Welcome to episode 0 of the carry the fire podcast. This is kind of a Prelude a prequel episode of what's coming and we're doing this for a couple reasons one is to make sure that everything gets uploaded so that on October 7th when we launched you guys will have access. To the first couple episodes. So subscribe on your favorite podcast app so that you get that right when it comes out and another reason it's just to kind of let you know why I'm doing this what it's all going to be about and to that end my buddy Dan Coke from the podcasts depolarize and also you have permission which is great and has been very active lately. You should check it out. He's going to come on and just ask me some questions. If you're excited about the podcast you can get more involved already even before it's out check out patreon. Come forward slash carry the fire pod. You can sign up for as little as $10 a month as a patron you're going to be able to weigh in on upcoming episodes interact with me and other patrons and also receive perks and special access to additional podcast episodes and content. If you become a patron before the end of the year, you'll also be added to the flint and steel Founders Club as a special. Thank you for supporting the show early on you'll receive perks beyond the regular tears such as limited flint and steel Founders Club enamel pin, that will be Getting to you once the signup closes at the end of the year. Yeah, check it out. Thanks for coming on Dan. I appreciate him. I'm very honored and I'm also interested like I'm excited about this podcast. I have followed your music for a long time and really you've always been a thoughtful songwriter. I think that most people who are familiar with your work would say you're on certainly on the thoughtful end of the spectrum. You're not just writing stuff that's catchy. And so it's going to be really cool to see where you go with this my first question for you. You talk about you know, the big questions. This is something that I talked about as well and you have permission, you know, people ask these big questions kind of naturally, sometimes they are encouraged and sometimes they're squashed and their squash for all kinds of reasons, but before talking about why they're squashed like what are these questions? Like, how would you describe some of these questions? I mean, it's the kind of questions that you lay up thinking about when you're a kid or like what what is going on? It's the questions you asked before you're told that you just need to have an answer to and move on. I like that. Yeah, so it's yeah, it's like why are we here? What is going on with the universe? And I don't know. I mean it's not like every episode is going to be themed on like our what is time and right. Yeah, it's more about I wanted to be I don't want it to be a philosophical show even though you know the good the true. Beautiful that's these are philosophical Concepts in a sense, but they're human Concepts. These are the things that were all ascribing value to innately I think the buckets of kind of placing this value in it's a way of talking about what we actually care about deep down. So everyone is going to be approaching those things differently whether you know from different cultures your religious upbringing or not religious upbringing or the kind of work. You do the kind of things you've studied. It's going to affect that. I guess my contention is that at the end of the day? There is a Common Thread between any human and and these Concepts so I want the the show to be very open in the sense. I mean that it's been hard to answer kind of before it starts people being like, what's it about? Well, it's about kind of whatever we're talking about that day. What and the way that these things interact with? I don't know whatever it seems like an interesting way to approach it for that specific guess whether they're a science. Or they're a musician. It's going to play out a little different and that's that's kind of the exciting thing about it to me is that it doesn't it doesn't have a it's got a framework. It's got a lens as I say but part of my intention in doing it is fostering and intellectual humility and growing empathy for people to just hear from different kinds of people may like, oh man, I never would have thought about that way, but I hear this person talking I My I hear their Humanity. I it's getting you outside of the maybe the bubble that you've been in so. When do you first remember asking these kind of questions of transcendence these you know, I not necessarily like a three-year-old asking why are we here, you know, but like maybe a little older than that where you have a sort of a semi adult or at least adolescent experience of like oh really ruminating on on these things. I always remember being curious just loving to think and ask weird questions on Twitter the other day. I was at posted a picture of the globe upside down though with all the names reverted. So just it just I thought of the day and I was like someone else has to have thought of this like, what would that do to you? If you just started looking at the whole world upside down it's piss people off is really funny actually because of course it's not upside down. It's arbitrary that we put North at the top and south of the Yeah, I mean people. Yeah, it's from people were not happy about it. Someone posted. There's a there's a West Wing where they they do something like this and it was actually hilarious. The guy was like, hey, you can't do this. It's freaking me out. I've always liked thinking about that stuff. I remember I would soon someone brought up time or something and the threat I was like you could I use that was my big thing. I'd lie awake at like a sleepover and be like hey times not even like real meaning like The way that we break time up, right we have hours and days whatever but I was just thinking expanding into the universe was like of time there and I mean, this is before I was exposed to you know, anyone really thinking profoundly on this but my brain was gone, like there's no actual seconds or hours or anything like that. I am looking at relativity of time but as a ten-year-old trying to figure it out one way, we might determine which questions count is like You imagine someone asking them between bong rips their funny and if you imagine them asking them sober they're like really challenging. What's all right. I thought about that and I mean that's probably one way to describe the stuff we're getting into is stunner stunner questions, but you know, it's sad about that. Those questions are associated with stones because I think people stoned forget that they're not supposed to think about them. Yeah, or it's a way for us to sideline them to not actually have to Discuss them but like it's not what but you know, I'm saying they're like, yeah, it's like beginner's mind stuff. Right like rare. They're asking you questions. Yes that are actually profound totally but everyone else is like we don't have time for that. Well, so there's a couple things one thing that's you know, they're asking them when they are their mind is opened in such a way that they could think to ask them but they're also in a really bad position to answer them and that's I think where some of the humor comes in and that's True, but then we do I think that we have a defense mechanism of like, oh, you're just stoned like people who are getting on with the business of life don't actually ask those questions. Yeah, you know and then we don't have to deal with them. So that's a very yeah as that's especially very kind of modernist and especially American approach. It's about efficiency and our yeah that actually getting you somewhere but speaking of that efficiency and inefficiency, you know, one thing that's worth asking is are we asking these questions in order to answer them or are like how much of the value comes in the asking itself at one point in my life was I would get really frustrated and be like all these especially as a Christian. There'd be people have a very different view now a lot of this, but people would be able man I should have questions about this and I would be like, well, you're not even looking for answers man. You just you're just you're just trying to have Shins and I think it's just a way of deflection of me that willing to deal with whatever those things were but I've come to a place where I think the questions are are more important than the answers and that's mostly I think because I think when we have extreme certainty about things it generally is very harmful. I'm interested in asking the questions. I'm not interested in like avoiding answers to two helpful questions, right? But I'm also I don't think I have to land in the same place as someone for that to have been helpful and uplifting to you know, both people in that conversation. I tend to think of it like given a robust intellectual humility, which is one of the goals of the show your show and mine both. I think I like to aim for really enjoying asking the question and then trying to find a provisional answer that works right now and that point me toward the The true in the beautiful Point me towards God whatever knowing that that provisional answer might change but not not simply Awash in a sea of who knows man. It's the journey not the destination with sort of no destination in mind, you know. Yeah. There's a great g k Chesterton quote where he says, I think I'm quoting it, right? He says it's not arrogance to believe that you're right. It's arrogance to be unable to imagine how you could have been how you could be wrong or How could you could have gone wrong? Yeah, and so that's I think that's talking about that provisional nature of look we all think we're right like it's impossible not to yeah you that's how you function and that's fine. You just always need to have that level of humility like a shoot like I could be wrong. I'm a big fan of the idea of changing your mind being essential to growth and the problem is we really don't like changing our mind because it means we were wrong before. And so it takes humility to change your mind to have to be like Oh, I thought this before and now I think something differently Ralph Waldo Emerson would say I have always loved especially parts of his essay on self-reliance about about changing your mind and he says something like shout today with today says loudly and even if tomorrow it can't it's contradictive everything you say because unless you're willing to do that. You can't grow so. We're recording this after having just recorded an almost to our interview for my show for you have permission, which will be up about a week after this episode airs, if people want to listen to that but in that interview check it out, but in that interview, I was trying to ask you about the good the true and the Beautiful sort of one by one and it became clear that they're Inseparable. And so I would like to just have you say a little bit about the good that The beautiful why are they Inseparable or why do they link to each other? And how did you come to view that as sort of the focal point of the show or the focal lens through which all things will be approached on the show. I've seen this thread now through my life where the good that you're in the beautiful are essentially the things that have always been Bedrock for me and I have always even understood them that way completely but various points in my own kind of beliefs or doubts or faith. Deconstruction reconstructions, whatever is going on. I realized those were always at the bottom. And so I had you know in my early 20s times where I was had a bunch of doubt about the things I've been raised believing and in the end the reason I kind of came back towards what I'd grown up believing was because I thought it was the only way to to hold on to the value of the good that you're in the beautiful. I had this false. Of like well, if you go the other way, it's just, you know, reductive materialism and nothing matters or has any value like I can't go there. I don't know. I don't nothing makes sense to me that way. So I guess I'll keep all this baggage and at least I get to keep the good that you're the beautiful more recent than when I had a deconstruction a lot of it related to views of inerrancy of scriptures and stuff like that where I realized. Oh the good that you're in the beautiful Dozer. Those are really foundational to my experience and I I thought I was using the Bible to prop those things up. But really A Certain view of the Bible is being propped up by these things. And so removing that view of the scriptures didn't do anything to those those pillars. I did they just I had this visceral experience of feeling like, oh those pillars are just there. They're solid none of this heady stuff that you've been doing and playing with affected them at all. And so I think there's there's something interesting there where It's a good way to get at the Shared human values a way to talk about things where I can be like, oh I disagree with you on so many things but somehow first even be having this conversation, but I think it implies that the good that you're in the beautiful cement matter to us. So if the good the true in the beautiful are not separable from each other, what do you think? How do you see their relatedness? Yeah this idea that they're inseparable. Goes back to kind of early classical philosophical views of these the called the transcendentals one of the first the first two transcendentals are really talked about we're Oneness and and being so the good that you're the beautiful kind of fit into this idea of Oneness and being and the idea is that if you go all the way down you follow them down that they basically are are all connected but we see them separate in certain ways, but we do see a lot of connections between them. So a lot of times to do The good maybe you have to know something true about what's happening. And that's going to lead into may be a situation that has aesthetic value in his beautiful. And so they rarely is one functioning just on its own. I think we're making connections between them all the time and so it can be useful to break them apart recombine them. See what's going on, but I really don't think there's anything that you can talk about that has valued that that can't be described within the three some sometimes it's helpful to know if a podcast is for you by knowing who it's not for who would not like this show do you think and why people would not like the show probably who have a concrete view of what reality is from something that they would view as as direct Revelation. Maybe you I think essentially fundamentalist of any stripe will be rubbed the wrong. Way because what I'm trying to do with the show is in a sense undercutting fundamentalism. It's undercutting this idea that you know, certainly what everything is supposed to be about because you have this text or this tradition or whatever. It's trying to cut against that so I think whether you're fundamentalist, I mean you can be a scientist scientist as a hard word to use there, but at not a not a something could be a scientist Mentalist. Assault follower of scientism. Yes. Thank you as opposed to science. Yeah where you think science is the only way you get truth, which is a philosophical statement to begin with. So that's already weird. If you have something where you're like, this is the only place where where I get the truth from you probably going to be bothered by by the show because it's actively cutting against them. And so would it be fair to say it's a show for people who are interested in their understandings of the world being why? Didn't and also at the while also widened focused on these transcendental questions these big questions and these sort of universal values. Absolutely and I don't I don't think if someone actually listens to it. It's the kind of thing that anyone needs to be afraid of I know that there's people who have come up in a more fundamentalist way or a lot of people wouldn't even understand themselves that way but have that tinge of like I don't know this seems scary to just let all the ideas fly that's evidence that there's some fundamentalist indoctrination that you are a part of and I would just encourage you to it's okay to let the ideas fly and you don't you don't have to be passive about a You can disagree with all sorts of stuff. But at the end of the day, I think hearing from people from these diverse backgrounds and beliefs is going to enlarge your view. Of the world. It's going to increase your empathy and I'd say absolutely it's going to increase your sense of wonder about everything which is I think at the core of all of this, I think I think the sense of wonder is is key to just so much so Last question for you Destin you are someone who is very publicly into Theology and thinking through things from a Christian perspective. I mean that both in your musical work and Twitter profile Etc. Should we expect mostly Christian guests on the show? Definitely not well and first I'd say there's a lot of Christians who wouldn't consider me a Christian. Anyway, you know, that's where I've come from and have deconstructed reconstructed that multiple times. I want the show to Really diverse. So I want to hear from people from all different religious backgrounds and people who don't have religious backgrounds and people who do all sorts of different work different racial backgrounds genders, whatever. I really want it to be as wide as possible. So definitely is not going to be a majority Christian voice. Well, dude, I am really excited to see where they show goes. I'm excited for some full episodes and thank you for having me on to interview you and again if people want to hear more of our conversation that will be up a week from the date of this on the you have permission feed. That's it. It's all I got cool. Thanks so much man. I appreciate it. Alright. Thanks again everyone for listening. We can't wait to start this whole thing off on October 7th. So make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast app so that you get those First episodes right when they come out. I want to thank Dan Coke for helping me out with this episode 0. I want to thank Oscar Navarro and Pat Brumfield for helping me with some of the setup for all of this in the first place and Andy Laura, who is the show's producer now as well as just being a rad dude and helping me out before. He was the producer another reminder. If you want to know what's coming up who what guests are going to be on what we're really talking about. You can sign up for our mailing letter at www.kerryshook.org pod.com. And if you want to get more involved to check out patreon.com forward slash carry the fire pod. Thank you all we will see you for episode 1 2 + a special sneak preview of The Patron only episodes on October 7th. Thanks so much. much
Welcome to Carry the Fire Podcast. Hosted by Dustin Kensrue. This preview episode is offered as an introduction to share about what's to come from Carry the Fire Podcast. Our friend, Dan Koch (Depolarize! and You Have Permission Podcast), joins us to interview our host Dustin Kensrue as a means to explore where this show will go, discuss what it means to pursue the Good, True, and Beautiful, and what we can expect from our guest list. Next week, a full episode interview with Dustin will air on Dan's podcast, You Have Permission, that dives deep into the questions discussed on this episode and much much more. Make sure to tune in to his show next week for that interview. More specifically, the show aims to explore those big questions through the lens of the good, the true, and the beautiful. While these days it may feel like our disagreements and divisions threaten any hope of building a broad and beloved community, could it be possible that we all share some innate common belief in the value of these three transcendentals? By exploring our differences through this common ground, I believe our individual worldviews can be enriched by our interactions, becoming more good, true, and beautiful every day. To this end, we will engage in conversations with people like you, from a wide variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and professions. Whether the conversation is with a musician or author, a scientist or philosopher, we will together glimpse the world anew through their unique perspectives. Thank you for listening, - Dustin Kensrue SUPPORT THE PODCAST ON PATREON We are offering a special opportunity to support the show early through Patreon. If you are new to Patreon, it is an effective way to support the creators that you already love, or discover brand new ones. When you sign up to become a patron of the show, you are partnering with me in this work, helping me to cover costs and to invest the necessary time to make the podcast both great and sustainable. Not only that, but as a patron you'll also gain access to a variety of patron-only episodes, exclusive content and perks, as well as a patron-only online community where you can interact regularly with myself and other patrons and have the opportunity to give input that will help shape future episodes. By joining Patreon before the end of the year, you will be inducted in the Flint & Steel Founders Club, where you will receive special perks beyond the tier incentives. To start, you will receive a limited edition Flint & Steel enamel pin, that will ship out at the close of the year. Thank you in advance for your support, you can begin your support here > SIGN UP ON PATREON  Carry the Fire will official launch October 7th, 2019. Please be sure to check out Dan Koch's Podcasts below, we enjoy them very much and believe you would too. Depolarize! 