417. “Fear Sells, Optimism Builds” | Lessons on American Strength with Paul Johnson & Larry Aldrich

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Larry Aldrich:
The story of America was not written by institutions, it was written by individuals.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strive to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning to this episode of The Daily Helping podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And this is gonna be a fantastic episode and an important one. We have two guests for you today, and they're extraordinary, and they're here to talk about their newest book. 

First, Honorable Paul Johnson is the host of the popular podcast, The Optimistic American. He's been active in politics and policy for over 40 years. Over the decades of his career, Johnson was the CEO and co-founder of Redirect Health and previously a delegate with the US State Department. There, he served in Saudi Arabia where he studied oil cartel business to understand a major Middle Eastern political issue better. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he assisted Poland in implementing new local governing systems to move closer to democracy. He has visited and studied almost every major genocide site, went to China to study the changes from the Great Leap Forward under the Mao to the economic progress after it liberalized its markets, and visited Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Johnson also served as mayor of Phoenix from 1990 to 1994. 

Joining him is Larry Aldrich. He's been a federal antitrust prosecutor, is an active member of the District of Columbia Bar Association, and a staunch defender of First Amendment rights. He's the former CEO of University Physicians Healthcare and former CEO of two daily newspapers, the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen, and founder of Tucson Ventures, the first VC firm headquartered in Southern Arizona. 

There's more I could say about both of these gentlemen, but they are here today to answer the question, is America's future as bright as its past? A bipartisan and emphatic yes is the answer, and they're here to talk about that in their newest book, which is available everywhere tomorrow, What's Right with America: ...And How We Can Keep It That Way! Gentlemen, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is amazing to have you both with us today. 

Paul Johnson:
Thank you, Dr. Richard. Thanks for having us. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, this is going to be exceptional and timely, right? Because if you spend any amount of time watching the news, and depending on which flavor of news you choose to digest, it's awfully negative and it's fear-laden. And we talked a little bit about this before we hit the record button about the movie network. And it seems a lot of those themes are as true today as they were decades ago. But my first question, and either one of you can tee off here, why did you guys decide to write this book?

Paul Johnson:
Well, I'll start, and then I'll let Larry add to that. And again, Dr. Richard, thanks for having us. You've got a great show. I've really enjoyed watching the episodes and you do a wonderful job. So, the why. I start with the why saying that the goal is to try and help give people agency. We're in this political era where you're just being bombarded with negative information and where both sides tend to be attacking the American brand. 

I spent a lot of time in politics, and I had a pollster once who told me something that I found to be interesting. I was trying to focus, I was involved in a presidential campaign and I won't say which one, and I was trying to focus the campaign on a more aspirational message. 

And I remember the pollster telling me, she was a brilliant lady, very good pollster, also a psychologist, but she said, "Look, I know that you think that the goal is to move people aspirationally." She said, "But here's the key." She said, "We have a base of voters. And our base of voter, they have a set of beliefs." And she says, 'And if we can terrify them about the opposition, we can terrify them to the point that they recognize the challenges, there's this thing called the amygdala. And the amygdala begins to hijack the neocortex where rational thought takes place. Once we can lock them up through the amygdala hijack, we don't have to worry about whether or not they're going to vote for the opposition because they're going to be terrified of."

Now, that process has been perfected, not only by news medias but by politicians. The goal is to get you to watch tomorrow, to spend time listening to what they have to say. And the challenge with that is that many, many people have begun to gain a very pessimistic view about the United States. And that has an effect on policy, on different types of a policy in the United States.

So, one of the things that we're seeing a lot of talk about today or terrorists. By the way, the left, for many years, was attacking the exact same thing that Donald Trump is attacking today. They would talk about the hollowing out of American industry, the decay that was happening in the loss of jobs, and how countries were stealing jobs away from the United States, and how globalization had done damage. Well, what I would say to you, whether you like tariffs or not, spend a little bit of time thinking instead about, what does the data tell you?

Now, here's some interesting data for you. In 1992, when we really began the push through the GATT agreement, I had the fortunate opportunity to work with Mickey Kantor and others for a short period of time in Geneva, working on the GATT agreement. But the point was we made a conscious decision that we wanted to have more protections for intellectual property rights. So, we put together free trade agreements with bite for intellectual property rights.

Well, let's just look at the data from that point until today. The data says, that point, every other G7 country, the wealthiest countries in the world, all of them were about the same in terms of GDP per person as the United States. Today, 25 years later, the United States is double all of them. And in fact, Mississippi, which has the lowest GDP per person in the United States, about $53,000 some odd hundred dollars, it is bigger or better than any other economy in the G7, with the exception of Germany and Canada. 

So, before you decide to throw out the baby with the bathwater here, you might want to take a look at the data. And what we've done in our book is we've tried to build a robust discussion and defense for how things like civil rights, equal rights, human rights, property rights, free markets, free trade, as well as free elections, the effect that that's had on building what undoubtedly is the greatest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in the history of the planet. Larry?

Larry Aldrich:
Yes, well said. And Dr. Richard, I too want to echo, thank you for having us on and we admire what you've accomplished with your podcast over the, I believe, eight years you've been doing it. 

So, we wrote this book in part, I think, just to remind Americans  what we have all basically inherited, that we are the strongest country ever. And so, we did write to Americans, basically average Americans – and Paul and I are in that category – to remind them to get away from the fear and the negativity. 

I was at the newspapers in Tucson, I remember one time asking my vice president of circulation, you know, "How's it going? How's business looking?" He goes, "Hmm, hurricanes, earthquake, forest fires, disaster, we're doing great." That time passed, that's what we had. I tried to be a little more optimistic in my operation of the newspapers. He could do whatever he wanted from that perspective. 

So, fear sells, divisiveness sells, and you have to work a little bit to be optimistic, but you don't ever build anything from a pessimistic view. You basically just go into your crouch with pessimism. So, we wanted to remind Americans there is so much to be optimistic about, and we wanted to go back to the philosophy, the founding of America. We are not in this position by accident. This was designed. This is the designer. The founders of America designed this country around the power of individuals, not the government, not the collective, not groups, around individuals, and basically breathed into those individuals the rights, freedoms, and responsibilities they have to take the risks they need to take in America to make a difference. And where risks don't work out well, to start over because we do that very well in America. 

So, we really wanted that reminder at a time that everyone was thinking America's best days are in the past. Oh no, America's best days are today and moving forward.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love this for a lot of reasons. Number one, as I think about psychological principles, I can't help but think of external versus internal locus of control. And this is something that's been studied across cultures, over time, across genders, it doesn't matter. If you have an inherent belief that you have agency – Paul, to use your word – and you have control over your life circumstances, even when things aren't going the way you would expect, those people tend to have better mental health outcomes, are happier, experience less depression and anxiety than people who believe what's going on is out of their control, right? An external locus of control.

So, obviously, we can't do anything about the weather, right? It's something that we can get riled up about if we choose to let ourselves get riled up about. So, that's one thing that I really love about what you guys are doing. 

The other thing that comes to mind, and again, we talked about it before, you have both talked about the news cycle, right? And so, what's fascinating, and we have a rule in our house that we do not allow news on in the house. It makes my mother crazy when she comes over. But we don't allow it. Nobody can watch the news in our house because the news, as you talked about, the amygdala, and how that works, and I love that you brought some neuropsychology into this because that's fun for me, but the reality is, if you think about the news, think about your local news, don't even have to be the national news, how many uplifting stories are there? None. They want you to stay, right? They want you to keep watching. The fun stuff, they even put at the end, most of the time, unless there's a hurricane, right? Those sports are at the end, weather's at the end. And they make you sit through stories that, by and large, are negative, some to terrify, some to not. 

And I think you hit on something really interesting. I mean, Paul, it was very stark and striking to have a pollster say to you, "Look, if we've got them terrified, we've got them. And it doesn't matter what." And I think both sides of the aisle, whether intentional or not, it feels like that's where we are because you talk to people who you know are on the left of the spectrum and they will say, "We're in a constitutional crisis and it's a threat to democracy." And you have two people on the right side And then, there's fear of what the left is doing to undermine the country. But the reality is for most people fed either through conventional news media, which, less and less viewership is there but it's in our cell phones, right? Like we cannot escape unless we choose to. 

And I tell people as well, that there's just a little test that I have people do. So, everybody listening to this, I would encourage you to think about this. The next time you go out to dinner, put your phone in your pocket. And if you can get through the whole dinner, have a great conversation, and not even think about your phone, you're in good shape. Most of you listening to this are going to get that itch. And they are going to need to grab the phone. I mean, go to any restaurant, you will always see people with phones on the table, pulling up their phones, looking at the phones. 

So, we have conditioned ourselves as a society to be remarkably reliant on these devices, right? We've all got them. I'm not saying we don't. But that's caused this insidious problem to where the negative news media that you guys are talking about has pervasively worked its way into our feeds because all of the social media platforms use algorithms. You could test this really easily. Go on YouTube and Google fried chicken recipes, and watch a video on fried chicken, and your feed is gonna be full of the same kind of stuff, right? And that's true of the news, and that's true of world events, and that's true of people with political bias towards one side or the other. 

So, you guys bring up a really important point, because if you think back a few decades, a couple decades ago, not even a few decades ago, it wasn't that long ago where it wasn't like this here. You know, we still could have dialogue with people from the other side of the aisle, and they could still be our friends and our relatives. There's been a striking number of people in this last election cycle who were outwardly saying, "Look, if you voted for the other candidate, unfriend me. I don't want to talk to you ever again. If you're my relative," I mean, people were posting these videos that went quite viral crying because they have a parent or a sibling who voted for the other candidate and they don't want anything to do with them anymore or vice versa, that family member disowned them. 

So, yes, what you're talking about is needed. And now, that we've talked a little bit about the problems, I just get to sit back and let you guys tell me the solutions. 

Paul Aldrich:
Well, and let me add in there, following on just what you said, Dr. Richard, one of the things we've identified, in addition to the fact that the thesis of the founders and therefore the thesis of our book is around the power of individuals, we focused on five traits of the American experience and American success. Those five are courage, imagination, grit, generosity, and optimism. 

And focusing just a second on generosity, I think a lot of your viewers and listeners care deeply about generosity, America remains the most generous nation on a per capita basis that there is. A lot of people think about, "Oh, we've got to focus just on ourselves." Well, the average American cares more than just about themselves and just their neighbors. They're very generous towards others, they're very generous around the world.

You know, you look at post-World War II, I mean, we rebuilt the world. I am arguably a trained nuclear engineer. I became a lawyer, but I look at this world and say, "We are pretty darn fortunate in America that we didn't face worldwide nuclear annihilation and the end of history would be then." And a big part was because American leadership, and I would say generosity, realized we've got to avoid that. And we led very deeply to make sure that the world didn't blow itself up through nuclear war. 

So, that may seem kind of pessimistic, but I view that as an optimistic approach. And those five traits really do underscore that Americans can reach out, make a difference, engage, get out of this cycle of pessimism and fear, and rebuild and continue to build a great America for everybody.

Paul Johnson:
Yeah, we give a robust understanding of all the different reasons why people should be optimistic in the United States and all the great things that are happening here. Just for a moment, I'm going to focus on the point that you made a second ago, because I believe it's important. You know, what I know from politics, what I know that political leaders and the news media is doing is that they're focusing more on what you lose than what you gain. 

Now, our book talks a lot about what you gain, but I'm going to give you some things that you lose when you lose agency just for a moment to think about. You can lose the ability to make the right decision on whether you should buy that new home or maybe your first home. You might make the wrong decision on whether you should start a business or a new podcast or change careers. You also can lose friends, people that you care about. 

Now, having agency, we started the book with a story about Rosa Parks. And the story of Rosa Parks was a story, I brought her to Arizona. I had passed a Martin Luther King Day. A governor that we had at the time took it back out. We went back to the voters to get put into place. Rosa Parks came out to visit us. So, as I'm driving with her on a bus from one place to the next, I'm going through this book with her that had pictures in it. 

There was this picture of this young white guy with a police officer with a yellow strap across his body. He had on hijacked boots and a crew cut haircut and he's fingerprinting her in. So, I made a comment about him. I said, "Oh my gosh, that looks like the wall of oppression." Rosa Parks, who I don't know how tall she was, but seemed to me like all of five feet. Of course, I'm 6'7". So, maybe that has an effect. But she put her finger right in my face and she said, "Now, don't you say that about that young man." She said, "He was just doing his job. And his job, even though in my opinion had a right to sit on the front of that bus, his job was to enforce the law. It was the law that was wrong, not him."

I couldn't help it, man. I started to cry because I'm sitting there recognizing here's this very powerful person in American history, and she was deeply concerned that I not be unfair to the white guy that arrested her. That's agency. That's what agency is. And when you don't have it, you lose the benefits that come from people who don't think like you. You lose massive benefits. 

I love the story of The Gulag Archipelago, if you've read it. It's a great story by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And Aleksandr, he had to write the book originally in his mind because he had been sent to the Gulag. And when he was there, he could have very easily picked up a victim mentality. The victim mentality could have come from the idea that he went to a German prisoner war camp, spent significant time there, and then when he came back, they put him in the Gulag. And they put him in the Gulag because they didn't quite know what to do with these prisoners that now had this Western influence. 

But instead of blaming Stalin, he said he began to think about the role that he had played. He'd been in the military. And in the military, one of his jobs as a communist early on was to go take these Kulak families and move them off their farms so they could bring in poorer farmers. The Kulak, by the way, was considered to be a rich farmer simply because they had one cow instead of no cows. And they took these people, and they moved them out to Siberia. Now, he said of the people that he took, 60,000 families, they all died. 

The point that he gave was that communism had granted him the authority to believe that if you were a Kulak, you were evil. You were on the other side. And it wasn't by recognizing that communism was wrong that gave him agency. It was recognizing that good and evil exists in all of us. We all have the capability for good, and we all have the capability for evil. And the right way to see other people isn't as a Democrat or Republican or a Trump voter and Anti-trump voter. It's as a human being. It says someone that has a special set of traits.

And this is a guarantee.  If you look at people as people, it will enrich your life. It will make your life better. It'll certainly make your business better. It will certainly help you in investments and making money, but it will also help your personal life. You don't need everyone to think like you. And you get stronger when you're challenged, when you don't just simply accept that the way that you think must be right. So, this whole concept, it's part of our founding. It's in our fabric of who we are as Americans. That's something we can't afford to lose.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, this is really interesting. And we've talked about these five traits that came from the founding fathers that make America great historically. Paul, you just gave a beautiful analogy to how age… well, not an analogy, but you described agency and I thought the Rosa Parks example was striking. So, if somebody is listening to this and they're still saying, "Yeah, you know what, America's on the decline. America, the Empire's falling," however you want to phrase it, what evidence do we have to suggest the opposite of that? You guys are saying our best days are ahead of us.  How do we know that? 

Paul Johnson:
Well, we can give you a lot but I'll just point out three. First, I started the program by giving you a comparison to other G7 nations and how much we've grown. We make up about 5% of the world's population. Yet, we make up almost half of the top 2000 businesses. I think we have 600 of the top 2000 businesses in the world. Literally, from a GDP standpoint, we're about 25% of the world's GDP. There's more innovation coming out of here than most other places. If you look at all of the statistical data, there's just no doubt that we do very well. 

Now, what a lot of folks will do is they'll say, "Yeah, but we slipped." Well, yeah, we slipped because as we've allowed other countries or as we've helped other countries improve their GDPs, they've moved up, they've gained more wealth. It isn't that we lost any wealth. We kept growing also, we just didn't grow necessarily as fast. But still, GDP per person, there's nothing quite like the United States. 

But what I would tell you is look around and think about what's happening. You know, another story that's in the book, Larry and I, we were both little kids, there was a big event happening. In 1969, the United States was going to the moon, right? And so, I can remember running home, riding my bike as fast as I could, getting to my grandmother's house. She had a concrete floor. I'm laying out on the floor. They had the television with the old rabbit ears on top of them, adjusting the rabbit ears to be able to watch this account of us being able to do it. I could tell you the name of a number of NASA engineers. I could tell you the name of all of the astronauts, all of their spouses. And we watched this great event of the capsule splitting apart and turning around and getting the astronauts on board and then landing on the moon and coming back. It was a great sense of pride. 

Now, I told that story once in a room of reporters who were working for some of the largest networks, CNN and others, and I said, "Whose job is it to help build some sense of what's going right here?" And the comment back was, "Well, that's really the politician's job." My argument was, "Okay. So, when I watched that show, every single network was covering it." 

It just so happened about three weeks before my conversation with the reporters I had gone home and I had to work on a spreadsheet. And so, I turned on CNN, turned the volume up, sat there working on the spreadsheet, and the only thing you could see was how the United States was going to crumble because of Donald Trump. I mean, it was just wall to wall the entire time I was there. 

So, I turned it on to Fox. The only thing then you could watch were millions of Haitian immigrants that were coming into the United States. That literally went on for four hours. But for just about 60 seconds, William Shatner came on. Now, you may be too young, but William Shatner used to be the guy in Star Trek who was Captain Kirk.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
James Kirk, yep.

Paul Johnson:
That's right. And he had actually gotten into a spacecraft and had gone into outer space. But here's what's interesting. It was done privately. We have these three guys now in a race about how far they can go into outer space, all with private money. What I'm saying is he's going to get to Mars. I don't know if you watched the one where the spacecraft took off on SpaceX and then came back down and actually... 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Landed itself, yeah, on the pad. Yeah.

Paul Johnson:
How can you say we're not doing the same thing? How can you say that American technology still isn't just the most amazing, robust thing that you could see? However, the amount of time that we're giving it, the amount of time that the media is focusing on it. No president, no president was going to those types of events. And that's a mistake. We're not celebrating our victories. And so, many people who are in the public begin to gain the sense of everything's going wrong because that's all they see. 

What I find to be interesting is that I hear it from many of my friends, and then I'll say, "Really? So, is that true in your life?" And they'll go, "No. Well, my life is really good, but I keep hearing there are all these other people that it's really bad for." Now, I don't want to say that there aren't challenges out there. Certainly, there are challenges. But you should take a look at, "In comparison to what," because if you don't compare it, you may make a big mistake in terms of what you give away.

Larry Aldrich:
Yeah, let me build on that, Paul. I think at the risk of going slightly back pessimistic, it's really more a challenge to the viewers. The biggest threat to our democracy and our resilience is not the media and not the politicians and not the all-negative groups, but it's Americans that believe our history is in the past. That's kind of why we wrote the book, as you said earlier. We are trying to remind people that their best days are ahead. 

So, yeah, that Chopsticks Grab was last year, 2024, and we have had such innovation and such strength. So, we're trying to remind folks but also what our reminder is, this isn't a celebration, this is a call to action. This is really kind of having people step up and take that responsibility. If you believe the founders built a country around the thesis of the individuals are in first position, then individuals need to step up, understand what they can, and take action appropriately. 

And we think most Americans want to. I think the average American spends something like eight or nine minutes a day on news, so all they get is the fear stuff. They need to work probably a little harder because optimism does take a little more work. But once they look and once they get the data, which we have in the book, I think they will feel pretty good about the future prospects of America. 

And the last point is we have been through some tough times in this country. We've obviously been through the Great Depression, the McCarthy era, challenges and reconstruction, post-reconstruction, civil rights movements, Vietnam, go on and on, we've come out of those in a much stronger position. The one thing we have a tendency to forget is we are almost 250 years old. That is a pretty old democracy, which means we've seen a lot, we've gone through a lot, we've recovered from a lot and we are stronger as a result. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, for me, it just goes back to that internal versus external locus of control and helping people learn to unplug from the negativity wherever they're getting in their lives because your book has the data to suggest that better times are ahead and that's really encouraging. We almost need to have you guys back and do a second episode because our time together has flown by so rapidly. But as you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests this one question. There's two of you, so you both get to answer. What is your biggest helping, that one single most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after you're hearing our conversation today?

Paul Johnson:
Well, because I went first, I'll let Larry go last on this one. And by the way, it was a joy writing the book with Larry. We both come from different perspectives. I was mayor and spent time in politics. Larry actually, accuracy matters. He was a lawyer and he was very focused on making certain that the information that we were putting out was correct. He also is a very good writer. And it was enjoyable doing it with him. 

But I think the most enjoyable part was the differences that we had because the differences caused us to communicate. It caused us to have to talk. When I would write something he agreed with, it just got put in. When he would write something I agreed with, it just got put in. But when we wrote something that we didn't quite agree, we had to have conversations about it. Sometimes, we'd do that in our morning run or we would do that over the phone but there's actually a joy to that.

And what I would tell you is, if you think about this less in terms of why you should do this for the country, but instead why you should think about our country from an optimistic viewpoint from your own sanity standpoint, another favorite of mine is a person by the name of Viktor Frankl. I love Viktor Frankl. I love his book. But one of my favorite stories of his is when he had gone into Auschwitz. His family, they said there was nine members of his family, he said, went to the left, he went to the right. His assumption was they were going to kill him and his family would be okay. And instead, they sent him to work camp. And he didn't know that his family was pretty much killed off a few days later.

When he was in this camp, he had invented the theory, as I recall, of logotherapy. He spent a lot of time on the idea of suicide. And so, he knew that these men who were in this work camp had gone down to where, I think, he said the average size of the man was about 85 pounds. They were so much on the brink of death that, literally, any loss of hope could end up causing them to lose their life. He talked about one guy who had some date that they thought they were going to be saved, and they ended up not being saved, and he died five minutes after midnight. 

But the thing that was inspiring was that he got the men to go out and watch the sunset. When they were working, he said, "Tonight, let's watch the sunset." And they'd come back in, they'd talk about, "I wonder if my family saw this tonight, I wonder how other people in the world were seeing it." And it created this sense of the other people there wanting to work during the day and see that sunset at night, so they can have this thing to talk about back and forth, to create this common sense of connection.

He says that you gain meaning, that purpose and meaning is much more important than happiness, but that you gain it through who and what… or excuse me, what you create, who or what you love, and through struggle. Those are the big ones. I would add service to it, but I suspect he just included that into what you create. But the point is that part of us finding a purpose, you will have a very difficult time finding it if you start with a pessimistic point of view. The goal is find agency.

And here's the good news. You live in the greatest nation in the history of the planet. Yeah, we've get knocked sideways every now and then. I grew up as a little boy during the Vietnam War. I've seen things that have happened in this country, 9/11 and other things that made us wonder if we were on our back heels. Bet on us. Bet on who we are. This is a great place to be and you are in a very fortunate time in your life. And most importantly, whatever you do, don't exclude other people from your life simply because they don't think like you. That is a huge mistake.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well said, Paul. 

Larry Aldrich:
I'll conclude, Dr. Richard, by saying that the story of America was not written by institutions, it was written by individuals. So, I would encourage your listeners to look around their neighborhood, their friends, find those places where they see courage, grit, generosity, joy every day because that's where America shines. That's where America's future is. It's happening every day. As you said, focus on those things externally that you can see and not have this inner fear that drives you just simply bananas. And thank you, Dr. Richard, for having us on your podcast. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
It was delightful. Very grateful to both of you for coming on. The book is called What's Right with America: ...And How We Can Keep It That Way! You can pre-order it now, but it's available everywhere tomorrow. Gentlemen, tell us where people can learn more about you guys online.

Paul Johnson:
A couple of areas. First, the book, obviously, you can pick up on Amazon and almost any other site. You can go to our podcast. The podcast site is The Optimistic American. We also have another program that The Optimistic American program pays for it that's called New Frontiers. And then, at least with me, I have a variety of different social platforms where I have young people working for me that are posting on a pretty regular basis but you can see us on Wikipedia.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Okay. And Larry, what about you?

Larry Aldrich:
I would say probably the easiest way is on my LinkedIn page, but I think it's Larry Aldridge, AZ. So, that's where I'm generally a little more active than other social media.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect. And so, for those of you at the gym, no worries. We've got you covered. Everything Larry Aldrich, Paul Johnson, and the book will be available and linked in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, gentlemen, I greatly enjoyed this, an optimistic and uplifting 30-plus minutes. Thank you both so much for coming on the daily helping. 

Paul Johnson:
Thank you, Dr. Richard. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And to each and every one of you sitting at home, sitting in your car, wherever you are, thank you as well. If you liked it, if you're inspired, if you learned something, if you're more optimistic than you were 30 minutes ago, give us a follow on a five-star review in your podcast app of choice because that is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are and post it in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.