I must say that college has changed from when I went to my undergraduate at Oklahoma State and my MBA at Oklahoma City University. We worried about dating, football, and getting ready to make money. (only in my junior and senior years after realizing grades matter.) Then got a 4.0 in the MBA as I really understood the importance of a good education.
Our interview with Dr. Ridgley was a lot of fun and he is a breath of fresh air for a university professor. His book “Brutal Minds – The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing Our Universities” was an eye-opener. please buy it at Amazon HERE:
The United States is in trouble and our energy security is at stake. There is a worker and employee crisis in the oil and gas space, and just as bad in the renewable market. The students don’t understand that the country runs on energy, and everything they love requires energy of all types.
Thank you for stopping by the podcast, I had an absolute blast. – Stu
Please follow Dr. Ridgley on his LinkedIn HERE:
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
02:39 – What prompted you to write Brutal Minds and tell us a little bit about that process
04:57 – Talks about the Reuters Article about 100 campuses running some that were as old as 1950 in their power plants
06:59 – In the university setting, you mention that they tell us what they’re doing they tell us how they’re going to do it, and then they go do it.
09:31 – Are you the only guy at the faculty lunchroom sitting in the corner and nobody will talk to you?
12:33 – Tell us about how cancel culture got started
14:52 – Talks about Andy Grove
17:21 – Do you see any change coming in the culture?
20:13 – How do you talk to folks that don’t want to have a conversation?
23:50 – You asked me how I came to this book, how I survive or whatever, because, you know, I’ve always been a lived a living kind of guy, an idealist
25:47 – Talks about the biggest problem with energy which is no workers coming behind us, how do we implement Stanley`s solution
32:16 – Some people are really misguided they’re disconnected, especially those on the soft side of campus
34:26 – Talks about Dexter Manley
35:57 – What’s coming around the corner for you personally and what do you see coming around the corner in academia?
38:37 – Outro
The following is an automated transcript and may have been edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us funnier or better looking.
Stuart Turley [00:00:04] Hello Everybody, Welcome to the Energy News Beat Podcast. My Name is Stuart Turley, President and CEO the Sandstone Group. We got us an action packed show today I’ll tell you, it’s just not a normal action packed show we got a fantastic show.
Stuart Turley [00:00:18] We’re going to be talking about Brutal Minds the dark world of left wing brainwashing of our universities by Stanley K Ridgely, Ph.D there’s the book for our podcast listeners if you’re on YouTube, there it is.
Stuart Turley [00:00:34] I want to just start with this one paragraph for [00:00:37]Praise for Brutal Minds. [1.1s] If you’re scratching your head as to allow radicals how radicals could have seized control in Washington and all and of American media while defaming American democracy as white supremacist nightmare, look no further than the left’s transformation of American universities into an ideological boot camp for Marxist Treachery.
Stuart Turley [00:01:05] Brutal Minds is a model of clarity and straight talk about this national tragedy whose destructive energies have yet to run their course how this fits into energy is our discussion and how it fits into how everything else. Welcome, Stanley. Dr. Ridgley, I so much appreciate you for taking the time.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:01:29] Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about these important issues with your audience. Things that I feel very strongly about and that I know you feel strongly about as well.
Stuart Turley [00:01:39] I can tell you what. If there was ever a person that you could imitate, you could be a heck of a Donald Trump impersonator for our podcast listeners that very sharply dressed and everything else that got some beautiful hair. Me. I got the flesh color going on here so.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:01:59] I can tell you I’ve never heard that Donald Trump comparison before. No, I heard all the time. And of course, the other guy wears the Navy blazer and the the red tie as well so I think he’s imitating me. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Stuart Turley [00:02:10] Oh, I think so. I don’t know that he’s a published author.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:02:14] Well, he’s had some books with his name on him, The Art of the Deal, that kind of thing.
Stuart Turley [00:02:18] Oh, that’s right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:02:20] That’s a classic.
Stuart Turley [00:02:21] But he didn’t write them?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:02:23] I feel sure.
Stuart Turley [00:02:26] Let’s get him on the podcast to talk about it. But anyway.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:02:29] We ought to, both of us, so you can compare the two sides.
Stuart Turley [00:02:32] To start off the discussion and how this applies to energy and how it applies. Let’s start on what prompted you to write Brutal Minds and tell us a little bit about that process.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:02:45] Well, it’s a convoluted story, and I’m not going to tell you the entire tale, but it was I focused in on a different topic, the influence of critical theory or neo-Marxist theory on American management, because I teach in management department. And I began to see the tendrils and the the initial forays into management capitalism by these socialistic neo-Marxist theorists.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:03:10] And as I began to explore and followed the bibliographical trail and it took me about six years I saw emerging from my own research. The book that you have in your hands right now, it Brutal minds. It was actually an organic creation that sprang from my research.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:03:30] So in other words, what you have in your hands there, what brutal mines is all about, is the tale of the American university’s decline, in the words of the folks who are engineering that decline. It’s not what I say it’s not like you it’s not what I’m I’m saying about what they say. This is what they say that they’re doing and it verifies substantiates that they are indeed doing it and energy is a great part of that.
Stuart Turley [00:03:56] It is, and it’s part of the energy hypocrisy, both in the ESG investing as well as everything else. And before the thing I want to give everybody, I’m going to give you, Stanley, a shout out for your LinkedIn and other ones. People need to follow you on LinkedIn. I do like your post out there and and or Twitter or wherever else I found you because it was a lot of fun reading your post out there as well too so go follow you and get your book.
Stuart Turley [00:04:26] But here’s education and I think one of the big things is energy poverty is real around the world. And one of my biggest believes is that we need to deliver the lowest kilowatt per hour to everyone on the planet. Let’s do it using the least amount of impact on the environment and sustainable low power I don’t care where you solar when nuclear does not matter let’s use oil as gas, but it’s sustainable.
Stuart Turley [00:04:56] Now, I sent you that article with all the universities and that structure is going on that they’re teaching that you talk about in the book and that they’re teaching green, but yet they all run coal power plants. The Reuters story was amazing it had like 100 campuses, whatever it was, and they’re running some that were as old as 1950 in their power plants.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:05:24] I think what you’ve just described in the article that you did send me, which exemplifies the hypocrisy we find in the University of, you know, do as I say, not as I do. That kind of is captured in the short video clip. I saw this the other day. I think it’s the the Swedish prime minister. I’m not sure it’s a female arrives by private transport to private jet private motorcade.
Stuart Turley [00:05:46] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:05:46] The climate change conference gets out of her vehicle and rides the last 100 meters on a bicycle for the photo op to show that she is indeed practicing what she’s preaching while out of sight of the media she’s actually flying in a private jet and a private motorcade.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:06:05] And that kind of exemplifies what you focused on in the article that you sent me about how universities are preaching green and yet practicing to insulate themselves from the effects of their preaching in their policies.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:06:19] They don’t want to rely upon a grid that that itself relies upon with solar and intermittent wind generation. They want to rely upon coal to fuel their own, their own power plants, the university campus, so that they’re not really affected by the policies that they themselves are are preaching.
Stuart Turley [00:06:39] You know, it’s amazing to me. I saw that same line and I actually got so tickled because they’re sitting there and they were on e-bikes.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:06:47] Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:06:47] And the e-bikes, you know, the lithium has to be created and all the kids are in the Congo and.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:06:56] Right. Right.
Stuart Turley [00:06:57] It’s horrible. But in the university setting, you mention that they tell us what they’re doing they tell us how they’re going to do it, and then they go do it.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:07:08] Yes.
Stuart Turley [00:07:09] And how does that how did that start? Because when I went to Oklahoma State, it was a whole different animal back then.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:07:16] Yeah, well, story, I have to tell you, I, I can’t explain they’re my colleagues in the faculty inability to to see this and believe that this is what these folks are doing. The bureaucrats are doing. I had a conversation with a lot of my colleagues brilliant young man he’s he’s from Germany. He’s a German management scholar.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:07:36] And I spoke to him about the theme of of Brutal Minds and I said, this is what they’re saying that they’re going to do. They want to, quote, boldly transform higher education. Now, these are all faculty saying this. These are bureaucrats that are saying they’re going to boldly transform higher education I don’t want to ask them to do this. They don’t have any plans to consult the faculty with this transformation, and they have no mandate to transform.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:08:05] So I said this to my colleague he says, Well, you know, this this transformation could be could be, you know, consist of many different things, kind of a knee jerk reaction against what I was saying. I said, Well, that’s fine, except they tell us exactly how they’re going to transform the university. It’s laid out right here do you agree with this? Well, and you have this this disinclination.
Stuart Turley [00:08:29] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:08:29] This wedded you know, this investment in in the belief of the university is kind of the way it always has been. The old university at Oklahoma State that you were talking about and and my own experiences at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as an undergraduate many, many years ago.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:08:47] So but I really can’t explain it the only thing we can do is continue to present fact based,.
Stuart Turley [00:08:54] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:08:54] Fact based, I would say tracks like my own boring lines that are grounded in sound research, sound theory that shows in their own words what they’re trying to do and make them acknowledge it, make them publicly justify it. And for the most part, I would say get that information out to parents, students, donors and alumni.
Stuart Turley [00:09:21] You see, there’s about 16 things I keep. I’m sitting here listening to you and I’m going round and round in my head, Squirrel. And so how, are you the only guy at the faculty lunchroom sitting in the corner and nobody will talk to you? Is that I’m serious? I mean, are you ostracized?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:09:42] No. Well, not. Not overtly I would say there is no we don’t have a faculty lunch and we’re not blessed like that. Okay. But I will tell you this. I cleared a I cleared a table at a banquet for suggesting certain things because I know all the folks who come to the university usually train in from the suburbs I live in West Philadelphia, about a mile from the campus in a.
Stuart Turley [00:10:04] Right,.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:10:05] Which is a very it’s a poor neighborhood.
Stuart Turley [00:10:08] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:10:08] And I choose to leave here for the convenience of it but I have firsthand experience of the life that goes around the university. My view is not tainted from, you know, by I’m here during the day of the I train home to the suburbs and the things that I’m saying was based on my personal experiences they basically went one after the other, got up and left the table, which I celebrated because I had the table all to myself.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:10:30] So I like to use that. You know, I just I kept I kept telling the truth, right? I kept telling the truth and not living the lie, as I say, in Brutal Minds when I approached Vaclav Havel, the playwright of that, was persecuted in Czechoslovakia and later became the first president of the Czech Republic, says You have to stop living the lie. And once you tell the truth, all bets are off then you will certainly become the target of a lot of attacks.
Stuart Turley [00:10:58] Kind of like I believe it was John Kerry was yesterday or day before when he told the committee that he didn’t own a plane.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:11:07] But he’s got to be dodging, you know. You know, you could probably make a case, as you know, as a circum circumlocution case that you mean he doesn’t really own it, you know, he’s leasing it. There’s some other there’s some other attachment. But the idea that he’s going to say something like that and expect people believe it is incredible,.
Stuart Turley [00:11:27] Oh and I used it one time. Good grief. Leave that knucklehead alone in your book. I absolutely love it. Excuse me. Did I just call him a knucklehead? I’m sorry if I did. I just. That was like a Tourette’s.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:11:44] Kind of America’s best and brightest, don’t you know?
Stuart Turley [00:11:46] Oh, geez.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:11:47] Al Gore he’s another one, right?
Stuart Turley [00:11:49] Oh, my goodness the man bear pig what a not head. You know what bugs me is. All right. Well, we’ll start there in your book. I love your writing style and I also love the way that you say what you’re going to do and at the end, the conclusion says, this is what I talked about.
Stuart Turley [00:12:08] So as a true professor, you’re over there going student here’s what we’re going to talk about and then, by the way, you tell them again at the end of it. I like, I like your book on that, but I got some things here.
Stuart Turley [00:12:19] Now. The history of cancel culture I thought that was phenomenal, I had never thought about it until I read your part on the Romans. What happened there? Tell us about how cancel culture got started.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:12:37] Well, give some kind of a arresting examples in that chapter that you’re referring to. And to say to expect the people to know that we can trust these folks who are canceling folks to give us to give us a hearing. Right? To give these people the power to to say yes or no to the the reigning orthodoxy and they’ll make room for us.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:13:00] And I talk about how the barbarians can we trust the barbarians who come in and oust the Romans and trust that they’re going to provide a safe space for Roman culture, that they’re going to provide a place where we can talk about a great art, we can talk about the Roman accomplishments, or are we going to expunge them from history?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:13:18] Same thing with with the Cultural Revolution in China, can we expect, you know, the Maoists to come in? They’re going to destroy the statues, they’re going to torture the professors, which is exactly what they did can we trust to create a safe space to for Chinese for ancient Chinese culture we can discuss these ideas. No,.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:13:38] The oppressors and the the folks who would destroy our existence simply by virtue of the ideas that we express has always been prevalent, has always been, you know, right there we look at the the history of the Inquisition, the idea of speaking the ideas, speaking and writing against the reigning orthodoxy was severely punished throughout the Middle Ages or at the stake by torture and is primarily that’s the perfect example of simply ideas being dangerous.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:14:09] So this idea of cancel culture that is is as it is real, it is part of a long history of this type of suppression of heretical ideas. And so once you find the totalitarians get the upper hand, when the authoritarians get the upper hand, there will be no safe space.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:14:27] And Vaclav Havel knew this, Arthur Kessler knew this, Alexander Solzhenitsyn knew this. Joseph Brodsky who this? I think we should listen a lot to the Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans who have emigrated to the United States, who have lived under Walesa, Kolakowski, and they can talk from their own experience of what happens when the authoritarians gain control.
Stuart Turley [00:14:52] Yes, I worked at Intel for 12 years and Andy Grove had important he knew that as well, too.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:15:01] Let me just interject but you brought up Andy Grove his power only the Paranoid Survive is a wonderful demonstration of that I use in my one of my classes on on strategy, the idea of how you recognize an inflection point and then marshal your forces to to meet that challenge in the in the business world.
Stuart Turley [00:15:22] He was an very interesting cat. Now, I didn’t work with him directly, but one time in a big meeting and he has a big sales meeting and 20 years ago he says the voice will be the next interface and I’m like, Wow, that’s pretty brilliant.
Stuart Turley [00:15:42] My idiot coworker next to me asks Andy Grove that same question again he jumps off the stage, runs over and starts pointing at me and going weren’t you listening to my presentation? And I’m like, No, I’m Mr. Teflon. I go in that gentleman is he’s fired within an hour you don’t mess around with Andy Grove.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:16:10] Well, that’s a very, you know, a very military way of doing things where there’s not a lot of room for slippage.
Stuart Turley [00:16:17] And he was very successful.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:16:19] Yes, he was. Yes, he was.
Stuart Turley [00:16:22] And so, anyway, now back to with the cancel culture. Last year, I said that the 2023, we would see a big awakening of people saying, wait a minute, climate change may not be as big of a crisis. Investing like BlackRock had lost $1.7 trillion last year in the first half of the year because they’re ESG investments investors are starting to wake up and stuff.
Stuart Turley [00:16:50] What are you seeing in the university areas? Is there starting to be any kind of push back to the left in us? Is there going to be any any acceptance? What are you seeing as far as the temperature? Let me rephrase this. Just a hair.
Stuart Turley [00:17:06] And that is because in your book you also talk about the sub, not the professors, but the support staff, also getting into the brainwashing as well. And I guess brainwashing was maybe not the right word, but it’s a whole culture. Do you see any change coming in the culture? Possibly?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:17:26] I see absolutely no change coming in the culture. And I hate to be a pessimist on this. Unless unless the unless the recipe for reform that I lay out in brutal lines is is somehow enacted. And that comes from the ground up, there are two solutions to the problem.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:17:43] One is long term, which is is what we’re seeing in Florida is what we’re seeing in Texas and Virginia is the idea of outside pressure by the folks who hold the purse strings exerting oversight that is missing oversight in the universities dismissing.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:18:01] The other solution is more short term and immediate and that is what parents and students themselves can do with the support of alumni. And information, of course, is the actual is the first step in the solution because right now, the reigning myth about what the university is all about and perpetuation of that myth, that the university really hasn’t changed in the last 20, 30 years is part and parcel of what’s going on right now.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:18:27] Now, do I hear or see anything in university where I work that this is that there’s an awakening? No, what I see is a doubling down on I see a doubling down on sustainability and that kind of thing. And as I’ve said before, you know, yeah, sustainable sustainability. Well, sustainability say sustainability, click your heels three times and voila, you’ve got renewable energy in endless quantities that that’s, that’s kind of the virtue of the stats.
Stuart Turley [00:18:56] That Happen.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:18:56] No, it doesn’t happen. Nor does chanting positive valence words like diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging, which have the really amorphous kind of cult like sayings. You know, if you look at the Moonies, look at the Unification Church and their their mantra is peace and unity, but there is no anti peace and unity movement out there who could be against peace and unity like inclusion and belonging.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:19:22] Well, who’s against inclusion? Belonging? No one. How do you mix that? You can’t accept by negation except by someone who’s who supposedly. Well, that person made me feel make me feel included in that I belong. And suddenly someone is brought up before an inquisition of some sort.
Stuart Turley [00:19:39] So I think the biggest problem we have is America. Sorry for interrupting, Stanley, but the biggest problem we have as Americans is you and I can sit here and have a talk. I can pretend I’m talking to Donald Trump and I’m somebody famous.
Stuart Turley [00:19:53] But really, you can hear we can have an adult conversation and say, here’s some problems. I may agree with you, I may not. We have a conversation, but how are you employed with your attitudes in the university? Because I love your attitude we got to have some conversations. How do people how do you talk to folks that don’t want to have a conversation?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:20:16] Well, I usually don’t talk about the kinds of things that you find a brutal mind because I’m a business professor and the courses that I teach are in entrepreneurship, management, information technology or technology innovation. I teach biology and competitive advantage. I don’t teach a course in Brutal Minds.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:20:31] I probably ought to I don’t teach a lot business communications another one, international business is another one. And my personal views and my research on another topic stays out of classrooms because I believe in the Max Weber’s notion of the neutral classroom of classroom neutrality. And I don’t use it as a bully pulpit to propound ideas that have absolutely nothing to do with what I’m being paid.
Stuart Turley [00:20:55] See, now, that’s what college is all about.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:20:58] I happen to agree with that.
Stuart Turley [00:21:00] I love that.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:21:03] You will find on the campus that there are a lot of people who don’t believe that they believe that it is there. They did the ubiquitous. They even subscribe to the idea of that they are somehow scholar practitioners this is what they call it,.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:21:17] Scholar practitioners imbued with critical consciousness, which means that they can peer into society and see the relations of power, privilege, that kind of thing whereas you Stuart and I cannot. We are we have false consciousness, and it’s part of this narcissistic, imperious attitude that somehow they are imbued with superior perception. So.
Stuart Turley [00:21:39] Yeah, see, I don’t care what if you’re a human, I want to talk to you and respect you, period. I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care about anything else. You’re human. I’m a humanitarian. I want to help you. I help that homeless help. Africa is one of my biggest pet peeves. And that is why is the West trying to stuff down energy policies that will drive the energy prices up? Let’s help them out.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:22:08] Well, I’ll tell you a Stuart my fundamentals that I ground all of my classes in are merit, fairness, equality and respect. Nice tuition free of merit, fairness, equality and respect. And that’s how I deal with people. I insist on that type of dealing in the classroom, Right. You know, it’s kind of a basic the golden rule do unto others as you would have them doing for you. The only politics I’ve ever needed, and that’s how my classes are, how they function.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:22:37] So back to your your that there is is there anyone I will tell you I was having a conversation with someone the other day at the hallway about the fact that Philadelphia has high taxes, high crime, a 24% poverty rate and the salient facts here is that we’ve been under under Democrat rule for 70 years, uninterrupted.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:23:00] And the person I’m dealing with is a very bright person says that, Well, you know, I look at Republican and Democrat, those are just labels. I said, what are you telling me that the result we have today would be the same? Have we had had if we’d had seven years of Republican rule? I said, no, no. Republican and Democrat are portfolios of policy prescriptions, and they almost none of them overlap.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:23:23] And so what you said to me is that there would be no difference had we had a different portfolio policy prescriptions regarding crime and the economy and taxation. And we have a different we would have the same result today says it’s a matter of personal corruption.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:23:37] This blind spot absolutely floored me that I was hearing this from a young faculty member here in 2023. Absolutely. But let me just interject something I’ve got to say. You asked me how I came to this book, how I survive or whatever, because, you know, I’ve always been a lived a living kind of guy, an idealist.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:23:59] 2020 motivated me because I saw the great facade, the great fraud that was picked up, and it was perpetrated on America during the summer of 2020 with the riots and with the universities exhibiting this obsequious attitude toward the of ideologues who insisted on imposing programs in the universities around the country based on the idea that we somehow were responsible for what happened in Minneapolis in March of 2020 I thought that was that was just absolutely absurd.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:24:33] And yet I look around and I see university presidents right and left going, you know, testing the breeze and going with the wind. And I said, you know what? Someone has to say something maybe if I say something, other people will stand up and say something a little absurd its twaddle.
Stuart Turley [00:24:49] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:24:50] Very few people, if anyone, have openly said anything. A lot of people say it behind your behinds, Right. That kind of thing. And so I decided to take the kid gloves off. You know, I’m not going to play anymore there’s not going to be any kind of midcourt.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:25:02] These folks, I should tell you, do not want to compromise these folks being the ideologues that I talk about, Brutal Minds, they’re out to win. They’re not they’re not traditional liberals. I love my traditional liberal friends who look just like you. Yeah, a love them.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:25:17] But these are not popular people, these are uncompromising ideologues subject to a primitive ideology of mockery of villains and victims they are the color of your skin, period and there’s no compromising with that.
Stuart Turley [00:25:32] Well, let me ask you this as as we sit here and we roll two solutions, the only way that we’re going to get on the other end of this peacefully is if we all get along and if we all listen to each other. And you and I just talked about a minute ago what the biggest problem with energy is there’s no workers coming up behind us.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:25:56] Right.
Stuart Turley [00:25:57] Your solution in the book that you talked about it, it’s going to fall on deaf ears right now. How do we implement your solution?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:26:07] Well, the solution that I talk about that I was referring to with you at our prior conversation is the idea that where other people see an obstacle. Smart people, strategic minded people see us see an opportunity for themselves.
Stuart Turley [00:26:23] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:26:23] I’ll give you a kind of a parallel analog situation you know millennials who came through as a cohort a couple of years ago from, you know, they had a reputation, deserve it or undeserving of being, you know, slackers, not having a good work ethic.
Stuart Turley [00:26:36] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:26:37] It Brought this to them I said, look, if you know that your group, your cohort, your generation has a reputation for for being slackers and no work ethic, then this an opportunity for you to position yourself individually as having a fantastic work ethic. I don’t mean by to thumping your chest and say, Hey, look at me. I have a good work ethic.
Stuart Turley [00:26:54] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:26:55] No, But by saying and communicating potential employers, everything that you communicate, your punctuality, listening and dedication, commitment to my teammates, all of it shows that you have a work ethic. You will position yourselves advantageously now the same way, but therefore to solve the problems that you just talked about is.
Stuart Turley [00:27:14] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:27:14] It’s the same thing with the blue ocean I think it’s a blue ocean horizon. The blue, what was it? The yellow exploded and the.
Stuart Turley [00:27:21] Blue, right? Yeah.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:27:22] Right. Yeah. That that oil rig, you know, there was under a not really British Petroleum, but really Transocean ran that thing. And so I said to my students, then when you work for BP and they said, oh no, no, it’s terrible company. I said, well, listen to yourself okay, fine, because no one’s going to even remember this except maybe the movie.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:27:41] I said, Yeah, if you position yourself, if someone wants to jump aboard BP and say, Hey, I want to be outside giving that message that BP is a great company, it wasn’t his fault and they did their best to solve that problem and I want to communicate that. You will find yourself rocketing up the career ladder, same way with fossil fuels today fossil fuels are here to stay.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:28:05] So now you position yourself as willing, ready, willing and able to to tell the fossil fuel message and that you’re going to jump aboard the ship against the climate change characters who have tried to elevate this really what we know is to be a write in natural phenomenon and has been for thousands of years, as my wife would say, and turn that into a crisis of some sort.
Stuart Turley [00:28:33] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:28:33] If you want to listen to those people and jump aboard that train and march along with all the other sheep and lemmings that you’re working at sustainability instead say, Hey, what? Why do we go over here and look at oil, Gas, even nuclear, and say, Hey, cheap, sustainable energy, plentiful, cheap energy is the way that human beings have lifted themselves out of poverty for centuries.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:28:59] And I’m going to stop doing that now in fact, what you’re going to do is you’re going to depress and suppress people and keep them in poverty by aligning yourself with some sort of chimera, a wish list of climate change. You know, that no one really believes, certainly not the Swedish prime minister. I don’t even know Sweden, but it’s someone who rides a bicycle the last hundred meters because she really doesn’t believe the nonsense that she’s out.
Stuart Turley [00:29:25] And I thought it was pretty funny. I think her assistant, I think it was her assistant was riding behind. He had a satchel bag on his right he’s trying to say,.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:29:38] Oh, you know, and Pete Bridges has done the same thing he’s you know, he’s he’s he’s riding in his armored limo, whatever he does. And and just before he arrives, it’s the photo op. He gets out and gets on the bicycle and rides the last hundred meters or so to show him arriving. Of course, the media compliant as they are anti also fuel as they are we’ll show him dutifully arriving on the bicycle without showing the this the Potemkin village facade that is actually going on.
Stuart Turley [00:30:05] You know the funny thing is my young millennial partner if you would and also partner in crime on the podcast, our Daily Show, he is cool. He’s a young millennial and he and I talk every morning at six and Dude does not think he’s a hard working dude we’ve automated businesses and everything else, so he’s one of those millennials I don’t mind going into business with. So they’re out there.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:30:34] Yeah, well, yeah, they certainly are in large numbers of what the fact is that, you know, you can either bear this brand that has been, you know, for the most part it might be like that, I don’t know. But but you can bear this brand and say, no, I’m one of the 40% who is different than this brand and I want to distinguish and differentiate myself in ways that are meaningful to you,.
Stuart Turley [00:30:58] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:30:59] I can help you create value and I can do so unlike my compatriots. So it’s becomes a kind of a double edged sword that. You can cut both ways here in a good way, then I’m going to make myself more marketable to business and I’m also going to dismiss the rest of these folks out here as being exactly where you think they are. So I would say that that’s a good solution for for young people going into oil and gas. And I might actually use that in one of my classes next week.
Stuart Turley [00:31:25] Oh, that that’d be great. I’ll tell you, you heard it here second. But, you know, the funny thing is I. I wanted to retire and be a professor. I was going to go get my doctorate and I loved academia and wanted to go do that on my retirement. I’m a podcast host. Let’s see. Podcast host. Academia. I’m having.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:31:52] Well, you’re having more fun now than you would in academia certainly the way academia is today. I would tell you, radio academia is great. I mean, we are we are known for unusual personalities, you know right?
Stuart Turley [00:32:03] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:32:04] I love them they’re fun to listen to, you know, But you also will find many good compatriots. One of the greatest thing is that they’re almost everyone here and I’m talking with faculty or smart people in different ways. Some people are really misguided they’re disconnected, especially those on the soft side of campus you’ve got economics or business or physics and chemistry to those guys.
Stuart Turley [00:32:28] Did you say the soft side of it?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:32:31] Yes, I did.
Stuart Turley [00:32:32] Okay. I just was checking.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:32:33] I usually call it the dark side of campus you know what I’m taught but you know, the soft side of campus, the folks who who like to like the history department, likes to give histories of capitalism about what we do here in the business school. And I’ve seen some of their syllabi I should what are their syllabus is to my compatriot he reads it go this is malfeasance.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:32:53] Because you look at the history of capitalism that doesn’t mention Karl Marx or Adam Smith,.
Stuart Turley [00:32:58] Right?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:32:59] Instead has got a whole lot of other stuff in there is secondary and tertiary sources talking about what capitalism kind of sort of is.
Stuart Turley [00:33:08] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:33:09] And so it’s but yeah but generally speaking these are smart folks and that you can have those kinds of conversations that we’re having together but but once you once they find out, you know, that it doesn’t really help me in my my goal to have those conversations looking the way I do. And so it’s kind of.
Stuart Turley [00:33:28] I was gonna say you could do some other person imitation, but your invitation you’re doing now, dude. Well.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:33:35] Well, I’ll tell you, I got my Bill Clinton in my voice. Bill Clinton took me me. He was out of office by the time I perfected my Bill Clinton imitation.
Stuart Turley [00:33:42] Oh, how cool. Give us one.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:33:43] Well, maybe you remember me. I was I was in I was the governor of Arkansas long before I saw the president.
Stuart Turley [00:33:50] We gotta get you scheduled Bill, on my podcast next week.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:33:54] Man, I don’t look like Bill Clinton, I hope. And and.
Stuart Turley [00:33:57] No, you don’t but you, Shirzad, like him.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:33:59] Well, but it’s a fun thing to do when I’m going I’m doing a, you know, verbal only kind of thing where people keep saying, oh, yeah, I feel you’re playing a religious. Stuart Oh, my guess, you know.
Stuart Turley [00:34:13] We were about two more minutes running out of time but here’s here’s what I want to do is I want to get in touch with you guys. I got to I want to have some more questions for you and we’ll have you back if you don’t mind coming back.
Stuart Turley [00:34:26] But, you know, when I was going to Oklahoma State, Dexter Manley and pat down, Pat Jones was the defensive coach and oh, Jimmy Johnson was the head coach. Right. And they asked me to tutor some of the football players on Dexter Manley was one of them.
Stuart Turley [00:34:47] And Dexter could not read or write and they abused the school system, abused Dexter. They kept passing him all the way through and he’s the nicest guy on the planet. I love Dexter. You couldn’t read. Try to teach him business law you can’t.
Stuart Turley [00:35:10] And so I think that’s where the universities do a lot of disservice is by passing those kids through. But on the other hand, you see the other kids that I was able to help, they were phenomenal. I mean, the universities did right by them, if that makes sense.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:35:27] Yeah. So just as an education, I love cool names and Dexter Manley is a heck of a football name, you know?
Stuart Turley [00:35:33] Oh, it is. And he would throw people around I walked in on in the practice room there and he’s like, I’ll be with you in a minute. And I’m like, okay, take your time he’s working at 100 pounds a free way, I mean, he could squish my head like a grape and I absolutely love Dexter Manley he was a lot of fun.
Stuart Turley [00:35:51] So anyway, what’s coming around the corner for you and what do you see coming around? So there’s two questions. What’s coming around the corner for you personally and what do you see coming around the corner in academia?
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:36:04] Well, for for me personally, I’m continuing. I’m not going to call it a crusade, but makes it sound so noble. I’m continuing my my voicing my my preferences in academia with brutal minds. I want people to simply read the book I’d like to put a time in every parent and every college students has certainly as a back to school gift.You know, it makes sense for that.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:36:28] And I’m already working on a second book and third book, its actually because of this book, Brutal Minds, was really more than, again, half again, as large as it was with over 850 citations. And the Publisher, the publisher said, you know, you can’t publish a 180,000 word manifesto with with 850 footnotes so I had to cut it by more than half. And so I’ve got lots of material, more substantiation, more evidence for the thesis that is in Brutal Minds.
Stuart Turley [00:36:54] Right.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:36:55] Now I’m working on two separate books right now
Stuart Turley [00:36:58] Fantastic!
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:37:00] I think so. I mean, I enjoy doing that, you know and what’s next in academia? Well, I see glimmers at the end of the tunnel here I really do write about whether I see person thinks there’s a glimmer on the other the nation landscape, the partial landscape, and that what’s going on in Florida is absolutely phenomenal because what you’re doing is you’re seeing people open their eyes. And I want trustees who are supposed to be overseeing colleges and universities to start.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:37:28] So to start exerting oversight, because right now, think about this college president, vice presidents present, they present their own evaluation forms to the to the people who are supposed to be judging them. They have a board of trustees meeting was here’s how I’m doing, here’s how well I’m doing and the board of trustees oh, well, very good. Carry on. Here’s another half million dollars in salary. Well, that’s bizarre. You know, it’s okay in the private world because you’ve got numbers to meet but in the university or so, we want to change that, I think.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:37:57] And I think that in Texas, Virginia and Florida and good things that I’m hearing, you know, behind closed doors, it’s absolutely fantastic. And so I’m going to do my best to add my voice and my energies and my influence to that movement.
Stuart Turley [00:38:11] And I love that we will have Brutal Minds in the shownotes, this is going to go out to all the channels YouTube podcast available selfishly, wherever you listen to your podcast, but also it’ll go there, will tag you and follow up with you again. Dr. Ridgley, thank you for stopping by.
Stanley K. Ridgley [00:38:33] Thanks so much. I enjoy the heck out of it. Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:38:36] Thank you.
