The Way I Want to Believe

The last one I attribute to my father, who I love very much. He told me two things that I’ve carried with me to this day. The first one is, eat, drink, and be merry in moderation because nobody gets out of this world alive. I’ve done my utmost to live by that. I do have a sweet tooth, and I like to speed from time to time, it’s hard not to want to do that!

The other aspect of it is that we all are going to go through that period of transition. So I have made it my life’s work as it were to be ready. To say if this is my day to transition, I’m good to go. No fear. Is there more I want to do, absolutely, and I hope I get that chance. If not, then I will be happy with the things that I have accomplished up to this point. But just to put people’s minds at rest, I plan to live to be at least a hundred.

Remember, I have to outlive my great-grandmother who lived to be 100.

Eileen: Your platform is based on bringing many different points of view, from around the circle, into our view, to assist us in expanding our life and living. To assist in the positive evolution of mankind and bringing about a greater awareness of self and others to create the kind of world we want. Tell us more about this platform.

Richard: Let me start out by saying that when I first started interviewing people in 1979/1980, I was simply curious about things. That goes back to my childhood. I was always asking questions. Not necessarily the stereotypical why, why, why. I wanted to know how things worked and why, but I also was curious about where other people were coming from.

Fortunately, I learned early on that in the process of learning about someone else’s perspective on something I transitioned from trying to get them to accept and believe my perspective on the subject. I began to incorporate bits and pieces of what they shared. It goes back to one of those old sayings about the beginning, ending, and certainty. I had a phase in my life where I was very certain about things and found out that my certainty was misplaced because I didn’t have all of the information or a greater part of the information needed to make a better-informed decision.

As I began working officially in 1978 on my first on-location job, I began to experience other people and their ways of doing things, ways of believing things that they believed in. When I got into radio and began interviewing people it opened a whole new world for me. I began to listen more and tried to understand better. I worked at processing the information I received not just through my own personal filter, but also through the information that I had received from others.

As my interviewing style progressed and my exposure to new ideas increased. I began to ask better questions that not only elicited better answers but also went more to the core of why we’re here and what we should be doing with our lives and how we can do that.

As I have shared before, in 1986 I went to work for a local news talk station, the number one station in Phoenix at the time to be what they called a board op for the overnight weekend shift. At that time, they were airing from the mutual broadcasting network the Larry King show. It was at that point that I went to the Larry King School of Broadcasting. It’s where I learned that not preparing in an official capacity was actually better than reading everything that was sent to me about the guest on the subject. Of course, my curiosity kicked in and I asked questions from that perspective and learned an awful lot more than I would have had I already read the information and had that in my head. Where would I go from there? What questions would I ask the guest that I did not already have?

So, it continues to this day where now I say that the Universe asks the questions and I am just along for the ride. The universe taps my curiosity and my rational logical thinking mind and places questions that I put to the guests to elicit a more in-depth conversation. I have only done one interview with a list of questions in front of me. That was the first interview that I had ever done and when it was all over it was the last interview that I did with a set or list of questions. I am always open to a list of topics, points, and issues that the guest wishes to discuss, then allowing the universe to guide us in that direction.

I want to support people, organizations, communities, and societies, or maybe just the overall civilization in which we live to move forward, evolutionarily toward a greater awareness, consciousness, understanding of who and what we really are. I do mean really, the path that mankind has been on since he has been here has been to a greater or lesser degree forward-moving, albeit slow and even at times one step forward and two steps backward.

I still hold out hope that we will come to a place where we will understand that collectively we must work toward a better place to live, work and play in harmony with each other with the natural world and with our higher self. Listen to that still small voice, that divine self that has been wanting to lead us and guide us to a better way of being.

But please do not get me wrong, I’m not saying that where we are is a terrible, horrible let’s get the hell out of here place. I am saying that where we are can be viewed as paradise, beautiful and wonderful, and extraordinary, all inspiring and miraculous. At the same time, I believe that we can be more, do more, share more, achieve more than we ever have in all of human history. I believe it is our evolution, I believe it is our destiny. I believe it is our birthright.

Eileen: What have you learned the most through your years interviewing about people, life, and what makes us tick?

Richard: What have I learned about people? That is a very good question and there are times when I think I’ve found an answer and then it seems that reality kicks in and says nope that’s not true.

The current situation since the start of the pandemic is extremely disheartening. I thought that human beings were a lot kinder and it turns out that under the right circumstances you might say they are selfish, greedy, and self-absorbed. They may claim that they’re doing it for their family, but they have no thought for others and their families. They don’t know to trust the universe to take care of them, to become part of the process, and not to control the process.

However, I have learned some lessons that were not proven to be wrong or false or untrue. Through my interviews, I have enjoyed conversations with incredible thinkers, incredible feelers, and wonderfully intuitive and empathic individuals who genuinely care about others. Not to the exclusion of themselves, which is as it should be, but including themselves.

One experience I had was with the author Noah Benshea. The first time I interviewed him he was in the studio with me when the program was live on a Saturday afternoon. Many of his, as we might say, wise sayings, we’re being printed on Starbucks coffee cups. My question to him was, “you have inspired thousands of people with the writings not only in your books but on the coffee cups, who has inspired you?” The answer came surprisingly to me through tears. I personally was a little shocked and embarrassed because my intent in the question was not to make my guests cry. But I guess the fact that his daughter was the one who inspired him greatly was very emotional for him and very dear to him.

Another interview with the author of, Love and Fear in the Middle East, shared with me in our first interview about conversations he had had with young people of both Palestinian and Israeli blood who were tired of the fighting and had basically told him that it was their parents’ fight, not theirs. Which gave him great hope. When I interviewed him the second time, I mentioned that I remembered that experience he shared, and he was rather surprised that it was one of the main takeaways from our first interview. He was greatly surprised and appreciative.