What if the way you see your struggles is the key to overcoming them?
In this episode, I talk with motivational speaker and all-around awesome human Aaron Welty—moderator of the Council of Nerds film series, former Two Geek Soup co-host, and Senior Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives. Born with cerebral palsy, Aaron brings a powerful lens to storytelling, shaped by his love of movies and his lived experience with disability. But instead of seeing himself as a victim, he calls his condition a “terrible privilege” and lives as the hero of his own story. We dig into how the stories we tell ourselves shape our mindset—and how rewriting that narrative can help us face life’s hardest challenges.
Aaron Welty was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy as a newborn. He overcame those early years of low expectations and a presupposed poor quality of life to graduate from Cedarville University and serve as a Senior Legislative Assistant in the House of Representatives, wherein he worked on a variety of policy issues. Presently he lives and works in Washington, DC.
An avid fan of comic books superheroes and Star Wars, Aaron has shared his story with outlets such as NBC Nightly News, Facing Life Head On, Roll Call, The Daily Signal, and various radio programs. His writing has been featured by a variety of publications and presented at conferences and conventions.
He is the creator and/moderator of the Council of Nerds film discussion series at the Miracle Theatre in Washington, DC and served as a co-host for the Two Geek Soup podcast, focused on the intersection of faith and geek culture.
Zack Arnold: So I must say, Aaron, that you and I have a very interesting backstory. You and I have a very interesting origin story. We're going to talk a lot about origin stories and the hero's journey today, but just to acclimate everybody to what you're doing on this call today, let's go back to the beginning of our origin story. How did you and I first meet and how did you find me?
Aaron Welty: I found you because, if I remember correctly, there was an article either written by you or by your brother back when I was working on Capitol Hill in the late 2000s it was an article about the documentary project that you were doing on your friend Chris. And I came across that one day, and I thought, wow, this is really, really cool. I really relate to this. And as I as I dug into it and I learned more about Chris, it was like, Wait, he grew up just down the road from me. We kind of lived in the same area of Michigan. How have I never heard about this guy, you know, and and I watched it, I read the article, and I watched the videos, and I watched the scuba diving pieces, thinking about how my whole family when I was 10 or 11, even into my teen years, my whole family got certified for scuba diving, except for me, because we didn't think that that was something that I was going to be capable of of doing. So it's kind of something that my whole family did separately. And then I watched these videos and read the article, I was like, I don't know if I had I can use that excuse anymore. And then something in me, right, that still small voice in me said, you need to reach out to Zack, and you guys need to talk and see how you can get involved in what he's doing.
Zack Arnold: Well, I must say that I am incredibly happy that you did decide to reach out and find out what the heck it is that I was doing. For a little bit more background for those that aren't aware, because at this point, it feels like it was in another life. But I spent eight years producing, directing, funding and otherwise a documentary feature film called Go Far, The Christopher Rush story that was about the first quadriplegic to become a licensed scuba diver, amongst many, many other accomplishments. But as you referenced, by and large, Chris was just my friend. He and I went to college together. We got to know each other. Just we both had a love of movies. He was a Star Wars fanatic. PS, we're going to talk a lot about Star Wars and the hero's journey a little bit later, for sure. But he and I just bonded over films, and got to the point where he and I got got close enough that he flew out to California. He stood up in my wedding. And when I say stood up, I stayed in quotes, because, again, he was quadriplegic, but integral part of being a part of that day for me. And then, unfortunately, weeks after I got married, and he was there, he unfortunately passed away, but had far, far exceeded his life expectancy and had passed away at 30. And I decided, You know what, I want to tell a story about this guy's life, because his story isn't over, and have since completing the documentary and releasing it in 2015 which again, feels like a lifetime ago, use the go far framework that he devised every single day to help people set better and bigger and more exciting goals and overcome their obstacles along the way. And I very much remember you approaching me at one of those screenings. I'm pretty sure that you and I met in person at the Michigan theater in Ann Arbor, if I remember correctly, you and I got to chatting, and you just had a fascinating story. And we've kept in touch over the years, and now here we are, after months of calendar Tetris, getting you on my calendar and talking about your story. So very excited to be here. And the first part that I want to dig into is you had mentioned something that, for those that don't have the context, might have sounded a little odd. Well, scuba diving isn't something for me. I couldn't do that. So now let's talk about your origin story,
Aaron Welty: Right? So my origin story actually starts at the beginning, and I say that because my origin story starts the day that I was born, 10 weeks premature in the early 80s, the day where all of the medical minds around me expected that I would die, because my understanding of the situation is that my mother was brought in that day, brought in to the ER went in to essentially emergency C section to get me out and to see what they could do. And an interesting wrinkle with all of that is that my grandmother, right? My mom's mom, actually worked at the hospital as a nurse, so she was already there that day, not because she was working, but because she was a patient at that time. And so my grandfather had to go. And get her and bring her down, and they got me out. And the way I understand the story is that I was almost immediately whisked away to somewhere else in the hospital. And even my dad has said that there's a chunk of time that first day that nobody can really in the family can account for because they don't know where I was, except for the fact that years later, probably 30 years later, my grandmother told me the story of how a friend of hers that worked as a nurse at the hospital was actually with me as the doctors were deliberating somewhere else about what to do and how much effort should be put into trying to save my life. Because at that time, the expectation was, hey, he's probably not going to make it like, like, where's the where's the stopping point here. And so this nurse who worked with my grandmother and knew our family, she's the one that spoke up, she's the one that spoke up. She's the one that stood up and stepped into the gap for me and said, we know this kid's family, like and his grandmother works here. We know that this kid is the first grandchild in the family. We've got to do everything that we can. And she was able to kind of convince the folks that were working on me, like, hey, there's a chance here. And so they did. And eventually, as I understand it, I was medevac to U of M hospital, and then things kind of proceeded from there. So my origin story really does start on day one, and my first memory is actually from a couple years later, where my grandmother and I are together with my teddy bear in an oxygen tent, and I was probably, I told my mom once that that was my first memory, and she just looked at me and she said, You were two. I was like, okay, so apparently, like, that was a very strong core memory, even if it goes back 40 years.
Zack Arnold: I want to talk a whole lot more about origin stories, hero's journey, but one of the questions that I find really interesting, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember you telling a version of this story somewhere else, and it wasn't just about we need to do something for this kid. You know that his grandmother works here, but you'd mentioned something along the lines about somebody seeing potential in you. Am I remembering that part of the story incorrectly?
Aaron Welty: Yes, yes. So the way I process that piece of the story right is that this nurse, who was friends with the family, she looked at me and she saw potential, where all that these doctors saw was a premature problem they didn't really want to deal with. And so even even on day one, she saw potential and possibility. She saw a future that probably outside of my family, nobody else saw.
Zack Arnold: I gotta say, when you're looking at a newborn that's in that condition, what in the world do you think she saw in you? What potential Do you think she saw? Because clearly, she was right, and then some, but in the moment, like, how would you be able to see that kind of potential?
Aaron Welty: I don't know. I think she had, you know, to quote a line from the Thundercats, she had a capacity for sight beyond sight that I think most people don't have. I mean, I don't even know if I have that capacity like she had, but one of the things that's kind of come out of my life as a result is I do a lot of mentoring of high school students, college students and folks that are in their early 20s, early to mid 20s, who come to DC, where I live. I live about six blocks south of the Capitol building, and so I spent a lot of time in the last decade or so focused on mentoring folks much younger than myself and trying to do for them what she did for me in terms of seeing their potential and seeing how I can influence who they're becoming in a positive way.
Zack Arnold: I just find it fascinating how one person can say one thing in one delivery room or nurses station or otherwise, and just the ripple effect, the butterfly effect that has, it has had where, yes, I'm sure the doctors that took care of you ultimately saved your life. But. But probably that nurse had just as much to do with saving your life, which then led to you becoming a big part of inspiring others and maybe even saving their lives. So you just, you never know how what you say, what you write, what you put out there, even for one person, can have such a profound effect. And we're definitely going to talk more about that. But I want to, I want to kind of give people just kind of some of the basics, right? So when it comes to understanding you and your origin story, I just want to give people a better understanding of your and I'm going to say this in air quotes for those that can't see it, but I want people to understand your disability,
Aaron Welty: right? So it's funny, because I actually over the over the last dozen years or so, I've actually found a way to talk about it without even talking about it, right? And in terms of when I talk about my cerebral palsy, right, I talk about it is as medical and mobility challenges related to, you know, a cerebral palsy diagnosis that ultimately was rooted in, you know, premature birth and some, you know, issues that happened related to, you know, brain damage and brain function. Because that's that's a large part of how cerebral palsy happens, is there's a part of the brain that isn't functioning the way that it's necessarily supposed to, in terms of, like, if you're, you know, a quote, unquote, normal person without the challenges that I have. But, you know, I saw, yes, I have cerebral palsy. And so for me, what that means is I have reduced muscle function and motor skills, mostly in my lower extremities. And one of the things I find really interesting about all of this is that I had a conversation last year with a gentleman on an airplane on my way into Southwestern Illinois. I was going to speak at a church, and I'm sitting next to a guy whose specialty, he's basically a brain scientist. And so we got to talking, and we got to talking about my the cerebral palsy, and his eyes lit up because he was like, wait a minute, because he understood, you know, the basics in terms of, you know, the connection to the brain and stuff. And so he started talking about all of these things related to neurons and neurons affected, and all the and all those kind of things that were kind of where my head at the time, but I had a follow up conversation with him later, where, when we were talking about this, he made a comment where he said, you know, of all of the the billions of of neurons in your brain and in your body with the way it looks like you're affected versus not being affected, there's probably only a couple million neurons that are actually affected in your Body in a negative way that resulted in, you know, the place you find yourself. And that sounds like a lot, but based on what he was talking about, overall, it's a very, very, very small number.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's an incredibly small number. I went to public school, so my math is not fast enough to figure out what that exact will that actual percentage is, but it's a really, really small percentage. But here's the challenge that I want to talk about. There's many challenges that I want to get into, but I would guess that one of the main challenges is that with your disability, and again, I'm just going to continue thinking, saying that. I'm saying this in quotes, but with your disability, somebody looks at you. They're going to see somebody that's disabled. They're going to say, here's somebody that is not doesn't have the strength to walk properly. They're going to make assumptions so they're not thinking, Oh, here's somebody that has 110 of 1% of a disability and a few neurons that don't fire. They're going to say, there's a disabled person, right? They make all these false assumptions. This is something I learned about so intimately when I got to know Chris, and I learned more about him and his story. So talk to me about the perception of being disabled.
Aaron Welty: Wow, um, so even as you were even as you were setting up that question and you were delivering that question, what was going through my head was it all depends on how they encounter me. It all depends on how they encounter me. And what I mean is, so let's take that, for example, that conversation I had with the with the brain doctor on the plane, when he showed up on the plane and he sat down, I was already sitting in my seat, and because I was already sitting in my seat, you would never have even known had we not struck up this conversation. And he started asking me about what I do, and it went into talking about the cerebral palsy, and then getting into the the brain, part of it and all of that. So. Like, if I'm sitting down somewhere, like in just in a regular chair, you would never know. Now, if I'm sitting in my scooter, you're probably going to be like, okay, something's up. And I've I've run into this a number of times in my life, where I was visiting some friends out in Arizona, probably a decade ago. And we were going, we were touring some caves in in Arizona, and I was in a I was in a chair, and it was set up to where you could take the wheelchair through the, you know, through the cave system, or whatever, and one of my friends was pushing me. And so we're there. There's three of us, and we're talking to the park ranger, and I'm sitting in there, you know, kind of lower than the park Ranger's line of sight, and the park ranger is talking to my friend, who's pushing me, and at one point she looks at the park ranger, and she looks at me, and she says to the park ranger, you know, you can talk to him, he's probably just as smart or smarter than you are. So there's some of that where some of the perception is because they see something physical, they also assume something else, like some other, some other level. And so there's that challenge that you have to kind of navigate, but there's also the challenge, and this, this happens sometimes too, is where you encounter somebody. They see you, they meet you. And the way that encounter comes off. What you take away from that encounter is they don't see you. They only see the device. They only see the scooter or the chair or whatever. Now the one, the one instance, I guess scenario where that's different is if I'm driving the Phoenix around Washington, DC, right and for and for the sake of the audience, the Phoenix is a custom built mobility device that my dad and I designed together, that he built for me that basically looks like a cross between a light cycle from Tron an X Wing and Charles Xavier's hovering mobility chair from the 90s era cartoon. Now, if that is out and about, in about the reaction is completely different, right? The reaction is like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. You know? I, I, I met a group of, a group of students from Florida. Years ago. I was out testing things, and I was driving up and down the National Mall, and I ran into this group of students, and they stopped, and one of those students just, you know, exclaimed at me, after I kind of talked to them a little bit about the origins and the backstory, this student just looked at me and said, Man, you make walking look boring.
Zack Arnold: That's such a great way to put it right.
Aaron Welty: And I was like, wow, okay, like I did the job, like I didn't really have to do much, but just me being there in that space, in that device, in that moment, totally shifted the way this kid from Naples, Florida thought about something that he was able to do that I couldn't do as well as he could.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit more about this idea of somebody being able to do something that others can't, or vice versa, right? One of the most important themes, and it took me a long time to figure this out, but one of the most important themes in the film about Christopher was the following saying, and I've gotten in trouble for saying this before, because people don't understand don't understand the meaning behind it, but Chris would always say that everyone has a disability, and disability is all about context, right? So in the context of, are you going to hop out of your chair and sprint across the room or sprint down the street? In that context, you have a disability, it's just not going to happen. You're not going to run a marathon. You know, at a regular marathon runner's pace, right? But then, if we're looking in the other context of like, say, for example, let's say that you were going to have a contest that talked about knowledge and trivia and understanding of the hero's journey, specifically in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, like you're gonna destroy everybody imaginable, like you have a tremendous superpower in that area, right? Right? So I just, I always try to remind myself, and always try to impart this idea on others that everybody has a disability, and for most people, that disability is something that you don't see when you first meet somebody. So we assume that person has all the abilities in. World, but all of us have our shortcomings and our disabilities, and it's about how we can turn those disabilities into superpowers by changing the context. And boy, are you good at being able to weave a story and really reframe a disability as a superpower. So I know that I'm going to be pulling a very giant thread, and I might have to slow you down at some point. Yeah, but let's talk a little bit more about your love of Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, comic books and otherwise. Because for you, it's not just fandom, it's not just no This stuff is so cool. I love the visual effects, or I love the Sci Fi, like there's a much deeper meaning to all this. For you,
Aaron Welty: there is. And I'm actually gonna start with what you just said about how Chris understood the world, right? Because around the time that you and I finally got to meet at that screening, I think it was probably 2012 2013 because there were a couple of screenings that we were about that that was shortly after the release of the first Avengers film. Right? The first Avengers film was May 2012 and I was there opening night with a huge group of friends that I brought together for this because it was a huge event for me. And I was sitting there with a couple of really good buddies, and the moment that Tony Stark had that conversation in the shield Helicarrier lab with Bruce Banner, and he started talking about how the arc reactor in his chest, right, and being Iron Man, when he said that, It was a terrible privilege, something unlocked in me, because in that moment, I realized, oh my gosh, he's right. This is language that I can use, that the culture around me will understand, that I can use to explain how I see the world and why I operate in the world the way I do so, whereas Chris would say that everyone has a disability, the way I frame it is that everybody has a terrible privilege, right? Everybody has something in their life that they think is terrible that they think it's awful that they don't want in their life. And I'm when I say this, I'm not demeaning whatever it might be for a person, but everybody's got something, and the reality of having that thing is that from where I sit and the way I see the world, it is through that terrible thing that you're able to embrace the privilege of impacting the world around you, of influencing the worldwide for Tony Right, being captured by terrorists, right and almost dying out in the desert in Afghanistan, and everything he went through absolutely terrible, but he understood that becoming Iron Man as a result of that was a privilege, right. Tony Stark's story is the kind of story where you understand that the heroic can emerge from the terrible right, the heroic can emerge from the terrible and purpose can arise like a phoenix from places of personal pain. I'm going to repeat that purpose can arise like a phoenix from places of personal pain. And that's how it's worked out for me, where this thing that I have, this challenge that I have, that, yes, it is a challenge, yes, sometimes it is awful, and sometimes I wish I didn't have it. I mean, one of my, one of my core memories from college, right? I went to a, you know, conservative religious school for college. And one of my memories in college is as a sophomore, as a 20 year old sophomore, right, it's the dead of winter in Ohio, right? Snow everywhere. It's cold, it's awful. I'm in my dorm room. It's two or three in the morning, and I am just hunched over a chair, just praying and begging, God, hey, can you fix this, please? Can you take this away? This is really awful, because when I got to college, I had to level up in terms of how I lived and what I did and the energy that it took just to get through day to. Day in college. I mean, college was great and went to a great school, but college was very, very hard. And so here I was as a sophomore in the dead of winter begging for this to change. It didn't. It didn't. And so what I had to learn with the reality I had to embrace was two things. Number one, I wanted life to wave a hand like a Jedi mind trick and take it all away. I wanted, I wanted God to prescribe painlessness for me and the person. Prescription I got instead was perseverance, right? Was the fact that, hey, this is hard, this isn't fun, but you got to go through it. This isn't going to be prevented, but you're going to persevere through it to the other side, however long that takes, however long that lasts, that's where you're going to end up. And, I mean, that has been like, kind of the cycle of my life, right? Wanting things to be easier, and life kind of saying, Nope, sorry. You're stronger than you think. You can handle this. You might not like that. You can handle this, but you can handle this. And, you know, one of the, one of the ways I kind of process some of this is, I ran across a quote a number of back in 2020, about, you know, the biblical character of job. And the quote was, Job didn't suffer because he was the worst of humanity. Job suffered because he was the best. And what I took from that is, if you want to be the best, if you want to be the best you can be in life. One of the things you got to know how to do is you got to know how to suffer well. You got to know how to go from suffering to perseverance, perseverance to deeper character, and from that deeper character to a place of hope, right? And I've listened to a few episodes that you've you've done recently, and you've had a number of guests talk about hope you've had. I think one of your guests, Christina Rasmussen, talked about how people don't have hope. They don't know what hope is. What's interesting for me is when I think about hope, I go all the way back to, like the kind of ancient Greco Roman understanding of hope. And that is when you, when you deal with hope, kind of from that perspective of that culture. You, you run across an ancient Greek word, and that Greek word is L peace, right, l peace. And what that word means is that word means a confident expectation of the future. Right, that hope is a confident expectation of the future. And for kind of the ancient pantheistic Greco Roman culture that that came out of they actually had a goddess. They had a deity whose name was El peace, whose name was hope. So for that culture, the idea of Hope was rooted in something outside of themselves, right outside of themselves, in something spiritual, in something that was bigger and had capacity beyond themselves, and yet in the culture that we live in now, today, in the 21st Century, in 2025 when we talk about hope, we're not talking about competent expectations. Zack, what we're talking about when we say, I hope x happens, or I hope you know x doesn't happen. What we're actually saying is we're wishing that something happens. And the difference between wishing and competent expectation, the difference between how we use the word and idea of Hope versus what it really means is, are we willing to do the work? Are we willing to do the work to help hope happen? Because when we're wishing, what's actually happening is we are showing off. We are displaying our own weakness of spirit that says, Nope, don't want to do the work. Don't want to do that. Don't want to go through the hard thing. But with when you have a real, robust, tangible idea of what hope actually is, it changes the game. Yeah. Yeah, so if
Zack Arnold: anybody is wondering what that giant, loud noise just was, I believe that was a Mic drop. I have never heard hope put that way before. But what a wonderful way to frame this for everybody. You clearly know your stuff. You understand the power of story, the power of the hero's journey, and one of the pieces of what you said, of which all of it really resonated. But the one that sticks out to me, that I want to go into next is this idea that it has something to do with something outside yourself, right? Are you familiar with Victor Frankel's book, The man search for meaning in his story?
Aaron Welty: I am. I am familiar with it kind of adjacently and by osmosis, but I haven't actually read it, sure, and
Zack Arnold: that's okay, don't worry, I'm not going to quiz you afterwards. But essentially, it's the story of, at least in modern times, probably the worst thing anybody could go through, which is surviving a Nazi concentration camp. And he essentially paraphrases Nietzsche when he says that, when a man knows his why, he can bear almost any how, right? So in times of crisis, when there seems to be no hope, when there is uncertainty, if you just make it all about you and what's happening to you, it's unbearable, right? When you're somehow framing it to make it this is happening for me, and then I can be in a situation where I can help others through it, it completely changes your perspective. Your perspective, right? All of which I know you agree with. Here's what I want to ask that this is a conversation that I used to have with Chris a long time ago. It was one of the favorite conversations that I ever had with him. And I said he will, first of all, to give a little bit more backstory, Chris was very well off. He was in a family that had all the means they were doing well financially, upper middle class family in lower Michigan, right? He had everything that he would have ever needed. He had every excuse in the world to play the victim and say, I want the world to take care of me. Oh, woe was me. This disability happened to me. I am a quadriplegic. I cannot use my arms and legs? He's got every excuse to literally sit around and do nothing, right? And he chose exactly the opposite. And I think a lot of the same things could be said about you. Where your your mentality can be this happened to me. How do you get to the point where you say this is happening for me and then actually turn that into something that helps change individual lives.
Aaron Welty: Here's where the nuance is, I think, because I know that there was a recent conversation that you had on the podcast where you were talking about the idea of something happening to me versus something happening for me as it relates to pain, right? You know the idea that the situation is happening. I think the quote was, the situation is happening, but the suffering is optional. And I thought that's a really interesting idea. But I'm not sure I'm on board with that 100% of the time, because I was thinking as as I was listening to you talk about this with the guest? I was thinking about the time in middle school when I was in the hospital for three weeks at Shriners, hanging out on the edge of life and death, not knowing what was going to happen next. And I thought, well, in that particular situation, yes, the thing was happening to me, but the suffering wasn't optional. The suffering was happening too, yeah, right. And so I think it's what I like to what I like to say to my summer camp students about suffering is and, and both of these things are so important, suffering sucks. Like, don't, don't bypass that, don't get over that. Don't gloss over that, right? Don't try and put on a happy face when you shouldn't. Suffering does suck. You know, as one of your previous guest had said multiple times, life is hard, suffering does suck, but what suffering produces if it's handled correctly, right? That progression, suffering, perseverance, perseverance, character, character, cope from suffering to competent expectation that, that getting to that place of hope, of confident expectation, of willing to being willing to do the work that is worth it, right? And I've had, I've had, you know, students ask me, Well, okay, you've gone through all this stuff. You've done a lot of physical training and stuff in order to be here for at camp for two weeks, and this that. And the other thing was, it worth it. And oftentimes my answer to them is, being here with you is worth it, and that that's, that's the answer. Now, if they want me to go into the nuance of well, does that mean that all the stuff that that happened previously was worth it? Well, it got me to where I am, and being here with you is worth it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every single step along the way was worth it, and I didn't wish I could, could bypass one thing or another. And when you were talking about, you know, Chris, having every right to look at life one way and and be the victim, here's the thing, when we in this, this kind of goes back to, you know, talking about Star Wars and hero's journey and all that stuff when we engage story, whether that's, you know, Marvel or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or whatever, and even As we engage our own story, the way that is structured, right, we have a choice to make, right, when you, when you watch a film like Star Wars, and you have a hero like Nick Skywalker, and you have a villain like Darth Vader, you have, you have a Victor and a villain, both of those characters a generation apart, started in the same place they started their journeys as victims, right? Anakin was a slave on Tatooine, you know, didn't know his dad. You know, you can get into the nuances of not really having a dad. Luke Skywalker, victim doesn't know his parents. You know, kind of orphaned situation, living on the same backwater world all that kind of stuff. But it's what the character does and how they move out of that victim space that determines the trajectory of their story, right? Because what they do with that pain determines which path they're going to take. Are they going to take a path of a victor, of a hero, of of the type of character that harnesses their hurt to help others heal, or are they going to take that pain as they turn them into a villain, and villains weaponize their wounds to create more victims like themselves? And so to kind of encapsulate an answer to your question, it it's very difficult for me to end up in the victim space, even though sometimes I'm tempted by it because it's quicker and it's easier, but ultimately, I don't go that direction because I love heroes too much, and that's not what heroes do. And it's like if I want to be, you know, like Luke Skywalker and Yoda and Professor X and Gandalf and all of these, these heroic characters, then I know which direction I can't go, right? I may not necessarily know where I am going to go, I may not necessarily know what I am going to do, but I know what I can't do I can't take the quick and easy path, because I know that that leads to the dark side, and that's not an option for me.
Zack Arnold: Well, for anybody that is listening, and there are probably quite a few that literally make these films that you're talking about, whether editors, writers, directors, crew members, visual effects artists or otherwise. I personally have never heard a better explanation of the true difference between a hero and a villain. So if anybody's in the process of trying to write a character, whether the good guy or the bad guy, I've never heard a better explanation where you're like, I get it like, if you really dig into the deep emotional core of the person, that's the hero versus the villain, they both suffered pain. They both suffered through something. It's how they chose to use that suffering. And I love how you put it. You're like sometimes the suffering not optional, right? It's certainly easy to say that in certain circumstances, but when it's intense, deep, physical pain that you just cannot escape, like you're right, that suffering is absolutely not optional. What is optional is how you choose to use it. Yes, right? And that's what's so important about these stories and this hero's journey.
Aaron Welty: And so two you know, these, these folks that you just mentioned, right, that work on these films that are are in the trenches of actually helping them get made. I want to zoom out for a second, because what you guys do is so stinking important, because what you do is. You. You take whether you realize it or not, you take that idea of hope, you take that idea of confident expectation, and you project it on a cinema screen. You help create the story that gets projected on the cinema screen that helps the audience. And by that, I mean not just me, but me helps me as an audience member who's most likely there on opening night and might see a Marvel movie two or three times opening weekend, as a way for me to process it, what you're doing is you're taking hope, and you are, you know, figuratively, metaphorically projecting it on the silver screen. And you, by doing that, you are giving the audience hope for their own life and their own story, because whether they realize it cognitively or not, is that these stories, they drill down into an incredible core in many of us, right? I always talk about it related to, essentially, bastions journey and the never ending story. How that what you see happen with bastions journey is that the journey of discovery remains intact. You, you go along with him, and with a tray, you and our tax and all of them in the journey, just like Bastion realizes that he's been with Atreyu all along, because he is a tray you write spoilers for a 40 plus year old movie. But that journey of discovery is so important, because as you go along the journey with the characters, you learn what they learn. You do the cognitive work you do, the emotional, spiritual work that they do along with them, and if you're involved in that journey of discovery, what you learn as a result ends up drilling itself very deep down into who you are and influencing who you who you're becoming. That's why there's, there's this, you know, 30 plus year old interview that George Lucas did with Diane Sawyer on 2020 in, like, the spring summer of 1989 you know, last crusades about to come out, or just come out, and Diane Sawyer wants to talk about Star Wars, right? And she they're talking about Star Wars, and she's talking about Luke and Leia and Han and all these characters and all these things you can learn from these characters, and Darth Vader and all that stuff. And she says to George Lucas, says, You, you taught us how to live, you told us how to live. And he says, Wait a minute. Hold up, not exactly. I didn't tell you how to live. Didn't tell you what to do. I gave you a sense of it. I gave you an idea of it, because giving someone a sense of something is more powerful than a direct imperative command. And I listened to that interview a number of years ago, and I thought, wow. Like, you know, he gets it. He understands the power of storytelling. And so for me, it's very important that when I engage with these films as a way to process life, that the journey of discovery remains intact. And part of what I mean by that is as a as a movie goer, as a cinephile who who deeply processes this stuff, who believes that it's more than visual popcorn, I don't need to be preached at. I'm willing to do the work. So let me do the work, because when, when an audience feels preached at, when it comes to the story in a movie, and and you know, whatever the moral or the idea being on the surface, and you don't have to do the work, part of what's happening is that the folks behind the curtain that are making the movie, the writers and all that they're saying, we have to spoon feed the audience. We don't trust the audience to get it. And I say, No, you don't take the risk. Trust your audience to get what you want them to get. Trust their intelligence and let let it. Happen as it happens. I
Zack Arnold: gotta say, you and I are sharing the same collective consciousness right now, because you're like, half a question ahead of me. When I'm thinking, this is where I want to go next, you're answering my exact question. But the questions in my head, and I haven't actually said it out loud, because the question that I wanted to ask next was given the you're such a cinephile, given the you you ingest all of this stuff, all these big budget movies, these, you know, like you said, this visual popcorn, the Avengers movies, and otherwise, we talk so much in this industry, when I say the industry, I'm in the entertainment industry, about just what a giant shit show of a dumpster fire it's been for the last few years. But it's all about the business and the models and the streaming bust and all these other things. What nobody's talking about is that movies aren't very good anymore, right? They're just not, like, yes, there's occasionally a good one, but all the movies you're talking about, like, Never Ending Story classic, right? Yeah? Like, it's funny, because I realized about six months ago. I'm like, I have a really, really tight attachment to my dog, right? And everybody loves their dog, but I'm like, There's something weird going on here. And then I realized, oh my God, my dog is falcore. My dog literally looks like falcore, like the same thing. I'm like, that's what this this weird bond is that I have with my dog. She looks just like Falco, right? So you look at the never ending story, Last Crusade, Star Wars, like an endless list, like every single weekend in the 80s and the 90s. And I'm gonna sound 100 years old, everybody that's, you know, Gen Z, but you to go, you would go to the movies every weekend, and every movie was good. Like, I've seen these photos of marquees in the 80s, where you see, here's just what was available any given week. Every film was a classic. That's not the way it works anymore. That's just not the way that it is. So as somebody that's such a cinephile, I want you to tell me and tell everybody else given and I'm so glad you framed it this way. The work that we're doing matters to people. It's not just visual popcorn, it's not just pay me a bunch of money for my weekly rate so I can make cool shit and have cool credits on my resume when it reaches the right person. It matters. But something's changed. So from your perspective, not in the industry, as somebody who loves this stuff where it matters, what the hell is wrong with movies and TV right now?
Aaron Welty: That is an excellent question, and here's how I'm gonna answer it, you have to make the people making the movies have to make the same choice that the viewer makes, and that is and and nine times out of 10, I believe, because I use that, that phrase, visual popcorn, nine times out of 10, I believe that the viewer makes the wrong choice, and the choice is, am I going to be entertained, or am I going to engage right? Think you know Russell Crowe like, are you not entertained? Well, do I want to be entertained, or do I want to engage with a good story? Now, some people might want to be entertained, and that's fine, like, that's my mom, right? She just wants to, she tells me, like, we'll watch something, and I'll be talking about all this stuff, and she'll just look at me and just say, Son, I just want to turn my brain off. And she knows I'm total opposite, right? You know, she goes to a Marvel movie with me, and I'm thinking about it, and I'm processing it in real time, in my head, you know, or mission like ours. My mom and I, our series is Mission Impossible. So really excited. The new ones coming out in about a month. I will probably fly home for a weekend just so I can see it with my mom. But you have a choice to make. Am I going to am I going to create something? Am I going to help make a movie that people want to be entertained by, or they want to engage with, right? And you can, you can look at, and I'll use this as an example the first 18 or 19 Marvel movies, right, infinity saga, from 2008 to 2019 most, not all, but almost every one of those is good on one level or another. You look at a lot of what's happened since then, and there have been some great ones, but there have been some colossal misses too, and that that goes for, you know, MCU TV, I mean, Daredevil born again is wrapping up right now, and it has been phenomenal. HawkEye was phenomenal. I didn't connect with some of the other shows, like Miss Marvel the way that I'd hoped to. And so again, I'm not necessarily saying that they're all you. Bad, but what goes into the calculus as you're making these movies? I should say specifically, what goes into the non financial calculus as you're making these movies. And do folks making these movies want to make a good movie? And I think there's using Marvel Studios as an example. I think they're starting to realize, Oh, hey, we got to bring things back to where they were. That's why Robert Downey Jr is coming back. That's why Steven McFeely is coming back to write that's why the Russo brothers are coming back to direct the next couple of Avengers movies, because audiences remember how good that was, and they want it to be that good again, not just because of nostalgia, right? Because there's a nostalgia factor now, but they actually want to, I believe, engage with movies that are good. Like, like you said, like what we remember from the 80s and 90s, where stuff was just amazing, and I and the the example I always go back to, I know, because you worked on Cobra Kai for a number of years, 1984 Yeah. Four Ghostbusters, Karate Kid, The Last Starfighter. I love the Last Starfighter so much that I paid 300 bucks a few years ago to rent out a theater so I could finally watch it on the big screen, because I was two when it came out. You had all these, all these movies that were incredible, that were all coming out within 456, months of each other. And like, they're amazing. You know, Terminator was, you know, 1984 the year I was born, in 82 you had Tron. You had played runner, you had, you had Wrath of Khan, like, all these movies that are now classic icons of cinema that people study, they're so good, and it's hard to come by that now in terms of, like, popular cinema. And so it's really a question of to go back to what I said before. Do we want to be entertained. Do we want to turn our brains off, or do we want to engage? And as a result of being engaging with the story, risk coming away changed, right? So then that's the question for the audience, right? Do we want to risk coming away changed. And my answer to that is an emphatic yes. But there's a version of that question that I think that folks that actually making these movies also need to wrestle with. I'm
Zack Arnold: going to throw one additional one in there, because you were talking 1984 and you're so close 1985 Back to the Future. Like of any list of amazing 80s movies that are absolutely iconic, that's certainly one of them. And here's this is just kind of me wrestling with this, as you know, a middle aged man is wondering, well, is this just what every generation does is say, Well, back in my day in the 80s, I had predator and platoon and Back to the Future, and, you know, The Last Starfighter. And now movies stink, but then I don't think this is just a generational thing, because I don't think whatever's coming out now, like when I think to myself, because I I've raised my kid on watching all this stuff that I loved, right? And I kept thinking, well, am I doing him a disservice? Because I'm not taking him to all the new films that are going to create these memories for him, and I would say, but there aren't any. Like when he decides to sit down with his kid when his kid is five. I don't know what he's going to show them, other than Back to the Future and Predator and Bloodsport like, because those are all the same films that we live together, right? Like, I horrible father. I've been showing my you know, my children rated R movies since they were like, seven, don't,
Aaron Welty: well, I would say, don't feel bad about that. The first R rated movie I ever saw, I was in fifth grade. My parents sat me down and they showed me tombstone, because I was doing a book report on wider nice. I already like parents, right? And then, you know, my dad eventually sat me down. He showed me dune and Predator and alien. And I was probably like 11 when he showed me Terminator two. So, you know, I would say, don't, don't feel bad about that at all. And so I do think there is a nostalgia factor that absolutely yes, but at the same time, I mean these, we're talking about movies that are studied right in film school and stuff and and movies that have stood the test of time, that people still watch over and over because they're good movies. These, and that's, that's, that's the thing like, do we want to create? Well, I would say, do we want to create story that stands the test of time, right? One of the questions that Diane Sawyer asked George Lucas that when he answered this, I was like, emphatic, yes, you know, hand up in the air like Bastion riding Falco at the end of the ring story. She said, Why did you create Star Wars? He said, something that I think is so powerful. He said, I wanted to create new, modern mythology. Okay? He wanted to do for that generation, for the generation you and I come from, he wanted to create new modern mythology, just like Tolkien wanted to create new modern mythology for England by writing Lord of the Rings. And then what is, what is George Lucas do? A few years after Star Wars is over and done, you know, done, quote, unquote, he makes Willow with Ron Howard. And that's basically Lucas Film meets Lord of the Rings. When you when you think about how the plot is structured and and all of that like that is his homage to Lord of the Rings, which he would have read back in college while at USC film school. So, like, it's not just oh, it's just nostalgia. It's no there. There is power in mythology, right? And we don't, we don't lean on, you know old like Greco Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian. You know Norse mythology much anymore, well, Norse mythology, if you're if you're Tolkien and Lewis and Neil Gaiman. But that, that drive and that instinct that we, that we still have for myth and using myth as a vehicle for understanding, we still have that in us in the 21st Century as human beings, and so we need modern mythology. Star Wars is modern mythology. You know, Marvel movies are modern mythology. DC movies are modern mythology, when you look at you were talking earlier about and it wasn't just nostalgia. One of the things that's really helpful with this is Glenn Weldon from the NPR happy hour. He's written a couple of books on superheroes, and one of the ones he wrote was about Batman, and it was about Batman. It was about the history of Batman, from, you know, 1939 up to now, enveloping the Nolan movies and all the history in between. But it was really about, and this is in the subtitle, you know, the rise of nerd culture, right? The reason we have geek culture, the reason we have fandom culture today in the 21st Century, the reason we have these crazy, big budget summer superhero movies, is because back in the 1930s and 40s and even into the 50s, there was a subset of individuals who fell in love with Batman from the page and panel, right? They fell in love with Batman. They may have fell in love with Batman because of some of the black and white cereals from that time frame. And so they had a certain idea of who and what Batman was, right? More like, you know, Zorro meets the shadow right along comes Adam West and Burt Ward in the 60s, and you've got this bright, campy show that adults understood. This is camp. This isn't serious. This is supposed to be funny. But that group, that subset of original fans that had been following Batman for the better part of 2025, years, that subset of fans revolted, and they said, You're doing it wrong. This is not our Batman, right. That phrase, you're doing it wrong. This is not our fill in the blank. Batman fans are why we have it. And so you had this revolt of of Batman fans in the 60s. And then, you know, all of that goes away. They continue to publish, you know, Batman DC Comics in the 70s, and they go back to the gritty, grittier roots, you know, Neil Adams is, is, is drawing at the time. Denny O'Neill is writing. That's where you get characters like Rachelle cool from, from that time frame. And it's in that time frame that Michael uslin is. Is working at DC Comics in the late 70s. He buys the multimedia rights, the screen rights for Batman for a steal, and it takes him and Tim Burton 10 years to get Batman 89 with Nicholson and Keaton on the screen, a Batman that is much closer to the original vision of Batman in the comics than what we've had for Absolutely. You know, for decades, I was seven years old. Back then, I was not old enough to see that movie in the theaters. I wasn't old enough Batman Returns came out in 92 my first live action Batman experience was Val Kilmer in 95 so, like, what's happened recently is had an effect on me. You know, in my first Batman experience, theatrical experience was Mask of the Phantasm in 93 as an extension of the Saturday morning cartoon. And so I, I like begged my parents. I was like, look, it's animated. It's fine. Mark Hamill is in it, Luke Skywalker is in it, right? Don't worry about it. And so part of what you have is, yes, there's the nostalgia piece, but there's a subset out there that knows what these characters are supposed to be and how they're supposed to be, you know, true to the source material, right? And when they're not, when they when they divert, there's, there's an issue when they divert. It's a, it's a question that goes back to that question of, do we want to be entertained? Does the studio want to make money, or do we want, do we want to build an engaging story? And what kind of respect do those that make the movies have for the source material? Because sometimes, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. That's the conflict you have between like Henry Cavill and the folks making the Witcher, and that's why he left. So it's really, what kind of story do you want to make? What kind of story do you want the audience to either be entertained by or engage with.
Zack Arnold: I think that again, everybody that is in any capacity whatsoever to be making decisions about what stories need to be told, I would say that that's required listening. And as you were talking about this idea of all of it's really based on Greek mythology, right? This hero's journey. For anybody that wants to dive even deeper into this, they can either dig into the book The Hero with 1000 Faces by Joseph Campbell, which helped modernize all this, which, which, PS, a really difficult read. I'm just going to put it out there. It's not an easy Sunday read. It's definitely deep. But if you're somebody that wants to look at the hero's journey and the understanding of how it applies to story on a little bit more practical level. There's a great book called The writer's journey by the writer, Chris Vogler, who I just happen to have on the podcast. So if anybody wants to dig into that shameless self promotion, check out my episode with Chris Vogler. But here's here's what I want to dig into next. I want people to understand the the challenges that I think everybody is facing and figuring out how to tell these next stories. Because when you talk about mythology and well, it's all based on mythology, but there's not. We're not really doing that anymore. The first thing that came to mind is, funny enough, that's exactly what Christopher Nolan is doing next. He's he didn't. He's going to be making Homer's the Odyssey. So we're coming back to form. We need to find these new mythological stories. But I'm going to play the devil's advocate for a second. I'm going to play the part of the people that are making these decisions. I don't work with them directly, but I'm, you know, circuitously In this world, enough to get a sense of where this is coming from. And essentially, there's two challenges. The first challenge is that right now, we just don't know where the eyeballs are going to be, therefore we can't justify the cost. But number two, nobody can fucking pay attention to anything anymore, right? So when you're saying, Tell me a great story and I want to be engaged and I don't want to be entertained, the powers that be are saying, We can't even get people to pay attention for seven seconds. How are we going to do it for 90 minutes or two hours? Right? I think that's one of the main challenges we're up against, is we don't know where the eyeballs are anymore, because of YouTube and all these kind of disparate platforms everywhere. But beyond not knowing where the eyeballs are, we can't get the eyeballs looking at the same thing at the same time
Aaron Welty: fair. And I realize, you know, I'm I've revealed a lot of my cards here already, but which
Zack Arnold: I appreciate, by the way, that's the whole point of this conversation,
Aaron Welty: right? I understand those challenges, and like, I want to say that I'm sympathetic to them, but I don't work in the industry like I'm the one consuming. Yeah. Mm, hmm, but as I'm processing that question, two things pop up. One is Daredevil, right? And how good, how consistently good Daredevil as a show has been across four seasons, right? If you can, if you can, and back when it was Netflix, right? They they would drop a whole season, and you just sit there and you'd watch, or at least, that's what I did. And so I think about Daredevil, and the reason I, I, you know, focus on Daredevil is because of what I'm going to say next, Daredevil is to the MCU, what andor is to Star Wars. AND and OR is incredible. I mean, we're two weeks two, two and a half weeks out, actually, not even two weeks out from the new season dropping. And like, I cannot wait. Like I cannot wait, you know. And then so I think about Daredevil. I think about andor. And yes, you know, I think about like, I, I just re watched three episodes of of um, Clone Wars season six this morning as a little bit of prep for this conversation. And, you know, anytime I watched Clone Wars, I remember how good it was. And, you know, at the beginning, yeah, you had a season, season and a half, that was slow and felt kind of kiddish, but, but it got to be so incredible by the end and and the way I process this and perceive this is, you know, Field of Dreams, right? If you make it good, I will show up. If you make it good, I will show up. You know, I'm, I'm absolutely ecstatic for Fantastic Four this summer. Can't wait. I'm cautiously optimistic about Superman, but I'll still go see it. I'm absolutely hyped about thunderbolts, but like, I mean, for me, it's all baked in, right? I I'm the audience they want in. In some ways, I'm the audience they want, but I'm also the audience that they know they already got. Then there's
Zack Arnold: the problem, right? Is, like, why do we need to make it good anymore? If Aaron's gonna show up anyway, because
Aaron Welty: it because the level of quality depends on how many times I'm going to show up. Ooh,
Zack Arnold: that's that's make sure anybody that's counting tickets, listen to that. That's important.
Aaron Welty: So I'll say it again. The level of quality determines how many times I'm going to show up. Am I going to go see it? 234, times, or am I going to go see it once I went and saw Thor love and thunder once, and that should tell you everything you need to know, right when, when Force Awakens came out in 2015 I saw it in the theater seven times, because that, to me, felt like what Star Wars was supposed to feel like. And part again, part of it, you know, baked into our conversation, part of its nostalgia, because it was, you know, new hope with some pieces rearranged. But at the end of the day, the level of quality is going to determine how many times I'm going to show up, or how many times I'm going to re watch a show. I've rewatched Battlestar Galactica probably half a dozen times since it went off the air in 2009 I've watched Deep Space Nine, probably three times. I've watched battle you know, Babylon five, twice. I've watched multiple seasons of, you know, Cobra Kai more than once, and a lot of that has to do with you and your work. But like good shows, people will come back to good movies. People will come back to ones that aren't they won't.
Zack Arnold: I want to leave today's conversation with one final discussion, which could be opening Pandora's box, and it's talking about the two dirtiest words in this industry right now, which are artificial intelligence. What I'm curious about is somebody that's not in the industry right now. AI is still finding its way. It's still we're still figuring it out. How do the tools fit into our workflows? What are they capable of? What aren't they capable of? So we're going to need to fast forward to whatever our near future is. But if you were to watch something at, let's just say, just about the same level of quality as you're getting from any great Marvel Movie. What it make a difference to you that it wasn't real? Would it matter that what you were looking at that you couldn't even tell was artificial intelligence generated versus it was real people on real sets telling real stories?
Aaron Welty: Wow. So couple of things play into this. Two words and then one word. Two words are human dignity, right when it comes to actual humans in the industry
making movies, whether good or bad, is the increased involvement of artificial intelligence doing something to diminish human dignity and the dignity of work right and the dignity of occupation and vocation. So there's that, right? And then there's the one single word that I always associate with artificial intelligence, and that is Skynet. Every single course, every single stinking time, you know, I own all of the Terminator movies. I own the TV show. I'm a huge Terminator guy. It's a big thing in my family. I've even I watched and loved the Netflix anime. I thought that was genius. But when are we? When are we going to, like, cross the Rubicon, where? Um, we go from a tool to technological terror and tyranny that and not even just as like a geek, but like as a human being, that is a concern I have. So one of the things that I would say, one of the like the bigger, kind of philosophical, ethical questions that Hollywood needs to deal with and wrestle with, is, is how we are, is how we are using artificial intelligence in our industry. Is it diminishing human dignity by diminishing the, you know, dignity of work and vocation and vocation and is how we're using it going to end up contributing to some sort of like technological terror and tyranny scenario?
Zack Arnold: Boy, we went dark fast. Holy cow. We're gonna stay away from Skynet becoming active. We're gonna put that for another conversation in another show for now, I not that I disagree, but you know, with the limited time we have left, I want to be careful with what we can cover. I love the fact you're bringing up this idea of human dignity, because I think that's a core part of this conversation. My fear is that those that make the decisions don't care. Where they're going to care is when it stops creating income, right? And here, here's where I think the human dignity part of it is so important. And I'm going to do my best to not turn this into my own TED talk on artificial intelligence and creativity, but we'll see where it goes in the next minute or two, I can feel that. I can feel the TED Talk voice coming up, right? But I think that one of the one of the reasons that we gravitate to great storytelling and great stories are the imperfections, right? Like we're talking about, it's something that's not just entertaining, but it's entertaining and engaging, and it feels real and it feels authentic and it feels emotional. Yep, I fear that we're going to work on perfecting artificial intelligence and realize that it's the imperfections that make these stories so universal and so appealing. And my only hope is that they realize that as we perfect this technology, we get away from people engaging with it, therefore it's leading to less revenue, therefore we pull back from it, right? But let me ask you this. I know nothing on, like, the very the tool specific technological level, what it's capable of. I try to stay away from, like, getting into the weeds on that stuff too much. I'm more interested in the societal and the creative implications of it. But I know that there's already talk of somewhere in the relatively near future. I don't know if we're talking in a year or 10 years, but they're already talking about there's a world where you don't even go to the movie theater anymore to watch a movie. You create your own movies. You literally speak into your your you know, your Apple Watch, or your Netflix remote, and say, Hey, Netflix. Make me a 90 minute movie where Aaron is like Superman, and he's fighting the bad guys and he's dealing with all these challenges, show me that movie. Here is your movie, Aaron, would you even want to see that? Would you want to be a part of that, knowing that you love these stories so much? Would you want? Would you engage with that?
Aaron Welty: Yes and no, I would engage with it to see. Be where it is, right kind of how far along it's come. But chances are I wouldn't engage with it for very long, right? Because what you just described, the way, the way I frame that, is that is there is a, there's a way of thinking about avatar, The Last Airbender, right? There's the show from 2021, years ago on Nickelodeon. Fantastic, wonderful show, another show I probably watched half a dozen times, but the first live action iteration of that story that came out, I've never seen it. I refuse to see it. I very rarely acknowledge it. And I say that because the difference that I understand between the the animated series that I love and the that interpretation of the story is that it's basically the first season done in live action with all of the character moments stripped out. And so the question in terms of engaging with artificial intelligence in this way, as a viewer, saying, Netflix, give me X, Y and Z is what's the character going to feel like, and I don't mean like the character in the movie, but like the character of the experience. Is it going to still feel real? Is it going to still feel authentic? And it if, if the question, if the direction the question goes, you know, no, it's not. Then that's not a good thing, and I need to run away screaming like I'm running from the mirror gate in Fantasia. But if the if the answer to that is yes, and somehow Artificial intelligence has been able to capture that and capture it well, and make it feel real and authentic. That is also scary, because then the then the question becomes, what's next?
Zack Arnold: Given all that we covered a million and a half different things, as I always assume is going to be the case, covered roughly 5% of all the things that I wanted to talk about that we prepared for, all the questions at hand, but with the last couple of minutes that we have, you're somebody that has a lot to say. You have a lot of viewpoints on life. Is there anything that we haven't talked about, any stories that haven't been told that when we done, if you were done, you're like, Oh man, I wish we had talked about this. Yeah, I want to give you a chance to wrap it up today.
Aaron Welty: So when we talked earlier about the idea that the suffering isn't optional, right, we were talking about suffering isn't optional, and we were talking about Star Wars and Campbell hero's journey, all of that, I have gone through plenty of things, and am currently going through a thing that I like to describe As my own version of the Dagobah cave. Right? My current Dagobah cave. And I don't think I've ever really talked about this publicly, and I know that you love hearing that is I am working on finishing a series of edits to a manuscript that I've been working on for a book for about 20 years. Wow. Part of the reason it's taken so long is there's more life that I had to live in order to do it, or at least from my perspective. But part of the reason it's taken so long is because I was working with an editor for about four or five years in the mid 2010s who was also my aunt and my godmother, and she passed away in early 2020 shortly before COVID. And I had I until recently, because of some things happening, you know, occupationally here in DC as a federal employee, and we haven't even talked about
Zack Arnold: any of that stuff, speaking of obstacles, yeah, that
Aaron Welty: I'm living through, I got to a point where I realized I haven't touched this manuscript since my aunt died. But I don't have, I don't have my main excuse any. More right? Because I'm currently on administrative leave from my job and kind of waiting to see what happens long term. And so I had to confront the fact that I've got this thing that needs to be finished, and all of the avoiding that I'd been doing is kind of being dismantled, right? All my excuses are being dismantled. And so one of the things that I'm learning, because I frame it around the DAG of a cave, is when you look at that sequence and Empire Strikes Back, and Luke says, you know what's in there? I feel cold death. Yoda says, only what you take with you. Yoda immediately says, After that, your weapons, you will not need them. What does Luke Skywalker do? He takes his belt with his lightsaber and his blaster, and he straps it on, and in he goes, and he has that confrontation with Darth, Vader that ultimately, you know, is a confrontation with himself. And I say all of this because I believe that if Luke Skywalker had followed Yoda wisdom wisdom that Yoda himself had lived through. If you watch the Clone Wars episodes where he goes into the cave on dacapa and does not use his lightsaber, that Luke skywalker's outcome of that experience would have been different. Why do I say all of that? Because when it comes to anything in our life that feels like the Dagobah cave, I believe that how we enter that cave and how we engage while we're in that cave influences how we exit and what happens afterward.
Zack Arnold: There's that giant noise again, I think that was another larger mic drop, given that, I would venture to guess every single person listening to this right now is staring into the abyss of this cave and all of this uncertainty. I can't literally imagine a better way to have closed out the show. I certainly could have done it nearly as well. So, Aaron, I don't even know what to say. Like this was far beyond meeting my expectations, and I had high expectations, and this was such a wonderful interview before we wrap it up, if anybody listening to this. Wants to engage further with you. How can they learn more about you? How can they find you? How can they connect with you? Yep,
Aaron Welty: there are a couple ways to do it. I have a I have a website, a speaking website, that's Aaron R Welty, my first name, my middle initial, and my last name, Aaron R welty.com, there is a contact form on the website that they can use. I also have an email address connected to the website, and that's Aaron at Aaron R wealthy.com I'm also on Facebook. I know you've said that you're not a big Instagram guy, but I am on Instagram. It's just at Aaron wealthy, it's a it's a public account. So definitely different ways for folks to connect with me, engage with me. And I would love to hear from folks. Well,
Zack Arnold: I would love for for people to feel free to reach out to you. I think you're, you're clearly a great person to to connect with on many levels. Just going to plant the seed now, now that I hear this word manuscript and potential book, I have a feeling we might have a part two coming at some point to talk about everything that's inside that book. There might be a part two. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Well, in the meantime, Aaron, I can't thank you enough for playing a very challenging game of calendar Tetris with me and finally, making this happen like you just made my day and you made my week. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Aaron Welty: Thank you, Zack, good to be here.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Shownotes and published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
As you’ll hear in our conversation, not only will you understand how to better write your own stories, but you’ll learn how to apply Will’s unconventional approaches to rewrite the story of your own life.
Christina shares valuable insight on how to cope when back-to-back losses shake the foundation of our creative lives, leaving us questioning who we are and what’s left to hold onto.
Beyond Chris’ detailed explanation, we dive deep into how you can use the principles of the Hero’s Journey to both understand and change the story of your own life.
