August 13, 2025 • 54 mins
This first episode of season 2 is with my dear friend and former colleague at Cerity Partners, Jeff Lancaster. Jeff has had a fascinating career, from working for the US state department stationed in Japan to becoming Partner at a top wealth management firm in San Francisco. We discuss faith, connection, community and so much more in today’s episode.
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Episode Transcript
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(02:26):
Welcome to the
season two premiere of Coated in Gold.
This first episode is with my dear friend
and former colleague at Seriti Partners,Jeff Lancaster.
Jeff has had a fascinating careerfrom working for the US State Department,
stationed in Japan,
to becoming partner at a top wealthmanagement firm in San Francisco.
(02:48):
What I've enjoyed the mostabout my friendship with Jeff is how open
and willing he is to have deepand sometimes controversial conversations.
As you listenersknow, I've struggled with faith
and it's been an ever evolving journey.
By contrast,Jeff is someone who seems so unwavering
(03:09):
in his convictions about God and faithand the community values of his church.
In this episode, I wanted to sit downwith him to understand
more about his perspectiveon all of this and more.
Before we jump in,I want to emphasize how personal faith is,
and you may disagreewith our perspectives, and that's okay.
(03:32):
But I invite you to see thisas an opportunity
to understand moreabout how someone else sees the world.
I may sound like a broken record,but at this moment, it's vital
that we remember to embraceour differences and seek common ground.
Without further ado, here'smy conversation with Jeff Lancaster.
(03:53):
All right, well, why we're here today.
I think we'll start
by yousharing a bit about your background.
You know,you and I were partners at, you know,
Bingham Osborne in Scarborough, aSan Francisco based registered investment
advisor service that we subsequently soldthat firm at the end of 2021.
(04:13):
And really recently this year,
in fact, you retired, right?
And I actually want to
talk a little bit about,you know, you've been giving advice,
you know, to the folks on retirementfor a long time,
and now you're in the seatof experiencing it and what is right.
What is that like?
(04:35):
Like, were you sufficiently prepared?
Yeah.
I'm I'm asking myself that same questionall the time.
I think I was pretty well prepared,but I do think I,
you know, I think anybody in my shoeswould say the same thing that the,
the math, you know, the the retirementplan, the Excel Excel spreadsheet.
This is what you can afford to spend,so on and so forth.
(04:58):
That's extremely helpful.
But it does not prepare you for that
first two weeks since you're 15 years old.
No paycheck, no paid.
And that's the
psychological challenge, right?
That's the psychological challenge.
(05:18):
If you're, you know, like most of us,you know, you're kind of not raised
with a silver spoon in your mouth.
And the idea is you're growingthe nest egg.
You're saving, you know, you're saving,you're spending less money every month,
and you're earning. Right?
Because that's what saving is. Yeah.
All of a suddenit's like, no, actually, this month
you spent more money than you earned.
(05:39):
And that's easy mathbecause you earned zero, right?
But let's go back.
Paint the picture.
How did you grow up?
Where did you grow up?Where'd you go to school?
Yeah, I grew up in Lafayette, California,which is a suburb of San Francisco.
When my family moved here in the early70s, it was a middle class suburb.
(06:00):
You could buy a nice rancherfor 40, 50, $60,000,
which is what my parents did, issubsequently become a sort of high end
community, simply because the real estatevalues have gone up as much as they have.
I went to a public high school,
terrific public high school.
And then I went to Amherst College,which is a small liberal arts school
in Western Massachusetts, largelybecause my dad and gone there,
(06:23):
it seemed like a nice placeto go to college.
And then,
I got out of school,I did a little of this,
a little that briefly wentto graduate school and political science,
but I ended up working in the U.S.
State Department for about 7 or 8 yearsin the diplomatic corps,
the last four years of thatin our embassy in Japan.
During which time I had a visitor, guynamed Bob Bingham,
(06:45):
who'd also gone to Amherst Collegeabout 25 years before I did.
My wife and I were living in the USembassy housing compound in downtown
Tokyo, and, Bob and his wifeCarol were coming.
And Bob's tall, I want to say ismaybe six, four, six, five.
Easy.
And I'd seen him at some Amherst Collegepicnic or whatever.
(07:06):
And he told mehe and his wife were coming to Tokyo.
And I said, Bob, you know, you're notgoing to make it in a in a Tokyo hotel.
You know, you're so tall.
Why don't you comestay with my wife and me?
You know, we've got a beautiful U.S.
taxpayer provided apartment in downtownTokyo.
So? So Bob and Carol cameand we became friends.
I mean, we were already friendsa little bit because,
(07:27):
as I say, Bob and my dadhad known each other well for years.
And then after Bob had visitedfor about a week,
he said, you know, if you ever wantto do something different,
I've got a new little firmin San Francisco.
We manage people's money for them.
I'm pretty optimisticabout the future of the firm.
We'realways looking for good young people.
(07:47):
And I actually was not very happyworking with the US government.
And I told Bob, you know, can I.
Can I start now?
You know, I'll just say absolutely yes.
And Bob said, well, no, you know, youdon't have any experience or credential.
Why don't you get a certifiedfinancial planning degree?
You can take correspondence coursesand take tests at U.S.
(08:10):
military bases. And so that's what I did.
I got my CFP via correspondencemy last two years in Tokyo.
And then and then I,I was going to go to University
of Chicago Business Schoolif Bob didn't honor his commitment.
But he did honor his commitment.
He offered me a job basically scrubbingtoilets and taking out the garbage.
(08:31):
But I was just so happyto be working for Bob.
And he did have a great firm,and it's just a handful of people.
But it was exciting.
You're growing and learning, and,I got to stay in the Bay
area where I'd grown up,and then I stayed for 30 years.
Okay. You went to public school?I want to pivot a little bit.
You went to public school?
How many kids do you have? Two kids.
(08:53):
Okay. Two kids.
And you didn't put them in public school?
I didn't.
We had that chance because we're living inan area with really good public schools,
and that was a really nice optionfor for us.
We ended up homeschooling our kids.
We're Christians.
And so we were kind of doing the whole,you know, Christian homeschool vibe,
but we've never done that before, David.
(09:15):
And so we didn't have a lot of confidencethat that was going to go well.
Okay.
So, you know.
We can imagineit could go one of a few ways.
Exactly, exactly.
And so we just saw my wife and I said,well, look, let's try it for a year.
Let's see how this goes.
But we're not we're not committed to doingthis for, you know, the next 12 years.
(09:37):
But we liked it and it went well.
And there's a lot of, you know, greatthings about, you know, homeschooling.
You know, you can obviously progress atthe pace that's appropriate for your kids.
And, you know,you obviously spend a lot of time
with your kids,which, you know, can be a plus or a minus,
depending on who youare and who your kids are.
And where we live,
(09:59):
we had no trouble
integrating our kids into the local sportsprograms or the local arts programs
that our kids played musical instrumentsor active in our church, you know?
So, you know, there's always the riskand you hear about it,
that the kids are going to be isolated,
that they're not going to have a chanceto be kind of properly socialized,
which itself is kind of curious because,of course, most most people do homeschool,
(10:20):
homeschool because they want the kidsdistinctly socialized.
But be that as it may, we just saidevery year, yeah, let's do another year.
Let's do another year.
And then, when high school approached,
we said, yeah, I think we're done.
I think this is done very well.
But, you know, the kids now need to take,you know, multivariable calculus.
(10:42):
They need to take AP physics.
You know,
we could pull that off, but, you know,there's some good high school options,
you know, sort ofsort of kind of normal high schools.
And so we did that.
We dropped the kidsactually into a local private school,
which was also a nice choicefor homeschool families because, I mean,
most of the kidsdidn't know any of their classmates
(11:03):
when they got there because that highschool pulled from all over the Bay area.
So our kids were normalthere. That's right.
They didn'tthey didn't know anybody. Right?
But their classmatesdidn't know anybody either.
Yeah.
So that worked.
That worked really nice.
So what grade ninth grade is that. Yeah.
Yeah okay.
So they did going through 12th.
Yeah ninth and 12.
And how are your kids turning out now.
(11:25):
Yeah. You know they're good.
Good.
Yeah.
No buddy of mine I got through high schooland, I told them, I said, man,
you know, these teenage years,I can't believe it looks like we made it.
And he warned me.
He said, Jeff, you know, it'snot the teenage years with your kids.
It's the 20s.
Oh. And it was.
(11:45):
It was like a punch to the gut.
They said, well, what do you mean by that?
And he said, well,
you know, in the teenage yearsyou still have some confidence
that you can steer these kids if they'rekind of heading in the wrong direction.
He said, just take it for me.
If you're not happywhere your kids are going
when they're in their 20s,there's there's a real sense of panic
because these arethese are kind of fully formed adults.
(12:09):
You know, they're kind of fully sure.
Yeah. So that that,
that struck terror into my heart.
But be that as it may,
you know, my boy, he lives in the city.
It's got a, you know, good job.
He's got a fiancé we like.
He's getting married.
So, so far, so good. There and then.
My daughter lives in Denver.
(12:31):
Also got a nice job.
We're going to try to persuade herto move back to the Bay area.
I think Covid probably hit her generationa little in that generation.
She's just a few yearsyounger than my son, but probably spent,
you know, less,less time in her college classroom
than her first jobs at a schoolwere remote and so forth.
So I feel sorry forfor a lot of those kids
(12:54):
who are still staring at screens all daylong.
Yeah, I was just reading. Well, yeah.
I mean, I've been reading a lotabout screens.
Yeah. Right. Because we have. Absolutely.
You know, Zander's actuallyhis birthday is this week.
And he's going to be seven.
And I mean, we've read this booklike The Anxious Generation.
It's a great, great book,I guess, but I gave that.
(13:17):
I bought eight copies of that bookand I've never done this before.
I'll never do it again,
because you don'twant to hand people a book
because they feel likeyou're judging their parenting,
which to some extent is to some extentyou are.
And I handed out
to every colleague in the officewith a child under the age of ten.
Oh you did.
I gave one to Joeland Peter and Miles and Aaron and.
(13:40):
Yeah, I wish I'd had that book.
When my kids were, were youngbecause they were we funny.
We didn't have a television in our house.
But then, you know, when the kids were allgetting phones, we got our kids phones.
But I was also reading an article.
Or it could have been a podcast.
I listen to Ezra Klein.
Or I could have been reading, actually,there was this interesting article
(14:02):
in the New Yorkerthat I was reading on an airplane back.
I was recently in Washington, DC, and,and it was
it wasn't refuting, you know,
the authorof The Anxious Generation's data,
but it was just kind of saying, like,there was a also a lot going on
when some of these studieswere taking place. Right.
(14:24):
That perhaps we should look at as well.
Right.
But I am pretty convinced, like.
Yeah, just.
There are times like when we go whenif we cross an ocean, Zander gets an iPad.
Right?
So it's like he will get an iPadif we are crashing, like,
just to keep us all sane. Right?
But it's amazingonce we get to the other side,
he doesn't want to give it up, right?
(14:44):
And is adamantabout not giving that thing up.
And then he's obsessed with itfor a period of time until like,
he realizes it's completely gone awaybecause it's not coming back, right?
Yeah. Until we crossed another ocean.
Maybe that's why he likes to travelso much.
I don't know.
But it is
it is curious the the data that you seein some of the reports
(15:05):
that they mentioned, inthe book is like terrifying,
to us.
It's terrifying.
I mean, to me, I think it's true.
I, a lot of these kids, you know,
they got the phones and the laptopsand they're fine, right.
But obviously most conscientious parents,
you know,
(15:26):
you know, most people who smokecigarets are fine, too, right?
I mean, not not a lot of people are smokecigarets, right?
You know,come down with lung cancer. Right.
But you just kind of feel like, well,to some extent, I want to
on the side of caution here.
And you mentioned you're a Christian.
What does that mean.
Even within the context of workor just in the context.
(15:47):
No, no in the current.
Yeah. In the context of life.
So for example like on this podcast, I've,you know, been,
you know fairly open, you know, very open
about like born and raised,you know, in a mormon household.
Right.
And, you know, Mormonsconsider themselves Christians.
Right.
And I think even some folks debate that.
But like, they you know,I grew up thinking I was Christian.
(16:10):
Right? Right, right.
And there's, there's different
there's different varieties of that,you know, out in the world.
And so I guess I'm asking the question,what variety?
Tell me a little bit about it.
Yeah.
Was it, you know,were you raised this way.
Was it something that you made a decision.
How did it go. Yeah.
I wasn't raised in the church.
I wasn't raised as a Christian.
(16:31):
I was raised in something that we sort of
talked about and rejected.
It was just kind of like, not in the airand not in the water, okay kind of thing.
And then as I became older,I became an adult.
You know, I had read to some extentthe Bible, which seemed compelling.
It seemed kind of believableto me, sounded about right.
(16:52):
You know, the narrative sounded aboutright, very distinct from the narratives
that I had heard growing upand and university and so forth.
And at a certain point,I just realized, like, I have to like,
I can't this kind of bewishy washy on this thing.
I, you know,I either believe this and or I don't.
And if I don't, I'mgoing to live this way.
(17:12):
And if I do, I'm going to live this way.
And that's, you know, that'sa painful place to be because, oh, yeah,
if you make if you decide I do,
then, you know, you are surrendering
to some extent significant control,
over your own decisions.
(17:33):
Right?
Because you want to be obedientand so forth.
And so that was that was stillthe biggest change in my life.
I made that as an adult.
I married a woman, as a Christian,you know, I raised my kids as Christians.
Obviously they're adults.
They're going to do what I
they have done what I did, which is,you know, it didn't matter.
Shouldn't matter that much.
(17:53):
The environment in which you're raised,a certain age, whatever that is.
Like you'reyou got to make your own decisions, right?
Doesn't does it shouldn't matterall that much what you know,
Mom and dad say, you know,Mom and dad are living with you, right?
Right.
And so it's it's
it's time to stand on your own two feetand make your own decisions.
(18:15):
At what age did you make that decision?
That's probably mid 20s okay.
Yeah, yeah. Mid 20s.
And what does thatand what were you deciding to do.
Like what are the, you know, maybe,perhaps the best way is by,
you know, me sharing a little bit about,you know, it's, right, like,
(18:36):
you know, we had, you know, the KingJames Version of the Bible, right?
That,and then and you know, very much believed
that a companionscripture was the Book of Mormon.
And then there was this also this other,book called the Doctrine and Covenants.
Right.
But like all taken together.
Right.
There were a lot of,
(18:58):
Oh, there was also this thing called the,
the word of wisdom. Right?
And the word of wisdomkind of spelled out, this is where,
you know, most people out in the world,
you know, Mormons have these prohibitionsagainst alcohol or, you know,
even caffeinated beveragesand yada, yada, yada.
Right.
And it kind of comes from,from the word of wisdom.
(19:19):
So I'm, I'm
wondering, like, and of course, you know,the Ten Commandments, clearly,
you know, about those, but,you know, generally abiding by,
you know, a life kind of as.
I don't want to say as prescribed,but like, you're signing up
for a very specific way of living,and you are almost a way of being.
(19:43):
And I guess what I'm asking is like,what is that
way of being?
For you.
Yeah.
I think you said it.
Well, I think that. Really?
Yeah. I mean, like,I don't know much at all
about Mormonismor most faiths, really, but,
yeah, the
(20:03):
the biblical narrative essentiallyconfronts each person with a decision,
which is they're either going to sort oflive for themselves by themselves,
make up their own rules,not to say make up all your own rules.
You know, most of us sort of rightlylive by the rules of our community.
But in any case,you are your own sovereign right?
(20:25):
Your own sovereign.
As every child says at some point,you know, don't tell me what to do.
And that and that, that becomesthe operating system.
Right? That's thethat's the software for your hardware.
Don't don't tell me what to do.
Yeah.
That's certainly don't tell me thatI've done anything wrong.
And certainly don't tell methat you're going to punish me.
(20:47):
You know, those are all very human,you know, to some extent,
if you don't feel those things, there'ssomething wrong with you.
But, you know, a Christian
worldview says, yeah, but that is wrong.
That is wrong.
What's the word? Sinful.
And the idea is there is a creator God.
(21:08):
He he's the sovereign.
He's in control.
He has a set of, ideasabout how you should
treat your fellow citizen,treat your spouse, treat your kids.
And, you know,
that's very different from, you know,
a contrary operating systemwhere you, you make it up as you go along,
(21:30):
and you,
you, you fudge whereit's appropriate to do so because that's
going to make your life more enjoyableor easier or so on and so forth.
I think that,I think there is that sort of,
all those rules,
you know, sort of this I feel like, David,as I say this, it sounds like,
(21:50):
oh, there's rules that you have to followand so forth, but,
you know,
that's a piece of it.
That's a piece of it.
But I feel like,
you know, it's been a long timesince I've sort of scrubbed the scripture
to see what am I supposed to dospecifically in this situation.
And, of course, Christiansbelieve that, you know, they're empowered
(22:12):
by the Holy Spirit of God to be discerningto some extent in this world.
And so, you know,
right and wrong is
placed upon your placed upon your heart,
and you are supposedto cultivate an attentiveness
and an obedience,to what's placed in your heart,
(22:32):
which, of course, is a daily challenge,because I'm sure
what is what yousometimes sense is the right thing to do.
And what you want to do are very different
or very different. How,
how does one cultivate that attentiveness?
Yeah, that.
Well, that's a great question.
I mean, I think to some extent
(22:55):
it is just regular timereading the Bible, reading the scriptures.
It is to some extent,you know, regularly being in prayer,
which is to say,listening to the best of your ability.
And this,
it's talking about,
you know, computer devices, but,listening to the Spirit of God, well,
(23:16):
so speaking to God, you can bringyour supplications, bring your requests.
And then I think also it's very it'svery helpful to spend some time,
not all of your time,but some time, you know, in a community
of people with a similar worldview,with the civilized world, which is,
you know, gathering, you know, it'sa Christian context gathering together.
(23:37):
For church or gathering together for,you know,
Bible study or for prayer meetingsor for picnics or whatever.
Because in theory, you know, you
you got a bunch of peoplein the same room,
reading the same books,you know, listening to the same people
trying to take their livesin similar directions.
(23:58):
I think about.
You know, just in all necessary.
I think all three of us.
Right, is the reading, the prayingand then being with, what we in our church
called the body, you know,which means all the people,
in, in, in the church.
Is that the strongest,
(24:18):
sense of belonging and community
that you have experienced in your life?
Outside of my immediate family, yes.
And and it's interesting,
you know, I've lived in severaldifferent places, and,
some of the churcheshave a very powerful sense of community,
(24:43):
and and some less so.
Right. Some less. Ooh.
Okay. That's very interesting to me.
What,what is different between those that feel.
Yeah.
Or sense is, you know, deepersense of community versus the others.
Yeah.
That's I ask myself that a lot.
(25:03):
I think that,
you know, in the Bay area,
it's interesting, you know, if you're,if you're grew up in the Bay area
and you travel on a Sunday,I had this experience years ago.
I would travel every once in a whileto go see my daughter in Denver.
And if it's football season, you realize
(25:23):
these people are just waymore into the Denver Broncos
than anyone in the San Francisco Bayarea is to the 40 Niners or the Raiders.
And I've been told the same is trueif you go to Alabama during
football season. The,
or even ifyou go to Boston during basketball season.
And you know, the criticism,the arrogant San Francisco explanation for
(25:47):
this iswe have a lot of choices on Sunday.
You know, there's a lot of things you canthere's a lot of options in the Bay
area on a Sunday.
Whereas in Denver you're either skiingor you're watching the Broncos
and that's it. Right? That is it.
So I do think the sort of menu of options
(26:09):
again, this is not a very romantic answer,but I think
the menu of options is part ofthat is part of that.
So I, my wife and I attended a churchin Tokyo,
Christian Church in Tokyo.
And yeah,there's a lot to do in Tokyo, but
it's an English language church.
And so right away you're in Tokyo,
(26:31):
and yet you're in an English languagesetting.
And at this I this is in the early 1990s.
There were not a lot of Englishspeakers in Tokyo the way there are today.
It's a Christian setting.
You know, the Christian populationin Japan is a fraction of 1%.
And so you are in a very exclusiveI don't mean exclusive hoi polloi.
(26:52):
I just mean it's a small little world.
And then on top of that, in this church,
there were a lot of people from,
well, there weren'ta lot of people from anywhere.
There were people from Ghana,
from Cameroon, from Nigeria,from South Africa, from the Philippines,
from Thailand, from Japan, from China,from America, from Canada, from Mexico.
(27:16):
I mean,it was truly like a little United Nations.
These people had nothing in commonwith one another except that they were
Christians who spoke English,who were very far from home.
And so I saw like thatcommunity was really skillful
at pulling in the newcomerand pulling in the visitor
(27:39):
and surrounding that personand making them feel like you are.
You are part of the hive.
You are part of a big, strong, healthy,
loving, caring, protective family.
Right? Family.
And we had formal ceremoniesto say goodbye to everybody who left
because people are recycling out overevery 2 or 3 years.
(28:01):
That's a pretty different vibethan, you know, living in the Bay area
where,you know, people have a lot of options
on Sunday morning,you know, a lot of options.
I want to talk a little bit about faith.
Okay.
And let's start
(28:22):
kind of by definition, like what is faith?
Yeah.
And I'm not asking thatbecause I don't have my own idea.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think
faith is a squirrely word.
And I agree.
I agree, by the way,I do. It's also tricky.
And I'm not a theologian.
(28:42):
I mean, I have faithand you know, hope in things unseen.
But, I like the idea of rely.
And sometimes the head teacherat our church will quickly
every time you not every time,but many times he uses the word faith.
He'll he'll quicklytell everybody in the congregation like,
yeah, but what does that mean?
You know, that's like, that's us.
That's,you know, that's a tricky concept to say.
(29:06):
How about how about rely?
How about rely?
You know, relyand is is the metaphor right.
Which is you you can have faith that,you know, the ice is going to support you
as you walk across the lake.
But, you know, candidly,doesn't matter how much faith you've got,
if the ISIS an eighth of an
inch thick, you're going to fallthrough and drown, right? Yes.
(29:29):
Right.
Congratulations on having great faith.
That's right.
Faith. Faith. Faith in what?
That's right, that's right.
And the Christianin the Christian worldview, of course.
Faith and in whom?
And faith in whom? Right.
And so, you know, for me, as a Christian,faith is about relying upon
Jesus and relying uponJesus as God as my Savior.
(29:54):
Right.
That is what that is what faith is about.
I don't have faith in my abilityto frankly,
be reconciledwith people that I've mistreated.
I don't have faith in my abilityto have the right answers for my kids.
I don't I don't, you know,
I mean, I do all the time, of course,this was talking about earlier.
(30:16):
I mean.
I tell myself, no, I can do this,I can do this, I can do this.
And then that very often doesn'tgo as well as you had hoped.
You know, the then you then you have to
you have to remind yourself,oh, wait a minute, you know.
Sure.
I think I forgotwho was in charge of this decision.
And I made my own decisionand it didn't go well again.
(30:37):
You know, just not to say everything'sobviously bright and happy,
when you are obedient, that's not.
That's not how it works either.
No, it doesn't work that way or.
How had you not converted?
How might your life have been different?
Do you reflect on that ever?
(30:58):
I do, I don't think about it.
I mean, I mean, the main thing is, like,my wife is a Christian
and she's great, and,She is great, by the.
Way, I can't imagine.
I just I mean, I just,you know, she's away for a week.
I can't imagine, like, livingwithout her for one more week, much less
not having lived there for the last 30,35 years.
(31:18):
So, you know, there's that familiar thingthat we all have.
Like, if I haven't married this woman,I wouldn't have these kids.
But, you know, because the questionis really a spiritual one.
You know, I just think, David, that,
like, things would
for me personally, things would have gonereally, really poorly.
(31:40):
Just because, the,
just, frankly, not a great person.
Not a great person, it's that to say have.
Come on, come on.
That not to say I'm a great person nowby any means, but what I just telling you
is that left to my own divide,when I'm left on my own devices,
when I sort of treat the worldas my little five dumb,
(32:05):
you know, I just, I,
I upset people, I burn bridges,
I get angry, I get impatient,
you know, petulant, pouty
and, you know, again,am I extreme in those ways?
No, I'm not, but,
you know.
I understand that.
Yes, I completely understand that. Yeah.
(32:27):
So is it fair to say that
that decision
has been a,
Because really, to me,
when you make a decision like choosing,
a religious,
(32:51):
Faith,
is that fair to say that?
Okay, well, I don't want to get intothe whole sort of Calvinist.
Yeah.
Extreme Calvinists would even go so faras to say you actually didn't.
You don't make that choice, God.
God makes right.God makes that choice. Right.
It's predestination.But again, I let's not go there.
(33:11):
And that's not athat's seldom a profitable,
you know, you get the,get the theologians to handle that one.
Had this not happened though.
Right. Right.
I think what you're expressingis that the,
and I don't know that there's
my mind is saying like,we'll call them guardrails.
(33:34):
But I don't know that they're just
necessarilythey're necessarily guardrails either.
But like, okay,so there's this way of being
that you are living right.
And and you also mentioned
like it's not just rulesand I completely I get that right.
Like okay it's not just rules.
So there's this way of being that actuallylike has had this
(33:57):
like profound positive effect
on your own outcomes in life.
I think that's what you've expressedright. Yes.
You know that without itit would have looked radically different.
That's correct.
You know, in, in my,
you know, my,my scriptures are coming back to me
(34:17):
and it's like the natural manis an enemy to God.
Right? So,
and I also in,
in theory,I think feel that way too, right?
Like,if I am left to just who I am, right?
Without, I,
(34:38):
I don't like the word rules, but, like,without any rules.
But let's call them rulesfor the sake of this conversation, right?
If I live my life without any rules,then like, I'm off the rails.
Like I could be very much off the railsbased on my natural state in the world,
right?
Like I'm fast to anger.
Like I've got a little bit of a temper,right?
(35:00):
I get frustrated pretty easily.
Right?
Like,I don't suffer fools like, you know, some,
you know, like,there's there's a lot of things that
if I were not intentionalwith how I'm living my life,
would look radically differentthan it is today.
And so I totally get I actually,
(35:20):
I get that a lot in the East.
There's meditative practices.
Does that have a place in your world?
It. Yeah, meditation
is a tricky word because it, it,
I guess to some extent
there's a prayerful component to it.
(35:42):
But then having talking toso going to friends of mine who sort of,
you know, meditate in the waythat's become,
I don't say more popular,but what we hear more about,
in America in the last 20 years, you know,
you know, it's the concept of
filling up your mind,but then also the concept of emptying it.
(36:04):
So, I think it's quite different too.
So I think I would put it, you know,
prayer and contemplation and meditationat some level in the same box.
But I think in many other waysthey're very, very different boxes.
Yeah.
And I have not studied, you know, zazenor you know, I it's just chatter.
(36:27):
Not that'snot something that I've studied.
It's interesting.
I had one of my questions like,is there a point
where faith can break down for you?
But I'm now thinkingand reflecting on that response, like,
if we think about like faithis like to rely on.
Right?
Like, yeah, well I haven't yeah,I haven't relied upon myself
(36:48):
instead of God for at least the last,you know, five minutes.
Right?
I mean, it's just, you know, it's in your,it's in your DNA to do your own thing.
Right.
It's in your, it's in your DNAto do your own thing. So.
It break, it breaks down.
It breaks down all the time.
(37:10):
You know, breaks down all the time.
Which is why, you know the Christian
Christian mindset,
you know, forgiveness,you know, repentance, forgiveness,
you know, is a very, very big,
you know, part of the,
of the of the of the package.
Right? Yeah.
(37:31):
Which is why, you know,Jesus is the center of the faith.
Because. Right.
He is he is the vehicle of the,you know, he is the atonement.
Yeah. You know.
You go back all you. Yeah.
Like going all the way back to Genesis.
Right?
It's Abraham believed God and it was,
you know, reckoned to himas, as as righteousness.
(37:53):
You know, having, you know, having madethat belief a part of you, you have peace.
You know,we were promised peace with God. Right?
So there's that, that and manyyou describe in your own life
mind as well, that constant setting,that constant, but that sense of anger,
the sense of opposition,
that problem is solved.
(38:14):
We live and I think a lot of people,
on the planet in the pasthave been able to say this to.
So I don't think it's necessarily unique,but I think maybe as humans it's
a part of the human condition,
but it certainly feels likewe live in a very interesting time.
On the planet.
Right.
Like, I struggle with this,
(38:38):
a lot in my own,
like, thoughts,like we're living in a time
where things just seemso incredibly polarized.
And I'm, I'm speaking, you know, primarilywith my day to day experience
just living in America. Right?
So that's one that also seems like,you know, I was just sharing with,
(38:58):
a colleague recently that there was
a time like just after,
the wall fell
and we kind of left this Cold War erawhere there was kind of like
there was like peace on Earthfor a while, right?
Like things felt like.
(39:19):
And I'm a Cold War kid, right?
Like, I grew up like, oh, gosh,you know, like my mother,
you know, telling us about, like,the, drill, you know, the nuclear drills.
She'd have to get under herdesk at school, and you needed to know
where the fallout shelter wasand all that.
I grew up as a little lessintense than that.
But there was this idea that, you know,
(39:41):
the world could endthrough mutual destruction at any moment,
that it was certainly possible wherethere were nations capable of this thing.
And then that felt like,oh, gosh, that's over.
It's over. Like, oh, gosh, my goodness.
Like, you know, peace flags like,this is fantastic.
And it just didn't it felt likeit didn't last very long to me anyway.
(40:04):
And fast forward now, and maybethis is a function of also having children
because your worldview shifts. You start
I've never
had to worry about another humanbeing that's, you know, I mean, like, it
actually feels like a part of youon the outside that you're,
you know, worrying about,
and I wonder, do you see?
(40:26):
And you're.
By the way, I valuethe way that you think, and your mind.
And which is why I'm asking this question,which is, you know,
there's part of my mind that's like,do you have faith in humanity?
There's that. Right.
And then it's like, I don't know, like,you know, can we really rely on humanity?
I don't know, maybe we'd all die.
It's through mutual destruction if, like,it was just left up to us.
(40:48):
But then there's also,
are there
ways of being in the world today
where people can come together again
and and live in an existence that is less
polarized, where there's more civility?
(41:08):
I feel like civility is really kindof gotten tossed out.
So it's really a problem.
I think that, well,I mean, this is not my idea, but,
I think it's veryI mean, first of all, you know,
the whole internet thing and Twitter and,you know, you're
kind of free to anonymously shoutat people and so forth.
(41:28):
That's one thing.
But I also just thinkthat it's very challenging
to live in a diverse
community, very, very challenging.
And I think most of usare not really able to make it work.
And that it's really challenging.
(41:50):
This is so, explain what you meanby diverse community.
Well, I mean, I read this first,
the guy, the Harvard sociologistRobert Putnam,
who wrote the book Bowling Aloneand Bowling Alone, was a very popular book
which described why all the bowling alleysin America were going out of business.
Even though people are bowlingmore than ever, the bowling
(42:11):
alleys are failing because bowlingactually is a money losing business.
Bowling alleys make money selling pizzaand beer and pizza and beer is purchased
by people who are in bowling leagues,
and no one wants to sign upfor a bowling league
because it'stoo much of a commitment, right?
Nobody wants to be part of the community.
That used to be the bowling leaguewhen I was a kid.
My parents bowled in a league, you know,and all their friends bowled, you know?
(42:35):
No one I know balls in the league anyway,that Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam
published another piece, I
think, in the Journal of ScandinaviaStudies, in which he looked at,
communities within Americawith more and less diverse cities.
And he found that the,
the sense of social cohesion
(42:57):
and trust was very high
in communities with almost no diversity,he said.
Not only is there little trustbetween different groups of people,
but there's even intra groupdistrust, right?
Intergroup distrust, you know,
he said he was so upsetwith the conclusions of that research
(43:19):
that he debated not publishing it,because it's very depressing.
It's very depressing if you're.
Yeah, if you'reif you're a great believer in humanity,
you'd like to think that the kindof experience I had in church in Tokyo,
where we're all from all these
different places in the world,and therefore we all get along great,
because we have a common,you know, in our case, a common god.
(43:41):
Yeah.
And then he said, you know, there'sactually two exceptions in America.
There's two institutions that arehighly diverse that work really well.
One was the US military
and the other was the evangelical church.
He said, thesethese institutions are highly diverse,
but they're also characterizedby high levels of trust.
(44:04):
Because, yeah, what you're saying ispeople have to be in community
with one anotherwith high levels of trust,
which then gets to the root of, well,okay, well, what is trust?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, evenwe just got back from a trip to Japan,
which, by the way.
You want it,
you want to see contrast to whatwe're living in here in America right now.
(44:27):
You just, you know,
take a trip to Japan, get off the airplaneand experience that for a little bit.
And, literally, it just feels likea different planet, almost.
But, you know, we were
thinking, like,how does you know, how how is this
civility past, you know,
(44:48):
you know, from generation to generationand it feels like Japan,
you know,is the most civil place on earth,
the most orderly, the cleanest that,I mean, like, I can go on and on and on
about our experience,
which it's not likewe've been to Japan once in our lifetimes.
We've been there like six times
in the last couple of yearsbecause we love it so much.
Right? Yeah.
(45:09):
But it is a very homogenous society.
Yeah. I like you, David.
I spent a lot of time in Japan.
I've spent yearsand years of my life in Japan
and and I also just keep going back and.
Yeah, it's it is a little bit of a mirror
because you, you,you know, it's not changing, right?
It's not changing.
(45:29):
No. But you feel like wow, it's crazyhere, man.
It's just like this is really cool.
Look, I just used the public restroomin downtown Tokyo.
Or the subway station.
Yeah, I'm like a force cleanerthan, you know, in my own house, you know?
So people.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Which is even when it'snot our own country, our own culture,
there's a peacefulness to being someplace
(45:52):
where everybody is playingby the same set of rules.
Yeah, it's just so much less work.
Now, don't you think?
You need to learn those rulesand you need to obey those rules.
But there's only one set of rules, right?
I don't have any data to support this,but it seems as though
and maybe this is just generational, like,you know, you look back and you're like,
oh gosh, when I was a kid,is this nostalgic and blah blah blah.
(46:14):
But it seemedit seems as though everyone playing
by the same set of rules is in decline.
Is that a doyou think that's a fair statement?
I think that's a fair statement.
I mean, I you know, you read the crimestatistics, you know, obviously
crime is way down compared to,
you know, like the 1970s and so onand so forth.
(46:36):
But just, you know, some of the smallerthings, you know, whatever.
I mean, you used to be able
to go to the beach and not listen to threeother people's music, you know,
walk down the street and not read,you know, 17 different things of graffiti.
I mean, in many waysit does just seem like,
there's a lot of different sets of rulesout there that we're not all,
(47:01):
yeah, we're not all of the samesheet of music, it seems that way.
Yeah, right.
I hear a lot of people say these dayson a lot of podcasts that I'm listening
to, like, you know, America is stillthis really great, like experiment.
Right? And,
And I think in many
ways, yeah, you know,it is a grand experiment.
(47:23):
And, you know, we're certainly in aI think we're in a rough patch,
you know, of the grand experiment.
And and like, let's just forgetabout the political mess.
I think the rough patch aside,aside from that,
I think theI think the, the political stuff is,
(47:43):
almost like a symptomof what is, you know, under the surface,
but it's just an outwardprojection of kind of, you know,
a group of human beings who no longer
are singing from the same page of music,
or working togetherto rewrite the music themselves.
(48:05):
Right.
Like there's a, there's a part of, like,you have to be an active.
I mean, one of the thingsthat I worry about is,
there's a whole lot of complacencyin the world.
And me, like, raise hand and me included,like, because you don't know what to do.
But at the same
time, if we're not,if we don't know what to do,
someone else will make those decisionsfor us, right?
(48:26):
Yeah. So, yeah.
You know, so you can eitherbe an active participant or you can sit
by, you know, on the sidelinesand not do anything.
And so I've been thinking about lately,like, okay, well then just what do you do.
You know that.
And I don't even have the answer to that.
Right.
Yeah. It's very differentthan when you and I were kids, right?
Sure.
(48:46):
When we went, you know, we went to schooland, you know, if we had enough money
to go to the the movies over the weekend,we all saw the same movie.
We all watched the same TV show.
We all listened to this, you know, it'sjust like, totally different now.
Maybe it's better.
I don't know.
For some people I think it is better.
You know, for some peopleI think it sure better.
(49:07):
Sure.
Sure. Yeah.
It's certainly much more fragmented.
It's just it's a challenge, right?
It's a challenge.
Do you feel communitywith people outside your church?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.I mean, I mean, I know that to be true.
So. Yeah.
No, absolutely.
I mean, our kids high school,
(49:27):
that was a great experience for us. And,
we became friendswith a bunch of the parents,
you know, like, like anybody else.
You know, it's funny,
my daughter was.
We were at a graduationceremony or something,
and I just felt sorry for myself.
I said, like, well, nowwhat am I supposed to do?
You know, and, and my kidsand then of one of the parents,
(49:48):
you know, laughed at me and she said, oh,yeah.
Jeff, it's the golden age of television.
You know, there's a lot of really goodtelevision and, you know, and,
she's so funny.
And then she said, well,do you play bridge?
And I said, yeah, I play bridge.
And, you know, for couples,you know, for my kids,
you know, so we've been playing,
playing bridge together for, for years,you know, and it's very cool.
(50:11):
And that's,you know, it's a very small community.
There's just eight of us.
But yeah, it's really nice and,you know, my wife's very active
in some neighborhood associations,Firewise, which prevents us all
from burning to the ground.
And, you know, the local, improvementAssociation.
So, yeah,there's a lot of there's a lot of great,
a lot of great communityopportunities, for sure.
(50:31):
Apart from the church, in fact,it's really,
you know, psychologically necessary,right?
Because, you know, you don't want to have
I don'twant to say the same conversations,
but you don't want to always be thinkingin the same way
and talking in the same way,and discussing the same things.
That's listening to same music,reading the same books.
I mean, that gets boring in a hurry.
(50:54):
Oh, actually, I'mso glad that you just said that,
because you just hit on somethingthat I think is,
pretty big, like, I think,
and I felt this way even growing up,there were times where,
if you are in a single communityalmost exclusively
and you're not participatoryor building community
(51:16):
in other areas of your life,it become you.
It begins to feel insular.
You know, a very plain way to sayit is like, yeah, it's boring.
Like you can only take so much of like,
you know, one, we'll just call it oneflavor of ice cream, right?
Where. Yeah. Okay.
But then you, you wind up venturing outand you have these other communities
(51:38):
and believe it or not, by in my,
own experience, has been like thethe more you participate in a deep
it doesn't have to be deep communitieslike you said.
Bridge. Right.
But the
more anda and I think it's a finite number,
you can't keep goingbecause you can't support that.
But like if you have a small numberof communities that you're participating
(52:01):
in, they can actually feed one another,not the two groups interacting.
But like for you,they feed like who you are,
how you move through the world,how you show up for things.
Exactly. Yeah.
And you have something to contribute,right.
You can you can further, you know,fertilize, maybe not the right word,
but you have somethingyou have something to contribute, right?
(52:23):
That, you know, in my community,
if I ask for a book recommendation,let me get very, very good
recommendations for my,you know, my church world
and for my bridge worldand for my neighborhood world.
But they're going to be very differentbooks.
Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
I mean, my, my best bookrecommendations came from my clients.
Okay. You heard recommendations today.
(52:43):
Well, I'm reading an old one right now.
I'm reading for Mac McCarthy's BloodMeridian.
Man. That is that's a tough one.
That is a tough one, but quite good.
Yeah.
Oh. I'm not in book land right now.
I'm trying to like,
I'm. I've been listening to podcasts
and reading like,The Economist in the New Yorker lately.
(53:06):
It's it's tough to read books.
You know, you got to retrain your mind
just to sit, just to sit down on the couch
for two solid hoursand not pick up your phone.
It's like,oh my gosh, remember when you're younger,
you could just spend an entire dayreading a book.
You could.
It's very difficult to do that now.
Hey, do you think,
(53:26):
I know this is a little random, but I wasI was trying to think about like,
well, gosh,maybe people should start reading more.
And then it's like, well, why aren't theyall they're on their phone?
Well, you know, do you think, you know,we all need to put our phones down
a little bit
more and interact a little bit more,and maybe things get a little bit better?
I do, yeah.
But you know, am I doing that. No.
(53:47):
I know, I know, I hear you I mean yeah I.
Yeah I, yeah I really do
the hate book The Anxious Generation
you know targets the kids.
Right.
But I have to think he's going to come outwith a book next year.
That's going to say, by the way, dad,like you're no better.
You know, you're so distracted.
You're so good. Yeah.
(54:08):
Absolutely true.
When you look around,I mean, I just look at my own behavior.
It's atrocious in this way.
Yeah, it's a challenge.
These things are just so great.Yeah, yeah.
You don't have to be bored for one second.
Oh, we've been, talking a lot.
Zander likes to say,
(54:29):
these days, like, I'm bored.
I'm bored.
And our response to him is like,good, good.
That's good. Right.
This great state for you to be in, youknow, and like, okay, what are the thing?
And then we, you know, then we engagein active conversation around like, okay,
what do you do when you have thatfeeling of like, I'm bored, right?
(54:50):
You could think about this.You can think about that.
You could actually sit and be stilland try not to think.
Right.
There's like all these things that youcould be doing that will actually lead to
you feeling a lot better than the feelinglike you expressing like, I'm bored.
Yeah, you could go in the backyardand turn over a rock.
You will not rest.
Probably some bugs underneath it and yeah.
(55:12):
Oh. By the way, like,speaking of community, like I look out,
you know, we live in a community,but you don't see kids anymore.
You know, and that's all I had was like
my mother was like,get out of the house, out.
Yeah. Yeah.
Come home for dinner.
Totally. Yeah. Totally.
But but not before then.
(55:33):
Not before then.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
And I'm not even going to worry untilyou're, like, really late for dinner.
Right? Right.
It's cocktail hour.
Do not interrupt cocktail hour.
There was not, My house.
I, I do think for sure,especially in the suburbs.
Yeah.
You can just drive all day longand you don't even see kids
riding their bikes,you know, on the streets.
(55:54):
Or I was reading, I think it was,
there'san article recently in the Atlantic
about the lostart of riding a bicycle as a child.
For what?
But it's true. It's absolutely true. Yeah.
Absolutely true.
Jeff, this has been wonderful.
Is there anything else you want to cover?
(56:16):
No, I,I didn't know that this was going to.
Yeah. It's just it'salways a joy to talk to you, David.
Yeah.
I always enjoy being with you.
You're such an interesting person.
I like wine, so, you know, youyou always have a lot to say,
but you always have a lot of questionsyou want to ask as well, which is, yeah,
if you're one of those ways,it's not great.
But when you're both of those ways,it's great.
(56:37):
I appreciate that.
Cool. All right man.
All right. Thank you sir.
Thanks for listening to Coated in Gold.
I've been your host, David Newson.
If you enjoyed this conversation, leavea like, comment or share this episode.
Let's keep the conversation going.
You can followCoated in Gold on our socials for updates
(57:00):
on upcoming episodes.
Links are in the show notes.
Thank you and take good care
one more time.
One more time.
One more time.
One more time.
Thanks for listening to Coated in Gold.
(57:21):
I've been your host, David Newson.
If you enjoyed this conversation, leavea like, comment or share this episode.
Let's keep the conversation going.
Oh my god.
Thanks for listening to Coated in Gold.
I've been your host, David Newson.
If you enjoyed this conversation, leave alike a comment or share this episode.
(57:44):
Let's keep the conversation going.
You can followCoated in Gold on our socials
for updates on upcoming episodes.
Links are in the show. Notes.
Thank you and take good care.
Welcome to the
season two premiere of Coated in Gold.
This first episode is with my dear friend
and former colleague at Seriti Partners,Jeff Lancaster.
Jeff has had a fascinating careerfrom working for the US State Department,
stationed in Japan,
to becoming partner at a top wealthmanagement firm in San Francisco.
(02:48):
What I've enjoyed the mostabout my friendship with Jeff is how open
and willing he is to have deepand sometimes controversial conversations.
As you listenersknow, I've struggled with faith
and it's been an ever evolving journey.
By contrast,Jeff is someone who seems so unwavering
(03:09):
in his convictions about God and faithand the community values of his church.
In this episode, I wanted to sit downwith him to understand
more about his perspectiveon all of this and more.
Before we jump in,I want to emphasize how personal faith is,
and you may disagreewith our perspectives, and that's okay.
(03:32):
But I invite you to see thisas an opportunity
to understand moreabout how someone else sees the world.
I may sound like a broken record,but at this moment, it's vital
that we remember to embraceour differences and seek common ground.
Without further ado, here'smy conversation with Jeff Lancaster.
(03:53):
All right, well, why we're here today.
I think we'll start
by yousharing a bit about your background.
You know,you and I were partners at, you know,
Bingham Osborne in Scarborough, aSan Francisco based registered investment
advisor service that we subsequently soldthat firm at the end of 2021.
(04:13):
And really recently this year,
in fact, you retired, right?
And I actually want to
talk a little bit about,you know, you've been giving advice,
you know, to the folks on retirementfor a long time,
and now you're in the seatof experiencing it and what is right.
What is that like?
(04:35):
Like, were you sufficiently prepared?
Yeah.
I'm I'm asking myself that same questionall the time.
I think I was pretty well prepared,but I do think I,
you know, I think anybody in my shoeswould say the same thing that the,
the math, you know, the the retirementplan, the Excel Excel spreadsheet.
This is what you can afford to spend,so on and so forth.
(04:58):
That's extremely helpful.
But it does not prepare you for that
first two weeks since you're 15 years old.
No paycheck, no paid.
And that's the
psychological challenge, right?
That's the psychological challenge.
(05:18):
If you're, you know, like most of us,you know, you're kind of not raised
with a silver spoon in your mouth.
And the idea is you're growingthe nest egg.
You're saving, you know, you're saving,you're spending less money every month,
and you're earning. Right?
Because that's what saving is. Yeah.
All of a suddenit's like, no, actually, this month
you spent more money than you earned.
(05:39):
And that's easy mathbecause you earned zero, right?
But let's go back.
Paint the picture.
How did you grow up?
Where did you grow up?Where'd you go to school?
Yeah, I grew up in Lafayette, California,which is a suburb of San Francisco.
When my family moved here in the early70s, it was a middle class suburb.
(06:00):
You could buy a nice rancherfor 40, 50, $60,000,
which is what my parents did, issubsequently become a sort of high end
community, simply because the real estatevalues have gone up as much as they have.
I went to a public high school,
terrific public high school.
And then I went to Amherst College,which is a small liberal arts school
in Western Massachusetts, largelybecause my dad and gone there,
(06:23):
it seemed like a nice placeto go to college.
And then,
I got out of school,I did a little of this,
a little that briefly wentto graduate school and political science,
but I ended up working in the U.S.
State Department for about 7 or 8 yearsin the diplomatic corps,
the last four years of thatin our embassy in Japan.
During which time I had a visitor, guynamed Bob Bingham,
(06:45):
who'd also gone to Amherst Collegeabout 25 years before I did.
My wife and I were living in the USembassy housing compound in downtown
Tokyo, and, Bob and his wifeCarol were coming.
And Bob's tall, I want to say ismaybe six, four, six, five.
Easy.
And I'd seen him at some Amherst Collegepicnic or whatever.
(07:06):
And he told mehe and his wife were coming to Tokyo.
And I said, Bob, you know, you're notgoing to make it in a in a Tokyo hotel.
You know, you're so tall.
Why don't you comestay with my wife and me?
You know, we've got a beautiful U.S.
taxpayer provided apartment in downtownTokyo.
So? So Bob and Carol cameand we became friends.
I mean, we were already friendsa little bit because,
(07:27):
as I say, Bob and my dadhad known each other well for years.
And then after Bob had visitedfor about a week,
he said, you know, if you ever wantto do something different,
I've got a new little firmin San Francisco.
We manage people's money for them.
I'm pretty optimisticabout the future of the firm.
We'realways looking for good young people.
(07:47):
And I actually was not very happyworking with the US government.
And I told Bob, you know, can I.
Can I start now?
You know, I'll just say absolutely yes.
And Bob said, well, no, you know, youdon't have any experience or credential.
Why don't you get a certifiedfinancial planning degree?
You can take correspondence coursesand take tests at U.S.
(08:10):
military bases. And so that's what I did.
I got my CFP via correspondencemy last two years in Tokyo.
And then and then I,I was going to go to University
of Chicago Business Schoolif Bob didn't honor his commitment.
But he did honor his commitment.
He offered me a job basically scrubbingtoilets and taking out the garbage.
(08:31):
But I was just so happyto be working for Bob.
And he did have a great firm,and it's just a handful of people.
But it was exciting.
You're growing and learning, and,I got to stay in the Bay
area where I'd grown up,and then I stayed for 30 years.
Okay. You went to public school?I want to pivot a little bit.
You went to public school?
How many kids do you have? Two kids.
(08:53):
Okay. Two kids.
And you didn't put them in public school?
I didn't.
We had that chance because we're living inan area with really good public schools,
and that was a really nice optionfor for us.
We ended up homeschooling our kids.
We're Christians.
And so we were kind of doing the whole,you know, Christian homeschool vibe,
but we've never done that before, David.
(09:15):
And so we didn't have a lot of confidencethat that was going to go well.
Okay.
So, you know.
We can imagineit could go one of a few ways.
Exactly, exactly.
And so we just saw my wife and I said,well, look, let's try it for a year.
Let's see how this goes.
But we're not we're not committed to doingthis for, you know, the next 12 years.
(09:37):
But we liked it and it went well.
And there's a lot of, you know, greatthings about, you know, homeschooling.
You know, you can obviously progress atthe pace that's appropriate for your kids.
And, you know,you obviously spend a lot of time
with your kids,which, you know, can be a plus or a minus,
depending on who youare and who your kids are.
And where we live,
(09:59):
we had no trouble
integrating our kids into the local sportsprograms or the local arts programs
that our kids played musical instrumentsor active in our church, you know?
So, you know, there's always the riskand you hear about it,
that the kids are going to be isolated,
that they're not going to have a chanceto be kind of properly socialized,
which itself is kind of curious because,of course, most most people do homeschool,
(10:20):
homeschool because they want the kidsdistinctly socialized.
But be that as it may, we just saidevery year, yeah, let's do another year.
Let's do another year.
And then, when high school approached,
we said, yeah, I think we're done.
I think this is done very well.
But, you know, the kids now need to take,you know, multivariable calculus.
(10:42):
They need to take AP physics.
You know,
we could pull that off, but, you know,there's some good high school options,
you know, sort ofsort of kind of normal high schools.
And so we did that.
We dropped the kidsactually into a local private school,
which was also a nice choicefor homeschool families because, I mean,
most of the kidsdidn't know any of their classmates
(11:03):
when they got there because that highschool pulled from all over the Bay area.
So our kids were normalthere. That's right.
They didn'tthey didn't know anybody. Right?
But their classmatesdidn't know anybody either.
Yeah.
So that worked.
That worked really nice.
So what grade ninth grade is that. Yeah.
Yeah okay.
So they did going through 12th.
Yeah ninth and 12.
And how are your kids turning out now.
(11:25):
Yeah. You know they're good.
Good.
Yeah.
No buddy of mine I got through high schooland, I told them, I said, man,
you know, these teenage years,I can't believe it looks like we made it.
And he warned me.
He said, Jeff, you know, it'snot the teenage years with your kids.
It's the 20s.
Oh. And it was.
(11:45):
It was like a punch to the gut.
They said, well, what do you mean by that?
And he said, well,
you know, in the teenage yearsyou still have some confidence
that you can steer these kids if they'rekind of heading in the wrong direction.
He said, just take it for me.
If you're not happywhere your kids are going
when they're in their 20s,there's there's a real sense of panic
because these arethese are kind of fully formed adults.
(12:09):
You know, they're kind of fully sure.
Yeah. So that that,
that struck terror into my heart.
But be that as it may,
you know, my boy, he lives in the city.
It's got a, you know, good job.
He's got a fiancé we like.
He's getting married.
So, so far, so good. There and then.
My daughter lives in Denver.
(12:31):
Also got a nice job.
We're going to try to persuade herto move back to the Bay area.
I think Covid probably hit her generationa little in that generation.
She's just a few yearsyounger than my son, but probably spent,
you know, less,less time in her college classroom
than her first jobs at a schoolwere remote and so forth.
So I feel sorry forfor a lot of those kids
(12:54):
who are still staring at screens all daylong.
Yeah, I was just reading. Well, yeah.
I mean, I've been reading a lotabout screens.
Yeah. Right. Because we have. Absolutely.
You know, Zander's actuallyhis birthday is this week.
And he's going to be seven.
And I mean, we've read this booklike The Anxious Generation.
It's a great, great book,I guess, but I gave that.
(13:17):
I bought eight copies of that bookand I've never done this before.
I'll never do it again,
because you don'twant to hand people a book
because they feel likeyou're judging their parenting,
which to some extent is to some extentyou are.
And I handed out
to every colleague in the officewith a child under the age of ten.
Oh you did.
I gave one to Joeland Peter and Miles and Aaron and.
(13:40):
Yeah, I wish I'd had that book.
When my kids were, were youngbecause they were we funny.
We didn't have a television in our house.
But then, you know, when the kids were allgetting phones, we got our kids phones.
But I was also reading an article.
Or it could have been a podcast.
I listen to Ezra Klein.
Or I could have been reading, actually,there was this interesting article
(14:02):
in the New Yorkerthat I was reading on an airplane back.
I was recently in Washington, DC, and,and it was
it wasn't refuting, you know,
the authorof The Anxious Generation's data,
but it was just kind of saying, like,there was a also a lot going on
when some of these studieswere taking place. Right.
(14:24):
That perhaps we should look at as well.
Right.
But I am pretty convinced, like.
Yeah, just.
There are times like when we go whenif we cross an ocean, Zander gets an iPad.
Right?
So it's like he will get an iPadif we are crashing, like,
just to keep us all sane. Right?
But it's amazingonce we get to the other side,
he doesn't want to give it up, right?
(14:44):
And is adamantabout not giving that thing up.
And then he's obsessed with itfor a period of time until like,
he realizes it's completely gone awaybecause it's not coming back, right?
Yeah. Until we crossed another ocean.
Maybe that's why he likes to travelso much.
I don't know.
But it is
it is curious the the data that you seein some of the reports
(15:05):
that they mentioned, inthe book is like terrifying,
to us.
It's terrifying.
I mean, to me, I think it's true.
I, a lot of these kids, you know,
they got the phones and the laptopsand they're fine, right.
But obviously most conscientious parents,
you know,
(15:26):
you know, most people who smokecigarets are fine, too, right?
I mean, not not a lot of people are smokecigarets, right?
You know,come down with lung cancer. Right.
But you just kind of feel like, well,to some extent, I want to
on the side of caution here.
And you mentioned you're a Christian.
What does that mean.
Even within the context of workor just in the context.
(15:47):
No, no in the current.
Yeah. In the context of life.
So for example like on this podcast, I've,you know, been,
you know fairly open, you know, very open
about like born and raised,you know, in a mormon household.
Right.
And, you know, Mormonsconsider themselves Christians.
Right.
And I think even some folks debate that.
But like, they you know,I grew up thinking I was Christian.
(16:10):
Right? Right, right.
And there's, there's different
there's different varieties of that,you know, out in the world.
And so I guess I'm asking the question,what variety?
Tell me a little bit about it.
Yeah.
Was it, you know,were you raised this way.
Was it something that you made a decision.
How did it go. Yeah.
I wasn't raised in the church.
I wasn't raised as a Christian.
(16:31):
I was raised in something that we sort of
talked about and rejected.
It was just kind of like, not in the airand not in the water, okay kind of thing.
And then as I became older,I became an adult.
You know, I had read to some extentthe Bible, which seemed compelling.
It seemed kind of believableto me, sounded about right.
(16:52):
You know, the narrative sounded aboutright, very distinct from the narratives
that I had heard growing upand and university and so forth.
And at a certain point,I just realized, like, I have to like,
I can't this kind of bewishy washy on this thing.
I, you know,I either believe this and or I don't.
And if I don't, I'mgoing to live this way.
(17:12):
And if I do, I'm going to live this way.
And that's, you know, that'sa painful place to be because, oh, yeah,
if you make if you decide I do,
then, you know, you are surrendering
to some extent significant control,
over your own decisions.
(17:33):
Right?
Because you want to be obedientand so forth.
And so that was that was stillthe biggest change in my life.
I made that as an adult.
I married a woman, as a Christian,you know, I raised my kids as Christians.
Obviously they're adults.
They're going to do what I
they have done what I did, which is,you know, it didn't matter.
Shouldn't matter that much.
(17:53):
The environment in which you're raised,a certain age, whatever that is.
Like you'reyou got to make your own decisions, right?
Doesn't does it shouldn't matterall that much what you know,
Mom and dad say, you know,Mom and dad are living with you, right?
Right.
And so it's it's
it's time to stand on your own two feetand make your own decisions.
(18:15):
At what age did you make that decision?
That's probably mid 20s okay.
Yeah, yeah. Mid 20s.
And what does thatand what were you deciding to do.
Like what are the, you know, maybe,perhaps the best way is by,
you know, me sharing a little bit about,you know, it's, right, like,
(18:36):
you know, we had, you know, the KingJames Version of the Bible, right?
That,and then and you know, very much believed
that a companionscripture was the Book of Mormon.
And then there was this also this other,book called the Doctrine and Covenants.
Right.
But like all taken together.
Right.
There were a lot of,
(18:58):
Oh, there was also this thing called the,
the word of wisdom. Right?
And the word of wisdomkind of spelled out, this is where,
you know, most people out in the world,
you know, Mormons have these prohibitionsagainst alcohol or, you know,
even caffeinated beveragesand yada, yada, yada.
Right.
And it kind of comes from,from the word of wisdom.
(19:19):
So I'm, I'm
wondering, like, and of course, you know,the Ten Commandments, clearly,
you know, about those, but,you know, generally abiding by,
you know, a life kind of as.
I don't want to say as prescribed,but like, you're signing up
for a very specific way of living,and you are almost a way of being.
(19:43):
And I guess what I'm asking is like,what is that
way of being?
For you.
Yeah.
I think you said it.
Well, I think that. Really?
Yeah. I mean, like,I don't know much at all
about Mormonismor most faiths, really, but,
yeah, the
(20:03):
the biblical narrative essentiallyconfronts each person with a decision,
which is they're either going to sort oflive for themselves by themselves,
make up their own rules,not to say make up all your own rules.
You know, most of us sort of rightlylive by the rules of our community.
But in any case,you are your own sovereign right?
(20:25):
Your own sovereign.
As every child says at some point,you know, don't tell me what to do.
And that and that, that becomesthe operating system.
Right? That's thethat's the software for your hardware.
Don't don't tell me what to do.
Yeah.
That's certainly don't tell me thatI've done anything wrong.
And certainly don't tell methat you're going to punish me.
(20:47):
You know, those are all very human,you know, to some extent,
if you don't feel those things, there'ssomething wrong with you.
But, you know, a Christian
worldview says, yeah, but that is wrong.
That is wrong.
What's the word? Sinful.
And the idea is there is a creator God.
(21:08):
He he's the sovereign.
He's in control.
He has a set of, ideasabout how you should
treat your fellow citizen,treat your spouse, treat your kids.
And, you know,
that's very different from, you know,
a contrary operating systemwhere you, you make it up as you go along,
(21:30):
and you,
you, you fudge whereit's appropriate to do so because that's
going to make your life more enjoyableor easier or so on and so forth.
I think that,I think there is that sort of,
all those rules,
you know, sort of this I feel like, David,as I say this, it sounds like,
(21:50):
oh, there's rules that you have to followand so forth, but,
you know,
that's a piece of it.
That's a piece of it.
But I feel like,
you know, it's been a long timesince I've sort of scrubbed the scripture
to see what am I supposed to dospecifically in this situation.
And, of course, Christiansbelieve that, you know, they're empowered
(22:12):
by the Holy Spirit of God to be discerningto some extent in this world.
And so, you know,
right and wrong is
placed upon your placed upon your heart,
and you are supposedto cultivate an attentiveness
and an obedience,to what's placed in your heart,
(22:32):
which, of course, is a daily challenge,because I'm sure
what is what yousometimes sense is the right thing to do.
And what you want to do are very different
or very different. How,
how does one cultivate that attentiveness?
Yeah, that.
Well, that's a great question.
I mean, I think to some extent
(22:55):
it is just regular timereading the Bible, reading the scriptures.
It is to some extent,you know, regularly being in prayer,
which is to say,listening to the best of your ability.
And this,
it's talking about,
you know, computer devices, but,listening to the Spirit of God, well,
(23:16):
so speaking to God, you can bringyour supplications, bring your requests.
And then I think also it's very it'svery helpful to spend some time,
not all of your time,but some time, you know, in a community
of people with a similar worldview,with the civilized world, which is,
you know, gathering, you know, it'sa Christian context gathering together.
(23:37):
For church or gathering together for,you know,
Bible study or for prayer meetingsor for picnics or whatever.
Because in theory, you know, you
you got a bunch of peoplein the same room,
reading the same books,you know, listening to the same people
trying to take their livesin similar directions.
(23:58):
I think about.
You know, just in all necessary.
I think all three of us.
Right, is the reading, the prayingand then being with, what we in our church
called the body, you know,which means all the people,
in, in, in the church.
Is that the strongest,
(24:18):
sense of belonging and community
that you have experienced in your life?
Outside of my immediate family, yes.
And and it's interesting,
you know, I've lived in severaldifferent places, and,
some of the churcheshave a very powerful sense of community,
(24:43):
and and some less so.
Right. Some less. Ooh.
Okay. That's very interesting to me.
What,what is different between those that feel.
Yeah.
Or sense is, you know, deepersense of community versus the others.
Yeah.
That's I ask myself that a lot.
(25:03):
I think that,
you know, in the Bay area,
it's interesting, you know, if you're,if you're grew up in the Bay area
and you travel on a Sunday,I had this experience years ago.
I would travel every once in a whileto go see my daughter in Denver.
And if it's football season, you realize
(25:23):
these people are just waymore into the Denver Broncos
than anyone in the San Francisco Bayarea is to the 40 Niners or the Raiders.
And I've been told the same is trueif you go to Alabama during
football season. The,
or even ifyou go to Boston during basketball season.
And you know, the criticism,the arrogant San Francisco explanation for
(25:47):
this iswe have a lot of choices on Sunday.
You know, there's a lot of things you canthere's a lot of options in the Bay
area on a Sunday.
Whereas in Denver you're either skiingor you're watching the Broncos
and that's it. Right? That is it.
So I do think the sort of menu of options
(26:09):
again, this is not a very romantic answer,but I think
the menu of options is part ofthat is part of that.
So I, my wife and I attended a churchin Tokyo,
Christian Church in Tokyo.
And yeah,there's a lot to do in Tokyo, but
it's an English language church.
And so right away you're in Tokyo,
(26:31):
and yet you're in an English languagesetting.
And at this I this is in the early 1990s.
There were not a lot of Englishspeakers in Tokyo the way there are today.
It's a Christian setting.
You know, the Christian populationin Japan is a fraction of 1%.
And so you are in a very exclusiveI don't mean exclusive hoi polloi.
(26:52):
I just mean it's a small little world.
And then on top of that, in this church,
there were a lot of people from,
well, there weren'ta lot of people from anywhere.
There were people from Ghana,
from Cameroon, from Nigeria,from South Africa, from the Philippines,
from Thailand, from Japan, from China,from America, from Canada, from Mexico.
(27:16):
I mean,it was truly like a little United Nations.
These people had nothing in commonwith one another except that they were
Christians who spoke English,who were very far from home.
And so I saw like thatcommunity was really skillful
at pulling in the newcomerand pulling in the visitor
(27:39):
and surrounding that personand making them feel like you are.
You are part of the hive.
You are part of a big, strong, healthy,
loving, caring, protective family.
Right? Family.
And we had formal ceremoniesto say goodbye to everybody who left
because people are recycling out overevery 2 or 3 years.
(28:01):
That's a pretty different vibethan, you know, living in the Bay area
where,you know, people have a lot of options
on Sunday morning,you know, a lot of options.
I want to talk a little bit about faith.
Okay.
And let's start
(28:22):
kind of by definition, like what is faith?
Yeah.
And I'm not asking thatbecause I don't have my own idea.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think
faith is a squirrely word.
And I agree.
I agree, by the way,I do. It's also tricky.
And I'm not a theologian.
(28:42):
I mean, I have faithand you know, hope in things unseen.
But, I like the idea of rely.
And sometimes the head teacherat our church will quickly
every time you not every time,but many times he uses the word faith.
He'll he'll quicklytell everybody in the congregation like,
yeah, but what does that mean?
You know, that's like, that's us.
That's,you know, that's a tricky concept to say.
(29:06):
How about how about rely?
How about rely?
You know, relyand is is the metaphor right.
Which is you you can have faith that,you know, the ice is going to support you
as you walk across the lake.
But, you know, candidly,doesn't matter how much faith you've got,
if the ISIS an eighth of an
inch thick, you're going to fallthrough and drown, right? Yes.
(29:29):
Right.
Congratulations on having great faith.
That's right.
Faith. Faith. Faith in what?
That's right, that's right.
And the Christianin the Christian worldview, of course.
Faith and in whom?
And faith in whom? Right.
And so, you know, for me, as a Christian,faith is about relying upon
Jesus and relying uponJesus as God as my Savior.
(29:54):
Right.
That is what that is what faith is about.
I don't have faith in my abilityto frankly,
be reconciledwith people that I've mistreated.
I don't have faith in my abilityto have the right answers for my kids.
I don't I don't, you know,
I mean, I do all the time, of course,this was talking about earlier.
(30:16):
I mean.
I tell myself, no, I can do this,I can do this, I can do this.
And then that very often doesn'tgo as well as you had hoped.
You know, the then you then you have to
you have to remind yourself,oh, wait a minute, you know.
Sure.
I think I forgotwho was in charge of this decision.
And I made my own decisionand it didn't go well again.
(30:37):
You know, just not to say everything'sobviously bright and happy,
when you are obedient, that's not.
That's not how it works either.
No, it doesn't work that way or.
How had you not converted?
How might your life have been different?
Do you reflect on that ever?
(30:58):
I do, I don't think about it.
I mean, I mean, the main thing is, like,my wife is a Christian
and she's great, and,She is great, by the.
Way, I can't imagine.
I just I mean, I just,you know, she's away for a week.
I can't imagine, like, livingwithout her for one more week, much less
not having lived there for the last 30,35 years.
(31:18):
So, you know, there's that familiar thingthat we all have.
Like, if I haven't married this woman,I wouldn't have these kids.
But, you know, because the questionis really a spiritual one.
You know, I just think, David, that,
like, things would
for me personally, things would have gonereally, really poorly.
(31:40):
Just because, the,
just, frankly, not a great person.
Not a great person, it's that to say have.
Come on, come on.
That not to say I'm a great person nowby any means, but what I just telling you
is that left to my own divide,when I'm left on my own devices,
when I sort of treat the worldas my little five dumb,
(32:05):
you know, I just, I,
I upset people, I burn bridges,
I get angry, I get impatient,
you know, petulant, pouty
and, you know, again,am I extreme in those ways?
No, I'm not, but,
you know.
I understand that.
Yes, I completely understand that. Yeah.
(32:27):
So is it fair to say that
that decision
has been a,
Because really, to me,
when you make a decision like choosing,
a religious,
(32:51):
Faith,
is that fair to say that?
Okay, well, I don't want to get intothe whole sort of Calvinist.
Yeah.
Extreme Calvinists would even go so faras to say you actually didn't.
You don't make that choice, God.
God makes right.God makes that choice. Right.
It's predestination.But again, I let's not go there.
(33:11):
And that's not athat's seldom a profitable,
you know, you get the,get the theologians to handle that one.
Had this not happened though.
Right. Right.
I think what you're expressingis that the,
and I don't know that there's
my mind is saying like,we'll call them guardrails.
(33:34):
But I don't know that they're just
necessarilythey're necessarily guardrails either.
But like, okay,so there's this way of being
that you are living right.
And and you also mentioned
like it's not just rulesand I completely I get that right.
Like okay it's not just rules.
So there's this way of being that actuallylike has had this
(33:57):
like profound positive effect
on your own outcomes in life.
I think that's what you've expressedright. Yes.
You know that without itit would have looked radically different.
That's correct.
You know, in, in my,
you know, my,my scriptures are coming back to me
(34:17):
and it's like the natural manis an enemy to God.
Right? So,
and I also in,
in theory,I think feel that way too, right?
Like,if I am left to just who I am, right?
Without, I,
(34:38):
I don't like the word rules, but, like,without any rules.
But let's call them rulesfor the sake of this conversation, right?
If I live my life without any rules,then like, I'm off the rails.
Like I could be very much off the railsbased on my natural state in the world,
right?
Like I'm fast to anger.
Like I've got a little bit of a temper,right?
(35:00):
I get frustrated pretty easily.
Right?
Like,I don't suffer fools like, you know, some,
you know, like,there's there's a lot of things that
if I were not intentionalwith how I'm living my life,
would look radically differentthan it is today.
And so I totally get I actually,
(35:20):
I get that a lot in the East.
There's meditative practices.
Does that have a place in your world?
It. Yeah, meditation
is a tricky word because it, it,
I guess to some extent
there's a prayerful component to it.
(35:42):
But then having talking toso going to friends of mine who sort of,
you know, meditate in the waythat's become,
I don't say more popular,but what we hear more about,
in America in the last 20 years, you know,
you know, it's the concept of
filling up your mind,but then also the concept of emptying it.
(36:04):
So, I think it's quite different too.
So I think I would put it, you know,
prayer and contemplation and meditationat some level in the same box.
But I think in many other waysthey're very, very different boxes.
Yeah.
And I have not studied, you know, zazenor you know, I it's just chatter.
(36:27):
Not that'snot something that I've studied.
It's interesting.
I had one of my questions like,is there a point
where faith can break down for you?
But I'm now thinkingand reflecting on that response, like,
if we think about like faithis like to rely on.
Right?
Like, yeah, well I haven't yeah,I haven't relied upon myself
(36:48):
instead of God for at least the last,you know, five minutes.
Right?
I mean, it's just, you know, it's in your,it's in your DNA to do your own thing.
Right.
It's in your, it's in your DNAto do your own thing. So.
It break, it breaks down.
It breaks down all the time.
(37:10):
You know, breaks down all the time.
Which is why, you know the Christian
Christian mindset,
you know, forgiveness,you know, repentance, forgiveness,
you know, is a very, very big,
you know, part of the,
of the of the of the package.
Right? Yeah.
(37:31):
Which is why, you know,Jesus is the center of the faith.
Because. Right.
He is he is the vehicle of the,you know, he is the atonement.
Yeah. You know.
You go back all you. Yeah.
Like going all the way back to Genesis.
Right?
It's Abraham believed God and it was,
you know, reckoned to himas, as as righteousness.
(37:53):
You know, having, you know, having madethat belief a part of you, you have peace.
You know,we were promised peace with God. Right?
So there's that, that and manyyou describe in your own life
mind as well, that constant setting,that constant, but that sense of anger,
the sense of opposition,
that problem is solved.
(38:14):
We live and I think a lot of people,
on the planet in the pasthave been able to say this to.
So I don't think it's necessarily unique,but I think maybe as humans it's
a part of the human condition,
but it certainly feels likewe live in a very interesting time.
On the planet.
Right.
Like, I struggle with this,
(38:38):
a lot in my own,
like, thoughts,like we're living in a time
where things just seemso incredibly polarized.
And I'm, I'm speaking, you know, primarilywith my day to day experience
just living in America. Right?
So that's one that also seems like,you know, I was just sharing with,
(38:58):
a colleague recently that there was
a time like just after,
the wall fell
and we kind of left this Cold War erawhere there was kind of like
there was like peace on Earthfor a while, right?
Like things felt like.
(39:19):
And I'm a Cold War kid, right?
Like, I grew up like, oh, gosh,you know, like my mother,
you know, telling us about, like,the, drill, you know, the nuclear drills.
She'd have to get under herdesk at school, and you needed to know
where the fallout shelter wasand all that.
I grew up as a little lessintense than that.
But there was this idea that, you know,
(39:41):
the world could endthrough mutual destruction at any moment,
that it was certainly possible wherethere were nations capable of this thing.
And then that felt like,oh, gosh, that's over.
It's over. Like, oh, gosh, my goodness.
Like, you know, peace flags like,this is fantastic.
And it just didn't it felt likeit didn't last very long to me anyway.
(40:04):
And fast forward now, and maybethis is a function of also having children
because your worldview shifts. You start
I've never
had to worry about another humanbeing that's, you know, I mean, like, it
actually feels like a part of youon the outside that you're,
you know, worrying about,
and I wonder, do you see?
(40:26):
And you're.
By the way, I valuethe way that you think, and your mind.
And which is why I'm asking this question,which is, you know,
there's part of my mind that's like,do you have faith in humanity?
There's that. Right.
And then it's like, I don't know, like,you know, can we really rely on humanity?
I don't know, maybe we'd all die.
It's through mutual destruction if, like,it was just left up to us.
(40:48):
But then there's also,
are there
ways of being in the world today
where people can come together again
and and live in an existence that is less
polarized, where there's more civility?
(41:08):
I feel like civility is really kindof gotten tossed out.
So it's really a problem.
I think that, well,I mean, this is not my idea, but,
I think it's veryI mean, first of all, you know,
the whole internet thing and Twitter and,you know, you're
kind of free to anonymously shoutat people and so forth.
(41:28):
That's one thing.
But I also just thinkthat it's very challenging
to live in a diverse
community, very, very challenging.
And I think most of usare not really able to make it work.
And that it's really challenging.
(41:50):
This is so, explain what you meanby diverse community.
Well, I mean, I read this first,
the guy, the Harvard sociologistRobert Putnam,
who wrote the book Bowling Aloneand Bowling Alone, was a very popular book
which described why all the bowling alleysin America were going out of business.
Even though people are bowlingmore than ever, the bowling
(42:11):
alleys are failing because bowlingactually is a money losing business.
Bowling alleys make money selling pizzaand beer and pizza and beer is purchased
by people who are in bowling leagues,
and no one wants to sign upfor a bowling league
because it'stoo much of a commitment, right?
Nobody wants to be part of the community.
That used to be the bowling leaguewhen I was a kid.
My parents bowled in a league, you know,and all their friends bowled, you know?
(42:35):
No one I know balls in the league anyway,that Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam
published another piece, I
think, in the Journal of ScandinaviaStudies, in which he looked at,
communities within Americawith more and less diverse cities.
And he found that the,
the sense of social cohesion
(42:57):
and trust was very high
in communities with almost no diversity,he said.
Not only is there little trustbetween different groups of people,
but there's even intra groupdistrust, right?
Intergroup distrust, you know,
he said he was so upsetwith the conclusions of that research
(43:19):
that he debated not publishing it,because it's very depressing.
It's very depressing if you're.
Yeah, if you'reif you're a great believer in humanity,
you'd like to think that the kindof experience I had in church in Tokyo,
where we're all from all these
different places in the world,and therefore we all get along great,
because we have a common,you know, in our case, a common god.
(43:41):
Yeah.
And then he said, you know, there'sactually two exceptions in America.
There's two institutions that arehighly diverse that work really well.
One was the US military
and the other was the evangelical church.
He said, thesethese institutions are highly diverse,
but they're also characterizedby high levels of trust.
(44:04):
Because, yeah, what you're saying ispeople have to be in community
with one anotherwith high levels of trust,
which then gets to the root of, well,okay, well, what is trust?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, evenwe just got back from a trip to Japan,
which, by the way.
You want it,
you want to see contrast to whatwe're living in here in America right now.
(44:27):
You just, you know,
take a trip to Japan, get off the airplaneand experience that for a little bit.
And, literally, it just feels likea different planet, almost.
But, you know, we were
thinking, like,how does you know, how how is this
civility past, you know,
(44:48):
you know, from generation to generationand it feels like Japan,
you know,is the most civil place on earth,
the most orderly, the cleanest that,I mean, like, I can go on and on and on
about our experience,
which it's not likewe've been to Japan once in our lifetimes.
We've been there like six times
in the last couple of yearsbecause we love it so much.
Right? Yeah.
(45:09):
But it is a very homogenous society.
Yeah. I like you, David.
I spent a lot of time in Japan.
I've spent yearsand years of my life in Japan
and and I also just keep going back and.
Yeah, it's it is a little bit of a mirror
because you, you,you know, it's not changing, right?
It's not changing.
(45:29):
No. But you feel like wow, it's crazyhere, man.
It's just like this is really cool.
Look, I just used the public restroomin downtown Tokyo.
Or the subway station.
Yeah, I'm like a force cleanerthan, you know, in my own house, you know?
So people.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Which is even when it'snot our own country, our own culture,
there's a peacefulness to being someplace
(45:52):
where everybody is playingby the same set of rules.
Yeah, it's just so much less work.
Now, don't you think?
You need to learn those rulesand you need to obey those rules.
But there's only one set of rules, right?
I don't have any data to support this,but it seems as though
and maybe this is just generational, like,you know, you look back and you're like,
oh gosh, when I was a kid,is this nostalgic and blah blah blah.
(46:14):
But it seemedit seems as though everyone playing
by the same set of rules is in decline.
Is that a doyou think that's a fair statement?
I think that's a fair statement.
I mean, I you know, you read the crimestatistics, you know, obviously
crime is way down compared to,
you know, like the 1970s and so onand so forth.
(46:36):
But just, you know, some of the smallerthings, you know, whatever.
I mean, you used to be able
to go to the beach and not listen to threeother people's music, you know,
walk down the street and not read,you know, 17 different things of graffiti.
I mean, in many waysit does just seem like,
there's a lot of different sets of rulesout there that we're not all,
(47:01):
yeah, we're not all of the samesheet of music, it seems that way.
Yeah, right.
I hear a lot of people say these dayson a lot of podcasts that I'm listening
to, like, you know, America is stillthis really great, like experiment.
Right? And,
And I think in many
ways, yeah, you know,it is a grand experiment.
(47:23):
And, you know, we're certainly in aI think we're in a rough patch,
you know, of the grand experiment.
And and like, let's just forgetabout the political mess.
I think the rough patch aside,aside from that,
I think theI think the, the political stuff is,
(47:43):
almost like a symptomof what is, you know, under the surface,
but it's just an outwardprojection of kind of, you know,
a group of human beings who no longer
are singing from the same page of music,
or working togetherto rewrite the music themselves.
(48:05):
Right.
Like there's a, there's a part of, like,you have to be an active.
I mean, one of the thingsthat I worry about is,
there's a whole lot of complacencyin the world.
And me, like, raise hand and me included,like, because you don't know what to do.
But at the same
time, if we're not,if we don't know what to do,
someone else will make those decisionsfor us, right?
(48:26):
Yeah. So, yeah.
You know, so you can eitherbe an active participant or you can sit
by, you know, on the sidelinesand not do anything.
And so I've been thinking about lately,like, okay, well then just what do you do.
You know that.
And I don't even have the answer to that.
Right.
Yeah. It's very differentthan when you and I were kids, right?
Sure.
(48:46):
When we went, you know, we went to schooland, you know, if we had enough money
to go to the the movies over the weekend,we all saw the same movie.
We all watched the same TV show.
We all listened to this, you know, it'sjust like, totally different now.
Maybe it's better.
I don't know.
For some people I think it is better.
You know, for some peopleI think it sure better.
(49:07):
Sure.
Sure. Yeah.
It's certainly much more fragmented.
It's just it's a challenge, right?
It's a challenge.
Do you feel communitywith people outside your church?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.I mean, I mean, I know that to be true.
So. Yeah.
No, absolutely.
I mean, our kids high school,
(49:27):
that was a great experience for us. And,
we became friendswith a bunch of the parents,
you know, like, like anybody else.
You know, it's funny,
my daughter was.
We were at a graduationceremony or something,
and I just felt sorry for myself.
I said, like, well, nowwhat am I supposed to do?
You know, and, and my kidsand then of one of the parents,
(49:48):
you know, laughed at me and she said, oh,yeah.
Jeff, it's the golden age of television.
You know, there's a lot of really goodtelevision and, you know, and,
she's so funny.
And then she said, well,do you play bridge?
And I said, yeah, I play bridge.
And, you know, for couples,you know, for my kids,
you know, so we've been playing,
playing bridge together for, for years,you know, and it's very cool.
(50:11):
And that's,you know, it's a very small community.
There's just eight of us.
But yeah, it's really nice and,you know, my wife's very active
in some neighborhood associations,Firewise, which prevents us all
from burning to the ground.
And, you know, the local, improvementAssociation.
So, yeah,there's a lot of there's a lot of great,
a lot of great communityopportunities, for sure.
(50:31):
Apart from the church, in fact,it's really,
you know, psychologically necessary,right?
Because, you know, you don't want to have
I don'twant to say the same conversations,
but you don't want to always be thinkingin the same way
and talking in the same way,and discussing the same things.
That's listening to same music,reading the same books.
I mean, that gets boring in a hurry.
(50:54):
Oh, actually, I'mso glad that you just said that,
because you just hit on somethingthat I think is,
pretty big, like, I think,
and I felt this way even growing up,there were times where,
if you are in a single communityalmost exclusively
and you're not participatoryor building community
(51:16):
in other areas of your life,it become you.
It begins to feel insular.
You know, a very plain way to sayit is like, yeah, it's boring.
Like you can only take so much of like,
you know, one, we'll just call it oneflavor of ice cream, right?
Where. Yeah. Okay.
But then you, you wind up venturing outand you have these other communities
(51:38):
and believe it or not, by in my,
own experience, has been like thethe more you participate in a deep
it doesn't have to be deep communitieslike you said.
Bridge. Right.
But the
more anda and I think it's a finite number,
you can't keep goingbecause you can't support that.
But like if you have a small numberof communities that you're participating
(52:01):
in, they can actually feed one another,not the two groups interacting.
But like for you,they feed like who you are,
how you move through the world,how you show up for things.
Exactly. Yeah.
And you have something to contribute,right.
You can you can further, you know,fertilize, maybe not the right word,
but you have somethingyou have something to contribute, right?
(52:23):
That, you know, in my community,
if I ask for a book recommendation,let me get very, very good
recommendations for my,you know, my church world
and for my bridge worldand for my neighborhood world.
But they're going to be very differentbooks.
Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
I mean, my, my best bookrecommendations came from my clients.
Okay. You heard recommendations today.
(52:43):
Well, I'm reading an old one right now.
I'm reading for Mac McCarthy's BloodMeridian.
Man. That is that's a tough one.
That is a tough one, but quite good.
Yeah.
Oh. I'm not in book land right now.
I'm trying to like,
I'm. I've been listening to podcasts
and reading like,The Economist in the New Yorker lately.
(53:06):
It's it's tough to read books.
You know, you got to retrain your mind
just to sit, just to sit down on the couch
for two solid hoursand not pick up your phone.
It's like,oh my gosh, remember when you're younger,
you could just spend an entire dayreading a book.
You could.
It's very difficult to do that now.
Hey, do you think,
(53:26):
I know this is a little random, but I wasI was trying to think about like,
well, gosh,maybe people should start reading more.
And then it's like, well, why aren't theyall they're on their phone?
Well, you know, do you think, you know,we all need to put our phones down
a little bit
more and interact a little bit more,and maybe things get a little bit better?
I do, yeah.
But you know, am I doing that. No.
(53:47):
I know, I know, I hear you I mean yeah I.
Yeah I, yeah I really do
the hate book The Anxious Generation
you know targets the kids.
Right.
But I have to think he's going to come outwith a book next year.
That's going to say, by the way, dad,like you're no better.
You know, you're so distracted.
You're so good. Yeah.
(54:08):
Absolutely true.
When you look around,I mean, I just look at my own behavior.
It's atrocious in this way.
Yeah, it's a challenge.
These things are just so great.Yeah, yeah.
You don't have to be bored for one second.
Oh, we've been, talking a lot.
Zander likes to say,
(54:29):
these days, like, I'm bored.
I'm bored.
And our response to him is like,good, good.
That's good. Right.
This great state for you to be in, youknow, and like, okay, what are the thing?
And then we, you know, then we engagein active conversation around like, okay,
what do you do when you have thatfeeling of like, I'm bored, right?
(54:50):
You could think about this.You can think about that.
You could actually sit and be stilland try not to think.
Right.
There's like all these things that youcould be doing that will actually lead to
you feeling a lot better than the feelinglike you expressing like, I'm bored.
Yeah, you could go in the backyardand turn over a rock.
You will not rest.
Probably some bugs underneath it and yeah.
(55:12):
Oh. By the way, like,speaking of community, like I look out,
you know, we live in a community,but you don't see kids anymore.
You know, and that's all I had was like
my mother was like,get out of the house, out.
Yeah. Yeah.
Come home for dinner.
Totally. Yeah. Totally.
But but not before then.
(55:33):
Not before then.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
And I'm not even going to worry untilyou're, like, really late for dinner.
Right? Right.
It's cocktail hour.
Do not interrupt cocktail hour.
There was not, My house.
I, I do think for sure,especially in the suburbs.
Yeah.
You can just drive all day longand you don't even see kids
riding their bikes,you know, on the streets.
(55:54):
Or I was reading, I think it was,
there'san article recently in the Atlantic
about the lostart of riding a bicycle as a child.
For what?
But it's true. It's absolutely true. Yeah.
Absolutely true.
Jeff, this has been wonderful.
Is there anything else you want to cover?
(56:16):
No, I,I didn't know that this was going to.
Yeah. It's just it'salways a joy to talk to you, David.
Yeah.
I always enjoy being with you.
You're such an interesting person.
I like wine, so, you know, youyou always have a lot to say,
but you always have a lot of questionsyou want to ask as well, which is, yeah,
if you're one of those ways,it's not great.
But when you're both of those ways,it's great.
(56:37):
I appreciate that.
Cool. All right man.
All right. Thank you sir.
Thanks for listening to Coated in Gold.
I've been your host, David Newson.
If you enjoyed this conversation, leavea like, comment or share this episode.
Let's keep the conversation going.
You can followCoated in Gold on our socials for updates
(57:00):
on upcoming episodes.
Links are in the show notes.
Thank you and take good care
one more time.
One more time.
One more time.
One more time.
Thanks for listening to Coated in Gold.
(57:21):
I've been your host, David Newson.
If you enjoyed this conversation, leavea like, comment or share this episode.
Let's keep the conversation going.
Oh my god.
Thanks for listening to Coated in Gold.
I've been your host, David Newson.
If you enjoyed this conversation, leave alike a comment or share this episode.
(57:44):
Let's keep the conversation going.
You can followCoated in Gold on our socials
for updates on upcoming episodes.
Links are in the show. Notes.
Thank you and take good care.
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