Best of 2020

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] I'm Dak Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Monica Padman.

[3] It's the end of the year.

[4] We get to do our third best of.

[5] Yes, it's so fun.

[6] It really is.

[7] What a year.

[8] Yeah.

[9] I mean, for a lot of people, it was a real shit show, a real shitty year.

[10] Yeah.

[11] But, man, I had a lot of great times this 2020.

[12] Best year of our show.

[13] Well, going through all the clips and stuff and looking at our roster from this year, I mean, it's easy to just be on the hamster wheel that I just learned it's hamster, not hamster.

[14] Right, the hamster wheel.

[15] The hamster wheel.

[16] Also, it's your hamstring, not your hamstring.

[17] Okay, that I knew.

[18] Okay.

[19] But it's easy to just be in the mode of working and paying attention to what's next, what's next.

[20] But when you get to look back, I was so grateful.

[21] What a wonderful year for the podcast.

[22] Yeah, and I hope when people listen to these, maybe their own memory will take them back to like where they were at on a road while they were doing their morning walk or their jog or something.

[23] fun they were doing while they heard this.

[24] So maybe it'll trigger a lot of fun memories for everyone else.

[25] We're so grateful, of course, that all y 'all make this possible for us.

[26] You're making our dreams come true.

[27] So thank you, and I hope you guys enjoy the best of 2020.

[28] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[29] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[30] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[31] Let's start by saying that we are self -quarantined.

[32] We're recording in Rob's garage outhouse, lean to.

[33] He's got his own little studio now at his new house, and we're in here, and it's wonderful.

[34] Yes.

[35] And he has better internet than we have at the attic.

[36] So while we continue to interview people, which we're going to do for the people who've reached out and are worried that we will slow down in any way, we are not going to slow down.

[37] In fact, we're going to pick up the pace.

[38] We're probably going to offer some other distractions for you.

[39] some lighthearted distractions, so those will all be coming.

[40] But for now, we're going to get our arms around what we're all going through.

[41] From episode 261, we've all hurrah.

[42] Yeah, the people in the 50s wanted to go back to the 30s.

[43] The 30s want to go back to the tens.

[44] You just follow it all the way down the rabbit hole, yeah, and you're back in the Rift Valley.

[45] Exactly.

[46] Now, I would say that there is still a lot of sense also in conservatism.

[47] I think that a good society needs both.

[48] It needs both some progressive people that push forward and also conservatives because these experiments in building human societies, they very often fail.

[49] I think, you know, look at conservative philosophers like Edmund Burke in the 18th century, observing the French Revolution.

[50] And they made some very, very good points.

[51] When you try to go all the way, like building a new society from scratch, it's very often an arrogant enterprise because you think that you completely understand the world and how to build a perfect society, and it never works.

[52] Even revolutions need to be gradual.

[53] You know, you compare, let's say, the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution, which they try to build an entire society, let's just throw away everything that was until now and start from scratch.

[54] And what you get is Stalin and the Gullahs, or in the case of the French Revolution, You get a guillotine and then Napoleon.

[55] And the American Revolution was far more conservative and mild.

[56] Okay, let's take it slowly, step by step.

[57] Don't change everything at one time.

[58] And it had its downsides, but also humans just don't have the ability to predict the outcome of everything they do.

[59] So when you really try to change everything at once, there is a big danger there.

[60] 2 .55, Isabel Wilkerson.

[61] Well, yeah, and I'm going to go further.

[62] You're already at the apex of everything you could have transcended, right?

[63] So you're already representing the New York Times.

[64] I'm assuming you're dressed smartly.

[65] Yes.

[66] You're speaking in the manner that they would desire, you know, everything's been done.

[67] Right.

[68] And you can't shake that.

[69] You can't transcend that.

[70] And that's why I make a distinction between class versus cast and race.

[71] So I will say that cast is the bones, race is the skin, and class is the accents, the diction, the education, the clothing, the kind of things that we can change about ourselves in order to move up or to reposition ourselves.

[72] And so I often say, too, that if you can act your way out of it, it's class.

[73] But if you cannot act your way out of it, it's cast.

[74] Oh, interesting.

[75] So that's the distinction.

[76] Will you repeat that?

[77] So if you can act your way out of it, it's class.

[78] If you cannot act your way out of it.

[79] It's cast.

[80] There's nothing more that I could do.

[81] So then clearly African Americans are most obviously the ones that can code switch.

[82] You can do all that.

[83] But right, you couldn't have done anything there.

[84] So that would demonstrate Cass.

[85] Who else are we putting in that category?

[86] I would say females, right?

[87] Yes, absolutely.

[88] And that's why I use the word cast to focus in on the infrastructure that is underneath all of it.

[89] Because cast is not only about race.

[90] It's about gender.

[91] It's about immigrant status.

[92] It's about the physical manifestation that is a signal to the subconscious of anyone we might meet as to where you belong, what is expected of you, where you presumably do not belong.

[93] From episode seven, Monica and Jess love boys with Esther Perel.

[94] But when you go on a date or when you go and you just even live in a situation where suddenly somebody catches.

[95] your attention.

[96] You are so busy focusing on your fears that you're having a relationship with this little thing that sits on top of your shoulder that says, be careful.

[97] Don't.

[98] You don't know.

[99] You don't even know.

[100] You know.

[101] And say to this one, you've been really nice to me, protector of mine.

[102] You've been so sweet.

[103] For 32 years you've made sure, but you know, I think I'm okay.

[104] I don't need you in this way.

[105] And this one is going to convince you.

[106] No, no, no, you need me badly you need me bad you don't know how dangerous and cruel the world can be you're going to give all this power to people the moment you love you give power to others and they can hurt you and this is part of love yes it is love doesn't come without loss and doesn't come without fear but it comes with a lot of other things too you know i would want you to invite another one to sit on the other side you need that other one that just has a dialogue here and says would you please be quiet for a moment i just turn off this volume let me even be here and enjoy the situation, see what happens.

[107] Yeah.

[108] From episode 258 with Matthew McConaughey.

[109] So Matthew's mom enrolled him or entered him into a like Little Mr. Texas.

[110] Oh.

[111] Oh, we need a picture of that.

[112] Oh, there's one in the book.

[113] He is the cutest motherfucker you've ever seen.

[114] I don't want to ruin it for you.

[115] So just tell us about Little Mr. Texas.

[116] Yeah, so we got on Bander, Texas.

[117] I'm like eight years old.

[118] Oh, me got my vest on made out of a leather vest.

[119] I got a cowboy hat.

[120] I go down there to Bandera, Texas, and we get up there and we do the questionnaire, and we walk on a horse and stuff, and throw a lasso, and I'm pretty good at all these things, and, you know, win the trophy.

[121] There's a framed picture of me with the trophy, and mom puts it up in the kit you want every morning.

[122] Look at you, son, there you are, little Mr. Texas, the one and only, little Mr. Texas.

[123] And so this going on daily, weekly, and then her introducing me, this is my son, you know he won Little Mr. Texas.

[124] He is Little Mr. Texan.

[125] Goes on and now I'm just like, yeah, I'm Little Mr. Texas.

[126] Well, this goes on for, you know, Little Missed.

[127] Decades.

[128] Yeah, not years.

[129] He grew up thinking he was Little Mr. Texas.

[130] Okay.

[131] Well, I was, Little Mr. Texas.

[132] I was Little Mr. Texas.

[133] Until.

[134] Uh -oh.

[135] Uh -oh.

[136] Oh, no. I happened to zoom in on that trophy, name the plate on that trophy one day just a couple years ago.

[137] Runner up.

[138] Oh, my God.

[139] Runner up.

[140] Look with the gifts she gave you.

[141] Oh, and she did.

[142] And to this day, I called her out on it just here recently.

[143] She was like, ah, well, you were a little Miss Texas.

[144] That's something.

[145] He didn't his family had too much money.

[146] They were able to buy that three -piece suit and shit for him.

[147] You're a little Miss Texas.

[148] She still denies it.

[149] From episode 269 with Hillary Clinton.

[150] I just have a quick question.

[151] going back to transitions and you, moving into the public stage, I've wondered this since the 2016 election.

[152] Like, you know, I'm wearing my nasty woman shirt right now.

[153] Kristen, me, and Dax's sister Carly, on election day, we went out.

[154] We went to the polls.

[155] We brought donuts.

[156] Like, we were so excited.

[157] And for you, like, you're carrying around the weight of me, of the girl down the street.

[158] You're walking around with all of this.

[159] pressure on your shoulders of all these little girls like, I'm dying for this to happen.

[160] I need this to happen.

[161] That's so much.

[162] It's no unfair of all of us.

[163] I mean, we can't help it, but it's unfair of us to be projecting all of that energy onto you.

[164] But you know, Monica, I felt that.

[165] I mean, you have described it to a T. I really felt the weight of history, the weight of expectation.

[166] I mean, the, you know, the thousands of, you know, girls and young women who showed up at my events and they'd be wearing the t -shirts and it just had such a sense of possibility.

[167] And I think you've rightly pointed out one of the most difficult transitions I ever had to go through was unexpectedly, you know, not becoming president because I thought I was.

[168] I thought I was on the path to being the president.

[169] I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do to, you know, deal with a lot of the serious problems we face.

[170] And for at least two years, you know, very intensely at first and then beginning to taper off, people would come up and throw their arms around me and sob on my shoulder.

[171] They would be with tears streaming down their face.

[172] There were a lot of young women who came up and apologized to me because they said they didn't vote because they didn't think I needed them to vote.

[173] I'm so happy that voting has gone up in the last two elections, particularly this one.

[174] So I felt the burden on an almost daily basis that I feel like I let you down.

[175] I'm so sorry.

[176] I don't exactly understand what happened.

[177] And we've learned more.

[178] And then I said, look, I got to write a book about this because I can't figure it out.

[179] And none of the quick takes on it made sense to me. And so I did.

[180] I wrote a book called What Happened because it was a perfect storm of all sorts of forces at work.

[181] And thankfully, people learned about the Russians interfering.

[182] They learned about all of the disinformation on Facebook and everything that influenced voters.

[183] They had a chance to digest that, and it didn't have as big an impact, certainly in 2018 or in this 2020 election.

[184] But it was hard.

[185] That was a really tough transition.

[186] You know, I love going for long walks.

[187] It's my mental health exercise.

[188] Me too.

[189] I like to go in the woods.

[190] You're nasty women love your long walks.

[191] We're nasty women.

[192] We love these long walks.

[193] And what are you doing on those walks?

[194] Where I live in New York, there's lots of places to walk that are, you know, pretty nice.

[195] And so, oh, my gosh, like three days after the election, I was back in the woods.

[196] I wasn't sure I was ever coming out.

[197] And I walked on a trail past a young woman who had a baby in her backpack and had a dog on a leash.

[198] And I kind of nodded at her.

[199] And she took like a step past, you know, just started to cry, said, you know, I've got to talk to you.

[200] I've got to see you.

[201] We took a picture.

[202] She posted it.

[203] and then, you know, all the walking in the woods memes started up, but incredibly emotional for me, too, because up until that point, I'd basically been just in my house, you know, feeling incredibly distressed.

[204] So getting out there and beginning to go back to stores, go to the theater, go out to, you know, restaurants with my friends, I began interacting with people who kind of oddly, I think we're also having a transition, if you will, transition from.

[205] their hopes and expectations and the level of grief.

[206] I mean, if you talk about the stages of grief that so many people went through, you know, I think it's one of the reasons why people are exhaling right now.

[207] You know, this election was closer than it should have been.

[208] It's hard to believe that millions more people than had voted for him the first time saw what he'd been doing and saying and wanted more of it.

[209] But nevertheless, you know, the election repudiated him and elected an honorable and decent man and an incredible woman to be our leaders.

[210] So I think people are kind of almost saying, I want to get back to not having to worry about politics.

[211] I want to get back to normalcy.

[212] I want to, you know, sleep through the night.

[213] I don't want to be scrolling on Twitter seeing what terrible thing is going to happen or be said.

[214] So a lot of transition is happening right now.

[215] Camel Anjiani Well, also, what is he, six, seven or something like that?

[216] I mean, like, they got great abs just genetically.

[217] Like, their abs, the shape of it is just great.

[218] It's beautiful.

[219] Wait, what do the wives...

[220] I know, I know Caitlin, because when I texted about the calendar, she responded, and she sent me a couple of pictures, and she said, here's a picture of my husband's deformed body.

[221] Yes.

[222] So that's her response.

[223] Yeah.

[224] She has certain trigger words.

[225] Like when she hears words like, vascularity she checks out if she hears the term caloric intake she checks out glycogen depletion yeah yes gay any kind of ganges yeah she'll just check out yeah my wife same reaction completely over it she says my body has corners now and there was a time that you were saying the nice window after you shoot for three weeks for me the nice window with my wife was there were like three weeks where every time she saw my body she was surprised oh okay it was a great feeling because I would see her be surprised because I'll tell you I don't wear a shirt around the house anymore I should hope not it would a waste of but why are you wearing one now that'd be like keeping her cover on the Ferrari I'm keeping the side when I would walk into the kitchen I would see her like notice each time and that was a good window now she's like over it in every aspect she's over it with Gaines caloricin cake going to the gym it is there's an underlying threat to it I would say if you're a spouse of someone getting an incredible shape because one is they're spending a lot of their focus on themselves there is an obvious vanity to it oh my god she's like you can't like walk by a reflective surface anymore that's right so that that's one issue and then second to that is I think they know on some level you're going to want to be appreciated for this and they're not going to give a fuck because that's not why they liked any of the three of us our wife's not for our looks or for Zeke, I can promise you.

[226] So she's like, yeah, that's not what I was ever in the market for.

[227] I would have fucking married an athlete.

[228] I don't know why you think I would care about that.

[229] She said to me very seriously that if you had this body when we first met and hooked up, I would think something was very wrong.

[230] She was like, I would not go out with you again.

[231] Right.

[232] Yeah.

[233] That's fair.

[234] I think that's fair.

[235] Caitlin said to me, we were laying in bed and we hadn't talked in like four or five minutes.

[236] We were just like reading.

[237] She was deep in thought or I thought maybe.

[238] deep in her book.

[239] And it's five or six minutes of silence.

[240] And she just turns to me and she says, I just want you to know, I do not find this attractive at all.

[241] Okay.

[242] From episode 238 with Ellen Pompeo.

[243] Well, it's uniquely harder on females, which are, A, y 'all never get paid.

[244] So of course you want that trophy because, you know, at best, someone's getting paid 60 cents on a dollar.

[245] So really that award becomes the only thing that will be equal in that white women sorry to interrupt you but white women are getting paid 60 cents on the dollar black women are being paid I don't want to misstep here and say but I think it's 40 cents on the dollar and Latino women are being paid less than that in our industry in show business yeah yeah yeah so you know you're uniquely penalized financially and then let's just be honest and the shelf life is like you might will be in the NFL historically.

[246] It's like 38.

[247] See ya.

[248] And that is uniquely harsh.

[249] You know, I live with an actress.

[250] We joke regularly.

[251] We'll be like just horsing around and I'll go, TikTok, motherfucker.

[252] It's true.

[253] I said, I say in an article, first time I was up to renegotiate on Gray's six years after I started the show when I was 33.

[254] By the time my first contract came up, I was 39 years old.

[255] And so I was had just a. had my first child.

[256] And I was terrified.

[257] I was like, I'm super typecast on this show.

[258] The show is a monster.

[259] And I'm 39.

[260] Like, I'll never work again.

[261] I better just stay here.

[262] And how amazing the strides that actresses have made in the past 10 years.

[263] I'm so impressed with all of these women who have gone into business, who are entrepreneurs, who are acting, producing, whatever it is.

[264] There are so many actresses that have found a way to be entrepreneurs and do other things.

[265] I think it's so inspiring and really proud to be amongst them.

[266] Episode 225 with John Legend.

[267] And it's interesting the physical strategy around where we put prisons because we separate them from cities.

[268] So you're a distance from your family.

[269] You're distance from most of the people in the state.

[270] So they never even see it.

[271] So one of my friends uses the verb, we disappear people because they were basically out of sight and out of mind.

[272] And so you're able to go about your daily life in L .A. and I am too without even thinking about it.

[273] Yeah.

[274] And then these small towns, their entire economy is built around the fact that a prison is there.

[275] So they have a stake in us incarcerating as many people as possible because that means jobs.

[276] That means more for their economy.

[277] and what's interesting in a lot of states, they get those prisoners counted toward their population.

[278] Oh, so they get more federal money?

[279] So they get more representation, more federal money, even though those prisoners often don't get a right to vote as part of that.

[280] And so it's a weird incentive structure for the smaller community, like Lancaster or whatever these towns are in California or all around the country, that house the prisons.

[281] And there's a whole economy built around it.

[282] an incentive structure to keep it in place for jobs and to support this infrastructure in this area.

[283] Meanwhile, the state and local governments are spending tons of money on prisons and jails.

[284] Families are being destroyed.

[285] Families are being separated.

[286] And prisons aren't effective at reforming people.

[287] No, no. People get out worse.

[288] When you look at it as a system, right?

[289] As a system, we had this guy on, he said it's so simply and it's so accurate.

[290] Whatever result you're currently looking at is the result of a perfectly designed system to create that result.

[291] The systems work.

[292] They work.

[293] They're working at all times.

[294] And it's not broken.

[295] It's not broken.

[296] That's the fucking result of this system.

[297] It's perfectly designed to create this outcome.

[298] And you're right.

[299] When you incentivize incarceration for a community, I'm not hating on the community that wants the money and blah, blah, but let's think of incentives that are productive and drive the narrative forward.

[300] Yeah.

[301] And like we've been talking about with the defund the police, movement, all of these systems cost a lot of money and they are a choice.

[302] So whenever you spend it on one thing, you have a finite amount of tax money and you have to balance a budget every year if you're a state.

[303] So anytime you're spending it on one thing, you're necessarily precluding that same money from being spent on something else.

[304] And so every time we make that choice for more policing, more jails, more prisons, it means we can't spend it on health care, we can't spend it on schools.

[305] We can't spend it on pre -K for all these young people, which is proven to reduce their likelihood to commit crime, increases their income prediction.

[306] You know, all of these positive outcomes come from pre -K.

[307] Are we spending the money on it?

[308] No, we can't afford it, but we can afford more police.

[309] So when people are talking about defund the police, what they're saying is not that there wouldn't be zero police ever.

[310] They're saying, let's spend way less money on this so we can spend it on that.

[311] Well, prevention worth, you know, cure.

[312] From episode 248 with David Farrier.

[313] Yeah, all the subtlety out of that discussion that had taken place was just completely sucked dry and it was just like, I'm wrong, Dax is wrong, this man's wrong, headline.

[314] Yeah, because what a lot of people admire about Trump is that he just, he never says, I'm sorry or I'm wrong.

[315] So I understand that like that's the part of the appeal.

[316] So it's like, yes, by painting me as some weak person who would admit I'm wrong was like it was the worst sin.

[317] Yeah, and I think, yeah, that is a big part of what we're facing is that subtlety has completely and nuance has completely gone out the window.

[318] This email says this.

[319] So this is clearly what this.

[320] There's no pulling apart the information in any kind of intelligent way.

[321] It's just blunt and black and white.

[322] I mean, you watch the discourse in the states at the moment and you can see how polarizing it's getting on both sides.

[323] Oh, yeah.

[324] And it's both sides just lean.

[325] into it, you know, both sides leaning into their own bullshit.

[326] But I would argue that the bullshit on Dewanon's side is definitely, definitely maxing out at the moment.

[327] Yeah.

[328] From episode 236 with Sean Penn. And I very much have always sought exoneration for being someone who cheats and partied too hard.

[329] And the idea of that really appealed to me for a big chunk of my life.

[330] Yeah, well, look, we know that, you know, being a lush, I've been a lush myself.

[331] Being a lush is, you know, ultimately an unsustainable value added.

[332] However, when we look at the kind of anti -exoneration period that we're in, that's not sustainable either.

[333] Oh, I agree.

[334] You know, that you're right.

[335] There's got to be, if not a celebration, an embrace of the imperfections of all of us.

[336] Or we're just going to be an increasingly hypocritical society and a kind of game -out a hater society hating things that we ourselves possess judging our neighbors for shit we did an hour ago absolutely and and it's the opportunity to call somebody out somehow supersedes the ability to recognize well that we see the same thing in the mirror as you say five minutes earlier yeah yeah and do you fear i have a fear and i think it's present in your book that the new expectation of perfection is going to limit the pool of people we have to solve our problems to such a degree that I don't even know how we progress, right?

[337] Like if the barrier of entry is perfection, who's standing to solve a problem?

[338] Yeah, and what you get is a kind of order of reversal.

[339] And so you have the least responsible, the least self -reflective people with the greatest amount of voice and power.

[340] And so that sets a standard, a lowering of the bar of the human spirit that creates a mass depression.

[341] And I think that that, along with this COVID pandemic and all that comes with it and all that will come with it, the kind of excess mortality issues of people who are afraid to go visit public health facilities to check a lump here or here, who will end up getting their first diagnosis at stage four instead of stage one or two, you know, we're going to be living with the effects of this.

[342] And there have been a lot of things, you know, in the kind of psychological pandemic that preceded COVID, that we've seen really on a kind of exponential rise in our divisiveness.

[343] And it's not just a political divisiveness.

[344] It's a divisiveness of aspiration and a kind of freedom of connection of thought that it becomes all too cautious and less magical things happen from episode 244 with susan burton when we talked the other day on our zoom you gave us an example of some of the day -to -day things like the woman who needed a cell phone yeah i think it's important to hear the little steps it takes for people to get what they need and when you told us that chris and i were talking about it for a long time after so can you share that story yeah so it was a woman spanish -speaking woman she just knows a little English.

[345] And she had dropped her cell phone in the toilet.

[346] As we all do.

[347] She was scared.

[348] She had made a mistake.

[349] And she was about a week out of prison.

[350] And her friend had brought her the cell phone.

[351] And she was scared to tell the friend that she had dropped the cell phone in the toilet because she thought she'd get punished.

[352] And she was just really, really terrified.

[353] So I let her know that it's okay to make a mistake and that punishment was not going to happen to her, that punishment was a behind her.

[354] What she had now was support.

[355] And I took her to the store.

[356] And at the store, the guy says, well, the cheapest phone that we have is $180.

[357] The phone that she dropped in the toilet was $329.

[358] So she reaches into her purse and she pulls out the money and she's ready to pay for a new cell phone.

[359] And I says, wait a minute, does that phone have a warranty.

[360] And the phone had a warranty.

[361] The one she dropped.

[362] Yep.

[363] The one she dropped.

[364] So just those types of things happen all the time, all day long.

[365] People are overwhelmed just walking into a store.

[366] Oh, it drives me nuts.

[367] I get in these arguments with folks and it's like, well, why can't they do X, Y, and Z?

[368] Why can't this person blank?

[369] And it's like, well, I'm going to guess that when your dad took you to the hardware store, you watched him interact with people and you learn some things.

[370] And If you don't...

[371] Everything's new.

[372] Yeah.

[373] Everything's new and different and really, really fast.

[374] So they have to learn the computer.

[375] They have to learn all of the gimmicks.

[376] You know, women say, oh, I just got a cruise.

[377] I'm fixing to go on a cruise.

[378] Girl, you ain't fin to go on a cruise.

[379] They're fin to get your credit card information.

[380] Don't give it to them.

[381] You know what I mean?

[382] That's tough.

[383] Yeah.

[384] And then, yeah, and then a language barrier.

[385] I mean, if you put me in Moscow and I got to buy a phone, I went to college.

[386] I don't think I can do it.

[387] You know?

[388] Right.

[389] Yeah, that's incredible.

[390] So yeah, these tiny little life skills you've got to help people and have the patients to walk them through it and hold their hand.

[391] And sometimes that's all someone needs.

[392] We have to care enough about the well -being of our fellow man. And I mean, we could put it in the like the word of patience, but we just have to care enough about one another.

[393] Yeah.

[394] Stay tuned for more armature expert if you dare.

[395] We've all been there.

[396] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[397] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[398] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[399] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[400] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[401] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[402] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[403] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music.

[404] What's up guys, this is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[405] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[406] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[407] And I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[408] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[409] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcast.

[410] From episode 232 with Brad Edwards.

[411] Yeah, was there any moment for you were, not to say that you ever lost your objectivity or came under his spell, but were ever moments where you're like, this guy's kind of likable?

[412] Like, if I wasn't involved in any of this and I ran him to him at a dinner party, that I might just think the guy was fine.

[413] Every time.

[414] Every time I ever met him, you know, there came a point in time where he filed a lawsuit against me and then called me immediately and said, you know, look, I will drop the lawsuit against you if you'll abandon your prosecution against me. You know, that was his way of kind of extorting me or attempting to extort me both decided we're going to get more done if we don't have lawyers there.

[415] So let's just start meeting in person and we would meet at coffee shops and start talking.

[416] In person.

[417] Wow.

[418] So there comes a point in time where I use that as a way to feel him out and learn who he is and kind of get in his head.

[419] And at the same time, he's trying to do the same thing.

[420] He wants me off his trail.

[421] And I want to figure out how to take him down.

[422] So we're meeting in person and jousting this kind of intellectual chess game.

[423] And every time, we were only three minutes into every conversation where I find myself laughing at his stupid jokes.

[424] I go, hey, wait, you know, he's not a bad guy.

[425] And then you go, wait, but I know all of the things that he's done.

[426] He's a terrible guy.

[427] Yeah, yeah, he's the definition of a bad guy.

[428] I would have to remind myself over and over again and go, okay, remember why you're here.

[429] Let's stick to it and try to pin him down on what his real game is, how I have you right now, and listen to him, try to talk his way out of it, you know?

[430] And he was a smart guy.

[431] So he would sometimes catch you in a situation where he would say, all right, Brad, you're a smart guy.

[432] We don't have to get pinned down with all of these nuance, these laws when we're talking about I'm a billionaire who travels from Florida and the age of consent's 18 and then what?

[433] I go to New York and it's 17 and then I go to France and it's 15 and all of the girls are the same and how am I supposed to keep up with all of this?

[434] You know, biology should kind of dictate things, don't you think?

[435] from episode 228 with Travis Mastrana.

[436] Okay, so you're just an all -time legend.

[437] You've also built this incredible empire.

[438] You're winning X games, you're fucking jumping and flipping everything you could possibly do, and then you create a TV show, Nitris Circus, with a lot of the jackass folks.

[439] And the pilot, if I recall, and I told you about this, Monica one time you almost threw up.

[440] The pilot, you meet Travis on this show.

[441] he's in an airplane up in the air and he says hey i'm travis pastrana and this is nitro circus he's in board shorts and no fucking shirt and he jumps out of an airplane oh my god and i do i have that right if i if i yeah i mean it was kind of pass or fail those tests were always the best it was actually it was a red bull test you know they said it gives you wings i'll just check it out okay so i'm watching that and this is the first time i've now been put in the seat of like a mother where i'm like, no, no, and no. I love Travis Mastrana.

[442] He is a motorsports phenom.

[443] I don't need him jumping out of a fucking airplane with no parachute.

[444] He just dives out of the airplane.

[445] And then he meets another dude in the air.

[446] And he puts on a fucking parachute and then opens it and land safely.

[447] Yeah.

[448] And you can't practice this.

[449] Yeah.

[450] Well, so I'm not a great skydiver.

[451] Like I got my A license, which is like your beginner license.

[452] That's like your learner's permit.

[453] I mean, I get around fine.

[454] I think it's like one of those things you can fall out with the best of them yeah I mean that's the best part about base jumping and skydiving the second you step off the bridge or building or plane you're going as fast as anyone else can go so you know you're already up to figure it out from there but so I jumped out and I tried to get away from these guys I was doing everything that I could to basically play tag assuming that they were it and I was trying to run and they basically tackled me out of the sky and they just hooked up to the rock climb artist okay so the guys guys or girls, whoever chased after you in the air, I presume hopefully they were some of the best in the world at skydiving.

[455] I found a military guy.

[456] And I figure, you know, military, they never leave a man behind.

[457] So like, I should be all right.

[458] We'll be great.

[459] So he was special force.

[460] I mean, the words you're saying makes sense, but at the same time, they don't.

[461] I'm like, yeah, I can jump up because the military's never left a guy behind.

[462] Well, okay, yeah, that is a true statement, but this isn't, I don't know that it applies here.

[463] I also want to say that not everybody at the cock buffet is there because it's their only option and they're sad and they really want a relationship.

[464] Some people want the cock buffet and that's all they want and that's perfectly legitimate.

[465] One of the problems in committed long -term relationships is that so many people who don't want them are sort of hustled into them by sort of a cultural pressure.

[466] We've talked about that a little bit on here.

[467] Okay.

[468] Good people want to be in relationships.

[469] I want to be a good person.

[470] and I'm going to put myself in a relationship, a lot of people end up in relationships who really would be better at having a lot of STRs, as I call them, short -term relationships.

[471] We talk about LTRs all the time and successful LTRs, which means somebody died.

[472] That's our metric for success in a committed relationship.

[473] Somebody's dead.

[474] Coronavirus is going to result in a lot of successful relationships, right?

[475] And we also need to have a language, I think, around what's a successful short -term relationship, a successful relationship that both people emerged from alive.

[476] And an STR can be two hours, you know, after meeting up on Grindr.

[477] And if you're kind and decent and they're kind and decent and you have great sex, you create a little bit more joy in the world.

[478] Even if there's no click, you can be kind to each other.

[479] Or a successful STR can be, you know, three months.

[480] And somebody can be the kind of person who has a lifetime of successful three -month STRs.

[481] One of the things that I see all the time is that when people want out of relationships, they feel like they have to blow them up.

[482] They feel like the only way they can legitimately leave a relationship is if it's high conflict and there's anger.

[483] So people will generate conflict and anger to get out or to justify getting out after three or six months all the time, rather than just being honest and parting amicably after three or six months because you're an STR type.

[484] And it's better for STR types to seek out STR types than to lead LTR types to believe that they might want an LTR when they know that they can't.

[485] There's a lot of people out there who are STR types who, you know, have a kind of false consciousness around wanting to be LTR people when they're not.

[486] It's just like around monogamy.

[487] A lot of people out there make monogamous commitments they can't keep because they can't conceive of themselves as a good, moral person, but not monogamous.

[488] Right.

[489] So they cite themselves up to believe that monogamy is for them when actually they're not for monogamy.

[490] I love that.

[491] Interesting.

[492] From episode 234 with Atul Gawande.

[493] Should I accept the system?

[494] inheriting and do I want to perpetuate it or do I have questions for the overall system?

[495] We can try to unpack that because I don't have the answer to.

[496] Our goal is for you to leave here with a mental diagnosis from two non -professionals.

[497] I get very disturbed by things that don't feel right and that are especially confusing to me. For example, in surgery, I became a person who really pushed back on the culture of arrogance.

[498] intimidating people, there is a difference between arrogance and self -confidence.

[499] Oh, please tell me, so I can stay on the right side of it.

[500] You do.

[501] You have to make choices and you got to forge ahead.

[502] But the ones who don't have humility that things can go wrong are the ones who then can't own it when things go wrong and learn from that.

[503] Right.

[504] Right.

[505] And so it's not the confidence that you are perfect, which is a dangerous confidence.

[506] It's the confidence that you can handle it and that you're aiming for perfection, but you know you'll never completely achieve it.

[507] Right.

[508] The best surgeons I know are ones that are able to have good judgment, make quick decisions in the face of uncertainty, and are generally right and own it when they're wrong.

[509] Some of the best politicians, I feel like, are those kinds of people.

[510] That they are able to recognize things are uncertain.

[511] you have to make a choice, and then you've got to own it and live with it.

[512] Well, what's the saying, right?

[513] They say, like, you make the best choice with the best information available, and sometimes that's insufficient.

[514] You don't want someone dithering.

[515] You know, Obama, the night that he sent the special forces out to kill Osama bin Laden, and his entire presidency's on the line, he happened to be at the White House correspondent's dinner that night.

[516] Yes, giving joke.

[517] Folks, being as funny as any of the comedians.

[518] Roasting Donald Trump at that very night.

[519] Regrettable, probably.

[520] Right, right, which of course pissed him off.

[521] But being able to make the call, it wasn't arrogance.

[522] It was confidence.

[523] It was like I've done the best I can.

[524] And then I'm going to own and live with the consequences.

[525] And I'm going to hope everybody comes with me when I then say, well, this is my choice I made, and here's how now we deal with this consequence and where we are, right?

[526] I have to walk out in surgery.

[527] Look, I've got it down to like 97 % of the time it's going to go, as I hope, the 3 % I'm going to have made worse off.

[528] And by the way, that seems like one of the highest percentages in surgery, right?

[529] I mean, in general, there's a sliding scale, right?

[530] Back operations, I don't know, they're like 50 % effective or?

[531] Yes, that's right.

[532] You can have their operations like colon surgery where 25 % will have some kind of a complication that you have to deal with.

[533] And then there's, you know, some of them are errors, some of them are not.

[534] But I have to be able to walk in when there is something that goes wrong and, you know, not say like, what, nothing went wrong.

[535] Look, this is what happened.

[536] This is our situation now.

[537] Here's what we can do.

[538] And this is how we can manage the situation.

[539] Nothing is ever going to always go work perfectly.

[540] Yeah.

[541] Yeah.

[542] And so you have to be able to bring people along for the right.

[543] And that's what I felt like I got out of surgery, which was I was not that guy.

[544] My favorite New Yorker cartoon, which I felt like defined me was the gravestone that said, he kept his options open.

[545] And that was me. That is me. From episode 243 with Tom Brady.

[546] Can you remember a player that you were envious of?

[547] And professional football.

[548] I mean, there's been so many over the years.

[549] I mean, if I look at like some guys who physically, obviously have a lot more ability, you know, they're faster, they're bigger, they can run, they can, you know, I think there's some things that I've learned to do probably better over time, you know, because I've been at working hard at it for a long time.

[550] But, you know, my fifth year in the league, I was no, you know, freak of nature.

[551] Right.

[552] But I look at some guys who maybe were great physically, you know, run a 4 -640.

[553] Like, I'll joke all the time.

[554] I'll see a guy run like a 4 -740, which is pretty fast.

[555] I would say like the average NFL quarterback probably runs, you know, a four, eight, four, nine.

[556] The fast guys run like four seven.

[557] The slow guys run like five flat and over.

[558] I ran a five three.

[559] I was slow as shit.

[560] I was the slowest person on the field.

[561] I couldn't outrun a 300 piti pound defensive lineman.

[562] So every time I got the ball in my hands like a hot potato, I'm like, where does someone at?

[563] I got to throw this thing, you know, because I'm going to get killed if I'm holding this thing.

[564] So, you know, I look at the ref was going to outrun me. Yeah, exactly.

[565] So, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, God, if I could run a 4 -7, football would be so easy.

[566] I mean, how easy it would this sport be if I could run away from people.

[567] And again, that could be a limit you could have given yourself.

[568] Well, it just won't be that because I don't have that.

[569] From episode 250 with Allie Raceman.

[570] Like, if a fan comes up to me and they start telling me their story of being a survivor, I've worked on this in therapy a lot because I get triggered really easily.

[571] And sometimes, like, I'm the only person they've ever told.

[572] Like, I'll have someone in the grocery store say, I'm 70 years old, and I was abused, like, over 50 years ago.

[573] You're the only person I've told.

[574] And I put so much pressure on myself to the point where, like, I obsessively overthink what I say to that person.

[575] Because if I'm the only person they've ever told, from personal experience, I understand the weight and the power of when you confide in someone that you've been abused, the way that that person reacts to you, it has such a massive impact on their healing.

[576] And so I want to make sure that I'm supporting them and being there for them.

[577] But then when it happens a couple times a day, how can I still show them?

[578] I support them, but kindly ask them not to go into graphic detail.

[579] Because when you have over five people or if I'm at an event and it's like 30 people going into graphic detail, if I do a meet and greet, how am I supposed to go through life, traveling alone, being in a hotel by myself, walking outside late at night and not be afraid something bad's going to happen to me. Like it's this paranoia.

[580] So I've worked on this, like, strategy of just kindly being like, I support you so much.

[581] I'm still so much in my healing.

[582] So I support you.

[583] But just please don't go into graphic detail.

[584] But I'd love to talk to you about your healing.

[585] And I'd love to tell you about what's helped me. Like, I hope you're getting help.

[586] So a lot of people answer and be like, you just seem so strong on TV.

[587] I forget that you're still dealing with it.

[588] So it's almost the opposite.

[589] People don't feel pity with me. It's that they forget that I'm actually dealing with it.

[590] when I do interviews, I haven't cried because I like have kind of put up a wall of like I have to be strong.

[591] I want people to listen to me. I want people to think that I'm intelligent and I don't want people to think I'm weak and I've been like so afraid to be like super vulnerable in that way.

[592] Yeah.

[593] That people forget and they're like you just seem like it doesn't really like phase you.

[594] So it didn't occur to me that going into graphic detail would impact you.

[595] So yeah, the emotional way of being a symbol of this movement must be humongous in.

[596] that, yeah, you're going to be asked sometimes 30 times a day, join someone emotionally to meet them emotionally at a place that's just really taxing on anyone.

[597] Your own issues, I'm sure are taxing enough and then you add on.

[598] So yeah, I bet it's really, really hard to establish boundaries that are both protective of you and also generous to the people you want to help.

[599] Yes.

[600] And it's so interesting in the way that trauma works because a lot of times not sending boundaries can be trauma.

[601] And it's also the shame of guilt of not setting enough boundaries in my childhood and not speaking up for myself.

[602] So sometimes when I feel like somebody isn't respecting my boundaries, and I feel like 99 % of people are so respectful.

[603] But if there's that like anybody in life, you know, not everybody you're going to like mesh very well with.

[604] But, you know, if I'm at an event and like somebody's really touch you with me, but not meaning it in like a sexual and appropriate way, it might be like an older woman that's like, oh my God, do you remind me of my granddaughter?

[605] they're just like touching me. And because I'm such a people pleaser and I don't want to let anyone down when they meet me, I like, you know what?

[606] I'd rather make her happy and just let her do this, that I put someone else first.

[607] And then that has been so triggering for me because I'm like, well, now I feel traumatized and I feel uncomfortable because I was just standing there helpless like I felt when I was being abused.

[608] Yeah, yeah.

[609] You're just there and you're so uncomfortable.

[610] It's almost like you're in shock and you don't know what to do, but I feel frozen because I don't want to upset them.

[611] I don't want to trigger them.

[612] So then I just, like, upset myself.

[613] I'm really working on it.

[614] From episode 254 with Eric Lander.

[615] Well, and, like, we're just learning what happens in the microbiome.

[616] Like, that's entirely new.

[617] 25 years ago, you would just think, oh, microbes in your gut, those are got to be bad.

[618] Now we're learning, oh, you don't have the right one.

[619] You might have obesity.

[620] You don't have the right one.

[621] You might have mental health issues.

[622] You know, so much is so unknown still.

[623] Well, you know, science has to bring humility to things.

[624] Like, it's amazing.

[625] We've done all sorts of powerful things, read the genome, all this stuff.

[626] I love it.

[627] I'm proud of it.

[628] You know, what this generation is done.

[629] But science has to bring a lot of humility that there's tons of stuff we don't know.

[630] We are still reading this, you know, three billion -year -old text.

[631] And we've been reading it for a decade or two where kindergartners reading the text.

[632] and we think like we understand all its subtle meaning.

[633] So humility has got to be a part of every bit of science and how you balance amazing opportunity and the duty to serve patients and the duty to move forward with the right kind of humility is a important thing.

[634] Scientists have to hold together.

[635] From episode 218 with Blake Griffin.

[636] Okay, so then my last question is, so Donald Sterling.

[637] there's a new documentary coming out right i'm very excited to see it did you participate in that i actually didn't they did a 30 for 30 on this whole thing and then right after that they were doing this and i was like i'm i've told my piece you know yeah yeah by the way i also had to talk about it so many times before that that i was just kind of like i don't want to do another deep in -depth like sit down for three four hours and and go over this one subject you know what i mean well again this would be another trigger of mine if I were black or mixed, which is, okay, so there's this racist asshole.

[638] And now I got to fucking answer all these questions because this guy, like, this is my responsibility to constantly be available.

[639] And I'm doing it to you right now.

[640] But I don't, you know, I don't need that.

[641] Like I didn't sign up to have to now talk about this guy being an asshole all the time.

[642] Yeah.

[643] It's really interesting because there's a draft lottery that happens where they find out who's picking what.

[644] So the Clippers get the first pick, and then, you know, a month later is the actual draft.

[645] So during that time, they announced that they were going to take me with the first pick.

[646] And I remember my mom called me one day, and she was like, I was like, honey, I just was reading about the guy who owns the Clippers.

[647] And at the time, I didn't know much about him because, like, the Clippers were never on TV.

[648] No, never.

[649] Barely in L .A. were they even on TV?

[650] I'm from Oklahoma.

[651] And, like, yeah, exactly.

[652] They were on PBS.

[653] And so I'm from Oklahoma, so, like, you know, I heard about the Lakers and the Celtics and the big teams.

[654] So I sort of looked into it, man, like, there's a lot of stuff, but, like, no one really seems to, like, say anything.

[655] Really quick to bring Monaco up to speed.

[656] Do you know this?

[657] No, I don't.

[658] So the owner of the Clippers, he made a bunch of racist comments.

[659] Didn't he also bring his, like, his mistress into the locker room and stuff?

[660] Didn't he do weird shit like that?

[661] Am I thinking of the same?

[662] Yeah, so quickly, he made up all his money in real estate.

[663] He had so many different lawsuits surrounding racial discrimination, literally.

[664] recorded saying this or that about different minority groups also driving up prices to be able to kick them out treating them unfairly like all these different things right yeah so when i first got drafted i had to i had to go to his house oh wow malibu for a white party it was like a you know everybody dressed in white oh my god oh my god so i get there he's wearing all black at his own white party so he's wearing all black and he proceeds to parade me around the the party, he would hold my hand and bring me around to other people and, like, introduce me. He'd be like, this is our number one pick in all the land and look how strong is, feel his arms.

[665] And like, you do stuff like that.

[666] So then, you know, we're playing for him.

[667] He would always do, you know, things he would bring, yeah, people in the locker room.

[668] I can't remember.

[669] Yeah, she probably came in the locker.

[670] There was a girl that she was, he was always with.

[671] It was just known as his mistress, him and his wife, whatever.

[672] I don't know whatever they had.

[673] When he was taking you around the party and feel his muscles and all that, in that moment where you feel I mean, because it's very, it's very plantation ownery.

[674] Look at this thing I own, feel how strong he is.

[675] Like, was that on your mind while it was happening?

[676] Or just feel like, oh, this guy's kind of a weirdo.

[677] And I am pretty ripped, so go ahead and feel.

[678] What was happening?

[679] A little bit of both because, like, I'm just getting into the league and, like, he's the owner of this team.

[680] I don't know how, obviously I know this is not normal, but, like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

[681] How much power do I have in this situation?

[682] Yeah, I would like not hold his hand as much as I possibly could, which was like, you know, me standing up.

[683] People were like, no, you could have done more.

[684] I was like, ah, yeah, but I wiggle the way a few times.

[685] So, yeah, I don't know.

[686] Obviously it felt weird, but I also was just like, get me out of here.

[687] So fast forward, he gets caught on tape saying to his mistress, she secretly recorded him and he was saying a bunch of racist stuff.

[688] so then this is happening right before the playoffs so then these tapes come out and we're about to play game three of the first round big series and this all comes out and we're like now what do we do because like people knew he was racist before this it just brought it to light again like he had multiple lawsuits for racial discrimination so now people are looking at us like what are you guys going to do here's another thing i've griped about a lot in my Monica disagrees with me and I think I'm wrong about it, but I will say I am very sympathetic to like a black actor who just wants to be a comedian and then the second they're famous because they're black, they also also have to be a social activist.

[689] It's just not a responsibility that a white guy has to deal with.

[690] And I think that's a little unfair.

[691] So similar to the Olympics, right, when they wanted the black athletes to not go to the Olympics, I'm like, I mean, they already had the shittiest fucking life and now you have to tell them not to go reach the pinnacle of their dream.

[692] On top of that, I just, some part of that feels.

[693] And then you're, you've worked your ass off to get to the playoffs and now you have to respond you know oh yeah go ahead and i haven't i haven't watched the documentary yet i don't know if this is going to go against what anybody says but like in my mind and i know in most people like we weren't going to boycott the games because we never played for him right yeah he paid us i wasn't like oh this is my owner man this guy like great you know like fuck this guy like he's paying us he owns the team sure but we're like this isn't him like actually owning us.

[694] We're playing basketball.

[695] We're doing what we want to do and we're good at it and we're in this situation.

[696] You know, we decided to do a thing where we turned our warmups inside out.

[697] We had to wear these jackets out.

[698] So we came out to half court for warmups.

[699] We took our jackets off, do them on the ground.

[700] And we were all just in basically blank t -shirts because they were inside out.

[701] It's so gangster.

[702] That's, that's in the commercial for that doc.

[703] It's so gangster.

[704] I love it.

[705] Again, at the time, maybe I'm just a horrible judge of like how big moments are at the time.

[706] At the time, you're just kind of, you're just kind of, of like, all right, like we got to play this game.

[707] It's like the whole box thing.

[708] We're like, this is not in our box.

[709] We've worked our whole season to get to this point and now we're going to let this asshole, like, ruin it and like, you know, take the focus away from what we're really here for when we were never playing from in the first place.

[710] And so, you know, I think we navigated it pretty well, given the circumstances, and given how fast, this came out on a Friday night.

[711] Our next game was Saturday.

[712] Oh, geez.

[713] So Friday night, or maybe it came out Saturday morning.

[714] We had a team meeting Friday night and our coach was like, hey, this is going to come out just so you guys know.

[715] And I'm pretty sure Saturday morning, it all blew up on TMZ, whatever.

[716] So we quickly sort of had to decide what we were going to do because everybody was sort of looking to see.

[717] People thought we were going to boycott.

[718] And I remember getting like text from people like, you guys should boycott.

[719] Like you guys shouldn't play and all this stuff.

[720] And I think our coach at the time was like, turn your phone off.

[721] Not because he didn't want us to deal that he did want us to deal with it as a team, but he just didn't want people, you know, trying to get in our ear who didn't work this whole season, who didn't put blood, sweat, and literal tears into this season to be at this position to say, like, oh, you guys shouldn't play because then we're doing ourselves a disservice as well.

[722] Yeah.

[723] So, it was crazy situation.

[724] From episode 272 with Natalie Portman.

[725] I'm working through my own stuff with you, which is there were times I'm here for it.

[726] I shouldn't be so in love with this girl.

[727] But yet, Timothy Hutton is.

[728] He's much older than me. I guess I'm fine.

[729] Was that something you were aware of?

[730] I guess that's where I'm going with all of this.

[731] I was definitely aware of the fact that, like, I was being portrayed, like, mainly in kind of journalism around when the movies would come out as, like, this, like, Lolita figure and stuff.

[732] And I've actually talked about it.

[733] I wrote a thing about it for the Women's March a few years ago about how being sexualized as a child I think took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid and it made me feel like the way that I could be safe was to be like, I'm conservative and I'm, you know, like serious and you should respect me and I'm smart and like don't look at me that way.

[734] Whereas like, you know, that age is like you do have your own sexuality and you do have your own desire and you do want to explore things and you do want to be open but you don't feel safe necessarily when there's like older men that are like interested and you're like no no no no no no and so I feel like you build these fortresses around you and also take on like so many people I think had this impression of me that I was like super serious and like prude and like conservative as I get older.

[735] And I realized I consciously cultivated that because it was ways to make me feel safe that, oh, if someone respects you, they're not going to objectify.

[736] Well, we interviewed the California Surgeon General, and she was talking about childhood aces, right?

[737] And a common outcome of that for women who are molested, it's pretty common for them to gain a bunch of weight to become invisible.

[738] They want to be not seen by men ever again.

[739] And so it doesn't surprise.

[740] me that you had your own kind of defense against that unwanted attention.

[741] Yeah.

[742] It's deep.

[743] And it's a complicated thing because it's like you're told as a girl and a woman that you're supposed to want that and that it's a good thing that like people finding you attractive or like people thinking you're sexy or people thinking you're beautiful or precocious like these words that, you know, we use around young girls in particular.

[744] And then it's complicated because it doesn't make you necessarily always feel good or always feel safe.

[745] And then it hinders your just like natural development of what you might be like because you're creating a self -defensively.

[746] I'm like, I will be the person that is going to be like immune to any weirdness, you know.

[747] And it worked out.

[748] Luckily, I mean, I was safe.

[749] Stay tuned for more armature.

[750] for if you dare from episode 176 the fact check for clare dames should we tell people that we think we might be having a baby oh sure i want to i don't want to start the rumor mill but um i used monica's toilet at her new house which is a non -functioning house and i what i did is i flushed the toilet and it flushed properly and i was like oh the water's still on great then i whizzed okay Then I hit the flusher again, oopsies, no water in there.

[751] No. So then I came to you and I was like, I've peed in your commode and I got a, I'm going to have to bring over a five gallon bucket of water and flush this thing.

[752] You know, like, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it.

[753] Yeah.

[754] And then you were there like a couple days after and you were going to pee your pants.

[755] And so you peed on top of my.

[756] I did.

[757] I didn't want to put pee in another toilet because that would just be multiple things we'd have to figure out.

[758] So I peed on top of your pee and it's all still there.

[759] This is weeks ago.

[760] Jesus.

[761] I'm so embarrassed for us.

[762] And we think that maybe the mixture of the pee.

[763] A life will grow out of that.

[764] We don't know.

[765] We just don't know.

[766] Maybe Malcolm Gladwell could weigh in on how many broth babies have been.

[767] Historically, how many broth babies are.

[768] I think this would be so exciting, though, if we went over there.

[769] We went over there with the five -gallon water bucket, and then we heard, Mama, Dad, Dad.

[770] And there is a little yellow baby down there.

[771] No. I would really love it.

[772] Me too.

[773] Of course we would.

[774] Our little urine, baby?

[775] Yeah.

[776] It would probably need to like live in that toilet.

[777] It might need to live in that toilet.

[778] You're right.

[779] And it would be jaundiced.

[780] Well, for sure.

[781] Okay.

[782] Extremely jaundice.

[783] Okay.

[784] From episode 265 with Tristan Harris.

[785] Yeah.

[786] And my life has been largely defined by.

[787] I think the impact of, you know, the Macintosh on my early childhood.

[788] And yeah, that's a kind of an interesting place to theoretically start, which is prior to Macintosh, and again, I'm not super savvy about this, but I will say what used to be seemingly kind of a utilitarian pursuit of people who liked making simple programs on these early computers, with Mac comes, in my opinion, a culture or a movement.

[789] It like transcends that space a little bit.

[790] Was that your experience with it?

[791] Did it feel like more of an emotional connection to that thing?

[792] It actually did, yeah.

[793] I didn't know any of the lore behind the Macintosh, you know, who Steve Jobs was, or Andy Hertzfeld, or Bill Atkinson, some of these characters who, you know, invented and put all of this culture and soul into this computer.

[794] But it's funny because not even knowing that history, I felt this kind of weird, mystical almost connection to the creativity behind it.

[795] And it really was, you know, as the saying goes, as we say in the film, that the Macintosh and the computers were a bicycle for our minds.

[796] They would be giving us kind of leverage for the kind of conceptual creativity and capacity that we could have as human beings.

[797] And that's a really optimistic view, obviously, of technology that I still believe is possible.

[798] We just went astray with these business models that kind of pulled us into this mini dark ages.

[799] Well, and then to drill down a little bit on what you just said, which I think could be useful, is yes, the bicycle is a tool.

[800] You do a great job of describing that, meaning a tool, a rake, a lawnmower, it sits in your shed until you want to use it to perform some tasks that it's going to assist you in.

[801] And that is not how we interact with these tools, our smartphones, our computers.

[802] They are actually engaging us at all times, right?

[803] We didn't wake up necessarily with the game plan of like, you know what, let's try to get five, six hours on that thing today.

[804] No, no, it handles that for you.

[805] Yeah, that's exactly right.

[806] I mean, it's important to state, if you go back to the Marshall McLuhan kind of theories of what is media, what is technology, and it's an extension of thinking and action.

[807] So all technologies are extending and reshaping the way we make sense of the world and the kind of actions that we might take.

[808] So a bicycle is going to change your basic sense making and choice making, the menu of options that might occur to your mind of where do I want to go today or what I want to do today because your bicycle extends that.

[809] So it's important to say that first.

[810] However, as you said, a bicycle doesn't have an agenda about what it wants from you.

[811] Right.

[812] Right.

[813] Well, it wants you to lubricate the chain occasionally and keep the air pressure at optimum level.

[814] I guess at some existential level it wants to survive, but it doesn't have any means of doing that except by, you know, being able to make you care about that.

[815] But, you know, a bicycle doesn't have an avatar voododol like model of each of us that uses trillions of data points to figure out predictively, how do I get you to drive more to places like McDonald's and less to places like parks and playgrounds because I need to make.

[816] money from you using me in a very particular way.

[817] And that's the difference, as we say in the film, between a kind of tools -based technology environment and an addiction and manipulation -based technology environment.

[818] That's the thing that's really changed that we talk about in the social dilemma is that the business model of Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. They all depend on us using it in very particular ways that involve hours a day of screen time.

[819] But that's not really the core harm when you, I'm sure we'll get into this more.

[820] It's really the kind of the erosion of the life support systems that make up a society, that make a society work.

[821] Because we need our mental health.

[822] We need a common view of reality.

[823] We need shared facts and truth.

[824] We need to have a basic compassion for each other.

[825] And each one of those dimensions of our society are things that are not inside of the business model's interests.

[826] Right.

[827] And that's really why we have to change the broader system.

[828] From episode 222 with Jennifer Everhart.

[829] So I want to get into the story of your son.

[830] because it's so profound.

[831] I think it has to be very informative in the work you've done because you've led a lot of implicit bias or unconscious bias workshops for police departments.

[832] And I think this experience with your son is just very profound.

[833] So will you tell us about that?

[834] Okay, so we're on an airplane and he's five.

[835] And my son, he's just so excited, right, about being on this airplane with mommy.

[836] And he is looking all around and he is checking everybody out and he's checking everything out.

[837] And then he, you know, sees this man and he points at him and he says, hey, that guy looks like daddy.

[838] And so I look at the guy and he doesn't look anything at all, like my husband, like nothing at all, right?

[839] So then I started looking around on the plane and I noticed that this guy was the only black man on the plane.

[840] And I thought, all right, I'm going to have to have a little talk with my son about how not all black people look alike.

[841] There's a couple hilarious points in that, which is your husband is bald and this guy had really long dreadlocks, right?

[842] Right, right, right, right, right.

[843] Much different height, different way.

[844] Everything, yeah, everything.

[845] So I decided I was going to give it a shot because, you know, kids see the world in a different way from adults.

[846] And so I thought, well, maybe he's seeing something, right?

[847] There's some resemblance there that I can't get.

[848] And so I looked at his height and his weight and his skin color and his facial features.

[849] And I looked at his hair.

[850] And, you know, he did.

[851] He had a long dreadlocks flowing down his back.

[852] And my husband shaved his head.

[853] And I'm like, all right.

[854] So I turned to my son and I'm like, okay, you're going to get the talk.

[855] So I'm already given the talk about how not all black people look alike, right?

[856] And so before I could say anything, my.

[857] son, he looks up at me and he says, I hope he doesn't rob the plane.

[858] No. And I said, what?

[859] I said, what did you say?

[860] He says, well, I hope that man doesn't rob the plane.

[861] And I said, why would you say that?

[862] You know, Daddy wouldn't rob a plane.

[863] And he says, yeah, yeah, I know.

[864] And I said, well, why would you say that?

[865] And he looked at me with this really sad face.

[866] And he said, I don't know why I said that.

[867] I don't know why I was thinking that.

[868] You know, we're living, this such severe racial stratification that even a five -year -old can tell us what's supposed to happen next.

[869] And that's, I mean, what would you say you're leading causality for that as television?

[870] People always point to television right away, right?

[871] Oh, it's the media exposure and all that.

[872] But I don't know, he's five.

[873] He actually wasn't looking at that much TV.

[874] frankly.

[875] And of course, the media, that plays a role here.

[876] But I think that we're so quick to point to the media because we don't want to look at ourselves.

[877] And that part of it bothers me, because they're not just picking up things from television.

[878] They are picking up all of this from the signals we deliver to them, you know, even though we don't intend to, or even when we don't intend to.

[879] You know, I have another son when he was in the first grade.

[880] He came to me and And he said to me, he said, Mommy, do you think people kind of have a different feeling about black people than they do other people?

[881] And I said, well, you know, what do you mean?

[882] He says, I don't know.

[883] I just feel like there's just something different there and how people look at black people.

[884] I asked them to give me an example.

[885] And he thought about it.

[886] And he said, well, remember, we were in the grocery store the other day.

[887] And there was a black man who came in.

[888] So this was a grocery store in a mostly white neighborhood.

[889] He says a black man came in.

[890] He says, I noticed that people kind of stayed away from him a little bit.

[891] And he was really in the Star Wars then.

[892] He was saying it was like he had a giant force field around him.

[893] And so people were like staying away.

[894] And then he said when this man got into the line, he said his was the shortest line because people weren't getting in line behind him.

[895] And so he had picked all of this up, you know.

[896] And I'm just shopping and all.

[897] And I did notice the man coming in the store.

[898] but I didn't pick any of that up, right?

[899] And part of it is just I'm used to it, you know, I think.

[900] It's white noise now, right?

[901] It's just, it's all in the background.

[902] It is, it is.

[903] And so, and then I asked him, what do you think it means?

[904] Why did they do that?

[905] And he thought about it, he said, I don't know.

[906] He says, I think it's fear.

[907] And I thought, wow, a first grader can get to that, not by watching TV, but just by watching how we move through the world.

[908] and how people react to us as we do.

[909] Yeah, it's such a humongous motivator for people of fear, right?

[910] I mean, it's got to be the strongest.

[911] Episode 217 with Vivek, Murphy.

[912] People don't start counting trits to see, you know, whether they're going to get paid back for donating a meal to a family need.

[913] They step up and they serve.

[914] And that's the best of humanity coming out.

[915] You're seeing that right now during the COVID -19 pandemic.

[916] pandemic when doctors and nurses are putting their lives on the line, even though they don't have enough masks because they have a sworn duty to help protect other people.

[917] You're seeing neighbors dropping up meals to support other neighbors who are too old to go out because they're in a high -risk group.

[918] You're seeing humanity at its best.

[919] And you saw it in 9 -11.

[920] And 9 -11 was extraordinary.

[921] One of the lesser -known stories of 9 -11 is the boatlift story from 9 -11.

[922] Do you guys, are you familiar with the boatlift story?

[923] I'm not.

[924] I don't think so.

[925] When the Twin Towers were burning down, there was a tremendous amount of smoke and ash in the air, and it was hard to tell which direction to go if you were fleeing.

[926] And so some people fled north, and that was actually the path of relief.

[927] But a lot of people fled south, not realizing that they were just heading towards the Hudson and that they would have no escape from there.

[928] And as that happened, thousands and thousands of people started to build on that southernmost tip of Manhattan, and they were getting more and more anxious and desperate as the smoke and fire behind them were growing.

[929] The Coast Guard recognized that this was going on.

[930] And they knew also that they didn't have enough resources in the area to be able to rescue all of them.

[931] So they did something they had never done before, which is they issued a call to all the civilian boats in the area and asked them to join on this unprecedented rescue mission.

[932] You might think In that moment, if you were sitting on a boat in the Hudson and you see this inferno growing in front of you, are you going to take your boat toward the inferno or are you going to head for the safety of home?

[933] Within minutes, there were scores of boats that were streaking toward Manhattan.

[934] And these boats guided by civilians brought soot -covered passengers on board.

[935] They gave them water.

[936] They ferried them to safety.

[937] In total, they rescued nearly 500 ,000 people.

[938] that day.

[939] And that 9 -11 boat rescue became the largest boat rescue in the history of the world.

[940] It's bigger than Dunkirk.

[941] Wow.

[942] That's exactly right.

[943] Wow.

[944] That's what people do because on our hearts, when the chips are down, we are guided by our human values.

[945] And when I was Surgeon General, I tried to think about that as a guiding principle to how we act.

[946] We can get into debates, into political philosophy debates about what's the appropriate role of government.

[947] And those are important debates to have.

[948] Don't get me wrong.

[949] But I think what we have to make sure is always guiding us is that human perspective of how do we take care of each other, recognizing that we all do truly depend on each other.

[950] How do we recognize just because we are doing well in one area, whether that's economics or our health or our children are doing well, doesn't mean that because other people aren't doing well in that area, that it's all their fault.

[951] My goal is for you to look in the mirror and say, I really appreciate and like who I am.

[952] And I like the way I look.

[953] Yeah.

[954] And it doesn't matter the way anyone else looks or they feel it's a personal deal.

[955] It's an inside deal.

[956] If you appreciate the miracle of who you are and the way you look and the beauty in it, there's no one else like you.

[957] And you look in the mirror and say, I truly give myself permission to love and appreciate who I am, the way I look.

[958] look and the way I feel and the confidence within me that no other human being can ever take away and it and it's not for sale yes you're on to something amazing right now and I can't believe I've never thought of it I think part of this huge hurdle is you're you're wanting your look to be this thing that already existed but as as he just said you're your original thing and the thing is beautiful now yes you can't point to 25 magazines where it exists and you can't point to 25 leads of TV shows where it exists but that in no way means that this thing that's new for us isn't unbelievably beautiful.

[959] You're just the first to show it to us.

[960] It's a Michelangelo.

[961] It's a work of art. I'm not going to try to get you to believe you look like everyone else that's on TV and in magazines.

[962] And why should you?

[963] But I want you to believe that the version of you is insanely attractive.

[964] And enjoy your natural beauty.

[965] Yeah.

[966] Yeah, because bitch, it'll be gone soon enough.

[967] And you're going to be looking at photos going, fuck I miss it.

[968] Yeah, we're going to do it now.

[969] You resonate that natural beauty.

[970] but you now need to know it's an inside deal that you truly feel it when you look into a mirror.

[971] From episode 227 with Rob Cordrian.

[972] And this is the opening speech of Henry V. Oh my God.

[973] You really want me to do this?

[974] A thousand percent.

[975] I also want to take my shorts off before you begin.

[976] By the way, this is so embarrassing.

[977] I know.

[978] But I was shocked at how good you are at it.

[979] I mean, I'm not shocked.

[980] You're super talented.

[981] Okay, so the theater, you could hear a pin drop in the theater.

[982] Everyone's so excited to see the show.

[983] The curtain comes up.

[984] And the man is wearing a scarf.

[985] Of course, let's say.

[986] I'm wearing a scarf and a suit without a tie.

[987] Perfect.

[988] Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

[989] My kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene.

[990] Then, should the warlike Harry ascend the seed of Mars, and at his heels, leased in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire, crouch for employment.

[991] Pardon, gentles all, for a crooked figure may attest in little place a million, and let us on your imaginary forces work.

[992] When we say there are horses, imagine that you see them, clopping their proud, feet in the receiving earth.

[993] May we cram within this wooden O, the very casks that did a light the air at Agincourt?

[994] Oh, nay.

[995] And then I, oh, my, that I don't know.

[996] That was great.

[997] I already messed up.

[998] No, no, no. That was a paraphrased.

[999] It was perfect.

[1000] It was perfect.

[1001] Monica, can you relate to my, my reaction yesterday?

[1002] Yes.

[1003] Which is like, I have no clue one thing he said.

[1004] I followed that there's horse, that we have to imagine there's horses.

[1005] Nay.

[1006] Basically what you're saying is like, we're going to act out that there's horses, but you're not going to see them.

[1007] So imagine that when we say there's horses, you see them.

[1008] From episode 249 in the fact check for Sophia Coppola.

[1009] I could rewatch that.

[1010] Me too.

[1011] Let's do it.

[1012] I could rewatch anything with Leo.

[1013] Oh, my God.

[1014] What a sex machine.

[1015] All I can think about is his dinosaur bones now.

[1016] I know his T -Rex skull.

[1017] Yeah.

[1018] Yeah.

[1019] I really want to see it.

[1020] I really want him to make.

[1021] I want you to be bent over the T -Rex skull while he makes love to you.

[1022] Can you imagine him more?

[1023] Wait, is it?

[1024] Well, I don't think people are all going to like that.

[1025] Oh, why?

[1026] Because of the paleontology of it all or just you being bent over.

[1027] Yeah, because it's disrespectful to the T -Rex.

[1028] Oh, okay.

[1029] I didn't know if I had crossed the line with you about you and Leo.

[1030] No. He's in my age range, under 65.

[1031] Well, he's a little young for you, but yes.

[1032] Yeah.

[1033] And he's going to move.

[1034] in and bring his T -Rex, and we're going to find a way to incorporate that into my new house.

[1035] Well, but just imagine that the lovemaking somehow takes place on the T -Rex, and you're, like, holding on to the incisors of the T -Rex for stability.

[1036] I'm going to be nervous.

[1037] Can you imagine anything, though, more primal than holding the T -Rex's incisors while coitus is happening?

[1038] That's a lot.

[1039] I think I would make love to them if I could hold on to the incisors.

[1040] Maybe you guys will do it in the mouth of the T -Rex.

[1041] How big is the mouth?

[1042] I bet it's big enough to put, like, a twin bed on the tongue where the tongue would be.

[1043] Oh, my God.

[1044] And you guys could be in like a T -Rex cave.

[1045] Oh, my God.

[1046] I'm not saying no to that.

[1047] I hope Leo's listening, because if he hasn't thought of this idea, he's missing out on a great opportunity.

[1048] But dibs, Leo, it only gets to be with me and in my house with your T -Rex.

[1049] Talk about a novel experience.

[1050] Oh, yeah.

[1051] It's a double whammy.

[1052] Very few people have been able to make love to Leo.

[1053] Plus, I would argue no one's made love in the mouth of a T -Rex.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] God, we're so good at coming up with these.

[1056] Should we write for softcore pornography production companies?

[1057] Potentially.

[1058] First thing will be the butt snake.

[1059] Butt snake.

[1060] Yeah, bottom snake.

[1061] Oh, yeah.

[1062] From episode 252 with Bob Woodburn.

[1063] Take the question of George W. Bush, who invaded Iraq, thinking there were weapons of mass destruction.

[1064] This is 2003.

[1065] Before the invasion, I wrote a front -page story in the Washington Post, quoting CIA source saying, we do not have smoking gun intelligence that there is WMD in Iraq.

[1066] Now, I did not realize what I had written, because if you say there's not smoking gun intelligence, that means you don't have hard intelligence.

[1067] That means you're not sure.

[1068] And I should have realized what somebody was saying to me. And I failed miserably on that front.

[1069] And if I would just have read and understood my own words where I was quoting somebody, I would have then converted the story.

[1070] And it would have been uncertainty about WMD in Iraq before the invasion.

[1071] And now, it would have it had made in any difference, God knows.

[1072] But it's a really wonderful thing to be in journalism, and you learn, and I haven't been fired yet.

[1073] Because there is a realization, there's what's called good faith fuck up, and then there's a bad faith fuck up.

[1074] And a good faith fuck up is that where I didn't realize what I was being told.

[1075] I didn't realize what I was being told.

[1076] I didn't realize what I had written.

[1077] And all the editors at the Washington Post, who are very smart, one of them could have come over to me and tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, do you realize what you're saying here?

[1078] This is a GFF.

[1079] A good faith fuck -up.

[1080] That's a perfect term for us to use as we get into this.

[1081] From episode 270 was Scott Kelly.

[1082] Let's say it, pulling the food through your intestines down to your butthole.

[1083] That's not happening that force.

[1084] Yeah, it's a vector, I think, for our digestion to know which way to move things.

[1085] So what's the remedy for that when you're on the space station?

[1086] You just poop once a month or something?

[1087] The Russians have some really great colloquial expressions and they have some space ones too.

[1088] And it's the one about like if you can't go to the bathroom in space, just eat more food.

[1089] Okay.

[1090] So eventually it's going to come out of one end.

[1091] I guess is the method.

[1092] That's such a Russian way to look at things.

[1093] Get a bigger hammer.

[1094] Yeah.

[1095] From episode 196, Alicia Keys.

[1096] And you added one little detail that says everything to me, which was he was early every time.

[1097] Oh, he was waiting for me. I didn't have to go.

[1098] It's five for here.

[1099] It's far for here.

[1100] No, he was there.

[1101] Ready.

[1102] Yeah, because dads are late.

[1103] Especially those, those dads, you know, certain dads tend to be late.

[1104] And that's okay.

[1105] I find they come around eventually because my relationship with my father has evolved and I'm really grateful for it.

[1106] And I'm glad that we've been able to find a way to really be friends, you know, because at some point I realized, okay, you don't have to be my daddy.

[1107] Like, we could let that go.

[1108] But we could actually be friends.

[1109] We could know each other and get to know who we are as a woman and as a man and, like, respect that.

[1110] Yeah, I had a therapist say to me one time and I'm so gratefully said this, I was like, Like, I'm at the point I think I might be done with this trying to have a relationship with my dad.

[1111] It just, I get frustrated.

[1112] I get let down.

[1113] I'm disappointed.

[1114] Blah, blah, blah.

[1115] He said, look, it's not about your dad.

[1116] Are you the type of person that doesn't talk to their dad?

[1117] Like, forget him.

[1118] Do you think you're the type of person when people would describe you?

[1119] He was like, oh, yeah, he doesn't talk to his dad.

[1120] And I was like, fuck, I think you're right.

[1121] That I'm the type of person that no matter what would continue to try.

[1122] I would reach out.

[1123] It would be cool.

[1124] It's like I'm not harboring all.

[1125] of these things.

[1126] And I had a similar experience with somebody that shared some perspective like that to me that totally blew my mind and it changed everything.

[1127] She said, like, I'm always going to be disappointed.

[1128] Like, I'm always going to be disappointed.

[1129] I'm going to ask him to come to the thing.

[1130] He's going to say he's going to come to the thing.

[1131] And then he's not going to show up to the thing.

[1132] And then I tell myself, I'm not going to be disappointed because it's fine.

[1133] I know he's not going to show up.

[1134] And then I'm still disappointed.

[1135] And I'm kicking myself because I'm like, why, you knew that already?

[1136] I'm just over that.

[1137] let's just like forget it and then i turned up to another level when i had kids because i was like you know what you're not going to do you're not going to do this shit to my kids because that's not happening you know so so that like elevated and she was like so why do you keep asking him to do things that you know he's not going to do and i was like oh she was like it's like you're setting him up to disappoint you're like you know you have these different friends you know you can call this friend for when you need to vent and you can call this friend for when you need to like be up to an appointment on time.

[1138] And like that's who you call.

[1139] You don't, why are you setting him up to not come through for you?

[1140] It changed everything.

[1141] And I was able to look at it from that perspective and I was like, why am I doing that?

[1142] Like I'm trying to punish him or something.

[1143] And in a way, I was.

[1144] Well, and I think people do this in relationships a lot where they, especially of people that have a hard time accepting that they're loved, They're having a hard time believing they're worthy of love.

[1145] So then they start creating tests for the person that they can't pass.

[1146] That was it.

[1147] And it was deep.

[1148] So that changed so much for me. And I was able to start a relationship with him in a new way.

[1149] Based on knowing who he is as a person and accepting who he is as a person, we do this thing where we try to make people who we want them to be, not who they actually are.

[1150] And so I was able to look at that.

[1151] And I said, you know what?

[1152] I'm going to stop asking him.

[1153] to do the thing that he's probably not that great at doing.

[1154] It's just how it goes.

[1155] And I'm asking to do the thing that I notice goes well.

[1156] And when I started doing that, we started to be able to connect and I felt good.

[1157] And, you know, so it's so deep.

[1158] I thought in the book, you did a really good job of being gracious about his position, which was he was 27.

[1159] This was not a planned pregnancy.

[1160] He kind of found out when your mom had made the decision, yes, I'm going to keep this baby.

[1161] right and so i think you're just you're pretty gracious about recognizing like oh this wasn't his plan per se so you know it's hard and how do you who teaches you how to be a parent at what point do you get the memo like okay here's all the guidelines of how you parents nobody knows how to do this shit it's literally super confusing it's scary it's totally a whole new world and then the stakes are so high you know it's not like you guys are married and you plan to live the rest of your life.

[1162] That's terrifying because then you're like, oh my gosh, what do I do with that?

[1163] So I realize, obviously, in the beginning, I was totally, you know, pissed off and heated and all the shit.

[1164] And I talked about that too because that's fair.

[1165] I had a right to feel like that.

[1166] But I also realized after a while, like the only person that's angry, heated, and feeling this wrath that you swear you're slinging everywhere is you.

[1167] Yeah.

[1168] Because he doesn't, he doesn't have a clue that you feel like this.

[1169] How does he know?

[1170] he's going off, living his life, chilling.

[1171] I'm sitting here harboring all the anger and the, and like I'm darkening my spirit holding on to something.

[1172] But look, it's all a journey, and it is hard.

[1173] Not to say any of this is easy.

[1174] It's layered and all that, but finally getting there, you know, I feel you.

[1175] I feel you.

[1176] And I'm glad that it came off gracious because, you know, that's how I feel at this time in my life for sure.

[1177] We have a saying in AA, which is having resentments is like drinking poison, hoping your enemy dies.

[1178] That's exactly it.

[1179] That's exactly it.

[1180] You're like punishing yourself to get even with them.

[1181] It's wild.

[1182] Oh, deep.

[1183] That might be a song.

[1184] Oh.

[1185] I feel like that might be a song.

[1186] You don't even need to credit me. You don't even need to credit me. All right.

[1187] No, I'll just credit A .A. From episode 251 with John Bon Jovi.

[1188] Now, growing up in New Jersey, first of all, I love you on Stern.

[1189] You're always the greatest interview.

[1190] I think it's adorable.

[1191] You guys are so close.

[1192] And I loved hearing him bitch about inducting you into the Hall of Fame for six months leading up to it.

[1193] It was like every episode he lamented that.

[1194] When you would hear that would make you laugh or did you start feeling guilty?

[1195] A little of both because I do know him so well.

[1196] If you know him, you know that the guy that's off mic is completely different than the one on the mic.

[1197] And the backstory is, and I'm sure you've heard it, but it is true.

[1198] When I called him on the phone and I said, I have to come over to your house to see you today, you know, at first he thinks, are you okay?

[1199] And then it was like, you're not coming to my house.

[1200] And I'm like, well, I am coming to your house.

[1201] So when are you going to get there?

[1202] Long story short, we finally negotiated the deal.

[1203] And he said, you have to meet me at this location and be in the backseat of my car.

[1204] because when I come out, I'm going to tell the driver to keep rolling.

[1205] So this was like a mob meeting.

[1206] You know, he's got his driver in a car.

[1207] I got a driver in a car.

[1208] I tell his driver to get out of the car.

[1209] And there's no R in that.

[1210] Get out of the car.

[1211] And I get in the car.

[1212] And then he comes in the backseat.

[1213] This is real.

[1214] This happened in the backseat.

[1215] Everything I'm telling you.

[1216] He closes the door in the back seat of his car.

[1217] And I tell him what it's all about.

[1218] And I says, and honest to God, you're my first and only choice.

[1219] choice and he'd said i'd been asked a whole lot of times by a whole lot of people but you're the only one i can't turn down i'm in i said thank you very much it was an emotional little moment i got out of the car to leave and i went home and i called my manager and if you know anything in the music business irving azov you know that name is i don't he's a legendary legendary manager and he says he said yes no problem i said absolutely yes he goes did you tell him it's in cleveland i go no No. I said, that's what I pay you for.

[1220] And I think that's where the rubber met the road in this whole thing.

[1221] It's like, what is it starting to occurring to him?

[1222] He was going to be flying to Cleveland.

[1223] That he had to sleep in a hotel in Cleveland.

[1224] It scarred him.

[1225] But I told him, I said, Howard, you don't got to bring a passport to come to Cleveland.

[1226] Right.

[1227] There's no immigration line you'll stand in for hours.

[1228] from episode 2 .10 with Melissa McCarthy.

[1229] Melissa McCarthy.

[1230] Yes, Jack Shepard.

[1231] God, I love you.

[1232] Right back at you.

[1233] But we're both from the Midwest, and I do wonder, so I think my wife in particular, she's a very good person, the best person, more good than me. Oh, my God, by a landslide.

[1234] Yes, and I like you a lot.

[1235] I like you a lot, but sometimes I think she's so good that I'm like, in the end, we're going to find out she's super shady because it just seems too good.

[1236] I couldn't agree more.

[1237] That bitch has secrets for sure because, you know, I'm never shocked when it's the guy like, you know, like Bill Cosby where I'm like, of course, the guy was going around telling people they can't swear doing stand -up and shaming Lisa Bonnet for doing nudity.

[1238] Yes, that makes sense.

[1239] And the sweaters, I never trusted the sweaters.

[1240] They can't be trusted.

[1241] But, okay, so Kristen stocks the house with very responsible cleaning ingredients.

[1242] I know.

[1243] I know.

[1244] I actually knew.

[1245] I was like, if I say pine salt, I feel like Kristen's going to text me and be like, you know, there's all these.

[1246] I'm like, I use vinegar chew, but today I just hit it hard.

[1247] I'm like, you know what?

[1248] I want everybody all day to be like, God, you really clean that bathroom.

[1249] Yes.

[1250] Exactly.

[1251] So I wanted a little proof.

[1252] Yes.

[1253] I couldn't agree more.

[1254] Kristen and I have this silly thing that happened where I had cut myself like in the afternoon.

[1255] And then I had used toilet paper to get rid of all the blood.

[1256] And then I purposely put the toilet paper like on top of the trash.

[1257] can so that when she got home she'd be like oh my goodness what happened to you but then someone threw something else out in there and then i found myself rearranging the toilet paper so the blood would be on top just so i could get attention that's so great and then just walk in limping or like holding your wrist like oh this no it's fine of course i tried to play it off like yeah like i can't believe she found that i was trying to hide it and then i came clean i guess you told her see that's why you're that's why you're lovable so the weirdness plus the honesty is like a wonderful combo.

[1258] Yeah, scumbag and then apologetic about it.

[1259] I always feel like Ben is Kristen and I'm you and we're all doing fun.

[1260] But Ben's a much, much better human, a better person than I will ever be.

[1261] And most people that know us as you do are like, yeah, that's pretty accurate.

[1262] Yeah, and I'm glad you brought it up because I think that.

[1263] And I was like, you know, I don't know if I bring that up, she'll, you know, it'll be met with open arms.

[1264] But yeah, I would say that's a really good.

[1265] Yeah, we're each other.

[1266] We're each other.

[1267] Why?

[1268] In what way is he better than you?

[1269] I'd like him to prove it.

[1270] He's super patient and I'm always like, hot cold, hot cold.

[1271] I mean, anything I'm like, that's outrageous.

[1272] Somebody's got to help these people.

[1273] And he's like, well, let's figure out a way to help them.

[1274] But I've got to take seven laps around the house going, what's going to, who somebody has to do something?

[1275] And meanwhile, by the time I'm done ranting, he's like, so I called and looks like if we do this, it can really help.

[1276] so I did that.

[1277] And I'm like, all I've been doing is outside swearing.

[1278] And like, he just does it and like does it better.

[1279] And I'm like, oh, great.

[1280] He goes, great intentions.

[1281] Your process is not always wonderful.

[1282] From episode 259 with Joseph Laycock.

[1283] We're not good at this, you know?

[1284] And because we're not good at this, we need to be extra vigilant about the legal process, about evidence, about crossing.

[1285] examination about all these things, like, they are there for a reason because we are so fallible.

[1286] Yeah, and this is what I tell my students all the time is critical thinking, if you're doing it right, should hurt, right?

[1287] Actual critical thinking should really make you uncomfortable and should make your head hurt.

[1288] But if critical thinking is making you feel good, that probably means you're doing it wrong, right?

[1289] That probably means you are just engaging in confirmation bias and you are just ignoring anyone who disagrees with you and then patting yourself on the back for, you know, seeing through the fake news.

[1290] You're so right.

[1291] To be presented with proof that confirms what you already thought is not critical thinking.

[1292] Finding out things are counterintuitive and completely opposite of what you assumed is probably, that's a great way to approach it, is that it should, it probably feels uncomfortable.

[1293] Yeah, because I think all the time people are really engaging in something like anti -intellectualism, right?

[1294] And they say, well, what does Fauci know about disease really.

[1295] And they're like, I'm a critical thinker.

[1296] I ignore Dr. Fauci about coronavirus.

[1297] Yeah, yeah.

[1298] It can feel like critical thinking, but it isn't.

[1299] Episode 202 with Rob Lowe.

[1300] You guys, what, you shot that in Arkansas, right?

[1301] Oklahoma.

[1302] Oh, Oklahoma.

[1303] Tulsa.

[1304] One of my favorite parts of your story is getting to the hotel, checking in, learning that Francis in his wisdom, has given the social.

[1305] is the actress playing the soches they're in better rooms and they have more per diem totally and when you're checking in you're checking in with the young tom cruise yep and you the room is not to his liking is that is that how the story goes yes that part of it was when we went to new you all the la people survived the lea auditions and then had the handpicked people had to go to new york to face the new york version and so it was me and tom cruise and a Emilio and C. Thomas Howell, and we got, first time I ever stayed at the Plaza Hotel.

[1306] And we check in and Tom finds out that we're sharing a room.

[1307] Okay, that's the...

[1308] And just goes ballistic.

[1309] And you know what?

[1310] To me, what's great about the story is there's certain people who have always been who they are.

[1311] And that element of them has powered them to where they are today and the rest is history.

[1312] And the notion that a 18 -year -old actor with a walk -on part in endless love and like a seventh lead in taps could have that kind of like wherewithal.

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] You know, I remember going, wow, this guy is the real deal.

[1315] I mean, it made me laugh and it was gnarly, but at the end of it, you can't argue with the results.

[1316] He's at his eye on the ball since day one.

[1317] That's what I liked about it, too.

[1318] It's like no one knocks on anyone's door and says, hey, you want to fucking be in 12 Mission Impossible's.

[1319] It's not how it works.

[1320] Like those people, they're that way and they make it happen.

[1321] I thought there's something, you know, oddly interesting about that.

[1322] I've gone down the rabbit hole recently of watching these YouTube behind the scenes of Mission Impossible, all the stunts that Tom's doing.

[1323] And it took me back, man, to being in the Tulsa Gymnasium where we had to learn.

[1324] to do backflips.

[1325] For whatever reason, Francis had it in his head that he wanted us to do backflip.

[1326] I mean, Francis had a lot of ideas that I don't know what was going on.

[1327] But, you know, you've ever tried to do backflip?

[1328] It's really scary.

[1329] Like, you think you're going to fall and break your neck.

[1330] It's not easy.

[1331] I hold people who can do backflips on the same level as Rhodes Scholars.

[1332] I literally, I think it's the most fantastic physical feat someone can do.

[1333] And it's hard as fuck to learn.

[1334] And Tom was relentlessly competitive.

[1335] He ended up being the only one who can do a backflip.

[1336] It is in the movie, The Outsiders, for no reason.

[1337] Oh, I remember it.

[1338] He runs out of the house and does a back clip for no reason just to do it.

[1339] But that's what people who do backflips.

[1340] That is what they do.

[1341] They are for no reason.

[1342] Yes, our friend Ryan Hanson does them every couple hours.

[1343] See, it's a thing.

[1344] Episode 213, the fact check for Bradley Whitford.

[1345] That was good.

[1346] It's really, really good.

[1347] You were about to tell me something about Husson did.

[1348] Yeah, when we started this, I was saying Husson.

[1349] Hosson had a good, well, there's, as in Thursday's episode, we noted, there are so many videos, there are so many things circulating, there are so many things to watch, and no one can expect everyone to, like, watch all the things.

[1350] But Hosson, Manash, posted...

[1351] Nicky's brother.

[1352] No, posted a kind of like short kind of episode.

[1353] essentially.

[1354] And it was speaking like very directly to the Indian American community about getting involved and acting and not just like looking at it from afar because we're benefiting from civil rights.

[1355] We are benefiting.

[1356] If the Immigration Act was like piggybacked on the civil rights.

[1357] Oh.

[1358] You know, like there's some obligation.

[1359] Yeah, there's an obligation.

[1360] I mean, I've been thinking about this for days and a few people have asked my thoughts on all of this because I said it on here a hundred times that I just wanted to be white, because I always wanted to be white.

[1361] And that's true.

[1362] That's a part of my story.

[1363] I did.

[1364] I wanted that.

[1365] And I did everything and my power to like strip away my otherness, my Indianness, all of it so that I could blend in as much as possible, which is, I think, a human thing to do.

[1366] But I've always looked at it in like a, it was a defense mechanism that I feel like I created or something, like that I was unique and like figuring out how to, how to like put this otherness aside.

[1367] And I haven't, I've never really thought to examine it from a little bit more of a bird's eye view, which is like, why did I feel like I had to do that?

[1368] Right.

[1369] And it's part of this whole conversation we're having, you know.

[1370] And I also blame myself because you know sometimes me and you will have these debates or me and eric were having it was having a debate yesterday and like i'll have like quote debates and they're like intellectual debates about these topics and they affect me a lot more than if we had an intellectual debate on um you know on like christ sleeping with your sister on vacation yeah Moral dump out, yes.

[1371] And for a while, I was like, why am I feeling this so much?

[1372] Like, I couldn't even recognize why I felt emotionally tied in a deeper way.

[1373] And at one point I was like, oh, yeah, because I am a person of color.

[1374] And often in these conversations, in these debates, I'm the only person of color.

[1375] Uh -huh.

[1376] And that is something I did.

[1377] Like, I created that.

[1378] I created this system where I've basically...

[1379] Yeah, you didn't go to babysit Will Smith's kids.

[1380] I'm not regretful.

[1381] I love the way my life is turned out.

[1382] I'm teasing.

[1383] Just...

[1384] I just started thinking, like, oh, every decision I've made since I was like five has been just surround yourself.

[1385] with as many white people as possible and blend into their surroundings and their situation and be like them.

[1386] Uh -huh.

[1387] And now I'm expecting you guys to defer to me because I am the only one who has experienced what it feels like to be judged based on the color of your skin.

[1388] And I'm expecting other people to like defer and not have a debate.

[1389] about it and just be like, okay, sure.

[1390] But how can I expect that if all I've done is tell you I'm white, I'm white, I'm white, I'm white.

[1391] Like, why would anyone take me seriously?

[1392] Well, hold on, no. I think so that certainly could be part of it.

[1393] But I also think that, and this is a part that is always hard to reconcile, which is nobody on any topic wants to be in a conversation where they're not allowed to have an opinion about it.

[1394] It's like, well, that's just being taught.

[1395] So I might search out going to class or I might search out going somewhere where I'm going to switch into just absorbing information.

[1396] But any backyard conversation, no one's entering it with the thought, okay, I'm going to enter this conversation and I'll have nothing to say.

[1397] So, like, you're right.

[1398] I cannot, I cannot relate to your experience.

[1399] I haven't had that experience.

[1400] And that's dead true.

[1401] From episode 200 was Cheryl Crowe.

[1402] So in high school, you were popular.

[1403] You were a track star.

[1404] You won a beauty pageant.

[1405] Did you feel those things?

[1406] Like on paper, you could acknowledge, like, oh, if I look on the paper and I was on track and I was in honor society, it seems like you did pretty well in high school.

[1407] Did it feel that way?

[1408] I mean, I felt like high school was, well, obviously I had no reference, but for me it was really awkward.

[1409] I mean, I was a super skinny girl.

[1410] And I had the relationship to being loved with doing good, doing well, being the best.

[1411] Uh -huh.

[1412] Very female of you.

[1413] Very female, yeah.

[1414] And not disappointing my parents, you know, working hard.

[1415] The stink guy was a huge motivator for me. So if I ever sense any disappointment out of my parents, it was just like, you know.

[1416] So I think that it took me really, to be perfectly honest, until I got diagnosed with breast cancer, to figure out that love is not something that you tap dance to get.

[1417] And that was my relationship with my work, my relationship in the universe.

[1418] I picked people that demanded that of me. I mean, I've picked some very high -achieving men.

[1419] Uh -huh.

[1420] So, I mean, not to make you my therapist, but...

[1421] No, I would love to be your therapist.

[1422] I'd like to continue this weekly.

[1423] You'll love my rates.

[1424] They're very competitive.

[1425] It's too bad.

[1426] We aren't in the attic because if you were on the couch, you'd really, really feel like it was therapy.

[1427] This would be like a four -hour lesson of crying, maybe some yelling, beating a pillow.

[1428] I think I did the really hard.

[1429] hard stuff after I went through the whole cancer thing.

[1430] I mean, I think I've done bits and pieces of it through the years, but nothing like that.

[1431] And I really dug down.

[1432] Do you think you could articulate what about that moment caused you to question some of these things?

[1433] Well, I had a couple of instruments of people that just seemed to say something that resonated at the moment that I could get it.

[1434] For years, I've been studying meditation, and I would do it religiously, and then I would stop doing it for a couple of years.

[1435] And then I would change the kind of meditation.

[1436] It was just kind of about like how I approached everything.

[1437] And I started seeing this great healer in New York City when I was living there.

[1438] He would not say he was psychic, but he was definitely intuitive.

[1439] And he was like, look, everybody has the ability to be intuitive.

[1440] It's just, it really depends on how much you want to know.

[1441] And that's what keeps you from knowing.

[1442] He said a couple of things that resonated with me. And one of them was that, you know, until you can put yourself first, in your life, you will always be at the bottom.

[1443] And I think that was where I had gotten.

[1444] In fact, I think I had really mastered even in relationship picking someone that could really manifest that with me of making me seriously the bottom of the heat.

[1445] And the other thing is that awakening emotion is the gateway to awakening.

[1446] So if you're somebody like me who's always been, and this is typical of Westerners anyway, you know, you fall down as a kid, you're not hurt, just don't think about it.

[1447] you know somebody breaks up with you just try to stay busy don't dwell in it everything is about pushing it down pushing it down not dealing with it and that just registers itself in your somewhere in your psyche have you read um body keeps the score yes and i believe that there are several really great books that kind of fortify that notion from episode 237 with bill gates Oh yeah.

[1448] Your ability to, you know, take on a completely new discipline, economics or biology or health or, you know, all these things.

[1449] Are there specific disciplines that have been hard for you?

[1450] Well, I have this mindset that I'm still a student.

[1451] And many people, as they become adults, leave that mindset.

[1452] I also, for any subject I study, I know somebody who knows the subject super well.

[1453] So I have a lifeline.

[1454] You know, like when I'm studying macroeconomics, you know, I can say to Warren Buffett or Ray Dalio, God, unconfused me here.

[1455] So I know I'm not going to get stuck.

[1456] And that helps you be kind of brave of pushing ahead.

[1457] I mean, macroeconomics, that's a complicated one, you know, quantum computing.

[1458] There's things that are on the edge where you've got to say, do I really have the time to figure it out or not?

[1459] Now medicine has become this thing that I get a kick out of.

[1460] There's all these diseases our foundation works on.

[1461] So I've been rewarded for putting the time in, and eventually it all makes sense.

[1462] You have to be willing to be confused.

[1463] Most adults, the minute they start getting confused, they're like, oh, this isn't for me. I'm not good at this.

[1464] So you kind of have to feel good about, wow, I've just jumped in here, and I am so confused.

[1465] And then eventually pursue the things that don't fit until they really do.

[1466] That's great advice.

[1467] from our bonus episode day seven i feel shady but i don't feel like this is a problem i didn't desire more when the thing was over blah blah blah blah blah so this escalates to i have a ton of injuries i've had seven surgeries from shit i go ride a lot yeah and after i ride sometimes on the track i feel I'm entitled to take to Vicodin at the end of the day because I am in pain.

[1468] That again doesn't feel that crazy.

[1469] And then this last go round of the hand, then the shoulder, starting like, I don't know, six months ago or whatever it was, I'm getting shadier and shadier and I've not ever yet bought them.

[1470] Mm -hmm.

[1471] And then I do.

[1472] Yeah.

[1473] And so, yeah.

[1474] And for the last eight weeks, maybe, I don't really know.

[1475] You would know better than I would.

[1476] I'm on them all day.

[1477] And I'm allowed to be on them at some dosage because I have a prescription.

[1478] And then I'm also augmenting that.

[1479] And then all the prescriptions run out.

[1480] And I'm now just taking 30 mil oxies that I've bought at whenever I decide I can do.

[1481] and again in my addicty brain I'm like I don't take them after four so I can sleep I'm taking stool softener so I'm not constipated I'm doing all the dishes and I'm being a dad and I'm interviewing people and the interviews seem to be going pretty well and it's feeling very manageable and I'm thinking this is very manageable and then primarily you start saying what are you on or why are you different or what's happening.

[1482] And I start lying to you pretty regularly.

[1483] And I hate it.

[1484] And I'm lying to other people.

[1485] Yep.

[1486] And I know I have to quit.

[1487] But my tolerance is going up so quickly that I'm now in a situation where I'm taking, you know, eight 30s a day.

[1488] And I know that's an amount that's going to result in a pretty bad withdrawal.

[1489] And I start getting really scared and I'm starting to feel really lonely and I just have this enormous secret.

[1490] And I create a schedule.

[1491] You try to handle it yourself.

[1492] I try to handle it myself and I come up with a schedule that I'm going to take, you know, eight, then the next day I'm going to take seven, then I'm going to take six and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1493] And then I'm going to be down to a half and I go up that.

[1494] Well, day one when I'm supposed to step down, I'm like, oh, I wasn't anticipating that this was already going to to feel bad after just one less.

[1495] So I don't step down the first day.

[1496] And then I don't step down the second day.

[1497] And now I'm really panicking because I don't have many left and I know it's getting worse.

[1498] And I now start getting pretty visibly detoxy and withdrawly.

[1499] And I lie and say I'm having an arthritis flare up.

[1500] And then 10, maybe 11, 12 days ago.

[1501] Yeah, something like that.

[1502] You and I are driving in the car, and I'm now on my, like, fourth lie to you of the day.

[1503] And I just can't, I can't do it.

[1504] I can't.

[1505] I just, I'm gaslighting you, and I know I am, and I'm making you feel crazy, and I'm making Kristen feel crazy.

[1506] And so I say to you in the car, I start crying a little bit and I say I have something to tell you but I want to tell you and Kristen at the same time so we go in the gym and then I tell you guys everything yeah and I give you the remaining stuff I have and I say please help me because I'm not doing this well yep and now I don't really know what to do I'm like I've told you guys I apologize for all the cast lighting I've been doing and now I have this whole AA situation and my more more importantly my ego in my 16 years 16 years 16 years.

[1507] Compounded by the fact that like it's in the news that I have 16 years.

[1508] I know the public element makes this so much harder than it is for another person which is why I'm extra proud.

[1509] By the way, I said, I don't think you need to start over.

[1510] I think it's fine.

[1511] I think we get through this.

[1512] And let's also say why, because I think it's relevant.

[1513] My fear was that if I have one day, I'm going to drink.

[1514] Yeah.

[1515] And I'm going to do Coke because I haven't drank a beer in 16 years and I haven't snorted a line in 16 years.

[1516] And if I have one day, then I might as well fucking have what I really want and then start.

[1517] over.

[1518] And my fear of that is, I know if I do that, it may take me three years to get that back in the cage, and I may die.

[1519] I just know what I'm like on those two things.

[1520] And so I'm, and again, it's very hard for me to know what part of this is like my addiction and what great stories I tell myself of reasons why I can't just be fucking humble and say I failed.

[1521] I think I have a very legitimate fear that I would drink.

[1522] And also, I think my addiction is smart enough to say you can't do that oil drink.

[1523] So what I end up doing is going to a meeting after I tell you and Kristen and I kind of, I talk about the thoughts I had, which is, wow, that stuff's confusing because you're kind of functional and it doesn't feel powerless and it doesn't feel unmanageable.

[1524] And so like I kind of just crack that door, but the guys there aren't necessarily thinking anything and then the next night I go to a much smaller meeting with some really good friends of mine and I copped to a lot of it yeah I basically copped to getting a couple prescriptions that Kristen didn't know about which again is not the full story right and then I Saturday I call my best friend someone who I look up to so much who's much older than me and has everything I want as a person and two beautiful daughters and he's just the most amazing man in the world and I talk to him and I tell him everything yeah and he says you know your your number one character defect is your arrogance you think you're so much smarter than everybody and he said and I know it because I suffer from the same one which is true I never thought I'm not not an addict, but I thought I'm a smart enough addict to do this and be smarter than it and come up with a bulletproof game plan.

[1525] And he said, you know, it's your number one character defect in that unfortunately I know the antidote to it, which is humility.

[1526] And there would be nothing more humbling for you than to tell everyone in our meeting and then ultimately tell everyone, period.

[1527] And that was terrifying that was so terrifying and yet i could not deny that was the real antidote yeah so then i am living in pretty big fear from saturday till tuesday also i'm stepping down and i'm really very physically ill yeah yeah yes i'm like sweating bullets i'm jerky i my back kills uh it's just it's It's terrible.

[1528] I've never detox from opiates, and I have so much compassion for these junkies who have, like, fucking cycle through this 20, 30 times.

[1529] It's, it's, yeah.

[1530] Oh, I know.

[1531] Also, you just had your sobriety birthday.

[1532] Yes.

[1533] And, oh, yes.

[1534] So let me add that.

[1535] Thank you.

[1536] Yeah.

[1537] So my older friend who I worship, one of his first questions was, how'd it feel taking that 16 year cake at the meeting where everyone was being so kind to you and saying how much they admire you.

[1538] And I said it was the worst hour of my life.

[1539] You were on them.

[1540] Oh, yeah.

[1541] I was high at the meeting having people tell me that they admire my sobriety.

[1542] And I said it was the worst thing in the world, but my choices in my mind at that time were don't go to the meeting on my 16th birthday, which would have been.

[1543] the biggest red flag in the world and my secret would be out and I'm dead and I I'm really at that point thinking like this is my life on the line is like the idea that I would have to quit these things tomorrow morning it just yeah irony right because your life is on the line in the opposite way in the opposite way yeah but I have convinced myself at that point again stupidly and in wrongly that the love I've experienced in that room for the last 17 years has been conditional it's they love me because I'm sober and I really convinced myself of that yeah you you you you have an MO of that or you think people love you because you they love you because you're a good driver I love you because of this and that this just people just love you you have to be able to just put a period at the end of that it's very hard do you don't you think you have that of course I think everyone does but when you're on the other side of it, you know that's just so not true.

[1544] You're right.

[1545] Yeah.

[1546] You're right.

[1547] And then.

[1548] Well, and then that, so I had great fear of going to the meeting on Tuesday.

[1549] And it timed up kind of perfectly where I had been off of opiates for a full 24 hours.

[1550] And I had taken Xanax the night before to sleep because I couldn't sleep.

[1551] So Tuesday really was day one.

[1552] Yeah.

[1553] And then so I went to this meeting and I, man, I've known the men in this meeting.

[1554] for a 17 and a half years because I had many attempts before I got you know going and I told my whole story and I told it honestly and I went first and I was crying and it turned into the most incredible like 90 minutes I've ever experienced where there was just so much love and there was so much understanding and kindness and unconditional.

[1555] love.

[1556] And it's the own, there's probably been many others, but it's the only experience I can remember having that was just grace, the definition of grace.

[1557] And it was very emotional and it was a really, really surreal kind of experience.

[1558] And when it was over, I actually mentally, for the first time in a very long time, felt optimistic because for the last while, a long time, I've known intellectually that things are going to get worse, that each encounter with it has gotten more shady and more dangerous.

[1559] And I recognize that the next go -round would be, oh, I can't get pills let's snort heroin and you know and I've had a lot of friends that I've watched go through this whole cycle and I finally have the humility to say I will not be any different I won't be special I won't be smarter I will be exactly like everyone else I've seen I mean Philip Seymour Hoffman who I just adored an idolize he had 20 some years and I think he he had a very similar kind of experience that ended in death and so I'm not smarter than Philip Seymour Hoffman I'm not more special.

[1560] I'm not anything more than him.

[1561] So embarrassed by the thing.

[1562] I'm not as much now going through it as I thought I would be.

[1563] But I was very embarrassed by the whole thing.

[1564] You know, I had really started, yeah, my ego was like, oh, I've got this under control.

[1565] And yeah, I do admit I don't have control, which is the thing I desire the most.

[1566] And to openly say that, I have lost complete control is hard, yeah, hard for me. I think everyone hearing this is going to learn something new about you and maybe themselves and feel like everyone is going through a hard time.

[1567] Everyone is.

[1568] Yeah, I guess the only thing I would hope people would hear is that, at least in my case, the outcome wasn't anything like I feared it would be.

[1569] And the secrets are so much more painful than whatever the fallout from owning my secrets was, yeah, I'm just really, really grateful that you guys, you know, were understanding and didn't feel as betrayed as you should, you know.

[1570] No, but that's the other thing.

[1571] I'm not letting you off the hook or anything at all.

[1572] But it is a disease.

[1573] It's a real disease.

[1574] I, when you, and I think we've talked about this before, but when you had surgery, this is maybe a couple years ago, and I don't know why Kristen wasn't there or something, so I was in charge of administering your pills.

[1575] And we were just in the middle of conversation.

[1576] Yeah.

[1577] Normal, like totally like this.

[1578] And then you'd just be like, it's two.

[1579] Like in the middle of the conversation, it's 2 p .m. Without looking at my walk.

[1580] Yeah, you just knew your brain was always counting down the minutes until you could have it.

[1581] And that's the part two I want to be honest about, which is the lie I was telling myself was, I'm pulling this off and this isn't powerless and it's not unmanageable because, look, I'm interviewing people and I'm going to work and I'm doing all this stuff.

[1582] but the truth is while I'm interviewing someone I'm almost having this out of body experience where I'm like oh good this is working this will end in an hour I'm going to go pee I have two pills in my pocket I'm going to try to take one while I'm peeing that way Monica won't know I took a pill oh my god I think a pill fell out in the lazy boy all I'm thinking about is that there's a pill in the lazy boy and you're going to see it but I'm still so that's what's fucked up is that my real life gets put to my subconscious my subconscious is now just off operating whatever skill set I have.

[1583] But my real thoughts are all day long.

[1584] When do I have another pill?

[1585] I can't have too many.

[1586] I got to stop at four.

[1587] Fuck, wow, it's already four.

[1588] I can't have, you know, really all I'm thinking about is that.

[1589] And I'm not actually present, even though there is the facade of being present.

[1590] Yeah.

[1591] It's very grody that I can do that.

[1592] Again, when I saw that, like, you know, we've talked about addiction so much.

[1593] and I hear all the stories.

[1594] But when I was administering the pills was the first time I really was like, oh, he has no control over this.

[1595] I don't know.

[1596] It just really opened my eyes to it in a new way.

[1597] Like intellectually, I can understand it.

[1598] But I felt like I could understand it emotionally for the first time of your lack of control over it.

[1599] And so I know it's like this is a disease.

[1600] I really get that now.

[1601] And from episode 219 with Jeff Sacks.

[1602] So in 1976, after my first foray, you know, into trying to understand the world by visiting East Berlin, I went to Sweden to Stockholm.

[1603] And Stockholm's a great place, an amazing, sparkling, you know, really special place.

[1604] But they have what became famously.

[1605] called the middle way between capitalism and communism.

[1606] And the term that they have used for it, and by that point, it was basically a half century old, is social democracy.

[1607] And the main party that kept power for most of the time was the social democratic party.

[1608] So I got there in 76, and whoa, that's interesting.

[1609] Okay, I've seen one.

[1610] I've seen one.

[1611] I've seen.

[1612] the other.

[1613] I spent four years in college understanding this debate, but this is really something.

[1614] This is quite interesting.

[1615] So I became a social democrat in 1976.

[1616] And I pretty much held that view all the way since then.

[1617] And the idea of social democracy is it's a market economy.

[1618] It's mainly private companies, but it's decency.

[1619] You know, everybody gets a chance and everybody gets health care.

[1620] Everybody gets education and so on.

[1621] Really quick, can I just ask so that people are following along?

[1622] Is, am I writing to say that in that paradigm, you're basically circling some industries that you've decided shouldn't be for profit?

[1623] Well, for example, healthcare, you say that is a public service.

[1624] That is what in economics, we call it a merit good, meaning everyone should have it.

[1625] If you're poor or you're rich, you got it.

[1626] It's part of your human rights.

[1627] So we have one thing in this country, which is the fire department.

[1628] Doesn't matter if your dead ass broke.

[1629] Your house is on fire.

[1630] You call.

[1631] We've decided everyone should have access to people putting their house out.

[1632] That's correct.

[1633] And we have some in the health side.

[1634] We have Medicare for everybody over 65 and so forth.

[1635] But in the social democracies, and they became strongest in Northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, which is three countries, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

[1636] They went a long way to, you pay a lot of taxes, and then you get a lot of public services.

[1637] And the public services you get start from family leave time that both the mom and the dad get up to a year of paid leave.

[1638] And then guaranteed childcare, and then quality education, and everybody gets health care.

[1639] And everybody gets basically free or very low -cost higher education if you qualify to either, you know, get into the vocational or university system and so on.

[1640] So their ideas pay a lot of tax and get a lot of benefits.

[1641] And the society is not completely equal.

[1642] And there are some billionaires and they're millionaires.

[1643] But it's definitely much more equal and much more egalitarian in the ethic than in America.

[1644] I have a quick question.

[1645] Are there any examples of social democracies where it's as diverse?

[1646] as it is in the United States.

[1647] Great question.

[1648] Because I can see a lot of people going, yeah, that would work in Scandinavia.

[1649] You have this homogenous population.

[1650] They have good natural resources.

[1651] They're set up to kind of win.

[1652] There's less maybe underlying social issues.

[1653] Yeah.

[1654] So it is really right in history that that kind of social homogeneity.

[1655] Everybody speaks one language, same religion.

[1656] Basically, they were all farmers.

[1657] They weren't really set up to win, interestingly.

[1658] They were pretty late developers.

[1659] They were pretty poor until the end of the 19th century.

[1660] And actually, the way social democracy emerged was after three decades of a lot of labor strikes, general strikes, strife on happiness.

[1661] It was not a happy place.

[1662] But then they figured out we want social peace because we really are in this together.

[1663] In Sweden, they made an agreement in 1937, famous agreement, to make social peace.

[1664] and that's when social democracy really took hold.

[1665] So it's not that it was fated to be the case.

[1666] They had to invent it.

[1667] But what is true is it came more naturally.

[1668] You know, they felt we're all in this together.

[1669] America is so divided.

[1670] The truth is, it is, I think, our greatest strength is our diversity.

[1671] It's what makes America really special.

[1672] It's what has allowed America to attract the greatest talent in the world and people coming poor, but with phenomenal talents or people coming, like the great scientists that were the refugees from Hitler in the 30s that helped make America so dominant in science and technology afterwards.

[1673] But it's also, you know, our weak spot because this is a country that was founded on slavery, founded on genocide of native populations.

[1674] And there's a deep, deep, deep streak of cruelty in American history as well as this incredible glory and achievement that I think diversity is our greatest calling card.

[1675] But when you look at it, it's absolutely correct that that diversity means we don't have the feeling that we're all in this together.

[1676] Yeah, there's so much in -group, out -group within the U .S. Exactly.

[1677] But, you know, the problem in what I say as an economist is, come on, even if you're thinking in those ways, let me explain to you how it works.

[1678] so well for everybody to have that common system.

[1679] So I'm constantly asked, well, that's Sweden, that can't apply.

[1680] And by the way, when you do the work that I do, which is seeing that something works and then trying to apply it somewhere else, the first line for anything and everything is, well, that won't work here.

[1681] And the truth is a lot can work here.

[1682] And a lot of, you know, Things can really be learned, but it doesn't come naturally.

[1683] And in our country, you're in it on your own approach.

[1684] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1685] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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