Rediscover Reading as a Way to Learn

[Tom Pounder] People learn in a variety of different ways. They learn from podcasts, which I love. They learn from videos, which I love as well. But they also learn from reading. And so today we're going to take a look back at the lost art of reading and how they can inspire and encourage you still today. Are you ready? Because it's time. [Announcer] You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network. [Tom Pounder] Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and you are listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. This is the podcast where I bring in ministry leaders and we talk about different things around the world and learn how to do ministry more effectively in this very digital and online world. And today I'm bringing back a friend of mine, Robert Carnes, and he and I are going to talk about book reading. Now, again, it sounds pretty boring and it also sounds not very digital, but there is a digital component to reading and not just book reading, but just reading in general. And today, Robert and I are getting together and we're going to talk about what does that look like? How can that encourage you? How does that inspire you? And we're going to learn an interesting fact about Robert, what he did over COVID in regards to reading books. But. Before we get into that, I do want to encourage you, hey, make sure you subscribe to this. If you're watching the video, go to YouTube and subscribe to it. If you're listening to this on Spotify or iTunes, make sure you hit the subscribe button. I've got new interviews coming out basically every single week, and we're going to learn different tools, different tips to really encourage you in how to do ministry more effectively in this digital and online world. So I want to encourage you to subscribe to it. All right, so now that I've got that out of the way, I'm really excited to have Robert back on the podcast. We get to catch up a little bit, but then we dive deep into what reading does for us on all levels of life. And we're going to get into that right now with this interview. All right, with me right now is my friend Robert Carnes. Robert, how are you, man? [Robert Carnes] Doing pretty well, Tom. Great to be on the podcast again with you. [Tom Pounder] yeah obviously you're doing pretty good because that cap you're wearing um is you know something to be proud about so um for anybody for anybody who does not know robert and i have known each other for a number of years of dating back to his time at orange um but he and I are big baseball fans. And he's from, you know, he roots for the Braves. And if you're watching the video portion of this, you'll see his Braves hat. And I'm a Washington Nationals fan. So we go back and forth all the time about this. And a few years ago, the Nats won the World Series. And now this year, the Braves won the World Series. So tell me a little bit about that run that they made, because they were kind of like the Nats. They weren't like the most dominant going into the World Series, but then they just got rolling. [Robert Carnes] Yeah, well, we'll have to be careful because we could almost spend the entire podcast conversation just talking about baseball. So we'll have to kind of, I'll keep from rambling, but yeah, it's, you know, obviously I grew up in Atlanta. I'm an Atlanta native, so it's super exciting. And I grew up during, you know, the 90s runs with the Braves and making several World Series, but only winning one. And so it's exciting, yeah, for 20 plus years later to finally... gone back and won another another title uh so yeah it feels vindicating it's it's obviously uh great to to chat baseball even with uh rivals and to be able to cheer each other on uh yeah we're excited to to beat the houston astros uh but um yeah my my base my uh world series gear is still in the mail uh still coming to get here so i i can't wait to to be able to wear that but yeah in the meantime got my brave's head on and yeah [Tom Pounder] i remember uh and tell me your experience like after game seven of the world series for the nats i immediately like it was like 11 o'clock at night 11 30 at night i went out to the sporting goods store and was hunting for like and there were a lot of people just hunting for um shirts and all that stuff and they didn't have them at that point but then i went back first thing in the morning and bought a bunch of stuff where the store is just like crazy and everyone just going nuts [Robert Carnes] i didn't even bother because yeah i have a lot of friends who did that and who waited in line at like 2 a.m uh i just went ahead and ordered them online the next morning which i'm sitting here waiting but that's okay uh because yeah i think everybody went out and hit the sporting goods stores that morning and it was i mean that whole week was a little surreal because everybody was staying up till 1am to watch the games which are so late for some reason but it was again well worth it the fact that we were able to see the victory and i actually got to go to game three which was pretty crazy i won tickets in a raffle uh through my wife's work so that was i think perhaps the best sporting event i've ever been to uh was going to the world series just down the street from my house i live really close to the stadium here in atlanta so good experience yeah now did they win that game [Tom Pounder] They did. They did. [Robert Carnes] We were two. I mean, they took a no hitter into the eighth inning, which is one of the reasons why it was a pretty crazy experience. So again, if you're a baseball fan, you know how big a deal that is. It was two to nothing for the Braves. It was really exciting. [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. I actually, when the Nats made their run, my brother has season tickets to the Nats, and so he let me go to the NLCS game. And then he offered me tickets to the World Series, but I was out of town with my daughter for a softball game, and all the softball parents were like, Tom, what, are you crazy? I'm kind of glad that I didn't go because the Nats lost that game. So that was, you know, fine by me. So... All right. Well, we could talk about this. Seriously, we could talk about our experiences for a long time, and I'm sure nobody would like that. [Robert Carnes] Yeah, this is a podcast conversation for just the two of us. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. Okay. But okay, before we get into the conversation, I know you've been on my podcast a few different times, but remind people what you do and kind of how you got into that. [Robert Carnes] yeah absolutely so i'm uh i currently work at a company called green melon it's just a small digital marketing agency here in atlanta we do websites and strategies for social media email for lots of different businesses uh i came from the reason again like you said we got to know each other was because i came from a church communications church marketing background i've worked at several churches here in the atlanta area uh worked at orange which is obviously the kind of church leadership and events resources team. So that's how we get to know each other. And then I came up with a book a couple years ago called The Original Storyteller, which is all about storytelling kind of through the lens of the Bible and the Christian space. So yeah, I mean, this is still my passion, still very much involved in the local church, even though I don't work full time in it anymore. But that's a little bit about who I am and what I've done. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's great. And I'm going to include, again, the podcast where we talked about your book, The Original Storytelling, because we talked all about storytelling and the power of that. And so that was a great conversation we had. So I'll include that in the show notes. Well, again, before we get started, again, I would be remiss to not ask you, you know, we're into almost year two of this COVID stuff. So how has your life been impacted or changed at all during the past two years? [Robert Carnes] yeah well i mean it's probably not changed as much as some people's um everything is you know kind of the world has turned upside down but i've been very lucky to you know have my health and been able to continue to work and work from home which has been a huge change being able to kind of go from a long commute through atlanta traffic to being able to be flexible with remote work and all that, have enjoyed being able to spend more time with family. So that's been a blessing kind of in disguise, the silver lining in the gray cloud. And then one of the things that kind of ties into our overall topic to maybe tease that a little bit was being able to spend a lot of time at home, especially during 2020. meant that i got to read a lot more kind of discover kind of some new habits and including diving into uh reading and so i read close to 100 books i think i logged 96 during 2020 so yeah i haven't had a little bit more time on my hands to do stuff like that so that was again a little bit of a silver lining yeah and uh right now you're in your house right now are you still working from home I am. Yeah, we have a small office near where I live, our agency does. So we go in to the office every once in a while to kind of meet up as a team. But yeah, for the most part, by default, we work from home. And I found actually, I'm a lot more productive. When I'm at home, I'm able to do stuff by myself. And then we go to the office and spend most of our time just chit chatting and catching up with one another, which is still great. I think that's a huge part of being able to build a team culture and collaborate with one another. But when I'm able to kind of be at home by myself and put my head down, I'm usually able to actually get more work done. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, no, you know, it's been really interesting because I was really nervous early on because I had found before COVID hit, I was not very productive at home. I didn't have good work habits at home. I was very easily distracted. And what ended up happening was I converted my office space at my home. I had a small little room and I converted into a work environment where I was very productive and very helpful. And to the point where right now, I do go back into office every day, but just for a few hours, because like what you talked about, I want to connect with people. And I go there more to just connect and talk and collaborate with people. But I have found that I am still very productive at home. And I think that's really cool. [Robert Carnes] Yeah, yeah. I mean, kind of, I like you. I had small opportunities to work from home before the pandemic. And I was usually more distracted. I think by necessity, we kind of had to figure out how to do remote stuff and had to kind of invest in redoing our home offices or inventing a home office to be able to allow us to work from home. But yeah, that was one of the things that we were all And it's very similar about having to figure it out together. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's great. That's great. See, we're very similar. I mean, we're just very, you know, even though we like different teams, we're very similar. Okay, so let's get into the topic right now. We're going to talk about reading. And I know this is a digital podcast and everything like that. but i think reading is still a very valuable thing i it's funny i remember um a guy named jim rome he's a uh he was kind of a shock jock sports guy um and uh he said um they asked uh some someone asked him if he's like do you like to read and he's like dude if you don't i'm paraphrasing here he's like dude if you if you don't read you're not going to get smarter you're not going to get you know you're not going to grow in your intelligence and again i know that especially during covid we had tons of webinars that were offered we had tons of podcasts that were launched but reading is still a really important thing today in our culture people need to learn how to read so i'm not going to ask you do you read a lot because you just told me you read like almost 100 books but tell me a little bit about what type of books do you read and what got you going? Was it something that you started from a really young age or something a little bit later in life? [Robert Carnes] Yeah, it was. It's always kind of been a passion and a habit of mine. I really can't remember a time when I wasn't just reading mostly for pleasure. I mean, obviously, a lot of us had to read, thinking back to high school, maybe college. We had a lot of books that were assigned and kind of it was a mandatory thing, which takes away a little bit of the fun, but I've always read for pleasure and read for enjoyment and read for learning kind of on top of those things. And so it's just kind of been ingrained as a part of kind of who I am, part of my character, part of what I enjoy and how I spend my time. So, yeah, I mean, I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. And in terms of what kind of stuff I like to read, I used to read a lot more of the like classic literature, the fiction pieces a lot more. And I mean, that's still something I try to work in and still something that's very important. We can learn a lot about kind of the great classic books. But I've more recently within the past five or six years. I've done a lot more to kind of intentionally balance that with nonfiction books, especially kind of in our professional careers. That's one of the great ways to learn new skills. So I usually try to read, I alternate between fiction and nonfiction, kind of strike that balance. And there's great things out of both, but it kind of helps me stay sharp in both areas. And there's great things to kind of learn from both fiction and nonfiction types of books. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I would agree with you on that. I was never a big reader. And part of the reason why I wasn't is because I'm a slow reader. And sometimes reading comprehension was hard for me. But when I found a book that I did enjoy reading, I just gobbled it up. Again, my favorite book of all time is Great Expectations by Dickens. I like Dickens. For some reason, just something about England and the time period he was writing, I really just love his stuff. But Great Expectations is definitely one of my favorite books. Uh, of all time, but what I, what I tend to side on is the, um, is the learning, the self-help books, the books that really kind of encouraged me in my leadership and in my ministry kind of career, or even if it's something related to web or computer stuff. But talk to me a little bit about your nonfiction stuff. What kind of nonfiction books do you read? What draws you to that? [Robert Carnes] Yeah. Uh, I mean, much similar to what you just mentioned, kind of leadership. Obviously, I work in marketing, so I'm interested in kind of learning. the tools of the trade and kind of picking up on new marketing skills. Obviously, because my faith is important, I'm going to read things from spiritual leaders, things about the church. But I also try to I mean, try to keep it pretty broad and try to I mean, that's one of the best ways to kind of be introduced to a new subject, whether it's like psychology or philosophy or history. I don't tend to read a ton of books on any one of those, but I try to kind of sample a few different, you know, the most well-known books in those areas to just get a new sense of something i think one of the best benefits that we can get from reading books is a wider perspective and a greater empathy for other people because when we actually sit and take time to read something that that somebody has uh written and kind of poured themselves into we're gonna get a little piece of their humanity we're going to kind of get a glimpse into how they think and their life experience and so that's one of the best ways to just i mean other than obviously talking to people but oftentimes we don't have time to to actually meet and talk to those authors so that's the next best way to kind of understand who they are and understand their life experience so i just found that reading pretty broadly helps me to to just be more empathetic towards other people from different walks of life [Tom Pounder] Great, that's awesome. Are there historical figures that you are most drawn to? Is there someone that you like to follow or read about or learn about? [Robert Carnes] It's a good question. I feel like when I was earlier kind of in my... reading journey. I wasn't super interested in like biographies, autobiographies. I just seemed like, I don't know, that seemed a little antiquated to me. And I feel like the older I get, the kind of more that I read, the more interested I am in figures and learning about their lives specifically. So reading biographies. So I have a longer list of biographies that I want to read. than biographies that i actually have read um trying to remember i mean the most recent one that i probably read was tom petty's biography so oh i love tom petty for all you music fans out there yeah uh that was a really great one and i mean again love his music but it was you know just about his life and him growing up and him getting into the music scene and all those kind of things. That's just one example of somebody. And again, I have listened to his music for years, but actually being able to kind of read his story and how he created and wrote all that music, it gives you a much different perspective. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's really cool. You know, one book that I want to read right now is the Dave Grohl book. um that he has i've heard lots of great things about that and the stories that he shares about his life experiences and whatnot um well okay so talk to me a little bit about this that you know um reading like right now we're consumed with webinars we're consumed with podcasts um and it's kind of like what we talked about a while back when we talked about blogging how there's the lost thought of blogging it's still really important reading is still really important um and so you talk to me a little bit about um how you would encourage someone that says oh i i listen to the podcast that's okay i listen to a webinar okay how would you like i i i don't really like to read how would you encourage them in that way it's a good question and i mean there's nothing wrong with all the things you just listed i mean i i absolutely consume all those different kind of content i think you need [Robert Carnes] a lot of different ways to learn and grow. I think that's natural. Different people gravitate more towards different kind of things. People are visual learners or auditory learners. And so there's nothing necessarily wrong with any of those things. And you've got to do you. You've got to figure out what works and the way that you best consume content and learn. But I think reading, just from a human fundamental standpoint, it's one of the best ways, I think, to learn because I mean you mentioned like that your experience you're kind of a slower reader but I, I think that that's kind of underrated. I probably read too fast in some cases and kind of blow by things I think it when you sit and take time like that's one of the beauty, the beautiful things about reading is it just, it takes time like. A lot of people don't have time, they're busy, so they don't, they shy away from books. But when you sit and kind of have to contemplate on a subject and you have to kind of take your time to work through the text, that's usually why it's so valuable. It's because it's kind of forming connections in your brain. It's kind of making you think deeply about something. It's an active thing that you're having to kind of... actively grapple with the text on the page and the ideas that are being presented. So it really just engages your mind in a whole different way and makes you kind of, it forces you to learn a lot of different things. And so again, one of the excuses that I hear so often, even beyond just, I don't want to read it. I don't have the time to read. I just can't, I should read more. And I have a long list of to read books, but I just can't find the time. So that's an understandable reason, but there's enough ways that you can, again, find time to read good books and learn from them. It's just, there's so many good things that can be gathered from a good book that it's really worth engaging in and finding the time to do. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. Okay. So I'm glad you said that because here's the deal. Like again, over the past two years, I've gotten so many unhealthy work habits. I was constantly working and whatnot. And for the past few months, I've really said, You know, forget it. I'm shutting my computer down at this time. I'm not working after this time. I'm not starting to work until this time. And I'm really trying to honor my time for my family, for myself. And I really like it was funny because literally last night I was sitting out in my couch on my couch and I was just watching TV. And I like to tend to watch mindless TV. And I think to myself, I thought to myself, I. should be reading a book right now i haven't read a book in a few months and i'm like i need to be reading a book right now because i need to learn and i need to grow or i just need to enjoy something other than seeing the italian job movie for the 20th time you know in the past six months you know it's just kind of one of those things um and so you have a you have a busy life you have a young family so how and you read a ton of books um how how do you make the time do you schedule time do you just say hey i've got some free time here how would you encourage someone with that like to say is it best to schedule it or or what would you recommend i mean again very much it depends on who you are sometimes it takes people kind of being intentional of [Robert Carnes] scheduling that time i don't personally again it's i think it's just the habit is so ingrained in me already that i just naturally am going to pick up a book and that doesn't i mean i very much watch mindless television as well you know it's not an either or you can you can do both obviously you're gonna be able to read more if you're watching less tv But yeah, I mean, I typically read before bed. Like my wife and I will both, you know, kind of wind down at a certain time after we've watched our kind of, you know, a little bit of Netflix and we'll both read together. So, I mean, I think the fact that we both enjoy it and we both get a lot out of it, that helps. There's somebody to kind of hold each other accountable to that. But so, I mean, it's only an hour, hour and a half, kind of every night that I'm able to kind of dive into a book. But I usually will also, I mean, the beauty of technology is it can be a distraction, but it can also be a huge tool. So, I mean, I've got an Amazon Kindle, I've got the Kindle app on my phone. So if I'm waiting in line at the grocery store or something like that, rather than scrolling through social media, sometimes I will have had a book downloaded and take those five minutes and read a chapter of a book or something. So there are different other ways that you can kind of find those small margins in your day and kind of reclaim that time. for reading. So again, that takes time and that takes practice to kind of work that into your habit. And I will close out kind of this idea by mentioning another book specifically written for people who aren't sure about reading, which I can reach up here. So I've got a copy of it. It was written by a buddy of mine, Jesse Wisniewski, called Read the Lead. It actually just came out pretty recently, and it's written almost specifically for people who need to kind of figure out that reading habit. What kind of book should I read? Why is it worth me reading to kind of develop myself as a leader? And so that may be a good place for people to start if they're wanting to kind of develop a better reading habit. So I would definitely encourage, I'll give a quick plug for that book. [Tom Pounder] Yeah. Hey, thanks for the plug. That's great. I'll actually include that in the show notes if anybody wants to get that book, because actually my next question for you was, how do you read? Do you read with the... [Robert Carnes] a regular like paperback book or you read a kindle but you have the kindle app so do you ever read any paperbacks or hard oh absolutely yeah i mean i i do kind of that's another thing is just the kind of variety of different ways to read um again some people may prefer one way or the other and they may be old school and want to stick to the paperback or maybe just completely technological i try to cover the gamut and try to do a little bit of everything i mean i listen to audiobooks i get books you know physical books from the library i buy a lot of physical books i download ebooks i mean that's that's one of the things that i think has helped me is kind of just being open to any different way of reading and are different advantages pros and cons of doing it digital versus paper or vice versa so again you may have a preference strong preference one way or the other i just do a little bit of everything and that i think helps me read more [Tom Pounder] That's awesome. One of the things that really kind of kick-started me a few years ago to reading a little bit more is I got a Kindle for Christmas. And now it's outdated, but I don't care because it still does what I need to do. It's like an iPad. I don't need to upgrade every time they come out with a new Kindle. But, and it also has a cool little light case that I got. Anyways, but the Kindle was so great because I can stick thousands of books in my Kindle. I don't have to carry around thousand books. I can just stick it all into my Kindle and then just pick out the one I want to read at that point. uh so that's that's awesome i yeah i highly recommend a kindle but um i i know people who just swear by they need to they need to write it and they need to jot down notes in the margins and all that kind of stuff so i mean i get that too so yeah and and i was very much an old school i had to have a physical book when the kindle kind of first came out several years ago [Robert Carnes] But I think I'm on my second or third Kindle now. And I mean, like you said, they tend to last a while. I mean, the battery lasts a long time. They've done, you know, I don't know if this is necessarily a commercial for Amazon, but they've done a really good job of kind of mimicking the benefits of a physical book. But with the benefit of, yeah, I can carry a thousand books around in my pocket. So it's, again, it's another tool, another technology that really can help a lot more people read. [Tom Pounder] yeah i agree completely okay so um i want to hit on one thing that you said about you and your wife reading together do you guys ever read the same books together and does that help you read or do you guys are you guys two completely different people when you come to reading more of the latter more of we're both sitting side by side she's reading her kind of mystery book and i'm reading my non-fiction or whatever so it's typically different books i mean we have read [Robert Carnes] marriage books together we we took the kind of bible in a year challenge we read the bible together for a year so that was that was a good experience but for the most part you know we have our own unique tastes and we will typically read books separately and then we'll you know on a long car ride or a walk or something like that we'll kind of share with our book you know what's happening in the book and get updates for one another so it's it's a fun habit to share together but also being able to kind of separate and enjoy our own titles yeah that's cool that's cool yeah [Tom Pounder] All right, we're wrapping up here a little bit, but I have one question. Again, we've been talking strictly really about books, you know, reading books and everything like that, but there's lots of other ways that you can read. What are some other forms of literature that you can read that you can encourage? Like I will say, I read blogs all the time. I'm a big blog reader, but, you know, and I'm sure you're a blog reader as well. So what other forms of literature would you encourage people to read that would encourage them? [Robert Carnes] Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Because yeah, most of what we talk about when we talk about reading is books, but blogging is a big one. I just recently I'm so I majored in journalism in college. So I still very much care about kind of print news media. I don't have a newspaper subscription anymore. But I do have actually subscribed to wire mag wired magazine. Yeah. uh so magazines are still a thing hey and they're not just digital like i still get a physical printed copy of the magazine in the mail every month and i will still read an article every once in a while so it's i mean that's another kind of long form piece of content that's still enjoyable and gosh there's magazines and every kind of different discipline and all that stuff so i think those are huge um audiobooks again i mentioned that kind of before as a different format and there's a heated debate over whether or not those kind of count as reading a book Um, I mean, I think it's still kind of, it does because it's, you're still kind of consuming content in a different way. I mean, I think there are certain books that work better in audio form than others. Um, but I still enjoyed downloading an audio book and listening to it in the car. I don't have as long as a commute as I used to. So I listened to less audio books. Um, but I still think that that works, um, now how that translates into podcasts because podcasts are usually conversational and less written pieces. So. there's kind of that weird gray area in there but i mean i think again my standpoint is that audiobooks certainly count uh for for reading and because you're consuming again a piece of literature just in a different way so yeah those are a few different kind of forms that i think are worth people checking out [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I never have done much audiobooks. I do a variety of podcasts, but the audiobooks, but again, I've heard that debate about amongst readers a lot is it doesn't count as a book. I'm like, I like what you just said. You're still consuming the content. You know, you're like, again, like how they always say the movie is different than the book, you know, and and i well i learned that firsthand when i was in high school and i had to read withering heights and i didn't read it all the way through and so i decided to rent the movie from blockbuster and uh it was a classic old movie and i wrote up my report on it i told my friend after like the next day and this is before computers and all that stuff i did like handwriting and all that stuff and um and the guy told me dude the the movie is different than the book you have to and so i was like i totally freaked out he gave me the clip notes and all that kind of stuff but i think if you're listening to it or if you're reading it it's important that you just be able to get that kind of stuff so i i you know i i appreciate it yeah absolutely they don't yeah they don't change the ending in the audiobooks like they do exactly exactly um all right so as we're wrapping up here robert how how else would you encourage us in regards to reading and especially reading to learn yeah yeah so [Robert Carnes] I think there's, I mean, like I said, technology can kind of be a distraction. We can kind of let that keep us from reading or we can kind of take advantage of technology and we can use some of the apps and tools out there that can help us consume more and learn more. So, I mean, Goodreads is a tool that a lot of people use. I know I log all of my books in there. It's actually, it's another company that's owned by Amazon. So if you have a Kindle, I think it will actually update your Goodreads for you as you, read and finish books so that's kind of cool again just a it's like the you know imdb of of books it's the kind of the online category of everything books um blinkist is another really cool tool and again we can debate whether or not that's officially reading a book but blink is basically summarizes books into shorter chunks um you know instead of taking a couple hours to read a book it breaks it down to like 10 or 15 minutes um so sometimes you can kind of still get the core message out of a book, which is really cool. And then another set of tools that I really encourage people checking out is Hoopla and Libby. That actually really changed how I read books there. They basically are ways to partner with libraries to download free digital content. So my local library uses Hoopla and allows me to check out e-books or rent audio books. That's usually how I get my audio books. And it's all free. You check out items like you would do at the library. it's all in a digital format so it's that was one of the kind of things that unlocked me being able to read a lot more because i've i've just got so many different options at my fingertips and yeah so you're not having to necessarily purchase every single book you read it there there are so many right there for free [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's awesome. And again, I think that's a missing thing that people think. They forget about the library and they forget that they can rent these e-books for free. I mean, you don't have to buy these books. You don't have to go to the physical library. There are apps that allow you to do that. So I think that's really important. I will say I'll throw in for blogging, if you like to read blogs, I have a Feedly account and that's free too. And all you do is just insert the website to it. And every day I get a new list of different blogs that have been updated. And so that kind of keeps me reading because I see rather than me having to search for things, it just kind of comes to my app and I'm able to read the ones that are most interesting to me. [Robert Carnes] i would strongly second that one if you do like to read blogs rather than individually visiting every single site a feed reader like feedly which is the one i use as well is is a great way to kind of summarize all that and allow you to to engage with a lot of content a lot quicker it's a good one [Tom Pounder] That's great. Well, Robert, as always, it's great talking with you and chatting with you. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk. [Robert Carnes] Yeah, Tom, love the conversation. Thank you so much for having me. [Tom Pounder] Oh, wait, before I end, though, real quick, tell people how they can connect with you on social media. [Robert Carnes] Yeah, yeah. So I'm still pretty active on Twitter is my kind of main social platform of choice. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I'm usually tweeting to Tom about. [Robert Carnes] sports or music or something like that yeah at jam rob carr uh is is my twitter handle um you can again certainly check out more about the book original storyteller at uh originalstoryteller.com you can kind of check that out get more copies obviously uh tom will also link to the other show where we talked more about that um but yeah those are kind of the main places to find me on the internet that is awesome so okay now we can wrap up That's right. [Tom Pounder] I have all those links on the show notes. So, and I would definitely encourage you to check out the original storyteller. It's a fantastic book. So I appreciate that. All right, Robert, well, have a great rest of your day and I'll talk to you soon. [Robert Carnes] Thanks so much, Tom. Great talking to you. [Tom Pounder] All right, so there you have it, my interview with Robert. It's great catching up with him. Even though he's a Braves fan, I still love catching up with him. He's just awesome. He's a great guy. And I love how we've talked, again, I've had him on the podcast where we've talked about blogging, we've talked about reading now. There's just lots of different things that you can do that are digital, but also old-fashioned as well, that are still really useful and helpful for you as you grow as a person. So I want to ask you this question. Are you reading? And if so, what are you reading? Are you reading blogs? Are you reading books? What are you reading right now? I would love for you to comment on that. Definitely comment on the comment section below if you're watching the video or just hit me up on Twitter at TAPounder. I would love to talk with you a little bit more about this. I'm reading certain things. I'm using my Kindle, but I'm also using my Feedly account to catch up on some blogs. So I want to know what you're reading and how it's encouraging you today. Definitely make sure you comment on that. All right, heroes. Well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, definitely subscribe to this. We would love for you to do that. But also check out the church.digital website. There's lots of great content and there's more even coming soon. As we enter into a new month, a new year, everything that's happening, we would love for you to check out thechurch.digital to get all sorts of digital encouragement and inspiration at thechurch.digital. All right, heroes, I hope you have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week. And until next time, have a great one.