He Got Thrown Out of School, Went to Clown School, and Ended Up at Harvard Medical School | Ep 317 with John Glaser

So John Glasser, I was reading about your story and I was fascinated and it kind of reminded

me of some things that happened in my life and that's why I wanted to get you on here

because I wanted to understand what it's like for you when you were growing up, the

fact that you went to clown school, like I don't know if I've ever talked to anyone

besides a clown, how it was clown school and how you leveraged that in life.

But let's go all the way back to when you're in grade school.

Okay.

And something happened to you that I imagine you'd say really changed your life.

What was that like?

Well, that's a fair question.

I mean, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and my father was consultant.

So he spent a couple summers in Hawaii while he did work and spent in my first freshman

year as in the British boarding school, you know, going to because he was stationed in

the Düsseldorf, et cetera.

So we did some movement around even though based in the Bay area, my mother was very bright

as my father was too, but very eclectic and unorthodox and she encouraged us.

So I did trail crew during the summer and a variety of other things like that.

So learn and also went to school with a Jesuit high school and the Jesuits were remarkable.

They taught you to challenge the church, challenge the, you know, the Bible, challenge, think

about it, challenge.

And so I challenged stuff.

So it came up with this, you know, maybe not quite a rebel, but certainly quite willing

to be unorthodox, you know, along the way.

And that led to, you know, I'm sure some of the things we'll talk about hitchhiking all

over kingdom come, getting tossed out of high school, going to clown school, et cetera,

but the willingness to be unorthodox and to try things that are not conventional.

I guess not really risky.

I mean, I did try to claim Mount Everest, but nonetheless, things that are a little bit

different.

Hey, I liked it.

It seems like the people that really change the world are the unconventional thinkers.

You can't think inside a box and make a big change.

I dropped out of college.

No, I didn't have.

Well, you did.

I think it's even more fascinating.

Tell me about that.

Well, it was three buddies wrote an underground newspaper, you know, called the Bellarmend

Free Press.

It was Cardinal Robert Bellarmend, the school was named after.

Each wrote a column, and it was about drinking beer.

And we knew all about drinking beer, you know, that was just not something we were not

familiar with at all.

And we made the mistake of publishing it on the afternoon of the parents night.

So mom and dad came down to visit the priest, picked up a copy of this thing, and in the

roof blow off.

Oh my goodness gracious, you know, it's raunchy stuff.

What's going on here?

So the fall or mornings, we were in front of a tribunal of Jesuits, you know, one by each,

my three buddies did the Mayacupa, which, you know, Latin for I'm sorry, and I was the

last one in.

And I got in there in this little stage nine Jesuits, the principal in the middle and

the principal said, Mr. Glasser, are you aware of the damage done to the school and how

this is countered?

Everything we're trying to teach you, fine of standing Catholic young man.

And I got mad.

And I said, I'm not sorry at all.

As far as I'm concerned, the Catholic Church is a criminal organization.

And I said, for thousands of years, you've suppressed science, conducted unjust wars.

And I think, frankly, the position on birth control is killing millions of women and

children.

And I was proud of what I had done.

And I hoped it would be the first in a long series of criminal activity on my part and

keeping with the tradition of the Catholic Church.

And that I just got, I had my throat slit as a result of that.

So I got mad at him.

I pushed it probably a little too far, a little too hard.

And there you go.

I wound up in the middle of my junior year at a high school and went off to college because

I didn't really want to go to a different high school for my last year.

I mean, wow, like you, you stood your ground.

I can tell that you, you stood your ground.

I mean, I don't think most people at that age would have said the things you said in

that environment.

Like your friends at that time, they told them what they wanted to hear so they can continue.

I mean, you break, you break the mold.

So then you go to clown school.

What the heck is clown school like?

Well, I think from there I went, I went to Duke because I, you know, my freshman year is

a board, British board of school.

I got enough credits to get out of it.

And so I went to Duke.

And again, I wanted to go as far away from California's possible.

So obviously North Carolina is pretty far away.

And we'll get to the clown school, but there's some intervening stuff there.

So I was a math major, I really liked math.

It's also where I met my, now wife, you know, been together for 51 years.

You know, she and I were in the same dorm.

But anyway, I got, you know, at the end of my senior year, everybody seems so certain

about their lives.

You know, I would be, you know, medical school or law school or business, whatever it is.

I didn't know.

So I took the GREs, the GMATs, the LSATs, the NCATs, the actual, every exam I could

think of, because if you'll never be this smart again, and they're good for five years.

And I got out of college and I went to work at Pizza Hut.

And then after a couple of weeks of that, I said, well, that's kind of cool.

And then I went to work in Alaska, in a salmon canry in South Town, a native American

village called South McNackney.

And in August, I had, you know, six grand in cash, more money and never had my life

and nothing to do.

So I hitchhiked from Fairbanks, Alaska to the Panama Canal through North Carolina,

it took me six months, you know, along the way.

It finally got to Panama and said, I'm tired of hitchhiking and I miss this woman.

Oh, no, I'm very too.

I'm going to go back to Carolina and be with her.

And while messing around, looking for a job, I said, I'll go to law school.

You know, I'll learn how to be a clown.

I still have my makeup in the attic.

I can still do a passable juggle, have a couple stupid Cubscaught troop, you know, tricks

to do, etc.

But it was largely because it seemed like something to do.

It might be kind of interesting.

For some reason, I couldn't help but think of Forest Gump.

I don't know why.

He runs the cars.

It is very interesting.

Like hitchhiking was a thing at some point.

It's really hard to imagine like hitchhiking was an actual way that people got around because

obviously for many years, I mean, still, you know, it's illegal and people don't do it.

But there was like the dangers, I think of hitchhiking.

What was it like back then?

I mean, Alaska to Panama.

I can't even imagine that.

Well, I mean, there's a route.

You can go from Anchorage up to what they call Tocque Junction, catch the Alcan, I'll

ask the can, you know, can it a highway down to Seattle?

And from there, you hitchhike out to Spokane, drop down to Denver, take I-80 or I-70

back to North Carolina, I-40 back to California, and then down the Pan American Highway until

you get to Canal and then the road stops, etc.

But you know, you have to be smart.

Even then, there were some scary people and some scary times.

So what I would generally do is hitchhike out of truck stops.

And I'd basically go up to someone filling their tank and there would be one of three

scenarios.

It's either Mom, Dad, and the kids.

And basically I'm John Glaster, I'm a Duke student, I just had a summer job, I'm heading

back east to visit my girlfriend, I'm a clean-cut All-American.

And so, you know, they either bought that or they did it.

Or it was a guy with a gun rack and a flag and basically, you know, bounced around between

jobs, just there was some work up at Alaska, heading to see some other work, I'm basically

a blue collar working guy.

And so, yeah, yeah, I did my kind of guy.

And the third was, you know, a bunch of guys, long hair and a micro bus and say, man,

got any weed, I got some money for some weed things.

You know, how kind of stuff here?

So, and that didn't always work and the truckers wouldn't touch you because there's a liability

issue.

But, you know, first of all, never hitch, I'll give you some advice.

Never hitchhike at night because the wacko element is up.

Never hitchhike within 30 miles of a big city because you want long rides.

You want 400 mile rides, not 10 miles down the road, plus the wacko element's higher as

you get closer to the city.

So, out of the truck stops during the day and you're looking for the big, several hundred

mile rides, instant or later, you'll get there.

That's, I mean, soon there'll be robotics, that, you know, robot cars that will just drive

this for very cheap.

So, we won't have to even think about hitchhiking.

But I did a week on the Applation Trail when I was around the same age.

And it really taught me a lot of different things.

It was a very unique experience.

I wish I kept, I could only last a week, I couldn't go.

But, you know, at some point I did think like I should have kept going to finish.

What did you learn something about yourself or just about life in general while you were

doing this?

Well, I think one of the things I learned is at the time I was really anxious that everybody

else, my colleagues, were off to careers and I was just floundering.

And what I learned is it doesn't really matter.

I mean, there are lots of ways to make a great life and to accomplish a lot, but the fact

that you're not traditional.

It's okay.

But I learned that.

The other is you got some really cool rides with some really cool people.

And, you know, they may not, they may have been farmers or mechanics or hairdressers,

etc.

But they were smart.

They were sophisticated worldviews.

I remember one particular ride I got was going from Seattle to Spokane.

It's about 400 miles.

And I got to ride with two women whose husbands were truck drivers who drove back and

forth Seattle Spokane.

That was the route.

And they would drive the same route and on the CD radio, chatted up with all the truckers.

You know, jokes and gossip and all that stuff.

And I thought, this is really fun.

You know, they're really cool people, although they're about as innocuous as hell.

So you learn that there are many people who may not be glamorous, who may not be Nobel

lawyers, but they're just really neat, thoughtful people.

That's what you learn.

The other is in Central America.

I had never seen poverty like that.

So, wow.

You know, this is, you know, there is, you know, you come from a up white middle class suburban

kid.

You're not really seeing people who are, you know, basically on the edge of starving if

not starving.

You're experiencing poverty.

Frankly, I'm the last thing in Panama, but the time there's great tension between the

US and Panama over the canal.

And I had never experienced prejudice because I was a gringo.

And I had never been on the receiving end of hatred because of the color of my skin and

where I was from.

And wow.

I didn't like that at all and I can imagine people who, that's their daily reality.

Wow.

I mean, you know, it's something I always tell people is travel and experience the people.

Like I don't really travel and I don't, I don't go to museums necessarily anymore.

Like I've been to so many museums and churches and I, I've seen so many things that feels

the same.

But what I like to do is I like to travel.

I want to sit down with people.

I want to understand the culture.

I want to see how they live because for me that, that's been just absolutely changing in

my life.

It sounds like for you the same.

Absolutely.

You know, you're, you're different in ways it's hard to describe, but you are because

of all those experiences.

So you obviously, it's very interesting because you obviously are very intelligent.

I mean, you went to Duke, which is an incredibly challenging school I need to get into.

You are now teaching at Harvard, one of the hardest, you know, schools in the world, one

of the most prestigious, if not maybe the most prestigious school in the world, everyone

in the world knows about Harvard.

So, but you've also thought very differently, do you, did you see throughout time how

education and thinking outside the box, did those go hand in hand or have things changed

where now schools are more open to it?

Well, I think most schools, particularly when you get to university, you know, college

and, you know, graduate school, if you say, I want to do the following and it's not typical,

they usually can accommodate that.

So I want to put together majors there.

They're used to people want to be econ majors in chemistry.

But they're pretty accommodated and they just want to make sure you've thought about it,

et cetera, and then go off and to do these things.

So I think there is a willingness to do that when I was in graduate school, I went to

the University of Minnesota, I got a PhD in, you know, medical informatics and all my

buddies were computer scientists.

But I was a sociologist because I was interested, I thought that actually the hard part of getting

this technology to be used by doctors and nurses was not the technology, but was managing

people and managing change and things like that.

And so I was going to study that very unusual for someone in that program to be a sociologist,

but they were willing to accommodate that.

And they said it makes sense.

And if you're willing to, you know, grind your way through it, I produced this monster of

a dissertation, 467 pages, which is just this moose of a thing like that.

But anyway, that was, you know, I do think in the colleges, if you want to try something

different, they're open to it, just as long as it's thoughtful.

Yeah, you know, those, those, it's interesting how people like, I, you know, if I want to

be successful, I need to get a computer science degree where like my wife, she has a psychology

degree.

She never was anything in, she wasn't a psychologist or never went on to be a psychiatrist,

but she's used that in sales, for example, or management of leadership, understanding

people, which I think there needs to be a big push now.

I mean, we, like computer science might be the worst degree that you get.

I mean, it might be replaced by AI tomorrow.

It almost seems like people going back for these like liberal arts type degrees or anthropology

or like use sociology, like these might be very useful for understanding how to navigate

people.

Yeah, and I think there's not only book learning you can get in those courses that teach

you that more so than, you know, taking a course in differential equations, for example.

It's also life experiences.

It's the way you were taught.

It's just by your parents and also the experiences you have, you know, I have three grown daughters.

In high school, they were all on teams, you know, soccer and lacrosse teams.

You know, they're, they're, they're okay athletes.

They're not great.

But the point is they were on teams and teams teach you something, you know, how to get along

with others, how to work together, how to handle disputes, et cetera.

So, so, so, series of experiences of dealing with other human beings and how to work together

and work well at times you turn into a leader, but not always.

So I think that that kind of thing is absolutely incredible in terms of making sure that, or giving

you the ability to thrive.

Hey, I like to talk to professors.

My dad was a professor.

He just retired.

I think he was sad when I dropped out of college, although I did go back many years later

and graduate because my then girlfriend said, I will not marry you unless you have a

college degree.

There you go.

There you go.

Which is sad because I really didn't, I wanted to just have a Lamborghini that said no

degree.

That was my goal in life, right?

I wanted to prove that I didn't really want to have a Lamborghini, but I wanted to prove

that you didn't need to have a degree to be successful, but I did have to go back.

And I think that was a great day for my father.

I think he was happy.

So when we look at, like you said, you've been, you made your wife over 50 years ago, or

you've been married for 50 years, right?

You see.

No.

Well, 51 years ago was the first time I called her, I loved her.

Oh, amazing.

Okay.

So 51 years ago, you said, I love you.

I mean, people aren't even together for five years, I don't even, there's so many people

I know that don't even have, like a relationship at all, and like, and they're already in their

like 40s and up, and they're struggling.

So what, what for you, what did you do, or what helped you to balance this, and then

you had three daughters, but then also a high level executive career?

Well, I think, you know, there's a separate question that I'm, people have talked about,

you know, why do, what is love, and what makes durable love, you know, over a very

long career at the time, through some times that are not always easy, where you're changing

a lot.

Golly, we met when she was 18 and I was 19, there's a, that's a lot of changes still going

to go through.

So anyway, how does that work?

That's a separate kind of conversation here.

You know, I do think, you know, everybody wants to have it all.

They want to be good parent, they want to have a good spouse, they want to serve their

community, they want to grow themselves, they want a job, whatever, whatever, they want

to do it all.

And it's not possible to do it all, you know, not as well as you would like.

There are trade-offs along the way.

So it's just constant, sort of low grade anxiety, and I had the right balance.

When I miss a kid's soccer game because of a conference or tournament, it's that the

right thing to do.

And so, you know, you try as best you can to balance knowing it is highly imperfect, and

you will do it again.

I do think what you can do and should do is a conversation with the principles of your

spouse and your kids is, look, I'm trying as hard as I can to balance all this stuff,

I won't always get it right, okay?

But I don't want you for a moment to think that that's because I don't love you, I love

you dearly.

It's just that I will be a human being and I will try.

And if you think I've got an imbalance, you let me know.

So, you know, you try hard, you bring them in as part of the solution and as part of

the balancing act, and you ask for honesty back about whether, you know, my wife, remember

one time when I was traveling, like she said, I get lonely when you're not here.

That's all she had to say.

And I said, God damn it, you know, it was too much, you know, I've skewed to the right

too much.

I need to get back to the basics.

So would you say then that communication might be the single most important thing?

Yeah.

I think there's a, you know, if, you know, and, you know, it sounds like you, you, sure,

you have your own special, there's communication and being very candid about this.

Like, now, you know, there are certain things your spouse will do that irritate the hell out

of you.

And at some point, there's no point saying it over and over again, it tries me nuts

when you do it.

Okay, leave it alone, get on with it, et cetera.

So communication, and I think the other is mutual respect, I respect you.

What you do and how you go about that.

And the other is the willingness to give in.

And to say, I know it's important to you.

So we will go do this less important to me, you know, picking where do you go for vacation?

And you might say, I want to go this country.

She says, I don't want to go that country.

I want to go another.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying?

Here's a give and take that goes with the communication and goes with the high respect.

I feel like I, I'm, I kind of really appreciate that because I feel like I'm many times

go with the flow.

And it's not because I don't have my own opinions.

It's because I don't really care so much to have an opinion because I know she's going

to choose something like we like the same things.

So like she wants to go visit here.

I'm great with that because I can only make so many decisions in my mind.

I don't even like to make decisions to be honest.

So I'm like, I would rather someone else make that decision than me making that decision.

But I, I really enjoyed what you said.

Now you have, you've written eight books.

I don't know why the hey, I wrote one book over here.

I don't even, why would someone even want to write another book?

It must have been that important to you.

Well, I, first of all, I like writing.

I mean, I just enjoy the act of writing.

So I think if you don't like it or it's kind of a grind and you know, you're not going

to do a lot of it or if you did one, you said, never again, that was too terrible.

So I wrote a textbook with two colleagues because I thought there's a generation of leaders

of these organizations that just doesn't really know how to do this technology well.

So we actually, it's the most widely used textbook on the topic in the world and has been

for many years.

So that was great because I just, there was a need for it.

There was one book I wrote which is, I used to write college for various trade press.

I had, you know, I've had 16 articles in Harvard Business Review over the years.

So I just pull them all together.

So this is this sort of compendium of writing of them.

We did a book on AI and a book on strategy.

The four non-professional, one was this 101 questions, which is the kid, and I'll talk about

the others.

I mentioned, you know, I've written a letter to my family every week for 35 years and

what I did is I took a five year block of letters when the kids were little.

So there's six, seven, eight years old.

And I pulled out the parts that dealt with them.

And I created a book called The Father's Collage and it said, this is what your father

remembers.

This is camping trips.

This is science projects, et cetera.

And it's kind of a written photo album and it said, this is my present to you, my memories

of you.

And I publish it.

And then five years later, I took another five year block and did the same thing all

over you.

And then I actually, you know, you may, you don't know if you have kids or not, who

used to do bedtime stories and Elizabeth adventures and we make up a story and I wrote

them all down and published a book called The Elizabeth Adventures of all these things.

And I said, this is the stories we used to tell.

And then the most recent one is 101 questions is eight sendy questions.

And I write an answer.

And so far, we took 101 in one book.

I'm now up to 180 and this is, and they run the gamut from, what's the scariest time

in your life?

You know, fair question.

You know, what, but on the other flip side is what were your favorite cartoons growing

up?

So anyway, there is, there is books partly and because I like writing, partly because

I feel like the field needed it and I could be right or wrong.

And partly because with my children and my spouse to agree, I want them to know, this

is your father.

And this is what he believes and this is what he remembers about you as a little kid.

I need that book because I'm always looking for really unique questions.

I like that.

What scares you the most or what scared you the most before?

Well, when, in the answer to that question, when I was the chief information officer at

the Brigham and Women's Hospital, we had one day where the systems went down and they

were down for a very long period of time.

And I was getting scared because somebody was going to get hurt.

You know, a doctor or a nurse was going to make a mistake because they couldn't get

a test result.

I could do this and someone was going to get hurt or die.

And you remember talking to the technical wizards, you always got these technical ninja

wizards, you know, who make this thing sing.

And I remember going into the computer room with Bob, who's our ninja warrior wizards,

Bob, what's going on?

We know it's wrong.

He said, no, we don't.

And you could feel your intestines the size of a golf ball because they could fix it in

one second or maybe not at all.

I said, oh, my God.

And here's my chief smart guy.

He didn't know what's going on.

He didn't know what's happening here.

And I remember being scared at that particular time that, and I don't, I'm not smart enough.

I don't know enough to give many real advice.

I'd tell you what I did to, you know, I said, Bob, tell you what, how about if I go get

a priest and we'll do an exorcism?

And he looked at me, you know, this sort of stare.

And I think he's trying to think of one or two things, get him out of here.

You know, he, I got work to do.

I got this moron who's talking about an exorcism or what the hell?

We run out of other options.

We'll get a little holy water and incense down here and see what we can do.

Make the whole thing work.

But that was the scariest thing I'm like, because I thought we were going to hurt somebody.

And maybe even kill somebody.

When you look back, was there, did you ever have a thought in your mind when you were

younger?

Like, I want to achieve this.

And then what was the feeling if you achieved it or it doesn't even have to be when

you were like a teenager or in your 20s, it could have been two weeks ago.

And I was there something there where you're like, I really want to achieve this.

And if so, did you achieve it?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I wanted to, you know, go to Duke and I got into Duke.

You know, I wanted to get a PhD, got that.

I wanted to get certain jobs along the way.

You know, I was very active in professional societies in the digital health field.

And I wanted, you know, created one and I wanted it to thrive and I did that.

And I want, you know, it give you an example.

One of the questions I think all people should ask themselves, let's presume you've got

five minutes left in your life and you look back on your life, what do you want to say

about your time here?

And I said, I want to say five things, you know, when that time comes, that I'm as madly

in love with my wife then as I am now, that my children will have lives as blessed as mine.

They'll have their own paths, but blessed.

The third is that I'm a spirit of crushing poverty, pain, you know, racism, et cetera.

But if I'm not, then I deal with it with the courage.

The fourth is that the people I work with will say that I inspire them, top them and

lead them well.

And the fifth is that the industries and organizations I served are better because I was here.

I want that.

I want to be able to say that when I'm done.

And I probably, if I went in the next five minutes, I could probably say that.

So along the way, there are things that you accomplish and you feel great about and

there are big things and there are little things, you know, along the way.

What I find is as cool as those are, the feeling is fleeting, you know, because you then

move on to now.

I remember when they came out after I might be spending my PhD and I'd make you leave

the room and the committee debates that come out, they'll get with my advice.

I said, congratulations, Dr. Glass, I thought, it's kind of like four years of work.

And I got it.

And I thought, but I'm no different, I'm no taller, I'm no smarter, I'm no more athletic,

you know, I'm better.

I'm the same person as I was before.

In some ways, it was sober to go off and do that.

So anyway, I think there are, there are accomplishments are great.

There are things that are great turf than that.

I think I've heard this before from other people like athletes or somebody exit their

company.

I was just talking to someone this morning.

They exited, but, but they didn't, it didn't feel like a void.

The void was still, they were the same person and they were very depressed for many, many

weeks.

If not months later, because they thought it would completely change not the monetary

gain, but just change everything in general and it didn't, they were just the same person.

So it seems like this is something that as humans, do you think it's because we still

have a, like, it's like technology has adapted much further than us.

Like, our brain is still like a, was it Neanderthal brain or lizard brain or whatever.

Like, do you think it's because like we haven't really adapted, like our environment is

adapting much further or, or progressing much faster?

Well, I think it may be fairly fundamental, which is when, you know, most people, when

they wake up, if they're excited about the days, why are you excited about the day?

Well, I really like working with my colleagues.

I enjoy the work that I do, you know, I feel good about it.

And I like the organization that I serve.

It's that it's the journey, as they say, that is the treasure, not the arrival.

It is the everyday day in and day out.

It feels really, really good here.

So when you find people who are retired and they walk away from their professional career,

it's, you know, it's the long walks.

It's the crafts they take.

It's the involvement in the community stuff.

The things that fill their day, they give their day meaning that are the things.

It's not necessarily the, if they get an award, that's great.

You know, there's everybody likes that.

Colleague, get your picture taken, people clapping, that's terrific.

But that's not the real, that's in some ways that is hollow, which is one of the reasons

I think you got to be careful.

If you believe that your goal is fame or wealth or whatever, you'll get there.

I don't doubt that.

But then you'll get there and if I, that's it, I'm the same as I was before.

And to the degree of my life sucked, it still sucks, even though I'm a wealthy,

if I'm wealthy as hell now.

But so I think it is more that we enjoy the journey.

You know, that's like, for me, sitting on the couch next to my wife, that's the greatest.

You know, not saying much of anything, just sitting there is the greatest.

You know, so anyway, that's you get what I think get my point.

Maybe technology oriented, but I think it's very fundamental.

It is the moment that is the treasure.

Yeah, I travel quite a bit and I have to say,

when I am just sitting with my wife on the couch watching Netflix,

there's a lot of satisfaction there just as if I'm like traveling somewhere.

So yeah, I can, I can see that it's sometimes those moments are,

I'm like, I'm kind of happy that I'm just here with you relaxing

because it's just always a constant go, go, go.

So John, I need to get your book.

I need to get a few of those books, but I need to get the questions

because I need the really, really thought provoking questions I need.

And then I love the idea of the collage.

I mean, the fact that you're executive in residence at Harvard medical school,

I mean, it's insane.

Like I want, that is my goal one day is I just want to go to Harvard.

My wife went to Harvard.

I want to go to Harvard so I can get, I can get my sweatshirt there.

And then I would love to attend a class.

That's my goal one day.

I just thought of it, John.

I want to sit in a class of MIT in Harvard just to see.

You know what's the coolest part, though, is, you know, when we teach these class.

Yeah, so great.

You know, you got the crimson, the Latin and all-line yards.

But I sit in this class, and I'll give you two examples.

And so there are the students.

One student, for example, is a physician from India.

And she's got a project she's working on, which is to reduce the teenage suicide rate

in India.

And she said, it's the highest of any country is a teenage suicide.

It's, wow.

You know, why is that?

I say, well, because usually the pressure on the Indian kid to be a doctor, a lawyer,

or whatever, and the kid just wants to be a musician.

And so, but the pressure is excruciating.

So she was going to go off and dedicate her life to reducing teenage suicide rates in India.

Wow.

That is cool.

That's what makes Harvard special, because people like you become students.

Another one is a woman who is a scientist in China, who has a set of works for a company

that does medications for kids with a very, very genetic disorder.

And they can give that kid the therapy for one tenth of the cost in the U.S.

And she says, I'm going to open up a business where the kid and the parents come to China

to be treated, because they can't afford it.

It's not coming by insurance, it's $1,000,000.

And so it makes it special.

Yes, the name is special, but those two people are examples of the 75 people in this class.

And they say, wow, you guys are really cool.

And the world's going to be better, a lot better, because of the work that you do.

And for me to be part of that.

And to help you do a better job, that's what makes this special.

You know, that's what makes this place special, is it can draw that, draw that talent

in.

But John, this has been great.

So if you want to get in touch with you, they want to look at the books.

They want to, you know, follow along your journey, how can they do so?

Well, I think a couple of things.

One is there's the website for the books called Books by John Glasser, or it's all one

word.

The other is you can find me on Facebook.

I publish a, I put out a weekly post on Facebook, which is a series of vignettes or whatever

from writing.

You know, come on in and be my friend on Facebook.

So and you can find these books on Amazon too.

But anyway, I look forward to, if they want to, people to be part of the broader community.

It's fun.

You know, there's a lot of good stuff.

There's a lot of humor, but also some insight, you know, periodically.

I mean, I wrote one post on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, is, you know, what do I think,

what are some of the pearls of wisdom that I pass under this class about leadership?

Now, give you one example.

You know, leadership is, is, people give you permission to lead them.

You cannot impose leadership on people.

They will look at you and say, I will let you lead me.

And because if, if you try to impose it, they'll sandbag you, they'll quit, whatever.

It's just remember leadership is a voluntary act on their part.

It's not something, you know, it just sort of be sober and thoughtful about that.

So anyway, we, we, there, that kind of stuff is being posted, but I've been a light

of either Facebook or through the website or whatever, I look forward to having them

part of a broader circle, people who are, who are just showered with wisdom from John

Quasser.

I love it, John.

I can tell you a lot.

You have a few years of wisdom in you and you are now dedicated to making the world

a better place, seems like you've been for that, while, you know, you've been doing that

for a while and that that's an obvious importance to you in your life.

The next five is, I'm going to ask this question to everyone, everyone, I'm going to ask

this question to every single person that scares you and then that question and then I'm

going to come back to you with their answers, but John, this has been great.

I'm going to give you two other questions that ask people, what, what's the scariest time

of your life?

Second, what's the hardest thing you've ever done?

Third, and then the third one, because we thought, look, what, in this kid came to me and

she said, how would I know, I'm in love with this person?

How would I know if this person is the one, you know, what does that kind of love look

like?

And that's a good question.

You know, and so anyway, you ask your people, what, what loves the needs of them?

What's the hardest thing they've ever done and when they've been the most scared?