July 25, 2025 • 16 mins
For Shop Talk, Bill and Alex reflect on 4 of their favorite nonfiction books. What's yours?!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Everybody's Bill Courtney. Welcome to Shop Talk number sixty two.
Welcome into the shop, Alex, Thank you Bill. I want
to show you to this back corner of the shop
of I've made an addition back here in the back corner.
You want to see it. I want to walk back
here with me and see the new corner in the shop.
Sure it's it's the bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh nice? Yeah, well you're going to save my own
cigar chairs me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
No, but I was going to tell you back in
the corner whe the bookshelf is, I have you a
very nice comfy chair where you can see the whole
room from there.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Actually, once your house renovations are done, if they're ever done,
that's what you need to work on next.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Like a smoking room, there will never be done. Have
you ever met Lisa like ventilations such thing as finished?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, you just keep going. Well, maybe just add the
smoking room in there.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, I have a card room, so maybe I can
smoke where we play cards.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You gotta get the ventilation, though.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Why just open the windows.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
At least that's cool with it?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
What she doesn't No, I won't kill her. Shop Talk
number sixty two my favorite dot dot dot coming up
right after these brief messages from our general sponsor, everybody,
(01:34):
welcome back to shop Talking number sixty two. Last week
we talked about two by two, not my favorite, two
of my favorite uh fiction books. This time we're gonna
talk about my two favorite non no two of my
favorite nonfiction books. And Alex is gonna give us one.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Why do I get one?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, Alex can give us two, but no more. My
first one get two years up. You're going to be next.
I sctually haven't thought about it. Well, let's start thinking.
My first one is one that I read, actually very
very recently. I attended a conference actually in the Caribbean
where I spoke, and then this gentleman spoke and I
(02:18):
found him and it very interesting. And then when I
read it and I found out that so much of
he wrote three or four years ago when he wrote
the book is actually happening right now. I decided he
might be a modern day Nostrodamus. I mean, it's unbelievable.
The name of the book is It's a little sobering.
Is the End of the World is just the beginning,
(02:39):
mapping the collapse of globilization. It's by Peter Zion spelled
ze i h O N. I cannot suggest enough that
if you want to understand what's going on in the world,
that you buy this thing. The premise is this, buy
it and read it. The premise is this. After World
War Two, there was only one navy left, really completely intact,
(03:02):
that could dominate the world's waters, and it was the
US Navy. And we were also the only only power
left with a big enough army to really dominate the world.
And we could have we could have been imperialists. But
in their wisdom, and I mean that seriously, and their wisdom,
(03:24):
the leaders of the day in the United States realize
that imperialism never worked. If you think about all the
imperial you think about the Roman Empire, you think about
the British Empire, you think about Mongolian Empire, you go
on and on and on. It becomes too arduous and
(03:46):
too expensive to continue to governor and rule over vath
swaths of land and people who don't want to be
ruled by you. So ultimately imperialism always collapses. So at
the end of World War two, we had a choice
be imperialist or pull back. But we had this massive navy,
(04:08):
and so we made a deal, and that deal became
basically NATO, which says we will police the waters. We
will we will keep the world free for global trade,
so nations can trade and build themselves up.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
But to do so.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
For us to do that, we need trade agreements with
people all over the world, and the dollar is going
to be the currency of the world. And that went
on for many, many, many many years until recently when
it's become too arduous and too expensive to police the world,
and where the people who were happy to have those
(04:47):
agreements countries quit spending the requisite amount of money it
took to join in that effort with US, and as
a result, this is or five years ago. The author's
premise was that the US would have to pull back
from globalization and other countries that have stuff up. Also,
(05:11):
as he makes that argument, he pars shrinking population and
growing population with what countries will have enough people to
actually spur and continued spur to economic growth. And what's
crazy is there's only three countries that he says, over
the next twenty years will have both the banking systems,
(05:36):
the economic and military strength, and enough population growth to
sustain itself in a world where globalization is pulling away
and is shrinking, and ironically enough, the United States is
one of them, you'll be happy to know. But the
(05:58):
depopulation of China over the next twenty years, he says,
will be there undoing. That's all I'm saying. Read the book.
It is phenomenal. That's why it's called the End of
the World. Is just the beginning, because it's basically the
end of the world as we have known it since
World War Two. The other one other thing, He says
(06:19):
that all of us grown have grown up accustomed to
free trade and relative peace across the world, basically buttressed
by the United States military and Navy, which is true,
but he said, he says that you know, we've grown
up thinking that that's normal, when in fact, in the
(06:39):
history of mankind, the decades we've had since World War
Two with relative world peace and free trade across the
globe is actually quite abnormal and has never been achieved
before because of the cost of reaching that achievement, and
that the cost has got too big for us to
(07:01):
continue it, and therefore the world would look with population decline,
deglobalization in term of economics, and the costs associated with
the one power who's been able to usher in this
relative peace and global trade over the last decade's changing
(07:21):
that the next fifty years for mankind will look very
different than the last fifty have. And he makes an
incredibly good argument. I'm not saying I agree with every
single thing in the book, but the guy's smart, done
a lot of interesting studies, and I highly suggest you
read it if you want to try to figure out
what's going on in the world today, whether you like
(07:42):
the politics of it or not. The inevitability and the
reality of our changing world is very very well laid
out in this book. So that's one. What about you?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
I thought you're gonna do.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Too, No, I said you're next. I'm gonna do one.
You're gonna do one, then I'm gonna do Then you
can do the next one.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Okay, Randy Lewis, I have ever told you about Randy Lewis.
The book is No Greatness without Goodness. So he was
the head of logistics for Walgreens, like a billion dollar category,
ten thousand employees, and his son was diagnosed with autism
and it really changed his life. And so the kind
(08:24):
of things he realized is like he would yell at
his girls and they would basically be fine, you know,
within an hour, but he would yell at his son,
and you know it would take him, you know, a
day or two, you know, to recover from that. And
you could see the emotional difference and it really had
him reflect on what am I doing to my kids?
And so he talks about how it made him a
(08:45):
better person and softened him. But then he's like, look,
I got to do something with this. If someone like
me is not going to do something, who is? And
so he decided at Walgreens, you know, how can we
employ more folks with disability? Because I forget the exact stats.
We're doing this off the fly, but you know it's
something like sixty or seventy percent of people with intellectual
(09:06):
disabilities or unemployed. And he was opening up a new
distribution center in South Carolina. They were going to hire
six hundred people, and they had the idea of what
a two hundred of them? Wow, people with disabilities served. Yeah,
And there was kind of a theory behind a two
of a two for one match, right, so two typically
able you know, employees would be able to know, be
(09:27):
mentor and help and all this. And he didn't think
it was like such a big deal. But suddenly, like
the Today Show and the Wall Street Term and all
these people are writing about it, and even like funnily reflects,
like how pathetic is it, like that this is such
groundbreaking news you know of doing this. But what's amazing
is their retention rate was better, their safety rating was better.
(09:48):
And it also changed just like how it changed him,
it changed the culture in the facility too. So rather
than the manager of the plant treating people as widgets like,
they actually had to treat them as human beings. And
so it like made everyone which is called so it's
called no greatness without goodness.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, but it's an amazing story. And so I mean
they've done this for all of their distribution facilities. Now,
I was like maybe like forty percent of all the
workers there or folks with disabilities, But then Walgreens has
also set a goal for the nationwide consumer stores a
ten percent of the employees there you know will be too.
And one of his things early on too is we
are going to open this up for all of our
(10:26):
competitors to see, which traditionally, like you wouldn't let your
competitors like come in here and see exactly what you're
doing with this, but he's like, we got to share
this with the world if it works. So it's like
best Buy and Sophora in Starbucks and like all these
other companies have copied you know what he's done, which
is amazing. And anyways, I had the blessing of interview
(10:47):
on him once and he's interviewed. Yeah, he's a hell
of a human being. I mean from he's from Chicago. Actually,
like a funny thing. Obviously he's done pretty well, you
know with that title at Walgreens, but like he bought
his like lake house in Gary, Indiana rather than like
one of these fancy places and something. Yeah, I mean
(11:07):
he's just a total like normal dude, an amazing person.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Huh. Okay, well there's one for you. Here's my second one.
I read it in college. It was assigned to me
by Sparky Bruden Nice. It's called Unbecoming a Leader by
Warren Bennis, who actually he passed away I don't know,
ten years ago or so. It's not really a how
(11:34):
to of leadership, but it explores the tenets and characteristics
of leaders and how you find leaders for your organization.
He uh. In the book, he discusses what's called contemporary leadership,
and he discusses all kinds of different ways to foster
(12:01):
leadership in your organization, but it all breaks down to service.
It's the basic thing. And it's been out forever. And
I read it in college, and I read it again
about six seven years ago, and I think I'm going
to read it again. Hoghy suggested for young upcoming seniors
(12:22):
in high school and freshmen and sophomores in college to
just contemplate what real leadership is. So there you go.
I'm Becoming a Leader by Warren Dennis Love the book
What about You? You got a second one?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
You know, I'm actually gonna plug one. I haven't read yet,
but I've listened to podcasts with this guy. It's worth
reading and I want to get him on the show.
But it's been tough. So this book is called The
Art of Neighboring.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Oh I've heard about this, have you? Yes?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
So I've actually maybe I told you about her, maybe
you heard it separately. But he's in Denver. We got
an interview him in Denver. He's basically like my travel schedules,
two nuts.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And it won't come to Memphis.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I mean He's like, uh, Diaver sucks. You got in
the air I actually love Denver.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
No, No, getting in and out of Denver sucks because
they put their airport about seven and a half hours.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Better, better than any of the New York airports. At
least they got a train in from the airports of
the city.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
God, I don't want trains, yeah, but we got to
get them in.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Actually kind of respect him for this. I mean, so
he's a pastor, you know that think travels for some
paid speeches. And he's like, look, I want to be
home with my family. Sorry, I get it.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
That's nice, Scott.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Next time we're in Denver, we gotta I guess. So
he's game to do it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
But what's so I've heard something about it. Yeah, so
I might have been from you, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So he realized like, look, there's a lot more we
could be doing as a church in our community. And
he decided to get like twenty pastors like him to
go meet with the secular mayor in Denver and say
how can we help. The mayor said, well, you know,
you could do this with homelessness, you can do this
with poverty. This was second chances. All this stuff we said,
at the end of the day, if you guys just
(14:02):
like loved your neighbor, we wouldn't have any of these problems.
It's basically like, if you guys are just good Christians,
like all these problems go like the secular like, if
you guys just like lived out your faith, like it's
pretty wow, pretty simple.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I don't think he was trying to be a smart.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
At just that it's like hits you in the face
of the board. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And the here's the next thing. He realizes, how many
of my neighbors do I know? And he knew like
two of them. I actually I actually just shared this
in my Bible study the other day because actually the
part we're reading kept talking about love your neighbors. I
mean it's like in the Bible, like, does it mean
your litertleal neighbor probably probably yeah, so and so he's like,
(14:47):
I mean, he's a busy guy who runs a church.
You know, he knows all the people there. But does
that mean you get to ignore your obligation to love
your neighbor? And so he came up with this cool thing,
like people can go on the website, I think is
you probably look up art and neighboring or maybe Dave
Runyon dot com is the guy's name. It's there. But
this resource that looks like a bingo board and like
yourself in the middle, and you write down the names
(15:10):
of your eight closest neighbors. Now that's interesting, and part
of the idea is, like you set the barrier so
low that anybody can jump over it. Like, first do that,
and if you do that, you're gonna start talking. Yeah,
you're gonna start having them over. You're gonna start helping
each other out.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I don't know if I might have them over. I'm kidding,
I don't know. Let's not get carried away here, Alex.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
With how much construction you're doing, your neighbors want to
come over. Nobody wants to come over to what it's
called the art of neighboring.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
The art of neighboring. Okay, so there you go. We
got unbecoming a leader. We've got the end of the
world is just the beginning.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
No greatness without goodness, no greatness out goodness, and the
art of neighboring.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Okay, that's me and Alex is non fiction. Some of
our favorite non fiction books to share with you. Write
me at Bill at normal folks dot us and share
with me your ideas because I like to read, and
we put it up on a website or something and
share it with our body book suggestions.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Right, maybe one day a normal folks book club. That
would actually be pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That actually would be pretty cool. But we could at
least share this stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, Hey, if you liked this.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Episode, rate it, review it, share friends, join a nut joint,
subscribe to the podcast, do any and all this stuff
that helps us grow.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Right, we still want you to sign up to join
the army at normal folks at us.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah, do that. Write me anytime, fill it normal folks
dot us. I'll respond and that's it. Shot Talk number
sixty two. Alex and Bill, we're out.
Everybody's Bill Courtney. Welcome to Shop Talk number sixty two.
Welcome into the shop, Alex, Thank you Bill. I want
to show you to this back corner of the shop
of I've made an addition back here in the back corner.
You want to see it. I want to walk back
here with me and see the new corner in the shop.
Sure it's it's the bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh nice? Yeah, well you're going to save my own
cigar chairs me.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
No, but I was going to tell you back in
the corner whe the bookshelf is, I have you a
very nice comfy chair where you can see the whole
room from there.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Actually, once your house renovations are done, if they're ever done,
that's what you need to work on next.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Like a smoking room, there will never be done. Have
you ever met Lisa like ventilations such thing as finished?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, you just keep going. Well, maybe just add the
smoking room in there.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, I have a card room, so maybe I can
smoke where we play cards.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You gotta get the ventilation, though.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Why just open the windows.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
At least that's cool with it?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
What she doesn't No, I won't kill her. Shop Talk
number sixty two my favorite dot dot dot coming up
right after these brief messages from our general sponsor, everybody,
(01:34):
welcome back to shop Talking number sixty two. Last week
we talked about two by two, not my favorite, two
of my favorite uh fiction books. This time we're gonna
talk about my two favorite non no two of my
favorite nonfiction books. And Alex is gonna give us one.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Why do I get one?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Okay, Alex can give us two, but no more. My
first one get two years up. You're going to be next.
I sctually haven't thought about it. Well, let's start thinking.
My first one is one that I read, actually very
very recently. I attended a conference actually in the Caribbean
where I spoke, and then this gentleman spoke and I
(02:18):
found him and it very interesting. And then when I
read it and I found out that so much of
he wrote three or four years ago when he wrote
the book is actually happening right now. I decided he
might be a modern day Nostrodamus. I mean, it's unbelievable.
The name of the book is It's a little sobering.
Is the End of the World is just the beginning,
(02:39):
mapping the collapse of globilization. It's by Peter Zion spelled
ze i h O N. I cannot suggest enough that
if you want to understand what's going on in the world,
that you buy this thing. The premise is this, buy
it and read it. The premise is this. After World
War Two, there was only one navy left, really completely intact,
(03:02):
that could dominate the world's waters, and it was the
US Navy. And we were also the only only power
left with a big enough army to really dominate the world.
And we could have we could have been imperialists. But
in their wisdom, and I mean that seriously, and their wisdom,
(03:24):
the leaders of the day in the United States realize
that imperialism never worked. If you think about all the
imperial you think about the Roman Empire, you think about
the British Empire, you think about Mongolian Empire, you go
on and on and on. It becomes too arduous and
(03:46):
too expensive to continue to governor and rule over vath
swaths of land and people who don't want to be
ruled by you. So ultimately imperialism always collapses. So at
the end of World War two, we had a choice
be imperialist or pull back. But we had this massive navy,
(04:08):
and so we made a deal, and that deal became
basically NATO, which says we will police the waters. We
will we will keep the world free for global trade,
so nations can trade and build themselves up.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
But to do so.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
For us to do that, we need trade agreements with
people all over the world, and the dollar is going
to be the currency of the world. And that went
on for many, many, many many years until recently when
it's become too arduous and too expensive to police the world,
and where the people who were happy to have those
(04:47):
agreements countries quit spending the requisite amount of money it
took to join in that effort with US, and as
a result, this is or five years ago. The author's
premise was that the US would have to pull back
from globalization and other countries that have stuff up. Also,
(05:11):
as he makes that argument, he pars shrinking population and
growing population with what countries will have enough people to
actually spur and continued spur to economic growth. And what's
crazy is there's only three countries that he says, over
the next twenty years will have both the banking systems,
(05:36):
the economic and military strength, and enough population growth to
sustain itself in a world where globalization is pulling away
and is shrinking, and ironically enough, the United States is
one of them, you'll be happy to know. But the
(05:58):
depopulation of China over the next twenty years, he says,
will be there undoing. That's all I'm saying. Read the book.
It is phenomenal. That's why it's called the End of
the World. Is just the beginning, because it's basically the
end of the world as we have known it since
World War Two. The other one other thing, He says
(06:19):
that all of us grown have grown up accustomed to
free trade and relative peace across the world, basically buttressed
by the United States military and Navy, which is true,
but he said, he says that you know, we've grown
up thinking that that's normal, when in fact, in the
(06:39):
history of mankind, the decades we've had since World War
Two with relative world peace and free trade across the
globe is actually quite abnormal and has never been achieved
before because of the cost of reaching that achievement, and
that the cost has got too big for us to
(07:01):
continue it, and therefore the world would look with population decline,
deglobalization in term of economics, and the costs associated with
the one power who's been able to usher in this
relative peace and global trade over the last decade's changing
(07:21):
that the next fifty years for mankind will look very
different than the last fifty have. And he makes an
incredibly good argument. I'm not saying I agree with every
single thing in the book, but the guy's smart, done
a lot of interesting studies, and I highly suggest you
read it if you want to try to figure out
what's going on in the world today, whether you like
(07:42):
the politics of it or not. The inevitability and the
reality of our changing world is very very well laid
out in this book. So that's one. What about you?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
I thought you're gonna do.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Too, No, I said you're next. I'm gonna do one.
You're gonna do one, then I'm gonna do Then you
can do the next one.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Okay, Randy Lewis, I have ever told you about Randy Lewis.
The book is No Greatness without Goodness. So he was
the head of logistics for Walgreens, like a billion dollar category,
ten thousand employees, and his son was diagnosed with autism
and it really changed his life. And so the kind
(08:24):
of things he realized is like he would yell at
his girls and they would basically be fine, you know,
within an hour, but he would yell at his son,
and you know it would take him, you know, a
day or two, you know, to recover from that. And
you could see the emotional difference and it really had
him reflect on what am I doing to my kids?
And so he talks about how it made him a
(08:45):
better person and softened him. But then he's like, look,
I got to do something with this. If someone like
me is not going to do something, who is? And
so he decided at Walgreens, you know, how can we
employ more folks with disability? Because I forget the exact stats.
We're doing this off the fly, but you know it's
something like sixty or seventy percent of people with intellectual
(09:06):
disabilities or unemployed. And he was opening up a new
distribution center in South Carolina. They were going to hire
six hundred people, and they had the idea of what
a two hundred of them? Wow, people with disabilities served. Yeah,
And there was kind of a theory behind a two
of a two for one match, right, so two typically
able you know, employees would be able to know, be
(09:27):
mentor and help and all this. And he didn't think
it was like such a big deal. But suddenly, like
the Today Show and the Wall Street Term and all
these people are writing about it, and even like funnily reflects,
like how pathetic is it, like that this is such
groundbreaking news you know of doing this. But what's amazing
is their retention rate was better, their safety rating was better.
(09:48):
And it also changed just like how it changed him,
it changed the culture in the facility too. So rather
than the manager of the plant treating people as widgets like,
they actually had to treat them as human beings. And
so it like made everyone which is called so it's
called no greatness without goodness.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, but it's an amazing story. And so I mean
they've done this for all of their distribution facilities. Now,
I was like maybe like forty percent of all the
workers there or folks with disabilities, But then Walgreens has
also set a goal for the nationwide consumer stores a
ten percent of the employees there you know will be too.
And one of his things early on too is we
are going to open this up for all of our
(10:26):
competitors to see, which traditionally, like you wouldn't let your
competitors like come in here and see exactly what you're
doing with this, but he's like, we got to share
this with the world if it works. So it's like
best Buy and Sophora in Starbucks and like all these
other companies have copied you know what he's done, which
is amazing. And anyways, I had the blessing of interview
(10:47):
on him once and he's interviewed. Yeah, he's a hell
of a human being. I mean from he's from Chicago. Actually,
like a funny thing. Obviously he's done pretty well, you
know with that title at Walgreens, but like he bought
his like lake house in Gary, Indiana rather than like
one of these fancy places and something. Yeah, I mean
(11:07):
he's just a total like normal dude, an amazing person.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Huh. Okay, well there's one for you. Here's my second one.
I read it in college. It was assigned to me
by Sparky Bruden Nice. It's called Unbecoming a Leader by
Warren Bennis, who actually he passed away I don't know,
ten years ago or so. It's not really a how
(11:34):
to of leadership, but it explores the tenets and characteristics
of leaders and how you find leaders for your organization.
He uh. In the book, he discusses what's called contemporary leadership,
and he discusses all kinds of different ways to foster
(12:01):
leadership in your organization, but it all breaks down to service.
It's the basic thing. And it's been out forever. And
I read it in college, and I read it again
about six seven years ago, and I think I'm going
to read it again. Hoghy suggested for young upcoming seniors
(12:22):
in high school and freshmen and sophomores in college to
just contemplate what real leadership is. So there you go.
I'm Becoming a Leader by Warren Dennis Love the book
What about You? You got a second one?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
You know, I'm actually gonna plug one. I haven't read yet,
but I've listened to podcasts with this guy. It's worth
reading and I want to get him on the show.
But it's been tough. So this book is called The
Art of Neighboring.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Oh I've heard about this, have you? Yes?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
So I've actually maybe I told you about her, maybe
you heard it separately. But he's in Denver. We got
an interview him in Denver. He's basically like my travel schedules,
two nuts.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And it won't come to Memphis.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I mean He's like, uh, Diaver sucks. You got in
the air I actually love Denver.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
No, No, getting in and out of Denver sucks because
they put their airport about seven and a half hours.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Better, better than any of the New York airports. At
least they got a train in from the airports of
the city.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
God, I don't want trains, yeah, but we got to
get them in.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Actually kind of respect him for this. I mean, so
he's a pastor, you know that think travels for some
paid speeches. And he's like, look, I want to be
home with my family. Sorry, I get it.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
That's nice, Scott.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Next time we're in Denver, we gotta I guess. So
he's game to do it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
But what's so I've heard something about it. Yeah, so
I might have been from you, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So he realized like, look, there's a lot more we
could be doing as a church in our community. And
he decided to get like twenty pastors like him to
go meet with the secular mayor in Denver and say
how can we help. The mayor said, well, you know,
you could do this with homelessness, you can do this
with poverty. This was second chances. All this stuff we said,
at the end of the day, if you guys just
(14:02):
like loved your neighbor, we wouldn't have any of these problems.
It's basically like, if you guys are just good Christians,
like all these problems go like the secular like, if
you guys just like lived out your faith, like it's
pretty wow, pretty simple.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
I don't think he was trying to be a smart.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
At just that it's like hits you in the face
of the board. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
And the here's the next thing. He realizes, how many
of my neighbors do I know? And he knew like
two of them. I actually I actually just shared this
in my Bible study the other day because actually the
part we're reading kept talking about love your neighbors. I
mean it's like in the Bible, like, does it mean
your litertleal neighbor probably probably yeah, so and so he's like,
(14:47):
I mean, he's a busy guy who runs a church.
You know, he knows all the people there. But does
that mean you get to ignore your obligation to love
your neighbor? And so he came up with this cool thing,
like people can go on the website, I think is
you probably look up art and neighboring or maybe Dave
Runyon dot com is the guy's name. It's there. But
this resource that looks like a bingo board and like
yourself in the middle, and you write down the names
(15:10):
of your eight closest neighbors. Now that's interesting, and part
of the idea is, like you set the barrier so
low that anybody can jump over it. Like, first do that,
and if you do that, you're gonna start talking. Yeah,
you're gonna start having them over. You're gonna start helping
each other out.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I don't know if I might have them over. I'm kidding,
I don't know. Let's not get carried away here, Alex.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
With how much construction you're doing, your neighbors want to
come over. Nobody wants to come over to what it's
called the art of neighboring.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
The art of neighboring. Okay, so there you go. We
got unbecoming a leader. We've got the end of the
world is just the beginning.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
No greatness without goodness, no greatness out goodness, and the
art of neighboring.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Okay, that's me and Alex is non fiction. Some of
our favorite non fiction books to share with you. Write
me at Bill at normal folks dot us and share
with me your ideas because I like to read, and
we put it up on a website or something and
share it with our body book suggestions.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Right, maybe one day a normal folks book club. That
would actually be pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That actually would be pretty cool. But we could at
least share this stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, Hey, if you liked this.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Episode, rate it, review it, share friends, join a nut joint,
subscribe to the podcast, do any and all this stuff
that helps us grow.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Right, we still want you to sign up to join
the army at normal folks at us.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah, do that. Write me anytime, fill it normal folks
dot us. I'll respond and that's it. Shot Talk number
sixty two. Alex and Bill, we're out.
Host
Bill Courtney
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