0
SPEAKER_00
Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m thrilled to welcome today s guest, Kate Bowler, host of the podcast Everything Happens and the author of numerous bestselling books.
0
SPEAKER_00
Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
0
SPEAKER_00
On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we re here.
0
SPEAKER_00
Pulling the Thread is about big questions.
0
SPEAKER_00
Why we do what we do, how we can understand our own experiences within a larger spiritual and historical context, the ways in which we might begin to understand ourselves and each other better, and what s required to heal ourselves and our world.
0
SPEAKER_00
I ll be joined in conversation by luminaries and wise elders, those who have laid tracks on their work and lives to help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming.
0
SPEAKER_00
My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m really hopeful that we re evolving past our very hyper individualistic understanding of like, my health, wealth and happiness is the great goal, is the great goal.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that we re trying to like fold in a more collective and I hope generous sense that like,
0
SPEAKER_01
Our, our, our, our lives will require love, our lives will require courage and interdependence, you know, and that that s, it s probably going to never follow along any of our, our demographic
0
SPEAKER_01
political, religious, sociocultural dreams that advertising companies have for us.
0
SPEAKER_01
But instead, it s going to require a very collective sense of what can we become.
0
SPEAKER_00
So says Kate Bowler.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it s not without a dose of irony that Professor Kate Bowler, a prolific historian and author about the prosperity gospel, was diagnosed with stage four cancer at the age of 35.
0
SPEAKER_00
After all, her work had revolved around parsing a spiritual point of view that if you were a good person, a good Christian, good things would invariably happen, like wealth and health.
0
SPEAKER_00
From this diagnosis, she wrote a best-selling book, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lives I ve Loved, and added an entirely new dimension to her scholarship at Duke.
0
SPEAKER_00
She s now in remission and the host of the Everything Happens podcast and has written several more bestsellers, including books of devotionals like The Lives We Actually Have and Good Enough.
0
SPEAKER_00
In today s conversation, we covered a lot of ground, the inherent goodness of people, when we rise to the occasion and when we don t, and whether evil as an absolute exists.
0
SPEAKER_00
Okay, let s get to our conversation.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hey, congratulations.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m so happy for you.
0
SPEAKER_01
You have just crushed this last season.
0
SPEAKER_00
Every time I see something with you in it and your beautiful face, I just feel joy.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, I feel like I m just I m following or I m trying to follow in your footsteps.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how you re minting these books so fast.
0
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I wrote about you in the final chapter because of your ability to sort of both visibly experience so many things simultaneously and almost instantaneously.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m halfway through, so that gives me an exciting, very narcissistic ending.
0
SPEAKER_00
So thank you, my love.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s so nice.
0
SPEAKER_00
Hopefully you think I do you justice.
0
SPEAKER_00
You and Nora are in there.
0
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to do something slightly different and not like break formats or anything like that, but write a book for not a space like in the market.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t like that sort of, but I wanted to write something that would be hard to quantify.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it about culture or religion or spirituality or
0
SPEAKER_00
agnosticism?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it about men or women?
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it s the sort of book, I think, too, where I worked really hard to bring together all these disparate thinkers and threads and weave them together.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I feel like for the really hardcore academic, they ll read it and be like, this is fun.
0
SPEAKER_00
And for some women, it s like, oh, I ve never actually even attempted nonfiction.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I did it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so it sort of lives in its own
0
SPEAKER_00
space, if that makes sense.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it really does.
0
SPEAKER_01
I do really I like that a lot.
0
SPEAKER_01
It does like open up then what we re allowed to do and then what other people I mean, just to not create yet another
0
SPEAKER_01
how-to book where someone, you know, re-describes the ending of Good Will Hunting, and then, you know, like, it just... I think it s kind of wonderful to feel interdisciplinary.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I do always think that at the beginning and at the end of the book, I always go, what three disciplines does this... What three primary set of sources did this draw from?
0
SPEAKER_01
And I always like the fact that the answer is, like, not the normal ones.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, like, cultural history.
0
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like, personal experience.
0
SPEAKER_01
And for me, usually, like, some kind of iteration of... kind of, like, historical theology.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then for them, I m like, great.
0
SPEAKER_01
Done.
0
SPEAKER_01
Super.
0
SPEAKER_01
I don t... I mean, it s not somebody else s brain.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s just one that s my little... that s my little braid.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I like having a little braid.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think it s really important, and I feel this way about your work, too, in that it puts... at least it puts me a little bit...
0
SPEAKER_00
It s not on my back foot, but I like work where I m like, I don t know exactly what Kate believes.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t actually know.
0
SPEAKER_00
As much as you are revealing about your life and the way that you ve processed and the things that you ve studied and where you come from,
0
SPEAKER_00
but there s something that is certainly not prescriptive, even as you re offering blessings.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s nice.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, thanks for saying that.
0
SPEAKER_00
I do.
0
SPEAKER_01
I have been reading a lot of, I know people love a good list and people love a good inventory, personal inventory.
0
SPEAKER_01
But man, it is really nice to kind of swim around in someone s brain without having felt like they just gave you a prescriptive list.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, and it would be so antithetical to everything that you stand for, which is in a way,
0
SPEAKER_00
how do you make friends with uncertainty and how do you get comfortable with darkness and loss and hard moments and not only maintain your sense of humor but also stay open to go to dig deeper and rather than
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, totally.
0
SPEAKER_01
Become the certainty police.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the certainty police is very compelling, but it is such a lie.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s so true.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s so true.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s so funny.
0
SPEAKER_00
So how are you?
0
SPEAKER_00
How s your health?
0
SPEAKER_00
How are you?
0
SPEAKER_00
Everything seems gangbusters, which is probably overwhelming in its own way.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m feeling really good right now.
0
SPEAKER_01
I just had a good scan a couple of weeks ago.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I ve got to wait and have one other little procedure and kind of find out where I m at.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I think I m in a really good spot.
0
SPEAKER_01
So that is.
0
SPEAKER_01
I can always feel sort of the horizon open up when that happens.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so I m feeling really good.
0
SPEAKER_01
This last year was harder than I wished it were because I had this just brutal year of chronic pain where I had, because of all the abdominal surgeries I ve had, it just kept, it just kind of pushed over a set of dominoes.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so I really only had about 45 minutes of clear brain space a day.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that made me very,
0
SPEAKER_01
Is it happening?
0
SPEAKER_01
Is it happening now?
0
SPEAKER_01
Do I have to concentrate?
0
SPEAKER_01
But I found ways to kind of fill that time with something creative and good.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then the rest of the time, honestly, I was just trying to get through as best I could.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I feel great that so much of that is cleared up.
0
SPEAKER_01
I just feel kind of like a brand new little baby.
0
SPEAKER_00
Really?
0
SPEAKER_00
So the pain has dissipated.
0
SPEAKER_00
And did you ever figure out what it was?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I ve been doing like a nutso regimen of different kinds of physical therapy and trying to mash it together.
0
SPEAKER_01
And just I had a theory about if I combined a couple things and did these appointments like multiple times a day, I was like, I bet you anything it ll work.
0
SPEAKER_01
But it s just me trying to gerrymander my own kind of care.
0
SPEAKER_01
But then it worked.
0
SPEAKER_01
So it took about three months for me to even just be able to drop the amount of intense pain meds I was on.
0
SPEAKER_01
But then all of a sudden, the fog clears.
0
SPEAKER_01
A brain works again.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then I just felt just gloriously new.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m still in it.
0
SPEAKER_01
I still do a lot of appointments, but I just I m so much better than I was even a few months ago.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, good.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, Kate.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you re such a fascinating person to watch in the world for all of these reasons.
1
SPEAKER_03
your ability to hold conflicting ideas simultaneously and move through them and reflect them back to us.
1
SPEAKER_03
Obviously, I think you become sort of a beacon.
1
SPEAKER_03
How do you think, obviously, however many years ago, you would never have said, like, this is the space, this is my like, this is my cabin in the culture, come hither.
1
SPEAKER_02
Totally.
1
SPEAKER_02
No, never.
1
SPEAKER_02
I never would have thought that.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s true.
1
SPEAKER_02
And also just because at the beginning, when I first started writing about like, feeling exiled from the world of health, wealth and happiness,
1
SPEAKER_02
I think I was also just so lonely that the second I started to feel the companionship of having ideas and then being able to share them with other people, that was just so wonderfully addicting.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because I ve made most of my good friends and sort of emotional, intellectual companions for the journey just by doing this work out loud.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s just funny that it s changed my life so much, you know, in terms of my, like, network of friends or even just imagining the kind of books I would write.
1
SPEAKER_02
I never, ever, ever, ever, ever would have presumed to write, like, even more, like, a book of blessings or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because before, I was so disciplined into, like, Kate Bowler, you will stay in your lane and your lane is you re an effing historian and you will write... Those books take six years and you will sit alone until they re done.
1
SPEAKER_02
So this has been actually a much less lonely, much friendlier way of kind of sharing the ideas.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
And obviously sort of the great irony, right, that you were a historian specifically of prosperity gospel and this idea of like goodness,
1
SPEAKER_03
precedes all the good things of life, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
They re tethered together and then you have a much more complex experience.
1
SPEAKER_03
And then it s interesting just even thinking about who you are and who you re becoming and who you ve been for people.
1
SPEAKER_03
And this idea of everything happens for a reason in other lives I ve loved and no cure for being human, which is another gorgeous book.
1
SPEAKER_03
But it s also, I want to say, like, maybe everything does happen for a reason on some sort of grander scale, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
Like, there is some sort of... Your love for me in saying that, I really feel it because you re like, look, you have stuck a landing on being in a vocationally open space.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I do feel like everything s meaningful.
1
SPEAKER_02
You know, but it s different than saying that everything s causal.
1
SPEAKER_02
Because I have felt like, you know, I spent my whole 20s interviewing televangelists and megachurch preachers and learning all about this very intense
1
SPEAKER_02
religious world called the prosperity gospel, which does say that everything is super hypercausal.
1
SPEAKER_02
You do this, if you re good, good things will happen to you.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you re bad, bad things will happen to you.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so, good luck person who gets stage four cancer.
1
SPEAKER_02
Good luck.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so,
1
SPEAKER_02
I am wanting to move away from that, because I mean, the burden of that is that all of our choices then feel so fraught and then we feel like we re always trying to, you know, we were just sort of like in our we look in our hands and all of a sudden we re like.
1
SPEAKER_02
Our hands are full of puzzle pieces that don t fit and then we re just trying to like mash them in because otherwise we won t get that beautiful feeling we get when we look at the big picture.
1
SPEAKER_02
But I totally agree, though, my love, that like we do sometimes end up with these mountaintop moments where we get to look back and say,
1
SPEAKER_02
Man, some things really came together so beautifully that I couldn t have orchestrated, but now I feel the coherence of.
1
SPEAKER_02
So being able to be an expert in one thing that I genuinely did learn lessons from in the end.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_03
Well, it s interesting, too, to think about your books, which are largely memoir, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
But they re also in the context of you as a historian.
1
SPEAKER_03
And in writing, you know, my own book, that is a blend, and you re contextualizing my own life against this larger backdrop, which is similar, I think, to what you do, but
1
SPEAKER_03
Also for you to say, okay, I m gonna be a historian here, a diagnosing abstract from a place of remove about this corner of Christianity, and then to actually be sort of drawn by the nose forcefully into it is also quite cosmic to actually have to go into it and to bring insert yourself into sort of the, this version that doesn t,
1
SPEAKER_03
align with most of our lived experience, unless you re Joel Osteen and you have like $1,500 million, I don t know, and a lot of Ferraris and Porsches.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes, I do think that was the big, I guess what happened with
1
SPEAKER_02
cancer and with the feeling of the limitations of my own life was, it felt like a grand humbling.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like, Kate, whatever you thought you were going to get to do, you know, with your 80 years of academic life and your grateful fleet of graduate students and your many, many leather-bound
1
SPEAKER_02
books, I really, I had a very clear, clean ladder-like sense of how it was supposed to go.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then to have that all wiped away, but then in that leveling, feels so much more of like a sense of real purpose in like, well, now that I m here,
1
SPEAKER_02
Now that I m Ariel style, where the people are, I felt so much more interconnected and then in a way so much freer to say, well, now that I m here, what else can we learn when life comes undone?
1
SPEAKER_02
And that sense of then connection with other people, I do think has probably been the most meaningful
1
SPEAKER_02
part of my life.
1
SPEAKER_02
And now I can t even imagine.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I ve now spent maybe five years being able to, like when I go somewhere, I get to hear all of these stories of other people whose lives come undone.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that very horizontal, cracked open sense of the world has honestly totally changed how I think and I hope how I interact.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m Rachel Martin.
1
SPEAKER_00
After hosting Morning Edition for years, I know that the news can wear you down.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we made a new podcast called Wildcard, where a special deck of cards and a whole bunch of fascinating guests help us sort out what makes life meaningful.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s part game show, part existential deep dive, and it is seriously fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
Join me on Wildcard, wherever you get your podcasts, only from NPR.
1
SPEAKER_03
As you re speaking, it s like that s also the story of what you ve studied at its source, right?
1
SPEAKER_03
Like the great everyone, you know, leaving everything or losing everything, being cast into the desert, like deep despair is sort of the heart of all of the, you know, Judeo-Christian religions.
1
SPEAKER_03
How do you think about, I don t even know
1
SPEAKER_03
Interestingly, like reading your books and then knowing sort of some of your interests.
1
SPEAKER_03
I loved your conversation with Elaine Pagels.
1
SPEAKER_03
I love her and her work.
1
SPEAKER_03
How do you define your faith and where do you find, what interests you?
1
SPEAKER_03
Like what draws you in deeper?
1
SPEAKER_02
That s such a big, lovely question.
1
SPEAKER_02
I m, I mean, I m very Jesus-y.
1
SPEAKER_02
So there s, which is to say, I feel the hilarious tension of having like big cosmic beliefs about things, God is love, etc, etc.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then also constantly being drawn into the
1
SPEAKER_02
absurd and wonderful particularity of like one dude story.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think what s so funny about revelatory religion, right, is we feel like we get a story and then we re supposed to peer through a keyhole at all of the at the rest of life.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that is, I guess, what I find so
1
SPEAKER_02
compelling about, you know, I ve studied Christian history for a long time and I guess that s what I find so compelling about the story about how we learn to belong in the community of faith is
1
SPEAKER_02
We are, you know, we re called to a really small set of claims about love of neighbor and a God who will never be separated from us and a story about how somehow God completes and saves the world despite our many, many apocalypses and how we re like determined to destroy ourselves and everyone around us.
1
SPEAKER_01
I guess I find those set of themes
1
SPEAKER_02
endlessly fascinating over and over and over again.
1
SPEAKER_02
So like, and it s usually the same set of questions like, well, then what does it mean to be
2
SPEAKER_00
a person of hope?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or what does it mean to have courage?
2
SPEAKER_00
How much in the face of unknowing does it require that we constantly get back up again?
2
SPEAKER_00
God, why do you keep requiring interdependence of me?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not good at it, and I don t like it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then how much do we get broken down and broken in by learning how to be defined by love?
2
SPEAKER_00
And like those four little themes, I swear to God, I am interested in them spiritually, intellectually, forever and always.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s, I think, fundamentally how I think about what are the big sort of notes in the song of what I hope is Christian faith.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
I also love Jesus and grew up... My dad s Jewish, and I had this white bread version, Wonder Bread version of Jesus where I was like... And you hear... I just grew up in the soup of
2
SPEAKER_01
Parents who would probably call themselves atheists, but a deep reverence and connection to nature and this feeling of like, I ve been here before.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t believe I m here again.
2
SPEAKER_01
Why?
2
SPEAKER_01
And then also just sort of a presencing, a feeling of not aloneness.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s only in recent years have I even come to sort of pay attention to Jesus and what he was saying and then start to separate it from the stories that have been told in the centuries since or the way that he s been defined or, you know, and I m like, all right, he didn t write, he didn t
2
SPEAKER_01
commit these things to pay like this is a game of telephone a cultural game and what was lost and what have we gotten wrong and how has he been translated or interpreted in ways that he s been weaponized where it s like that s not actually anything has nothing to do with what he said and his aphorisms yeah and to what he did in the world is quite stunning yeah yeah who do you who do you like to read besides sort of
2
SPEAKER_01
Who do you think that tells a nuanced, compelling version of history that might be slightly truer?
2
SPEAKER_01
Who do you look to for sources?
2
SPEAKER_00
I guess this one is easy for me only because I work in a divinity school, so it s a lot of me wandering up and down a hallway being like, Warren!
2
SPEAKER_00
Warren, what do we think about original sin?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like Warren comes out with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s a lot of, that s a little bit of threading for me.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I guess one of the, and it is also part of the, so when students come in and they either want to be, you know, they ve nonprofit workers or social workers or
2
SPEAKER_00
a lot of chaplains, and many want to be pastors or some kind of academic.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we do teach these big kind of history courses.
2
SPEAKER_00
And those ones are always the time when I get a chance to kind of, like, rehearse and retest my own, like, knowledge and assumptions.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because I m not a Bible scholar, but I love Bible scholars.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, for instance, I interviewed one just recently, N.T.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wright.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he writes really beautiful, he ll always write like a big, fat academic book, and then he ll write the same book.
2
SPEAKER_00
in an accessible way, which God bless him for it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But he blew my mind last week when he was saying that there s this verse that s the equivalent of everything happens for a reason in the way that people read it.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s Romans 8, 28, and it s that God works, you know, for the good of all those who love him.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s how it usually reads.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that sounds like, oh, gosh, like, you know, if you are good, then God will divinely conspire to make all the details work out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that sounds
2
SPEAKER_00
really nice and also something I m pretty sure I don t agree with.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, oh, no, no, no.
2
SPEAKER_00
The actual translation is like, God works alongside all those, you know, who love him.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was like this, it was this wonderful translation of the cooperation God wants to have with all those who are trying to do good for others.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, no, this is actually the right translation.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I love a good Bible scholar for helping me.
2
SPEAKER_00
But so people like that really do encourage and inspire and challenge my own assumptions that I know what I m reading.
2
SPEAKER_00
I also just really, really like historical theology, which is basically like just, you know, history of theological ideas over time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do read a lot of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
But in those cases, I usually just read my friends, Warren Smith, Stephen Chavin, you know, people I work with.
2
SPEAKER_01
It is anyone who s listening, regardless of whether you consider yourself interested in religion or not, I do think it s eye-opening.
2
SPEAKER_01
Just those subtle distinctions between a God, as you said, who s sort of doing things for you as long as you re obedient in your goodness, versus a God, a universe that is co-conspiring and co-creating.
2
SPEAKER_01
And maybe it s not what you would choose, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
You would never like look at the menu and say like, yes, stage four cancer, young child at home, perfect.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And yet at the same time, like one of the sort of stunning things about this like living project, being on this planet is what we experience, what we endure,
2
SPEAKER_01
and what we become rather than like a linear life, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Perfectly said.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is so perfectly said.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh.
2
SPEAKER_00
I could not agree with that more.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s, it s not fun necessarily.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not fun, necessarily, will be my new memoir title.
2
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for that.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not always a great time.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it is meaningful, you know, and it s interesting, too.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if you ve ever interviewed Pauline Boss, who wrote, she coined that term ambiguous loss.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so she s written
2
SPEAKER_01
several academic books about it, but sort of came up with this idea, these losses that are not so easily codified, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And certainly not necessarily recognized as cultural rights, where you re like,
2
SPEAKER_01
oh, there s a funeral because there s a body, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s like victims of 9-11, IA s, extreme homesickness, like before the time of telecommunication, ghosting, miscarriage, etc.
2
SPEAKER_01
And she talks about sort of the essential quality of meaning making in terms of people being able to reorient themselves.
2
SPEAKER_01
And yet,
2
SPEAKER_01
certain things in life have no meaning and that inherently is a meaning, which I thought was so beautiful because she s saying, you know, she s like, you can t say your child is murdered.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re not supposed to like find the meaning, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Find the value, but like meaningless is a meaning, which is so hard.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a really nice, like, set.
2
SPEAKER_00
Parsing those things, I do think that s really good, hard work for all of us when we are trying to decide, like, what stories we tell ourselves about why something happened.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because sometimes, depending on, like, the nature of our burden, we need to tell different stories.
2
SPEAKER_00
People with, you know, addiction write to me all the time and say,
2
SPEAKER_00
There s parts of this story that I need to be able to say, I can act my way out of.
2
SPEAKER_00
This happened because I made these choices.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then there are parts, of course, that happened to me, the likes of which I could never have set up.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so when we re always trying to decide what does something mean, to me, the next always inevitable question is like, how then do I act now that I know?
2
SPEAKER_00
And in some cases, you kind of just have to like,
2
SPEAKER_00
turn to face the abyss for a hot minute where you re like, oh, I didn t get to choose.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then the other times we have to then say, what do I have now such that I can choose the next beautiful, difficult, hard, lovely thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And watching people make those choices, it creates awe in me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Every time I see someone like take a horrible thing and then figure out that next little sliver of agency, I could watch that all day.
2
SPEAKER_01
this is hard to tease out, but you think about our animal nature, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like the very qualities of humanness, like our fear, our response to threat, the ways in which we are mammalian, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like that we are just animals on this planet trying to make good choices.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then those moments when we can sort of,
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Not overcome, but those transcendent states where you do begin to affect the world and not be affected by the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s that dance.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think so often we also just want to like affect the world, control certainty, instead of saying like, well, you re going to be dropping
2
SPEAKER_01
You re living in both, friends.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re not masters of the world, unfortunately.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
As much as we constantly want to quote unquote overcome, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
or get over something or get on top of something.
3
SPEAKER_02
How do you, in those moments where you feel fear, where you feel your animal nature, where you don t get to be transcendent, how do you?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s a perfect way of putting it.
3
SPEAKER_01
What are those moments when you are not in any way transcendent?
3
SPEAKER_01
When you are made of plastic and garbage and ice cream.
3
SPEAKER_02
How do you work with your fear?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because some things hit what I think of as like the emergency button, capital E, capital B, you know, where you re like pull a thread and then you re like not wearing a sweater anymore.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re like, oh God.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I have some of those buttons where for a bit nothing seems louder to me than
3
SPEAKER_00
This is awful.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is terrible.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can t figure this out.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m never going to overcome this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ve had feelings like that recently where I realized it s like a particular cord that gets mashed.
3
SPEAKER_00
Usually it s like urgency.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh no, I have limited time and it might be too late.
3
SPEAKER_00
The feeling of like withdrawal of something I could never get back.
3
SPEAKER_00
you know, a relationship is gone, a thing is over, a dream has died, that kind of feeling.
3
SPEAKER_00
So like urgency plus a lot of loss, plus then my immediate shame and it s like, bam, bam, bam, and then it s over.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I find that my fear is so loud.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I have loved in those moments,
3
SPEAKER_00
Having the kind of friends who are not just friends, but they re like a witness to your life where they say Oh love these buttons feel really familiar to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know it really feels like you can t make a choice right now I just want to affirm that like it does feel that urgent that is a real loss I know it feels like you can t do something next so that has really helped me get past the
3
SPEAKER_00
initial like flooding feeling that fear can bring.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think the other bit I ve just been trying to learn is that not all fear feels the same.
3
SPEAKER_00
And for a bit, the harder my life got, the more I kind of mushed them up and put them all in the same bag.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I ve been scared of cancer treatment for such a long time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel sort of hyper alert.
3
SPEAKER_00
I get really... And then, you know,
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, like I used to have to travel all the time for medical travel.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I d walk into an airport and I d be like, my skin would prickle.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would just, I was having these like just awful saliva run thin kind of feeling.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I realized, I think you need to start like learning a clearer vocabulary for fear.
3
SPEAKER_00
There could be thrill, there could be excitement, there could be anxiousness, there could be physical worry, there could be just hyper anticipation.
3
SPEAKER_00
I started doing dumb things like zip lining, because I d cry half the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I was like, oh, no, this is actually just you metabolizing fear.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or I talk to people about their scary experiences.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I try to ask them, because I find sometimes that, just like you, just the right word can kind of help shade out some of the different colors of how scary fear is on a cellular level to us.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
No, I think about it too as, and I think maybe this is the invitation of this next stage of my life as someone who really has had my stuff together and have experienced gradations of loss.
3
SPEAKER_02
But nothing catastrophic, although I think that the story of humanity is like nothing is catastrophic until you re dead.
3
SPEAKER_02
And then even then, is that a catastrophe?
3
SPEAKER_02
We don t know, right?
3
SPEAKER_02
Maybe it s just an invitation.
3
SPEAKER_02
But I think too about just
3
SPEAKER_02
fear of darkness, fear of chaos, fear of allowing, and the way that culturally we ve assigned so many values to the night, to darkness, to the womb, the void, whatever you wanna call it, and it s like, well, what if we actually just go into it?
3
SPEAKER_02
What happens?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like that a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, what happens if we just take that little extra half step toward it?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, sometimes, sometimes we find that we re really not that bad at it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it takes a minute for our eyes to adjust to the light, but like... I mean, people all the time that...
3
SPEAKER_00
were positive that they could never possibly, you know, thrive with that little, you know, love, water, light, like all the things that you imagine makes life, that natural growth.
3
SPEAKER_00
But man, are people a wonder when they are stripped down to the studs.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think people find that they are capable of incredible love for other people, that their suddenly very like empathy just gets like turned right up because they know the burdens of their own pain.
3
SPEAKER_00
I find that people are really then attuned to what life doesn t require anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
Turns out email would probably be the first, really the first thing to go.
3
SPEAKER_00
in that universe.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think darkness, ironically, has such a bright quality to it when we kind of just scoot up a little closer.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, and it s like the yin-yang, like the counter polarities, like things doesn t exist.
3
SPEAKER_02
Lightness doesn t exist without darkness and shadow.
3
SPEAKER_02
And we re so scared of it.
3
SPEAKER_02
And yet at the same time, it s like, this is our invitation to wholeness.
3
SPEAKER_02
All of the stuff that we re afraid of is what completes this whole project.
3
SPEAKER_00
I guess I always worry about becoming brittle, you know, because I think I like did kind of a good job with the initial horror show that was
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I was like, oh, I learned my lessons.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then I have been a little worried that like, gosh, having that kind of like buoyancy you re describing where you can just kind of soften up in it rather than be like, good God, I did this before.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve already become this person.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to do it again.
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I kind of wonder if survival is like doing what you re describing for the fourth time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Both to the first or second, which did feel character building.
3
SPEAKER_02
How do you think about qualities like, you know, sort of thinking of this idea of goodness, like good and prosperity.
3
SPEAKER_02
If you re good, good things happen.
3
SPEAKER_02
If you re bad, bad things happen.
3
SPEAKER_02
What do you think is badness?
3
SPEAKER_02
What do you do you think that evil exists?
3
SPEAKER_02
What?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
How would you even?
3
SPEAKER_02
What is that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
In your worldview?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I do think evil exists, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I, there s, there s just like a, there is a lovely theological term for it that I ve always found really satisfying.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s because most of ours, I think secular paradigm for good and bad is, you know, we can put all kinds of things on that spectrum.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think we imagine in our culture that like,
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, we imagine like in very therapeutic terms, like self-expression, individuation, you know, and then maybe some like bonus service.
3
SPEAKER_00
But like that for the most part, there s kind of a flowering self-expression.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then the bad bit would be like deformation into, you know, groupthink or oppression or
3
SPEAKER_00
you know, like a lack of self-expression.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I guess I still really like the growth paradigm that the therapeutic has really taught us, but I really, really like the theological term for growth that is sanctification, that we really can
3
SPEAKER_00
sort of in becoming more fully ourselves and more fully human, that we are simultaneously hopefully sort of like sloughing off some of the bullshit that then really does comprise evil, selfishness, instrumentalization, oppression, lack of justice, you know, all the things that are like... So I do like the sense that progress
3
SPEAKER_00
can be, and that s why I love the language of holiness.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like we can, that we can grow more sacred as we become more human, but that does require the opposite of it, which is that we can, yeah, just also devolve.
3
SPEAKER_00
And oftentimes that s, tragedy does that too.
3
SPEAKER_00
We just become a real dick having realized scarcity of resources.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re like, good, I ll get mine.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that I think turns away from other
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think that s beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_02
And like in a Jungian matter, you just think about like the dense shadow.
3
SPEAKER_02
And I agree.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think our job as humans is to own those shadowy parts, recognize we re all capable of evil, fear, being pushed by fear, scarcity into behaviors that we would condemn in others.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that it s our job to sort of be present with that and to be alchemist, like just exposing that shadow to light, moving it, processing it, getting bigger, getting more whole, not by disavowing those parts, but by owning them and recognizing you can t escape these human instincts.
4
SPEAKER_01
They are part of us.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think we get into trouble.
4
SPEAKER_01
when we sort of otherize evil, we turn it into Satan or whatever, and maybe that exists.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t understand it in the model of like, if God is everything, then isn t that God too?
4
SPEAKER_01
How do you understand that sort of this, we re not gonna be trapped by Satan, this war that we have with
4
SPEAKER_01
evil or the bad people over there, sort of this binary instinct.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about that?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, because I spent a weird, you are like encroaching on a part of my brain that is like, I really love to talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I spent so long, I mean, gosh, at least 15 years in a part of Christianity that does talk a lot about Satan and evil.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I ve seen exorcisms.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve had people try to exorcise me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m weirdly chill.
4
SPEAKER_00
You and I are wired very similarly.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because there s like a very ethnographic interest in everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I m like, Oh, sure, what s going on?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, no, please stop trying to cast cast these demons out of me, which just happened, like, like, at least half a dozen times.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I guess I have thought a lot about how people spiritually describe what they think evil and then the personification of that would be in their mind, which is could be, you know, demonic spirits or Satan and
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think so much of it comes from, yeah, like an oppositional sense of like, God is love, God is whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
So therefore, why do we, like what you described before, like the presencing?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s such a, that s a perfect word.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so why does it feel sometimes like the things that undo us are so compelling that they feel like they overtake us?
4
SPEAKER_00
And so the personification of evil becomes such a natural inclination.
4
SPEAKER_00
It also helps us have compassion for people who seem overtaken by things that are so terrible that we need another answer to like, but how?
4
SPEAKER_00
How could they possibly have done that?
4
SPEAKER_00
And it helps us ritualize and separate from things that do take our lives apart.
4
SPEAKER_00
So people then talk about, you know, I m not saying it s helpful, but demonization of like physical ailments.
4
SPEAKER_00
In one way, it s also trying to affirm the goodness of what someone is supposed to be.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it kind of has a really interesting effect on groups and how we think about our deepest dreams for our lives that we could be whole and healthy.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I think we ve all met people where we re like, what has taken over?
4
SPEAKER_00
Who is driving that bus?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think it s an easier answer for people to say forces that are beyond them.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you personally have any, I mean, it s like a question that s consuming for me unsurprisingly, where I m like, is there, what is it?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I recognize it as extreme shadow and also as like an archetypal energy or force that can be very distorting.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that I could say like it has a, I can t quite anthropomorphize it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I hear you.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love that this worries you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think about this stuff, too, a lot.
4
SPEAKER_01
It actually worries me, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, you see it, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
You see people, and you watch them get bent, big cultural people.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, oh, I see.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you sort of start as an amoral entity, I can see these people getting bent, distorted.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what is that?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I really haven t spiritually put a lot of energy into imagining like a personification of evil who is like working to my detriment all the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have not.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do think that it is so genuinely hard to be good sometimes.
4
SPEAKER_00
The greatest evils are not murder or any of the other exciting sins.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s terrible.
4
SPEAKER_00
PSA, please don t murder.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I find that the most compelling ones are just always the easiest ones.
4
SPEAKER_00
Slander, condescension, jealousy, withdrawal.
4
SPEAKER_00
Our deep desire to have a lack of love and call it, oh my gosh, and lately call it self-care.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m obsessed with these news stories about people who choose great evil, but they mask it in like, I just really had to choose me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because it is, you know, because most of what is like good and I think holy and lovely also just doesn t also doesn t have a great reason for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like we look at Mother Teresa and people like that with awe and a little confusion because because sometimes the path to good requires so much self-sacrifice that like
4
SPEAKER_00
We want a million other reasons to not choose that road.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I m not saying the monastic ideal is the only one that helps us create a distinction between good and bad, but I do find that most of our conception of evil is so exaggerated because the evil we would choose is already so acceptable to us.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I guess I think of it, too, just listening to you.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I just think of it as like a density, or not a gravitational pull, because I also like take issue with the way that our culture is structured as like, we just need to get out of here and up there, like the ascension, instead of sort of recognizing it as a cycle of bringing us down and deeper into ourselves.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then before we go up, you know, some sort of,
4
SPEAKER_01
spiral, but there is a density, a tariness, I think, to some of those sticky instincts.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I find evil is a really helpful category when I think about, like, structural evil.
4
SPEAKER_00
When I, you know, I ve been, I almost bankrupted my family with medical bills.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have spent
4
SPEAKER_00
tens of hundreds of what feels like thousands of hours on the phone with someone named Linda, who is hired by a company designed to have sent me an insane and absolutely irrational bill for two needles that will then, you know,
4
SPEAKER_00
Prevent anyone I love from keeping their bungalow.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or, for example, the future of genetic testing that will be all of our information will be bought by companies that will be then used to exclude my offspring from receiving fair access to health care.
4
SPEAKER_00
We don t really have to look very far around us to know that genuine evil rules the primary logic of structures that do us harm.
4
SPEAKER_00
In those versions, sometimes I feel like the personification of it helps give me a better sense of justice and a stronger sense of, like, these are, as my preacher friends would say, powers and principalities.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they would use language like that, and I find it very dramatic, and I sort of find it helpful.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think structure of any kind, shape, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So that it s not so amorphous.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I, you know, because I feel this way, or this is what I was trying to do in Honor Best Behavior was to sort of give shape and structure to sort of an oppressive dominance based
4
SPEAKER_01
patriarchy in the way that it shows up in our lives, instead of saying, sort of using language where it s like, it, they, it becomes sort of a boogeyman where you re like, what are we even talking about?
4
SPEAKER_01
And how is this alive in us?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or systemic racism is another example where you re like, actually, you have to define it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t just deny it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And what is the system of misogyny?
4
SPEAKER_01
What is the system of racism?
4
SPEAKER_01
What is the system of...
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, whatever it is, like, then you can start to undo it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But otherwise, you re sort of casting around at this, like, terror in a way that feels maddening.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s funny.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think you re totally right that our language for evil can be so broad, like, so, yeah, so diffuse and amorphous that it can t name things that undo us.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like clinical trial consent protocols, just to name one.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it can also then be so individualistic that it s like only the Unabomber, you know, only.
4
SPEAKER_00
We have, I think we do get caught, especially
5
SPEAKER_00
in American, I think, religion, where we either go hyper individualistic and we imagine each person along this sort of path of individual progress, or so collective in our imagination that we have no account of, I think, our own sin and our own progress.
5
SPEAKER_01
And our own culpability, and our own adherence, our own involvement or engagement with these systems.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think the last
5
SPEAKER_01
few years and decades have been so helpful and instructive, as difficult as they ve been, for people to recognize, oh, right, okay, I understand systemic racism now as something that I m participating in and I am a part of, even though I never subscribed, I never made a conscious agreement to participate in this, yet I understand how it s alive in me and alive in the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think what has to happen, even in these conversations about any sort of structured evil, darkness, badness, is to bring it into our bodies and to say, I recognize that this is alive in me.
5
SPEAKER_01
I recognize I don t want to pay a higher premium.
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, so that Kate gets appropriate care, whatever it is.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
I want my bonus as a pharma executive, you know, all of these things that like are very easy to rationalize, but until we sort of recognize it and then identify it in ourselves as something that s also collective, we can t undo it, I don t think.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have to own the darkness.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, one of the reasons why I ve always really loved thinking about like the cultural like the big broad cultural scripts that we tell ourselves about how we imagine like what
5
SPEAKER_00
whether our lives are going to work out, frankly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Lately, I ve been working on a history of self-help, so I ve been reading hundreds of self-help books.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I ve been sort of thinking a lot about how much we expect for ourselves, what our experience of our entitlements are, really.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then because the follow-up questions is like, well, then what do we owe one another?
5
SPEAKER_00
I love that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m really hopeful that we re evolving past our very hyper individualistic understanding of like, my health, wealth and happiness is the great goal, is the great goal.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that we re trying to like fold in a more collective and I hope generous sense that like, our, our, our, our lives will require love, our lives will require courage and interdependence, you know, and that that s, it s probably going to never follow along
5
SPEAKER_00
any of our demographic
5
SPEAKER_00
political, religious, sociocultural dreams that advertising companies have for us.
5
SPEAKER_00
But instead it s gonna require a very collective sense of what can we become.
5
SPEAKER_01
Ooh, Kate, I can t wait.
5
SPEAKER_01
I hope that that s, is that a book for all of us or is that an academic text?
5
SPEAKER_00
I will write it just for you.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s what I ll do.
5
SPEAKER_01
May I please have that book?
5
SPEAKER_01
I love that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like the paradigm shift
5
SPEAKER_01
required for all of us and the way like the bigger umbrella for that world is also personal responsibility.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like, yes, individual culture has this rugged individualism has gone so far to become depraved.
5
SPEAKER_01
And yes, there is a lot of value in cleaning up our stuff before we project it onto each other.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so it s like, it s a personal responsibility.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, take care of yourself, take care of your messes, and in service of something that s so much bigger than any one of us.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yep, it s so true.
5
SPEAKER_00
If I could pick one thing that everyone would have to do that no one will do, I just want everyone to like join the Rotary Club or like some kind of Girl Scout organization or just realize that like so much of my sense of responsibility, it no longer weakly requires
5
SPEAKER_00
weakly requires that I care about things other than myself.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m imagining that at some point, our endlessly book club bottle of what we think collective action is going to break down.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we ll just all go back to being weird Rotarians.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s my that s my prophetic imagination.
5
SPEAKER_00
Weird Rotarians unite.
5
SPEAKER_01
I love it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Kate is a very special human with a mind I deeply admire both for her historian sensibility that leaning towards a larger context or frame in which to find ourselves paired with her
5
SPEAKER_01
deep, deep humanity in the way that she lets us see her insides against this bigger tapestry of her outsides.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I also
5
SPEAKER_01
love her because she is obviously a person of deep faith and writes about religion and writes books that are memoirs and also books of blessings but there is nothing pushy
5
SPEAKER_01
about her system of belief.
5
SPEAKER_01
In fact, I would call it really just faith, a person of faith who s willing to hold a lot of people s lives in her experience without projecting
5
SPEAKER_01
how we should all live.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I love her podcast.
5
SPEAKER_01
I love her books.
5
SPEAKER_01
I love her sensibility and the accessibility of her feelings is really something to behold.
5
SPEAKER_01
She is not frozen or hardened.
5
SPEAKER_01
She is so soft.
5
SPEAKER_01
And all of her experiences are miraculously accessible to her, even as she s experienced many hard things.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you liked today s episode, please rate and review and tell a friend.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can find show notes and full transcripts of the episodes at EliseLoonan.com.
5
SPEAKER_01
While there, please sign up for my sub stack.
5
SPEAKER_01
I send a short note every Wednesday about topics that are aligned with this show and a deeper dive most Sundays.
5
SPEAKER_01
Or follow me on Instagram at EliseLoonan.
5
SPEAKER_01
And finally, if you haven t already, please consider picking up a copy of my New York Times bestselling book, On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good, available wherever you get your books.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s an exploration of how women have been conditioned for goodness, men for power, and all the ways we ve been programmed to police ourselves and each other according to these cultural ideas of what it is to be a good woman.
5
SPEAKER_01
I d also like to give a huge thank you to my sponsors who make this show possible.
5
SPEAKER_01
Please support them the way they support this podcast.
5
SPEAKER_01
This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studio.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you enjoyed this episode, please listen, rate, review, and follow Pulling the Thread.
5
SPEAKER_01
Available now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.
5
SPEAKER_01
I want to give a shout out to Phil Svitek, Lauren LaGrasso, Mary-Kate McDonough, Ali Brockman, and the entire Kden s 13 team for producing these episodes, and to Valero Deval for my key art.
5
SPEAKER_01
Take care of yourselves.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ll see you next week.