It's not nothing what a dog can become. But it doesn't just happen. It's not, you know, we all know lots of misbehaved dogs.

Maybe they were abused or neglected or whatever. It's a very important point. The realization of potential is not inevitable.

Oaks, whatever, acorns don't become oaks. But that potential is concrete.

Somebody has the potential to become this and not a bad. So we're talking about apple seed.

Talk about the puppy. Apples are not uncomplicated, you know, try gardening if you haven't done it.

You know, it's like, all right. It's work. It takes ingenuity. You've got to know what you're doing.

Then go to the puppy, more complicated, but you get the point. It has a potential that it needs certain conditions.

Well, let's now move up to the baby, the human child. It's another whole level of complexity.

Because compared to a dog, what does it have? It has a self-aware agency, a self-conscious agency that its own nature requires it to realize.

You can't have a human being that just can become fully itself or always only being told what to do.

It has to become an actually actively self-determining entity.

Well, how do you do that?

Okay, Stephen, it's so good to see you again. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Last time we spoke was

May or June on the farm at Okee-Fenoki. We had a really in-depth, fascinating philosophical

conversation after some food there, right? We had lunch together. We had the food after.

The food after. Both very memorable. Yes. Yeah, it was just a really good conversation.

And I knew then I was like, got to get you on the show. So it's great to have you here.

We were just talking offline about the summer program you guys do at Ralston College. And so

we're going to get into like a lot of philosophical stuff here,

but I wanted to start with that because I just think it is one of the coolest things I have

ever heard of. I really wish senior me in college had known about this program. So if you could

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