I want to tell you the story about two fish. There are these two young fish swimming along,

and they happen to meet an older fish, swim in the other way, who nods at them and says,

morning, boys, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one

of them looks over at the other and goes, what the hell is water? David Foster Wallace, one of my

favorite tortured authors, gave a commencement speech at a college that started with this story. It's called

What is Water? About how the obvious things around us are in fact not that obvious at all.

He talks about how universities are supposed to not teach you what to think, but teach you

how to think and how if you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this,

and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you need anybody to teach you how to

think. Now I agree, but he talks to them about how it's not really about your ability to think,

but your total freedom of choice about what to think. An obvious seeming thing that is in fact

not so obvious. You and I live in a world full of the obvious that's not obvious. The world is

simultaneously better than it's ever been and on absolute fire.

There's too much information, too many problems, and increasingly the few aren't talking truth,

and they aren't also building. If we want to change this country and you want to change your life,

you can't just get mad when the building is on fire. You need to know how to put out the flames,

maybe how to build a fire department, and better constructed houses in the first damn place.

Here we are going to do a very dangerous thing.

We are going to talk about culture, cash, business, and how to become the type of humans who live lives worth living.

We can't live in a vacuum anymore.

We can't silo into political corners, into the rich versus the poor.

We can't just get upset.

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