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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.
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I m Dan Shepard and I m joined by Monica Miles.
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Are you tired, Shepard?
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No, I m not tired.
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This is the best of Thursdays.
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So if you listen to best of Mondays, you know that we have split it into two bests of, which is a great, great, great choice by Monica.
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She had her thinking cap on.
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So these are our favorite experts of the year.
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fun if you, I bet you could buy this, a cap, baseball cap that says Thinking Cap.
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Write that down.
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That s a hat on a hat on the nose.
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Or, okay, then there s another hat called... How about a hat on a hat?
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There s a lot of these.
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Etsy s got a whole bunch.
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But what about, you have a hat, but the hat for no reason has a little support beam that sticks to your nose so that the bill doesn t come down low.
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And then you would say that hat s too on the nose.
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Oh, that s good.
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You d probably make a cross-eyed if you wore it long enough.
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Yeah, that sounds painful.
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And then there s a hat, baseball cap style, and then a small beret on top of the cap, and that s a hat on a hat.
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Okay, I would just wanna suggest that you do a bowler hat on top of that.
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I love a beret.
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I know, but both are round, like you have a pancake on a scoop of ice cream.
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Oh, you want shape.
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Well, you just hate circles.
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I love circles.
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I m so motivated by circles.
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The world runs on circles.
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What are we talking about?
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Okay, please enjoy the best of Thursdays.
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From episode 533, Phil Stutz.
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A big part of my philosophy, especially with performers, is failure and loss.
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They almost have to be worshipped as if they re gods.
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They re positives.
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Obviously, you have to know how to deal with them so you don t get paralyzed completely.
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Why are they to be worshipped?
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If you think of it in terms of the shadow, which is the part of you you don t want anybody to see, but you can t get rid of, but you still try to hide it,
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It has a lot of stored up stuff in it.
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Emotions, memories, attitudes, fears, whatever it is.
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You have to get at that stuff.
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With the human ego, it s nature is to try to avoid that.
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So it s the definition of the ego is removing anything that you think the world will look askance at, will shame you, embarrass you, whatever it is.
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So let me tell you how I invented this.
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Of course I do, yeah.
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Yeah, you guys are actors.
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Okay.
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I had first gotten out here was the 80s.
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I was just learning about acting and show business, all this stuff.
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So a typical thing would happen would be one of my patients would get a call back.
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They get so excited about it and then they say, okay, now I have to replicate that reading
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So a callback is the one that happens after your initial audition.
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Basically, you made it through a round of the process.
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That s right.
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And right, your immediate inclination is like, oh, fuck, what did I do that was so right in that room?
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I have to figure out how to do the exact same thing in this callback.
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So, in fact, they would say to the shadow, just stay outside because if they see you, we are roundly fucked.
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There s no chance.
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Just wait out here.
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It ll take five minutes.
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I ll buy you an ice cream cone.
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Whatever.
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What happens is you tell your shadow, stay out, stay away.
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So you, the ego, is working so hard to make the thing perfect.
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And what you really get is like a flat reading.
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It s not terrible, but it doesn t catch your attention.
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It s dead.
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And the reason it s dead is because the shadow has been excluded.
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And by the way, when you tell the shadow to stay outside, what he says is, I ll wait for you out here, but don t expect any help from me.
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You are fucked.
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I resent being rejected.
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I mean, it s not that on the nose, but it s close to it.
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And when the shadow rebels, it s kind of a withdrawn state and the soul force doesn t come out because the soul force or flow, whatever you want to call it,
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It s unpredictable, it s sloppy, it s messy, because it doesn t care about the things that we care about.
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It doesn t want to win, it s not playing for that.
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It doesn t believe in words that much.
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It believes in feelings much more than in words.
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The ego thinks the shadow is insane.
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That s the best way to say it, because his value system is so different.
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So I started to bring the shadow with me.
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I would talk to him and I d say, you can come in here, you can say and do whatever you want.
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I ll tell you, between the two of you, you have an excellent vibe to give that permission.
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Oh, thank you.
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That s the goal of this entire thing.
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Oh, it is.
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It is.
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First, I want to ask, before I proclaim the agenda of this show, is it fair to say that what we re most attracted to, even though we avoid it in real life, what we re most attracted to in life
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is complexity and multi-dimensionality.
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And when you leave your shadow outside, you re literally leaving one of your most fundamental dimensions.
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So when I now am just my ego or my superego or my perfect self, we can feel that this is two dimensional.
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There s not that other bit of geometry that makes you complex and intriguing.
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This is a little bit broader of an issue, but it s important, which is most people live pursuing that which is magical.
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So if I just draw like a rectangle on a piece of paper, but it s outlined with dashes.
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It s not a solid line.
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And I call that the pursuit of perfection.
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This is the snapshot?
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Yeah, this is the snapshot.
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But that idea, it seems to make sense.
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But what it really does is if you think about it, it has the quality of a snapshot.
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Now, a snapshot has no movement in it and no depth.
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So the more you hunt for the perfect, the flatter the thing gets.
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From episode 573, Rick Rubin.
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Can we make it less cold?
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Yes.
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Or at least, it s just blowing right on me.
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Something is blowing cold right on me.
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It snowed in Los Angeles yesterday.
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Wow.
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I know.
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And I m just coming from Costa Rica, so I m particularly.
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I applaud your lack of codependency, because I would find myself freezing somewhere, and then I would just deal with it.
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I know, I m glad you said it.
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Because I d be too afraid you wouldn t like me.
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I m impressed by what I just witnessed.
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Why do I care if you like me?
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Yeah, you can advocate for yourself.
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I m here to be myself.
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Yeah.
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I hope you like me, but I m not gonna change me so that you like me.
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Right, you re not gonna pretend you re warm when you re cold, so that I ll like you.
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No, I wouldn t.
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It s admirable.
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You realize a lot of people struggle with that.
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Most people.
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Therein lies what?
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My job is, and what the job of creativity is, is knowing yourself, being okay with yourself, and being able to say, feels cold in here.
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That s all my job is.
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Wow, it just happened.
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It was like when Stutz, it was like when Jonas started actually participating and let Stutz therapize him.
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You know, you can talk about therapy for a long time.
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You can talk about it as tools, but until there s a click in the dock where we start seeing them being used and then you can understand them in a way that s profound.
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So yes, we could have talked about your book all day long.
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Also, I ve been asked about how do you have
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Confidence in your taste and it s like I m either cold or I m not cold.
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It s so clear.
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It s like I m getting chilly I feel like there s cold wind blowing on me and has no more meaning than Seems cold in here.
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There s no greater meaning.
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There s no insult.
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It s so face value Yeah, this is what s happening and I m responding to what s happening.
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That s all I
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Within that is a tool, because for most people, it is much more cluttered than that.
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Every little thing, am I cold or am I not?
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Because a lot of people go, I m cold.
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Huh, they re not.
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Why am I cold?
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They re not.
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Oh, don t you have an iron deficiency?
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You know, it could lead to a million thoughts.
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It s true.
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Or like, this is their space and I can t be the one to call it out.
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Like Letterman famously, did you ever do Letterman in the day?
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I never did, but I know we kept it freezing cold.
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It was like 50 degrees in there, right?
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And you went in knowing this motherfucker likes it ice cold.
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If you d have said to me, you know, we really like doing the show cold, we could get you a blanket.
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It s like, okay.
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Like I would roll with it, but I m still telling you, I m not going to walk out.
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I think it s okay to talk about these things.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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It should be easier.
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That s fascinating.
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Yeah.
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From episode 578, David Sedaris.
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I just got some good postcards.
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I was just in Australia and I went to a place I d always wanted to go to in Tasmania called the Museum of Old and New Art, Mona.
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And a billionaire, he made his money online gambling, I think, not gambling himself, but setting it up so that other people could.
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And then he opened a museum.
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And one of the things in the museum, and it wasn t there when we went, was it s like a toilet kind of thing.
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And there s a camera in it and it broadcasts your anus.
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Huge.
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I think I m okay if I don t know what mine looks like.
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I don t want to know.
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built a man-made colon and they feed it at 11 in the morning and it defecates at 2 in the afternoon and you couldn t believe what it smelled like.
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It s in this big beautiful room and I d never smelled anything quite like it and they said no it s just breaking the food down.
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That causes the smell.
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But then there s Picasso pottery.
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And in the gift shop, I bought some great postcards.
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And I bought four bars of soap that were cast from four different women s vaginas.
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Oh, wonderful.
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Did the shape surprise you?
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Yeah, this is a good question.
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Yeah.
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In what way?
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Was it like deeper and longer than you were expecting?
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Everyone was slightly different.
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Was it because of the vulva or was it like they had filled the vagina with wax and it hardened?
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No, it was like the outside of the vulva.
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Yeah, the shape.
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The outward shape.
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Yeah, it was just what a guy, you know, does that make sense?
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Sure, sure, sure, sure.
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Dax is worried that someone shoved wax up a woman s childhood.
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Like had a woman do a handstand and then filled her full of wax and then took that out, because that to me probably would be shockingly large.
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But they sell it online at the gift shop, Mona, M-O-N-A, and it s $40 for a bar of soap, but such a good gift for people.
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You didn t use the soap, did you?
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No, I don t think anybody would.
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I think it s so nice and it comes in a pretty box and then you kind of save it and put it out.
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How does it smell?
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Does it have a photo of the woman whose vagina it is?
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No.
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Okay.
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It smells like there are four different scents.
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Like one s sandalwood, one s rose.
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Okay.
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It s not like the goop vagina candle that Paul Tromade.
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No.
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Back to the toilet exhibit, because I want to make sure I understand it correctly.
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They ve built a mechanical digestion system.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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And they didn t try to make it look like a man on top of it.
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They re just packing a box full of food and letting it rot.
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It s three.
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massive jars and the food goes into one and it goes into another and then it defecates.
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The whole room smells because it s constantly breaking down the food.
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Sure, sure, sure.
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And it made me think too, I spent two weeks at the medical examiner s office in Phoenix.
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They would do autopsies and the most disturbing part of it wasn t the sight of it, but it was the smell of it.
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And I can t say the stink exactly, but
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It s a smell that says to your brain, run.
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Yes.
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Yes, death.
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It s evolutionary.
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Get as far away from here as possible.
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Yeah.
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From episode 643, Gabor Mate.
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Okay.
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You and I have both are addictive behaviors, Monica, have you?
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Yeah.
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Again, not drugs.
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Oh, so let me give you a definition of addiction.
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Then you tell me.
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Okay.
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By the way, the word addiction comes from a Latin word for slavery.
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Oh, wow.
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Yeah.
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Well, isn t that accurate?
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Yeah.
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Addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences in the longterm and doesn t give up despite the negative consequences.
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So pleasure craving relief in the short term, harm in the long term, refusal or inability to give it up.
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That s what an addiction is.
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I didn t say anything about drugs.
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It could include drugs, obviously.
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Nicotine, caffeine, crystal meth, heroin, fentanyl, alcohol could also be sex, gambling, shopping, pornography, eating, fantasy, bulimia, internet gaming, work, power.
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I could go on and on and on.
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So yes.
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Okay, all right.
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Absolutely.
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So here s what I m gonna ask both of you guys now.
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Not what was wrong with the addiction, not even what the addiction was, but what did you get from it in the short term that you craved?
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So Monica, what did you get?
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Validation.
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Can you say more about that?
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Feelings of being worthy.
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Okay, thank you.
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Dax, what did your addictions give you?
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Relief.
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From?
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Pain.
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Yeah.
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Hence my mantra.
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Don t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.
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In my case, it s also validation, for example, and also a real sense of being alive.
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Temporary.
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I m an arousal junkie.
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Sense of being alive.
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Sense of being worthy.
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Pain relief.
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Are there good things or bad things in themselves?
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Great things.
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Essential.
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The addiction wasn t your primary problem.
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Your addiction wasn t an attempt to solve a problem.
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It s an adaptation.
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The real problem was your lack of worthiness or your belief in your lack of worthiness.
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which is a result of trauma.
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The pain that you experienced, you ve already talked about it, DAX is sourced in very painful experiences.
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Mine as well.
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And I m not telling on Monacada School because we ve talked about this a bunch in here.
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What is really salient is, yeah, so mine involves like criminal activity.
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Hers is not.
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But the result is just as strong.
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In fact, definitely as strong.
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Maybe even more strong.
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That s the whole point.
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Yeah, being brown in the South and liking a boy and having the boy say, I can t like you back because you re brown is like, well, that s a wrap on that.
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And some passed-down abandonment stuff.
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This is my issue.
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I know that about myself, but it s like what we said earlier.
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It happens in here all the time, and it continues to happen where I don t feel like I should be here, and I don t know how to stop it.
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The thepiston, he wants to jump on this like a dog on a bone.
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But let s just conclude the point.
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Your addictions, my addictions were adaptations.
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Adaptations to what?
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To emotional pain?
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Where is that pain sourced?
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In trauma.
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So addictions are not diseases that you inherit.
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They re not bad habits that you choose.
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They re desperate attempts to relieve suffering.
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That s all they are.
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And the fact that your addictions were criminal, it s only because this society criminalizes certain addictions.
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I meant the inciting trauma to me.
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You could try to evaluate as being more traumatic than that.
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I don t compare traumas.
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That was the point I was making, is I would debunk that.
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Yeah, even though yours is criminal, hers is just as devastating.
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Yes, exactly.
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So the result s the same.
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So, Monica, can I ask you a couple of questions?
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Yeah.
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First of all, you said that you don t feel like you belong.
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Is that the phrase you used?
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I think I did say that, yeah.
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Freudian slip.
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So let me give you a bit of coaching, if I may.
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I don t belong is not a feeling.
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Feelings that I m tired, I m hungry, I m sad, I m angry.
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Those are feelings or emotions.
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What is I don t belong?
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Opinion?
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A fact?
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Fear?
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It s an opinion.
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It s a point of view.
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Yeah.
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What do you feel when you believe that you don t belong?
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Ah, unnecessary?
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Unnecessary is not a feeling.
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You re right.
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Okay.
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I guess sad, but that seems basic.
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What do you mean that seems basic?
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It seems so obvious, but it feels deeper than the word sad.
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No, no, wait a minute now.
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If you re willing to work with this, just stay with this belief that I don t belong here.
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Did you experience it here today?
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Yes.
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Okay.
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Now just check in with your body.
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What do you feel when you have that belief, when that belief seizes hold of you?
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Physically, I feel hot.
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Okay, if this was on camera, when you said that, what would the audience have seen on your face?
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Just now when I said it?
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Yeah, you probably don t know.
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Did I smile or laugh?
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You smiled.
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What s funny about it?
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I want to smile again.
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What s funny about it?
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Nothing.
1
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Okay, so what you re already doing is you re distancing yourself from your feeling.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s not a criticism, just an observation.
1
SPEAKER_00
For a good reason you learned that I better not be with my feelings, I better kind of minimize them.
1
SPEAKER_00
But let s go back to the question again.
1
SPEAKER_00
What do you feel when you believe that there s three of us here engaged in this, to me, very deep and honest conversation and you don t belong?
1
SPEAKER_00
What do you actually feel in your body when you believe that?
1
SPEAKER_02
I would say hopeless.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s not a feeling.
1
Oh God.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hopeless is a belief that there s no hope.
1
SPEAKER_00
What do you feel when you believe things are hopeless?
1
SPEAKER_02
Sad.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sadness.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now how does sadness show up in your body?
1
SPEAKER_02
Everything feels retreated and deflated.
1
SPEAKER_00
Kind of constriction?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
In your chest and your belly and so on?
1
Mm-hmm.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can you be with that emotion right now just for a moment?
1
SPEAKER_00
Is it okay that things are constricted?
1
SPEAKER_00
Can you just accept them and be with them?
1
SPEAKER_02
Mm-hmm.
1
SPEAKER_00
What s it like when you re with them?
1
SPEAKER_00
When you re not deflecting, deminimizing?
1
SPEAKER_02
It s uncomfortable and painful.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like it hurts.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s pain there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can you be with that pain?
1
SPEAKER_02
I don t want to.
1
SPEAKER_00
Who the heck wants to?
1
SPEAKER_00
Of course you don t want to.
1
SPEAKER_00
But can you be?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s the way through, is you actually have to allow yourself to have those emotions and to be with them.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because it s got nothing to do with being worthy or not worthy.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s got to do with these emotions that we don t know how to be with.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because as a child, you weren t given the support to experience all your emotions.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you can actually work your way through it, but your way through is through the body, not just by talking about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to actually be with this stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m not a Buddhist teacher by any means, but I m talking basic, you know, but the Buddha said you just gotta be with all this stuff and notice.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then by the way, who s the person that s noticing the pain and staying with it?
1
SPEAKER_00
Who s the person that s being honest about it?
1
SPEAKER_02
Me.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Is that person really not worthy?
1
SPEAKER_00
No.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_03
I love you, buddy.
1
SPEAKER_01
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
2
SPEAKER_05
From Episode 661, Barbara Kingsolver.
2
SPEAKER_02
Growing up in a working-class culture and a working-class place, you don t say you want to be an artist when you grow up.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, at least in Kentucky, you don t say that because it seems... It feels hoity-toity.
2
SPEAKER_02
It feels hoity-toity.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s what it feels.
2
SPEAKER_03
It feels upper-class.
2
SPEAKER_03
It feels rich.
2
SPEAKER_03
We hate rich people.
2
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s self-indulgent.
2
SPEAKER_02
What a luxury.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it s putting yourself above, like, I m not one of you.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s like saying, I m going to be Meryl Streep when I grow up.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yes, which happened on accident.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, I just kept this to myself.
2
SPEAKER_03
Can I say as a boy, as a young boy growing up in very blue-colored Detroit area.
2
SPEAKER_03
It was gay.
2
SPEAKER_03
That was my fear.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was writing.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was being creative.
2
SPEAKER_03
And so my little paradigm I was stuck in was that was gay.
2
SPEAKER_04
Because it was feminine, which also is probably part of your feeling too.
2
SPEAKER_04
You want to be a powerful woman, which means more masculine.
2
SPEAKER_04
Right.
2
SPEAKER_02
I need to do what the boys are doing.
2
SPEAKER_02
And they re not writing poems.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s for sure.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s all wild that either of us would have had any thought like this thing needs to be private.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s so crazy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and God forbid if you d wanted to be a dancer.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, no, it wasn t on the table.
2
SPEAKER_03
People ask me that in interviews, like, when did you know you were going to be an actor?
2
SPEAKER_03
Did you act all through high school?
2
SPEAKER_03
I m like, you didn t go to my high school.
2
SPEAKER_03
in high school, I had to get my ass kicked in the parking lot every day.
2
SPEAKER_02
Not an option.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s how I felt.
2
SPEAKER_02
For a long time after I left Carlisle, Kentucky, being a writer was not an option.
2
SPEAKER_02
Saying I am a writer, I couldn t imagine it.
2
SPEAKER_02
I needed to be something real and practical.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I just wrote.
2
SPEAKER_02
And all that time I was traveling around, I was still writing and I wrote poems in French.
2
SPEAKER_02
God, they re probably terrible.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I was writing and processing and I think what hit me in Tucson is I didn t have a voice.
2
SPEAKER_02
I wasn t from anywhere.
2
SPEAKER_02
I didn t have any authority.
2
SPEAKER_02
I was writing short stories set in Tucson, and they just felt fake, just as fake as those French stories that I wrote.
2
SPEAKER_02
There was no authenticity.
2
SPEAKER_02
And also, honestly, I had internalized the shame of being hillbilly.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, we haven t even started on that.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, no, we re getting there.
2
SPEAKER_02
But just as I didn t understand I was white until I went to the Congo.
2
SPEAKER_02
I didn t understand I was a hillbilly till I went to college in a state where people stopped me in the cafeteria and made me say words so that they could laugh at me.
2
SPEAKER_03
W-A-S-H.
2
SPEAKER_02
Warsh.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
And syrup.
2
SPEAKER_02
What s this syrup?
2
SPEAKER_03
Smells like a polecat.
2
SPEAKER_03
What?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, just mocking my accent and saying, oh, you re wearing shoes, how cute.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I just kind of erased that.
2
SPEAKER_02
The accent you re hearing now, I code shift.
2
SPEAKER_02
When I m in Kentucky or when I m at home, when I m talking to my neighbors, I talk the way I spoke growing up.
2
SPEAKER_02
But little by little and not really intentionally, I just neutralized my affect.
2
SPEAKER_03
For sure.
2
SPEAKER_02
So that people will listen to what you re saying instead of stopping at the words.
2
SPEAKER_03
Really quick, you re arriving at a place that artists have to arrive at, which is you first start by trying to emulate things that you yourself find captivating or romantic, and you can t succeed at it.
2
SPEAKER_03
And then hopefully the road leads you to believing, actually, my version is worthy of telling, and my voice is worthy of listening to.
2
SPEAKER_03
And that s such a crazy road.
2
SPEAKER_02
I agree with you completely, and I d take it a step further.
2
SPEAKER_02
You have to get to, I do have something to say.
2
SPEAKER_02
My voice is worthy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Furthermore, it s the only thing I ve got.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s your only true asset.
2
SPEAKER_02
And if all you have out there are antennae for what you think people want from you, you got nothing.
2
SPEAKER_03
Other prerequisite knowledge you must know is that I fucking hated the hillbilly elegy.
2
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
2
SPEAKER_03
I fucking hated it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Monica and I had a bunch of arguments.
2
SPEAKER_03
I was screaming from the rooftop.
2
SPEAKER_03
This is a fraudulent account of all of this.
2
SPEAKER_03
The person wasn t there.
2
SPEAKER_03
They didn t experience any of this.
2
SPEAKER_03
This is bullshit.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the one good thing about him running and winning the position he has now is it s proof.
2
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
He s not one of us.
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, that s the only thing that ultimately Monica had to
2
SPEAKER_04
I had to really eat my shorts or whatever that phrase is.
2
SPEAKER_04
We had a lot of arguments around that, because he was like, I don t buy it.
2
SPEAKER_04
I know that world.
2
SPEAKER_04
And I m also from the South.
2
SPEAKER_04
I m from Georgia.
2
SPEAKER_04
So I was like, well, you can t assume just because it wasn t your experience.
2
SPEAKER_04
Like, we had so many debates.
2
SPEAKER_03
We had a lot of debates about it, right?
2
SPEAKER_04
And then I had to be like, God, you were right.
2
SPEAKER_02
This fraud.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s his worldview.
2
SPEAKER_02
OK, here s my complaint about that book.
2
SPEAKER_02
We don t even have to say the name of it.
2
SPEAKER_02
He s entitled to write his memoir.
2
SPEAKER_02
The fact that that got pitched and bought wholesale as my memoir, too, and your memoir, too.
2
SPEAKER_02
The explanation of a people makes me so mad because he had no context.
2
SPEAKER_02
He didn t talk about structural poverty.
2
SPEAKER_02
He didn t talk about the history of this region.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was a self-aggrandizement of his enormous accomplishment.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, it was like bootstrapped.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, I went to the Ivy League.
2
SPEAKER_02
If you only work hard enough, you can be... And the thing is, what s heartbreaking about it is that it really validated the stereotype.
2
SPEAKER_02
It was so widely... Sorry.
2
SPEAKER_02
No.
2
SPEAKER_02
You ve already eaten your shortbread.
2
SPEAKER_02
So embraced by the rest of America because they want to hate on hillbillies.
2
SPEAKER_02
They want to look down on us.
2
SPEAKER_02
We are the last class of people that progressive people get to make fun of.
2
SPEAKER_04
There s also a poll.
2
SPEAKER_04
Humans love a quote, underdog.
2
SPEAKER_04
People love an underdog story.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that s what it.
2
SPEAKER_04
felt like a little bit, which is very problematic because it s, again, this model minority issue where... Also, he s pretending he s Basquiat and he s not.
2
SPEAKER_03
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_03
Right.
2
SPEAKER_04
It makes people believe, oh, well, if he can do it, what s wrong with everybody else?
2
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_04
And that s wholly wrong.
2
SPEAKER_02
A lot of us recognize structural racism, institutional racism, but structural classism is just not talked about.
2
SPEAKER_05
From episode 591, Michael Waldman.
2
SPEAKER_00
They call it the counter-majoritarian.
2
SPEAKER_00
In other words, sometimes when the crowd wants something, you want someone to say, slow down everybody, but not too much.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sooner or later, you want the country as it is and as it s growing and changing to be reflected in the government that is supposedly elected by the people.
2
SPEAKER_00
There were only three times in the country s history where the Supreme Court left this kind of invisible unmarked spot in a really big way.
2
SPEAKER_00
where it was extreme or partisan or unduly activist.
2
SPEAKER_00
And each time there was a massive backlash.
2
SPEAKER_00
There was a massive political and social backlash.
2
SPEAKER_00
There was even a political realignment.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, one of the questions is, are we in a beginning of a moment like that now?
2
SPEAKER_00
So one of them, for example, which I talk about in the book is the Dred Scott case.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that was the first time Supreme Court really, really got in the middle of things.
2
SPEAKER_00
And only the second time in the country s history, they struck down a law of Congress.
2
SPEAKER_00
There d been all this growing agitation over slavery and efforts to push slavery out of the South so that it would be more nationwide.
2
SPEAKER_00
Every time there was new territories, every time there was a war, we had to decide.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the country was getting more and more worked up about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the Supreme Court said, we re going to intervene and, quote, solve the problem, meaning the problem of agitation over slavery, not the problem of slavery.
2
SPEAKER_00
They did this case, Dred Scott, which was this enslaved man who d gone to a northern free territory and became free and then went back home to Missouri and they said, oh, you re a slave again.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he fought this 11-year battle.
2
SPEAKER_00
First of all, everyone knew it was going to be a really big deal.
2
SPEAKER_00
You might remember that the Dobbs case, the abortion case, leaked last year.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was a really dramatic thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
The Dred Scott case leaked.
2
SPEAKER_00
Really?
2
SPEAKER_00
It leaked to the incoming president-elect, Buchanan.
2
SPEAKER_00
He was actually privately lobbying them, hey, go big, overturn the limits on slavery.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so then he knew exactly what they were going to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he had his inaugural.
2
SPEAKER_00
And first of all, he was on the stage and he was like whispering to the chief justice and everybody said, well, we know what that means.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then he got up in his inaugural address and he said,
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, the Supreme Court s going to make this big ruling in a few days.
2
SPEAKER_00
None of us know what it will be, but let s just all agree we re going to abide by it, whatever it says.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the newspapers the next day said, well, we know what that means.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it said Congress could not limit slavery in the Northern Territories.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not only that, black people are so inferior they can never be citizens and have no rights.
2
SPEAKER_00
This was explosive.
2
SPEAKER_00
It led to an incredible eruption, led to the rise of the Republican Party.
2
SPEAKER_00
Abraham Lincoln s whole political career was to take on this opinion.
2
SPEAKER_05
From episode 599, Megan Phelps Roper.
2
SPEAKER_03
You were very involved.
2
SPEAKER_03
You re, I guess, from the outside, from my perspective, you re kind of an heir apparent.
2
SPEAKER_03
Your mother was the matriarch of this organization, right?
2
SPEAKER_03
And she was a lawyer herself and had originally picked all the picketing spots and whatnot.
2
SPEAKER_03
Ultimately turned over to you at some point that became your role.
2
SPEAKER_01
About a year and a half before I left, there was kind of this big shift within the church where these elders took over.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was all of the essentially older married men.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so a lot of the things that my mom did fell to me.
2
SPEAKER_01
My mom, a lot of her,
2
SPEAKER_01
influence within the church came from the fact that she would do anything.
2
SPEAKER_01
So again, I m the third of 11.
2
SPEAKER_01
I feel like she had like seven or eight full-time jobs, like she was doing the media for the church and all the logistical operations, which
3
SPEAKER_00
It s all of the external facing stuff like the protests, but also the internal stuff like lawn mowing and daycare.
3
SPEAKER_00
of, like, piano lessons.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s an incredibly well-orchestrated operation.
3
SPEAKER_04
And did she ever say to you guys behind closed doors, did she ever have to preface that?
3
SPEAKER_04
Like, I know this is extreme, but never.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, no.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s really funny, because my husband had these questions, too, before he was my husband.
3
SPEAKER_00
He would ask these questions, like, we had to know how crazy this was, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
This had to be something that we, like, wink, wink, nod, nod.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, no.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because we believed that the Bible was the
3
SPEAKER_00
infallible word of God.
3
SPEAKER_00
In other words, it wasn t us.
3
SPEAKER_00
We weren t wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was other people were wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like they were the ones who had left the truth of God.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s so clearly set out here.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can t you just memorize this verse?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
And it wasn t intentionally inflammatory as much as it s intentionally the truth.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it wasn t until after I left, and actually the process of writing my book as I was kind of following the way things had fallen out, because, you know, again, I was five when all this started.
3
SPEAKER_02
You start doing interviews very, very young and you two start participating in a lot of the forward facing media stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you re pretty fucking savvy by the time you re 17 years old.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was just right there with my mom.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was one of the things, you know, she required me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m the oldest girl.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think she was trying to protect me and, like, keep me close.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so there were moments where, you know, I started to go out into the world, like, to get an outside job, and those ended very quickly.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I accepted that this was my role.
3
SPEAKER_00
As I was going back through my memories and the newspaper articles and talking to the older people in my mom s generation who had left when I was very young, so people who I didn t really know and I was asking them all these questions, I think one of the things that I didn t realize at first was
3
SPEAKER_00
My grandfather was absolutely using the power of the 24-hour news cycle.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s very funny because you can see this happening on social media today.
3
SPEAKER_00
Outrage, provocative things, like this is what gets attention.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we optimize for those things.
3
SPEAKER_00
My mom would say, this is the soundbite generation.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is why we have three to five words on a picket sign, like the most inflammatory version of our message.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s real and it s true.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we believed every word of it, but it s also clearly something that is designed to get attention.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s funny, I remember sitting in on an interview that my grandfather gave and the reporter said, some people say that you re just doing this for attention.
3
SPEAKER_00
And my grandfather looked at her like she was an idiot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, well, of course I m doing this for attention.
3
SPEAKER_00
How am I going to preach to these people if I don t have their attention?
3
SPEAKER_02
Your transition out of it starts in, I guess, 09 when you joined Twitter.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_02
Your TED Talk, which I urge everyone to see, it s tremendous.
3
SPEAKER_02
You really detail this whole experience in your urging people who would like to challenge other people s beliefs to use four steps.
3
SPEAKER_02
So maybe we could talk about the four steps, because I think they re wonderful and they re the ones that ultimately broke through to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I got on Twitter to spread the church s message.
3
SPEAKER_00
Initially, the responses that I got there were very much like what I experienced on the picket line, a lot of anger and reflecting the same kind of hostility and provocation that people felt from me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then there were these individuals who just used these, to me, they re very basic tactics.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m essentially, in that TED Talk, I m just describing what people did for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the four steps, the first one is don t assume bad intent, because it immediately cuts you off from being able to understand, you know, like we were saying earlier, seeing people in their own context.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because if you believe that they are doing this on purpose, if they are purposely doing what they know is wrong,
3
SPEAKER_02
They re nefarious, they re forces of evil.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, like what hope do you have of changing their mind?
3
SPEAKER_00
They have to be defeated, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
Second point was ask questions.
3
SPEAKER_00
For a number of reasons, like first, that s the thing that helps you understand where they re coming from so that you can address what they actually believe.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s also this other point, which is that when you ask people questions and you give them an opportunity to be heard,
3
SPEAKER_00
That sense of feeling heard, I think, also makes us more likely to listen.
3
SPEAKER_00
These people are asking me all these questions, so I m like going on and on about, you know, I have a lot of things to tell you because I ve memorized all these Bible verses, and then I get to the end of it, and then what?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, well, what do you think?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you make of this?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, how could you possibly disagree with this?
3
SPEAKER_00
Asking questions is actually a really powerful tool.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel like they seem very obvious, but they re not easy.
3
SPEAKER_00
From my perspective, we are all the product of our biology and our upbringing, our environment.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s really funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
The epigraph of my book is this line from the great Gatsby that says, reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh, I like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love it so much.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was one of the things that I read, you know, because it was Chad s profile picture when he was anonymous on Twitter back in the day was Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you re kidding.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m surprised you guys don t live on West Egg instead of up in South Dakota.
3
SPEAKER_00
I went back to reread that because I d read it in high school and that was near the beginning of the book.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even for people who seem to be doing really bad things, the recognition that who they are in this moment isn t who they have to be forever.
3
SPEAKER_00
From episode 652, Robert Sapolsky.
3
SPEAKER_01
So then you look at some interesting things about stress.
3
SPEAKER_01
Suppose you re two years old, you re stressed at home because you re growing up in poverty and your food s lousy and your parent or parents are never around, they re stressed as hell.
3
SPEAKER_01
By age five, you take kids in kindergarten and the socioeconomic status of their families is a predictor of how high their cortisol levels are going to be when they re just sitting there quietly.
3
SPEAKER_01
and you put them in a brain scanner, and by age five, if you make this stupid decision to be born into a poor family, your frontal cortex is already maturing more slowly than average.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, God.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re already starting to pay the price for it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is so screwed.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
A study last year, brain imaging techniques, first couple of studies where you could now do imaging on a fetus s brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Whoa.
3
SPEAKER_01
You look at fetal brains and you look at mom s socioeconomic status and what her cortisol levels are like in her bloodstream, which gets across the placenta and into the kid s brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
And during fetal life, your mother s SES is already impacting the grade at which your brain is growing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And presumably the amygdala is growing as well at an asymmetrical rate.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Get exposed to a lot of your mom s stress hormones while you re a fetus.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as an adult, you ll have a bigger amygdala.
3
SPEAKER_01
Be more reactive.
3
SPEAKER_01
And here s the real horror of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
As an adult, you ve got a bigger amygdala that s more reactive and secretes more stress hormones.
3
SPEAKER_01
And thus, when you get pregnant,
3
SPEAKER_01
your fetus is gonna be exposed to more of your stress hormones and get born with an enlarged amygdala, and it goes multi-generationally.
3
SPEAKER_01
A cycle.
3
SPEAKER_03
And when they say trauma s passed down, that s a biological reason why.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
In addition to maybe also epigenome as well, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
Mom s passing down her epigenome.
3
SPEAKER_02
Am I right about that?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yep.
3
SPEAKER_01
Experience doesn t change her genes, but it changes the regulation of them.
3
SPEAKER_01
and have a whole lot of those stress hormones coming all over your fetal brain.
3
SPEAKER_01
You do epigenetic things, you futz with it so that certain on and off switches are stuck in the off position forever after and others ones in the on position and you got that out.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s part of the instructions of what kind of brain are you constructing so that you either go out and succeed or don t in the world.
3
SPEAKER_02
Of let s just say a man, he s holding a gun, he s in a riot and someone s approaching
3
SPEAKER_02
and they pull something out, it looks like it could be a gun, the man shoots, and we say...
3
SPEAKER_02
What happened one second before he shot?
3
SPEAKER_01
What most courtrooms will ask at that point is, what happened one second before?
3
SPEAKER_01
And once we know the answers to that, we re set.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did the guy intend to shoot?
3
SPEAKER_01
Did he realize what the consequences would be?
3
SPEAKER_01
Did he realize there were alternatives?
3
SPEAKER_01
He could have done something else.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the answer to all of those is yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you say, okay, that s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was intent.
3
SPEAKER_01
he should be held responsible.
3
SPEAKER_01
The problem with looking at one second before, one minute before, is you re not asking where did that intent come from in the first place, not if he had that intent at the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Where did that intent come from?
3
SPEAKER_01
It had something to do with if the guy was hungry or stressed or sleepy or afraid or happy that minute.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s got something to do with what the guy s hormone levels were this morning.
3
SPEAKER_01
If he was secreting a lot of cortisol, his frontal cortex wouldn t be very good at saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s not a handgun.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s a cell phone.
3
SPEAKER_01
Don t do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Don t do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did the guy go through a trauma in the previous couple of years?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because the structure of his brain would have changed.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you re back to adolescence and you re building the last year prefrontal cortex and childhood and culture and prenatal environment.
3
SPEAKER_01
Again, your mom s poor and already that s having an effect on your brain and your genes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then if you have this one gene, right, MAO alpha, what happens then?
3
SPEAKER_01
It comes in a couple of different flavors and studies from rats and monkeys and stuff suggested that if you had one of those flavors, you were more likely to be violent.
3
SPEAKER_01
In a courtroom, somebody even went
4
SPEAKER_00
once had somebody s sentence lessened, citing that they had the, quote, warrior gene.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then really beautiful, thorough studies looking at people where you know what their genetic makeup is, and you look at them from birth and you re saying, which of them have had antisocial violence by age 25 or so?
4
SPEAKER_00
And the answer is, if you had the bad version of that gene,
4
SPEAKER_00
were you likely to be more violent than average by the time you were an adult?
4
SPEAKER_00
And the answer was yes, if and only if you were abused as a child.
4
SPEAKER_00
It like turns that gene on almost.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, if you weren t abused, it didn t matter if you had that scary variant.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not genetic inevitability, it was genetic vulnerability, gene environment interaction stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s genes where, in principle, if you ve got the bad version, you should be more likely to get clinically depressed as an adult if and only if you went through major stress as a child.
4
SPEAKER_00
Other genes, in this culture, if you have this gene variant, you re more likely to become alcoholic than chance.
4
SPEAKER_00
But in this other culture,
4
SPEAKER_00
doesn t have any effect.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why did that person pull the trigger?
4
SPEAKER_00
And you gotta understand what was happening a second ago, and what was happening a million years ago, and everything in between, because all of that went into who that person was going to be at that instant.
4
SPEAKER_01
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
4
SPEAKER_03
from episode 567, Alice and Roman.
4
SPEAKER_03
Ever, that is the biggest takeaway.
4
SPEAKER_02
This is my moral judgment of you.
4
SPEAKER_02
Are you kidding me?
4
SPEAKER_02
Don t talk shit about people, do your thing.
4
SPEAKER_03
That was like far and away the biggest takeaway and obviously came from such like a place of insecurity and like me being protective.
4
SPEAKER_03
Maybe some jealousy.
4
SPEAKER_03
Oh my God, so much jealousy, are you kidding me?
4
SPEAKER_03
I had this like little parcel of I m the cook lady and I do the cooking and then there s like other people doing it that are like beautiful and famous and I m like, how dare they?
4
SPEAKER_03
Who gives a shit and why did I have to
4
SPEAKER_03
make a comment on that to increase my own value.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right.
4
SPEAKER_02
So that s the only thing for me.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I m like, that s a bummer.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think we d all aspire to be bigger than that.
4
SPEAKER_03
Totally.
4
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, because the two people you criticize, because they were both Asian, that was painted as a racist point of view.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, an allegation of racism, it kind of requires the New York Times or whoever to act.
4
SPEAKER_02
But again, what percentage of the world thought you were racist when they saw that?
4
SPEAKER_02
I have a hard time believing it was above .4%.
4
SPEAKER_03
I mean, my perception was it was 100%.
4
SPEAKER_03
Sure, of course.
4
SPEAKER_02
And that the whole world knew, probably, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, 100%.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s an example of being like, oh, you said something super fucking stupid, really born from a place of jealousy, childishness, insecurity, all this other stuff that s obviously not coming from a well person.
4
SPEAKER_03
And you re like, oh, that was dumb.
4
SPEAKER_03
But now you re saying it s also this other thing.
4
SPEAKER_03
So it s not as easy as being like, oh God, that was such a gaffe.
4
SPEAKER_03
It then becomes like a scarlet letter on your personhood for the rest of your life.
4
SPEAKER_03
I can see why that was interpreted that way.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I would never discount somebody saying that that s how they felt for that instance, because it was like, well, you only named two people and they happen to both be Asian.
4
SPEAKER_03
And you re like, okay, yes, I see that looks really fucking bad.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I m like, I promise you I m just jealous, petty, and stupid.
4
SPEAKER_03
I m not racist or whatever, you know?
4
SPEAKER_02
You should have thrown a Caucasian in there.
4
SPEAKER_03
I know, but you know what it was?
4
SPEAKER_02
You were just talking!
4
SPEAKER_03
Well, because Marie Kondo was on the cover of Forbes magazine that was on my kitchen table, and I had just read this article about her, literally like the night before.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I literally was cleaning out my pantry when I was giving this interview.
4
SPEAKER_03
Don t ever do that.
4
SPEAKER_03
And just like looked over and I was like, like this person and like this person.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was naming like the two most famous people I can imagine in that space.
4
SPEAKER_03
I didn t give it a fucking second thought, which was such like a frankly ignorant move on my part.
4
SPEAKER_01
And rookie mistake.
4
SPEAKER_03
Such a rookie mistake.
4
SPEAKER_03
What I interpreted in the moment as, oh, that was shitty, then almost ruined my life.
4
SPEAKER_03
You know, because of the rapid fire sort of spreading of social media.
4
SPEAKER_03
And this was also at a time where pandemic had just happened.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was very popular at the time because people were cooking a lot.
4
SPEAKER_03
And so it was like a perfect storm.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was top of mind.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was not really a celebrity.
4
SPEAKER_03
And so I was this regular person that this thing was happening to that I think encouraged more people to talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_03
It s kind of like when Julia Fox became famous.
4
SPEAKER_03
So, like, I know her.
4
SPEAKER_03
I see her at Lucien.
4
SPEAKER_03
Now she s dating Kanye.
4
SPEAKER_03
Like, people want to talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was, like, in this quote-unquote feud.
4
SPEAKER_02
Did you have defenders at that period?
4
SPEAKER_03
I m sure, but it was too dark for me to even look to see anyone I had worked with, anyone of my friends.
4
SPEAKER_03
Like, no one publicly wanted to stick their neck out because it was such an intense climate for anyone at that time.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t begrudge anybody.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like McCarthyism.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like, oh, I don t know if he was at that meeting.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I think that when people say like, oh, you weren t canceled, I sort of, I m like, well, I was.
4
SPEAKER_03
Unless you literally die, how else do we define cancellation?
4
SPEAKER_03
Because I was canceled in so far as much as that nobody would hire me for anything.
4
SPEAKER_03
I made my own work.
4
SPEAKER_03
Phone did not ring.
4
SPEAKER_03
The email box was at zero.
4
SPEAKER_03
It was dark.
4
SPEAKER_02
It was bleak.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I was like, oh, nobody s going to ever want to work with me.
4
SPEAKER_03
No one s going to hire me.
4
SPEAKER_03
So I have to then create my own ecosystem.
4
SPEAKER_02
this is a weird new phenomenon of the last 15 years.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think there needs to be examples of what is the post-cancel landscape and there s going to be advisable paths and ones that like, yeah, if you re just sitting around going, when s the such and such paper going to hire me again?
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like, yeah, you are canceled.
4
SPEAKER_03
For me, I was like, well, I have to continue to do the work, make this about the work, because I really believe in that.
4
SPEAKER_03
But also, I hope to have a very long and storied career.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_03
And that s going to be a shitty part of it.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s going to be like a divot.
4
SPEAKER_03
I can t just have a meteoric rise and ascend forever and ever, because I m a human person.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think what would be really helpful to people, because people experience much smaller versions of this, but very relatable where it s like, oh my God, my life s over.
4
SPEAKER_02
My friendship circle hates me.
4
SPEAKER_02
Whatever that core community that they have, they lose.
4
SPEAKER_02
People do that.
4
SPEAKER_02
Can you think of some turning points where there was breakthroughs?
4
SPEAKER_02
You must ve just wallowed in it for a while.
4
SPEAKER_03
It was so dark.
4
SPEAKER_03
I lost a few friends in the process that the friendships were probably a little precarious to begin with.
4
SPEAKER_03
They were mostly white women, you know, so, you know, like, okay.
4
SPEAKER_03
But one really important person to me was, like, in her wedding.
4
SPEAKER_03
I made her wedding dessert.
4
SPEAKER_03
Like, I was like, we were very close.
4
SPEAKER_03
And that was really painful.
4
SPEAKER_03
Everybody else in my life was like, I know you, I love you, I stick by you, you ll get through this.
4
SPEAKER_03
Had I not had that, I would have been a nightmare.
4
SPEAKER_03
I mean, it still was a nightmare, but it took a really, really long time to be able to leave the house with confidence.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I was really fortunate that we were wearing masks at the time because I felt like it was the only thing that protected me from this deep pit of shame every time I left the house.
4
SPEAKER_03
Because I would make eye contact with someone on the street and I d be like, they know who I am and they fucking hate me and they think I m a racist.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, I was just gonna say, it s not just that you were called a racist on its own, you re called a racist at the beginning of the BLM movement.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yes, I mean the timing.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like there s literally gonna be marches down the street where it s like high alert for racists.
4
SPEAKER_03
I know.
4
SPEAKER_02
Really bad timing across the board.
4
SPEAKER_03
I know.
4
SPEAKER_03
I wasn t like, that s not who I am.
4
SPEAKER_03
My attitude was like, I m bad.
4
SPEAKER_03
Like I m sad and bad.
4
SPEAKER_03
Like I went really inward.
4
SPEAKER_03
I made myself very small.
4
SPEAKER_03
I had zero confidence.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was so shrouded in shame.
4
SPEAKER_03
I feel like I m going to burst into tears right now, but actually.
4
SPEAKER_01
Please do.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s really good for the show.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let it rip.
4
SPEAKER_03
Monica, honestly, when people first started telling me that you were into my recipes, I was like, does she know what I did?
4
SPEAKER_03
Because, like, you re not a white lady, you know?
4
SPEAKER_03
I m like, oh, she s a smart, informed person.
4
SPEAKER_03
She must not know.
4
SPEAKER_03
Because if she did... Of course I knew.
4
SPEAKER_03
You re like, I am very online.
4
SPEAKER_03
Any time I received any sort of praise or, like, feedback from somebody that wasn t a white person, I was like, oh my God, I m not the fucking worst.
4
SPEAKER_03
Oh my God, I knew I was going to cry.
4
SPEAKER_03
Oh, Monica, I m so proud of you, and I m so happy for you, and now I m welled up.
4
SPEAKER_03
I know, we re all crying.
4
SPEAKER_03
Should we take our clothes off?
4
SPEAKER_02
Everyone s vulnerable.
4
SPEAKER_02
Where s Ben Affleck?
4
SPEAKER_02
This will be really connective.
4
SPEAKER_03
From episode 611, Neil Thies.
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people have heard of something called chaos theory, and or the geometry that goes with that, fractals.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this comes to the scaling thing, which we may come back to.
4
SPEAKER_02
So you might look at a tree in its totality.
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it s a tree.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then you might find if you carve a piece off of it and you look at it under a microscope, you might be shocked to find that the little piece of the tree actually looks almost identical to the big tree you re seeing.
4
SPEAKER_02
And that s fractals?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t even have to cut a piece off.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just look at the trunk and then see where it branches.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those each look like a trunk.
4
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
4
SPEAKER_01
Those branch into smaller branches.
4
SPEAKER_01
Each of those looks like a trunk.
4
SPEAKER_01
on and on until you get to the twigs.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the thing about fractals is that they re scale invariant.
4
SPEAKER_01
No matter how close you look, or you look at it microscopically, the way the bark is forming looks like the way the bark is forming big.
4
SPEAKER_01
Clouds from a distance look puffy, but if you go closer, you feel like, why aren t I getting closer?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because you see smaller puffs and smaller puffs.
4
SPEAKER_01
In an airplane, you can t always judge how far you are away.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so it just looks like the same thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
regardless of how close or far you are.
5
SPEAKER_01
And these geometries occur all over the place.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if you look at a satellite view of a riverbed and the way a river branches into a delta, but I can show you pictures.
5
SPEAKER_01
If I don t tell you that it s a riverbed, I could tell you, oh, this is a picture of blood vessels.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, can I tell you- And it looks the same.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you use Apple TV?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I do.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Apple TV has these great screensavers that come on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Maybe four days ago, I m watching one that is a satellite view of a river system.
5
SPEAKER_00
And at first I thought, that s so weird.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re showing us some kind of cardiovascular system.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
You had seen it one way and suddenly see it another way.
5
SPEAKER_01
People have asked me on occasion after I ve given talks on all this stuff, what s enlightenment like?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like I would know.
5
SPEAKER_01
But what I say to them is it s that moment where you thought it looked this way and then you see it that way.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s an awakening moment.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right, right, exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s all a matter of you come in with sort of assumptions about what things are and this gets into complexity theory.
5
SPEAKER_01
You hear a sound in the sky and you look up and you see a dark, funny shape.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it a balloon?
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it a ship?
5
SPEAKER_01
And then you realize, no, it s a memoration of starlings.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a flock of birds.
5
SPEAKER_00
I love the starlings.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when you look up, if you re at the right vantage point, you might look at the group of starlings and see it as one object.
5
SPEAKER_00
And now we zoom in, and what do we see?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s interacting birds.
5
SPEAKER_01
It looks like a thing, but it s not a thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s interacting smaller things.
5
SPEAKER_01
You go in deep enough to the microscopic level, and there s no starling.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s just cells interacting.
5
SPEAKER_00
We need to spend one second there.
5
SPEAKER_00
The notion that we re not one item is really abstract.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because our only interaction with it is as one cohesive unit.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s only abstract because we re trained to not see it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
And my professional training, because I m a pathologist, what that means is I look at biopsies from people s tissues under the microscope all the time.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I m seeing people at the cellular level hours every day.
5
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I live at that level of scale.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve had dreams.
5
SPEAKER_01
I never have flying dreams.
5
SPEAKER_01
Did you have flying dreams?
5
SPEAKER_00
Never had one.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course he does.
5
SPEAKER_01
I know, I m jealous.
5
SPEAKER_00
I figured.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh God, I m resentful.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I had all the flying dreams.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re the chosen person.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m the new Messiah, oh my God.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sell your businesses.
5
SPEAKER_00
I always fly just three feet off the ground though.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I don t want you guys to think I was up in the sky, like, doing somersaults.
5
SPEAKER_00
But you flew.
5
SPEAKER_00
I flew, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
So the only time I ve ever had a flying dream, I was flying over a liver slot, and I was flying in the tissue, in the valleys, up over the peaks, and part of me lives at that level of scale.
5
SPEAKER_01
My training allowed me to open up complexity theory the way I do.
5
SPEAKER_01
At the level of the cell, the bird ceases to exist.
5
SPEAKER_01
The way at the level of the bird, the flock ceased to exist.
5
SPEAKER_01
Our bodies are nothing but cells interacting with each other.
5
SPEAKER_01
Flocks of cells.
5
SPEAKER_01
Kabillions of cells.
5
SPEAKER_01
That organize themselves from the bottom up.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s no cell in the body that s figuring out, do I need to eat?
5
SPEAKER_01
Am I hungry?
5
SPEAKER_01
Do I need to sleep?
5
SPEAKER_01
Am I tired?
5
SPEAKER_01
Am I horny?
5
SPEAKER_01
Am I excited?
5
SPEAKER_01
Am I depressed?
5
SPEAKER_01
They re all just doing their thing, interacting with each other at the local level.
5
SPEAKER_01
Someone told me that starlings pay attention to seven other starlings around them.
5
SPEAKER_01
If that s the correct number, how they got to it is you can computer model
5
SPEAKER_01
all these things.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s what led to chaos theory and complexity, is once you had computers, you could model how things interact over time.
5
SPEAKER_01
Any one cell changes how it s going to behave, the whole system is going to change.
5
SPEAKER_01
So in Buddhist terms, that s interdependence, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
That the way the world exists depends on every single tiny piece of it, and they re all connected to each other.
5
SPEAKER_01
and the slightest change down here can yield vast changes.
5
SPEAKER_01
A significant difference between complex systems and chaos is that complex systems always have a little bit of randomness in their system.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is really key.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that makes them predictably unpredictable.
5
SPEAKER_01
Chaos was predictably predictable.
5
SPEAKER_01
Complexity, you can t ever tell where it s going.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the importance of this low-level randomness, I often use ant colonies.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I was sitting in a zen garden in Kyoto once, and there was a wisteria branch in front of me, and there were ants going up the wisteria branch, two columns of ants going up and one column of ants coming down.
5
SPEAKER_01
And after that trip, I came home and I went into the subway at Delancey and Essex in New York City, Lower East Side.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s a stairwell there that s particularly wide compared to most subway systems.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was rush hour and there were two columns of people going up the outside and one column of people coming down.
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SPEAKER_01
And none of them knew what they were doing, any more than the ants knew what they were doing.
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They were all just, I ve got to go home and get dinner together.
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Oh, I ve got a meeting I have to go to.
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Oh, I can t wait to go home and sleep.
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Yeah, there s no rule to walk this way.
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And yet it was arising.
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And this is what complex systems do.
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We call that emergent self-organization.
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If you remember from Star Trek, matter and antimatter, let s say an electron and a positron.
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A positron is an electron, but with a positive charge.
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If they hit each other, they annihilate and become energy again.
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So you have these particles popping up and self-annihilating and sinking back down into the energy field.
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So that s called the quantum foam.
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I love that.
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This idea that the smallest levels of scale, it s just this bubbling, seething foam of particles coming in and out of existence.
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Sometimes those particles don t self-annihilate.
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Sometimes they survive long enough to interact with each other.
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When they do that, what are they doing?
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They re interacting.
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And they fulfill all the principles of a complex system, all four rules.
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So they interact with each other to become larger subatomic particles.
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Those interact to become atoms, to become molecules, to become cells and everything else in the entire universe.
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So the entire universe is one complex system and there is no thing identifiable anywhere that is in fact a thing.
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Because at the lowest level of scale, it s just the quantum foam.
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Foam, quantum foam.
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I gotta get some of that.
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I d like to order some off Amazon.
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I d like to do a shot of quantum foam every morning and kick things into high gear.
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But we are quantum foam.
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Sure, sure.
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There s no piece of us that isn t quantum foam.
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You already have it.
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I want more of everything I have though.
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This is very consistent with my personality type.
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I want more quantum foam.
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So this is where we go next.
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This is how you get all the quantum fun.
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Oh, I got it.
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I see the segue coming.
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Right.
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You look at an ant colony from a distance and it looks like a thing.
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You go in closer and it s just ants.
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Then you go into the ants closer and it s just cells.
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At different levels of scale, you have a different appearance.
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What else changes as you go across scales?
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So at this level of scale, there are four people in this room.
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We are separate and our edges are our skin.
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And that s the way we grow up thinking of ourselves.
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Yeah, we have like boundaries.
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Right.
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But when you go down to the cellular level, where are your boundaries?
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So the first thing is that you re sloughing dead skin cells off the top of your skin all the time.
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And that s a lot of the dust in our rooms, which is really a little disgusting when you think about it.
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We just had the grossest episode of our life with someone that rented an Airbnb and their psoriasis over the course of two months.
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The person thought that someone had taken a bag of flour and thrown it all over the room.
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And we were like, whoa.
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Perfect.
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Yeah.
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So where is the boundary of that person with psoriasis?
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Where are our boundaries?
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It s at least the space that you sit in.
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Your homes, your offices, et cetera.
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But that s dead stuff.
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Now we know about the microbiome.
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And we each have signature microbiomes that are our own microbiome.
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The ultimate fingerprint.
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Except that if you have people you live with and pets like cats and dogs, for example,
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Within a short time, your microbiomes merge into a single microbiome.
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Like a household microbiome.
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Like a household microbiome.
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What?
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Oh, here we go.
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And everything you touch, you re leaving microbiome behind and you pick it up from other people.
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So you kiss someone.
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Microbiome exchange.
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You touch a doorknob and someone else touches that doorknob.
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Microbiome exchange.
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Keyboards, pencils, forks, knives, couches.
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And so, where are your boundaries at the cellular level?
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Your boundaries are at least as wide as the spaces you inhabit.
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So, at the lower level of scale, our boundaries got out further.
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That s a spatial version, but how about in time?
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If you take your body and all your cells, your human cells, and go back to yesterday, all your current cells derived from cells yesterday.
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If you go back 10 years, they derive from those cells.
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If you go back to your teenage years, from those.
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All in continuity, no separation.
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Go back to your childhood years, your toddler years, your infant years.
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And then you re-enter your mother s womb and you go back to being an embryo and you go back to that sperm and that egg.
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And that egg in your mom was present in her body at the time she was born.
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There s no separation between you, your mom, your grandmother.
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Keep going back.
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Go back 300,000 years to when we weren t even Homo sapiens, we re Homo erectus.
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Back to Homo habilis.
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Yeah, thank you.
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Australopithecine apherensis.
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That s farther than I can go.
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But then all the way back to early animals, down to, as best as we can tell, there was a single cell progenitor.
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I know we even like to compartmentalize evolution.
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We like to think of it as having all this punctuation.
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Right.
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There s no separation.
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There are no boundaries.
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So at the cellular level in time, we re part of the whole biomass of the planet.
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Everything alive, right.
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Well, there s no atom in our body that we didn t breathe, eat, or drink from the planet.
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So we can think of ourselves as these beings that are separate walking around on top of this rock we call planet Earth, or we are the Earth that has, at the atomic level, self-organized its atoms over three and a half billion years to people who have the misconception that they re separate.
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But in fact, our boundary is the entire planet.
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And what science tells us we are
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isn t the materialist view that says, oh, we re independent individuals and politically, oh, we should all have certain freedoms, et cetera.
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All of that s true at this level of scale, but it s also true that we are simply expressions of the universe in every moment, and we are seamless and not separate from each other.