Susan David

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair.

[1] Expert, Experts on Expert.

[2] I'm Dave Shepard, and I'm joined by Minature Mouse with the Maximus Attitude.

[3] Hello.

[4] Maximus Powers.

[5] This episode of Experts on Experts is with Susan David.

[6] Susan David is a PhD.

[7] She's one of the world's leading management thinkers and an award -winning Harvard Medical School psychologist.

[8] She's an incredible TED talk that I saw that got me interested in her called The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage.

[9] And she has a book.

[10] emotional agility, where she talks at great length about these concepts.

[11] I found her to be really, really helpful in understanding your emotions, identifying them, and learning how to avoid just chasing your emotions to places.

[12] Yeah, I agree.

[13] And letting the emotions tell you more about yourself as opposed to just letting them control you.

[14] Yes.

[15] I clicked many of the boxes she brought up.

[16] Me too.

[17] No, I did too.

[18] One or two.

[19] One or two.

[20] All right, well, please enjoy Susan David.

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[24] Hi, how are you?

[25] I'm good.

[26] I'm good.

[27] Where are you at in time and space?

[28] I'm in space in Boston.

[29] Okay.

[30] And in time, I'm at 3 in the afternoon, relaxed, happy, walked, beautiful day.

[31] And if you don't mind me asking, who are you quarantining with?

[32] Isn't that a new word for our vocab?

[33] Yeah.

[34] It's like no longer, you know, where you're going on vacation or what are your plans?

[35] It's like, who you're quarantining with?

[36] Yeah, who's your pod?

[37] Yeah, who's my pod?

[38] part since February has been my husband, who's a doctor.

[39] So that has its various complications as well as my two kids.

[40] Okay.

[41] Yeah.

[42] So it's been kind of fascinating because he's been very much on the forefront of a lot of what's been going on.

[43] And it's been really interesting.

[44] Well, then I guess this question then might not apply to you because if he's been so busy in his normal routine as it sounds like maybe he has, maybe you guys have not succumbed to the same what seems like kind of universal stress between couples.

[45] I know my wife and I have had some real major ups and downs.

[46] And most of our friends, I think this, you know, new living arrangement where you're with each other 24 -7 has just presented all these new issues.

[47] I mean, I think it's a whole new world that we negotiating and navigating in so many different ways.

[48] And I think both of those words come in, you know, for us, he's being busy in his normal thing, but we still are at home, we home scooting two kids, we have been doing this since February.

[49] He came to me in December and he was like, this thing is going to be big.

[50] I'm buying masks.

[51] I'm buying toilet paper.

[52] And I was like, you are going crazy.

[53] You are ridiculous.

[54] Yeah.

[55] And then I ate my words.

[56] So I think in so many ways, it's a renegotiation for all of us.

[57] It's like, who are we?

[58] What is our identity?

[59] Who are we without our work?

[60] What does the relationship look like?

[61] like what does effective parenting look like?

[62] Oh, yeah.

[63] What does friendship look like?

[64] You know, how are we with our friends?

[65] There's all of this stuff.

[66] I mean, it's such an extraordinary moment.

[67] It really is.

[68] As you point out, it's like put a wrinkle in nearly every compartment of your life.

[69] You know, it's not just one new element.

[70] It's whether you're working or you're not working, everyone's work has changed virtually.

[71] The whole rug was kind of taken away.

[72] I think there's the physical, technical aspects of it.

[73] And then there's the psychological aspects.

[74] I mean, for me, every single week I was traveling.

[75] And suddenly it's like, you're not traveling.

[76] And like, what's your identity?

[77] Who are you?

[78] Like, how are you separate from your work?

[79] There's just all of this.

[80] And it's just fascinating and takes such courage.

[81] And I think it also really, like, brings us front and center of the reality, which is like, we always have the sense that we're in control.

[82] And then actually we realize how fundamentally, that was an illusion.

[83] Oh my God, yes.

[84] It puts such a fine point on that security is an illusion, safety is an illusion.

[85] I have to imagine, though, that this is like an amazing opportunity in the social sciences in the way that like punctuated evolution theory is like some big environmental event leads to all this stuff.

[86] And I just have to imagine there's going to be a lot of truths revealed in the social sciences by this data set.

[87] Yeah.

[88] I mean, certainly in terms of my work, you know, my work is really in the context of emotions.

[89] And, what are the narratives that we have about our emotions?

[90] How do they make us fragile?

[91] How do they make us agile?

[92] And it's been so fascinating for me because not only am I living it, breathing it in a vulnerable way myself, but of course these conversations around mental health about well -being, there's so many conversations that I think we were starting to have.

[93] You know, even like if we think pre -pandemic that like depression and anxiety were the leading causes of disability globally, outstripping cancer, outstripping heart disease.

[94] And yet there's so much of this that is at the periphery.

[95] And I think what happens in this context is it all becomes, you know, something that's so front and center.

[96] And I think for me, in my work, it's just been extraordinary, actually.

[97] Yeah.

[98] In both the feeling of it and being in it.

[99] Yeah.

[100] And then also in, I think the power that comes from the conversation, the power that comes through, the power that comes through to us all going, oh my God, like we are human.

[101] How about that?

[102] Yes.

[103] So I would love to just briefly set up what your work is.

[104] I love your TED Talk, gift and power of emotional courage, as do 8 million other people.

[105] It's a very popular TED talk, and it's very well done.

[106] But in that you talk about this topic, which you also wrote a book called Emotional Agility, and you explore that, you know, we tend to have kind of rigid responses to emotions.

[107] And I would love for you to just kind of tell us what that looks like, because I think a lot of people identify with it.

[108] Yeah, so my work explores really one central question, which is what does it take for us to be healthy human beings?

[109] We have everyday thousands of thoughts.

[110] The thoughts might be, you know, I'm not good enough or I'm being undermined.

[111] mind or I'm bored.

[112] We have emotions, stress, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, cynicism.

[113] And then we have stories.

[114] And some of these stories were written on our mental chalkboards when we were five years old.

[115] Stories about who we are, what kind of love we deserve and so on.

[116] And so my work concerns really this core question, which is what does it take for us to be healthy human beings, to be healthy with our thoughts, our emotions and our stories.

[117] And what I explore in the that TED talk, and thanks for your kind words about it.

[118] It was a very powerful experience because I was really going through this core theme that runs through my work, which is the power of seeing.

[119] You know, the power of seeing the self and the power of seeing others.

[120] And in my talk, I expressed this word, I use this word, Sobubona.

[121] And Sobubona is this beautiful phrase that you hear every day on the streets of South Africa, it means hello.

[122] So you hear it thousands of times a day.

[123] Saubona, yeah, but Saobona literally translated means I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being.

[124] And really what that means is that when you show up to someone, when you show up to someone in their vulnerability, in their pain, in their discomfort, in their needs, that the showing up to them, whether we are showing up to our children as a parent or a colleague or a spouse, when we show up to people, we help them to be, we help them to be the imperfect, beautiful essence of who we are as people.

[125] Yeah.

[126] But the opposite context of that or the different way we can think of seeing is, do we see ourselves?

[127] We often have these ideas, oh, I had a good thought or a bad thought.

[128] It was positive or it was negative.

[129] It was happy and that's good, but if I'm sad, that's bad.

[130] Yeah.

[131] And so what we have societally, and this is what I so explore in my work, is this idea that we have these rigid ideas that these human beautiful capacities are actually somehow, sometimes abnormal, good or bad.

[132] And also binary, like how limiting that there's no nuance or complexity to it.

[133] It's good or bad.

[134] It's good or bad.

[135] You know, I'm feeling bad.

[136] I'm feeling sad.

[137] I shouldn't be sad.

[138] I should be grateful.

[139] And really, when we do this, like, what do we do?

[140] doing, we are refusing to see ourselves.

[141] We are refusing to see the essence of what makes us human.

[142] And then in doing that, what are the costs?

[143] And they're very real costs psychologically as well as in a broader scope.

[144] So, you know, what is my work?

[145] My work is what does it take in the way we see ourselves in order to be healthy?

[146] Because how we deal with our inner worlds is everything.

[147] And then, yeah, I guess that's an immediate delineation to make, which is you're saying healthy, which is not necessarily synonymous with happy or not synonymous with positive, right?

[148] Yes.

[149] I mean, I think one of the most dangerous narratives that we have in society is this idea that successful equals happy.

[150] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[151] I rail on this all the time.

[152] I had a fantasy of what it would feel like to have X amount of money and have X amount of people recognize me. And I was fortunate enough to find out that that really didn't result in what I hoped it would.

[153] I would suggest that not only does it not equate with being healthy, but actually the opposite.

[154] Yeah.

[155] That when we have these narratives, it actually makes us unhealthy.

[156] It makes us fragile.

[157] It makes us and our society less resilient.

[158] Well, because as you point out, as you ignore things or you push them away, they rear up with most often more disastrous outcomes than had one just.

[159] sat in it, experienced it, analyzed it, thought about what was to learn from the emotion, but the ignoring it or the pushing it away or the substituting or trying to get out of it with some other thing generally is more destructive than just experiencing it, yeah?

[160] Yeah, and it's avoided.

[161] It's avoided, you know, as wonderful as on the face of it, just think positive thoughts because you'll manifest a positive reality or just be happy or, oh, just look for silver linings.

[162] As wonderful as that sounds, on the surface of it, what is it?

[163] It's denial.

[164] It's denial of the world as it is.

[165] It's avoidant.

[166] And whenever we face ourselves or others with avoidance, what do we do?

[167] We incapacitate the ability for us to actually solve the problem, to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be in some Instagrammed, you know, version of our imagining.

[168] Yeah.

[169] Just for fun, let's spitball on how we ended up in this situation.

[170] do you think?

[171] Do you think this is a kind of an undesirable byproduct of capitalism where advertising has been inundating us since the 30s and it's been selling happy?

[172] I mean, what are the roots of our obsession with a constant state of elation?

[173] Or is it just human?

[174] Does it predate that?

[175] It's like, ask the million dollar question five minutes into the interview and I'm like, oh yeah, like let's get heavy now.

[176] Let's get nerdy.

[177] Well, I think there are a couple of things.

[178] firstly, definitely advertising sells us one way of being.

[179] And it's one thing when you are seeing that advert on a billboard as you're driving home.

[180] It's quite another when you are bringing that advert into your home, into your bedroom, into your bed, into your phone.

[181] And now you are on just comparing yourself to this particular individual who you maybe didn't like in high school, but who's now become incredibly successful, now you comparing yourself to a million of those individuals and they all are 18 years old.

[182] And so we start engaging with one of the most toxic forms of human relatedness, which is self -comparison.

[183] It's one of the most toxic ways that we can be.

[184] So I think that's one aspect of it.

[185] Another is psychological, which is really interesting.

[186] If we look at the history of psychology, when Freud first was talking about, you know, the subconscious and the id and the ego, it felt very difficult to measure it.

[187] It felt like it was almost intangible.

[188] And then you get behaviorism in psychology.

[189] So you get this idea that, oh, you know, if the dog barks twice when you give it a bone, you can measure it.

[190] That feels very tangible.

[191] And so that's the move from the more kind of psychoanalytic.

[192] traditions in psychology to the behaviorist traditions.

[193] And the behaviorist traditions are basically, if you can measure it, it exists.

[194] And where do emotions fall in?

[195] Emotions feel difficult.

[196] Emotions feel intangible.

[197] And so they sideline as being byproducts or end products or soft, weak.

[198] There are other reasons as well that I can get into, which I think are about gender.

[199] Yeah.

[200] And also the history of the DSM is fascinating, right?

[201] Where there is a very noble attempt to quantify some of this stuff so we can set parameters of what is mental.

[202] illness and what is not.

[203] And in doing so, we kind of inadvertently create what a normal, a psychological state is for a human.

[204] Well, I think that's so much of what the DSM does is it tries to put parameters on these things.

[205] Yeah.

[206] But then in trying to put parameters, what we don't talk about is that suffering is normal.

[207] Right.

[208] I mean, that fragility is normal.

[209] that self -doubt is normal and so it becomes so easy to just feel an overwhelming sense of shame and of not good enough.

[210] Yeah.

[211] What the cost lands up being is we are unable to be compassionate with ourselves because we see ourselves as being weak.

[212] We struggle to be in difficult conversations with people who are experiencing injustice because we start saying to them like, oh, you're being negative.

[213] Yeah.

[214] And there's a cost.

[215] I just want to outline like rigid responses to emotions would be like obsessively brooding on our feelings and being stuck in our own head.

[216] This is Monica.

[217] And you.

[218] Yeah, yeah.

[219] Hooked on being right.

[220] Like all of a sudden the most paramount thing in life is that I'm right.

[221] That's me terribly.

[222] People who are victimized by their news feed.

[223] This is a very rigid response to the emotion.

[224] And yeah.

[225] And as we talked about like bottling emotions and pushing them aside.

[226] and ignoring them.

[227] Those would all fall into the umbrella you have being rigid as opposed to agile.

[228] Yes.

[229] So the idea behind agility is that every day we have thoughts, emotions and stories, thousands of them, and they're normal.

[230] Yeah.

[231] When we become rigid with them, we often start treating them as fact.

[232] So you'll say something like, I was undermined, and the fact that I was undermined means that my boss doesn't respect me. And so we start locking into rigid ways where we have these normal thoughts, emotion stories, but we start treating them as fact.

[233] Or we have a difficult experience of feeling of being unhappy or feeling anxious, and we start associating that with or fusing that with a sense of like, that means I'm not good enough.

[234] That means I'm a bad person.

[235] And it actually stops us from living our lives.

[236] It stops us from reaching out.

[237] It stops us from loving because we're so embroiled in ourselves.

[238] And so often when people have these difficult thoughts, emotions, and stories, there's different ways we can come to them.

[239] The first is where we bottle them.

[240] So bottling is this idea that we push them aside.

[241] We say things like, I've just got to be happy.

[242] At least I've got a job.

[243] We engage in this idea that somehow my suffering doesn't matter because there are lots of other people that are suffering.

[244] And so we push these emotions aside.

[245] And we often do it with very good intentions.

[246] You know, we're trying to get on with life.

[247] We're trying to get on with our projects and the things that we're trying to do.

[248] Well, also, there's a little bit of a noble pursuit of like trying not to be a narcissist, egomaniac, and you're kind of telling yourself, like, don't indulge yourself so much.

[249] There is some aspect of it where you're like, get over yourself.

[250] You're not that important.

[251] You're not the center of the universe.

[252] Yeah, I don't want to navel gaze.

[253] Like, I don't want to do this.

[254] So we push it aside.

[255] And, you know, what's just beautifully fascinating in the research on this is that when people push their emotions aside in this way, often what they're starting to do is they're starting to, you know, again, it's an avoidant strategy.

[256] And so they'll get lost in.

[257] drugs or they'll get lost in Netflix.

[258] It's not that those difficulty emotions have now disappeared.

[259] It's rather we start engaging in substitute activities to create some kind of avoidance.

[260] And so that's the bottling.

[261] That's one kind of rigidity.

[262] Can I ask you a quick question?

[263] Yeah, go for it.

[264] Because sometimes I do that and I guess the explanation I give is, well, emotions are temporary and I just let it pass.

[265] Like it passed.

[266] So I kind of ignored it and then I now I'm in a different state of being.

[267] Yes, so that's really important because, of course, emotions are transient.

[268] So you don't want to get, like, too attached to anyone feeling.

[269] What I'm talking about when I'm talking about bottling is when it becomes almost like the default way of dealing with your difficult emotions.

[270] It's like I'm unhappy in my career and I'm struggling, but at least I've got something.

[271] And so I keep pushing it aside.

[272] Right.

[273] Or we know in our hearts that a relationship isn't working out.

[274] And so we push it aside.

[275] There's nothing wrong with, you know, every once in a while just getting lost in Netflix.

[276] Yeah, yeah.

[277] But it's when it becomes a default strategy that it's rigid.

[278] So that's bottling.

[279] And then, Monica, you know, the brooding part is when we get stuck in the difficulty motion.

[280] It's, I feel bad.

[281] You know, why do I feel bad?

[282] Did I say that wrong?

[283] Did I say that right?

[284] I often think about it.

[285] It's almost like if you imagine carrying a load of books, you know, bottling is where you carry those books so far away.

[286] from you, you're pushing them away, and then your arms and your heart and your feet get tired and you drop the books.

[287] And then brooding is when you are carrying those books, those emotion books so close to you, you're holding onto them, you're immersed in them, and you're not able to see your child, to see the world, to perspective take, to see the other.

[288] And both of those have a cost.

[289] And sometimes we go from one to the other, but both of those are rigid ways of being.

[290] And of course, this happiness, this idea that I've just got to be happy, is one version of bottling.

[291] Don't you think people so often are really just mining those emotions to confirm their narrative?

[292] So they have a story they're telling themselves about their life.

[293] Let's say for me, it's, oh yeah, that always happens.

[294] So I'm going to push it aside.

[295] And I actually take that as proof.

[296] Or so if Monica has a story about herself and she's maybe obsessing on a certain thing and then ignoring, as you say, like the light that's coming in or the love that's coming in, because it doesn't fit into this emotional spiral that I'm in or she's in.

[297] Is that work in concert with what you're saying?

[298] Yes, yes.

[299] If we think about, like, how do we as human beings make sense of our world?

[300] We make sense of our world through basically saying, oh, you know, this noise that I'm hearing is the washing machine and this other noise is my sun crying, the one I need to pay attention to the other I don't.

[301] So we are sensory beings.

[302] We're constantly taking sensory information in and we're trying to make sense of that sensory information.

[303] Yeah.

[304] And so these thoughts, emotion, stories, they help us to develop a coherent picture.

[305] So it's not having them that makes us rigid.

[306] Having them makes us normal.

[307] It's when we hook into them, we start treating them as fact.

[308] Okay, I'm being undermined, so I'm going to shut down.

[309] Or that person doesn't care about me, so I'm now not going to reach out to them.

[310] Or there's no point in even trying, or I feel down.

[311] And I don't want to get out of bed.

[312] So now I'm not going to get out of bed.

[313] They're driving our actions.

[314] I feel stressed.

[315] And so I bring my cell phone to the table and I'm now not able to be present with my child because I'm so locked into my stress.

[316] So what's happening here is this, you know, you've probably heard and even spoken about on the podcast, Dax and Monica, this beautiful, powerful idea that I think was so poignly spoken to by Viktor Frankl, this idea between.

[317] stimulus and response, there is a space.

[318] And in that space is our power to choose.

[319] And it's in that choice that lies our growth and freedom.

[320] Victor Frankel survived the Nazi death camps.

[321] He survived the Nazi death camps and he describes how, you know, we've got ways that we can come to our being.

[322] Rigidity is when there's no space between stimulus and response.

[323] Right.

[324] You just are always reacting.

[325] We're not bringing other parts of ourselves forward.

[326] And the parts of ourselves that we on bringing forward is we're not bringing the beauty and the capaciousness in us, the wisdom, our values, our intentions, who we want to be in our relationship.

[327] So, you know, Monica, if you're like feeling stuck in a difficult experience, what that's doing, even though you might be doing that with good intention, which is you want to try and understand what it's often doing is it's not allowing you to be present with people who love you.

[328] But I guess for me, the question is, so like, let's say I'm ruminating or I'm stuck in an emotion, to me the antidote is to do the other bad thing, which is, okay, so this is something negative, but at least there's this and like finding some hope in that, but I don't think that's really good either because that's also not giving credit to the thing that's causing the negative emotion.

[329] So this is such a powerful insight because I think the first component of being more emotionally agile is facing into that emotion with compassion, you know, that what you're struggling with, what you're finding difficult is difficult.

[330] You know, it might be difficult to re -thread your business in a pandemic or to renegotiate your relationship in a pandemic.

[331] Like, that's difficult.

[332] And so being able to bring compassion of your humanity to the emotions that you experiencing is now doing something very different than getting stuck and feeling victimized by the emotion, rather what you're doing in that context is you loving yourself.

[333] You're saying like, this is tough.

[334] I've got my own back.

[335] I'm going to look after myself here.

[336] So that's one way that we can start moving out.

[337] And also, I think this would be a great time to just talk about accuracy, how vital accuracy is in exploring your emotions and then getting to someplace that's productive.

[338] Absolutely.

[339] So this idea is.

[340] one of the ideas that I've found in my research, but that other people have found as well, which is that very often when we're struggling, we use very big labels to describe what we're feeling.

[341] I'm stressed is one of the most common ones we hear.

[342] Or I'm busy.

[343] Or, you know, it's this emotion that is a very big umbrella description of the reality of what's going on.

[344] But, you know, if you think about it, there's often much more that's beneath that stress.

[345] It might be disappointed or I feel ashamed or embarrassed or I'm feeling overwhelmed.

[346] I'm feeling depleted.

[347] So when you label everything as stress, that doesn't actually allow you to galvanize or find anything within that stress.

[348] It just feels this amorphous experience.

[349] Yeah.

[350] So what's really fascinating and it's this linguistic separation that happens, which is very powerful that you'll experience in therapy or that one experiences in journaling, which is when you go beyond just saying, oh, I'm stressed, and you say to yourself, what are one or two other things that I'm experiencing here?

[351] Like, what is this thing that I'm calling stress?

[352] What is it really?

[353] And when you label that more accurately, something really powerful happens that amorphous experience now becomes something that has defined parameters.

[354] As soon as you say, oh, it's depleted, you're now able to understand the cause of that emotion and also what it is you need to do in relation to it.

[355] I need to engage in self -care.

[356] If you're feeling disappointed, it might be that you need to have a courageous conversation.

[357] And it's so powerful.

[358] It's so small and yet extraordinarily powerful when we label our emotions more accurately.

[359] This is called emotion granularity.

[360] What I love is that you say, you know, your emotions are the data, and then you can explore causality or how it's not in concert with your values, right?

[361] Like, it's a great piece of data to then do some further exploring.

[362] Yeah, when we're rigid, when we're stuck in our emotions or when we're hustling with our emotions, when we're saying things like, I shouldn't feel this, I'm not allowed to feel this, et cetera.

[363] Basically, what you're doing is you at war with yourself.

[364] So what happens when we have these ideas of emotions as being good or bad is we'll often have any more.

[365] motion where we say, you know, I'm unhappy, but now I'm unhappy that I'm unhappy because I should be happy.

[366] And what we're doing is we're struggling with our difficulty motion.

[367] The opposite, which is when we face into what we're experiencing with compassion, with saying, you know, I didn't have an instruction manual about how to navigate my relationship in a pandemic at home with my spouse 24 -7.

[368] I didn't get an instruction manual with this.

[369] And yet I'm in this place and it's tough and we can face into that with compassion.

[370] Now what we're doing is we ending the war inside of us by quite literally dropping the rope.

[371] We're now on trying to say whether we should or shouldn't feel something.

[372] Instead we're saying this is what I do feel.

[373] I'm seeing myself.

[374] Again, this seeing comes through.

[375] And what is it that then happens?

[376] You are able to say when you have an imaginary piece of paper and on that one side of the piece of paper you might have the word lonely that you're feeling.

[377] You can be lonely in a crowd, you can be lonely in a house full of people and children, you can be lonely when you're with your spouse 24 -7.

[378] And so lonely might be on the one side of that piece of paper.

[379] On the other side of the piece of paper, what society would have you do is to find the silver lining or to persuade yourself now, why are you so lucky that you shouldn't be lonely?

[380] But what I would invite people to do is something very different, which is turn that piece of paper over and ask, what is the value that this emotion is signposting?

[381] What is the need that this emotion is telling me that I have as a human being right now?

[382] Loneliness might be signposting that you value intimacy and connection.

[383] and that even though you all so busy in your household, you need more of it.

[384] Grief might be signposting that there is love inside of you that is looking for a home.

[385] Boredom, and we can be boredom when we're busy.

[386] You know, day in and doubt we know what the day is going to bring.

[387] We can be busy, but bored.

[388] Bortem might be signposting that you value learning and growth and that you need more of it.

[389] And so you are now not stuck in some narrative of who you should be, or what you should be or how you should be acting, but rather you are showing up to your emotional truth and learning from that.

[390] Yeah, you're getting into action, as we would say in NAA.

[391] Like now you're into action and through action we get results, you know, not always the ones we desire, but, you know, one must take steps and get busy because it won't just miraculously vanish.

[392] Yes, yes.

[393] And it's a very particular kind of action that I'm hearing you talk about.

[394] which is purposeful, intentional action, as opposed to autopilot action.

[395] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[396] We've all been there.

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

[398] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[399] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms, can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[400] 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 entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

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

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

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

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

[405] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[406] What's up, guys?

[407] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

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

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

[410] And I don't mean just friends.

[411] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

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

[413] this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[414] You point out that like, here would be a normal scenario for people, I think, is they're watching the news and then all of a sudden, you know, there's probably some update on the news about how the American car manufacturers are doing.

[415] Internationally, they don't care.

[416] Then there's a thing about a sewer plant that broke.

[417] No one cares.

[418] And then something ignites you.

[419] And now you're very emotional.

[420] And what you point out is that that's kind of an opportunity for you to discover one of your values.

[421] use.

[422] Yeah.

[423] While our emotions are transient, we tend not to get upset again and again and again about stuff that doesn't matter to us.

[424] And so this is where our emotions are foundational to us as human beings.

[425] And so one of the most powerful ways we can come to the world is by knowing our own why.

[426] You know, what is it that matters to us as people?

[427] And so how do we begin to understand that?

[428] And one of the ways we begin is when we feel a tough emotion, instead of racing for the emotional exits, is to say, what value is that emotion signaling?

[429] That value might be, I feel rage when I watch the news, and that rage is signaling that I value equity and fairness.

[430] And the power is then the power of not acting into your emotion, because then your emotions owning you, the power is acting into your value, which is saying, what do I need to do that brings me closer to this thing that matters?

[431] Is it a difficult conversation?

[432] Is it volunteering?

[433] Like, what is that action for me?

[434] Okay, now, this is potentially antagonistic.

[435] So I read all that and I like it.

[436] I do.

[437] And I believe it's true.

[438] But it feels a little scapegoaty to me. So if you're watching the news and you get pissed off about this thing and then you go, well, I have a really strong sense of justice.

[439] That's almost complimentary.

[440] Where I find personally, most often I become emotional when one of my fears is triggered.

[441] So if I'm fighting with my wife because I think she's picking her job over me or our kids over me or whatever it is, that's really five -year -old Dax that grew up with a single mother who worked a ton, who really wanted to be chosen first and prioritized first.

[442] And when that childhood thing gets triggered, I am now acting very emotionally.

[443] everything is heightened immediately.

[444] But if it's another thing that she does that's objectively annoying, but it doesn't bother me at all because who gives a shit?

[445] I don't really have a fear of the kitchen cabinet doors always being open.

[446] It's just inconvenient.

[447] It doesn't make me irrationally angry at her.

[448] I just find that for me, anytime I'm emotional, I look at it as an opportunity to figure out like, okay, what fears are you still carrying around that you're not working through or that you're not taking steps to address?

[449] Is it financial insecurity?

[450] okay, well, if this is triggering me, then am I planning responsibly?

[451] Do I need to give some money away to demonstrate to myself?

[452] No, take contrary action.

[453] So I'm curious how you think that all folds in.

[454] Yeah, I mean, I think it folds in exactly coherently with the messaging, which is that the difficulty emotions we have, whether that emotion is a fear -based emotion or an anger -based emotion or some other based emotion, those emotions signposts stuff that's important to us.

[455] Yeah.

[456] It's signposts our needs or our values or our wants as a human.

[457] And when we push them aside in the service of some kind of denial or force positivity or I'm right and you're wrong and I'm just going to take it out on you, what we are actually doing is we are losing our capacity as human beings because, you know, internal pain always comes out.

[458] And if we are more able to do away with these narratives of, I've just got to be positive and everyone else has just got to be positive.

[459] And if they're negative, then they're toxic.

[460] And then, you know, actually, I feel like so often what we're doing is we are just socially gaslighting ourselves.

[461] And instead, if we can just move into this recognition that, like, we're having this feeling, that these feelings are normal.

[462] You know, this Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin described how our emotions are.

[463] functional.

[464] Our emotions are adaptive.

[465] Our emotions have evolved to signal to others what our needs are, but also to signal to ourselves what our needs are.

[466] Well, it was interesting because I was going to ask you how one would go about defining their values.

[467] It seems like a very simple proposition, but in fact, I bet most people couldn't list the most important 10 values that they carry around.

[468] But weirdly enough, it's almost like the null hypothesis.

[469] Your emotions can reverse inform you of what your values are?

[470] There are a couple of ways you can connect with your values.

[471] The first is by connecting with these difficult emotions.

[472] And I think the example that you gave earlier, which is, you know, there's a five -year -old decks in you saying, see me, see me and love me. And, you know, am I enough?

[473] And there are other ways we can do that as well.

[474] You know, it's interesting.

[475] Often people talk about values, but values often feel very abstract.

[476] And the way that I think of values in my work is that they're qualities of action.

[477] Qualities of action.

[478] They're qualities of action.

[479] Like literally every day, if I value my health, I have a choice point every day.

[480] Do I go towards the muffin or do I go towards the fruit?

[481] The one will bring me towards my value, the one will take me away from my value.

[482] If I value my relationship and I'm fighting with my spouse, the choice point that I have is the one value takes me away from the value of that relationship, which is I'm now going to stonewall and I'm getting stuck in being.

[483] right.

[484] And the other says, gee, I'm upset and I love this person.

[485] You know, we have the capacity to have this beautiful bothness, this capacity to both be angry and love someone and value them at the same time.

[486] And I'm going to move in the direction of those values.

[487] So there are the ways that we can think about values.

[488] Like, for instance, what did I do today that was worthwhile?

[489] What did I do today that was worthwhile?

[490] Not what did I do today that felt good, that felt fun.

[491] what did I do today that was worthwhile?

[492] Often it's the difficult stuff that was worthwhile.

[493] Yeah, that's the truth.

[494] One thing you said that I love, and I think we all do this, which is saying like, I am sad, I am angry, I am pissed.

[495] You know, I am, and that's not the right approach.

[496] We do this all the time.

[497] I am sad.

[498] I am not good enough.

[499] I am unworthy.

[500] I'm ashamed.

[501] When we use this language, what we are doing is we are doing.

[502] defining ourselves by the emotion.

[503] All of me, 100 % of me, is that emotion.

[504] I am sad.

[505] There is no space for anything else.

[506] So you literally have become confused with that emotion.

[507] It becomes your identity, right?

[508] And if I, like, how to protect whatever identity we've decided that day we have.

[509] All of me, 100 % of me is sad.

[510] And it's almost like the emotion is a cloud, you know, and you are the cloud.

[511] It's like I am that cloud of sadness.

[512] But one way that we can start creating distance between us and our emotion, because a very important part of my work is the recognition that our emotions are these beautiful data, but they're not directives.

[513] Again, you know, I can show up to my son's frustration with his baby sister.

[514] I can love him.

[515] I can suburb -born to him.

[516] I can see him.

[517] I can be compassionate towards him.

[518] it doesn't mean that I'm endorsing his idea that he gets to give away to the first stranger that he sees in a shopping mall, okay?

[519] We own our emotions that don't own us.

[520] So when we start doing things like labeling our emotions more accurately, like I described earlier, what we're doing is we're creating that space between us and our emotions in the Victor Frankel context.

[521] When we say, I am sad, there's no space between me and my emotion.

[522] I am all of what I'm describing.

[523] But if we instead just notice our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories for what they are, then we create that distance.

[524] And the way we do this is we, instead of I am sad, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad.

[525] Yeah, that's powerful, yeah.

[526] Yeah, it's so subtle, but just powerful because you aren't the cloud, you are the sky, you onto your emotion, you have an emotion.

[527] It's very Buddhist, right?

[528] As I understand it, Buddhist, which is like life isn't suffering.

[529] Suffering is actually wanting to be in another state than you're in.

[530] So it's really like sadness isn't nearly as uncomfortable as we think.

[531] It's actually the action of trying to not be sad that's so uncomfortable.

[532] Yeah.

[533] I mean, the more we try to control what is uncontrollable, the more we increase our suffering.

[534] Denial is unsustainable and trying to control stuff that's uncontrollable.

[535] is a form of denial.

[536] We will all die.

[537] Like, we will all die.

[538] There is injustice in the world.

[539] There is pain in the world.

[540] And trying to pretend otherwise basically makes us more fragile.

[541] Whereas if we instead face into this is what's the reality, that life is fragile, that these difficulty motions are part of what I should be experiencing as a human being, now we become more able because we're now not trying to deal with some fictional version.

[542] We're now dealing with the world as it is.

[543] You know, Dex, one of the things you mentioned earlier on in this conversation is my TED talk.

[544] And I referred a little bit in that talk to an experience that I had when I was around five years old.

[545] And that was, I became very scared of death.

[546] And this is actually very normal around the age of five or six years old, children become aware of their own mortality.

[547] They realize that...

[548] Well, I've had this experience twice with my two kids.

[549] I know exactly what you're talking about.

[550] Yeah, it's like they have this growing horror, this growing realization that you will not be around forever.

[551] Yeah, for them, it started with me. Like, they seemed to recognize my mortality, obviously, quicker.

[552] And then it was like, first mom and dad are going to die.

[553] And then all of a sudden, like, the light bulb went on.

[554] Oh, and I am too.

[555] And so I had this, and it's part of what is very normal in children's experience.

[556] But I remember at the age of five, finding my way into my parents' bedroom, like not just one night, but night after night after night.

[557] And I would lie between the two of them because I had this fear that if I went to sleep in my own room, that I was going to wake up and one of them would be dead.

[558] So I would lie between the two of them.

[559] said to my father, promise me you'll never die.

[560] You know, promise me you'll never die.

[561] And my father could have buffered me with forced or false positivity, what I've now come to call the tyranny of positivity, which is this forced, oh, don't worry, you've got nothing to worry about, everything's fine, you know, I'm going to be around.

[562] But he didn't, he didn't.

[563] He showed up to me. He said to me, Susie, we all die.

[564] We all die and it's normal to be scared.

[565] And Dex, what I realized is that the way he comforted me was not through denial.

[566] It was rather in coming to the difficult experience that I was having, showing up to it.

[567] And that actually gave me a sense of courage.

[568] You know, we all die.

[569] I was able to be with that difficult emotion, and it helped me to become more resilient, this feeling that I don't need to pretend to myself.

[570] I'm not being lied to here, but actually I'm able to recognize this reality and that takes courage.

[571] It was such a powerful experience.

[572] And 10 years later, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died.

[573] And I just had in the aftermath of that, this very difficult experience, but then also this recognition that somehow those conversations that I'd had with him in those early days had garnered a sense of resilience because they were...

[574] Well, you were more prepared for that.

[575] I was prepared.

[576] I was prepared.

[577] You know, pretending pain doesn't exist, whatever form that takes, whether it's socially, whether it's in the conversations about racial justice.

[578] Pretending that that pain doesn't exist is just a pretext.

[579] And it makes us more fragile, it doesn't make us more resilient.

[580] Yeah, my experience was at the risk of sounding like I'm getting on my atheist high horse.

[581] I will say, we had the talk with my oldest, am I going to die?

[582] Yes, you're going to die.

[583] She starts bawling.

[584] And it's two minutes of solid crying.

[585] And during the two minutes, I'm thinking, well, I have an out for this.

[586] I know exactly how I can get out of this, which is, but don't worry, we're both going to heaven and we'll be together.

[587] And I'm not religious.

[588] I'm an atheist, but boy, did I feel so compelled to say that, because I could have solved the fear for her.

[589] And I ultimately didn't do it.

[590] And then it just passed much quicker than I was fearing while it was going on.

[591] It was like, yeah, there was three minutes of crying.

[592] And then she got interested in some other thing.

[593] And it passed.

[594] But it was just my impatience in that moment that I wanted to solve that for her.

[595] So I think, you know, the temptation The patience who race for the emotional exits, especially with our children, is so strong.

[596] I have it all the time in different ways.

[597] But, you know, what are we teaching our children when we race for the emotional exits?

[598] What we're teaching them is that sadness is bad, that fear is to be feared.

[599] We're teaching them that there are good and bad emotions.

[600] You know, when a child comes and says, Daddy, I didn't get invited to this birthday party.

[601] And your heart breaks because you never wanted your child to be.

[602] the child who was rejected and that temptation to jump in and say, don't worry, I'll phone and Jack's parents and I'll make sure you get an invitation.

[603] You know, what are we doing?

[604] We are signaling to our children that sadness is not to be tolerated, that we'll jump in and make things right.

[605] Here is the disservice is our children are growing up in a fragile world where their hearts will be broken and broken again.

[606] And the greatest gift we can give our children is to, yes, teach them mathematics and science, but actually to help them with the emotional skills that can help them to navigate uncertainty.

[607] And so what does that look like practically?

[608] What it looks like is when your child is upset, even with good intentions, don't race for the emotional exits.

[609] The first thing we want to do is, I can see you are in pain.

[610] What that is helping them to do is it's helping them to get comfortable with discomfort and it's when they're comfortable with that discomfort, that they're starting exactly what your children did, which is, oh, the sadness passed.

[611] They start recognizing the transience of emotion.

[612] You know, like I relearned it myself, which is like, okay, I can handle it, and it'll work out, and I wouldn't have learned that, you know, and there'll be more of those.

[613] And yes, she will not get asked to the prom by the person, and we'll sit there together and we'll mourn, and I won't hire her a jigolo.

[614] that's handsomer than the other guy.

[615] So, yeah, I taught myself, like, oh, you can get through this.

[616] You can sit in this and it'll be fine, you know?

[617] And that it will pass and you know that it will pass.

[618] And that is a gift to know that emotions pass is a gift.

[619] The other thing you can help them do is you can help them to label their sadness.

[620] Like we spoke about earlier, the accuracy of, you know, yes, you upset that Jack didn't invite you to his birthday party and you feel angry about it.

[621] But actually, what is the emotion?

[622] It's disappointment.

[623] It's rejection.

[624] and helping children to accurately label their emotions, it is not an understatement to say that when we look at data on emotional well -being, in a longitudinal way, what we know is that children who are more able to be granular with their emotions, that it is profoundly impactful in terms of positive mental health, well -being, and so on.

[625] And why is this?

[626] Because if you imagine a child who is, you know, with someone, else who says, oh, I've got this great idea.

[627] Let's let the air out of the principal's car tires.

[628] You want your child to be able to say, okay, what I'm feeling in this one emotion is excitement, but actually what's going on for me is just quiet.

[629] Actually what's going on for me is this feels not who I want to be as a person.

[630] And so helping children to label their emotions accurately is associated with greater levels of well -being, delayed gratification, the capacity to motivate more effectively.

[631] So we're sober -bordering our child, we're helping them to label, and then we're doing one other thing that is critical, which is exactly what we've spoken about already in this call, which is our emotions, signpost, our values.

[632] The child who says, I feel rejected, what is the value that that child has?

[633] The value is, I value friendship.

[634] I value community.

[635] Friendship.

[636] I value connection.

[637] And so you can start saying to the child, what does being a good friend look like?

[638] How can you bring yourself as a friend to the situation?

[639] And, you know, just like the gymnast is able to be responsive, effectively, and agile to the environment that is changing around them.

[640] So we are able to be effective when we have a strong inner core, a sense of our character and values.

[641] And it's the greatest gift that we can give our children.

[642] Well, first of all, I wanted to own, I'm so impatient with other people's emotional states.

[643] I want to talk them out of it or I want to, quote, work them through it.

[644] I want to get them to the part where they recognize what fear they have and address that.

[645] Like I'm so impatient and it's becoming more and more clear.

[646] And now I'm starting, I think today when I was watching your thing, I started asking myself like, why am I so impatient?

[647] Why am I so uncomfortable with other people I love discomfort?

[648] And, you know, I think some part of it is like I try to.

[649] to be perfect for my mom so she'd be happy and it didn't pan out and now I'm trying to be perfect for them and everyone around me should be happy at all times because I'm trying to make them happy and when they're not it's a failing of my own and and I'm inadequate or they would be happy around me there's a lot going on it's a terrible habit I have it's a character defect Monica do you want to agree and say I'm just the worst about that no I won't say you're the worst you do like it when everyone's happy.

[650] And if they're not, it does feel like a personal assault on you a little bit.

[651] It's so egocentric.

[652] But good realization.

[653] I just wait, if you wanted to take a minute to just say, yeah, I hate it.

[654] No. It's very uncomfortable.

[655] I'll take it.

[656] I'm not going to say it.

[657] Okay.

[658] Okay.

[659] Now, with COVID, just some things that I thought of that I've noticed, first of all, if I were not in AA and I didn't talk to 30 or 40 men a week and hear what their, experiencing in the pandemic, I think I'd be proceeding through life thinking everyone's fine.

[660] I think I have this very unique opportunity that I'm weekly with men going like, oh, my God, I'm going crazy because of this or I'm going crazy because of that.

[661] And I start going, oh, we're all really, really affected by it.

[662] And I think I might miss that if I weren't in that kind of group.

[663] So everyone's suffering, yeah?

[664] And could anyone be getting through all this without having some effect?

[665] Well, certainly what we know is that, As I'd mentioned earlier, even pre -pandemic, the World Health Organization was saying that depression was the leading cause of disability globally.

[666] And I am absolutely certain that what's very likely to happen is that there is going to be another pandemic, and that is a pandemic of desperation in terms of people's sense of capacity and well -being.

[667] And I think that this plays out in different ways.

[668] firstly, people who are already experiencing difficulty, what this does is it often shines a spotlight on it.

[669] The other thing that I think it is doing is it's starting to get many of us to look at maybe some of the ways we were on autopilot previously and think about whether we were doing stuff that was consistent with who we wanted to be and how we wanted to live.

[670] Like, there's definitely a moment of life saying to all of us right now, you know, are you agile?

[671] Well, I think we spend a lot of our lives building this routine, which becomes a coping distraction.

[672] For me, Elise, I'll speak.

[673] I have all these wonderful distractions that prevent me from having to sit in any of my feelings.

[674] And then when those are all taken away from me, you know, I've got to really confront them.

[675] And then the other thing I really noticed, and it seemed universal in my group, which is I think a lot of us had these pockets of personal time and personal space, whether that was your commute to work or your flight somewhere, all these different areas of your life where you could be by yourself and recharge.

[676] Now, again, for people who are lonely, obviously, it's another thing.

[677] But I think for a lot of us who live in a multi -member houses, there's just no space for the individual anymore to sit and recharge and nurture themselves.

[678] And this is where this understanding your emotions and intentionality become so powerful.

[679] When we move beyond saying I'm stressed and we're saying actually I'm depleted and the reason I'm depleted is because I do not have any headspace, then what I need to do in action, you know, again, values or qualities of action and I care for this relationship, then what it behooves us to do is to actually communicate our needs to the people that we love.

[680] And that communication might be, I mean, I know of people who've literally in one bedroom apartments put up little tents inside the apartment where the person says, you know, this is my 15 minutes where basically what you're doing is you're starting to just not expect the other person to know your needs, but to actually communicate your needs and to communicate parameters.

[681] Because, you know, you highlight something earlier, which is that there's often in relationships a different level also of even neediness.

[682] One person is suffering right now and they want to talk and the other person just feels overwhelmed and they want silence.

[683] And so there can be a lot of hurt feelings that come out in that context because there's this new dynamic that we're needing to negotiate and to navigate.

[684] And so the power of saying this is what's going on for me and I don't want my relationship to be the victim of it, this is what's going on for me. I need more space.

[685] How can I get more space?

[686] And communicating that need and actually coming to something that feels like it's got parameters around it is such an important and powerful way of being in a relationship in this context.

[687] Yeah.

[688] And in any context.

[689] Okay.

[690] Now, and then the last question I want to ask you is, as you pointed out, it is a disability that affects more people than any other disease on planet Earth.

[691] and then so naturally that really begs the question why and i have multiple theories and i assume it's multi -layered explanation but the one in particular i'm curious to ask you about is you know we know how we were designed to live we know generally how many hours a day hunting and gathering societies worked versus how often they sat and we are in an increasingly stimulating world we travel very fast everywhere we go we now have these devices that stimulate us all day long i wrestle sometimes with the notion that we give our children sometimes kids melatonin and then i'll be sitting there going like i feel bad about this and then another part of my brain's going well no no no no they're living in a world that is so antithetical to how they were evolved it's in their 14 hour day the amount of stimulus and speed to think that they could live in that world and then go to sleep as if we we're in the canopy as primates is also naive.

[692] So it's like I'm wrestling with this guilt, but also trying to acknowledge the reality of the world we live in and how it has a cost.

[693] And I just do wonder, do you think we're going to have to increasingly aid ourselves to counterbalance this very heightened high -tech world that is only gathering momentum?

[694] Yeah, I mean, I think that technology has outpaced our evolutionary capacity.

[695] And I think whether we're going to need to learn more of these capacities about how to shape our environment.

[696] So in the same way where we say we know that if there's fruit on the table in the kitchen, we are more likely to reach for the fruit.

[697] And if there's chocolate, we are more likely to reach for the chocolate.

[698] We are shaping our environment so that it invites a particular way of being with that environment.

[699] And I think as human beings, we are more and more going to be looking for ways to shape our environment effectively.

[700] so that we can thrive in the context of this uncertainty.

[701] And those are behavioral options that I am a big proponent of, but is it naive, I guess I'm wondering?

[702] Is it going to require some other technology be that biochemically?

[703] I mean, do you think that'll be enough?

[704] I mean, I think a lot of people think that there will be ultimately, you know, other ways that are going to help us to just bypass our difficulty in the sphere and just be some kind of hybrid form of what we are now.

[705] I don't think that that is around the corner.

[706] I think that what is around the corner is the reality of what we're facing into, our need to be compassionate with that reality, that that is tough, our need to be curious about what's going on, I need to be courageous and to be intentional, to be intentional.

[707] I remember reading a couple of years ago, this fascinating study that showed that at the time of the study that the average American spent nine years of their lives watching television.

[708] Oh, I'm at 18 for sure.

[709] Monica and I are on the high teams for sure, yeah.

[710] And so when we do that by default versus when we say what are choices that we are making and what are ways that I can block out how I want to come to technology and how I want to interface with technology and be intentional about it, I think that's really powerful.

[711] You know, and the other things that you draw on in your work as well, I mean, when my father died, I remember feeling so much that I just had to be okay, be okay, be okay, just get on with it, you know, and you kind of get swept away by this being okay, being the master of being okay.

[712] But journaling, like journaling is like an example.

[713] We're brothers and sisters in this regard.

[714] I saw that, yeah, in the wake of your father's death, you found that being honest with yourself in this book was a way to take, some quote control of the situation and I have found that to I'm religious journaler as part of my sobriety and I don't know what the appeal to you is but for me it's like I need one thing I can be dead honest with at all times I have to be able to dump everything without shame or fear of judgment or anything without that I don't know you know how I would feel I mean what I experienced in that context for me was my father dying on a Friday me going back to school on the Monday, trying to be okay, trying to be okay, trying to be okay.

[715] But what an English teacher, after my dad, this English teacher handed out these notebooks and she said, you know, write, tell the truth, right, like no one is reading.

[716] And it was this invitation to show up to myself.

[717] And I think that there is this invitation right now for all of us to show up to ourselves and to say, who do we want to be, you know, even in the midst of complexity, who do we want to be and what is worthwhile and what are my values?

[718] these are powerful ways of bringing ourselves healthily and wholeheartedly to what is ultimately a fragile and beautiful world.

[719] Yeah, it's a really great opportunity for all of us to look at the big picture and go, okay, what things do we want to pick back up and which ones do we like putting down?

[720] And, you know, it is a kind of second shot at what course our lives are on.

[721] Yeah, it's simultaneously a gut punch.

[722] Yeah.

[723] Like any gut punch is.

[724] and it is an invitation to step into a future that is intentional.

[725] Yeah.

[726] Well, that's a lovely note to end on.

[727] Yeah.

[728] Susan, I like you immensely and not just because of your charming accent, although it helps.

[729] It does help.

[730] I would urge everyone to get your book, Emotional Agility.

[731] I would also urge everyone to watch your wonderful TED Talk, the gift and power of emotional courage.

[732] Susan, David, please come see us again, and we really enjoy talking to you.

[733] Thank you.

[734] I loved it.

[735] Thank you so much.

[736] Okay, take care.

[737] Goodbye.

[738] Stay tuned for more armchair, Hicksburg, if you dare.

[739] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Badman.

[740] Good morning.

[741] Good morning to you.

[742] It's not morning.

[743] No, it's late afternoon, early evening.

[744] Neither.

[745] Yeah, late afternoon.

[746] Quarter to four, what we call that late?

[747] Now with the time change, everything seems so dang late.

[748] I know.

[749] It's a mix of, I like it, and I hate it.

[750] I hate it.

[751] You hate it?

[752] Of course, because it's dark so early.

[753] Yeah, that part sucks, but I do like the moment where you're like, oh, it's already seven.

[754] Then you look at your watch and you're like, oh, it's 4 .30.

[755] I've got tons of day left.

[756] That part I like.

[757] Okay.

[758] If you had that moment where you think the party's over, but you're like, oh, no, the party's just starting.

[759] No, I feel the opposite.

[760] I feel like, oh, my God, it's only 430.

[761] I'm so tired.

[762] Well, we did go to bed in a crazy early hour in the sand, Yes, we went to the sand dunes.

[763] I went for one night to the sand dunes with Laura and Matt and brought Linky and we were all in the rack at 8 .30 p .m. Yeah.

[764] It felt really late.

[765] What a bunch of nerds.

[766] People go out to the dunes to rage and we were all in our sack and our slumber sacks at 8 .30.

[767] Yeah, but then you got a burst of energy and then we wanted to do things.

[768] Remember?

[769] You really led the charge to go to sleep.

[770] Well, Aaron was there, too, and he was also in bed before.

[771] Yeah, you was just hanging watching telly on his phone.

[772] In bed.

[773] In his bed.

[774] Yeah.

[775] With his top off.

[776] And then I was...

[777] Little light gas.

[778] Yeah.

[779] Yeah.

[780] And then I was sleepy, so I said, I'm going to go to bed early.

[781] We were at the fire, and you said, I'm going to go to bed early.

[782] Yeah.

[783] And then we were all like, huh, that doesn't sound terrible.

[784] Yeah.

[785] Let's do it.

[786] And then so we all followed you.

[787] Yeah.

[788] And then, soon as you got in your bunk bed, you were in the mood to party.

[789] You wanted to play cards.

[790] I did.

[791] You wanted to watch a movie.

[792] You watched The Crown.

[793] Yeah.

[794] I'm so into the Crown.

[795] You are?

[796] Oh, my God.

[797] Not as much as Queen's Gambit.

[798] Not as much as, well, in a different way because the Crown is four seasons.

[799] So I have like so much left to watch.

[800] It's so exciting.

[801] I think I already talked about this on the last episode, but I, I skipped to season four because I wanted to watch the Princess Diana part.

[802] And it sounds like you'd recommend that.

[803] That's what I should do, huh?

[804] I loved it.

[805] I mean, this kind of ties.

[806] This is like kind of a ding, ding, ding.

[807] Because the mental health of these royals cannot be good because they have to sacrifice so much of their true beliefs and wants for the crown.

[808] to service this fairy tale?

[809] It's, okay, so I didn't know this, but Charles.

[810] Spoiler alert.

[811] But it's real life.

[812] Oh, sorry.

[813] History lesson.

[814] Thank you.

[815] Charles and Diana, like, I never really in love.

[816] Oh, yeah, that doesn't surprise anyone, does it?

[817] Because he was in love with this other lady, Camilla.

[818] He was previously in love.

[819] With Camilla.

[820] Who was not available, right?

[821] Well, yeah, this is a fascinating story.

[822] They were dating, but then he was sent off to the Army or the Air Force or something.

[823] He was sent off, and then while he was gone, she got married.

[824] Oh.

[825] Yes.

[826] Oh, does she regret that?

[827] Well, what I found out, this is a spoiler.

[828] Okay.

[829] Charles is like kind of uncle no oh okay I'm sorry I'm sorry okay went to the worst no because they have two kids William and Harry yeah but it wasn't in vitro oh okay so wait the two guys that are popular right now are the offspring of those two of Diana and Chuck Charles yeah really yeah oh you know nothing about the royals no no I well I make it a point not to I now know everything about yeah you're like an expert I'm in a rabbit hole we should have on as an expert in monarchies.

[830] Oh, I would love it.

[831] So Charles had a bad relationship with his dad, but he had a really good relationship with his dad's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, Mountbatten.

[832] Lord Mountbatten.

[833] Okay.

[834] And Mountbatten, I think.

[835] And he is kind of a Charles' father figure, and he actually is the one that arranged for Charles to leave and arranged for Camilla to get married.

[836] Because he didn't think she was good enough for him.

[837] Yep.

[838] Oh, my God.

[839] Who was Charles's dad?

[840] Prince Philip.

[841] Prince Philip.

[842] Prince Philip?

[843] Prince Philip?

[844] Yeah.

[845] Wait, Charles's dad is still alive?

[846] I think.

[847] The queen is still alive.

[848] She's like 90.

[849] There's no king right now.

[850] Because there's only a queen.

[851] When's the last time there was a king?

[852] There will be.

[853] Once the queen dies, Charles will become king.

[854] Oh, my God.

[855] Isn't he a dufis?

[856] Is that?

[857] No. Oh, he's not.

[858] No. Oh, I'm sorry.

[859] I apologize to him and anyone that likes him.

[860] I kind of thought he was seen as a doofus, no?

[861] Maybe you're thinking of...

[862] The molester guy, the pedophile?

[863] Yeah, that's...

[864] I'm not thinking to him.

[865] I know who he is.

[866] I see him.

[867] Epstein's pal.

[868] Yeah, he's Charles' brother.

[869] Oh, he is.

[870] And did he get along good with the dad?

[871] Who knows?

[872] You're not there yet.

[873] I'm not there yet.

[874] Okay, all right, all right.

[875] Charles has one sister, Anne, and two brothers.

[876] One of them is the Epstein guy.

[877] Okay.

[878] So embarrassing.

[879] Anyway, so Charles was in love with Camilla.

[880] Then he comes back because she's married.

[881] They're still in love.

[882] Of course.

[883] So.

[884] Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

[885] Exactly.

[886] And the heart was already fond.

[887] Yes.

[888] So fond squared.

[889] Then they started having an affair.

[890] Oh, okay.

[891] I hope I'll get sued.

[892] I actually hope I do get sued.

[893] Oh, really?

[894] Yeah, by the queen.

[895] Oh, she wouldn't muddy herself up by, like, suing a civilian, a plebeian.

[896] I would love to meet her.

[897] You would?

[898] Now I do want to meet her.

[899] Oh, my God.

[900] Oh, my God.

[901] Oh, my God.

[902] Okay.

[903] So we're so different in this way.

[904] Do you not watch it and go like, oh, my God, this is a fairy tale.

[905] Yeah, of course.

[906] It's a joke.

[907] No one's born special.

[908] Yeah.

[909] No one's born royal.

[910] What a ridiculous fairy tale everyone bought into.

[911] I do.

[912] And we're still.

[913] perpetuating it.

[914] I do think it.

[915] And doesn't that anger you?

[916] It doesn't anger me because it's not like it's taking anything out of my pocket.

[917] Like, I don't care if they have this kind of delusional life.

[918] I just find it fascinating.

[919] I think when anyone who agrees to view them as royal and special is co -signing on their fairy tale.

[920] I'm going to kiss her hand.

[921] Oh, my God.

[922] You're going to.

[923] You have to.

[924] I want to.

[925] Dex!

[926] You're never going to get invited to see the queen.

[927] Clearly, I've made my...

[928] No, I've made my...

[929] You're just like the queen's husband.

[930] He did not want to bow to her...

[931] Right.

[932] At her coronation.

[933] And she was like, yes, you are going to bow to me. Husband.

[934] People shouldn't bow to people.

[935] Let me just say that.

[936] No one on planet Earth that's ever lived deserves to be bowed to.

[937] I am so opposed to.

[938] that.

[939] I can't believe you're not.

[940] Well, she's given powers by God.

[941] Oh, my God.

[942] Well, that seals it.

[943] Okay, but listen.

[944] So then he goes, so then he's in love.

[945] They have this up there.

[946] Can I pause you?

[947] Yeah.

[948] And this will really anger a lot of people, including you.

[949] I have more respect for Pablo Escobar.

[950] No, that's horrible.

[951] That man gave himself power.

[952] He didn't just receive it for being born.

[953] Who cares?

[954] This isn't about power.

[955] They do good things.

[956] They do do a lot of charities and a lot of stuff.

[957] Pablo Escobar just killed a bunch of people.

[958] Well, no, he built a ton of housing.

[959] And killed a bunch of people.

[960] Yeah, he killed a bunch of people.

[961] Oh, you don't think the royals have killed the most amount of people?

[962] Anybody?

[963] All these dingbat, ego -driven battles for three, four, five hundred years all throughout Europe?

[964] Okay.

[965] They are responsible for more deaths than anybody.

[966] You've got to acknowledge that.

[967] No. Yes, the monarchs.

[968] We can't say that.

[969] We don't know that.

[970] No, we 100 % know this.

[971] All the wars were waged over the egos of these royal families.

[972] Well, that was when.

[973] That was old times.

[974] Okay, but that's the history of it.

[975] Some people do think the queen had Diana killed.

[976] Oh, my gosh.

[977] Let's be real careful about that.

[978] I know.

[979] It's a theory.

[980] It's probably not true.

[981] I don't think it's true.

[982] I'm just saying kings beheaded people.

[983] Can I finish my story?

[984] Yeah, go ahead.

[985] So Charles and Camilla then were having an affair.

[986] Did he ever get her pregnant?

[987] Not that I know of.

[988] And then he had to marry Diana.

[989] He had to like pull it together.

[990] for the crown and the family, and he married Diana, who was a little bit fancy, but not that fancy, but a little bit fancy, because she was a lady.

[991] Okay.

[992] Then they had this loveless marriage, and he was in love with Camilla the whole time.

[993] Who was she in love with?

[994] She was married to this man still.

[995] No, no, I know they were married.

[996] Who was she in love with?

[997] Did she not have any love in her life?

[998] Who, Diana?

[999] Yeah.

[1000] Oh, Diana.

[1001] Diana did have some affairs.

[1002] Right.

[1003] Why?

[1004] Who did she?

[1005] So she had an affair with, there's rumors.

[1006] I don't know about.

[1007] Matt Damon?

[1008] Oh, my God.

[1009] I hope.

[1010] There's rumors about like bodyguards and this and that.

[1011] And then this one guy was like some military guy.

[1012] That's the main, I forget his name, but that's like the main person they know of that she had an affair with.

[1013] And then there's another rumor.

[1014] Because he looks a lot like Harry.

[1015] Oh, that that's Harry's dad.

[1016] But again.

[1017] That's an exciting rumor.

[1018] It's a rumor.

[1019] It's only a rumor.

[1020] And I'm learning of it for the first time right now.

[1021] So I'm not betting on it.

[1022] I just, it's exciting rumor.

[1023] It's exciting.

[1024] So does he have red hair?

[1025] Yeah.

[1026] Yeah.

[1027] But I think a lot of the royals had reddish hair.

[1028] English people have red hair a lot.

[1029] They sure do.

[1030] So then Diana dies, tragically, as we know.

[1031] Okay.

[1032] And then now Charles and Camilla are married.

[1033] How did that happen?

[1034] They got divorced.

[1035] Diana and Charles got divorced.

[1036] Before she died.

[1037] And then a couple, a year later, I think, she died maybe by the head to the, by the head of the queen.

[1038] Okay.

[1039] And then.

[1040] Well, no, it was by the hand of a drunk driver is what it was.

[1041] Well, but she could have.

[1042] Could have what?

[1043] I don't know.

[1044] Made the guy drunk.

[1045] Yeah.

[1046] Well, we have a show about debunking conspiracies.

[1047] I just want to point out, the driver of that car was hammered.

[1048] He was.

[1049] Yeah.

[1050] But, you know, the reason, there was a ton of paparazzi chasing.

[1051] They were outrunning paparazzi, yeah, and crash in a tunnel.

[1052] Yeah.

[1053] She was always, like, just totally mobbed.

[1054] Yes, yeah.

[1055] But I don't think the queen can orchestrate a mob of paparazzi and a drunk, in a drunk driver.

[1056] She's a lot.

[1057] The God gave her power, so she can't.

[1058] Okay.

[1059] So then she dies.

[1060] It's horrible.

[1061] Camilla gets divorced.

[1062] Oh, she has a divorce of her own.

[1063] Yep.

[1064] Okay.

[1065] And then years later, Camilla and Charles get married and they're still together.

[1066] And it's really interesting.

[1067] So beautiful love story.

[1068] Well, that's the part.

[1069] That's what I actually find fascinating because Diana, Princess Diana, Lady Diana, is so beloved, you know.

[1070] Yeah.

[1071] She was the people's princess.

[1072] Yeah.

[1073] Princess to the people.

[1074] And everyone loved her and she had a great fashion and she was this icon.

[1075] So it was like she, you know, she was always looked at as that.

[1076] And it was this, like, love story that people watched.

[1077] But the real love story was Charles and Camilla.

[1078] It's kind of the real fairy tale, even though no one.

[1079] People might not like that I said that.

[1080] I also want to backtrack and be clear.

[1081] I imagine there's a bunch of really nice people within the royal family.

[1082] I'm not saying that they're all idiots.

[1083] What I'm saying is the premise is fucking idiotic.

[1084] Right.

[1085] But what can they do now?

[1086] Now they're just in it.

[1087] Well, I like the two that said, fuck this.

[1088] Harry.

[1089] Yeah.

[1090] Harry and Megan Markle.

[1091] Yeah.

[1092] If that's what, if that was them, then yeah, I applaud that.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] Go, this is, this is guys, everyone needs to stop this charade.

[1095] Okay.

[1096] We're not entitled to anything.

[1097] We're not ordained by God.

[1098] We're just people.

[1099] We poop.

[1100] We go poo -poo every day.

[1101] They don't.

[1102] Oh, they don't poop.

[1103] You think they're reptiles.

[1104] Oh, the reptile people.

[1105] Is there anything in the crown about them being reptiles?

[1106] Not yet, but I'm on season one.

[1107] Which is season four?

[1108] No, I finished season four.

[1109] Now, so I finished season four, I blew through that.

[1110] And then I decided, I'm going to watch the whole thing.

[1111] You're so ambitious with your watching.

[1112] I really applaud it, yeah.

[1113] You got through Queen's Gambit in a couple hours.

[1114] If I like it, I'm in.

[1115] Yeah, that's what Aaron does, too.

[1116] I said on a Monday, like, you should check out Queen's Gambit.

[1117] Now Wednesday when he arrived, he had seen the whole thing.

[1118] And he loved it.

[1119] So good.

[1120] Yeah.

[1121] Both ding, ding, ding, queen.

[1122] Crown.

[1123] Oh, yeah.

[1124] Queen Crown's Gambit.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] Crowns Gambit.

[1127] I love it.

[1128] Now I love the Royals.

[1129] Oh my God.

[1130] I've lost you.

[1131] William and Harry.

[1132] But you're a romantic and you like fairy tales.

[1133] So this kind of makes sense.

[1134] Do you remember at her funeral?

[1135] No. Oh, I do.

[1136] At her funeral, it was really sad.

[1137] The boys.

[1138] Oh, I don't like that.

[1139] I don't like the kids have to go in public to mourn their parents.

[1140] And then there was this like...

[1141] Jack Jr. Beautiful flower arrangement and a little card and it said, Mommy.

[1142] I know.

[1143] I don't like that.

[1144] You know what I don't like?

[1145] What?

[1146] Williams' daughter's name is Charlotte.

[1147] Who's William?

[1148] The son, the oldest son, who will also be king.

[1149] He'll be king after Charles is king.

[1150] Oh, okay.

[1151] That's exciting for him.

[1152] Very.

[1153] That's probably why Harry kind of defected because he's like, I'm not going to be king, so who cares?

[1154] Right.

[1155] Yeah, but if he was going to be king, he was going to be king, he was going to get a lot.

[1156] He might not have done it.

[1157] So he's like, I'm not going to go to the Olympics.

[1158] I know.

[1159] But is that that noble?

[1160] Well, we don't really know if that's why.

[1161] He might have just said this whole thing is preposterous.

[1162] He probably did.

[1163] Yeah.

[1164] A lot of the crown is them trying to preserve the sanctity of it.

[1165] Like, not let people think it's silly.

[1166] Of course.

[1167] That's the same thing the Catholic Church does.

[1168] Like all these institutions that are thousands of years old that are just objectively so arcane.

[1169] Yeah.

[1170] Look, even if you believe me. God, that's great if you believe in God, but the notion that there's a guy down in Rome who should pick kings is just a little, it's out there for me. It really is.

[1171] And that they have all this power and all this money and all this protection and they can keep, you know, this horrendous scandal that just keeps endlessly unfolding the pedophile scandal within the Gallic church.

[1172] It just won't go away.

[1173] Every time you think the lid's blown off it, I mean, it was just two weeks ago, I heard another thing about it.

[1174] Oh, humans.

[1175] Wow.

[1176] We love status.

[1177] We do.

[1178] We do love status.

[1179] But it's just fascinating in the inner workings.

[1180] I think the mental health element of it is really.

[1181] They don't want to be.

[1182] Like in the last episode, Elizabeth asked for an apology from her uncle who was the king.

[1183] He abdicated the throne because they didn't let him marry the woman he loved, because she was divorced.

[1184] Oh, I mean, again, what were we talking about?

[1185] But this was a long time ago.

[1186] Then he abdicated the throne, so then her dad then had to become the king.

[1187] That's the king's speech.

[1188] You know, he has a stutter.

[1189] Oh, that was a good movie.

[1190] I liked him.

[1191] Yeah, he's...

[1192] Only because he had a stutter.

[1193] He's beloved.

[1194] Yeah.

[1195] And then when he died, Elizabeth became queen.

[1196] Okay.

[1197] I forgot why it was said that.

[1198] Damn it.

[1199] Oh, then in the show, she...

[1200] Oh, you're talking about mental health.

[1201] Yeah.

[1202] And the show, she says to the uncle, you owe me an apology.

[1203] You don't think I wanted to live a normal life?

[1204] Like, they're stuck.

[1205] Right.

[1206] And I would imagine the rat fuck of it all, too, is that you're in this position that everybody envies and it's not fun.

[1207] Exactly.

[1208] It's a horrible life.

[1209] So you're not even allowed to acknowledge it.

[1210] It sucks.

[1211] Yep.

[1212] Or you're seen as being ungrateful.

[1213] It's like, yeah, their lives are the worst.

[1214] Shit on a gold toilet is only so fun.

[1215] Being in a house with 80 hallways is only.

[1216] so fun.

[1217] It's probably fun for two weeks.

[1218] Yeah.

[1219] And then that's it.

[1220] That's not what is fun in life.

[1221] What's fun in life is fucking divorced women and then marrying them.

[1222] Oh, wow.

[1223] And hanging out with divorced people and hanging out with drug addicts and artists.

[1224] That's what's fun in life.

[1225] So all this decorum.

[1226] I don't know about that.

[1227] My mother was divorced.

[1228] So watch your tongue.

[1229] It's not fun.

[1230] My mom wasn't good enough for the royal family.

[1231] Oh, God.

[1232] See how personal it got?

[1233] Yeah.

[1234] Yeah.

[1235] Oh.

[1236] I'm glad you like this show so much.

[1237] It's fun to see you so excited.

[1238] Thank you.

[1239] I wrote it down.

[1240] I want to talk about the crown and mental health.

[1241] Do you think the actual weight of the crown might have something to do, too?

[1242] It's heavy.

[1243] I just watched that episode.

[1244] Oh, wait.

[1245] There's an episode about it?

[1246] Well, the coronation.

[1247] It's too heavy.

[1248] Is it solid gold?

[1249] They have to, like, practice walking because it's, like, really heavy.

[1250] Oh, my God.

[1251] Like Daniel Ricardo would be the perfect princess.

[1252] Oh, he has the greatest next for it.

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] Oh, my God.

[1255] He wouldn't even know that.

[1256] crown was on his head.

[1257] They should bring him in to do some neck training for the Royals.

[1258] Or at least his trainer.

[1259] I think I think Daniel knows enough at this point.

[1260] He knows stuff.

[1261] I wonder if Daniel loves the royal family.

[1262] I guess they're in the Commonwealth, Australia, so they probably are more into it.

[1263] Even when I was a kid, I'd be up in Canada, you know, which is part of the Commonwealth.

[1264] And the road signs, we're all in crowns, right?

[1265] So there's a crown around the speed limit.

[1266] And I'm like, what is the going on here?

[1267] Yeah.

[1268] I think you would find it more fascinating if you didn't have a personal vendetto about your mom.

[1269] And a class warfare struggle.

[1270] That's about your mom.

[1271] Sure, or me. Yeah, all connected.

[1272] Let me ask you this.

[1273] Do you love the idea of, like, trust fund people who get a billion dollars?

[1274] I don't have the thing you have.

[1275] Oh.

[1276] That doesn't bother you.

[1277] No. Because it does.

[1278] That some people on planet Earth have to earn their stuff and some people don't.

[1279] You should.

[1280] Well, I don't know if I should.

[1281] I don't take it personally that that is happening.

[1282] I think it's frustrating that some, yeah, that there's this huge discrepancy where some people are just given a whole life.

[1283] Yeah.

[1284] And other people are given nothing and are struggling.

[1285] And I want to find a more middle ground about all of it.

[1286] Yeah.

[1287] Yeah.

[1288] But when I hear, oh, that trust fund kid, that doesn't do anything for me in my insides.

[1289] Like, I don't care.

[1290] I know that I worked hard.

[1291] And again, I've met nice trust fund people.

[1292] Mm -hmm.

[1293] I just don't think it is right conceptually that some people don't have to do anything and some people have to do everything and still live in poverty.

[1294] I know.

[1295] Well, I agree.

[1296] Someone out there is definitely thinking, well, you're going to give your kids money and you're right.

[1297] I'm going to.

[1298] So I'm a total hypocrite.

[1299] I'll say that.

[1300] Yeah.

[1301] Because I can see where they justify it.

[1302] So I go, well, I made this money.

[1303] So I get to do whatever the fuck I want with this money.

[1304] And if that's give it to my kids, that's my right to give it to my kids.

[1305] Yeah, that's what those people say.

[1306] I know.

[1307] So I'm just owning my own hypocrisy.

[1308] I know that.

[1309] So if you know it's hypocritical, then why don't you reverse and say and not be upset by that?

[1310] So this is a common argument that's made on the right.

[1311] So if someone says they're in favor of higher taxes, a real common thing on the right is to text that, or rather tweet that person, why don't you just give more money to the government yourself?

[1312] If you really believe that, you'd give all your money.

[1313] They think they've got them in checkmate.

[1314] But I'll tell you why that's a really useless argument.

[1315] The person who wants higher taxes wants the country to change.

[1316] And they know that if they individually give all their money to the government, that is.

[1317] is not going to carry out their goal.

[1318] So it's a stupid, stupid retort that doesn't hold any weight.

[1319] Similarly, me deciding to not give my children money is not going to fix the problem I am offended by.

[1320] But if we all agreed, if there was a law and we all agreed, this is bonkers that some people never, ever have to work a day in their life.

[1321] And other people cannot make ends meet, then I'm signing up because I want the change.

[1322] but there's no reason I need to be a sacrificial lamb that will yield no results.

[1323] That's not what I was saying.

[1324] I was saying, why don't you then just give the trust fund parents the benefit of the doubt, the trust fund kids, like, why do you still have anger towards that if you know you're going to do the same thing?

[1325] Well, there's a lot of things going on here.

[1326] One conversation is, do I not understand the people who give their kids all that money?

[1327] No, I do understand those people.

[1328] Okay, that's one argument or one debate to be had.

[1329] Another debate is, is it right that in this country X amount of percentage of the people don't ever have to do anything?

[1330] That on its face is wrong.

[1331] So I don't find there to be a paradox there that I understand the parents and that also that I think there shouldn't be this enormous difference.

[1332] Yeah, I don't think there should be an enormous difference at all.

[1333] But it doesn't bother me that there are people who don't do anything.

[1334] It bothers me that there are people who do everything and can't get anywhere.

[1335] Yes.

[1336] Well, that's a good point.

[1337] I like that point.

[1338] Yeah, I'm not mad about lottery winners.

[1339] I don't care if someone's dad gave them a billion dollars.

[1340] Like, great.

[1341] Yeah, I don't either.

[1342] And you're right.

[1343] And I found, because in L .A., you meet a lot of people that are in that situation.

[1344] I find that it's been just generally speaking harder for them to be.

[1345] happy than the people I know who made their own shit.

[1346] So I don't really think it's the gift that it seems like it's going to be.

[1347] Yeah.

[1348] Yeah.

[1349] I just want the ability for people to have a way out when they're doing, working for jobs and still in a hard situation.

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] Okay.

[1352] I have some facts.

[1353] Let's see.

[1354] You brought up punctuated evolution theory.

[1355] I'm going to read a little bit about that.

[1356] Okay.

[1357] In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium, also called punctuated.

[1358] Oh, wait.

[1359] Oops.

[1360] That's probably not what you were talking about.

[1361] As I remember it, there had been this kind of working theory in the early stages of evolution that it was kind of slow, predictable, and methodical.

[1362] There was incremental change happening pretty predictably over 1 ,000.

[1363] year period, right?

[1364] And what they started observing in the archaeological record is there's almost no change for a long, long time.

[1365] And then there's rapid change because of some environmental thing that happened or, you know, any number of reasons.

[1366] A asteroid hits the planet.

[1367] And so this huge shift in the environment causes really rapid and accelerated evolution.

[1368] Yeah.

[1369] Okay, then this is that.

[1370] I bet this is called punctuated equilibrium.

[1371] In evolutionary biology is a thing.

[1372] theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of its geological history.

[1373] This state of little or no morphological change is called stasis.

[1374] When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis.

[1375] Cladogenesis is a process by which a species splits into two distinct species rather than one species gradually transforming into another.

[1376] Okay, so kind of similar to what you were saying.

[1377] I think the example in the biology book was, so these moths, they were black, and they probably would have stayed black forever.

[1378] There would be no reason for some mutation to take off.

[1379] But then there was a big volcano eruption, and so everything was covered in like ash, so they were very visible to predators, and some tiny percentage of.

[1380] them were mutated to be white and then they blended in and then they overnight basically altered white.

[1381] Oh, wow.

[1382] Interesting.

[1383] Yeah.

[1384] Okay.

[1385] She said that Charles Darwin said emotions are functional.

[1386] So the study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century.

[1387] Evolution and natural selection has been applied to the study of human communication mainly by Charles Darwin in his 1872 work, the expression of the emotions in man and animals.

[1388] Darwin researched the expression of emotions in an effort to support his theory of evolution.

[1389] He proposed that much like other traits found in animals, emotions also evolved and were adapted over time.

[1390] His work looked at not only facial expressions in animals and specifically humans, but attempted to point out parallels between behaviors and humans and other animals.

[1391] According to evolutionary theory, different emotions evolved at different times.

[1392] Primal emotions such as fear are associated with ancient parts of the brain and presumably evolved among our pre -mammal ancestors.

[1393] Phileal emotions such as a human mother's love for her offspring seems to have evolved among early mammals.

[1394] Social emotions such as guilt and pride evolved among social primates.

[1395] Sometimes a more recently evolved part of the brain moderates an older part of the brain, such as when the cortex moderates the amygdala's fear response.

[1396] Evolutionary psychologists consider human emotions to be the best adapted to the life our ancestors led in nomadic foraging bands.

[1397] You know, we were in Glamis in the sand dunes.

[1398] Aaron and I were sitting at the fire.

[1399] And it just crossed my mind that for a lot of the time that hominids were here, not homo sapiens, but early hominids like australopithecines, they didn't have fire.

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] So we're sitting there around the fire.

[1402] And I said to him, how excruciating was the experience on planet Earth with this much computing power?

[1403] Mind you, they didn't have as much as us.

[1404] But still, very, very smart, smarter than any other animal.

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] And nothing to occupy that brain with, not even fire.

[1407] I know.

[1408] Was it maddening?

[1409] Of course.

[1410] Were you just like sitting in the grass going, what the fuck are we doing?

[1411] What is this all about?

[1412] But you have nothing to compare it to.

[1413] So I don't think.

[1414] It's either one or the other.

[1415] Either they were so serene and peaceful and we're super fucked up because we're not supposed to live like this or it was maddeningly boring and useless.

[1416] Because I think with our intelligence, you start asking what the reason for doing anything is.

[1417] Yeah, yeah.

[1418] And if you couldn't even make anything or build anything or cook anything.

[1419] I know, but you don't know that you can't.

[1420] You know, like, you don't know that it's a thing.

[1421] Well, you could scratch a picture on a rock.

[1422] Right.

[1423] But you don't know, like, oh, my God, there's like spaghetti.

[1424] And I don't, I don't have the ability to make it or eat it or, like, none of that exists yet.

[1425] For sure.

[1426] But there's also, like, there's not even salt yet.

[1427] Yeah, right?

[1428] There's not, there's, and you can't cook meat.

[1429] So if you're eating meat, it's raw, which is disgusting.

[1430] And you're just eating it for the protein.

[1431] And then you're eating, you know, some leaves you gathered up with no dressing or anything.

[1432] There's no way the meal was delish.

[1433] No, there isn't.

[1434] There's nothing was pleasurable at all.

[1435] They must have just fucked and had kids.

[1436] Yeah, but I mean, I think, again, it's relative.

[1437] Pleasure is relative.

[1438] So maybe one piece of the meat tasted better than another piece of them, that's like a good, that's an exciting.

[1439] Okay.

[1440] That's a good.

[1441] I like that.

[1442] Don't you feel like you'd go mad?

[1443] Well, I, myself now would.

[1444] Of course.

[1445] But not me as an old lady.

[1446] We're just looking around.

[1447] We got no clothes, no pockets, can't own anything because you can't put it anywhere.

[1448] You got to carry whatever you own.

[1449] I know.

[1450] Oh, boy.

[1451] I got real scared.

[1452] It's why?

[1453] Thinking about it.

[1454] You got just sitting in the sand.

[1455] We're not going back.

[1456] Don't worry.

[1457] Just picture like the sun goes down.

[1458] You're sitting in the sand.

[1459] And that's that.

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] Oh, man. Can't be up at night.

[1462] There's no light.

[1463] Okay, well, it's kind of ding, ding, ding.

[1464] You said Buddhists say life isn't suffering.

[1465] Suffering is wanting to be in another state than you're in.

[1466] So I did a little, just a quick pullup of Buddhists and suffering.

[1467] I think this was on PBS or National Geographic.

[1468] I forget.

[1469] More simply put, suffering exists.

[1470] It has a cause.

[1471] It has an end.

[1472] And it has a cause to bring about its end.

[1473] In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering.

[1474] By desire, Buddhists refer to craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied.

[1475] Yeah.

[1476] Yep.

[1477] In Yuval's book, he used the word craving a lot.

[1478] I could so relate to that.

[1479] Yeah.

[1480] Craving different mental states.

[1481] Well, you're, you're even doing it in regards to the old people.

[1482] Uh -huh.

[1483] I am.

[1484] I would have been, there would have been so much suffering.

[1485] They wouldn't have, they won't have craving so because they don't know.

[1486] Well, they would crave to be warm.

[1487] Maybe.

[1488] Like, if they don't know what warmth is, would you crave it?

[1489] I don't think so.

[1490] Well, they would know it from when the weather was nice.

[1491] Oh.

[1492] Is the weather nice ever?

[1493] Yes.

[1494] Absolutely.

[1495] Think about the perfect spring day in Georgia.

[1496] They had those days.

[1497] But then the rains came and it got cold as hell And they didn't have Gortex What's Gortex?

[1498] You know, water -resistant clothing Oh, it's called Gortex?

[1499] That's a brand of a water -resistant material Gortex.

[1500] Okay, she said around the age of five or six Children become aware of their mortality.

[1501] Children begin to grasp death's finality around age four.

[1502] In one typical study, researchers found that 10 % of three -year -olds understand irreversibility, compared with 58 % of four -year -olds.

[1503] The other two aspects of death are learned a bit later, usually between age five and seven.

[1504] Yeah, I feel like that moment I described with Lincoln, she was three or four.

[1505] Yeah.

[1506] Maybe that's what they did entertain.

[1507] Well, they probably sang.

[1508] Oh, yeah, made music.

[1509] Yeah.

[1510] Wow.

[1511] Oh, that's sweet.

[1512] Bugabuga, boogga.

[1513] booga booga uga do you think that's what their song was because in all the k -man movies they go uga -buga i think that's the stereotype we put on them you're probably right they didn't legacy box any of that footage and it's all lost exactly that's why you got a legacy box you got to do it you got to so she talks a lot about honesty with your kids which i think was good and i just wanted to commend you because you're very honest with your kids That's so funny you'd bring that up because this weekend.

[1514] I wrote it down.

[1515] So, yeah, speaking of, so Lincoln is with us in the sand dunes and it's like a bunch of adults in her.

[1516] And we somehow get on the subject of Michael Jackson.

[1517] And we keep talking about him, like saying all the stuff.

[1518] And she keeps interjecting saying, what?

[1519] What do you do?

[1520] What do we molested children?

[1521] What does that mean again?

[1522] Well, he played with their private parts, and he showed him his private parts and so on and so forth.

[1523] It was inappropriate.

[1524] It was very inappropriate.

[1525] And she was just like, okay.

[1526] And then she said, can I see a picture of him?

[1527] What does he look like?

[1528] Right.

[1529] And then it became all about that he used to be black and then he was white.

[1530] And he used to be super cute, which he was.

[1531] And then he had that triangle nose and was white and his chin was humongous.

[1532] She was like, I mean, I think that was the first time she's ever seen.

[1533] a person that's transformed in pictures like that.

[1534] And then you were talking about Neverland and you were telling some story.

[1535] A friends of mine that have been there.

[1536] And how Michael Jackson was laughing at the kid, like giggling.

[1537] And Lincoln goes.

[1538] Why is he like this?

[1539] Like she could not.

[1540] She had heard so many stories up until that point.

[1541] Her brain was, like, racking, trying to figure out this person.

[1542] Yeah, how could this person be like this?

[1543] Yes.

[1544] And she wasn't saying it in a judgment.

[1545] She was asking, like, why is he like this?

[1546] Yeah, she needed an explanation.

[1547] Yes.

[1548] I laughed so hard.

[1549] And I kept thinking about it because it was pretty poignant.

[1550] Yeah.

[1551] And then my explanation was, I mean, it's so incomplete.

[1552] I'm like, well, he was very famous as a young boy.

[1553] He had an abusive father.

[1554] Trauma is the real reason.

[1555] Trauma and not ever having a childhood and God knows what sexual abuse he experienced.

[1556] Blah, blah, blah.

[1557] Why does he like this?

[1558] He's a tricky topic nowadays.

[1559] Of course.

[1560] Like if you're going to bring up Michael Jackson around your kid, you better buckle up for like a real long, awkward conversation.

[1561] A lot of questions that you'll have to think of the perfect wording for.

[1562] Yeah, but you were honest about it, which I thought was good.

[1563] And I thought, I think most people would have just been like, nothing, you know, just brushed it off.

[1564] I was certainly tempted to.

[1565] Yeah, I was certainly tempted to change the subject.

[1566] You answered it.

[1567] Well, I thought.

[1568] Oh, thank you.

[1569] I would love to hear.

[1570] I wish I could overhear her now, maybe explain to one of her peers.

[1571] I would love to hear, like, what she retained, yeah, what she retained, how she makes sense of it and how she would relay it to a peer.

[1572] here.

[1573] Yes.

[1574] I'm really curious.

[1575] Yeah.

[1576] I just realized something.

[1577] What?

[1578] It's Thanksgiving.

[1579] Oh my gosh.

[1580] Happy Thanksgiving.

[1581] Happy Thanksgiving.

[1582] We're going to be together then, too.

[1583] Yeah, today.

[1584] Today we're together.

[1585] Yes.

[1586] Do you want to say three things you're thankful for?

[1587] Oh, yeah.

[1588] I would like to do more than three, but yeah.

[1589] Okay.

[1590] But you have to kind of dwindle it down to three.

[1591] How come?

[1592] Oh, just for this length of the podcast.

[1593] Oh.

[1594] Or you can say, The first time we've been concerned about this.

[1595] Okay.

[1596] Say however many.

[1597] Okay, well, I want to say the health of my family, number one.

[1598] Yeah.

[1599] That I'm sober today.

[1600] Yeah.

[1601] That I have an impossibly great friendship circle that gives my life so much meaning and joy.

[1602] Those are nice.

[1603] What are yours?

[1604] I'm going to selfishly add my own health too.

[1605] Okay.

[1606] Yeah.

[1607] I'm thankful for...

[1608] Having employment in this tough year.

[1609] Me too.

[1610] I'm thankful for, I don't want to repeat yours, even though yours, some of yours are also some of mine.

[1611] The friendship circle.

[1612] And the family, health of my family.

[1613] Oh, and that you're sober.

[1614] Thank you.

[1615] I'm thankful that, that's not nice, I shouldn't say that.

[1616] Oh, I want to hear it so bad.

[1617] I'm thankful that I don't live in Alaska because of seasonal affective disorder.

[1618] But I'm not going to say that.

[1619] Okay.

[1620] You can say you're thankful.

[1621] You live in a sunny climate.

[1622] I know.

[1623] More specifically, you're thankful you don't live in Alaska.

[1624] Well, let's just be honest.

[1625] I'm thankful that people really showed up in November at election time.

[1626] And that hopefully progress is on.

[1627] on the horizon.

[1628] And I'm thankful that even though I'm going to be away from my family for the holidays this year, which is going to be hard, that I have a surrogate family.

[1629] Yeah.

[1630] And even, I want to extend an offer to you.

[1631] Okay.

[1632] Feel free to storm up the stairs and get into the guest bedroom and then put your ear to the door and see if you can hear us talking about you.

[1633] Really?

[1634] Yeah.

[1635] Just like I do at home.

[1636] Yeah.

[1637] Okay.

[1638] I want you to have the full experience.

[1639] Okay.

[1640] I'm also, I'm really thankful that there's a vaccine that's 95, 95 % effective.

[1641] I can't wait to get that thing in fucking.

[1642] Go places.

[1643] Everywhere.

[1644] I want to eat out every fucking day.

[1645] I want to go to the movies.

[1646] I want to fly all over the place.

[1647] I know.

[1648] I want to touch everyone and kiss everyone and manhandle them, get sued.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] By the queen.

[1651] Do you think there's been a reduction in handling?

[1652] handsiness?

[1653] Yes.

[1654] I do.

[1655] The one unintended benefit, I guess.

[1656] Unless you desire handsiness and you didn't get it.

[1657] Well, that is what is happening, too.

[1658] Lots of loneliness.

[1659] Mm -hmm.

[1660] But a happy Thanksgiving.

[1661] Bye.

[1662] Bye.

[1663] I love everyone.

[1664] Happy Thanksgiving.

[1665] I'm so thankful for everyone that listens to this.

[1666] Oh, my God.

[1667] I can't believe that we didn't.

[1668] start with that.

[1669] Well, the employment, we both think we're thankful for our employment, and that's them.

[1670] That's everyone that listens.

[1671] Yeah.

[1672] But we should say it more specifically.

[1673] You guys have given me my favorite job I've ever had in my life.

[1674] Yeah, me too.

[1675] Yeah, thank you.

[1676] Thank you.

[1677] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1678] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and add.

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