0:00

And not what your country

0:03

can do for you and what

0:05

you can do for your country. I

0:12

have a dream, but one thing

0:25

Welcome to the lead different podcast. First

0:28

and foremost, I want to thank all of you. Who've been listening

0:31

to our podcast, especially this

0:33

last series that we've been doing.

0:35

William Dureza wits . I think it's been

0:37

, um, I don't want to overuse the word Epic,

0:39

but it feels pretty Epic. Uh, I've

0:42

had a chance to read , uh, all

0:44

of his books and , uh,

0:46

one of my favorite , uh, articles

0:49

, uh , or essays that he wrote on solitude

0:51

and leadership. And I hope at some

0:53

point to be able to get that out to you, but for now,

0:56

we've got these three podcasts

0:59

they're in a series. And if you look on lead different,

1:01

you'll see we have an article posted there

1:03

that really , uh, puts them all

1:06

together in one package. So you have

1:08

them right there along with a little bit of

1:10

a , you know, me sharing that this is a special

1:12

opportunity to be able to listen to

1:14

, um, William [inaudible] , uh, the New York times bestselling author. And

1:18

our final episode is about the cultural

1:21

importance of artists and the arts. Now,

1:23

before you think I'm not an artist and

1:25

I don't practice the arts, all of

1:27

us , uh , have favorite artists

1:30

, uh , have entertainment, have

1:32

things that we like to watch and listen to that inspire

1:34

us. Whether it's paintings, whether

1:36

it's music or movies, whatever it may be.

1:39

Broadway shows, we all have an interest,

1:41

a podcast that we listened to writers

1:43

that we read, blogs, whatever

1:46

it may be. And in this, he

1:48

talks about really the challenge that is before

1:51

artists, because in this world

1:53

that Silicon Valley has built, which I'm from Silicon

1:55

Valley. So I love it. Uh, it's made

1:57

it in some ways more difficult, and we've got to figure

1:59

some of these things out, but at the same

2:01

time, it's really this episode,

2:03

the death of the artists, how creators are struggling

2:05

to survive in the age of billionaires and big tech

2:08

is the book. The episode title is

2:10

the cultural importance of artists in the arts.

2:12

It's all about because big tech has removed

2:14

the gatekeepers to creating and distributing art.

2:17

Digital content. Monetization is down

2:19

to near zero. Artists have difficulty

2:21

making a living or making art. One

2:23

of the things that William D Redwood said builder

2:26

, as we had said is I don't try to convince people

2:28

that they should value art. I show them

2:30

that they already value art. What's really cool.

2:33

After that, a wonderful quote.

2:35

You can see what applies, what

2:37

bill does in the podcast is he contrast

2:40

to statistics. 96%

2:42

of Americans agree with the statement that the arts

2:44

contributed a lot of value to society, but

2:47

when it comes to, you know, their

2:49

payment only about 27%

2:52

are significantly interested or paying attention

2:54

to concerned about are willing to pay. They

2:56

just think, Oh, they're doing fine. They're rich, they're fine.

3:00

Artists articulate and communicate emotionally

3:02

what we are unable to do ourselves. So

3:04

this podcast really

3:06

it's a podcast for anybody.

3:08

Who's thinking about how the world's culture

3:10

flows and changes and moves.

3:13

And so here you are episode

3:16

three, William de resolutes

3:18

. He allowed me to call him bill, which I feel pretty

3:20

cool about on

3:22

the cultural importance of arts

3:24

in the artist. I

3:29

just want to jump in if you've got a few more minutes. Oh

3:31

yeah.

3:31

Okay, great. Okay, great. And Jane ,

3:34

Uh, I, I , um, that

3:36

the death of an artist , when

3:38

I picked it up, I was like, I

3:41

don't consider myself an artist , uh , at

3:43

all, but , um, I picked

3:45

it up and I was like, w why, why, why am I, why

3:48

am I going to read this book? Like, what's this book going to do

3:50

for me? Right. Uh,

3:52

and then I started reading it and I was like, this book is

3:54

about me in so many ways. And

3:56

I think part of it is , uh

3:58

, and I mean, I'm going to say a few things and then I'll ask

4:00

a question. Part of it is the death of an artist

4:03

made me think about fear because

4:05

one of the things I'm doing is

4:07

, is building out properties, trying

4:10

to see if I can't

4:12

in our team can contribute to helping people and

4:15

maybe get into publishing, not just articles

4:18

and podcasts, but books and seeing where

4:20

it all leads. Right. But I don't

4:22

think this was like a major thing in my head,

4:24

but it was in there. When I read the book, I found

4:26

out how hard that is. And I found

4:28

out how many odds are stacked against people.

4:30

And then it made me a little irritated

4:33

because I was like, wait a minute. That's the very thing

4:36

I feel society needs. I feel

4:38

what you talked about, about citizenship when I was, you

4:40

know, I'm , I'm older than a lot of my listeners,

4:43

but when I was in high school,

4:45

I got citizenship awards. And,

4:48

and, and you got that and you were like, Oh, I got a citizenship

4:50

award. You know, and that means I'm coming to school

4:52

and I treat people, right. And that was the

4:54

thing, you know, civics class was a thing.

4:57

Um, so I want to make that kind of contribution

5:00

to people today, as best I can on

5:02

my small local level. But when I read

5:04

death of an artists that made me afraid and say, wow, this

5:06

is a much tougher thing to do. It's

5:08

always been difficult, but it's much

5:10

tougher to do with , uh , what

5:13

was I reading? I want to just say , um,

5:16

the death of an artist , there are two stories

5:18

you hear about making a living as an artist in the digital

5:20

age, and they're diametrically opposed.

5:22

One comes from Silicon Valley and this boosters in the media,

5:25

there's never been a better time to be an artist

5:27

that goes, if you've got a laptop and you've got a recording

5:29

studio , if you've got an iPhone, you've got a movie camera, garage,

5:32

band, final cut, pro, all the tools are

5:34

at your fingertips. And if production is cheap distribution

5:37

and it's free. And I read that and I thought,

5:39

yeah, it , it , that's not true.

5:42

And I think some of my friends down here, we went,

5:44

Oh yeah, that's not true. In a sense, we're selling people,

5:46

a bill of goods. That's not

5:48

real. And if we let

5:51

and I, I'm going to let you talk about this. If we eliminate

5:54

artist's capacity to influence

5:56

society, I didn't look up the quote. But John

5:58

Kennedy, I sat in the John Kinney presidential library. And

6:01

he said, he talked about the importance

6:04

of the artist to culture. And I

6:06

think some of what we're missing, even

6:08

with all the racism, Asians

6:10

against blacks, some of what we're missing is there's

6:13

a deep cultural chasm where

6:15

we don't know how to fix ourselves culturally,

6:18

because we don't have the relationships. We don't

6:20

have the depth . And we're

6:23

squashing the artist , whether it's music, it's paintings,

6:25

it's books, et cetera. But maybe you

6:27

can talk about, I think the threat

6:29

that it is. And also the

6:32

two stories that may be too much.

6:35

No, no, no, no. I'm happy . Believe

6:37

me. I'm happy to do it, especially to an audience that

6:39

includes people from Silicon Valley. So

6:42

the first story is the one that you said Silicon

6:44

Valley story for 20 , 25 years

6:47

now, never been a better time. The tools

6:49

are all out there. You can circumvent the gatekeepers.

6:51

You can appeal directly to an audience and you

6:53

can monetize that audience. You can

6:55

find a way to make a living. The

6:58

other story is the story that artists tell

7:00

and by artists in this book, I mean, musicians

7:03

and visual artists and writers

7:05

and people who make film and television, basically

7:07

all artists, right? Um,

7:10

yeah. You can just

7:12

put your stuff out there, but no one's going to pay

7:14

you for it. Like that's the first problem,

7:17

right? The same Silicon Valley

7:19

that's given us these tools and

7:21

this access has also

7:24

driven the price of digital content down

7:26

to zero or near zero. So

7:28

you can go on YouTube and listen to pretty much

7:30

any song you want and not pay

7:32

a cent and YouTube. If it

7:34

pays anything to the musician and

7:37

it may not pay anything at all, the

7:39

average per stream per

7:41

you know , per listen is thought to be

7:43

, uh , best guests that we

7:45

have because they don't tell us seven

7:48

hundredths of a cent per

7:51

stream. Wow. That means if your

7:53

music is streamed a million times, which

7:55

sounds like a lot, you will

7:57

get $700. Wow.

7:59

People can't live like this. And

8:02

we could say the same thing across the arts

8:04

it's digital demonetization. So

8:07

I talk in the book a lot about what this means

8:09

for artists and how artists have adjusted. And there's crowdfunding

8:12

sites, Kickstarter, Patrion, and people are very

8:14

resourceful. And the people I interviewed for

8:16

the book, well, over a hundred artists are really

8:19

admirable human beings who are managing at

8:21

some level or another to make it work. Some of them

8:23

are on food stamps. Some of them are making six figures,

8:26

but the headline

8:28

is the overriding messages that

8:30

it's actually extremely hard now for

8:33

the reasons I just talked about. And then another

8:36

reason is that so many people

8:38

have been drawn into doing this because of Silicon

8:40

Valley's propaganda. There's never been a better time.

8:43

Um, I just heard the other week that every

8:46

day now 40,000 songs

8:48

are put up on Spotify every

8:50

day, 40,000 songs, a day that's

8:52

14 and a half million, a geesh

8:56

over a million self published books

8:59

are put on the Kindle reading platform

9:02

every year. Everyone's trying to do

9:04

this more and more slices of a

9:06

smaller pie. Um

9:08

, also the cost of living is much higher than it used

9:10

to be. You know , you can't be the Bohemian living on

9:12

the margins of society, working a part-time

9:14

minimum wage job and making your

9:17

art minimum wage pays less

9:19

rent is 62% higher than

9:21

it was in 2000. That's adjusted for inflation

9:23

62%. Yes.

9:26

So what are we, what are we, what's

9:28

at stake here for all of us who aren't artists.

9:31

This is exactly what you said. We

9:34

count on artists for

9:36

generations. Now we've counted on artists to

9:38

do the things that we've been. We were talking about

9:40

earlier in our conversation, give

9:42

us those perspectives that we don't otherwise

9:44

have. Tell us things that

9:46

we haven't thought of, and

9:48

don't want to hear speak

9:50

truth, not just to power, but

9:53

to the audience. And

9:55

I think you and I have both talked about Fitzgerald,

9:58

dusty, esky , Homer Jane, Austin,

10:00

how important those experiences have

10:02

been in helping blow our minds

10:04

open and become different people. And

10:08

we're at risk of losing that because

10:10

if the market is so difficult

10:13

for artists to negotiate, their work is

10:15

going to have to become more and more marketable

10:17

to the extent more and more commercial. There's

10:20

not going to be the opportunity to kind of work

10:22

in your studio, work at your desk

10:25

for years, honing your vision,

10:28

you know, developing, looking deeply

10:30

inside yourself for those truths. You've got to put

10:32

stuff out there every day. You

10:34

know, every week, a new drawing every day,

10:36

a new song every week, a new story every month.

10:39

I mean, this is, this is stuff that I heard from

10:41

artists. So

10:43

we need to do things to make, to,

10:45

to change the arts economy for all of our

10:47

own sakes.

10:48

You know, it's an interesting thing. I , I had a course

10:50

, uh, that would talk , it was a

10:52

, I dunno , a religious symbols and art

10:55

course, but it was basically an art course. And

10:57

, um, and I I've never, I can't

11:00

draw. I can't, I mean, it just,

11:02

when I was in kindergarten, I figured it out. I just

11:04

like, you know, I'm not going to be a contributor

11:06

in this way, but when I started

11:09

learning about, are they

11:11

talked about high art, low art, various things

11:13

like that. And I'm not, solutely not an expert.

11:16

Uh, but I don't think I had appreciated

11:18

until that moment, how much we need it. And they

11:20

talked about the Holocaust

11:23

and I have a book on it , but I can't remember the artist's

11:25

name , uh, served with a C

11:27

that, that did a lot of art around the

11:29

pogroms, things like that. Like, there's so many

11:31

things. I think a lot of us aren't even educated

11:34

about what artists do that go beyond

11:36

say giving a speech that change

11:38

culture. And , um,

11:40

I felt I've, I've, I feel like

11:43

one of the things that I'd

11:45

like you to say a little bit more about is

11:47

the need to be willing to understand

11:50

that art goes beyond an action movie

11:53

and that it does something for society

11:55

that maybe we didn't appreciate

11:58

before, but we're losing. And I don't

12:00

know if you could give us an example or a story

12:03

to do that, but it would be helpful.

12:05

Well, you know, I don't,

12:09

don't try to convince people that they

12:11

should value art. Okay . You'd

12:13

know, here's what I, here's what I do.

12:15

I show them that they already value

12:18

art. So first of

12:20

all, there's this amazing sta I at

12:22

horsey , I came across this study after

12:25

I'd finished the book, the urban Institute

12:27

did this like 20 years ago. I'm not sure

12:29

if they asked about other occupations as well,

12:32

but , uh , one of the findings of the study

12:34

was that , uh , 96%

12:36

of Americans, 96% agree with

12:38

the statement that the arts contributes a lot

12:40

of value to society. 96%.

12:43

If you ask them, if artists contribute

12:45

a lot, only 27%

12:48

think they do. How

12:50

is this possible? Where do people think

12:52

art comes from? This is why

12:55

this is the , this is the problem at the heart of

12:57

the arts economy. But let's just go back to that first

12:59

number. Okay. Yeah , let's do it. I

13:01

don't need people to reduce the esky

13:03

. If dusty ASQ doesn't work for them. I

13:06

think, look, there's a lot of junk entertainment

13:08

that people consume, superhero movies and pop

13:10

songs and so forth. But I think almost

13:12

everyone also

13:15

the most important place in their heart is

13:17

for the art. That really goes deep

13:19

for them. And that can mean it's going

13:21

to be different for everybody. And I'm not going to judge people's

13:23

choices. But when you have a musician

13:26

that really speaks to you, you listened to them every

13:29

day for years, they're like, you

13:31

know, you worship them. So

13:34

I don't need to convince people. I'm willing to

13:36

let the other 4% go. We all value

13:38

the arts already. We just have to

13:40

think about how we

13:42

do, which are, do we value?

13:44

Like how much do we really value that pop song

13:46

that comes and goes in a few

13:48

weeks? And we forget even what it was a year later

13:51

versus the stuff that we, that

13:53

we hold close to our heart for

13:56

our whole lives and recognize

13:58

that if we want to keep

14:00

having that second kind of thing, we

14:02

need to think about how artists

14:05

are going to make a living doing

14:07

what they do, because they can't do

14:09

it otherwise.

14:10

Oh, wow. That's it . So I

14:12

can't talk too much about my daughter. She won't want me to talking

14:14

about her on the podcast, but you made me

14:16

think about her. She loves

14:18

rap. She loves it. And

14:21

, uh, which, you know, I was like, wow, you do. And

14:23

she loved this guy juice world who died

14:25

and , uh , uh , of an overdose.

14:28

It was a sad story. Uh

14:30

, but she gets me to listen to all of

14:32

her music, even when I don't want to she'll

14:34

send it to me. Hey, you gotta listen to this. You gotta hear it.

14:36

You got to understand it. So I started

14:38

liking juice world and I realized that he basically

14:40

has a guy who communicates emotion and

14:42

that, that, that, that he's able to articulate.

14:45

And I think artists do this. They were able

14:48

to communicate and articulate things that we

14:50

feel, but can't articulate ourselves and

14:52

can't communicate ourselves, which

14:54

brings me around to one of the things you said at the beginning.

14:56

And then I have one more question for you, but

14:58

in that is that art

15:00

makes you listen, as I'm listening to you.

15:02

Now, I go, art makes you listen. For the most part,

15:05

we stop. We hear it. We see

15:07

it. We read it. We imagine based

15:09

on what we see and it makes you listen.

15:12

And that's one of the beautiful things I think about

15:14

culture. And right now America's not,

15:16

we're having a hard time listening to each other. And

15:18

it makes me say, ah, we

15:20

don't want artists to be gone because

15:23

there are , you know, I think about, I couldn't stand to

15:26

artists sound when I was in college and high school,

15:28

Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, I was like, Oh

15:30

my gosh. As I got older,

15:33

they became two of my favorites. And

15:36

I , I, I didn't know it at the time,

15:38

but they could tell a story. And

15:40

that story made me think

15:42

about what I've been through. Because when I was young, I hadn't

15:44

suffered. But as I got older, I suffered.

15:47

And then I was like, because my parents, you know, they

15:49

did a lot for me and it's nice, but you

15:52

know, I was shielded from stuff. But then

15:54

all of a sudden I listened to them after suffering. I was

15:56

like, now I know what Bob Dylan was saying. Now

15:58

I know what Springsteen's saying. I keep my

16:00

mouth shut. I opened my mind and

16:02

things happen, but I really, I

16:05

really loved that book. And we're going to make sure

16:07

that we list all the books in the show notes. Folks, I

16:09

may be going too fast for you to capture all the titles,

16:12

but they're going to be fair . And you can get

16:14

these books and we'll share on our Facebook

16:16

page. We'll share on Twitter. We'll get it out

16:18

to you being able to grab them all . But I have one

16:20

final question for , uh , uh

16:22

, build a reservoir and you've been generous

16:24

to us today. I'm really grateful.

16:27

Uh, I've learned a lot. Um, I think

16:29

I've learned , uh, more about

16:31

how to think about society

16:35

and how to think about it in a way, not judging

16:37

it, but trying to educate it

16:40

about seeings , that maybe it can explore,

16:43

not telling them what they're exploring is wrong.

16:45

But one of the things I thought a lot about,

16:47

and I have a lot of books about it as being a public intellectual.

16:50

And this is just, this is me. This is my question.

16:53

I'm indulging myself a little bit folks. Cause I really

16:55

wanted to ask you this. I've read

16:57

a lot about them, looked at them and I

16:59

feel that a lot of them , uh,

17:01

throughout the years , uh, maybe you could argue

17:04

centuries, depending upon who you classify as a

17:06

public intellectual, they have been,

17:09

I don't necessarily consider them artists. Maybe they are, but

17:11

they have shaped. They shaped

17:13

the world with their ideas

17:16

and probably in my own little local

17:18

way. I look and I go, I'd like

17:20

to influence the world with ideas,

17:22

not make it do stuff, but influence it with ideas.

17:25

I don't count myself as a public intellectual, but what

17:28

do you consider to be? And maybe you

17:30

don't even consider them to be real. I know David

17:33

Brooks goes, I'm not a public intellectual. What

17:35

do you consider to be a public intellectual? And

17:37

what would you tell students

17:40

about why that might be valuable

17:43

and why that might be a pursuit that

17:45

they could take on in

17:47

a way to make a difference in the that's just me

17:49

indulging myself, but I got you. So

17:51

I'm going to ask that last question.

17:53

Well, I also, don't like to

17:56

call myself a public intellectual because

17:58

I have so much esteem for that phrase.

18:01

And I also feel like it's been really overused.

18:03

Like to me, it's a really, really high bar

18:06

and there are these sort of great public intellectuals

18:09

in the middle of the 20th century, kind of this great age

18:11

people I read a lot. Um,

18:13

I I'm not fit to tie their

18:15

shoelaces. Right. But I

18:17

would say part

18:19

of the thing is that that, okay, a

18:21

lot of people get called publicly intellectuals now

18:24

who are just people who talk a lot in

18:26

public. Uh, people who may be

18:28

are journalists or ex journalists

18:31

who have opinion columns and some

18:33

of them I like, but you know,

18:35

that doesn't exactly qualify. And then another

18:38

category that , um, our academics

18:41

with, with a certain area of expertise who

18:43

are good at addressing the public and

18:46

that's great too, but I don't also, I also

18:48

don't consider them public intellectuals. I

18:50

think a public intellectual is someone who's able

18:53

to think on a broad range of topics concerning

18:55

society and culture and morality

18:58

in a way that's creative, that's powerful.

19:01

Um, but that's also accessible, right?

19:04

So the third kind of person who's not a public intellectual

19:07

is sort of a brilliant philosopher, a social

19:09

thinker who isn't capable of communicating

19:11

effectively to a larger public because

19:13

they've been disciplined within an academic

19:15

environment and they sort of talk in academic

19:17

language. That's not really accessible. So to

19:19

have that combination of someone

19:21

who's really smart and learned, and

19:23

also can articulate and can speak

19:26

on a broad range of topics is rare.

19:29

But I will say, and this is

19:31

just, I wouldn't have said this a month ago, but I've

19:33

started to listen to more and more podcasts now.

19:35

And I know there are literally literally

19:37

well over a million podcasts, right. But

19:40

, um, I think

19:43

also quite frankly, as , um,

19:45

heterodox views become less acceptable

19:48

to be expressed in

19:50

academia and in the media

19:52

and the most interesting sort

19:55

of opinion writers get pushed out and now

19:57

they're on stub stack and they have their own podcasts.

19:59

Right? I think I'm not going to say a golden

20:01

age of public intellectuals that's way too

20:04

overblown, but I think more and more people

20:06

are doing this. Um,

20:09

you know, I listened to Glen , lairig a lot now.

20:11

And Glen Larry and John McWhorter, they're both, you

20:13

know, an economist and a linguist. I mean

20:15

professors, but they have a broad,

20:17

broad outlook. And they're great at, at

20:20

talking at a very high level. That's

20:23

the other thing is that , uh , mainstream

20:25

news outlets don't allow you to talk at this

20:27

kind of level. The old

20:29

public intellectuals from the fifties and sixties

20:32

were writing for literary journals

20:34

that had a few hundred or a couple of thousand

20:36

readers, but their influence diffused all

20:38

over the, you know, diffused,

20:41

you know, from that point, their readers influence

20:43

people and so forth. Now we have podcasts.

20:48

They may also have a few thousand listeners

20:51

only, but we now, in other words,

20:53

we now have the kind of thing in a different

20:55

form that we haven't had for a long time.

20:57

I love that . And I think it's wonderful and

21:00

it's, it's a, you know, it's a , is it an ambition

21:02

to pursue as a young person? I

21:05

don't think you arrive at a public being a public intellectual

21:08

by deciding to be one .

21:09

I just learned that I

21:12

just got a master class right there and

21:14

they exist. But being one, it's not

21:16

something you pull off the career shelf

21:19

and say, Hey, I think I'll become that.

21:21

Yeah . I love that. Your answer's brilliant.

21:23

This has been build a resume . He spent

21:26

a generous amount of time with us. As

21:28

I've mentioned, he writes the essay

21:30

and book, the death of friendship. His

21:32

most recent book is the death of the artist

21:35

. You got to check it out. It'll surprise you.

21:37

Especially if you're in Silicon Valley working at, at

21:40

one of the great companies or one of the small startups

21:42

, check it out because it'll make you think differently about

21:44

creativity and artistry.

21:47

Because a lot of people who work in Silicon Valley are musicians

21:49

as well, believe it or not. And then excellent

21:52

sheep, which I, it made me rethink.

21:56

Even what I tell students,

21:58

I run into about education. How to think

22:00

about education, getting a full one. And the

22:02

one that I almost didn't read,

22:04

but said, let me give it a look at Jane

22:06

Austin education. And I was surprised to find

22:08

so much treasure there. He

22:10

also has several other essays. One of my

22:12

favorites that I haven't actually finished the

22:15

American scholar solitude on leadership.

22:17

That's probably the one I need to read the most, but you

22:19

can check that out. We'll be putting all

22:21

kinds of information out over the next couple of weeks

22:23

that allow you to find Bill's website,

22:26

his books, and any other

22:28

podcasts he's been on too . And your

22:31

Ted talk. We talked about that this morning.

22:34

Thank you very much. This is lead different. You

22:36

can check out our [email protected]

22:38

. You can check out other podcasts that I

22:41

do on the side, Russell off the cuff. And

22:43

thanks again to bill for joining us. Thank you so

22:45

much for us . This really was great.

22:51

[inaudible] .