November 26, 2025 • 35 mins
Baratunde returns to the How To Citizen feed with a conversation that sits right at the intersection of character, democracy, and what it means to citizen in this moment.
This episode features Baratunde in a live discussion with retired U.S. General Stanley McChrystal at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. The two dig into the responsibility of leaders in a time of democratic crisis, the historic norms around deploying the U.S. military inside American cities, and why character is not something we simply “have” but something we practice.
They talk about the pressures facing the country, the role of national service, and how AI is changing the speed and stakes of decision-making in military and civic life. Stan shares candid reflections from his own experiences, including moments when he fell short of the character he expected from himself, and what it takes to recover and stay aligned with one’s convictions.
This conversation originally aired on the Rapid Response podcast from the Masters of Scale network. Special thanks to their team for allowing it to run here.
Baratunde closes with reflections on the polycrisis we’re living through, the people who continue to speak up for what’s right, and the power we still have to shape the next chapter of this country.
For more from Baratunde, see his substack newsletter.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, it is me barratun Day back in your ears
after a few months of silence. So we are going
to be reusing this feed for things related to How
to Citizen. If this is just auto playing in your ears,
by the way, Hi, I'm Baratundae. You at some point
(00:23):
pressed subscribe or follow to the How to Citizen podcast
where we believe that citizen is a verb, democracy is
something we do, not just something we have, and we're
going to keep the feed going. The formal show called
How to Citizen still doesn't quite exist yet, but the
world needs these messages now more than ever, and we
(00:45):
stay connected to people doing good work and we'll bring
that to you as we can. So I just want
to bring you slices of my world that still connect
deeply with this mission, which drives a lot of what
I'm doing out in the world, including the podcast that
I have that is Active Life with Machines. So if
you've been missing my voice on a regular basis just
(01:09):
showing up in your ears every week or so.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
That is about how we live well with technology and
not just endure it. And there is a spirit of
how the citizen with tech that imbues that whole project,
But right now, I just wanted to check in with you,
and then I'm going to share a conversation I had
on the check in. So it's twenty fourth of November
twenty twenty five, and it's been like the longest year
(01:35):
ever right in the United States in many parts of
the world. And that thing that we've been saying for
a while, that that democracy is dying but also being born,
we're in the middle of that at this very moment,
Like that is what is happening at this moment. You know,
We've got Mayor elect Zora Mamdani from New York City.
(01:59):
We had big performance by the Democratic candidates in the
twenty twenty five off year elections. We've got a lot
of shifting and also the infliction of pain on the
hungriest and poorest of Americans, which was absolutely unnecessary. We
(02:20):
found money for Argentina, but not for our own people.
So there's a lot going on that can generate a
ton of ire in one and there's some beauty happening.
And we are on the road to the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence for our country,
and that's going to be a big, awkward birthday party.
(02:43):
But it doesn't have to be. And there's other ways
that we can honor real history, the kind being banned
right now, but the kind that will not die. And
one version of that that's happening is this week long
documentary by Ken Burns and teams on PBS, The American Revolution.
(03:06):
I have been watching every episode. I have been writing
about every episode on my newsletter, my sub stack. You
can find it at newsletter dot baratunde dot com. I
call it speak easy, you know, telling it like it
is and the way things can be. And I've been
moved by the amount of revelations and embrace of complexity
(03:29):
and whole truth in this. I still have criticism, there's
still some things being left out, but this is a
massive upgrade to one of the stories of us that
matters the most. So I'm offering Ken Burns my flowers.
I'm encouraging you to head over to newsletter dot baratunde
dot com to check out that series of my writing
(03:51):
about the series called The American Revolution. And what I'm
about to drop into your ears right now is coincis
perfectly timed to relate to that. In October, I was
invited to a conference called the Masters of Scale Summit.
(04:11):
The title is a misdirect It sounds like a big
tech conference to dominate the world, and it may have
started with a little bit of that intention, but that's
not the spirit of what I felt on the ground there.
It is principally funded and organized by Reid Hoffman. He's
the LinkedIn co founder and part of the original PayPal mafia.
He's one of the billionaires we have left who still
(04:34):
believes in we the people and democracy and not the
ceo monarchy, techno fascist bullshit that folks like Peter Teel
have been backing the likes of Curtis Jarvin to inflict
on us. That'd be another talking to that I provide
to you later. I was invited into this space to
deliver a poem about AI, which maybe I'll throw that
(04:58):
in the feed too, but it will definitely be a
from the life with Machine side of my universes, and
to sit down in a conversation with a former general
named Stanley McCrystal. I had met the general on multiple
occasions before in the past five years and was impressed
with his candor. I am not a stand for US
military might just carte blanche. I respect the people who
(05:23):
have sacrificed and signed up for the armed services. And
there is a complex and brutal history of US, you know,
trying to deliver democracy at the end of the gun,
and all the things that the military has also represented,
and it's represented a radical level of inclusion and opportunity
before other parts of society that folks in my own
(05:46):
family have been a part of and benefited from, including
my own father. So when given the opportunity to speak
with the General, I took it. He has a book
out about character, and this feels like a real good
time to talk about character and leadership. And so we
open with that and we get personal and his experiences
(06:06):
leading combat operations in Afghanistan, and then we get into
the real meat of it, the use of military force
on the ground in US cities as deployed by the
President of the United States. This occupying military force in
(06:27):
Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Chicago, threatened in Portland, active now
in Charlotte, North Carolina, and who knows who is next.
And so I asked the General about his thoughts about that,
and his answer came back to the Revolutionary War, the
American revolution. So I'm not going to spoil the whole thing.
(06:49):
I will let you hear that full conversation. It is
coming to you from a podcast called Rapid Response, and
this is a show that the Masters of Scale Network
puts out. So I hope that you will enjoy this.
I'm supposed to say some things. I thought I was
(07:11):
all smooth, but here's some of what we agreed on,
what they gave me to set it up. Outside of
that authentic thing. So Rapid Response, just to give a
little more context, this is a podcast featuring candid conversations
with today's top business and civic leaders as they navigate
real time challenges. And so Stan which he insists I
(07:34):
call him he and I explored a lot of those
real time challenges about character, about the use of the
military on our own soil, and about AI. We covered
a lot in a little bit of time. So I
just want to encourage you at a gratitude to the
Rapid Response team. Please find them and follow Rapid Response
(07:56):
wherever you listen to podcasts like right here where they
showed up and now here's the episode.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
If we need to decide what is our character in
America going to be? What is okay and what is
not okay because we've allowed the norms to slip. We
watch TV and we see people lie to us on TV,
and we accept it. We decide that let's hold each
other to account. We get to decide what condonation we are.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
That's Stanley McCrystal, retired US General and Leadership Advisor to CEOs,
talking live at the twenty twenty five Masters of Scale
summit in San Francisco on October eighth. Stan has been
a guest on Rapid Response before, most recently to talk
about his book on Character. In this special episode, stan
is in a read onstage by another repeat Rapid Response guest, futurist,
(09:04):
culture critic and media personality Baritunde Thurston. They talk about
the responsibility of leaders in twenty twenty five, the role
of the US military in civil society, and what it
means to be courageous. Plus they do it all with
warmth and a smile. So let's get to it. I'm
Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Hello General McCrystal, Thank you for being here with us.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
In your book on Character, you wrote about a period
of your life when you were dismissive of philosophy, you said,
and I quote famous philosophers in my junior high school,
they would have been bullied and had their lunch money stolen. Stan,
did you know that I'm majored in philosophy, not till today.
(09:58):
Anything you want to say to me, well, this is
very uncomfortable. Well, we can lean into that discomfort and
work through it. In a more serious note. I was
moved by your book. I was moved by your philosophical
exploration of the concept of character, not just pushing a
(10:18):
specific version of it, but breaking it down into component parts.
Character is conviction plus discipline. And the thing that you
argue for is to be curious about our convictions. Why
is it important for you for us to not just
have character or have good character, but to challenge the
components of it in our lives.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
If you break character into the convictions, the strongly held
beliefs you have, times you're disciplined to live to them,
because anything is zero if you don't have the discipline
to live to it. The convictions matter a lot, but
they're not the things that someone just told you.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And if you think about.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
It, most of us of the religion we were raised
in where the nationality we were born into.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
We are a product of the experience we've had.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
So much of what we believe is what was sort
of handed to us as we went along.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That don't make it right.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And I remember, you know, in the counter terrorist fight,
we would be against members of al Qaeda who were
extraordinarily effective, and they were killing people and they were
trying to kill us at the same time.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
The best they.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Had were loyal, they were brave, they were focused on
a cause that they believed in, and the only difference
between me and my people and them was a life's journey.
Had we switched life's journey, every probability is we'd have
been at the other place. And so once you get there,
(11:52):
you step back and.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Go, well, then maybe they're not entirely wrong. Doesn't mean
I agree with them.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I mean I support them, but it means that my
convictions need me to pressure test them to the greatest
degree possible. Part of that comes with philosophy, and I
didn't do it through much of my life. I did
a few things, but then as I get older, you
start realizing how important character always was. It was always
(12:22):
the thing at the moment you didn't always consider it
that way. You were trying to be more proficient in this,
or more successful and this or more powerful, and.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Then at the end you go.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
The common denominator of getting it right was always character.
And the decisions that I'm most proud of were good character.
And the ones that I regret, and there are some,
they were places where I didn't live to the character
that I knew was the right answer. And so I
think we've got to be humble enough to decide what
(12:54):
we think we believe and then challenge it.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I want to follow up on the humility and on
what we do, and I use we intentionally. I know
I have not always lived up to the character I
profess and deeply believe in. I've put my emotional needs
before someone close to me and an act of small
but significant selfishness. And maybe you've had your own versions,
and people here have What have you found works when
(13:21):
we recognize that we haven't lived up to our character
to recover from that and still maintain a good path forward.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I think the first thing is we say, well, that's
not me. But if any of you flew here and
you made the mistake of checking your luggage, you had
to go to the turnstile where the bags come out,
and what do you typically see. You see people crowded
right up next to it, like Will Debeest at the
last watering her serengetti. And there's this idea that my
(13:52):
bag's going to come out faster if I'm closer, but
the people down below putting the bags on things they
don't care. If we all stepped back three or four feet,
everybody could see it, we could calmly get in and
reach our bag and when it came out and we
could move on. Yet, why are we that way? Not
because we're bad people. I don't think it's because those
(14:12):
people in that moment we are anonymous to. We're tired,
we want to get home. We're never going to see
them again, so we can.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Be that way.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And how many times do you deal with somebody or
some instance where you just think I'm going to be
this way because I'm angry or it serves my purposes,
things you would never do around people that you see
routine me or your family, and then you realize we
have lapses. So I think that the key thing for
me is and I'm pretty self critical. At the end
(14:47):
of every day, I literally say and think of the
times in the day when I was not the person
I should have been, when I responded incorrectly to somebody.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
I got mad, I was short. But there's just a litany.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
And the key is not to make that the new standard.
The key is to say that was wrong, and tomorrow
I'm going to try to do better, knowing you're never
going to get to perfect. But if you don't have
some kind of pressures and then you didn't ask this.
But I think the other thing that we desperately need
in society are norms where we hold each other accountable.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Where we're willing to do that.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
You know your mom would do that, but if your
mom's not around, who will do it? And sometimes we
need to look each other in the eye and just
go that's that's not the way we do things. That's
not the way we treat other people. That's not what
we would consider the standard that we all want to
hold ourselves to.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Think you're brought up how we treat other people. Let's
talk about what is happening with the US government right now,
which has a duty of care to treat people a
certain way, and is making really radical decisions on how
to deploy the services of the government. How do you
(16:04):
respond to the deployment of armed forces in American cities,
particularly those are one by Democrats, but really any city,
or the deployment of immigration officers dressed as special operators.
How do you see this and how do you feel
this use of our military right now?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, I think it's unfortunate and I think it's a
big mistake. But if we stepped back and sort of
antiseptically said, someone looks at you and you didn't like it,
and they say, well, you don't believe in illegal immigration,
do you? And I sort of don't believe in anything
that begins with illegal But that's really not the issue here.
(16:46):
The issue is how we're treating each other, how we're
treating people, And there are probably two levels to it.
The first is people are human beings, and there should
be a standard that we all decide we're going to
treat people, particularly people who are less strong than we are,
who need to be supported, who need to be respected,
(17:07):
who need to be helped. Then the use of the military,
and this is course personal to me. There's a tradition
of not using the military in the streets of the
United States. The posse commatatis rule. And it's got a
really good reason. It's because you don't want the American
people to identify the military with people that come and police.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
You're familiar with a quartering Act. Part of our.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Initial the founding fathers put in couldn't make soldiers live
in your homes, and that was because the Red Coats
had done it, and so we were trying to protect
ourselves from it, and of course people grew to hate
the Red Coats. What we don't want is we don't
want the American people to grow to fear or be
resentful of our own military. Because the military has to
(17:54):
be a mirror of the population. It has to be diverse,
it has to be as much talent as we can bring.
Parents have to feel good about their sons and daughters
going into the service, so there won't be a service.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And so there's got.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
To be this organic relationship, and so you've got to
be very careful. Now, are there instances where the military
can do things other organizations can't? Absolutely, there's a common
sense point of this. But I think the apolitical nature
of our military is one of the sacred norms that
(18:28):
we have respected for most of our history. Never perfectly,
but pretty darn well. And I'm sorry to go on
so long. When I was a senior officer, actually with
all ranks, I never knew the political persuasion of any
of my peers. I didn't know if they were liberal.
I didn't know if they were conservative. We didn't talk
about it. It was considered inappropriate to do that, and
(18:49):
of course it was inappropriate to talk about it with
your subordinates, because that's undue influence. You just didn't because
the military wasn't part of that. And the problem is
if if a military gets politicized, we need only look
around the world for examples where that happens, then suddenly
it has a different role in society and we won't
like it.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I guarantee it.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You probably can answer this one, But how are y'all
talking about this in the former general's group chat.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
You're right, there is no group chat.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
That there are communities of people, not just former military,
but who just cared deeply about our country. They've been
alongside service members who've sacrificed, they have sometimes sacrificed, and
they just have this sense of responsibility for the future
of the nation that although we're not serving actively right now,
(19:54):
So we don't do those things. There's still this emotional attachment.
So I think there's an entire community of people out
there who feel very strongly that we need to go
in a better direction.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Stan isn't being COI about a better direction. His description
of the diverse political perspectives within the military echoes what
I keep hearing from business leaders too, about the need
for their organizations to represent the wide breadth of the population,
even when that's challenging. So how is evolving technology like
AI impacting the military and what sort of character do
(20:31):
we need in deploying AI. Stan and Baratunde talk about that,
what it means to be courageous and more. After the
break stay with us. Before the break, we heard retired
US General Stanley McCrystal live at the Masters of Scale
(20:54):
summit in conversation with futurist and media personality Baritunde Thurston
about the role of character in leadership and the role
of the military in civil society. Now Standing, Baritunde talk
about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy,
stands exhortation to embrace national service and the double edged
sword of AI.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Let's jump back.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
In one of the projects I've been an honored to
work on, it's called how It's a Citizen. We interpret
citizen as a verb, and it's not just about voting
and electing people. It's what we do every day, and
our work and premise has been telling these stories of
people who are practicing democracy, who are citizen ing in
(21:39):
innumerable ways. When you hear that more open definition of
citizen as a verb, what is your call to the
people right now on how we can citizen?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I love what you're doing with that. I love citizen
and being a verb because I think that's what it is.
Most of the people in this room became citizens by
action and a birth.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
We didn't do anything to earn it.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
And most of us think that if we pay our
taxes and we vote, we've checked the block. But as
you know, in the last presidential election, only sixty five
percent of eligible voters voted. That's lower percentage than Afghanistan
when I was serving there. And so whoever wins, wins
with less than fifty percent of sixty five percent, so
(22:23):
the winner comes in the low thirties. I don't think
that that's really the kind of democracy we need. So
The first thing I think is we need to take
the responsibilities. You know, people talk of inalienable rights, we
have responsibilities to go with those. And I think they
are wider than simply voting or paying taxes or not
(22:45):
violating the law. I think they are participating in things
that make the nation stronger.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
In our communities.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
There's a great tradition in America about volunteer fire departments
and raising barns and all the things. You couldn't have
a community work without that, and yet we've drifted a
bit from that. I'm a great believer in national service
for all Americans. So every young American gets an opportunity
to do a year of fully paid national service. Not
(23:15):
big money, stipend kind of money, but so they don't
have to be supported by their parents, health care, conservation, whatever.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Some will go in the military, some might go law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
But everybody should go do something for the nation for
a year or two, and then they should go on
with their life and they will have a common experience
when they get together, they meet somebody later when their
kids are playing soccer, they go, where'd you serve? Somebody
says I taught down in New Orleans and somebody else says,
I built trails in this park.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I worked with the elderly, and that.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Connectivity would give us something that starts to go across
zip codes, political ideology, and all rape, religion, all the
other things that divide us, something that's a common experience.
Even if it was a really painful year, even if
they just hated that year, they'd laugh about it. Yeah,
mine shucked more on yours, and maybe my generation could
(24:16):
craft it to make sure it did.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Well done. We are also good at playing the We're
good at playing the oppression Olympics. So let's let's not
do that one. I work on a show. I've helped
create a show called Life with Machines, and we're exploring
how to live well with tech, not just endure it.
There's this emergence of AI where it's not just a
tool anymore. It's becoming a teammate and we're having professional
(24:42):
and personal and even familiar relationships. How do you think
about the role of artificial intelligence in the chain of
command for military or in a business structure? And what
are you seeing that excites you? What are you seeing
that deeply concerns you.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think in the positive, it's going to be in
a neighbor or it's going to take a staff officer
or an intelligence analyst, and they're going to be able
to do it just remarkably faster.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It took two years to plan.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
The Normandy invasion during World War Two because the logistics
and everything. You'll be able to do that in the
morning and it'll be pretty close. And so those kinds
of things can be much better. You can free up
talent to do other things, so that's very positive. There
are going to be some challenges. One, we used to
say that we'll never put anything that doesn't have a
(25:29):
human in the lethal loop, meanbe a hum before we
shoot and kill something, a human will be involved.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
That's already gone. It's not fast enough.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
We respond to things now strictly because of machines, because
if a human's in there, you just can't get it done.
And so machines are already doing that. And if we
train humans well, they can become great tools. But we
do have to understand the power there. But I would
throw this scenario to you, as intel AI is starting
(26:01):
to be able to derive probabilities of things happening. Suppose
you get a scenario where leadership is suddenly told tomorrow
Country X is going to invade Country Y and maybe
work country why. And a machine tells you this, and
you know you can't. Don't human store have the ability
(26:23):
to get in and fact check the machine well enough
because of the complexity of all the data that's been
considered and how it's been done. And so they're going
to have this thing. You are going to get attacked tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
What do you do? Well?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Traditionally, what leaders would like to do is take the
first punch. Let Pearl Harbor get hit or whatever happens,
so then we have moral right on our side. But
if it's potentially an existential threat, then.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
You're going to be put with this idea.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Do I do a preemptive strike to protect our people
based upon what this machine told me? And this machine's
usually right. Now think about that and now speed it up.
Don't say that you're going to have thirteen days like
President Kennedy did for the Cuban missile crisis. So you're
(27:12):
going to have thirteen minutes and somebody calls the president
says here it is, It says it's coming. It's coming
in thirteen minutes. You've got to make a decision. Right now,
and they say, are the missiles already? Are the enemy
missiles launched? No, but they're about to. So we are
going to have to get our minds around dealing with
some of the things that AI will do that we're
(27:35):
not yet comfortable having done for us.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It sounds like you want to make sure you have
the type of leader who's maybe thought a bit about character.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I mean, I know some people are trying to put
character into AI, but you're going to have to have
leaders who have really thought about this, and they've got
to be so grounded in their values so that they
are to things.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
That we know we're comfortable with.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
And they're going to have to be courageous because they're
going to make decisions they're going to terrify them in
the moment, not because they'll be hurt, but because they
will fail the nation. And I think that that's going
to have leaders of extraordinary not just confidence, but courage
to accept that kind of responsibility.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
We have such little time left. I'm not going to
pry open a specific question. I'm going to give you
an opportunity to say something that you wish you had
gotten to say while you're on this stage.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, they kindly mentioned that we have this book on character,
and it's not the brilliance of the book, it's that
it's the point we need to talk about character. We
need to have a national conversation on character right now.
And we don't need to have it in DC. We
need to have it in churches, in classrooms, at dining
room tables. We need to have it at grassroots level.
(28:57):
And what we need to do is we need to
decide what is our character in America going to be?
What is okay and what is not okay because we've
allowed the norms to slip. We watch TV and we
see people lie to us on TV and we accept
it because well it's TV and.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
That's the way it works. Ah, we decide that.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
And so what I want everybody to do is to
think about character, talk about character, and.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Then let's hold each other to account.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Let's we get to decide what kind of nation we
are and if we make no choice, we've decided.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
A closing reflection of gratitude, there's a lot of volatility.
We're in a poly crisis crisis that can't decide what
kind of crisis they wants to be.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Love, and in times of such volatility, you started to
say to yourself, we got to hold to something deep.
We hold a principle right, we hold to each other right,
and we remember that we have the power. Stan, I'm
a stand of you. Thank you so much, Thank you
(30:20):
empty very much.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Stan and Barratundi have such different backgrounds and experiences, yet
they meet on common ground. I got a chance to
eavesdrop on them chatting backstage before their appearance, and while
they've only just met, the empathy and the mutual respect
was palpable. A decade ago, I interviewed Baritunde and Stan
separately for a series I wrote at Best Company about
(30:51):
what I call Generation flux, people with a mindset of adaptability.
Since then, they've each continued to adjust as our world
has yet remained anchored to core principles.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
This is the tricky dance.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
We're all engaged in in twenty twenty five, as we
test our own character and our convictions and what it
takes to be courageous in the face of change. Like Baritunde,
I am, as he puts it, a Stan of stands
stand manages to inspire me every.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Time we talk.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
I've tried to deconstruct just what it makes him effective
as a leader. There's his calm and his clarity and
his steadiness, but the emotional cords he's able to stir
comes from something deeper and harder to put into words.
Let's just say I think he's in deep touch with
his own humanity. It's something we can all aspire to
and remind ourselves of as we face the political, technological,
(31:45):
and business challenges of our modern age. I'm Bob Safian,
Thanks for listening. Response is a wait what original? I'm
Bob Sathian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our producer
(32:07):
is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashumaku Tonina mixing and
mastering by Aaron Bastinelli. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is Leetal maulag. For more, visit
Rapid Response Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yo.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Give it up for General Stanley McCrystal. We honestly, we
had a blast. We had a blast, and I've interviewed
President Obama, I've interviewed Valerie Jarrett, I've interviewed the President
of the Republic of Georgia.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I've done a lot.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Of conversations in my adult life, and this was one
of my favorite because I felt like he was really there,
like I was really there. The people in the room
were there with us, and I hope you felt it,
and I hope that you take away from it a lot,
but in particular that we're not alone. That there are
(33:08):
people who know the difference between right and wrong and
are still willing to speak up for it. And we're
seeing it in the set of Democratic lawmakers who put
out that montage video encouraging members of the services, reminding
them that they have an obligation to disobey illegal orders,
(33:28):
things that violate the Constitution. And in the season when
the President of the United States is calling that sedition
and demanding execution of folks who speak like that. I
just want to recognize the strength of character in former
General the Crystal stan and people like read who do
(33:53):
have a lot to lose by platforming discussions like this.
And so to all who put that conference on, I'm
very grateful to the General and all who serve with honor.
I am grateful to you who are listening right now.
I am grateful and just know that something amazing and
(34:15):
better is coming because we're going to bring that into being.
I have a lot more I'll be sharing with you
over the coming weeks and months. I'm going to use
this feed a bit more to the best of my
ability to keep the channels of communication open. And if
there's stuff you want to hear about and from me
or this network of those of us who believe that
(34:35):
citizen is a verb, hit me up. Head on over
to Baratunde dot com. You can drop a message to
me direct through my website. Me and my team see it,
and just take a deep breath. And in this season
of gratitude, I am grateful for you, and I hope
that you can find a way to express your gratitude
(34:57):
for someone in your life who has allowed you to
be here right now.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Peace,
Hello, it is me barratun Day back in your ears
after a few months of silence. So we are going
to be reusing this feed for things related to How
to Citizen. If this is just auto playing in your ears,
by the way, Hi, I'm Baratundae. You at some point
(00:23):
pressed subscribe or follow to the How to Citizen podcast
where we believe that citizen is a verb, democracy is
something we do, not just something we have, and we're
going to keep the feed going. The formal show called
How to Citizen still doesn't quite exist yet, but the
world needs these messages now more than ever, and we
(00:45):
stay connected to people doing good work and we'll bring
that to you as we can. So I just want
to bring you slices of my world that still connect
deeply with this mission, which drives a lot of what
I'm doing out in the world, including the podcast that
I have that is Active Life with Machines. So if
you've been missing my voice on a regular basis just
(01:09):
showing up in your ears every week or so.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Check that out.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
That is about how we live well with technology and
not just endure it. And there is a spirit of
how the citizen with tech that imbues that whole project,
But right now, I just wanted to check in with you,
and then I'm going to share a conversation I had
on the check in. So it's twenty fourth of November
twenty twenty five, and it's been like the longest year
(01:35):
ever right in the United States in many parts of
the world. And that thing that we've been saying for
a while, that that democracy is dying but also being born,
we're in the middle of that at this very moment,
Like that is what is happening at this moment. You know,
We've got Mayor elect Zora Mamdani from New York City.
(01:59):
We had big performance by the Democratic candidates in the
twenty twenty five off year elections. We've got a lot
of shifting and also the infliction of pain on the
hungriest and poorest of Americans, which was absolutely unnecessary. We
(02:20):
found money for Argentina, but not for our own people.
So there's a lot going on that can generate a
ton of ire in one and there's some beauty happening.
And we are on the road to the two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence for our country,
and that's going to be a big, awkward birthday party.
(02:43):
But it doesn't have to be. And there's other ways
that we can honor real history, the kind being banned
right now, but the kind that will not die. And
one version of that that's happening is this week long
documentary by Ken Burns and teams on PBS, The American Revolution.
(03:06):
I have been watching every episode. I have been writing
about every episode on my newsletter, my sub stack. You
can find it at newsletter dot baratunde dot com. I
call it speak easy, you know, telling it like it
is and the way things can be. And I've been
moved by the amount of revelations and embrace of complexity
(03:29):
and whole truth in this. I still have criticism, there's
still some things being left out, but this is a
massive upgrade to one of the stories of us that
matters the most. So I'm offering Ken Burns my flowers.
I'm encouraging you to head over to newsletter dot baratunde
dot com to check out that series of my writing
(03:51):
about the series called The American Revolution. And what I'm
about to drop into your ears right now is coincis
perfectly timed to relate to that. In October, I was
invited to a conference called the Masters of Scale Summit.
(04:11):
The title is a misdirect It sounds like a big
tech conference to dominate the world, and it may have
started with a little bit of that intention, but that's
not the spirit of what I felt on the ground there.
It is principally funded and organized by Reid Hoffman. He's
the LinkedIn co founder and part of the original PayPal mafia.
He's one of the billionaires we have left who still
(04:34):
believes in we the people and democracy and not the
ceo monarchy, techno fascist bullshit that folks like Peter Teel
have been backing the likes of Curtis Jarvin to inflict
on us. That'd be another talking to that I provide
to you later. I was invited into this space to
deliver a poem about AI, which maybe I'll throw that
(04:58):
in the feed too, but it will definitely be a
from the life with Machine side of my universes, and
to sit down in a conversation with a former general
named Stanley McCrystal. I had met the general on multiple
occasions before in the past five years and was impressed
with his candor. I am not a stand for US
military might just carte blanche. I respect the people who
(05:23):
have sacrificed and signed up for the armed services. And
there is a complex and brutal history of US, you know,
trying to deliver democracy at the end of the gun,
and all the things that the military has also represented,
and it's represented a radical level of inclusion and opportunity
before other parts of society that folks in my own
(05:46):
family have been a part of and benefited from, including
my own father. So when given the opportunity to speak
with the General, I took it. He has a book
out about character, and this feels like a real good
time to talk about character and leadership. And so we
open with that and we get personal and his experiences
(06:06):
leading combat operations in Afghanistan, and then we get into
the real meat of it, the use of military force
on the ground in US cities as deployed by the
President of the United States. This occupying military force in
(06:27):
Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Chicago, threatened in Portland, active now
in Charlotte, North Carolina, and who knows who is next.
And so I asked the General about his thoughts about that,
and his answer came back to the Revolutionary War, the
American revolution. So I'm not going to spoil the whole thing.
(06:49):
I will let you hear that full conversation. It is
coming to you from a podcast called Rapid Response, and
this is a show that the Masters of Scale Network
puts out. So I hope that you will enjoy this.
I'm supposed to say some things. I thought I was
(07:11):
all smooth, but here's some of what we agreed on,
what they gave me to set it up. Outside of
that authentic thing. So Rapid Response, just to give a
little more context, this is a podcast featuring candid conversations
with today's top business and civic leaders as they navigate
real time challenges. And so Stan which he insists I
(07:34):
call him he and I explored a lot of those
real time challenges about character, about the use of the
military on our own soil, and about AI. We covered
a lot in a little bit of time. So I
just want to encourage you at a gratitude to the
Rapid Response team. Please find them and follow Rapid Response
(07:56):
wherever you listen to podcasts like right here where they
showed up and now here's the episode.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
If we need to decide what is our character in
America going to be? What is okay and what is
not okay because we've allowed the norms to slip. We
watch TV and we see people lie to us on TV,
and we accept it. We decide that let's hold each
other to account. We get to decide what condonation we are.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
That's Stanley McCrystal, retired US General and Leadership Advisor to CEOs,
talking live at the twenty twenty five Masters of Scale
summit in San Francisco on October eighth. Stan has been
a guest on Rapid Response before, most recently to talk
about his book on Character. In this special episode, stan
is in a read onstage by another repeat Rapid Response guest, futurist,
(09:04):
culture critic and media personality Baritunde Thurston. They talk about
the responsibility of leaders in twenty twenty five, the role
of the US military in civil society, and what it
means to be courageous. Plus they do it all with
warmth and a smile. So let's get to it. I'm
Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Hello General McCrystal, Thank you for being here with us.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
In your book on Character, you wrote about a period
of your life when you were dismissive of philosophy, you said,
and I quote famous philosophers in my junior high school,
they would have been bullied and had their lunch money stolen. Stan,
did you know that I'm majored in philosophy, not till today.
(09:58):
Anything you want to say to me, well, this is
very uncomfortable. Well, we can lean into that discomfort and
work through it. In a more serious note. I was
moved by your book. I was moved by your philosophical
exploration of the concept of character, not just pushing a
(10:18):
specific version of it, but breaking it down into component parts.
Character is conviction plus discipline. And the thing that you
argue for is to be curious about our convictions. Why
is it important for you for us to not just
have character or have good character, but to challenge the
components of it in our lives.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
If you break character into the convictions, the strongly held
beliefs you have, times you're disciplined to live to them,
because anything is zero if you don't have the discipline
to live to it. The convictions matter a lot, but
they're not the things that someone just told you.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
And if you think about.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
It, most of us of the religion we were raised
in where the nationality we were born into.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
We are a product of the experience we've had.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
So much of what we believe is what was sort
of handed to us as we went along.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
That don't make it right.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And I remember, you know, in the counter terrorist fight,
we would be against members of al Qaeda who were
extraordinarily effective, and they were killing people and they were
trying to kill us at the same time.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
The best they.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Had were loyal, they were brave, they were focused on
a cause that they believed in, and the only difference
between me and my people and them was a life's journey.
Had we switched life's journey, every probability is we'd have
been at the other place. And so once you get there,
(11:52):
you step back and.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Go, well, then maybe they're not entirely wrong. Doesn't mean
I agree with them.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I mean I support them, but it means that my
convictions need me to pressure test them to the greatest
degree possible. Part of that comes with philosophy, and I
didn't do it through much of my life. I did
a few things, but then as I get older, you
start realizing how important character always was. It was always
(12:22):
the thing at the moment you didn't always consider it
that way. You were trying to be more proficient in this,
or more successful and this or more powerful, and.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Then at the end you go.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
The common denominator of getting it right was always character.
And the decisions that I'm most proud of were good character.
And the ones that I regret, and there are some,
they were places where I didn't live to the character
that I knew was the right answer. And so I
think we've got to be humble enough to decide what
(12:54):
we think we believe and then challenge it.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I want to follow up on the humility and on
what we do, and I use we intentionally. I know
I have not always lived up to the character I
profess and deeply believe in. I've put my emotional needs
before someone close to me and an act of small
but significant selfishness. And maybe you've had your own versions,
and people here have What have you found works when
(13:21):
we recognize that we haven't lived up to our character
to recover from that and still maintain a good path forward.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I think the first thing is we say, well, that's
not me. But if any of you flew here and
you made the mistake of checking your luggage, you had
to go to the turnstile where the bags come out,
and what do you typically see. You see people crowded
right up next to it, like Will Debeest at the
last watering her serengetti. And there's this idea that my
(13:52):
bag's going to come out faster if I'm closer, but
the people down below putting the bags on things they
don't care. If we all stepped back three or four feet,
everybody could see it, we could calmly get in and
reach our bag and when it came out and we
could move on. Yet, why are we that way? Not
because we're bad people. I don't think it's because those
(14:12):
people in that moment we are anonymous to. We're tired,
we want to get home. We're never going to see
them again, so we can.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Be that way.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And how many times do you deal with somebody or
some instance where you just think I'm going to be
this way because I'm angry or it serves my purposes,
things you would never do around people that you see
routine me or your family, and then you realize we
have lapses. So I think that the key thing for
me is and I'm pretty self critical. At the end
(14:47):
of every day, I literally say and think of the
times in the day when I was not the person
I should have been, when I responded incorrectly to somebody.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
I got mad, I was short. But there's just a litany.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
And the key is not to make that the new standard.
The key is to say that was wrong, and tomorrow
I'm going to try to do better, knowing you're never
going to get to perfect. But if you don't have
some kind of pressures and then you didn't ask this.
But I think the other thing that we desperately need
in society are norms where we hold each other accountable.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Where we're willing to do that.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
You know your mom would do that, but if your
mom's not around, who will do it? And sometimes we
need to look each other in the eye and just
go that's that's not the way we do things. That's
not the way we treat other people. That's not what
we would consider the standard that we all want to
hold ourselves to.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Think you're brought up how we treat other people. Let's
talk about what is happening with the US government right now,
which has a duty of care to treat people a
certain way, and is making really radical decisions on how
to deploy the services of the government. How do you
(16:04):
respond to the deployment of armed forces in American cities,
particularly those are one by Democrats, but really any city,
or the deployment of immigration officers dressed as special operators.
How do you see this and how do you feel
this use of our military right now?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Well, I think it's unfortunate and I think it's a
big mistake. But if we stepped back and sort of
antiseptically said, someone looks at you and you didn't like it,
and they say, well, you don't believe in illegal immigration,
do you? And I sort of don't believe in anything
that begins with illegal But that's really not the issue here.
(16:46):
The issue is how we're treating each other, how we're
treating people, And there are probably two levels to it.
The first is people are human beings, and there should
be a standard that we all decide we're going to
treat people, particularly people who are less strong than we are,
who need to be supported, who need to be respected,
(17:07):
who need to be helped. Then the use of the military,
and this is course personal to me. There's a tradition
of not using the military in the streets of the
United States. The posse commatatis rule. And it's got a
really good reason. It's because you don't want the American
people to identify the military with people that come and police.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
You're familiar with a quartering Act. Part of our.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Initial the founding fathers put in couldn't make soldiers live
in your homes, and that was because the Red Coats
had done it, and so we were trying to protect
ourselves from it, and of course people grew to hate
the Red Coats. What we don't want is we don't
want the American people to grow to fear or be
resentful of our own military. Because the military has to
(17:54):
be a mirror of the population. It has to be diverse,
it has to be as much talent as we can bring.
Parents have to feel good about their sons and daughters
going into the service, so there won't be a service.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And so there's got.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
To be this organic relationship, and so you've got to
be very careful. Now, are there instances where the military
can do things other organizations can't? Absolutely, there's a common
sense point of this. But I think the apolitical nature
of our military is one of the sacred norms that
(18:28):
we have respected for most of our history. Never perfectly,
but pretty darn well. And I'm sorry to go on
so long. When I was a senior officer, actually with
all ranks, I never knew the political persuasion of any
of my peers. I didn't know if they were liberal.
I didn't know if they were conservative. We didn't talk
about it. It was considered inappropriate to do that, and
(18:49):
of course it was inappropriate to talk about it with
your subordinates, because that's undue influence. You just didn't because
the military wasn't part of that. And the problem is
if if a military gets politicized, we need only look
around the world for examples where that happens, then suddenly
it has a different role in society and we won't
like it.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I guarantee it.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You probably can answer this one, But how are y'all
talking about this in the former general's group chat.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
You're right, there is no group chat.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
That there are communities of people, not just former military,
but who just cared deeply about our country. They've been
alongside service members who've sacrificed, they have sometimes sacrificed, and
they just have this sense of responsibility for the future
of the nation that although we're not serving actively right now,
(19:54):
So we don't do those things. There's still this emotional attachment.
So I think there's an entire community of people out
there who feel very strongly that we need to go
in a better direction.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Stan isn't being COI about a better direction. His description
of the diverse political perspectives within the military echoes what
I keep hearing from business leaders too, about the need
for their organizations to represent the wide breadth of the population,
even when that's challenging. So how is evolving technology like
AI impacting the military and what sort of character do
(20:31):
we need in deploying AI. Stan and Baratunde talk about that,
what it means to be courageous and more. After the
break stay with us. Before the break, we heard retired
US General Stanley McCrystal live at the Masters of Scale
(20:54):
summit in conversation with futurist and media personality Baritunde Thurston
about the role of character in leadership and the role
of the military in civil society. Now Standing, Baritunde talk
about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy,
stands exhortation to embrace national service and the double edged
sword of AI.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Let's jump back.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
In one of the projects I've been an honored to
work on, it's called how It's a Citizen. We interpret
citizen as a verb, and it's not just about voting
and electing people. It's what we do every day, and
our work and premise has been telling these stories of
people who are practicing democracy, who are citizen ing in
(21:39):
innumerable ways. When you hear that more open definition of
citizen as a verb, what is your call to the
people right now on how we can citizen?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I love what you're doing with that. I love citizen
and being a verb because I think that's what it is.
Most of the people in this room became citizens by
action and a birth.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
We didn't do anything to earn it.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
And most of us think that if we pay our
taxes and we vote, we've checked the block. But as
you know, in the last presidential election, only sixty five
percent of eligible voters voted. That's lower percentage than Afghanistan
when I was serving there. And so whoever wins, wins
with less than fifty percent of sixty five percent, so
(22:23):
the winner comes in the low thirties. I don't think
that that's really the kind of democracy we need. So
The first thing I think is we need to take
the responsibilities. You know, people talk of inalienable rights, we
have responsibilities to go with those. And I think they
are wider than simply voting or paying taxes or not
(22:45):
violating the law. I think they are participating in things
that make the nation stronger.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
In our communities.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
There's a great tradition in America about volunteer fire departments
and raising barns and all the things. You couldn't have
a community work without that, and yet we've drifted a
bit from that. I'm a great believer in national service
for all Americans. So every young American gets an opportunity
to do a year of fully paid national service. Not
(23:15):
big money, stipend kind of money, but so they don't
have to be supported by their parents, health care, conservation, whatever.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Some will go in the military, some might go law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
But everybody should go do something for the nation for
a year or two, and then they should go on
with their life and they will have a common experience
when they get together, they meet somebody later when their
kids are playing soccer, they go, where'd you serve? Somebody
says I taught down in New Orleans and somebody else says,
I built trails in this park.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I worked with the elderly, and that.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Connectivity would give us something that starts to go across
zip codes, political ideology, and all rape, religion, all the
other things that divide us, something that's a common experience.
Even if it was a really painful year, even if
they just hated that year, they'd laugh about it. Yeah,
mine shucked more on yours, and maybe my generation could
(24:16):
craft it to make sure it did.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Well done. We are also good at playing the We're
good at playing the oppression Olympics. So let's let's not
do that one. I work on a show. I've helped
create a show called Life with Machines, and we're exploring
how to live well with tech, not just endure it.
There's this emergence of AI where it's not just a
tool anymore. It's becoming a teammate and we're having professional
(24:42):
and personal and even familiar relationships. How do you think
about the role of artificial intelligence in the chain of
command for military or in a business structure? And what
are you seeing that excites you? What are you seeing
that deeply concerns you.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think in the positive, it's going to be in
a neighbor or it's going to take a staff officer
or an intelligence analyst, and they're going to be able
to do it just remarkably faster.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It took two years to plan.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
The Normandy invasion during World War Two because the logistics
and everything. You'll be able to do that in the
morning and it'll be pretty close. And so those kinds
of things can be much better. You can free up
talent to do other things, so that's very positive. There
are going to be some challenges. One, we used to
say that we'll never put anything that doesn't have a
(25:29):
human in the lethal loop, meanbe a hum before we
shoot and kill something, a human will be involved.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
That's already gone. It's not fast enough.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
We respond to things now strictly because of machines, because
if a human's in there, you just can't get it done.
And so machines are already doing that. And if we
train humans well, they can become great tools. But we
do have to understand the power there. But I would
throw this scenario to you, as intel AI is starting
(26:01):
to be able to derive probabilities of things happening. Suppose
you get a scenario where leadership is suddenly told tomorrow
Country X is going to invade Country Y and maybe
work country why. And a machine tells you this, and
you know you can't. Don't human store have the ability
(26:23):
to get in and fact check the machine well enough
because of the complexity of all the data that's been
considered and how it's been done. And so they're going
to have this thing. You are going to get attacked tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
What do you do? Well?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Traditionally, what leaders would like to do is take the
first punch. Let Pearl Harbor get hit or whatever happens,
so then we have moral right on our side. But
if it's potentially an existential threat, then.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
You're going to be put with this idea.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Do I do a preemptive strike to protect our people
based upon what this machine told me? And this machine's
usually right. Now think about that and now speed it up.
Don't say that you're going to have thirteen days like
President Kennedy did for the Cuban missile crisis. So you're
(27:12):
going to have thirteen minutes and somebody calls the president
says here it is, It says it's coming. It's coming
in thirteen minutes. You've got to make a decision. Right now,
and they say, are the missiles already? Are the enemy
missiles launched? No, but they're about to. So we are
going to have to get our minds around dealing with
some of the things that AI will do that we're
(27:35):
not yet comfortable having done for us.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It sounds like you want to make sure you have
the type of leader who's maybe thought a bit about character.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I mean, I know some people are trying to put
character into AI, but you're going to have to have
leaders who have really thought about this, and they've got
to be so grounded in their values so that they
are to things.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
That we know we're comfortable with.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
And they're going to have to be courageous because they're
going to make decisions they're going to terrify them in
the moment, not because they'll be hurt, but because they
will fail the nation. And I think that that's going
to have leaders of extraordinary not just confidence, but courage
to accept that kind of responsibility.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
We have such little time left. I'm not going to
pry open a specific question. I'm going to give you
an opportunity to say something that you wish you had
gotten to say while you're on this stage.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, they kindly mentioned that we have this book on character,
and it's not the brilliance of the book, it's that
it's the point we need to talk about character. We
need to have a national conversation on character right now.
And we don't need to have it in DC. We
need to have it in churches, in classrooms, at dining
room tables. We need to have it at grassroots level.
(28:57):
And what we need to do is we need to
decide what is our character in America going to be?
What is okay and what is not okay because we've
allowed the norms to slip. We watch TV and we
see people lie to us on TV and we accept
it because well it's TV and.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
That's the way it works. Ah, we decide that.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
And so what I want everybody to do is to
think about character, talk about character, and.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Then let's hold each other to account.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
Let's we get to decide what kind of nation we
are and if we make no choice, we've decided.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
A closing reflection of gratitude, there's a lot of volatility.
We're in a poly crisis crisis that can't decide what
kind of crisis they wants to be.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Love, and in times of such volatility, you started to
say to yourself, we got to hold to something deep.
We hold a principle right, we hold to each other right,
and we remember that we have the power. Stan, I'm
a stand of you. Thank you so much, Thank you
(30:20):
empty very much.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
Stan and Barratundi have such different backgrounds and experiences, yet
they meet on common ground. I got a chance to
eavesdrop on them chatting backstage before their appearance, and while
they've only just met, the empathy and the mutual respect
was palpable. A decade ago, I interviewed Baritunde and Stan
separately for a series I wrote at Best Company about
(30:51):
what I call Generation flux, people with a mindset of adaptability.
Since then, they've each continued to adjust as our world
has yet remained anchored to core principles.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
This is the tricky dance.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
We're all engaged in in twenty twenty five, as we
test our own character and our convictions and what it
takes to be courageous in the face of change. Like Baritunde,
I am, as he puts it, a Stan of stands
stand manages to inspire me every.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Time we talk.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
I've tried to deconstruct just what it makes him effective
as a leader. There's his calm and his clarity and
his steadiness, but the emotional cords he's able to stir
comes from something deeper and harder to put into words.
Let's just say I think he's in deep touch with
his own humanity. It's something we can all aspire to
and remind ourselves of as we face the political, technological,
(31:45):
and business challenges of our modern age. I'm Bob Safian,
Thanks for listening. Response is a wait what original? I'm
Bob Sathian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our producer
(32:07):
is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashumaku Tonina mixing and
mastering by Aaron Bastinelli. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday.
Our head of podcasts is Leetal maulag. For more, visit
Rapid Response Show dot com.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yo.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Give it up for General Stanley McCrystal. We honestly, we
had a blast. We had a blast, and I've interviewed
President Obama, I've interviewed Valerie Jarrett, I've interviewed the President
of the Republic of Georgia.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I've done a lot.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Of conversations in my adult life, and this was one
of my favorite because I felt like he was really there,
like I was really there. The people in the room
were there with us, and I hope you felt it,
and I hope that you take away from it a lot,
but in particular that we're not alone. That there are
(33:08):
people who know the difference between right and wrong and
are still willing to speak up for it. And we're
seeing it in the set of Democratic lawmakers who put
out that montage video encouraging members of the services, reminding
them that they have an obligation to disobey illegal orders,
(33:28):
things that violate the Constitution. And in the season when
the President of the United States is calling that sedition
and demanding execution of folks who speak like that. I
just want to recognize the strength of character in former
General the Crystal stan and people like read who do
(33:53):
have a lot to lose by platforming discussions like this.
And so to all who put that conference on, I'm
very grateful to the General and all who serve with honor.
I am grateful to you who are listening right now.
I am grateful and just know that something amazing and
(34:15):
better is coming because we're going to bring that into being.
I have a lot more I'll be sharing with you
over the coming weeks and months. I'm going to use
this feed a bit more to the best of my
ability to keep the channels of communication open. And if
there's stuff you want to hear about and from me
or this network of those of us who believe that
(34:35):
citizen is a verb, hit me up. Head on over
to Baratunde dot com. You can drop a message to
me direct through my website. Me and my team see it,
and just take a deep breath. And in this season
of gratitude, I am grateful for you, and I hope
that you can find a way to express your gratitude
(34:57):
for someone in your life who has allowed you to
be here right now.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Peace,
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