#42 | Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh: Ag Economist to the presidents; Kansas State University

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:00:00] He gets up and he proposed to toast and he said, Mr. Speaker, if I didn't, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one too, I'd throw mine away and go to hell with you.

Vance Crowe [00:00:17] Now,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:00:17] Could you see Pelosi and Trump doing that?

Vance Crowe [00:00:20] No. This is Court Winneke, a marine surveyor living in Seattle, Washington, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Each week I sit down to try and explain exactly what this podcast is all about, and you wouldn't know it, but I probably record and rerecord this 15 to 20 times because this two sentence description saying, what is it that this podcast is all about has proven to be elusive. And I think one of the reasons that it's proven to be so difficult to describe is that it's been an evolution. When I started this podcast, I was doing it because I knew that I had a ton of time in between starting my company and getting out and doing consulting work and going out and giving speeches. And I wanted to make sure that the level of thought and discourse that I was having stayed really high because it's when I interact with other people that I learned new things, that I discover, ideas that I want to explore further. And it, it was really just a way to keep me moving forward during a time when I didn't know exactly what the path would look like. Over time, this has become an exploration, not just of expertise, but around the worldview that comes from somebody that has built an expertise. And I think how that expertise has impacted their worldview, but also how their worldview impacted the expertise that they developed. And I think that that is exactly what you will see happening during this interview this week, which is with a man named Dr.

Vance Crowe [00:01:52] Barry Flinchbaugh. Now, Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh is one of the most world-renowned ag economists alive today, and he is a fascinating character. But if you are expecting that we're gonna talk about economics or really the deep level about agriculture, that is not going to be this podcast. In fact, as we were going through and we were nearing the end of this nearly two hour interview, I realized I'd barely asked him anything at all about his expertise in agriculture. And I started to get a little nervous. But as I went back to listen to this interview, as I was going through and editing, I started to realize that not only was that did we not talk about economics, but also that that was a wonderful thing. This man, Dr. Flinch Bow is a national treasure. He has a way of looking at the world that is extraordinary, and it is no mistake why presidents from for many, for many, many years have come to him to talk about agriculture policy. How should we think about the laws that we're setting up that our farmers will abide by? How will we set up the farm bill? How will we set up trade with other countries? It is clear that his ability to communicate with other people on both sides of the aisle has transcended just his knowledge of economics, and it has something to do with the way that he views other people, how to interact with people, how to be the type of person that we all aspire to be. And so I am really excited about this interview, and I have to say that it has made me be more and more introspective about what I want to get out of these interviews.

Vance Crowe [00:03:32] I don't think you'll think this is way out of the norm, because oftentimes when I'm talking with an expert, I hear them say something that sounds a little different or sounds unexpected, and I pull on that thread until we find new things about him. But this time, I don't know, I think Dr. Flinch B probably has this impact on a lot of people, but he really got me thinking about how did have more conversations like the one that I had with him. So I'm very excited for you to hear this interview. I think there's something in it for everyone because his life lessons are so profound and so interesting and so simple, and he's just got this nature about him that makes you, you smile and, and you wanna know him better. So we're gonna jump into that interview, but they, I have a couple of housekeeping items I wanted to bring up with you. Of course, the as the Crow Flies Book Club is coming up here on Sunday, February 23rd. And for those of you that have been following along, we are reading The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. This is a very, very short book. If you have not picked it up, you could still order it on Amazon right now and get it by Friday and and have read enough of the book to be able to participate in the book club at seven 30 on Sunday. But you're wanna do that fast because this is one of those books that even though it's incredibly easy to read and it's very short, you're gonna read some sentences and some stanzas in there that are so profound that you might just find yourself staring off into space or you're taking a photo of it and you send it to somebody because you're like, oh my gosh, I've always thought something like this.

Vance Crowe [00:05:06] But I'd never put it into words. And I noticed this month that I got a whole bunch of books, photos of people receiving the book in Twitter, and then there was a few weeks of lag. And now just in the last week, I am getting lots and lots of photos of particular pages and sentences that people liked and that has been heartwarming. But I also know that a lot of people are waiting until this last week to read the book. So if you are reading it, make sure you shoot me some photos of some things that you find interesting at the hashtag A TCF Book Club. That's as the Crow Flies Book Club, A TCF. And we are going to be talking at seven 30 on Sunday, February 23rd. I'm hoping that Lyle Benjamin four who on Twitter will be able to be my co-host. He's been an excellent host in the past. Another thing is that March 15th, that whole week, I am going to be traveling across the Greenlands of Canada. So if you are living somewhere between Winnipeg and Calgary, we are stopping at four different cities along the way. And I will be giving the morning keynote about how culture changes and the chaos that comes from new technologies and new ideas being introduced into society. It is a very interesting and exciting project. Sean Haney of Real Agriculture is heading it up and it is sponsored by Corteva. So this will be a fun adventure. I'll definitely be tweeting and putting things out on Instagram about it.

Vance Crowe [00:06:37] But if you're interested and think you might be in the area and wanna get tickets, check out real agriculture.com/tech tour live. So that's real agriculture.com/tech tour live. Finally, the third thing that I want to talk with you about today is something that people have been asking me about for months, and I did not have a good answer for it. Many of you have heard me talk about stoicism and I've made mention of how much of an impact it's had on my life. It was a philosophy that I had heard about when I was in college, but I'd never really had a good on-ramp to it. I always thought of stoics as being people that didn't laugh or smile, they were just very serious people. But my good friend Rob Long, who goes by Plantables on Twitter, he and I have been pounding on what does this philosophy teach us? How does it help us interact with our day-to-day problems? And what is it that we can learn by viewing the world through this philosophy? And together, along with several of our other close friends, we have developed our own personal philosophies that have a bedrock or a foundation somewhere in stoicism. But all of this has happened through conversation and a lot of it from reading books. And when people would write me and say, Hey, I hear you talking about stoicism. How can I, how can I get involved? Or how can I learn more? How did not have a good answer for them?

Vance Crowe [00:08:08] There are a lot of people that write about it. There's a man named Ryan Holiday that does a great job with these books describing stoicism. But there is something that we needed that was even more basic, just the very first building block to know, should I go pick up a book and think about stoicism in some deeper way? And that didn't exist, or at least we couldn't find it. So this last week, my buddy Rob Long, actually contacted me and said, Hey man, I finally did this thing that I've been thinking about doing for a very long time, which is I have written down, I've tried to distill the very basics of what it is to be stoic, why people should look into this philosophy and where they can go to get more information. And so I, I was delighted. And when he told me that, I asked, Hey, can I talk about it on the podcast? Can I bring it up? And he said, sure. So this is Rob's first attempt at putting something out into the world like this. And I think you will find it to be very interesting. If you're a person that's listening to the podcast, you are definitely open to new ideas and exploring about how to be more disciplined and how to develop new ideas in your life. And stoicism might bring something to you. So if you are interested in this, the website that he houses it at is a really interesting name, but it's a little hard to navigate to. So what you wanna look for is Archetype, which is that Jungian concept archetype al slash stoic. So that's archetype al slash stoic.

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] If you have a little trouble spelling archetype, don't worry, it's in the show notes. I'll throw it down below and you can always just click on that link and I hope you check it out. And I hope you let me know if that definition was good for you. Did it help you? I think there is a high likelihood that during the month of March our, as the Crow Flies Book Club, will be one of the books recommended on that page. I haven't quite decided which one it'll be. We'll have to tune in on Sunday, February 23rd for the book club for it. But in the meantime, if you've ever been wondering what is stoicism or is there a philosophy out there that could help me understand how to interact with the world such that I get out of it, what I need to get out of it? So I'm gonna leave it there. I hope you go check out that website and also real agriculture.com/tech two Live. Thank you so much for hanging through this with me. This is a long introduction, but I think you will be delighted to listen to this interview with the one and only Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:10:50] Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:10:51] I actually shouldn't say welcome 'cause we are in your office here at K State University. Tell me what is it that you do here? You have your own space, are you, you teaching? What are you doing these days? Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:11:02] I'm semi-retired, have the title emeritus, which I think is an awful title, but that's what they do to you when they put you out to pasture, put you out to pasture. But I still teach the course. I started in 1970. Next year will, next fall will be my 49th year teaching the same course. And they tell me if I make 50, which I'm going to, that'll be a record. It's this university. So it's a course in agriculture policy primarily for juniors and seniors. And we, we cover the main issues that agriculture has to deal with right now. Of course, trade is front and center. I started in 1970 as an extension specialist

Vance Crowe [00:12:01] Now. And for people that aren't familiar at all with the agriculture world, what do Extension Specialists do?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:12:06] Well, it's, it's called the Cooperative Extension Service. And it's in every state. It's at the Land Grand University, and basically they take the university to the people. We do the research and we take it out to the farmers. And we've branched out, of course we do community development. And my wife, for example, was a, a home economic specialist many years ago. So it's not only for the farm business, it's for the farm family. And

Vance Crowe [00:12:46] That term home economics got kind of turned around. I mean, when I was growing up, for anybody to be involved in home ec was like, you were taking the class on, you know, how to manage your checkbook, but it seemed so beneath us. But now you look at the world and you say, most people don't know how to do that. That's

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:13:04] Right. And of course we, it's gone through all kinds of different titles and for a while we were human ecology. Now it's health and human services. But it, it's basically, I've joked many years about the difference between teaching in the countryside and teaching on campus is that on campus, the professor flunks the student and the countryside, the students flunk the professor.

Vance Crowe [00:13:38] That's very insightful.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:13:39] If you're gonna, you keep farmers' attention and work with 'em and teach 'em something, you need to be on the cutting edge. So historically, when I was fully employed, I had a 80 20 point appointment, 80% extension, and 20% teaching that undergraduate course. I've dabbled in administration, some, I was the extension state leader for AG economics for 20 years. I spent four years as public affairs assistant of President University. I did the lobby work in Topeka for those four years, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [00:14:25] Wow.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:14:26] So, you know, I've dabbled in all kinds of things, but always came back to agricultural policy.

Vance Crowe [00:14:37] So you have this big, thick gray beard. Yes. And you've got this slight voice, but you are a booming voice in agriculture. Very, very well known. How is it that, well, thank you. How is it that that came about? Because when I, so maybe just to set the stage, I met you at the Wisconsin Corn and Soybean Expo. Yes. And for people that don't know about agriculture, there are commodity groups that get together that say, we want to think about the future of our grain trade, about how we should market our grain, sell it into the market, how to prepare for new technologies that are coming. And they invite speakers like you in to say, help us understand how we should prepare for the problems with China. Or, you know, what's gone on with nafta, those kind of thing. But you, there are many people out there that are speaking, but very few of them have the booming voice. How did you build a reputation to the way that you have now? Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:15:36] S several things. I think number one, from the beginning, I did not shy away from controversial issues. I hit 'em head on. I put it on the table. I didn't tell farmers what to do. I explored with 'em what their options were and what the consequences of those options would end up being. And then they could decide. But I, I played the role of an educator and humor played a very heavy role in it. I had a speech teacher at Penn State many moons ago. She's a graduate student and she's taught freshman speech. She also was Ms. Pennsylvania. So she had my attention. We, we, freshman boys all sat there with our tongues hanging out, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:16:49] Didn't miss class,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:16:50] Didn't miss class. No. And the first day she wrote on the board a light moment every five to seven minutes. I, I never forgot that. And then she explained that. And when, if people are smiling or laughing, their mind's open. If they're frowning, they're ma and they're mad, their mind's closed. So you, if you're gonna tell 'em something that they need to know, but they don't want to hear, you gotta humor them. And I've always thought the, the humor that they always appreciated the most was self-deprecating humor. And I can tell all kinds of stories about little short fat Pennsylvania Dutchman, and they get a big kick out of it or something like, you know, or if I pick on one of them, I pick on myself too. And,

Vance Crowe [00:18:03] Well, so you'd be interesting. So during the talk that I, we both gave talks, you gave one in the morning, and I gave one in the afternoon at lunch. And I brought up the idea that humor is tribal in a way. It defines who are we and who are they? Because when you laugh at a joke, what you're really doing is you're connecting two pieces of disparate information. And the comedian shows a way to make a connection between those two things. And that ha ha ha sound is the social signal that tells the people around you. I understand that connection. Did you agree with that point? What did, what did you think about that? Yes. I,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:18:38] I do agree with that. And every story I tell every, I don't like the word joke very well. I don't tell jokes. I tell stories and they're funny. But they make a point that will teach the audience something I want them to learn.

Vance Crowe [00:19:00] How did you develop the repertoire that, I mean, you throw them out like cards, like you have no issue pulling them out. It seems like they're right there for you. Thousands of them.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:19:12] Well, you know, I've been, I made my first speech as a high school student in Future Farmers of America. And I also did it in four H. And standing up in a high school assembly as one of the high school students may be the toughest audience I've ever had. You know, they, to keep their attention, you have to almost hit 'em with a sledgehammer. And, you know, they were my peers, so to speak. So I, I started when I was 14 and I had the toughest audience of my life right at the beginning. And, you know, they made farmers look easy down the road, so to speak. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:14] I'd much, much rather speak to a group of farmers, even even farmers that are not happy with me than I would be to speak with high school students or even college students because they, they're easily distracted. And if they don't like what you have to say, they've got other things to do. They

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:20:30] Just close their mind.

Vance Crowe [00:20:32] Do you remember what jokes you told when you were 14 years old and the FFA?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:20:38] Well, I used to, the first speech I ever gave was called Porky Pig at his best. I, I was in the hog business. Hogs paid my way through college, showed hogs all over the East Coast. And, and the minute I got up there and opened my mouth and said, Porky Pig at its best, they laughed. Now you have to be pretty self-confident to do something like that. And you can't be, you can't be arrogant. But there's a, then there's a big difference between self-confidence and arrogance. Self-confidence is based on fact, arrogance based on figment of your imagination. So, and I built on that theme and told 'em about how raising Peaks was gonna pay my way through college, which it did. And I just build on that. And then it was, I was the first flinch ball to go to college.

Vance Crowe [00:21:54] Really?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:21:55] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:21:55] What were the other ones doing? Farmers. They were all farmers, yes.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:22:00] And there's not many of us. It's a very unusual name. There's probably 500 of us in York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was just understood. I was gonna go to college. I'm a product of a one room school and I adored the teacher. I had the same teacher for eight years. She's probably the best teacher I've ever had.

Vance Crowe [00:22:26] You were in one room and you had the same teacher for eight years. For eight years. That would seem in today's age, to be the stone age. I mean, it would seem like a very long time ago.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:22:37] It was in the fifties. And she, well, we, my dad had her too, by the way. And if she couldn't teach it to you, she'd pound it into you. She was really tough. And then I went to, in high school, I had several teachers that I remember well and revered. Then I went to Penn State twice, once for Ma Bachelor's and once for Master's, and then to Purdue for PhD. And I had two or three professors each place that took me under their wing. And after 50 years of teaching myself almost 50, there is a well kept secret to it. If, if you truly give a damn about each one of those students and you can't fake it, some professors try it and they don't get away with it. But my students know that if they're in a mess at 2:00 AM they call the old man.

Vance Crowe [00:23:58] Have they ever taken you up on

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:23:59] It? Oh, sure. I've gotten, got, went downtown, got 'em outta jail. Really? Well, sure. You know, they, they, they got drunk in Ville and took a pistol on the street and got caught. So somebody had to get 'em outta jail, you know. And but those professors at Penn State and Purdue, they gave a damn about me. They cared what happened to me. And they, they guided me from one step to the next. People said, why didn't you come to Kansas growing up in Pennsylvania and going to school in Indiana? How did you end up in Kansas? Well, the old professor at Purdue had a student here that was a professor here by the time I came on. And they just decided I was coming here. They didn't tell me. I came and interviewed, but it was all cut and dried. I found out later because they gave it damn about me. And I did the same thing for my students.

Vance Crowe [00:25:14] You know, I'm often struck when I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to be. And I think I might have mentioned this at the talk at the Corn and Soybean Expo, that if you go away to school and you don't know, you are very vulnerable to having someone indoctrinate you with ideas. Is, would you agree with that? Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:25:35] Absolutely. I mean, I pretty much knew what I wanted to do from maybe 10th grade on up. I was going to be a, a university professor. I started out in animal science. I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to specialize in. And then I switched to agricultural economics. And my dad and mother lived in fear that I was gonna be a politician. 'cause I've always liked politics.

Vance Crowe [00:26:12] Well, you're very, you're okay with having an opinion that other people don't agree with.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:26:16] Oh, sure. And ag agriculture policy merges political science and economics. And I, as an educator, I can that old alternative consequences model where, you know, here's the problem, here are the alternative solutions. Research shows, here are the consequences of each of those, those solutions. Now we gotta apply value judgements and politics and come up with a policy. And if you're in the, if you're a policy educator, you don't have to get caught up selling your soul to one political party. And I've never done that. And, and that's really important today. 'cause we've become so politicized and so polarized and we gotta go back.

Vance Crowe [00:27:17] The challenge in economics of not partitioning yourself to one party or another is that the parties are, at least it seems to me to be divided along economic lines. Right. One saying, free markets are the best way to achieve the largest amount of good for the largest number of people. And the other saying, regulated markets allow us to have a government that's strong enough to protect the vulnerable. And those seem like divergent things that never will meet. How is that just in a vast oversimplification?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:27:52] Well, I don't know if it's vast, but it is oversimplified. And what the current administration has done is flipped it.

Vance Crowe [00:28:03] Tell me more about that.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:28:04] I can make you a list of issues of where the Republican party stood before Trump and where they stand now. One of the things I said in Wisconsin is we're adding a trillion dollars to the deficit federal budget deficit every year. Does anybody give a damn?

Vance Crowe [00:28:32] No. And in fact, they don't care so much that when I put this out on Twitter, 'cause I thought that was a profound graph that you showed. If you send it to me, I'll put it into this, into this podcast. And they said, that doesn't matter. You know, we, that that, that's, that's an old way of looking in economics. We don't, that's not correct. What do you say to that?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:28:54] Well, they're full of bullshit.

Vance Crowe [00:28:58] They

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:28:58] Don't understand economics. Deficit is a deficit. And at a very minimum, a deficit has to be serviced. Yes, the government prints money, but they have to borrow to back it up. And you gotta pay interest on barred money. You own a savings bond, you are helping fund the federal debt. And you don't buy that savings bond just because you're such a good citizen and you wanna help fund the debt, you expect a return. Now you'll take a lower return because it's the last thing to go down would be the federal government anarchy, so to speak. But I've got a two and a brand new grandson, two and a half years old for only one. I got

Vance Crowe [00:30:03] Congratulations.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:30:04] Only grandchild, the old man when it happened. And I feel awfully guilty because I'm passing that problem onto him.

Vance Crowe [00:30:17] Yeah. The line, the sins of our fathers will be visited on the sun, seems to me to be right here. And, and you know, we can say, Hey, we get to keep grinding out and living in the way that we are having the government structures that we are. But the legacy that you'll leave if you leave that debt, will be the children that hate their ancestors because they left them with a pile of ash.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:30:40] Yeah. You know, grandma and grandpa love their grandkids, but they're consuming for them.

Vance Crowe [00:30:46] Say more. What do you mean?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:30:48] Well, we're borrowing money for our consumption that they're gonna have to service us, or at a minimum, preferably pay it off. But they're gonna at least have to pay the interest on it. And I mean, that's just someday I, and I won't predict when, 'cause I don't know, but there is an end to this crap if we don't clean it up. I mean, it's a trillion dollars a year. We're adding to the federal deficit. We're doing it under a Republican administration. And we had a Republican house and a Republican Senate. And Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and Papa Bush are rolling over in their graves because they stood for fiscal sanity. They stood for a balanced budget. And that chart you looked at really interesting. There was a balanced budget in there. Four years.

Vance Crowe [00:32:02] That's right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:32:03] And you know who was president? It was

Vance Crowe [00:32:05] Bill Clinton. Bill

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:32:05] Clinton. He and Newt Gingrich believed in old fashioned politics where like Tip O'Neal and Ronald Reagan, you had fun like el from daylight to dark, and then you partied together and they, you weren't enemies, you were opponents, you weren't

Vance Crowe [00:32:34] Enemies. You said something the other day that has been rattling around in my brain for the whole week since we spoke. I think it's one of the most important things I've heard in a long time. And I, I'd like you to talk about the genesis of where you heard this, but it was the concept that you fight with enemies, but adversaries make you better. You don't want enemies, you, you want adversaries. I think it was to do with the FARC and the Colombian president.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:33:00] Yes, yes, yes. We, right before I came to, to Wisconsin, the, a retired president of Columbia was here on campus. We have what's called a land and lecture series. It's named after former Governor Al f Landon. And he was governor of Kansas in the thirties. He ran against FDR for president in 36. Didn't even carry Kansas. But he's a great statesman. And this lecture series has been in effect since 1966. Harvard's jealous. We have a better lecture series than they do. Every president since Nixon's been on that lecture series.

Vance Crowe [00:33:48] Wow.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:33:49] While

Vance Crowe [00:33:50] Serving as president or, or after,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:33:51] No, not as, some was in, like Papa Bush was here when he was

Vance Crowe [00:33:56] Probably all the better. They can't say much when they're president. When they're not president, they can

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:33:59] Say things. We had the President Santos from Columbia, who won the Nobel Prize, he inherited a country that had 50 years of war and had this rebel group called Fark. And I mean, people, God knows how many people were murdered, but he brought peace. Santos explained how he did it. And he traveled the world studying the peace process, how you make peace. And one of the things he said, and I've often thought about this, but I never articulated like, like he has, I convinced he said, I convinced Farc that they weren't my enemies, they weren't my adversaries. And if we learn and understand that we're better off all of us. If we make peace, we'll do it. And he got it done. And it, I mean, he went and I, after he said that, I thought, gee, I've been hunting for 30 years how to explain that. And he did it in,

Vance Crowe [00:35:26] And it's, it's brilliant in the sense that when you consider the other side to be your enemy, then you'll do incredible things in your mind to who they are and what their intents are.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:35:39] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:35:39] But when they're your adversary, then you can view it as, we can climb over this mountain, and if I get over this mountain, I'll be better. Yes. It doesn't mean I have to run the mountain down.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:35:49] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:35:49] That's a that was really helpful to me because I have a natural tendency to simplify the world by making things black and white. And I want people to either be on my team or the other team. And that allows you to have a middle ground.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:36:04] I I I, I've taught a lot of Kansas politicians on both sides there and, and some pretty famous names like Bob do, for example,

Vance Crowe [00:36:21] He was one of your students?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:36:22] No, no, no. But he, not in the classroom, but outside the classroom.

Vance Crowe [00:36:26] You knew him.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:36:27] Oh yeah. No, him. Well, I, I rarely go to Washington. I don't stop and see him.

Vance Crowe [00:36:33] Oh.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:36:33] And he's 96 or something like that. Can't hear. He can't see and he can't walk. But other than that, he'd say, I'm in pretty good shape. And you know, when he and I started to work together a little bit in the early seventies, he had the attitude that if I wasn't for him, I was against him. And I explained to him that an educator's role is not to choose upsides, but to put the facts out, to destroy the meth and help everybody understand things better. And then, you know, Senator, if I do that, it's going to help you because I wished I'd have said then, you know, they're not your enemies, they're just your registers. And he, I mean, I can see him yet buying that concept. And he and Teddy Kennedy, for example, worked very close together in the Senate. It, and he, he tells the story that he was majority leader and Reagan was president. And the history book is showing Reagan had a really good head on him.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:38:15] And he went, he was majority leader. Reagan was president and he goes over to see Reagan and he was pretty down 'cause he wasn't getting anything done. So he thought, and he said to Reagan, I can't put your program through the Senate. And Reagan said none of it. And do said, oh no, no. Yeah, not, no, we'll get some of it done. Well how much? And DOL said 75%. Reagan said, that's a hell of a lot better than 74. Now get outta here and get it done. You see that, that's, that's what the president of of Columbia was saying too. You know, you have to compromise. You, you have to understand that even though you and I don't agree on something, we're not enemies. We're, we just have a difference of opinion. One of us is probably wrong, but we don't know if we throw red swamp.

Vance Crowe [00:39:34] It's interesting when you're embroiled in a, in a controversy or in a situation because you start to believe that anybody that leaves your camp, they're in apostate. And I, I remember thinking that we were in unique times as far as how tumultuous the government was and how much people hated the president until I went to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield where they have a hall that you walk through and they have all the editorial cartoons and Oh God, they hated him.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:40:09] Oh my. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:40:10] And there is, they were every bit as vitriolic to him as what you see today. So the question that I have is, are we compromising less than we did in the past?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:40:21] Why

Vance Crowe [00:40:21] Does it feel like right now is we're on the precipice? Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:40:25] We, we are compromising less than any time in my lifetime. Now that doesn't mean that we're compromising less than any time in the history of the, of the country. You know, we, the the time that we compromised the least was when we went to war, civil war, the 20 years before the Civil War was terrible.

Vance Crowe [00:41:03] 20 years. It, it was up to that.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:41:06] Well we had four presidents. Yeah. Four before the Civil War that only served on term. We

Vance Crowe [00:41:12] Never hear about that in, in the history books. No, you just hear about Lincoln Conflict. Civil War.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:41:19] No. Yeah. We had four presidents that were one termers before Lincoln. And Lincoln was, he got reelected, but then of course was shot shortly thereafter. And we're still paying for that today.

Vance Crowe [00:41:37] You really think so?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:41:38] Oh, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:41:38] Tell me more.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:41:40] Well, the civil rights battle would've been, it, it's probably never going to be settled, but it would be much less vicious than it is today

Vance Crowe [00:41:57] If we hadn't had the Civil War.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:41:59] No. If we had, if Lincoln hadn't have been shot.

Vance Crowe [00:42:01] Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:42:02] Andrew Johnson was a disaster. And we, we were enemies where Lincoln understood enemy and adversaries Lincoln. Lincoln and Grant understood that the quicker we bring the South back in, the quicker we treat them as citizens, the better off we'll all be. And I mean, Lincoln had it all thought out and was ready to read his second inaugural address. Malor Nun was the main theme.

Vance Crowe [00:42:55] I feel way out of my depth here. I, I'm now realizing that my understanding of the Civil War is like paper mache version of, of the, of the statue that really is there because I know almost nothing about it. And I grew up in the land of Lincoln. I mean, I knew about the battles and I knew about Gettysburg and I, I knew we treated them badly all the way up to the end of the war. But I didn't really consider that after Lincoln was shot, that

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:43:24] We went back to treating them badly

Vance Crowe [00:43:28] And never realized that

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:43:29] We never, you know, they were, if Lincoln would've lived, they'd have gotten the vote in his second term

Vance Crowe [00:43:37] That would've changed things.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:43:39] He, he, he just, he was a genius and he was very much a humanitarian and, and people would follow him. And then he, he had to most sense, the number was unbelievable. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:44:00] Yeah. He even transcends time.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:44:03] Yes. Well, he could, we were talking earlier about humor in his speech. If you see the audience getting nervous or frowning, it's time for some humor. And that relaxes them. Then they open their minds. And that's why, by the way, that gal's name was Savage, Ms. Savage. And I, I lost track of her. I wanted to tell her how much she taught me and what my speaking fee was and stuff like that. You know, and I'll never ever forget what she taught me. And 'cause it works.

Vance Crowe [00:44:54] You know, you're describing having people guide you and be your mentors. And I, I can think of many in my life that taught me things that you're like, I use what they told me there every day. Did you ever mess up along the way? Did you ever give

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:45:11] Advice? Oh, did I ever, what?

Vance Crowe [00:45:13] Did you ever give advice or give some guidance that now you look back and you think, oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:45:17] Oh yeah. Well I I told you I did the lobby work for the university for four years. Yeah. I was absolute disaster at it. I hated it with a passion. Because

Vance Crowe [00:45:33] Why? You're in politics. You're in agriculture

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:45:36] Economics. I was, I was born to be an educator. I firmly believe that. And yes, there's some education in lobby work, but there's also, it's pretty hard to describe

Vance Crowe [00:45:58] Horse trading.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:45:59] Yes. But it's not all honorable either.

Vance Crowe [00:46:01] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:46:05] And I have a hard time, even though it might help my cause of teaching people stuff that isn't true

Vance Crowe [00:46:25] Or letting them come to conclusions knowing that they're not looking at the full picture.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:46:30] Yeah. You know, playing on their ignorance. It's, and I, the system needs lobbyists don't misunderstand me. And there are a lot of honorable people in, in the lobby business, but it's ripe for, and horse trading don't have to be dishonorable, but it sure can be. And you know, I wanted to go back to the classroom awful quickly.

Vance Crowe [00:47:03] So as the consummate educator, what is the thing that you really wanted to impart on these juniors and seniors in this class that you had that would prepare them to be a part of the world?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:47:17] Well, I wanted them to understand the political process and how to participate in it. I, I wanted them to be able to separate fact from myth. Because you see in the political world, fact and myth are identical because myth is what people think is fact. But it isn't, you know, a lot of Kansans think we have the highest sales tax in the country. We don't. It's fifth, I think it's too damn high from a value judgment standpoint, but it's not. Number one, people think that sales taxes are regressive. They hurt poor folks more than wealthy folks. Well, yes. But they don't have to. You can exempt the basic necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter, health, and take the regressivity out of the sales stuff. So things like that, that are fairly simple to understand, if somebody will take the time to explain it to you, and the system will function. But the political world's not, isn't based on efficiency, but it is based on, and at the end as a decision's made, it, it, it, it's based on factual information and the decisions are made by honorable people.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:49:01] And you gotta work in that direction. The Santos, when he was here, said at the end, there was one word that guided him through the whole process. And that word was compromise. And two of my students were sitting on either side of me and, and one of 'em said, don't let your buttons pop off. 'cause that's just what you taught us. See that made my day.

Vance Crowe [00:49:33] Yeah, of course

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:49:34] There's two ways to make public decisions, compromise or dictatorship. There's nothing in between.

Vance Crowe [00:49:40] That's interesting that those two are the dichotomy. Yes. I, I think a lot about dichotomies. Yes. And try and say, if you have one concept, what is its equal and opposite.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:49:52] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:49:52] Force.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:49:53] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:49:53] And you told me this the other night about compromise and, and authoritarian. And you're right. The challenge with compromise though is that the herd, the large group of people, you know, Nietzche said that, that they will always try and gravitate towards equality, where then no single man can rise up. And then you don't have the great works of art and you don't have the great, because greatness comes from one person separating away and, and building something that was very difficult they had to do alone. And so when I think about this compromise and authoritarian, I think it's easy to imagine a soft world where compromise is the best. But you can also imagine where this individual force in, in the world is also allows great things to be produced.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:50:52] Well, we throw the term around benevolent dictator. The only benevolent dictator I've ever known is me.

Vance Crowe [00:51:05] Yeah, me too. Yeah. You're not, you're

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:51:09] Not, you know.

Vance Crowe [00:51:10] No, I could, I do, I don't want that kind of power. In fact, I'm, I'm very afraid of getting that level of power.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:51:15] Yeah. You see, so compromise does not prohibit greatness. In fact, the real great political leaders have been the great compromisers.

Vance Crowe [00:51:31] Who are some of the great ones in history that you reflect back on and think are particularly interesting?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:51:38] Well, the, in my lifetime, the, I i clearly the greatest one would be Harry Truman.

Vance Crowe [00:51:46] That's, I, this is another one. I I have no idea anything about his backstory. I could barely pick him out of a lineup.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:51:54] He, he was a piece of work, let's put it that way. He, if you go to Kansas City and you go on, I forget what street, but you can go past his habitry where he went broke

Vance Crowe [00:52:12] Making hats.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:52:14] Habitry.

Vance Crowe [00:52:14] Isn't that a hat maker?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:52:15] No, that's a, a retail clothing store.

Vance Crowe [00:52:20] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:52:22] It is what he had. And they called it a habian.

Vance Crowe [00:52:24] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:52:25] He and Eddie Jacobson had it together, and they were, were our soldier buddies. And of course Eddie was Jewish and, and Harry was a, I believe a Presbyterian or Episcopalian, I can't remember which, Protestant. And, but they were good buddies. And of course Harry was the f he recognized the state of Israel within 24 hours after they

Vance Crowe [00:52:57] Were formed.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:52:59] And he always said that was, you know, Eddie, Eddie wouldn't shut up if he hadn't have done it.

Vance Crowe [00:53:05] So,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:53:06] But then he told Eddie, no, I'm not flying their damn flag over my capital. You know, so, but he was a Missouri farmer. He farmed for 10 years. He was an accident, but he understood human nature and he had lots of fortitude. He made the toughest decision any president's ever made. And that was to drop the atom bomb on Japan. I personally asked him when I was a, I actually spent some time with him when I was a college student. I personally asked him why he did it. And his answer was in more, there's no such thing as men and women and kids. It's all human beings. And if I hadn't have dropped the bomb on Japan, there've been a lot more American soldiers killed. And maybe if they would've invaded us, there'd have been a lot more women and kids killed. And so I had to draw the line, and if I'd have let the thing go on without dropping the bomb, there've been a lot more people killed, a lot more Japanese killed. And he was very comfortable explaining it.

Vance Crowe [00:54:41] My, my mentor, he is this 99-year-old man. He lives out in Manhattan, in New York. And he was on a, a ship he had already deployed in the European theater, but they packed him up and then he was headed for Japan when Truman dropped the bomb. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:54:57] And

Vance Crowe [00:54:57] He later met a kamikaze pilot who said the same thing that Pete had said for all those years. Pete said, Truman hadn't dropped the bomb, I'd be dead. Yeah. And the kamikaze pilot said the same thing.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:55:07] Yes, exactly. And I learned to know Truman's nephew fairly well. He's gone now. His name was Harry a Truman, and he was a farmer in on the Kansas, Missouri border. And I looked out and I was doing an extension meeting there and looked down and I thought, my God, there says Harry Truman. I mean this guy was a spitting image, the old man. And I went up to him and I told him that I thought he was Harry Truman. He said, I am. I said, what? He said, my name's Harry a Truman. And he was my uncle. And he was at Potsdam. He was in the German theater. And when the president went to Potsdam to meet with Stalin and Churchill, he brought his nephew from the field into Potsdam. And then when the conference was over, and basically they went, they divided up Europe, which is what they did at Potsdam. Harry took his nephew to the airport, and Harry came home on a, on a ship. And Harry Young Harry was coming home to get married and then was gonna be shipped out to Japan. And he said to his uncle, the president, you don't know how I dread going to Japan.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:56:41] And the president put his hand on the nephew's shoulder and said, son, don't worry. Nobody's going to Japan.

Vance Crowe [00:56:50] Whoa.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:56:51] And he, then they parted. And so that the decision to drop the bomb was made the night before.

Vance Crowe [00:57:02] Wow. You know, the, it's one thing to make the decision, but I I I, I struggle to even imagine what it would be like to go from not having that power to being handed that awesome power.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:57:19] See, and he didn't know it. He didn't know the night Roosevelt died. Oppenheimer, who was one of the developers

Vance Crowe [00:57:32] Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:57:34] Briefed Truman. And Truman had no idea there was an atom bomb being developed.

Vance Crowe [00:57:40] Oh my God. That would be, I never realized that dropped

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:57:43] It dropped right on his lap.

Vance Crowe [00:57:46] It would be like giving the power of the gods of Zeus. Not just in the fact that you're now president. No.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:57:52] But

Vance Crowe [00:57:53] Now you have this awesome power in, in the most terrifying of ways. You know, and if, if you think about the, the situation that we got into in World War II came as a result of not being able to forgive the people from World War I.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:58:08] Exactly. They were the enemy, not the adversary.

Vance Crowe [00:58:12] That's right. And that Santos

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:58:15] Is right.

Vance Crowe [00:58:15] All, I mean, even France's armaments and the way they prepared for World War II was all a hangover from the rage they felt over World War I. Yeah. And, and it was a bad war and people did real bad things in World War I,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:58:30] But

Vance Crowe [00:58:30] That was like an infant. If you think about modern society developing consciousness, you know, as we've developed stronger and stronger armaments, we didn't suddenly become more mature. We No. Just had people out there that were now able to inflict vastly more harm. It's like a boy reaching puberty. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:58:49] Before

Vance Crowe [00:58:50] His mind has, and he becomes vicious and violent is very dangerous.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:58:55] Yeah. It, and, and by the way, Ben Harry Truman never went to college. And it is, it is in the top five. And, and no matter what list you see from historians, he's in the top five

Vance Crowe [00:59:15] For the, for the viewers that don't know, I've got Ben over here. You can't see him. He's off stage. But he actually was my driver to K State. He's an exceptional guy. And, and we were having a, a chance to talk with him before Ben dropped outta school to start an app company. I'll have him on the podcast at some point.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:59:30] Yeah, you should do that.

Vance Crowe [00:59:31] He's very clever guy.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:59:32] Yeah. You can tell that. But you know Harry about he, he never went to college, but he read every book in Independence, Missouri Public Library.

Vance Crowe [00:59:43] One of the greatest gifts that the, the gods or whatever can bestow upon a human being is a love of reading.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:59:49] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:59:49] Because if it's not a burden to you Yes.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:59:52] Then

Vance Crowe [00:59:52] You can go and discover wisdom that would've otherwise taken you a lifetime to learn. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [00:59:57] 1 1, 1 of the real traumas I'm going through now is I'm losing my eyesight and I can't read very well.

Vance Crowe [01:00:04] Oh.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:00:05] And it doesn't, listening to it is not the same as reading it.

Vance Crowe [01:00:11] Yes.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:00:12] I'm learning to listen to books, but it's, it's a struggle.

Vance Crowe [01:00:15] What makes it a struggle for you?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:00:18] Well, I, you know, when I'm reading something and I want to think about it, I stop where you gotta reach over and turn a damn machine off and, and then you lose your place on the, it's just not, you lose control.

Vance Crowe [01:00:36] Right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:00:37] So to speak.

Vance Crowe [01:00:38] One thought I have for you is they make headphones now. Yes. I don't know if you listen to head that when you take it out, it pauses it.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:00:44] Oh, I didn't know that.

Vance Crowe [01:00:46] So it, it's, I used to struggle with this. I'm the same way. I was a voracious reader and then I started to realize that the advent of podcasts and audio books is the equivalent of Gutenberg's printing press. Because now you can have ideas that used to be only accessible to those that were both literate and wanted to read. And now they could listen. But I take your point, like there are certain books, if I'm trying to read philosophy for instance, where I can't, I'm not just trying to crank through the story. Yes. I'm trying to understand the concepts is very diff my brain processes it differently. Yeah. When I listen

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:01:24] To it, I can still read, but it's very slow. So my mind gets ahead of my eyesight.

Vance Crowe [01:01:30] And describe that for me because I don't know what it's like to have my eyes grow old. Is it that you have trouble focusing on the letters

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:01:37] Or? No, I have what's called dry eyes and I don't make enough of tears. And so then it gets foggy.

Vance Crowe [01:01:48] It'd be very frustrating.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:01:49] Yeah. Now if I pick this up and I have light behind it, I can read it, but then I look up and look at you and I, if I didn't know who you were, I'd wonder, you see, because there's a fog in between

Vance Crowe [01:02:13] Is it's,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:02:14] I don't drive for, for, for example anymore. It's not safe. I ran over a student two years ago.

Vance Crowe [01:02:21] Everything. Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:02:22] Oh yeah. I just scared the hell out of it. But, so

Vance Crowe [01:02:27] We think about the, it's easy for us to point out and it's probably time immemorial of, of what happens to the human body as they get older. Right. People as they get older, your eyes are getting dry or you maybe struggle to walk. What were the things that happened to you getting older that you didn't expect that was positive for you?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:02:49] I think I have better judgment. I've got, there is such a thing as wisdom. And wisdom comes with age. Now some people are wiser at 20 than others are at 80. But on the average you are wiser at 80 than you are at 20 because you learn from experience also. And I don't find this with all my fellow old boys. I'm more tolerant than I was when I was 20.

Vance Crowe [01:03:30] Tell me more about that.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:03:31] Well, I'm more willing to listen to the other person's point of view. I'm more, each day the world gets more com I learn more. The world gets more complex. Learning's tough. If you're ignorant, life's easier. At least for a while.

Vance Crowe [01:03:57] Well, it's like, it's like taking on debt, right? Yeah. It's, you can do it for a long, long time.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:04:02] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:04:02] But you will pay the, pay the bill at some point you'll

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:04:05] That's right. It's like a federal deficit. That's

Vance Crowe [01:04:07] Right. Chickens

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:04:08] Are coming home to roost someday.

Vance Crowe [01:04:12] So I wanna go back to politics a little bit because you and I had a conversation and everyone sitting around us was shocked at something that both you and I knew, which was the senators in the United States state senators that get sent up to the, the, the federal level used to be selected by the legislatures and not the voters.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:04:38] That's right.

Vance Crowe [01:04:40] This is an interesting thing because right now what we have are two sets of elections. You either vote for your representative, your US representative, or your US senator and the US senators get put there for six years. And as far as you, as the public can tell, it's like we vote for two guys for six years and a bunch of people for, you know, for

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:04:58] Two,

Vance Crowe [01:04:59] For two years. But that wasn't set up that way. How was it set up before?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:05:03] Well, it was, it's always been two and six, but the six was not a public decision. It was once removed from a public decision because the legislature elected the senators. Right. Not the public. And they didn't serve us long a time. They still had six year terms. 'cause that's in the constitution. But

Vance Crowe [01:05:52] Those roles were much more, you were supposed to have been a professional that then the government says, you represent our state, the state government says we wanna send you there. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:06:03] For

Vance Crowe [01:06:03] Six years you're gonna go there. Yeah. And the reason they had six years was so that they didn't have to be accountable to the whims. The constantly changing pressure of the voters. Exactly. Let the US representatives represent what's going on right now and the senators go there and say, represent the state's interests. And in my opinion, and I'm sure there were valid, good reasons for doing it, but if you think about this in a hypothetical exercise, having a group of people that are serving the, at the federal level that are just responsible to the state itself means that you keep that Federalist Republic. Exactly. You keep the idea that the state is separate from the nation. And if you go this other way, we're all just one large country. And the states have minor differences.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:06:53] The house is called the People's House, but now the senate's the people's house too, except it's just you, you live there longer.

Vance Crowe [01:07:04] Yeah. You have more power.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:07:05] Yeah. Than, you know, I, I catch myself as nothing. I dislike more than to hear people say, well, we never did it that way before. Or the good old days if we, you know, I'm diabetic. If I was in the good old days, I'd be dead. So the hell with the good old, you know, so, but you, you learn things from the past. And so I don't like to talk about we need to go back there, but we need to learn some things. We need, we, I I wanna a speaker and a president that behaves like, and works like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill, who were as far apart politically as you could get. But they were good friends. They were fellow Irishmen and they worked together. And I heard Senator Monaghan tell the story one time he was a Harvard professor and a US senator both, which is unusual, but, and he was an authority on how to take care of old people, social security, et cetera. And he went over to see Tip one day, who was the liberal speaker of the house from Boston and said, if we don't do something, social security's gonna go broken between seven and nine years.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:08:46] And as Monaghan tell, told the story, tip picked up the phone and said, Mr. President Monahans in here. And he says, social security's going broke. We don't want that to happen under our watch, do we? Oh no. Get over here. So Monahan and, and O'Neill goes over to see the president within an hour they had appointed the Greenspan commission went out in the Rhodes Garden and Tip said, whatever they come up with, the Democrats will back. And Reagan said, whatever they come up with, the Republicans will back Social Security still solving for 30 years. That's where the government's supposed to work.

Vance Crowe [01:09:31] Now what change that made it so that it doesn't work that way?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:09:34] Well, all the political scientists will make that forever. Some say it goes back to Watergate. Others say it goes back to, we'll never know who won the 2000 election. And the Democrats think that the Republicans stole it. And the Democrats also think that they were paying the price for getting Nixon. And this just made it more polarized. Others blame it on social media. We don't know political science are gonna study that forever, but we've been polarized before. So it gets back to when we were talking about pre-Civil War. We can work our way outta this, but we wanted, God will wanna do it. And again, it gets back to humor. We've lost our sense of humor. You know, Trump doesn't shake Pelosi's hand at the state of the Union, and then when he's done, she tears up his speech. Now, as a grandpa, I'd like to spank both the two year olds. You know, it's, and the great story about Reagan and, and O'Neill, when Tip turned 75, Reagan had a birthday party for him at the White House.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:11:10] And

Vance Crowe [01:11:11] You would never see that now.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:11:12] Oh no. God no. And it was a big party and Reagan got up and he was as clever as, I mean, he could turn a phrase better than, I mean, there just wasn't anybody better at it and a lot of them were original with him. The more we study him, the smarter he gets, by the way. And he gets up and he proposed to toast and he said, Mr. Speaker, if I didn't, if I had a ticket to heaven and you didn't have one too, I'd throw mine away and go to hell with you. Now, can you see Pelosi and Trump doing that?

Vance Crowe [01:11:52] No. No.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:11:53] I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:11:53] No chance.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:11:54] Now Tip and Ronnie, were adults, not two year olds, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:12:02] Yeah. And they're, you know, for all of the, the challenges that large corporations have, I've had a chance to be in the room with executives. Yeah. And the corporations that run the best are the ones where you have people at the top that are adversaries, intense adversaries, extremely disagree with one another, and yet they walk outta their arm. In arm. It's, it's happy go lucky. It's, it's, and I see the same division that happens right now in politics going on in corporations. Yeah. And, and I think

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:12:38] It's, it's part of the human element now.

Vance Crowe [01:12:41] Yes. It

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:12:41] Goes on right here.

Vance Crowe [01:12:44] I, I think in part, and your, your thing about saying we've lost our sense of humor in, in a big way. I think it's because people feel a calling to their tribe to be puritanical. You know, to, to the extent that, you know, any deviation from the group means that yeah, you're in apostate. Not only should we throw you out, but everything that you've done is no longer even considered a part of your historical record.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:13:12] Well, you know, people say all those damn politicians do is compromise. They got a yellow streak up their back. They used to say that. Now they say they won't compromise.

Vance Crowe [01:13:23] Right. And they claim they want them to. Yes. But to want them to means they have to be willing to give up on your side.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:13:29] Yeah. You gotta give.

Vance Crowe [01:13:32] So in this world of puritanical views, this is something I've, I wanted to ask you. You have a very edgy sense of humor. It's, it's, you're right there on the edge with your, with the things that you say that I think if I said what you said, I, I would face tremendous pushback. It's not that you are sexist or racist or anything like that, but you say things that are edgy, you're looking at me like you don't know what I'm talking about.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:14:02] Yeah. It's, here's the reason,

Vance Crowe [01:14:04] Because you have gray hair.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:14:05] That's right.

Vance Crowe [01:14:07] And it, I, I could see that people assume good intention.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:14:11] See, my co younger colleagues will say to me, how do you get away with telling farmers what you tell 'em? I say, well, number one, it's, I just tell 'em the facts. And if I screw up, I admit it. If I don't get it right, I tell 'em. But they know I've spent all these years on their behalf that I've worked hard with 'em and that I want them to succeed. And, you know, I'll tell 'em sometimes I respect you too much to feed you a lot of bullshit. I'm gonna tell it to you. Not the way it is, but the way I think it is. I could be wrong. My wife says her husband is often wrong, but never a doubt.

Vance Crowe [01:15:03] And

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:15:05] So farmers members respect that. And, you know, occasionally it even surprises me what I get away with. And I'll say to somebody, I don't understand how I get away with that. And they all say respect age.

Vance Crowe [01:15:28] Yeah. And I would say, you're probably right. I hadn't, I wouldn't have thought of this as a part of it, but you are telling people things they don't want to hear. Exactly. At least in the room that I was in in Wisconsin, the there, those were farmers that were not hearing, Hey, you're protected forever and things are gonna go well. And look at the green pastures ahead of us.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:15:46] I told 'em the facts.

Vance Crowe [01:15:48] Yeah. And, and I think that somebody that's willing to do that to a group of people and get them to swallow that medicine, that's so rare. It's so unusual that they respect it more. Now

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:16:02] I, ironically, I did that when I was his age.

Vance Crowe [01:16:06] So it's,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:16:06] And I was al you know, my, the first 10 years around here were pretty rocky.

Vance Crowe [01:16:11] Really?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:16:12] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:16:12] What price did you pay for being honest?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:16:14] Well, I didn't, I don't think I paid a price. 'cause I had a president and a dean that stood behind me. But my first assignment here was to teach farmers the tax issue. The state was in a real uproar over taxes. And farmers were absolutely convinced that they were paying too damn much property taxes and professional people weren't paying enough income tax. And everybody argued taxes were too high. The first thing I said, when I did 305 hour seminars in three years,

Vance Crowe [01:16:53] 305 hour seminars, seminar, Texas

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:16:55] State been every, was every county three times. And, and first words outta my mouth were, my taxes are too damn high, but I don't know about yours. And let loose 'em go up a little. They got know they got a little itchy. And then I said, that's not, if we argue for five hours, what, whether taxes are too damn high, we're gonna need 10 and we still won't know anything. What's the problem? And that's the first thing you do when you are a public policy educator. You gotta get the problem defined accurately. The problem was, what should the tax mix b to pay for government? How much from property, how much from sales, how much from income,

Vance Crowe [01:17:54] And how much should they be forced to cut or, or how much should they be the government

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:17:58] Be? Well, no, I just did taxes.

Vance Crowe [01:17:59] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:17:59] And they were, I assumed that what they were spending was acceptable. 'cause I didn't wanna argue about spending, I wanted to teach them the tax situation.

Vance Crowe [01:18:09] Okay,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:18:10] Now that's another issue. How much should they spend? And I laid it all out. You cut the property tax 10%, how much you gotta increase the sales tax or the income tax. Who's paying the property tax? Who's paying the income tax? But I never once told 'em what the proper tax mix was. And within that three years, by taking the hottest issue in the state and leveling with 'em, my wife said to me one night, and she's very astute, do you realize how much you get away with? And she had just been to one of the meetings and she made a critical comment about what I said. And some old farmer tackled her. I'm sure his finger at her, you know, you listen to what he says, he knows what he's talking about.

Vance Crowe [01:19:15] Wow.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:19:16] And he's got the guts that lead on the table. I had somebody handed me a note in Wisconsin, I don't know who it was, didn't sign his name. He handed it to me and took off. And I almost got tears in my eyes when I read it. I, it said, thanks for being honest. That's all it said.

Vance Crowe [01:19:45] That's really powerful. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:19:46] What,

Vance Crowe [01:19:47] What else could you want from somebody to say no, they couldn't, to be grateful for your honesty. That's the,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:19:51] To

Vance Crowe [01:19:51] Be grateful for the best gift that you have is your honesty.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:19:53] And, and people, I, especially now, and I see a turn, I mean, when the great red state of Kansas starts to turn a little blue, and that's not a partisan statement. If it was, when California starts to turn a little red,

Vance Crowe [01:20:13] Change means something.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:20:15] Yes. But we elected the Democrat governor, now get this, this is the great conservative state of Kansas, so-called narrow-minded farmers. We just sent a congresswoman to Washington, who's a Native American lesbian, married and has two kids and has a law degree from Harvard and is also a veteran.

Vance Crowe [01:20:53] Wow.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:20:56] Now, my California liberal friend said they think I'm lying to 'em. And I said, well check.

Vance Crowe [01:21:04] Was she a democrat then or a Republican?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:21:06] Oh, she's a hard Democrat.

Vance Crowe [01:21:07] Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:21:10] And tougher nails. She come in my office one day and, and told me she was gonna get elected. And I told her she's crazier than hell.

Vance Crowe [01:21:22] Really?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:21:23] Yeah. She's never let me forget that either.

Vance Crowe [01:21:27] Good, good for her.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:21:29] I mean, when she told me who she was, I, I,

Vance Crowe [01:21:35] So when politicians come by through here, it's because they want to know about agricultural policies. Yes. So somebody sits down here, they're from the city, they've had an Ivy League education, they, they, they're not familiar with agriculture. How do you lay this out for them?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:21:53] How do I what,

Vance Crowe [01:21:54] How do you lay out agriculture for them? I mean that you only have an hour or two hours or three hours. What are you trying to get done?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:22:00] I, you know, I begin, I basically tell them how risky agriculture is. And I'll start with the weather and insects. And, and then I end with, and then there's the politicians that set policy that farmers have gotta live within. And that's what you're all about. And you know, I tell my students the first day, I can, I feel sorry for you 'cause you've gotta sit through 30 of these damn lectures and we can sum this all up with one four letter word. Of course. They won't be getting to, they wonder what that four letter word. And then I say, well, it's clean. It's called risk. There's no occupation. More risky. Really. When you look at the, and now not only do you have weather risk, you've got, you had political risk. Now you've got international political risk because we export 25% of everything we produce. And people that don't. I just had the Senator Roberts is retiring, which is, he's 83, you know, I understand it. But God help us because we're turning in 50 years of seniority.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:23:32] And he's the only person ever shared both the House and Senate Ag committees. And I mean, he's, he knows exactly what he's doing. I I just read the thought, but, and we got everybody's dog wants to, to take his place. And I, you know, I just had a young lady in here the other day that she doesn't know a bull from a steer, but she's smart. And I, I, I got more done in two hours than normal.

Vance Crowe [01:24:11] Yeah. You know, that challenge that you, you know, not knowing a bull from a steer. And that just is the very, very, very tip of the iceberg on agriculture and the people that are setting the policies for how most of the land in the United States will be utilized. What level of education do they have? How sophisticated is their thinking as they set up this policy?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:24:36] Well, they learn, most of them have goodwill. I still will defend politicians. I think they pretty much reflect society and they wanna learn, you know, I helped teach Mike Pompeo ag policy, for example. He's now Secretary of State. The, and one of the things Pompeo said to me when I was working with him is, well, I know what you did for Glickman. Where do you think I'll end up? I said, I have no idea, but I think you'll be in the headlines. And I never dreamed you'd be Secretary of State.

Vance Crowe [01:25:27] Yeah. Wow.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:25:31] And, you know, I don't necessarily agree with his policies. I didn't necessarily agree with Glickman policies, but that's, I irrelevant. Having the ability to teach people like that is awfully, awfully rewarding. And now you turn it the other way. I tell my student assistants, now that kid back there is dumb as a stone, but he's working his butt off and you're gonna work your butt off to help him. Now that kid over there is smart as a whip, but it's measuring an ville, which is the beer place downtown. And you don't need to help him. He won't take care of help. Anyhow. Now, one of the most influential students that I ever had in ag policy, and I won't name him because it's, I don't have his permission to do it, but I gave him a D so that he could graduate. And he is a very influential ag lobbyist today. And as I told his mother a hundred times, he will grow up.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:06] And he has

Vance Crowe [01:27:07] Wow. You get to know your students' mothers at times.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:12] Well, yeah, a lot of them.

Vance Crowe [01:27:14] I don't think any of my college professors did. My graduate school was different, but Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:18] That's

Vance Crowe [01:27:19] Great. That's, that's,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:20] Well, I had to prove that because I went to the countryside in extension.

Vance Crowe [01:27:27] Oh, so you would've had people coming up to you saying, my son's in your class.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:30] Oh, sure. It happens all the time.

Vance Crowe [01:27:32] Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:33] Yeah. Or what are we gonna do with this?

Vance Crowe [01:27:37] Do you think that, that, as I'm listening to you talk about extension and the fact that you had to be on the front lines as probably something that kept you much more grounded as a professor, kept you outta the ivory tower.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:27:51] Oh, yes. Yeah. I don't like that term ivory tower.

Vance Crowe [01:27:55] Yeah. Because you don't want to be in it or because you don't think it's true. Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:28:00] A lot of it's not true. And it ridicules basic research.

Vance Crowe [01:28:07] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:28:08] I don't wanna do basic research, but I sure as hell want people doing it. It's got a good head on 'em.

Vance Crowe [01:28:17] And you think the university system research is important in light of private research that you

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:28:25] Could Yes, because we don't have an, we only have one ax to grind here. It's called education. We're not selling any product where our function is to educate the, the kids in the state of Kansas and the farmers and so forth. And we can be objective. That doesn't say we always are, but we can be where when you're selling pet food, by doing research on pet food for, for science diets, you can't be objective. 'cause your job is to sell science diet.

Vance Crowe [01:29:08] Yeah. And I, I studied diplomacy in graduate school. Yeah. And they used to always say, where you sit at the table determines where you stand on issues. And I, I always thought that that was a clever thing. I don't think money corrupts Absolutely. I know many science researchers. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:29:25] But

Vance Crowe [01:29:25] I can imagine that if what you wanna do is keep doing research sitting in your, your, in your lab. And what it takes for you to do that is to not tell, not tell the news straight, but to give them what they want to hear. That can probably happen. Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:29:41] And that's why we're gonna have to have a debate fairly soon. What's the role of public education at the college level? The USDA research budget that goes out to land grant universities. If you discount it for inflation, it's probably a 10th of what it was 50 years ago. And that's being substituted by private research. Now. There's a role for both, but the real basics requires complete objectivity. And you can't be objective when somebody with an X to grind or a product to sell is paying the bill. When I first started doing those tax meetings that I talked about, the county agriculture agents in each county would put 'em on and they're part of extension also. And they would say, well, I'll get a sponsor and I don't want any damn sponsors. This is a university function. We'll pay the bill or we'll charge admission, but I'm not gonna have a Farm Bureau sponsor it.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:31:13] Then that's gonna piss the farmer's Union off. You know, you gotta, there's a certain part of it that's got to be uncorruptible.

Vance Crowe [01:31:27] I know this feeling myself because I worked for Monsanto and I absolutely never stood up and said anything I didn't believe. However, there are definitely things I'm good enough at dancing on the stage that if somebody asks me a question, that giving my real answer is going to cause problems. I the temptation to avoid giving true answers there is too great because you've got your family and your insurance and, and you know, you used the four letter word before risk, you know, by taking the risk to go out on my own. The thing that I bought with that risk

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:32:07] Was freedom.

Vance Crowe [01:32:07] Was freedom. Terrifying. Completely scary freedom. But it,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:32:16] It's why I'm a college professor.

Vance Crowe [01:32:19] Do you think college professors feel free? You're do you've seen rarefied air?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:32:23] I Oh, you pretty much, it's getting, we're losing some of it

Vance Crowe [01:32:27] To what?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:32:29] To private enterprise, because the public don't wanna pay the bill too much. Basic research is being done by private enterprise.

Vance Crowe [01:32:41] Interesting. What, what, what was done by the public that's now done in the private?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:32:49] Well, from, from an economic standpoint or from an ag policy standpoint, there is less analysis, basic economic analysis being done on farm programs, for example, by universities and more by farm organizations. And weed and corn like to fight. You know, I'm surprised that when to see that corn and soy keep having that expo together.

Vance Crowe [01:33:32] You're surprised by that?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:33:33] Oh yeah. That's

Vance Crowe [01:33:34] How, well, that's because they pair off. Like they're, they're not, that's not, you're not giving up, you know, if you do wheat and corn, you're right. Those do compete. But

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:33:44] You, you

Vance Crowe [01:33:44] Gotta, well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:33:44] But corn, so we compete too.

Vance Crowe [01:33:46] Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:33:47] Not as much. But not, and I often joke when Nancy, how come it's not soybean corn? And she says it rhymes better corn first.

Vance Crowe [01:33:58] Yeah, I bet that that's funny. So

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:34:01] Let's, it's rare you don't see much of that.

Vance Crowe [01:34:06] I've never seen that before. Actually.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:34:08] Actually, I think that may be the only one.

Vance Crowe [01:34:10] The one the Wisconsin Corn and Soybean Conference Yeah. Expo. That, that may be right. And it probably is. Nancy is an exceptional person. Oh my

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:34:18] God.

Vance Crowe [01:34:19] I ran into her, I met her years before, and she was just a little lady sitting on a bus that I sat next to on a tour of a, of a farm. And that's, you know, I, I talk about this quite a bit and I wonder if you feel the same way. I used to just talk with people randomly on the, on the bus or on the plane because I was bored. And I, I am extroverted. I like it.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:34:43] Now.

Vance Crowe [01:34:44] I get this sense that every single person that starts a conversation with me is like a character in a movie that you think it's a throwaway line, but you better listen because it might be on the test later. Yeah. And I, I've become almost obsessive about, like, if somebody starts to say something to me, I turn and I like, because something like Nancy, I met her for 20 minutes on a bus. Four years later I run into her and she introduces me to you. And she's excited to introduce us. But it's only because we had a conversation four years before on a bus for 20 minutes.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:35:20] She told me about you before I came.

Vance Crowe [01:35:22] Oh, really?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:35:23] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:35:24] Huh. So let's, I wanna give you a chance to give a five minute crash course on what people living in the city should, should think about when they think about agriculture. I, I mean, you can go longer than five minutes, but we've got a little bit of time.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:35:42] Well, there was a city. Yes. There was a city, there was a book written one time by Willard Cochrane, who was a professor at University of Minnesota in ag economics and was called the City Man's Guide to the Farm Problem.

Vance Crowe [01:35:56] The city Man's Guide

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:35:57] The Farm Problem. And so I, this is not possible, but I wish they could all read that book. I

Vance Crowe [01:36:07] Have a book club. The, the, the podcast reads a book every, every month.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:36:12] No, I haven't read that.

Vance Crowe [01:36:13] All right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:36:14] It's in the library somewhere.

Vance Crowe [01:36:16] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:36:17] It's old, but it's still,

Vance Crowe [01:36:18] That's the point of the bobcat. The book club. We're trying to read books that we wouldn't ordinarily read.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:36:22] Yeah. Okay. It, it's, and he was a very brilliant ag economist from University of Minnesota. But what he tried to do with that book was to get people to understand the risk,

Vance Crowe [01:36:38] The risk of farming,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:36:38] Farming. And that the only thing more important than food was water. And really actually have to obviously have both. He also taught that that doesn't mean farmers should have special privilege. Now some farmers tend to think because they produce food, they should have special privilege, or they love this, they have this son, don't cuss a farmer with your mouth full or something like that. I don't like that kind of stuff. That's too negative. You know? So you, you need to get pe people to understand what it's like producing your food. What, what goes into it. And it's not just soil and water and air. It's, it's very scientific. And one of the things I've told farmers a lot of times to, to get 'em to kind of calm down and, and think logical is, or to listen to me. If I ever lose my voice, I'm gonna starve.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:38:16] Because all I need to do is be able to talk and understand economics. They need to be an animal scientist, understand how to raise animals. They need to learn how to conserve the soil. They need to be an agronomist. They need to be a climatologist to try to handle the weather. It's very difficult, but they gotta work at it. Then they gotta be a marketer. Because what goods is stuff, if it isn't marketed,

Vance Crowe [01:39:05] And most people living in the city don't understand what marketing is, that you actually have to, not only do you harvest that corn, you have to decide when am I gonna sell it? Am I gonna sell a futures contract? Yes. And I'll owe you that. Like, so that's a certain amount of risk or it may be hedging risk.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:39:20] Exactly.

Vance Crowe [01:39:21] Or are you gonna store it in bins, pay somebody else to store it, and then sell it at the right time. Or

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:39:26] You're gonna, you

Vance Crowe [01:39:27] Gotta be your own stockbroker essentially.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:39:28] Or you're gonna convince the government to store it, which the government does sometimes.

Vance Crowe [01:39:32] I didn't know that.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:39:32] Oh yeah, sure.

Vance Crowe [01:39:35] For our strategic corn reserves

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:39:37] Yes. Or strategic food reserves. We used to have, we had a big argument years ago, and when my old professor, Earl Butts was Ag secretary with too much government storage, so he sold all the government's bins and that ended the government storage. So he thought, but then Jimmy Carter come in and he paid the farmers to the store, the government grain in their bins. So, you know, when there's a, well, there's a way. But, and now to top it all off, you gotta be an ag an animal scientist and an agronomist, soil scientist, et cetera, climatologists a marketer. Now you gotta understand politics, not only domestic politics, you gotta understand international politics because it's all part of this ball of wax. That's why there's, there's damn few dumb farmers left.

Vance Crowe [01:40:47] Yeah. I think farmers are more than happy to let people think that they're not

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:40:51] Very bright. Oh, oh, yes, yes, yes.

Vance Crowe [01:40:53] And it's why you and I were talking, I, I gave a talk and somebody gave me a little bit of a hard time about it. They were like, you gave a college lecture here and you know, you did. And I was like, these people are prepared to handle some very intense topics. And nobody came up and complained to me. Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:41:08] And they, that bunch that came up to you, they were, they tried to take you deeper.

Vance Crowe [01:41:15] Yeah, that's right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:41:16] I listened to part of it sitting there at the table.

Vance Crowe [01:41:18] That's right. They had their own philosophies and ideas and they wanted to explore 'em.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:41:22] Exactly. Oh yeah. You didn't talk over their heads.

Vance Crowe [01:41:24] People, when I tell people what I do, 'cause I live in the city and I'm around a lot, I know that they don't understand that there is an entire ecosystem, a huge, all across the country of people that are farming and that these are sophisticated business owners that run multimillion dollar operations. They're not liquid. They can't just go around and spend money like the multimillionaires.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:41:49] So you gotta be a, a financier.

Vance Crowe [01:41:52] That's right. Your own bank for

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:41:54] Sure. Yeah. You just keep adding it. And now, because the family farm has to hire labor. 'cause mom and the kids can't do all the work on a big farm. You gotta know how human relations and how to deal with paid labor.

Vance Crowe [01:42:15] Just That's right. And running your own human. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:42:18] It just keeps coming and coming and coming.

Vance Crowe [01:42:20] You know, there's an interesting, I've been studying St. Louis recently because I wanted to know the namesake of the city that I was in. I talked a little bit about that in the podcast or on the, in the presentation.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:42:30] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:42:30] But one of the things that I wanted to look up was St. Louis was known for having the lords that, that held over the land, that had the peasantry having them come to his castle, and then they had to respond to the poor, you know, so they, the poor that would come to the gates, he would send those people down and talk with them. And I was like, I wonder how rich those people were. So if you were a lord in the time of Louis the ninth, how much land did you have? Do you have any idea? No.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:42:58] 1200

Vance Crowe [01:42:58] Acres.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:42:59] 1200. That's all.

Vance Crowe [01:43:01] That's all. But think about what you would be managing in 1225 or 12 35, 1200 acres. You'd have a whole bunch of people. Right,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:43:10] Man. Yeah. You'd have a ton of people.

Vance Crowe [01:43:12] And what we've changed out, the farmers are lords. Now I, I'm afraid to tell them this 'cause I don't think they'll like it, but they've changed out human capital for physical capital, the tractors and things. But they are running the same tracks of land now. I mean, there are a lot of farmers farming 1200 acres, right?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:43:29] Oh, that's of average.

Vance Crowe [01:43:30] Yeah. Well, I think technically the average is 200, but that includes all those little, well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:43:35] That's the federal definition. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:43:36] All

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:43:37] You need to do is sell a thousand dollars worth of agriculture commodities. And they're a farmer

Vance Crowe [01:43:41] Because they wanna count all of 'em.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:43:43] So every four H kid that has a a

Vance Crowe [01:43:46] Every FFA kid that gets the final badge and the

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:43:49] Yeah, sure. They're a farmer. Well, and farmers want that too, because we want, we want them to think, I mean, there's very few of us left 2.1 million, now 800,000 produce 85% of the production, but we have 2.1 million farms by the federal definition. That sounds better.

Vance Crowe [01:44:10] It does sound better.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:44:10] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:44:12] You know, I, I think the, we talk about the transition going on in China all the time. You know, they moved more than 50% of the people living in the city now live in, or living in the country now live in the city. But we, we did that Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:44:25] Sure. From

Vance Crowe [01:44:26] 1940 to 2020, we went from 40% being on the farm to less than 2%. And I don't think that society can change. Culture can change that fast and have it be

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:44:38] Stable. Well, I, well, and it's, I joke with farmers that there's not a, the culture has kind of merged because you got that satellite TV out there. Oh. And you can see, and you get the Playboy channel just like they do in town C So, and you know, of course they don't watch it, but they can get it.

Vance Crowe [01:45:00] That's right. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:45:01] That's supposed it too. So, but anyhow,

Vance Crowe [01:45:05] But there is a values difference.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:45:07] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:45:08] The people living in the countryside aren't doing that by accident

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:45:11] Though. That's because they, it's riskier.

Vance Crowe [01:45:17] I really hadn't thought too much about the fact that the only way you could be in farming is if you have a high tolerance for risk, which would

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:45:24] Make it Oh, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:45:26] I never thought about that.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:45:27] I didn't ever, I people say, why have you been a college professor all your life? Well, it's the only occupation probably that I can think of where I can be who I wanna be and say what I wanna say and not get fired or not lose my ass because I have tenure now. People say, oh, you shouldn't give these professors tenure. They get old and lazy. Well, I'm still teaching at 78. I don't think I'm old and lazy. And Yeah, there are some people get tenure and retire when they shouldn't. But I'd have been fired a dozen times if I hadn't had tenure. Probably. You

Vance Crowe [01:46:19] Really think so?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:46:20] Well, that may be stretching it, but I've had a couple deans that I didn't get along with and I told 'em where to put it. You know, I've had one president that I didn't get along with and I helped get his butt fired.

Vance Crowe [01:46:34] Really?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:46:35] So

Vance Crowe [01:46:38] When you say that, is it because you're a political animal? Are you, are you

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:46:41] Oh, I'm a political animal, but not a partisan political animal.

Vance Crowe [01:46:46] Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:46:47] He was screwing us.

Vance Crowe [01:46:49] Okay.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:46:49] He needed fired.

Vance Crowe [01:46:51] That's true. Right. That's, that's the part about politics I had for the last few years. I completely skewed all politics. I said, it's too much chaos for me. It's too much noise. It doesn't seem to all together that different to me than WWF wrestling, watching what they do on television. So why, why, yeah,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:47:12] But that's rigged.

Vance Crowe [01:47:13] Yeah. But it seems like they're all just playing a giant game and they, they

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:47:17] Want the

Vance Crowe [01:47:18] Bravado, but you have to be aware of it. It, it was foolish of me to think you can have no involvement in politics because really that just means you're getting drug around by the politics.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:47:28] Well, are you and I gonna interact with each other? We're involved in politics.

Vance Crowe [01:47:32] That's right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:47:33] So politics is how men and women with a different, different values live together in a civilized society. And we're, I'm worried about the civil part. There's, I mentioned the president not shaking the speaker's hand and then she tear up his speech. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:48:00] That's

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:48:00] Not civility. That's

Vance Crowe [01:48:01] Right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:48:02] That's not how adults behave. And I don't want my grandson to see that. I don't want him to look up to something like that.

Vance Crowe [01:48:16] How have your students changed over time? Do you see them as Oh,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:48:18] Oh my, yes. I've got the best students I've ever had.

Vance Crowe [01:48:22] You really mean this?

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:48:23] Oh, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:48:24] Tell me more.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:48:26] Well, first of all, they're, they care. Somebody taught 'em empathy. And I have a theory they, but their parents had taught 'em and why they taught 'em. But my parents taught me empathy. But between my generation and this generation, there wasn't a lot of empathy taught. It was more rugged individualism. Nixon's mom taught him, you gotta get them before they get you. For example, now Papa Bush's mother and dad didn't teach him that. And he didn't teach George w that Barbara taught him to be honorary, but not to be. I mean, and he, he a w had a little difficulty showing it, but he cared. And today's students are just compared to five years ago, they work harder. They attend class more regularly. They can ask more questions than a country lawyer.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:50:01] They now, I have a unique relationship with 'em in a way. I tell 'em the first day, and I get accused occasionally of being too crude, but I'm gonna bust my ass for you and therefore you're gonna bust your ass for me. I say that in the first five minutes and they, you know, who is this old fart? You know? But I have their attention and they discover day one, and they know my reputation that I give a damn about what happens to 'em. And they give a damn about what happens to me. I mean, they know I'm getting old pottery and they help me in and out of the classroom. They'll get ahold of my arm or, or they'll, I see them on the street. They wanna know could they help or do how far do I have to walk or,

Vance Crowe [01:51:02] I mean, this is the most hopeful thing that I've heard anyone say. When you started this and you said they have empathy. I fear empathy because empathy is the thing that can lead an individual that doesn't have self-worth. I think a wrongly placed empathy can say, it's better for me to give up my destiny, my, my desire to exert ideas into the world to try and make something different happen. And I'm gonna give myself over to this mass movement because this mass movement, we care about things. We care about animals more than other people. We care about the environment more than other people. To me, that's always been an expression. Not, oh, I, I've only recently come to these conclusions and it may not be right, but that, that an overabundance of empathy can lead a cult culture towards collectivism. Where, where we're only caring about the feelings of others as a, as opposed to striving them

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:52:08] To do better. I've now, I'm gonna pull age on you. I'm 78. I, if I've learned anything, it's one thing I have never seen a problem or an activity or a feeling or philosophy, et cetera, that a good dose of moderation won't solve.

Vance Crowe [01:52:48] Yeah, that's right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:52:51] And there you can be ex empathetically extreme or extreme empathetic, I guess is the right word. Yeah. But society that works operates between the 40 yard lines. Decisions are made philosophies, established facts, and are separated from myth between the 40 yard lines, not in the red zone. If you do it in the red zone, you won't get in the end zone.

Vance Crowe [01:53:28] Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:53:28] You gotta make the decisions in here.

Vance Crowe [01:53:30] That's the Overton window. The, the Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:53:32] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:53:33] That's exactly right.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:53:33] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:53:34] Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:53:34] And between the 40 yard line can be viewed as moderation. And the red zones are extremes. Now, I, I look out at those 2020 year olds and I, you know, this past year I told 'em I was 77 and I said, now you won't believe this at 20. But that's true with sex too.

Vance Crowe [01:53:58] Oh, moderation.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:53:59] Yes. He, he won't believe that.

Vance Crowe [01:54:02] No, but

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:54:03] You're getting, you're starting

Vance Crowe [01:54:04] I'm getting to the point you're starting. Yeah.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:54:10] Well that brings the humor in and they get it.

Vance Crowe [01:54:14] It would, yeah. Yeah. Well,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:54:17] And it, it, it, it's, I sleep good at night because I know that generation's gonna take over. That is a very good generation.

Vance Crowe [01:54:33] I mean, this guy Ben, we wrote in here, he told me how hard he works, how he thinks about things. It's incredible.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:54:38] Yeah. See, that wasn't true 10 years ago. Now the great recession taught him some because, you know, you could graduate from this institution with a 2.2 10 years ago and got a pretty decent job. That's harder to do today. And the president talks about all this job creation. Well, most of those are low paying jobs. We've got unemployment at historic lows, but we're still only growing at 2%.

Vance Crowe [01:55:16] Well, one, one area that definitely has demand for jobs is agriculture. Yes. And, and that's, I'm, I'm so glad that you are teaching. I can, I can, I can barely describe it. It, this is, I'm, I'm so glad that we met and Me too. And that we had a chance to do this.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:55:34] Me too.

Vance Crowe [01:55:35] And I, I just want to thank you for taking your time to, to sit down and do this. This has been

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:55:40] Wonderful. Well, I, when you told me you wanna do this, I was, I come home and brag to my wife. I said, that guy wants to do a blog with me. And I've never done one or a podcast and, 'cause I don't know those terms. And I'm, well, I got a

Vance Crowe [01:55:56] Yeah, your flip phone,

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:55:58] Flip phone, you know, and it's, I can't, you can't get 'em anymore. So I, when it goes, I don't know what I'll do then. But anyhow, she has a, a smartphone and she tells me all the stuff that's on it. But, and I tell my kids in class, and now that's a dumb phone. But if I catch you with a smartphone on that, thing's gonna get awful damn smart. You know? So

Vance Crowe [01:56:23] Well, you, you were an excellent guest and I'm just so grateful that you were willing to do this.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:56:27] Well, I'm really, I'm honored.

Vance Crowe [01:56:30] Well, if I swing through Kansas again, Manhattan, come by anytime. Thank you.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:56:34] Anytime. As long as you bring be.

Vance Crowe [01:56:35] I think I will. This is good. Thank you.

Dr. Barry Flinchbaugh [01:56:37] You bet. You bet.