Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Josh and Chuck here to remind you that
Speaker 1: our last three shows of the year. Boy, this is
Speaker 1: a good show this year are taking place very soon
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so get in the saddle and come out and
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Speaker 1: Just go to stuff youshould know dot com and click
Speaker 1: on the tour link and you can get all your
Speaker 1: tickets right there. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
Speaker 2: Charles W. Chuck Bryan is here and this is Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know. Dear Diary edition.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I'll just ask the obvious question. Have
Speaker 1: you ever kept a diary of any kind, any kind
Speaker 1: of journal?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I did when I was younger, but
Speaker 2: I haven't in a long long time. And it's one
Speaker 2: of those things like I'm like, gosh, this is such
Speaker 2: a great idea, do it a couple of times, and
Speaker 2: then just fall off, Yeah, fall off the wagon.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things that you can
Speaker 1: either be inclined to be one of those people that
Speaker 1: does it and keeps up with it or not. But
Speaker 1: you can also learn to do it, I think, with practice,
Speaker 1: like anything else, by setting that habit. And the reason
Speaker 1: I assigned this idea to Livia, who did a great job,
Speaker 1: is because my good friend Mike Anderson has kept a
Speaker 1: daily journal since nineteen ninety one. Dear Mike, it's pretty amazing. Obviously,
Speaker 1: never read it, but it's just it comes up. It
Speaker 1: comes up every now and then because it's it is
Speaker 1: a journal of his life. But what it serves, as
Speaker 1: far as the friend group goes, is a journal of
Speaker 1: all of our lives to a certain degree. And sometimes
Speaker 1: we'll be talking, we'll be camping or just hanging out
Speaker 1: or something, and we'll be talking about something that happened
Speaker 1: in the old days and we won't be clear on it,
Speaker 1: and Michae will just be like, you know, I can
Speaker 1: find that out for us, and it's just it's cool.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a bit of a time capsule, and
Speaker 1: you know it's a he's he's currently getting them, i think,
Speaker 1: digitized from his old handwriting days, oh handwritten days, rather
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know these are important, right
Speaker 1: and you need to make sure you know, we're all
Speaker 1: getting older, and like, what if a UFO picked you
Speaker 1: up and took you away, and he's like, I got
Speaker 1: that cover of my friend there going to his daughter
Speaker 1: already there will be preserved by her. And I would.
Speaker 1: Mike's a crazy, weird, creative genius, so I would. I'd
Speaker 1: like to see these like published one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's who you want to keep a journal for
Speaker 2: that long? For sure.
Speaker 1: It could be one of those things that comes out,
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred years from now, and that's when
Speaker 1: he becomes famous.
Speaker 2: What year did he start?
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety one, so it's twenty twenty three, So do
Speaker 1: the math.
Speaker 2: No, wait, thirty eight years?
Speaker 1: Do the math?
Speaker 2: Are you sweating my upper lip is?
Speaker 1: Anyway, So this is on diaries And this actually turned out,
Speaker 1: at least in the history section, to be way more
Speaker 1: woman centric than I imagined it would be. But it
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense now that I see the
Speaker 1: history of it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and if you kind of dive into tenth
Speaker 2: century Japan, which we'll talk about in a second, there
Speaker 2: was a kind of a movement of journaling. What a
Speaker 2: lot of people point to is the first real historical
Speaker 2: example of people using diaries. They're writing because they're not
Speaker 2: allowed to be externally, So the only way to share
Speaker 2: themselves is to write to themselves. And women have so
Speaker 2: long been repressed by men that I could see journaling
Speaker 2: being a largely woman affair for most of history.
Speaker 1: I should say, yeah, I mean we can actually start
Speaker 1: with that, because the earlier examples aren't really diaries. Like
Speaker 1: we're talking about a papyrus logbook by an Egyptian official
Speaker 1: named Marror about limestone blocks being delivered for the pyramids
Speaker 1: at Giza.
Speaker 2: Not a diary.
Speaker 1: Not a diary because there's nothing you know, A diary
Speaker 1: is something personal about someone's experiences. So he wasn't like
Speaker 1: ten blocks delivered today, also feeling a little depressed. If
Speaker 1: anyone cares, it was just recording of things. Marcus Aurelius,
Speaker 1: the Roman Emperor, got a little closer with his meditations
Speaker 1: because he did talk about things like here's how i'd
Speaker 1: like to I'd like to develop these character traits and
Speaker 1: cultivate these things in my life. But it still was
Speaker 1: sort of abstract. It wasn't like today, this happened and
Speaker 1: I felt this way about it. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: these pillow books that are kind of the first diaries.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and again they came up among the ladies
Speaker 2: of the court in Japan in the tenth century, and
Speaker 2: again they were extraordinarily repressed, but they were able to
Speaker 2: share themselves so eloquently that a lot of these these
Speaker 2: what are called pillow books survived, and one of them
Speaker 2: was essentially so they would kind of veer into fiction
Speaker 2: and poetry and stuff in addition to recording, you know,
Speaker 2: historical events at the court, both large and small. It
Speaker 2: could be gossip, it could be the death of an emperor.
Speaker 2: They're really good historical records, but they're also really good
Speaker 2: inward records of historical figures who otherwise wouldn't have who
Speaker 2: would have been lost to history, and that from that
Speaker 2: tradition of kind of veering into fiction a little bit
Speaker 2: was considered. The first novel, The Tale of the Genji,
Speaker 2: came out in the eleventh century by Murasaki Shikibu. I
Speaker 2: think I got that right, and that was basically the
Speaker 2: first novel. It came out of the pillow books.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was there were the pillow books, which
Speaker 1: were written by many women. They used a specific writing
Speaker 1: system that was I think the first purely Japanese system
Speaker 1: called hira guna. I'm probably going to get a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff wrong. And that was compared to the
Speaker 1: official writing system called kanji, which I think was derived
Speaker 1: from Chinese and used exclusively by men, and this other
Speaker 1: writing system was used only by women, at least at first.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that changed, and I think it
Speaker 1: was a little simpler, but what it allowed for was
Speaker 1: if you weren't like formally educated, you could learn this
Speaker 1: writing system and it allowed for more expression of emotion
Speaker 1: and like inner thoughts than it seems like Kanji was
Speaker 1: a little more rigid and didn't have words and characters
Speaker 1: for that stuff pretty neat. So they wrote these pillow books.
Speaker 1: There's also one called the Pillow Book, and that was
Speaker 1: a specific book written by how would you pronounce Sei
Speaker 1: as a first name? Say saye, say say e? Shona
Speaker 1: Gun And that was made into a movie in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, Peter Greenaway the Pillow Book with what's his face?
Speaker 1: Obh oh, what's the guy you? And McGregor was in that.
Speaker 2: I thought he was talking about Sir Alec Guinness. No.
Speaker 1: Uh, Europe. They started doing this in the Renaissance, right,
Speaker 1: started journaling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what's interesting about that is this is when
Speaker 2: journaling really kind of became more widespread because the idea
Speaker 2: of individualism became more widespread around the Renaissance, so people
Speaker 2: started reflecting on their own experiences rather than you know,
Speaker 2: just counting themselves as part of the crowd. It became
Speaker 2: it mattered how they felt about something that happened. Then
Speaker 2: they started writing it down. So even though the pillow
Speaker 2: books kind of really kicked it off, there were several
Speaker 2: centuries where that just kind of fell away, and then
Speaker 2: it was picked up again and really kind of took
Speaker 2: off off, at least for those of us in the
Speaker 2: the West, beginning in the Renaissance. Renaissance Europe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, around the same time Puritans started doing the stuff,
Speaker 1: Quakers started doing it, but these they were diaries, but
Speaker 1: it was a little more of a you know, how
Speaker 1: can I be a better Puritan or a better Quaker?
Speaker 1: And you know, very sort of religious based rather than
Speaker 1: just like hear my feelings about you know, Goodie Procter exactly.
Speaker 2: They Oh my god, I can't imagine they would write
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: The French got really into it too during the French Revolution.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I don't know exactly what kicked that off,
Speaker 2: but they came up with what's called the journal Intimate,
Speaker 2: the intimate journal, and the British also said, hey, that's
Speaker 2: a pretty good idea. So they're writing about their inner lives,
Speaker 2: their inner feelings, thoughts, experiences. This is the I guess
Speaker 2: the early nineteenth century and that same century, so this
Speaker 2: is so now people are like everyday people are writing journals.
Speaker 2: So there are suddenly self important. And one of the
Speaker 2: other big things as far as diaries and journaling are concerned,
Speaker 2: that came about in the nineteenth century was publishing old
Speaker 2: journals in diaries. Yeah, as not just historical records, but
Speaker 2: it's like kind of like for mass consumption as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is really interesting because I think it's super
Speaker 1: cool that you can go back and read first hand
Speaker 1: accounts of the westward expansion, and again a lot of
Speaker 1: these were written by women and what they were going
Speaker 1: through at the time. It's just a fascinating peak into
Speaker 1: these times that you can't get any other way. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can get artifacts, you can recreate scenes in a museum,
Speaker 1: you can paint pictures of stuff that happen, but like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like being able and I know they say
Speaker 1: pictures worth a thousand words. But I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of reversed in this situation. I think it diary is
Speaker 1: worth like a gazillion pictures.
Speaker 2: Very nice. You know, I was going to say a
Speaker 2: thousand words and a diary is worth.
Speaker 1: A picture, right, you have worth one picture.
Speaker 2: But the idea that people were now willing to publish
Speaker 2: other people's journals and diaries that were not intended for publication,
Speaker 2: it actually created a new form, a new literary form,
Speaker 2: the journal, the diary, usually historical, and Olivia points out
Speaker 2: that that kind of raised the question from that point on,
Speaker 2: like are you really just writing for yourself?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Or can you ever overcome the idea that if you
Speaker 2: don't destroy these before you die, that there's a chance
Speaker 2: that somebody might discover them and find them worth publishing.
Speaker 2: And so are you paying attention a little more to
Speaker 2: sentence structure, to grammar, to the words you're using. You're
Speaker 2: trying a little harder than you would and therefore is
Speaker 2: it a little less of something than it was before
Speaker 2: people started publishing these?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I get that question. There's one of our
Speaker 1: old favorites, Oscar Wild. There's a very funny line and
Speaker 1: the importance of being earnest when a character won't let
Speaker 1: another read their diary and she says it is simply
Speaker 1: a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions,
Speaker 1: and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form,
Speaker 1: I hope you will order a copy.
Speaker 2: Pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff, very oscar wild.
Speaker 2: So the importance of being earnest came out in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, which means that that idea was established by then,
Speaker 2: very well established, and not a lot happened for about
Speaker 2: a century, and then blogging came along in the late nineties,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, the whole point was to
Speaker 2: share your diary, your journal, your innermost thoughts. The thing
Speaker 2: about doing it online, though, is now you had an option.
Speaker 2: You could share it with your intimates, your closest friends
Speaker 2: and family, or and like keep everybody else out. I
Speaker 2: don't know through password protection, who knows. Or you could
Speaker 2: go the other way around and blog anonymously and share
Speaker 2: it with everybody, but your closest friends and family have
Speaker 2: no idea to you. If you do it correctly. Either way,
Speaker 2: you're sharing things in ways that that diarists never ever
Speaker 2: did before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or blog non anonymously for just anyone to read anything.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what social media ended up being.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like all hang out there.
Speaker 1: And isn't it great? Yeah that happened.
Speaker 2: If everybody's ruining their own life, then nobody's ruining their
Speaker 2: own life.
Speaker 1: Uh, all right, baby, let's take an early break. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take an early break, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the more famous historical diaries out there.
Speaker 1: All right, we were talking before the break about historical
Speaker 1: diaries and how I haven't ever really read one. I've
Speaker 1: read memoirs and things, which is fine.
Speaker 2: That's different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a different deal. I'd love to read one
Speaker 1: of these. It really like prime to my pump.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, did that happen while you were letting it
Speaker 2: all hang out there.
Speaker 1: There's a naval administrator, a very famous person named Samuel
Speaker 1: Peeps who wrote a journal for about nine years in
Speaker 1: Shorthand even and this is sort of a classic example
Speaker 1: of a historical diary because he wrote about you know,
Speaker 1: restoration and the Great Plague of London and the Fire
Speaker 1: of London, and so not only do you have that stuff,
Speaker 1: but you have this stuff from his perspective, and you
Speaker 1: also have him getting annoy in his marriage and talking
Speaker 1: about how excited he was about his new watch and
Speaker 1: like kind of fun things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's considered the greatest English diarist, and I'll own it.
Speaker 2: Last time he came up, I called him pepees I
Speaker 2: think probably, but people wrote in and corrected us, so
Speaker 2: we got it right this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this watch. Can you read that? That's a pretty
Speaker 1: fun entry. I think about his new watch.
Speaker 2: But lord to see how much of my old folly
Speaker 2: and childishness hangs on me still that I cannot forbear
Speaker 2: carrying my watch in my hand and the coach all
Speaker 2: the afternoon and seeing what o'clock it is. One hundred times.
Speaker 2: That was my Samuel peeps.
Speaker 1: I love it. That's fun. He's like, what that does
Speaker 1: is that makes it relatable because everyone has gotten a
Speaker 1: new watch or a new shirt that they're like, I
Speaker 1: gotta look in the mirror again and see how this
Speaker 1: thing looks like. People get excited about that stuff, and
Speaker 1: it's fun to see someone write about, you know, the
Speaker 1: fire of London in one hand and also talk about
Speaker 1: how excited it heard about their new watch.
Speaker 2: He wrote more than a million words dude, which on
Speaker 2: its face sounds like a lot. But get this, the
Speaker 2: entire Harry Potter series is just over a million words.
Speaker 2: So he wrote about the same amount of words as
Speaker 2: the entire all the books of Harry Potter by hand,
Speaker 2: in less time than JK. Rowling wrote them.
Speaker 1: Oh, all right, pretty nuts, little shade.
Speaker 2: Uh No, not really. I'm just it's a good touchstone.
Speaker 1: Sure, plus we could shade her for all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 1: Sure that don't involve speed of writing, if you really
Speaker 1: want to do that. Who's the Game of Thrones guy?
Speaker 1: That's what everyone's mad at him? Cc cc deville.
Speaker 2: No, it was his named George R. R. Martin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are they still mad at him?
Speaker 2: Cheeses? People give him a break?
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't that the deal. I don't even know
Speaker 1: anything about that stuff, but I think everyone's just like,
Speaker 1: why aren't you finishing yet?
Speaker 2: Huh? Well? What about Michael Schiner Chuck?
Speaker 1: Yes, he was an enslaved person in Maryland and in
Speaker 1: eighteen oh five was eventually a freeman. But he worked
Speaker 1: at the Washington Naval Yards for many decades and ended
Speaker 1: up keeping a fifty six year diary that was maybe
Speaker 1: like my friends Mike one day that'll be published after
Speaker 1: he died by historians. So all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: have this amazing account of the life of an enslaved
Speaker 1: person over fifty and then a free person over fifty
Speaker 1: six years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also was not educated. Born a slave, you
Speaker 2: typically weren't educated. In fact, that was usually illegal to
Speaker 2: educate a slave at the time. So he taught himself, apparently.
Speaker 2: So he uses his own spelling, his own grammar, very
Speaker 2: little punctuation, and he had to conserve paper as much
Speaker 2: as possible, so he would kind of like write stuff
Speaker 2: wherever there was space on an old page that he left.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think his grandson came along and kind
Speaker 2: of organized it and it ended up being published.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, And that's one thing you'll see as
Speaker 1: a tip later on, is to is to write as
Speaker 1: good as you can write. If you're not some fancy
Speaker 1: great writer, like, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can just write punctuation and academics
Speaker 2: centuries later will come along and digitize your stuff and
Speaker 2: translated essentially for everybody. It's it's that it can be
Speaker 2: that important.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Josie Underwood is another great example, probably the
Speaker 1: most famous civilian account of the Civil War. She was
Speaker 1: au in a unique position because she was from a
Speaker 1: Southern family in Kentucky, very prominent family in Bowling Green,
Speaker 1: of slaveholders. But she was sympathetic to the Union cause.
Speaker 1: And you know, she writes a very sort of honest
Speaker 1: first person account as someone from that perspective throughout the
Speaker 1: Civil War and it became very famous.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But then interspersed with that with being occupied by
Speaker 2: the Confederate Army and then the Union army, she also
Speaker 2: like talked about normal life for like a society person
Speaker 2: in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where you know, going to parties
Speaker 2: or things like that, or looking for what she called
Speaker 2: her true prince a husband. So it has it's very
Speaker 2: much like Samuel Peeps. There's historic events, but it's written
Speaker 2: from the perspective of the individual who also writes about
Speaker 2: themselves too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this stuff is this is history. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is how we learn about history. If you read
Speaker 1: history books and they describe in great detail about how
Speaker 1: life was. Some of that is from research and clues
Speaker 1: and things like that, but some of that is from
Speaker 1: first person accounts.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was another very very famous journal I don't
Speaker 2: know if you'd call it a diary, but it was
Speaker 2: from Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who led an expedition to
Speaker 2: the South Pole in nineteen twelve, was trying to be
Speaker 2: the first expedition to the South Pole, and in fact
Speaker 2: they reached the South Pole to find that a rival
Speaker 2: explorer had beat them by one month, and so they
Speaker 2: had to make it back to civilization. They never made
Speaker 2: it back, so Scott chronicled their slow demise over weeks
Speaker 2: trudging through the Arctic or the Antarctic, I should say,
Speaker 2: just trying to get back to safety and then just
Speaker 2: not doing it.
Speaker 1: I bet that's a heavy read.
Speaker 2: It is. I was reading it today and it's just it's, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's crazy to put yourself in that situation, which he
Speaker 2: makes it easy to do in just these little, you know,
Speaker 2: few sentence what do you call them, not inscriptions or installations, entries,
Speaker 2: just a few sentences each typically, But yeah, it really
Speaker 2: kind of draws you into like inside the tent where
Speaker 2: blizzard's going and one guy's nose is falling off because
Speaker 2: it's so frost bit, and everybody's trying to keep their
Speaker 2: spirits up kind of thing. Like he really, it's a
Speaker 2: really moving journal. For sure.
Speaker 1: There's another one. And I never knew how to pronounce
Speaker 1: his name A nice nin But I finally, do they
Speaker 1: listen to who the men? On YouTube? Yeah? You ever
Speaker 1: listen to that guy? Yes, today we will learn to
Speaker 1: pronounce the name. Who is that a real person?
Speaker 2: I don't know anymore, No one knows anymore.
Speaker 1: I gotta figure that out. That'd be a good short stuff.
Speaker 1: Maybe even who's real? Who is that person?
Speaker 2: Okay? Who are these people?
Speaker 1: All right, we'll do it as Jerry Seinfelcker. Anyway, he said,
Speaker 1: it was pronounced a nice nin. And this was the
Speaker 1: course of very famous diary that she kept from age
Speaker 1: eleven until and this is nineteen fourteen until she died
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven. And it was noteworthy and that
Speaker 1: it was very sort of body stuff for the time.
Speaker 1: She talked very personally about, you know, sort of romantic
Speaker 1: escapades that people did not talk about at the time.
Speaker 1: It was published in sixty six like a sanitized version
Speaker 1: and was a big hit with the ladies largely, and
Speaker 1: then she said, hey, after I die, why don't you
Speaker 1: publish the full and uncensored version.
Speaker 2: But even the sanitized version was like, I've been ing
Speaker 2: a double life. I've been having this affair. I'm married
Speaker 2: to two guys. I've split my life between New York
Speaker 2: and Los Angeles, and my husband doesn't know, like just
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff. And she purposely published them while
Speaker 2: she was alive. And I mean, that's a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of risk that she took on. She ended up becoming
Speaker 2: a feminist icon, like basically overnight as a.
Speaker 1: Result, another icon. You can't talk about diaries without talking
Speaker 1: about Anne Frank. And this is something that I never knew. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you know, we'll tell you who Ann Frank is,
Speaker 1: because I always think everyone knows, even because it's the
Speaker 1: second most widely read book in the world after the Bible.
Speaker 1: But Anne Frank wrote a diary between nineteen forty two
Speaker 1: and nineteen forty four as a teenager, started at thirteen
Speaker 1: hiding from the Nazis with her family and wrote this diary.
Speaker 1: The thing I never knew is that she had planned
Speaker 1: to publish it. As the story goes, she was inspired
Speaker 1: by a radio transmission in nineteen forty four from the
Speaker 1: Dutch government that said, hey, collect this and put it
Speaker 1: on paper. All this everyday material about Nazi occupation, like
Speaker 1: write it down so people know. And so she did
Speaker 1: that and like rewrote it with the aim of publishing
Speaker 1: it before she was captured.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so her original diaries considered diary A. Like there's
Speaker 2: entire people have written theses on parts of this stuff.
Speaker 2: So the first one's Diary A, the one that she
Speaker 2: rewrote intended for publication, that's considered Diary B. And her
Speaker 2: father Auto, the only one who survived the Nazi occupation
Speaker 2: in the Netherlands of the family because they were found
Speaker 2: out by the Gestapo and taken to concentration camps, which
Speaker 2: is where Anne Frank was murdered as a girl. Still,
Speaker 2: she would have been maybe fifteen or sixteen at the time.
Speaker 2: Auto survived and he was given her journals and basically
Speaker 2: had them put together journal Diary A and Diary B
Speaker 2: to kind of create like a a version of it
Speaker 2: for public consumption. And after he died, they published the
Speaker 2: whole thing, and that's considered Diary C. And like you said,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's probably the second most read book in
Speaker 2: the entire world after the Bible, and for good reason too.
Speaker 2: I mean, like this the insight into history that it
Speaker 2: gives is just amazing and unparalleled. But also there's a
Speaker 2: poet named John Berryman who put it like this. He
Speaker 2: said that the book is about the conversion of a
Speaker 2: child into a person, and Frank's going through this conversion
Speaker 2: from age thirteen to fifteen. Big big difference in ages.
Speaker 2: Right there, thirteen to fifteen, A lot happened. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: she's doing it hidden away in an attic in the Netherlands,
Speaker 2: hiding out from the Nazi, hiding for her life.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to the an Frank House?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I haven't you ever been to Amsterdam? Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, make me feel bad, though, why don't you?
Speaker 1: No, you shouldn't feel bad. I've been there a few times,
Speaker 1: and I went once. I didn't go two times.
Speaker 2: Well, at least she went once, though. I don't even
Speaker 2: have that to boast about. But I would like to
Speaker 2: go though. I mean, I can't imagine how moving that
Speaker 2: place is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So those are some famous examples of famous journals. I
Speaker 2: guess you want to take another break and talk about
Speaker 2: why people might write journals in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's another earliest break. But it aligns nicely.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, Chuck, there's all sorts of reasons to write
Speaker 2: in your journal, whether you're talking about limestone being delivered
Speaker 2: to build a pyramid, or being enslaved in the navy
Speaker 2: yards or being occupied by the Confederate Army. People have
Speaker 2: been doing it for centuries and centuries and centuries without
Speaker 2: any real intention to do anything other than get their
Speaker 2: thoughts out on paper. And it wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties that psychotherapists were like, you know, there's something to that.
Speaker 2: People are putting their internal lives out into written form.
Speaker 2: They're getting out of their minds and into the world.
Speaker 2: There has to be some therapy to benefit to that.
Speaker 2: And a therapist named Ira Progoff came up with what
Speaker 2: it's called intensive journaling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you said, it was in nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and his version it was basically a notebook like a
Speaker 1: three ring binder, with color coded sections about topically arranged
Speaker 1: thematically arranged. It could be like dream recording your dreams,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about again a little bit later, could
Speaker 1: have been just daily life stuff. It could be very like, hey,
Speaker 1: write about a big event in your life, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about trauma journaling later. Because
Speaker 1: that can be very valuable and painful, I imagine. But
Speaker 1: basically it's all about like almost like a meditation and
Speaker 1: allowing things that were important to you or related to
Speaker 1: you at different points of your life to come to
Speaker 1: the forefront of your mind and just sort of write
Speaker 1: out through the pin onto the paper or through your
Speaker 1: fingis onto the keyboard.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, you sit there for a few minutes reflecting
Speaker 2: on the topic you've decided to focus on for that
Speaker 2: journal entry. Then you write it, then you read what
Speaker 2: you just wrote, and then you write your feelings about
Speaker 2: writing it and then reading it.
Speaker 1: That's got to be helpful, got to.
Speaker 2: Be And that's the point of all this. Like we're
Speaker 2: going to get into some pretty deep bs here eventually.
Speaker 2: But the upshot of it is there's a very very
Speaker 2: little chance that it will be in any way harmful
Speaker 2: and possibly very beneficial, and that it could be.
Speaker 1: Difficult, yes, but that doesn't mean harmful.
Speaker 2: Right, And that that alone makes it worth at least
Speaker 2: giving it a shot. And if it works for you, great,
Speaker 2: It doesn't work for you, then you gave it a try.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's another guy named James Pinnabaker from Texas University
Speaker 1: of Texas Austin. He's a psychologist that did studies on
Speaker 1: what he called expressive writing. Been doing this since the eighties,
Speaker 1: And he said, you know where I found or where
Speaker 1: he found it helpful was when you would just start
Speaker 1: out with like very disjointed sort of raw feelings and
Speaker 1: things and then transform that into a story and into
Speaker 1: a narrative. And the process of taking like a difficult experience,
Speaker 1: maybe just writing down the eight feelings you had about it,
Speaker 1: and then that gets a little more detailed and more
Speaker 1: detailed until you've turned it into a story can help
Speaker 1: you handle that stuff more easily and help you live
Speaker 1: with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's actually studies to back this up. His
Speaker 2: whole thing is like, you don't need to journal every day.
Speaker 2: If you do, fine, that's great. But he found that
Speaker 2: just one fifteen to thirty minute session of writing about
Speaker 2: a difficult or traumatic experience can help relieve not just
Speaker 2: psychological symptoms, but physiological symptoms as well, and that a
Speaker 2: lot of studies have found that if you do like
Speaker 2: three to five for fifteen to thirty minute sessions writing
Speaker 2: about the same experience, it can really help work past
Speaker 2: trauma that you've been carrying around. It's pretty amazing just
Speaker 2: writing about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of the things they found in studies, a
Speaker 1: short term increase in distress or negative mood. That's what
Speaker 1: I was talking about, Like, it may be difficult in
Speaker 1: the moment, you know, bringing up these bad memories, but
Speaker 1: it pays off in the long run. Evidence of improvements
Speaker 1: in depressive systems, long term and emotional well being. Benefits
Speaker 1: to physical health like lower blood pressure, better lung function,
Speaker 1: less illness, less doctor visits, better immune system, more antibodies.
Speaker 1: Pretty neat, pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they think that it's just by getting this
Speaker 2: thing out of your working memory, essentially, by documenting on paper,
Speaker 2: you don't have to worry about remembering or thinking about it,
Speaker 2: ruminating about it anymore. You put it out there, and
Speaker 2: that that alone can lower your stress levels and your
Speaker 2: immune system can kick back in to higher gear again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think he's the guy that really stressed, Like,
Speaker 1: do it how you do it? If you want to
Speaker 1: write it with a pen, fine, you can put it
Speaker 1: in your phone, don't and don't worry about like writing well,
Speaker 1: and don't worry about being fair even like you're doing
Speaker 1: this for you, you're not doing this for publication, So
Speaker 1: write about how you really feel, even if it's a
Speaker 1: very selfish thing in the moment, and try and really
Speaker 1: bring up a lot of sensory details and you know,
Speaker 1: deep emotional, physical, sometimes feelings that you had at the
Speaker 1: moment of this trauma. And be careful as you're doing it.
Speaker 1: It's not like a therapy replacement, but ideally to be
Speaker 1: used in conjunction with therapy.
Speaker 2: Remember in our meditat Now our mindfulness episode where we
Speaker 2: talked about some people who engage in mindfulness activities like
Speaker 2: find that there they freak out because they accidentally uncovered
Speaker 2: trauma and they weren't prepared right, Pennebaker kind of warns
Speaker 2: about the same thing. He says that there's too soon
Speaker 2: for journaling. It can be that with that potent and
Speaker 2: powerful that if you if it's if it follows too
Speaker 2: closely after the actual traumatic event, it can be too
Speaker 2: hard on you, and that you should have at least
Speaker 2: some distance of time. And probably the more you know,
Speaker 2: for a seriously traumatic event, you probably want to do
Speaker 2: this under the advisement of a therapist. Don't necessarily try
Speaker 2: to do it on yourself. So it's probably not going
Speaker 2: to harm you, but the potential is there enough that
Speaker 2: if this is, you could probably only be the only
Speaker 2: judge for yourself. Right, this is so weighty that it
Speaker 2: could break you mentally. You should probably talk to somebody
Speaker 2: first about how to do it correctly or when to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally agree. A gratitude journal is something that I
Speaker 1: had never really heard of.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I never heard of though I've heard about
Speaker 1: course gratitude and thankful and ruminating on that stuff, but
Speaker 1: like actually writing it down a list or a journal
Speaker 1: is a pretty popular thing that I'm a big dummy
Speaker 1: for not knowing, because they've even done a meta analysis
Speaker 1: and so that means there's a lot of studies on it.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, Japanese researchers did this analysis and
Speaker 1: they found that it really helps with stress and depression
Speaker 1: if you do it at least like six times, it
Speaker 1: said over the course of a study. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what timeframe that is, but basically, like you know, it
Speaker 1: can take a lot of forms. Noticing generosity that you
Speaker 1: see walking around in the world, things that you're just
Speaker 1: thankful for. It can help lead to you expressing gratitude
Speaker 1: and thanks to others, and you can also note that,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, sort of a version of what's
Speaker 1: called positive affect journaling, which is basically focusing on positive
Speaker 1: things and gratitude and ideally that's going to increase your
Speaker 1: well being. And then it seems like it would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And they also say you want to
Speaker 2: be very detailed, you want to typically focus on people,
Speaker 2: not necessarily things that you're grateful for, although you can
Speaker 2: focus on that, and that it's much better to focus
Speaker 2: on a single topic rather than you know, list off
Speaker 2: five things like I'm grateful for this, this, and this.
Speaker 2: More like I'm grateful for this and this is why
Speaker 2: is much more helpful as far as gratitude journals go.
Speaker 2: I like that. Also, going back to the trauma things
Speaker 2: just real quick, there was a twenty sixteen study by
Speaker 2: a researcher named g. Jung Park, and they found that
Speaker 2: people who use expressive journaling, which is writing about your
Speaker 2: experience getting it out in those fifteen to thirty minute sessions,
Speaker 2: they showed more self distance after journaling. And self distance
Speaker 2: is actually it's a psychological term. It's a concept where
Speaker 2: you are more detached emotionally from an event that you experienced,
Speaker 2: and that by being able to distance yourself from it.
Speaker 2: You're able to cope with it much easier, process it
Speaker 2: better than when you're super all up in it and
Speaker 2: it's overwhelming you. And they found that self distancing can
Speaker 2: be helped along by journaling about the event. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's sort of that time heals wounds things,
Speaker 1: And I think the idea here is it can help
Speaker 1: sort of speed up that process, speed up that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it helps you get things off your chest.
Speaker 2: It helps you clarify your thinking. And one other thing
Speaker 2: that it really helps you do is see other people's perspectives.
Speaker 1: And I imagine you may be able to put stuff
Speaker 1: down on paper in private that you might not even
Speaker 1: tell a therapist that you think that you can be
Speaker 1: completely open to you know.
Speaker 2: Yes, ideally that you are sharing that level of openness
Speaker 2: with your with your journal diary. That's from what I
Speaker 2: can tell. The more you're able to do that, the
Speaker 2: healthier it could conceivably be. Although I don't know if
Speaker 2: you said it or not, but Pennebaker says, maybe you
Speaker 2: don't want to journal every day because that can actually
Speaker 2: potentially make you ruminate more on negative stuff because you're talking.
Speaker 1: Like you said that actually did. I there are several
Speaker 1: truths in your life. There is the truth you tell
Speaker 1: your therapist, there's the truth you tell your doctor, and
Speaker 1: then there's only one real truth, and that's the truth
Speaker 1: that you tell yourself. Probably yeah, when no one else
Speaker 1: knows anything, even the closest people in your life, I
Speaker 1: think the truth you tell yourself is probably the truest thing.
Speaker 2: You can also delude yourself though, too.
Speaker 1: Oh well no, no, that's a completely different thing.
Speaker 2: Oh oh sorry I brought that up.
Speaker 1: No, you can lie to yourself. But uh, I think
Speaker 1: that I don't know. That's just an opinion of mine,
Speaker 1: you know, sure, And that's why I think that journaling
Speaker 1: very privately could be like a really there thing.
Speaker 2: For sure. It seems like, yeah, that's the thing when
Speaker 2: I said we were going to wait into BS, Like,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people out there who have tried
Speaker 2: to qualify this, quantify it. Hr people who are like,
Speaker 2: maybe we should get all the employees to journal every day.
Speaker 2: It's like this thing may work. So everybody's turned it
Speaker 2: into a thing that you have to do, and if not,
Speaker 2: then you're not you're not trying to achieve your goals,
Speaker 2: and you're you're not living your best life or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's it's just it's meant to be one of those
Speaker 2: things that like, if it helps you, great, If it doesn't,
Speaker 2: move on, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be this
Speaker 2: thing that everybody has to do and benefit from in
Speaker 2: exactly the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have a fun small collection of two to
Speaker 1: three journal entries from various points in my Life's nice
Speaker 1: where I would say I'm going to start doing this, man,
Speaker 1: because I'd do something like this, or a teacher would
Speaker 1: talk about it, and then all right, here we go,
Speaker 1: and a few days then I stopped doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so easy to not do anymore.
Speaker 1: I did have. I think the longest one I ever
Speaker 1: kept was for one full quarter when we were in quarters.
Speaker 1: Back then in college, I had a play writing class
Speaker 1: I took, and my playwriting teacher had us as part
Speaker 1: of the class, so it wasn't optional to do what
Speaker 1: he called a commonplace journal, and that was just not
Speaker 1: even your thoughts and emotions, just more in the as
Speaker 1: a writer might do, like things you notice and things
Speaker 1: that might inspire you in this in that commonplace. Then Okay,
Speaker 1: so I did that for a quarter, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I have that one. That's my biggest, most robust one,
Speaker 1: and it's lost to time.
Speaker 2: Poor guy.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of journals that have become popular
Speaker 1: as far as like, oh, this person says this is
Speaker 1: a very good way to do it. The artist way,
Speaker 1: a self help book from ninety two by Julia Cameron,
Speaker 1: talked about morning pages. So you just sort of and
Speaker 1: this is based on the Jungian idea that you're ego
Speaker 1: defense doesn't wake up until for forty five minutes after
Speaker 1: you wake up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look that up, and I don't think that's
Speaker 2: actually a thing that you never said.
Speaker 1: Oh really, yeah, so did Julia Cameron, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a self help book, right, anyway, that's the idea,
Speaker 1: at least that sounds like it may or it may
Speaker 1: not be true. But the whole idea is you do
Speaker 1: this first thing in the morning, sort of stream of
Speaker 1: consciousness style to get just sort of drain out your
Speaker 1: brain of like stuff that might plague you throughout the
Speaker 1: day later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the point isn't to just write anything like inspirational
Speaker 2: or good or where just to get it out like
Speaker 2: you were saying, Yeah, that's a good example of what
Speaker 2: I was talking about with the BS, like does it
Speaker 2: have to be based on a Jungian idea? And that
Speaker 2: is exactly forty five minutes. It's just like, hey, this works,
Speaker 2: you guys should give it a try. Don't try to
Speaker 2: write anything worth while. Just get out the crud that's
Speaker 2: going to plague you for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2: Why can't people present ideas like that anymore?
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, just say do it when you're sweepy. That
Speaker 1: seems to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you got to bring young into this?
Speaker 2: It's like, don't drag me into this just because you
Speaker 2: use the word ego.
Speaker 1: We talked about gratitude journals. What are bullet journals?
Speaker 2: Theories are well, they were created by a digital designer
Speaker 2: named right Carol, great digital designer name back in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: and they're much more real world focused, like to do lists, calendars.
Speaker 1: It seems like a life system exactly.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is in written form, and so
Speaker 2: whatever you need to help you, like you're trying to
Speaker 2: keep up with the meals you're eating for the week,
Speaker 2: or the exercise you're doing, or the chores you have
Speaker 2: to do or whatever you have. These different journals all
Speaker 2: within this kind of bullet journal, these different sections or
Speaker 2: segments to it that are typically laid out over time
Speaker 2: a week, a month or something like that, or by section,
Speaker 2: and people decorate them in very pretty ways.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's also can be though not literally just uh,
Speaker 1: things I have to get accomplished today, but like like
Speaker 1: go to the store or go to this appointment, but
Speaker 1: things you want to accomplish is in a holistic way,
Speaker 1: like today I'm gonna I'm gonna really work on either
Speaker 1: gratitude or thankfulness or empathy or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, here's I got to check the box next to empathy,
Speaker 2: I empathize today.
Speaker 1: Check that sounded slightly cynical. Dream journals Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: don't do those either, no.
Speaker 2: But so there are formal interpretation systems of dreams, like
Speaker 2: if your tooth fall out, you're worried about your looks
Speaker 2: or something like that. Right, those are clearly obviously just
Speaker 2: totally wrong. But there is a usefulness to dream journals
Speaker 2: in that it's it's very much like getting your thoughts
Speaker 2: out with a with typical journaling. With dream journals, you're
Speaker 2: recording the thoughts that you got out while you were
Speaker 2: a dream before they you know, disappear, you know, in
Speaker 2: that forty five minutes before your ego defenses go up, right.
Speaker 2: But that's that's kind of the point of dream journal,
Speaker 2: And you're almost visiting or you're recording these visits to
Speaker 2: the other parts of your mind that you can't typically access,
Speaker 2: so you're just jotting down what happened, and it can
Speaker 2: affect your waking life in ways. I read a New
Speaker 2: York Times letter from somebody who suggested doing this, and
Speaker 2: they were, like, it makes when I dream about somebody
Speaker 2: in a certain way, when I see them the next time,
Speaker 2: I noticed those qualities about them. So like the dreams,
Speaker 2: logging the dreams affects how they navigate waking life, which
Speaker 2: sounds pretty neat.
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds like the most fun one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just for no other reason than to go back and
Speaker 1: read about fun weird dreams years later. Exactly, have you
Speaker 1: ever woken up, uh, have you ever been like mad
Speaker 1: at you me in a dream and woken up a
Speaker 1: little bit like feeling a little mad, even though that's
Speaker 1: totally unfairing.
Speaker 2: No, not that specific thing, but I have been out
Speaker 2: of works in many different ways from dreams, and it
Speaker 2: takes a little while, because I mean, think about the
Speaker 2: same neurochemicals are being released in your brain whether you're
Speaker 2: awake or you're asleep while you're experiencing that, and yeah,
Speaker 2: if they happen to still be flooding your brain when
Speaker 2: you wake up, you're still gonna be feeling that way,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Emily and I both had dreams where like one
Speaker 1: of us did something to the other in sallity and
Speaker 1: you wake up and you know it's unreasonable, and you
Speaker 1: try to shake up. You're like, I'm sorry, I'm just
Speaker 1: a little mad at you for my dream, and then
Speaker 1: we laugh and talk about how unfair that is.
Speaker 2: That happens to me in normal life too. With TV shows, like, uh,
Speaker 2: they'll go to commercial break, you know, when you're watching
Speaker 2: regular TV h and I'll be like, why am I
Speaker 2: so like tense right now or upset? And I'll realize
Speaker 2: it's because I just watched the kid get kidnapped on
Speaker 2: Law and Order, and like that sensation is carried over
Speaker 2: into the commercial break and now I'm suddenly paying attention
Speaker 2: to it and wondering why I feel that way.
Speaker 1: Uh, that's fun. We were in New York one time
Speaker 1: and a similarly, we were we were leaving, like kind
Speaker 1: of finishing up at our table, and the waiter came
Speaker 1: over and says like, hey, you guys are about done right,
Speaker 1: because someone you know is waiting to be seated, like
Speaker 1: in a really nice way. We're like, yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: getting out of here. You can go go ahead and
Speaker 1: bring him over or whatever. And uh, it was the
Speaker 1: actor from that TV show The Killing, the Billy Campbell.
Speaker 1: That didn't sound right, but maybe it is. I thought
Speaker 1: he was like Swedish or something.
Speaker 2: There was an original Swedish version of The Killing.
Speaker 1: Uh is that what I watched?
Speaker 2: I don't know where the titles.
Speaker 1: Billy Kimball's the other he is in that show. But
Speaker 1: I was talking about Joel Kineman.
Speaker 2: Is he the the congressman or the city councilman.
Speaker 1: No, he was. He is Swedish, actually Swedish American. He
Speaker 1: he was the partner.
Speaker 2: That's Billy Campbell.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to get too involved here because
Speaker 1: I don't want to give anything away, but uh, Keneman
Speaker 1: was for sure her partner.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I guess I only made a past
Speaker 2: season two.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it was him and it was his TV show
Speaker 1: and he had again I don't want to give anyway,
Speaker 1: but he had just done he had been a bad
Speaker 1: person in that week's episode, and I kind of scowled
Speaker 1: and I was like you. I was like, I'm so
Speaker 1: mad at you. And he was like, I'm sorry, bro.
Speaker 1: He was like everybody he said on the streets this
Speaker 1: week has been so rough. He was like, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's really kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Actually, So you might be thinking of Peter Sarsgard, he
Speaker 2: was in it.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I'm thinking about Joel Caky.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about the same person. I thought his
Speaker 2: name was Billy Campbell. Billy Campbell was the or the
Speaker 2: city councilman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's older, he's like in his sixties, okay, and
Speaker 1: he played he was the rocketeer.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that. I never saw that movie.
Speaker 2: It just looked creepy an art deco.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I mean cop partner.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Joe Kinneman was the cop partner, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about the same person. I just had
Speaker 2: the name wrong. You had the name right. Is that
Speaker 2: what you want to hear? Is that what you're holding
Speaker 2: out for here.
Speaker 1: I'm not holding out for anything.
Speaker 2: You got anything else about journaling or diaries?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Nah, Well, I think I speak for us all when
Speaker 2: I say that we hope you find that quarter journal.
Speaker 2: What was it called? The what journal?
Speaker 1: The commonplace note.
Speaker 2: Common place notebook? What a great name. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 2: like something that would be stitched together with like fabric
Speaker 2: and twine. You know, there's like a mushroom on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sure, Chuck said, yeh.
Speaker 2: Sure, everybody. That means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this things that we have recommended.
Speaker 1: Did I read this? I don't think I did. I'll
Speaker 1: read it again. Hey guys, my name is Evan Whitby
Speaker 1: from Hendersonville, North Carolina. It's kind of a long one,
Speaker 1: but I'll just say that Evan really loves the show
Speaker 1: and it's meant a lot to him through his life.
Speaker 1: In one of the biggest ways that it means a
Speaker 1: lot is the recommendations movie recommendations that Evan has gotten
Speaker 1: from us over the years. Sometimes it's a plug or
Speaker 1: just comes up in conversation, but by this point I
Speaker 1: trust your taste a lot, so I check most of
Speaker 1: them out and then list a bunch of examples what
Speaker 1: we do in the Shadows, Reservation Dogs, Larry Sanders Show,
Speaker 1: Nate Bargatzi's stand up Eyes Wide Shut, just to name
Speaker 1: a few that I particularly liked. And I just finished
Speaker 1: watching both seasons of Dick Town, which was is John
Speaker 1: Hodgmanshow David David Reese's show. Yeah, and you were right
Speaker 1: and that it's the perfect length to finish it all
Speaker 1: in one sitting. And as a native North Carolinian who
Speaker 1: has lived all around the state my whole life, I
Speaker 1: found it particularly funny. Go wolf Pack. I look forward
Speaker 1: to many more lessons and many more laughs thanks to
Speaker 1: the whole team. One Love Evan.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. That is so much better than cheers, Evan.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Evan and say hey,
Speaker 2: I really like this thing you guys recommended, or conversely,
Speaker 2: you can say, hey, I really like this thing you
Speaker 2: guys might not know about, so I want to recommend
Speaker 2: it to you. We are always open for both of those.
Speaker 2: You can send it in an email via One Love
Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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