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We're talking about AI technology, Amazon's Alexa in a conversation
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net arr Oe dot Net. Enjoy your exploration. Hey, how
are you doing today? John?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I'm doing great. How about yourself?
Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic. I love the book that's sitting right behind you.
You're gonna have to tell me that. I realize listeners can't,
but that's what I love about radio. It's theater of
the mind. And that book that's right behind you, passion
struck that You're gonna have to explain that one to
me because there's something that's going on in the center
of that book cover that's got my attention. What is that?
Speaker 2: That is a flame?
Speaker 1: I thought? So where there's flame, there's energy, there's power,
there's purpose. What's going on there? Buddy?
Speaker 2: Do you pronounce it? Arrow?
Speaker 1: You got that right? Man, you pass you got two
extra hundred dollars from monopoly here. Congratulations. You know that's
one thing. That's one thing you learned about radio.
Speaker 2: Sure my name all the time?
Speaker 1: Oh in what way?
Speaker 2: H well Mills milaise yes, yes, all kinds of mispronunciations. Yeah,
Johnny yoh? Is that the is that the pet peeve
right there? When somebody goes, hey, Johnny, what's up? And
you're going, I'm not sure it's Johnny. That's not just
not what it was? So late lean out the groundwork
of a book? What what is the process that that
you moved through? Because a book is like a movie.
It doesn't just happen, It comes to you in pieces parts. Well,
do you want to talk about Passion Struck or do
you want to talk about you Matter Aluma the children's book?
Because theses were both very difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely want to talk about both, because that
is I was going to talk about that, the two
different personalities that are required here and how did you
have to shift that engine?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I had always thought I could be a writer,
but most of my career I was a business executive,
and so what I was practicing it wasn't really creative writing.
It was more writing for boardrooms or project updates or
business cases. So one of the hardest things for me
was was to change my writing style so that it
would really be as if as I'm writing, I'm trying
to speak to the person who's sitting next to me
in the car, which I think is really a profound way,
especially if you're working on a nonfiction book or a
children's book, to do it, because you're opening the reader
into your world and you're also opening yourself into theirs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even when you're writing a children's book, do
you not also have to keep the parent in mind,
because if you can keep them engaged, I'll be inside
that room reading that book to that child anytime, any night.
Speaker 2: Oh well, absolutely. For the children's book, it was difficult
on two fronts. One, because you're absolutely right, the main
audience who's actually buying the book is parents, it's not
the kids, So that's the person you have to appeal
to if they're going to buy it. But I was
also trying to bring in developmental psychology, behavioral science, and
neuroscience into a children's book in a way that it
would both be understood by the child in a way
that they don't even realize it, but also in a
way that an adult would pick up these concepts and
see themselves in them and make them a better parent,
better partner, better friend.
Speaker 1: Well see, I call that speaking the street. You understand
who's going to receive this, and so you've got to
put it in the language to which they understand. That's
a skill to be holding onto.
Speaker 2: John Well, it definitely is, and it's one that has
taken a lot of work to try to develop. I
can tell you that.
Speaker 1: When you put a book like this together, I mean
it's you know, it's one of the things that I
learned about you Matter Luma is that building habit formations,
you know, learning how to be positive and to stay positive.
That's a tough place to be right now for a
lot of people, and a book like this really does
open up that door for someone to say today, my
choice is to be a little bit more positive than yesterday.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we all need a little more positivity
in our lives. But you've got to do it in
a way that feels real, right, because if not, people
aren't really gonna find it authentic. So I think it's
a cross between having a positive effect, but also making
it real for the participants. So in this children's book,
one of the scenes that ended up adding was one
that has actually made some young readers cry. I created
a storm scene. The main character in the book, Luma,
little Bunny, finally kind of finds her superpower, and all
of a sudden, a storm arises in her life, just
like the storms that arise in any of our lives,
and it makes her question herself and her own self worth.
And I think it was important because a lot of
books that I read for kids don't really do that.
But I don't know about you, Ero, but I have
faced so many challenges in my life, and I think
one of the things we need to teach kids very
early is that they are going to find themselves at
some point in their life dealing with a struggle. And
so I think when they see another person who's able
to navigate it, they experience it themselves as a mirror,
and it helps them process that they could do it
someday as well. Well.
Speaker 1: The one way that I really related with Luma was
the fact that we raised one hundred and twenty five
rabbits up in Montana, and those rabbits didn't have special
house or anything. They had rabbit huts. So when you
talk about the challenges that Luma goes through, it really
made me think about I've never lived through a rabbits
set of pause. In other words, I didn't know what
they were going through out there. I just knew that
they built their nest, they had their families, and life
moved on. But you give me that opportunity to it's
not about us learn to live and love all living
things and learn to love their story that goes with it.
Speaker 2: Oh, just last night, and I'm here in Florida, so
you don't think it's very cold, but we hit the
thirties and we have a ton of rabbits in our neighborhood.
And interestingly enough, they when it gets cold, they burrow
under the ground to keep them warm. So I've woken
up the past couple of days to find holes unfortunately
my backyard. But it does teach you that all living
things need community, need need safety, and need to feel loved.
Speaker 1: Right, So, now do you take the book You Matter
Luma to another level in the way of creating educational
digest you know, like we used to have the Think
and Do book when I was in school would we
would have a story that we would read, then we
would go to the book and we would answer questions
to you know, to activate what the message was in
each one of these books. Because your book is built
with so many different areas where activation can actually happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have built a number of things, and I'm
glad you asked me that. So there's a parent and
teacher guide that goes seen by scene. Yeah, it goes
scene by scene and it kind of explores in more
depth in case they're missing it what's going on in
a different scene. But outside of that, I provide two
to three activities that a teacher or a parent can
do beyond the scene that's in the book to reinforce
what we're teaching. And then at the end of the book,
I didn't want this to be a story that ended.
I wanted it to be a beginning. Yeah, so I
did two things. First, I created a whole page, which
is really an opportunity for the parent to ask their
child a series of three or four questions so that
they could start shifting the conversation from doing from being
about performance to being you know, things like what makes
you light up inside? How have you helped someone else
in your life feel like they matter in children's like terms.
But then on the last page, I always feel like
you learn a lesson the most when you get to
put it into place in your own life. And I
happen to hear about this school in Grand Juncture, Brand Junction,
Colorado that needed new playground equipment, and so they did
this kindness challenge in the school ended up raising thousands
of dollars, but more importantly, they created twenty five hundred
kindness moments. And so I said, if one school can
do something like that, what could lots of kids who
read this book do? And so we created something called
Pass the Ripple. You can go to it at Passthripple
dot com. And we're actually now partnering with that school
in Colorado to build this out so that kids can
log an active kindness, and we have a global mapping
technology built out so they can see how far their
kindness travels throughout the world and how many people at
impacts beyond the one person that they helped, maybe Baker
Cake or Carrie Groceries in for their neighbor, or help
a sad friend.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with John R. Miles
coming up next. Hey, we want to welcome you back
to podcaster as well as author John R. Miles. Don't
you love it when the thought of an author one thought.
We don't know what went into that thought, what was
required for that thought to happen? That one thought can
change multiple lives beyond that thought and that page, and
it starts with the author.
Speaker 2: Well, what I call this the mattering effect. So it's
one thing to it's like one thing to feel like
you matter. But the ripple effect really starts happening when
you make other people feel like they hold value and
you do kind things for others. And that's the principle.
I was trying to really not only show the kids,
but show the adults because I think if you look
at the way so many of us are living, we're
not really practicing moral beauty in our lives, are we?
And the interesting thing about it is science really shows
that when you perform acts of kindness, that's when you
feel the most awe in your life. So wouldn't more
of us want to experience on an everyday basis.
Speaker 1: With you being down there in Florida, we're up here
in Carolina. Are you going to do a book tour.
Are we going to see you up here at the
Park Road Shopping Center bookstore and any other one of
the small, privately owned stores.
Speaker 2: Man, I would love to. I think the best thing
to do would be requested. I was recently in Austin
for this. I'm heading out to Colorado, going to Puerto Rico.
I'm here soon and up to Tallahassee, which is four
or five hours north of me here in Florida. So,
and I was in Winston Salem talking about Passion Struck
a few months ago. So I used to live in Charlotte.
So love getting back up to Carolina area.
Speaker 1: Wow. What part of Charlotte did you live in?
Speaker 2: I was an executive at Low's. So I wear you
lived in Mooresville.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, well you're not. Okay, then you're gonna understand
where I am right now. We are currently camping at
Lake Norman State Park.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yes I lived. I lived right down Raleigh
School Road, so I know the area. Well.
Speaker 1: Oh I know your backyard all too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Man, that traffic it's in there. Holy no wonder you
found time to write. It's like, okay, I'm just stuck
in traffic. I'm just gonna sit here and write a book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for people not familiar with that lake. Sometimes on weekends,
I think there are more waves on Lake Norman than
there are here in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so true. Because when we were
coming up here a couple days ago, when we're taking
I seventy seven just past Cornelius, the first thing that
we always do, we're the white Caps. What did the
white Caps look like on the lake? Because that's going
to determine what they see. And it's the same thing
as a book. You see the white Caps, but you
don't know the story until you get into the action.
Speaker 2: That's so true. I remember when we first moved there,
I had like a nineteen foot se ray and I
went out on it maybe two times. I'm like, boy,
on this lake you need a minimum of like a
twenty four foot boat. So we had upgrade.
Speaker 1: Were you ever inspired to write stories while out here
on Lake White and Lake Norman not Lake Wiley with
the end again, you know Lake Wiley is so close.
Maybe you did run away to lake.
Speaker 2: I've been on Lake Wiley too, have some friends who
have boats down there. I had I have always wanted
to write a book about my experience. When I was
at the Naval Academy, I was on the Brigade Honor Staff,
one of the six primary members during the time that
the Brigade had its largest cheating scandal, and I've always
thought about writing a book about that, and so back
during those days in North Carolina, I was pondering writing
that story, and I still ponder it.
Speaker 1: Wow, you got to do it, man, because you can
turn that thing into like a six year series when
it comes to binge watching on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Well, man, this story has it all. It's got people
blowing up in cars, people disappearing, and CIS agents, corrupt admirals,
So it has a lot of hooks in it.
Speaker 1: Wow, Where can people go to find out more about you?
Because obviously you're writing in so many different directions, but
you're giving You're giving people that opportunity to find their
own voice within your paragraphs.
Speaker 2: Well ero, if they want to learn about the children's book,
they can go to you Matter Luma l u m
a dot com. If they want to learn more about
the challenge that we're doing, it's at passthar Ripple dot com.
They want to learn more about me, they can go
to John Rmiles dot com, and I have a great
substack if they're interested in getting weekly doses of inspiration
at the ignitedlife dot net.
Speaker 1: Did you get this this book for the library that's
in uptown Charlotte, the Children's library that's right up there
on Seventh Street, Because I mean that that is one
of the greatest places. When when I go walking in
there and I go into the children's section, I i
see the authors that I've shared conversations with. You need
to be in there with these books, and it's imagine
an I would imagine it's such a great place for
this book.
Speaker 2: I would you know, I would love to do that.
I sent a book out to a friend of mine
who's a professor at the University of Rochester, and his
niece is actually a librarian in a library in New
York City, and she loved it and thought it could
have such a big impact. So I'm going to have
to look up this library.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine. And what I love about them, John, is
the fact that they have their story reading time for
all age groups, and then they turn it into things
where they can activate the story and get them on
little scavenger hunts afterwards and stuff, So it's not just
sitting there reading the book. They actually get those kids
involved into the lessons that were learned inside that story.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what's so cool about this is I've
actually partnered with a division a Kaplan, the education company, Yes,
and we have developed a six six episode learning discovery
series where they've taken the characters and they've made them
like Pixar like animated and it shows a core value
that's lived through a short two to three minute video
with each one of these animals. And so again we're
implementing this first in that school in Colorado, but the
idea is that this could be used in programs like
Imagine on or in schools, or in after school programs,
or even in Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, church
programs throughout the country.
Speaker 1: Wow, well, you've got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. Maybe we should do some camping
up here at Lake Norman State Park. Dude, I mean,
we just found out there was a huge fire here
in twenty twenty and to walk through that, what they
must have gone through, that's walking through history and learning
for the presence of right now.
Speaker 2: Man, Well, I love camping and I love Lake Norman.
There's a great there's a great campsite down here as well.
That's right on the golf and it's part of Fort
DeSoto State Park and you can camp right on right
on the inner coastal and they have about eight boat
ramps there, so it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I love it. Well, you be brilliant today, and thank
you so much for taking the time to spend a
moment with us about your writing and exploration so that
other writers can be inspired to grow their own stories.
Speaker 2: Ero, thank you so much for having me real honor
to be on your show.
Speaker 1: You'd be brilliant today, Okay, sir, thank you you too,