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#035_ To Shake the Sleeping Self · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Well, welcome. It's been three years since I've seen you.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I feel like we had this amazing conversation the last
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: time that you did this oh so long ago, and
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I just remember thinking, we're gonna be best friends. We're
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: gonna hang out all the time. And I know what
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: first time that I've seen you, I don't know what happened.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Well, La is a big place, and you live like
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: in the mountains, in like a hidden oak valley somewhere.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Something like that. Kind of like that was a barrier.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: That was a barrier, like I have live in Santa Mom,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, you live in Dubai, have a great life.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Right Well, you're an eastsider and you're the first person
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: that I've had over to the downtown outpost of the podcast.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We're breaking in this new space and it's very exciting
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to be in downtown area. And now i'mpproximate. So perhaps
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: we will part ways after this and rejoin for social frivolity.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's so many restaurants and things down here
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: that I need a reason to try.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, I'll go with you. There we go. When
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I go on your Instagram, I'm like, he's always hanging
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: out with super cool people having a great time, like
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I have fomo looking at your Instagram. But there's a
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: lot of problems with social media. But one of the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: good things is that even though I haven't seen you
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: in three years, like I still feel very connected to
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: you and everything that you're doing. So I'm just delighted
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: to have you here today.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: I love talking to you. I mean, we talked for
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: three hours last time, and I felt like it was
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: thirty minutes. It's such a fun mind meld, so I'm
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: happy to be.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Back well excited to get into it with you today,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: although I will admit at the outset I'm feeling very
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: naked right now. I'm like a control freak about this
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: whole thing. And when I have a guest on, I
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: do tons of research and quite often somebody has a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: book coming out and I make a point of reading
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that book so I know what to talk to them about.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: And we had this conversation offline over the last day
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: because your book is coming out, I have not had
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to read it yet, and we wanted to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: go ahead with this anyway. So we're going to talk
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: about a book that I have not read.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Which Vulnerable, which I think is very appropriate because no
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: one listening to this has read it either, so it's
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: like them getting to ask me questions of like why
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: should I read this?
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Right, But the ballast of like who's in control of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: this podcast shifted? Now you have to shoulder some responsibility
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: to make it go well.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: But also that kind of makes sense, like I need
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: to convince you that it's worth your time, you know,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: and that's hopefully what I do right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I'm super proud of you that
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: you got this done. When we first spoke, it was
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the very beginning of this adventure. You had set about
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: beginning to crack this book open, and it took you
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: three years, but you did it.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was about It took me about two years
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: to do it, and then you turn it in and then.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: It's a year until it comes out more or less.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of refining and all these amazing
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: details that publishers are really good at, which I am not.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And then it exists, which is so fun. Like it
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: was so nascent and such like a dream in my
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: head and so scary in a mountain that I could
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: see from the valley when we first spoke, And now
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: it's a physical thing that I can hold in my
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: hands that now is given away to strangers who it'll
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: become their experience. Now they love it, they hate it. It
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: means nothing to them, like I can't control that anymore.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: It's now out.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about that?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: I feel pretty zen about it because I live in
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: LA surrounded by a bunch of artists who make art,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: they make TV shows, they make music, and I've witnessed
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: them processed this experience where they work on an album
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: for years and it boom, it comes out. Maybe there's
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: some chatter about it, maybe not, and then they are like, wow,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: like what do I do. It's not like when you
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: give birth to a child and now you have to
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: raise the child forever and it'll it's out and it's
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: a thing, and then whether it catches the zeitgeist of
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: culture or not, there's not a lot you can do about.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: It, right, I would say one distinction perhaps is that
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: being a writer and putting a book out in the world,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: there's a certain responsibility that you have as as the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: author to help people care about it. If you're a
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: musician or if you're making a TV show, you've got
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a gigantic infrastructure behind you to get people interested in
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: watching that television program. It's a little bit different when
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you when you write a book. Yes, you have the publisher,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and that publishing house has a public you know, a
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: publish you have a publicist and all that kind of stuff.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: But one thing I've learned is you really have to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: carry that mantle yourself. And I know you're doing that.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: You're going on this like you're going to be gone
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: on like a book tour for a while.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm doing just a few book events and then
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: we'll see if other ones manifest. Because I really enjoy
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: talking to people and live it's really fun. But I
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: don't I mean, yes, I do carry that mantle because
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: I believe my intention with writing the book was write
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: the book I wish I could have read when I
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: was twenty three and my identity was totally in flux,
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: and I was Evangelical, Christian and gay and didn't know
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: how to reconcile those things and was doing my best,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: and I wished I had somebody a little further along
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: that I could find that would speak my language because
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: a lot of times the sexuality faith thing is such
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: a precipice that when people, when people really reconcile it
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: their faith, and they're so wounded by the tradition in
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: which they were raised that they rejected completely. And so
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: when I was still in it, I was trained to
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: fear people who rejected the faith as deceived and wrong,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: and so I feared them. So I couldn't find someone
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: who was still speaking my language who could like usher
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: me into a new way of thinking.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: I feel the burden of like doing my best to
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: make sure young me whatever that looks like rights gets
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: the chance to read this book.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: It's interesting you rejected the notion of being the rejector. Yeah,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and it's like this journey to finding this middle place
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of comfort with faith and your sexuality. Yeah. On the face,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: like we chatted a little bit about this an email,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Like on the face of the book, it sort of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: seems like this is going to be a book about
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: like finding your passion and like lighting out on the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: territory and like you know, exploring your you know, finding
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you know, finding your dream by like rejecting corporate America.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And perhaps that's you know, the hook on the lure
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that might bring in that young reader. But then you
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: kind of hoodwink them and take them on this on
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: this journey that has a lot more depth and nuance to.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: It, yeah, which I think is a big part of
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: being human, where you, especially when you're young, have lofty goals,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: big ideas for your future, and and you go forth
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: and reach for them, and then you might realize that
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: their counterfeit and they're not what you thought, and you
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: reject them and you try something else. And really all
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: of that pendulum swing, sea sawing of life and seasons
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: of life is a search for self acceptance, identity, completion,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: wholeness and walking in that.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: And so what I thought was I.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Want my dream career and I want to be a writer,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: and I want to be known as an adventurous guy
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: who does risky things was really kind of the smoke
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: from a deeper fire of I want to be okay
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: with me and my bike trip really started peeling those
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: layers back. Like once it got real hard, once it
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: got no longer cool and fine, and it just became
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: laborious and I really wanted to quit and all these
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: things it started to it started to teach me lessons
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: that I didn't even anticipate.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Right, Like am I doing this because this is what
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I really want to do? Or am I doing this
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: because I want to be known as somebody who would
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: do this exactly right?
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Which is I think a lot of people never differentiate
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: those two things, and they don't realize that they're actually
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: performing in such a way to be known as right blank.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: But it was in the doing that you had to
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: The doing was the vehicle for answering that question for yourself. Right.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of talk in the Christian world and
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: maybe outside of it as well, about what legacy will
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: you leave, like what's your legacy?
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: What's your legacy?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Which is a beautiful idea, but also is the same
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: thing as how do I want people to talk about me?
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Like what will my reputation be?
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And I don't know.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I think if you're worried about your reputation rather than
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: worried about who you are first and let that, let
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: your reputation radiate out, and don't worry about how you're
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: coming across, worry about who you are, and then how
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: you come across will be great.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I just people.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I think people get the dominoes out of order.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's difficult.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: It's really difficult because.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: That requires the heart, the hard work, the heavy lifting
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: of looking inward, you know, And I think I think
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: most people are either afraid of that or we're just
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: socially conditioned to not do that and to get our
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: validation externally.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I listened the other day to your yuvol Harari interview,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: which was fantastic, is the best one I've heard of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: him yet. And it's not often that you listen to
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: a podcast and change your behavior the next day. But
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I've never meditated in my life, except like once when
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: my friend gave me a group meditation for my birthday.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: And.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: The way you guys spoke about his meditation practice, and
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: really specifically when he said, eighteen years ago he did
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: is it Viposama and his teacher told him to just
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: think about his breathing for ten minutes and he couldn't
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: do it for ten seconds and just being centered and
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: starting your day that like that.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: I woke up.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Today and sat in my bed and found like a
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: YouTube guided thing and just grounded myself and my body
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: and really listened to my breathing for ten minutes, and
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: then if a thought came in, I observed it outside
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: of that thought and let it float away like a balloon.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And it was this amazing moment where I started my
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: day realizing that I exist, that I am here, that
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: that is amazing, and that I am worthy.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know, it was this.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Is just one ten minute meditation, one.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: In this tiny little moment of your day, just starting
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: your day like that, and it was I don't know.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It was really impactful and simple and felt like a
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: little blessing on the day. And I think it's going
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to be a new practice. I mean, you've all it
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: does thirty forty five sixty day silent retreats and meditates
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: two hours a day. You know, we'll see if I
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: get there.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Well, it's super intimidating when you hear that, right, but
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: when you hear him say, yeah, he couldn't go ten
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: seconds without you know, his mind attacking him. And then,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: in the wake of these three gigantic books that have
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: quite literally reshaped culture and how we talk about so
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: many issues, for him to credit those books, the idea
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: is that he that he formulated in order to write
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: those books almost solely to his meditation practice is one
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: of the most profound Yeah. Pack through lines.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the through line that really hit me and was
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: the impetus of the challenge that changed my behavior was
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: he said it teaches you how to focus, or the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: way he says it focus or head on his accent.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And I really is very hard for me to focus
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: on anything for more than ten seconds. I mean we
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: have our obviously our phones, you have someone coming in
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: the room, there's a leaf blower outside. Your brain is
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: leaping constantly, maybe now more than it's ever been. And
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: the ability in writing this book taught me that I
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: really struggle with focus.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: I could write I had.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: To do twenty minute spurts and then give myself ten
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: minutes allowed to look at my phone, and then twenty
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: minutes again, ten minutes, twenty minutes.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: It was like, that's how I wrote the whole.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I think you've all wrote Sapiens like a year after
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: we did our first podcast. Oh that he's honest. He
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: just this is the thing.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: His ability to focus is extraordinary because he exercises that
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: muscle through meditation. And I was like, wow, if I
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: could focus, imagine the clarity of thought. And I was
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: thinking as I was going to bed last night, which
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: is why I took a note of it. Reflecting on
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: that podcast, there are like three types of thinking in
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: the world. There's like the particulate thinker, the categorical thinker,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: and then the systems thinker. And the particulate thinker only
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: responds to the thing right in front of their face,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: which is I think most people they don't analyze their life.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: They're not thinking about andustry. They're We're reacting.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: They're reacting every moment.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: The categorical thinker maybe is somebody who writes for the
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Washington Post about politics. They know a lot about a
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: category and they think about it in a little bigger picture.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: But if I ask them about psychology or the environment,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: they would be like, I don't know anything about that.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: You've all As a true systems thinker, he flies above
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: the earth and looks at the ecosystem of all things
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: and somehow can synthesize it and pull the relevant patterns
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: out and just speak it so crisply and clearly where
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: it makes the world make a little more sense. And
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: I know I'm a systems thinker. I'm nowhere near him.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: But that's like I always am, like feeling and absorbing
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: the patterns that transpose over everything, like the unity of
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: truth through nature human behavior. I just see it like
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: a unity in the way things are, and I want
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: to exercise that muscle.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I think it would be a gift to humanity if
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: you did that. I mean, I think I agree with you.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I think what's unique about you, and perhaps what distinguishes
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you from you've all's approach, is that your gift is
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in Yes, you're a systems thinker, and you can find
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: this unity, but it's all through the prism of your
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: own personal experience, and you convey it with a personal
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: truth that also strikes a court of universal truth. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I think that's why everyone connects to your writing so deeply,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: because you may be talking about something that happened to
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: you or something that happened to you, you know, with
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: respect to or relationship that you have, but we can
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: all find some commonality in that experience. Like that's that's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: where I feel your power and your strength is in
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: what you write.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: Wow, thank you well, I.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You've not he doesn't talk about like he's not filtering
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: it through his own personal experience. It's very it's it's
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: sort of antiseptic, you know.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yeah, And I mean that's the kind of
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: beauty of if you look at the world like an orchestra,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: everyone has their instrument and their note to play, and
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: each one brings its own important moment to the symphony.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: And maybe the way I communicate what I've learned or
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: a truth or a feeling, well, the way that I
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: communicate will impact someone more than the antiseptic just history
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: sent sized by a different type of book.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: And that's why I like.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Encourage people when they're like, I don't even know, I
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: don't have anything original to say, you know, I don't
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: know if I should write. I don't, And I'm like,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: no one has lived your life in that exact way.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: If you can just write truthfully about your experience, that
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: will have value because you exist and you have value period.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: But it requires you to connect deeply with your interior life. Yeah,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and you have that. You have, you know, meditation aside
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: whether you never meditate again, you're very in touch with
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: your emotional landscape and you have an ability to bring
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: voice to that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: I think I've thought a lot about that because I
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: don't know why I am that way, but I think
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: it has to.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Do with.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: When I was a kid and realizing I was gay
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: and realizing the world was not made for me. I
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: didn't feel safe. I didn't think, oh, I'm not safe,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: but I didn't feel like I was fitting in, And
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: in that moment, my brain got real curious about how
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: everything works. I needed to understand the lay of the
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: land so that I could find ways to fit in
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: and not get lost mechanism, and so very early on
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: I learned to like jump up above the city and
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: look where the roads go, so I don't get lost
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: where a lot of people if it were if you're
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: just like handsome or pretty in eighth grade and everything's
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: working great for you, and you had no awkward moment,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: you just float right on through and you never even
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: think how how is this happening? You're just reacting and
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: it's working out.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: For you, right, So let's go back there. You grow
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: up gay in an evangelical Christian environment, and from what
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I understand you, you felt compelled to kind of hide
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: from that. I suppose maybe you have a different word
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: for other than that, and to kind of exert some
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: semblance of masculinity, to prove to the world that you
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: were other than perhaps who you were or are, And
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: that became expressed in being this adventurer and trying to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: show the world this masculine, you know, version of yourself
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: or or your idea of what like a man, a
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: young man is supposed to be. Yeah.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of gay men who in
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: those early years are they become either performatively masculine or
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: their natural disposition and their like feminine expression causes them
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: so much hurt that they retreat.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I mean they're really wounded by their environment and they
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: run away to West Hollywood and finally are free, you know,
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: and they're at the club and they're like, f you,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Mom and dad, I'm free, you know.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Like compensating in the other extreme exactly.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And I I was in middle school. I had a
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: really high voice, and it must have been really feminine.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I had middle schoolers say ask me if
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: I was a girl, and I'm like, I don't think
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I am. I think I'm a boy. But I think
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: it's not like I sat down and made decisions. I
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: was just reacting to the world, trying to survive. And
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: I tried to control the way I spoke so as
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: not to get asked that again. I tried to control
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: the way I moved my hands so as not to
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: be noticed. I learned to be funny and silly and wacky.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And that was a thing where I thought, well, if
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I make fun of myself, I'll beat them to it
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: and take the wind out of their sales. So if
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: I'm the funny guy, I can insulate myself from mockery
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: and just all I mean, all thesevel and it worked.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: It worked really well, to the point that by sophomore
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: year of high school I was pretty popular. I was
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: really well liked by junior year, like all my best
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: friends were like the football and baseball players, straight guys,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: and and I don't know, like I was able to
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I don't want to say hide because I didn't feel
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: like I was hiding.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: I just felt like I.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Was me, but I was playing the game that everyone
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: plays to fit into the world that they're in.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: But you knew you were gay. I knew I was gay.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: I knew something was quote unquote wrong with me in
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: third grade because the kids were talking about boners and
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: they asked me how what gives me boners? And I
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: said bodybuilders on ESPN and they laughed, and so I
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: was like, uh, oh, I can't talk about this. And
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: then in seventh grade I learned what the word was
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: for when you like that stuff when you when you
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: are a boy and you like boys. But I didn't
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: know that it wouldn't go away. I thought maybe, like
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: many people do, it.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Was a phase. And as senior year.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Approached, I realized, this probably isn't going to change, like
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: this is who I am, right, And at the same time,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: I was willing. I was willing to believe that God
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: could bring a woman into my life that would inflame
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: my passions. And you know, maybe I'm not attracted to
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: all women. Maybe I'm only attracted to my future wife.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: And when God brings her into my life, it'll be
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: hot and heavy and I'll be I'll make all the
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: church happy and it'll be great.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well that has to be coming directly from the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: doctrine that was getting hammered into you every Sunday right
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: in this even.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, and it's it's not always hammered. It is
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: the like death from a thousand cuts of just talking
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: about one Sunday. They'll talk about how people who interpret
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: the Bible to get what they want are actually deceived.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It's they're they're taking the Bible as a buffet and
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: they pick and choose what they want, just to serve
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: their own self and so you're you're taught that's the
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: worst way to think, and you're and you're taught, you
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: know adverse. In Jeremiah, the heart is deceitful above all things.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking, Okay, So if I want something and
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: it's not approved in the Bible, then that's me rejecting
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: God's word, and that's me being selfish and seeking. That's
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: me just being self seeking, and therefore I need to
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: repent of that. And I'm just a selfish asshole.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: And that's a that's a super highway to a shame spiral.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Total shame and total shame spiral. Because the real kicker
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: is sexual identity is also tied into behavior, and so
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: it took a while for the church to get this
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: language down. But they were like, it's not a sin.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: To be gay.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: It is is it is a sin to act on it.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And then they'll say things like God gave you this challenge.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: He doesn't give you anything that he doesn't know that
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: you can accomplish. He won't give you anything you can't handle.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: So he gave you this calling to celibacy as an
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: invitation to true Godly wisdom and that's a real burden.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: But lucky much for that well.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And I believed that.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I was like, wow, I must be so strong that
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: God trusted me with this burden.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And did you have anyone that you could talk to?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Honestly, No, I had friends who I knew didn't weren't
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: super Christian and didn't take it that seriously. But because
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I was so deep in the faith and like wanted
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: to prove how good of a Christian I was, I
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: couldn't find someone who was higher up on the piety
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: scale who was okay with gay marriage or being gay.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: So I couldn't find someone in authority to look to.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I could find people quote unquote below me on the
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: piety scale who would just like would drink and smoke,
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: and they were just like hedonistic, and so I'm like, well,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: thank you for accepting me, but you also accept a
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: lot of other things I don't believe in, So that's
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: not really help right.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And your parents did they have any awareness of what
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: was going on with you? They did.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: My dad, apparently, when I was two years old, asked
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: my mom, do you think Jet is gay? I don't
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: know what I was doing, but I and my mom
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: was really hurt by that because she is a deep
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Bible believing Christian woman, you know, and was like, why
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: would you speak that over our son? And I then
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: just my dad's I mean, then they got a divorce
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: and my dad cheated and went to be with my
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: stepmom and blah blah blah. So it was a whole hectic,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: chaotic world. My older sister was really damaged by the divorce.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: My younger brother had like physical disabilities that they were
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: really it was chaos for my mother, and so she
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: couldn't really workyry about that, not to mention in this
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: time in the eighties, all of a sudden she sees
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: on the news that gay people are dying by the
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: tens of thousands by a mystery gay cancer. Right, and
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: at the church they're saying, see the rewards for sin
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: is death, and so well, ap, let's be We'll see
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: that's easy. Let me make sure that let me pray
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: that this does this curse doesn't fall on Jed, which
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: I totally understand her mindset there, and I learned to
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: not rock the boat as I got older. My sister
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: is dating drug dealers, my little brother is has you know,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: his medical issues, and so I'm like, okay, I got
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: to get straight a's, I got to be the best kid.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: I can't rock the boat. And that continued.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: That's a heavy burden to carry as a young kid too,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: on top of all the rest of it.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: And I just learned to do my own thing and
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: do well. I mean I was student body president in
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: my high school and my mom didn't know yeah really
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: yeah until graduation and I was like, I have to
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: get there early. And she was like why and I'm like, well,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: I have to give a speech. She's like why and
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm student body president. She was so mad
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: at me that I didn't tell her, But I had
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: like built up this thing of like I'm independent, I
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: do my own thing.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not in your hair, right, and on some level,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: as somebody who's who's carrying a certain level of shame,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: whether consciously or unconsciously, to compensate by being this achiever.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Right, And that's actually big in the gay community, Like
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: the internalized shame creates like superhumans because they're so intent
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: on proving that they are worthy that they make a
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: lot of money, they get good jobs, they get a
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: nice car.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's like a big thing.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: And so was there a moment where you had a
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: reckoning with this and became okay with with being outwardly
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: you know, comfortable with it, or was it a slow
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: progression of aquam.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: It was a slow progression in my and then there
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: was a moment of reckoning for me.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: My mid twenties began my deconstruction of my faith in
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: the sense where the the infrastructure of my life which
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: my mother had blessed me with to keep me safe
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: and make the world make sense.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: It's like, actually.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Scientifically proven that when you raise a kid in a
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: structured environment, like in a faith community, they are better
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: prepared for the world than if it's chaos.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: And so I'm so grateful for that.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: But then as I'm finding it for myself in my twenties,
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: becoming more and more adult and diving deeper and deeper
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: into okay, if I'm gay and Christian, while I'm tired
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: of this, I need to figure it out. And so
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I went all the way at like twenty five, I
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: went to gay conversion therapy meeting.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: You did, Oh my God, tell me more about that.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it started with an elder in my church
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: really confronted me and said you need to figure this out.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, and she said, I know
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: a couple men who had this struggle and God healed
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: them of it and now they're married with families and
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: you should.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Meet with them.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So I met with a couple of these men, and
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: one of them was inspiring. He was fun, he was chatty,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: He had a beautiful wife.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: And a daughter, and.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: He he was just like I couldn't I lived the
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: wild gay life in my twenties and I couldn't shake
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: the shame.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And you know, I went to.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: These meetings and God healed me and brought my wife
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: into my life, and now I'm happy. And he's like,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: it's not that I don't feel those feelings anymore. It's
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: like I'm still attracted to men, but I choose my wife.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: And I was like, and you're like, but dude, you're gay.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Oh one hundred percent. I'm like, bro, you're gay. But
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I also don't. I believe he does love his wife,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: and I believe they may have a great marriage.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: I mean it seemed like they did.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Maybe they were putting it on their best performance, but
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I was like, this is this is a real way
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: of being and what's interesting is in that season of life. Also,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: I had begin working off and on in Uganda for
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: the charity in Visible Children, which we talked about last time,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: and they're entire like, especially in the traditional North, you
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: don't marry the person you love so much as you
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: marry families.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Set it up.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: It's a good deal. She's fertile, she's not barren. She'll
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: give you ten kids. Your kids can work the land,
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: and your family will grow. Marriage is a business arrangement,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: not an expression of ultimate self actualization with another person.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: And that's a very individualized American Western idea. And so
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: I had seen like, oh, marriage, especially in the Bible,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: is not just find your true love and live happily
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: ever after. It's a it really like God maybe intended
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: marriage to be this strategic partnership where you choose the
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: person daily, even if it's hard. And so I was like,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: maybe that's what I meant to do. Maybe maybe it
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: is what I said before about the heart is deceitful,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Like maybe I'm being selfish wanting love.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: And so you go to gay conversion therapy.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which was this big meeting I went to one
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: of the I went to this other guy's house, and.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: He was less.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: He was less believable in the sense that he seemed unhappy.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: He seemed unhappy to take me to this which was
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: interesting because in my mind he was living my dream,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: which was he had been healed of this thing that
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: caused conflict in my life, conflict in my family, conflict
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: in my community, the fear of loss of my entire
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Christian community, and he had been rescued from it by
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: God and was living with a wife and kids, and
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: he was willing to take me.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: To this meeting.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: And yet the feeling I got from him was that
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: there was an invisible gun to his head making him
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: take me.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: I feel so bad for that guy, and he's begrudgingly
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: bringing you, knowing that he's to you to this burden
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: that he's carrying.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: So I went to this meeting and it was this
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: man bald man on stage and they're singing worship songs,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: and then he's talking about, you know, you need to
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: let go of whoever ivever molested you, whoever hurt you, whoever,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: if your mother who overmothered you, your dad who abandoned you, whoever.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Because that's the only reason they're right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: There has to be a cause, scream out and forgive them,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: forgive them right now. And so I'm staying there like
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: no one did, Like nobody did anything to me. I
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: loved my childhood, every minute of it. M what do
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: I scream? And everyone's yelling and it's just this weird
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: cacophony of noise, and then there are some testimonies get
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: up and I'm looking around the room and there's a
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: verse in the Bible that I'm going to paraphrase what
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Jesus says, but it's like, I come to give you
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: life and life abundant, and you will know false teachers
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: by the fruit they bear. If they bear good fruit,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: it is of the Lord. If they bear bad fruit,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: it is not. And so I was looking at this
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, this is not good fruit. These people
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: are so burdened by shame, and they are not alive,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: they are not radiant.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: The people on stage.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Who are supposed to be beacons of hope are like.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: Cold, dark.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Zombies. The people in the audience are zombies. The guy
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: who brought me as a zombie. I'm like, I don't
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: think this is life and life abundance.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Right, It's life and resignation.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And my brain started like, but we're going through like
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: all these like factors of okay, Well, if you're raised
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: with false shame, let me just like imagine what if
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: God is actually cool with me being gay, and yet
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: all of society tells you it's shameful. You're raised in
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: that shame, and you misappropriate the feeling or you misapply
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: the feeling of shame as God's judgment, but it's actually
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: your community's judgment. Then maybe we've got this all wrong.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: I right at that moment, started to break break break, break,
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: break it down.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: How old were you?
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: I was like twenty six.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I mean that's a pretty good self awareness.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, well that's what in middle school I had
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: to be like figure out what am I? What is
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: the world? I had to or else I would be
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: swallowed up. And the real kicker is around that time,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: maybe a year later, I made a new really close
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: friend who was a couple years younger than me, and
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: he didn't know I was gay. Most of my friends did,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: but I don't always super signal that I'm gay, especially
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: to people who were a little oblivious, and so he
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: didn't know. And we spent all of our time together
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and this was still I was in the headspace of
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: figuring it out. I hadn't like realized it was okay
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: to be gay. I was like processing this, and we
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: were at this point. I think I was twenty six
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: or twenty seven. I'd never kissed anybody. I'd never held
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: hands with anybody. It was like buried, buried, buried. And
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: he would sleep over all the time. We spent twenty
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: four hours a day together. He's just my best friend,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: straight as an arrow, and in his sleep he was
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: a sleep cuddler. He was like a deep, deep, deep sleeper,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: and he would just throw his leg over me because
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: he'd like roll around. We'd be sleeping on the floor wherever, and.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I would be.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Awakened with this jolt of like sexual desire that I
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: had never felt in my life. And I wasn't really
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: aware because I had sectioned off that side of my
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: brain that I was in love with him. I had
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: written a narrative that he's my best friend, we do
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: everything together, my soulmate, but I in love with Attracted
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: to were things I had moved into a basement that
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to look at, access or think about.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: So it was interesting. I was compartmentalized, self aware. I
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: was really self aware in certain ways and willfully ignorant
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: to others. And he would do this sleep cuddling all
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: the time. And one night he was like laying like
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: laying on top of me, basically in his underwear, and
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: in this like rage of desire, I put my hand
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: in his underwear.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: And he woke up.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And this is my best friend who doesn't know I'm gay,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: and I'm touching him in his sleep, basically molesting him.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: And he woke up.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: And that was the to this day darkest moment of
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: shame I have ever experienced. It was a feeling of
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: out of body shame where I was looking at myself
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: and I didn't recognize myself. I was like, oh my gosh,
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: and I will never forget, he said.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: He sat up.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: It was in the dark, and he just goes, uh.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: He said, we have to talk about this. I'm an adult.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not six years old, meaning like implying like I'm
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: molesting a child or something. And when I tell you that,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: that landed on me like the hardest. I mean, that's
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: definitely the hardest thing I've ever heard. And we processed
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: it over months and we're still best friends, and he's
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: the most amazing He gave me the most grace.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: And the most forgiveness.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: But that was the true moment where I was like,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: if I don't tackle this head on and I don't
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: open all the doors in the basement, this is why
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Catholic priests do this right.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: This is why.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: When you think you've got something under control, especially sexuality,
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: you don't.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the unhealthy expression of repressed sexuality and emotion.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: And it will express itself. You think it won't, it will.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: That's one hundred percent of the time.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: And so that's amazing that you were able to navigate
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: that with your friend though and maintain that.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a testament to his wisdom, kindness. I mean,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: he's one of the most amazing people in my life
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: and always will be. And he is a similar person
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: to me where he seeks first understanding. He is a
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: very confident, safe person. And so as we then processed
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: me and he learned about my journey with sexuality and
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: their repression and all these things, he reached a place
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: where he was like, bro, I get it. Like he's like,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: I'm straight. I've been kissing girls since I was fifteen.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine being twenty six and completely removing sexuality
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: out of my existence.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Had like no sexual experiences.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: None, and I was twenty six. Imagine doing that.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Condoning or excusing anything any priest has done, but just
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: imagine suppressing that.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: For forty five years.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can compartmentalize your life and then you're in
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: a position of power. This is why I like the
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: celibacy requirement in Catholicism is a problem.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't work. Clear means are not wired to function,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: no way.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: And no, and it does certainly having God.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: The prohibition on marriage just attracts that type of person
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: to the priesthood.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you when I was deeply in love
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: with God, wanting to serve Jesus, and people told me
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: that I couldn't get married, and I wanted to be
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: a good boy and I wanted to excel.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: I was really attracted to that.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, then maybe I can marry God
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: and then be in a position of like respect and finally,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: like I can turn in this thing, this ball and
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: chain in my life for a crown on my head.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Like what a great exchange. But the trick is you
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: never get rid of that ball and chain because it's
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: woven into your DNA.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Right. The idea is that if you then do that,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: it will go away, it will vanish, it will dissipate.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: That has to be similar to what goes on in
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the minds of so many of these guys.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Oh it must be.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's so funny when you like listen to Uvolharrarah,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: you listen to these like people who've studied the evolution
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: of man and you evolution of life, and you realize
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: that pretty much everything we do is so we can
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: end up having sex.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: Like why do you.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Brush your teeth so your teeth are white, so they're
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: not falling out of your mouth, so that someone doesn't
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: think you're gross, so that you can kiss them, so
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: that it's like why do you want a good job?
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Why do you it's like so that you can procreate,
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: have a family. I mean, that's like so deep in
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: our wiring. And then obviously there's like complex scientific theories
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: of like why homosexuality is three to ten.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Percent of the population, But.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: It's got to be in there somewhere, like our sexuality
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: is wired into us.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting to me that this was going on
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: right around the time you were twenty seven, which, if
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: memory serves me, is kind of around the same time
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: that you had this idea to do this bike ride. Right.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: You announced it three years before you actually did it,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and you did it at thirty, Right, So what is
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: the relationship between that desire to embark on that adventure
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and this kind of internal struggle that you were having
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: coming to terms with your sexuality and who this person
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Jed is?
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a perfect example of me me still operating
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: in a compartmentalized fashion. I was dealing with my sexuality
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: deconstruction faith thing over here, and that was giving me
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: deep anxiety in my core. And yet I was in
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: my job and I saw thirty coming, and I was like, whoa,
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: when you're thirty, you aren't a kid anymore. You're not
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: allowed to just like not know what's going on. That
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: was like when you're in your twenties, Like, whoa. Thirty?
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: And I was in a job I loved, loved, but
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: it wasn't a job I really chose for myself. It
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: was a job I was working with friends, I was
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: doing important work. But I was like, if I don't
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: if I can choose my own career. Now's when I
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: should do it, and what do I want that to be?
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: And so I thought, wow, I need to pursue my
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: dream career of being a writer.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I'm too young.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: It's like embarrassing to write a memoir in my twenties
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: because like I just got to earth, Like what am
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I doing? So give me a let me go on
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: a wild trip, and then at least if I write
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: about that, it'll be objectively interesting.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So the idea of writing about it was in a grole,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: the idea itself. Yes, And so there was this idea
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: on so level. You were harboring the stream of being
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: a writer totally. It's hard to imagine you doing anything differently.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: And I have a very hard time picturing you in
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: law school.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I loved law school because it is a lot
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: of reading and writing, as you know. But I I
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: liked learning how civilization works, like property law and tort law,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: like these things, all these words I had heard in
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: the news all of a sudden, the like specific ways
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: in which if you have the intent to even touch
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: someone that can be a battery, even if it's nothing.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like all these like little details. I
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: found those endlessly fascinating and realizing that law is actually
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: the imagined infrastructure of civilization itself. It is, it is,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: and I just had never really put that together. So
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: law school was this like endless discovery of the way
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: the world works, which I fancy myself assistants thinker.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: So seeing that, so what you you're the greatest gift
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: of law school is it trains you to think in
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: a very specific way.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I kind of didn't ever think I would
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: be some fancy John Grisham trial attorney or.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I just thought maybe if I get this tool in
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: my tool belt, it'll influence the direction of my life.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: But how much of it was driven by that that
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: child inside of you who's trying to be the good
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: boy on it?
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: I was like, I need to be impressive because the
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: core of a big piece of.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: My core being is a blemish.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Fast forward to you sitting in an office working for
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a cruise line, right like in house counsel.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Oh that was and that was the perfect example. That
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: was during law school, and it was a perfect example
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: of that. I've made more money that summer than I'd
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: ever made in my life.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: And it was lifeless.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, I made some really good friends that summer,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: as like human beings are always interesting and fun, but
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: just the work itself. I'm so glad I did that
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: because that really woke me up quickly to oh, you
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: are not the type of person that can survive this,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: like you will die in a cage. And so that's
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: why I was like, Okay, well I'm just going to
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: go work for this charity and make no money and
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: be their lawyer because I got to do something else.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Right, And these were guys that you met at USC
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Film School, right. And for people that didn't listen to
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: our first conversation Invisible Children, this is this incredible nonprofit organization,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: most famously known for the Cony twenty twelve video that
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: like exploded the internet.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Listen to our first conversation, we go really into it. Yeah, yeah,
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: which is the only time I've ever done that on
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: a podcast.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Really talked about that chapter in that way. It was
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: a complicated thing.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: What happened with that It's very hard to unpack it.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a cool gig, right, if you're going
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: to be lawyer working with your friends.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: Traveling back and forth to Uganda and DC and meeting
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: with Samantha Power and the Obama administration and getting laws passed.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: I mean that was really cool.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're like five seconds out of law school.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: And yet I was.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: Really aware that it wasn't something I had chosen. I
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: had come alongside my friends to help them do a thing,
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: which was I did for five years and was really
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: life changing, no doubt. But I did feel I felt,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it is to use Christian language,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I felt a calling on my life that I had
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: something I was supposed to do.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: It's interesting that you had that awareness, because juxtaposing that
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: against this drive to be perceived in a certain way
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: as this, you know, good person doing important things, most
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: people would have relented to, you know, the geshtault of
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the responsible, you know path of security, and you know,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the high paying lawyer job, and and and stayed with
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: that for perhaps decades, only to act on that impulse,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: you know, when it might be too late.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: Well, and I don't want to give myself to credit
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: because I didn't have college debt.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: I had a lot of financial lad at USC and
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: then my parents paid for law school because I'm a
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: privileged kid from Nashville, And so I entered the world
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: able to just like survive on four hundred dollars rent
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: and being in cheese burritos ready to roll.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying?
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: And that is a very that is a serious privilege.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Most people I know now I'm thirty five are still
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: paying huge cast debt.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And and what most people do and what I
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: did was in addition to that debt, I was able
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: to tolerate a semi intolerable professional existence by compensating bye bye,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: by buying a bunch of shit, right, you're so miserable
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: and seeing a car I can't afford. You know, it's
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: always like a little bit outside of your grasp, and
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: that that's the death knell, because that's what gets you hooked,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and that's what leads to that idea like, oh I
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: cann everlieve this because my life is now big and
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I have to maintain.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: This right, Oh oh yeah.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: The accumulating of things that were to they were band
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: aids for your frustration, because what else.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Are you going to do otherwise you just you go
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: to sleep and you go back to the job again.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: Well, and that was the real circumstantial privilege. Of immediately
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: beginning my professional life working at Invisible Children, I was
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: surrounded by people making pennies who were there for the
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: passion of ending a war or in Central East Africa,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: and in turns volunteering their time. So it was very uncool.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: If I pulled up in a BMW, that's like not
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: the culture, right. The culture was to sleep on the floor,
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: to stay up all night, to call your senator, to
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: call your congressman, to go to Uganda.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: It was like.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Deeply woven in and and my chrisch and upbringing. It's
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: like sacrifice service, all these things. It really scratched a
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: lot of itches, and I loved it so much.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it speaks to, you know, the next
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: move that you make, and this decision to embark on
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: this ride from Oregon to Patagonia speaks to this theme
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: that that that you kind of address in the very
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: first pages of the book, which is this tension between
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: these mixed messages that were given when we're kind of
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: coming of age, which is, on the one hand, you know,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: seek the seek the you know, the career that's going
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to be that puts you on an upwardly mobile trajectory
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and then out of the other side of the mouth
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: of that same person is you know, think different or
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: you know, live your passion, and those butt up against
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: each other and it becomes very difficult to reconcile what
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: fits your own personal blueprint.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's the thing is is the the
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: circumstances of your youth often deeply influence, i mean, always
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: influence that chain of events in your twenties. If you
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: were raised where your parents were in crushing credit card
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: debt and life was falling apart, you you think, I'm
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: not going to be like them. I'm going to be
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: financially responsible. I'm going to do the opposite. If you're
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I have friends who were raised in fabulous wealth in
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Texas and they went on to be barefoot.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: Serving the homeless.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: I ain't going to be like that, and they're going
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: to drive a beat up Camra to show that they
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: don't want daddy's money. And so there's like a lot
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: of identity like pendulum fluctuation there. But I totally understand
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: that it's society's duty to actually give you a certain
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: flow chart of how to make it in this world,
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: because it's really hard to do it, to figure it
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: out on your own. So I don't fault society for
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: like telling us here's how you do it. But I
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: also would hope that society would say there are a
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: million ways to do this. Don't get sucked into the
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: like to the allure of thinking you have to do
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: it this way and if you don't, you're going to fail.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: And I really think with the gig economy and what's
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: happening with now now that millennials are in their thirties
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: and late twenties, they're discovering really that they that old
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: pathway is not functioning the way it used to. And
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: that's why, I mean, there's I don't know the stats,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: but huge numbers of people my age and younger don't
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: work in offices, don't have traditional Do.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: You know anybody that has a normal job.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: I swear to you, I have to think about it.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Like I live in La and to like go on
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: a hike on a Tuesday at eleven am is the
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: most normal.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Thing in the world.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: It's so true, and it's I don't know, and that's like, I.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Mean, I think you know La. I remember when I
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: have a vivid memory of when I first moved to
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: La and I was a lawyer in San Francisco, and
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: I moved here for a law firm job. And this
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: is pre gig economy. But there's something very unique and
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: strange about Los Angeles because you could go into a
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Starbucks at two in the afternoon and well, I would
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: be packed with people, and you're like, do any of
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: these people work? Like they all look like they took
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: a shower this morning. You know, but like, how does
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: that even make sense? I remember, it just blew my mind.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: This city is more than any other. Yeah, but it
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: expanded my horizons of what was possible. I mean, prior
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: to moving here, I never it never would have occurred
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: to me that you could find gainful employment pursuing something
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: that you cared about in a way that defied our
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: traditional notions of what that social contract looks like. Because
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: because of the entertainment industry, somebody who, like, who's very
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: talented at carving faces out of styrofoam can actually have
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: a career, you.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Know, like exactly, yeah, but that's what you're saying. It
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: speaks so clearly to the importance of modeling or representation
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: of different ways of being. I mean in terms of
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: representation in the arts, where you have people of color,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: you have people with different abilities and talents coming up
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: in storytelling. I know that when I I was a
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: kid watching Will and Grace change my life because I
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: saw I thought being gay was flamboyant in a Pride parade.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: And then I saw Will who was a lawyer in
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: New York, and I was like, oh, you can just
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: be You don't have to be in a thong. You
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: can just hang out and be normal.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have this idea that every young gay male
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: is the kid who's sashaying down the right way.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Which is if he is like fantastic. But that wasn't
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: me and so I didn't see the I thought, oh, okay,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: all this, all these things that the Christians are saying
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: are true. You either become hyper sexual and hate God
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: and you're in a parade. This is like, I don't
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: want to assume that that's true. I'm just saying that's
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: what I perceived. And I was like, well, where are
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: the like happy married gay couples who like are clothed
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: and have jobs, Like, where are they? And that was
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: really powerful with Will and Grace and then seeing that's
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: what I love about all the different people you have
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: on your podcast. They show you, like all the different
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: careers and adventures they've been on and expertises. You see model,
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: you see modeled different ways of making it in this
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: world and in contributing something important. And that's really encouraging
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: to me about gen Z or whatever it is and
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: millennials figuring out what they're doing. I think there's going
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: to be a lot of surprising contributions because of a
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: certain level of just modeled access to.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: I think that's right of being. I think that's right.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think you you see it. I mean
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: you see it manifest already. You know, people who are
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: driven not by salaries and four oh one k's and benefits,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: but by impact, Like how is how is taking this
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: job going to move the needle in terms of making
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: the world a better place? Like That's certainly nothing that
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: occurred to me when I was looking for my first job,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: or my second job or my third job, But that
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: is very much the mindset of young people now, and
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: amidst all the craziness and the chaos and the lack
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: of civility and everything that's going on right now, that
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: gives me tremendous hope and optimism for the future.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Me too, and I and I wonder, I mean, you
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: have kids this exact age of just I'm so curious
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: about what the brandification of identity is going to do
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: to young people where you're like worried about your brand
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: in eighth grade, like, oh, I need to wear this shirt,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: I need to post this photo? How many how many
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: likes is it going to get? That's such a tired conversation.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: Everyone that's a parent is like freaking out, but it's
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm curious. I don't have skin in the game,
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: but I.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Like play out.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, are they going to become are they going
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: to get burned on not getting a job because someone
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: went deep in their Instagram and found found something? Or
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: are people going to become more open to just the
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: fact that people grow and change?
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: And I think we're going to have to be Yeah,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: you already dominant is documented, and I think this idea
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: of generations is being accelerated. You know, it's no longer boomers,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: gen xers, gen why. It's like now every every three
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: years is a new generation. You know, my older boys
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: are twenty two and twenty three. That pendulum has swung
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: towards analog, like they're really. I mean, that's interesting. Yeah,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: they have Instagram accounts maybe once a month they post.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: They're not on Facebook, they're not on Twitter, they're not
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: they're not interested.
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, which is cool.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's a reaction to, you know, how my wife
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: and I are living, or just what they're seeing amongst
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: their peers. But that was very interesting to see both
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: of them make that choice. And now I have younger
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: daughters who are very different from that. They're a totally
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: different generation, even though they're only separated by a short
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: number of years.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to delineate Christian influence from millennial
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: influence of my own life, but I know making an
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: impact was a really big deal to me always, And
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's like, because you're a brand
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: ambassador for Jesus, you need to be on your best
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: behavior and you need to be an excellent brand ambassador.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: That's like wired into me in college and high school,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: and that's still a huge part of me now with
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: my writing. I just my only dream is that some
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: people who feel trapped in their identity, feel trapped in
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: their tradition, feel and don't see a way out read
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: this book and it just shin. It just models the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: sometimes difficult, sometimes tender exiting out of that entrapment, and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: and I what's fun about the time we live in
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: is normally, when you're a writer, you write a book
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: and maybe you get some letters in the mail from
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: people who were impacted by your words, maybe someone writes
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: a nice review. I write online mostly, and I see
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: people being impacted by my thing. The immediacy of it
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: is astonishing, and it feels incredible.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: The very first sentence of the book is if discontent
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: is your disease, travel is medicine, which is such a
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: fucking awesome sentence. How long did it take you to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: come over with that? I mean the pressure, you know,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the first sentence of it. It's like it's so important,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Like I just I was like I read that, and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I was like, it's so great, and I'm like, oh,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: thank you. How many versions of this sentence?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: That's what That's what I knew I wanted to say
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: in the first sentence, And then I would I wrote,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: I'm sure I wrote it a different way, and would
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: come back two weeks later and look at it and
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: be like, M close, but not there, And then I
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I did. I don't.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: I don't think my words are that precious, Like I
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: don't labor over them. If it makes sense, it can stay.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: If it's too cliche or too cheesy, it's got to go.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: And I just believe that. You know, the book is
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: called to Shake the Sleeping Self, and there's like parts
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: of you that need to be removed from their comfort
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: zone to even wake up. And you can't do it yourself.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: You have to remove yourself from the routine, from the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: thing you know, and travel is a perfect way to do.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: That, right. So the architecture of the book is you're
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: going to ride your bike from Oregon to Patagonia. We're
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: going to go along for this ride with you, and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: you are going to shake the sleeping self. You are
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: going to have this reckoning with who you are. And
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: as we kind of talked about at the outset, going
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: into it, the reader is perhaps lured into this note
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: that this is going to be Yeah, it's going to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: be a journey of self discovery, but but it's going
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: to be so much more than that. It's going to
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: be a reckoning of sexuality and faith in your place
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: in the world and all of these themes that you
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: then explore when you embarked on this, when you when
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: you began this, when you either when you decided to
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: do this, this bike journey or you began the journey,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: what level of awareness did you did you have that
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: this was going to be your opportunity to really work
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: this out for yourself, And how much of it was, Oh,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do this crazy adventure, so everyone you
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: know thinks of me as this, you know, masculine, adventurous sort.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Honestly, the performative masculinity bit of it came later through reflection.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize that I was trying to be the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: most outdoorsy, the most man like. I know that I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: can't throw a football or throw any ball, and I
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: know that there are certain like dude things that I
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: just cannot abide. But I was like, I don't know
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: a single dude who's ridden fourteen thousand miles on a bicycle,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: so at least I'll have that metal on my jacket.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: But that was not so much conscious until later. I
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: knew that it would be a right of passage. I
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: intended that, and in the like, especially maybe ten years
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: ago fifteen years ago, there was a big movement in
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: like reclaiming masculinity in the Christian world.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: There was like a whole wild at heart all these.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: Things, and that impacted me where. And one of the
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: things they talk about is like, our culture does not
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: have a right of passage, especially for men, like to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: go from a boy to a man, and a lot
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: of traditional cultures have had that for fifty thousand years.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: And I that idea, that sense of liturgy, that sense
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: of putting your body in a thing that goes before.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: I was this and now I am this, And I
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: was like, well, this is a very sign of the
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: times that I'm going through my rite of passage, not
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: at thirteen but thirty. But with any developed society, childhood
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: is extended. So I extended it very far. And I
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: knew it was a rite of passage for me intentional.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what was on the other side. I
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: didn't think it would be so much about figuring out
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: my faith. I didn't think it would be so much
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: about figuring out my relationship with my family, sexuality.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: God.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: I really thought it would be going from an amateur
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: writer to embarking on a project to become a real writer.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: That was what I was conscious of while it was happening.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't until the reflection of actually writing the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: damn thing that I realized what was really happened opening,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: or what really had happened?
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Right, you had this. I've read an interview with you
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: where you you quoted something your friend John Chu said,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: which is, if you want to be good at something,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: you have to do it first. Yeah.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: Right, He's he's an amazing director. He just directed crazy ration.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: But an insane success story. Oh my god.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: I mean and I went to college with him and
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: he was a star in college.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: He's just an amazing So you knew.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Like this guy was gonna.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big movies, but he you know, and he's like
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: made a lot of great movies. But he's this is
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: his moment to like become like to have the runway
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: to do whatever he wants, which I'm so proud of him.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: He's just the best person in the world. And he
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: got asked quite often because he's, you know, a darling
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: of USC So he'd go back and speak to the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: film students and they'd ask, like, what do you suggest,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Like how do we make it? And he's like, if
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: you want to be good, you have to do it first.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: If He's like, you have an iPhone or a Samsung something,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: and that thing films really well. And if you're not
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: making things all the time, then I don't believe you.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Like that just means you want to be famous.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you like the idea of being that person, but
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: you're not actually in love if you, yeah, actual craft
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: of what it is to do it.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: If you want to be a writer and you don't write,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: then you don't want to be a writer. You want
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: to be known as a writer. If you want to
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: be an actor and you're not doing local theater, you
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: don't want to be an actor.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: You want to be fan.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: It's like that's if.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: You really want to do something, you'll do it wherever
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: you are, and especially in this day and age. I mean,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: some of my favorite music, I find out that the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: girl in London made it in her bedroom on her
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: laptop and put it on SoundCloud, and now it's like
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: my favorite song in Los Angeles.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: I think that's how Lord's first album was made.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know in some canyon in New Zealand,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: and now she's a household name. So if it is,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: if it doesn't billow out of you, out of out
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: of necessity, then you're doing it.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: For the wrong reason.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: And you cut your teeth. You literally cut your teeth
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: as a writer on Instagram.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: Well, well, so I didn't know I was a writer
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: until I was told I was. So this happened in
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Invisible Children. I started as I started as their lawyer.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: And then we would be in meetings and trying to
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: figure out how to articulate the campaign for high schools,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: how to like synthesize this information, and then they would
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: ask me what I thought, and I would say what
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: I thought, and they would be like, write that down,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: that's exactly it.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: And then that led.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: To okay, Jed, well, you just write this out for
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: us and then we're going to use that. And then
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: that led to, Okay, we don't want you to be
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: our lawyer anymore, hire someone else and do this full time.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, they're telling me, you're
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: really gifted at articulating synthesizing ideas in a way that
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: is approachable, in a way that a high school kid
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: can understand this complex issue. And it just kept being
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: affirmed in me just something I was doing naturally. And
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: it was right around then that Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: came out in that content. Sept of ten thousand hours
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: was being talked about everywhere, and I was just sitting
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: with some friends, I don't know what we were doing,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: drinking coffee, and we were like, what would you be
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: willing You know, in our twenties, we're trying to figure
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: out what is our ten thousand I was like, what
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: would you be willing to even do for ten thousand hours?
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: And for me, it was It dawned on me in
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: that moment, Well, I actually really enjoy writing, and my
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: favorite thing in the world is underlining sentences and books.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: That's my favorite feeling when I read something and somebody
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: says it and I didn't even know. I didn't even
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: know you could articulate something so perfectly. That was just
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: a gray cloud in my head.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: I thought until I read.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: It, it would be my dream to create sentences like that,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: and I'd be willing to spend ten thousand hours doing it.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: And so that gave me the confidence when I started
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: my bike trip, well, it gave me the confidence to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: then commit to I want to be a writer. I'm
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: going to do this trip. I'm going to write about it.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: And also I'm going to ride about it online and
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: just yeah, see if I'm any good, and and I
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: was just really willing to risk it and maybe be bad.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah I don't know. But that declarative act of like
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: saying out loud, I think is so important. Well, the
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: same way that that's how your bike trip actually came
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: to be, right, you had to like announce it one.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, I am a coward. I love to cancel plans.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: I love to think I'm going to do something and
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: then not. And so I knew I needed social pressure
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: and I needed to announce I'm going to do this thing.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: Everyone's got to know three years out so that I can't.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not like road tripping to Yosemite. It
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: was a year and a half on a bicycle in
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: countries where my mom told me I would be beheaded.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: So that's like a big deal. I needed to really
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: psyck myself up.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: And in this three year period of preparing to do
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: this ride, actually there wasn't that much preparation, right, There
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: was years in between preparation. Yeah, you were acclimating to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the idea, but during this phase it didn't dawn on
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: you that you were in certain respects walking in the
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: footsteps of your parents who were made famous by their
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: amazing trek across America, which we talked about last time, right,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: But it's like, how is that possible that it didn't
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: occur to you that you were doing something that was
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: so so much, so similar in so many ways to
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: that defining you know, act that they are most well
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: known for.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: You know, really, looking back on it, I think a
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: lot of that has to do with this theme of
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: compartmentalization that we've been talking about. I, in order to
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: not ruffle the feathers of my family, I really built
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: my own life. I went to high school alone. My
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: sister and brother went to different high schools. I just
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: really felt autonomous. And so that's what's funny, is like
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: I didn't acknowledge that I was the result of an
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: amazing family, of an amazing upbringing, of an incredible faith tradition,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: of a sense of safety, of creative parents who encourage
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: creativity and fearlessness and do what you love. I was
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: just I thought I was this unique flower that grew
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: in a desert. And you know, that is just a
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: real awakening when all of a sudden you're literally imitating
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: your parents almost exactly, and and their and their vocation
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: like travel writing memoir.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: I thought I had.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: Invented that category. Yeah, it's incredible. How willfully will for it?
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Willfully ignorant I can be.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: I want to explore the faith aspect of this a
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: little bit more deeply, like in the in the process
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: of this adventure that you go on, how you and
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: in the wake of that, and now writing about it,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: like where where are you today? In your relationship to Christianity,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: faith the Evangelical Church.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: I've really been influenced by a teacher named Father Richard Rhor.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: He's a Franciscan Friar, I believe, and he's written a
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: lot about non dualism and similar to these amazing writers
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: like Thomas Martin, and he's kind of expanded outside of Christianity.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Is just this or that you believe Jesus is the
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: Son of God or you don't. You believe he literally
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: rose from the dead on the Third Day, or you
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: don't you're a Christian or you're not. And there's such
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: a simply that's such a simplistic view of the world.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: And what Father Richard says is the path to enlightenment
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: is to transcend and include.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: And so when you move, when.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: You feel like you've moved through something and it's no
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: longer for you, understand that it was for you because
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: it brought you here. And it's not saying that like
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: I'm wiser than evangelical Christianity or something. I'm just saying
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: that I tried it. I tried it my damnedest. I
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: went full bore and had my first kiss at twenty eight,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: first time I had sex with thirty. And that's because
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: I tried it real hard. I went, I led Bible studies.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: I would like leave law school every Tuesday every Friday
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: and lead these high school Bible studies because I was like,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be the best. I'm going to like
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: fail my classes. I almost failed a semester of law
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: school because a friend of mine went into a coma
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: and we did intercessory prayer every night. I didn't sleep,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't even go to classes trying to save him,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: which didn't work. And I mean, I did full bore that,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: and it did that. Just that worldview did not serve
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: me to speak very pragmatically, and yet it certainly did
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: serve me. It gave me a lot of the infrastructure
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: of my mind, which I now hold very dear. And so,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: but to transcend and include is to thank it for
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: what it is and understand that it's incredibly integral into
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: the fabric of reality.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: But also there's more.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: And so I would say I still call myself a Christian,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: I would call myself a mystic Christian in the sense
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: where I reject, I reject as a strong word. I
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: do not feel drawn to evangelical Christianity's obsession with certainty.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: Either you believe the Bible like us, or you're deceived.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: You know, like, this is exactly how old the earth is,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: this is exactly what God meant. There's just a lot
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: of obsession with certainty, because when the world is chaotic,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: it's actually nice to know some things for certain and
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: to have somebody stand on stage and tell you life
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: is exactly like this, and if you do a B
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: and C, you're going to live for eternity in paradise.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: If your world is falling apart. That is very comforting.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Yea antidote to fear. It allows you to sleep well
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: at night.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: And so I really respect and love that, and I
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: love Jesus, and I believe a lot of things about Jesus.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: But I just don't believe in.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: The certainty and the exclusion and the tightness of that
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: narrative anymore.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: It sounds not dissimilar from the kind of things that
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: Rob Belt talks about.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: Well, that's I mean, the ever widening circle. If you
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: go on this journey and you have the disposition to
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: be curious about other ways of thinking and you don't
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: lock in, I mean that was the thing where like
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: there was evangelicalism never stood a chance with me because
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: I'm too curious and I too deeply like hold things
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: with an open hand. I don't to me locking in
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: like this must be how life is only this, and
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: then I see it bang up against reality over and
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again. And then all of
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: a sudden your brain has to be a lawyer to
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: convince you that your old worldview still fits in with reality,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: and you're constantly in this like legal battle with the
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: worldview you accepted as truth and new evidence. I mean,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: that's the history of the Christian Church is then like
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: scrambling to and I was like that just is not
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: I don't want to constantly scramble. I just want to
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: hold it with an open hand and see what comes.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: But also understand that I come from a tradition, I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: come from a sincere relationship with God that I still have.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: And while my language may have expanded, my understanding, my
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: understanding of the universe may have changed expanded. I don't
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: reject it. I don't believe it. I don't want to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: even say it hurt me. It taught me.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: How. Was at a conference this past weekend on the
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: East Coast and one of the speakers was so amazing.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: This woman, Nadia Bowls Webber. Have you ever heard of her.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: She's a Lutheran pastor, but if you saw her, you
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: would think that she plays bass in a punk rock
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: band in the East village.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: She's got sleeve tattoos down both arms, like this wild
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: gray hair about my age, and just like fire in
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: her eyes and like this spirit and she rocks like
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: the collar but she cuts the sleeves off the shirt
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: and it's just like I'm like I loves yeah, Like wow,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: she was really really powerful. I'm going to try to
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: get her on the podcast. But you know, pastor, Lutheran
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: pastor in Denver.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a really special thing. There's I mean,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: I don't remember the exact statistic, but it's something like
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: eighty five million American consider themselves born again Christians, which
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: is a lot, it's almost a third. And that and
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: then if you include Catholics and all these other things,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: it's like most of America. And so if you cannot
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: speak that language and you cannot see the world that way,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: then you're then you're going to lose a lot of
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: communication and connection with human beings all around you.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: It's such an important point. I mean, as somebody who
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: who grew up in Tennessee, born of the evangelical tradition,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: this this mystic stuck in a millennial body as Tom
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: Shehadyah is referred to you as h and as somebody
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: who you know, grew up in and what sounds like
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: a relatively conservative community, but you being this progressive, how
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: do you you know, what's your perspective when you look
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: at the dialogue that we're having right now about culture,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: about politics, about social mores. It's a very toxic scenario
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: that we find ourselves in. And I'm always thinking about
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: ways to bridge that divide. You know, we're so siloed,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: of course, I mean, it's a it's a Trope at
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: this point. But if we don't find ways to exude
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: compassion and ways of shelving our judgment in the interest
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: of trying to bridge this divide so that we can
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: be the United the United States of America, we're in
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: big trouble.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: Well. Jonathan Heit talks a lot about this in his
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: book Righteous Mind, which was so influential in my thinking.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: I recommend everybody read it. But in order to have unity,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: of any kind of nationalistic unity, you need a common enemy.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: So the more divided a country gets, often it means
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: the more the more we bicker about smaller and smaller things.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: It's actually like a it signifies a pretty healthy society
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: where you're freaking out over little nuanced things happening in government.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: Whereas like when you have a common enemy like Pearl
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: Harbor or Hitler. I mean that's why the Greatest, the
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: Greatest generation rose out of the world having a common enemy,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: the Axis Powers, and it's it created this entire generation
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: of Americans that felt unified in we are America. We
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: stand for virtue, we stand for valor, we stand for
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: democracy against tyrants. And you still see people using that
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: language in a generation like mine where war is so
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: bifurcated into things that don't feel like war. They feel
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: like response to roism. They feel like so provincial and
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: strange and alien and complex, and like why are we
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: even fighting this to where?
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Now?
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Well, you know a lot of people my age see
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: someone in uniform and they have mixed emotions about it.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: They're not like Wow, what a hero, They're like, wow,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: what are you doing over there?
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: And that really, you know, the breakdown probably began with Vietnam.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: I wasn't alive, but what I perceive of history and
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: so and we felt it a little bit in my
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: lifetime with nine to eleven, where America became America for
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: like six months or something, and I remember feeling that,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: like I remember seeing an American flag on like September nineteenth,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one, and thinking, I love this country
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: and what we stand for, and I want to kiss
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: everyone I see on the street. Because there was this
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: idea of having a common enemy. We're very complex apes
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: who are a tribe, and our tribes have just continued
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: to expand. So the more complex we get, the more
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: difficult it will be to have unity as a globalized world,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: As a nation and so 'voll Harari, as he said
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: on your show, thinks climate change could do that. But
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: as you said, it's so ephemeral, it's really hard to
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: like hate a temperature degree difference, you know, like what
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: does that even look like? In terms of the way
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: in which we speak to each other in the like
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: complete falling apart of civil discourse. I think a lot
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: of it has to do with us reverting to these
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: natural instincts of creating enemies out of those that disagree
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: with us. The moment you can like call a group
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: of people cockroaches, you dehumanize them and you know, or
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: deplorables or whatever you want to say, and you create
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: a categorical stereotype that is now able to be crushed.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: And I was listening to this interview of Oprah by
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: Van Jones the other day and Van Jones asked her,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: if you had ten minutes alone with Donald Trump, what
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: would you say to him? And I loved her answer.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: I'm still thinking about her answer, but she said.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: I don't really speak to people. If I won't, I
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: won't speak to someone if I know I won't be heard,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: and so I'd probably be silent or she said something
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: like that, and I really thought about if you can't
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: be heard, and this is what happens when a liberal
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: and a conservative are shouting at each other.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody's listening.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: No one's listening, I mean. And that's actually brain chemistry.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: When you're in an argument, the part of your brain
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: that learns new information loses blood. The part of your
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: brain that is the filing cabinets of your own argument
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: is raging with neuron like firing, and so you, the
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: part of you that learns is turned off. The part
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: of you that defends its preheld positions is on raging
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: and so heated arguments. That's why nothing good has ever
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: happened on Twitter except being surprised by news. Is like,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: no one in a Twitter battle ever reaches a new idea.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: It's rare. I'm sure it's happened.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: But so I think.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: I think there's places, certainly important places for people to
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: be angry. Anger is an expression of pain, is an
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: importance expression of pain, and it gets attention and draws
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: attention to a cause. And then I think there's important
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: places for people who fly thirty thousand feet above and say,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: let's understand where you're coming from. Let's understand where you're
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: coming from, and let's let let you both reach a
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: place of relative safety where you can hear each other.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: And so how do you do that in a one
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: on one? I mean, you live you live in Silver Lake,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: but you go home like your home all the time. Right,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: you're in Tennessee, You're you're you're part of that community
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: still back there. Oh yeah, So when you are engaging
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: somebody you know one on one, or at a dinner
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: party or you're with your mom, what does that look like?
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: If you do not have respect for the person you're
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: talking to, and if you cannot entertain the fact that
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: you might be wrong, you cannot have civil discourse.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: It becomes charity.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: At that point, it becomes patronizing, it becomes propaganda. I
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: don't know that everything I believe is true. I believe
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: certain things have significant evidence and other things do not.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: I've never seen a polar bear die from global warming,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: but I know a lot of scientists agree that it's happening,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: and so I tend to trust experts. I am a
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: progressive person. I'm socially progressive. I've seen how progressive policies
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: have impacted my life as a gay man, and the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: life of my black friends, the life of people of
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: people of color. In my life, I've seen how progressive
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: policies have changed history. I've also seen how hyper far
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: left policies have destroyed entire nations, and so fiscally conservative
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: people have a lot of good ideas, and I for me,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: you can have a good conversation with anyone if you're
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: curious about what they think and why they think it.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: And a lot of times people have never asked them,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: and so I tend to remove myself. I feel like
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: a very small ant on a very large planet, and
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: so screaming at my cousin for voting for Trump and
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: believing that climate change is not real feels like it's
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: going to give me high blood pressure. And I don't
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: know what's going to change. Whereas if I am curious
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: about why he thinks that way, and then I make
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: him feel safe and respected, he may be curious about
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: why I feel that way. And I mean, and I've
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: had conservative friends tell me you're the only liberal person
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: I can talk to, and they're like, why is everyone
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: so angry? And you know, and I like try to
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: break it down, and I'm like, because they're scared.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a two way street. But I think
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: if you approach those conversations from a perspective of curiosity,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: like you said, you know, or to come from this
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: place of that's interesting, tell me more about that, you know,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: I want to understand.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: And I feel like that's the note I play in
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: the conversation, that's my personality. I believe that the angry,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: screaming activist is also an instrument in the orchestra.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah, all the everybody has their part to play.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: Those people are important because they they they toe that
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: line or they show you where that line is. And
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: they may not be converting people to their perspective, but
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: they're letting you know where where that line for them exists.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: And I'll speak from experience this Ferguson. The marches in
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: Ferguson happened in twenty fourteen while I was on my
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: bike trip and I thought I was this open eyed,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: progressive Los Angeles person, And I remember they were marching
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: through the streets and I was like, why are these
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: black people so angry? Like how did they just mobilize
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: after this one random person was killed? Like I just
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: was so ignorant, and that rage and mobilization that I
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: was like, there must be some current of truth in
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: what's going on and what they're saying, or these people
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: could not unify to make a statement like this, the
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: streets are full of weeping black people, and that, like
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: that expression of rage anger woke me up to act,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: start asking questions and say, clearly, what I thought was
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: a post racial America was wrong, and that is like
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: obviously let our whole country down. This conversation and the
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: tipping point was anger.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Very true, you know, very true. I've had my own
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: journey with that as well, where you think, oh, you know,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I'm a liberal, I know what's going on, and then
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: something gets thrown in your face and you realize like, oh,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: I still have growth, yeah, in this place. But to
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: be able to hear that and not just react and
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: be defensive, but to like take it in, pause, meditate
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: for ten minutes.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's and people who are defensive, people who
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: are quick to anger, that is always rooted in fear
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: and the fact that.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: Fear that just might be true, and fear.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: That their safety is compromised.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: You know it, and it's sincere, and so you learning
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: like through other people. Of course, some people are hot
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: heads and they're angry too often over small things. But oftentimes,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: especially when there's an entire angry culture or there's an
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: entire movement, then you need to listen that there is truth,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: There is deep truth woven in there. That is the
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: immune system of humanity flaring up.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: Speaking of truth. Truth is the touchstone in your writing.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: It's all about personal truth and trying to find a
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: way to tap into universal, universal truth by by expressing
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: your personal truth. And I know firsthand how difficult that
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: can be when you're writing a book that people are
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: going to read and there's other human beings involved that
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: happen to be real people in your life. So how
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: do you how did you you know, tiptoe around that.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you if you want to write memoirs and
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: you write about your real life, it's really hard because
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: you don't live probably, you don't live alone on an island.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: You live around people that you love who maybe there
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: aren't maybe they aren't even villains or evil. Maybe they
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: love you, and through their love of you, they hurt you.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying?
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: Like, this is my life ship with my family, They
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: all we love each other so much, and by very
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: nature of doing your best and the circumstance of my
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: identity and figuring it out, there was pain. And everyone
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: is doing their best and just outpouring love, and there's
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: incredible pain.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't intentional the infliction of that pain never
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: and none of them signed up to be written about in.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: A book exactly.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: And so one thing that was really influential for me
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: was I bought Jack Kerouac's book book Big Sir.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I think it was this book.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: It was one of his books, and I always read
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: the introduction because these like literary professors write such great
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: like overviews of what's going on. And one of the
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: things this intro said was Jack Kerouac his books are
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: full of colorful, inappropriate wild people and you'll never hear
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: him say.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: A bad word about any of them.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: And what it is is he's able to paint these people,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: but you can tell he likes them, even though they're
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: doing the craziest shit and they're being horrible to him
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: or whatever. He likes them, and you can you can
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: feel that in the page and on the page and
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: in the way he talks about them. And I am
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: that way, I don't have any enemies in this world.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: I couldn't love my family more. I love them the most.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: I couldn't love my friend Weston who went on the
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: trip with me. His real name is Philip and he
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: is the.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: Well, if you're going to say it here, why didn't
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: you just write Philip in the book? Well?
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: No, The thing is, it's the same reason Sea covers
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: her face with a wig. You can google her face
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: at any moment. But it's just just one level. It's
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: one one step removed, just gives like, I don't know,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit more privacy.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: And he is very.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: Wild in the book, I mean compared to me, who's
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: like recovering goody two shoes. So I was just like,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give you one step or move. He
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: didn't want me to do that. I just wanted to.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: And that's probably a little bit of being triggered by
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: Cony twenty twelve. And you never know when you put
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: something out into the world how people are going to
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: take it. And so I was like, I'm just going
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: to give you one one clique. But I wanted to
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: write honestly about people from the position of I love you,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: but what you do is interesting, and that kind of
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: like disconnection and disassociation I hope is conveyed in the book.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: Did you have that conversation with certain people beforehand? No?
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: I did it afterwards. Well, with Philip, I did. He
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: said he gave me permission to write whatever I wanted.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: With my parents, I didn't. I actually thought I was
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: extra loving and generous and trying to write about them
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: but also truthfully, and it was hard. My mom read
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: the book and was really hurt by the way I
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: spoke about her.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: And that's.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: You know, if I'm just like rich, you're like one
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: of the best guys, we're like best friends, and just
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: like you know, you're kind of like he's kind of cheap,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: but he's like the best guy. Like all you'll hear
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: is you think I'm cheap. You know, your brain, if
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: someone speaks about you in anything but an overflowingly congratulatory
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: or celebratory way, that's what you latch onto, and especially
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: when they have somewhat of a it's going to be
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: in public and you don't have a way to defend
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: yourself or give your own perspective. I learned so much
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: about my mom from her reaction to my book. And
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: my misunderstanding of my own childhood now such as such
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: as I thought she was this like just Jesus loving.
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, she is.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: Person who forced us to go to church all the
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: time because we just had to love Jesus little. Did
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: I really comprehend how hard it is to raise three
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: kids alone, and when your dad is off somewhere writing
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: books and not in the picture enough, and it's on
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: you and you have no money. The only real safe
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: place to go in that time was for her to
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: take us to all these church events and take us
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: on retreats and make us go on these things because
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: it's like, I can't handle all these kids at once.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: I mean I have friends who are married raising one
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: kid right now and they can hardly brush their teeth.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, how on earth did my mother do this?
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: I have no idea, And so that's something. Of course.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: I never perceived that my mom was a human until
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: I was about twenty two. I thought she was this
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: like force of nature, as a lot of us do.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: And there are those moments that land on you like
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: bricks where you realize that your mom is a sixteen
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: year old girl who got older. You know, your mom
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: is you who got a little older, and that I mean,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: that's just things I can't see. And when you look
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: back on your own childhood, your truth is your truth.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: So I don't I didn't change it in the book
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: of how I perceived it, because that is exactly how
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: it is. But she gave me some perspectives of her
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: experience that I was like, wow, I and I included
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: some of that in there, and she Okay, Now she's
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: nervous about the book coming out. Listen, she's she is
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: a wise woman who's been through a lot and walked
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: across America and had a very public, brutal divorce with
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: a famous author and her famous and she's lived and
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: so she is not a fragile woman. And she's got
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: God on her side, and.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: She does, yes, she does. So I'm not worried about her.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, our relationship is complicated, you know, and it's
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: still I mean, I'm in that flux as we record
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: this podcast. I don't know when I talk to her
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: next what it'll be like, you know. So, but we
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: we both even when we have really intense email exchanges,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: we're not very confrontational in person, but we can get
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: We're both writers so we get real deep in the
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: emails and there they begin. It's almost like we took
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: conflict resolution courses. They always begin and end with utter
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: adoration and love and I will never leave you, will
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: never stop loving you. And then you say the really
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: hard shit and then you land it with I will
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: never stop loving you, I will never leave you, I
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: will be there and that, like.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: So it's safe.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: It just allows you to like express this thing and no,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: you're not about to lose a relationship. There might be boundaries,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: there might be things we never see eye to eye on,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: but the foundation of the relationship will never leave, right.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: Barb, Right, yeah, yeah. Dream. The best is when you
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: do these Instagram stories and you're with Barb and she's
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: getting loose with her friends.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: They're i mean, they're like, this is the thing. She's
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: very easy to love. I mean, she's the most incredible woman.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: My dad is an amazing man. My family is amazing.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: But that's that's the big complicated I mean. And guess
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: what I'm not. I'm not like the first person to
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: write about I'm not the first gay boy to write about.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: Their mother in a memoir. You know what I'm saying.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: This is like.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: Warn territory, right, But it's not running with scissors. No,
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: it's different. And that's like, what's so interesting is every
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: time you hear someone tell a true story, no matter
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: how extreme it is, you're able to transpose that over
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: your life and glean some truth about your own experience.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: One of my one of my best friends out here
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: is raised, this beautiful woman. She's raised Orthodox Jewish and
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: never met a gentile until she was nineteen, then lived
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: on like Pico Robertson, like right in the middle of.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: La and.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: Incredibly Jewish family, incredible Jewish family. And she is in
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: her thirties now and unmarried, and that's really hard for
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: her family, and she feels like a failure. And yet
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: she also is like the dopest girl I've ever met,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: and the coolest and lives the most amazing life and
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: everyone loves her and is so successful. And she has
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: this so similar to me experience of shame and the
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: influence of the culture and tradition in which she was raised,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: her love of God and wanted to do right by God,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: her love of family and wanted to do right by family.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: And so when I was telling her about my book
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: and how it breaks down. She started like crying and
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: she was like, that's my story. I'm like, no, it's not.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: And I'm a gay Christian boy and she's like, no,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: that is my exact story.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: Wow. And so it's just interesting how expences. That's because
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: it's truth supersedes all right, and if you're speaking from
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: a place of truth, you're gonna you're going to tap
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: into some vein of humanity that we all share. And
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: that's what great writing is well.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 3: And that's where I remember reading.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: I think it's a Paris review. They do these amazing
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: collections of author interviews and one of the guy. The
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: guy interviewed this woman and said, what when you're writing
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: this novel, did you know what it would mean?
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 3: Did you?
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: Did you like intentionally put in your message in the story.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: And she's like, I don't believe in doing that. She's like,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: I just believe in telling true stories because the truth
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: is the teacher, not me, and so if I just
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: tell the truth, then it'll have a message.
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: Whatever message is meant to be conveyed will percolate out right.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: And the moment you try to be the teacher, then
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: you're probably getting it a little wrong. And so that
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 2: with this book, I really tried, and you can tell
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: I'm very open about everything, and I'm very much so
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: like that in the book because I'm like, it doesn't
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: serve me to hold a secret. It sits inside my
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: core and like burns and rots, I might as well
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: puke it up in this book and then it's out there.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: I saw this with I've seen.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: This happen time and time again, especially in the Christian world,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: hidden secrets that destroy someone's reputation and identity when they
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: come out later destroy And so I'm like, well, if
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: I have no secrets, then guess what, you can't destroy
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: my reputation because if you.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: Know me, you know I can get anything on you. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: because you're out about it. But that doesn't mean that
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: it isn't difficult to be that vulnerable on the page.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: It takes a lot of courage, you know, to be like, Okay,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: am I really going to say this about myself or
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: this thing that I'm not proud of, or this this
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: you know, event that occurred around which I still harbor
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: some shame. Right, It's terrifying.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: You know, a lot of that terror is mitigated when
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: you have a really tight knit community of friends that
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: you respect and that respect you, did you.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: Let them read pages. I let one.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: I let my best friend Lauren read it first.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: But I didn't let people read it as I was
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: going because I didn't want I didn't want, like the
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: ship to keep turning over and over again at night.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: I wanted to like get it all out and then
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: figure out what it was. And so once it was
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: all out and my editors went at it, because I
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: also my editors didn't know me, and so I really
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: respected their notes because most readers of a book don't
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: know you, hopefully, and so if they're like, this doesn't
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: make sense, their notes are important.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: And so once they had.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: Gone through and we've done all those edits, then I
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: gave it to my friends to read, just because they're
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: my true My goal is actually to make them like it.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: If they respect my work, then I'm done because I
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: respect them the most. And so, and what's so special
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: about it is that the ones that have read it
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: are really touched by it, and they're proud of me,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: and they've underlined things, which is my dream, right and so.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: You've already won. Haw's it even come out yet?
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: I feel one hundred percent I feel people ask me
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: my nervous Now. The thing is like, I've written a
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: thing that is now a tool that I hope it
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: gets in the hands of a lot of people struggling
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: with identity.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: And I'm proud of it. My friends are proud of me.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: That's You're living a blessed life, I know.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing is if you can, if you
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: are lucky enough to find a community of friends that
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: you respect, that respect you, a lot of things that
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: people call courage just become natural, like being open and
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: honest about your life. I don't fear abandonment at all
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: because this community of friends that I have know everything
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: about me and already won't leave me.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, you're somebody who's amazing with friends,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: and then I realize, like, well, I haven't seen you
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: in three years, and I'm basing that entirely on this
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: like projected relationship that I have with you, based on
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: me following your social media. But all Indisha is there
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: that you surround yourself with a lot of good people
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: that you trust and rely on and you're very much
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: a part of a community.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is I'm a hypersocial person. I'm a
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: double extrovert. I get energy by being around other people,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: and I think by speaking. So if I'm alone, I'm
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: asleep and or meditating now right, Yeah, that's my.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: Breathe.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: So I just am very fortunate to have tracked these
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: people down and force them to be my friends against
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: their will.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: And it's just I don't know. I really feel like.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: When a human being is in community, they are most alive,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: at least for me, in the fullness of purpose. And
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: I do think a lot of those things come through
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: when you feel part of and maybe this is our
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: evolved DNA to be in a tribe, and when the
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: tribe is united and feeling really close knit, you feel safe.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: You feel like you can take on any bad guys.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: You feel like you're gonna make it. And with that
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: foundation of a sense of safety, you can start moving
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know, you can start
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: pursuing self actualization, you can start cultivating respect and.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: Character because the safety net is there.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big for me. That's the biggest thing.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: And I always when people are not ready, if you're
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: forty six and in the closet, if you don't feel safe,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: I don't blame you for staying in that closet. If
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: you're in any kind of situation and you don't feel safe,
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: that's courage when you step out and you do not
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: feel safe, but something in you demands that you take
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: that step. I have rarely done that. I mean, I
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: was scared to do this bike trip, for sure. That's
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: like the most courageous thing I've ever done. But most
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: of the things I do are because I feel unconditional
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: love and therefore can really pursue the truth of who
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: I am with Gusto, Right.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: It's powerful, man, It's really powerful. In the In the
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: uh writing of this book, the original idea was that
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: you were gonna do this as a self published thing, right,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: and then a certain wise person talk to you out
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, originally, of course I wanted it to
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: be published by a publisher. But I tried and no
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: one was biting. And I had amazing, this amazing agent,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: and she was like, I'm sorry, I've sent it to
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: so many people and they're just not biting.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe we need to rework it.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 3: I don't know what was the feedback, just this is
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 3: a travelogue.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: The feedback was, oh great, another gay guy like mad
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: at his mom. Wow, you like are on a bicycle.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: They're just like and really it was really it was, oh,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: you're like Instagram famous. That's not legitimate literature. So no,
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: And I was like, well, you know, and this Invisible
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: Children trained me to be like a raucous punk. So
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: I was like, we're in a new time and publishing
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: is dying and I'm gonna self publishing.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: You're I'm going to show you.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: And so I started to and that is a way,
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: one hundred percent. It's away and people have had huge
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: success doing and it's an incredible thing.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: I do not mean to deny that it's not.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: But one thing that I know that I am is
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: really scatter rained and batt at a lot of things
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: that involve any level of organization. And so I was
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: at a conference up in northern California and Cheryl Strade
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: was there and I had met her once before in
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: Tell You Ride at a film festival, and so we
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: kind of knew each other. Hi, Hi, Hi, you know,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: And then I had given a talk that morning, so
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: she had heard me give my talk, which like gives
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: you a little bit of legitimacy of like they know
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: a little bit about you.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: You've been vetted a little bit. Yeah.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: So we're we're sitting at lunch and she I probably
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: sat next to her, just like he this seat taken
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: and sat there and she goes, tell me about this
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: book you're working on, like what's tell me about it?
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: And she's just like such a good listener and she
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: has this magic Jennesse quah that makes you just want
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: to tell her everything, which is why she's such a
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: great advice columnist and vice giver.
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 3: And I told her that I tried.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: To publish and nobody would buy it and it's a
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: new world and I'm just going to self publish and
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: do it myself. And she said to me, I mean,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: I don't even know her. And she said to me, Okay,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: do you want me to encourage you or do you
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: want my advice? Which I loved. I was like, whoe badass, Yes,
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: I want your advice.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: I can take it.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: And she said, if you're anything like me, you don't
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: want to be a publicist, a marketer, a copy editor,
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: an editor, a shipping company, and a graphic design a
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: graphic designer photography and develop relationships with six thousand bookstores
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: across the US. If you're anything like me. You want
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: to be a writer. You want to focus on writing.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: And she was like, you can self publish if you want,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: but all of those other pieces are very important to success.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: And so what's great about traditional publishing is that they
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: are professional. They have hired actual individuals who do all
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: of those jobs exceptionally well, and so you get to
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: write and focus on writing. And she was like, what
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you is that if no one's biting,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: I would say it's probably not good enough. Yet you
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: need to keep working on it. And that's a hard
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: pill to swallow, but is the best advice anyone ever
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: gave me. I said, thank you, I'm going to do that.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: I'm going to think about it, and then I'm going
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: to do that. And right at that moment, I had
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: this other agent reach out to me and he said,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: I can get your book sold.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 3: Give me a chance.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: And my other my agent at the time, who was
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: a dream she was like, listen, it's my job to
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: get you a book deal.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 3: If I can do that for you, go for it.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: Like if someone thinks they can, like, all I want
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: is for you to get this book done. So she
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: released me. I went with this new guy. We reworked it,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: retooled it, went out a couple months later and sold
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: it too.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: Did you go back to houses you had already submitted
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: to Yes, because that's like that's not coming from zero,
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: that's coming from behind. Yeah. They already are coming in
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: saying didn't I say no to this already? Yeah.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: The thing is we went to this new agent was
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 2: older and had real cred with certain imprints at these
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: agents or at these publishers, and so he was like,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: we've reworked this, I want you to look at it again.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: And they get so many submissions they probably barely remembered
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: what I had submitted before, and a few of them
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: really liked it, and specifically Penguin, Random Houses, Imprint Convergent
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: really liked it.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: And they courted me.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: And I mean it was a really special experience and
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: a dream come true. And I think, Wow, if Cheryl
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: Strade hadn't hadn't spoken her truth to me in a
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: way in which to bring it back to what we
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: were saying before, I was in a position to hear her.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: I wasn't defensive became your millennial snowflakeism. Yeah, I hear.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: I hardly let the snowflake melt and just became water
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: and absorbed her.
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 3: And I heard her and it changed my life.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: And now I have this book, and she gave us
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: this amazing blurb which.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: We couldn't run on the first front.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: She's so special and such an incredible influence on so
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: many people's lives.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: And as I step into this world.
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: Where I speak openly about myself, my problems, my mistakes,
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: my shames, she has walked that road really successfully.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: She's the standard bearer. I mean for the three people
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: that are listening who don't know who she is. She
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: wrote wild, this incredible memoirs Me Beautiful Things, Yeah, with Witherspoon.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: She writes to your Sugars. I guess it's also a podcast. Amazing.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: She's an incredible human being.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: So, and for her to read the book, that was
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: my biggest fear was for her to.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 3: Be like, ah, proud of you.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: You did it, you know, like a very general look
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: what you did, which is a code for I was
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: so bored. And she really liked the book and gave
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: me this beautiful quote that we're going to print on
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: the second pass, and just I mean that it's one
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: thing to have my best friends who know me to
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: my core.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: Get what I'm trying to say.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: But to have someone who knows me tangentially, not really
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: and really through a professional context, who is like the
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: peak of their to look down at me at the
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: bottom of the mountain and say you're doing a good
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: job is really a powerful thing to hear.
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: It's huge and continuing in that vein of like mentors
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: and like for some reason you being this magnet for
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: hanging out with cool people. How did I know Tom
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: Shadyac has been like this mentor to you and has
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: just impact on you. I mean, how did that come about?
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, what is it that he injected into
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: the jet equation?
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: He has injected more into the equation than anyone in
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: my life, I would venture to say, in terms of
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: giving me language to restructure my entire thinking. And sometimes
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: he did it in ways that I wasn't able to hear.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: Like he told me things that I didn't like that
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: I liked three years later.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 3: And it's so funny they think.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: About storytelling or about about my worldview.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, he he told me early on when I
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: was telling him that I don't act on my sexuality
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: because the Bible says. So he goes, you got to
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: let the Bible go, and I was not ready to
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: hear that. I was like, aha, you're a heretic. Mm
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: I can't trust you anymore. And what he meant by
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: that is you can't worship the Bible. You need to
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: worship God. And another thing he told me once when
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: I'm processing all this with him, he's so generous with
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: his time to even talk to me back then, was
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: you know, I was talking about dealing with sexuality and
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: faith and all these things, and I was so deep
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: in it, and he said, Jed, let me ask you
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: a question. Where does your allegiance lie. Is your allegiance
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: with your tradition with is your allegiance with Christianity? Or
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: is your allegiance with the truth. And I was like, well,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: I think that's a trick question because Christanity is the truth.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: But I would say the truth, and he goes, okay,
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: that's all I ask is that you keep it there.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: And that was like somebody with an a hammer and
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: a nail and a marble statutes going and making that
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: one little crack to break my whole worship of certainty apart.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: Where if my allegiance is with the truth, then I
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: do not fear new evidence from experience, from the outside world,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: from my heart because the truth is the truth is
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: the truth. It is unshakable. So God is not scared
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: by someone challenging him or her or it. The Bible
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: is not scared. The Truth is not scared. And yet
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: there was so much anxiety in defending this tiny little
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: bit of certain truth that my worldview had, and it
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: was so anxious of being perverted and changed and somebody
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: ruining it that when he said that those words, and
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: when he said it then it didn't land on me
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: the way it lands on me now. He's just really
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: good at telling you things that you're not ready to hear,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: and then you thank him years later.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: And so how does that manifest in your life and
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: in your awareness and in your writing and how you
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: carry yourself?
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: Well that, I mean fully, it manifests in I am
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: eternally teachable. There is nothing, there is nothing that I
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: believe that I could not change my belief about because
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't actually care what the truth is.
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: I just believe that it exists. I have no allegiance
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: to what I think it is. It could change, and now,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: of course the.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: More evident relief. It's like it's such a relief.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: It is such a relief I have nothing to defend,
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: and it just the truth is God is so much
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: bigger that it doesn't need defense, and that is such
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: a exhale of life that I try to embody every day.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: So when you're mining your psyche and your experience to
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: find that truth and make its way onto the page,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: what are the devices that you use? Like, what is
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: the litmus test of truth for you?
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: Great question.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: I think I pursue truth not because it's important, but
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: because it feels good. It just when I learn something
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: new that feels true and I recognize it as true,
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: it feels it is a rush.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: Like these are your feelings, of.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: Course, I mean I don't actually believe in anything but feelings.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, there's obviously math and physics, but
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: humans are feelings and our o limbic system is way
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: older than the rest of our frontal cortex. So it's
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: like there's a lot of truth in that. And when
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: I learn something new, like my phone, the notes on
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: section on my phone is full of moments that where
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: that electricity of recognition shocked me, and I'm like, can
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: I write it down? And then that often becomes something
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: I write about on Instagram, and I feel no compulsion
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: to write regularly. I feel no compulsion like, oh, I
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: haven't done the moment. I have an electric thought, I
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: write it down and then I process it and then
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: I put it out there. And maybe it's a dumb thought,
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: but it felt like something true and I'm just gonna
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: test it. And what's fun about put it testing those
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: thoughts with the world is that if you get pushback
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: or someone says you're thinking wrongly or that's not my experience,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: then I'm like, ooh, good point, you know, like let's
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: roll with this. And so yeah, my litmus test is
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: really as I observe and absorb living as a human being,
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: and my brain, the pattern recognition software in my brain
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 2: recognizes things work like this, things don't work like this.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: So when some when I see something new that lights
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: up and matches other patterns, that interests me.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why aren't you've like conditioned yourself to
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: recognize it?
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it, And and then I try to
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: find language for it, and oftentimes the language comes in
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: just a few words, and then I'll unpack it, which
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: is I mean, it's the best feeling.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: It's so it's my favorite thing to do when I
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: read these these posts on Instagram. They're so naturalistic, but
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: it feels like, on some level a stream of consciousness.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: But it's also so well crafted and composed, and I'm like, God,
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: damn it, it looks like he wrote that in ten seconds.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: Please tell me it took him like three hours to go.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: I mean sometimes usually it takes me just I don't know,
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: fifteen minutes or something where I like, and I generally
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: do it where I type it out in the note
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: section so that I can like read it and reread it.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't just natively put it into Instagram. It
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: depends on what it is.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: I used to do that a lot, but then I
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: would Instagram would freeze or something and I would lose it.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, the composition window is so narrow.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 3: Right, and I need to see it.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I do it in the note section, and
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: I'm normally like sitting on my couch or at a
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: coffee shop, and it'll just come like I'll be reading
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: a book or doing some other work, working on emails,
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: and some electric thought will hit me and I have
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: to get it out or I can't work. And that's
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: like where posts come from, Like they bother meice, that's.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: Why you're a real writer.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: I have to yeah, they I cannot think about anything
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: else until I figure out how to word this and
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: then once I've like exhaled it, then I can go
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: about my business.
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: So what is it that you want people to take
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: from this book? My hope is.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: And now that it's done, I hadn't actually read it
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: until I recorded the audiobook, because in the past I
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: had read it over and over again during edits, and
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: so I would keep catching things and then like rewrite it.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 3: So it wasn't this but never from befow.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you. Let me interrupt you to ask
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: you one question. Did you have that experience you were
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: speaking about the benefits of that chill Strade was telling
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: you about, like going with a publisher and they handle
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: all these they're expert and all these various specialties with
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: regard to publishing. Did you have that experience where you
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: turned in the manuscript and you're like this thing is tight,
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: Like you're like every word is exactly the way that
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: I want it. I've read it a million times, the
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: punctuation is perfect, and then they have the copy editor
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: go through it and it comes back just you just can't.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: There's literally red marks on everything.
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, bloodbath.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: It's like.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: Graphic right, all the amount of blood. There's a censored
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: bar over it. I definitely had that, except I turned
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: it in without having labored over every word. I am
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: a external processor. A lot of my writing I never
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: read again.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 3: I just this is first draft.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: I wrote it, now I really hate it, and then
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 2: it's out and I sent it to them because I like,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: I get so caught up and thinking new thoughts when
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 2: I'm reading something, and I'm like, I must have thought
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: it best that time, because I'm just going to go
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 2: off on another direction if I go back.
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 3: In there and it.
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: And then once they, in their clarity and lucidity, were like,
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: this doesn't make sense. You jumped from here to hear.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 2: I know you want this to be an emotional moment,
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: but you didn't set it up before to knock it down,
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: So you got to set it up. They were really
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: good at teaching me those things, and so there was
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: many many back and forth. But I'm not I'm not
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: someone who labors over my words. I just I write
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: like I speak, I hope, and it's just like whatever
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking. Yeah, but there is structure to it, which
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: is interesting. I mean, when you tell the truth, like
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: nature has structure so it comes out. It's so interesting
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: the flow up the book and how it's set up.
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: And when I read it, I was like, Wow, this
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: really worked, you know, But I credit my editors with
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: that because I don't know what I was doing.
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know what you're doing.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: Some simple guidelines of tell the truth, try to if
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: you're gonna if something's going to happen, you need to
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 2: explain why it matters, you know, and set it up before,
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: like little things like that I knew. But outside of that,
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've never done this before.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: And so we're going to work our way back to
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: that original question about what you want people to take
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: from the book, but on this subject of you know,
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: going through the book for the first time from beginning
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: to end when you do the audiobook, what is the
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: you know what what did the book teach you? Like
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: what I'm interested in, like your journey through it from
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: this place of what you thought it would be when
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: you began to what it is now and and you
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: know what that what that process was like for you
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: in terms of teaching, you know, a teachable moment for
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: yourself in the doing right as John Chu.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it's funny because in and the like when
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: scientists research memory and stuff, they when you tell a memory,
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 2: the telling of it changes the actual memory. Like the
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 2: truest memory you'll ever have is the one that you
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: tell for the first time is actually the one you
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 2: never tell.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: It's like the moment you speak it, the neurons rearrange.
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 2: And like, there's stories from my childhood that I've told
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: so many times I'm certain none of it's true anymore.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: Well you have that little refeatory paragraph at the beginning
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: of the book.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is fun Yeah, I say at the
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: beginning of the book, like, receive this book as you
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: would a long story told by a friend over dinner,
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 2: you know, and like if they're telling a long story
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: about their past, you're not like fact checking them too hard,
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: even though like in Truth the book is very true,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: but there are things that I jumped over and things
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: I simplified because.
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: Well, you have to define truth, Like sometimes the truth
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: of a story isn't in the specific factual unfolded right totally.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: So what did it teach me?
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say one thing is interesting is as
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: you read a book, your brain constructs the narrator and
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 2: it can you can almost see them, you can feel
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: them as a real person, and as you get to
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 2: know them, especially a book written in the first person,
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: which this one is. And what is interesting is that
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: reader isn't exactly me, which as I was reading it,
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: I was like, whoa, Then there it's like me ish,
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: it's me with a little more understanding than I had
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: at the time. It's me a little bit clearer, which
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: is like, it's just an interesting thing to like imagine
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: myself as like a character in a movie that looks
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: like me, with just like the eyes are a little
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: close together, and the beard's a little something.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: And with a little bit armed with a little bit
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: more insight. It was a trick.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: It was an interesting thing to like feel that. And
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know what else I learned. I mean, I
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 2: learned that it's really fun to read your own book,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: as I just had the best time, and it's fun
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: to read it with a director and an engineer through
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: the glass and they haven't read it, and so they're
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 2: or at least the engineer hasn't read it, and so
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: they're experiencing it. Like sometimes I would see through the
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: glass he would be laughing or whatever, and it is
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: just really cool to experience that live exchange.
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't.
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 3: Know what I learned.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: Well, what do you want people to take from it?
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: I would hope that.
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 2: People would enjoy the book as an adventure story, because
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is so much magic in Latin America
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 2: that is put on display in this book, and I
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 2: was so blessed by that entire part of the world.
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, oh my god, every country, Mexico's, all of
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: Central America, I mean Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile,
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: Like each place is so different and so special, and
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: so that alone is like just young. But then the
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: journey into the interior of who you are, what you believe,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: and why. If people aren't taking that journey in their life,
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 2: they're missing a huge part of what it means to
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 2: be human. And as the title suggests, I hope that
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: people are willing to watch me do that in a
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: beautiful location in their imagination and it gives them maybe
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: some tools, maybe some dos and don'ts of taking that
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: journey themselves.
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: Do you think that you would have been able to
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: take that journey without going on this bike ride.
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, and I know people
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: in my own life who are on that journey now
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: while they have a nine to five job.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 3: Not in la but in other cities.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: No one works now.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: But I do believe that it helps to take yourself
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: out of the of the structure that your life is
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: built on, because it does shake you awake, it does
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: expose patterns of thinking and other ways of thinking and
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: being when you go and remove yourself from your comfort
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: zone that.
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 3: Begin this process for you.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: There's a line in Wild I believe it is where
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: Cheryl Strad's mother told her to put herself in the
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 2: way of beauty. And I just think about that all
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 2: the time. It's like, you need to put yourself in
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: the way because it's not necessarily going to come through
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: your front door.
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: And Yeah, you have this beautiful passage in the introduction
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: where you talk about how when we're young and everything's new,
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: and everything's an adventure and we have no preconceived ideas
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: about what to expect about what you know is going
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: to happen when we walk through the next door, because
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: everything is shiny and different, and then we get you know,
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: inured to our lives. And even if we live interesting, happy,
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 1: dynamic lives, we're still habits of creature. And there is
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: a dimming switch that occurs with that. But when you
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: travel to new places, suddenly you're able to connect with
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: that childlike nature because everything is indeed new again.
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 3: Right well, and of course we're that way.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: If we were shocked by everything that happened every day,
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 2: we would get nothing done, you know, like of course
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: we get used to things. We're like elf, everything is
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 2: exactly I mean, we don't want that, but I will
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: say they're cultivating childlike wonder once in a while at
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 2: different phases and transitions in life is important and does
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: resensitize you to the beauty of life, and also the
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: willful choosing of your own journey and path. You know,
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: accept and flow down the river, but also feel like
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 2: you chose it. That's the beautiful sweet spot.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: And we have lost touch with these rites of passage
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: and these rituals that were part and parcel of growing
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: up in a bygone era, and there's something, you know,
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: there's something sad about that.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's just a lot of things.
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: I never grew up in a real liturgical church where
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: you just like go through all these motions and you
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: have these readings and you go to the front and
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: you get the communion. But there is some I mean,
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 2: there's a reason why those things have lasted thousands of years.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: There's there is.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 2: Something about when the human when a human performs something ceremonial, ceremonious, ceremonial.
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: Ceremonial words.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: When a human performs something ceremonial, it's almost like language.
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: It gives them a metaphor a frame around this much
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 2: bigger thing, like a marriage. Ceremony gives you a before
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: and after a whatever it is. You know, when someone
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 2: dies and you take their ashes out on a surfboard
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: and everyone circles around and like that, ceremony and reverence
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: gives that feeling, that heaviness, that weight, before and after,
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 2: and that is helpful in the human brain that likes chapters.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: I think ritual is important, even if these ceremonies are
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: as simple as you know, the way you prepare tea
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: or or you know the ten minutes of meditation. I
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: think the more that we can kind of connect with
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: whatever is primordial about that it gourds our lives with
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: with the level of meaning and depth that we know
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: is true, even if it doesn't seem to make logical sense.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: I hope to have kids someday.
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 2: We'll see, but if and when I do, I will
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 2: I will like institutionalize a gap year, a gap two year,
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 2: a situation where it's like you go from high school
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 2: to college and you work and it's not going to
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: be in this country and you have to and it
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 2: is like and every kid knows that. The younger ones like,
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: oh god, that's coming up, and the other one's like,
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: oh wow.
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: I mean something like that.
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 2: I just feel is really powerful, and you do feel
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 2: like removed from the conveyor belt of education, and all
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 2: of a sudden you feel, WHOA, I have to make
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 2: my own money.
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 3: WHOA life is actually not that easy. You have to
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 3: work hard.
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know, So I'm just like thinking like something
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 2: like that there. Like my dad did this thing with
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 2: us which was really special, which is after we graduated college,
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 2: he took us on solo adventures. So when I graduated college,
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 2: I went on a seven week motorcycle trip with my dad.
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 3: Across the US.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: And we was all back roads, no freeways allowed, and
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 2: it was so special and I felt so seen and
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 2: loved by him, and he had done it with my
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: sister and he did it with my brother and whatever.
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 2: So and that felt like, I don't know if it
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 2: was a rite of passage, but it definitely felt like
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: a tradition that I was a part of and that
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 2: I had earned finally my turn.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 3: Which is a feeling people want to feel.
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but adventure was sort of woven into your your
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: growing up experience. You guys, camping trips and all kinds
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: of stuff.
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, and both my parents were writers.
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 2: So if you live in that world, it's feast or
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 2: famine or famine and famine. You know, it's it's rarely
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: you make a lot of money. So they were big
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 2: shots in the early eighties and made some good money
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 2: and then the coffers dried up, and so my childhood
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: is like, we don't fly on planes, we don't go
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: to fancy things, so we go camping because you can
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 2: drive there and it's cheap, and so it's interesting. My
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 2: love of camping and nature was also like a bit
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: of necessity for this is what we can afford to
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 2: do and still do things as a family.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 3: And see the world that we love.
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we gotta wind this down. I gotta
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: pick up my daughters. So leave us with some parting
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: thoughts about the book, about this journey that you're you're
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: about to embark on a new adventure, a new journey
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: of kind of going out and sharing about the book.
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: I already asked you, you know what you want people
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: to take away from the book, But uh, you know,
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: I want to hear, like, if there's one kind of
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: core message that you want to leave people with about
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: your writing, about your life, about this book, what would
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: that be? I would say.
• 2:17:51
  Speaker 2: I would say there's a lot of anxiety, stress, sadness,
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 2: loneliness in the world, and if that is true, one
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 2: would hope that the opposite is also true. And listen,
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know how it happened.
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know who I am.
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 2: I've had a lot of struggles in my life, but
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 2: I am living my dream. I am writing every day
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 2: to people who will actually read it and seem to
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 2: like it. I am surrounded by a community of friends
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 2: that I respect and respect me. I love my family.
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 2: It's complicated, we get in it, but we love each
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 2: other and life is good. And so I'm telling you
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 2: that when something is true, the opposite is also true.
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: And like a lot of times, you're like, well, am
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 2: I just always going to hate my job? Am I
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 2: just always going to hate the circumstance? Am I always
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: going to have? Not necessarily it can be really good.
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 2: And I am so so grateful and to the circumstances
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: of my life.
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 3: And I don't know how it happened. By the way,
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 3: I do not know.
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: You live an amazing life. I think it's definitely true
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: you cannot judge your future based on your current circumstances.
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: I think that the universe rewards those who strive. And
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: it is an amazing arc to see this person whose
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: experience could have gone sideways. You know, a gay kid
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: feeling very isolated and ashamed in an evangelical home. I mean,
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: that's a recipe for a lot of things, but not
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: necessarily somebody who's living their best, most authentic life, surrounded
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: by people that love them and in the fullest expression
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: of your creative voice. So that is something to be celebrated,
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: and it's icing on the cake that you are so
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: gifted at writing and so not just eloquent in your prose,
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: but in your commitment to the truth. And there is
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: true beauty in what you express, like I am so
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: touched every time I get to read one of your
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: Instagram posts. I'm just I'm delighted by you in every regard.
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: I think you really do have a gift. And this
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: was awkward for me because I didn't I was only
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: able to read the first ten pages of this book,
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: and I wish that I had read the whole thing.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: But I have no doubt that my praise would only
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: be more effusive, and I wish you only the best.
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: And I'm so excited for this next chapter where you
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: get to share what I already know with people all
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: over the country who are going to now enjoy your
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: words for the very first time.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a true, true privilege to talk to somebody
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: as thoughtful and big hearted as you, because epiphanies just
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 2: pour out my brain because I'm just amazed the way
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 2: that you open someone up is truly unique, and why
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: this podcast is so special, why you are so special.
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that man so you're going out on the road.
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: If people want to come and give you a hug
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: and get a book signed by you, how can they
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: learn more about where you're going to be and how
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: to make that happen.
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So October third, I'll be at Parnassis Books in
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 2: Nashville at six thirty pm. October eighth, I'll be at
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 2: Barnes and Noble at the Grove in Los Angeles at
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: seven thirty and then that there may be other dates
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 2: added on. I don't have any yet because I'm just
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 2: kind of like I did a tour this summer that
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 2: I ended up in the er from stress because I
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 2: had stress caused gastritis from over exerting myself loving on people.
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 2: I just like want to hug everybody and talk until midnight.
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: And my body was like, you just you can't do.
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: That every day, not Alma the hugging, saying.
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 3: No, I am indeed not.
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 2: And so I'm just kind of taking care of myself
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 2: a little bit and seeing what comes. But yeah, I mean,
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 2: if people want to come hang, I'll be at those
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 2: two places and more more to come for sure.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: Cool. And I forgot to add about this this thing
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: that you're involved in.
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I Beata cup.
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: It's beta. I was like, is it bitas a?
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: There is no real way to It's a Swedish word
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 2: and they pronounce it like buta, which we don't.
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 2: But it's this travel mug company that I designed and
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 2: started with my friend just because I was so tired
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: of throwing away so many cups and red cups at parties,
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 2: paper cups at coffee shops. I was like, I just
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 2: want to carry one that is pretty, that is like
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 2: me everywhere and then who knows, I'll save a thousand
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 2: cups a year.
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 3: That's kind of cool. And so that's what I did.
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: And so you designed that. Yeah that's cool because I
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: see these things all over the place and all kinds
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: of people on social media are using them and talking
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: about them.
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're cool. It's very fun to make stuff. I mean,
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: that's like another podcast, but it's really fun. All right,
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 2: So people should buy this thing. Where do you get that?
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 2: My beta Byta dot com?
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: And did you bring me a copy of the freaking book?
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 2: I have one in my car, but there's one in
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 2: the on its way to you. I mean, if you
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: just want to be underwater with books, you're supposed to
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 2: get in like two days.
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: I want you. I need your book. If you mailed
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: it to me, that's good enough.
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's on it. It's like in this guy now.
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: All right, cool, I release you to your life. If
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: you want to connect with Jed, probably the best way
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: to do that is Instagram Jadda Jenkins, where you can
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: read his musings. You have a website, but that's not
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: really the gig, right.
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, there's like links out of like stuff
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 2: the podcasts and interviews I've done.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: But right, but the most important thing is to pick
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: up the book to shake the sleeping self. Yeah, this
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 1: is this podcast is going up soon. It's September, I mean,
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: by the Times is going up. But it's right when
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: the book is coming out, I think, so pre order
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: it or just buy it and read the audio book.
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 3: It's time to go to a real bookstore and just
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 3: pick it up.
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: And that's in your get the heart cover. Right, Yeah, awesome,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you, my friend, Thank you so much, love much
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: much success with this book. Launch and come.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 3: Back and talk to me again, you know I will.
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: And and can we hang out at least once in
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: the next three years? Alright? The m