Kevin Freeman: Sometimes creativity seems to work against us
Kevin Freeman: Yeah. Good. Good day. God created the heavens and the earth. He created with a word. Do you wonder where your childhood imagination went? You feel drugged down by bills, deadlines, politics and drudgery. God made us created beings. He created the heavens, the earth, and he created you as a creative being. If you're a believer in Christ, you have the ultimate creativity inside you through his holy spirit. And yet, most of us find ourselves trapped in boredom, staring at our cell phones, wondering how we're going to pass the time. We watch the creativity of others and sometimes seem designed to trap us rather than to set us free. So sometimes creativity seems to work against us. But God designed us in his image. He filled us with his spirit. So why do we feel so stifled? We're going to learn the secrets of creativity with a man who has broken free of the four walls of conformity. And this guy was one of Disney's top. Have you heard this word? Imagineers. It's a great word. And joining me today, I'm pleased to say, is my wonderful wife of nearly 27 years, the mother of our. And a creative inspiration to me for those listening on radio rather than viewing the podcast. She is a fiery redhead with all that comes, and an artist and an art teacher who loves Jesus. The fabulous Marnie. Welcome, Marnie.
Marnie Freeman: thank you for having me. It's fun. We always get to run, off of each other and just enjoy it.
Marshall Monroe was one of Disney's original Imagineers
Kevin Freeman: Yeah, no, I love when you come into the studio and you're here in large part, I understand, because of our special guest, Marshall Monroe. Marshall was one of Disney's original Imagineers. The skill of an engineer, but the creativity of Walt Disney himself. He joined Disney in 1986, which, according to their website, I looked it up, was the very year that WED Enterprises, named for Walt Elias Disney. It was named that in 1953, was renamed as Walt Disney Imagineering. It was 1986, and the very next year, the Imagineers worked with the great George Lucas, the creator of Star wars, and developed one of our family favorite rides. You remember Star Tours?
Marnie Freeman: Star Tours, absolutely.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah.
Marnie Freeman: So, bye bye, bye bye.
Kevin Freeman: and this is a young Marshall Monroe. He began his career at Disney. I've got a picture of him working alongside Chewbacca the Wookiee.
Marnie Freeman: Look at him. Young, young whippersnapper.
Kevin Freeman: And we're gonna learn his story and the secrets to Marshall Monroe magic 3M. a different kind of 3M.
Pirate Money Radio welcomes Marshall Monroe to talk about Disney
with that introduction, let's bring on our special guest today, the one, the only, Marshall Monroe. Welcome, Marshall.
Marshall Monroe: Hey there. How are you guys?
Marnie Freeman: We're great. How are you?
Marshall Monroe: Well, I'm doing pretty good. I'm in the Washington, D.C. area thinking about, all the things that go on here. It's quite an interesting time.
Kevin Freeman: It is. I love and hate Washington both passionately. I love the history and all of that. I hate the politics, sometimes that goes on there. But we're sitting here in Liberty Hawk Ranch, a place I know you know well, and we're glad to have you on Pirate Money Radio. Can you tell us about your Disney experience? What was it like being a young imagineer? How did that get started?
Marshall Monroe: Well, that. Yeah, that is a, It's a while ago now. but, yeah, it was back in the 80s and it was just an amazing time. You know, as I get older, I can look back and sort of compare things more. and back then, it was a really positive time. The economy was doing good and the, world was kind of stable, and we had a great president, and the Walt Disney Company was very different than it is now.
Marnie Freeman: Those were the good old days.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, it was the good old days. And there were some things happening there that made it extra special, which was that some Texas smart guys, the Bass brothers, had taken a serious stake in Disney and had basically said, hey, let's reinvigorate this company that had kind of been asleep, since Walt passed away. They had finished Epcot and just kind of been floating along and not doing much in the film studio and not, building a lot of parks. And so they, put money into the company and they switched out the management and they brought in a really interesting guy, Michael Eisner, and they brought in a new coo, Frank Wells. And none of that was anything I knew about, but it just happened that through the sort of amazing, miracle of timing in the universe, I wound up there. I had graduated from Stanford and was, you know, my whole life have been interested in creativity, sort of in all its forms, whether that's musical and artistic, whether that's design and invention, whether that's just starting a new business or visioning. And so I had studied that topic at Stanford and just thought, well, you know, the guys who know more about this than anybody are these guys who do things like the monorail. They do things like Small World. They do things like the. The Spectromagic Parade, which was, you know, the twinkly lights parade, which, you know, for its time was way out there.
Marnie Freeman: That's huge.
Marshall Monroe: right. You had Pete's Dragon. You had all these funky things rolling down the main street again.
Marnie Freeman: The good old days.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, it was. I mean, really. And, I remembered it as a kid. I had had, like most people, a sort of magical sort of childhood experience where my grandfather and grandmother took me to Disneyland. I remember the lollipop I got. I remember everything just being so different.
Kevin Freeman: And so just fabulous, creative, family friendly, you know.
A couple of guys from Texas came in and reinvigorated Disney
And one thing that you said, Marshall, that just intrigues me. a couple of guys from Texas came in and reinvigorated Disney and saying, this is time to do that again.
Marnie Freeman: Let's do it.
Kevin Freeman: All our Texas listeners, I know a very creative man in Texas that could come in and finance and re. Engage with Disney. We ought to consider that, really.
Marshall Monroe: I mean, think about it. It's not impossible and they've drifted and it's sad to see some of what's been going on. But, I feel very fortunate. And just before I talk about my own experience, the timing is pretty uncanny. We literally had the old men, and they were old men who helped start the company were still there. M. So if you do the math, these guys were on their 80s and 90s, but they still came to work because there's nothing more fun than designing cool stuff for kids if you have the right frame of mind about it. And they did. And so Claude Coates and Herbie Reiman, and you had John Hench and you had Mark Davis, you had Ex Atencio. I mean, Mark Davis drew Tinkerbell, you know, sit down and have lunch with Mark Davis. And he drew Bambi, you know, oh, Bambi. these are the Michelangelo's of that time. Most of them are gone now.
Kevin Freeman: They're pioneers, certainly in creative entertainment.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, big time. And the thing that, you know, I felt like at the time, I don't know why, but I just had this profound sense of talk to these people. Don't talk very much. Do mostly listening and find out a little bit about these guys. And so I just began a process of studying creativity at the highest imaginable level. I had no idea the intellectual depth of these guys because you can kind of look at it and say, well, it's a cartoon, you know, you know, how hard can it be until you try to draw Bambi? And then you realize, wait a second, there's more going on here. Or design a show like Small World, you know, or write the song for Small World. You know, lots of people could just retire on having accomplished one of those things.
Marnie Freeman: You know, I don't think people realize what goes on behind every project, behind every musical score, behind everything. It's unreal.
Kevin Freeman: Not just drawing a single drawing. It is telling a story, plus all of the creativity of the drawing, plus all of the setting, plus all the. Telling a story is the most human thing we possibly can do, and it requires great creativity.
Marshall Monroe is one of the original Disney Imagineers
All right, we're talking with Marshall Monroe, who is one of the original Disney Imagineers. And Imagineering is the only think tank created by Walt himself. And he joined right as they renamed the, WDE Enterprises to be the Imagineering, which is an amazing thing in itself. we're going to talk with Marshall about some of the projects that he did at Disney. And when we share these, you're going to be shocked because, you know, these. You've been to the rides, you've been to the park, you've been to the seen this done, and you're going to be so thrilled that this guy is still engaged in bringing delight to children, but also telling stories in a way that are going to promote liberty, security and values, to promote America to be the greatest nation on earth once again. We'll be right back with Marshall Monroe. M.
Mike Carter: Welcome back to Pirate Buddy Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah.
Kevin Freeman: And I'm joined by my beautiful, fabulous, loving wife, Marnie. I love that smile. I love it. I just love it. Makes my day. It lights me up.
Marnie introduces Marshall Monroe, former Disney Imagineer
Marnie, we've got a special guest today.
Marnie Freeman: Oh, my gosh. One of the most creative people I truly have ever met.
Kevin Freeman: well, why don't you introduce him?
Marnie Freeman: Okay. Well, Disney Imagineer, former. Well, current. I mean, not really current, but his name is Marshall Monroe, and he is doing amazing things, continuing on with this creative journey to affect the rest of the world outside of Disney.
Kevin Freeman: Right.
Marnie Freeman: So welcome, Marshall.
Tell us about some of your favorite design projects at Disney
Tell us about some of your favorite design projects that you did at Disney.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, I. You know, there's so many. It's such a funny thing to think back at. So, I can tell you, when I got there, there were some interesting things cooking. One of them was this crazy thing that was gonna be what looked like dumpster on top of hydraulic rams, which became Star Tours. It was a giant motion base at the time. There was a big thing of military training simulation. And the engineering team at Imagineering had gotten a hold of one of these sets of, actuators. And the idea was, hey, could we make a ride where you get inside this thing? And, ultimately it became a tour service. To go outer space. And so that was Star Tours and we had to create the illusion of getting on board this Starspeeder 3000. And the amazing thing about it was it was tied to the movie Star wars of course. And so there became a really high level set of, you know, George Lucas was involved and so his whole ILM special effects team working on the visuals that were in the inside the motion base. And then we created an entire exterior environment where R2D2 is working on one of the star speeders in the Pre show there C3PO is up there on the console and they're talking and R2D2 keeps shocking himself while he's trying to fix the flux capacitor.
Marnie Freeman: It's so fun. I love it.
Kevin Freeman: That has been our family favorite, ah, for years. And now of course they've got Galaxy's Edge and everything. The whole Disney Star wars connection started there. And now Star wars is owned by Disney. And you know, you were there at the beginning of history in a creative sense.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah. And there's a lot to say about that because you know, ah, over the years I've become more and more deeply involved in the study of sort of mythic structure, what the meaning of stories can be. And George had a really important message he was trying to get to the world, that you know, some of the irony of that is that the creative was so good that the actual substance went over some people's heads. But he had a lot to say about the progression of essentially authoritarian and fascist structures being sourced from anger and being sourced from fear and the dangerous consequences of that. And of course then you had the rebel forces which was this rejuvenation energy. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of important stuff there. I think that the deeper substance has been diluted with some of what the Mouse House has been doing since then with it once they bought it. But the original core message that George had was really deep and really relevant today.
Kevin Freeman: Well, especially, I mean you look at history, how a republic then becomes an empire. That happened in Rome and there's a lot of pickup there. It's happening in America, much to my dismay that we started as a republic and now a lot of people view us as an empire and want to act, treat America as an empire. There are important life lessons that can be learned. And I was a 16 year old kid going to watch Star wars in 1977 and to me, you know, it changed the world for me. yeah, and it was more Than just the crush on Carrie Fisher. But, yeah, no, it literally is an amazing thing. And you were there at the beginning, but you've been there in so many cultural areas. I looked on your website and I saw Captain eo. What did you do with that? With Michael Jackson?
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, so Michael Jackson's an amazing guy. You know, I've said. Talked about working with him, several times, but he's, you know, he's one of the hardest working guys I've ever met. And he really had high standards for himself and for projects. And so that was really cool. But Captain EO was another project that was sort of in percolation stages when I arrived. And the idea was, well, let's make essentially, music videos had become a big thing. And so the idea was, well, the economic studies of Disneyland had said there was a little bit of a drop from the 17-24s, even down to the 14s and 17s. And so what could we do that makes it more fun and invites that age group? And of course, at that time, he was. There was nobody close. He was the greatest, biggest pop, you know, star in the world.
Marnie Freeman: Truly talented.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, crazy. and incredibly thoughtful and wanting to do positive things. And so you had a pop artist with a ton of talent. And he loved Disneyland. I don't know if you know, but he was really almost obsessed with Disneyland. He loved it so much. He would go all the time. He studied everything. And when we, you know, began working with him, it was obvious he knew a ton. I would say more than I did about Disneyland at the time.
Kevin Freeman: Well, he was Peter Pan, literally. I don't want to grow up, really. I want to stay a kid forever.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, there was that. And so we started this, this project had gone through. It was crazy. That thing was Francis Ford Coppola directing. It was the most expensive 17 minutes of film ever shot in Hollywood.
Marnie Freeman: Big names. Big names.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, yeah, it was. It was the talent on screen. George Lucas literally was the dp. That's how crazy this was. He wasn't even directing. It was Francis Ford Coppola. And so, they had shot the film. Very difficult, early 3D stereo process. So this is film. This is big, you know, mechanical cameras organized in a stereoscopic optical train. And they had shot this film with all the dance numbers, all of the special effects. And it was in the can and they played it in the theater, which is called the Magic Eye Theater. So there's a cool history there because the show before Captain EO was called, Magic Journeys. And I don't know if you ever saw it, Kevan, but it was a really neat, magical, very high concept, artsy, 3D film. And so this replaced it. And the idea was, what can we do in the theater to bring 3D to a surround set of effects.
Kevin Freeman: That was my first 3D.
Kevin Hawk designed the melting water park at Walt Disney World
I know they had it in the 50s, but I hadn't seen it growing up. That was my first introduction to 3D. Was Captain EO.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, yeah. And they basically I walked in and literally one of the directors, at Imagineering said, you went to college. Do you know anything about lasers? And it was like, well, yeah, sure. And so we had all these laser effects that happen inside the theater. So when the starships and, the different space vehicles are in a little bit of a fight scene, the lasers come out of the screen and go over the audience and they're actually in the room. So there was a fusion of optical laser effects with real lasers shining and shooting around the room. And then when they hit the walls of the room, we had explosion effects there with projection and lighting and smoke, and strobes. So it looked like a laser really did hit the wall.
Kevin Freeman: That's amazing.
Marnie Freeman: It was awesome.
Marshall Monroe: I remember that we spent a lot of time on a 3D starfield at the beginning of the film. There's a 2D starfield and then there's a big sparkly pixie dust sound sequence. And the whole galaxy in front of you turns to 3D and it's super magic.
Marnie Freeman: Astonishing.
Kevin Freeman: It's Disney. It's what we grew up with. Something else we grew up with. And I had no idea. I was so excited when I met to realize, my favorite water park in the world is something you had something to do with Blizzard, beach. It's the third most attended water park in the world. It's when Marnie and I went. When we first got married, we got, we did a timeshare checkout and they gave us, park passes that never expired. Park Hopper never expired. And they came with two water park days. And we held onto those and used them expeditiously through the years. finally used our last water park pass, to go see Blizzard Beach. But you designed that. This is your project, right?
Marshall Monroe: It is, yeah. That's a really fun story. I had, you know, I had some notoriety by that time, having been there at Disney for I don't know how many years, probably seven, six years. And there was a need for a new attraction down there in Disney World. And I just, you know, for Whatever reason, we have a process. I have a process I've developed for gathering information, thinking about things and then feeding that into a sort of mysterious creative mind process. And out came this melting ski resort. And I just had such a clear picture of it. I literally, in a dream, was driving through Florida, could see it through the trees, came up upon this thing. And you know, the first impression I had was you checked into a lodge and rode a chairlift over to, so there was a hotel that was this ski lodge and then you would take a chairlift over to this water park. Melting, sort of Olympic ski sports themed water park.
Marnie Freeman: It's so creative. And it was $100 million back then and it has $2 billion in sales. Is that to date?
Marshall Monroe: Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. it's a really fascinating story at least, Kevan, from a business standpoint, because it's not marketed. It's never marketed. It's never been marketed. It just is full every day. So there isn't really a big sort of hyper visible media campaign around it. It just is word of mouth.
Marnie Freeman: I think it's because you nailed.
Kevin Freeman: Doesn't need extra marketing. It is when you go to Disney and you've been, you've been through every park and you've got the two week passes or whatever, it is your respite. It is your chance to go and rest and relax, let the kids play and you get to sit by, the pool and enjoy yourself. Now Marnie has seen this and Marnie has talked to you about this. She is desperate to put a lazy river somewhere here at Liberty Hawk. And so sometime we're going to have to have you come in and design that for us here at Liberty Ark Ranch.
Marnie Freeman: He said he could do it. he's already looked at the property.
Marshall Monroe: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And they're really fabulous. They're, you know, all age groups. Everybody loves it.
Marnie Freeman: Absolutely.
Marshall Monroe: It's a, especially on your property with the actual hillside. You know, we had to build a mountain from a swamp down there. There was no mountain. That was part of the funniness of it. That's why Michael Eisner loved it. He was like, ski Florida, Are you crazy?
Kevin Freeman: But the whole notion is a swamp. Everything about Disney is on the swamp in Florida.
Marshall Monroe: It's true. And so we had, I mean there's real big boy engineering to dewater the site and then build a hundred foot high mountain. And so that was the, that was the. Just to get started, we had to do that.
Kevin Freeman: Well, Disney has turned the Florida swamp into A, paradise, which is phenomenal. But unfortunately, there's a group that's turned Disney into a swamp. And we've got Marsha Monroe. He left Disney. We'll understand why he did that, why Disney turned woke, and exactly what we need to do to reach kids with new creativity. We'll be right back with this and more. And Marshall Monroe.
Mike Carter: Pirate Money Radio, helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values.
Kevin Freeman: Disney has pushed on ESG and dei issues
Welcome back with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman: Yeah, and I'm joined by, my beautiful wife Marnie, and our special guest, Marshall Monroe, former Disney imagineer. he was at Disney for a number of years, was really a pioneer in so many ways, with Michael Eisner and revitalizing Disney. And then over time, he saw it beginning to go down. And, you know, I've been an investor well since 1983. I've managed people's money, since the mid-1980s. And Disney was always a staple in the portfolio. And then all of a sudden I realized we can't invest in this anymore. It's not investable. You know who did invest in it? BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. They're the largest institutional shareholders. And what have they done? They've pushed on this, this thing that we talk about all the time, ESG and dei. In fact, Disney has on their website an ESG reporting center where they promise that they're going to be doing all of these wonderful things. Diverse, multinational organization. you know, they're talking about, sustainability and social impact, but what they're really talking about is control and dei. How can you have, creativity when you're forcing quotas on your employees instead of taking the most creative people? How do you turn a woke, a wonderful Toy Story and turn it woke. So much so that Buzz Lightyear as a movie bombs. How do you ruin Star Wars? How do you ruin Marvel? And yet Disney has done so much of this. And they've also, at the same time ruined their stock price, just a few years ago at $200 a share. I looked at it just a couple of days ago. It was $1, $19 a share. So, I mean, in this great stock market boom, Disney's stock is not doing all that well.
Marshall Monroe says Disney went woke overnight
And we've got Marshall Monroe, who was at Disney and saw this happen. What was it like, Marshall, when you saw Disney go woke?
Marshall Monroe: Well, it's not something that happened overnight. And, it's a very curious sort of journey, you know, is the only word I can think of. And there were just Things that I saw. But, you know, there is a. There's a really funny balance in creative work that has to do with the sort of spontaneous and, sort of unpredictable ideas. But there's also this thing of, is there a guiding set of values that steer that creativity? And there's a term. When I was studying with the older originators of the company, they had a saying. They said, freedom without direction is chaos. And, that's a pretty interesting notion because it requires understanding what freedom is, but then also having a sense of purpose or a sense of some, continuity. And in the case of Walt Disney, it was, you know, I study him a lot, and the older I get, the more I am amazed by this individual because he was able to say, can we just do great stuff for kids? And he did that with the frame of mind of, well, what do parents want for their kids? Not just what do kids want? Which is what, spongebob. That's how you get spongebob, and that's how you get modern kids programming, is that they take it from the, well, let's just do what kids respond to. And that's not what Walt was doing. What Walt was doing was Pinnochio. He was doing, if you lie, your nose will grow. And that seems so simple, so ridiculous. But nobody's doing that today. You know, that's what fairy tales were. Fairy tales were messages that were like, you know, little Red Riding Hood. He was doing all kinds of fairy tales. And, wow, what is the wolf dressed up in a wardrobe? That is a camouflage. What does that mean? And he thought, well, kids should know that evil doesn't always present as evil. You know, what happened with the Third Reich, which was his childhood experience, began as not that big of a threat. And next thing you know, oh, that's a wolf in there in that little red, you know, hood. And so, I think that the substance of what he was doing, I mean, this is the guy who did great moments with Mr. Lincoln. You know, the chances of that company doing something like that today are 0.0. You know, and that's just. That shows you when you compare, that idea and I mean, that was a staple, a guaranteed everybody wants to see it show for so long on Main Street. And great moments with Mr. Lincoln.
Kevin Freeman: You know, what I think has happened to Disney, has happened to many other great corporations, is they stop focusing, on the mission, which the mission here was good. and they start focusing on the money. And, eventually they end up not getting either mission or money. I mean, the companies that go woke like Jaguar recently or Bud Light or so forth. But they start out worrying about the money. you know, there are really only three things you can do with your money. You can give it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. And here at Pirate Money Radio, we work to explain solutions that support all three areas in a way that promotes liberty, security, and values. Patriot Mobile. It's a mobile phone company. They support the Pirate Money radio program. Patriot Mobile uses US carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile, and operates on both Apple and Android phones. More information about the economic war room and Patriot Mobile is [email protected] AFR that's PirateMoneyRadio.com AFR and I relating, Marshall, to what you've been saying. My mom was a huge Disney fan. she called in to KRMG Radio, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 100 times to win the free, trip for four to Disney World and took my sister and I'm not jealous, took my sister, and her family and loved it. She loved Disney. My dad was a stockbroker. She insisted on having Disney shares, and she wanted it because she wanted the stock certificate that she got out. She ordered the stock certificate, which has got Walt Disney on. It's got Mickey Mouse and Bambi and Dumbo and, you know, really on Pinocchio. You mentioned all of the Chip and Dale, the characters, Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh all there right on the certificate.
Marnie Freeman: It's beautiful piece of artwork itself.
Kevin Freeman: It's very creative. But all the creativity now at Disney, with the exception I did see Fantastic Four and thought it was creative, well done, loved it. But the creativity of Marvel and so Star wars and Disney, it all seems lost to me. but Marshall, you moved on from there and now the creativity, the mantle where you studied Disney, where you were under Michael Eisner, the mantle of creativity, I believe, has transitioned from Walt Disney to Marshall Monroe magic, the new 3M. you're doing some amazing things.
Marshall Monroe founded Magic, a design firm, after leaving Disney
Let's talk about your career since Disney and what you're working on now.
Marshall Monroe: Sure. Well, what I thought was, you know, when I got out of Stanford, I had studied creativity. That was the. That was, you know, I had gotten. My degree was a combination of mechanical engineering and fine art. Because at the time that just made perfect sense to me.
Kevin Freeman: That is the definition of imagineer. I had no idea you were it.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, yeah. And we actually, I was part of basically inventing a new degree that at the time they started to call it product design and now if you go look at Stanford, they have a thing called the D school. That's what the degree we designed became. So it's the design school. And the idea is to really broaden what can design do? And so when I left Disney, my thought was, well, not only do I want to get back to what I felt like were the original Walt values, which is not stodgy and sort of stuffy and, sort of, constricting, it actually is true that values open the mind, not the other way around. And so what I wanted to do was apply creative thinking beyond entertainment. I love entertainment. We do it now, and it's great. But I felt like, you know, the world is, in a place where we could use new thinking in other areas. And that might be national security, that might be nonprofit work, that could be economic development, which is. Which is, of course, you know, so much about. And so that's what the firm was. So, when I would, you know, get a request to get involved in something at, Disney in later years, they would say, hey, we've got a project that's really cool. You know, it's. It's like a 9 out of 10, but it's not magic. Then I was asked to step in and take a look and try to elevate using these sort of thought methods I had come up with. And it worked. And so that's what we do. So Marshall Monroe, Magic is a firm. It's a design firm. We're in New Mexico, so we're not too far from you. And I like New Mexico. I grew up there. But it's also a place that has old world sort of depth. And it has national laboratories and supercomputers. So there's a kind of interesting blend of what I call high altitude thinking. And so that's where we're located.
Kevin Freeman: It also has ski, resorts and desert. So you get to go back to the Blizzard beach there. Yeah.
Marshall Monroe: And so. So magic is the word. And just to look at that for a second, magic is really fascinating because magic is a noun, but it's also an adjective. And the adjective part's really interesting. Basically, in my way of thinking, magic is what you call something that is so cool, you don't know what else to say. You literally are, at a loss for words. It's so cool. And so whether that's an evening out, whether that is a product, whether that is a new kind of business, or whether it is a transformation from one kind of situation to another, magic is this quality that means really great. And so we have built this practice of doing it across four different areas. One is commercial, one is national security, one is non profit and one is public policy. And we think that we need creative thinking at the public policy level as much as we do the next pet rock, you know, or better smartphone or new AI, you know, or rabbit's foot or hermit crab. Yeah. And so, we are involved in a lot of projects that are across those practice areas. And what we say when we work with clients is we say if you're looking for an incremental, slight variation on your current approach, we're the wrong people. We do quantum leap jumping and that's our specialty and that makes it really interesting. We specialize in the personal challenges, the organizational challenges, the technical challenges, jumping into something new. And that's our sort of specialty. So that's why magic, it's the rabbit out of the hat part of magic, which is there's no rabbit and then there is a rabbit.
Kevin Freeman: Alright, this is an amazing conversation we're having with Marshall Monroe about the loss and the emergence of creativity. America's losing it. Marshall Monroe is bringing it back and we'll be right back with him after this break.
Mike Carter: Pirate Money Radio. Helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values.
Kevin Friedman talks with Marshall Monroe about creativity and failure of success
Welcome back with your host Kevan Friedman.
Kevin Freeman: And I'm joined by my beautiful wife Marnie. And we're talking with Marshall Monroe, we're talking about creativity. And Marnie, you brought to my attention, something that was in a TEDx talk from 2011 by George Land titled the Failure of Success. And there supposedly, and you've admitted, we.
Marnie Freeman: Don'T know if it's real, it's unverified.
Kevin Freeman: It'S unverified from the 1980s. But tell about that TED talk and how it impacted you and let's bring Marshall into that in a second.
Marnie Freeman: Okay, so what it was is that NASA supposedly ran this, that 98% of they studied 1,600 children and they were all genius level, 98% of them, of 5 year olds, 5 year olds, kindergarten age. So at age 10 they retested them. So it's 30% that are only left as geniuses. Age 15, only 12% and as adults only 2%. And how does this happen? Why does it happen? And I will say one thing, is that I saw this experientially, of course, through teaching art. The younger ones are uninhibited. They will absolutely. They're free to draw, free to create that I mean no hindrances but when you get older, like 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, they're encumbered by the world. What the world thinks, maybe coaches, parents or whatever say things that they take personally, they just freeze up and they don't create as easily. And it could have happened in the schools. There's a lot of thought on that. But, Marshall, what do you think about that? Because we have got to bring that creativity back out.
Kevin Freeman: And Walt Disney was doing that, and now, Marshall, you're doing that. I know you've got a book out on this, but, what are your thoughts on what George Land was talking about?
Marshall Monroe: Boy, that is such a giant topic. I have so many things to say about that. So it turns out that developmentally, kids are wildly creative. And there is this sort of process, and institutions, are part of it that it sort of diminishes. I have a funny story. I actually got involved in a lot of sort of high level corporate relationships that Disney had. And we would go around because they were sponsors of attractions at, Epcot. And I was having dinner with Marty Sklar, who ran Imagineering, and a guy by the name of Arno Penzias, who is credited with the study of background radiation at Bell Labs and the whole concept of the Big Bang. And they said in that dinner, Marty looked at me and he said, so do you think you can teach creativity? And I said, no, but you can unteach it.
Kevin Freeman: Wow.
Marshall Monroe: And I kind of wrote it down later because I thought, man, that's a mouthful. but it really is true. And so, when in my work, what I do is study creativity, and my analogy for what I'm doing is it's like studying gravity. And it's like, it's so I consider, you know, Isaac Newton to be a soulmate because he sat there and saw an apple fall from a tree. That's the, sort of mythology. But he asked himself, why did that happen? What made the apple move from one place to another? And how is that even possible? And so he began asking about gravity. So I'm doing the same thing with creativity. I'm not inventing creativity. Creativity is a miracle that is part of this amazing universe that is made by a creator himself. So all we can do is observe it and ask ourselves, well, what can we find out about it? And so even in the case of gravity, it's everywhere. You know, he was just smart enough to pause for a second and appreciate it.
Marnie Freeman: I think you're right. I had to learn to, teach them to unlearn what they had Locked up and frozen, which is their creativity.
Marshall Monroe: And you'll remember there's a line that George Lucas wrote that Yoda says. He says, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's a powerful concept. Lots of powerful things he put that came out through Yoda. but I believe creativity can be reinvigorated. It can be reasserted. But it's really important to know the difference between, like I said, freedom without direction is chaos. So how do we do that in a way that has a multitude of understandings that come with it? And so that's what I saw in Walt Disney. He was unbelievably creative. I mean, it was. It's. You know, most people could just write the songbook of Mary Poppins and retire and say, you know, m. Unbelievable. That was just one of hundreds of things that he brought to the world.
Marnie Freeman: They kept churning them out. It's truly astonishing. And there's a lot, if you see a lot of histories, documentaries on him.
Marshall Monroe: Astonishing, inspirational.
Marnie Freeman: Yes.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah. But even when you look at. Takes a second for it to sink in, because really, I mean, the guy did the Tiki Bird show, so.
Marnie Freeman: The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room. The Tiki Tiki Tiki, yeah.
Marshall Monroe: That thing is just. It is entertainment comedic genius. And it's so beautiful and it's technologically advanced and it's programmatically functional and it makes money. And it has a sponsor. It just goes on and on, the layering. And so what we study with our work with Marshall Monroe, magic is the structured nature of high performance creativity.
Kevin Freeman: I love what you're doing. It's phenomenal. I jump in here. We're trying to be creative like, Walt Disney and like you. And we have big projects that we're doing from Liberty Hawk. One of them is using gold and silver's functional money. We call it pirate Money. It's based on a book that I wrote and it has a Disney theme like Pirates of the Caribbean. you know, even Hardy Boys, on the Mickey Mouse Club had a song about gold doubloons and pieces of eight, which is pirate money. Well, a fintech company out of the uk, that we used as proof of concept has become a supporter of our work. support for this program comes from Glint, a financial technology service offering a debit card and mobile app that enables users to access their gold holdings for everyday purchases. With Glint, users maintain ownership of allocated physical gold, which is stored in a managed vault. At the time of a transaction, gold is sold in real time to cover the purchase amount in local currency, Glint offers an alternative way to store and use the value.
Glint provides access to gold for modern spending through its mobile app
Combining gold and silver with modern payment infrastructure, Glint clients can monitor their gold balance, view transaction history and manage their account through the Glint app, available on major mobile M platforms. More details about how vaulted physical gold can be used as money are [email protected] Gold247 that's glintpay.com Gold247 Glint providing access to gold for modern spending. And Marshall, this is us being Disney esque creative idea, implementing it, wrote a book and then we got a sponsor for it.
Marshall Monroe: So that's awesome.
Kevin Freeman: What's the end of, what do you find at the end of every Disney ride?
Marshall Monroe: Merchandise.
Kevin Freeman: A gift shop. That's exactly right.
Marcia: How do we celebrate our 250th birthday looking forward
All right, Marcia, we've talked a lot about the different things. I want to pull one more Disney theme in. We just got a few minutes to wrap up. and that is Marnie. One time when I was writing one of my books at Disney World, Marnie went with the Great girls and I get a phone call from some strange phone. Kevan, can you help me find my Apple iPhone? I've lost it. And I said, oh, I found it. It's in the park. And wait, it's moved. Somebody's got it. No, wait, it's going in a circle.
Marnie Freeman: It's going round and round and round.
Kevin Freeman: She left it on the Carousel of Progress. Right, which it was a World's Fair exhibit talking about the progress of humanity. And it kind of ends. they haven't updated it in a while. It kind of ends with, the emergence of the first video games, but nevertheless. Marshall, you've seen the Carousel of Progress at Disney, but you've also studied it in the United States. And we're about to hit our 250th birthday. Let me put you in charge. What would you do? How do we celebrate our 250th birthday? Looking back at what we've accomplished, but looking forward. Forward to what we see ahead.
Marshall Monroe: What a cool question. And you know, truth be told, we are involved in some of the advanced thinking about that topic. Exactly. And you know, what we're doing is putting together some information. One way to answer your question is to look at World's Fairs to study them and look at how technology breaks, how the story of the future can break, how we preserve and choose important things to remember happens, and what all that can be combined to turn into. Whether it's a National State Fair or whether it's a world exposition. I think we need to do it. And I think that we're taking the time to do some research right now. And here's the thing. The 250 is happening at the same moment that we're going to be seeing AGI taken to a level, AI in general, to a place that we need to be able to manage and think about how it incorporates into a positive future. So the thing that we've noticed that's pretty interesting is if you take the word magic, you look at the middle three letters, it's AGI. And we are really looking at how AI can bring design forward and be used to tell the positive stories and the important stories for kids to the country. Because 250 years, there's so many stories. You could spend 10 years just studying World War II. And we are, we are putting together a studio. We call it 250 more. And you'll be hearing more about that because we think that's the view that you need to have as you head to. It's called the semi quincentennial. Try saying that three times fast. It is, it is a, you know, we have a grandson, and I'm trying to make that his first word that he ever says. You know, help me out with that, because it's not going to.
Kevin Freeman: It's a little easier than supercalifragilic speakers, but it's a mouthful for sure.
Marshall Monroe: That's right.
Kevin Freeman: Marshall, we love having you. We, love learning about Walt Disney and your history. We want to have you back, in economic war room and Pirate Money Radio. I want to learn more about this. 250 more. I want to get involved with this.
Marshall Monroe: Marnie.
Kevin Freeman: any last comment?
Marnie Freeman: It's a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day.
Kevin Freeman: Yeah. Amen.
Kevin Freeman: You should pray for America to return to God's creativity
All right, if you've got questions or comments, you can email [email protected] and you should pray for America. Pray for America to return to God's creativity. He made us creative. Pray for us to be faithful, with our unrighteous mammon. Pirate Money has a role and you listen. Listeners have a part to play. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, et cetera. This is Kevan Freeman, joined by Marnie Freeman for Pirate Money Radio.
Kevin Freeman: Sometimes creativity seems to work against us
Kevin Freeman: Yeah. Good. Good day. God created the heavens and the earth. He created with a word. Do you wonder where your childhood imagination went? You feel drugged down by bills, deadlines, politics and drudgery. God made us created beings. He created the heavens, the earth, and he created you as a creative being. If you're a believer in Christ, you have the ultimate creativity inside you through his holy spirit. And yet, most of us find ourselves trapped in boredom, staring at our cell phones, wondering how we're going to pass the time. We watch the creativity of others and sometimes seem designed to trap us rather than to set us free. So sometimes creativity seems to work against us. But God designed us in his image. He filled us with his spirit. So why do we feel so stifled? We're going to learn the secrets of creativity with a man who has broken free of the four walls of conformity. And this guy was one of Disney's top. Have you heard this word? Imagineers. It's a great word. And joining me today, I'm pleased to say, is my wonderful wife of nearly 27 years, the mother of our. And a creative inspiration to me for those listening on radio rather than viewing the podcast. She is a fiery redhead with all that comes, and an artist and an art teacher who loves Jesus. The fabulous Marnie. Welcome, Marnie.
Marnie Freeman: thank you for having me. It's fun. We always get to run, off of each other and just enjoy it.
Marshall Monroe was one of Disney's original Imagineers
Kevin Freeman: Yeah, no, I love when you come into the studio and you're here in large part, I understand, because of our special guest, Marshall Monroe. Marshall was one of Disney's original Imagineers. The skill of an engineer, but the creativity of Walt Disney himself. He joined Disney in 1986, which, according to their website, I looked it up, was the very year that WED Enterprises, named for Walt Elias Disney. It was named that in 1953, was renamed as Walt Disney Imagineering. It was 1986, and the very next year, the Imagineers worked with the great George Lucas, the creator of Star wars, and developed one of our family favorite rides. You remember Star Tours?
Marnie Freeman: Star Tours, absolutely.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah.
Marnie Freeman: So, bye bye, bye bye.
Kevin Freeman: and this is a young Marshall Monroe. He began his career at Disney. I've got a picture of him working alongside Chewbacca the Wookiee.
Marnie Freeman: Look at him. Young, young whippersnapper.
Kevin Freeman: And we're gonna learn his story and the secrets to Marshall Monroe magic 3M. a different kind of 3M.
Pirate Money Radio welcomes Marshall Monroe to talk about Disney
with that introduction, let's bring on our special guest today, the one, the only, Marshall Monroe. Welcome, Marshall.
Marshall Monroe: Hey there. How are you guys?
Marnie Freeman: We're great. How are you?
Marshall Monroe: Well, I'm doing pretty good. I'm in the Washington, D.C. area thinking about, all the things that go on here. It's quite an interesting time.
Kevin Freeman: It is. I love and hate Washington both passionately. I love the history and all of that. I hate the politics, sometimes that goes on there. But we're sitting here in Liberty Hawk Ranch, a place I know you know well, and we're glad to have you on Pirate Money Radio. Can you tell us about your Disney experience? What was it like being a young imagineer? How did that get started?
Marshall Monroe: Well, that. Yeah, that is a, It's a while ago now. but, yeah, it was back in the 80s and it was just an amazing time. You know, as I get older, I can look back and sort of compare things more. and back then, it was a really positive time. The economy was doing good and the, world was kind of stable, and we had a great president, and the Walt Disney Company was very different than it is now.
Marnie Freeman: Those were the good old days.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, it was the good old days. And there were some things happening there that made it extra special, which was that some Texas smart guys, the Bass brothers, had taken a serious stake in Disney and had basically said, hey, let's reinvigorate this company that had kind of been asleep, since Walt passed away. They had finished Epcot and just kind of been floating along and not doing much in the film studio and not, building a lot of parks. And so they, put money into the company and they switched out the management and they brought in a really interesting guy, Michael Eisner, and they brought in a new coo, Frank Wells. And none of that was anything I knew about, but it just happened that through the sort of amazing, miracle of timing in the universe, I wound up there. I had graduated from Stanford and was, you know, my whole life have been interested in creativity, sort of in all its forms, whether that's musical and artistic, whether that's design and invention, whether that's just starting a new business or visioning. And so I had studied that topic at Stanford and just thought, well, you know, the guys who know more about this than anybody are these guys who do things like the monorail. They do things like Small World. They do things like the. The Spectromagic Parade, which was, you know, the twinkly lights parade, which, you know, for its time was way out there.
Marnie Freeman: That's huge.
Marshall Monroe: right. You had Pete's Dragon. You had all these funky things rolling down the main street again.
Marnie Freeman: The good old days.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, it was. I mean, really. And, I remembered it as a kid. I had had, like most people, a sort of magical sort of childhood experience where my grandfather and grandmother took me to Disneyland. I remember the lollipop I got. I remember everything just being so different.
Kevin Freeman: And so just fabulous, creative, family friendly, you know.
A couple of guys from Texas came in and reinvigorated Disney
And one thing that you said, Marshall, that just intrigues me. a couple of guys from Texas came in and reinvigorated Disney and saying, this is time to do that again.
Marnie Freeman: Let's do it.
Kevin Freeman: All our Texas listeners, I know a very creative man in Texas that could come in and finance and re. Engage with Disney. We ought to consider that, really.
Marshall Monroe: I mean, think about it. It's not impossible and they've drifted and it's sad to see some of what's been going on. But, I feel very fortunate. And just before I talk about my own experience, the timing is pretty uncanny. We literally had the old men, and they were old men who helped start the company were still there. M. So if you do the math, these guys were on their 80s and 90s, but they still came to work because there's nothing more fun than designing cool stuff for kids if you have the right frame of mind about it. And they did. And so Claude Coates and Herbie Reiman, and you had John Hench and you had Mark Davis, you had Ex Atencio. I mean, Mark Davis drew Tinkerbell, you know, sit down and have lunch with Mark Davis. And he drew Bambi, you know, oh, Bambi. these are the Michelangelo's of that time. Most of them are gone now.
Kevin Freeman: They're pioneers, certainly in creative entertainment.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, big time. And the thing that, you know, I felt like at the time, I don't know why, but I just had this profound sense of talk to these people. Don't talk very much. Do mostly listening and find out a little bit about these guys. And so I just began a process of studying creativity at the highest imaginable level. I had no idea the intellectual depth of these guys because you can kind of look at it and say, well, it's a cartoon, you know, you know, how hard can it be until you try to draw Bambi? And then you realize, wait a second, there's more going on here. Or design a show like Small World, you know, or write the song for Small World. You know, lots of people could just retire on having accomplished one of those things.
Marnie Freeman: You know, I don't think people realize what goes on behind every project, behind every musical score, behind everything. It's unreal.
Kevin Freeman: Not just drawing a single drawing. It is telling a story, plus all of the creativity of the drawing, plus all of the setting, plus all the. Telling a story is the most human thing we possibly can do, and it requires great creativity.
Marshall Monroe is one of the original Disney Imagineers
All right, we're talking with Marshall Monroe, who is one of the original Disney Imagineers. And Imagineering is the only think tank created by Walt himself. And he joined right as they renamed the, WDE Enterprises to be the Imagineering, which is an amazing thing in itself. we're going to talk with Marshall about some of the projects that he did at Disney. And when we share these, you're going to be shocked because, you know, these. You've been to the rides, you've been to the park, you've been to the seen this done, and you're going to be so thrilled that this guy is still engaged in bringing delight to children, but also telling stories in a way that are going to promote liberty, security and values, to promote America to be the greatest nation on earth once again. We'll be right back with Marshall Monroe. M.
Mike Carter: Welcome back to Pirate Buddy Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah.
Kevin Freeman: And I'm joined by my beautiful, fabulous, loving wife, Marnie. I love that smile. I love it. I just love it. Makes my day. It lights me up.
Marnie introduces Marshall Monroe, former Disney Imagineer
Marnie, we've got a special guest today.
Marnie Freeman: Oh, my gosh. One of the most creative people I truly have ever met.
Kevin Freeman: well, why don't you introduce him?
Marnie Freeman: Okay. Well, Disney Imagineer, former. Well, current. I mean, not really current, but his name is Marshall Monroe, and he is doing amazing things, continuing on with this creative journey to affect the rest of the world outside of Disney.
Kevin Freeman: Right.
Marnie Freeman: So welcome, Marshall.
Tell us about some of your favorite design projects at Disney
Tell us about some of your favorite design projects that you did at Disney.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, I. You know, there's so many. It's such a funny thing to think back at. So, I can tell you, when I got there, there were some interesting things cooking. One of them was this crazy thing that was gonna be what looked like dumpster on top of hydraulic rams, which became Star Tours. It was a giant motion base at the time. There was a big thing of military training simulation. And the engineering team at Imagineering had gotten a hold of one of these sets of, actuators. And the idea was, hey, could we make a ride where you get inside this thing? And, ultimately it became a tour service. To go outer space. And so that was Star Tours and we had to create the illusion of getting on board this Starspeeder 3000. And the amazing thing about it was it was tied to the movie Star wars of course. And so there became a really high level set of, you know, George Lucas was involved and so his whole ILM special effects team working on the visuals that were in the inside the motion base. And then we created an entire exterior environment where R2D2 is working on one of the star speeders in the Pre show there C3PO is up there on the console and they're talking and R2D2 keeps shocking himself while he's trying to fix the flux capacitor.
Marnie Freeman: It's so fun. I love it.
Kevin Freeman: That has been our family favorite, ah, for years. And now of course they've got Galaxy's Edge and everything. The whole Disney Star wars connection started there. And now Star wars is owned by Disney. And you know, you were there at the beginning of history in a creative sense.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah. And there's a lot to say about that because you know, ah, over the years I've become more and more deeply involved in the study of sort of mythic structure, what the meaning of stories can be. And George had a really important message he was trying to get to the world, that you know, some of the irony of that is that the creative was so good that the actual substance went over some people's heads. But he had a lot to say about the progression of essentially authoritarian and fascist structures being sourced from anger and being sourced from fear and the dangerous consequences of that. And of course then you had the rebel forces which was this rejuvenation energy. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of important stuff there. I think that the deeper substance has been diluted with some of what the Mouse House has been doing since then with it once they bought it. But the original core message that George had was really deep and really relevant today.
Kevin Freeman: Well, especially, I mean you look at history, how a republic then becomes an empire. That happened in Rome and there's a lot of pickup there. It's happening in America, much to my dismay that we started as a republic and now a lot of people view us as an empire and want to act, treat America as an empire. There are important life lessons that can be learned. And I was a 16 year old kid going to watch Star wars in 1977 and to me, you know, it changed the world for me. yeah, and it was more Than just the crush on Carrie Fisher. But, yeah, no, it literally is an amazing thing. And you were there at the beginning, but you've been there in so many cultural areas. I looked on your website and I saw Captain eo. What did you do with that? With Michael Jackson?
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, so Michael Jackson's an amazing guy. You know, I've said. Talked about working with him, several times, but he's, you know, he's one of the hardest working guys I've ever met. And he really had high standards for himself and for projects. And so that was really cool. But Captain EO was another project that was sort of in percolation stages when I arrived. And the idea was, well, let's make essentially, music videos had become a big thing. And so the idea was, well, the economic studies of Disneyland had said there was a little bit of a drop from the 17-24s, even down to the 14s and 17s. And so what could we do that makes it more fun and invites that age group? And of course, at that time, he was. There was nobody close. He was the greatest, biggest pop, you know, star in the world.
Marnie Freeman: Truly talented.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, crazy. and incredibly thoughtful and wanting to do positive things. And so you had a pop artist with a ton of talent. And he loved Disneyland. I don't know if you know, but he was really almost obsessed with Disneyland. He loved it so much. He would go all the time. He studied everything. And when we, you know, began working with him, it was obvious he knew a ton. I would say more than I did about Disneyland at the time.
Kevin Freeman: Well, he was Peter Pan, literally. I don't want to grow up, really. I want to stay a kid forever.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, there was that. And so we started this, this project had gone through. It was crazy. That thing was Francis Ford Coppola directing. It was the most expensive 17 minutes of film ever shot in Hollywood.
Marnie Freeman: Big names. Big names.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, yeah, it was. It was the talent on screen. George Lucas literally was the dp. That's how crazy this was. He wasn't even directing. It was Francis Ford Coppola. And so, they had shot the film. Very difficult, early 3D stereo process. So this is film. This is big, you know, mechanical cameras organized in a stereoscopic optical train. And they had shot this film with all the dance numbers, all of the special effects. And it was in the can and they played it in the theater, which is called the Magic Eye Theater. So there's a cool history there because the show before Captain EO was called, Magic Journeys. And I don't know if you ever saw it, Kevan, but it was a really neat, magical, very high concept, artsy, 3D film. And so this replaced it. And the idea was, what can we do in the theater to bring 3D to a surround set of effects.
Kevin Freeman: That was my first 3D.
Kevin Hawk designed the melting water park at Walt Disney World
I know they had it in the 50s, but I hadn't seen it growing up. That was my first introduction to 3D. Was Captain EO.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah, yeah. And they basically I walked in and literally one of the directors, at Imagineering said, you went to college. Do you know anything about lasers? And it was like, well, yeah, sure. And so we had all these laser effects that happen inside the theater. So when the starships and, the different space vehicles are in a little bit of a fight scene, the lasers come out of the screen and go over the audience and they're actually in the room. So there was a fusion of optical laser effects with real lasers shining and shooting around the room. And then when they hit the walls of the room, we had explosion effects there with projection and lighting and smoke, and strobes. So it looked like a laser really did hit the wall.
Kevin Freeman: That's amazing.
Marnie Freeman: It was awesome.
Marshall Monroe: I remember that we spent a lot of time on a 3D starfield at the beginning of the film. There's a 2D starfield and then there's a big sparkly pixie dust sound sequence. And the whole galaxy in front of you turns to 3D and it's super magic.
Marnie Freeman: Astonishing.
Kevin Freeman: It's Disney. It's what we grew up with. Something else we grew up with. And I had no idea. I was so excited when I met to realize, my favorite water park in the world is something you had something to do with Blizzard, beach. It's the third most attended water park in the world. It's when Marnie and I went. When we first got married, we got, we did a timeshare checkout and they gave us, park passes that never expired. Park Hopper never expired. And they came with two water park days. And we held onto those and used them expeditiously through the years. finally used our last water park pass, to go see Blizzard Beach. But you designed that. This is your project, right?
Marshall Monroe: It is, yeah. That's a really fun story. I had, you know, I had some notoriety by that time, having been there at Disney for I don't know how many years, probably seven, six years. And there was a need for a new attraction down there in Disney World. And I just, you know, for Whatever reason, we have a process. I have a process I've developed for gathering information, thinking about things and then feeding that into a sort of mysterious creative mind process. And out came this melting ski resort. And I just had such a clear picture of it. I literally, in a dream, was driving through Florida, could see it through the trees, came up upon this thing. And you know, the first impression I had was you checked into a lodge and rode a chairlift over to, so there was a hotel that was this ski lodge and then you would take a chairlift over to this water park. Melting, sort of Olympic ski sports themed water park.
Marnie Freeman: It's so creative. And it was $100 million back then and it has $2 billion in sales. Is that to date?
Marshall Monroe: Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. it's a really fascinating story at least, Kevan, from a business standpoint, because it's not marketed. It's never marketed. It's never been marketed. It just is full every day. So there isn't really a big sort of hyper visible media campaign around it. It just is word of mouth.
Marnie Freeman: I think it's because you nailed.
Kevin Freeman: Doesn't need extra marketing. It is when you go to Disney and you've been, you've been through every park and you've got the two week passes or whatever, it is your respite. It is your chance to go and rest and relax, let the kids play and you get to sit by, the pool and enjoy yourself. Now Marnie has seen this and Marnie has talked to you about this. She is desperate to put a lazy river somewhere here at Liberty Hawk. And so sometime we're going to have to have you come in and design that for us here at Liberty Ark Ranch.
Marnie Freeman: He said he could do it. he's already looked at the property.
Marshall Monroe: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And they're really fabulous. They're, you know, all age groups. Everybody loves it.
Marnie Freeman: Absolutely.
Marshall Monroe: It's a, especially on your property with the actual hillside. You know, we had to build a mountain from a swamp down there. There was no mountain. That was part of the funniness of it. That's why Michael Eisner loved it. He was like, ski Florida, Are you crazy?
Kevin Freeman: But the whole notion is a swamp. Everything about Disney is on the swamp in Florida.
Marshall Monroe: It's true. And so we had, I mean there's real big boy engineering to dewater the site and then build a hundred foot high mountain. And so that was the, that was the. Just to get started, we had to do that.
Kevin Freeman: Well, Disney has turned the Florida swamp into A, paradise, which is phenomenal. But unfortunately, there's a group that's turned Disney into a swamp. And we've got Marsha Monroe. He left Disney. We'll understand why he did that, why Disney turned woke, and exactly what we need to do to reach kids with new creativity. We'll be right back with this and more. And Marshall Monroe.
Mike Carter: Pirate Money Radio, helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values.
Kevin Freeman: Disney has pushed on ESG and dei issues
Welcome back with your host, Kevan Freeman.
Kevin Freeman: Yeah, and I'm joined by, my beautiful wife Marnie, and our special guest, Marshall Monroe, former Disney imagineer. he was at Disney for a number of years, was really a pioneer in so many ways, with Michael Eisner and revitalizing Disney. And then over time, he saw it beginning to go down. And, you know, I've been an investor well since 1983. I've managed people's money, since the mid-1980s. And Disney was always a staple in the portfolio. And then all of a sudden I realized we can't invest in this anymore. It's not investable. You know who did invest in it? BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. They're the largest institutional shareholders. And what have they done? They've pushed on this, this thing that we talk about all the time, ESG and dei. In fact, Disney has on their website an ESG reporting center where they promise that they're going to be doing all of these wonderful things. Diverse, multinational organization. you know, they're talking about, sustainability and social impact, but what they're really talking about is control and dei. How can you have, creativity when you're forcing quotas on your employees instead of taking the most creative people? How do you turn a woke, a wonderful Toy Story and turn it woke. So much so that Buzz Lightyear as a movie bombs. How do you ruin Star Wars? How do you ruin Marvel? And yet Disney has done so much of this. And they've also, at the same time ruined their stock price, just a few years ago at $200 a share. I looked at it just a couple of days ago. It was $1, $19 a share. So, I mean, in this great stock market boom, Disney's stock is not doing all that well.
Marshall Monroe says Disney went woke overnight
And we've got Marshall Monroe, who was at Disney and saw this happen. What was it like, Marshall, when you saw Disney go woke?
Marshall Monroe: Well, it's not something that happened overnight. And, it's a very curious sort of journey, you know, is the only word I can think of. And there were just Things that I saw. But, you know, there is a. There's a really funny balance in creative work that has to do with the sort of spontaneous and, sort of unpredictable ideas. But there's also this thing of, is there a guiding set of values that steer that creativity? And there's a term. When I was studying with the older originators of the company, they had a saying. They said, freedom without direction is chaos. And, that's a pretty interesting notion because it requires understanding what freedom is, but then also having a sense of purpose or a sense of some, continuity. And in the case of Walt Disney, it was, you know, I study him a lot, and the older I get, the more I am amazed by this individual because he was able to say, can we just do great stuff for kids? And he did that with the frame of mind of, well, what do parents want for their kids? Not just what do kids want? Which is what, spongebob. That's how you get spongebob, and that's how you get modern kids programming, is that they take it from the, well, let's just do what kids respond to. And that's not what Walt was doing. What Walt was doing was Pinnochio. He was doing, if you lie, your nose will grow. And that seems so simple, so ridiculous. But nobody's doing that today. You know, that's what fairy tales were. Fairy tales were messages that were like, you know, little Red Riding Hood. He was doing all kinds of fairy tales. And, wow, what is the wolf dressed up in a wardrobe? That is a camouflage. What does that mean? And he thought, well, kids should know that evil doesn't always present as evil. You know, what happened with the Third Reich, which was his childhood experience, began as not that big of a threat. And next thing you know, oh, that's a wolf in there in that little red, you know, hood. And so, I think that the substance of what he was doing, I mean, this is the guy who did great moments with Mr. Lincoln. You know, the chances of that company doing something like that today are 0.0. You know, and that's just. That shows you when you compare, that idea and I mean, that was a staple, a guaranteed everybody wants to see it show for so long on Main Street. And great moments with Mr. Lincoln.
Kevin Freeman: You know, what I think has happened to Disney, has happened to many other great corporations, is they stop focusing, on the mission, which the mission here was good. and they start focusing on the money. And, eventually they end up not getting either mission or money. I mean, the companies that go woke like Jaguar recently or Bud Light or so forth. But they start out worrying about the money. you know, there are really only three things you can do with your money. You can give it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. And here at Pirate Money Radio, we work to explain solutions that support all three areas in a way that promotes liberty, security, and values. Patriot Mobile. It's a mobile phone company. They support the Pirate Money radio program. Patriot Mobile uses US carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile, and operates on both Apple and Android phones. More information about the economic war room and Patriot Mobile is [email protected] AFR that's PirateMoneyRadio.com AFR and I relating, Marshall, to what you've been saying. My mom was a huge Disney fan. she called in to KRMG Radio, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 100 times to win the free, trip for four to Disney World and took my sister and I'm not jealous, took my sister, and her family and loved it. She loved Disney. My dad was a stockbroker. She insisted on having Disney shares, and she wanted it because she wanted the stock certificate that she got out. She ordered the stock certificate, which has got Walt Disney on. It's got Mickey Mouse and Bambi and Dumbo and, you know, really on Pinocchio. You mentioned all of the Chip and Dale, the characters, Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh all there right on the certificate.
Marnie Freeman: It's beautiful piece of artwork itself.
Kevin Freeman: It's very creative. But all the creativity now at Disney, with the exception I did see Fantastic Four and thought it was creative, well done, loved it. But the creativity of Marvel and so Star wars and Disney, it all seems lost to me. but Marshall, you moved on from there and now the creativity, the mantle where you studied Disney, where you were under Michael Eisner, the mantle of creativity, I believe, has transitioned from Walt Disney to Marshall Monroe magic, the new 3M. you're doing some amazing things.
Marshall Monroe founded Magic, a design firm, after leaving Disney
Let's talk about your career since Disney and what you're working on now.
Marshall Monroe: Sure. Well, what I thought was, you know, when I got out of Stanford, I had studied creativity. That was the. That was, you know, I had gotten. My degree was a combination of mechanical engineering and fine art. Because at the time that just made perfect sense to me.
Kevin Freeman: That is the definition of imagineer. I had no idea you were it.
Marshall Monroe: Oh, yeah. And we actually, I was part of basically inventing a new degree that at the time they started to call it product design and now if you go look at Stanford, they have a thing called the D school. That's what the degree we designed became. So it's the design school. And the idea is to really broaden what can design do? And so when I left Disney, my thought was, well, not only do I want to get back to what I felt like were the original Walt values, which is not stodgy and sort of stuffy and, sort of, constricting, it actually is true that values open the mind, not the other way around. And so what I wanted to do was apply creative thinking beyond entertainment. I love entertainment. We do it now, and it's great. But I felt like, you know, the world is, in a place where we could use new thinking in other areas. And that might be national security, that might be nonprofit work, that could be economic development, which is. Which is, of course, you know, so much about. And so that's what the firm was. So, when I would, you know, get a request to get involved in something at, Disney in later years, they would say, hey, we've got a project that's really cool. You know, it's. It's like a 9 out of 10, but it's not magic. Then I was asked to step in and take a look and try to elevate using these sort of thought methods I had come up with. And it worked. And so that's what we do. So Marshall Monroe, Magic is a firm. It's a design firm. We're in New Mexico, so we're not too far from you. And I like New Mexico. I grew up there. But it's also a place that has old world sort of depth. And it has national laboratories and supercomputers. So there's a kind of interesting blend of what I call high altitude thinking. And so that's where we're located.
Kevin Freeman: It also has ski, resorts and desert. So you get to go back to the Blizzard beach there. Yeah.
Marshall Monroe: And so. So magic is the word. And just to look at that for a second, magic is really fascinating because magic is a noun, but it's also an adjective. And the adjective part's really interesting. Basically, in my way of thinking, magic is what you call something that is so cool, you don't know what else to say. You literally are, at a loss for words. It's so cool. And so whether that's an evening out, whether that is a product, whether that is a new kind of business, or whether it is a transformation from one kind of situation to another, magic is this quality that means really great. And so we have built this practice of doing it across four different areas. One is commercial, one is national security, one is non profit and one is public policy. And we think that we need creative thinking at the public policy level as much as we do the next pet rock, you know, or better smartphone or new AI, you know, or rabbit's foot or hermit crab. Yeah. And so, we are involved in a lot of projects that are across those practice areas. And what we say when we work with clients is we say if you're looking for an incremental, slight variation on your current approach, we're the wrong people. We do quantum leap jumping and that's our specialty and that makes it really interesting. We specialize in the personal challenges, the organizational challenges, the technical challenges, jumping into something new. And that's our sort of specialty. So that's why magic, it's the rabbit out of the hat part of magic, which is there's no rabbit and then there is a rabbit.
Kevin Freeman: Alright, this is an amazing conversation we're having with Marshall Monroe about the loss and the emergence of creativity. America's losing it. Marshall Monroe is bringing it back and we'll be right back with him after this break.
Mike Carter: Pirate Money Radio. Helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values.
Kevin Friedman talks with Marshall Monroe about creativity and failure of success
Welcome back with your host Kevan Friedman.
Kevin Freeman: And I'm joined by my beautiful wife Marnie. And we're talking with Marshall Monroe, we're talking about creativity. And Marnie, you brought to my attention, something that was in a TEDx talk from 2011 by George Land titled the Failure of Success. And there supposedly, and you've admitted, we.
Marnie Freeman: Don'T know if it's real, it's unverified.
Kevin Freeman: It'S unverified from the 1980s. But tell about that TED talk and how it impacted you and let's bring Marshall into that in a second.
Marnie Freeman: Okay, so what it was is that NASA supposedly ran this, that 98% of they studied 1,600 children and they were all genius level, 98% of them, of 5 year olds, 5 year olds, kindergarten age. So at age 10 they retested them. So it's 30% that are only left as geniuses. Age 15, only 12% and as adults only 2%. And how does this happen? Why does it happen? And I will say one thing, is that I saw this experientially, of course, through teaching art. The younger ones are uninhibited. They will absolutely. They're free to draw, free to create that I mean no hindrances but when you get older, like 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, they're encumbered by the world. What the world thinks, maybe coaches, parents or whatever say things that they take personally, they just freeze up and they don't create as easily. And it could have happened in the schools. There's a lot of thought on that. But, Marshall, what do you think about that? Because we have got to bring that creativity back out.
Kevin Freeman: And Walt Disney was doing that, and now, Marshall, you're doing that. I know you've got a book out on this, but, what are your thoughts on what George Land was talking about?
Marshall Monroe: Boy, that is such a giant topic. I have so many things to say about that. So it turns out that developmentally, kids are wildly creative. And there is this sort of process, and institutions, are part of it that it sort of diminishes. I have a funny story. I actually got involved in a lot of sort of high level corporate relationships that Disney had. And we would go around because they were sponsors of attractions at, Epcot. And I was having dinner with Marty Sklar, who ran Imagineering, and a guy by the name of Arno Penzias, who is credited with the study of background radiation at Bell Labs and the whole concept of the Big Bang. And they said in that dinner, Marty looked at me and he said, so do you think you can teach creativity? And I said, no, but you can unteach it.
Kevin Freeman: Wow.
Marshall Monroe: And I kind of wrote it down later because I thought, man, that's a mouthful. but it really is true. And so, when in my work, what I do is study creativity, and my analogy for what I'm doing is it's like studying gravity. And it's like, it's so I consider, you know, Isaac Newton to be a soulmate because he sat there and saw an apple fall from a tree. That's the, sort of mythology. But he asked himself, why did that happen? What made the apple move from one place to another? And how is that even possible? And so he began asking about gravity. So I'm doing the same thing with creativity. I'm not inventing creativity. Creativity is a miracle that is part of this amazing universe that is made by a creator himself. So all we can do is observe it and ask ourselves, well, what can we find out about it? And so even in the case of gravity, it's everywhere. You know, he was just smart enough to pause for a second and appreciate it.
Marnie Freeman: I think you're right. I had to learn to, teach them to unlearn what they had Locked up and frozen, which is their creativity.
Marshall Monroe: And you'll remember there's a line that George Lucas wrote that Yoda says. He says, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's a powerful concept. Lots of powerful things he put that came out through Yoda. but I believe creativity can be reinvigorated. It can be reasserted. But it's really important to know the difference between, like I said, freedom without direction is chaos. So how do we do that in a way that has a multitude of understandings that come with it? And so that's what I saw in Walt Disney. He was unbelievably creative. I mean, it was. It's. You know, most people could just write the songbook of Mary Poppins and retire and say, you know, m. Unbelievable. That was just one of hundreds of things that he brought to the world.
Marnie Freeman: They kept churning them out. It's truly astonishing. And there's a lot, if you see a lot of histories, documentaries on him.
Marshall Monroe: Astonishing, inspirational.
Marnie Freeman: Yes.
Marshall Monroe: Yeah. But even when you look at. Takes a second for it to sink in, because really, I mean, the guy did the Tiki Bird show, so.
Marnie Freeman: The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room. The Tiki Tiki Tiki, yeah.
Marshall Monroe: That thing is just. It is entertainment comedic genius. And it's so beautiful and it's technologically advanced and it's programmatically functional and it makes money. And it has a sponsor. It just goes on and on, the layering. And so what we study with our work with Marshall Monroe, magic is the structured nature of high performance creativity.
Kevin Freeman: I love what you're doing. It's phenomenal. I jump in here. We're trying to be creative like, Walt Disney and like you. And we have big projects that we're doing from Liberty Hawk. One of them is using gold and silver's functional money. We call it pirate Money. It's based on a book that I wrote and it has a Disney theme like Pirates of the Caribbean. you know, even Hardy Boys, on the Mickey Mouse Club had a song about gold doubloons and pieces of eight, which is pirate money. Well, a fintech company out of the uk, that we used as proof of concept has become a supporter of our work. support for this program comes from Glint, a financial technology service offering a debit card and mobile app that enables users to access their gold holdings for everyday purchases. With Glint, users maintain ownership of allocated physical gold, which is stored in a managed vault. At the time of a transaction, gold is sold in real time to cover the purchase amount in local currency, Glint offers an alternative way to store and use the value.
Glint provides access to gold for modern spending through its mobile app
Combining gold and silver with modern payment infrastructure, Glint clients can monitor their gold balance, view transaction history and manage their account through the Glint app, available on major mobile M platforms. More details about how vaulted physical gold can be used as money are [email protected] Gold247 that's glintpay.com Gold247 Glint providing access to gold for modern spending. And Marshall, this is us being Disney esque creative idea, implementing it, wrote a book and then we got a sponsor for it.
Marshall Monroe: So that's awesome.
Kevin Freeman: What's the end of, what do you find at the end of every Disney ride?
Marshall Monroe: Merchandise.
Kevin Freeman: A gift shop. That's exactly right.
Marcia: How do we celebrate our 250th birthday looking forward
All right, Marcia, we've talked a lot about the different things. I want to pull one more Disney theme in. We just got a few minutes to wrap up. and that is Marnie. One time when I was writing one of my books at Disney World, Marnie went with the Great girls and I get a phone call from some strange phone. Kevan, can you help me find my Apple iPhone? I've lost it. And I said, oh, I found it. It's in the park. And wait, it's moved. Somebody's got it. No, wait, it's going in a circle.
Marnie Freeman: It's going round and round and round.
Kevin Freeman: She left it on the Carousel of Progress. Right, which it was a World's Fair exhibit talking about the progress of humanity. And it kind of ends. they haven't updated it in a while. It kind of ends with, the emergence of the first video games, but nevertheless. Marshall, you've seen the Carousel of Progress at Disney, but you've also studied it in the United States. And we're about to hit our 250th birthday. Let me put you in charge. What would you do? How do we celebrate our 250th birthday? Looking back at what we've accomplished, but looking forward. Forward to what we see ahead.
Marshall Monroe: What a cool question. And you know, truth be told, we are involved in some of the advanced thinking about that topic. Exactly. And you know, what we're doing is putting together some information. One way to answer your question is to look at World's Fairs to study them and look at how technology breaks, how the story of the future can break, how we preserve and choose important things to remember happens, and what all that can be combined to turn into. Whether it's a National State Fair or whether it's a world exposition. I think we need to do it. And I think that we're taking the time to do some research right now. And here's the thing. The 250 is happening at the same moment that we're going to be seeing AGI taken to a level, AI in general, to a place that we need to be able to manage and think about how it incorporates into a positive future. So the thing that we've noticed that's pretty interesting is if you take the word magic, you look at the middle three letters, it's AGI. And we are really looking at how AI can bring design forward and be used to tell the positive stories and the important stories for kids to the country. Because 250 years, there's so many stories. You could spend 10 years just studying World War II. And we are, we are putting together a studio. We call it 250 more. And you'll be hearing more about that because we think that's the view that you need to have as you head to. It's called the semi quincentennial. Try saying that three times fast. It is, it is a, you know, we have a grandson, and I'm trying to make that his first word that he ever says. You know, help me out with that, because it's not going to.
Kevin Freeman: It's a little easier than supercalifragilic speakers, but it's a mouthful for sure.
Marshall Monroe: That's right.
Kevin Freeman: Marshall, we love having you. We, love learning about Walt Disney and your history. We want to have you back, in economic war room and Pirate Money Radio. I want to learn more about this. 250 more. I want to get involved with this.
Marshall Monroe: Marnie.
Kevin Freeman: any last comment?
Marnie Freeman: It's a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day.
Kevin Freeman: Yeah. Amen.
Kevin Freeman: You should pray for America to return to God's creativity
All right, if you've got questions or comments, you can email [email protected] and you should pray for America. Pray for America to return to God's creativity. He made us creative. Pray for us to be faithful, with our unrighteous mammon. Pirate Money has a role and you listen. Listeners have a part to play. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, et cetera. This is Kevan Freeman, joined by Marnie Freeman for Pirate Money Radio.
Former Disney Imagineer Marshall Monroe unveils his journey from engineering Star Tours and Blizzard Beach to spearheading a creative renaissance beyond Disney’s walls. He discusses the decline of originality in major companies and the urgent need to revive childlike imagination and values-based storytelling. Marshall shares insights on how true creativity can be rekindled, drawing from formative experiences with Walt Disney’s legendary team. Dive in for inspiration, untold Disney stories, and practical steps to bring enchantment back to everyday life!
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