Crafting a Bright Future: Reverse Engineer Your Child’s Journey

[00:00:00] How do I start changing things now? Right? What are the first three steps our audience can implement now to start this journey and start making these changes and implementing this kind of ideal into their children's lives? The first thing is decide what you want in the end. So it's very much like a GPS that you, and I talked before we went online about the distance from your home to the airport and the various, I think it was three airports you were in equal distance from, but what, wherever you decided to go, or Certainly if I was flying in to one of those airports and I was deciding to come visit you, I would have to use a GPS to figure out where I was going.

[00:00:43] And so the first thing I have to just is what's that destination? And I think that's the very first thing that parents have to decide if your child is yet to be born. If your child is eight, if your child is five, it doesn't matter. Parents have to decide what the destination. Well waste another minute.

[00:01:02] The men in north, here's the million dollar question. How do men like us reach our full potential? Growing to the men we dream of being while taking care of our responsibilities, working, being good husbands, fathers, and still take care of ourselves? Well, that's the big question. In this podcast, we'll help you answer those questions and more.

[00:01:25] My name is Brent and welcome to the Fbu Man Podcast on mission. Welcome to the Fbu Man Podcast, your home for all things, man, husband, and father. Big shout out to Fallible Nation and a warm welcome to our first time listeners. My name is Brent. Today my guest is Humanity. Humanity Propulsion engineer Nate Turner.

[00:01:44] Nate, welcome to the Falbo Man Podcast. Nate, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Nate, we like to start things off kinda light, so we have a so yeah I'm together today. I haven't had enough coffee. Sorry. No worries. B, we start with a silly question. Okay. Just to have a little fun. So the Empire State Building is made up of how many bricks?

[00:02:04] Is it? A 10 million? B, 5 million? C, 8 million, or D 12 million?

[00:02:12] I'm gonna say 12 million. 12 million. All right. Okay, guys, you know the rules. Don't go cheat. Wait for the show, make your guests and see how you fare at the end. Now, Nate, I don't do big introductions because I can read off accolades to people and it really doesn't translate to much. As a host, I get to research you before this show, but in your own words today, who is Nate Turner?

[00:02:38] Today, just a guy. I'm just a guy. I'm no more than anyone else, and I'm no less than anybody else. And who I'd like to be if today was my last day, is someone who the world remembers, who as someone who helped serve and made sure other people knew their lives matter. Okay. That's a, I like that answer.

[00:03:00] I do. I like, you know, people overthink it all the time, right? We deal with identity crisises constantly throughout our lives as adults. And so, you know, knowing who and what you are is so right that, that's so foundational, hon. Honestly, for people, and a lot of people don't have a sense of that. If you could have a conversation with one person, living or dead historical, wherever, who would it be and why?

[00:03:28] One person living or dead? Deceased. I would like to talk to my father. Okay. Living, I would like to talk to Dr. Cornell West. All right. Can I ask why? Sure. Yeah. I'd like to talk to my father, cause my father and I did not have the greatest relationship. I'd be curious to know what he thought about who his son had become.

[00:03:53] Okay. And I'd like to talk to Dr. Cornell West because he introduced me to the ideal of being a public intellectual and it's something that I aspire be. Well, Dr. West, if you happen to actually catch the show, let us know. We'll help connect you with Nate. Okay? Appreciate it. Nate, do you like ice cream? Dairy?

[00:04:14] No. Vegan? Yes. Okay. You know what I, I love the fact that there are options these days, right? Mm-hmm. Whether it's vegan or regular, or whether it's non-dairy, right? My, my little sister is lactose intolerant. So what is your favorite flavor? Depends. Vanilla probably in terms of the plant-based vanilla probably tastes the closest to real ice cream to me than some of the other flavors.

[00:04:42] Okay. I don't know a whole lot about it. Do they have, like, they have vanilla bean and French vanilla? French vanilla. Vanilla. They have everything like the Ben and Jerry's not to be advertising for them. Have some of the same flavors that they have in in the traditional for vegan or plant-based ice cream now as well.

[00:05:00] That's awesome. Yeah. Good job. Ben and Jerry's don't always like everything about him. I do love some of the ice cream. Yeah. They're not, it's not my favorite brand. I prefer Oakley, not a mo, not a move, but they, just as an example, I figured. People are generally familiar with Ben and Jerry's, so I know Oley, so, okay.

[00:05:17] Yeah. Yeah. I, but I like Chunky Monkey. I, for Ben and Jerry's, I'm, I grew up, my mom would make banana ice cream for church socials. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Alright. We have the big, big church socials and my, her and my grandmother will both make banana ice cream, so it hits that nostalgia taste for me. Well, I'm happy.

[00:05:35] It's great ice cream. It's just nostalgia. Like, you get that. I remember being a kid, church socials running around screaming. Yeah. It was great. Well, they have a plant-based version if in case you ever want to try it. Oh, you know what I've, I have a guest who is a she did chocolate, was it Brownies for Breakfast?

[00:05:56] She's an outspoken vegan activist grandmother who has not given up on me yet. She sends me texts every now and then. It's like, Hey, Brent, have you tried this recipe I had in the books? Yes. Yes ma'am. I have, you know, she's hoping one day to convert me, so. Okay. All right. Well, I want, that's not my goal.

[00:06:15] I will not try to convert you. What purchase of a hundred dollars or less have you made in the last year that's had the biggest impact on your life? A hundred dollars or less? Yes, sir.

[00:06:26] I spent a week with my son recently and I paid for parking on the street, so I would say that was the best. A hundred dollars spent. Awesome. For a long time. Yeah. That's awesome. See, I love to ask people because everybody has their own things going on and you like, I wouldn't have thought of that, but Right.

[00:06:46] That's legitimate. A hundred dollars on parking, that's depending on where you are. A really good deal for a week, so that's great. It's not an off the shelf answer. I get a lot of books. I ask people that. I get a lot of books. Yeah. Yeah. And I love books, but. That's very cool, man. That's a good spend of a hundred bucks.

[00:07:04] Absolutely. What are you most proud of? Nothing. I try not to be proud. I think proud is kind of a foolish kind of a foolish pursuit. I mean, I didn't, nothing I've done to be, I didn't respond to this plan myself, the ability thing to breathe. So I'm not, I'm more grateful and proud. Okay. What is one random fact that people don't know about you?

[00:07:35] That I wanted to quit school at one time and become a comedian. Okay. Okay. And my mother told me, my mother told me I couldn't, and she said I could be a clown. I was like, thanks, ma. Did you ever play without any, did you get up on stage or anything? I got on top of cafeteria tables during, in college, and I have my own little skits and routines.

[00:08:02] Yes, we got, and I've MCed a thing or two and had a chance to tell jokes, and whenever I get a chance to present, I always start with some, with a couple jokes or something. So I think of myself more like a situational comedian maybe, so, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I asked my, my business coach actually has started doing like standup every so often.

[00:08:23] It's something, he kind of started taking glasses and I don't know if it's like part of a club or something where he is starting to do some routines every now and then push himself out of his comfort zone. So, okay. You never know what people were doing, you know, you could have a great, I'm not there.

[00:08:36] I'm not there yet. No you could have a great standup career on the side, man. You just, yeah. The sky's the limit, right? Yeah. If you say so. Not according to my mom. Well, mom's generally trying to have our best interests at heart. Mm-hmm. Mine, mine smiles and nods at me sometimes, goes like, I don't understand, but I love you anyway.

[00:09:01] I was like, okay, I'll take it. That's good enough for me. That's pretty consistent. What's something everyone should know about you before we dig in today? That who I want to be is determined by who I hope to be when my time on this planet is up and that I don't believe that who I am is consistent.

[00:09:22] I believe who I believe I am, who I think other people believe I am, and who you may perceive me to be after this conversation or done may not be all the same. They may not be coherent in that, and that the reality is that who you judge me to be when we are done. If you are the last person to have the chance to speak and say who I was, your opinion will matter as much if not more than anyone else.

[00:09:46] That's incredibly deep for the early part of the show. We'll come back to that. No, no that's more than fair, man. There's no wrong answer, especially in the first section of the show. So that's a deep thought, man. I actually may have to slow that down and play that back for myself a few times just to, there are lots of layers involved in that.

[00:10:07] Yeah. Do you have children? I do. I have two. So, I always use this analogy to explain that. So if you ask me what kind of father I am, I'd say to you, I'm the best father in the world. And then you say, well, what does your son think you are? No, no. What do you believe your son thinks you are? And I'd say, of course, he thinks I'm the best father in the world, and then you might get a chance to meet my son.

[00:10:28] And you say, what kind of dad is, is your father? And he'd say, he's a pain in my, you know what? Well, who am I? Am I the guy who thinks he's the best father in the world? Am I the guy who believes his child, thinks he's the best father in the world? Or am I, who the child who gets to determine what the father is not the father?

[00:10:48] Am I that guy? Okay. That's, that's, that's the way I approach it. So anyone that I'm in a relationship with, right, that I choose or we choose to have a relationship with, their opinions have to matter for something. Mm-hmm. Because who we are is based upon the relationships that we have. Otherwise, we just exist where you are in a piece of land and nobody else is around like the tree and the forest.

[00:11:12] But if you're going to be in a relationship with people, their, their thoughts of who you are has to map. All right, so guys, we've been spending just a little bit of time getting to know Nate. I want to introduce you guys and let you connect with him and see who he is and what he's about. Before we get into the, the core of the show, in the next part of the show, we're gonna dive into modern education and what that is today and is it great?

[00:11:37] Is it not? You know, what do we think's going on with it? We're gonna roll to our sponsor and we'll be right back with more from Nate. Now, before we go any further, I wanted to share with you guys, I don't always tell you how much I love doing my podcast, like I passionately love what I'm doing and one of the things that makes my life better as a podcaster is to work with a company like Grow Your Show.

[00:12:01] Grow Your Show is a one-stop podcast. Do it all. Now I use Grow Your Show for my marketing, but Grow Your Show is literally a one-stop shop. You can record your episode and just drop it off with them and they take it from there. It's amazing. If you are interested in picking up podcasting, it's a hobby, or maybe you're looking to expand your business and use podcasting in that aspect, talk to my friends over Grow Your Show.

[00:12:23] Adam will take care of you. I guarantee it. I trust him. He's my friend. He's my business. Colleague and I wouldn't trust anybody else with my show. Welcome back guys. The first part of the show, we were spending some time just getting to know who Nate is, and there's a long, deep list of that guys. I didn't read you any of his accolades.

[00:12:44] I wanted to him to introduce himself, but he's a Renaissance band. He's, he's educated himself in multiple paths, in multiple ways. And so we're gonna get some really great depth out of this con conversation. In this part of the show, we're gonna dive into the modern education system and what that looks like, how that's affecting American youth.

[00:13:06] And, you know, is it, is it the right way to go? So, Nate, let me ask you, in your opinion, what are some of the key reasons why modern, the modern education system is failing to adequately prepare students for the challenges in the 21st century? Lots of reasons. So one reason I would say is that we don't care enough about actually preparing the next generation of global citizens.

[00:13:30] I think we think about education in many ways, purely the same way we did during the industrial revolution. Is that maybe a place to house children while parents go to work? The one of the other reasons that our system fails, and I guess this is sort of the, the, an underlying issue, is that our system is still based primarily on wealth and privilege.

[00:13:50] If you live in a really a well to do town a subdivision, you're likely to assume, be able to send your child to a school that's very well funded. Our school systems are still primarily funded. Off of real estate tax dollars. If you are poor or if you live in a rural community, then you're likely not to have the best school because again, schools are based off of a tax revenue.

[00:14:15] So that's, those are two things. I think the third thing is that as a nation, we're just not really thinking about what it is that education is for. And we, we've caught, we're caught up in standardized tests and state local standards, and we're not looking at how we're actually preparing students to be global citizens.

[00:14:34] When you look at stuff like psa, the program for International Scholastic Assessment America at large in reading, math and science are in the twenties and thirties. In some cases, we're doing about the same as countries like Rwanda. So I would say, you know, there are a host of reasons, but the main reason is I just don't think we care enough about educating all students, all people in this country.

[00:14:59] All right. I can't say I entirely disagree with much of that. So, you know, I, I, the standardized, the whole teaching for the testing is just killing me these days. Right. That, that we put so much inf emphasis on standardized testing that teachers, at this point, all they can teach is how to pass the test. We don't teach thinking, we don't actually teach life skills.

[00:15:29] I was never taught anything about money or finance or how to, you know, do things I do on a daily basis and it's, it's only gotten worse there. Right. It's been a few years, but I think us leaning into teaching for the test, it's like

[00:15:47] in what ways do you believe that a traditional classroom structure is limiting students' ability to critical thinking or creativity or do you not? You said, say, repeat that for me if you can. You said traditional classroom structures. Yeah. Do you, do you think that they're limiting students, developing critical thinking and creativity?

[00:16:08] So, so I have a sort of a, a different take on what's happening with schools and now we say this, that it's easy to talk about the failures of schools. I think this failure of, of schools are connected directly with the failure of parents. Okay. I think the failure of schools are c are connected directly with people who understand what the, what the global economy, what geopolitical requirements are in this country.

[00:16:36] That, I think that's where the failure is. So here's what I mean. Children are, are birthed in, in the optimal case, I suppose, to two parents. And those parents, I won't say two, they're birthed to a parent or parents. And that parent. Has that child for six years or so, five to six years for certain where they are, they are the child's only and primary teacher.

[00:17:06] So if you know about the rule of 10,000 hours mm-hmm. You'd say, how long does it take to become an expert? 10,000 hours. So according to deliberate practice. So, okay, how many hours, how many hours is 10,000 hours in a work week? Well, in a work week, if you work 50 weeks a year mm-hmm. Eight hours a day, five days a week.

[00:17:26] In five and a half years, you'd be an expert in this country. Our parents are taught to be experts in outsourcing. So we don't spend time preparing our own children. If you understood, if parents understood that most of the brain develops for a child between ages three and five, most of the child's social emotional skills are developed in that same period of time.

[00:17:46] Well, if they're children at home with moms and dads and they're not doing anything, And then one day we decided to send 'em to school. Then the kids are already so far behind and we're asking teachers in many ways who are amongst the least paid people in the country and who don't wanna do the job.

[00:18:02] Cause this country talks about, and then sort of about capitalistic pursuits, about, you know, generational wealth and those kinds of things. Well, how can I create generational wealth on 40,000 off a year? How cannot take care of my own child on $40,000 a year? So what you have now, no disrespect to many educators, but sometimes people who found nothing else that they thought, there was nothing else they thought they could do, they become teachers were once upon a time, the best and brightest people decided to do it cuz they thought it was an honorable profession and they could take care of their families.

[00:18:31] So I think that there's, again, there's more than just what happens in the classroom. I think it happens long before children get to the classroom that the system is, is messed up. I would agree with you largely on that. In fact, I generally don't fault teachers. I generally fault the.

[00:18:48] Pressure behind the teaching system. I know a lot of, like my sister's a teacher Sure. Actually has a lot of several friends who are teachers and they're amazing teachers, but they're required to teach the tests. They're required to teach certain things and they're not allowed or enabled to really teach yeah.

[00:19:09] In a lot of remediation. More effective way, I'm sorry, in what they know is a more effective Yeah. Way. Yeah. There's a lot of remediation going on. So if you were, if we were doing things optimally instead of children coming to school needing to learn to read, children would already be reading and they will be reading to learn instead of having kids show up for school to then learn how to count.

[00:19:34] Children would show up at school prepared to do math. It's very, it is a very different process if we were to prepare children. Efficiently before the age of five, or by the age of seven. Aristotle famously said, bring me a child by seven. I'll show you the man. Most child psychologists and child development experts will tell you something very similar to that, that most of us, our humanity is created by age seven.

[00:20:02] And we, there's some things we can, we can vary and we'll change, but at the core of your being, you're probably who you are at eight, seven. And the question is, what is it that we're doing for children between zero and seven? Okay. So part of it is we're not structuring the system, which I'm, let me get this out there.

[00:20:23] I'm not a huge fan of public education. Sure. I grew up in public education. We're actually homeschooling our kids just because the public school system was just not going to, they started in public school and it did not take us many years to go, yeah, no, this isn't gonna work. So. And, and that's despite knowing a whole lot of really great teachers.

[00:20:43] But what you're saying is Sure, yeah. The way we approach it has to start way sooner and much different than the average kid growing up these days. Yeah, absolutely. If kids are growing up in homes where parents don't know that there's things that they can do to help their children, then you're always gonna have a mass students who are having difficulty in school.

[00:21:09] And you are gonna have a, a slim number of students that are quote unquote elite. And you'll look at the colleges and universities, the Ivy League schools and the elite schools every year. They're, they're meeting fewer and fewer students than 3% at Harvard, or 4% at Yale, or, you know, and those, there's some correlation to what they believe are the students who are most prepared.

[00:21:32] So they're saying, they're saying, In my mind, they're saying 95% or more of America's children are not fit to attend our institution. And there's a problem with that, right? There's a problem. You all go somewhere else cuz the rest of you all are not fit to attend here. They won't enlarge the class sizes, they won't admit more students.

[00:21:51] They stick with the same number year after year. And why, why, why? Well, you know, there's something to be said about what's happening in the very beginning that translates to what happens when you apply to, to an elite I institution. Okay. Now, in our earlier communications, you referred to the inhumanity of having others try to predetermine and undermine your life trajectory.

[00:22:15] Mm-hmm. I was, I was fascinated by that statement. Can you explain what you were talking about with that? Yeah. My 10th grade year in high school, I had a guidance counselor. I used to say his name, but it's, it's, it's not worth it anymore. He told me during my making my schedule for my junior year, that first of all was not college material.

[00:22:40] So when he asked, you know, what do you wanna do? Of course all my friends were talking about going to college. So I, I said, I'm gonna go to college. And he said, you're not college material. The best you could hope for is to join the military. Now joining the military is not a bad thing. If, if you were saying I could go to be an officer and a gentleman, but that's not at all what he meant.

[00:23:01] He thought the best I could hope to do was join the military and, and or maybe spend my life working in the mill. Cuz Gary, I'm from Gary, Indiana and Gary was known for, for a steel mill. So those to him were my only options. Okay. It's and it is, you know, it's interesting how life changes over time.

[00:23:23] Because there was, there was a time where that was definitely the thought process with what the way the military is. And now the military actually rejects a whole lot at time, right? Yes. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, so if it was, if today within I, he would probably tell me, I don't know. Yeah, man. Right. You're, you're s o a Oh, you know, I, I never, I can't say I spent any time at all hardley.

[00:23:52] I think I saw my guidance counselor once in all of high school cuz they'd be like, you wanna talk to 'em now? I, I had no interest in talking to them, but I haven't actually encountered a whole lot of guidance counselors in schools that were really great at guidance. It's a, that's one of those roles that's always baffled me at schools.

[00:24:13] So do you think then that applies to the general system at large? Right? A lot of kids are hitting that same kind of, Negative response where the people around at the time as they're going through whatever form of education are going good luck. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, if you're, if we're not gonna do anything with them from zero to seven and they're gonna show up in school and they're going to be behind.

[00:24:40] And let me give you example by what I mean by behind, cuz sometimes it seems like a nebulous thing that I'm saying. So, one year we took, my son's name is Na. Mm-hmm. When he returned from Brazil while we, I, I'm sure we'll talk about that later. He returned from Brazil. We took it, we took a visit to Stanford.

[00:24:56] And while we were on this tour of Stanford, we met a, a group of students and families. And some of them were from Eastern Europe and some of them were for China. And they all said that their children had calculus as third graders. So here they were applying to one of America's most elite institutions.

[00:25:19] Their children were far more prepared than, than most American children could ever imagine, cuz who's teaching American children calculus as third graders? In fact, I would say, I would dare say that many high schools throughout the country don't have anybody who can teach calculus in their high school.

[00:25:36] And so there's a huge right disconnect that, that I'm referencing. Okay. You say from the UK and from China, from, they were from, I think they were from Eastern Europe, so it was probably from Ukraine or Russia or somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, I, I know some guys from Great Britain, they aren't teaching calculus at their grade, but

[00:25:59] they're, they're colorful people. They're those fun personalities. So you looked at this whole thing, right? You looked at your life growing up and your experience. And you looked at what was out there, and so you created your own thing called, you call the Life template, right? Mm-hmm. That's correct. Give just give us a really high level overview of how your approach is different than, and we're gonna dig in more to it in a little bit, but Sure.

[00:26:31] Just a high level overview, how your system that you worked out for your son is different than the common education system. Okay. So, so when my wife said to me that it's plus, it's, plus in, in relation to this early pregnancy test I did not want to be a father, but now that I know of a sudden I'm gonna be a father and the thing that I wanted to do was be better than my dad.

[00:26:55] And so the search for what do what, how do I be better than my father? So I was, I was in law school at the time in graduate school and realized that I would be, be graduating soon. There were no law firms that were looking for me. I wasn't sure what my employment options were. And so what dawned on me then is that what if I had been able to go to a better school and what's the best law school I could have gone to at the time I thought Harvard.

[00:27:17] And so the question was how is it possible for us to help prepare this unborn child to meet the academic qualifications of Harvard? That's where it began. So we wrote Harvard, got an application from Harvard, took the application from Harvard, looked at it and noted that not only did Harvard have a prescription for what we should be doing academically, but then they laid out two other things that became part of the template.

[00:27:38] So Harvard asked for students who were rural citizens. This is a language in 1994. And then they asked for students to care for something greater than themselves. So we suddenly had this idea about what we wanted to do for a child. We would raise a child, as we call it today, to be intellectually ambitious.

[00:27:55] We'd raise a child who was globally and culturally competent and we'd raise a child who was humanitarian driven. And those are the three elements of the life temple. Okay. It's definitely a different base. We know, I, I know from reading the rest of the story that it, it, it will actually turn out very well.

[00:28:14] So I'm looking forward to this in the next part of the conversation. But before we get there, guys, we're, we've been looking at, you know, some of the concepts around modern education and modern child raising at this point, right? Mm-hmm. And in the next part of the show, we're really gonna dive into Nate's life template.

[00:28:30] And this is, this is now tested, it's been tested on his kid, he's shared this with other people and oth other people have tried this. And so we're gonna dive into what that looks like and how that works for kids. We're enrolled, our sponsor, and we will be right back with more from Nate. How well do you sleep at night?

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[00:29:24] Sleep tomorrow. Now let's go on to the show. Guys. Welcome back. In the last part of the show, we're discussing modern education and parenting and our kids, right? We, we all want our kids to do well. So in this part of the show, we're going to dive into Nate's life template and how this works for ki his kids and for other kids, cuz he's at now shared this with a lot of people and the, I mean, it, it speaks for itself.

[00:29:55] The more you dig into it, it very well works. So, examining your own life, you designed a template for your sons, we covered in the first part of the show, and you felt that would help him reach his full potential. And, you know, observation tells us it's doing very well as all right, he's doing very well at this point.

[00:30:14] It's been very successful for him. Before we jump into the depth of the plan what are the questions that you like to focus on is who they want to be. So let's talk about that focus and how it applies to everyone as we go forward into this. So when, when we we're gonna talk about the template. But in inside, there's this thing we call the core view existence.

[00:30:45] So you can imagine three rings. A there's a big outside ring. There's a middle size ring in, in, in, in the center. And then in the very center there is a, there's a tiny ring. But I would say sometimes we make that ring look like art, and we believe that at the, at the, or I should say I, I believe at the core of our existence is that that's that rate that determines who we are.

[00:31:11] And I like to begin with the end. I like to begin by thinking about who I want to be when my time on the planet is up, who I want this child to be when this child's time is up. And since none of us know that they know the hour, I figured then what we should do is to make sure that we raise someone who, at the core of his, his, his, someone that we are.

[00:31:36] With, you used the word proud earlier, but we would all race, we would all be sorry to see go. We have a great story to tell no matter what age he was. So that's where he wanted to begin. That began with the name Tim, that began with the way eight days before after you come on from the hospital to give him a name.

[00:31:55] That began with watching his characteristics and behaviors, figuring out who was gonna be part of this community, his village as he was growing up, and asking those people all to come by and participate in helping to name him. So from the very beginning, it was to think about who we wanted him to be when his time on this planet was up.

[00:32:13] Okay. I I just, before we dug into it, I was just, I, I had heard you talked about it on some of your previous stuff when I was getting ready for the show and it's like, okay, this is a different, a lot of people don't come at it from that, and I frequently encourage our listeners to think about, you know, at the end, When, when that time comes, how, what do you want them saying about you at your funeral?

[00:32:37] Right. What really mattered did they say at that point? Right, right. So I Most people, no, I was gonna say, most people, we live life without necessarily having a, a vision for what we want to be. And so, but I'm not, some kids grow up and they say, I wanna be a basketball player. One, y'all was small, he wanted to play soccer and play in Laga.

[00:33:01] That's great. But who do you want to be as a human? How do you want people to remember you as a person who was giving, as a person, who was a taker, as a person who cared, or a person who didn't give a damn, like there are certain values, let's say, or values or virtues that you, that you want. And there has to be a way to make that a part of everything that you do.

[00:33:23] And to me, those things mean more than whether or not he's a great engineer or a great scientist. That's all fine. I know a lot of people who hold a lot of great positions and make a whole lot of money and are the worst people on the planet. And I know some other people who have nothing and are the best, like they have the best values and virtues and would lend their hands to help anyone.

[00:33:42] And though that was, were the things you wanted to, to think about from the beginning. It's one of those thoughts that's always been with me. My father was a minister, so I, I attended a lot of funerals over the years and it was always fascinating to me listening to people, you know, at the graveside or at the memorial service, talk about who this person was and, and what they actually spoke about, right?

[00:34:05] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Very, very few people ever stood up there and went, you know, Bob was a great. Great employee at this company for 20 years. Man, I, I was just so blessed to work with him because he was such a good employee, right? There were a few of 'em who were like, I was blessed to work with him because the person he is is just incredible.

[00:34:25] Yep. You get it. Yep. You get it. Exactly. Listening to that, growing up, it was like very, very influential. So when I heard you talking about it was very curious about this as a kind of the starting point. As we dig into this now, I'm gonna get outta your way and let you walk us through what does the life template look like?

[00:34:42] Tell us, tell us about this program you built for your son, you're now sharing with the world. Okay, so there's, there's two parts. That's why we talked about th this center, right? The center, which is the core, but out the, the bigger circle is called familiarity. Any ideal about raising? So let me go back three parts to the template.

[00:35:02] Intellectual ambition, second, global and cultural competency. Third, humanitarian drive. There are three elements that we use to bring those to, to life. The outside template is familiarity. We believe that there are some things that all children should know, that there are things all children should be familiar with.

[00:35:22] It could be as simple as looking at someone in the eye, how to shake someone's hand, seeing a thank you note to people who do something kind, being willing to do someone else kind, because that's what reciprocity is. You do it before you can ask someone to do it for you. There may be things you should, you should know generally about the planet, about your country.

[00:35:43] There are lots of things children should be familiar with. There's expression that jack of all trade, master of none, and we, we say that as if that's a bad thing. In this particular case, we do want children to be jacks of all trades, so as many trades as possible. Then the the, the second circle inside is mastery.

[00:36:02] There are things that we believe. Children should master, or humans for that matter, should master. Children should master in this economy, math and science. Children should hopefully master science and technology reading and writing, although we have things artificial intelligence like chat, g p t, that keeps trying to convince people that we don't need to know those things.

[00:36:24] But tho there are certain things we think people should master. And of course at the middle of that is, is the core. So you take those things and you say, we have to plug those things into how to make sure a child is intellectually ambitious. Well, if I was talking to you and I am, and I ask you, what were your hopes and dreams for your child?

[00:36:42] And I told you to articulate as many as those things you could. If you told me that you had a particular college or university you wanted your child to attend, we would then take a look at that institution's most recent or several years recent admissions and look at the kinds of students that they admitted.

[00:37:01] And we would then start to backward design a process to make sure that your child could meet the, the minimum requirements of that institution. And then in terms of global and cultural competency, we re recognize that the world is big, but it is smaller in many ways and has ever been. You and I can have conversations with anybody, any place in the world through this device here.

[00:37:21] And sometimes the languages can be translated such that if I don't speak a language that someone else speaks, we can still have a conversation. So it's important to be globally and com and culturally competent and be able to draw the similarities and comparisons with other people anywhere in the world.

[00:37:35] So we wanted to be able to do that. And then the last part, which is consistent with the core, is that we wanted to make sure that our son was driven by humanity to, that he was going to always care about something greater than himself. And that's, those are the aspects of the temple. Okay. Now you want, you wanna share how this has panned out so far with your son?

[00:37:57] Yeah, sure. So, I'll say this, so very early on, the, if I jump to the end, it makes it sound like, well, no one can ever do it. So let me say this. When he came home from the hospital before he was born, we didn't know if we were having a boy or girl. So we brought this baby home and I to like, am I like, to be honest with, with you and anyone, I have no idea what I was doing.

[00:38:20] None. I, I, I, I freely admit that I have more instructions about how to put a car seat in than I did about being a father. I had no idea. But I did come across some literature that said, try these things. I can't. The guy's name is Gatesman. I apologize. I'll send it to you so you can add it in the show notes.

[00:38:37] It just absolutely escapes me at the moment. But there's, he has an institute in Philadelphia got cut institute for I think it's a mass human potential. At any rate. He, he suggested that you get these big picture books for Bates. And you would say everything you could see, say, or see on the pitch book.

[00:38:55] So let's say there's a lion and I would say, Hey, this is a lion. A lion makes this sound. You spell lion, l i o n. A lion has a man if it's a right male lion. But if it's a female lion, you say it's many facts as you possibly could about the lion until you saw the child losing attention and you changed to another big picture.

[00:39:13] And so we did those kinds of things Now why? Because they told us that these are kind of things that help a child's vocabulary. And so when children talk about sight words and so forth, that this, this was building towards that. The other thing we did was we played language tapes in this baby's Crip. So rather than gaga Google and nursery rhymes and so forth, if you came over, you would've heard Ola be too, you might hear gut Morgan, gut tarde.

[00:39:41] So you'd hear ano a series of languages being played. Why, because some of the literature we read said that these are kinds of things you do to introduce the brain, such that at the time someone finally has a chance to learn the language, the language will be easier to, to learn. So we did those kinds of things.

[00:39:57] After two months, the child spoke his first words, after 11 months, the child get in full sentences at at at one. We bought a computer for the child. Cause not for us. We bought a computer for the child because we were starting to get introduced to some of the computer programming and there was the thing called Rita Rabbit and I forget the other one, but we bought those for the, for for him.

[00:40:26] And so things just continuously evolved from that foundation. Such that when my son was 16, he decided that he was done with high school. He had already earned 33 college credits by the, the end of his junior year in high school. Had met most of the academic requirements for high school. I think he hadn't taken government, so he had to take that.

[00:40:46] But he decided to, that he had had enough and wanted to chase his dream of playing professional soccer. So he packed his bags and he moved to Brazil to a town called Porta Felice and played in an academy at, in Desi. He did that for a little over a year. We traveled to Germany. He had travels in Germany, he had a concussion.

[00:41:05] Then he came back home in NOV October of 2013 and decided to take the s a t and applied to 31 of America's top engineering schools cuz he had decided what he wanted to be and he got accepted to 27 of them. And most of the schools offered him a scholarship to attend their school. He finished, he attended Santa Clara University, finished in four years, got a.

[00:41:34] Bachelor's in electrical engineer, a minor in computer science, computer engineering, applied to I think 11 top PhD fellowships got accepted to seven of them. He's in his fifth year at Carnegie Mellon. He's actually in the process of preparing to do his defense on April 25th, and then he applied to do his MBA because he wants to run his own tech company and he doesn't want anyone later on coming by and telling him he doesn't know enough about business to run his own company.

[00:42:05] So he's applied to a number of MBA programs and I think. He's been accepted to four. He's been wait listed by four. But I think he's pretty much sure one, one school has rolled out the red carpet, and I think he's pretty certain about where he's going. He said Keep it a secret for, for now. But yeah, so that part of his academic portion of his life has been great on a humanitarian side.

[00:42:29] He started his own foundation as a 14 year old called the Social Justice League to help home homeless teenagers. He wrote his first book as a freshman in, in, in college called, what are we Gonna Do today to give parents some insights to what they should be doing and to, to be engaged in their children's lives.

[00:42:47] He also wrote a version of that book in Spanish, and he's now, he and I, together with our with a third person, Kiva Richardson, have authored a book, a series of books, children's books called Amazing World of Stem. Okay. That's a, that's a little bit of, of, of that story. So guys, There, there's something to this.

[00:43:08] Okay. He didn't, this isn't like a conceptual idea. Yeah. Okay. Nate is already doing this with other people. He's been doing this with his boy and now, right. He's sharing it with the world because it's a different approach than a lot of parents are gonna make. But there, there's evidence that's showing that there's, there's, this actually works.

[00:43:33] This has some really good ideas to it. Now we're, we're gonna keep moving, but I want you to stop and think, right? These are questions that a lot of, I talked to a lot of young dads. I talked to a lot of expectant fathers. These are questions that are gonna be swirling through your head, okay? You can start making massive impacts from the beginning.

[00:44:00] I know for a lot of his dads, right? I, I don't know any dad who knew all the answers. Okay. I, I used to be a youth minister. I spent my whole life growing up, taking care of kids and working with kids. Growing up in the churches, my dad being a preacher, we were at a lot of small churches, so I was always teaching children's classes.

[00:44:16] From the time I was able to and working with like cradle role and stuff like that, I had a lot more experience with little ones than a lot of people do. And as a, when my daughter was born, it was like everything just went out the window. I was like, I don't know anything. Took me forever to get the car seat into the car, right?

[00:44:33] Mm-hmm. So all dads start at the same place. Guys, I don't care who you are, all dads are starting in about the same place, but know this, okay? Nothing else. Hear this. Don't wait till you think your kid is interesting. Your kid is interesting from day one, but you can change their life radically starting at day one.

[00:44:56] Your ability to impact their life, their trajectory in life in a positive way starts at day one. We'll try and get you the name of that. I'll get Sarah to look that up for me. I never heard the, the picture, Glen. I know now. Glen Doman. Glen Doman, and Glen Doman is famous because he was working with children with brain injuries and he was teaching children with brain injuries how to read in 18 months and do complex mathematical problems.

[00:45:27] He's, he's deceased. His, his daughter runs his, the, the foundation or the institute, but I think it's the Institute for Advancing Human Potential. Okay, phenomen. Like that's, I, I read some of his stuff and I was like, holy cow, my child has no brain entry. I can at least try this. So my child is going to be the human Guinea pig, cuz I'm going try it and see what happens.

[00:45:48] Right? I, I thought we were doing pretty well with the, you know, phonic CDs and stuff like that. But I love the exposure to language just, just right off the top of my head, just observational. I love the exposure to language at an early day age. It is so easy. Much easier for children to comprehend that and learn that at an earlier age is unreal.

[00:46:07] Absolutely. So guys, going forward, right? You now know, if you didn't know before you unequivocally, you can make a massive impact on your child from the beginning. Nate, what are the first three steps are, right? My, my kids aren't that little anymore. Sure. My kids are eight and 11, so, you know, whether I'm.

[00:46:34] Just starting out as a dad are, my kids are a little bit down this journey and I'm looking at it going, wow, how do I start changing things now? Right. What are the first three steps our audience can implement now to start this journey and start making these changes and implementing this kind of ideal into their children's lives?

[00:46:55] The first thing is decide what you want in the end. So it's, it's very much like a G P S that you, you, you and I talked before we went online about the distance from your home to the airport and the various, I think it was three airports, you, you were in equal distance from, but what, wherever you decided to go.

[00:47:18] Certainly if I was flying into one of those airports and I was deciding to come visit you, I would have to use a G P S to figure out where I was going. And so the first thing I have to just is what's that destination? And I think that's the very first thing that parents have to decide if your child is, is yet to be born.

[00:47:37] If your child is eight, if your child is five, it doesn't matter. Parents have to decide what the destination is. And what I would say is, and how do you figure out their destination? I would ask parents, if you could, if the world were perfect and whatever your hopes and dreams were for your child could come true, what are those hopes and dreams?

[00:47:56] So that's, that's the first place I would start. The second place I would start was, would, would be an honest assessment of ourselves. And too often we think about raising children as just something that the children are going to benefit from. But the truth is when it, I think when it's done right, the parents grow too.

[00:48:17] So I am my son's tree and he is the fruit, but the better the fruit is the, the sweeter the fruit tastes. The more likely people are to come back to that tree and want to sample another piece of fruit or find out what's special about that tree. The reason I'm on here with you today is because my son is the one that's special and so, and his story is a great story and yeah, I'm the tree, but I'm the tree responsible for a piece of fruit and we're intertwined, which meant that throughout his life, in order for him to improve, I had to improve as well.

[00:48:50] So I think those two things are, are hugely important. One is we figure out what we want in the end, and two, we're willing to make, I know you said three things, but the the, the second, and it is just we have to make an honest assessment about who we are. And two, infrequently do we take an honest, deep look at ourselves.

[00:49:11] Most of us don't even know who we are. How do you help a kid understand the concept of a global citizen as well? I guess it's, it's not that hard. Right? So you mentioned like the Olympics earlier. Mm-hmm. So kids understand you know, international competition, they see it in sports all the time, but we don't talk about what international competition looks like in terms of employment, in terms of education.

[00:49:38] But it's the same, it's the same thing. It's just, just, it just doesn't, every four years people just don't come into a, a ring and then they get this big medal afterwards. But we are all competing globally. All you need to do is look in inside of your, your shirt and find out where it was made. Look at your fruit when it is, you know, pineapple comes and it says Costa Rica to realize that we live in a society where, again, the world is big, but it's very small and the best of us are able to compete and be a part of larger institutions as opposed to just the real smallness.

[00:50:14] Okay. The, the fruit thing rings a bell. I, I live in a heavy agriculture area. Okay. If you, if you get apples, most likely they say they're coming from Washington. Washington. Yeah. Yeah. I I live in Apple country. Apple and potatoes. So what don't you get there? What are, what are you all big? What's the big import?

[00:50:35] Fruit wise? No, just anything. The big import

[00:50:39] we're actually pretty sustainable here. Okay. Our, like, I, I live in Oh, avocados. Yeah. We don't have avocados. Wrong climate for that. And citrus fruits. The we're really, really, like, we have just a crazy amount of agriculture here. Sure. We, we ship apples and pears and hay and potatoes all over the world.

[00:51:02] We have ranching, we have farming. We're, we're pretty, Washington is an interesting place to live. Because the different sections of the state, actually, it's the most diverse, geo diverse state in the United States. We have five different climate zones, including a rainforest. Wow, okay. So it's a very, it's a very interesting place to be.

[00:51:25] If you wanna, if you want to get out and explore a little bit, like I can be at the ocean in about four hours, three and a half, four hour or about four hours. I can also be up on the Atlantic the Pacific Pacific. That's what I meant. I'm sorry. Yeah. I can be out on the coast of Washington in four and a half, five hours.

[00:51:43] I can be up. We have the tallest mountain in the continental United States, Mount Rainier. It's just that way, about an hour and a half. We have high desert, we have planes like part of the state looks like Kansas. We have just rolling wheat fields and grass and hay fields. So it's, it's a very interesting place.

[00:52:02] They ship more tulips out of Skagit Valley than they do out of Holland. It's, yeah, it's, it's a very interesting, it's worth a visit. You should come check out the state. Oh, I, I'm, I'm sold. I'm sold. There's a lot to see here, but you have to make it a longer trip and you wanna do it during late spring, which is when is, when is that?

[00:52:22] So let's see, we're into April. So mid-April to, yeah. May is when things were really growing and in bloom. Okay. All over the state from like the apple orchards here and cherries and stuff like that to like the tulips out in Skagit Valley. The rainforest is beautiful. It is not the warmest state when you go out to the ocean.

[00:52:47] We went, took our kids camping last August out at the ocean, at the Pacific Ocean. And it was beautiful the first day and swimming the ocean was great. And then it was misty and overcast and rainy for the next two days. Okay. Right. And that was in August. So that's, it's a hit or miss thing, man. The weather here is interesting sometimes for sure.

[00:53:08] So you need to import more, more good weather, just more sun. Like we have a lot of sun here. The temperature gets a little in eastern Washington, we can drop from, go from negative six to 103. Wow. Okay. Sorry. It's it's, yeah, we, we have extreme. Yeah. So Nate, what is next for you? Right? You're doing, you're doing the podcast thing and making appearances.

[00:53:39] What's next for you? What's next? We're revamping our website so that we can provide a little more instruction than we, well, we don't do any now. I used to have a course up, but we're working on, on a new course, a couple new courses that hopefully we'll be able to share. We're finishing our second book of the second children's book, the Amazing World of stem.

[00:54:02] This one is called Homes for All. Each one of 'em that we write is targeted one of the 17 issues that the UN says are sustainable goals. So the first one was about energy, and this one is about about homes. A home, the home, or let's just say some, say homeless crisis. I would say the lack of home crisis.

[00:54:22] So, you know, that there's these children deciding how to fix this homeless problem because adults don't seem to understand how to do it so we'll, hopefully we'll continue to, to write those. I'm supposed to be working on a book called The WHO Mindset. I've got about six or seven books that I've outlined.

[00:54:41] Some of, I've written eight or nine chapters. I haven't finished them. So at some point I'll get those done too. I, I understand writing books can be daunting, man. That's, I started one, I got about 130 pages into it. It's still not written. That was two years ago. I love to write, I write every morning and I write a journal and each day that's, I guess I should have mentioned that too.

[00:55:01] So we wrote a book, it's called Journey for, and the response from that book were that people said, Hey, this is great, but we'd love to hear it as an audio version. So for the, for the last almost probably a year now, I've been doing an audio version of Every Day's Journal. And so the objective is to be able to make that an offering.

[00:55:21] I don't intend to have a podcast, but maybe somewhere there'll be a, a place where the journals, the audio versions of the journal per house. So you stay out, right? I wake up. And as I said to you, I write about what are my hopes and dreams as if my hopes and dreams are my, the, are my reality. Okay? So we have your website, right?

[00:55:43] And guys, we'll have links for all the night stuff in this description and the show notes, wherever platform you're watching, whether you're on YouTube, the podcast, Nathaniel Turner, Nathaniel a Turner sorry.com. If you're on the YouTube version right now, you can see a picture of it. Nate, is this the best place to find you or is there a better place to find you?

[00:56:04] Unless you're gonna come visit me? That's, that's probably the, that's probably the, that's probably the best place for now. Best place for now. All right. Now the answer to the silly question of the show, the Empire Mi State Building is made up of how many bricks? You said 12. And the answer is 10 million bricks.

[00:56:24] Okay. That's I, I never would've guessed that's, I didn't actually realize it was made out of bricks, so I'm news to me, I just figured the more fewer. Yeah. Yeah. I, I probably would've gone with the same, so, but that's the benefit. I get to look it up and ask the silly questions, and I could, I, and I couldn't cheat.

[00:56:46] You told me not to cheat, so I didn't cheat. Right. I know. It takes all the fun out of it now, Nate, I man, I appreciate the conversation today, guys. There's, there is, I think a lot you can learn, okay. As fathers, we all want to do the best for our kids, and it's a learning game from before the kid ever gets here.

[00:57:07] It's a learning game to be a good dad to try and help your kid as they progress through life. Nate has found a really great way of doing it that is very effective. I encourage you to go over to his website, check out his social media. Where he talks a little more about this and, and see for yourself, it's there.

[00:57:25] The proof is there that this works. It's very effective and this may be exactly what you're looking into. Nate, thank you for coming and talking to this day and hanging out. Now, before we go, what is the most important takeaway you want people to hear today? First, the most important thing is that I just want you to know that I'm grateful there are 8 billion people on the planet and you saw fit to have a conversation with me and you thought I was worthy of conversation.

[00:57:52] I do not take that for granted, so I'm grateful that's, that's it. Guys as always, be better tomorrow because what you do today, we'll see you on the next one. This has been the Fallible Man Podcast. Your home for everything, man, husband, and father. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a show. Head over to www.thefallibleman.com for more content and get your own Fallible man gear.

[00:58:23] Now. I ain't waiting and wish I.