Jason’s Background and Passion
Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White from Vive 18. And today I’m hanging out, you guessed it, with a new friend. His name is Jason Corder. And I’m going to read a little bit about him. Jason has a really cool background that’s very diverse and it’s took him around the world. And why I asked him to chat with us today is because he has this really cool platform and a TEDx talk on social closeness and he’s working a lot with Gen Z. so with that said, y ‘all are going to love this episode. Check this out. So Jason Quarter, born in San Francisco in 1969, is a TEDx and keynote speaker whose work focuses on mental health for Zoomers. In over 20 years abroad in Kenya and France, he’s worked with people like Anthony Bourdain, the Nobel Laureate Wangari Mathai, some other really, really renowned producers and names, as well as clients like UNICEF, the Brookings Institute, Nokia, the University of Nairobi, and Intel. He’s worked as a visual artist, singer, songwriter, composer for film, an actor, producer, scriptwriter, as well as cultural envoy, creating projects for the US embassies, working with over 10,000 young people across the African continent. He lives with his three sons in Sedona. So Jason, what’s up? How’s it going?
You do it what’s up Jake great to be here.
Yeah, this is great. I’m so excited to talk about social closeness, kind of like Gen Z and stuff like that. But will you fill in any gaps for us just to get to know you a little bit better? I know I read your professional bio, but anything else that got you into this work that you’re doing or your passion behind it? I would love to hear about that.
Yeah, well, it’s funny because you read that long list of the things that I do and have done, but as I like to say, it doesn’t mean I actually did any of them well. When we hear the list of the things that people have worked on, we always assume it means that they were geniuses at it, but actually, I could just be more of a volume guy, know, kind of quantity over quality.
You Right, at least the skill of getting yourself into really cool situations, right?
That’s for sure. Definitely getting outside the comfort zone has been my MO for about the last 30 plus years. That’s for sure. And it’s, you can’t say that it was easy at all times doing that, but then it’s one of those things where after you’re done, you you look back and you appreciate the challenge, you appreciate the moments that you almost lost it, you know? Whether that’s losing, almost losing your life or your mind or your family or et cetera. And I was close to all those things. So it wasn’t, again, it wasn’t always easy, but now looking back, I think, wow, okay, I did learn a ton and I was pushed to the limit, if you will, so many times and that makes us stronger, makes us have to figure out how to pivot on our feet, you know, to sometimes to survive. So I’m grateful for as much as it wasn’t always easy, I’m grateful for those experiences. And just to answer your question, I mean, I’ve had the life of an artist really, you know, from a visual artist, I’ve always been a singer songwriter, you know, then in getting into film and acting and all that. But at the same time. I’m, unless I’m a narcissist in empaths clothing, I identify as an extreme empath.
And I’ve been a father for 26 years now and a lot of that time as a single father. So all of that is to say that yes, I have my artistic work and creative work, but I also have an incredible passion for my own son’s parenting, being a good father, and then in general relating to what Generation Z is going through.
And seeing that through my own sons, my two older sons are 26 and 22. So I have that creative side, that’s that artistic side that people sort of see as being about me. The artist is, it’s me, I wanna get me out there. But I think there’s a link between creativity and empathy and love because.
We’re still, it’s about connecting, I guess. For me, being an artist, it’s not about like, I have to do me. No, it’s about sharing something that I believe in that I believe can add value to other people’s lives. And I wanna share it with them, not so that they say, Jason, you’re so great, but that it actually touches their heart and opens up their heart.
Yeah, well that makes sense. there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of motives that we have that are it’s expression of, Hey, like I want to not only be understood, but understand others and influence impact and change lives. And the cool thing is music and art does it on an emotional level that other mediums can’t, I mean, it can’t even touch because art is so expressive and so relatable.
So I’m curious when I’m learning about you, Jason, and your expertise in this season of life, it’s like, hey, you’ve done all these really cool things. You’ve had experiences across the world. And what I know about you now, and I’m putting like little buckets in my brain of like, okay, Jason, he’s working with Gen Z. And then he’s working on something called social closeness. And then you’re getting on a lot of stages to share. so you’re speaking. So I would love to design this episode to kind of unpack each of those. Can you, our audience a lot of times is working with Gen Z to help them make better decisions, you know, not going down the path of addiction, but developing real coping skills, positive habits, real connections. So can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve learned about Zoomers and Gen Z and kind of maybe some problems or challenges they have or some opportunities they have, all that kind of stuff.
Understanding Gen Z and Social Closeness
Absolutely, absolutely. No, I appreciate that question. And I’d love to. The idea of social closeness, and I didn’t make up the phrase, but it did come to me and then I Googled it and I thought, okay, someone did say this in 1974. But for me, it’s the idea, it’s very much a kind of post pandemic idea really, which is to state that being physically near each other, close enough to actually exchange parts of what’s called our microbiomes. And I can briefly explain that.
That’s actually good for our health. And don’t take my word for it that Oxford NIH even says the same. And I mention all this, of course, in my TEDx talk. We literally, so we have these microbiomes, which is really, it’s things that literally exist on our skin. And it sounds a bit weird. Hundreds of millions of little tiny creatures that are.
You know, microscopically small that of course we can’t see, but they’re part of our microbiome and they actually create our health. They’re part of our immune system. If we don’t have those, we die. It’s crazy, but it’s true. And so in fact, the number one thing you can do to support your health right now is actually to go out into the world and physically interact with as many people as possible in as many diverse environments as possible is the opposite of what the narrative has been the last five years. Will say this, I’ve been more and more, everything my dad told me was true when he said that everything they’ve told you is a lie. And it’s crazy, but the more and more, the opposite of the narrative more and more these days is actually true. And getting that information out there that is information that is not profit driven, that’s the difference. And I know I’m really tangenting right now which is not even a verb, but so much of the information that we get, and I’m speaking now to Gen Z in the sense that they get, that you guys get, is not information, it’s advertising. In fact, it’s very hard to get information that isn’t advertising. Definitely don’t get it from the media, definitely don’t get it if you turn on your TV or any of that.
Obviously we now find independent sources of information online and obviously that’s what’s wonderful. So, I mean, that’s something that Gen Z has at their disposal that my generation didn’t have when we were young because all we had was the sort of quote corporate media, which is often the profit driven corporations that run the media. Anyway, that was a long diatribe. Yeah.
Challenges of Reliable Information in a Profit-Driven Media Landscape
Well, can I, Jason, can I butt in? Cause I think what’s our audience is going to really relate to is that like the example that comes to mind of exactly what you said is the rise of vaping products. And right now with THC and cannabis products is there’s information being shared. Right. And I put that in air quotes because these companies are paying for studies to be done. They’re paying companies to produce studies to get the outcome that they want.
So you’re like, I have to see this as an advertisement, not a study. They’re literally paying for this outcome. And even how they get information on social media through different influencers, hey, who’s paying these influencers? It’s the advertisers, it’s the sponsors. And it’s true, it’s like hard to see the line of where a true message is, an authentic caring message and one that’s been bought and paid for by somebody with a product to sell. Like you said, it’s profit driven. And I’m just now hearing this term being thrown around called addiction for profit. And I don’t know the most about it, but the term just makes me angry. It’s like, hey, let’s sell you this product, get you addicted. It’s great for a lifetime customer, but I don’t really care how long that lifetime lasts because you’re going to be a consistent consumer.
And that’s good for the bottom line this next quarter. I get a bonus, I get a raise, whatever it is. It seems to lack humanity and real connectedness. yeah, we, man, we’re on it. We’re in it now.
The Lack of Humanity and Real Connectedness in Profit-Driven Industries
Yeah. 100%. I mean, I just was learning. I knew about this in general, but like, for example, you I think it was the 50s, 60s, 70s. People were starting to smoke less cigarettes for the first time back in the 40s, every single adult smoke cigarettes. then as time went on, so Philip Morris, one of the two major companies that they were aware of that. And they said, you know what? We need more customers now. We’re losing our
We’re losing our addicted tobacco customers a little bit. So they literally went to the food industry and they said, we need to create a series of packaged foods that are as addictive. This has all now come out. There’s a memo, like it’s the evidence is there, the memos are there. They purposefully went to create addictive food.
And literally the entire food system that we have now, when you go into a Safeway or anything, 99% of what’s in there was created on purpose by a couple of very large companies, Philip Morris being one of them, in order to addict you. And I think it’s wild. And that’s what we have today. And that’s why we have the sickest country. The numbers are coming out now. We have the most, the sickest, the unhealthiest country in the world now.
And unhealthiness is big business, as we know. So our whole system is not just broken, it’s shattered. It’s crumbled to the ground. Everything that we felt that we had. When I was young, we were the, quote, air quotes, your greatest country in the world. Et cetera, et cetera, in every way. And every one of those metrics is shattered and destroyed right now. And part of it, like you say, is there was this trust that we had regulatory agencies that were there to help us and protect us from greedy capitalists or greedy corporations. As you say, that doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no structure around that, whether you’re talking about vapes and et cetera, or you’re talking about food.
If we’re being sold poisonous food that gives us cancer then what how well is the regulatory agency working? How well is that protecting us? It’s not so as you say around vapes and vapes and THC products We’re not getting we’re not getting unfiltered information. We are getting advertising.
The Importance of Doing Our Own Research
One thing I will say is, again, this goes against the narrative of the last five years when we were told, don’t do your own research, just listen to air quotes science. I would say, of course, the opposite. And I know Gen Z is incredibly good at this, is do your own research. So even if there’s a vape product or that kind of product that you like and it looks good and you think you’ve got information around it that makes you feel comfortable, go and try five, get five other opinions. Research it to the last moment. Look up, as you guys know how to do this already, but anything you’re researching, put scam at the beginning of it or put, then you’ll find if there is any one suggesting that it’s a scam, et cetera. So no, it’s wild. think the sad truth is that, I mean, in my opinion, our country was taken over by crooks and now going into a whole other thing many, many, years ago. they’ve, anyone that’s tried to speak the truth has been either assassinated or canceled. And I feel like we are on our own now. We are on our own. We do not have anyone looking out for us. Definitely not in our government. Definitely not in our healthcare systems. Not in really any of our major systems. It’s up to us to do our own research. But let’s be aware that 99 % of the information there is profit driven. So it’s just a question of being a genius researcher, but I’ve never met more genius researchers than I have in Generation Z. I think you guys are the goats of research. I know you’ll do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Right?
But I think it’s just good to be aware that this system is broken. There is no regulatory agency that is there protecting us from whether it’s poisonous food or forced experimental medical products. It goes on and on and on.
Yeah. Well, and that’s the thing that I was giving a presentation down near Miami and there’s parts where it’s really open dialogue with the audience and they can ask questions and it always pops up during, you know, the part about cannabis products, marijuana products, because they’ve heard all these narratives. Like it’s not addictive. it’s natural, so it can’t be bad for you. it’s used as medicine.
So it’s all these, these narratives that are being told without the side of, Hey, with a young brain, it’s a completely different drug and it’s not the same natural drug that it was. It’s synthetic and knowing what you’re consuming. so without saying, Hey, if your parents use their terrible people, you know, I don’t want to come across saying like that. It is very popular. I don’t want to be judgy or turn them away, but going back to the science and really emphasizing, I will trust a study that is done by a hospital, a hospital’s job is to save lives or a medical facility. Like that’s what they care about. And if they save lives, their bottom line goes up. They’re actually profitable by saving people’s lives. I’m more inclined to trust that study than a different one. because you just kind of look at the motive behind it. What’s the business model? Is it, is it saving lives or is it taking them?
And you know, you kind of just like you would any court case, right? Hey, what’s the motive? Does it make sense? If it lines up, follow it through and take it for what it is. But can you talk to me a little bit more about social closeness? Because we talked about the microbiomes a little bit, but what is this doing for us? like, what does it even mean?
The Benefits of Social Closeness
Yeah, exactly. No, absolutely. Well, there’s, and there’s a couple of level like social closeness to me that exists on the emotional level, and then it exists on the biological level, and they’re both, you know, equally important. So just the biology level, again, our microbiomes, the greater the diversity of our microbiomes, i .e., the more people we’ve literally like hugged and shook hands with and exchanged a quick exchange, the greater our health. that’s again, according to the NIH and Oxford, it’s very mainstream actually at this point. So I think a lot of us, especially after the pandemic is sort of like, no, I’m safer if I’m alone, I’m safer at home. No, no, you’re not. It’s also a fact that people who live alone die younger. And that’s why. Now again, there’s two reasons. There’s the physical.
So the best thing you can do is go out into your community and just start shaking hands, giving hugs, being touchy feely. No, but I mean, it literally is true. we think just before I talk about the emotional side, I think also it’s just a mindset. Do we have a daily mindset of fear or do we have a daily mindset of openness, trust, love. know, trust, love and openness, that’s connection. That’s connecting me with you. It’s connecting me with your audience. It’s also connecting me with strangers I meet at the grocery store. If I’m open, I am, I’m just like, I’m just constantly making conversation with strangers wherever I go.
And usually trying to make a joke and make them smile. It’s not a conscious thing. I wanna go make people happy, but my urge is to do that. So I’m a natural grocers. It’s like when I’m in there, it’s sort of a constant banter with everyone in the store and we’re all laughing by the end of it. I just, I love that. It gives me energy and it gives other people energy. I can see that. So that’s a mindset that I love that I’m, I guess I’m lucky enough to have at this point. I’ve survived, you know, this long in my life, but so many people, the mindset is fear, fear of other people, fear of the natural world where the fear mindset says that that’s a germ.
Open and knowledgeable mindset says we are made up of germs and in fact without germs we die and that’s actually true, you know, so We have to get back somehow to this idea that the world is not a place to be afraid of people are not and I and of course I’m Not to being so naive as to say that there aren’t dangerous people there are and there are dangerous places and I’m not saying that but in a general way the natural world is not dangerous. It’s, you know, here’s a here’s a one little tip I’ve learned out of so many. Touching dirt triggers your brain to release serotonin. So literally just the act of putting your fingers in the soil is going to give you a shot of happiness.
It’s why, I remember when I was 19, I was home from college, and I don’t know why I was drawn to suddenly dig a little vegetable garden in our backyard that was full of like six foot scotch broom. And I did it, and I don’t know why, and I think that’s why. I think I somehow, my body knew like instinctually that I was gonna get some serotonin out of this.
Whoa. And serotonin is the one that makes you calm, reduces anxiety, it makes you feel good.
100% makes you feel it’s kind of like the happiness hormone. When you are hungover or crashing from any addiction, including to your screen, your serotonin drops. So that’s partly why we feel so miserable when we’re hungover or after a bender of any drug, including our screens.
So, sorry, I’m going off on a tangent here. So that’s the biological side of social closeness. And the emotional side, of course, you know, it’s that feeling of love when you hug someone. So, you one of the things I say in my speech, and I know it does sound a little naive, but is find someone every single day who is happy for you to hug them.
Because it’s just an incredible feeling that we can’t reproduce. again, I know that sounds simplistic and sort of naive, but it is real. It really is. So I definitely encourage that. And then just encouraging getting together in groups as much as possible and safe and inclusive groups. As I say in my TEDx talk, say we should be having like live jazz on the streets or dance competitions or generational mixers where Zoomers and millennials finally get to explain to Boomers why they’re wrong. Hahaha! I love that.
And then just to bring it around this so this is not social closeness But it’s another tip which I know your guy your listeners a lot of them know about is grounding or earthing so every day if you just take 15 minutes and make sure that you your shoes and socks are off and you’re touching either the bare earth or it actually conducts through stone or even concrete. So you could actually be on a concrete driveway that’s on the earth and you still get it. But basically we’re electromagnetic beams. have a bunch of, there’s, need a positive ion and a negative ion together to be sort of a whole thingy. understand, you know how technical I am now.
And so stress and screens cause us to have these things called free radicals. That’s a positive ion running around without a negative ion. it’s magnet, we’re talking about magnetism right now. Well, the earth is a massive battery. So one of the things it does is it literally gives us those negative ions, literally by touching it, that go into us and attach to the positive ions and chill us the F out. And you know, that that reduces anxiety, touching the earth, reduces your blood pressure, reduces inflammation. So if you have chronic pain, literally, and I’ll tell you this, I’ve been finding that the best solutions to most chronic health problems are free or very, very, very, very low priced. In fact, and that’s the opposite of what the healthcare system tries to teach us. They try to teach it and it’s the most expensive and the most complicated that we are taught is gonna be the best for us. the answers are actually, the solutions are actually extremely simple. Funny that no one teaches us that in school. God, I wonder why that is.
Right? Or if your primary care doctor tells you to do something normal, you’re like, I don’t pay you to tell me to go stand outside. You want them to give you this easy, quick fix instead of doing the normal, natural things that our bodies designed to do, like being outside, touching the earth, hugging one another, feeling connected. Because what I love what you’re saying is that’s prevention.
Like we’re preventing sickness, we’re preventing isolation, we’re preventing mental health crises by working with the world in the way that we’re designed to. That’s so cool, I love this, this is awesome.
Absolutely. No, it’s wild. It is wild. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
The Power of Public Speaking
No, I would love that was super interesting. I liked learning about that and I’m, I’m very curious about what you’re talking about too. I don’t actually think we have time to do it now, but like the whole energy thing, magnetic stuff. I’m, I’m a very skeptical person. So when someone talks about energies and even stuff like yoga, I’m like, I don’t know. But when I look at the science, I’m like, gosh, okay. That’s a way that people understand it, you know? Not me, but a lot of people understand it. But what I do see is, you’re totally right. I feel great when I take my shoes off and I walk in the grass. you’re right. When I dig in the mud, it feels relaxing and fun. And like, I don’t have a care in the world. Like I’m a kid again, you know? Like all these things, but you’re breaking it down to like a very scientific level, which I love. And I think our audience really likes too.
But I actually would love to switch gears for a little bit because you are like launching your speaking career. You’ve got onto some incredible stages. Now you’ve spoken in multiple countries. I’m wondering if that was something. It seems like your personality fits the speaking type, but you’re like, kind of like me. Maybe is like, I could talk forever, but I need that time and I need that structure to make it engaging. So I’m wondering if you’ve learned anything about speaking that you can share with our audience because our audience kind of has 10 jobs. They’re writing grants, they’re overseeing volunteers, they’re speaking, they’re recruiting volunteers, and then they’re running a team. And there’s actually a lot more even on top of that, but one of the things that comes through though is speaking with confidence, building a team. There’s a lot of things that talking well can just help us with and being able to present and draw up what we’re gonna say. anything that you’ve learned recently that you wanna pass on to them, I would really love that.
Absolutely, and I love that question. So yeah, I’ll just really quickly tell you something that you would normally have to pay 10 grand to learn, which is how to construct a TEDx talk, but it’s the same. It doesn’t matter if it’s TEDx or any other public speaking moment. The formula that I learned that is kind of out of the box, but I love it, is I’ll just say quickly here, you start with a hook, you’ve got to hook the audience in in the first sentence, whether that’s a joke, it’s an icebreaker, it’s a joke, it’s something totally unexpected, just to grab their attention.
So they go off their phones. wow. This guy might actually be interesting. I might actually listen to this one, you know, and I did that in my Ted X. I won’t do it now because a lot of your listeners won’t get it. Cause I refer to Monty Python’s flying circus. And I know that a lot of your listeners don’t know who that is anyway, you can see my Ted X talking. You’ll see if it’s funny, but anyway, so you’ve got the hook, little bit of an, an up story, which is to sort of talk about maybe your childhood or something good, like, you know, again, you’re in a positive space and then you plunge them into the down.
Story, so this is now most people have gone through some kind of challenge or tragedy or you know most of us It’s hard to find someone who’s just had a peachy keen life from age zero to now So that’s the time to go down it one of the most important points of any talk is an emotional variation You don’t want the emotions to stay level you want them to go up and then go way down and then go back.
That’s kind of what we’re doing. So the down story you tell the worst moment of your life or whatever the worst challenges you dealt with and you also you slow down So when you’re being funny and you’re telling up stories you’re talking real fast and you do a lot of gestures and then you start to go Into the down and you slow your voice down your voice probably should be lower in in pitch and so there’s these variations of tone and pitch and speed that should be changing all the time basically throughout the whole talk.
There’s nothing worse than a talk that goes at the same pace with the same emotion and that people just start to tune out. So you’ve got the down story and then you have your quote journey. Your journey is coming back from the ashes. It’s your journey, it’s story of rising from the ashes to the new person that you are and Then once you’ve kind of done that whole journey process everything now It’s time to really do your teaching moments. You’ve prepared your audience. You’ve hooked them in there. They’re hanging on every word because of this emotional journey, and now it’s time to give value. So they call it, it’s the teaching moments, I’ve learned this and I’ve learned this.
And then we phrase it as what’s called a call to action, a CTA. That’s where you’re actually giving them things they can do the second that they leave the auditorium or wherever they are. The second your talk is over, they can go out and actually do that. So they can go and do their grounding. They can go and find someone that’ll hug them, et cetera. They can go arrange like boomer bashing events or things like that. that’s that’s and then yeah I think I always tell people that if you write a talk like a 10 -minute talk could be a thousand words but you almost that’s probably a good level but then I would still probably go and cut another hundred out and the reason I say that like 900 words or even 800 is everyone’s inclination when they’re on stage is to do it as fast as possible and get the heck off that stage because I’m terrified AF right now. And I was lucky enough when I did my talk at Valparaiso University, which is outside Chicago in Northern Indiana, my TEDx talk, somehow when I got out of that stage and I swear this was one of the moments where I literally felt, you know, God and the universe pushing me, which is I went on that stage and instead of just launching into my talk, I stood there smiling at the audience, connecting with people in the front row that I could see for about 10 seconds. And I thought in my head, well, I know they can edit this out. So I’m going to do this because I know they’ll edit it out. Well, funny enough, they didn’t edit it out. But it was a really interesting moment. So what I said is I was settling into the energy of the room. And I was connecting with the energy of the room. That’s why I like doing live talk in person because, again, it’s all about that social closeness.
So I was literally sort of getting some social closeness with the actual audience before I started and it really helped like ground me and slow me down. So that’s my final advice is slow down when you do a public speaking. Slow down twice as much as you even think you should. And then the final thing is that when you make a joke or when you make say a particularly impactful statement.
Take a pause after you’ve said it because the silence in public talks is actually some of the most golden moments. It also shows that you’re confident when we’re tense we talk more and we talk faster. When we’re confident we slow down and we actually can take pauses. I’m so confident I can stand here pausing and smiling at you, an audience of a thousand people. That’s how confident I am. So it expresses confidence to actually allow yourself to have those silences between the talking.
Ooh, I love that. That’s golden. That’s dude. I love it. There you go. $10,000 worth of coaching right there, baby. But now they got to go practice it. So just to recap, cause I love this too, being a speaker, like I always need reminders. I need to practice this stuff. So you said there’s a hook when you’re writing out your talk, the first sentence, you get them hooked and interested. Yeah. And then you can. First sentence, immediately it’s either a joke or an icebreaker. Yep.
Tell them a story. It’s kind of like an uplifting story or a normal one. And then it introduces your challenge or your down story. And then you start talking about what you learned through the process. You’re bringing them back up. You change.
Your sound, your journey, before you tell them what you learned, it’s just the story of your journey to rise from the ashes. then it’s all the Lordy.
Okay. Okay. then your learning experience becomes theirs and then it will become their call to action. So as you tell your journey up, they’re going to learn from it because they’re, they’re experiencing it through you as well. so that’s, that’s fascinating. I love that part, right? Like, okay, this is what happened to me. What is it we can use from this? So here’s the lessons learned and here’s how you can take it away, which is the call to action.
Okay, that’s cool. And, and you have mentioned like, this is a simple 10 minute talk, you know, I, I love the fact that I don’t love the fact that we have really short attention spans, but I do think it introduces, a very cool opportunity for you to become a master at your craft because anyone could give a 45 minute or an hour long talk and you could probably give a longer one, but you have to practice and critique yourself and really get it down to a 10 minute version to say what I want them to leave with and what I want them to do and what’s the fastest way to get on there. And that’s a powerful, powerful experience. So even when you’re doing like my 45 minutes, it’s a bunch of 10 minute little talks, you know, and they all relate to one another. They got the central theme, but it’s this, this arc, this up and down arc. And then it’s all about them leaving with something. And you’re totally correct about the power of a pause and the fact that we don’t love to do it in front of people.
It’s wild that pause, how powerful it is when people do it. It really is. again, I think as humans, we always want change. It’s why a pop song that has no sort of variation is very monotonous. It’s boring. We like change. We get bored immediately. In a second, we get bored. So if you have a talk that’s up one second, then it’s down, and then it’s up, the audience is constantly hanging on.
So it’s really just about modulating everything you do, like every few seconds, never saying in the same pitch, same emotion, going up and down and up and down and up and down, slow and fast, slow and fast, you know?
Yeah. And it matches your story, right? Because you’re telling them about a different moment. It is more impactful. And then, you’re in something fun and playful and the audience gets to feel that with you. It’s such a fun ride, entertaining ride.
And as you said though, so there’s two things that come to mind. First of all, there’s a famous saying, I think it’s Mark Twain. He wrote a letter to somebody, he said, I’m really sorry for the long letter. I didn’t have the time to write a short one.
That’s good.
And that’s exactly what you’re talking about. And then, yeah, I mean, the less you say, the more power that the words that you do say have. And so yes, cut it, know, just cut every talk you write, cut it, cut it more so that almost every sentence has an incredibly impactful meaning or moment and you’re cutting out all of the excess. Again, partly because yes, your audience has low attention spans, but yeah, I mean, how amazing to be able to give a life-changing talk in like six minutes or seven minutes or nine minutes. Like you say, way more impactful than 45 minutes. It’s less is more. It’s another truism that my dad always said. He was right, dad, you were right about it all.
That’s cool. Dude, well, Jason, this has been really, really fun. If people want to learn more about what you’re up to, we’ll include a link to your TEDx talk in the show notes. But just kind of tell us if they want to go look at it right now, what do they type in to see your TEDx talk and then where can they like friendly stalk you and check out all you’re doing.
I love it. I’m really mean, I’m really open. I love communicating and meeting people so I don’t mind people like Sliding into my DMS at all if they want to watch the Ted X talk right now They can just just easiest ways to go on YouTube and within YouTube search Ted X Jason quarter corder but yeah, and I know you’ll have that there and then I’m most active on Instagram and and my handle now is refers to my alter ego. So my Instagram handle is its underscore blabbermouth And I’m on linkedin too, but god is linkedin boring af I’m I’m literally thinking of getting I had this whole epiphany while I was traveling recently. I was like I just is such a square space that I just don’t fit into it. I I try to do little things there and you know, it’s just It’s so boring and I don’t even like corporate jobs or that space and and I wouldn’t push anyone to go into it So I know I’m on there if you want to find me you definitely but Instagram is my is my favorite space to
Okay, that is perfect. Well, thank you, Jason. This is a really fun conversation. I feel like I could talk to you forever. just with. Yeah.
I’m sure we could. I’m sure we will get a chance to. This is really fun Jake. This is really lot of fun. I appreciate it.
Yeah, of course. And for everyone listening, this has been another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I cannot thank you enough for the work that you do to have partners like yourself all around the country that are really, really impacting young people, putting yourself and your careers on the line to make sure that they have a better life. If someone hasn’t thanked you in the last week, please allow me to say thank you so much. You are making a difference, even if you don’t see it right now. It’s catching up and just like I say in my speech, there’s some moments that I learned from adults I didn’t appreciate as a kid. Jason talked about his dad. I’m sure he wasn’t as a teenager so thankful to his dad about those kinds of things. But keep up the amazing work and we’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.
