Kate Bowler

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

[1] I'm Monica Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Dax Padman.

[3] Cool.

[4] Really cool.

[5] You ended up with the first name.

[6] I guess we both ended up with each other's first name.

[7] Because that would have been, okay, it would have been Padman.

[8] Shepherd?

[9] No, it would have been.

[10] Shepherd, Padman, Monica Dax.

[11] If only one of us ended up with first names.

[12] I don't like that at all, that combo.

[13] Okay.

[14] We hate that.

[15] a shepherd and I love Dax Padman.

[16] It's nice.

[17] Today we have Kate Boller on and Kate Boller is a PhD and a New York Times bestselling author, podcast hosts, a professor at Duke University and a self -proclaimed incurable optimist.

[18] She's written several books.

[19] Everything happens for a reason, the preacher's wife, blessed, and she has a podcast that is wonderful called Everything Happens.

[20] She has a new book out, September 28th, called No Cure for Being Human and Other Truths I Need to Hear.

[21] a very harrowing story of getting diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in the peak of her life when everything is happening.

[22] Yeah.

[23] It's a very honest and raw account of that experience.

[24] And we love getting to meet her.

[25] So please enjoy Kate Bowler.

[26] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair expert early and add free right now.

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

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

[29] Where are you from originally?

[30] The garbage part of Canada?

[31] What's the garbage part?

[32] It's the middle that no one ever mentions.

[33] I have never not had to say, oh, I'm from, I mean, we could do this now where I go.

[34] I'm from Manitoba.

[35] Okay.

[36] I don't know Manitoba.

[37] No. Yeah.

[38] It is above what states?

[39] I'm going to say it's above Montana and Minnesota and North Dakota.

[40] I like that you're naming all the northern states.

[41] I picked the three middle northern states.

[42] Yeah, well, Saskatchewan is above Montana and North Dakota, but you are so close.

[43] Okay.

[44] It's North Dakota and Minnesota.

[45] Okay, great.

[46] So it's a little further east.

[47] I lived in Minnesota for four years and not a single person that I ran into knew where Manitoba was.

[48] And I was like, you are abutting it at this moment.

[49] How far would you say you were from the border?

[50] 80 % of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U .S. border.

[51] What a great fact.

[52] It's not unlike that 90 % of California.

[53] live within five miles of the coast.

[54] Oh.

[55] Or something like that.

[56] It's in the high, it's a ton.

[57] Yeah.

[58] So is the middle of Canada like so...

[59] She's from the middle of Canada.

[60] Thank you.

[61] Everyone's like, oh, yeah, I've been to Toronto.

[62] Oh, well, you've been to the Drake part.

[63] You haven't been to the desolate middle.

[64] Where the rubber meets the road in Canada.

[65] Can I blow your mind right now?

[66] I love it.

[67] My mother's currently, as we're talking, is in Manitoba.

[68] Yes, she is.

[69] Wait, really?

[70] Yeah, she's crossing Canada right now.

[71] Stop it.

[72] She went to Prince Edward Island.

[73] She was in Toronto.

[74] She has begun moving west.

[75] And she, I don't know this for sure, but she should be around that right now.

[76] Well, my parents are just two turns off the highway.

[77] Okay.

[78] So she just turns left twice and just into this squat bungalow.

[79] That's my parents will have her right in there.

[80] It's just wood paneling everywhere.

[81] Oh, yeah.

[82] Was your father a pilot?

[83] They were.

[84] Or a lover of boats?

[85] We're very proud of our two rivers.

[86] That's what we have in Winnipeg.

[87] And I really just want to keep telling you more about the rivers than no one will visit.

[88] But both my parents are professors.

[89] Oh, they are?

[90] What type of professors were they?

[91] My dad's a historian and my mom's a music professor.

[92] So whenever I was sick, I got to go sleep under the piano.

[93] Oh, that's nice.

[94] Oh, that's really cute.

[95] So you kind of did a hodgepodge of that, right?

[96] Because you're American religious history?

[97] Yeah.

[98] Yeah.

[99] And so obviously you must have attended church as a kid.

[100] Yeah.

[101] Yeah, I grew up among the cheese -eating Mennonites of the Manitowa Plains, just known for, like, simplicity and pacifism and good, desperate desire to make furniture.

[102] Oh.

[103] Are they adjacent to...

[104] The Amish.

[105] Is that what you're thinking?

[106] Close, but no. I grew up around a lot of Amish people in Michigan.

[107] There's a ton.

[108] No, the Pennsylvania Dutch are predominantly...

[109] Are they Mennonites?

[110] Amish.

[111] No. Really?

[112] I'm thinking of another thing.

[113] And there's a lot of atheists that have now been drawn to this.

[114] My friend Christine is now into this.

[115] Guys, you know this religion.

[116] It's so popular.

[117] Okay.

[118] It's like Dutch Pennsylvania, not Puritans.

[119] Quakers.

[120] Oh.

[121] Is it similar at all to Quakers?

[122] Yeah.

[123] I mean, I desperately want to launch into like, it was the year.

[124] Do it.

[125] Educators.

[126] Well, there's kind of a family, like theological cousins.

[127] Right.

[128] And Quakers came out of like an English tradition, but yes, also committed to pacifism.

[129] And then the Mennonites and the Amish therapist.

[130] all have kind of similar commitments to communitarianism and usually kind of a radical anti -state anti -violence and they tend to move in groups and it's similar to being Jewish and so far as it has the same food same typically like bloodlines you hear a last name and you're like we're team oh okay so I play the metanite game all the time you win when you figure out you're related when was the great explosion of menonite attendants or popularity uh well they kept getting kicked out of every place where they settled.

[131] So one of my favorite things about the Mennonites is they always speak the language of wherever they were kicked out last, often 200 years before.

[132] So they were initially from Holland and they used to be city dwellers.

[133] Then they got the boot and they settled in parts of Germany.

[134] And then when they were in Germany, they spoke Dutch.

[135] And then when they got kicked out of Germany, they moved to Russia.

[136] And then when they were in Russia, they spoke German, of course.

[137] And then by the time they got the boot and settled a lot of the parts of Canada that really needed sort of like communal mass farm labor.

[138] That's what they liked to do in groups.

[139] They drained swamps by hand as is their way.

[140] My husband's uncle, he always says lovely poetic things like, oh, the dirt is so rich and deep, deep as you could dig a grave.

[141] And that's how deep the soil.

[142] Anyway, so that's why the metanites ended up taking up huge sort of farmland in southern Madatoba and southern Ontario.

[143] Okay, so my understanding of the history of Christianity is not great.

[144] But what I believe is that Catholicism was the order of the day.

[145] And then Martin Luther came along and there was the Protestant Reformation.

[146] And he said, this is bizarre.

[147] You can buy your deceased relatives entry into heaven.

[148] That doesn't feel like something that the church should be doing.

[149] And then he nailed some list of grievances on some public building.

[150] And then you have this great schism.

[151] And now we split into two different camps.

[152] Just at that point, it was what Lutherans or Protestants in Catholics?

[153] We're the two colonels.

[154] Well, because the great schism happens around.

[155] year 1000 where it's east and west, which is why you have all these different kinds of orthodoxies, like Greek Orthodox, which was Roman Catholic, and then Russian even became Russian Orthodoxy.

[156] You've got Egyptian Orthodox.

[157] Yeah, so the East and West split, and then the Reformation comes along in the 16, well, like 1 ,500s, and then becomes part of how each country is defining nationhood.

[158] By the way, thank you for taking me here, but it's always lightly out of my league, because I normally do like, okay, cool, but when it gets to America, and especially after World War II, I'm real strong.

[159] When it starts to divide by, so like the Church of England, for example, it has these nation -state projects, but one of the sort of unique things about the United States in particular is the rise of denominations.

[160] They really kind of invent denominations, like, for instance, Methodism, which becomes this, like, frontier Baptists, exactly.

[161] They have these huge revivals.

[162] Americans love, like, a big field, and then they'll, like, cut down a tree and someone will stand on a stump, and then a deeply charismatic person will get up there.

[163] and be like, fight me or listen to this story.

[164] Yeah, we do like that.

[165] We do.

[166] So denominations is our unique contribution to all of this.

[167] Why was America, I mean, I have theories, but you would know best.

[168] Why was America so ripe for that kind of explosion?

[169] I think individualism is such a deep part of the way that Americans explain themselves.

[170] And also that it was trying to define itself against a statehood project.

[171] So it was trying to say, you know, we're not the Church of England.

[172] and therefore, so diversity, multiplicity, so each person determined by their own conscience.

[173] Yeah.

[174] So they became more into sort of professions of faith.

[175] Like that's very American to be like, you are what you say you believe, you are your profession, you are your self -articulated statement of.

[176] Your identity can come from that.

[177] Yeah, and that it won't be inherited, that it will be self -defined.

[178] I feel like every American has this deep and abiding love to, like, know themselves by pulling a belief from inside and then expressing it.

[179] Yeah, they want to change.

[180] choose, right?

[181] That's like an expression of freedom.

[182] They don't want to inherit something or be told by the state.

[183] Well, let's go back 300 years because the interesting problem, as I understand it, that the justification for most royalty was that these royals were divine, right?

[184] That they were chosen and the Pope would give the blessing.

[185] And so it had some justification of why this person was the king.

[186] It had a religious reason.

[187] And when that wasn't there anymore, I think a lot of right royalty was nervous that without that justification, how would they?

[188] Yeah, there's always been like a big debate about how religious authority is conferred.

[189] And Americans kind of picked their own version of that, which is that that religious authority is individually determined.

[190] And that really defines most of the major religious projects that are sort of uniquely obsessively Americans.

[191] So Mormonism, for instance, as a frontier's religion that builds a whole world for itself.

[192] Yeah.

[193] And so to Pentecostalism, the idea that a believer would be able to kind of be able to kind of know that God was alive in the details of their life by being able to express their own faith in a heavenly language.

[194] Like, America's very show and tell in its faith.

[195] And so, I mean, that's honestly partly why I got so interested in the history of the American prosperity gospel, because I was like, what more show and tell faith is there than a religious tradition that believes that they will be able to demonstrate that God loves them by their bodies, by their health and their wealth and by their finances and whether they have like a beautiful, perfect family.

[196] Yeah.

[197] Well, okay, so really quick, before we move on for Mormonism, the interesting thing I learned, and mind you, this book wasn't a pro -Morman book under the banner of heaven, but Krakauer explained the appeal of Mormonism is that it was that this was the first Christian offering where they said you could receive prophecies from God, not through this intermediary, not through between a pope, the priest or whatever, that it was really an empowering religion in that you, yourself, God would tell you things, revelations.

[198] Yeah, that gets us right back to that sort of American answer to that problem of, like, how do we decide religious authority?

[199] And I wouldn't say that Mormonism is, like, unique in its belief that divine revelation can be manifest in any right believing person, but the idea that, like, a believer wouldn't need a single other person to interpret it.

[200] No hierarchy.

[201] I like that.

[202] Yeah.

[203] Yeah.

[204] It is very democratic.

[205] Yeah.

[206] Yeah.

[207] I also love that you're like, and in the John Crackauer book, I feel like you would crush my American religion classes.

[208] Well, it's done you.

[209] Oh, thank you.

[210] Okay.

[211] So I want to get to the prosperity Christianity because it's very fascinating to me. And as a cynic, it's the one that appeals most to me, of course, as you would imagine.

[212] But tell me how Mennonites in the Amish.

[213] So again, I'm just someone who my grandparents live next door.

[214] to Amish people, right?

[215] So they drove a horse and buggy.

[216] They didn't have a power line to their house.

[217] I came to learn they couldn't have any electrical devices, but they could borrow their neighbors, which I thought was a very interesting loophole.

[218] They can even drive your car.

[219] Yeah.

[220] Yeah.

[221] That's interesting in all of itself.

[222] But the thing I admire a ton, well, there's a lot of virtues that they have, A, the community, the work ethic, all these things.

[223] But the Rumshring, the notion that they would feel so confident in their beliefs that they would say, you go do your thing.

[224] Go out and go crazy and come back if it feels right to you.

[225] That to me feels so liberal and evolved for something that on the surface feels so conservative and restrictive.

[226] And I dig that.

[227] Yeah.

[228] Is there a theory?

[229] Like did that always exist in them?

[230] Or how'd they come up with that Rumspringer?

[231] Well, I think it comes from this like crisis of conscience that, I mean, that is also a very American impulse.

[232] I know it like predates it, but it's characteristic of a lot of different American religious traditions that it says that like, yeah, we can raise you in it and you can sort of inherit all of these traditions, but it won't ever be yours until you have the crisis of conscience and you decide and then you make your profession of faith.

[233] So I do remember, I mean, this is like an analogous religious tradition, but I remember when my boyfriend in the time turned husband did his adult baptism.

[234] So you have to then give a profession of like you have to like stand up in front of everyone you know and say what you believe.

[235] And I just remember at the time thinking that it was a very sexy time, at least for me, because he looked really good and he was really articulate about it, but he was like, that's the moment where you started become a man. I was like, oh, squared job, Mennonite, you beautiful creation.

[236] I don't know how you did it, but...

[237] Okay, so I have to imagine your initial interest in prosperity, Christianity, being a Mennonite, which would be, I would imagine the opposite, like be austere and frugal and modest and all these things.

[238] So deeply modest.

[239] I could never take that.

[240] that confluence back.

[241] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[242] Say more.

[243] Say more about that.

[244] You guys must do so well when you move into Minnesota.

[245] Yeah, yeah.

[246] You just kind of converge with the Swedish.

[247] No, you're pretty.

[248] No, I couldn't possibly talk about me anymore.

[249] But were you drawn to it because you were like, this is so antithetical to what I've been raised in.

[250] I was so ragey about it, honestly.

[251] Winnipeg has only one good road, and it goes around the whole city.

[252] Then they put a stop light up on it.

[253] And it was Sunday morning.

[254] I thought that these factory workers had been released, from this local factory and at this stoplight and I was like really, really going on about how they had ruined.

[255] The only good thing that Winnipeg had to offer, which was the perimeter.

[256] And then I realized that it was a church letting out and not a factory, just looked like a factory and that all of these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were in fact attending what I then realized was like a very impressive large church that talked a lot about money.

[257] And they have a stage show, right?

[258] There's a lot of performance in those megachurches.

[259] Yeah.

[260] And I was like, absolutely not.

[261] that is for Americans.

[262] And I told everybody, like, not here, not in my Jerusalem.

[263] So I was really raging about it.

[264] And then I discovered that the church had begun to celebrate their own liturgical holiday called Pastor's Appreciation Day.

[265] And they'd just given the pastor a motorcycle, which he rode around on stage.

[266] And I was like, absolutely not.

[267] Wait, hold up.

[268] I might have a calling in religion.

[269] Ride a couple wheelies for Jesus and then pass around the plate.

[270] If you could repel in from the ceiling and then ride that, motorcycle.

[271] I'd give you a megachurch on the spot.

[272] I'm going to go a step further.

[273] I want to paraglide in and then seamlessly land on a segue, ride that to the motorcycle.

[274] Yeah, yeah.

[275] I'll turn the fog machine on.

[276] And when you break in, I'll get the choir singing.

[277] It is kind of a whole thing.

[278] And I was positive that that thing couldn't be Canadian.

[279] And I was positive.

[280] It couldn't be Mennonite because how dare you?

[281] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[282] And it turns out, of course, it was Canada's largest megachurch was, in fact, a prosperity megachurch that was largely attended by Mennonites.

[283] And I was like, crap, I'm wrong, but it feels like there's a mystery to be solved.

[284] And I have just the kind of obsessive personality that would like to sort that out.

[285] And so I was, I think it was like 18 or 19 when I first got that first flush of rage.

[286] So then I think I'd really only been to Minneapolis in the United States before.

[287] So I hadn't really plumb the exciting depths of your many, many states.

[288] It's also kind of a misleading city to get a taste of America, if I'm being honest.

[289] It's just like everyone is so kind and nice and like it's misleading.

[290] Yeah, well, I started going to college there and I started visiting the megachurches in the area.

[291] It turns out they had a Lutheran prosperity megachurch, and it was just all these blonde hair, wherever the eye could see.

[292] And I thought, clearly I don't understand how well this is assimilating in American culture.

[293] And then right down the street, they had a largely first.

[294] generation, mostly Nigerian church.

[295] And I was like, okay.

[296] Filipinos too, right?

[297] They're pretty into the megachurches.

[298] Is that too broad to say?

[299] No, there's one of the largest prosperity movements in the world is this thing called El Shaddai, which is in the Philippines.

[300] Let me own all of my views, which is like, I think those pastures of these megachurches are con artists, I do.

[301] I think that when you fly a jet in your stock and trade is spirituality, day.

[302] I think there's something inherently conflicting about that.

[303] And yet I have zero judgment of anyone that attends one.

[304] And it's adding value and joy and color to their life.

[305] And maybe I can also, in my worldview, explain how the story you tell yourself comes true.

[306] I believe in that.

[307] So if this preacher convinces you that, of course, God wants you to be prosperous as his children and creator, then that in itself can be a story you tell yourself, which can yield results.

[308] So I'm only judgmental really of like the brass or the infrastructure at these things.

[309] Yeah.

[310] What is your takeaway after years and years of studying them?

[311] Well, I definitely came in feeling like that there was inherent hypocrisy at the heart of a story in which some people seem to prosper more than others.

[312] And I think that's in part why I was so determined to kind of understand what I thought of as like the kind of architecture of the movement?

[313] Like what are the primary ideas that make people's lives meaningful?

[314] What are the major themes?

[315] And I guess a couple things.

[316] One is there is often a relationship between like a set of beliefs.

[317] Like they call it the redempt and lift phenomenon where if people are, for instance, given a tight community that will support and care for them, especially if they're, you know, something happens, they resolve conflicts like addiction, abuse, they use a lot of church resources to solve that.

[318] Communities like that tend to naturally become more affluent.

[319] It happened with the Quakers.

[320] Quakers kept being like, we're very committed to frugality.

[321] Like two generations in, they're like, holy shit, we're so rich.

[322] I'm not really sure we're going to do about that.

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

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[340] What made the Quakers so rich?

[341] Well, they just didn't spend a lot of money on things like alcohol or communitarian.

[342] They kept fixing their own clothes.

[343] I mean, it feels very simplistic to say, but they were such a tightly bound group that they just kept helping each other, employing each other.

[344] And sometimes these megachurches act like these little cities where naturally, it can also be the place then where multi -level marketing schemes flourish because I just want you to be in charge of your own business.

[345] If you're going to a church that's telling you prosperity is out there for you if you live well and good, you've kind of already declared that you're interested in prosperity, which, by the way, I'm interested in.

[346] Yeah, yeah, there's no judgment here.

[347] Like, I too am.

[348] I'm not.

[349] I live in a shack really nearby, and I just actually walked over from.

[350] Thank you.

[351] You'd step over a briefcase full of money if it was sitting on a dirt road.

[352] Yeah, but that would be just tripped by it.

[353] I mean, it just sort of depends on whether you believe that we live in an open universe in which more always begets more, right?

[354] And that has spiritual presuppositions.

[355] It's the assumption that if you speak certain things, if you align your mind, this has, I mean, not just sort of prosperity gospel roots, but it looks a lot like neo -stoicism, neo -Buddism, mindset people, positive psychology people.

[356] It's like this deep...

[357] The secret.

[358] Yeah, that's right.

[359] And what it imagines, basically...

[360] We call it like a high theological anthropology.

[361] I always use giant hands here to be like that there's just like people, right?

[362] Just regular people.

[363] But then there's people who fully realize the power that they are given.

[364] And those people rise above.

[365] And in that version, we call it a high theological anthropology, meaning that they have kind of like super men -like qualities.

[366] And that belief tends to be transferred on sort of spiritual leaders who are then just a achieving the things that we all want to achieve.

[367] And also, I mean, frankly, it's just so unbelievably widespread.

[368] Well, it is funny because, like, from the outside I go, like, well, guys, if you want prosperity, stop giving this one turkey, all this money.

[369] But at the same time, I do recognize it confirms the whole story because it's like, here's this person who's on a very path that he or she, generally he has dedicated his life to these other people.

[370] So of course, he's going to be rewarded.

[371] And of course, I should be a part of that.

[372] It, like, confirms the whole story.

[373] And if God can do it for him, then God can do it for me. And, And I guess what seemed so much more normal to me, frankly, after spending over a decade interviewing mega church pastors and telephangelists and people in the pews is that, like, one, everybody has the overwhelming desire to feel like the details of their life are infused with special meaning.

[374] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[375] They don't just lose a job that they like, like, it's not just a setback.

[376] It's a set up.

[377] And that like pain isn't wasted, I think is a feeling people have partly because pain is just so.

[378] awful.

[379] You almost can't even go through it without infusing it with a meaning that it's going to lead somewhere.

[380] We do build narratives to make the situation feel better.

[381] Yeah.

[382] Like it's all leading up to something.

[383] This is all, this all counts.

[384] And first I was just trying to understand from a compassionate outsider's perspective, but the second one, no, first you were pissed.

[385] Yeah, I was.

[386] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[387] Judgment.

[388] To be a holy raging judgment and concession.

[389] And then you meet people who clearly this thing is adding value to their life and they have a great community and they're happy and they're healthy and they help each other and how can you hate that?

[390] And I met people who thought that the death of their child was a result of their own sin and I met people who believed that there could not possibly be an end because surely this meant that they had failed the test of faith and I met people whose loved ones are in hospital rooms like unable to sign the paperwork for a death because that would be admitting failure.

[391] And so like the sharp edge of the belief that anything is possible then becomes, well, if anything is possible, and why are our lives so fucking painful?

[392] Okay.

[393] So we're now getting to some of the bigger questions I want to ask you.

[394] So as someone who has studied all these different religions and spent the amount of time you have spent, for me it seems like the inevitable outcome of that would just be, and this is not to offend you, but once you're privy to the million different ways people have tried to make sense of this.

[395] world we live in.

[396] My conclusion is no one fucking knows.

[397] Look at all these people who believe so passionately, and they're all believing a different thing, there can't possibly be the one that's known.

[398] Like, how do you find confidence in your version of it, knowing there's so many versions out there that people believe passionately about?

[399] Because I just kept losing in my life, honestly.

[400] Like, it's hard to be, like, I don't have any arrogance, I guess.

[401] I don't mean, like, I just, like, Kept losing.

[402] Okay.

[403] Before your cancer diagnosis?

[404] Yeah.

[405] I was like really trying to have a shiny life.

[406] Like I really, I just thought like, I just need to hustle.

[407] I need to work really hard.

[408] There's always something around the corner.

[409] I was that person.

[410] I was like crying at my locker after every failed math test kind of person was like, surely I've got it.

[411] Everything always felt like it was counted and it was adding up to something.

[412] Well, really quick, is it fair to point out the irony right here that you were kind of critical of the prosperity church's belief in this measure of success and all that?

[413] simultaneously having your own version of it.

[414] And me too, I have my version of it.

[415] I think the realization that there was a prosperity gospel in there the whole time has been a deep humbler.

[416] Well, America has a prosperity gospel, right?

[417] It's in our Constitution.

[418] Yes.

[419] You know, it's so funny because I think it's life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, right, for you guys.

[420] I think for Canada, I think the grounding civil liberties were like peace order and good governance.

[421] We're like, hey, guys, hey, let's just all, let's all get a good health plan.

[422] It's all chill out.

[423] Yeah, but I think the American dream, in essence, is a prosperity claim, right?

[424] It's like through this higher calling of democracy, that's the thing we hang our hat on.

[425] If pursued purely, we will prosper greatly, which has largely been true.

[426] There will always be more than enough is one of the grounding tenets of American culture and American religion, frankly, because it does.

[427] does always assume this is an open universe, everything's, there's always going to be more than enough.

[428] Like, it's not an economy of scarcity.

[429] And it makes people believe that if they just act accordingly, then individually, corporately, nationally, personally, emotionally, like there's every version of that, therapeutically.

[430] Like, there's always going to be enough.

[431] And then when there is not enough, I mean, let's say if you're living through a global earth plague, or you're seeing crumbling infrastructures that are meant to uphold justice and equity for all, then you wonder, is there enough for everybody, of course?

[432] Of course not.

[433] And is this belief, this endless, bright -sighting, obsessive futurism that is American culture actually just making it unable to acknowledge when its optimism commits it to like a loving and very sweet and understandable delusion?

[434] Well, here's what I think is incredibly tricky about this topic, which is all things are true.

[435] This is a country where literally everything's possible.

[436] I'm sitting here coming from a welfare apartment, and now I'm fucking rich.

[437] So that's crazy.

[438] Is that the norm and the rule?

[439] No. But my public execution of that confirms the story enough that enough people will buy into it as I bought into it.

[440] So I think it's really tricky because it is for some people who have hit the lottery and all these different things.

[441] This is a place where absolutely anything could happen.

[442] but it ignores probably the rule.

[443] In this cultural narrative of everything is possible, right, the opposite is also intolerable and untrue, that nothing is possible.

[444] Right.

[445] I think what we're trying to land on is like a thicker cultural language for limited agency, right?

[446] In which there is a horizon that is possible.

[447] There is a what is possible todayness that is true.

[448] But the wild oscillation between either fatalism or I call like hyperagency really does make us I mean, well, first we just end up talking to entirely different languages at one another.

[449] I just think that it requires the kind of courage and it requires an honesty to say that we have limited agency.

[450] I was just in Detroit for the weekend, and I heard from someone who I love and respect.

[451] There's stereotypes for a reason, like this sentence.

[452] And I was like, oh, man, A, maybe I thought that 51 % at one point in my life.

[453] But it doesn't go far enough.

[454] Even if that's your conclusion, it doesn't really ask why that is or what are the root causes.

[455] I do think a lot of people walk through life accidentally assuming everyone had the same situation they had.

[456] I guess it's hard not to, I don't know.

[457] None of us think we hit the lottery with our parents.

[458] I mean, there's a couple rich kids among us.

[459] But in general, no one's thinking like, fuck, yeah, I got the leg up of the century.

[460] Well, even if their parents were rich, they probably have.

[461] of tons of issues.

[462] Other problems, sure.

[463] But I'm just saying you, like you had a great household, middle class parents that were fucking great examples of getting up and going to work in the morning, all these different things.

[464] Yet you were never going like, man, I hit the lottery with these two immigrant parents in Georgia.

[465] And it's hard to step out of that and go like in a long cry better than single mother who's addicted to something.

[466] I don't know.

[467] Yeah, because class sets horizon, right?

[468] And so are bringing in our now.

[469] network and our beliefs and our everything.

[470] I've heard a book raised only about the history of the middle class.

[471] And it was saying that like if you're middle class that you're raised to imagine yourself as being optimistic, a careful negotiator of institutions.

[472] What does that mean?

[473] Like you're, like you're, like, know how to get customer service on the line.

[474] And you know how to, like, if you see a system in front of you, you're like, got it.

[475] You know how to navigate it.

[476] Like, I'll find the side door.

[477] Like, I got it.

[478] Yeah.

[479] And hardworking.

[480] And I was like, oh, I thought I had a personality.

[481] and it turns out I was just middle class.

[482] So I was a little shocked.

[483] Wow, that's a great one.

[484] That one I wasn't even aware of.

[485] But yeah, when I'm presented with the rules of something, my first thought is like, great.

[486] Now, how can I do it?

[487] Like, how can I navigate it?

[488] Sure, there's the 10 rules for how you do X, Y, or Z. But surely there's a way I can do it, which is probably more efficient or easier or something.

[489] I start from that place.

[490] The steamrolling.

[491] I mean, like the bulldozer impulse.

[492] That is a hustler.

[493] impulse and like I'm going to find a shorter faster path here right of course I've hung the whole way I am on some kind of altruistic love of challenging myself as opposed to something else that's probably worse you know I like I like this is the same conversation I think everybody's always having with themselves where like there's a desire we want to be more yeah yeah yeah we want to be everything that's why every rock star ends up in a movie and every actor ends up releasing an album it's like It's not enough to be a movie star or a huge rock star.

[494] You've got to do every single thing you could possibly do.

[495] When we're the type, I think this is so frequently personality driven to, is just the type that leans into the everything as possible feeling.

[496] I mean, this is why that like trying to give up my own prosperity gospel has been like a real, it's real son of a bitch.

[497] It's so hard to accept any version of surrender that doesn't make me feel guilty or like a failure.

[498] Right.

[499] So as you had been studying it, you had inadvertently recognized that, A, some of it was rubbing off on you, and B, you already owned a lot of it in a different package.

[500] Yeah.

[501] And then you got diagnosed with stage four cancer, and then is it fair to say that's the primary thing that shook up this whole, like where you had to really question some of these things?

[502] I felt like everything kind of kept like had drift, right?

[503] Like I would just be like swimming so hard and then I'd look over the shore and I'm like, wait, I'm like way, I'm like way off.

[504] where I put my towel.

[505] And at first, it turns out I had this, like, chronic joint disorder that meant I lost use of my arms.

[506] And it was, like, right as I was trying to finish this, I was like, I've got one of the coolest jobs in the country.

[507] I'm like...

[508] You were working at Duke at this point?

[509] I was a student, and there was a job opening, and those jobs are, like, just impossible to get.

[510] And there was one opening, and I just had to, like, create this cool book.

[511] And it was in a certain amount of time, and I only had a couple months.

[512] And then, of course, all of a sudden, my fingers just kind of slow.

[513] and then stop, and they're just, like, powerless.

[514] And so I started trying to go to doctors, and nobody knew what it was, and my arms are in these arm casts, and simultaneously, I'm going to these healing rallies all the time to try to finish up the books, the people are moving toward me, like moths to a flame, like, let me solve this problem for you.

[515] I tried so hard to, like, okay, I'll learn voice dictation.

[516] I moved back in with my parents.

[517] I'm sitting in their basement, trying desperately to do, like, voice dictation on this unbelievably long, boring, complicated book with a lot of like specialized vocabulary.

[518] And I was like, this is not how I thought whatever winning was going to feel like.

[519] Can I pause you for half a second?

[520] Yeah.

[521] Do you think it's insane that your job was to write a book and that you lost the ability to type?

[522] Could that be a coincidence, I guess I'm asking?

[523] Well, it's certainly an irony.

[524] It always felt like it was like I was accidentally starring a reality show about a person who inadvertently stumbles into like horrible, horrifying life lessons she doesn't believe are magically created by the universe.

[525] I believe that there's like truth and beauty and meaning and et cetera in the world.

[526] But like I kept thinking wrongly that if I just learn the lesson that I was going to get out of it.

[527] Right.

[528] So I was like great.

[529] I'm going to be really humbled and I'm going to just work harder and whatever that season is.

[530] Yeah.

[531] And then I'm just going to get that job and then I'm going to finally have a minute to be able to like have the baby I've always wanted to have.

[532] And then of course it's endless exhausting fertility problems and miscarriages, but then I just have to learn the lesson of being so grateful from motherhood.

[533] And then I just have to wait for there to be a blah, blah, blah.

[534] And then I finally get pregnant.

[535] And then it turns out because of my horrifying joint disorder that I was already like a jellyfish and then I was like barely going to be able to hold on to this pregnancy.

[536] Oh, like it was going to come early because your hips were already separating and stuff?

[537] Honestly, when I went into labor, the look of overwhelming joy on my face because it didn't hurt nearly as much as the last few months.

[538] And they were like, ma 'am, you seem very chill.

[539] And I was like, oh, sweetie, you're going to need to check me because I am great at being miserable.

[540] But I just kept thinking, I just need to get over this horrible season.

[541] I'm going to learn the great lesson.

[542] Look how compassionate and kind I'm going to be.

[543] And then I'm going to get someplace.

[544] And then, I mean, only months later, without any cancer in my family, I get diagnosed with stage four cancer at 35 yeah and then I'm supposed to die that year and I'm like I think I'm done now with the lessons yeah I think we're about done boy yeah wow weirdly that's the lesson you did get a lesson weirdly like lessons are silly well one issue I have with this global thought process by the way my father was a big subscriber of this like by his account having really bad luck And he goes, I just don't know what I'm trying to teach me. And for me, and of course, I was very critical of my father.

[545] It was like, well, you don't manage your money well.

[546] Like there's all these things that are very obvious yet.

[547] It's being put off in some metaphysical realm, which was very frustrating to me. And I do think a good deal of religious practice as I observe it is there's not a whole lot of responsibility being taken.

[548] It's just like, well, there's this force happening and I'll learn this lesson.

[549] And there's not a lot of agency in the whole thing.

[550] It's just like you're a puppet of this higher power who's going to teach you these lessons.

[551] Right.

[552] I totally hear you.

[553] And that's quite honestly, I'm so interested in religion as cultural script.

[554] And that's why I love looking at, like, religious cliches that people get given.

[555] Because I think in there there's always like a tiny bit of truth.

[556] Of course.

[557] And then a lot of like unnecessary accoutreement.

[558] Yeah.

[559] It does feel.

[560] Declatage.

[561] That's a word?

[562] That's your neck.

[563] It's also a word for boobs.

[564] Oh, it is.

[565] I mean, it's just the, it's the extra.

[566] Oh, wow.

[567] Thanks for letting me just use that.

[568] That's great.

[569] The ones that tell you to just, I mean, there's so many different versions of it.

[570] And I got it all right after getting sick, there was the, just accept the perspective that God or the universe, whatever is trying to teach you.

[571] There's a lot of life lessons.

[572] There's a lot of, well, then just live in the moment.

[573] What we have is now.

[574] A lot of people breathing, all we have is now in a party.

[575] And the problem is, if you're just trying to grapple, it doesn't have to be like life limiting, scary.

[576] but just with your finitude, like with the fact that we get numbered days and hours in lives, right?

[577] Like, we always do have to be running the math.

[578] Like, I was still always going to have to figure out, like, well, that's great.

[579] But, like, I have a little kid.

[580] And I have to figure out how to, like, live meaningfully as a parent where, like, if you look at a kid, all they are is the future, you just see their little eyelashes and their little velviedness at the back of their neck.

[581] And you just think, like, they're massively oversized heads.

[582] And you're like, there's no version of life in which if you just pours, everything either into the present or surrender control.

[583] That's going to solve the problem of pain.

[584] Well, right.

[585] And so again, I'm reminded of this is why I like the surrounding prayer so much because it's like the art of life is figuring out when and when not to.

[586] You can't have a policy of surrender and you can't have a policy of now, you know, and as that power of now has taken off, it ignores like A, the best and newest part of our brain is the frontal low, which is solely in charge of modeling and predicting the future.

[587] It's like, it's our great development.

[588] And we're trying to basically say, well, no, live in your now, which is your reptilian brain.

[589] Well, my now wants me to fuck and do drugs and eat like shit.

[590] I can't live in the, I don't know.

[591] It's too simple.

[592] I love what you're saying.

[593] Be present is awesome.

[594] Yeah.

[595] Like when you're doing something, do that thing.

[596] I'm into that.

[597] But now being the greatest thing to achieve, I'm not positive.

[598] I'm with that one.

[599] Having a gratitude list, it's not going to solve the problem that I'm like worried about a kid who's going to grow up without a mom.

[600] Yeah, so what was your personal feelings about everyone having carte blanche to kind of discuss your medical condition with you?

[601] Yeah, absolutely.

[602] Yeah, it feels very invasive.

[603] Yeah, and it was.

[604] And apparently, I just did some reading with history of illness on this, but like it really is also illness specific.

[605] Like if I had talked to friends with brain cancer and no one assumes then that brain cancer is because of something they ate, but because it was colon cancer, the amount of like, oh, you're fat and just trailing away.

[606] I've gotten a lot of weight.

[607] I mean, I got weight commentary from a nurse just a couple months ago as I'm being wheeled into a procedure.

[608] She was like, oh, must be something you ate, a lot of just gentle.

[609] That's the original sin.

[610] Something about humans makes them abnormally vulnerable to guilt.

[611] I think it's being a social animal.

[612] I think, like, we have a lot of wiring to help us recognize when we've fucked up because we live in a group and you got to be really good at knowing that.

[613] I think that's why the concept of original sin was so easy to.

[614] to plop onto us because we're already kind of designed to feel shame all the time because we're grouping.

[615] We're not solitary on our own convictions going like, I don't give a fuck of shit in where I eat is good or bad.

[616] That's what I do and I'm thriving.

[617] So I think we're predisposed to really take on guilt.

[618] Like, this has to be your fault that you got colon cancer.

[619] Oh, and shame felt very intuitive.

[620] Like, it took a bit to realize that I didn't just feel sad or scared.

[621] I felt embarrassed.

[622] Right.

[623] I couldn't believe.

[624] I felt so, yeah, why do I feel?

[625] feel ashamed right now.

[626] And I felt like I was like, oh, I'm the bad thing.

[627] I didn't see it before, but I can see it now.

[628] Right.

[629] And part of it was the kind of wall of pity.

[630] And then just that, what you're describing, that overwhelming desire to explain and therefore render ourselves in vulnerable again.

[631] Like, well, then if it's you, then it's not me. It's like, well, sweetheart, like, it wasn't me. Like, no cancer in my family.

[632] No good reason.

[633] Well, what you're immediately doing as a scared human being on planet Earth is if you got something that scares me, I have to figure all the reasons you and I are so that this isn't my future.

[634] Yeah, it feels like a very...

[635] After every car crash, of course, the first question is, well, were they wearing a seatbelt?

[636] Because you need to know, well, I would wear a seatbelt, so that wouldn't happen to me. Like, because it's scary.

[637] Yeah, I love this room.

[638] I get this a lot with...

[639] I would have problems in this room.

[640] Yeah, I get that a lot with the motorcycle thing, which I totally get.

[641] It scares people.

[642] Motorcycles scare them.

[643] And they're talking to me as if they don't drive in a car, which kills 58 ,000 people years.

[644] There's a little bit of a lot of, like, you're not on total moral high ground here.

[645] We're all doing shit that's dangerous.

[646] Mine just, I don't need to be doing it.

[647] Yeah.

[648] But P .S., no one needs to fucking do anything.

[649] Yes, that's right.

[650] But if I run the math on your life, then mine's always going to add up.

[651] Yes, yeah.

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

[653] Okay, so when you started going through this process, how long before you got involved in the immunotherapy trial?

[654] Almost right away, they were like, well, you either have the kind of cancer where you'll just take chemo and you'll make it till June and then that'll taper.

[655] Or you'll either have a cancer that multiplies out of control and we won't be able to help you.

[656] Or there's a small percent that you have a cell replication error that will make you more responsive to immunotherapy.

[657] So within a couple months, the truth is it was so many hurdles to get into a trial because I am like an immigrant so I couldn't qualify for any charity care and it costs.

[658] hundreds of thousands of dollars right and so there was even to be a part of a trial well because if you're out of your own institution then you don't qualify at least with my insurance i didn't qualify for that so i was like at some point i was like sitting around pricing around her needle how many and my parents and family members were trying to figure out if they could like how many liquid assets they have like we all have like garbage bungalows can i be really dark yes this is so dark evil, but I'm going to say it.

[659] People are hearing this and they're like, I'll totally sell my house if it's going to work.

[660] Yeah.

[661] Are we not being real?

[662] That would be my thought process.

[663] Like, are we throwing great money after something?

[664] Because you got to do something.

[665] Like, that's a fucking terrible decision to be evaluating.

[666] No, that's exactly the right thing.

[667] Because as the bomb that's going off, you think, well, this isn't just me. Like, I'm going to take down everybody who loves me. Yeah, anyone who's got a good credit score.

[668] Kissed a goodbye.

[669] Everybody's going to suffer.

[670] And then if it doesn't work out, then they're bankrupt.

[671] Oh, my God.

[672] You're going to be looking at the faces on your deathbed of a bunch of broke insolvent people that you.

[673] Yes.

[674] This will happen to them forever.

[675] Oh, my God.

[676] My guilt would be so.

[677] Yeah.

[678] That is the hardest part of being fragile.

[679] Is it a big old drain on everyone you love?

[680] Yes.

[681] Oh.

[682] When you can feel the weight of all of your pain having to be held up by everybody like a human life raft and then you can't self -sufficient your way out of it you're just going to be delicate and fragile and you don't get to solve your own problems and the thing that might save your life is also something you didn't invent in a lab in your room and so you actually won't have any control of whether you live or die and you'll have to look grateful so I did the like what I imagine that he might do is just I'm going right back to invincible I'm going to manage it I'm going to crush every side effect, there will be no weakness in this.

[683] That's my job.

[684] Okay, so here's my other big complaint about cancer.

[685] I've had two parents that I've walked across the finish line from cancer, stepdad and dad.

[686] And this notion of like kick cancer's ass and fight hard and he's a fighter, I hate that you're adding on to it.

[687] Again, another character evaluation, like that they were weak or they didn't fight hard enough.

[688] You know Mike, he'll fight to the, and it's like, that's a movie.

[689] Yes, that's right.

[690] It has been.

[691] almost impossible to get over wanting to get over it.

[692] Like, can't I just be done?

[693] Like, can't I just be invulnerable again?

[694] I want to be self -sufficient.

[695] I want to take care of everybody else.

[696] Like, put me back there.

[697] So that was one of my questions for you is I'm obsessed almost primarily with identity.

[698] And so, yeah, I have an identity that I'm indestructible, for sure.

[699] Like a big chunk of my identity is that.

[700] Yeah.

[701] And I wonder, what is it like?

[702] to go like, oh, I don't even know how to be a person who could die shortly.

[703] What is that person?

[704] I don't want that person in my birthday party.

[705] No. No, that person is terrible at small talk.

[706] That person is.

[707] Yeah.

[708] Because there are parts of finitude that just feel kind of impossible.

[709] Will you tell us what the word finitude means?

[710] Oh, I just keep sorry.

[711] I saw it written in your stuff and I don't know what it is.

[712] Final.

[713] Yeah, like finality.

[714] Finality.

[715] Well, because everyone always talks about grief or sadness.

[716] or, like, worried about, you know, like, deafy kinds of things.

[717] And I guess I realized, like, it wasn't that.

[718] We all die, right?

[719] I mean, it's just a huge spoiler.

[720] And then I thought, gosh, maybe I'm just trying to figure out how to manage time because I've always been, like, a time efficiency monster.

[721] I read all the books, and I want to master that inbox in that work week.

[722] And because I've been a human bulldozer my whole life.

[723] And I thought, well, maybe I'm just actually just trying to figure out time.

[724] Mm -hmm.

[725] And again, it introduces this whole new layer of guilt and shame, which is, like, now I have X amount of time.

[726] time.

[727] So I've got to manage it perfectly.

[728] So now you have this added fucking thing.

[729] Like, I don't know how to manage my time perfectly.

[730] I hope my week's good.

[731] But if I figure that out, then I'll solve this problem.

[732] I guess I was like treating life like it was a problem to be solved.

[733] Because I used to be really good at that.

[734] I used to like be so good at solving the problem.

[735] And then when the problem was life, I was like, oh, okay.

[736] I'm out of tools.

[737] Yeah.

[738] I might need some like a few different categories to think about how to do this?

[739] And I guess that's why I started being obsessed with thinking about, well, what does it mean if everything is finite?

[740] Like, there's a certain number of hours and days and years.

[741] Maybe I just have to become a little bit more comfortable with living with that kind of, like it does feel a little lightly hysterical sometimes when you realize you only get a certain amount of anything.

[742] Sure.

[743] But then I was like, okay, so, like, what do I need to live like this?

[744] Yeah.

[745] It's going to take more courage than I thought.

[746] Yeah.

[747] Nothing requires more courage than to be weak.

[748] I say this all the time.

[749] I used to be obsessed with dudes who could do backflips on motorcycles or MMA fighters.

[750] And then I heard a dude who was an MMA fighter on Howard Stern, Jason Ellis, talked for an hour about his father molesting him and how he still loved his father very much.

[751] And I turned off the radio and I was like, well, that's the bravest thing I've ever witnessed to do, do ever.

[752] Like a guy in his world, professional skateboarder walking you through that, that blows backflips out of the fucking water.

[753] So yeah, being weak, requires so much courage.

[754] Oh.

[755] I thought that I would be able to, like, fully audition my way to the end, you know, of my life.

[756] I had this whole dream of, like, in academia, we've, I have this, like, fleet of really grateful graduate students.

[757] And I would have, like, like, a turret and, like, so gargoyles, just so many gargoyles.

[758] And I had this whole dream of this, like, wine and cheese function future of endless pretension.

[759] And I love that dream.

[760] Yeah.

[761] I really loved that dream.

[762] but like the idea that we've become so many different kinds of people and that most of the things that define our lives are the things we're not going to get to choose because of that we're going to have to find those little spaces where we do get to act and we do get that runway feeling and we get to like have that feeling of lift because the rest is going to come right yeah and we're not going to have a ton of saying it so no cure for being human you kind of synthesize this entire experience?

[763] Is that accurate to say?

[764] Yeah, well, I guess at first, like, when I first got sick, I had been trying to think through those problems of, like, why.

[765] Then I just kind of settled, okay, how do we live without quite so many explanations?

[766] Then I was like, well, but it still doesn't tell me I was just to live the rest of my life long or short.

[767] So, and then I was just sort of overwhelmed with the amount of advice I was getting about, like, like the hyperpresentism we were talking about or the, Or like the idea that the future was always going to be better and no regrets.

[768] And then everyone ending an interview, but it made me the person I am today as if like you can't ever want to go back and change anything.

[769] And so finding that place of limited agency and realizing that I probably have to redefine a lot of ways of managing the world than I did before.

[770] Yeah, because you chose to work through it and you had some guilt associated with that, right?

[771] Like, oh, people are going to be like, God, she's going to die, but she's not spending.

[772] every second with her child?

[773] Yeah.

[774] She must be really ambitious even to the end.

[775] Yeah.

[776] I guess part of it, too, I was just sorting through some family stuff that I didn't realize I was kind of chewing my way through because it's very hard to get a job in academia.

[777] And my dad had never really been able to be like what they would call it adjunct, which is a word meaning unnecessary.

[778] There's a lot more of which is just how they're treated.

[779] Yeah.

[780] And so he would teach in like eight different colleges in the same semester, like racing around the city.

[781] And like I would see him up till 2 a .m. with just like stacks and stacks of those little blue books.

[782] And it was just like, with each class only paying a couple thousand dollars.

[783] And then when that's done, you're back in unemployment.

[784] Right.

[785] And so when I got a job, I felt so much responsibility to like live into a story.

[786] Well, you're achieving your father's dreams.

[787] Yeah.

[788] Yeah.

[789] Yeah.

[790] And then I was just about to lose it.

[791] So I'm like, well, this is ridiculous.

[792] Like, I just need to have both the job and the calling.

[793] And I'll do this for everybody.

[794] And then I really kind of had to sort out like, What is the thing here?

[795] If it's just work, you should stop working.

[796] Right.

[797] You're on medical leave, it's fine.

[798] Right.

[799] But if it's something more, then, like, what is it?

[800] Especially for, like, women in academia, we're really not encouraged to have kids.

[801] I mean, it sounds very, like, draconian, but they're just, like, look, you've really got to write a lot of books, and it's in your only little window of fertility.

[802] Sorry about that.

[803] But so when I looked around, all of us really were having all kinds of fertility issues because we'd pushed it later and later and later.

[804] I guess that lines up in a lot of careers, but it doesn't.

[805] It does feel uniquely interesting for a professor, which is the pressure to publish at all times in that most people do their best work not in their forms as academics, you know.

[806] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[807] And I was like right in the middle of writing like a, I thought, very interesting book about the history of like women in the Christian marketplace.

[808] I was like, I'm going to really write a really great book about this is like library copy after library copy.

[809] But like, so in terms of like, this is going to tell the story in my life and knew it wasn't that.

[810] Right.

[811] So is that still worth doing, even if genuinely just a few hundred people are going to read it?

[812] It was something my friend Doug said.

[813] I had this, like, lovely little group of other scholar friends.

[814] I remember just telling him, like, I don't even know if I'm doing this right.

[815] Like, why am I writing this stupid book that no one's going to read if I'm like, I'm going to die this year?

[816] Like, shouldn't I just have been at home with my family?

[817] And he was like, is this something that you love doing?

[818] And I was like, yes.

[819] He's like, and you're good at it.

[820] Don't argue with me. I don't want to hear about it from a Canadian.

[821] And he's like, even if the worst happens, your family and the people you love you, like, they can still find you there.

[822] And I'm like, that to me, it felt like there was just some kind of, like, life essence.

[823] Like, you just, you are who you are in every stupid circumstance.

[824] And I was going to be who I was.

[825] I was going to talk about the history of Christian women.

[826] And so I was like, then done.

[827] And it kind of like clicked in.

[828] And then there I was in the cancer center, inviting megachurch wives to come visit me. I'd sit there with my little clipboard, and I'd get my infusion, and I would take my little notes and do my interviews.

[829] I did hundreds of interviews.

[830] Yeah.

[831] That, at the end of the day, I was like, I was me today.

[832] I was me even though I had fucking cancer.

[833] Well, this is what I was going to ask you about 10 minutes ago, which is how much of your day were you able to forget you had it?

[834] Well, for a few years there, I'd have to go every single week for an all day.

[835] I'd have to get up at four.

[836] I listened to an NPR program about the periodic table of elements.

[837] Oh, sure.

[838] It'd be a lot of like, this week, it's bore.

[839] on.

[840] So I feel like that was a limited series and you knew that the periodic table will come to an end.

[841] So I'm not sure how you imagine longevity of that room.

[842] I would like go there for a day and then I would be back at midnight.

[843] And then the next day I would like wake up in the morning like, okay, I'm here and I have to live being here.

[844] The problem is I was attached to a chemo pack that was like in this little fanny part, which I named Jimmy Carter because I kept seeing Jimmy Carter at the cancer center.

[845] He was getting treatment.

[846] I used to try to stay awake.

[847] Wait, you saw the real life Jimmy Carter.

[848] Yeah.

[849] We had the same chemo schedule.

[850] No shit.

[851] So I was like...

[852] Did you chat with them?

[853] They like zoom by the hallway with Secret Service.

[854] And so I used to like just keep out a Jimmy Carter book hoping that if I woke up and I was asleep, he'd have signed it.

[855] Sure, sure.

[856] I was like, unfortunately.

[857] I was just like, oh, hello there, young lady.

[858] But on an average day where you weren't doing a treatment, were you able to forget about it for long periods?

[859] I was clicking like a bomb preparing to detonate for about three or four out of seven days.

[860] And I only got a couple days off where I looked and felt.

[861] reasonably normal.

[862] But for the most part, I just mostly blocked it out.

[863] Because pain sucks.

[864] Well, when you're starting to think about, oh, I have X amount of time left, why would I want to spend any of that time worrying about this inevitable thing I know is going to happen?

[865] I also made like a lot of rules to like, and I do it sometimes when I'm just really sad or overwhelmed.

[866] I have like cancer rules.

[867] Okay.

[868] Which is like don't have any deep existential conversations after 7 p .m. Like if you're like, if you have those sort of like, you sound high post philosophy class, we're like, do you ever wonder if like, no, that's not that time.

[869] I followed a rule that my dad made when he watched the 1971 movie, the Trojan women, about the enslavement of a fallen city.

[870] And he was like, I will never again pay money to be sad.

[871] I was like, yeah, that checks out.

[872] So I would just like carefully screen.

[873] I'd be like, I'm going to just keep it on the upswing for now.

[874] Right, right, right.

[875] And then I just decided that, like, people are magic.

[876] You know, as I was contemplating your situation and also reading that you had come to this similar conclusion, I have this thought all the time.

[877] We talk about it pretty often.

[878] which is like we go as a pod.

[879] We have this beautiful pod.

[880] There's five families.

[881] And we go to houses.

[882] We rent them collectively.

[883] And what we always are conscious of is like, people will be like, oh, this house is so great.

[884] And you're like, yeah, but who fucking cares unless you're here with us?

[885] Like, I'd be at the shittiest hotel versus people.

[886] I kind of like at a great place.

[887] And especially, I think it's way easier for me to have this point of view because I've gotten all the bells and whistles that I was chasing.

[888] And I got all the bells and whistles that promised extended happiness, which didn't end up being.

[889] So for me, it's really easy to see, oh, the greatest thing in my life is this group of friends I have.

[890] And all my greatest times on planet Earth are communicating and interacting with this group of friends.

[891] And where it's at is pretty irrelevant.

[892] It is nice to have a pool.

[893] But all in all, yeah, I'm just really aware of that.

[894] But I also think that's a huge privilege I have of having gotten the other shiny objects and realizing, Oh, those weren't really as radical as I was hoping.

[895] I'm with you, though.

[896] The dumb particularity of other people's lives is just the most...

[897] I mean, I love people.

[898] Like, I mean, I think that's partly too, like the escape from the narcissism of pain.

[899] The cure for being humanist seems to me is just other people.

[900] It's being, like, so in love with other people that you feel like you're part of this human life raft experiment.

[901] When I'm around other people, I am the kind of person who, like, cries if I see someone do a pull -up at the gym, because I'm, you just tried so hard.

[902] Like, sometimes it feels just getting to watch other people try.

[903] And like when other people in your life are like willing to fail and willing to be vulnerable and like have unbelievably dumb relationship problems.

[904] Yeah.

[905] Those are always the moments in which I realize, like, you're teaching me how to have a little more courage.

[906] Yeah.

[907] Well, the kid complicates things.

[908] Like I would have a bunch of questions for you if you didn't have a child because I understand all of the pressure there.

[909] I have another soapbox I sit on, which is like we have this.

[910] perverse evaluation of a life in its longevity, which to me seems like kind of a crazy way to evaluate someone's life.

[911] There are people that lived at 120 that I wouldn't have wanted one month of their existence.

[912] And there's people that live till 45 that like, what a lie.

[913] I don't know.

[914] But of course, when you have a kid, it's much different.

[915] But I do not ask this in a patronizing way.

[916] I sincerely want to understand because when I try to imagine being Christian and truly believing, Jesus is the son of God.

[917] He died for my sins.

[918] I have them in my heart, and I'm good.

[919] I'm going to heaven.

[920] I don't understand why y 'all are afraid of dying.

[921] And then I ask that sincerely, like, if I believe that, I'm in a hurry to get there.

[922] What's the reservation?

[923] Yeah.

[924] Well, I find that debate really interesting, because that's certainly something that, like, I find to be a huge burden that other Christians try to put on me. Okay.

[925] Yeah.

[926] But like, oh, you should just be really, I mean, heaven.

[927] It's going to be amazing.

[928] Congratulations.

[929] Congratulations.

[930] Here's a certificate.

[931] I think for a lot of people, they confuse faith with certainty, and that certainty will feel like it's another solution to the problem of pain.

[932] And I just hate that.

[933] I find that to be like a deep and horrible lie that people try to voice do.

[934] That like a certainty about an afterlife, it makes it somehow always bearable to just be a person in the world.

[935] And I have just not ever found that to be true.

[936] And the language they would use, is like, so it's eschatology, right?

[937] Okay, eschatology.

[938] Like, it's from the Greek words for end.

[939] The theory is about the end.

[940] And so that is like a really common belief that like the end will make the middle and the beginning feel like it all measures up.

[941] I guess like if this were a movie and then you told the story from like just from the narrator's perspective and then from the bigger and then the biggest story.

[942] In terms of the biggest story, I'm sure I believe that that's true.

[943] Okay.

[944] But I am not in that story.

[945] Well, so, yes.

[946] So that would be kind of my follow -up question because I don't know.

[947] I guess when I hear people say they believe that, my assumption is they're certain about it.

[948] But maybe people aren't, even when they have faith, they're not, like, certain next stops heaven.

[949] Let's go there.

[950] Yeah, faith of certainty just has not ever felt very satisfying to me. Like, to me, faith just feels like love.

[951] Okay.

[952] Like, at the worst moments of my life, like, I wake up from a surgery, my abdomen is all in.

[953] I've lost organs that I miss. buttons, right?

[954] Is that part of your story?

[955] Yeah, I'm on my like ninth belly button.

[956] I just like, I'm like, I feel totally undone.

[957] In moments like that, because I don't really believe in like proof, I guess, like religious proof.

[958] I find most of it a bit, a bit hysterical and overly sentimental.

[959] But like the only feeling that I've ever had that felt like proof, honestly, was just that when I felt most ridiculously come apart, I felt really loved.

[960] Like, not just loved by other people, like weird, floaty love.

[961] taken care of God.

[962] And like that kind of surprised me because in my overachiever model, I was like, surely if I'm just like a good person, maybe I'll get my way to that feeling.

[963] I just, it never happened.

[964] And so the fact that I've just felt bubble -wrapped kind of love was like the closest version I have to like faith.

[965] Right.

[966] Well, I just want to read one quote from you, which I like.

[967] And it's on your, the topic of everything is possible, the American culture of everything is possible.

[968] This life is hard and we're going to need all the courage and all the self -compassion to face a life where not everything is possible.

[969] I like this because I think one of the primary sources of our discontent is expectations.

[970] Like, we're certain how things are supposed to turn out in the discomfort of that not turning out the way we had planned is really the source of the agony.

[971] The experience itself is kind of manageable.

[972] Yeah.

[973] But that unfulfilled promise you created in your head is unbearable, to me at least.

[974] I think I disagree.

[975] Oh, good, good, good.

[976] Good.

[977] Because I study people's views on bucket lists and whether it's expectation, I guess, and that's certainly like a Buddhist belief that's like expectation itself creates pain.

[978] And so that there's certain versions of people just imagining their lives are a series of other like experiences that they're going to have or like this is the formula by which.

[979] I guess I think that even if I was like studying the history of bucket lists and where the term comes from and why we got so obsessed with the idea that life could be a list that we check off.

[980] And as much as I don't believe that you can make life into a list and certainly not one you can check off.

[981] I think to me, the hunger for more and the ache for life itself is really like the best definition I have for what it means to be alive.

[982] The more we're alive, the more we want.

[983] And that if we're doing it right, we're just going to feel more of it.

[984] Like, you're never going to have enough love.

[985] You're never going to have enough of that feeling you have when you're with the people like in your pod and you're kind of overwhelmed by the like ridiculous magic of having made this like series of little heart bridges with each other and they're like I think that the more we do it the more painful life is going to get because there will never be enough I think the day we don't ache for more is when we call it yeah I think that's when it's over I like that I don't think those are contradictory but I like I like yeah I like that it is our natural state we should maybe not look to eradicate it as much as accepted or just reorient it maybe away from like false profits sure sure sure the bucket list I think is great if you structure it as this is additive but not I'm not happy until I get those things on the bucket list like I think you can be content and happy and want more you don't have to sacrifice one for the other I agree and I think that's an expectation thing so if you think that thing's going to give you some meaning to your life that's going to make you content for the rest of you I think that's a fool's errand but if you go like no I get all my sustenance from my service to other humans and my interactions, and I want to see Chiops Giza.

[986] Yeah, exactly.

[987] Cool.

[988] But if you think that's going to fill a hole in you, it likely won't.

[989] Oh, man. Well, it's been so nice getting to talk to you and meeting you.

[990] I don't know many people who have not been personally touched by this specific health crisis.

[991] I was with my three friends.

[992] All three of us are sitting there.

[993] All three of our dad's died of cancer.

[994] I think for you with your background and your knowledge to try to express the experience.

[995] I mean, that's the magic for me of AA, which is just I see in other people the same shit I'm dealing with.

[996] I feel less unique.

[997] I feel more included.

[998] And I think no cure for being human is an amazing resource for that.

[999] So I hope everyone who this topic touches, which is most of us, will remember no cure for being human and other truths I need to hear.

[1000] So fun having you.

[1001] Thank you for being with me and my gentle despair, guys.

[1002] Absolutely.

[1003] And we'll talk at another time why you are friends with Joel McHale But that'll be its own It should be noted to the listener that Joel McHale drove you here And dropped you off like you were his daughter I just want to point that out.

[1004] My lunch kit.

[1005] Yeah.

[1006] All right.

[1007] All right.

[1008] Thanks for coming.

[1009] Thanks for doing this.

[1010] You bet.

[1011] And now my favorite part of the show The Fact Check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

[1012] Good morning.

[1013] Good morning.

[1014] Good.

[1015] It's still your birthday.

[1016] I want you to know.

[1017] It is?

[1018] Yes.

[1019] Even though we're in September.

[1020] Yes, because it starts on your birthday and then you have 30 days to cash in.

[1021] Heck yeah.

[1022] Then I want spaghetti soon.

[1023] Okay, great.

[1024] No problem.

[1025] Wow.

[1026] That's how this works?

[1027] Absolutely.

[1028] Oh, I love this.

[1029] Okay, speaking of birthdays, I've been going down a zodiac rabbit hole.

[1030] I started following this account.

[1031] It's very off brand, which I like.

[1032] But because someone posted something and I was like, oh, that's hilarious, that's true.

[1033] Then I went to their site.

[1034] Well, let me find it.

[1035] Kastara astrology, C -O -S -T -A -R astrology.

[1036] And it just lists, it like lists things.

[1037] It's like believes in Aries, Free Will, Taurus, Fate, Gemini, Chance, Cancer, True Love, Leo, Fantasies.

[1038] Virgo, hard work, ding, ding, ding.

[1039] Libra, Justice.

[1040] Scorpio, nothing.

[1041] Oh, wow.

[1042] Wait, wait, wait, the question was, what do you believe in?

[1043] Believes in.

[1044] Nothing.

[1045] What number is that?

[1046] Sagittarius.

[1047] Is that what my brother is?

[1048] Is that November?

[1049] Hold on.

[1050] Sagittarius is.

[1051] It is November 23rd.

[1052] Oh, he missed it.

[1053] In December 21st.

[1054] Oh, my God.

[1055] So Delta?

[1056] Delta.

[1057] Delta, very.

[1058] Daltavarian believes in nothing.

[1059] That's not true.

[1060] Oh, she believes in everything.

[1061] Yeah, that one's wrong.

[1062] Yeah, that one's wrong for her.

[1063] But Capricorn logic.

[1064] I know.

[1065] So Monica's been sending me these throughout the last few weeks.

[1066] And of course, I get each one like, oh, my God, why am I about to read about astrology?

[1067] Inevitably, I get to Capricorn, and I feel like they've nailed Capricorn every single time.

[1068] What was another one was like, how to trust somebody?

[1069] And it said like NDA, sign NDA.

[1070] That one, I was like, oh, my God, that's really.

[1071] Yeah, I laughed that was on brand.

[1072] But yours, hard work and then cusp fantasies.

[1073] That's suspicious, too.

[1074] Yeah, because I'm on the cusp for Leo and fantasy.

[1075] Do you think it's greedy for people to be on when they say they're on the cusp?

[1076] No, because they're trying to get kind of like two astrologicals.

[1077] Oh, okay.

[1078] Because I'm the 24th and Virgo Switch is at the 23rd.

[1079] That's the cusp.

[1080] Well, 23rd seems like it would be the cusp.

[1081] Two or three days is the cusp.

[1082] It is.

[1083] Oh, there's a two -day window, event horizon.

[1084] Probably like four days.

[1085] Oh, wow.

[1086] Another one that was...

[1087] Maybe why mine are so accurate is I'm a bolzite capris corn, right?

[1088] I think I'm right in the middle of it.

[1089] Another one that was dead on was desperately wants you to notice.

[1090] So I just mainly look at mine, yours, and then sometimes look at Christens.

[1091] Desperately wants you to notice Virgo, me, the silent and visible work they do to keep everyone around them afloat.

[1092] That is really on point.

[1093] Capricorn.

[1094] Desperately wants you to notice.

[1095] how goddamn hard they're trying.

[1096] It's pretty good.

[1097] That's not 100 % accurate for you.

[1098] A cancer, that's Kristen, desperately wants you to notice the subtext beneath what they're actually saying.

[1099] That's good.

[1100] It's pretty good for her.

[1101] Wabi Wob, what are you?

[1102] June 20th.

[1103] June 20th.

[1104] We're on the edge of something.

[1105] Oh, you're a cussed, too.

[1106] Everyone has two signs but me. With Gemini, apparently.

[1107] Oh, Gemini.

[1108] Okay.

[1109] Let's see what Rob wants us to notice.

[1110] I like that one.

[1111] Notice.

[1112] What you want.

[1113] That one's so eagle maniacal.

[1114] I love it.

[1115] Desperately wants you to notice the constant stream of notifications coming through on their phone while you eat dinner.

[1116] Oh.

[1117] I don't think that's a weird one.

[1118] My wife might agree to that.

[1119] She might, yeah.

[1120] She might.

[1121] Let's get her on the phone.

[1122] Let me find.

[1123] There was some others like dead on, just dead on.

[1124] Burgo, know what works for you and what doesn't.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] I think that's pretty good.

[1127] Well, I think you're very direct, you know, which I appreciate.

[1128] I am.

[1129] And I think you do a really good job at being vulnerable for the most part.

[1130] Thank you.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] You're not needy.

[1133] You just, oh, yeah, this one was so dead on for you.

[1134] You're not needy.

[1135] You just catch everyone off guard when you remind them that you have feelings, too.

[1136] I thought that one was really, really accurate.

[1137] That was really good.

[1138] We've even talked about it on here.

[1139] It's like, I want to.

[1140] two things.

[1141] I want lots of sympathy and compassion, and I want you to look at me like I'm Superman.

[1142] So I don't know how those are going to jive, but that's what I want.

[1143] Exactly.

[1144] Okay, this is the last one.

[1145] Well, there's so many.

[1146] I want you to look at me and go like, God, he's Superman.

[1147] And it's so hard to be Superman.

[1148] I feel so bad for him for being Superman.

[1149] Is that gross?

[1150] Can you hear it?

[1151] Yeah, it's disgusting.

[1152] Oh, I'm pointing out.

[1153] Yeah, I'm in on the joke.

[1154] Yeah.

[1155] Totally.

[1156] I want you to think I'm invincible, and then I'm mad at you if you're not delicate about my sensitivities.

[1157] Exactly.

[1158] What is that a macho -wop?

[1159] We got It could have been a green juice, too.

[1160] Ew.

[1161] I'm not into those.

[1162] I like them.

[1163] But I have found, and I am not pro or I don't want to be Oprah in the meat industry.

[1164] But back when I was really into drinking raw fresh juice, I got.

[1165] Diary.

[1166] Well, I got food poisoning, like, once every three weeks.

[1167] I think you get a little bit.

[1168] And here's where I'm going to get in trouble legally.

[1169] But I think you get.

[1170] You could get.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] What do they say in a court thing?

[1173] Listeria.

[1174] But what are they say in courts?

[1175] Allegedly you could get Listeria from that.

[1176] I think I was getting Listeria once a month, to be honest.

[1177] Ooh, that's, yeah.

[1178] Because it's like a media, and I know exactly what it's like, and it's this one green juice I used to get from this place.

[1179] I'm not going to say it, and 88 % of the time I felt fantastic after I drank it, and then the other 12 % I was torrential.

[1180] Sorry about that.

[1181] If you're eating right now, listen to this.

[1182] I'm glad you're not drinking a green juice right now and you're having a matcha.

[1183] Okay.

[1184] This is the last one I'm going to say.

[1185] Okay.

[1186] Well, I want to say probably a lot more.

[1187] Okay.

[1188] But this one is also dead on.

[1189] How to make them open up.

[1190] This is the one you're talking about.

[1191] How to make them open up.

[1192] Virgo, put 30 minutes on their calendar.

[1193] That's not great for me. But it also kind of, I do like scheduling my time.

[1194] Well, I think what it's saying is that, like, you're, I think it's saying you're so goal -oriented that it would have to be a goal of yours.

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] And I agree with that.

[1197] Yeah.

[1198] Because I even think you're.

[1199] Yeah, that's a whole relationship issue.

[1200] Well, and I look at it.

[1201] at what motivates us towards self -improvement, and they're different motivations, I think.

[1202] I could be wrong.

[1203] But you have an idea of who you want to be in such a strong way, and you know it includes certain things.

[1204] That's my assessment of like your self -improvement is like you're smart and enough to, you're smart and enough.

[1205] You're like, I want to be this type of person.

[1206] You have a goal.

[1207] And you're smart enough to include that that requires like a lot of self -development and acknowledging that you're flawed and bettering yourself.

[1208] Uh -huh.

[1209] I guess that's true, but I think it's more, hmm, I think, I think that part of me is not part of the goal -oriented part.

[1210] I think that's just busy brain that makes me always kind of be thinking about what am I doing?

[1211] What are these people doing?

[1212] What's everyone doing?

[1213] I'm like observing behaviors and that others are doing and me and how I connect, how I am different from that or the same.

[1214] same or what's at the, like, I think that's more of a, I don't know.

[1215] I see here's motivated out of pride, but in a good way.

[1216] Hmm, that's interesting.

[1217] Yeah, like, you've somehow recognized that someone who can own their mistakes and flaws is actually kind of next step or evolved.

[1218] And your pride is like, I'm going to be this type of person.

[1219] Maybe.

[1220] I don't know.

[1221] Maybe, yeah.

[1222] And what's yours?

[1223] Mine is like I'm a piece of shit and all I do is fantasize about all the worst stuff and I've got to like actively combat that all the time or I'll just be a big gluttonous waste.

[1224] I see.

[1225] Yeah, that's different from me. I don't feel that about myself.

[1226] You don't have to come to terms with your limits and character defects because you'll die of alcoholism.

[1227] If you don't.

[1228] Well, that's true.

[1229] I'm going to the wine bar later.

[1230] Yeah.

[1231] Well, this is all to be revealed.

[1232] We're still early in your story.

[1233] We're only 34 years in.

[1234] I did have it thought.

[1235] I was like, am I one day going to be sober?

[1236] Not in a, I don't see my life like derailing in such a way that ends in it, but just I wonder.

[1237] That won't be the decision you'll ever have to make, which is why I think it's harder for you to make the decision.

[1238] Yeah.

[1239] It's not threatening anything.

[1240] You'll just have to make the decision.

[1241] Do you think my life's better without it or better with it?

[1242] Yeah.

[1243] And that's a very hard because it's the loss ofversion that we have as humans, which is you think you're losing.

[1244] something.

[1245] I think it's more I feel like I'd be losing the thing that comes with drinking, which is like the social, like I really like the world around alcohol.

[1246] Like I really like the wine bar.

[1247] I think it's adorable and cute and you get to try it and it's sweet and everyone sitting in this.

[1248] It's like it's an experience.

[1249] It's an event.

[1250] It's a there's like there's like possibility.

[1251] Yeah.

[1252] It is very specific.

[1253] Like I don't, I do not like a club.

[1254] Sure.

[1255] I don't.

[1256] I don't like alcohol in that way.

[1257] I don't even, I mean, even bars is on the facts.

[1258] Concerts, dicey.

[1259] Yeah, concerts, no. Truck poles.

[1260] No, no, no, I'm not into that.

[1261] But there's just these little environments that feel cozy to me, and I connect alcohol with them.

[1262] You should read John Barleycorn by Jack London.

[1263] Okay.

[1264] Great book.

[1265] He wrote it towards the end of his life, and it's him coming to terms with his relationship with alcohol, which his has progressed to the point where towards the end of his life, he had to wake up multiple times at night to drink.

[1266] Oh, my God.

[1267] To stay well.

[1268] And so he was aware of it.

[1269] And there was also a big temperance movement when he wrote this, I want to say.

[1270] And I think he was almost saying, like, let's do it because look at me, I can't control it.

[1271] But the way it started for him and I so related to him.

[1272] And by the way, I bet I'm going to figure this out right now.

[1273] Okay, he loved that.

[1274] That was the only way that men could come together and look at each other and talk to each other.

[1275] and have fellowship.

[1276] Yeah.

[1277] It didn't happen anywhere else unless you join the Elks Club or something.

[1278] So he really cherished that.

[1279] Yeah.

[1280] And I get it.

[1281] And I would argue for you, drinking had to have made the social experience so much less anxiety filled.

[1282] I mean, I don't know if that's fair.

[1283] I'm sure I mean, I'm sure I want to add that into the narrative, but I don't think that's true.

[1284] Like, I always was so good at...

[1285] for survival being social.

[1286] Mm -hmm.

[1287] So I never have had an issue with that.

[1288] I've never been like, I need, I have social anxiety or I need to add this thing and to help.

[1289] I don't feel that.

[1290] I didn't have that, but I had insecurities that seemed to evaporate when I was drunk.

[1291] And I loved the freedom of that.

[1292] But mine don't.

[1293] Like, I don't feel like pretty when I'm drinking.

[1294] You don't.

[1295] Well, you should.

[1296] You're pretty sober, so you should feel even prettier.

[1297] I'm probably not.

[1298] I probably look worse.

[1299] No, you should feel like Selma Hayek's circa 93 when you're drunk.

[1300] Really?

[1301] Yeah.

[1302] I'll try it tonight.

[1303] Yeah.

[1304] Give it a shot at the wine bar tonight and see what kind of action comes your way.

[1305] It's so weird.

[1306] I created the situation you were trying to escape, which is so ironic, just humans.

[1307] Like, I was trying to be different.

[1308] Right.

[1309] And then I was actively doing that.

[1310] And then I was places where I felt not included because I was different.

[1311] So it was like I was creating this problem, but I was just trying to, I don't know, show my bravery.

[1312] I don't fucking know.

[1313] But it is ironic, though.

[1314] I did.

[1315] I felt sad for myself a couple of days ago because I was listening to a podcast, listening to Samin's podcast, who we love.

[1316] Oh, she has a podcast?

[1317] Yeah.

[1318] I mean, I don't know if it's still going, but she had one.

[1319] And I was really in the mood to listen to a cooking podcast, obviously.

[1320] Your safety blanket?

[1321] So I, like, Google, I, like, just searched, and I saw Samin had one.

[1322] So I started listening.

[1323] And she has a co -host.

[1324] And it was a really cute show, and they, like, have people who call in and ask questions, and she answered.

[1325] It's very cute.

[1326] But anyway, they called the co -host's dad, and they were talking to the dad about his air fryer, and he's Indian.

[1327] Oh, lovely.

[1328] And he was talking about the air fryer, and it was just so silly.

[1329] And I so viscerally connected to that person.

[1330] Yeah.

[1331] Her or the dad?

[1332] Her.

[1333] The dad.

[1334] Indian dad.

[1335] I'm like, I know the Indian dad.

[1336] The Indian dad is my dad.

[1337] The Indian dad is my grandpa.

[1338] But it's something, it made me sad because when I was in the car by myself and listening, I was like smiling.

[1339] Yeah.

[1340] And then I was like, God, I didn't let myself have that for so long.

[1341] And it's sad.

[1342] It's really sad.

[1343] It's really terrible.

[1344] It is, yeah.

[1345] And I don't want anyone else to have that.

[1346] I really robbed myself of something.

[1347] I'm nervous.

[1348] This is really self -indulgent, but it may me think of this immediately, which is, I have that feeling you have kind of often with Lincoln.

[1349] And I, of course, had it yesterday.

[1350] And you feel sad for yourself?

[1351] I do.

[1352] Because I, well, it's a combination of, it's not self -pity.

[1353] It's forgiveness.

[1354] So I took her to the motocross track yesterday for the first time.

[1355] I was just the greatest fucking, like I won't, you know me, I won't wake up early for a goddamn thing.

[1356] But this I got up for, I was to pack up the van and everything and take her.

[1357] and have all of her gear.

[1358] So she goes on the motocross track.

[1359] And fucking Monica, she's so good at it right away.

[1360] Yeah, I know.

[1361] I saw the video.

[1362] I was so proud of her.

[1363] And not only just is she good at, she's on fire for it, right?

[1364] Like, she didn't want to come off the track.

[1365] I'm assuming, like, it was scheduled for three hours.

[1366] I'm like, we'll probably have to leave it at 10.

[1367] She'll be over it.

[1368] Didn't want, I was getting tired.

[1369] I wanted to come in.

[1370] Like, let's go get a water.

[1371] She's like, no, let's do some more alive.

[1372] Anyways, heaven, right?

[1373] Yeah.

[1374] And I'm looking at this little girl.

[1375] And I just like her so much.

[1376] and I can't believe what a good little person she is.

[1377] She's just really, we talk about all the time, like you can kind of give her anything she wants.

[1378] She doesn't abuse anything.

[1379] She doesn't, like, you don't have to protect her from anything.

[1380] You know, she's just, I don't know, she's special.

[1381] And often I look at her, and I do see a lot of similarities.

[1382] Not that I'm special, but just especially with the automotive shit.

[1383] Of course, I can see it then.

[1384] And we look the same and everything.

[1385] And she wants to be recognized in similar ways.

[1386] Like she, even her character defects, she, like, wanted to drink and O'Dul's really bad because she knows that the dudes there will think she's cool.

[1387] And so, like, that's something I see is like, you know, oh, that's me. That's a bummer.

[1388] She wants to show off like that.

[1389] But whatever.

[1390] She doesn't have any trauma yet that I'm aware of.

[1391] And I start thinking I was like that too.

[1392] And through a series of events, I became, you know, all the things I don't.

[1393] don't like about myself.

[1394] Yeah.

[1395] And I think I probably started like her.

[1396] Of course.

[1397] And then I feel bad for myself a little bit, but then I check myself because I don't believe in self -pity.

[1398] But then I just go like, I'm sorry for you.

[1399] You started as this thing.

[1400] And then through all these other things, you know, whatever.

[1401] I don't know.

[1402] Pretty self -indulgent?

[1403] No, I think that's, no, not at all.

[1404] But I think it's also not, it's not fair to your accomplishments and to your the bigger picture of your life, which is an incredible one.

[1405] Oh, I know.

[1406] It's weird to even say that because I'm so grateful for every.

[1407] No, that's not what I mean.

[1408] I just mean when you're like, oh, I'm, I used to be perfect, and now I'm not.

[1409] Like, you still are.

[1410] You just have lived a life.

[1411] And she just hasn't had those things that.

[1412] She will.

[1413] Like, she's not, she, I mean, you know, you're going to slap me in the face for saying it.

[1414] I love her.

[1415] She's my baby, but.

[1416] She's just a person.

[1417] She's a person, and she has character defects, too, and they're going to come out over time, and that's normal and okay.

[1418] Well, let me be a little bit more specific.

[1419] I fell in love with this whole adrenaline thing.

[1420] I know exactly when it happened.

[1421] I think I may have told you, but it was when we live with Rick, I had a stepdad.

[1422] I was very chaotic.

[1423] I had step siblings.

[1424] My brother and Rick fought all the time, physically, and I thought he killed my brother at one point.

[1425] I, in those times, would take my sister, my step -sister's 10 -speed bike, and I'd go up to my elementary school, and there's a very narrow path that you could go around the school.

[1426] And I would do it over and over again.

[1427] I'd ride as fast as I could where I thought it was going to crash, but that was just on the edge.

[1428] And I would do that for like an hour and a half, and I would always do it in response to what was going on in the house.

[1429] So I was just thinking, I guess, it was a sanctuary for me, why I became obsessed with it.

[1430] and I could control this thing.

[1431] And that's not why she's riding or enjoying it.

[1432] Right.

[1433] Yeah.

[1434] I don't know.

[1435] I guess you know what it would be like is if you had a little girl and she loved being Indian and she loved talking to your dad, her grandpa.

[1436] Oh, yeah.

[1437] You know what I'm saying?

[1438] And she was proud of it.

[1439] I think if you witness that a lot, it just does something to you.

[1440] I don't know.

[1441] Yeah.

[1442] I think you'd be able to see even more profoundly.

[1443] maybe what you missed.

[1444] I'm sure.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] Couple facts.

[1447] What percentage of Californians live close to the coast?

[1448] Of the total population of 38 .4 million in California, 26 .3 million people live in coastal portions of the state.

[1449] But I don't have the five miles thing.

[1450] 26 .3 million out of 38 .4 million.

[1451] Okay.

[1452] Coastal portions of the state.

[1453] I don't know what that means how close, but that's a lot.

[1454] So that's two -thirds, we could just say.

[1455] Yeah.

[1456] Yeah, that's a lot.

[1457] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1458] It's a long state.

[1459] Declotage.

[1460] Oh, she said that word, right?

[1461] Yeah, decalitage is a low neckline.

[1462] Oh, this says on a woman's dress or top.

[1463] I don't think it's, it should not just be for women.

[1464] It's everyone.

[1465] It's right below the neck.

[1466] A plunging neckline?

[1467] It's the area below the neck above the breasts.

[1468] Oh, that's.

[1469] That little triangle.

[1470] There's an area.

[1471] You have to keep that very moisturized because it gets wrinkled.

[1472] Oh, okay, great.

[1473] It's getting a lot of sun, especially if you wear a lot of plunging necklines.

[1474] That's right.

[1475] And people don't think about it because they just think, oh, face, like sunscreen on my face.

[1476] No, moisturize.

[1477] Your neck, your upper chest, your tits, your belly.

[1478] Here's a tip.

[1479] You moisturize up with your hands.

[1480] Okay.

[1481] You don't push the skin down.

[1482] You put everything up.

[1483] Oh, that's smart.

[1484] You don't compound gravity.

[1485] That's right.

[1486] You want to anti -gravity.

[1487] your skin care.

[1488] And every time you're not standing, you should be an anti -gravity chair to protect your skin from ankles.

[1489] Okay.

[1490] How many people die on motorcycle accidents a year?

[1491] I think we've talked about this before, but in 2017, that's the last data I could get.

[1492] 5 ,172.

[1493] Nothing.

[1494] No, that's not.

[1495] Who cares?

[1496] A lot of people I care about.

[1497] Well, it's about 55 ,000 for vehicular deaths, I believe.

[1498] I know, but.

[1499] I know.

[1500] It's only one -tenth as much, and there's probably one.

[1501] 100th as many riders.

[1502] I know.

[1503] Yeah, so maybe 10X?

[1504] Ooh.

[1505] I don't want to talk about that anymore.

[1506] Okay, well, um...

[1507] I think I did, I really dove into those at one point.

[1508] I think a high percentage of motorcycle fatalities involve alcohol.

[1509] Oh.

[1510] Yeah, people who like that.

[1511] It goes hand in hand.

[1512] This is a ding, ding, ding, motorsports, alcoholism.

[1513] We really wrapped it up.

[1514] Thank you for doing that for us.

[1515] Um, I love you and I think you're perfect.

[1516] I love you and I think you're perfect.

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