Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: If I followed this path that my father had laid
Speaker 2: out for me, I would be a woman who didn't
Speaker 2: follow her own dreams and desires, didn't follow her own passions,
Speaker 2: didn't live for herself, and was relegated to this sort
Speaker 2: of bent and broken place of silence, of only domesticity.
Speaker 1: Sophia Sinclair is a writer and poet who grew up
Speaker 1: in a Rastafari family. Her father was the head of
Speaker 1: the household, and he made Sophia and her siblings follow
Speaker 1: a strict interpretation of Rastafari. But as Sophia grew older,
Speaker 1: living under her father's rules became suffocating.
Speaker 2: And I thought, no, that's not the future that I
Speaker 2: want for myself. And I want to decide for myself
Speaker 2: the woman that I am going to be, and so
Speaker 2: I need to cut this future completely out of me
Speaker 2: and out of my life entirely.
Speaker 1: On today's show, Breaking Free from your family's beliefs, I'm
Speaker 1: Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. Sophia grew up
Speaker 1: in a small fishing village on the north coast of Jamaica.
Speaker 1: The village belonged to her mom's family, and Sophia's dad
Speaker 1: never quite felt like he along there. He was part
Speaker 1: of a radical sect of Rastafari, a religious and social movement.
Speaker 1: In that sect, the main tenant was to maintain purity,
Speaker 1: to keep your mind and body clean. This meant avoiding
Speaker 1: any influences from Babylon, the world outside of Rastafari, which
Speaker 1: was seen as evil and corrupt. Sophia's dad worried that
Speaker 1: keeping his family in the village would hurt their purity.
Speaker 1: Sophia and her siblings would be exposed to their maternal aunts,
Speaker 1: for example, who did things like eat meat, drink alcohol,
Speaker 1: wear makeup, and go out dancing. And so when Sophia
Speaker 1: was five, her dad moved their family to the countryside.
Speaker 2: We left the seaside, and suddenly the rules were coming
Speaker 2: fast at me, and you know, which involved like growing
Speaker 2: the dreadlocks. And then also when I was nine years old,
Speaker 2: my father said, you can't climb trees anymore, you will
Speaker 2: never ride a bicycle, you cannot wear jeans, you can't
Speaker 2: wear pants, you can't wear shorts. And so that's why
Speaker 2: I began to question everything, because I was like wait,
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure where these rules are coming from.
Speaker 2: And a lot of them weren't placed on my brother.
Speaker 2: He could still climb the trees and ride his bicycle
Speaker 2: and all of this. And so I did question, and
Speaker 2: the answer was always, don't question me, just do what
Speaker 2: I say.
Speaker 1: You mentioned these extreme restrictions, right, I mean, there were
Speaker 1: so many limitations placed on you. What was your understanding
Speaker 1: of the expectations of a Rastafari woman. What was the
Speaker 1: future that you were forced to envision for yourself within
Speaker 1: these confines.
Speaker 2: Well, for a long time, I didn't have a good
Speaker 2: understanding of what was expected of me. The rest of
Speaker 2: Fari movement itself doesn't have one unifying principle or core tenet.
Speaker 2: There is no kind of biblical equivalent for Rastafari. There's
Speaker 2: no Holy Book, and most Rastafari households, the idea was
Speaker 2: that the Rasta brethren was kind of God had figured
Speaker 2: in the household. Each Rasta brethren really got to interpret
Speaker 2: and create the rules for himself in his own household.
Speaker 2: And that's what my household was like. My father just
Speaker 2: said these are the rules and you must follow them.
Speaker 2: So that kind of set the tone for what growing
Speaker 2: up was like, and so silence was something that was seen,
Speaker 2: especially for women, as something that made you virtuous. And
Speaker 2: then you know, for women, there were also certain rules
Speaker 2: that weren't necessarily given to the men. For example, there
Speaker 2: were rules about the modesty of dress for women. So
Speaker 2: for the women of Rastafari, you know, they had to
Speaker 2: cover their arms and legs, cover their knees. Some women
Speaker 2: covered their hair. And there was a moment where we there,
Speaker 2: it was a gathering of the rass of community and
Speaker 2: I just remember observing, and I was maybe eight years old.
Speaker 2: I remember observing. All the women were inside in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: They had multiple children kind of grabbing onto their you know, arms, legs,
Speaker 2: their hems. They were making the food and they would
Speaker 2: bring the food outside to the men. And the men
Speaker 2: were all sitting outside talking. But the rastafar I call
Speaker 2: it reasoning right, which was like a big part of
Speaker 2: their community in a way that they passed down the
Speaker 2: oral wisdom and tenets of Rastafari, which was asking questions
Speaker 2: about the man's place in the universe. And they talked
Speaker 2: about philosophy and politics and so on, and you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of existential conversations happening. And I remember looking
Speaker 2: at the men or the bredren sitting there and having
Speaker 2: these conversations and reasoning, and ever so often they would
Speaker 2: call the young boys over like, come and listen, Come
Speaker 2: and listen to this wisdom. I remember being so jealous, like,
Speaker 2: why can't I get the wisdom in the reasoning? And
Speaker 2: you know, and then seeing the women were so preoccupied
Speaker 2: with making the food and bringing the food to the
Speaker 2: men that they didn't have a chance to have existential,
Speaker 2: you know, conversations with each other.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm smart, I'm capable. What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I remember that being one of the first
Speaker 2: times that I thought, Wait, is this the future that
Speaker 2: my father is laying out for me?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Is this if I continue down this path, is this
Speaker 2: where I'm going to be? You know, a woman relegated
Speaker 2: to this sort of bent and broken place of silence,
Speaker 2: of only domesticity and being beholden to just her husband. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you see what you described modeled in you talked
Speaker 1: about being beholden to a man? Right? Did you see
Speaker 1: that modeled between your parents and the way that they
Speaker 1: interacted with each other, Like the way that your mom
Speaker 1: was expected to serve your father.
Speaker 2: So when I was younger, when I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: this is how it appeared to me. You know that
Speaker 2: my mother, she did all the domestic things, she cooked
Speaker 2: for everyone, and she I mean, she was just a
Speaker 2: natural nurturing person, gentle, patient, and to her she saw
Speaker 2: it as an honor to be our mom and to
Speaker 2: educate us and expand our imaginations. But in her interactions
Speaker 2: with my father, I often, when I was younger, found
Speaker 2: her voice to be silent. It appeared to me that
Speaker 2: she kind of just deferred, maybe to keep the peace.
Speaker 2: She was, you know, a kind of person who did
Speaker 2: not like confrontation. My father I think some of the
Speaker 2: time was almost all confrontation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rastafaris constituted a very small minority of the population. Right,
Speaker 1: So you were you and your siblings were facing all
Speaker 1: of these restrictions imposed by your father, but you were
Speaker 1: further confronting difference at school because your peers were not
Speaker 1: having to follow the same rules as you. And so
Speaker 1: how did that dynamic play out for young Sophia, Right,
Speaker 1: She's going to school and you know, as little kids,
Speaker 1: we want to fit in, Right, It's like really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were so ostracized, not just by our peers
Speaker 2: by the children. Would you kind of expect that children
Speaker 2: will sort of tease you if you're different or whatever.
Speaker 2: But my teachers and the adults also treated us unkindly
Speaker 2: because they had this unkind idea of Rastafari in their minds.
Speaker 2: It's something that most people would be surprised to know
Speaker 2: about Rastafari because we I think most people outside of
Speaker 2: Jamaica really think Rasafari define Jamaica.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You would probably imagine that they're the majority of the population,
Speaker 2: but actually they're not. They're one percent or less of
Speaker 2: the population. And historically, after the Rastafari movement began in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties, Jamaica was still under British colonial rule
Speaker 2: and the movement began as this sort of anti colonial movement,
Speaker 2: one that sought to harden around black liberation and freedom.
Speaker 2: The Restafari were labeled as a cult by the British
Speaker 2: government and the founder of Rasafari and the big commune
Speaker 2: of where the Rastas lived altogether was burnt to the ground.
Speaker 2: And after that the movement really scattered, and my siblings
Speaker 2: and I were among the first Rasta ChIL children to
Speaker 2: integrate public schools in Jamaica. So Yes, that was a
Speaker 2: lot to kind of take on as a young child.
Speaker 2: We were the only Rasta children at school. We were
Speaker 2: often the only Rasta children on the street, in the
Speaker 2: supermarket wherever we went, so people would point us out
Speaker 2: or point at us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you were so easily identified, right because of
Speaker 1: your hair and the clothing restrictions.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, so no one else had dreadlocks. We
Speaker 2: were the only ones who had dreadlocks, and which I
Speaker 2: think most people kind of think, oh, it's it's a
Speaker 2: hair style, but for the Rastafari, it's a very big
Speaker 2: part of their belief and their faith. The dreadlocks are
Speaker 2: a sacred marker kind of it's a sign of your
Speaker 2: divinity and your your reverence to Ja, which is the
Speaker 2: godhead figure of Rastafari. And so it tethered me to
Speaker 2: my father's control. That signaled to the Rasta brethren in
Speaker 2: his circle that he had his house on the control.
Speaker 2: It created this kind of difficulty of feeling really alienated.
Speaker 1: H there's this very heartbreaking moment you describe in the
Speaker 1: book where a schoolmate of yours tells you that she
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be friends with you because you're Rastafari.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it was one of these moments in
Speaker 2: my life where things really changed, because as soon as
Speaker 2: we got back to school with our dreadlocks, we were
Speaker 2: being teased, and I remember feeling this is one of
Speaker 2: the first times I felt ashamed to be myself, and
Speaker 2: that was not a good feeling. But I thought I
Speaker 2: had a friend. And my father would always tell us,
Speaker 2: you know, don't keep friend and company, don't have friends
Speaker 2: because outside influences are dangerous and people only want to
Speaker 2: hurt you. But I thought she was my friend, and
Speaker 2: one day she did send someone to give me this
Speaker 2: note that said I don't want to be friends with you.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be friends with Arasta, And yeah,
Speaker 2: this was one of the most painful moments in my
Speaker 2: young life, and I tried to harm myself. I stepped
Speaker 2: on a rusty nail. I was ten years old. You know,
Speaker 2: all of this pain, I didn't know where it should go.
Speaker 2: And I was feeling all this pain, all this alienation, isolation,
Speaker 2: and I was at home recovering from what I'd done.
Speaker 2: I told everybody it was an accident, and somehow my
Speaker 2: mother knew it wasn't an accident, and she kind of
Speaker 2: she came to my bed and she sat down and
Speaker 2: she gave me this really beautiful talk about how she
Speaker 2: also felt alienated when she was growing up and it
Speaker 2: was poetry that always made her life feel better. And
Speaker 2: then she gave me my first collection of poems and
Speaker 2: she said, you know, poetry has always helped me, and
Speaker 2: I think it will help you too. Wow.
Speaker 3: And she was right, you know she And this is
Speaker 3: the moment I think my life changed. I know it
Speaker 3: changed because as she left me with this book of
Speaker 3: poems and I read the poems in there, and I.
Speaker 2: Could feel viscerally all the hurt and pain I had
Speaker 2: been feeling because of what happened at school, slowly leaving
Speaker 2: me slowly really evaporating and changing from hurt and pain
Speaker 2: into something else, something beautiful. And I knew then that
Speaker 2: that was the power of poetry. And I thought, if
Speaker 2: I can just keep this feeling, this feeling of wonder
Speaker 2: that really burnt away all of the pain, I would
Speaker 2: always be Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you remember particular line of poetry that you
Speaker 1: remember speaking to you or yeah.
Speaker 2: She gave me this book. It was called Poems from
Speaker 2: a Child's World, and she told me that William Blake,
Speaker 2: the poem The Tiger was one of her favorites, and
Speaker 2: then I just remember reading that and being awe struck
Speaker 2: and how the words sort of came alive as connected
Speaker 2: to feeling, and how I felt that the imagery was
Speaker 2: also a vessel for meaning and it felt like another
Speaker 2: world opening, a way of understanding the world. That it
Speaker 2: sort of touched something in me that was just waiting
Speaker 2: to be touched, the poet's soul. And then I wrote
Speaker 2: my first poem that was an imitation of the Tiger,
Speaker 2: called the Butterfly.
Speaker 4: But its.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, ascute little poem, but you know, it
Speaker 2: was the first time I realized that there was another
Speaker 2: world there waiting for me to touch it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's another world in which you could exercise
Speaker 1: your personal agency again, right in which you were unencumbered
Speaker 1: and just by having a pen and paper, you were
Speaker 1: fully empowered to express yourself. I mean, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how intoxicating that would feel, given all of the restrictions
Speaker 1: you had faced up until this point.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes, I mean, poetry offered me the space to
Speaker 2: nurture my sense of selfhood, to really hone my voice
Speaker 2: at a time where I felt that silence was what
Speaker 2: was being required of me, and poetry, yes, became this
Speaker 2: space where I could really evolve myself and my thoughts
Speaker 2: and my imagination.
Speaker 1: You start reading poetry, you're writing, You're having these magical
Speaker 1: experiences with it. Right you called yourself awestruck. Did you
Speaker 1: feel that it was puncturing holes maybe in your belief
Speaker 1: system or did it open your eyes to a future
Speaker 1: that it maybe felt inaccessible to you? Prior?
Speaker 2: Poetry for me was something that I felt was crucial
Speaker 2: to my survival. It was something that I needed to
Speaker 2: do in order to survive. But also once my poems
Speaker 2: began to be published, and my first poem was published
Speaker 2: when I was sixteen, this was really the first time
Speaker 2: I felt that not only did I have something to say,
Speaker 2: but that what I had to say matted, And so
Speaker 2: that was a crucial thing that poetry gave to me. Yes,
Speaker 2: there was always this imagination of a future in which
Speaker 2: I could be a poet. You know that this passion
Speaker 2: that I had was something that I could continue to do,
Speaker 2: that it could continue to imbue my world with all
Speaker 2: of this light and wonder. But I think the first
Speaker 2: crucial thing it did was really help me find my
Speaker 2: voice and to believe that what that voice had to
Speaker 2: say was important. So keep speaking.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. With a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans, at age sixteen, Sophia asked her mom to
Speaker 1: mail three of her poems to the Jamaica Observer, and
Speaker 1: soon after the paper published her first poem in print.
Speaker 1: As she continued to write, Sophia began to see that
Speaker 1: the future her dad had laid out for her, the
Speaker 1: one in which he avoided the influence of Babylon, was
Speaker 1: not going to be satisfying, and so, at age nineteen,
Speaker 1: she contemplated a bold decision.
Speaker 2: Practically my whole life, my whole you know, adolescence. I
Speaker 2: kept asking like, can I cut my dreadlocks? And the
Speaker 2: answer was always no, absolutely not. And then, you know,
Speaker 2: I just began to feel the older I got that
Speaker 2: tied to this vision of the woman, this future woman
Speaker 2: that I would become if I continued down this path
Speaker 2: that my father had me on. I really began to
Speaker 2: see the dreadlocks as the thing that connected me to
Speaker 2: my father and his beliefs and his control over my body,
Speaker 2: over my voice, and over my future. And I thought,
Speaker 2: this doesn't feel like who I am and that is
Speaker 2: not the future that I want. And I said to
Speaker 2: my mother, you know, Mom, I just don't feel like
Speaker 2: I can go on like this. I don't feel like myself.
Speaker 2: This is not who I am, and I want to
Speaker 2: choose for myself who I want to be. And she said, okay,
Speaker 2: well tell me how I can help you. Wow. And yeah.
Speaker 2: Then she she helped me do it. And you know,
Speaker 2: I said, Mom, aren't you like or maybe it was
Speaker 2: her friend one of us asked like, you know, isn't
Speaker 2: my dad gonna be furious? And she said that's okay,
Speaker 2: Like I'll take his anger. I just want you to
Speaker 2: choose for yourself the person you want to be.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so you know, that was another moment of
Speaker 2: my life that my mother really paved the path for
Speaker 2: me to live as freely as I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Do. You remember, Sophia, what it was like to see
Speaker 1: that first law fall to the ground.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was incredibly moving in a way that
Speaker 2: surprised me right, feeling this kind of peculiar remorse because
Speaker 2: I had railed for so long wanting to cut my
Speaker 2: dreadlocks that I hadn't expected it to matto when the
Speaker 2: moment came, but then it matted a great deal. I
Speaker 2: felt like, oh my gosh, I'm losing this part of
Speaker 2: myself that had been all of because you know that
Speaker 2: your hair carries like energy and spirits, you know, everything,
Speaker 2: and it just felt like, Wow, I was losing all
Speaker 2: of this, all the past, all of the moments I'd lived,
Speaker 2: and who would I be without these dreadlocks. There was
Speaker 2: this question like am I losing some of my power?
Speaker 2: Which is what my father always told me, that our
Speaker 2: dreadlocks were our power, like your hair is your power,
Speaker 2: your crown. Finally I felt free. I felt yeah, that
Speaker 2: the tell us had been cut from me, that I
Speaker 2: was new again, that I was someone unburdened and someone
Speaker 2: who could choose what happened next.
Speaker 1: Wow. What was your father's reaction when he first saw you?
Speaker 2: Girl? Anger? Fury? You know, like this was absolutely a
Speaker 2: like an disaster. It was like a fracturing in our family.
Speaker 2: It was he didn't talk to me for a while,
Speaker 2: even though we were in the same house. I think he,
Speaker 2: you know, he looked at me with like disgust. I
Speaker 2: would say, So it was hard. It was very hard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: It's a defining moment in my life. And a defining
Speaker 2: moment in my family's life doing that, because we knew,
Speaker 2: we all knew, me and my sisters that this was
Speaker 2: the one thing that would change everything, because even if
Speaker 2: we were questioning things or we were making our own
Speaker 2: little rebellions at home, once we went out in the
Speaker 2: world with our dreadlocks, it was still assigned to the
Speaker 2: community and my father's rasta redreend that his house was
Speaker 2: still under control. But once I cut my dreadlocks, my
Speaker 2: middle sister cut her dreadlocks, then my youngest sister cut
Speaker 2: her dreadlocks, and then my mother, who had been growing
Speaker 2: her dreadlocks since she was nineteen years old when she
Speaker 2: first met my father, And so the entire family changed.
Speaker 2: And of course my relationship with my father only worsened
Speaker 2: because he saw me as the sort of ruin us seed,
Speaker 2: the black sheep that really destroyed his perfect rast of family.
Speaker 1: On the cusp of your twentieth birthday, you decided to
Speaker 1: get your hair straightened at a hair salon, right surrounded
Speaker 1: by worldly Babylonian women that your father would have considered unclean,
Speaker 1: and that would take you right. Tell me about that
Speaker 1: first experience being in the hair salon with all these
Speaker 1: other black women.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like stepping into this world that I
Speaker 2: had no idea about. I'd never been in a salon
Speaker 2: my entire life. My hair had never been cut since
Speaker 2: I was born until that day when I cut my dreadlocks.
Speaker 2: Like no scissors had ever touched my hair. So it
Speaker 2: was like stepping into this curious world. And part of
Speaker 2: me was like, oh, this is like a feminine space.
Speaker 2: This is like a space for women, And I'd never
Speaker 2: been in a space like that before, where it was
Speaker 2: not women living for the needs of men. It was
Speaker 2: just women who were gathering for themselves, right for their
Speaker 2: own desires. It was like there were so many things happening,
Speaker 2: but that was the thing that I took away the most,
Speaker 2: that there was something to me kind of sacred about
Speaker 2: the space of the salon and the black women of
Speaker 2: black women putting her hands in your hair. And even
Speaker 2: though I was told this was like the pits of Babylon,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how
Speaker 2: they would see me or treat me. But they just
Speaker 2: welcomed me, and they welcomed me and treated me tenderly,
Speaker 2: and you know, I thought there was something beautiful about that,
Speaker 2: and I still do.
Speaker 1: It's been, you know, twenty years since you took that
Speaker 1: leap that you cut your locks. What is your relationship
Speaker 1: like with your family today? So do you mind starting
Speaker 1: with your father?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a good relationship. I think it was
Speaker 2: a hard road, difficult road, but I think eventually, and
Speaker 2: I think partially through my writing and my poetry, that
Speaker 2: I was able to speak to him in a way
Speaker 2: that he could hear me, that he could really see
Speaker 2: me as my own person.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you feel you have a different appreciation of
Speaker 1: your father and why he had the beliefs he had
Speaker 1: or why he was the way he was.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if appreciation is the right word.
Speaker 1: I think understanding.
Speaker 2: Maybe understanding is better because I think, you know, he
Speaker 2: did a lot of things wrong, and he did a
Speaker 2: lot of things that I wish hadn't happened to me.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to understand him in a different way
Speaker 2: and in all of his fullness, with as much nuance
Speaker 2: as I could, and not all one way, not all
Speaker 2: bad or not all good, you know. So I really
Speaker 2: part of that was going back to his own youth
Speaker 2: and trying to figure out what led him to Rastafari,
Speaker 2: how did he go on this journey? Because him going
Speaker 2: on that journey really shaped my own life and my
Speaker 2: own connection to Rastafari. And so I recorded several interviews
Speaker 2: with him, asking him about his life, which was something
Speaker 2: I'd never done. I mean, I wasn't allowed to, I
Speaker 2: think when I was younger, because it was always like,
Speaker 2: these are the rules, don't question them. So he never
Speaker 2: really humanized himself to us. And there were moments where
Speaker 2: I was recording with him. There was this moment where
Speaker 2: he described his mother leaving him at sixteen on the
Speaker 2: street to be homeless because he chose to be Rastafari.
Speaker 2: And when my father told me the story, he wept.
Speaker 2: It was the first time I remember hearing him cry
Speaker 2: like that, and I thought, wow, he is still holding
Speaker 2: these wounds. And I really had to think about his
Speaker 2: life in a way that led me to a path
Speaker 2: of forgiveness, which I had not expected. I would have
Speaker 2: never described myself as a forgiving person, so no one
Speaker 2: was more surprised than me to find myself on that path.
Speaker 2: But I'm very happy that I did.
Speaker 1: There's a stirring parallelism there, right, which was both you
Speaker 1: and your father experienced a rejection of some kind from
Speaker 1: your parents as teenagers, right. I mean he in choosing
Speaker 1: to become Restafara and you at nineteen and cutting off
Speaker 1: your dreadlocks. Right, So then the input was different that
Speaker 1: the reaction was the same.
Speaker 2: I know. I think if he'd had his way, he
Speaker 2: would have turned me out. And my mother said, there's
Speaker 2: absolutely no way that that's going to happen, like your
Speaker 2: own mother did to you. And you know, again, coming
Speaker 2: back to my mom really as this force of strength
Speaker 2: in a way that I couldn't have seen then, but
Speaker 2: I realize now. So she's the one who said there's
Speaker 2: no way that's happening. My mom, I mean, we're so
Speaker 2: so close. She's such a lover of poetry that I
Speaker 2: think no one is a bigger fan of my writing
Speaker 2: and my work than my mom. She's always she's always
Speaker 2: there if she can at my events in the front row.
Speaker 2: If it's a poem, I'll see her mouth moving like
Speaker 2: mouthing the worst in the poem, and she'll say to me, wow,
Speaker 2: like I just I can't believe this is what I did.
Speaker 2: Like I have my own personal poet, so to her,
Speaker 2: that's me. I'm her own personal post. Oh I love that.
Speaker 2: And you know, my siblings were all very, very very close.
Speaker 2: We grew up like very close knit because we grew
Speaker 2: up in this very strange condition of being the only
Speaker 2: rast of children. We became very close and we're still
Speaker 2: all very close. We talk every day, you know, me
Speaker 2: and my sisters we talk several times a day. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I mean, you had mentioned earlier that you feel hair
Speaker 1: carries energy. How would you describe your relationship with your
Speaker 1: hair today?
Speaker 2: I wear my hair in all different kinds of ways,
Speaker 2: But what really Matt does is that I have the
Speaker 2: choice to wear it how I want to, and so
Speaker 2: no matter what kind of style I have on my head,
Speaker 2: just the fact that it is my choice makes it
Speaker 2: a source of power.
Speaker 1: Sophia's latest book is a memoir called How to Say Babylon.
Speaker 1: We'll link to it in our show notes. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Next week, join me when I
Speaker 1: speak to journalists Charles Duhig about the science of what
Speaker 1: makes for a great conversation.
Speaker 4: When you and I have a real conversation, our bodies
Speaker 4: and our brains change, our heart rates starts to match
Speaker 4: each other, our breath patterns starts to match each other,
Speaker 4: our pupils start to dilate at similar rates, and more importantly,
Speaker 4: the neural activity within our brains starts to look more
Speaker 4: and more similar. This simultaneity, the similarity, is at the
Speaker 4: core of communication and is what makes communication so powerful,
Speaker 4: and our brains have evolved that when we achieve it,
Speaker 4: we feel wonderful.
Speaker 1: That's next week on A Slight Change of Plans. I'll
Speaker 1: see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created,
Speaker 1: written and executive producer by me Maya Shunker. The Slight
Speaker 1: Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer
Speaker 1: Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer
Speaker 1: Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song and
Speaker 1: Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
Speaker 1: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so a big
Speaker 1: thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change
Speaker 1: of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker. See you
Speaker 1: next week.