Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
13. Daniel Oppenheimer on Couples Therapy, Terry Real, and the Dream of a Normie Left
57 Plays1 month ago
Daniel Oppenheimer is a cultural and political critic, the author of Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century, and the host of the Eminent Americans Podcast.
Subscribe now
We discuss…
- Dan’s terrific NYT Magazine story, “How I Learned That The Problem In My Marriage Was Me.”
- Why some people expose themselves in front of a therapy audience (exhibitionism + desperation + wanting a really good therapist?)
- How epiphanies are a dime a dozen
- Terry Real’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It
- On raging near golf courses and roundabouts
- David Eddings, fantasy writer
- A Mitt Romney favorite and a good sci-fi book (not so much a good movie):
- The gravitational pull of a good series. Dan’s latest obsession—Dungeon Crawler Carl.
- Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”
- Patriarchy—a term suffering from “concept creep?”
- How the Left needs to get comfortable with asserting power again
- It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics
- I have a dream: a left wing made up of normies. But also, get me some of that rhydonium:
- The “Are Monkeys Inherently Racist?” episode that made me unfollow the Blocked and Reported podcast.
- What needs to be said to a lot of podcasters beating dead horses and triggering our outrage:
- Dan talking about the legacy of Rush Limbaugh
- Dan chatting withBlake Smith.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:05
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis.
00:00:18
Speaker
Daniel Oppenheimer is a cultural and political critic, the author of two books, including Exit Right, The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century.
Personal Essays and Marital Issues
00:00:30
Speaker
He's also the host of the Eminent Americans podcast, in which he grants, conveys, recognizes eminence, and some of the most interesting, under-the-radar public intellectuals out there.
00:00:45
Speaker
Dan, hello. Hey, Ken, ah nice to be on the show. Thanks for asking me. I guess. it's a Yeah, what i was I was going to say, it's always a pleasure to be on the other side of the microphone. doesn't happen often, but I love to talk about myself. So I appreciate i appreciate you you inviting me to do so.
00:01:00
Speaker
I'm honored to have you, Vaughn. As I said, i've I've done a deep dive into your work, which is all wonderful. I think one of the best things I read this year was your essay for the New York Times Magazine and the title of that.
00:01:12
Speaker
And i'm wondering I'm wondering if this is your title or not. is how I learned that the problem in my marriage was me. It was just an absolute wonderful essay.
00:01:23
Speaker
And this essay is ah where you talk about when you and your wife saw a celebrity therapist attend to some marital issues. And I want to ask what your motivations behind this piece were.
00:01:37
Speaker
And I don't ask that in any out of a sense of judgment. Like I have an unpublished relationship memoir. I feel the same inclination to talk about this part. Yeah. of my life. But as we've already talked about, you know, you're exposing yourself, you're exposing your, your marriage. It comes with some costs. So what were, um what motivations were heavy enough to outweigh some
Psychology and Therapy Insights
00:01:58
Speaker
of those costs?
00:01:58
Speaker
um I've been interested in sort of psychology and relationships, you know, forever. Like that was just the, the the family I grew up in. We were very, we weren't always so great at sort of expressing emotions and, and, and, and we weren't always the most psychologically healthy, but we were fascinated by,
00:02:15
Speaker
by those things, you know, analyze people probably in a somewhat too judgmental way, talk about relationships, you know, um you know, I probably like knew in some vague sense who Sigmund Freud was before, what psychoanalysis was before I even knew what it was in in some meaningful sense. And that just sort of persisted throughout my life.
00:02:36
Speaker
So I've, and the other thing, the other big thing we talked about is politics. Um, and, and, and so I think both of the books that I've written, particularly the first one that you mentioned exit, right. You know, are really kind of at the intersections. It's understanding people's political journeys through their, you know, with a really psychological lens.
00:02:51
Speaker
That's just the space where I, where as a writer, like I find, I think I have something to say, i have something to figure out. Right. And then, you know, the big thing that happened that, that set me on the path to this is, is I met and married my wife who, um,
00:03:05
Speaker
was not a therapist when we met, she was getting her PhD in American studies, but she was studying history of psychology. So she was super psychologically minded. And then, and then, um and then she ended up going back and getting, after she got her PhD, she ended up going back and getting her counseling degree and becoming a psychotherapist.
00:03:20
Speaker
So then that sort of added that piece of it to just my existence. And then also just somewhat coincidentally, I ended up working for a number of years at a mental health foundation, charitable foundation around mental health. So so it's it's like all these things came together,
00:03:35
Speaker
And then I'd say, you know, the last piece of it is my wife and I've been talking about writing a book about couples therapy and relationship together for a number of years. And so the specific idea to do this, I mean, I was pitching stories to the New york Times Magazine and a lot of them got rejected.
00:03:51
Speaker
um And then she and I had this experience, which was we we did where we did couples therapy with this guy, Terry Real, who's a very well-known, eminent ah couples therapist.
00:04:02
Speaker
And we got sort of free therapy in exchange for having our our sessions, our Zoom sessions with him observed by trainees in his and his system. And so we did that for the sake of our marriage primarily.
00:04:13
Speaker
um But I also had in the back of my head, knowing that we had wanted to write this book, knowing that I wanted to write something in the New York Times Magazine, I was like, well, you know maybe there's a maybe there's an article in here. And it just because of the way that that that therapy went down where we were being recorded, they were recording it for their training library, but they gave it to us. They gave the recording. So I had this sort of unique thing, which was just like the the perfect transcript, the perfect record of this experience we had.
00:04:40
Speaker
And so then, you know, i pitched the story of the Times Magazine along with others, and that was the one that they, that was the one they wanted. So that was you know that's that's a variety of answers to your question. You see, I've, I listened to Esther Perel's podcast. i yeah I've watched couples therapy with Dr. Orna and I love both.
00:04:58
Speaker
I think they have a lot of integrity. They treat their subjects really respectfully, but I'm i always in the back of my mind is like, why would anybody expose themselves on this show?
00:05:09
Speaker
Like, why would you put your your voice or, you know, your face on it? I guess it's not that bad for you because it was just a bunch of students probably watching you and your wife, right?
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's, you know, I've wondered the same thing because I don't think I would, I don't think we would have gone that far, um particularly since my wife is a couples therapist. And I think there's there's a, there's complexity. It's not that it couldn't bear this, but, but having her own secrets, marital secrets spilled to the world and all of her potential and existing clients, I think would be ah would be a step too far for her. But i I think just we're private enough that we wouldn't do that. We wouldn't go on couples therapy. I like, you know, we we're Esther's podcast. Yeah. I've wondered why people do it.
00:05:50
Speaker
I think so. One possible answer, because I did, we did do something that most people wouldn't do, right. Or two things. One is we did this in front of a few hundred trainees, right. Which is not nothing. And the other thing is then I wrote about it, right. that Then I really did, you know, put it all out there in the, you know, in a very controlled way, but I did put our, you know, dirty laundry out there in the world. So, you know,
00:06:14
Speaker
we we're willing to do that because it is very hard to find ah couples therapist as good as Terry real. And it is immensely important. You know, all couples therapy is not equal. It's not remotely equal.
00:06:25
Speaker
And so to be able to see Terry was worth a certain amount of exposure. um And, you know, to be able to see Esther is worth a certain amount of it. There's a little more anonymity,
Epiphanies and Personal Growth
00:06:37
Speaker
I think on her podcast.
00:06:38
Speaker
I mean, if you're on with Orna, you're like, and I don't give a last name, right? But there's, I know, so i actually know somebody who was one of the couples on couples therapy. yeah And I don't think they give their last name, but they give their first name.
00:06:50
Speaker
Not hard to figure out who they are. i mean, I, you know, a quick Google search, you could, so that's a level of exposure. Like, um yeah, but I wonder if it's just, I should have asked the guy who I know who's on it. Like, I suspect some of it is just like, it's some mix of exhibitionism, but also just like, we need help.
00:07:10
Speaker
And I know she's good. yeah and I don't know if the the person who I pick off of, you know, Psychology Today website is any good. yeah And that makes a huge difference.
00:07:21
Speaker
So, I mean, it's it's worth a lot to try and save your marriage. Yeah. um And speaking of solutions, you write about... An epiphany you had in these and this therapy session where you recognize the problem lies mostly with with you. And I'm quoting you here. Okay. Epiphanies are real, but they're fragile.
00:07:42
Speaker
They are a one-leafed seedling pushing up through the crust of the ground or a blind hatchling waiting naked and alone for its mother to return with a worm. Okay. They are easily crushed underfoot or done in by harsh weather.
00:07:56
Speaker
If they're not protected and nurtured, they will crumble and blow away in the wind as though they never existed. It was a wonderful line. And where I'm going with this is basically what you're saying is that an epiphany can lead to permanent transformation, or we could just quickly revert back to our old form. So you can see where I'm heading with this question. Have you Have you transformed or have you reverted? or Or are you making progress in a way that might impress your hard to impress therapist?
00:08:31
Speaker
um Yeah. ah I want to say, by the way, like ah the part of it that I am sort of more, well, I'm fascinated with both ends of it. i'm I'm fascinated. I think I've been fascinated for a long time of like, what does it take to actually change in a meaningful sense?
00:08:46
Speaker
But I'm also fascinated with like how cheap epiphanies can be. Like epiphanies are a dime a dozen, right? And like if you've ever interacted with somebody, you've ever been in a relationship with somebody, ah i mean, this isn't everybody, but you know, but but where like people can have accurate epiphanies all the time and they just add up to just zero, right? yeah Like there's a lot of people out there who are having...
00:09:11
Speaker
you know, formulating thoughts in their head that pretty accurately diagnose their issues. And, you I don't, you know I'm like this, i'm always like this. i don't want to be this anyway. and And sometimes they'll experience them as great epiphanies every time.
00:09:23
Speaker
And unless you're within a structure or you're you're on some particular path that's, that facilitates growth, which is, i think, not an easy way, yeah like not an easy place to end up,
00:09:35
Speaker
then then more likely than not, it's not going to add up to anything. it's just It's just like you had the thought, but you revert back to these sort of habitual patterns because those patterns are so powerful. So that that was that was a little bit of preamble. I mean, have I, you know, if you asked my audience,
00:09:54
Speaker
hard to impress therapist or my hard to impress wife, that question, i think, you know, their, their answer would differ differ depending on the day. I don't think I've been transformed. I think I have made progress.
00:10:05
Speaker
I think it, it really was some of those epiphanies really were meaningful and i am in a better place, more constructive place today than I was kind of trying to have, uh, I think that was about a year ago or so when I did that therapy. So I do think it's, it's made,
00:10:24
Speaker
ah profound difference in the sense, not that I'm profoundly transformed at this point, but I think it sort of shifted me into a different and better trajectory in terms of growth.
00:10:35
Speaker
and And I'm trying to think if I can articulate like what that looks like. the What's the football movie with ah Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx? Any Given Sunday. Any Given Sunday, right? There's that, the speech, right? The the Game of Inches, isn't that the Game of Inches speech that he Pacino gives at the end. and you know, it's like, it's a game of inches and every inch is like hard to fucking win.
00:10:58
Speaker
And so, you know, when I, if the answer to that is yes, that I've changed in meaningful ways, like it's these ways that, that, that probably only i and, and, and maybe my wife notice it's things like she had asked me if I wanted, instead of starting work at eight in the morning, I wanted to like,
00:11:18
Speaker
go to the gym with her and, you know, get coffee or something like that. And somehow one thing to like led to another. And I thought it was going to be in an i was going to be but an hour later starting work than I'd intended.
00:11:31
Speaker
And it ended up being about two hours. And she'd sort of brought something up midway, like we were already out there. And then she's like, well, we're out. Why don't we just run that errand? and And because I'm kind of a pleaser and I'd always know what I want right away. I was like, sure. And then I realized, and we got like 20 minutes into it and i realized, oh, I'm going to be two hours late to start work. And that's my most productive time of the day.
00:11:51
Speaker
And I just sort of expressed some distress about it. You know, there's maybe a little bit of like irritation at her that she kind of threw me a curveball, but mostly it was just, and she got very defensive. she She was basically like, mean I mean, not very defensive. She got defensive. Like I was accusing her of having like screwed me over or something like that.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I think historically that is the kind of thing that would totally set me off. Right. Like I'm not even allowed to like express some distress. And, you know, it would have set me off and I maybe would have accused her of like not deliberately, but maybe unconsciously manipulating the situation. And there was she'd always wanted to do this thing. But on some level, she knew that if she brought it up when she, said you know, before I would have said no. And um and she got defensive. And then instead of blowing up, I was just like, hey, it's not a big deal.
00:12:38
Speaker
I was like a little bit upset about it. I just need to process it a little bit. It was kind of my own fault. I like didn't think it all the way through. Or when you said, let's add this stop on the morning, I, I should have just said, I'd rather not like, I'm a little anxious about starting work or something like that.
00:12:54
Speaker
And ah just small things like that, right? Like just, um, Our couples therapist now, who's ah who's a sort of ah ah ah colleague of Terry's, he sort of referred to us to her. you know She talks about, you know what do you do when you feel that whoosh? And the whoosh is just the like rush of like cortisol or adrenaline or whatever. It's just that fight or flight kind of instinct. And whether you can insert into that whether you just respond automatically or you can insert into that just like a little bit of presence of mind, just up to few seconds where you are able to step to the side of it and say, okay, I'm i'm feeling that thing, but I don't need to respond in the way that I have historically that's kind of destructive.
00:13:36
Speaker
So, ah you know, things like that. and and And I continue on this sort of long journey that, you know, hopefully I'll get somewhere, you know, good of just like trying to get more in touch with my feelings, try to like,
00:13:48
Speaker
I sound so goopy, but like, it's, it's hard for me. Like, it's really, you know, I have a few feelings that are easy to get to, you know, anger and is, is a good one. And, and it's not that I'm emotionless, but it's just, you know, a lot of my distress feelings have just always been converted into anger. And so kind of disaggregating them or figuring out the ones that are underneath that and, and sadness and grief and disappointment and things like that is like,
00:14:14
Speaker
ah you know, that's that's that's a journey that i that I have a long distance to go on, but I'm, you know, I feel like I'm on it.
Anger and Emotional Management
00:14:21
Speaker
I'm reading one of Terry Reel's books right now, and I see myself a lot in that book in kind of someone worrying way. Which one are you reading? I don't want to talk about it.
00:14:34
Speaker
so yeah. yeah Yeah, this is he's on male depression, right? On depression. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he de talks about ah male, male's kind of using irritability, withdrawal, emotional numbness, rage.
00:14:51
Speaker
There's kind of a depression beneath all of that. And this is kind of how it gets expressed. yeah And rage is is is something I've experienced. Like my wife and I, we would have these kind of garden wars.
00:15:04
Speaker
where I care a lot about my my lawn and and garden. i see it as kind of like, I want to see it as like an autonomous zone where I go first for peace and landscape and creativity and stuff like that. And she has her own ideas. So we're always butting heads about the garden. And remember once,
00:15:24
Speaker
I picked up this giant boulder and I put it over my head and I just heaved it across the lawn because I felt such rage. And I felt like this was the only way I could kind of communicate how I was feeling because the words I was using didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I felt like I needed to do something kind of symbolic.
00:15:43
Speaker
And you write a ah lot about rage in that piece. And I'm curious about your rage, if you're willing to talk about it and, I'm guessing your family's familiar with it because our family is familiar with kind of the worst of ourselves and they're just kind of stuck tolerating it until it becomes truly intolerable.
00:16:04
Speaker
Has your rage ever kind of extended beyond the boundaries of family at all?
00:16:11
Speaker
Huh. That's a good question. Yes. My, my, my family is familiar with it. I mean, it's a joke, but you know, not maybe not that funny a joke that dad has anger issues. That's the, that's the joke. If you're talking about like the workplace or, um, you know, whatever out in the social world, i don't, I don't think so. I'm trying to think. I remember the closest in, I mean, it wasn't going to happen. I feel like the closest I've been to like,
00:16:38
Speaker
getting in an actual physical fist fight as an adult was, ah this was a few years ago. It was kind of early COVID and was walking somewhere with my son, i think was like four or five at the time. And he was on my, and we were walking across, there's a golf course, flew box from our house. We were walking and I was just not paying attention. And I was walking through the golf course and just basically not noticing that people were playing.
00:17:01
Speaker
So I was like walking, like where somebody would have hit a ball. yeah And this guy, started kind of yelling at me like like what an like what an asshole I was. And I had my four-year-old on my shoulders. like you know he's He's kind of like you know ice cream cone, as we called it.
00:17:17
Speaker
um And this guy's yelling at me. And I was so, I mean, but it was like it was also like COVID craziness, right? It was like, you know, and I was just like started yelling at him. But I mean, I didn't move towards him terms fight. But I mean, that was the closest where was like,
00:17:32
Speaker
ah there's a part of me that was like, I could go just fucking deck that guy. yeah Um, but no, it's interesting. I, you know, and, and and it's, um, I'm trying to think, I don't think Terry's written about this. And if you're talked about this, and he he used what he used this on me in therapy. And I think, you know, it's, it's a good, don't know it's metaphor or whatever device or something like that. But he, he said when I, you know, when people say, well, I couldn't control myself and he'd say, well, like, well, I,
00:18:03
Speaker
you didn't control yourself. he He insists that he's, that it's a choice. And he'd say, well, let's say, you know, um somebody, you were driving the car and somebody was in the backseat with your daughter and he had a gun to her head.
00:18:15
Speaker
And he said, if you yell at me, I'm going to put a bullet in your daughter's brain. Would you, ah would you yell at me? And I was like, no. He's like, or when you've been pulled over by a cop for speeding and he's being an asshole, do you yell at him? No.
00:18:28
Speaker
And his point is like, We actually can control these things when the consequences, when we perceive the consequences to be of not controlling ourselves to be severe enough. um But yeah, I mean, I'm a I'm a I'm secret rager in that sense. Hmm.
00:18:45
Speaker
I was just at a roundabout well in the UK. We have all these roundabouts everywhere. It was was like this busy one near this McDonald's. And i had four kids in the car and I was just really struggling to get out like into the roundabout because it was so much activity. And this guy behind me was just honking the horn.
00:19:04
Speaker
I was so tempted to put the parking break up, open the door. And just like go right up to that window and be like, what do you want me to do? yeah I have those moments too. I guess it's a moment where I controlled it, but you know, i sometimes I feel like right on the brink of that.
00:19:21
Speaker
yeah But, but let me, let me turn this to more pleasant material for a second, oh
Pop Culture and Escapism
00:19:27
Speaker
Dan. um So you write about the role culture played in your like young life. It was a kind of escape. You write, my solace was stories, TV shows, movies, science fiction, fantasy novels. I was safe and warm, tucked away in there with my action heroes, dogged detectives, young wizards and warriors.
00:19:48
Speaker
I lived, I think, a ah ah kind of rich pop culture life as ah as a boy and teenager. Can you um just talk a little bit about that? Who are some of your your favorite action heroes and wizards and all that?
00:20:02
Speaker
I mean, Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, like the fantasy stuff. i um I mean, that was a big deal. I probably read the Lord of the Rings, um you know, 10 times when I was growing up. I'm trying to think of other authors like David Eddings was a fantasy writer who had two kind of linked series.
00:20:18
Speaker
um He later turned out that he had some awful lot of like kiddie porn or that some sort of history of of of terrible abuse of children or something like that. But I didn't know that at the time.
00:20:29
Speaker
If I get really sucked into a series, like a multi-book series, um ah it actually, like, kind of fucks me up in a way. Like, I sort of become withdrawn.
00:20:43
Speaker
Like, there's almost, like, an addictive quality to it. Like, I don't want to, like, I'm less present in my life with my wife or my work or my kids because there's this sort of gravitational pull towards finish finishing the the story, getting on to the and next I'm guessing it's not just finishing. I'm guessing you're kind of half dwelling in this fictional world as well.
00:21:05
Speaker
Probably. What's what's what's the the first one that comes to your mind, like a series that just was really hard to to leave? So... The one that just comes to my mind because it's the one that I, the seven books that I just read, and I actually had this guy on my podcast.
00:21:20
Speaker
um There's a series called Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is... I've heard of this. Yeah, it's like, it's funny, right? It's very funny. It's like a mix of science fiction, and fantasy in an interesting way. it's it's ah it's It's in a sort of relatively new genre called lit RPG, where basically the plot somehow puts people in what's functioning kind of like a video game or a Dungeons and Dragons.
00:21:43
Speaker
game and and they're leveling up. So they're they're leveling up in the way that you do in video games and in D&D where you get more experience points or constitution points or and skills and spells and things like this. And there they're aware of it. So Dungeon Crawler, Carl, aliens come and take aliens come and take over Earth and kill most Earthlings, but then a small number of them, including Carl, get to, are you know forced into this um basically galactic reality show where they're just, it's like it's like running man, but but, but, but, but at a galactic level. So they're just in this world and there's different levels that have different kind of ah kinds of villains and structures to them. And they have to kill, they have to survive to, to proceed in the game.
00:22:28
Speaker
And as they go, as they kill more monsters or other players or whatever, they, they get more powerful. And so Carl is, ah you know, is, is dropped into this world.
00:22:38
Speaker
um And so I, these books were, ah initially self-published and they still live on, they're self-published on um Kindle Unlimited and they still live there. So if you be if you pay the whatever, seven bucks a month for Kindle Unlimited, you can read all of them.
00:22:52
Speaker
um They were just, they got very popular. So they were recently, part of the story is they were recently purchased by and reissued by a trade publisher as as hardcovers. And I think there's a TV adaptation in the works and things like that. But I was just like, these are long ass books too. These like five, six, seven, 800 page books. And I just burned through all seven of them.
00:23:12
Speaker
It really bothers me that some of those books don't get picked up by the traditional publishers just because they're not doing a good enough job screening to find the best material possible. Like Project Hail Mary, which I haven't read, but that's now going to be a Ryan Gosling blockbuster movie. Yeah, I saw the trailer for that. It looked pretty good. It looked like a really good trailer.
00:23:33
Speaker
But that was Andy Weir, right? That's the guy who did The Martian? Isn't it? Yeah, but I think they were both- i think Were they both self-published?
Publishing Industry and Self-Publishing
00:23:40
Speaker
as so Yeah, I mean, there these stories, right? And like so the the the the Silo show was based on some books, I forget the name of them, that were initially self-published.
00:23:47
Speaker
Some of them were like Fifty Shades of Grey, right? It was like Twilight fan fiction, I think, that blew up. um Yeah, ah they're getting more hip to it. um But you know it's funny, like i don't think for like fundamental core reasons,
00:24:05
Speaker
this could work in the sort of literary fiction space. But there is something kind of pure in a sense about, you know, in these genre spaces and in these self-published spaces, like there is a kind of like, you know, relatively pure meritocracy in a sense. Like there's these books, like it's not like Dungeon Crawler Carl is great literature, but it's a very fun, it's a lot better than a lot of books that I've read that have been put out by commercial publishers. Like it's, there's a lot of ingenuity and and humor and inventiveness to it.
00:24:34
Speaker
um And, you know, it succeeded because ah people love to read it. I mean, the dude was, I interviewed him. He was super nice guy. He's about my age.
00:24:45
Speaker
ah I think maybe he's a little bit older, but like he he, his main source of income to that point was he had self-published other books, but his main source of income was um painting cat and dog pictures. um Like he was like, he'd sell them on Etsy. He'd sell them at cat and dog shows. He'd sell them at art, art fairs and like had a like, you know,
00:25:03
Speaker
was like making a living, but not a not a fabulous living doing that. And then he wrote these books and they blew up. So that was that's actually a great, sort of a fun story. But yeah, I don't know. um What is it that upsets you about it?
00:25:17
Speaker
ah I think part of it's reflected with what's going on in my career, which is that I just haven't, I was on a great publishing streak and then I'm just in a huge slump and I've tried to get a couple of things published and struggled. So I'm just kind of projecting my frustration onto this larger thing thinking I have this wonderful thing that um publishers can't recognize very much like this this this funny fantasy sci-fi book.
00:25:44
Speaker
But let's talk about um someone who did get published and whose book did really well, Terry Real. Yeah. um This, again, was the male therapist who helped you and your wife. And i didn't know who he was, but ah apparently he was already pretty well known.
00:26:04
Speaker
But I feel like you kind of launched ah the real essence. I feel like you kind of took him to a different phase of celebrity therapist, kind of up to a Dr. Orna or Esther Peralta. Is that how you see things?
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it's complicated, right? Because... you know And haven't been tracking it you know perfectly, but I do know that after the article came out, then the Modern Love podcast did an episode with him and then did another episode with him.
00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, I listened to both of those you know I'll take a little bit of credit, but it's a weird thing to take credit for because, of course, he he he's a bigger deal than I am. I mean, there's no point at which he wasn't a bigger deal than I am. He's written you know a bunch of books, a number of which have been bestsellers.
00:26:50
Speaker
he's a he's a personality, right? I mean, that's what, I mean, even more in a sense, you know, it's interesting, Orna Gralnick on Showtime's show is like, she's compelling, but it's in a relatively like kind of understated way. Like Terry's a character. Terry's like, you know, there's still a little bit of like the kind of relatively working class Jersey kid and the way he talks and he swears and he's sort of, he cries easily, but he's kind of macho at the same time and he confronts people. And I mean, he's he's made for he's made for tv you know he's He's made for a celebrity therapist Dumb, I think, in a way I mean, it is pretty dramatic with Terry like That's part of his thing is he like he goes He cuts right to the chase He moves very fast ah He's very confrontational ah I mean, just extraordinarily On the spectrum with therapists i mean He's at the extreme kind of confrontational Dramatic end of things Just in the regular therapy he does Not not just if he's doing it on camera or something
00:27:48
Speaker
I want to um go on a ah brief aside um and and share kind of an observation yeah from watching him on these podcasts and reading his his book. And then i'm just curious to to get your thoughts on it.
Patriarchy and Political Rhetoric
00:28:02
Speaker
um And I have i've kind of like a strong and perhaps irrational reaction um to something about Terry. Terry asserts that we live in a patriarchy. Mm-hmm.
00:28:15
Speaker
you know He writes, make no mistake, patriarchy is the system we all live within to this day. He said that on your podcast. When I hear that word, I automatically bristle and go into defensive posture. And I think I do that because that word has suffered from concept creep.
00:28:36
Speaker
um Patriarchy means all sorts of things these days. It means... male dominance of institutions, government of the family. insinuates men have all the control, the power, the privilege.
00:28:52
Speaker
And a third meaning, and I think Terry is using this third meaning um more specifically, is that you know we're taught to suppress, men are taught to suppress feelings.
00:29:04
Speaker
distance themselves from their mothers, maybe not take women seriously, not be relational with them. And I can accept, if we're if we're going to use a definition of patriarchy, I can accept that as that last one as a real thing.
00:29:17
Speaker
i don't accept the others because you know we men have to live with this term patriarchy. ah Even though only a tiny percentage percentage of us like get to have like real power.
00:29:31
Speaker
Meanwhile, millions of us are addicted, lonely, depressed, suicidal, poor. And I just find it like extremely dehumanizing and maybe even politically dangerous.
00:29:44
Speaker
um to to use terms like this. So I guess I'm wondering if you have anything to say to that, or do you bristle at all when Terry used some of this almost outmoded language of the ah far left?
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, I have an more enormous amount to say about that. And i've've I've kind of are argued with Terry and at great length about on on this very issue, thinking about like the culture war stuff and the wokeness war stuff.
00:30:13
Speaker
And you take a concept, let's say, like white privilege, right? So I think white privilege started in a sort of analytical sense, um making a point that I think was probably a valuable one to make, right? Making some point, and I don't go that deep on it, but it was making some point about the ways, there's all these ways that we don't even really think of. So you think of something like Peggy McIntosh's essay on the invisible knapsack of kind of white privilege or something like that.
00:30:40
Speaker
like as a white guy, I kind of walk around in the world and there's all these things that they're kind of the absence of things that I i don't notice them because there's the absence of them. i I don't notice that when I walk into a store, when I'm 16 years old and I walk into a convenience store or something that the the the owner's eyes don't follow me in the same way. Like i don't what I don't notice that when I'm walking down the street late at night and I'm sort of next to a woman or something like that, she doesn't cross the street with the same frequency that she might if I was a black guy or something that. So it's all these things that are thinking,
00:31:11
Speaker
a sort of analytically true and profound and were worth writing about, the huge mistake was when they translate over into a certain kind of political rhetoric, right? So so so this the huge sort of mistake that so many people make, and this this happens in all sorts of ways, is like you get this analytical point about how society functions or how interpersonal relationships functions that profound, it's true, it reveals something about the world that you didn't see before. And then you think that the political thing to do with it is just take it and say it to everyone.
00:31:41
Speaker
Right. And point out what's wrong and use this language. But political rhetoric is just different. And public rhetoric is just different. And it functions in different ways. And so if I'm sitting there in a class and I'm learning about white privilege and it's in this very careful way in this academic context and we're talking about those things, that's very valuable. If a politician gets up and talks about white privilege.
00:31:59
Speaker
it's a, the the effect of that is very different. And it, and it's out in the public discourse in these ways that are not careful, that get kind of, you know, there's all sorts of concept creep. There's all sorts of political entrepreneurs and activist entrepreneurs and, and hucksters and grifters and opportunists and, and well-intentioned, but stupid or naive people who then start using the term in all sorts of ways because it makes sense to them or because it's a way to exert power or to attain influence or all these things. So, so the way that, you know, that's how I think about patriarchy, which is, I think went when, when,
00:32:28
Speaker
You know, you talk to you talk to Terry and get into the guts of it. Or I talk to Carol Gilligan, ah the the feminist psychologist, where he I think he got some of these concepts from. And you really get down to the nitty gritty of it, you know, and and and they're talking about it in nuanced, nuanced ways. It makes a lot of sense. And it and there's you know maybe it's maybe it's outdated in some respects. But but like it's really like I talked to kara Carol, Carol Gilligan about it. Like Carol Gilligan is not somebody who has the the least interest in stigmatizing men.
00:32:57
Speaker
Like she, she's, I think she's a father of boys. I mean, a mother of boys. Like she loves, she loves boys, men. It's just, there's nowhere, like if you just, if you vibed with her, there's nowhere in her, in nowhere in her that wants to do that and thinks that shaming men is a useful endeavor, right? It was, it was a analytical framework. And I think if you're doing therapy with Terry and I write about this, one of the things you get is that he loves men. Like he he has men's compassion for men and wants to connect to men. So you don't experience it in the moment in that therapeutic relationship.
00:33:25
Speaker
as stigmatizing, as shaming, as coming from a place of wanting to put somebody at a disadvantage.
00:33:33
Speaker
But I think when when he and and other people do it in a sort of where it's public political rhetoric, it's whether it's on my podcast or on the Modern Love podcast or you know writing in his books, I don't remember how much of this he does in in the one that you're reading, but at you know a a fair amount of ah his book Us, which think is the most recent one, you know has some sort of political sections like He wants it to mean precisely what he wants it to mean, but that he doesn't get to control that. He doesn't get to control how it's experienced by people. And I think that's a kind of fundamental mistake that he makes and that a lot of people make. Like what I think he means by patriarchy is not in some, if you go in his heart, is not the thing that might make you bristle or that might make me bristle, but he doesn't get to control how people experience it. Right. And, and they're not, when he's talking a podcast or I'm talking a podcast, like
00:34:23
Speaker
I don't have a relationship with the people that listening to me, right? Like, like they're just catching me like a little glimpse of me. And if I use a word that just blows up in their head and means, because this is how often, how so often people use it, it means men suck, right? And,
00:34:36
Speaker
and And it conjures up this image of men walking around with all of us men walking around with all this power. And like, we're just enjoying lording, blonde beasts kind of lording it over everybody or something like that. That's so disconnected from our actual experience the world. Like, then it's the wrong, it's a bad word to use. Like it's, and so I think, you know, i think this is a profoundly important stuff, not just, I mean, it's just an example of like a whole suite of like ways that we just take,
00:35:02
Speaker
things that make sense analytically and just blow them about into sort of public rhetoric and really disastrous and kind of self-sabotaging ways. And that's an example of it.
00:35:13
Speaker
I really wish just some explosives were, were laid underneath that word and just blew it to smithereens and then just create separate terms yes that describe the various things that we typically just associate, associate everything with, with patriarchy.
00:35:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, 100%. Like, I don't know what that rhetoric
Political Dynamics and Leadership
00:35:32
Speaker
is. But yes, we just we need to like, drop that rhetoric, say exactly the same, like, say the useful things that we get from that, but utterly rename them rebrand. We need to use a total rebrand um to put it in the marketing language that I use in my day job.
00:35:47
Speaker
And you had um on your podcast, you had a really fascinating discussion with Terry about the topic of masculinity and progressivism. And you said in the podcast, you know, it can be difficult for men to assert power in progressive spaces. And Terry called essentially called the Democrats a bunch of wusses. Yeah.
00:36:10
Speaker
yeah And you know they don't they don't know what to do with the power when they when they have it. um So we have two problems with the the Democrats. Number one, they're losing men to the Republicans. And two, when we have power, we don't govern in a way that's tough and produces the results that we could possibly get. So we end up compromising or losing to the side that has fewer morals, but like a stronger backbone.
00:36:39
Speaker
So I'm wondering if you've kind of charted our way um through this mess. And, you know, know you've done a lot of historical research. Is there ah historical precedent um that you'd like us to learn from? are there politicians out there who you think can kind of lead us out out of this mess?
00:36:59
Speaker
So it's complicated. Like, I think the issue is like power and comfort, exerting power and sort of owning power. And I think the left
00:37:10
Speaker
has a difficult, different kind of challenges with that than the right does. Like the right is sort of comfortable with the idea of power and they're comfortable with the idea of like patriarchal power and man exerting power. You know, often in some fairly, here's another word that like will set, you know, set people off in some fairly toxic ways, right? Like Donald Trump's a pretty toxic figure um and it's a pretty destructive kind of patriarchal exertion or style of power. But the left is just uncomfortable with sort of hierarchy and power you know, just just at a root level. And that's just like a dead end when it comes to, it's probably a dead end when it comes to politics, but i think it's just a dead end when it comes to living in the world. Like, you know, we are, you know, social creatures with sort of that we just intrinsically have to exert power. And and I mean, unless you just want to be
00:37:55
Speaker
have power exerted over you, then, then, you know, you want, you have to feel comfortable exerting power. And sometimes that can be, you know, collective and utopian, but sometimes it's just individual and it's exerting power within a hierarchy and you have people below you and you have people above you and things like that. And so ah being, being a mature adult in part is, is learning to sort of accept and integrate in a healthy way, the exertion of, of power and taking responsibility for the consequences of exerting power, which sometimes are bad, or sometimes you're just making hard choices that privilege your interest over someone else's or person X's interest over person Y's or group X over group Y. And like, that's just the necessity. That's what happens when you exert power.
00:38:34
Speaker
And if you want to play politics, you have to understand that. And so, you know, ah for a politically charismatic person, I mean, a politically charismatic person is in part somebody who, who, who can sort of exert a sort of comfort and ease and desirability to exerting power.
00:38:48
Speaker
That's often identified with the kind of masculine, but doesn't have to be that there can be women who are sort of exert a kind of cares who exude a kind of charismatic comfort with power. um I don't know what the answer to it is. I mean, you get these sort of because the reason I'm so hesitant to answer is like, you know, it's it's all retrospective. Like Barack Obama, you know, it was a pretty charismatic kind of embodiment of power, as was Bill Clinton, as was Ronald Reagan, as is Donald Trump. Like successful politicians, we can retrospectively look at them and say they were they were good at that. um
00:39:22
Speaker
You know, the problem with Kamala Harris or Al Gore or ah who are other failed or joe you know Joe Biden or whatever our other failed candidates is just like, you know they're they're like mediocre to above average politicians, but they're not exceptional. So I don't know.
00:39:43
Speaker
i don't know what, I mean, do you have an, ask me a question because I'm floundering a little bit. Like I think there's there's something there, right? There's something there in the sort of culture of the left that has a difficulty with exerting power But I get very lost when I try and like think of what advice I would give. Because you can't tell – mean you can tell somebody like Gavin Newsom be like this. And Gavin Newsom, who seems like a creature of sort of kind of pathological opportunism, will try to do it.
00:40:11
Speaker
And he'll kind of create a simulacrum of it. But it'll feel weird. ah Maybe not toxic in the way Trump does it, but it'll just – it won't be the thing that I think Terry – wants us to be. It won't be that kind of Barack Obama, you know, Franklin Roosevelt, that just kind of like comfortable, like slightly arrogant, but immensely compelling exercise of power or something like that.
00:40:36
Speaker
I think there's a ah couple of things I want to say, and I definitely can't answer the question I asked you. That's why I was asking you, because I think it's an important one. But, um you know, a few years ago, someone published a book,
00:40:48
Speaker
called something like it's time to fight dirty or something like that. okay And ah this author had a whole bunch of like hard nosed solutions for the left and progressive. Like let's, let's stack the courts. Let's turn California into three States. Let's get, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, let's get their senators, you know, let's like like push the bounds of yeah the law and constitution as far as they will go to get the power we deserve. But I want to say something else.
00:41:18
Speaker
um For me to kind of identify with a political movement or a political party, two things need to be in line.
00:41:29
Speaker
And the first is political message slash policy, like right universal healthcare. Great. i'm I'm on board with that. But the second thing is emotional temperament and the Democrats, they're ah i'm usually just on board with the message. You know, it's always too slow. glacial slow. It's too meek, whatever, but you know I'll take glacial incremental progress over, over nothing.
00:41:56
Speaker
But the emotional temperament of the left, I find just very unaligned with my own emotional temperament. Like I want self-deprecation, humility, no nonsense, not walking on eggshells, not judging people, not...
00:42:17
Speaker
moralizing you know there's part of me who's kind of got this protestant worth work ethic but there's also part of me that embraces like catholic debauchery you know and i and i want i want like a political movement to embody those things and that's my problem with the modern day left is it doesn't have that emotional temperament that that's mine i do think it's important to distinguish between like the democratic party and the left right where like liberals and the left, because I think that, you know, and I mean, I use these things interchangeably, but like, there's a left, which is like, you know, the hardcore, you know, whether they're sort of Marxist in some sense, or they, you know, believe in kind of like a lot of the precepts of like, social justice or things like that, like, you know, i'm not quite revolutionary, but sort of like, they they have a sort of fundamental radical critique of like the American,
00:43:12
Speaker
project, right? And think that it's like fundamentally characterized by whatever racism, sexism, um you know, homophobia, transphobia, capitalist exploitation, right? it some Some mix of those things is the critique. And that's the left, right? And then, or that's one way of thinking about the left.
00:43:30
Speaker
And then there's just like the Democratic Party, right? Like the center left, right? The people, you know, from the dead middle of the road to like the you know, let's say the left is like 10% or something like that. And then there's the 10 to 50, that's the rest of the party.
00:43:43
Speaker
And those people are mostly like, just kind of like, you know, you know, they want things to get better, right? They want things to work. They believe in a generous social safety net. You know, they like basically like people have a certain amount of freedom. They're not like, you know, they're not super moralistic, like they're a little moralistic, but they're not like super moralistic. And so, you know,
00:44:04
Speaker
I don't think I'm of the left in that sense,
The Left's Identity and Challenges
00:44:06
Speaker
if ever I was. Like, that's just like, like that there there's, I mean, there's both the sort of analytical kind of assessments they make of the American project of like Western civilization that I don't agree with.
00:44:19
Speaker
You know, I don't, I don't think that's the most constructive perspective to have on these things. But then there's this, as you're saying, there's the temperament, which is like moralistic and, you know, puritanical, maybe in the bad ways.
00:44:30
Speaker
And, negatively oriented in a lot of ways, like sort of critical in a way that I think like I'm not temperamentally, I'm just not of that. And so, so there's those people, I mean, you know, often the beef with a the rest of the people, like the democratic party, the Chuck Schumers, the Nancy Pelosi's, the Joe Biden's, the Kamala Harris, yeah isn't that they're, that they're bloodless and censorious. I mean, isn't that they're censorious and moralistic. It's just, they're kind of bloodless and lame.
00:44:58
Speaker
right? They're kind of like technocratic. They don't really have principles. Like they, they they mean well, but they're just kind of like, you know, there's just that it's the, it's the character, but maybe the reality of like our clueless elite or something like that.
00:45:09
Speaker
So I'm trying to like, like what, like ah when I'm trying to picture what you want and it's probably what I want, it's like, is it like the policies?
00:45:21
Speaker
Is it like Obama policies, but like, just like ah a temperament, a vibe that just feels more, like, has a little bit more populist flavor, like, feels a little bit more authentic, like...
00:45:35
Speaker
is like, like you're saying is kind of like, it has some wholesomeness on the one hand, but then it has a little flavor of like, Hey, if you want to like sit around and have a beer and make off color jokes, like that's part of life too. Like what's the, like of yeah try to think your way through it. Like, i think, let me, yeah let me quote you. Okay. Yeah. but me you You wrote a piece for persuasion, which I think touches on some of this stuff.
00:45:56
Speaker
And um I think in this part, you're talking about kind of the left and a kind of recurring pattern on the left. um You say there's a clear pattern, the shaming and the canceling, the puritanical moralism, the persistent influence of Marx.
00:46:12
Speaker
the metastasizing of noble goals of liberation equality into destructively utopian theories of human nature and society so and what you're i think what you're talking about there is how people just forget to act like normal people they forget the art of persuasion of connection They get lost in ideals and dogma.
00:46:37
Speaker
um And I actually went to Occupy Wall Street. I so i slept on Zotelby Park for for a week, but I felt very much apart. you know i was People would come up to me and be like, oh, you're you're a normie.
00:46:50
Speaker
Yeah. and i mean You were perceived as a normie within that context, just your vibe. Just my vibe. Yeah, I was just wearing like a buttoned-up shirt sitting on my backpack, and people were walking past me. And like oh and and I felt very alienated from the group there, which honestly seemed kind of half-crazy or more or deranged or just dogmatic. And yeah while I generally think the Occupy movement was...
00:47:19
Speaker
ah a good thing that happened. Like yeah I could not ever see myself. And I just, I just kind of noticed they weren't really trying to like, um, so, okay. so wait i think i have sorry I think something became clear to me that that makes sense in your question that maybe I wasn't getting before, which is, and I think it speaks, I think you're right that I, there's, there's a fantasy I have too, which is, which is of an actual left that doesn't exist. Like of a, of a populist left of that, like,
00:47:48
Speaker
feels like real people, right? Yes, exactly. That's what I want. The left that exists feels like a bunch of like shitty people in one way. Like shitty or sort of like weirdo or just like angry.
00:48:04
Speaker
They're doing a weird thing that doesn't have to do with what they think it has to do. They they say it has to do with. And it's like what we want. And that what we imagine and like what we imagine existed at one time, like, you know, probably it's like we have different models for it, right? But it's like whatever the labor movement, it you know, and moments of kind of labor ascendancy or something like that, where there was kind of a real base in the working class and the leadership were often people who came up through the working class, but had some charisma, but had that organic connection to those, you know, and but something like that. And I don't know how much like you'd have to kind of
00:48:38
Speaker
dig down to to see how real that was or wasn't at various points. But is that kind of what you're talking about? because i'm realizing that's a kind of shadow fantasy, I think, a lot of my writing, which is like like, in a lot of ways, I'm of that sort of boring, bloodless middle in terms of like my policies.
00:48:56
Speaker
But I have this feeling that we would benefit. But sometimes, first have this feeling that we would benefit from like a quote-unquote real left And also sometimes if I'm down about things, I'm like, actually, this looks sort of like technocratic incrementalism isn't enough. And like our society is too broken. And if we don't do something more radical soon, I mean, I've had that.
00:49:16
Speaker
I've been in that space at times. Like if we don't really do something radical soon, we're just going to break in a way we can't we can no longer muddle through in the way we have before. And it's like. And and and and that has for that to happen, it has it can't be the sort of Obama-Clinton technocratic center left. right They don't have it in them. They don't want that.
00:49:34
Speaker
And they don't have it in them to mobilize people in the way that would actually create the police i mean create the political energy to do something profound and transformative. So for that to happen, it has to be a real left, but it can't be this left of misfits and I don't know what we would call them. I mean, you know, it's like, it's very hard to come up with words with them that don't genuinely sound kind of, whether it's homophobic or sort of like,
00:50:02
Speaker
like misogynistic or something. I remember like Orwell in one of his essays talks about like the sandal wearers and the fruit juice drinkers and things like that. And it's like, it's right, it's right but it's a little icky.
00:50:13
Speaker
And like, I don't know how to talk about it in a way that's like not icky. i feel like we almost, I think we had that in 2008, right before the Obama election. And I felt like, a lot of us felt like transformational change was was right around the corner. you know There was economic collapse. Obama was just hinting at so much. Transformation was coming.
00:50:35
Speaker
You felt like electoral reform was just around the corner. And then you know none of that happened. and And Obama himself, and I don't know if I've ever kind of read a satisfactory explanation for this, I felt like, I remember very clearly feeling like, and i imagine you did too, that he had created...
00:50:53
Speaker
this mass movement for his candidacy. And then upon getting elected, he essentially disbanded it, that he could have kept it and found ways to mobilize it to advance, you know, pretty huge policy goals.
00:51:11
Speaker
and And really all that he did was he used it to get elected, and then he kind of spun it back up again to get elected in 2012. Well, I think he... I think he wanted to be revolutionary in a different way. So he was revolutionary and promising all these things at first. But then when he got into power, I think he wanted to be revolutionary in that he wanted to end polarization in America.
00:51:29
Speaker
And i think by putting Republicans in his cabinet um and it just backfired. but It didn't work. Republicans didn't work with him at all. And he was just hobbled by his, these early mistakes for the rest of his time. I mean, I thought you were going to say Bernie Sanders in 2016, because that was another moment when it felt like some of that was possible. maybe I mean, Bernie's a pretty, you know, I think I've always found Bernie a pretty appealing figure.
00:51:54
Speaker
um
00:51:57
Speaker
In the, in the sense that I think you're talking about, like somebody who actually seems, to have a pretty clear sense of like, seems authentic, but also seems to have a pretty clear sense of the ways in which the things that he's doing and saying would point towards meaningful sort of political change as opposed to like whatever was happening you know, in Occupy Wall Street or something like that. But we're talking about the followers as much as the leaders here. And I think like the followers of Obama, like he, he made like a collective of of normies who could have pushed for some radical
Revolutionary Movements and Mental Health
00:52:30
Speaker
change.
00:52:30
Speaker
And um I don't want to judge the, the, the Bernie people um at all. Maybe they were, um but yeah, I don't know. Do you think, I mean, i you know, When you were wait when you were you know at at Occupy for a week and you said you felt alienated, I mean, did you feel – like I do sometimes feel like I don't know what these people – I guess I know what they think they're doing, but it seems like they're doing something – like what's really driving them is very different.
00:52:59
Speaker
Well, I think, I don't know if this is what you're hinting at, but I think there are there was a ton of like mental ah health problems um represented there. You know, just people just scream. Some of them were like paid actors come ah told to come in and sabotage everything.
00:53:19
Speaker
But um yeah, I don't know if you watched the series and or, but yeah there was this amazing um soliloquy by the Forrest Whitaker character where he talks to this like young revolutionary and he says, we revolutionaries, we're the misfits, we're the damaged, we're the insane, we're the oxygen that's going to light the fire. So I do think there is a relationship between mental health problems and revolution. And you kind of need those people who are going to be on the front lines and pushing for things and and agitating. So I don't know what we're talking about here. We we we kind of want like a normie left, but you kind of need the, the, well, I mean, as well yes, but I mean, I think you want a normie left or I think the other thing, and I am remembering, I talked to Corey Robin about this, you know, one of the things he said that he sort of realized in the aftermath of kind of,
00:54:14
Speaker
you know, after the the promise of Bernie kind of evaporated was just how weak the organizational the structures, the organizations of the left were. He just had kind of, he'd overestimated what was there. And like, so yeah maybe it's a normie left, but, but, we but even like, you know, we have history, you know,
00:54:31
Speaker
labor unions but used to be much stronger and some of them were, you know, meaningfully left. I mean, the civil rights movement, you know, in the fifties and sixties was meaningfully left in certain ways and, and, and had some pretty strong organizations and some pretty sort of brilliant and strategic leaders. So there's another version of which is, you know, I mean, ah maybe it's, it's, it's less that it's defined by normies than that it's, that it has kind of strong and and seasoned and strategic institutions with, with smart leadership.
00:54:59
Speaker
And that seems to be, missing as well. um and and And normies are not, you know, maybe it's like if you have that, then you get some of the normies to sign up for your project. I mean, normies are not drawn to movements that seem like they're collections of misfits, right?
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:17
Speaker
Folks, that's the podcast. There's still another twenty twenty five minutes left. You can go onto my sub stack and become a paid subscriber and get rest of the access as well as access to all my podcasts in the past and essays and whatnot.
00:55:35
Speaker
Thanks a lot.
00:55:52
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis. Original music by Duncan Barrett.