Dr. Doug Garland practiced orthopedic surgery in Southern California for 37 years. He is a Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Southern California and published more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific articles. After experiencing the tall poppy syndrome (TPS) firsthand, Dr. Garland began a 10-year journey researching TPS. This exploration began in Ancient Greece, where the syndrome was first described, to modern times and involved various countries, customs, and cultures. Specific emphasis was directed towards Australia, where TPS is a cultural pastime. To his surprise, it was recognized everywhere in one form or another except in America. After studying America's emotional-cultural behavior, Dr. Garland concluded that TPS was prominent in America, perhaps more so than in any other country, but it is unrecognized. Emotional behaviors of the cutter and cutter were identified. The result was the definitive tome, "The Tall Poppy Syndrome - The Joy of Cutting Others Down," with more than 600 citations, which is available on Amazon.
Doug Garland
[00:00:00] Doug Garland: Um, and once again, some of it's not bad. I mean, the movie industry used to be the tall poppy syndrome. Um, Frank Capra, I mean, all the cowboy movies were based on what you were talking about was the rugged individualism and kind of our move west. And, you know, um, Jefferson was the one that sent out Lewis and Clark to open the West and he was the original farmer and the individualist and the farmer citizen. And he never could envision how rapidly that land would be gobbled up and the population would multiply. So that we've lost the, his concept of the individual citizen and, and his, um, as a good citizen, his individualism was good for society. But in, in the movie industry, in the old movie industry where cowboys were prevalent, it was the cowboy cutting down the bad guy. Which now we don't even know if we have a legal system that cuts down the bad guy anymore. But you would, um, the cow, the good guy cowboy would shoot the bad guy cowboy.
[00:01:24] And so the, um, and the bad cowboy was usually the lazy guy, wouldn't work. He would rob a bank, or he wouldn't build a cattle ranch himself, he would steal cattle, so he had bad envy. And the good guy was the cowboy that worked hard and, and eventually cut that person down. And when that happened, what happens to people? They feel good, they feel justified, they go out of the movie theater feeling very good.
[00:01:59] Ed Watters: To overcome, you must educate. Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best conversations happen with ourself. Reach out and challenge yourself; let's dive in and learn something right now.
[00:02:50] Today we are speaking with Doug Garland. Doug Garland used to work as an orthopedic surgeon for 37 years. But he's transitioned into writing books now, so he's an author. And also he is doing research on tall poppy syndrome. Doug, could you please introduce yourself? Let people know just a little more about you, please?
[00:03:19] Doug Garland: Uh, I'm a retired orthopedic surgeon, presently living in the central coast of California. I practiced orthopedic surgery in LA for 37 years. I was a full clinical professor at, um, University of Southern California and published around 120 peer scientific reviewed articles. So I have a heavy research background and I retired eight years ago. And actually had happen to me, what I think is common in America, but unrecognized was, I was what we now call tall poppied. Meaning I had a, I was actually the president of the American Spinal Injury Association at that time. I came back to my corner office with the big window and they had moved my office from the premier office to a little cubby hole. And I was actually going to spend six weeks in Australia, uh, reviewing their spinal cord injury programs.
[00:04:26] They had six, I was going to do a week at each. And when I resigned my position at the hospital, I canceled everything, my appointments. And I called the people up in Australia and told them that I wasn't coming and they wanted to know why. And then they go, Well, my goodness, you've been tall poppied and that was about ten years ago.
[00:04:52] And that word just stuck in my mouth, my head so much I, I couldn't wrap my arms around it. I had gone home and told my wife what happened and she said, Well, you know, uh, they're really telling you that your time's up and it's time they've moved your cheese, it's time for you to move on. So that was really good advice.
[00:05:14] And I have to say, if it hadn't been for my wife, I probably would have done what most people would do is go back and have a big contest, what I call a pissing contest, and see if I can get my position back in my office and this and that. But fortunately, I went back up and, and just put my keys on my desk, threw all my research away, took down all the accolades from the walls, and walked out the door and never looked back.
[00:05:43] And, but it, I finished, uh, my years in private practice. And then once I retired, I had time really to think about the tall poppy syndrome. And, and, um, since I have a research background, uh, then, then I began a, essentially a ten year study now on the tall poppy syndrome. The lack of it in America and the abundance of it, uh, throughout the world.
[00:06:10] I, so I began with the, when it was first described. But one thing we need to, before we get too far, is the tall poppy syndrome is a metaphor for seeing a poppy field and you see one or two or more poppies taller than the rest and you want to cut that poppy down so that everybody's equal. And I thought at the time that my message was very important for America.
[00:06:38] And actually, the premise of the book was, was that, uh, our individualism, uh, from our constitution and now culture was preventing maybe the tall poppy syndrome from occurring in America. That we didn't cut our tall poppies down, we worship them. Eventually through the course of my studies, I actually had to change that.
[00:07:04] Actually changed the book considerably because I'd done a lot of research on individualism and how it affected America positively. But in the end, the individualism and, really we're a meritocracy, we were a meritocracy. That is really going by the wayside. I'm not going to argue whether that's good or bad,
[00:07:26] I will argue that tall poppies are important. We need the Elon Musk's of the world or society doesn't advance, but I felt that the message was very timely. But when I looked at America and our meritocracy, I thought our meritocracy was driving the tall poppy syndrome. And, and we have more tall poppies than any other country in the world
[00:07:48] and many of them are cut down. It just, we don't have that phrase and we don't pursue that, and understand the emotions and the context of why that happens, and the behavior of either the cutter or the tall poppy. So that's eventually what my book evolved into and I had to conclude that I felt that the tall poppy syndrome was more prevalent in America than any country in the world, but it remains unrecognized.
[00:08:18] And as a physician, most of the studies come from Australia because that country was formed, um, as a penal colony for England. And of course, in the prison system, everybody's equal. I have to tell you in the prison system, if it's not equal, there's more tall poppy syndrome in the prison than anywhere else in the world.
[00:08:43] Because if somebody has a toothbrush and somebody else doesn't, it drives everybody crazy. So that's why even though the people, the Australian people are prideful with their egalitarianism, they still are ranked as the most envious people in the world because it does have a tendency to drive them crazy
[00:09:07] if somebody is better than they are. And that's why if you look in the English literature, the tall poppy syndrome is most prevalent in Australia of all our English speaking countries. But it's prominent, well recognized in England. Of course, New Zealand as well. But New England, or England and Canada as well.
[00:09:29] But it's still unrecognized here. And I started to talk about the professionalism, they claim the professions are, uh, free of it in, in, uh, Australia. But when I look at our professionalism here, uh, I feel it's, it's worse than the public. Because our professionals are very competitive. They're competitive to get into their schools, they're competitive in schools and that same competition persists.
[00:09:59] I mean, if you're a [00:10:00] lawyer and you have a case, you have a 50/ 50 chance of winning or losing. So, of course, that's going to create competition. And still the easiest way to, to win is you, just think of politics. The easiest way to win is to cut somebody else down, not to improve yourself. So that's the concept of the tall poppy syndrome. And if you want, you might have a question or two, but we can go into how I broke the syndrome down and the dynamics of looking at the emotional makeup of, of tall poppies and the cutters that cut them down.
[00:10:40] Ed Watters: Yeah, excuse me. I found it pretty fascinating when this came across as a potential guest. It's something that I've been looking at for quite some time, this syndrome that's known as tall poppy syndrome. America, like you stated earlier, we've always been this individualist, you know, and, and really before World War two, we've been agrarian people, kind of isolated.
[00:11:14] And, you know, we, we really hook upon ourselves the nature of the rugged individual and self sustainability. We don't find that anymore today and it's, it's really alarming. And I'm glad that you're bringing this up so we can highlight the awareness more about tall poppy syndrome. Let's, let's get into the details of what you've found. And through your research, have you found that this is a generational curve thing where it comes upon a nation? And then, because if you look at the fall of Rome, is this why Rome fell? Let's get into some of the details of it.
[00:12:10] Doug Garland: Well, that's what happens to all societies. I mean, all societies fail. And one of the reasons, the main reason, there's two, two reasons. Uh, one is, uh, they get lazy and they get prideful and, and essentially America is doing that. We don't want to work very hard, we want government handouts. We, we're losing our meritocracy and we're taking people down to, in order to not have to work hard ourselves and improve ourselves.
[00:12:50] So, I mean, I got into medical school and the whole application process is completely different now. And we want to get rid of A.C.T tests and, and S. A. T tests and, you know, colleges are dropping, they don't want to even be competitive to get the good students. When I went to school, it was the best of the best.
[00:13:12] We had 5 to 7000 applications to our medical school and only 78 got in. So, I mean, the competition was intention. Of course, um, I would think that we got the best students. But that's all drifting away from America. But it's, you know, that's happened in Europe. We're actually following how Europe is, is kind of fallen from their, their greatness, so to speak.
[00:13:39] They're, they're becoming very mediocre, mediocre and we're taking that same path. And as I'm, it's hard, it's hard to stay on top just like it is in, in athletics. You know it's hard to be number one year after year after year, uh, everybody gets complacent. The most common cause of the fall of the tall poppy in my studies has been pride, you know, you get hubris. And, and you get to the top and then you quit working and you work more on cutting other people down than you do on improving yourself.
[00:14:16] So, I mean, it happens in the business. The most common cause for a business to failure is pridefulness. Either pride in the CEO or pride within the company that just think they're better than everybody else. And they quit improving their products, they just steamroll it with marketing or something else. But they forget the,
[00:14:36] first, the customer, but also their product that initially got them there. So let's go back and, um, so the tall poppy syndrome was, uh, first described in Greece by Herodotus, the Greek historian. And when you think about it, Socrates was tall poppied. And they came next to, uh, Livy and Rome, who was the great historian there.
[00:15:08] Uh, Herodotus used wheat to do the metaphor, but Livy was the first one to do actually the poppy itself. And it was in the context of, uh, from 750 BC to 500 BC. Rome was actually ruled by kingdoms. And in the seventh kingdom was Tarquin the Proud and that name itself is going to tell you what's going to happen because he cuts himself down because of his pride. And that's, his rule is the end of the kingdomship in Rome. But he had a son, Sextus, who is at the neighboring town governing it. And he was
[00:15:50] having, having difficulty governing, so he sent a messenger back to his dad. His dad walked into a poppy field and lopped off the tall heads. So the, the son knew exactly what he needed to do was level the heads of all the people that opposed him. Now, it's described both in Greece and in, in Rome, in government situations, and lopping off the heads of the competition within society. And that's continued from the time those two countries, or rulers, did that until the present day.
[00:16:30] If you look what's happening in China now with, with Xi, is, is, um, lopping off the heads of the opposing people as he assumes his third term. And the first emperor did that, the first emperor of China. And Genghis Khan was a very, very big leveler, Genghis Khan was. When he conquered a village, if anybody was taller than the axle of the wheel, they were lopped off.
[00:16:55] He didn't want any old people thinking of old ideas. He wanted fresh minds that he could impress his rule upon. So it's continued. I found it in every society with a different name, maybe a different cultural context, but it's been present throughout the world almost from the beginning. So, the first thing, that's the first thing you have to understand, that everybody's aware of it but us.
[00:17:23] The second thing is in order to be cut down, you need, don't need to be a tall poppy. So I broke it down into peer to peer. And that means that it's, what I also call private and it occurs within your tribe. So that it occurs within the first, occurs in your family. Remember that your, most parents try to keep everybody.
[00:17:47] Well, there were seven in my family and my parents worked very hard not to favor one person over another. The Christmas presents were all the same price. They might be different presents, but the range was always the same. So it begins in, in the family. It's accelerated in schools, especially now. Now you don't have a valedictorian.
[00:18:13] Now you don't have the trophy winner, everybody gets the trophy. So we've ended the competition and the meritocracy in, in many of our schools. I don't even know if we have elite schools anymore. You have to check boxes to get in, not to get in on your merit. And And then it continues in the business world, continues in your profession.
[00:18:36] So it's present throughout, um, our upbringing and in our tribe. And the first emotion that becomes involved and the most prominent, is envy. Envy, I break envy, psychologists look at all the emotions differently in different ways. I like the simple way of a positive in a good emotion, positive and bad in an emotion.
[00:19:05] So envy is a good emotion if you use envy, if you covet something that somebody else has and you desire. The positive way is to try and improve yourself and be like that person. Just like I like Michael Jordan. I like Mike, so I want to be like Mike. I'm going to work hard and try and do everything he, he does and try and do everything as well.
[00:19:28] The bad envy is you, your self esteem is not great. So rather than, and try, and you think you can't improve yourself, so you cut that person down instead of trying to prove yourself. That happens in the family. If you look at the Bible, happened in Cain and Abel right out. Right as we just start the Bible and there's Cain and Abel. And within the family, somebody's actually being killed.
[00:19:55] They're literally and figuratively being cut down. So [00:20:00] that's the peer. So the cutter emotion, main emotion is bad envy. But of course, anger and we mentioned earlier laziness. You're just, you just don't want to work as hard as the next person either in your family, in your school, in your job. So rather than improve yourself, you try and cut that person down.
[00:20:21] So that's the three, three main emotions that I found in the cutter. And that's, that's what's pervasive in the peer to peer, you don't have to be a tall poppy. And that's what's going on every day, that's what, that's what the internet is all about. All these selfies, you know, you and I, I don't know your age, but when we grew up, we didn't have phones.
[00:20:44] And when, I've personally never taken a picture of myself. I mean, so it's all about going to, out with your friends, taking a picture, flashing it to the person that's back home for whatever reason, and kind of saying, Look at how great we are. We're having this great time and your home being an idiot. So,
[00:21:04] Ed Watters: Yeah.
[00:21:05] Doug Garland: Uh, that's kind of the nutshell of the tall poppy syndrome in the peer to peer or how it works out in, in our tribes. The public tall poppy syndrome is a different concept. You have a true tall poppy and those, and the cutter in this instance gets to cut down the tall poppy because they feel justified, which is a key concept. The cutter makes a decision, a conscious decision that that tall poppy doesn't deserve to be that tall poppy.
[00:21:43] This is an important concept, which we're going to come back to. But what makes the cutter make that determination is egregious activity of the tall poppy. And what are those egregious actions? The three most common are pride (hubris), uh, lust and greed. And if you look at all the media types that, the Harvey Weinstein's and, and the media, Matt Lauer, and the people that have been cut down in the media business,
[00:22:21] it's all, it's almost all three of those combined. But as I mentioned earlier, CEOs of companies, I mean, Steve Jobs was very prideful and, you know, he was cut down. And this, the board cuts Steve off the, off the CEO position of Apple the first time around. Of course, he, he did some tremendous growing. And, and when I read, I have a chapter of tall poppies, every tall poppy that I reviewed, uh, were, was, or every tall, people that I considered a tall poppy, every one of those people were cut down sometime during their career.
[00:22:59] And one, um, they may have been ahead of the time and were not doing egregious activities, but their role size was so out of proportion that people wanted to cut them down. But most of them were prideful and then they get that interim time to do some self reflection and they grow from that experience.
[00:23:23] And I actually had it happen to me. I grew tremendously from my being tall poppied, even though I left that position when I finished my practice up. I actually became head of the joint program in our hospital. I set everything up the way I ran the spinal cord injury unit and I acted very differently then.
[00:23:45] And I had acted as the head of our spinal cord injury program. So most people that do get cut down have the potential to grow and come back stronger. So just getting cut down is not necessarily a bad thing. Uh, but those are the three things, uh, that happen to the prideful or to the tall poppy, that they do something egregious
[00:24:09] and then the public thinks they have the right, and this is important, the right to, to cut them down. So here's where it's really led, so that's, that's the private versus public. The emotions involved in the, um, cutter and the emotions that are involved in the egregious activity of the tall poppy.
[00:24:35] Actually, those are six of the seven deadly sins. So you have laziness, envy, and anger, those are in the cutter. And within the egregious activity of the tall poppy, of pride, lust and greed. And the only one you're missing is gluttony. So why is that important? Well, it's just a memory aid mostly. But it's an important concept because,
[00:25:09] I mean, this is a Christian thing. Which is also what America was sort of birthed on as well as this whole individualism concept. And in Christianity, instead of thinking of emotions as positive, positive and negative, we look at virtues. So the opposite of envy would be kindness. So if you are cut down or see you need to look at your behavior and maybe look, figure out what emotion was involved.
[00:25:44] If, I like the positive/ negative aspects. But if you look at the Christian aspect, it's, it's the virtue, look for the opposing virtue. And why this is important is this, is my thinking has evolved and trying to make a nice package so people understand this really complex metaphor. Is that Buddha has this very important concept, he has, uh, in the emotional makeup,
[00:26:13] he has the near and far enemies. So if you think, if you think of England and kingdom, uh, the far enemy would have been France and you knew that enemy. But if you remember, all kings and queens, who do they usually get taken down by? It's the near enemy, it's somebody within, within them that poisons them.
[00:26:41] Somebody they think is their friend. So, how this involves a tall poppy syndrome, we've become a, we, we've become a justified nation. We think we have the right to justify cutting everybody down because they're a tall poppy. So we've taken that justification of the cutter and applied that to our society. And the, the moral equivalent is righteous indignation.
[00:27:16] That's the justification and the moral authority to cut somebody down. But the near enemy to that is self righteousness. And they don't have that moral justification, they, they, they have, their thinking is not right. They don't have the science behind it or the moral justice. But if you look at our society now, we're social warriors and most of it is self righteousness, it's not righteous indignation.
[00:27:47] So that's what's driving a lot of our movements in America, which is what's really tearing our country apart. So that's this full circle of the, it's part of, that's actually, the movements, movements occur because of injustice and movements are important because it's only with group think that you can often resolve injustices. Because those in power never give anything up easily.
[00:28:15] So it takes a village to change that. So in and of itself, the, the movement is a good thing. But my impression of American movements at this particular time, whether it's environmentalism, or racism, or women's, uh, liberationism, whatever, whatever it is, I feel that there's more self-righteousness in it than there is
[00:28:43] righteous indignation. And, and in moving towards their goal, there's a tremendous amount of collateral damage happening in our country, which I think is, is driving a lot of bad things. So that's kind of the journey. You can ask me some specific questions about it, about how am I thinking and how I look at American society over this 10 years of studying. What I did to write the book was,
[00:29:14] um, I took periodicals, I took the New York Times, I took Time Magazine, I took, uh, L. A. Times, Wall Street Journal, plus just looking at the internet. And every day, I would look for examples of the tall poppy syndrome. And guess what? In a country that we're not supposed to have the tall poppy syndrome, I see the tall poppy syndrome every day.
[00:29:39] I do. Uh, I have a tweet account and, and that's usually what I do when I see an example of the tall poppy syndrome. I tweet it out with my explanation of why, why I think it's an example of the tall poppy syndrome, so my tweets at tall poppy book. But, um, [00:30:00] every day I see examples of the tall poppy syndrome. And I don't do a lot of TV,
[00:30:07] I don't. It's kind of depressing so I don't look at TV. But I know if I did TV, I would really see a lot of it because TV is full of the tall poppy syndrome. And this, and once again, some of it's not bad. I mean, the movie industry used to be the tall poppy syndrome. Frank Capra, I mean, all the cowboy movies were
[00:30:34] based on what you were talking about, was the rugged individualism and kind of our move west. And, you know, um, Jefferson was the one that sent out Lewis and Clark to open the west. And he was the original farmer, and the individualist, and the farmer citizen. And he, he never could envision how rapidly that land would be gobbled up and the population would multiply so that we've lost the, his concept of the individual citizen. And, and his, as a good citizen, his individualism was good for society. But in, in the movie industry, in the old movie industry where cowboys were prevalent, it was the cowboy cutting down the bad guy, which now we don't even know if we have a legal system that cuts down the bad guy anymore. But you would, um, the cow, the good guy cowboy would shoot the bad guy cowboy.
[00:31:47] And so the, and the bad cowboy was usually the lazy guy, wouldn't work. He would rob a bank, or he wouldn't build a cattle ranch himself. He would steal cattle, so he had bad envy. And the good guy was the cowboy that worked hard and, and eventually cut that person down. And when that happened, what happens to people? They feel good, they feel justified, they go out of the movie theater feeling very good. On the other hand, you could have the, um, emotion called schadenfreude. Do you know that, that word schadenfreude? So,
[00:32:29] Ed Watters: Only from researching you. Very interesting though.
[00:32:33] Doug Garland: So the schadenfreude is a German word. Germans are actually interesting. They have a limited, like, some cultures, um, can't make words up. So they take words that they have existing and make two or even take three, three previous words and make a new word out of it. So it's actually pain and joy. schade and freude, schaden and freude and they combine that and make schadenfreude. And that means having, you have joy from somebody else's pain. So the movie industry is still giving us that, having fun at somebody else's expense. But it's not the black and white of the old cowboy movies.
[00:33:19] It's a different moral take. Kind of updating where our society is, I think. But somehow there's a twist so that you in the end, you get joy out of taking somebody else down or their pain. Not necessarily, even if it was justified, but more to what I now call the self righteousness. So it has to do with your, your bias.
[00:33:50] And that brings into the third part of the tall poppy syndrome is, having everything in context and you're observing society as I do and trying not to have your own bias involved in the decision making role. That you're deciding on who's wrong in this situation, the, the cutter? Is it bad envy that's driving it or is it pridefulness of the tall poppy?
[00:34:19] So you're, you're going to make a decision. And the book itself actually became more of a self help book because it involves the emotion and understanding the tall poppy syndrome, you have to understand emotions. And as you understand emotions, then you yourself should grow. Just like I hope you're growing as we're having this discussion. And understanding society, about your role in society. And you understand yourself better by understanding this metaphor.
[00:34:54] And, you know, the bully is never, if you're a bully when you start in grade school, in the family, the older brother, older sister, that carries into your school years. And if that worked in school, guess what? That continues to work for you through your life. And unless you have insight to that, you're not going to change.
[00:35:17] So it has to be somebody like us, seeing that and calling it out and sort of cutting them down. Whether it's the peer to peer or egregious. So certainly there's a lot of tall poppies, that in the end, are bullies, Steve Jobs, I think, um, Bill Gates. In their early years, they were prideful, but they were also bullies. And it's only, there's a certain sociopathic tendency in the, especially the dot com people that founded those companies early on.
[00:35:51] And then as they grow, as they grow, usually by the age of 40, they become very moral, altruistic. So it's partly a natural evolution, but also it's people like the board calling Steve Jobs out. And that gave him time to step back and reevaluate who he was and what he had done and where he needed to go.
[00:36:14] And, you know, he had tremendous self growth during that time period. Founded two more companies, came back to Apple and really made a huge contribution to the world. I mean, he was truly a tall poppy. So, uh, this schadenfreude then is now occurring when we, I mean, I don't want to get into Trump because he's so, I mean, important people have a tendency to have a lot of emotional behavior, good or bad.
[00:36:49] So even when we say, Trump, you know, that drives people's emotions and their bias. And they, and they are, automatically say, Well, well, I don't like this guy. I'm automatically tuning him out, he likes Trump. All I, all I did was say Trump's name and I could have lost easily more than half your viewership or listenership.
[00:37:09] But anyway, my point with Trump was, he was obviously a lightning rod long before he ever became president. When he got, he and his wife tested positive. So I monitor on the internet, I monitor through Google, uh, episodes of schadenfreude every day. Episodes of tall poppy syndrome every day. So when Trump, um, tested positive for Covid, the schadenfreude index on Google search hit the highest peak that it had ever hit. So there were a lot of people happy at Trump's misfortune. So that's a very good example of schadenfreude, misplaced or not.
[00:37:55] Ed Watters: Interesting.
[00:37:57] Doug Garland: I, I like to, I like schaden, to a certain extent, I like schadenfreude. I mean, in the LA, the 405 is one of the busiest freeways and, you know, when you're going to work, a stop and go, and flood of red lights, hitting the brakes.
[00:38:13] And then there's always some jerk weaving through the traffic and not infrequently has a fancy car, high powered car. And, of course, he makes you hit the brakes and you drop the F bomb or something to yourself. And then going up the freeway a few more miles, either he's been pulled over by the highway patrol or he's had a little fender bender and there you see him on the side of the road.
[00:38:40] Ed Watters: Vindication.
[00:38:42] Doug Garland: Yeah, right. Dude, you just experienced schadenfreude. And I can guarantee
[00:38:47] Ed Watters: Right.
[00:38:47] Doug Garland: every time that happens, you're going to have the best day at work that you could ever have short of getting a promotion. So I, there's a, there's a, you can't really, I mean, schadenfreude is driven by envy, but there's a certain light, lightness to the good envy and seeing that justification. And, and, you know, I don't think it's ever good to think ill will of people, even if it's Trump and he's got COVID. I just find that thinking
[00:39:19] Ed Watters: Right.
[00:39:20] Doug Garland: something basic, intrinsically wrong with that concept. But I do say, I think a little benign schadenfreude is, is good for one's psyche. But that's how that's also
[00:39:33] Ed Watters: Our society is, our society is just laden with it now. We see it every place. And like you said earlier in our conversation, Nobody's really aware of this in America that they're even doing it.
[00:39:51] Doug Garland: Yeah, that brings me to, I don't want to lose that point, that's, that's why I would like to tie schadenfreude in because schadenfreude is [00:40:00] a little bit more recognized than the tall poppy syndrome.
[00:40:04] But if you see schadenfreude or you experience schadenfreude, chances are there was the tall poppy syndrome preceding the schadenfreude. They go hand in glove. And Richard Smith, who is one of our more recognized and acclaimed, uh, emotional people. And he studies envy, he wrote a book on schadenfreude. And I don't think he was aware of the tall poppy syndrome. But most of the cases in his book of describing examples of schadenfreude, all were being preceded by the tall poppy syndrome before the people actually then had the experience to schadenfreude, the happiness of somebody's failure.
[00:40:55] And that just cemented to me that here we have awareness, some awareness of shadenfreude, but we don't have awareness of tall poppy syndrome with frequently procedure. So you need to think, if you see some happiness, if you experience some happiness about somebody's downfall, that's your first clue that you need to look further at what the context of this was.
[00:41:23] And was the tall poppy syndrome involved? And what is the context of the tall poppy syndrome? And was it the cutter who had low self esteem or was it an egregious tall poppy? And what's your own bias and your feeling? And why you had happiness from this. And I can tell you that you'll grow from that experience the next time it happens to you. I rarely
[00:41:48] Ed Watters: Yeah.
[00:41:49] Doug Garland: experience happiness at somebody's downfall, I can tell you right now. I don't care who it is, I don't care if I have a great distaste for that person. I just don't like to see bad things happen to bad people or good people.
[00:42:05] Ed Watters: Yeah, especially if you've experienced that yourself, you should feel more empathetic in nature towards others when, when it's happening to them. You know, the shock jock era, you know, it's, it's really hit us hard. And since, since that time, you know, we've allowed ourselves to, by authority, be okay with us living the way we live today. And it kind of ties in to, uh, a study done back in the 60s where they had a teacher and a learner.
[00:43:02] Stanley Milgram is the person that did this study. And the, the teacher was the reason for this study, basically, the authority. Authority tells you to do something, well, you feel it's justified then because a white coat person told you to do this. So, how far will a society go? And this was an experiment based on the Nazi concentration camps and how they use the Jewish people to perpetrate a lot of these horrendous acts
[00:43:54] against the Jews. So this is a good example of where they've put people against people basically, that toothbrush thing. Well, why does he have a toothbrush, you know? And, and they, they've really had studies for a long time about the psychological issues and how we deal with emotional intelligence and the ability to sort out for ourselves, is this right? Or is this wrong? And why is it that we need authority to tell us If it's right or wrong when we already feel inside of ourselves that this is right or this is wrong.
[00:44:55] Doug Garland: Well, that, that's, there's two things I want to mention with that. That, that actually becomes part of this self righteousness that I'm talking about. Which is, uh, we're confusing the true moral authority and the study and talking about self righteousness. And the other part, work, those, that's the near enemy and we're thinking that individualism and that we're as smart as they are. Not, it's not necessarily good thinking, number one. But here's, here's the problem that we don't, nobody seems to talk about. There is the individual good
[00:45:41] and there's the public good. So when you look at, at Covid, for example, the public policy sometimes is, uh, butts against the individual policy. And they did not do a good job explaining the difference between the public good versus the individual right. For example, if, if we didn't, if we didn't come down hard on polio and make everybody take the polio vaccination, we would have never gotten to, um, getting rid of polio because everybody had to be
[00:46:26] vaccinated in order to wipe the virus off the map, so to speak. So people forget that took us five years to get that vaccination. And the first vaccinations that we put out, the original company that did the research and development, they, they made some mistakes too. It's just common when you're starting something new to have problems. That was worked through then.
[00:46:53] Then the second problem came through when it was sent out to the other manufacturers to do it. And guess what? They weren't, which is frequently the case, then they had to go through the learning curve of the original people. And then the secondary companies gave polio to people that had been vaccinated. So the public has to understand that sometimes that there are problems
[00:47:19] when we initiate anything new. That's why some tall poppies get cut down because they're so ahead of the curve and things aren't right. But they, something adverse does happen and then people feel justified in cutting them down. But we, for me, even the abortion issue, you know, you're running, running up kind of a feminism movement and the women's right.
[00:47:47] In the end, that may be true. They have the right to say no, first of all, but secondarily, there can never be a consensus. It becomes a public health problem of, of now, do you have a person in their body? And does that person have a right? So, that becomes what I also call the public interest group and is sometimes in contradiction to the other movement or the other individual.
[00:48:16] So that's why, that's why all these things are never as easy as some people think. And you can be too self righteous and have to have an open mind and to listen to other views. Right now, we're not listening to that, we've lost confidence. We're kind of what you were saying, that the individual now, and it's hard to argue against it.
[00:48:39] When you look at what's happening in our government, they're making many, many, to a lot of people, bad decisions. I mean, the company's, countries become so diverse, we're not unified. So there's no way the government can win. So our prob, our, one of our main problems and why the tall poppy syndrome is so prevalent is because we've lost trust in our government. And when the government loses trust in people, um, the government actually becomes a big cutter.
[00:49:14] And so when you, when I look at our government, I think the most common cause of cutting in America is cutting by our government. And I think movements are the second most common cause. Then we get to the public and the peers. But if you take, when I studied, you know, when you, when you study a country like Japan, which is very egalitarian, but they have confidence in their leadership.
[00:49:43] And as the government moves, so does the public. And if you look at the Nordic countries, it's the same thing. They're all egalitarian. You know, they pay high taxes, but they assume that they're paying in and that everybody's going to share that equally. And everybody's going to [00:50:00] have a good retirement and good health insurance and things.
[00:50:03] And before they started having some immigration issues, that held true. But in the end, it was because of trust that the people have that sort of righteous indignation. That there's no indignation because they have trust in the leadership. And, and, you know, and whether it's in your local school district,
[00:50:25] in your local police force, uh, all the way up to the feds, we had, we had trust and we've lost that trust. To a certain extent, I suppose, even in the family. Because we have in America, we have more single parents than we do, um,
[00:50:44] Ed Watters: Yeah.
[00:50:45] Doug Garland: combined parents. And so there's a certain moral authority I think that we don't even have within the family and that's a huge problem because as soon as you get into your school districts now, we don't have that moral authority. I mean, look at how we're fighting schools and we're actually going to tear it, it's really a shame because we're going to tear down the public school system. And that's the worst thing that can happen because then we'll become an elitist country, we'll have the rich go to the private schools. And without a big population base,
[00:51:22] the poor students will go end up in the public system. The public system won't be able to drive because they won't have enough money going into it. They won't get good teachers because good teachers don't want to go in with students that have no learning ability. I mean, I don't want to, there's a
[00:51:42] school district in Northern California that's just undergoing this very problem right now, I don't want to name it. But the public school system is disintegrating and that's happening now throughout our country. And the basic problem is trust, we don't trust our school board, we don't trust the teachers that are actually teaching. And that, that's happening in our police forces and our local government,
[00:52:08] Ed Watters: That's right.
[00:52:09] Doug Garland: a terrible problem. So in the end, it's, um, it's a huge macrocosm of the tall poppy syndrome. Everything that's happening, I can boil down, uh, um, into one form or another, how it's a microplay on the tall poppy syndrome. It's a reflection, I think, of our society. And I don't know why the tall poppy syndrome concept can't take off. I think we'd be better off as a country if we understood what we were doing to our country and ourselves. Because all this division, I mean, the movements say it. I mean, it's like the internet, it's, the internet was, was, had a lot of good things, but you know, it's, it's, becomes more and more me. And our country is becoming more and more me, it's not becoming
[00:53:01] Ed Watters: Yes.
[00:53:01] Doug Garland: more and more us. It's becoming more and more boxes. We're, we're losing sort of what we had because there were
[00:53:11] Ed Watters: Our strength.
[00:53:12] Doug Garland: Yeah, there were some wrongs in it, but we're emphasizing our wrongs and, and they're being overemphasized. And it's, it's like they think it's a zero sum game that, that now they got to have their rights back, and more rights because they lost rights, and our rights are being diminished. And for goodness sake, America is a country of abundance, not scarcity. And it is not a zero sum game. And in our country, there's plenty for everybody and we should be making room for everybody.
[00:53:45] Ed Watters: That's right. That's right. I agree a hundred percent. You know, Doug, it, it, it, it makes me think about the French Revolution and when Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake." And what, what really happened is they raised all the little poppies up and cut the big poppies down and literally off with their heads. And this, this, this scares me because I, I look at the parallels there between what America's going through right now and what was happening. And, and then you see in the media these things, uh, what was that, uh, purge? The Purge, you know, movies like this and the animosities towards one another. And all of these
[00:54:47] facts are adding up to some sort of rendition or type of revolt, and it's not looking good. And both, both sides here in America and all sides have added to this disflavor, this disharmony. And, you know, when we have our leadership up there on national TV during state addresses acting like children, it's, it's pretty bad.
[00:55:25] Doug Garland: Yeah, that's, I agree.
[00:55:27] Ed Watters: It's scary. What do you see, uh, what do you see coming down the road for us with this sort of tall poppy syndrome in America and people not being aware of what's actually happening?
[00:55:45] Doug Garland: Well, so two points. First, my book is actually the world history, of me looking at world history through the lens of the tall poppy syndrome. So I take the French Revolution or, you know, the kingdoms of England. I have Eleanor of Aquitaine. So and as, I mean, I like Julius Caesar. So, of course, Caesar was tall poppied. So I go through these world events and, and, you know, I take various countries and look at the history of the country and show events and show how
[00:56:23] things evolve. So I actually do that looking through the tall poppy syndrome lens. And there, you know, in medicine. Part of my book, the first draft of the book was, about a third of it was, was, um, how to become a tall poppy. And I, and at that time I was doing it, um, there are 10, 000 self help books a year. And it might be cooking, but I, I mean, if you look at our best sellers and stuff, it's self help.
[00:57:00] It's, it's how to be a better person. And I made the conscious decision at that time that, that those weren't helping. Or why would a cook, I don't know how we can have so many cookbooks and they're always best sellers one right after the other. There's only so many ways you can make a potato or something.
[00:57:18] But, um, I made the decision that those books are very inspiring and, but there's no transformation. So I got out of, I got out of that business, I threw that away. And I, and I also came across Tolstoy and Anna Karenina and he made the statement that all happy families are happy, the same. And then all unhappy families
[00:57:50] are unhappy for different reasons. So if you're doing self help and you look at the seven habits of highly effective people, which is about the only, actually like the period when we went through emotional intelligence in the 90s. I don't know why that died out, but I wish it would come back. But I mean, I truly enjoyed
[00:58:12] The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, which somebody else did too. Because the last time I checked, it sold like 25 million copies. But anyway, there's only so many good things you can say about good things. It's like, uh, how, I can tell you how to live to a certain extent, a long life. Wear your seatbelt, don't eat salt, exercise, you know, there's, there's, there's basic things that you can do.
[00:58:42] And so, in medicine, we don't learn from healthy people. We learn from sick people. Just like Covid, the advances we made through Covid making the new type of virus, the NRA, the segments instead of the attenuated or the live virus and stuff. So I went back to the, um, the medical model of learning from disease. And we can't cure a disease
[00:59:11] if we don't know the disease. So we, we have to know what the, you know, you're not going to kill diarrhea if you don't know the cause of the diarrhea. So you have to understand what's happening with any disease entity. So that changed, so my last draft of the book was completely different from the first draft. Which remember I mentioned the emphasis was I thought it was on individualism and I was going to describe that and our American history of that. And how to be a tall poppy, probably a good individual.
[00:59:51] But it took the opposite role of, of a diseased country, a country full of the tall poppy syndrome. And here's what that [01:00:00] disease entity is and here's the emotional problems that make it up. And if you understand the disease and you understand the emotional makeup, you can understand what's happening in our country and how to rectify it. And the tall poppy syndrome's, not going to do that. But it's one big step, I can tell you that.
[01:00:25] Ed Watters: Yeah. A lot of this, I've heard you in other interviews state this. I find it interesting. Everybody, in my opinion, should aspire to be a tall poppy. And what our system and our approach is lacking is those tall poppies should aspire to lift and aspire the lower poppies up and we lack that. I really think we do.
[01:00:58] Doug Garland: No, I don't want to lose that. I agree with that. I dedicated my book to my four grandkids because I wanted them to know and understand that it was good to be a tall poppy and I wanted them to be tall poppies, that's the first part of the equation. But the second part, you're absolutely right, once you achieve that status, uh, your role not only should be to maintain that status in a non egression, egregious fashion, but then your duty becomes to elevate everybody else. And,
[01:01:31] Ed Watters: Yes.
[01:01:32] Doug Garland: and as I say, there is a,
[01:01:33] Ed Watters: Major.
[01:01:34] Doug Garland: right, that there is abundance. So you got it there and part of it is to help lift everybody else up.
[01:01:42] Ed Watters: Yes. And, and you know, what, what prevents that a lot of the time, and you stay, you state this in many of your interviews is, low self esteem. The individuals that can't find or aspire to be a tall poppy. It's tough to be a tall poppy, you've got to work for it. And our nation is a lazy nation, it's just a trend. But if we teach them to do this and, and we show them through, you know, our own actions, they can emulate. So every time we find a step, we should aspire to share that step with others.
[01:02:34] Doug Garland: Well, that's our, that brings up a good point in another direction. Um, the, the problem with the low self esteem, they want to drag every, they, first they cut the tall poppies down, but their m.o. is usually to keep everybody at their level. So the whole drug industry is built on that. And that's actually kind of a kissing cousin to the tall poppy syndrome, which is crabs in the bucket. You don't need to put a lid on the bucket because as the crabs crawl up, there'll be other crabs grabbing at them and pulling them back down. So
[01:03:14] Ed Watters: Interesting.
[01:03:15] Doug Garland: when you're, when you're in, I don't, if you saw The Wire, which was a fantastic TV series of the
[01:03:25] Ed Watters: I did not.
[01:03:26] Doug Garland: drug industry in, um, in Baltimore. And the young kids, mostly black, were in that industry and you know, how can they, nobody can leave once you're in a gang member, you can't, they won't let you get out, right? You get killed.
[01:03:45] Ed Watters: Right.
[01:03:46] Doug Garland: So they keep everybody within that system. So you're right. The low self esteem has a tendency to keep all the other players much, it's kind of the same concept of your family keeping everybody the same. And that's part of our, very m.o. And unfortunately, it's going into, into our country, uh, into our school system, that same craziness of
[01:04:16] Ed Watters: Yes.
[01:04:17] Doug Garland: keeping, of keeping people down instead of encouraging people up. I like
[01:04:22] Ed Watters: Yes.
[01:04:23] Doug Garland: J. D. Vance, he wrote Hillbilly Elegy and it was a bestseller. He came from Ohio into the Rust Belt. And there's a thing called ACE scores, Adverse Childhood Experiences, so that comes from, that's a very medical term. And unfortunately, that's not known in America. And if we understood that concept, we would be very, very more empathetic towards each other. But ACE stands, is Adverse Childhood Experiences and it has to do, if you come with a divorced family, if you come with somebody doing drugs in a family, if somebody's been incarcerated, if somebody has an unwanted,
[01:05:08] unwed pregnancy, so you have these, these negative forces in growing up. And if you, there were originally ten, I think there's like twenty now, but like, if you have three of those, you're not going to have any self esteem. And you're not going to get out of, out of this system that was created in your childhood.
[01:05:32] J. D. Vance, he, he's running for Senate now in Ohio. Hillbilly Elegy, he, he crawled out of that. And to me, it was a wonderful, wonderful, um, biography of his struggles to escape that. And I don't even think he knew what ACE was. But as a kid, he figured it out. His mother was, was divorced and doing drugs and she married again and brought in a second family and that second family was all low self esteem kids.
[01:06:08] And, of course, they tried to drag J.D. Vance down to their level as well, doing criminal activities and stuff. And he had the foresight to move in with his grandmother and, and get out of that environment and that's really what saved him. But it's a fascinating story of kind of the concept that you're talking about. But the low self esteem and the crabs in the bucket, which actually there's a,
[01:06:37] a series on one of the cable, the streaming channels, I think it's now in a second or third season on crabs in a bucket. But it's about the same concept and, and I, I have never watched that. But I think getting that syndrome out, if they're doing that correctly, and eventually segueing into the tall poppy syndrome that maybe, maybe people will see some of the light and
[01:07:02] not be negative and thinking on the positive side of the virtues. You don't have, our emotions, you don't have to know the virtue. But if you think about positive envy, which is what you're talking about emulation, seeing somebody better and improving yourself. And, and not only do you lift yourself then but a rising tide lifts all boats, so you're going to lift America with it.
[01:07:27] Ed Watters: That's right. Yeah, I love it. You know, I'm living proof myself, I came from that low self esteem family. And I noticed as I started to aspire to climb out of that myself, my family, they don't really hang out with me anymore. They don't like to talk to me because when I talk to them, I want to lift them up and apparently they're not ready to do that.
[01:08:01] So it's a game you have to play, but you can do it. You've got to aspire to be better than what you think you can be and then reach for that. It doesn't matter how long it takes, it doesn't matter how much money you have, it doesn't matter what type of people you are hanging around right now. If you aspire to be better and you work on it, you'll figure it out and you'll do it.
[01:08:34] And that comes to the point of, you're either a lazy person or you're an ambitious person. What do you want to do in the world? And don't allow others to tell you what to do with your life. Experiment, educate yourself, and transition into something that's inspiring for others. Dr. Garland, do you have any call to action for our listeners today?
[01:09:09] Doug Garland: Um, well, naturally read my book. But, uh, you don't have to, it'd be good to read my book. But if you actually just went to the website, Doug Garland, D, O, U, G, G, A, R, L, A, N, D dot com, and the book will come up on the website, click on it. And if you just click on the reviews, You'll understand what the book is. I mean, the reviewers frequently say it's a self help book.
[01:09:38] So you need to start somewhere. The audio book, I had a very wonderful guy read the book. I mean, all this was new to him. It was one of his hardest things. There's a lot of medical terms, a lot of foreign terms in it. It's kind of a semi intellectual book, but he, he became a real convert to it. And because it took him so long [01:10:00] to be able to read it,
[01:10:01] I mean, he had to do a lot of research every time he'd read ten pages of what he was really reading. So he really got into it. And that's, I think that's a trans, transformation that the book has that I was looking for that I wasn't seeing in the best sellers. It's not a best seller, but I think it's a, it's a transforming book.
[01:10:23] It's a transforming concept. I think most people, to read it, keeping an open mind will be better off for it. I mean, even when I, in, when I wrote the last paragraph, which was one of my favorites was, you know, what's required or what are the books to read. And the problem I had was I couldn't say any books. I forget how many I said I read,
[01:10:51] I read a lot. One year I read fifty books. But, you know, it took me five years to write. And if you're going to write, you have to read a lot. So I did a tremendous amount of reading, but, um, I mean, a historical, reading books on emotions, everything. And, and the problem is there's no book like my book. And even the research is not
[01:11:16] like my book. The problem with psychology research, they're doing like this study that you talked about in the classroom where they take a situation and they try and do a twist to something to almost trick the person. And those for me are never good studies because that's not how society works. You just want to take a township and look at how much tall poppy syndrome occurs in that town. Not tricking people and
[01:11:48] Ed Watters: Yeah.
[01:11:48] Doug Garland: telling them you're testing them because as soon as you do that stuff, you create a bias. So,
[01:11:55] Ed Watters: Yes.
[01:11:55] Doug Garland: because of that, most, I didn't even like most of the psychological studies, which is just a psychological social entity. Uh, so there was really no one book that I felt you could go to kind of, as your guide to read that.
[01:12:11] And I hope that, uh, mine kind of fills that need, that emptiness that's out there. And so, you know, just skimming, I think the reviews will help people. So, if you do that, I mean, we touched on it, I mean, it's really talking emotional intelligence. We had the movement, early movement in the 90s, whether emotional intelligence was more important than IQ intelligence.
[01:12:41] And in getting along in life, it is. And that message is gone, got lost. It didn't get carried through and I'm trying to reemphasize now where our society is and how this self righteousness has replaced righteous indignation. And our emotional configuration is very wrong presently and we need to get
[01:13:07] Ed Watters: Yes.
[01:13:07] Doug Garland: on the positive side of the emotions. I actually,
[01:13:11] Ed Watters: I really agree with that.
[01:13:13] Doug Garland: I like religion, but I don't want to get too religious. You know, we've, one of our problems in America is, I feel that we're not, we've lost religion. And religion helps you find the meaning of life. I actually have a chapter dedicated to the meaning of life because I felt that was, that was, the tall poppy syndrome is, in the end, a quest for the meaning of life. And the tall poppy is, is growing to something. And my guess
[01:13:49] Ed Watters: Yes.
[01:13:49] Doug Garland: is, tall poppies don't have to ask themselves what the meaning of life is. To a certain extent, their journey
[01:13:56] Ed Watters: That's right.
[01:13:57] Doug Garland: helps find them. And it's the other group that's cutting people down and stuff. Those are the people in the desert that are still looking and they, they need some direction.
[01:14:12] Ed Watters: Yeah, I really do believe that myself. You know, I don't preach, I teach,
[01:14:17] Doug Garland: Right.
[01:14:18] Ed Watters: but I really do believe that our morals are out of whack. And the only way to get them back in is through great conversation like this. And the ability to let individuals tell you what they aspire, what their ideas are, what they think, because I already know what I think, getting, getting that is easy. But to allow yourself to grow
[01:14:52] by understanding others, that's the diversity we talked about earlier in our conversation that grew America, that allowed us to grow. Carnegie, you know, these, these great figures that built America, they took chances. They, they did not allow others to show them the way. They forged a path, they grew themselves. And that's really the meaning of life to me. Get out and do something, make that path and make it worth living.
[01:15:32] Doug Garland: Yeah, I studied those, I studied the robber barons. So they're, they're the true tall poppies. And, and they also did exactly what I said was necessary of that group, almost all of them, you know, gave all their money back sooner or later. They,
[01:15:51] Ed Watters: Yes. That's right.
[01:15:52] Doug Garland: Carnegie was a bad guy, but he turned into a great guy. And, and I actually, we can't tell rich people what to do. But I mean, for me, doing the library system was one of the best things that
[01:16:05] Ed Watters: Yeah.
[01:16:05] Doug Garland: any altruist could have ever done to America. So, I do like that group, uh, a lot. They were true
[01:16:13] Ed Watters: Yeah.
[01:16:13] Doug Garland: tall poppies. But, you know, our biggest problem is between our own ears. That's what you were trying to say, but you didn't
[01:16:21] Ed Watters: That's right.
[01:16:21] Doug Garland: really say it.
[01:16:22] Ed Watters: That's right.
[01:16:23] Doug Garland: That our biggest enemy, we have met the enemy and the Pogo said, We have met the enemy and the enemy is I. Meaning that
[01:16:32] Ed Watters: That's right.
[01:16:32] Doug Garland: our problem is between our ears, we think we're so self righteous. Now, we are a country of self righteousness.
[01:16:39] I don't know how we got this way. We're not individually, individualist anymore. We're self righteous, which is a big difference. And the self righteous, I mean, that's what's happening in universities. They will not let anybody in between their ears and we're not going to change unless we can open up ourselves.
[01:17:03] Ed Watters: That's right.
[01:17:04] Doug Garland: So you have to, you have to have a yin and a yang.
[01:17:09] Ed Watters: Interesting enough, Doug, I was in Walmart a few months back. And I live in a very small town and my local librarian happens to be partially involved with the school and multiple different positions. And she said, I don't know what you're doing, but
[01:17:38] trying to change things around here, it's not going to work. We've been doing it this way for forty years and that's how it's going to maintain for the next forty years. Just, well interesting, that's a good way to see life and that, that's a good way to keep people in the dark. Because
[01:18:03] Doug Garland: Yeah.
[01:18:04] Ed Watters: A rolling stone gathers no moss. But if you're sitting, you're, you're covered with moss and you can't see the light of day. So how can people get ahold of you and connect and get more information about you, Doug?
[01:18:22] Doug Garland: Uh, the best is my website, which I mentioned. And the best way, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, to learn about the tall poppy syndrome, you don't have to follow me on, um, Twitter, but I tweet out. I just go on bursts. I may essentially tweet out every day, but I may do three today or three or four tweets in a day. But I tweet examples of the tall poppy syndrome, which is essentially what the book was about only with the historical perspective. You know, you know, the people that write history are usually the victors and they have a point of view.
[01:19:01] So most of the people, if you read the reviews, enjoy the history perspective and looking at history in a different light, which is what I did. And so the, you know, my take on a article in a newspaper may well be very, articles going to be very different than what you read into the article. So I think just looking at my tweets @thattallpoppybook, um, is a very easy way to segue into my thinking and the tall poppy syndrome. And if you like that, then probably you would like the book. But I think anybody that reads the book, I think will be a better person for it. It's a real growth book.
[01:19:49] Ed Watters: All right. I really enjoy what you're doing and it's powerful, meaningful, and we need more people actually addressing these [01:20:00] issues in our world today. Thank you so much for doing that for us, and thank you so much more for being part of the Dead America Podcast.
[01:20:10] Doug Garland: It's my pleasure and my pleasure getting to meet you and be part of Oregon.
[01:20:18] Ed Watters: Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of Dead America Podcast. I'm Ed Watters your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you may be.
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