00:00:00 Speaker 1: Quest Left Show is a production of iHeart Radio. We're gonna be normal today, right, We're gonna be. 00:00:26 Speaker 2: There's gonna be two regular secular people just talking. 00:00:31 Speaker 1: So, ladies and gentlemen, this is the Quest Left Show. 00:00:35 Speaker 2: For the past six years that I've been on this platform, I have spoken candidly about my journey. I always think that when I start talking about like the quote unquote journey I've been on that you guys are. 00:00:51 Speaker 1: Like secretly eye rolling me, like here he goes again. 00:00:56 Speaker 2: But you know, for the for the three people that turn off before I get to it. I'll say that a lot has happened in my life post twenty twenty, as far as in the name of growth, in my profession, my personal life, my discoveries in the mental health space. Even my next musical documentary project, which comes out on HBO this year on Earth, Wind and Fire, deals a lot in metaphysics. 00:01:27 Speaker 1: And I will say that at least. 00:01:29 Speaker 2: In the first four months before shooting, I dove into almost every book that I could get into from every author on the subject, be it Gay Hendricks, Jodaspenza, Florence Scovel, Shinn, Richard Rudd, Nevill Goddard, Trisher, Hearsay, NATURALA Glover. I had to write these down because there's a lot Barbariahan kleole Ta Swartt, David Hawkins, even Napoleon Hill, so on and so forth. But I will say that of all the material that I've immersed myself into, I will say that our guest today, who's probably highly uncomfortable. 00:02:12 Speaker 3: Not yet. 00:02:14 Speaker 2: When I start going in on how impactful this book in particular has been on my life. There are several books The Art of Letting Go, I'm the Hero of my Own life, The Truth About Everything, most popular, probably one hundred and one essays that will change the way you think. The pivot year is so many, but of course my all time favorite of that canon is The Mountain is You and the subtitle transforming the self Sabotage into self Mastery. Her book has reached millions of people just like me. Any artist that I know, any period that I know, I've purchased this book. I think I've purchased this book at least four hundred times. This book entered at a time in my life which I didn't know I was self sabotaged myself. Anyway, this is making me uncomfortable. Now to do this speels like a lifetime achievement, a war. You're about to receive, ladies and gentlemen. Well, let me just say, Brianna, I want to thank you for coming to the Quest Love Show. 00:03:15 Speaker 1: How are you? 00:03:16 Speaker 3: I'm good? Thank you for having me from. 00:03:18 Speaker 1: One to ten? How awkward is this right now? Zero? 00:03:21 Speaker 3: You're all good? 00:03:22 Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, he's in now with it. 00:03:24 Speaker 2: Let me give you just a slight background. Because we're not strangers. I'd like to say that we're we're we're between friends and acquaintances, you know. I mean, we're not at each other's house like cooking dinner or whatever. But I feel lucky that I'm able to text you Okay, we're friends. Well, I'll just say when we first met, it was surreal for me because I had just started hosting game nights. Everyone's heard about my game nights, and really game nights are supposed to be a good arthartic act on my part to step out of my comfort zone. I like to control the atmosphere from which I'm in, Like, I don't like going out as much, so hiding behind a turntable or drum set or anything is kind of my way of going out, like, oh, I went to a club last night, but I also had to DJ that club, so I didn't talk to anyone, but I got to be that environment. But I will ask you how challenging is this part of the journey for you? Because I'm a person that wants to do maximum impact or my gifts. 00:04:33 Speaker 1: But when it's time. 00:04:34 Speaker 2: To the reciprocation part to get the love and to meet people and to be one on one and all those things, I'm Captain hide and plane site Smurf. 00:04:46 Speaker 1: Same despite looking like this like same, I understand. 00:04:50 Speaker 2: Like taking my hair out now is like a major challenge, like uh do I got to you know? 00:04:55 Speaker 1: But also I'm not fulling anyone. I'm still me. 00:04:58 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:04:59 Speaker 1: For you you, what is it like that we now forced you to be our guru like against you will? 00:05:09 Speaker 3: That's probably That's actually a really accurate way to describe it too. 00:05:12 Speaker 2: Okay, So the reason why I was slow to say the friend part only is that because I'm that way too. I so don't want to freak you out. You're not you know, tricks Rabbit or the Cocoa Puffs commercial like okay, mere just. 00:05:28 Speaker 1: Make it feel normal. 00:05:29 Speaker 3: Today we can we can be friends? Okay, cool as of today, let's agree we're friends. We are friends as of right now, now that you know, I mean, you know me, if left to my own devices, I would live at my mountain house and never be seen again. And you know, part of that is just that's where I feel free and happy and inspired. But the other part of that, and this is a visual I've had for years, is it's kind of like you graduate high school and then someone throws you a graduation party and you're sitting upstairs and you have your arms crossed and you're staring at the wall, and it's like what you already did the hardest part, you know, like come down, come down, and you know, enjoy it. But yeah, there is I've just noticed for everyone. Really it's like it's it's almost easier to say, like, oh I have to work really hard to earn something or to deserve it, and then when it's a matter of just we'll just show up, just your presence can be enough. I mean I find that to be somewhat universal, just kind of like is it And the answer is, of course it is. But also you're you're about game nights too, I just as an aside. I have so many stories about those I've never told you. Oh no, well, actually I don't know how I know how good. One time, I think like like scared Ali Wong into leaving. 00:06:45 Speaker 1: Wait a minute, no, I hit Ali. I texted her. 00:06:51 Speaker 3: Did you text her and tell her like that's a normal person. 00:06:53 Speaker 2: She go, there, I so vouched for you, like I've dried. She has your books. She definitely goes. 00:07:00 Speaker 3: Yes, okay, because in that moment, you know, you reach a certain part of the night where like your inhibitions are gone. That's why I see her and I'm like, oh, we were drunk. Yeah, well that was that was my polite way of saying, like a few drinks and I'm like and like, you just lose it. And so I basically corner her right and I'm like I love you. And she was like oh, and I'm not kidding. For a second, she like almost looked over shoulder, like to look for security, like for a split second, was just like oh hi. And I was like, and I said, I was just so weird. I was like, I love you so much, and she was like, oh, it's great. 00:07:29 Speaker 4: You know. 00:07:29 Speaker 3: She was so composed and polite, and I was hysterical, and then I said, like the weirdest thing I could possibly say to her. I was like, I really used to fall asleep, like watching your specials all the time. She was like, oh, why. 00:07:44 Speaker 1: It just came. I know. 00:07:46 Speaker 3: It was like the most awkward thing that you could say to a person, because what are you saying? Like they're boring. I'm like, no, I just mean I love you. I watch your stuff. And so she's by the end, she's you know, handling it so well, and I'm just like leaned all the way in and She's like, well, I have kids, so I have to go. 00:08:00 Speaker 2: I was like, okay, all right, So you hit me immediately afterwards. If it were anyone else, I know, if it were anyone else, I would have just been like, all right, no, no, they'll be cool man. 00:08:14 Speaker 1: You know, but I knew Ali didn't know who you were. 00:08:18 Speaker 2: But I also know that I don't want to be the you know, when a person finds a new toy, or like when a brand new vegan or a new we're laughing at that person. That just the person that wants to force you a gunpoint to try their way at life and try this. And I'm very careful on how I spring this on her, Like the fact that she came to game night was like I've been trying for at least six other times to get her to come, but I think it's hard to explain to people, like the absurdity, like the reputation of it now is out there, so now it's like, oh, everyone wants to come. But in those first like four times, right, it was just like. 00:09:01 Speaker 3: Even with the well, no, she's never going to come back. 00:09:04 Speaker 1: No, no, no, once I explained. 00:09:08 Speaker 2: Who you were, and I'm telling you, I'm your biggest champion, like I have my entire community now, trust me, I landed the plan for you. 00:09:17 Speaker 3: Thank you for doing that. I think it was all fine. Then for those listening, a mirror is playing a cool but he actually has been like my personal, unpaid, unofficial person for like years. 00:09:31 Speaker 1: No, man, it's just that. 00:09:34 Speaker 2: I don't know if I directly told you, but I think I've shared this story here before that oftentimes when a person is self sabotaging, they don't know that they're self sabotaging, and even more intense, well, they're self sabotaging. But then there's a step beyond that, which good friend of mine Lauren Xander came up with a term called manifucking. 00:09:55 Speaker 3: Oh my god, I was going to bring this up. 00:09:57 Speaker 1: Yes, you can manifest or you can manifuct it. 00:10:00 Speaker 3: Can you please write a book at that title. 00:10:03 Speaker 1: Look, that's Lauren's word. You know she's in the same. 00:10:06 Speaker 2: Space as well. Yes she will. She I totally trademarket already. But the first time I heard manifucking was heard basically telling me the night of them miss Slap at the Oscars. 00:10:24 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. 00:10:25 Speaker 2: She told me, I manifucked that moment, and I was, you know, I was in denial first, like I did man fuck that? 00:10:31 Speaker 1: And she was like, yeah, who, but. 00:10:34 Speaker 2: You is scared of his own shadow and scared of leadership and scared of. 00:10:37 Speaker 1: Shining his light. 00:10:38 Speaker 2: Like anytime you turn around, you'll find a way to dim your light. And there's a way to actually inherently ask the universe to create a distraction. So she said that I know you, and I know that you were so shit scared of that. 00:10:55 Speaker 1: Moment of winning and. 00:10:58 Speaker 2: Elevating yourself and being the leader, that stuff that you told the universe. If there's a way to distract me getting glory from this moment and take it. 00:11:08 Speaker 1: Away from me. I will take it right now. 00:11:10 Speaker 2: And then suddenly that moment became centered around the slap and no one knows about I'm in industry. 00:11:17 Speaker 1: People know. 00:11:17 Speaker 2: But I sat down and then I thought about it, and the person I was dating at the time, she was next gave me the Mountains you And then that's when I first learned what self sabotage was. And so oftentimes I'm in a position in which I'm in. 00:11:36 Speaker 1: The passengers seat. 00:11:38 Speaker 2: Many an artist, and artists have a tendency to overthink and then they just get spiraled in this endless sea of yarn that they can't get themselves out of. And so literally any artist I've ever worked with, I gave. 00:11:58 Speaker 1: This to them. 00:11:58 Speaker 2: I'll say for least half of them, I know that they've read it. I know that twenty five percent of them like they were transformed. And really, even the night that you first came, the amount of people when I had to whisper to them, Okay, you remember that book that I got you for Christmas last year. 00:12:17 Speaker 1: That's the author right there. 00:12:18 Speaker 2: And the way that they will grab my like the nail wow, like in Prince of them grabbing my arm. 00:12:27 Speaker 3: That's so it's hard for me to imagine. 00:12:29 Speaker 2: Me also telling them you not say it a limit to freak her out, like I had to hold at least four people back, you know. And actually I think when the night that Jojo met you, I think I just got her that book maybe a week ago. 00:12:46 Speaker 3: Way, she's another one. She's a friend now. Yeah, I'm seeing her in like a week. But initially she was another one that I like, like moving things off the table. I was like, open my arms out, I was like hello, and she actually knew me. Actually, so thank you for you made that. 00:13:00 Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah. 00:13:02 Speaker 2: No, I'm telling you, you're doing the Lord's work right now, like people know you. Do you ever have fears of letting people down or disappointing them? 00:13:23 Speaker 1: And how do you handle it? 00:13:25 Speaker 3: Yeah? All of the time. I think that I try to just find my inner stability in just thinking like I've done my best and I'm doing the best that I could possibly do with what I've got. And even if, you know, sometimes I feel like it's almost harder to feel like I'm failing myself. But I think that when it comes to trying not to let other people down, I think you would imagine that people would, you know, want me to be so perfect and so put together all the time. But I actually find more often that their touch point with me is kind of a check in. They want me to affirm which the answer is, yes, is it okay to not have it figured out? Even where I'm at now? And of course the answer is yes. And I feel like they find a comfort in connecting over the fact that, look, we're literally all just figuring it out, you know, until the very end of this thing, and I feel like just being as authentic as I possibly can be. If I focus on the connection with that, then it kind of alleviates that fear of you know, am I enough or not enough? Because if I get into the am I enough game is when I really will never win in my own mind. So like, if I can focus instead on like what's true to me and what's what's the connective tissue here, then I feel like it goes deeper than you know, am I enough or not? 00:14:49 Speaker 1: Okay? 00:14:49 Speaker 2: So basically pre twenty twenty and this is really true for maybe a lot of people in my field. You know, I'm saying my field, I don't know what umbrother you will put me under. I mean, I guess I'm under the hip hop generation or Black gen X generation. 00:15:05 Speaker 3: But I was going to ask, I was like, what is I feel like? 00:15:07 Speaker 2: You have many I have no idea where I belong, just kind of omnipresent. But you know, hip hop culture is like hustle culture, and hustle culture basically means that your brain is going to be your GPS, and you have to particulously plan everything and you have to be in control of everything. And I noticed, probably maybe around the time I turned thirty, that between the balance of like brain and heart, that maybe I was like ninety five percent brain and five percent heart. 00:15:45 Speaker 1: Somehow I managed to numb. 00:15:48 Speaker 2: Myself even with like music even became a technical thing, a scientific thing. I'm known for, like studying how the mechanics of music. 00:15:56 Speaker 1: Are, and da da da da da. 00:15:58 Speaker 2: Yet if you were to tell me right now I'm here, I want you to get on those turntables and spend ten songs right now, I probably panic because ohh and I need four hours to. 00:16:08 Speaker 1: Plan this meticulous genius thing. 00:16:10 Speaker 2: Now, if you give me all the time in the world to plan stuff, I'll come up with something like mental level. But it also sues me like, oh, I don't operate by my heart anymore, like the passion of it. I'm now just in a technical scientific so I have to learn how to undo all those things after twenty twenty. But for you, is that the same thing? Like is it a struggle every day? Because I saw a recent headline where it says that we need to stop asking what is our purpose in life? Oh? Y, or I don't know if it's a misquot or now. I mean I generally agree with the sentiment. My whole thing is that if you're in hustle culture, that basically means that something traumatic happened in your past, which then will scare the Jesus out of you to only make you think about the future. 00:17:01 Speaker 1: And you know, I was one of those people that like had a. 00:17:04 Speaker 2: Vision board and all these things and what goals in life do I want? So for you, how is one supposed to really truly live in the present? Especially how do we find zen space in the present that we're in right now? 00:17:20 Speaker 3: So you're talking about, you know, the head versus the heart. Yeah, When I think about creating, it's to me, it's like two vehicles. It's like two different cars that I drive and so when I'm sitting down and I'm writing, and I'm making a book or a just anything that I'm making, it's coming all from my center place. It's coming all from the limits test entirely is just does this move me? Am I with this? Do I feel this? Does this resonate for me? Is this changing me? Just to create it? And when you're in that place, I can't think of the audience. I can't think of the reader. I can't really think of Actually, if I start thinking about anyone else reading it or anyone else seeing it, I'll kind of freeze up so much I won't even be able to, you know, move through it. I think that's also why nature has been you know, I allude to nature so many times. It's obviously in that particular title, but woven throughout. I would say that that's been such a profound muse for me. But I also think that what it allows me is the space to feel unobserved or unseen but in a positive way, where I feel free, and I you know, writing has been one of the greatest loves of my life. You know, whether nobody ever read it, it would still have always been one of the greatest loves of my life and when I started doing it fifteen, however, many years ago, I kind of made a promise with myself which was, Okay, you create freely, and we're always going to take a pause between what's on the page and what you know goes into a book, so you feel like you always have that space to just not be self conscious and just create. And then so that's kind of vehicle one. That's my that's my heart vehicle. And then when I get into the second one, you know, that's when it's like, Okay, well it's going to go out into the world and you know, what does the what does the cover look like? Or what you know should I be doing? And then it's kind of more of that like mental and strategic. So to me, it's like it's it's utilizing both, but it's knowing when. And something that helps me a lot is I think that the heart tells me what and my head tells me how, and then when we switch them, I think that's when we can sometimes feel really stuck or lost when we're trying to have the head tell us you know what and the heart tell us how, because that's I feel like that that's not their jobs. 00:19:41 Speaker 2: All right, So when I first started my profession, I had to learn, maybe by like year three, find my tribe. You know, so hey common most stuff and you know, like all all of my Constituentsy is there a thread with like you Mel Robbins and Jodaspenza and like all these self help Like is the peer community the same in this space as it is musically? Like musically I'm going to find all the drummers, all the bass players, all. 00:20:12 Speaker 1: The mcs on. 00:20:13 Speaker 3: Oh, I see what you're saying. 00:20:14 Speaker 1: Is there a community in your space? 00:20:18 Speaker 3: I'm probably the wrong person asks. I don't know those people, but like I'm very close to like my best friend Bianca, who's a poet. We've done everything together for ten years. So I kind of have my own thing going on your own, But I think there maybe there is. I'm just so much as much a part of it as I would like to be. 00:20:34 Speaker 1: Okay, no, no, I mean that's that's look. 00:20:37 Speaker 2: Some people also need to be in a bubble where their own world, and that's what makes it work. Like I'm trying to find if there's a parallel in the musical creative community as it is in the headspace community in which there's collaborations or there's yes. 00:20:52 Speaker 3: And I think that there's also a lot of parallels in music and writing in general, both in the industry, because I have friends other than you. Now that we've established that we're friends. 00:21:04 Speaker 1: We're friends, we're still friends. 00:21:07 Speaker 3: I have friends who are very much in that world, And just when we're talking about, you know, what we're working on or what's going on, a lot of things are very similar. But even beyond the outside of what's very similar, I find the process is very similar. And when he's like I'm struggling with something or I feel stuck, I think I think you know, no matter what your medium is, that it comes out on the journey from you know, starting with an idea and then getting it out into the world is something that I think we have more in common with than not, like anyone who does that. 00:21:39 Speaker 2: Got what is your morning routine or what was it supposed to be when you're not traveling and lobby calls at you know, five am? 00:21:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, so I have a lot to say about a morning routine. 00:21:51 Speaker 1: Actually, buckle up, Are you about to knock down my jinger? 00:21:55 Speaker 5: No, I'm not. 00:21:57 Speaker 1: I'm ready for it. 00:21:59 Speaker 3: So when I was really actively like writing and writing the books. The first thing I would do every single morning is wake up and write before I did literally anything else. And I did that to really just strengthen that muscle. I really believe that creativity is a muscle. So it would be the first thing I did, even if it was just for fifteen twenty minutes, and I did that for years. 00:22:20 Speaker 1: Do you write manually or just grab your laptop? 00:22:23 Speaker 3: Either one. Sometimes I would just grab the laptop. Sometimes it's just faster with my hands, do you know what I mean? Just to get it's like I'm losing the ideas before I can even just write them with my hand. If not that, I go outside and go for a walk, and especially when I have a coffee and just to be outside and get clear. When I'm working or traveling, it's a little bit different. Like this morning, I went and got a coffee and you know, went to the lobby and you know, had a minute to just kind of breathe and let things set. But so, you know, I've read all the books, and I you know, for years, have felt like, you know, oh, I need to have a really optimized morning routine like so many people, and it's so effective for them. And I found a lot of the time that if I tried to override what my you know, body, mind, spirit and life were telling me I needed in that moment because I thought that's what I should be doing, it would almost have like a counter effect on me, Like I'd become less productive because I tried to like like wake up at you know, four forty five, like everyone says you should and like exercise first thing, Like I'm someone that like exercise exhausts me. Sure, yeah, but everyone else says, like, you know, it's it's very it gives them energy, you know, And then that makes sense to me, you know, and I understand it. But I just found that for myself, I would sit down and you know, I'd really be starting to get into and I'd be like, oh my god, I've got nothing left. So that's kind of when it clicked me, like, right, well, if you know that you're the clearest and like the most productive in this time, to use that time for what really really like counts and so whether that's you know, being outside doing something I love, you know, walking something I love. Also something about writing first thing is that it was almost kind of like I didn't have time to get in my own head or stop myself. 00:24:13 Speaker 2: Okay, so you understand the laws of theta mind state vaguely, but yeah, I mean basically, your brain is divided into five parts alpha, Beta, Theta, data, and gamma. And of course the alpha is hyper aware of everything, like this is the color white, this is wood, this is you know, like a sweater. And this happens a lot for songwriters, which is why most of the creative and successful people you know do take advantage of the four AM. It's said that the first forty five minutes of your day when you're like struggling to wake up, when you're pressing this snooze button one more time, when you're in that sort of state, that's when the genius part starts, like if you force yourself. It took me like maybe last three years, especially for this album that we're working on, like all my ideas come to me the second I wake up. Or also the opposite is when you're dead tired. Basically, when you're alpha, the the aware part is asleep. Then the rest of your brain which still is awake to operate your heart and the body parts that you don't that's what guides you. So for you right, even if you're like fully half asleep or whatever. 00:25:33 Speaker 3: That's basically and I think that's also reminds me of something years ago someone told me to do and it was so incredibly effective, which was to make like a voice note or voice recording of my own voice, you know, saying affirmations and to fall asleep listening to them, or to listen to them when you just wake up. 00:25:52 Speaker 1: Do that all the time, do you. 00:25:53 Speaker 3: I'm not surprised. And then it's something about kind of the like your brain is most pressionable at that time when you're in that state, and then it's kind of like, I forget exactly what they were telling me. It was like when your subconscious state. Yeah, when your brain here's something right before it falls asleep, you know, it takes it and it kind of logs it. It's kind of you know, it's filing it away in a way that it's not when you're you know, I guess in your what is alphabet? Like what state are we in? Now? 00:26:21 Speaker 1: Well, we're in an alphae? 00:26:22 Speaker 3: Yeah right now? 00:26:23 Speaker 1: Okay, So well that's the thing. 00:26:25 Speaker 2: Another experience that's almost akin or equivalent to sleeping in that state is driving. 00:26:31 Speaker 3: Yeah, you're fool. 00:26:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, so all the books when like when I take your books, any music I create, any books I read. I just especially back when I was going back and forth between the farm I was staying at and my city in the apartment, which you know, it's like a two. 00:26:49 Speaker 1: Hour process driving back and forth. 00:26:52 Speaker 2: If you listen to those books even though you're driving and you're up and you're aware, like you're still in a subconscious state. And that's literally how I learn and take in everything, Like I don't do the whole I thought it was like repeating nineteen times over this thing. 00:27:09 Speaker 1: No, I go to sleep, wake up, know it like instantly. 00:27:13 Speaker 3: Okay, So this is fascinating to me as well because driving is actually a big part of my process as well, Like huge, Yeah, I would say that. So I wrote the Mountains you in Bixer and I lived there for a few years, and you know, when I was first going there, I'm driving it on Highway one, and this is the first time I ever had this experience. I think for me personally, it was the combination of you know what nature like that does for me, but also it's the element of driving of putting myself in that state. I seriously would be pulling over on the side of the road like mid drive because I'm like, I can't even get and I couldn't even get it out fast enough. 00:27:47 Speaker 1: Are crazy, Yes, Like. 00:27:48 Speaker 3: I can't even write this down fast enough. And I think the very like gross way I was describing I was like, it's like throwing up. It is like like I couldn't control it. But then also what was more amazing about it was if I didn't write it down as fast as I could, it's like I would lose it. Do you know what I mean? 00:28:06 Speaker 2: Nothing worse than right for you, at least as words like it's horrible or horrible When you're trying to hum a baseline and the next day you get to it, it's just like and I lost it forever. But for you you just voice memo it or you. 00:28:22 Speaker 3: Or write it down or write down the keywords or idea if I can't get the whole entire thing out. But that's pretty much how I've written that whole whole book. And I would say that my pive two poetry books, and I would say that those came through the exact same way, like like it wasn't something I had to really like think about or deduce or like, you know, intellectualize my way through at all. It was just kind of like it just hit you. And then there was. 00:28:47 Speaker 1: Do you have a musical talent? 00:28:49 Speaker 2: No? 00:28:49 Speaker 3: I don't think so. 00:28:50 Speaker 2: Man, if I can channel this present mind state of you right now into a music channel, your songwriting would just save all of us. 00:29:01 Speaker 3: Funny you bring that up. It's not off the table. It's not off the table off one day. 00:29:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, even if it's if it is. When you said poetry stands it, I was like, Jesus Christ, Yo, you could be a song. 00:29:15 Speaker 3: It's one of the dreams out there that I have for my life, maybe in the future. So let's check back in a little bit. 00:29:21 Speaker 1: I will. 00:29:22 Speaker 3: I would also like to I would love to sing, and I grew up singing and I don't think I'm super great at it. But do you know what inspires me? 00:29:31 Speaker 1: Though? 00:29:32 Speaker 3: So many people that I hear that sign on for movies and they learn either an instrument or to sing for the role. And I'm like, well, okay, if you could learn. 00:29:41 Speaker 1: That methodactic, there you go. 00:29:43 Speaker 3: Maybe I can learn too. 00:29:45 Speaker 1: What is your earliest memory in life? 00:29:48 Speaker 3: Oh? What a beautiful question. 00:29:50 Speaker 1: I have a few Okay. 00:29:51 Speaker 3: I remember being in the grassy green area of my apartment complex when I was like one or two and my dad teaching me to walk, and I remember feeling frustrated that I couldn't. Yeah that, I yes, which tracks if you know me now, like that right, Okay, I remember that. And actually I had my phone to show you the picture. I just found this photo of myself when I was maybe three or four years old, really super young, and I think it was a school photo and I have, I mean the fit, I have, like a like cheetah shirt on, like a cheetah matching cheetah bow. I was wow. And in the picture, I'm holding this blue puzzle piece in a really kind of awkward way. They kind of pose you like this. It's like a school picture. And I remember having a coherent thought at that age of really not liking that blue puzzle piece. I felt like it was so forced and I felt like they were really ruining the moment and the picture, and I'd like I'd gotten already for this picture, and I was like, this just so, isn't it? And I do I mean, I like did it because you know, I like, I didn't put it down, but I look back at that picture room like, I remember not liking this then, and you know what, I was right? It was too forced and the. 00:31:05 Speaker 1: Blue clashed To this day, you don't like that. 00:31:08 Speaker 3: You this day, I look back and think, you know what, I really I should have said something at three because I knew. And then the last it's a lot of memories, okay, last one, I remember falling asleep reading and I did have a TV in my room, but I had a lot, a lot of books. 00:31:23 Speaker 2: Where were your go to books as a child. Oh my gosh, you're not one of these potterheads, are you? 00:31:30 Speaker 1: Oh? 00:31:31 Speaker 3: Okay, no, I think I did have the books though. 00:31:36 Speaker 2: Now just went through a phase where like girls who were you know, they would be genuinely shocked. 00:31:41 Speaker 3: Like you never let hally pot people probably have that reaction too. Have you seen the movies though? 00:31:46 Speaker 2: For a person that immerses himself in a culture of cinnamon and all those things, if it's Art House films or Criterion collection or any of those things, like like the back of my hand, because I lived I lived in a roots tour bus for eighteen years, and so watching movies was surefireway to pass the time between thirteen hour trips between cities, but much of their horror when it came to like the classics. 00:32:14 Speaker 1: What do you mean you never seen Godfather? What do you mean You've never seen Star Wars? What do you mean? 00:32:19 Speaker 2: So I had to during the pandemic is when in quarantine is when I literally caught up with everything that have been shamed about. 00:32:27 Speaker 3: Oh my god, wait, I'm the same way. 00:32:28 Speaker 1: All right, So what your so many for? 00:32:32 Speaker 2: What is your top four or five movies that you've been shamed about having. 00:32:36 Speaker 1: Never seen it? 00:32:36 Speaker 3: Oh? You got it? You got it? Is out. We were watching Holes in the hotel two nights ago. 00:32:46 Speaker 1: Holes. 00:32:47 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, holes. 00:32:49 Speaker 1: Maybe I need to be shamed. What's holes? 00:32:51 Speaker 3: It's facing the Lewis Sachar book. I gotta watch its in it Sigourney Weaver. 00:32:58 Speaker 1: Okay, I've not heard of this, and I make movies. 00:33:01 Speaker 3: Oh shy, I love opposite it and it's and he's really young. 00:33:04 Speaker 1: And I've heard this now, Okay, okay. 00:33:05 Speaker 3: I like to watch repeats too of things that I loved when I was young. So that was a favorite when I was youngest. We're literally, I mean I haven't I have missed every good movie in the last five years. But don't worry. I own holes and have watched it and like know the lines. 00:33:21 Speaker 1: So this is your favorite film? 00:33:22 Speaker 3: I to god, you know what? We can't say that it's up there. I'm really letting people know me. 00:33:27 Speaker 1: Now, all right, what hell are you going to die on? What? What is your favorite movie? 00:33:32 Speaker 3: Oh? 00:33:33 Speaker 1: Go ahead, I know it's corny. 00:33:35 Speaker 2: It probably I've seen the answer and then now I've seen your brain racing for or something. 00:33:41 Speaker 3: So okay, but oh wait, I'm going to stand by it though. I really love Labor Day? Do you know a Labor Day with Kate Winslet No labor and Josh Brolin? Is that there isn't it? 00:33:53 Speaker 1: I gotta watch it. 00:33:54 Speaker 3: That movie, I feel like it came out maybe twenty fourteen, and I thought to myself, what a beautiful depiction of like pragmatic, practical love, And I just thought that it had a way deeper message than what was on the surface. And I love that movie a lot. And before Sunsets, Before Yeah, Romance, Yeah, really beautiful. 00:34:21 Speaker 2: Have you ever seen Defending Your Life over Brooks? All right, So, especially in light of the movie, I just did one of the things I had to sort of release myself from were just the kind of fire and brimstone religious dogma that I've been just force fed throughout my life. Well, I'm in one of the Pixar film Soul, of which Soul was the first time where I was like, this is actually what I think. 00:34:55 Speaker 1: Happens to your body when you die, like that. 00:34:58 Speaker 2: Whole journey and and defending your life is by Albert Brooks, and he essentially has to in a flash he's dead, similar to the story of Soul, Like he wakes up one day and he's in essentially what you call purgatory, and he has to go to kind of a court with a jury and lawyers and a judge and whatnot and defend his life. And essentially what he's being accused of is not living life to the fullest, not defending himself, not loving himself, and they're going in on him like the time where he got beat up in first grade, you know, and didn't defend himself and all these and it's a lesson where essentially kind of Christmas story Jacob Marley Scrooge Way, like he wakes up like renewed, like season a day and that sort of thing someone recommended to me, and what defense defend you life. 00:36:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, defending your life. And I never knew that that, never knew it existed. 00:36:08 Speaker 2: And to me, it's like one of the most powerful messages. 00:36:13 Speaker 3: That it sounds right up my alley. 00:36:15 Speaker 5: You would love this film. 00:36:28 Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question? This is your show? 00:36:31 Speaker 1: Go ahead, take over, we're friends. 00:36:34 Speaker 3: There's two questions I always ask people that I get to meet or no, and I've never asked you. Number one. Is there anyone you have ever been truly starstruck by. 00:36:46 Speaker 2: The way that Q Tip kind of ambushed me with the news that in sixty seconds I'm about to meet Prince for the first time. There's really no there's no described being what the feeling is because there's a lot. 00:37:03 Speaker 1: Of things you have to deal with. 00:37:04 Speaker 2: And first of all, I mean, the one is meeting Prince, but then and that those first thirty seconds you're sizing him up, You're trying to figure out like in your brain you're like trying to figure out, yeah, he's about five to two, but also the circumference of his actual headsize to his body, Like I just remember wanting to get to figure out what his head well, it was just I mean, it's like, holy shit, it's Prince, and then you think of it every moment he's ever changed your life musically, and then how tall you are to him, and then how large his head is, and then similar to you. 00:37:52 Speaker 1: Ali Wong. 00:37:53 Speaker 2: The only thing he's, the only thing I could get out was and he that perfectly. 00:38:00 Speaker 1: He led with Yo. 00:38:02 Speaker 6: Man. 00:38:03 Speaker 1: That video was so funny. I love that song in that video. 00:38:07 Speaker 2: So now I got to deal with the fact that he knows what I do for a living, and you know, like wait, hot, you watch TV, and so all that was coming to play, and then all I could muster up was I said, I think the the last chord on Dinner with Dolores is one of the best postmodern endings of a rock song in the past forty years. 00:38:29 Speaker 6: And he was just like, wow, well damn well he had a He had also I'm having this conversation in front of Lenny Kravitz, Oh God, Quincy Jones. 00:38:40 Speaker 2: Mariah Carey, and Quincy's dart was with him, Kadata Rashida's older sister, so they were hearing this too. So it kind of just went over like like you can hear a pin drop and it was like, I gotta. 00:38:54 Speaker 3: Go buy It's so funny, and I. 00:38:56 Speaker 1: Went upstairs like you ruined it. 00:38:58 Speaker 5: You ruined it. 00:38:59 Speaker 2: And then hour later I came back to try and redeem myself and said something even more ubard. 00:39:06 Speaker 3: About it was that was me and Allie Like I was like, what did you just do? And I was like, it's okay. 00:39:11 Speaker 1: I'm scared many of people, So what was your second question? 00:39:15 Speaker 3: This is just like a broad overall, like your whole life, how has fame been for you? 00:39:21 Speaker 2: Here comes an eye roll of everyone listening. I don't feel famous. 00:39:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, I understand that. 00:39:28 Speaker 2: And oftentimes I am aware that I will self evidence that you know, why I don't deserve it, why I'm not in this club, which is also silly, like there's a part of me that knows that what I've achieved and all those things. But oftentimes I just find myself in situations where it's right down the middle. 00:39:50 Speaker 1: It's either dude, you. 00:39:51 Speaker 2: Absolutely changed my life, or it's someone that's like and you are and I'm like Amir Thompson quest love. 00:40:05 Speaker 1: And then there's always a person like behind me looks like, dude, you don't know this is. 00:40:10 Speaker 2: And if they try and I always try to stop them because then if they try to shame or humiliate the person, especially you're in New York. Then they're just they're really going to play it out, like now he's really not getting I'm wait, you're shaming me because I don't know. 00:40:27 Speaker 1: Who this guy is or whatever. 00:40:29 Speaker 2: So I think oftentimes I'm reactionary. Maybe that's why I throw my own parties or movie night or game night or those things. 00:40:40 Speaker 3: So I ask, you know a lot of people those two questions, and the first one they almost always have a really funny story to tell, and the second I think you'd be surprised or maybe not that the answer is pretty consistent with what you just said. 00:40:53 Speaker 2: I often get frustrated when I ask people. Last time I was here, I talked to Jamie Lee Curtis and she still like forty minutes in. I was like, oh, you really don't know you're Jamilee Curtis. 00:41:06 Speaker 3: Like, so, I actually think she doesn't. 00:41:09 Speaker 1: She doesn't. 00:41:11 Speaker 2: But then, you know, the thing that I wrestle with is that there's a quote that Nelson Mandela says, actually she mentions this on her episode. It's it's Nelson Mandela quoting someone else. But it just leads to like, who are we to like demur lights. 00:41:28 Speaker 3: Or like I know exactly what you're talking right now that and. 00:41:31 Speaker 1: So I'm more hyper aware of am I serving a purpose? You know? 00:41:37 Speaker 2: Because number one, this is rare air for people in the hip hop community, because once you get twenty, your first your primary shot when you're twenty is you want to avoid getting shot dying. And trust me, when you're between twenty and thirty, especially when I turned thirty, it was like I made it. You know, everyone else else was twenty four, twenty seven dying. And it's not exclusive to hip hop either, like you know, it's just kind of expected. 00:42:09 Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh, I made it. 00:42:11 Speaker 2: And then I realized that the second test was even harder than not getting shot, which is health. You know, should I be Should we be eating this burger at three in the morning? 00:42:23 Speaker 1: Guys? Should we? 00:42:24 Speaker 2: You know, like we're now aware of that part. And now the last go round is just the mental health of it all. Oh yeah, I've had in the last year alone, and you know, I wonder is there a pandemic happening that I'm not aware of. 00:42:42 Speaker 1: I'll say for me, in. 00:42:43 Speaker 4: The last eight months, I've lost eleven friends to stage four cancer. 00:42:53 Speaker 3: Oh, my God. 00:42:54 Speaker 2: Like even the day that I found out DiAngelo had cancer, D'Angelo was the six person in a twenty four hour period that broke the news to me. 00:43:05 Speaker 1: And even then it was. 00:43:06 Speaker 2: Like in humor because five other people have broke the news to me, like earlier that day, and speaking to him late at night and it was like, what do we. 00:43:17 Speaker 1: What'd you gotta say? 00:43:17 Speaker 2: And I was like, gosh, just just don't say stage four cancer or whatever, and he was like, wait, who told you? 00:43:24 Speaker 1: And I'm like what? 00:43:26 Speaker 2: And literally, but I also feel as though our everyday existence, which is why I'm so vigilant and I'm not not a routine or a process, but just being in the mind stake, especially now where we could do doom scroll and some days I do wake up and I do doom scroll, I do oh. 00:43:46 Speaker 1: God, we're going to die? Are we going to live? 00:43:49 Speaker 2: People looking for me for the answers. Am I doing enough with my platform? Should I be doing more? Should I be doing more? Like all the anxiety builds up, but I also know that that is the open door to you, letting in diseases and all these things. 00:44:04 Speaker 3: So yeah, that's really well said. 00:44:06 Speaker 1: Every decade there's a new challenge to overcome. 00:44:09 Speaker 3: So I mean, right now, so you feel like you're at the one. It's just like health and longevity. 00:44:15 Speaker 2: Usually by this point people they'll choose religion, like of my age, I'm supposed to now, like I'm gonna go back to the church and become a preacher, or like people choose religion, and you know, I mean, I feel as though every practice has been tainted, religion, spiritual, like all the areas have done. So right now I'm leaning more towards the metaphysical side of things, which basically the only difference I feel between the two is what religion you are talking to God like he's Santa Claus and I need this and I need that, And metaphysics is just you sitting silent and listening for God the opposite. 00:44:57 Speaker 3: Have you ever heard the phrase that I believe it's and it's not to think about God while you wash the dishes. It's just to wash the dishes. 00:45:04 Speaker 1: See. 00:45:05 Speaker 2: Living in the present to me, is I believe that that is the Okay? I speak of the twenty twenty pandemic period as a point in time, at the time when I was living in it, you would have I would have thought it was the apocalypse? 00:45:21 Speaker 3: Yeah sure, right, yeah, Oh my. 00:45:23 Speaker 1: God, who died this week? Who died this week? 00:45:25 Speaker 5: You know? 00:45:26 Speaker 1: Am I going to live? You know? 00:45:28 Speaker 2: And then but the more growth I did, I started feeling guilty because I'm like, damn, it was twenty twenty, like the good old days, Like why am I now having fond memories of all the growth I did in twenty twenty and whatnot? 00:45:44 Speaker 3: Also, as an aside, can you believe it was six years ago? 00:45:47 Speaker 2: I can it it's now turning the fond memories for some reason, even though it was the darkest time, Like I did. 00:45:55 Speaker 1: The most growth and the most change and all that stuff. So now when. 00:46:01 Speaker 2: Kind of after the election cycle of twenty twenty four, I was like, okay, so I've been telling people that the pandemics where you did the most growth. And then I'll admit the second we all went outside and things were normal, and suddenly I started slacking off a little bit, and like just a little bit, by a little bit, without even knowing it, I found myself in the territory of like, oh, now that I'm safe, like I'm back to square one again. And I saw where we are right now as a way to almost like around two, around two of growth and the lesson I'm learning this time. I figured the only way to survive where we are right now is literally just one day at a time. And this is coming from a person who's a meticulous planner. Okay, and all, guess I'll do this and then April of twenty twenty eight, I'll do this, And really it's literally me just waking up. 00:46:59 Speaker 3: And this is why you're asking about the present moment. And you said at the beginning, you know, I was talking about a thing about purpose, which is instead of you know, planning it forward, just being in it now. Yes, on a very literal, practical day to day. I think if we don't just take it one day at a time, like to me, that's where your mental health really can slip the hardest. And but I think that's something to carry with us always though, of just one thing and one day at a time and to find that like stable center as best you can. But the purpose piece that you're asking about initially, so I think it can be more comforting to try to, you know, plan the next five years, ten years, fifteen years. And I'm a planner too, like I like that. I feel you know, I feel the most in control when it's like, well, I know, you know, I've accounted for all the variables. I know exactly what we're building or creating. I know exactly or I want to be in two point five years. And that's you know, the end of the story. But there are things you don't know. You don't know. There are things I've been saying this for a million years that are so good you wouldn't even know to ask for them. And all any of us can really work with is what is right here in this moment. And I think that when we can do, you know, everything we can with everything we have, I feel like it opens doors to places we wouldn't even know that we wanted to go. And the now is something I've written about for like ten years and been interested in if for that long, in that I wonder if you know, all of these thoughts that we have, whether it's about our past or our future, it's like, but all of that's kind of happening, you know, in the now, And our relationship to the now is kind of really our relationship to our whole life. It only ever is now, Like we always think, like, oh, when I get to this thing, then I'll feel settled and more successful when I have this, when I do this, and it's like, but when you get there, even there is still the now. It's just it's just ben't evolved, adapted different now, but it's still that same relationship. And I think that it requires a lot of inner work and grounding to just surrender to the now and be in the now and work with the now. And it's something that I have to work on every day. Yeah, so it sounds like I'm making it sound like, oh, yeah, I know, just. 00:49:23 Speaker 7: Do that, but it's not, though, Well it's so easy just saying and I think we mentioned this earlier, like you know, I was raised by my dad was definitely you know, like the performative work hard, grind your knuckles bleed, you. 00:49:39 Speaker 2: Know, do all you can to achieve and get to the top. Only for me to find out that no, actually the opposite is true. Do nothing, you know literally it's do nothing and show up, which it's like, where's the glory I met? And so especially now like I'm excelling and things that I didn't plan on it, Like I didn't posters on my wall of a camera or any of these things. I'm doing now, so it just all feels so sometimes I do get mad at the universe and I'm just like, dude, Like if you put me in an environment as a two year old with five thousand records and I studied these things meticulously and me and my best friend started a band in high school like dog, why can't I have the results of what I wanted my music career to be? Like of everything I do, my music career is sort of like it's not a ticket or leave it thing. 00:50:42 Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad I'm in a space now where. 00:50:44 Speaker 2: I'm not like depending on this album must be like the anxiety I was living under ask quest love, member of the roots year after year. This album must be critically acclaimed. This album must data to sustain us to you know, and now to be in a place where I haven't released an album in eleven years and I'm still here and thriving even more so. 00:51:11 Speaker 1: To me, it's also like my ego is a little bruise that wow, seem. 00:51:16 Speaker 2: To have all the magic for all these other areas in my life, but the one space where I really want it, but I know there's a reason for it. But also I'm demanding this new album is what I think it is in my head. 00:51:32 Speaker 3: Yes, you said something before, I'm missing the language. Now you said to let go and just show up. 00:51:38 Speaker 1: What did you say, literally just to go for meticulous planning. 00:51:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know often I'll say in the last five years, my father's voice is the voice in my head, the way the way that Morpheus guides in the matrix, like you know, make. 00:51:59 Speaker 1: A left in the duck down, Like that's my dad's voice. 00:52:02 Speaker 2: And his thing is basically shut up and just show up, like don't you don't have to plan anything. And it's so hard for me to not do research or on research and meta research and research on that and research and the footnotes and the footnotes of research and all you. 00:52:21 Speaker 1: Know again my brain. 00:52:23 Speaker 3: What I wanted to add to that was more has happened for me positively in my life just by showing up, just showing up and not And for me, it's this mental game of like am I good enough to be here? Do I just just show up? And how much that has changed and also how much people value that and just knowing that that's that's more than enough. And I was just intrigued by you saying that, you know, instead of that, like that constant forward motion, that constant like effort and strive to let go and to just be and show up and then you know this flourishing that you've seen in your life that makes sense to me. It also inspires me. 00:53:04 Speaker 2: I feel like I'm getting a coached right now for trillions of people. I have so many other questions. 00:53:22 Speaker 3: She's ever gonna ask on my favorite cereal? 00:53:24 Speaker 2: I was going to get to the front now now now we did this, We're like one second away from doing this to now. 00:53:32 Speaker 1: So what was the first record you ever got? 00:53:34 Speaker 2: Okay, well, I ask what TV show best describes what your childhood was like? 00:53:39 Speaker 3: What an amazing question? 00:53:42 Speaker 1: I told you. 00:53:42 Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask you stuff that no one ever bothers as ever. 00:53:45 Speaker 3: I don't think anyone's ever come up with that for what TV show is most like my childhood? Can it be a cartoon? 00:53:52 Speaker 1: Yeah? 00:53:53 Speaker 3: As told by Ginger. 00:53:54 Speaker 1: As told by Ginger, What is that? 00:53:57 Speaker 3: I love that? This is the third time I. 00:53:59 Speaker 1: Love you know. I feel like such a fraud right now. 00:54:01 Speaker 3: You know what, you know, you're all on my Kate, You're on my case about not knowing things. 00:54:08 Speaker 1: She's getting her revenge, right now. 00:54:11 Speaker 3: As told by Ginger, it's it was like the curly hair. 00:54:15 Speaker 2: And I will research this. Wow, you got me three times already. This is like I feel like by the time we're. 00:54:22 Speaker 3: Done, I know, I feel actually good about this. Right now, she she's going through her life. She's like a young girl and she really processes through her journal. 00:54:32 Speaker 1: And what year was this out? 00:54:34 Speaker 3: This must have been two thousands. I don't know when it went on, Macy Gray saying the theme song. 00:54:40 Speaker 2: Okay, I'm familiar with the theme. I just never watched the thing. 00:54:44 Speaker 1: And also like I was, you're busy. 00:54:46 Speaker 2: Well, no, no, I don't want to play it. Like you know, when I became an adult, I put away child. 00:54:51 Speaker 3: I understand. 00:54:52 Speaker 2: I watch animniacs every day like it's nothing. So it was actively still watching cartoons back then. What posters adorning your bedroom walls in your childhood home. 00:55:02 Speaker 3: Oh, I have a vivid memory of this Britney Spears. Oops, I did it again. Okay, the poster from that CD, and I had the CD and she's got like a it's like like like tassels hanging from a doorway or what would you call those? 00:55:16 Speaker 1: It's the white and gold and she's like she's. 00:55:19 Speaker 3: Almost like holding them open and they're standing in between. 00:55:21 Speaker 1: Ith. 00:55:22 Speaker 3: It was Brittany, What else did I have? But you know, that was like. 00:55:25 Speaker 6: A your post Disney was I well. 00:55:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean she's well, I guess so she nags Disney by then. 00:55:32 Speaker 3: I think that was the most memorable one. But I had a bunch of like random stuff in rotation that was notable. 00:55:39 Speaker 1: What is a talent that you possessed that we don't know about? 00:55:42 Speaker 3: Oh, I feel like I have to have one. 00:55:46 Speaker 1: That I possessed sour dough, bread making or archery, or. 00:55:51 Speaker 3: I do love to bake. I've made wedding cakes before for people. 00:55:55 Speaker 1: Wait, why would you subject yourself to that torture? 00:55:59 Speaker 2: Really, you just woke up one day it's like, I'm gonna make a wedding cake for someone. 00:56:04 Speaker 3: So they asked, and I baked a lot, and well, it's because you. 00:56:08 Speaker 1: Made a cake for a wedding or a wedding cake. 00:56:10 Speaker 3: We cake for a wedding, So a wedding, you know, interchangeable. But wedding cakes are really expensive and the ingredients really aren't. 00:56:19 Speaker 1: So it's just the physics of knowing, yeah, just. 00:56:21 Speaker 3: Knowing how to stack them and then also kind of what like style you want? 00:56:25 Speaker 1: How'd you learn how to make a wedding cake? 00:56:26 Speaker 3: I just I just, I mean, I just knew how to bake, and I just kind of intuited of those like, well might just stack this and do that. Wait, that can't be the one. We ought to have another one. 00:56:35 Speaker 1: No, that's liver. 00:56:43 Speaker 3: You can call me actually for baking needs. 00:56:46 Speaker 7: Yo. 00:56:46 Speaker 2: I now I got to get to the altar and I'm. 00:56:49 Speaker 1: Going to make you make you make my wedding. 00:56:52 Speaker 3: Cake just for the sake of it. 00:56:53 Speaker 1: At this point, you got to I just know, I see, like. 00:56:56 Speaker 3: At least a cupcake or something. 00:56:58 Speaker 1: Yes, no, you're not getting out of this. 00:57:00 Speaker 2: You're wed. 00:57:01 Speaker 1: I'll do the full thing with the figures on top of it. 00:57:04 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:57:05 Speaker 1: And was it execute it perfectly? 00:57:08 Speaker 3: I mean it was pretty solid. Obviously, it was like you know, you're I was so stressed. I was like hoping it was perfect. You know, it's like a big moment for people, But it was at the time it was kind of this like you would like take this decorating I don't even know what you call it panel and just kind of like move across that. It was almost kind of like like a light frosting, so it almost gonna look like rustic and there was like a flower on top. So I don't know what kind of wedding cake style you're going for, but send me some insfel pictures and get to work. 00:57:39 Speaker 1: All right, what was the worst grade you've ever gotten? 00:57:42 Speaker 3: Well, this is a good story. I cannot believe in telling everyone this, but it's time. I failed chemistry, okay, and then I grew up in New York, so we have regents. So I failed the chemistry regents and then studied because they do them at the end of the seer as well, they don't just do them once a year, and studied all summer night a tutor. 00:58:04 Speaker 1: You had to go to summer school. 00:58:06 Speaker 3: Basically, and then well it's like a I don't know if it was like official summer school, but like, but anyway, this is the point is I took it again and then failed it worse. And you know that it's bad because my mom called for the grade, and you like, you know, it is really bad. When she was like she wasn't even mad, she just was like took so much pity on me. She was like she like heard the grade. She was like, Okay, she was like, you know what, it's going to be okay. Like she wasn't even upset, she was just more going into it, like you know what. She's like, We're going to figure this out. And I was like what and I'm like crying and she's like, you know what, don't even it's okay, it's okay. Like, but when when your parent is going into a place of like just feeling bad for you at this point, like you know, it's it's not good. 00:58:56 Speaker 2: Man, I know, I know mine is sound like wow, that's awesome. I love that story. 00:59:08 Speaker 3: She's a teacher, so you know, she's she took pity on my life. 00:59:11 Speaker 1: I get it. 00:59:12 Speaker 2: No, that's that's actually the ideal reaction that I would take that. Sorry, I believe you, and I envy you right now. I did not have those results in my version of that. Do you have a cry song? 00:59:29 Speaker 3: Oh? 00:59:30 Speaker 1: Oh? Many song plays and you instantly cry? 00:59:33 Speaker 3: I know I do so many. Probably Celine Dion, actually Celine Dion in person. I want to go see her live years. 00:59:41 Speaker 1: Ago her residency and she must have. 00:59:44 Speaker 3: Been touring because I think it was in Philly. I cried from the minute she walked on stage till the minute she walked off the whole time? 00:59:52 Speaker 1: What was it about her? Heard? 00:59:54 Speaker 3: I feel this way about anyone doing what they were so meant to do, and you can just tell got it And even if it's not, you know, she's intense. 01:00:05 Speaker 1: When she performs, she gets into it, you're just. 01:00:09 Speaker 3: Like taking it. And the level of energy, magic, magic she had was, I mean, it was amazing. 01:00:17 Speaker 2: She came to the tonight show and just as a couch guest, like she's hands down the most intense couch guests, like her interviews are not it's like something inside her that is yes, I I Celine Dion's probably the confirmation I think back then I was wrestling with the thought of like pleadians or are there other spirits living inside these shells that we call like I don't believe that we're all from the same milk. I feel like these are expandable bodies that people that want to visit Earth. So I believe you're one of those people too. But you know, what's the last concert you ever attended? 01:00:56 Speaker 3: What was the last show we're up? Do you like you have to outsource all these answer about my own life? 01:01:01 Speaker 1: Yes? 01:01:02 Speaker 3: Japanese Japanese Breakfast that's right. 01:01:04 Speaker 1: What was the first council you ever attended? Oh? 01:01:07 Speaker 3: I remember this because I was really old. I was like twenty five when I went to my first. 01:01:12 Speaker 1: Wait did we have this conversation before? 01:01:14 Speaker 3: No, we're having it now. 01:01:16 Speaker 1: Wait. 01:01:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, And I had written, well, hold on, I had written books before i'd been to a concert. 01:01:22 Speaker 1: I think when we were sitting down plane, do you know I think I knew this about you? What was your first concert? 01:01:27 Speaker 3: It was Lord and Run the Jewels, which wow, right to like start out there? What you just never but you're from Philly and or from Long Island? 01:01:39 Speaker 2: But wait, do you have an accent? Do you have a Long Island accent? Even you say it? 01:01:45 Speaker 3: Man, I was like, wait, no, this confuses people as well. No I don't. My dad is from upstate New York, and so my siblings and I kind of speak a little bit more like him, I would say. And then and then I've also, I mean, I think I kind of ever had it. But then also I lived in what you're thinking of, Philly, and I lived in Pennsylvania or pretty much you hold all life until like end in my late twenties, so then it kind of was really gone by that and now I'm California, so it's really gone. But that's why I think that. So, but no, it was Lord and Reni Jeal's. And another cry time is when she the end of that show, she played green Light was her closing song, right, and just everyone was up on their feet and it was like this really transcendent moment and I started crying. 01:02:29 Speaker 1: So what was your thoughts when you went to your first concert? Like? Wow? 01:02:32 Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it was almost like I was never going to tell anyone that this was the first time, you know what I mean, Well, it's you deserve to laugh at me. 01:02:42 Speaker 1: I know. 01:02:42 Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm just I'm laughing at you, depriving yourself of just that. Philly, Were you ever a club kid? Like have you heard music in public before? 01:02:54 Speaker 1: Not your car, not your headphones? 01:02:57 Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yes, but like that was my first like true like stadium like experience, like full concert experience was that time. But yes, I had heard music before that. And then maybe shortly after, I went to the Jones Beach Amphitheater and I saw the Google Dolls and that really is oh god. 01:03:16 Speaker 2: Okay, so we're learning the time now where Iris is being played every twelve seconds or social media, and it's almost when I hear the intro guitar thing is such a jarring. 01:03:30 Speaker 3: I know, I know, I know. 01:03:33 Speaker 2: No more what three people, or with three professionals in this industry, are you the most shocked at that are aware of your work or have your book? 01:03:45 Speaker 3: Rick Rubin is up there? 01:03:47 Speaker 1: Really? 01:03:48 Speaker 3: Yes? 01:03:48 Speaker 1: Okay? 01:03:49 Speaker 3: Selena Gomez, Ah, yes, okay, okay, she read one hundred mon essays and was talking about it. 01:03:55 Speaker 1: I was like, how wait are you still shocking? 01:03:59 Speaker 3: I actually want to circle. I'm actually floored to this day. Really, yes, I would add you to the list. 01:04:07 Speaker 1: No not, oh okay, you and everyone. 01:04:11 Speaker 3: All the jojo everyone floored by everyone. 01:04:14 Speaker 1: What was your life before? 01:04:15 Speaker 2: I mean, you've been writing since your first book came out in twenty a long time. 01:04:19 Speaker 3: Like so I started writing when I was like nineteen, twenty years old, so it's it's been a long time. 01:04:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:04:25 Speaker 2: So for you, would you say that Mountain was the book that we're all came together or was there one hundred and one? 01:04:33 Speaker 3: Like for you, I guess technically one on one Essays was the one that kind of maybe got had more readers. You know what I mean that was kind of the one. But then this Mountains You. Yeah, I think that's with the click moment. But also it was the click moment for me, Like writing that book in particular was like like, even if no one had read it, just writing it was one of the most unbelievable experiences of my life, like truly just internally, you know, going through the whole thing. So I like to think at some level, like the readers feel that as well, and so I think that's part of the click. But you know, the factor here is that this was so many years in. I mean when of my essays came out actually ten years ago this year, but it was six seven, eight years before you know, anyone who really even knew about it, and I would imagine many people still don't. 01:05:26 Speaker 1: But like the thing was the pandemic effect of. 01:05:28 Speaker 3: People like wanting to sit down and read. Yeah, kind of I do. 01:05:33 Speaker 1: Also, I think that's the year that we all said, ay, now's the time to do some yes. 01:05:38 Speaker 3: Yes, and that was yes, and that Mountain As You came out in twenty twenty, and I remember, you know, at that time, feeling like wow, like this is the biggest flop and failure of my career, maybe life, like thinking this couldn't have been worse time, right, And I just kind of I actually kind of just like gave up on everything for a period of time where I. 01:05:59 Speaker 7: Was just like, I know, you thought it was just the pebble with no ripple effect I did. 01:06:04 Speaker 3: I was just like, there, I don't even care about this right now, like this is I guess here it is, like I just we well, And then there were logistic things that were like you couldn't you couldn't or you couldn't write. So there were logistic parts of you know, you know, we'd been working on this for so long and then it was just it was just wiped. But then beyond that, even just internally for me, I was like I couldn't whatever. So I was in my own head I was kind of like, well, you know, maybe in the future we could do like a realie I'm trying to kind of figure out ways to like doctorate. And years later, I cannot tell you how many people have said to me like, whether it was then, whether it was three years, whatever, it was that book found me at just the right time. 01:06:42 Speaker 2: So were you aware that, wait a minute, this isn't a flop, This is actually turning out to be. 01:06:48 Speaker 3: Probably a year or two later, or two year or two late. 01:06:52 Speaker 1: Not immediate. 01:06:53 Speaker 2: No, oh dude, I know for a fact, I've read that book maybe seven times before I even thought, oh, let me buy it for other people. 01:07:01 Speaker 3: Like I just thought it that's reassuring. But no, it took. It took me a while to be like, okay, no, this is you know, well, it reformed the way that I think about releasing, which is and this is important for my process as well, which is so the same thing with One on one Essays, which it's like I would imagine there are parallels and music here too, which is what happens initially. That's kind of how you measure the whole thing. It's like, you know, how much of a success is it right away? And that's never been my story, and that's never been the case with any of my books. I mean, One of One Essays took maybe seven eight years, I don't know the exact day, but like many many years before I kind of hit as Malcolm Gladman, we'll call it tipping point, right, And so in all that time, it was just kind of you know, a build. It was just kind of like one reader's passing it to the next and I'm pretty content with that. But then over time I've come to find that, like they kind of find people right when they're ready for them or wanting of them, and my timing isn't as important as just getting it out in the world and then it kind of makes its way. 01:08:00 Speaker 2: Okay, I would like to know what is your actual creative process. I know for comedians, many comedian I know has colored post it notes on their walls. Chappelle always starts with the punchline. 01:08:15 Speaker 1: You know, and then I ran him over with my car. 01:08:19 Speaker 2: He starts with the punchline and then throughout his day he'll figure out how to get from point A to point B that will make this hilarious. And you know, for me, I'll have a song idea, but I know it might be for this record or it could be for this next record. For you, though, like is it just one specific subject that you want to write about and you get it out. 01:08:42 Speaker 1: Or is it just a whole Are you just. 01:08:45 Speaker 2: Kind of in this beautiful mind state now where all these ideas come to you and you just figure it out later how to piece it together. And when do you know a project is done, this is the book. 01:08:56 Speaker 3: It depends. So there's pieces that I will write or have written, and where you know, they don't necessarily belong to a book, or they're not for anything bigger. It's just a few paragraphs or a thought. And whenever that comes, I just kind of let it come, you know, if I kind of like move by this principle of if I have to pull over the car for a second and jott it down so I don't lose it, I do. I just kind of honor, you know, when it comes in, and I can't always control it, but I can always control, you know, like the muscle that I'm working. So if I can wake up and just practice writing review things. But that real like strike of like inspiration, when that comes through, you know, that comes when it comes, and so I just try to honor that. Now, for books like one of an Essays and like a few of my other books, even a lot of the Pivotgeer, I would say that that was pieced together all of these little moments that had happened over time, and I didn't even know. I had no idea really anything in one of an Essays would be a book until way later, until we thought oh, it would be a good idea. And so then a book like The Mountains You though, is a totally different thing, where I started with just a really clear vision and idea, and first of all, the concept I was just so intrigued by and so entrenched in if I could even use that word myself, and so like just perplexed by how counterintuitive it is, and also how every single person I knew and had ever known was also doing it, and when we would talk about it, they'd be like, oh, yeah, it was just like this instant resonance. So I was so passionate about it. But the idea for that book came in kind of like all at once, and I knew the title, and I had an idea in my head for the cover, and it was really really like like I could almost close my eyes and like hold my hands out and know what it like, what it was to feel like. And I remember I have this memory with my book designer that when we were finalizing things, the final final of the cover, it was like thirty six or thirty seven you know, versions, because I just kept making her move that little mountain over like one Pika. I was like just a little more than I still don't know if it's fully even actually as I glance over it, you know you still have notes still might But in that process, she said something to me very intriguing, which is definitely like par for the course of this aspect of the process. She said, when you speak about this, you're not saying I like this or I don't like this. You're saying like, no, it should be here, or this is or isn't right, almost as though you feel like it already exists, and I'm just trying to make like almost a fact simile of what you already know is there. I said, No, that's exactly what it feels like to me in this case. 01:11:28 Speaker 2: Wow, I gotta try that process sometimes, Like that's that's interesting. 01:11:45 Speaker 1: Are you a karaoke person? I can be what should go to karaoke? Song? 01:11:51 Speaker 3: Well? How many drinks? Oh my gosh, but I'm blanking, but it's my only song I can sing. Yes, you know it? Give me one reason. 01:12:04 Speaker 1: Oh by Tracy Chapman. 01:12:05 Speaker 6: Yes, yes, it was like by Luther Vandres. 01:12:11 Speaker 3: I hardly knew you, okay, okay, but even that though, like you got to get me in a really specific headspace to even make that happen. 01:12:19 Speaker 2: There's a funny story about when I was working on the SNL doc, Like, Tracy's one of the most She's a true artist and she goes on mood and feeling and all those things, and so Saturday Night Live has been dying to have her like on the show. 01:12:38 Speaker 1: This is like back in eighty eight eighty nine. 01:12:41 Speaker 2: So what happens is, you know, of course, it's like, hey, Tracy Chapman, all right, what's first segment? 01:12:49 Speaker 1: Fast Car? Right, She's like, no, I don't want to do that, like she was in her face. 01:12:53 Speaker 2: Nirvana did it too, where they just got tired of doing smells like teen spirits, so they stopped doing it. So there was like a big controversy and the fact that she was just tired of doing Fast Car. You know, it's been like a year out and so she's like, I will only come to the show if you know, I want to do a new song. They're like, no, dude, like do your hit or whatever. So you know, it didn't happen. And then one day they needed an artist and they wanted Tracy Chapman, and so she comes on and this is like I think an eighty nine or ninety and she does a new song that no one's ever hed before. It was give me the reason, which at the time she's doing this like six years before she will actually release it. So I just remember like the attitudes of the staff was like kind of disappointment, like why she squandered such a moment. 01:13:48 Speaker 3: I think you would also be tickled to learn that. I say this all the time when I'm like posting writing or visiting writing, people like to kind of hear the hits, the greatest hits a lot, like more than you would think. So I kind of for years always went but like had this idea in my head of like, oh, I always need new material, and then I found that to really not be the case, that they were almost preferring to hear what they love and know. And I always say to Bianca, when it's time, I'm like, it's time to play slide or the Googoo dolls, it's time to play slide. When it's time to post your new life would cost your old one page, no iris, it's time to slide. 01:14:28 Speaker 2: But for you in the space, Okay, So for me with music, I can write about music, I can release an album, I can do a movie. There's there's so many avenues I can do and move around it. But for you, are there other areas of writing that you're interested? Like do you have an inner uh nor efron inside you? Are you thinking about screenplays? 01:14:53 Speaker 1: Are you? Yeah? 01:14:55 Speaker 2: But I think creativities you can almost trans for it. Like right now on my comfort zone is music docs. Yeah, yeah, that I like the back of my hand. So there's still a carrot on a stick kind of thing where people are like, hey, why don't you try this this animated series, or let's do this music biopic, like let's get out of the doc er. And it's frightening for me because I just planted my feed here and I'm like, okay, you're six now, I'm really ready for it, and you want me to pivot on. But for you, what would that equivalent be? Like do you could you do fiction your own series or childhood books or any of those things. 01:15:42 Speaker 3: I've had an idea for a fiction book that's like based on the true story of my life for a long time, and it's always been a dream to write a children's book. And you know, I don't even want to compare it to this because if I ever do it, one day, I don't. It will never be as good as this, But I would love to write something like the Giving Tree, something. 01:16:04 Speaker 2: Manifuct yourself, it'll be better than the Giving Tree that seems to be. 01:16:07 Speaker 3: Able to pull quote for this episode those perfect yourself. I appreciate the course correction. I aspire for it to give people that same experience where if maybe you're a parent, you're reading it to a child, you yourself are sitting with it and kind of being like all right, wow, like there's almost something in it for me as well, or something is being explained. There's another children's book of what do you Do with an Idea? Which I thought was just a phenomenal concept, and I wish I had come up with it. So things like that, and I, you know, I feel this chapter of my life, these types of books, books, excuse me, have felt complete for a little bit. Now. My last book was Great Callings, and that felt like I've been playing with that for so long, and then it kind of felt like the copstone of like a like a series if I could call that. And so I do feel a sense of completion with it, like I feel like I said what I wanted to say, and now I definitely am in a place where I'm interested and I feel right I do, and songwriting would be a dream. 01:17:18 Speaker 1: Nice. 01:17:19 Speaker 2: So when you turn in your book, when it's all said and done, close the chapter, what's the process that happens next to you once you let the book go and there's no more writing, Like, can you, and I mean metaphorically, can you be still? I feel very empty? Sometimes I actually might cry after and I don't mean like an emotional thing, like literally, you just have to let something go out of you, Like is what is the feeling you feel when you regurgitated and get it all out of you? 01:17:56 Speaker 3: Relief piece? You asked a question similar before that I forgot to answer, and you said, well, how do you know when a book is done? Or how do you know when it's ready to be a book? And my answer to both of these is similar. It's like a little wild, but it's genuine and if there's like a creative person out there listening, and if you take this back into your own life, it'll be worth it. I have to get to a place with it where you couldn't convince me it's bad. That's how I know. 01:18:25 Speaker 1: It's ready really, So you have to feel it. 01:18:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, and it can't be other people telling me that it's great. I have to know that it is, and I have to feel that I did the absolute best that I could possibly do. 01:18:38 Speaker 1: What's your version of a demo? 01:18:40 Speaker 3: Like a draft? 01:18:43 Speaker 2: Right now, I'm scared shitless, Like anytime I submit a song to the roots, like what do you think? Like I'm already having excuses like okay, this is the rough mix and my voice sounds bad. I'm just giving you the general idea, and there's like shut up in mere play this song. 01:19:00 Speaker 3: You know, that's the beginning of like here's the concept or like well, okay, so you're asking too about you know, like the the creative process, like the technical process of when you're putting, you know, putting that book together in particularly, so it's kind of like an umbrella it down where it's like I have the overall concept of what I know I'm trying to get across, and then I break it down to the chapters. So it's like right here, my here are my sub points, you know, like here's here's the next thing I want to get into. And I break it down that way so it can be even because otherwise I find if I free write it. I front load everything in the first chapter, and then by the end it's I've got nothing left. 01:19:33 Speaker 2: Who do you trust to be your sounding board? Like who talks you off the ledge? 01:19:38 Speaker 3: My fiance, I'm my best friend. But it depends also on what part of the process we're at, because there's different people. I go to four different things, So it's like if it's the concept or the idea, and it's we're going back and forth so that if I need a sounding board for that, sure, But then once it gets a little bit farther along, I'm usually asking more technical questions like is this well, where does this make sense? Or does this need to be clearer? So it kind of evolves for me. But I when that final you know, I've talked about this before, But when I got to the end of writing the Mountain, as you and I wrote those last lines, that is the point of the Mountain. I mean, I really mean it. That was a feeling like I've never had before in my life, and I don't know if I will ever have it again, because it was just truly such a process to get there. But it was like beauty. It was like awe, it was like relief. It was like surrender. It was almost like it's not even it's not even a security or certainty of you know, everyone will think this is amazing. It's that's not even in my head yet. It's just more I know that I did everything I could possibly do with this idea, like I feel like I did it justice. And then I have to get to the point where I feel that piece in me and then I kind of send it out with this intention, which I do find my books to listen to their instructions I give, which is you will find who needs it when they need it, and not a minute before and not a minute after, and who really needs it. And I all the people I've ever met are like it was. So people tell me all the time that the wild stories about how they're like it was exactly what I needed. But I was, you know, in my office and my coworker had it on the table and I was like, oh, what's that? Like these like strange roundabout ways that it comes to them. 01:21:26 Speaker 2: You say, I'm not laughing at you, You're literally just remind You're literally reminded me this. This is the worst, all right, this is the worst a mere story I'm telling of all time. 01:21:40 Speaker 1: There was one point. 01:21:41 Speaker 2: All right, I've heard on a few sitcoms or whatever, like a baby will be a good wingman or a. 01:21:48 Speaker 1: Dog you know, you walk through the park. 01:21:50 Speaker 2: And you know, give me your number whatever. I remember you said that, and it just hit me. One day I was on a flight and the way that the seat was structured, and I was in like one of the first rooms like when you get on the thing, and I had this out sitting there, and literally like seven people. 01:22:16 Speaker 1: Were like whoa, yoh, I love that book to oh my god, you read that book to this, and then all the mountain yes, And then all of a sudden this became like my and my confess. 01:22:36 Speaker 2: But literally yah, there was like a good two weeks when I was on tour where like yeah, I want to preport okay, yeah. 01:22:44 Speaker 1: Strategically. 01:22:47 Speaker 3: See if they notice it, yo, but I tell you no. 01:22:52 Speaker 2: And then but the thing is is also on the other side of the cord, is I'm notoriously I'm now getting over my no small talk phase, Like seriously, my anxiety with small talk is world famous in my circles. And so then the wrong person small talk me to death. And I just wanted to sleep on the plane. So then I've retired the book and stay stayed inside my bag. All right, these are my last five questions very quick. 01:23:21 Speaker 3: Okay, rapid fire. 01:23:22 Speaker 1: Uh, this is sort of that, I hope. So what was your favorite year? 01:23:28 Speaker 3: Wow? 01:23:31 Speaker 1: Wow? Should I ask why? Or no? 01:23:34 Speaker 3: Is this rapid fire? 01:23:35 Speaker 1: But I just who's your least favorite year? 01:23:38 Speaker 3: Twenty twenty? Which I guess doesn't but it really? 01:23:45 Speaker 1: Okay? Okay, what is the greatest cereal of all time? 01:23:50 Speaker 3: Cereal? 01:23:50 Speaker 1: Yeah? What's the greatest cereal of all time? 01:23:53 Speaker 3: Oh? 01:23:53 Speaker 5: Man? 01:23:54 Speaker 3: But I feel like I have bad tastes, so I feel like, but we're friends. 01:23:58 Speaker 1: Now, I won't judge you. 01:24:01 Speaker 3: No, I already feel it. 01:24:02 Speaker 1: I'm not judging you. 01:24:03 Speaker 3: No, I feel you're gonna have a reaction. 01:24:05 Speaker 1: Just don't say grape nuts. Go ahead, No, I. 01:24:06 Speaker 3: Wouldn't say that. I was gonna say Reese's Puffs. Puffs. Yeah, see, okay, never mind. 01:24:16 Speaker 1: I'm only saying this because. 01:24:20 Speaker 2: You know what, the shame that I feel about being late to Star Wars, I commit it to peanut butter Captain Crunch, which, if you look at it, Reese's Puffs and Peanut Butter Captain Crunch. 01:24:32 Speaker 3: Is sort of similar. 01:24:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's an amalgamation of cocoa puffs and peanut butter and chocolate. I love Reese's, That's my favorite candy bar. But I'm very much stuck in the Captain Crunch world. And actually I found out that, uh, Post Cereal they do a lot of their testing for Walmart, So Walmart's brand good Morning Cereal whatever I I cannot I cannot emphasize this strong enough that the Morning Cereals for Walmart some of the best cereals of all time, Like Posts will actually do a lot of their experiments. 01:25:13 Speaker 1: They'll do. 01:25:15 Speaker 2: Red velvet cake, like all these experimental Look, I belong to a cereal club. 01:25:21 Speaker 1: Why am I confessing like all these things? Do you? But yes, it. 01:25:26 Speaker 3: Says Captain Crunch. 01:25:27 Speaker 2: Your answer, Captain Crunch would be my rider. No peanut butter, Captain Crunch, but could be mine? My rider died. 01:25:34 Speaker 3: I want to say, fruity Pebbles is up there too for me? Yeah, it's what it does to the milk after. 01:25:39 Speaker 1: Yes, yes, you're absolutely right. 01:25:42 Speaker 2: Shout out to April Broomfield of Milk for doing the Cereal milk. 01:25:48 Speaker 1: What is your go to emoji? 01:25:52 Speaker 3: What is the emoji you use the most it's the laugh cry one that I. 01:25:58 Speaker 1: Straight up or sideways straight. 01:26:01 Speaker 3: But everyone says that like age is you. 01:26:04 Speaker 1: Oh why if I use that, then I'm am into the world and I'm over fifty. 01:26:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, like you're supposed to do the one on the side. 01:26:10 Speaker 1: I do the one on the side. 01:26:12 Speaker 3: You're right, okay, I do the laugh cry and then I would say that. 01:26:15 Speaker 1: The wait right now. 01:26:18 Speaker 3: Not well, not personally, but I've just like noticed, I feel like younger people use different ones that I do the laugh cry oh. And then he's saying that I do the like the sobbing one a lot, okay, And I use that interchangeably for I'm happy or like. 01:26:31 Speaker 1: Wow, black eyed sobbing. 01:26:33 Speaker 3: I just like the like tears streaming down. I use that one a lot, and then just like a I use it like a heart a lot. 01:26:39 Speaker 1: Okay, I'll do this. 01:26:41 Speaker 3: One, you know, the hands, Yeah, I think those are my top content? 01:26:45 Speaker 5: Are you? 01:26:45 Speaker 1: Are you being a gen z shame right now? 01:26:48 Speaker 3: Like I mean, I have a gen z shame. 01:26:51 Speaker 2: That I'll share mine if you share yours. I didn't realize how old the concept of cash is. 01:27:00 Speaker 3: I don't think I think I'm learning right now. 01:27:03 Speaker 1: I mean I think I know, but this current generation. 01:27:05 Speaker 2: So when I'm at thirty Rock, I'll sometimes maybe instead of uber eating, I will just send an intern down to get me a slice of pizza in the basement and bring it up to my office at thirty Rock. And this was such a case where I wanted a pizza, so I got my joorer, pulled my wallet out, and all I know is a week later, my niece who also interns there, kind of had a quiet intervention thing. But it's sort of like a yeah, so everyone in the office is talking about like you have this big giant wad of cash, and I'm like, what are they saying. They're like, well, you know, they've just never seen money like that before, and a wallet like do. 01:27:58 Speaker 1: You know what vemo is? 01:28:00 Speaker 5: Know what like? 01:28:01 Speaker 2: And up until that point, I'd never paid for anything on my iPhone. 01:28:07 Speaker 3: You never used like Apple wallet. 01:28:09 Speaker 2: So I got shame so bad that it was to the point where like I've called my girlfriend like, yo, I just paid for gas with my iPhone, like for the first Like it's such a such an achievement, Like they were joking about it. But when I tell you, when I got home and the way they just laugh at me for having a wallet with money in it. It's like, like, I felt like, Boomer, what's your shame? 01:28:38 Speaker 3: I think it's the emoji. Just using emojis was just the laugh emoji that I choose. I feel like I always them being like, oh, like millennials do that. 01:28:48 Speaker 1: Oh, so I hate that feeling. I hate that feeling. I admit something though. 01:28:54 Speaker 2: I saw all a text that Miss Lauren Hill sent once and kind of chastised me for some and then I say it on social media. But my only takeaway of it was like, she knows what emoji's are. 01:29:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wild episode. Do you collect anything? 01:29:16 Speaker 3: Yeah? 01:29:16 Speaker 1: What do you collect? 01:29:18 Speaker 3: This is another wild one. Lay Labo City perfumes when I travel. 01:29:24 Speaker 1: Yo, there's so many things you've mentioned to me and pop culture that I've never heard of. 01:29:29 Speaker 3: Have I hit the ten mark yet? 01:29:31 Speaker 2: I feel like this is twenty. I feel like I do not deserve this show. It feels so exposed right now. 01:29:36 Speaker 1: So what is this? 01:29:37 Speaker 3: Okay, it's the perfume brand lay Laboka, But they have stores in different cities all around the world, and each city will have its own scent that you can only get in that city other than in the month of September. You can order refills online, but other than that, you can only get like Lymette I think is San Francisco or something, so like you have to go to that city to get at that cent. So when I. 01:30:01 Speaker 1: Traveled, me are made. 01:30:03 Speaker 3: Someone just asked me this, and I don't know the exact number, but it's it's like a lot. But anyway, when I travel, I try to find the store and buy their city sense. So I have a lot of I probably have. I don't even know how many. I don't have all of them yet, but I have. 01:30:19 Speaker 1: I haven't a collection of it perfume nice, okay. I that only reminds me. 01:30:27 Speaker 2: There were two girls, probably like maybe fifteen twenty years ago. One of them had a daughter that wanted snow globes from around the world, so that turned me into a collector of vet. And then there was another one that I dated. She wanted I didn't know that these Starbucks mug collecting game was so intense. 01:30:50 Speaker 3: I didn't know about this either. 01:30:51 Speaker 2: Actually, it's it's the most intense called about, like when you go on eBay, like to find a special Milwaukee level. I figured that way into this girl's heart is through these. 01:31:02 Speaker 3: Mugs and literally wise by the way, but it was. 01:31:04 Speaker 1: Like six hundred mugs. 01:31:07 Speaker 2: Six hundred it was, you know, to so enthusiastic about the last one. 01:31:13 Speaker 1: I was like, all right, well, whatever city I'm in, I'll just. 01:31:15 Speaker 3: Collect, okay, but if not to impress a woman, is there anything you collect other than that? 01:31:21 Speaker 2: I'm in the getting rid of things faced, So I'm uh, that's a hard part. I mean, I've collected absolutely any and everything. I think right now, artwork is my thing. It used to be records, but I capped it at two hundred thousand, so now I'm on to artwork. 01:31:40 Speaker 3: You have two d thousand records. 01:31:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, it used to be me just individually shopping and buying records over the years, and then in the last five years many a library has shut down unceremoniously. Radio stations right now, NPR is going through it. So I often get a hey, you know, government subsidies. You know we have to shut down. We have like fifteen thousand records in our jazz program. We don't, I mean, we can give them the good will, but we know you love records, gest loove, like if you would like these, So I've just been in the last five years taken. 01:32:22 Speaker 1: This college is fifteen thousand records. And wow, maybe. 01:32:25 Speaker 2: This member of the Four Tops died and his daughter's like, hey. 01:32:30 Speaker 3: Take these chunks. 01:32:32 Speaker 1: Also, they know I'm the record hoarder, but then you know. 01:32:35 Speaker 3: We also collect records, but nowhere near that many. 01:32:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's bad. I just got to farm some building. 01:32:44 Speaker 5: Well. 01:32:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, in twenty twenty, you're going. 01:32:46 Speaker 3: To have a record house. 01:32:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, I will. 01:32:49 Speaker 3: Can you send me a picture. 01:32:51 Speaker 1: I will send you a picture of this. Yes, I'll invite you to the grand opening. 01:32:54 Speaker 3: I would love to come. 01:32:55 Speaker 1: Still building it. 01:32:56 Speaker 2: All right, So the last thing, when all said and done, I know this is a dumb question. I really wish I closed on the serial question. Yeah, what what do you hope that we say about you when all is said and done. 01:33:10 Speaker 3: I hope you say that she was really brave. 01:33:15 Speaker 1: I'll take that. Rihanna, thank you so much for coming on my show. This is a long time coming. 01:33:21 Speaker 2: I thought you would have never I almost felt like this might be an exercise on your part, Like I feel like I forced you out of here your comfort zone or in the shadows or something, or we're gonna have, you know, six extra weeks of sun and you know. 01:33:36 Speaker 3: Well that yes, but that's just you know. 01:33:39 Speaker 1: I feel accomplished. This, this was this was a big get for me. 01:33:43 Speaker 3: This was an honor to be here. 01:33:44 Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much. Friend. I appreciate you. 01:33:47 Speaker 2: Brianna Weed on The Quest Love Show and I'll see you guys on the next go around, all right, see you. Quest Love Shows hosted by Me Mere Quest Love Thompson. The executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jake Paine. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, Edited by Alex Convoy. iHeart Video support by Mark Canton, Logos Graphics and animation by Nick Polo. Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Brown. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, break review, and share The Quest Love Show wherever stream your podcast. 01:34:42 Speaker 1: Make sure you follow us on. 01:34:43 Speaker 5: Socials that's at q LS. 01:34:48 Speaker 2: Check out hundreds and hundreds of QOLS episodes, including the Quest Love Supreme Shows and our podcast archives. The Quest Love Show is the production of iHeartRadio