Our Mission:

At Beyond the Hype, we are committed to shifting your awareness and educating you in a provocative way. To help you close the gap between your aspirations and reality giving you a new sense of relevance.

a·ware·ness: the knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.

as·pi·ra·tion: as the hope or ambition of achieving something.

rel·e·vance: the quality or state of being closely connected or appropriate.

As human beings, we are an aspirational species. Ambitious. Driven. And who of us, does not want to be more aware and relevant?

Our Genesis:

The spark for Beyond the Hype ignited in the collision of our aspirations with reality.  Our everyday reality didn't match our ambition.  We found our life lacking. Happiness or satisfaction continued to be on the horizon, just outside of our grasp. We were not content or relevant. And we wondered why?

At BTH, we kickstart the process of altering our reader's awareness offering to close the gap between their aspirations and reality. When each of us is firmly aligned with reality, our relevance comes into focus.  This process takes a minute. Each of us has spent years constructing our worldview and change does not come without formidable resistance.  

Allow me to make a useful analogy to galvanize this notion of resistance, change, and tweaking our worldview in an effort to align with reality.  

Training to be an airplane pilot, one of the first things we become acutely aware of is the laws of aerodynamics. Only by combining engine thrust with lift to combat drag can we sustain our victory over the earth's gravity. At take-off, to maximize the force of lift, we turn our plane into the wind or resistance.  The Wright brother's awareness of our aerodynamic realities launched a revolution in transportation.

Another principle we learn as pilots is that flying is a process of constant, neverending adjustments. The forces acting on our planes like gravity, lift, and drag is always shifting causing us to be off course a majority of the time. Acutely aware of our position relative to our destination, pilots adjust their controls to the prevailing reality as a matter of habit.  We act. And act. And act again. No frustration. No disillusionment with the constant change. Change is the norm. Pilots align their craft with the forces of reality or crash.

A third principle pilots embrace while defying gravity with a machine is coping with mishaps and malfunctions.  No matter how well we maintain our aircraft or prepare for a flight, shit happens. Captain "Sully" Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River on January 15, 2009, after having his Airbus 320 struck by birds. Sully executed his emergency landing as his training dictated. In short, steer your failing aircraft away from dense ground populations and find a place to put down in a hurry, while staying calm and in control of your aircraft. Never stop flying until you land.  Sullenberger followed his training script to the letter. Pilots spend countless hours simulating mishaps and malfunctions for those eventualities.  So much so, that coping becomes second nature to us.

Let us take a moment to review. Flight training teaches pilots to seek out resistance to maximize lift, deal with constant never-ending change and cope with the worst possible outcomes without losing their minds. I believe pilot training mirrors life, as you and I know it.  

Does our perspective sound different to you?

BTH began in August 2021 in the blogosphere on a WordPress site (www.beyondthehype.blog) as a passion project of a father and son team. We started blogging in an attempt to get our footing. In those first early months, we published, listened to, and observed mainstream media, social media sites, and in-person day-to-day conversations.  We learned a lot. In those months, we sharpened our message and picked our targets of opportunity carefully.  

We don't claim to have a corner on truth. Instead of offering our opinions as gospel, we will engage you with penetrating questions and readily available data that suggests that all is not as it seems on the surface. With a little fact-finding and shifting of perspectives, a better, more factual narrative can and will emerge from the prevailing wisdom.  

We intend on tackling the thorniest of cultural, political, and economic issues with a high degree of tack and sensitivity.  We promise to ask the toughest questions in a diplomatic and open manner. And, we will take every opportunity to poke fun at ourselves along the way. But, alas, we will never make everyone comfortable with certain topics. It's the nature of our reality, not to have a conscious cultural consensus.  However, open, passionate debate sharpens all of us.  So please join us.

Welcome to Beyond the Hype!