Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff. You were a weekly reminder that with
Speaker 1: all of the bad things, there's people trying to do
Speaker 1: good things. Sometimes those people are even successful. A lot
Speaker 1: of times on the show, people are not so successful,
Speaker 1: and it's more of the thought that counts. This time
Speaker 1: they're successful. But speaking of successful, our guest today is
Speaker 1: Alison Ruskin, who is a New York Times bestselling author,
Speaker 1: a podcaster, a mental health advocate, and a relationship coach.
Speaker 1: How are you today?
Speaker 2: I really loved that. That was my tie in with
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well the successful people you've You've dedicated hours
Speaker 2: of research too, so I feel very honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also with us, of course, is our producer Sophie Hi.
Speaker 1: Sophie Hi, it's me British Sophie. You have a new
Speaker 1: accent Jamestown, I mean Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 3: That's right. I've been boom but watching Harry Potter films
Speaker 3: and I will speak like this from now and no
Speaker 3: one else said, but no one else eb it changes
Speaker 3: your accent when they're speaking to me. It's not a
Speaker 3: thing that plagues me throughout my life.
Speaker 1: So wait, do people do that? Do people start talking
Speaker 1: British to you all the time. Yes, I promise I
Speaker 1: will never do that because I'm incapable good that has
Speaker 1: not historically been a barrier to others. Okay, fair enough,
Speaker 1: So Sophie is out and this is not a permanent thing.
Speaker 1: This is just James is stepping in as a guest
Speaker 1: producer today, and we're all very grateful.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker 1: We're also grateful to our audio engineer, Rory. Everyone has
Speaker 1: to say hi to Rory. Hi, Rory, Hi, Rory Hi
Speaker 1: ROI And our theme music was written for us by
Speaker 1: Unwoman and Allison. When I was looking through your bio
Speaker 1: and I was thinking to myself, what topics should I
Speaker 1: cover this week? Last week, well, this week as we
Speaker 1: record this, but last week, as anyone's listening, we covered
Speaker 1: people who tried to kill Mussolini. And one of those
Speaker 1: people was a woman who was far from neurotypical, deeply religious,
Speaker 1: and her aim was steadied by an angel as she
Speaker 1: shot Mussolini in the nose. Her name was Violet Gibson.
Speaker 1: She spent the rest of her life institutionalized, and I
Speaker 1: kept thinking about her, and I kept thinking about how
Speaker 1: mental health historically and currently has been handled in our
Speaker 1: society because I'm of the opinion that we should free
Speaker 1: Violet Gibson, except that she died seventy years ago. And
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, well, I know some people who
Speaker 1: do really good stuff around supporting people with what gets
Speaker 1: called the serious mental illness, and so I started digging
Speaker 1: into it. And this week is going to be one
Speaker 1: of the most relentlessly positive episodes of this show to date.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: I know last week was like eight people who basically
Speaker 1: died trying to kill Mussolini. We're gonna one to eighty that, Alison.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the Clubhouse model or its
Speaker 1: flagship fountain House?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think of fountain that fountain
Speaker 2: Head that.
Speaker 1: Was that book, right, I believe so? Way is that
Speaker 1: Anne Rand?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I'm assuming you're not. This is not associated
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 1: What a terrible thing. I could just like bring out
Speaker 1: me like today's cool person is ann.
Speaker 2: And he's going to be so positive?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, And about how she learned that she too
Speaker 1: was using the welfare system and that that was positive.
Speaker 1: Now there is a method that has been developed by
Speaker 1: and four people suffering from what they would call serious
Speaker 1: mental illnesses. I know that the language around this stuff
Speaker 1: is very blurry, and we'll back she people feel very
Speaker 1: strongly about it, but in different directions from each other,
Speaker 1: you know. And there's a short summary of fountain House
Speaker 1: that comes from Charlie Sagassi, who told The New York
Speaker 1: Times this in the year two thousand. Fountain House is
Speaker 1: a non residential program for people with persistent mental illnesses.
Speaker 1: It was the original clubhouse model for psychiea treatment which
Speaker 1: has now been copied by many other treatment centers. Everyone
Speaker 1: who receives treatment at Fountain House is a member of
Speaker 1: the club, and the staff work for the club members,
Speaker 1: just like the staff at the Harvard Club work for
Speaker 1: their members. The members are involved in every aspect of
Speaker 1: running the house as part of their treatment. That's the
Speaker 1: like big picture of it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have learned to become so skeptical of all
Speaker 2: treatment until I learn more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, It's it's funny because if you just tell
Speaker 1: someone the like while I'm doing my research. So that
Speaker 1: the week I talked to a lot of my friends
Speaker 1: about it, and I was talking with my friends, I
Speaker 1: was like, this place is amazing and my friend's like,
Speaker 1: is it, and then we're going through each of the
Speaker 1: things that it that could be unamazing about it.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: But I I think by the end of this I
Speaker 1: will sell you on this as a cool people who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: I hope so, because I have a master's in psychology
Speaker 2: and mental health in the world of it, and a
Speaker 2: lot of what I advocate about is how we don't
Speaker 2: have access to enough resources, and so if there actually
Speaker 2: is something out there that's working that is better than
Speaker 2: the horror that is most in patient treatment, then I
Speaker 2: am very excited to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, no, I will be very interested to hear
Speaker 1: what your take on all of this is. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a reason that I picked this topic for you
Speaker 1: is because I'm curious your take on this. Fountain House
Speaker 1: has been around since the nineteen forties and it is
Speaker 1: going strong and it is growing these days. I know
Speaker 1: several people who work there, and I've been hearing about
Speaker 1: it for coming on about fifteen years now. And so
Speaker 1: this week I've got the usual bunch of sources like
Speaker 1: news articles, academic papers, and studies, but I also have
Speaker 1: as one of my sources that I can't really share
Speaker 1: because I didn't record it is the notes that I
Speaker 1: took during a ninety minute call I had with someone
Speaker 1: who's been working there for a very long time, with
Speaker 1: a social worker. But to dive into it. According to
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Health, about twenty percent of Americans
Speaker 1: are living with AMI or any mental illness. About six
Speaker 1: percent or living with a serious mental illness or SMI.
Speaker 1: This is defined as one that quote substantially interferes with
Speaker 1: or limits one or more major life activities. And I
Speaker 1: found this really interesting. I don't know, you probably have
Speaker 1: a lot more understanding about the different definitions of these
Speaker 1: sorts of things. I'm curious. The thing that was really
Speaker 1: interesting about this definition is that this is of course
Speaker 1: a social definition. This is a from the social model
Speaker 1: of disability. It is an SMI is not an SMI
Speaker 1: because you see things or hear things, or have you
Speaker 1: know that other people don't experience, or that of mood swings.
Speaker 1: But rather it's defined in this way by how those
Speaker 1: experiences interfere with your ability to function in our society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I sort of think of it as like there
Speaker 2: are people that will I tend to use the word
Speaker 2: like chronic mental illness. So people that will always need
Speaker 2: either need to be in therapy or need to be
Speaker 2: on medication their whole life and need extra support life long.
Speaker 2: And then I think there are other people that maybe
Speaker 2: will have flare ups where they will need that treatment,
Speaker 2: whether it may be in and out of therapy, on
Speaker 2: and off medication, depending how well they're doing. And so
Speaker 2: I guess, like I sort of in my head divide
Speaker 2: between those two. But I also think that like mental
Speaker 2: health and mental illness is so unique to each person
Speaker 2: and the way that it shows up that like, there
Speaker 2: is this desire to put people in buckets, but ultimately
Speaker 2: we all deserve and can benefit from mental health care.
Speaker 1: I agree. And one of the things that we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about as this goes on is that
Speaker 1: there's so many things that the folks who are nerd avergent,
Speaker 1: who work with Clubhouse, there's so many things that they've
Speaker 1: like learned that we can learn from instead of just
Speaker 1: assuming that we have things to tell them or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an awful lot of ways to deal
Speaker 1: with and conceptualizer and divergence. There are people, for example,
Speaker 1: who embrace mad pride. There are people who refuse to
Speaker 1: be assimilationist who refuse to find their way back into
Speaker 1: mainstream society. There are people who are anti psychiatry. There's
Speaker 1: people who are into what is not anti psychiatry, but
Speaker 1: as what called what is called democratic psychiatry. And there
Speaker 1: are people who know how to spell the word psychiatry.
Speaker 1: But I learned this week that I am not among
Speaker 1: those people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I had to spell that word eighty times.
Speaker 2: And I can't do psychology, which is really embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Oh and that's your degree.
Speaker 2: I know it's not good.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I don't know how to spell bourgeoisie. I'm
Speaker 1: getting closer. I can spell bougeoisie about forty percent of
Speaker 1: the time, and that is a vast improvement.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't even know where to start with that one,
Speaker 2: to be honest.
Speaker 1: It goes bo urge, and then from there I kind
Speaker 1: of lose the plot. James, can you spell bourgeoisie or psychiatry?
Speaker 1: They're probably spelled different where you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the biot extraally used to order them. I can
Speaker 3: spell bois Yeah. Okay, maybe I speak French and maybe
Speaker 3: I have a little yeah that step up in that
Speaker 3: regard that would do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I can't even spell like bureau because it
Speaker 1: comes from a French word.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they continue to u yeah, to attack us with
Speaker 3: this spelling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't even use them anyway, give backt the vowels,
Speaker 1: not using them from each according to a bit anyway.
Speaker 1: So the clubhouse model is one method of how to
Speaker 1: deal with mental health. As my friend put it, and
Speaker 1: I paraphrase that here, it's like biodiversity. There isn't a
Speaker 1: single best tree in nature, but instead the forest is
Speaker 1: stronger when there's a lot of types of trees. And
Speaker 1: I like this metaphor for it because it's also true
Speaker 1: about neurodiversity in general, right, Like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: our people have been making that you know, in a society,
Speaker 1: having people with neurodivergence can actually be very positive for
Speaker 1: that society, Oh definitely. But it's also true in terms
Speaker 1: of the field of mental health. There is no single
Speaker 1: magic bullet. There is no single modality that is the
Speaker 1: method by which all people, you know, should conceptualize of
Speaker 1: their mental health and work on their mental health. But
Speaker 1: this is one way, and it's a way that I
Speaker 1: find really inspirational that I think that the listener might God,
Speaker 1: I hate using the word inspirational about something like this.
Speaker 1: It's a dangerous word. But I really exciting. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am excited enough about this that I will dedicate two
Speaker 1: episodes of my show in a week of my life.
Speaker 1: The story starts in the US in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: It starts in two cities, in Detroit and New York City,
Speaker 1: and we're going to start in New York City. Technically,
Speaker 1: we're going to start in Orangeburg, New York, which I've
Speaker 1: never heard of, but it's near New York City, so
Speaker 1: I'm just going to call it New York City. And
Speaker 1: if you're an Orangeburg listener, I'm not really sorry. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2: I'm from New York. I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, Yeah, so it doesn't even exist wherever you are,
Speaker 1: the whole Burgh of orange I bet they're Dutch. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: almost certainly. Anyway. Yeah, at a hospital now known as
Speaker 1: the Rockland Psychiatric Center, it was known at the time
Speaker 1: as the Rockland State Hospital, is where we're going to start.
Speaker 1: This place was fairly new at the time. It opened
Speaker 1: its doors to patients in nineteen thirty one. It did
Speaker 1: all of the bad stuff. It did all the shock
Speaker 1: therapy in early twentieth century psychiatric impatient stuff that isn't
Speaker 1: pleasant to think about, and it was one of the
Speaker 1: largest psychiatric care facilities in the country. Orange Is the
Speaker 1: New Black was filmed at the former children's wing of
Speaker 1: the place, at least in part, so if you want
Speaker 1: a sense of what the place looks like, the answer
Speaker 1: is a prison and yeah for children. Yeah. In the
Speaker 1: early nineteen forties, a bunch of patients there started a
Speaker 1: social club. They pretty much just started this as a
Speaker 1: way to hang out with each other, and they wound
Speaker 1: up changing the face of mental health across the world.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of revolutionary ideas, it started with
Speaker 1: some people just hanging out. They met in what was
Speaker 1: called a clubroom, and this process was facilitated by one
Speaker 1: of the doctors. One of the things that's very hard
Speaker 1: about any history, and listeners are probably tired of me
Speaker 1: complaining about this, is that history gets boiled down to like,
Speaker 1: what one guy did you know? And so I got
Speaker 1: the one guy's names doctor, Well, there's other one guys
Speaker 1: later in the story, but so I couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: exactly how much this was. The patients being like, no,
Speaker 1: we want to meet, and a doctor being like fine,
Speaker 1: or a doctor being like, I will make you all meet.
Speaker 2: I don't know right where the germ of the idea began.
Speaker 1: Right, but the process was facilitated by one of the
Speaker 1: doctors there, doctor Hiram Johnson, and one of the volunteers there,
Speaker 1: a woman named Elizabeth Shermerhorn. You're from New York You
Speaker 1: ever heard the name Shermerhorn, I don't think so ever.
Speaker 1: Taking the G train, I admit that I'm from Westchester,
Speaker 1: New York. Oh, I see, I apologize you're from Orangeburg.
Speaker 2: It's confusing because the name of the state is also
Speaker 2: what we call the city. But I'm from right outside
Speaker 2: the city, and I'm terrified of public transportation.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Well, when I lived in New York City,
Speaker 1: one of the subway stops that I stopped at every
Speaker 1: day was Hoyt Shermerhorn. That's named after not Elizabeth Shermerhorn,
Speaker 1: but she's from one of the important families. If you like,
Speaker 1: look this stuff up, you're going to run across a
Speaker 1: lot of websites called like American Aristocracy, things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Beth. I have no idea if she went by Beth,
Speaker 1: but I like the name Beth, so we're gonna call
Speaker 1: her Beth was the first woman to volunteer in the
Speaker 1: wing at Rockland, and so she's actually I mean, she's
Speaker 1: like putting her privilege on the line in a kind
Speaker 1: of interesting way. It's an era of like social reformers
Speaker 1: and things like that. I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: upperclass women were into you know, the idea behind this
Speaker 1: clubhouse from the facilities point of view, was that, all right, look,
Speaker 1: all of these people have lost friends and family because
Speaker 1: of the stigma around their mental health and the fact
Speaker 1: that we stole them away and but we put them
Speaker 1: in a children's prison and are shocking them. But whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, they've lost some friends. It would be good
Speaker 1: to replace that with new ties, especially before folks are discharged.
Speaker 1: And it was consciously modeled after that. Knew it the time.
Speaker 1: Idea alcoholics anonymous hm oh interesting, Yeah, which is a
Speaker 1: I got to like cover AA and NA and all
Speaker 1: those things at some point.
Speaker 2: But they're I have thoughts around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's complicated, That's that's my like. I haven't done
Speaker 1: a ton of research about it, but I have a
Speaker 1: lot of friends who've dealt with it in positive and
Speaker 1: negative ways. You know, the.
Speaker 2: Success rate is shockingly low from what I've heard.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, isn't it higher than basically everything else?
Speaker 2: Though that I don't know, Okay, but it's yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: I do know the success rates of the clubhouse models,
Speaker 1: and I did not do I did not side quest
Speaker 1: into AA. After a bunch of the folks from this
Speaker 1: social club were discharged, they indeed started a social club.
Speaker 1: It gets called a self help group, which is true,
Speaker 1: but as best I can tell, they more consciously started
Speaker 1: their group as a social club, like the old English
Speaker 1: gentlemen's clubs, not strip clubs, but like where rich assholes
Speaker 1: get together to be rich assholes with each other. And
Speaker 1: I think this difference matters a lot, because most of
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about about the organization and
Speaker 1: the methods they started is that these are members, not patients,
Speaker 1: and not clients. It is their club.
Speaker 2: I'm very strict about. I never used the word patient.
Speaker 2: I always use the word client. That makes sense because
Speaker 2: it helps fight the une been power dynamic.
Speaker 1: Totally And Okay, then I think you're gonna like this.
Speaker 1: It's not going to start off strong, it's gonna start
Speaker 1: off interesting. Eight members of the Rockland Group got together
Speaker 1: with former patients from two other hospitals and their friend
Speaker 1: Beth Shermerhorn, who probably didn't go by Beth. They formed
Speaker 1: a group called We Are Not Alone or WANA. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they said Wana, but it's Wana and
Speaker 1: I want to call it Wana, Hey, Wana, call it
Speaker 1: anyway whatever. They formed this in nineteen forty four while
Speaker 1: meeting on the steps of the New York City Public Library.
Speaker 1: They met like AA does wherever anyone would have them,
Speaker 1: including at another kind of space that influenced them, that
Speaker 1: is messy as hell, settlement houses. We've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about these. Have you heard of settlement houses either
Speaker 1: of Yes, Okay, I feel like most people haven't, and
Speaker 1: that's good.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 2: I feel like I have now now. Of course I'm
Speaker 2: my OCD is like, did have you? Are you missing yourself?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm not gonna put you on the spot
Speaker 1: and make you defind it. I believe you. We've talked
Speaker 1: about them a little bit on the show before. These
Speaker 1: are like progressive era, turn of the century places where
Speaker 1: people from more privileged classes would volunteer to help the
Speaker 1: like less fortunate, which there's a lot to critique there,
Speaker 1: but they also were involved in a lot of things
Speaker 1: that did a lot of good, and so it's like complicated.
Speaker 2: Most things are, yeah.
Speaker 1: Especially when you do a history podcast about people you've
Speaker 1: decided are cool. The number of times I've had to
Speaker 1: later be like, oh, get three quarters the way through
Speaker 1: the research and be like, never mind, these before are terrible. Wana.
Speaker 1: They start going back to Rockland and putting up flyers
Speaker 1: and passing around a bulletin to the patients there. They,
Speaker 1: like everyone that I've ever covered on the show, basically
Speaker 1: run a newspaper. That is what people did back in
Speaker 1: the day before podcasts, and they believed that their breakdowns
Speaker 1: could be a source of power in the bulletin they ran.
Speaker 1: In the forties, they wrote an article called how Wana Started,
Speaker 1: and it said quote and it was all men who
Speaker 1: started it. So that's why it's going to be very
Speaker 1: gendered language here. The idea which had drawn the men
Speaker 1: together in the hospital was that the mental breakdowns were,
Speaker 1: in some cases simply psychological crises, which, if properly understood
Speaker 1: and successfully passed, might mark the beginning of a new
Speaker 1: and better way of life. They came to realize that
Speaker 1: other individuals perhaps society itself were disturbed by the same
Speaker 1: conflicts which had led to their own breakdowns. They felt
Speaker 1: that in their difficulties they were not alone, and that
Speaker 1: the very crises through which they were passing might, by
Speaker 1: deepening their understanding and broadening their sympathies, served to unite
Speaker 1: them more closely with rather than divide them from the
Speaker 1: rest of humanity.
Speaker 2: I love that. One of the things I've found most
Speaker 2: shocking in school was that group therapy is as effective
Speaker 2: as individual therapy, which you wouldn't assume that it is,
Speaker 2: but like you get, you get something out of group
Speaker 2: therapy and seeing other people's experiences, learning from their experiences,
Speaker 2: sort of modeling your behavior about around other people in
Speaker 2: the group. There's so much that comes from community.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me as a I'm a very
Speaker 1: hermit person in my daily life, but I like stubbornly
Speaker 1: acknowledge that actually we kind of need each other, and
Speaker 1: we kind of need like the sense of purpose and
Speaker 1: community that we can build with each other.
Speaker 2: You know, And now, isn't that annoying?
Speaker 3: I know?
Speaker 1: But you know what else is annoying? Pivoting to ads
Speaker 1: in the middle of a podcast. It's really annoying, but.
Speaker 2: He did it flawlessly though, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And now you two can be annoyed or press
Speaker 1: the pull your phone out of your pocket, find the
Speaker 1: little forward fifteen seconds button and press it till you
Speaker 1: hear the music again. Here's the ads, and we're back.
Speaker 1: And about once a week I think to myself, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that I have a job that seems to have
Speaker 1: not gotten mad at me about the way that I
Speaker 1: disparage our advertisers.
Speaker 2: Yet I was gonna say, as a fellow podcaster, I
Speaker 2: can't believe you're allowed to even acknowledge that you can
Speaker 2: fast forward through that.
Speaker 3: The only negative feedback I've ever gotten to is my mom,
Speaker 3: who thinks, so the advertisers will cancel on us if
Speaker 3: I keep being orrried about them.
Speaker 1: No, I sort of figure that because I'm like a
Speaker 1: radical podcast and we're like cool Zone Media is this
Speaker 1: radical network that it's like Unfortunately, it's like it's the
Speaker 1: sugar that helps the poison go down. Like I think
Speaker 1: the advertisers are like canny enough to know that I Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is my darkest worry is that I'm secretly helping
Speaker 1: them by talking trash on them.
Speaker 3: Ah, hopefully it wasn't like a Reagan coin again or something.
Speaker 2: Damn what we would do branded deals on branded videos
Speaker 2: on our YouTube channel and we were just like weak guys,
Speaker 2: we need this money, and people were like.
Speaker 3: Get your money, yeah, secured bag.
Speaker 1: I think transparency is the way to do it. It's like,
Speaker 1: because we are all going through the same thing. We're
Speaker 1: all trying to survive in this society.
Speaker 2: You know exactly, yeah, and also.
Speaker 1: Trying to survive in this society. We're the people from Juana.
Speaker 1: They needed a board of director for legal reasons. The
Speaker 1: ins and outs of charitable organizational structure from before the
Speaker 1: five oh one to C three thing is beyond the
Speaker 1: scope of this podcast. I fell down that rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, I don't want to fall
Speaker 1: down this rabbit hole. It only applies to the first
Speaker 1: like five years of their existence. Elizabeth Shermerhorn was the
Speaker 1: first president of the Board of Directors and she helped
Speaker 1: them find their first building on West forty seventh Street,
Speaker 1: Hell's Kitchen, which is a cool name for a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It was a two floor house with a fountain on
Speaker 1: the back patio, thus the name Fountain House and it's
Speaker 1: across the street from the much larger Fountain House of today,
Speaker 1: which is also on West forty seventh Street in Hell's Kitchen.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: At first this was basically a pool table in a
Speaker 1: Rundown building. It was a social club and basically a
Speaker 1: drop in center. Then they got some funding in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine from the National Mental Health Act and they
Speaker 1: started hiring professional staff. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: keys to what makes the clubhouse model so effective at
Speaker 1: building the agency of its members. They are the ones
Speaker 1: who hired the staff. They're like, hey, we need some help,
Speaker 1: come help us. And I want to say it went
Speaker 1: really well at first. It did not go really well
Speaker 1: at first. It went really badly at first. Fountainhouse was
Speaker 1: then and now completely non political. At no point has
Speaker 1: it been painted as any kind of utopian visioning of
Speaker 1: a better society, and its advocacy work has never expanded
Speaker 1: beyond the single issue of mental health and the rights
Speaker 1: of people suffering from illness. But when Fountainhouse was foundering,
Speaker 1: something happened here that I think is indicative of larger
Speaker 1: political problems in the US today. From its start, fountain
Speaker 1: House was in devoting It used Robert's rules of order
Speaker 1: and all that shit, and so it started factionalizing. I'm
Speaker 1: going to compare this later with the consensus model that
Speaker 1: they work on today, just so you don't think, like,
Speaker 1: what is Margaret into if she's not into voting anyway,
Speaker 1: it started factionalizing soon enough. There's two factions and they're
Speaker 1: fighting over really petty amounts of money because they're not
Speaker 1: like super well off right now, right, they're like fighting
Speaker 1: over like twenty dollars thirty dollars and having endless arguments
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Are they living there or this is just a place
Speaker 2: you would go to.
Speaker 1: No, it's a place you go to. Almost all of
Speaker 1: them are living in boarding houses on that.
Speaker 2: Street though, Oh okay, very local.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then this is one of the things that interesting
Speaker 1: about like Manhattan particular. It's like a hyper local place,
Speaker 1: like there's a like one of the newspapers I looked
Speaker 1: at about this was like the West forty second Street paper,
Speaker 1: you know. But it's such a high population density that
Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 2: I think it's probably like the same as an entire
Speaker 2: town somewhere, right.
Speaker 1: I think way too often. One of the things that
Speaker 1: floats into my head fairly often is I think about
Speaker 1: how there's the language. Finish has about five million people
Speaker 1: who speak it, or it did like twenty years ago
Speaker 1: when I first started thinking about this. That's half the
Speaker 1: population of New York City, right, it's wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My fact that I think about all the time because
Speaker 2: I just learned it is that there are more people
Speaker 2: in California than in all of Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense to me, but that's still why
Speaker 1: little wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I've had to look up how many people
Speaker 3: speak Catalan now nine point two million. It's the same
Speaker 3: as a population of New York City.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and twice twice the number of Fins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yet they are it's still changed within Spain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sad. And so they're arguing over twenty and thirty
Speaker 1: dollars soon enough. So there's the fellowship, which is basically
Speaker 1: the members, and then there's the board, which is the
Speaker 1: people who are doing the fundraising. And you have to
Speaker 1: in order to be the equivalent of a nonprofit. Before
Speaker 1: nonprofits existed, you have to have a board much like today.
Speaker 2: And those people wouldn't recognize that there's someone suffering from
Speaker 2: mental illness if you're on the board or people that
Speaker 2: the board is who identifies mentally ill on the board
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: I don't believe there is at that point. However, these
Speaker 1: days the members and the staff, like many of the
Speaker 1: staff used to be members and things like that. But
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I'm under the impression that the board
Speaker 1: is largely like well meaning, rich people. And there's a
Speaker 1: trove of letters from this time of various people from
Speaker 1: the Fellowship writing to the board to like complain about
Speaker 1: one another, being like, ah, John did this, like you know,
Speaker 1: and do all their petty faction fighting right and slowly,
Speaker 1: late nineteen forties, early nineteen fifties, the board starts quitting.
Speaker 1: They wanted to help, but they weren't helping, and so
Speaker 1: some of the money was drying up and fountain House
Speaker 1: was in trouble. And how they solved this problem later
Speaker 1: the factionalization is through consensus, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that later near the end of the episode, but
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. In the early nineteen fifties, it's
Speaker 1: not doing so great. Enter a man with a good
Speaker 1: all American name. His name is John Beard.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, that's a strong name for a strong man.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I hope he has a beard
Speaker 1: I did not look up photos of him.
Speaker 2: How embarrassing if he didn't, right, I.
Speaker 1: Know what if he couldn't grow one like that would
Speaker 1: be Yeah, the rest of this family is famously here suit.
Speaker 1: I don't have to pronounce this word. I've never said
Speaker 1: it aloud, Harry.
Speaker 2: I just say it must just be so annoying because
Speaker 2: every single person, if he didn't have a beard, would
Speaker 2: be like, where's your beard? John Beard?
Speaker 1: And that would get tiring. I know, maybe I would
Speaker 1: like shave every day on purpose despite those people. If
Speaker 1: I was John.
Speaker 3: Beard, just have a mustache only yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Oh that's when you're mad at your family, you have
Speaker 2: a yeah.
Speaker 1: Or you style your chin hair into a second mustache
Speaker 1: that also looks like a curly mustache. Oh yeah, like
Speaker 1: a double double decka Yeah, people do that. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of anyone doing that in my life, but I'm
Speaker 1: now imagining it.
Speaker 3: And listeners tweet your double deck of mustache is to Margaret.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the nice thing about like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: haven't had a beer in a very long time. I
Speaker 1: paid someone a fair amount of money and went through
Speaker 1: a lot of pain about that. But you know the
Speaker 1: nice thing about shaving is that you can do whatever
Speaker 1: you want and while you're shaving.
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, No, it's great. Yeah, sometimes you
Speaker 3: can do it like if you've got nothing really, you know,
Speaker 3: no video calls for a day, you can just do
Speaker 3: like I like to do the stars. You know, you
Speaker 3: got the side them becomes a star. Do that once
Speaker 3: a month? Ell yeah, starburns.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Later, there's a woman with an even more all
Speaker 1: American name who's going to help out. Her name is
Speaker 1: Mary Smith.
Speaker 2: I don't know, this sounds suspicious. I'm getting suspicious over here.
Speaker 1: The fact that it's the nineteen forties and fifties, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just think about it in that context.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there were only five names, yes.
Speaker 3: Like Queen of Fortune. You spin it and you get
Speaker 3: a generic name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I've named Margaret, and approximately everyone from
Speaker 1: before about nineteen sixty is named Margaret. So we're going
Speaker 1: to hop over to Detroit, where I'm sure there's people
Speaker 1: named Margaret and Mary and John. The largest psychiatric institution
Speaker 1: in the country was in Detroit at that time. It
Speaker 1: was called the Eloise Asylum. It is mostly known today
Speaker 1: as a haunted house tracks at its peak. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the deinstitutionalization and all that
Speaker 1: a little bit later about how all of these things
Speaker 1: have shut down, And I suspect your know way more
Speaker 1: about that than me, So I'm probably gonnag you in during.
Speaker 2: That, but I don't know that much. I just though
Speaker 2: we didn't handle it great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems to be like good idea poorly executed,
Speaker 1: was my quick takeaway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just yeah, or like but then what.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, which the clubhouse model is one of the
Speaker 1: things that is a then what Yeah. At its peak,
Speaker 1: this asylum, Elouise Asylum, was fucking gigantic. It had its
Speaker 1: own zip code, It had ten thousand patients, it had
Speaker 1: two thousand staff, and it was on nine hundred and
Speaker 1: two acres.
Speaker 2: And oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The conditions there were like, uh, not great. They were bad.
Speaker 1: There was lobotomies, an electro shock and just all the stuff.
Speaker 1: Whenever you imagine a bad asylum, this is one of them.
Speaker 1: And some of the employees there were like conditions here,
Speaker 1: They're like, not great, this seems like a bad thing.
Speaker 1: We're all doing right, And so they decided to do
Speaker 1: something about it. And instead of doing it in like
Speaker 1: proper cool people who did cool stuff for him. They
Speaker 1: did it in like scientist form, which is related but
Speaker 1: a little different because their test subjects are people. A
Speaker 1: psychiatrist there named doctor Arthur J. Pierce and a social
Speaker 1: work graduate named John Beard. We're like, all right, let's
Speaker 1: figure out how to make this better. And most of
Speaker 1: the stories I've seen mostly trace John Beard's perspective on
Speaker 1: this rather than ajp on it. But he worked with
Speaker 1: about two hundred schizophrenic patients, and he thought the thought
Speaker 1: that one hundred percent should not have been half as
Speaker 1: revolutionary as it was, which was, what if I treat
Speaker 1: my patients like their people?
Speaker 2: Ooh intriguing? Huhreaking? I know time it was.
Speaker 3: It's just like in the nineteen fifties, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nineteen. We're in the nineteen forties and early
Speaker 1: fifties at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, cool.
Speaker 1: They they're not victims, They're not just test subjects, although
Speaker 1: he is running tests on them, but the test he's
Speaker 1: running on them seem to be like what happens if
Speaker 1: I put a piece of candy under their pillow in
Speaker 1: the morning, How does it affect their day? And like
Speaker 1: what happens if I take them to really nice restaurants
Speaker 1: things like that, but they are also people with agency,
Speaker 1: and they're people who could help. One of the core
Speaker 1: ideas of the modern clubhouse model is that we have
Speaker 1: a human need to be needed. Yes, so mister Beard
Speaker 1: who's not a doctor but a social worker, which make
Speaker 1: it is great because I think being mister Beard is
Speaker 1: even better than being doctor Beard. Although it's a toss up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's close.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One day he was like, as the origin story goes,
Speaker 1: you know, all these things kind of become apocryphal over time.
Speaker 1: But the way it's told is he asked the patient, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you know how to get to the library, And
Speaker 1: so we followed the patient to the library, and he
Speaker 1: got the patient's help finding some math books and then
Speaker 1: got the patient's help with some algebra problems. Because John
Speaker 1: and Arthur and lots of other people, including presumably the patients,
Speaker 1: were well aware that madness wasn't the only part of
Speaker 1: these people's personalities, and a lot of like clubhouse model
Speaker 1: stuff is around, like find the strength or find the
Speaker 1: healthy part, and like focus on that. So they developed
Speaker 1: what became known as activity group therapy or AGT. They
Speaker 1: would organize picnics, they would solve math problems together they
Speaker 1: started like painting and woodworking and play acting. They would
Speaker 1: do normal shit together, staff and patience. And this is
Speaker 1: interesting to me because in my head, I don't know
Speaker 1: a ton about I mean, I read about it, and
Speaker 1: I read a whole bunch about it for this, but
Speaker 1: I don't know like a ton. I don't know everything
Speaker 1: in and out about asylums or psychiatric institutions. I want
Speaker 1: to call them asylums because even though I struggle to
Speaker 1: spell asylum, not I don't struggle nearly as hard as
Speaker 1: I struggle to spell psychiatric. But it's hard because why
Speaker 1: am I telling anyone this? Because you don't see my script.
Speaker 1: None of you do. Well, James can see it. I
Speaker 1: could see, but yeah I did.
Speaker 3: Do spellcha I see an asylum here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, just put that out to the listeners.
Speaker 1: When I think of like movies and stuff around psychiatric institutions,
Speaker 1: there's like two versions and it's really polar. Right, there's
Speaker 1: the hell house prison and then there's the like people
Speaker 1: painting in the garden. Right, it seems like this is
Speaker 1: the difference, is a GT like, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: enough of this is not what I specifically focused on,
Speaker 1: but there is a night and day difference about how
Speaker 1: people's experiences in these places can be, and that night
Speaker 1: and day difference is real, and it was based on
Speaker 1: work that people have done.
Speaker 2: And also if you're there willingly or not totally makes
Speaker 2: a big difference, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the early nineteen fifties, John Beard went to
Speaker 1: New York to present some of his work on the
Speaker 1: eloise asylium as as James's pointing out that I have
Speaker 1: it spelled here. And while he was there, Elizabeth Shermerhorn
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other women from Fountainhouse came and
Speaker 1: gave him a tour. And I'm pointing out, there are
Speaker 1: all women, because like my friend who I talked to
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, you know who's left out of this
Speaker 1: story the women who did all the work.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, well that was bound to happen at
Speaker 2: some point in a story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, But Elizabeth and Mary deserve as much credit
Speaker 1: as John, and actually just John. While he was there,
Speaker 1: he got a tour, and then after he left, the
Speaker 1: women were like, we really need this guy to come back.
Speaker 1: He like, this is the guy who's gonna who knows
Speaker 1: this stuff. We want this guy involved, but he didn't
Speaker 1: want to leave his work at Eloise, and he was
Speaker 1: a very like Detroit guy. His whole family's Michigan, you know.
Speaker 1: But he was thinking it would be nice to do
Speaker 1: the work I'm doing, but outside of the hospital setting,
Speaker 1: because you have the well captive audience that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of things very hard. So Elizabeth and the other
Speaker 1: women a Fountainhouse started calling him every Sunday and they
Speaker 1: would call him to give him like status reports, but
Speaker 1: really it was just to try and sway him to
Speaker 1: come to be director at Fountainhouse. And so nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: five he agreed. He moved to New York and he
Speaker 1: became the director of Fountainhouse and he had a little
Speaker 1: apartment on Times Square, and he spent a while studying
Speaker 1: the place, figuring out what wasn't working about it, and
Speaker 1: he provided about half of the solution. He said, basically,
Speaker 1: I think the dysfunction here is because of the system
Speaker 1: you've created. The building was falling apart, the people were
Speaker 1: burned out, there was no money, and so he presents
Speaker 1: a radically new version of Fountainhouse. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: coup to be honest by the board, right, because what
Speaker 1: he does is he shows up and he changes the
Speaker 1: locks on the building and he makes everyone reapply for membership.
Speaker 1: Everyone is invited to reapply, but he's like, we are
Speaker 1: starting fresh, and a few people wrote the board and
Speaker 1: we have their letters being like, I'm not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: I've been a member since before anyone heard of this guy, Like,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: How big is a membership at this point? Are we
Speaker 2: finite like ranging dozens? Like five people?
Speaker 1: I am not certain, I would offer. My inference is
Speaker 1: that we're talking like ten to forty people max and ite,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's probably like a very fluid
Speaker 1: I think there's like a little tight core. And then
Speaker 1: some people who like kind of sometimes use it.
Speaker 2: Do you have to pay to be a part of it?
Speaker 1: No, you certainly don't now, and I don't believe he did.
Speaker 1: Then he wanted the place to be open during the
Speaker 1: day and not at night because he wanted a certain
Speaker 1: type of normalcy. And we'll talk about a little bit
Speaker 1: about why that isn't a minute. And so all this
Speaker 1: is sort of some progress. Things get a little better.
Speaker 1: They start raising money the board, like they're just better
Speaker 1: at getting the board to raise money and stuff, and
Speaker 1: there's new energy, and they're hiring contractors to come and
Speaker 1: fix up the place a little bit. Attendance starts picking up,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't quite working. It still wasn't the kind
Speaker 1: of amazing thing that I think it is now. He
Speaker 1: was trying to do all the old things from AGT
Speaker 1: that he had done at the hospital. He's introducing activities.
Speaker 1: It's not work, it's activities. People would come in there
Speaker 1: because there's nowhere else to go, and then he'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh you can. I'm making this up, but like paint
Speaker 1: and do algebra problems. I don't know. But then so
Speaker 1: women saved it. His administrative assistant was also a mental
Speaker 1: health professional, and her name was Mary Smith, and she
Speaker 1: was much better with the members. A lot of the
Speaker 1: reasons people were coming in was like to hang out
Speaker 1: with Mary. As the story goes, John Beard is at
Speaker 1: his desk in his office one day and he can't
Speaker 1: get any work done. People are laughing and being loud
Speaker 1: as hell in the halls outside because they're listening to
Speaker 1: our amazing podcast at sorry, I realized this time for
Speaker 1: an ad break, and here's your interruption, and we're back.
Speaker 1: So you can't get any work done because people are
Speaker 1: laughing and being loud as hell in the halls outside.
Speaker 1: The implication is he's like grouchy, right, which I sympathize with.
Speaker 1: Not because it's a.
Speaker 2: Good thing to be person, a person that loves people,
Speaker 2: but not necessarily interacting with them.
Speaker 1: That's my inference and why I sort of like him
Speaker 1: in this context, even though he's like the wrong guy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He comes down the stairs and he sees Mary surrounded
Speaker 1: by members and they're all making lunch together and talking
Speaker 1: and laughing, and he notices two things immediately. One there
Speaker 1: is no easy way to tell whose staff and whose member.
Speaker 1: And two, as John describes it, he'd heard the members
Speaker 1: like laugh before, but maniacally laugh. This was the first
Speaker 1: time he heard laughter, genuine social laughter in Fountainhouse. Mary
Speaker 1: sees them and it's like, come on down and have
Speaker 1: lunch with us. And during lunch they talk about all
Speaker 1: the filing and stuff that they have to get done.
Speaker 1: After lunch. It's very mundane and like work focused conversation.
Speaker 1: Mary and a few other women had cracked the case
Speaker 1: most of the members were poor as fuck, that they're
Speaker 1: living in boarding houses on forty seventh Street. This is
Speaker 1: before SSI. They don't have money for lunch. So staff
Speaker 1: was going and getting like pre made food nearby and
Speaker 1: then coming back and eating alone. And then Mary was like,
Speaker 1: we should pull our money, all of us and make
Speaker 1: lunch together. And so the members had like a little
Speaker 1: bit of money. They just didn't have like they had
Speaker 1: like pay for their slice of bread money, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have like pay for their slice of pizza money.
Speaker 1: It's an Italian neighborhood. So they pulled their collective money
Speaker 1: and they went and bought bread, and they made sandwiches
Speaker 1: all together, and they all together had a problem, and
Speaker 1: they went out and solved that problem collectively, staff and
Speaker 1: members together. And they'd been doing it for weeks before
Speaker 1: John like noticed and John is like smart as fucking
Speaker 1: accomplished a lot, but he gets all the credit in
Speaker 1: most accounts. Literally, this is how much people want to
Speaker 1: write women out of stories. They're like, and this genius
Speaker 1: realized what was happening and that it was game changing,
Speaker 1: and you're like.
Speaker 2: This thing yet absolutely nothing to do with Yeah.
Speaker 1: He literally what he did is he didn't stop it.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, like, good on him, I'm glad he
Speaker 1: didn't stop it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, plenty of men of that era.
Speaker 1: Would absolutely, especially ones who are like in this position
Speaker 1: of power, right, And so Mary Smith and the members
Speaker 1: did something game changing, but he didn't stop it. And
Speaker 1: so that day contractors came in to fix the plaster
Speaker 1: on the walls and John Beard was like, no, we
Speaker 1: don't need you, and the contractors are like, well, you
Speaker 1: owe us fifty percent as a cancelation fee, and John
Speaker 1: Beard is like, fine, that's money well spent and gives
Speaker 1: them their fifty percent. They go on their way, and
Speaker 1: then with all the staff and members together, he's like
Speaker 1: pointing at the walls that need new plaster, and he's like,
Speaker 1: y'all want to live like this and they're like no,
Speaker 1: They're like all right, well let's fix the walls. And
Speaker 1: so fountain House became focused not around activities, but around
Speaker 1: the work day. Activities were working for him with this
Speaker 1: like captive audience, right, who had no ability to have agency.
Speaker 1: And here comes a tangent. My dog's name is Rintraw.
Speaker 1: Nstraw is a character from in the first word of
Speaker 1: a book called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by
Speaker 1: William Blake. I just need to work this into every
Speaker 1: script somehow if I can. It's like I didn't do
Speaker 1: Tolkien in the script, so I have to work in
Speaker 1: the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Got Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: published in seventeen ninety. In this book, there's a section
Speaker 1: called the Parables of Hell. And one day I'll do
Speaker 1: a whole William Blake episode and probably have some poor
Speaker 1: guests listen to me read every single one of these parables.
Speaker 1: Some of them have carried on throughout the years. The
Speaker 1: Road of access leads to the Palace of Wisdom. I
Speaker 1: think I've heard somewhere before. I don't know, but there's
Speaker 1: one that has become so cliche, that has become kind
Speaker 1: of anodyne. It's sort of cheesy. It's not the kind
Speaker 1: of phrase that comes from from something you'd expect to
Speaker 1: be called the Parables of Hell, and that is the
Speaker 1: busy bee has no time for sorrow. This is I
Speaker 1: don't think any of them are talking about William Blake
Speaker 1: while they're describing it, but I am. This seems to
Speaker 1: be like the basic idea. It's not, oh, keep busy
Speaker 1: so you don't have time to consider how bad everything is.
Speaker 1: It's not just a way of sticking your head in
Speaker 1: the sand. Instead, it's a way of building agency into
Speaker 1: your life, doing things, accomplishing things, having tangible goals that
Speaker 1: you reach. And I would argue the joy of accomplishing
Speaker 1: things has been stripped away from us by the modern
Speaker 1: workforce because in most jobs we act without agency. We'll
Speaker 1: just do what we're told and then we do it.
Speaker 1: I feel very blessed that even though this would have
Speaker 1: been a great place for an ad transition, what was
Speaker 1: I doing? But we're done. We don't need any more
Speaker 1: AD transition, So anyway, I feel very blessed.
Speaker 3: You can't do a mocks transition here, you're but please don't.
Speaker 2: I'm a big proponent of purpose, and I think people
Speaker 2: get like the defensive around a little bit because of
Speaker 2: you know, capitalism. But it's like a reimagining of what
Speaker 2: purpose can be. I mean, purpose can be that I'm
Speaker 2: a great grandmother, yeah, or that I my purpose is
Speaker 2: my rescue dogs. But just having something to tie you
Speaker 2: to this life is very helpful.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, and purpose is one of the I
Speaker 1: think there's like a people place and purpose are the
Speaker 1: three things that the clubhouse model argues that people need
Speaker 1: when they leave the when they leave like in patient
Speaker 1: psychiatric care, yeah, and when the members of fountain House
Speaker 1: hired John Beard to help them out. He organized it
Speaker 1: around the work day. Can come in anytime they want,
Speaker 1: from nine to five. They don't have to come in,
Speaker 1: but they can come in if they want to. While
Speaker 1: they're there, they don't have to work on the place,
Speaker 1: but they can if they want to. They also don't
Speaker 1: get paid for it. We'll talk about how they work
Speaker 1: to get people paid later, but they're doing real work,
Speaker 1: not simulated work, in the maintenance and running of the
Speaker 1: clubhouse itself. Like they don't get paid for it, the
Speaker 1: same way that like I don't get paid to do
Speaker 1: my own dishes, you know. And there's a reason to
Speaker 1: this day that articles about Fountain House describe it as
Speaker 1: looking more like a fancy country club than a medical space,
Speaker 1: because people take pride in maintaining the space and beautifying it.
Speaker 1: The Clubhouse moved from a socializing model to a working
Speaker 1: model in part because it was an easier way. This
Speaker 1: is kind of way you're gonna get at about like
Speaker 1: how purpose has been like taken away from us by
Speaker 1: like capitalism, right, you know, because under capitalism you think, well,
Speaker 1: I just want to not work, right, But that's not
Speaker 1: for most people. That's not really true. At the end
Speaker 1: of it, you know, no, So it moved from a
Speaker 1: socializing model to a working model because it was an
Speaker 1: easier way to get people involved and make friends with
Speaker 1: each other. Paradoxically, you think socializing is the better way
Speaker 1: to socialize, but it's not necessarily. When the clubhouse was
Speaker 1: open at night, it had a bit of a party vibe.
Speaker 1: Go to a party that you don't know anyone at,
Speaker 1: especially if you're suffering from serious mental illness already, that's
Speaker 1: hard as fuck for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Right, What are we talking about? What is there to say?
Speaker 2: When you're working with someone, it's inherently there's something you're
Speaker 2: having a shared experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And most members of the Fountain House have been
Speaker 1: kicked out in more communities than the average person has
Speaker 1: ever been part of. And a friend of mine describes
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who works there describes how he
Speaker 1: brings in new people. There's more than two two hundred
Speaker 1: light bulbs in Fountainhouse. This is not a light bulb joke.
Speaker 1: It's a weird it's a lighthouse parable instead, but it's
Speaker 1: literal and true. There's more than two two hundred light
Speaker 1: bulbs there. And because the place is and renovated dozens
Speaker 1: of times. All of them are like different kinds of
Speaker 1: light bulbs, right, there's always a bunch that have been
Speaker 1: burned out. So he sees a new person who doesn't
Speaker 1: know anyone, who's in their own head because of symptoms
Speaker 1: or depression or newness, and he's like, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go change the lightbulbs around here. I don't need
Speaker 1: you to do much, but if you could hold the
Speaker 1: ladder for me. And he's done this hundreds of times
Speaker 1: with people with very severe mental illnesses, but even folks
Speaker 1: who don't care whether or not they themselves live or die.
Speaker 1: Every single time, they can be counted on to make
Speaker 1: sure that another person who is climbing up a ladder
Speaker 1: is safe while they do it. And he goes around
Speaker 1: and he changes light bulbs. He's not even like, oh,
Speaker 1: I got a job for you, go change the light bulbs, right,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm doing this work. You want to come
Speaker 1: help me? After two or three lightbulbs, they're friends and
Speaker 1: my friend could introduce them to new people. With work.
Speaker 1: You can talk about work and you don't have to
Speaker 1: talk about yourself, and you can also connect with that
Speaker 1: healthy part of you instead of only connecting about your illness,
Speaker 1: and the work is purposeful. It matters that someone has
Speaker 1: made lunch. It matters that someone has held the ladder
Speaker 1: to make sure that someone didn't fall. It matters that
Speaker 1: someone answers the phone and files the paperwork and cleans
Speaker 1: the vomit and like the like real unglamorous tasks of
Speaker 1: daily life. You know, and you are not required to
Speaker 1: do anything. You can come in and eat lunch and
Speaker 1: smoke cigarettes and leave. That's the way my friend phrased it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're allowed to smoke in the
Speaker 1: building or not asserted subpoint, at least you were able to.
Speaker 1: And there is no external benefit either. It's not like
Speaker 1: whoever puts in the most work is more likely to
Speaker 1: get hired on as staff or it gets promoted to
Speaker 1: being like employee, volunteer of the month or like any
Speaker 1: of that. You can't fail at Fountain House. You can
Speaker 1: get paused, your membership can be paused if you assault
Speaker 1: someone or you steal stuff or something like that. But
Speaker 1: there's no mandated work. All you've got to do is
Speaker 1: come through the green doors. And of the there's thirty
Speaker 1: seven principles we'll get to it later. I know it
Speaker 1: sounds kind of culty, but whatever. There's the first two principles.
Speaker 1: One is, once a member, you're a member for life.
Speaker 1: So if you get in, you can leave for fifty
Speaker 1: seven years and come back and you can come right
Speaker 1: back in. Right.
Speaker 2: What is the admissions process?
Speaker 1: I don't know as much about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, maybe it's like an old English club, you know,
Speaker 3: like they go around with the billiard balls and then
Speaker 3: if someone puts, are you familiar with this process?
Speaker 1: So right, well, but tell me about it?
Speaker 3: All right, Okay, this is the thing I learned about
Speaker 3: history class. To be clear, those you who have not
Speaker 3: been to the United Kingdom and it's not still the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century there. But one of the things that they
Speaker 3: used to do in these clubs was they would if
Speaker 3: a new member is being admitted, right, they'd get all
Speaker 3: the other members together. I'd be like, Margaret would like
Speaker 3: to join the club? Are okay with Margaret joining the club?
Speaker 3: And then what they would do is pass around a
Speaker 3: sack and everyone has balls billiard balls, right, like snooker
Speaker 3: pool whatever. Don't play snooker in America, but the balls, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: You just keep you keep referencing things that are more
Speaker 2: and more confusing to us.
Speaker 1: Word yeah, the fancy word for pool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that to become the Britain Explained podcast. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I basical you're right right, they've got billiard balls. Anyone
Speaker 3: could put in a black board if they want to.
Speaker 3: But you don't know, right, everyone's just putting their ball
Speaker 3: in the back, but you don't know. Then they get
Speaker 3: to any dump them out. There's a black ball. If
Speaker 3: Margaret can't be admitted.
Speaker 1: Oh no, but I really wanted to be part of
Speaker 1: the Gentleman's Club of English.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's a shame. I know you've got black board.
Speaker 3: That's where the verb comes from.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's where black bulb comes from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, WHOA Why know black listed more than I know
Speaker 2: black balls.
Speaker 1: I didn't think Americans used black bold, but I first
Speaker 1: heard it in a Dead Press song and I think
Speaker 1: they were making a play on words.
Speaker 3: They full circle.
Speaker 1: Well for superrinciples, once you remember your member for life,
Speaker 1: and then everything at the clubhouse is voluntary for two principles.
Speaker 1: While I am talking about all of John Beard's other
Speaker 1: great accomplishments, I can't help but point out two other
Speaker 1: accomplishments of his He married to Margaret and had a
Speaker 1: daughter named Margaret. How lovely I know, I know.
Speaker 2: A man of good taste.
Speaker 1: And also he named his son John. Basically they're like
Speaker 1: John and Margaret are like, we got the best names.
Speaker 1: Why don't we just just keep on going? So was
Speaker 1: born the clubhouse model. In the book fountain House by
Speaker 1: Alan Doyle, Julius Lenol and Kenneth J. Dudick, the authors
Speaker 1: put it like this stripped of a medical surrounding and
Speaker 1: a preoccupation with illness, the work day at fountain House
Speaker 1: provides an ordinary setting for social interaction and personal contributions,
Speaker 1: in which the collaboration of staff and members and everyday
Speaker 1: activities becomes a transformative event that aids in the process
Speaker 1: of mental health recovering. And Uh, when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the worker cooperatives that they
Speaker 1: set up, and we're going to talk about the way
Speaker 1: that it has spread to thirty three countries, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the farm that they have that
Speaker 1: it totally makes it sound really culty whenever they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're going to go to the farm, and it just
Speaker 1: the farm and then farm is capitalized, which I understand
Speaker 1: why you do it, but the optics on it sounds
Speaker 1: crapyway or whatever.
Speaker 2: All of this stuff. You're like, where's the line?
Speaker 1: And that's what's so fascinating to me about this is
Speaker 1: if there is like there's critiques that can and have
Speaker 1: been levied egg about this, and I have like talked
Speaker 1: with people about them, right, but there's not there's not
Speaker 1: like a hidden bad, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, there's no big bad that's like, yeah, like pulling
Speaker 2: the strings with some bad agenda or power grab, right.
Speaker 1: And I think the big difference is that instead of
Speaker 1: existing like a cult exists to strip members of agency,
Speaker 1: and this exists to provide not just purpose but agency
Speaker 1: to its members. And we'll talk I'll quote a bunch
Speaker 1: of studies about how effective that is in part two.
Speaker 1: But first, at the end of part one, how are
Speaker 1: you feeling? You came in skeptical, and it's okay if
Speaker 1: you're still skeptical, but I'm curious how you're feeling about it.
Speaker 2: I'm feeling optimistic. I would say, I'd say that I
Speaker 2: agree with these principles that they seem to be based on.
Speaker 2: It makes sense to me. I'm a huge proponent of
Speaker 2: social support and community building and relationships and living in relationships.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, James, what do you got?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I'm loving it. I really like this idea of like
Speaker 3: participation being empowering. And when you spoke about your friend
Speaker 3: who likes to help people, like to have people help
Speaker 3: them with ladders and like bulbs, it reminded me like
Speaker 3: I've done a lot of helping out in refugee camps,
Speaker 3: and one of the things you'll sometimes see is like
Speaker 3: most people over there with their families and their communities,
Speaker 3: and you can see their kind of forming their own
Speaker 3: little communities in the camp. And sometimes you'll see someone
Speaker 3: who's not. And the thing that we've always done is
Speaker 3: been like, Hey, I have a giant vat of lentils here,
Speaker 3: and I need somebody to help me spoon the lentils.
Speaker 3: And it's always really empowering for that person to be
Speaker 3: to help you with the lentils. And then often you'll
Speaker 3: do that. You arrive the next day and they'll be like, hey,
Speaker 3: we're doing the lentils again, like the be the hot
Speaker 3: sauce person. You know, there are lots of jobs that
Speaker 3: are required in lental distribution yeah, so I can associate
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 2: It's important to feel like you have a role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, nope, I was trying to do it.
Speaker 1: Add well, what is your role, Allison in terms of plugging?
Speaker 1: What you want to plug? Here at the end of
Speaker 1: the first episode.
Speaker 2: So, I just had a new book come out in
Speaker 2: October called I Do I Think Conversations about Modern Marriage
Speaker 2: that sort of examines what marriage used to be and
Speaker 2: the possibilities of what marriage can be as we tailor
Speaker 2: it more towards our individual needs or if you even
Speaker 2: want to get married at all, which is great about
Speaker 2: modern society because you don't have to. And then you
Speaker 2: can listen to my podcast just between us every week.
Speaker 2: I also have a substack called Emotional Support Lady that
Speaker 2: is all mental health based and I'm also a relationship
Speaker 2: coach that is taking clients. So you can find out
Speaker 2: more information about that on Alisonraaskin dot com.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I'm excited about all this, James, you guys
Speaker 1: that you want to plug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a humanitarian disaster in North and East
Speaker 3: Syria and I would love for you to give some
Speaker 3: of your heart earned money. I know everyone's support it
Speaker 3: to tell me to have you saw the Kurdish red
Speaker 3: crescent hgvayas Ah.
Speaker 1: Well, now I feel selfish that my plug is about me. Immediately,
Speaker 1: I know, I felt terrible. I was like, oh no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that is actually just that's just what happens with cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media is we do both. It's completely fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can follow me on substack at margat kilroid do
Speaker 1: at substack dot com. I post a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Half of it's free and half of it is like
Speaker 1: the more personal stuff is for people who support me there.
Speaker 1: And also I want to shout out that I work
Speaker 1: with a collectively run publisher called Strangers in the Tangle Wilderness.
Speaker 1: Every month we mail out a zine to backers anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world, to anyone who supports us on Patreon
Speaker 1: at ten dollars a month or more. And you can
Speaker 1: also just read all of those for free on our
Speaker 1: website tangle wilderness dot org. We do a lot of
Speaker 1: like fiction and poetry and essays and stuff. I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff. We even have a separate
Speaker 1: podcast network that I have a podcast on that James
Speaker 1: is now sometimes a co host of called Live Like
Speaker 1: the World Is Dying. About individual and community preparedness.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So there's lots of other stuff. If you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: I don't want to wait till Wednesday to hear more
Speaker 1: of Margaret talking, no one actually thinks that. But if
Speaker 1: you do think that you have many options, I'm.
Speaker 2: Sure there are many people that think.
Speaker 1: That that's potentially true. But all of you can hear me,
Speaker 1: all of all three of us again on Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: we're just gonna wait till all of us are waiting
Speaker 1: till Wednesday, and every podcast is live.
Speaker 3: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: More podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website Foolzonemedia
Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.