Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to Kelly Carlin about the human path to wholeness.
Speaker 1: We delve into Kelly's childhood and what it was like
Speaker 1: growing up with the influential comedian George Carlin. Recently, she
Speaker 1: started her own coaching program called Women on the Verge.
Speaker 1: With a master's degree in Yungian psychology and a coaching certification,
Speaker 1: Kelly helps women step out of their expected societal roles
Speaker 1: by empowering them to reclaim their true selves. She finds
Speaker 1: great joy in seeing others live full, authentic lives. We
Speaker 1: also touch on the topics of parenting, depth, psychology, social justice, interconnectivity,
Speaker 1: and comedy. It was particularly interesting talking to Kelly about
Speaker 1: how her father, George Carlin, would react to many of
Speaker 1: the debates and political divides that are going on in
Speaker 1: the world today. And now I bring you Kelly Carlin. Kelly,
Speaker 1: it's so great to chat with you today in the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. It's about time. We've only been trying to
Speaker 1: do this for like, I don't know, probably five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a while, and I keep seeing you on
Speaker 1: Twitter and I love the stuff you're putting out there.
Speaker 1: And I'm really looking forward to shining a spotlight on
Speaker 1: you today. Thank you. You've lived quite an interesting life
Speaker 1: so far. Yeah, yeah, I would say so for sure.
Speaker 1: Lots of like twists and turns and you know plot,
Speaker 1: you know, unaspected. It's been a good, full life so far.
Speaker 1: I'd like more of it. I'm not done with it,
Speaker 1: but just in case anyone's listening, but yeah, no, I've
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of amazing, exciting things and a
Speaker 1: lot of times and years where it was difficult and
Speaker 1: hard and weird and all of that. But I feel
Speaker 1: very grateful for where I am in my life right now. Yeah. Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that. I really I'm glad to
Speaker 1: hear that. So for people who are wondering if there's
Speaker 1: any connection to the comedian George Carlin, yes, you are
Speaker 1: his daughter, right, Yes, yeah, that can be confirmed. That
Speaker 1: can be confirmed. And I was ring something interesting because
Speaker 1: an interesting article, because he had a bit in his
Speaker 1: nineteen nine n eighteen HBO special you were all diseased.
Speaker 1: He had a bit about coddling, you know, and when
Speaker 1: I was ringing this article, you kind of had remarked
Speaker 1: that what your childhood with him was the opposite of coddling,
Speaker 1: even maybe to a degree where it's maybe there's a
Speaker 1: balance that needs to be struck, right, you have like
Speaker 1: extreme calling on the one end, but then you know,
Speaker 1: you kind of talked in a little bit about your
Speaker 1: own childhood, which might be an extreme on another end.
Speaker 1: Is that right? It's complicated, and you did a whole
Speaker 1: you wrote a book about it, right, Yeah, I did
Speaker 1: a solo show about my life with my parents and
Speaker 1: all of that. But I mean my dad coddled me
Speaker 1: in lots of ways, and then in other ways, I
Speaker 1: was a typical gen xer my parents. I was like
Speaker 1: I was raised by wolves, you know, I mean those
Speaker 1: of us who were born in the early and mid
Speaker 1: and late sixties, our parents weren't parenting. Wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of parenting going on. There wasn't some ways, but for
Speaker 1: the most part they were being out being adolescents when
Speaker 1: they should have been being parents. And so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of having to grow up fast and being
Speaker 1: the only adult in the room sometimes and being parentified
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. And yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: my dad always rescued me financially and always rescued me
Speaker 1: in other ways, so I never had to kind of
Speaker 1: learn how to live with adult consequences in other areas
Speaker 1: of my life. So you know, none of these things
Speaker 1: are that simple and that easy to explain. But I mean,
Speaker 1: the good news is was that I knew I was loved,
Speaker 1: I knew I was cherished, I knew I was respected
Speaker 1: in many ways. And my mother had really serious addiction
Speaker 1: is she when I was a kid growing up, and
Speaker 1: she got sober when I was around twelve. So once
Speaker 1: she got sober, our family life changed a lot. And
Speaker 1: my dad had certainly his own addiction issues also, but
Speaker 1: my mother was a drinker. She was an alcoholic, so
Speaker 1: that was really tough. But yeah, you know, parents are
Speaker 1: you know, parents are people doing the best they could.
Speaker 1: And my dad always was looking out for me and
Speaker 1: always worried about me and felt really guilty about those
Speaker 1: crazy years where he and my mom really kind of
Speaker 1: went off the deep end with drugs and alcohol. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it was the era you know,
Speaker 1: we were really all of my friends parents, We were
Speaker 1: all left to our own devices. Yeah, well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know you're deeply interested in psychology, and yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: my master's in YUNGI and dep psychology. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: love and I love we could really nerd out about that,
Speaker 1: for sure, I certainly could, I hope. So part of
Speaker 1: my own interest in psychology certainly came from family discord,
Speaker 1: as this is apparently the first time I ever talked.
Speaker 1: My mom and my grandmom were arguing in the front
Speaker 1: seat of the car in one of their usual arguments,
Speaker 1: heated fights, you know, and I said, both of you,
Speaker 1: just shut up, grandmam, this is what my mom's trying
Speaker 1: to say. And I did all that and said, Mom,
Speaker 1: this is what my grandmom's trying to say, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And they just they were like Joel dropped,
Speaker 1: like I think I was seven years older. They looked
Speaker 1: in the the backseat of the car and they're like,
Speaker 1: what is going on here? You know? So I feel
Speaker 1: like being the peacemaker for me and I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just I bring this up to see if you
Speaker 1: resonate at all with This kind of led to a
Speaker 1: real deep interest in human psychology because I felt like
Speaker 1: I had to be a peace caper peacekeeper in a
Speaker 1: big way as a child myself. Yeah, I was definitely
Speaker 1: the peacekeeper in the family one hundred percent. I was
Speaker 1: an only child, and then my parents argued a lot
Speaker 1: during those addictive years. So yeah, no, I was that
Speaker 1: was my main role, was the peacekeeper and always trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to calm people down and sort
Speaker 1: things out between them, and you know, getting triangulated because
Speaker 1: of that. And that's the parentification of the child was
Speaker 1: what happens, Suddenly we're in their business and sorry and
Speaker 1: so yeah, and when that happens, what happens to the
Speaker 1: kid is that all of your relationship with your own
Speaker 1: needs and your own desires and your own ones, all
Speaker 1: of the psychic energy you would normally spend on that
Speaker 1: part of your development gets stunted or gets put somewhere
Speaker 1: in a closet inside of you, and so you end
Speaker 1: up kind of coming out as an adult or even
Speaker 1: as a young adult, with not really knowing what you want.
Speaker 1: At least that's how it showed up for me, really
Speaker 1: confused about who I was and what I wanted and
Speaker 1: even my own preferences and my own desires, you know,
Speaker 1: And really that took me pretty much in my thirties
Speaker 1: is when I really started to discover that for myself,
Speaker 1: when I felt super safe in the world and was
Speaker 1: no longer In my twenties, I ended up being with
Speaker 1: a guy and marrying a guy who I just was
Speaker 1: replicated my family dynamics, which was he was a narcissist
Speaker 1: and crazy, and all of my whole job was to
Speaker 1: figure out what he needed and wanted in every single moment.
Speaker 1: Scanning as they call it, Yes, total scanning. Yes, percent
Speaker 1: it's exhausting. It really, it truly is exhausting, and you
Speaker 1: almost start to when you're a child, you get certain
Speaker 1: expectations and assumptions about the world, and so you start
Speaker 1: to think, oh, that's normal this kind of discord right then,
Speaker 1: and then it feels normal in a relationship. No, I
Speaker 1: totally get it. There's one story I read, if you
Speaker 1: feel comfortable sharing, I thought I was really fascinating about
Speaker 1: how there was such an intense moment you decided to
Speaker 1: create like a pact or like have a like a
Speaker 1: certain just to have some peace for a second. It
Speaker 1: was a un peace treaty, though I didn't call it
Speaker 1: that in the moment, but that's certainly what it was like.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we were in Hawaii and my parents were
Speaker 1: we were on vacation, like our first big Hawaiian vacation,
Speaker 1: and my parents just were arguing the entire time and
Speaker 1: doing drugs and drinking and everything. And I finally revealed
Speaker 1: to them the effect. I mean, it had been years
Speaker 1: that they'd been kind of going at this, and I
Speaker 1: think I think it was around ten years old at
Speaker 1: this point, and I just finally let them see how
Speaker 1: much the toll it was taking on me emotionally, and
Speaker 1: I like let myself finally crack and scream and yell
Speaker 1: and cry and fall apart basically, and like that stopped
Speaker 1: them in their tracks and got enough attention from them.
Speaker 1: And then I sat down and, like you said, just
Speaker 1: continued my role, which is all right, let's let's keep
Speaker 1: this going exactly. I wrote out, like I, Brenda and
Speaker 1: George Carlin will not drink alcohol or snort cocaine for
Speaker 1: the duration of the vacation, you know, and made them
Speaker 1: sign it at the end, you know, at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the document and all of that. And twenty minutes later,
Speaker 1: my dad went in the bathroom and my mom accused
Speaker 1: him of boguarding the blow and then she marched down
Speaker 1: to the bar and I walked out and hung out
Speaker 1: with this girl who rented all the Snorkel equipment all
Speaker 1: week and tried to stay away from them as much
Speaker 1: as possible. But yeah, I mean that was like a
Speaker 1: real manifestation of that behavior. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, not only interested in psychology with House and
Speaker 1: this maybe informed your own interest in comedy because you're
Speaker 1: a comedian. You're a comedian period, right, you're comedian rights,
Speaker 1: I don't consider it, okay. I don't do stand up, certainly,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in a comedic. I don't have a
Speaker 1: comedic career. It's not what I do. I'm a storyteller.
Speaker 1: I have comedy in my jeans. I have good timing,
Speaker 1: I can tell a joke. I'm not very good at
Speaker 1: telling joke jokes, but but yeah, I mean I know
Speaker 1: how to improv with people and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: that's not my career. No, I'm not a comedian. Okay.
Speaker 1: So at the very least, I think I can say
Speaker 1: with a good degree of accuracy that you are all
Speaker 1: around comedy. You know, like you so you're serious excent
Speaker 1: you have a serious XCM podcast where you interview legendary comedians, right,
Speaker 1: so you're in touch with that and you did your
Speaker 1: You did a one woman show right called a Carl
Speaker 1: and Home Companion, Yes, I did. It was storytelling, kind
Speaker 1: of a La Spaulding Gray. So it was a lot
Speaker 1: of pathos and some definitely some humor too, But it
Speaker 1: wasn't a stand up show by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: It was really a storytelling solo show. I gotcha. Well,
Speaker 1: you're an officient auto of comedy. Do you like comedy?
Speaker 1: Do you hate comedy? I don't. I don't think. I'm
Speaker 1: not a comedy geek. I'm not an officient you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't really My dad was in the business. I
Speaker 1: watched Desan l as a kid. I loved Lily Tomlin,
Speaker 1: Carol Burnett, The New Hearts. You know. I grew up
Speaker 1: on sitcoms and variety show comedy. I aspired as a kid.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be someone like Lily Tomlin or cal
Speaker 1: Burnett and do sketch Comedy wasn't in the cards for
Speaker 1: me for a lot of reasons, mainly because of my
Speaker 1: mental health and just the direction my twenties went and
Speaker 1: everything like that. But that was a dream of mine.
Speaker 1: If I was going to be in showbiz, it would
Speaker 1: been that really didn't meet a lot of comedians or
Speaker 1: any royal comedians until after my dad died. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the week my dad died and people were calling
Speaker 1: me up and talking to me and kind of taking
Speaker 1: me in, which was very sweet of them. Bellzer and
Speaker 1: Lewis Black and Gary Shandling and Paul Ravenza and Rick
Speaker 1: Overton ended up becoming very close with Gary Shanling and
Speaker 1: still I'm very close with Lewis Black. Gary became like
Speaker 1: a mentor in life for me and really helped me
Speaker 1: get the courage to use my voice and find it
Speaker 1: on and do my solo show. We also shared our
Speaker 1: a deep love of psychology and a spiritual path. Both
Speaker 1: of us are practicing Zen Buddhists. So but yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I'm not a person who like waits for
Speaker 1: the someone's new special or anything like that. I think
Speaker 1: because my dad was in the business, it just didn't
Speaker 1: It just wasn't a thing for me. I think it
Speaker 1: I just being a stand up comedian is it takes
Speaker 1: a very certain type of personality and a certain drive
Speaker 1: and a type of person who really needs to be
Speaker 1: seen and heard a lot and has a lot to
Speaker 1: say in that particular way to the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have a lot to say. I consider myself a
Speaker 1: thinker and a communicator like my dad. But I don't
Speaker 1: have a desire to be on stage six nights a
Speaker 1: week like most stand ups do. I mean they have
Speaker 1: such a hunger for an audience. I found that I'm
Speaker 1: much more introverted than that. Actually, my dad was pretty
Speaker 1: introverted to actually, but he really really needed needed that
Speaker 1: audience connection and approval and all of that all the time.
Speaker 1: So I I am I. You know, I kind of
Speaker 1: became part of the comedy world after my dad died
Speaker 1: due to my dad's legacy and due to the people
Speaker 1: I started hanging out with, and they really did embrace me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what I would have done
Speaker 1: if without having you know, Gary and Louis and Paul
Speaker 1: Pravenza and people like that really kind of take me
Speaker 1: into their into their family. I mean that's really what
Speaker 1: it felt like. I felt like the family of comedy
Speaker 1: really took me in. But it's you know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not my life, it's not it's not my path,
Speaker 1: but it is it is in my bones. I mean genetically,
Speaker 1: I am a funny person. So what the heck would
Speaker 1: be very funny today, but generally, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: I love shooting this shit with comics. I love making
Speaker 1: people laugh, but in a very casual fun way. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. You said that your father was an introvert.
Speaker 1: What other ways was there a kind of split between
Speaker 1: his public performances? Was he hilarious just in just casual conversation.
Speaker 1: He considered himself more of a writer than anything else,
Speaker 1: so he had more of a writer's personality. He was
Speaker 1: always going into his office and writing and disappearing like
Speaker 1: my whole life, that's what my dad did. He was
Speaker 1: always in his office working. He was not a person
Speaker 1: who was on around people at all. Did not want
Speaker 1: to be the center of attention. Did never wanted to
Speaker 1: be the life of the party. Not that guy at all.
Speaker 1: Would never hang out in a diner or a deli
Speaker 1: after a show with a bunch of other comics shooting
Speaker 1: the shit, not his style. Would go back to his
Speaker 1: own room do his own thing. So very much an
Speaker 1: introvert in that way. So well, Kelly, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about you here. You're a Buddhist, right, is that right?
Speaker 1: Or you used to be? Yeah, I don't se identifies
Speaker 1: religiously as that, but I practice mindfulness and I have
Speaker 1: studied Zen Buddhism a lot and really love the perspective
Speaker 1: and the path beautiful. Yeah, I have such a great
Speaker 1: admiration for Buddhism and also for Union. Depth psychology, which
Speaker 1: you got a master's degree in. Yeah, we got to
Speaker 1: bring that back. It's not in the public conscience of
Speaker 1: most psychologists these days, no, but it's flourishing in its
Speaker 1: own world. I mean, there's archetypal and imaginal psychology that
Speaker 1: stands on the shoulders of Jungian psychology. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of great thinkers, James Hillman being one of them who
Speaker 1: really brought the and he didn't want to be considered
Speaker 1: the father of archetypal psychology, but that's basically who he is.
Speaker 1: And yet even though people don't talk about it. You know,
Speaker 1: depth psychology is the study of the unconscious. Freud was
Speaker 1: the first deep psychologist. Young Adler who were students of
Speaker 1: Freud's on their own paths and their own way of
Speaker 1: talking about it into the world. But any you know,
Speaker 1: I think most people these days know about things like
Speaker 1: the hero myth and archetypes and the unconscious and the
Speaker 1: shadow aspect of personalities and all of that is Jungi
Speaker 1: and stuff. So it's pretty much in the zeitgeist without
Speaker 1: people really knowing it. And of course there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cognitive behavioral stuff now, which is great. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had panic attack disorder, and without cognitive behavioral therapy,
Speaker 1: you know, I would wouldn't have been able to get
Speaker 1: in my car get to drive. So I love that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But I'm also a person who loves
Speaker 1: transformation and the process and the human path towards wholeness
Speaker 1: that you know, That's really what Young held was that
Speaker 1: there's this wholeness, this aspect of self with a capital S,
Speaker 1: where the person's personality is just a small part of
Speaker 1: who they are, and this bigger sense of who is
Speaker 1: really you know, that thing we're always leaning into and
Speaker 1: wanting and seeking and searching. So I'm fascinated by that stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by the human journey healing, transformation. I think
Speaker 1: the reason I ended up, part of the reason I
Speaker 1: ended up a doing my solo show, writing a book,
Speaker 1: and getting my masters in Young in psychology is because
Speaker 1: of my always wanting to ask answer the question, which is,
Speaker 1: how did I get here, How did I? How did
Speaker 1: I become this person? What happened to me? And how
Speaker 1: can I help myself get out of my own way
Speaker 1: in some ways? You know? So that's kind of my always,
Speaker 1: my my fascination is that, you know, how do we
Speaker 1: end up like this? You know, have you figured it out?
Speaker 1: You kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier, you
Speaker 1: know that thing about being like age is like four
Speaker 1: to seven where we have a certain type of cognitive ability,
Speaker 1: but it's very concrete thinking, and we pretty much assess
Speaker 1: the world and decide on how the world is and
Speaker 1: the rules during those years and then we live we
Speaker 1: live by those rules the rest of our life, and
Speaker 1: they're just they're so misguided, they're so like I said,
Speaker 1: it's such concrete, black and white thinking. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: don't we don't question any of it until we learn
Speaker 1: to question it. So that's a lot of the work
Speaker 1: I do is helping people, ay just know that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is this thing you constructed. These are there. You've
Speaker 1: got a rule book in your head that's always going
Speaker 1: leafing through the pages, trying to remember the rules for
Speaker 1: every moment, and most of those rules are bullshit. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, but to the credit of our brain, you know,
Speaker 1: it's doing the best with the information it had, you know,
Speaker 1: our brain our prediction machine. Yeah, and you know, I
Speaker 1: always like the analogy of like our brain is like
Speaker 1: a weather forecast system. When we're young, it's trying its
Speaker 1: best to kind of map and model the world and
Speaker 1: figure out, Okay, what can you expect And if your
Speaker 1: life was shitty when you're young, your brain basically starts
Speaker 1: to cement some neurons saying life is shitty. You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's life. And I've always been fascinated the fact
Speaker 1: that fear unlearning is housed, is housed in a different
Speaker 1: brain system than fear learning, and that we kind of
Speaker 1: develop these unconscious and I think this is where, you know,
Speaker 1: depth psychology is so important. You know, the unconscious fear
Speaker 1: of learning is so predominant, and it takes active strategies
Speaker 1: to unlearn it in adulthood. It doesn't just happen automatically.
Speaker 1: So yeah, absolutely, and that's I think that's where both
Speaker 1: come in. I think the cognitive behavioral stuff is important,
Speaker 1: but also accessing and utilizing the generative resources of the
Speaker 1: unconscious to to build ourselves from the inside. Up again
Speaker 1: and to use the deep imagination and deep play to
Speaker 1: relearn that the world is not as horrible and scary.
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of feels like it is if
Speaker 1: you watch the especially right now, maybe, but the but
Speaker 1: the the version of it in our head isn't real.
Speaker 1: And so it's about it is about unlearning. But I
Speaker 1: think it's also about really connecting to these generative aspects
Speaker 1: of self that you know have wisdom, and have courage
Speaker 1: and have a lot of creativity, you know, to use
Speaker 1: and to to open up those floodgates in ourselves with
Speaker 1: that stuff, to really live into our our fullness is
Speaker 1: really where my my joy and my blisses. Well, you
Speaker 1: are speaking my language. Okay, I don't know why to
Speaker 1: that accent, but you are definitely speaking my language here.
Speaker 1: So let's well, let's talk about this the coaching work
Speaker 1: you're doing. And Women on the Verge is the name
Speaker 1: of your most recent coaching program, and so how do
Speaker 1: you bring depth psychology into this coaching program? So I
Speaker 1: bring it in by a couple of different ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's my come from. It's it's how I look
Speaker 1: at the world. So I part of it is I
Speaker 1: start to teach people I work with a little bit
Speaker 1: how to how to understand how the unconscious runs us.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, so I'm a certified life coach also,
Speaker 1: so I use some coaching language around that, like saboteurs,
Speaker 1: things like that. We work with archetypes, we work with.
Speaker 1: I do a lot of visualizations and imagery work and
Speaker 1: kind of trance imagery kind of work to help people
Speaker 1: tap into other aspects in them selves through image, you know,
Speaker 1: through images or stories. I help also people see the
Speaker 1: narrative of their life. I find, having been a person
Speaker 1: who does storytelling about my own personal life, it really
Speaker 1: really helped me in such an incredible way to start
Speaker 1: to tell the story of my life and to piece
Speaker 1: it together and to even use myths to to kind
Speaker 1: of see like the more universal aspects of our of
Speaker 1: all of our narratives. Like everyone talks about the hero's
Speaker 1: journey all the time, there's also the heroine's journey. We do.
Speaker 1: We do some work around the heroine's journey in Women
Speaker 1: on the Verge, which is it's a different it's a
Speaker 1: different cycle. It's it's more of a cyclical and it
Speaker 1: has to do with healing our relationship with the deep
Speaker 1: feminine and the healthy masculine. And it's not just for women,
Speaker 1: it's for everyone. So I'm fascinated by people's narratives and
Speaker 1: teaching them about their own narratives and really getting them
Speaker 1: to understand that you can write a new story for yourself.
Speaker 1: You can you can walk away from the old story
Speaker 1: and heal it and write a new story. And so
Speaker 1: I used a different techniques and things. I do something
Speaker 1: called voice dialogue work, which is to shadow work. I
Speaker 1: work with people in dialogue with them. I teach people
Speaker 1: a lot of active imagination stuff, which is using drawing
Speaker 1: or movement and or writing in dialogue with you know,
Speaker 1: inner figures, dream figures, stuff like that. Like I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of deep imagination, deep play stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: mostly how I use it, and I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of separates me from a lot of coaches and a
Speaker 1: lot of coaching programs where it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: more of structure and goal oriented. And we have that
Speaker 1: too in Women on the Verge. We have I basically
Speaker 1: I teach them a four part process, and it's the
Speaker 1: first thing you do is you have to appraise, you
Speaker 1: have to figure out what's going on what's going on
Speaker 1: in my life right now, what's working, what's not working?
Speaker 1: What do I want? Like, this is a big question
Speaker 1: that women, a lot of women I work with have
Speaker 1: a have not learned how to answer, which is what
Speaker 1: do I want? Because women are usually outer focused or
Speaker 1: environmental focused, or like you said earlier, the whole scanning thing. Right,
Speaker 1: we're into scanning. So I get them to turn towards themselves,
Speaker 1: figure out what they want, what they need, what's going on,
Speaker 1: how's it working, all that kind of stuff. So there's
Speaker 1: this appraising phase and then usually what comes up out
Speaker 1: of that appraising phase is that they start to realize
Speaker 1: that they they kind of know what they want, or
Speaker 1: maybe they do know what they want, but they also
Speaker 1: know that there's something keeping them from going there. And
Speaker 1: so the next part of the process is like a
Speaker 1: discovery recovery process, and that's where we use some of
Speaker 1: the depth psychology stuff. But that's where we go in
Speaker 1: and below the consciousness. We look at our narratives, our
Speaker 1: inner narratives. We look at the stories we tell ourselves,
Speaker 1: We look at our saboteurs, you know, the rules, the
Speaker 1: unconscious rules we all live by. Like we talked about
Speaker 1: and then once we kind of get more relationship with ourselves,
Speaker 1: are more whole, full selves, then the next part of
Speaker 1: the process is this emerging, which is like, oh, now
Speaker 1: I've got more information. Now I know more of kind
Speaker 1: of who I am. Now what do I want now?
Speaker 1: What needs to be renegotiated? And this is where renegotiating
Speaker 1: roles in our lives and relationships are so important. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a big thing that scares people from changing,
Speaker 1: is that they think, oh, well, I've been a mother
Speaker 1: my whole life, or a wife, or a career, I've
Speaker 1: been kicking ass in a career, and we kind of
Speaker 1: have these identities that we get really latched onto, but
Speaker 1: there's like other identities inside of us that have been
Speaker 1: kind of in the background or not allowed to come
Speaker 1: to the full table and be here. But they're they're
Speaker 1: kind of unlived lives and they're unlived selves, and there's
Speaker 1: usually that's part of that yearning and longing kind of
Speaker 1: emptiness that we have inside of us. And so I
Speaker 1: help them get in touch with those aspects of themselves
Speaker 1: and learn to yeah, you are going to tell the
Speaker 1: world that you're more than this or this or this
Speaker 1: and that is a little scary. I get it. And yes,
Speaker 1: your relationships are going to change. And yet, like you
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, you know, this kind of idea of
Speaker 1: who we we think we need to be for the world,
Speaker 1: that if we don't continue doing that, that the world
Speaker 1: will kind of fall apart and the earth will open.
Speaker 1: We won't tell it. It doesn't it actually doesn't. Like
Speaker 1: most people around us kind of see us more for
Speaker 1: who we really are, and you know, and some people
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, like, oh, I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: be a writer, but oh I can't tell my husband that,
Speaker 1: or my kids that, or my whatever that, you know,
Speaker 1: and then like they start to do and it's like
Speaker 1: their kids are thrilled for them, you know, or their
Speaker 1: husband thinks it's great that they're like expressing them, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You know. And there's some cases where
Speaker 1: some people come to me and marriages do fall apart,
Speaker 1: and you know, careers are walked away from. But these
Speaker 1: are things that were happening anyway in their lives and
Speaker 1: they needed some structure and support to get through that.
Speaker 1: I work with women who are mainly over forty and
Speaker 1: you know, are kind of in that facing that like,
Speaker 1: what is all of this about type of moment in
Speaker 1: their lives, and then out of the emerging part of
Speaker 1: the process is really the embodying phase, which is this
Speaker 1: is where the coaching really comes in. And what I
Speaker 1: love about it is and what is just so true
Speaker 1: about life is that you aren't really going to change
Speaker 1: until you actually take action. And I know that sounds
Speaker 1: ridiculously simple and clear, but I don't think many of
Speaker 1: us really get that you don't, and that it's in
Speaker 1: the doing is where the real learning actually begins, because
Speaker 1: it's where we then were kind of all like scientists
Speaker 1: and experimenters. And it's not like it's like, oh, I've
Speaker 1: had these insights and I've had this opening and I
Speaker 1: understand more of myself. When I'm ready to go ahead,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna unfold exactly as I think it will. No,
Speaker 1: it's gonna you're gonna step into something and you're gonna
Speaker 1: try something, and then you're gonna come back and go, hmm,
Speaker 1: what's working now, what's not working? You know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: you're gonna start assessing immediately, because that's how that's how
Speaker 1: we do life, especially when we're doing something new in life,
Speaker 1: and and so I just love watching u this. I've
Speaker 1: had this program going for about three years now, and
Speaker 1: it's just been so amazing to watch women who are
Speaker 1: really ready for a more authentic, fulfilling version of their
Speaker 1: life and they just need community and some structure and
Speaker 1: some information and some coaching, and to watch them step
Speaker 1: out of their comfort zones and to step out of
Speaker 1: their ideas of who they think they were supposed to be.
Speaker 1: That's the big thing, you know, And that's the you know,
Speaker 1: and the reason I started this work is because that's
Speaker 1: the path my life has taken. I always had this
Speaker 1: idea of who I thought I was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And when I started to relax and just be who
Speaker 1: I am and live the life that really feeds me, yeah,
Speaker 1: things change. Yes, Well, I'm sure you're familiar with Karen
Speaker 1: Horney and the feminist psychoanalyst, Yes, who really gave Freud
Speaker 1: to run for his money. She's like, yeah, you're crazy,
Speaker 1: You're talking crazy talk Freud. You need some feminist psychology here.
Speaker 1: I've been trying so hard to tell people about her.
Speaker 1: I wrote an article for Scientific American called the Underappreciated
Speaker 1: Legacy of Karen Horney because she's been forgotten in the
Speaker 1: annals of the history of psychology to arge degree. That's unfair,
Speaker 1: this idea, this notion, the tyrannical shoulds, that's her phrase.
Speaker 1: And remember this. I was studying her at PACIFICA. Yeahold
Speaker 1: me about what you're talking about. And and I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you brought this up. And then you talk about
Speaker 1: how a lot of women struggle this. Of course, obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of men struggle with the two, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they're there are unique societal cultural expectations that
Speaker 1: are absolutely gendered to a certain degree in our culture, right,
Speaker 1: that need to be talking about. Yeah, absolutely, And men
Speaker 1: have their own version of this one hundred percent, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know. And and it's funny because the and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a fair word to use or not,
Speaker 1: but what I really feel like I'm doing and helping
Speaker 1: women with is dismantle the inner patriarchy within them. And
Speaker 1: I know, and I know patriarchy is such a buzzword
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of a trigger word. And it
Speaker 1: is so interesting you brought up her work because it
Speaker 1: is a tyrannical system of thought, and you know, patriarchy
Speaker 1: has that kind of bent to it, you know, in
Speaker 1: its most extreme form. You know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've studied any Greek or Roman history, you know
Speaker 1: women were not treated very well back then. It was
Speaker 1: like the birth of democracy, and women were like, I think,
Speaker 1: third class citizens at that point. You know, there was
Speaker 1: not a lot of a lot of respect for women
Speaker 1: in those great thinkers. So it is this dismantling of
Speaker 1: this tyrannical should system, which is I think, how I'm
Speaker 1: going to start to please do I would love that
Speaker 1: because we did. We studied her at PACIFICA, and you know,
Speaker 1: because we're PACIFICA graduate institute where I went and got
Speaker 1: my masters, is all about Jungian and the sacred feminine
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, and we
Speaker 1: had a lot of kind of early depth psychologist stuff
Speaker 1: we studied. And yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know, once
Speaker 1: you start going down that rabbit hole, your mind will
Speaker 1: be bolen. Because she was also one of the first
Speaker 1: humanistic thinkers in my view, she often wrote about the
Speaker 1: importance of wholeness, and she's like, how come the field
Speaker 1: of psychology is not talking about the whole personality structure,
Speaker 1: It's just speaking one part of us. And she also
Speaker 1: believed in growth. She has this quote that I love
Speaker 1: that says something to the effect of, well, we can
Speaker 1: grow and change up until the day we die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too late the day after you die, but at
Speaker 1: least well, but some people think you go on to
Speaker 1: another lifetime and you're still growing. So they're still growing.
Speaker 1: To do ghosts grow? That's actually an interesting question. I
Speaker 1: think it's open for debate. Like you never see a
Speaker 1: ghost like change, Like Casper never looks different. No he doesn't,
Speaker 1: he doesn't, but he's still maybe doing work on himself.
Speaker 1: Who knows. There's a bit there somewhere. But anyway, anyway,
Speaker 1: I just think the more you go down that rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: and I'd be happy to load you up on I
Speaker 1: love that. That would be awesome. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: a direct quote from your own website. The world needs
Speaker 1: women more than ever to step up and claim their
Speaker 1: authentic power. It's time for women to get out of
Speaker 1: their own way, to step into what they truly want
Speaker 1: and who they want to be. When you commit to
Speaker 1: big things, big things happen. My question from that is
Speaker 1: about this word authenticity, because I'm very, very interested in
Speaker 1: the definition of authenticity. Because there's various definitions in the literature. Anyway,
Speaker 1: without getting too much in the weeds about it, I
Speaker 1: just would love to hear your what that means to you.
Speaker 1: Is it like a self actualized version of authenticity? Is
Speaker 1: that what you're kind of referring to. I'm always writing
Speaker 1: about this stuff, and my brain isn't very hooked in
Speaker 1: today to all of that, but there is something about
Speaker 1: it is for me, authenticity feels like there is a
Speaker 1: congruence between my insides and my outsides, and there's something
Speaker 1: about being free of cultural restraints or roles. Uh So
Speaker 1: it's it's around that. There's there's this sense and it's
Speaker 1: one of those words that gets so overused and I
Speaker 1: hate to use it almost sometimes when I talk about
Speaker 1: these things, but there really is no better word for it.
Speaker 1: There is a a couple of things that that go
Speaker 1: with it. There is, first of all, knowing yourself. That
Speaker 1: that's an element to it. So knowing how you what
Speaker 1: really feeds you and what what you really feel connected
Speaker 1: to in a very somatic way, and you know that
Speaker 1: there's it's it's it's a full body somatic. It's not
Speaker 1: just a mental or an emotional or a feeling thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's a full body, gut kind of a thing also,
Speaker 1: and and so there's this part of it's a sense
Speaker 1: of yourself, but it's also reflected in your doing in
Speaker 1: the world, and that you're doing is aligned with your values,
Speaker 1: your own personal yearning for what you want to create
Speaker 1: in the world, and that there also is a sense
Speaker 1: of freedom of expression. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: women I work with and a lot of people on
Speaker 1: the planet, but especially women, you know, they always say,
Speaker 1: I just want to be free to be myself or
Speaker 1: free to express myself. So there's something that stops us.
Speaker 1: There's some fear. We talked about it earlier, right, there's
Speaker 1: some consequence that we fear is going to happen if
Speaker 1: we're in full expression, you know, really expressing our opinions,
Speaker 1: our emotions, our take on the world. And so there there,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's connected. So and that expression is
Speaker 1: so much right, it's kind of our portal from this
Speaker 1: inner life to the shared collective space. And so there's
Speaker 1: there's a sense of being able to be ourselves while
Speaker 1: in a collective space. And I you know, and I
Speaker 1: think I think about young people these days, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot about how the world is around race
Speaker 1: and gender, those two things in particular, the language that's
Speaker 1: going on right now, and the big push culturally on
Speaker 1: the edges of this conversation, which sometimes feels necessary, other
Speaker 1: times it feels oppressive too much, you know, wherever you
Speaker 1: are on the spectrum of this conversation. But I think
Speaker 1: the impetus to all of this is is that people
Speaker 1: just want to be free, to be themselves and to
Speaker 1: feel safe being themselves in the world. And I think
Speaker 1: what people call the patriarchy, if that right, whatever that
Speaker 1: system is that we're all pushing up against, whether it's
Speaker 1: white supremacy or patriarchy or whatever it is, is that
Speaker 1: it is this system that, for power reasons, kept people
Speaker 1: from not being their authentic selves. Likes like, you have
Speaker 1: to play a role inside of my system, and here's
Speaker 1: your menu. You get four choices over here, and you
Speaker 1: get five choices over here, pick and be happy. And
Speaker 1: I really feel like humanity is pushing up some sort
Speaker 1: of against some possibly evolutionary consciousness space by opening up
Speaker 1: more options for all of this. These are the millions
Speaker 1: of ways that people humans can show up on Earth. Now.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just look at the gender names for people,
Speaker 1: the fluidity of those words. I really do feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to some sort of I think
Speaker 1: it's both, but I think it's part of it's this
Speaker 1: kind of interesting human evolution of consciousness moment. And I
Speaker 1: think it also is a social justice issue. For sure.
Speaker 1: It's both things, and I think they just show up
Speaker 1: in the culture. I think that maybe the human evolutionary
Speaker 1: push shows up as a social justice issue because now
Speaker 1: we're having to fight up against infrastructure and institutions and
Speaker 1: ways of thinking and you know, things like that, and
Speaker 1: because that's the evidence of it in our culture. But
Speaker 1: I think all of us are just looking to be
Speaker 1: ourselves and to be loved as ourselves. In the end, yeah,
Speaker 1: we complicated, But when you get right down to it, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so well. I recently had one of my
Speaker 1: favorite podcast episodes ever was with Isaac Priletenski, who I
Speaker 1: recently had just a couple episodes ago, which I really
Speaker 1: highly recommend you listen to because I think you'll really
Speaker 1: resonate deeply with it. It's on the need to matter,
Speaker 1: he argues. He argues that is such a fundamental human need,
Speaker 1: need that pervades so much of what we do. But
Speaker 1: his perspective, particularly that what I like about it is
Speaker 1: that and actually what makes him a standout in the
Speaker 1: field of positive psychologies that he believes in fairness and
Speaker 1: wellness for everyone, and he says, no well being without fairness.
Speaker 1: He's this whole a big believer in fairness. He's a
Speaker 1: whole model about this, and I think you're going to
Speaker 1: resonate deeply with it. So I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: through you know, you say it's the need to be oneself,
Speaker 1: but I think that maybe we can even just go
Speaker 1: a little even deeper than that. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: just because we don't want just want to be any
Speaker 1: part of ourselves, right, It's not like right, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to be Why can't people just let
Speaker 1: me be my you know, schwabby, you know, pizza, liking Netflix,
Speaker 1: watching self. No, it's they want the part of me
Speaker 1: that they can have a unique significance in the world.
Speaker 1: Is being inhibited, is being oppressed, And my gosh, there's
Speaker 1: no denying that through the course of human history, lots
Speaker 1: of people have been left out of the table who
Speaker 1: could have contributed amazing, amazing things and could have mattered
Speaker 1: to human history in such important ways. There's no denying that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know it's so interesting too because some women
Speaker 1: I work with and it's just I've learned a lot
Speaker 1: in offering this space and having a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: with women about what they do want. And there are
Speaker 1: some women who and there's men too, but I work
Speaker 1: with women right now who they do want to matter
Speaker 1: and they're mattering. Is a big societal one, you know,
Speaker 1: like they really want to make women feel safer in
Speaker 1: the world, or you know, I mean I work with
Speaker 1: some leaders, women who like do nonprofits and things like that,
Speaker 1: you know, or entrepreneurs, and then there's others who want
Speaker 1: to just offer a space that's full of light and
Speaker 1: love to everyone around them. And it can be the
Speaker 1: smallest space like a dinner, you know, like like cooking
Speaker 1: dinner for their family or or whatever it is, or
Speaker 1: working in their garden and their you know, the beauty,
Speaker 1: or working in a community guard. And so I think
Speaker 1: what happens sometimes and I say, you know that it's
Speaker 1: important that there's this thing that we all want to
Speaker 1: express something into the world, and it doesn't have you
Speaker 1: don't have to be Oprah like that's fine, Like, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be this big thing because it is
Speaker 1: always the human to human connection moment. That that's how
Speaker 1: we make it difference in the world is the impact
Speaker 1: our presence has on our environment and those around us,
Speaker 1: and that that you can create an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: change and ripple effect in the world by just treating
Speaker 1: people with kindness truly, you know, because you never know
Speaker 1: who's having a bad day, and you know what, you
Speaker 1: never know what moment could really shift a person's life.
Speaker 1: So true, Yeah, I just but and it is interesting,
Speaker 1: this thing about mattering. You know, it is such a
Speaker 1: conundrum for us humans, right because we do matter in
Speaker 1: some ways. We've shaped this planet, We've changed the nature
Speaker 1: of natural order on this planet. So clearly we have
Speaker 1: an impact on our environment and clearly our interactions do
Speaker 1: matter with us. And yet that's always the big question
Speaker 1: is you know, what is our purpose? What do we matter?
Speaker 1: In the end? You know, where we all become, We
Speaker 1: all become you know, loamy soil in the end basically,
Speaker 1: which is a beautiful thing I think, you know, because
Speaker 1: we are part of this incredible life cycle here on Earth.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and it's this, it's this real you know,
Speaker 1: there's always that narcissistic part of it, the mattering part,
Speaker 1: you know, and you have to like, okay, well is
Speaker 1: it that part of it or with that? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: just you know, Isaac has part of his theory is
Speaker 1: that some people matter too much. We know, we had
Speaker 1: this whole we had this whole discussion and he he
Speaker 1: absolutely his in his theory. He believes some people matter
Speaker 1: too little in our society, but he thinks some people
Speaker 1: matter too much. Yea and uh. And we had a
Speaker 1: whole conversation about surrounding that idea and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to listen to it, love it. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. I just adore him, and I whatever I
Speaker 1: can do to kind of shine a spotlight on some
Speaker 1: of these people who as well known, but they're in
Speaker 1: there because they're in the trenches doing the work, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not like out there like on Twitter every day
Speaker 1: like yelling. But yeah, his work is so great, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he says some people are just taking up too much
Speaker 1: space because they're and they're not letting others have any space.
Speaker 1: And I completely agree with that. But god knows, we
Speaker 1: just spent four years yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah with
Speaker 1: someone who sucked the air out of every molecule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like if you turned on the news, you would
Speaker 1: think nothing else in the world is happening, right, true,
Speaker 1: and something about that person. Yeah, and then the cosmic
Speaker 1: thing that I think about that all the time, you know.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking the other day about like just
Speaker 1: just doing the thought experiment, like what if humans live
Speaker 1: in other two thousand years let's say three thousand years. Now,
Speaker 1: let's go ten thousand, long enough for human evolution to
Speaker 1: have a process on it, right, and that it turns
Speaker 1: out that in the grand scheme of things, we're like
Speaker 1: a really poor version of humans. Like, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: this is how my mind works, you know, like like
Speaker 1: you know, you know how we have like like robots
Speaker 1: a on a wine, you know, and then you're like
Speaker 1: that was robot version two point zero. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what if like fifty thousand years from now, there are
Speaker 1: humans that look at us and they're like, what a
Speaker 1: failed you know part of the line that human was
Speaker 1: And here we are thinking we're all these so significant
Speaker 1: you know, we matter, matter, I matter. But like in
Speaker 1: the fifty thousand years from now, they're like it's so
Speaker 1: funny they thought they mattered. They were like you know,
Speaker 1: in the conveyor belt. They were like version three point
Speaker 1: zero of humans. Yeah, but you can't. You can't get
Speaker 1: to the fifty thousand year old human without us. What
Speaker 1: a good point, you know, even if they learned the lesson, right,
Speaker 1: even if it learns the lesson to a lot of
Speaker 1: our traits. Yeah, one can only hope that, you know,
Speaker 1: our species figures out how to deal with our greed,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I really feel like that's the
Speaker 1: downfall of our species, is this inability to see how
Speaker 1: interconnected we really are. And what's exciting about these days,
Speaker 1: even though it's terrifying with climate crisis. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember twenty twenty four years ago when I started studying
Speaker 1: with Tick not Hahn mindfulness, Zen, Buddhism and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and he used the word inter being and interdependence, which
Speaker 1: are terms that the Buddha was using twenty six hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, which is, we are all interconnected, and every
Speaker 1: indigenous people understand that, all of them understand that we
Speaker 1: moderns somehow forgot it in this modern brain of ours,
Speaker 1: with this age of enlightenment, you know, which is yay
Speaker 1: for the age of enlightenment. Trust me, I'm all about that.
Speaker 1: And yet we kind of threw the baby out with
Speaker 1: the bath water a little bit, and so we are
Speaker 1: really now seeing that, oh, we are all interdependent. We are.
Speaker 1: The environment is not something separate from us. We are
Speaker 1: the environment. And so it's exciting that we are as
Speaker 1: a nation because I remember twenty years ago thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, if if the word inner deependence could be
Speaker 1: used in the White House, I think we're going to
Speaker 1: be Okay. Well, it's being used now around climate policy
Speaker 1: and stuff and really an understanding of how it all works.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping that we are evolving even right now
Speaker 1: a little bit. You know, I'm a big Ken Wilber
Speaker 1: integral thinker person. I love that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: I really do see this other kind of integral, third
Speaker 1: tier thinking kind of coming online a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all in a big culture wars over
Speaker 1: all the other stuff. But I think we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're doing it a little bit. We'll see. But there
Speaker 1: is this human greed thing that's still in the way.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a bitch a narcissism and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think they're connected, don't you, yeah, very much.
Speaker 1: What ever it is, we need some more transcendence around.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree on that we do.
Speaker 1: We need grounded transcendence, though we don't need spiritual bypass transcendence.
Speaker 1: Paul Williah, I call it healthy transcendence in my book.
Speaker 1: But I love it, and I distinguish that from spiritual narcissism, yes,
Speaker 1: where we're just going to all leave our bodies and
Speaker 1: all pretend it's all white, light and angels. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm a deep psychologist, because I love the shadow,
Speaker 1: because I know that the good, juicy, cathonic part of existence.
Speaker 1: You can only live a full life by digging downward
Speaker 1: and bringing it to include into who you are. And
Speaker 1: you need both. You need light and dark obviously. But
Speaker 1: those who just want to, you know, go around or
Speaker 1: move over or jump jump jump around things and not
Speaker 1: through things, they'll get some temporary relief, for sure, But
Speaker 1: the demons are going to still come knock it on
Speaker 1: the door, oh for sure. Oh show, well, show, let's
Speaker 1: kind of end our interview today talking about some of
Speaker 1: your exciting projects that you're up to. We already talked
Speaker 1: about obviously about the coaching one that's very exciting. But
Speaker 1: you also have the Kelly Carlin Show on siris XM.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little about that. I love
Speaker 1: that because I get to have deep, meaningful conversation with
Speaker 1: people who I think. I mean, I think comedians are
Speaker 1: probably some of the smartest people on the planet. They're
Speaker 1: just thinkers. They have to be in order to do comedy.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to have like a meta
Speaker 1: view and the micro view and be able to just
Speaker 1: kind of go back and forth between those two worlds.
Speaker 1: And so I love talking to comedians and I love
Speaker 1: kind of bringing this kind of a space to them,
Speaker 1: Like we talk about all sorts of things in those conversations,
Speaker 1: and so it's very fulfilling for me. And so that's
Speaker 1: what I do. I have it. It's like once a
Speaker 1: month on Sirius XM, and I've gotten to talk to
Speaker 1: some amazing people. I'm just in awe of the people
Speaker 1: I've gotten to talk to, like Carl Reiner and Jonathan
Speaker 1: Winters and Eddie Hazard and you know, and dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of people I've talked to. So I've just I
Speaker 1: feel so honored that I get to have those conversations
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, it's wonderful. It's such a great show.
Speaker 1: And I just want to add some of the other
Speaker 1: people that stuck out to me. Guess you've had so
Speaker 1: Robin Williams, what was it like talking to Robin Williams. Robin,
Speaker 1: he came and saw an early version of my One
Speaker 1: Woman Show, and he was so sweet. He would text
Speaker 1: me every few days because I was just learning how
Speaker 1: to be on stage and do some acting, and so
Speaker 1: he was really checking in on me with that, you know,
Speaker 1: and talk about a person who you just he brings
Speaker 1: out the funny in everyone around you because he's like
Speaker 1: he opens the sandbox and you get to jump in
Speaker 1: and play. Like I remember the first time I hung
Speaker 1: out with him, within ten minutes, he and Rick Overton
Speaker 1: and I were like doing an improv about seals and
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm improving with amazing. It's so much fun because he
Speaker 1: just plays and he grabs your thing and then he
Speaker 1: takes it up here and then you grab it and everything.
Speaker 1: So Robin just another deep thinker, deep feeler, and just
Speaker 1: was so so heartbroken by how all of that ended.
Speaker 1: But yeah, hell, I would have loved to have had
Speaker 1: been able to have a talk with him. Oh yeah, psychological.
Speaker 1: We're so open about all of it, to talk about
Speaker 1: all of it. Yeah, another person I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: You'd wear it out. Yankovic. I grew up with him,
Speaker 1: you know, we do. Yeah, he's also he's really silly
Speaker 1: and funny. Yeah, and lovely. And with all these people,
Speaker 1: you know, they've got the silly side. But we'd also
Speaker 1: you know, I love I kind of have this kind
Speaker 1: of thing that I just that's who I am. We
Speaker 1: just kind of go deep real quick. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you do. It's little Blue. It's wonderful. I'm
Speaker 1: telling me about the National Comedy Center. Work you do.
Speaker 1: So there's this place in Jamestown, New York, where Lucille
Speaker 1: Ball was born and raised, and Lucy always wanted to
Speaker 1: have some sort of institution that would honor the art
Speaker 1: of comedy and tell the story of comedy. And four
Speaker 1: years ago, a few years before that, but four years ago,
Speaker 1: we opened up the center. I donated ninety percent of
Speaker 1: my dad's archives to the National Comedy Center. And it
Speaker 1: is an holy interactive space. You go in, you go
Speaker 1: to a kiosk, you check your favorite comedians, movies, comedies,
Speaker 1: TV shows, all this kind of stuff. Out comes a
Speaker 1: bracelet with a little computer chip on it that holds
Speaker 1: your sense of humor. And then as you go through
Speaker 1: the exhibits, they're all interactive, all audio visual stuff. You
Speaker 1: tell the exhibit who your what your sense of humor is.
Speaker 1: You just hit it on the thing and it brings
Speaker 1: up all the things that you love and things that
Speaker 1: are on the edges of who are of who you
Speaker 1: love and all that kind of stuff. It's takes about
Speaker 1: three hours to kind of skim the surface of it.
Speaker 1: You're laughing the entire time. I highly recommend going for
Speaker 1: a three day weekend and really deep diving into it.
Speaker 1: They've got a permanent exhibit of my dad's stuff, so
Speaker 1: if you're a George Carlin fan, you can geek out
Speaker 1: on all of my dad's handwritten notes and calendars and
Speaker 1: interviews and all sorts of things. But it's got every
Speaker 1: genre of comedy, sitcom and movies, and it's got comedy
Speaker 1: karaoke and Lenny Bruce's Trench Code, and I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it's it's a kind of a perfect place on earth,
Speaker 1: and every single big celebrity who's come through Jamestown or
Speaker 1: the Lucy Fest there. Every year goes through it and
Speaker 1: they their mind is blown. And my hero, one of
Speaker 1: my heroes, is Lily Tomlin, and she came and performed
Speaker 1: at Lucy Fest and walked through the museum and was speechless.
Speaker 1: She was so and of of what we had done. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna have to check that out. You have
Speaker 1: to come check it out. It's awesome. I agree. I agree,
Speaker 1: that's a tyrannical should that I did. I yes, happened.
Speaker 1: You're also executive producing an HBO documentary on your dad,
Speaker 1: which is directed by Judd Apatow next summer. Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: coming out next summer. Yeah, we uh inked the deal
Speaker 1: right before the pandemic started. But yeah, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a two parter. As you know, jud did an
Speaker 1: amazing documentary on Gary who was a dear friend of his,
Speaker 1: Gary Shandling, so we were really excited to have jud
Speaker 1: come on board. He kind of ticked a lot of
Speaker 1: boxes for us, and his team of people are amazing.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it'll be a two parter on HBO and
Speaker 1: we're hoping to launch it and I think in May,
Speaker 1: which is my dad's May or August. We're not quite
Speaker 1: sure yet, hoping to have some special events in New
Speaker 1: York City and so, yeah, well I'm definitely looking forward
Speaker 1: to that. I want to ask you one question. I
Speaker 1: asked people on Twitter any questions for Kelly, and there
Speaker 1: was one question. I thought it would be interesting one
Speaker 1: to ask you. What aspects of today's world do you
Speaker 1: think would irk your dad the most? This person wrote,
Speaker 1: he often comes to mind when thinking of social commentators
Speaker 1: who are missed at this moment in history. Yeah, it's jeez,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone misses my dad right now. I think
Speaker 1: my dad would be most irked by people who got
Speaker 1: fooled by Donald Trump and just really let themselves be
Speaker 1: hoodwinked by the most greedy, narcissistic human in America. He
Speaker 1: would have some funny bits about Trump, right Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: my dad attacked white businessmen a lot in his material,
Speaker 1: and people seem to kind of miss that. But he
Speaker 1: had a real disdain for white male business people in America.
Speaker 1: I mean, those are the true owners of America. And
Speaker 1: he was you know, my dad grew up in Irish Harlem,
Speaker 1: they used to call it. He let me right next
Speaker 1: to Spanish and black Harlem, and he grew up on
Speaker 1: those streets, and from day one in my life, my
Speaker 1: dad taught me how how screwed over brown people are everywhere,
Speaker 1: but especially in America, starting with the native population, the
Speaker 1: indigenous people. So, you know, and of course he'd hate
Speaker 1: the PC stuff going on. He'd probably have something to
Speaker 1: say about all the genders and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But my dad really respected underdogs, and in our culture,
Speaker 1: my dad really was a person who always spoke out
Speaker 1: and fought for the underdog and really did not like
Speaker 1: people who comedians who punched down. So but you know,
Speaker 1: it's a more complicated landscape these days, and I think
Speaker 1: some of those people who are on the very left
Speaker 1: and are very politically correct would go after my dad
Speaker 1: right now, and I think he'd probably go after them
Speaker 1: because he always went after political correctness. He felt it
Speaker 1: was a real detriment to human evolution to he didn't
Speaker 1: think less speech was really going to create more freedom.
Speaker 1: That was his main stance around that. So, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's complicated times. It sure is. Well thanks for being
Speaker 1: on my podcast today to kind of navigate some of
Speaker 1: this complication. And I'm a fan of George Carlin but
Speaker 1: I'm also a fan of Kelly Carlin. I must say, so,
Speaker 1: all the best with this programer're doing, and I'll put
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes to the course. Are
Speaker 1: you giving people discount? Is that right with? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: the year long program is the coaching program. But I've
Speaker 1: got some other stuff coming up. I have a day
Speaker 1: long end a year thing I'm doing, and then in January,
Speaker 1: I'm launching a twelve week course. So I'll definitely send
Speaker 1: you some links for all of that. All the links yep,
Speaker 1: and we'll put up some special links for your viewers
Speaker 1: for sure and your listeners. Cool. Thanks Kelly for being
Speaker 1: on the Psychology Podcast. Thanks for having me, Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.