my best friend Brian, he'd had it the whole time.

He lives in Laguna, and I'll never forget.

I fly out to get my brain scanned, and and he hands me my phone.

And it, Mike, it felt like it weighed two tons.

Like, I just remember being like,

I just carry this around.

Is this how much my phone?

This thing weighs a lot.

Like, this is crazy.

And I put this next to my testicles.

And right now, it's underneath both my testicles.

I'm literally sitting.

I got this.

I'm going to take this battery,

this throbbing hot thing.

And it's just buzzing on my testicles right now.

You know, you know, yeah.

Nestle it in the tank.

Perfect.

And I just, you you know, I didn't want to turn it on.

I didn't want to turn it back on.

I was at such peace.

I didn't even need to see my brain results.

Like, I knew it was different.

I knew that my memory, I knew all these things had improved.

But my life was just like, it felt pure, like I said, just pure.

And, bro, I didn't want to turn it on.

And I sat there for three days with this thing just black.

And I finally, my wife's like, hey, we got to pay the bills.

You need to get some species.

Like, I know, you know, like, you got to turn it on.

This pays your bills.

Hey, Walden.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I turned it on and it just, bro, it was like,

I mean, imagine two months of notifications that were just like waiting.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Oh, my God.

And so this is what I did.

I handed it to my wife, and I said, I need you to hit select all, delete.

And I literally deleted every single message

and started from scratch.

And I said, if anyone really wants to get a hold of me, they'll call me back.

So I deleted all my messages and started clean, started fresh.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

It felt awesome.

Do you know what I like to do from time to time?

I like to put that thing on Do Not Disturb and sometimes maybe forget to take it off Do Not Disturb.

Can I tell you?

I've had my phone on Do Not Disturb for two years.

Really?

I have not had a single,

a single notification.

My family knows.

Now, now I tell people, this is how you can tweak it.

I tell my family, I've set it up to where if you call me, this is my wife, my kids, and my mom.

If any of you call me, if you need me and you need to talk to me, call me.

It will buzz.

But if you just, if you don't need me, don't call me.

Can I tell you in the last two years how many times anyone has called me?

I don't know, maybe three times, maybe three phone calls.

One for my son, he got a flat tire, another for, but besides that, I've never gotten a buzz or a ding on my person.

So suddenly I'm in charge of my phone.

My phone's not in charge of me.

And so I tell people all the time to do what you said you love to do.

Put it on do not disturb.

The notifications will still be there when you open, when you turn your, you know, flip your phone over.

It's all there, but it's not ever going to interrupt you and remove you into an alternate universe that you weren't in in the first place.

How do we get here, man?

Yeah.

I mean, how do we,

I just think of the times, I mean, I wanted this out for this because we're talking about this.

Yeah, totally.

But the truth is, I just interviewed somebody else earlier and it was out.

And I walk into restaurants

and the whole group of people.

It's like we're taking our guns out in a saloon and like turning them in before we sit out.

Take out our phones and we set them down.

We do the thing.

And then

we're just, we're all just

wraiths.

We're vapors.

We're not really

present

ever anymore.

My partner, Mary, runs my company.

She's got sometimes, I've seen her with the phone in each hand.

literally texting two different people at the same time with two different thumbs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

And I think of my dad, who's 92 now.

Yeah.

And for as long as I've known him, he's got the paper delivered to him.

Right.

When the paper lands

out there, whether it was on the porch in the house I grew up in or in the hallway.

in the condo of the retirement home he lives in now.

I was just home like two months ago.

Boom, the paper lands.

And he looks up and he goes, Oh, crap, there it is.

There it is again.

Yeah.

And I'm like, what are you doing, man?

Why, why, when is this going to stop?

And he goes out and he takes a paper and he opens up.

He's like, look at this, look at this.

And there's like three other papers stacked up.

The paper to him is an obligation to read and it's homework and they stack up.

And it always made me laugh to think about that.

Wow.

But now, thank God he's not on email.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it's that same feeling, right?

Yep.

Like, what do you, like, Mary literally just said to me, I've got 400 unanswered emails.

I can't talk to you right now.

Yeah.

That's where we are.

It is.

And so what do we do then

to be able to step away?

We're not all going to be able to go live with the Amish and monks.

So how can we do it?

How can we be purposeful?

Tell us, Carlos.

Tell us, Carlos Whitaker.

I'm going to tell you right now.

All right.

And the full full name is Carlos Enrico with the Irkus Mana Chi Borca Bell, first of all.

And there's going to be a test.

And there's going to be a test.

Okay, so.

Did any of the monks get it right?

No, no, no.

But they would call me Carlos.

So, this is what we do.

You do the next right thing.

With every situation, so I tell all my kids, what's the next right thing you can do to reclaim the lost art of humaning, whatever that might be for whatever listeners listening.

Well, I love that you brought up the paper with your dad.

Because I think for me and for a lot of people, the news apps on my phone were what were consuming all of my attention.

I mean, whether that be X, whatever, whatever it is, just news, news, news, news, news.

So what I did, the next right thing for me when I got back is I deleted all the news apps off my phone.

I deleted X off my phone and I subscribed to this thing that they throw in my front yard every single day called the newspaper.

And I walk out and there's the Tennessean every single morning.

It's the craziest thing.

I don't know if it's a dude named Bubba and in a trans am at 6 a.m.

That's throwing it out of his window, but I walk out and it's there and I love it.

I pick it up.

I drink my coffee out of a ceramic mug, right?

And I'm reading the paper just like my old man.

And I read it and I get done in about 20 minutes.

And if anything else happens on planet Earth that I need to know about, I'll find out tomorrow morning when I go pick up the paper again.

So what the paper has done for me is it's still allows me to be in the current cultural climate understanding what's happening in the world.

I'm a big news guy.

I love to know.

But that's where I'm going to find my news out is in the paper.

And that's one thing that I've done.

Another thing I've done is I went to Target and I bought this really cool thing that you plug in next to your bed called an alarm clock.

I don't know if you've ever heard of it before.

It's the craziest thing ever.

It's this invention that like it wakes you up in the morning and you don't pick it up and start like rubbing its face and like like touching it and like you it just it just wakes you up.

That's it.

My phone is in the kitchen, and for the first hour of my day, I don't even look at it.

And so, I read my paper, I drink my coffee, and I savor my coffee.

My coffee tastes so much better when I'm not scrolling on email and things like that.

And so, I just learned to, what the monks called Godspeed, to have my mornings at Godspeed.

And so, these are tiny little tweaks, tiny little things that I've added to my life.

The book has like 25 of them, but tiny little things that I've rediscovered

to start adding into my life that make me feel truly human again.

Give me that breath again in my lungs.

And it's,

okay, so I no longer use maps, Apple Maps or Google Maps to get anywhere.

So like on the way.

How the hell did you get here?

I looked it up on my phone before and I wrote it on a piece of paper.

And then so that was yesterday to get to the hotel.

Now I just I just got dropped off by my wife here on the way here.

But everywhere I go, I think to myself, I don't,

I can remember directions.

Like why are we no longer remembering directions anymore?

And so, like,

I'm writing the directions down.

So, here I am.

This part of my brain is waking up.

There was a study done, London cab drivers, and most London cab drivers have to know how to get around the city without GPS before they pass their cab driving tests.

That's a confusing town.

Yes, a confusing town.

And they scan their brains and the Uber drivers' brains versus the London cab driver's brain that have to memorize night and day difference.

And so, like, that's something that I no longer do is use.

you know what?

If I have to sit in traffic an extra 10 minutes on my way to a meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, because,

I don't know, Waze didn't tell me to get off and go a faster way, then it's 10 more minutes I get to sit in solitude and maybe be bored and sit in traffic and it's okay.

So, you know what else that does is I get lost and I have to like ask people,

hey.

Do you know how to get to, and I'll, and I make some friends at gas stations I've never stopped at before, face to face.

Those are things I've done.

I've stopped using Yelp.

No longer Yelping, you know, restaurants.

Like I just, I feel it in my gut.

Intuition.

What are ways that we can grab back a hold of intuition?

One story I'd love to tell you really quickly.

Sure.

That really hooked me when I was there with the Amish is Farmer Willis.

We're making it, we're trying to cut the hay, right?

And I'm like, bro, why does it take seven days to cut the hay?

Let's just get on the, he's like, the hay's got to be dry.

So we're checking the hay every day.

I finally get out in the morning and I feel the hay because now I'm feeling the hay every morning.

because it's just a new

it's what I do So I feel the hay.

I was like, oh, it's crunchy.

I think it's time to cut the hay, but then I look and there's like thunderclouds

and I'm like, it's gonna rain.

We can't cut the hay.

So I walk over to Willis and I was like, Willis, bro, the grass feels right.

Like we should be able to cut it, but obviously we can't cut the hay because it's gonna rain.

Like you can see the rain.

And he goes, Carlos, I want you to look at your boots.

I was like, what's this Amish trick that he's done?

So I look down at my boots.

He's like, what do you see?

I was like, I don't know, dirt.

He's like, no, look, look closer.

I'm like,

they're wet.

He goes, exactly.

We're going to cut the hay.

And I was like, we can't cut the hay.

It's going to rain.

He's like, my daddy always told me, if there's dew on your boots, it's not going to rain.

And I said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard because there's thunderclouds, right?

So he's like, I'm going to cut the hay.

So I get in the horse and buggy with Kathy.

We take off to the feed mill or somewhere.

We're there.

I don't know.

We're two miles away.

It's dumping rain.

It's dumping rain on us.

All day long, I'm gone.

And I'm looking at Kathy like, he ruined the whole crop.

Like he rolled it up, it's going to get mildewy.

All the things he told me is going to be wrong.

We start driving back to his house.

We get about, I don't know, half a mile from that farm, and it is dry.

There's not been a raindrop that has landed.

And she's kind of smiling at me.

I hop out of that vehicle.

I walk up to him.

He's standing there with his arms crossed, and he goes, there was dew on your boots.

And so I just think to myself, Mike, there's all these things that we no longer do,

but there's dew on my boots.

So every morning I walk out in Nashville now and I'll check my boots to see if there's dew on my boots.

Is it going to rain or not?

But intuition, what are ways that we can get back in touch with all of these beautiful lost art forms in our communities?

And what if the, I mean, what if the real horror of

this thing is

kind of a tacit assault on our intuitions on all fronts, every front.

What if this is,

we talk about this all the time, man.

And like when I moved, when you moved out here, Chuck, it's like you didn't get in your car without a Thomas guide.

Totally.

And this thing.

Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

I mean, a lot of people have never seen the like of it, but LA is so sprawling that you couldn't, you can't have a fold-out mat.

Right.

It would be the size of L.A.

Yeah.

It's just totally, totally.

So it's this book with these grids, and like page 34 might be attached to page 209.

You're like, oh, my.

You're going to get a corner.

And then you could.

Right.

So you need sort of a basic understanding of cryptography.

Yes.

But

it really helped make your brain understand north and south and east and west.

And like, that's just over now.

And oh, and when I think of like,

there's this yacht club that I belong to.

I don't have a boat, but I know a lot of people who do.

Yeah, there you go.

That's a way to be a part of that club.

And

it's the only way.

And there's this conversation among my sailing buddies I hear all the time, which is, you know, we can be anywhere in the world and know within two feet of where we are.

And the magic and the mystery of sailing at a time before we knew what longitude was and the search for longitude and the reliance on dead reckoning.

Yeah.

We were smarter.

We were better.

Yes, yes.

We were not faster.

Yeah.

No, but.

But we we were different.

Yeah.

And who says faster is better?

You know?

Three miles an hour.

That is the pace that a human being walks.

And that's the only thing we do anymore that's three miles an hour.

So like I'm just trying to get my life back to three miles an hour.

What's anything else in my life that I can do at three miles an hour?

And I promise you that it may feel like you can't multitask, you can't do all these things.

No, I think multitasking is one of the worst things we've ever learned to do.

Single task well.

You know, walk three miles an hour.

You know, increase your intuition.

Move at Godspeed.

You know, get lost.

Find your way.

Wonder about things for days

as you wander.

You know, final thought, Godspeed.

Yeah.

It's funny.

I've heard that expression my whole life.

And I don't know why I always associated it with

alacrity.

Yes.

Godspeed.

Let's get to move on.

Yes.

You know, speed.

Absolutely.

It's actually a cry to slow down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Godspeed is slow.

It's slow.

It's slow.

They say it's slow.

I tell people all the time: if you look in the Bible and you look at the speed that Jesus and his homeboys walked around, he moved at three miles an hour.

And if we're moving at 100 and he's moving at three, then who's following who?

The book is called Reconnected.

I know that because Chuck has put it right up there.

Carlos.

Carlos, you got it.

Carlos Whitaker, it's,

I hate to say this word, but it's important because this thing,

I mean, for better or worse, think of it however you want, but it is

pregnant with unintended consequences.

Absolutely.

And as perverse as it sounds,

if I were to tell people where to go to get a copy, are they going to have to get on a screen?

Not necessarily.

If you're traveling through any airport in America, it'll be at any Hudson bookseller.

So you can just

fly around, just go pick it up in the airport, but you can go on.

Don't Google it.

Don't do that.

Don't go to Amazon.

Just if you find yourself walking side by side with a monk, perhaps, through the terminal at speeds approaching three miles an hour and there's a Hudson's, go get yourself a copy.

That's right.

What a pleasure to meet you, man.

Oh, man.

It was so good.

Thanks for having me.

Anytime.

That was awesome.

Appreciate it.

When you leave a review, only five stars will do.

Not just one or just two or just three.

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four

more

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Holy is one more than four.

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from the you five stars will do.

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