Speaker 1: So let me ask you, when was the first time
Speaker 1: that you heard a Jewel song? I know for me
Speaker 1: it was who Will Save Your Soul? I was just
Speaker 1: knocked out by it. I remember thinking, Wow, this is
Speaker 1: a really, really great singer, songwriter and performer at being
Speaker 1: a songwriter myself. I'm so excited to be sitting down
Speaker 1: today with Jewel and we're going to find out about
Speaker 1: an organization that she's been involved with that's been helping
Speaker 1: kids with their physical, emotional, and mental health for over
Speaker 1: twenty one years. And I know you're going to be
Speaker 1: inspired by this organization but also fascinated by this amazing
Speaker 1: woman and performer. So lean in. I'm really glad you
Speaker 1: heard Jewel. I'm so excited to have you on this podcast,
Speaker 1: so excited to see you. I feel like we've met before.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure where, but I can't imagine that
Speaker 1: our paths haven't crossed at some point.
Speaker 2: I was thinking the same thing. Somebody was like, have
Speaker 2: you met him before? I like, we have to have,
Speaker 2: but yeah, wells apparently not making a ding in each
Speaker 2: other's memory.
Speaker 1: So well, that's okay, that's okay. But I could tell
Speaker 1: you that we have this dumb you know thing that
Speaker 1: we like to start the podcast off, which is this
Speaker 1: silly game, the six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. That that
Speaker 1: so we do the research and figure out how we
Speaker 1: are connected in the entertainment universe. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're aware of this connection. It's not a very
Speaker 1: hard one, but I know you were in Walk Hard,
Speaker 1: the Dewey Cock story. Uh. And the fun connection is
Speaker 1: is that Rance Howard, who is Ron's dad. Ron howard
Speaker 1: dad was in that and he was in Apollo thirteen,
Speaker 1: which I was in. So there's our six degrees connection.
Speaker 1: As silly as that is.
Speaker 2: It's profound.
Speaker 1: Where are you now?
Speaker 2: I live in the Rockies in Colorada?
Speaker 1: Nice?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love.
Speaker 1: It, fantastic. How long have you lived there?
Speaker 2: Gosh, I've been here maybe ten years.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I saw you on TV recently and
Speaker 1: I called up our people and said, this is the
Speaker 1: perfect person for this podcast, because the idea with this
Speaker 1: thing is that you know, you're a multi platinum artist,
Speaker 1: you're huge star, celebrity, all these kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: then people find out that in this podcast that there
Speaker 1: are things that you are super super passionate about that
Speaker 1: we're going to get to and also to introduce somebody
Speaker 1: that you work with and that you and that who
Speaker 1: is an unsung hero doing good work out there on
Speaker 1: the ground, because I think a lot of times people,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, they think that the celebrities or
Speaker 1: rock stars whatever are just kind of overpaid buffoons and
Speaker 1: don't really give a shit about, you know, anything that's
Speaker 1: going on in the world, and so you are the
Speaker 1: opposite of that. So that's why I think you're the
Speaker 1: perfect person to be talking about this. If I can
Speaker 1: just geek out a little, you know, your your music
Speaker 1: is just so fantastic and I'm such a fan, and
Speaker 1: I I wonder if I'm sure you've asked been asked
Speaker 1: this a million times, but I'd love to if you
Speaker 1: don't mind talk just a little bit about the songwriting,
Speaker 1: because it's just I fancy myself a songwriter and so
Speaker 1: I really am always interested to hear what somebody's process
Speaker 1: is around that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I started writing as a way of moving toward
Speaker 2: my mom left when I was eight. My dad and
Speaker 2: I became a bar act a duet, so we did
Speaker 2: five hour sets in bars in Alaska.
Speaker 1: And what kind of music was that.
Speaker 2: It was mostly covers, but my dad also was a songwriter,
Speaker 2: so he did originals as well, so it was a mixture.
Speaker 2: I sang harmony mostly. I'd been already on stage a lot.
Speaker 2: My mom and my dad had shows for tourists. It
Speaker 2: was a dinner show, so like the the cruise ship
Speaker 2: you know, would come in and Anchorage, Alaska, and they
Speaker 2: would this dinner show would happen, and that was my
Speaker 2: dad and my mom and me. I would get up
Speaker 2: in yodle wow. So then my mom left, my dad
Speaker 2: and I became a duet, and I was in a
Speaker 2: lot of pain. You know, divorce was hard. My mom
Speaker 2: leaving was hard. My dad started drinking, began being abusive.
Speaker 2: So I was obviously in a lot of pain. And
Speaker 2: what I was realizing around me in these bars that
Speaker 2: people were in a lot of pain. And I was
Speaker 2: had this front row seat to watching people handle pain.
Speaker 2: And there was drugs, there was PCP, there were biker gigs,
Speaker 2: there were you know, drunken fights, there was rage, there
Speaker 2: was relationships that were volatile, and I saw all these
Speaker 2: ways over the series of many years, and I realized, no,
Speaker 2: but I called it, you can't outrun pain, a real
Speaker 2: visuals So I remember it was like there was this original,
Speaker 2: you know, bit of pain, but instead of making pearls,
Speaker 2: everybody around me was just trying to cover it in
Speaker 2: more and more layers of more and more I guess
Speaker 2: now what you would call coping mechanisms. I just saw
Speaker 2: like archaeological and so I realized, like, I have to
Speaker 2: deal with my pain as it comes. And then I
Speaker 2: learned that the buffalo was the only animal that would
Speaker 2: move directly into the heart of the storm because the
Speaker 2: quickest way was through. And I just loved that, and
Speaker 2: I remember writing that down the quickest way is through,
Speaker 2: and so to move toward my pain instead of trying
Speaker 2: to avoid it became like a life strategy for me.
Speaker 2: Probably when I was ten and writing. I had noticed
Speaker 2: I always had written poems since that was little, and
Speaker 2: I always felt a little bit better even though I
Speaker 2: was dealing with a lot of pain and uncertainty. Writing
Speaker 2: always made me feel better and it's very therapeutic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well that is I can certainly relate
Speaker 1: to that. I mean, I well, my brother in law
Speaker 1: like to say, something goes wrong, write a song, and
Speaker 1: that is that is a really I'm fascinated. I did
Speaker 1: not know that about you and and so is it
Speaker 1: Are you able to make the connection between the specific
Speaker 1: moment or feeling that you're having, whether it be a
Speaker 1: specific I don't know, heartbreak or your dog dies or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and the song that comes out, or
Speaker 1: is it more a way of just feeling all these
Speaker 1: overwhelming things and that kind of channeling them through somebody
Speaker 1: else's story or or a piece of poetry.
Speaker 2: It had always been poetry, and it was usually pretty direct.
Speaker 2: The fascinating thing to me that was very comforting when
Speaker 2: I was young was that when I wrote, there were
Speaker 2: patterns I hadn't noticed I had noticed. I suddenly started
Speaker 2: seeing reasons or yeah, just patterns that I hadn't noticed
Speaker 2: when I was embroiled in living. It was until I
Speaker 2: wrote about it later that I noticed them. That was
Speaker 2: very comforting, and it made me really again want to
Speaker 2: rely on writing sort of as a tool of getting out.
Speaker 2: I didn't write songs ti much later. I moved out
Speaker 2: at fifteen, which I knew was a very risky thing
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: You were playing then, though you were playing with you
Speaker 1: or no, you are playing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn't play guitar. I didn't write songs.
Speaker 2: I only sang lead on one or two songs in
Speaker 2: the five hour set. I was just singing harmony honestly.
Speaker 3: Set By the way, a five hour set of covers,
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Wow, that's a lot to hold on through.
Speaker 3: That's like, that's like a Bruce Springsteen that showed plus
Speaker 3: two hours.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just how I was raised. You would, that's
Speaker 2: what you were paid for with these five hour sets.
Speaker 2: And so when I moved out, it meant also like
Speaker 2: my dad and I weren't going to be doing gigs together.
Speaker 2: I now had to support myself on my own without
Speaker 2: singing with my dad. And I knew statistically kids like
Speaker 2: me end up repeating the cycle, and I didn't want
Speaker 2: to be a statistic And so again I went back
Speaker 2: to writing and reading, sort of as this ladder hopefully
Speaker 2: out looking at the idea of nature versus nurture, and
Speaker 2: what if my nurture was so bad, I would never
Speaker 2: get to know my nature. We had a rabbit that
Speaker 2: thought it was a chicken, and so it would like
Speaker 2: peck at the food and it would waddle. It didn't
Speaker 2: quite hop normal, and it would lay on the nests
Speaker 2: and hatch eggs for the hens, and it really scared
Speaker 2: me when I moved out of fifteen, be cause I
Speaker 2: was like, what if that's me? What if I'm a
Speaker 2: bunny raised by chickens and I'll never know I'm a bunny?
Speaker 2: But how do you know your nature when your nurtures
Speaker 2: so bad? And so I looked at this idea of
Speaker 2: having an emotional inheritance, just like a genetic one, you know,
Speaker 2: a genetic inheritance that might predispose me to diabetes. Had
Speaker 2: this emotional inheritance that would just predispose me to like
Speaker 2: abuse or addiction. And could I learn a new emotional language?
Speaker 2: And so I just doubled down on writing curiosity observation
Speaker 2: as instead of climbing up and out, I wanted to
Speaker 2: go down and in.
Speaker 1: Now were your poems did they feel like songs? Were
Speaker 1: you're hearing melodies in your head? Did you pick up
Speaker 1: the guitar as a way to put the melody behind
Speaker 1: the words?
Speaker 2: Now, writing poems just felt like medicine, trying to soothe myself.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until I went away to school. I got
Speaker 2: a scholarship to go to a private school in Michigan
Speaker 2: called Interlock In. You weren't allowed to stay on campus
Speaker 2: for the breaks, and I didn't have money to go home,
Speaker 2: and so I decided that I would hitchhike across the
Speaker 2: country and that I would make money by street singing.
Speaker 2: So I got a cheap guitar and I learned a
Speaker 2: minor CG and D in that order. I couldn't go
Speaker 2: out of order because I didn't know how. And then
Speaker 2: I grew up improvising. My dad taught me to improvise
Speaker 2: in bars, like one of the best ways to have
Speaker 2: drunks listen was to start singing about the drunks not listening, huh.
Speaker 2: And so my huge plan was to street sing and
Speaker 2: just make up lyrics about people as they walked by,
Speaker 2: because I didn't know how to learn other people's songs
Speaker 2: or learn covers, and it was just a lot easier
Speaker 2: to make stuff up. And on that first two week trip,
Speaker 2: I think I was sixteen, That's when I wrote whole
Speaker 2: Save Your Soul. That was my very first song, and
Speaker 2: I just was le song.
Speaker 1: Hang on, you're kidding me?
Speaker 2: That was it?
Speaker 1: Wow? But how does that I mean? And that's not
Speaker 1: a that's not a super that's a pretty sophisticated melody.
Speaker 1: That's not like Mary had a little lamb. Did you
Speaker 1: have the guitar when you wrote that song? I mean,
Speaker 1: where you playing those changes that you knew and just
Speaker 1: around those changes that melody came to you. That really
Speaker 1: blows my mind.
Speaker 2: It was very beating. It great because I came from
Speaker 2: such a poetic background. It was very wordy, like people
Speaker 2: live in their lives for you on TV, they say
Speaker 2: they're better than you and you agree. It was very
Speaker 2: like kind of like written spoken word, not so much
Speaker 2: of a melody, like people live in the last for
Speaker 2: you want to eve it's pretty monotonous. And then I
Speaker 2: couldn't change the chords for a chorus because I didn't
Speaker 2: know how to yet, And so that's where I just
Speaker 2: changed the melody to create the chorus. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: off of a chord change. It was just off of
Speaker 2: trying to create a different sound melodically to make it
Speaker 2: sound like a chorus.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe the chorus is, so it's I mean, it
Speaker 1: is a like I said that the chorus is definitely
Speaker 1: is a very strong hook, a very strong melody. I
Speaker 1: mean it's just I don't know that's really that's that
Speaker 1: is astounding to me. So you were probably then you
Speaker 1: were what's sixteen or seventeen when you wrote that song?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sixteen?
Speaker 1: Wow? Now do you do you still write on the guitar?
Speaker 1: Do you write on the on the piano? Or or
Speaker 1: what's what's the do you do?
Speaker 2: You do? You?
Speaker 1: Are you one of those people that takes an hour
Speaker 1: every day? It sits there and you know, comes up
Speaker 1: with the hooks and or how do you do it?
Speaker 2: So I'm writing now? Is really different for me. When
Speaker 2: I was young, it was just oozing out of every poor.
Speaker 2: When I became a mom, it's very different a single mom,
Speaker 2: you know. So now you're with your baby, You're up
Speaker 2: at all hours of the night trying to go to bed.
Speaker 2: So that free time, that random free time where you
Speaker 2: might just catch an idea and stay up till three am,
Speaker 2: doesn't really happen. And so I had to become more
Speaker 2: craftsman like about it, plan time to sit and write,
Speaker 2: which I didn't mind.
Speaker 1: I feel like other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll also write with other people, which is kind
Speaker 2: of nice. It's like having a workout partner.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about that though, Because I have
Speaker 1: just I always looked at writing as something that I
Speaker 1: would do alone, or I would maybe do with my brother.
Speaker 1: But that was that was part of the sort of
Speaker 1: thing about it to me was that it was personal
Speaker 1: alone and just in the last like it probably I
Speaker 1: don't know, five or six years, we started to have
Speaker 1: writing sessions. We were so honored and had so much
Speaker 1: fun and went and wrote with Desmond Child for instance,
Speaker 1: and you know, wrote a cool song. And it's if
Speaker 1: you're not used to that. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I found that I find it can be very
Speaker 1: like socially sort of frightening and you know, kind of awkward,
Speaker 1: and you know, you kind of sit down there and
Speaker 1: you go, okay, well, you know, here we are, and
Speaker 1: we're going to be sharing something because I find it.
Speaker 1: I find it so personal, you know. And then too,
Speaker 1: it's uh, as you said, you know, there's something therapeutic
Speaker 1: about it. To me, it's like going into like a
Speaker 1: couple's therapy, but you never met the couple before.
Speaker 2: You know, I call it sober sex with a stranger.
Speaker 2: It's just very awkward.
Speaker 4: You're like, okay, let's get baked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's super awkward, and you definitely just have
Speaker 2: to go in and suspend judgment of yourself. You just
Speaker 2: have to throw ideas out, and the quicker you can
Speaker 2: kind of just get to embracing the awkward, the better it.
Speaker 1: Is judgment of yourself and also judgment of each other too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's vulnerable, you're going to throw out bad ideas.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're going to.
Speaker 1: Throw up bad ideas exactly, and and and I have
Speaker 1: found I want to do more of it. But I've
Speaker 1: found that piece of it to be like challenging, but
Speaker 1: in a good way, because I'm not really used to
Speaker 1: like it. When I'm acting, there is an element where
Speaker 1: you know, you have to have the courage to try
Speaker 1: stuff and fail. But I also feel that I've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time thinking about what the performance is
Speaker 1: going to be, what the character is going to be.
Speaker 1: So if it's if right off the bat somebody doesn't
Speaker 1: like it, that's pretty vulnerable. But in the writing thing,
Speaker 1: you're just it's so immediate in the way that you're
Speaker 1: throwing things out. I found it to be a great
Speaker 1: hurdle to kind of get over in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I find co writing to be very different. When
Speaker 2: I'm alone, I won't start with an idea. I'll just
Speaker 2: catch a feeling, you know, you start playing guitar and
Speaker 2: you catch a vibe and that evolves and you don't
Speaker 2: know where it's going, and it's this just discovery process
Speaker 2: for co writing, you know, typically you'll come in with
Speaker 2: an idea or have an idea, or the co writer
Speaker 2: will have an idea or a hook or a sentence
Speaker 2: or a riv I don't find that when I co write,
Speaker 2: I get is interesting of stuff. It's usually more commercial.
Speaker 2: And that's a fine line because just because it's more
Speaker 2: commercial doesn't actually make it very listenable either. So it's
Speaker 2: it's a it's a lot to balance, you know, when
Speaker 2: you're in your own singer songwriter. The thing I love
Speaker 2: is always learn something. They'll put chords together. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have thought of that. It's such a cool sound.
Speaker 2: Or just seeing how somebody else's brain works. It always
Speaker 2: makes you better.
Speaker 1: Foolish games to me, is such a sad song, Like
Speaker 1: I just find that to be I don't know it
Speaker 1: just it's it's one of those songs just makes me
Speaker 1: sad when I when I it's a great song, but
Speaker 1: when I hear it, What do you have a song
Speaker 1: like that? It's like your kind of go to sad song.
Speaker 2: It was Leonard Cohen's The Famous Blue rain Coat for me. Oh,
Speaker 2: I had heard it when I was in eighth grade,
Speaker 2: and well.
Speaker 1: Pretty much anything Leonard Cohen, right, yeah, but that's but
Speaker 1: that one is uh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's so just tragic and but nostalgic and you can
Speaker 2: tell she loved them. And it's why I wrote Foolish Games.
Speaker 2: I was trying to rip off the Famous Blue Raincoat,
Speaker 2: like I wanted to write something that gave you just
Speaker 2: like this intense, like visceral, emotional, but very visual kind
Speaker 2: of cinematic quality.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting. So you do think sometimes in terms
Speaker 1: of visuals and as you said, something cinematic taking people
Speaker 1: to a world, taking them to a place, having them
Speaker 1: kind of disappear in the same way that we do
Speaker 1: when we're trying to create movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think writing is the lens. It's what you're
Speaker 2: going to show out of an entire immense world. It's
Speaker 2: like that narrow little scope you're going to show somebody
Speaker 2: of just this thing. It could be a huge, busy room,
Speaker 2: but then you narrow the camera in on one woman
Speaker 2: just sitting alone there with a fake smile, nodding, and
Speaker 2: that's the story. But nobody might have noticed that story
Speaker 2: if you didn't just tilt the camera and zoom into
Speaker 2: her face. And so to me, when I'm writing, whether
Speaker 2: it's poetries or fiction or anything, it's yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: help push the camera in. And how quickly is it
Speaker 2: like bam and it hits you in the face or
Speaker 2: is it kind of the slow push in and it
Speaker 2: gives you different you know, like it's funny just talking
Speaker 2: about it'll give my like hairs, different reactions on my skin.
Speaker 2: But that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to
Speaker 2: elicit really intense personal stories, which is done through editing,
Speaker 2: limiting information, highlighting information to create yeah, something intense.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, that is a really interesting way to look
Speaker 1: at it. Do you look at a lot of movies?
Speaker 1: Do you like movies? I mean do you like I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you've got a child now, so it's probably
Speaker 1: less and less time for that. But when you when
Speaker 1: you talk about that, I mean, I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of people films will wash over them, but they
Speaker 1: won't even necessarily be aware of that idea of pushing
Speaker 1: in on something in order to tell the story. And
Speaker 1: you know that that's something that many people they know
Speaker 1: how they feel, but they don't know how we get there.
Speaker 1: But obviously you have an eye for that.
Speaker 2: I always loved I didn't grow up watching movies, you know,
Speaker 2: in Alaska, we didn't have electricity, we didn't even listen
Speaker 2: to much music. But I read a lot, and I
Speaker 2: read a lot of playwrights, and I think that's probably
Speaker 2: what gave me a real innate sense of story. Like
Speaker 2: a lot of Chekhov, a lot of Flattering O'Connor, a
Speaker 2: lot of Steinbeck, and I just think they were naturally
Speaker 2: very cinematic writers. And then poets like Pablo Naruda that
Speaker 2: were so visual you could to practically smell his poetry,
Speaker 2: the salt and the bread and the soil after the rain.
Speaker 2: You know, he wrote so viscerally that it made your
Speaker 2: mouth water practically reading his stuff. And I loved that,
Speaker 2: and so they really informed my writing style. Not to mention,
Speaker 2: you know, every writer I loved was glorifying very underserved communities.
Speaker 2: You know, check off to Steinbeck. We're trying to shine
Speaker 2: a spotlight on you know, tortilla flats or sure migrant workers,
Speaker 2: or you know, the mass population of the everyday man
Speaker 2: in Russia. Uh, and so I just that that's why
Speaker 2: I write what I write. I think that's where folk
Speaker 2: music came from, was from those playwrights that chose to
Speaker 2: write that way.
Speaker 1: You heard it here first, folks. Jewel was a massive
Speaker 1: Anton chekhov in. I mean that that I think would
Speaker 1: be Uh. I don't know why that would be surprising,
Speaker 1: but but it's it's it's surprising to me. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's actually surprising to me because I don't really
Speaker 1: think of anybody outside people in the theater of actually
Speaker 1: reading plays, you know what I mean. It's like sometimes
Speaker 1: people get you know, forced to study Shakespeare in school
Speaker 1: or stuff like that or whatever Steinbeck, Ibsen or you know,
Speaker 1: but but to to but your lack of media growing
Speaker 1: up where you grew up, you had to that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: You had to actually read a play and in a
Speaker 1: way use the imagination to hear the voices of the
Speaker 1: of the characters speaking, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the study of psychology, I think, especially in
Speaker 2: the Russian writers, but the psychology in playwrights I thought
Speaker 2: were so clever, right, they were really trying to tell
Speaker 2: you about the psychology of a human and using these
Speaker 2: situations putting these characters in situations to really highlight that psychology.
Speaker 2: And to me, that's where like Tennessee Williams are the
Speaker 2: great play rights, that's what they were doing. They were
Speaker 2: trying to figure out these squeezes where life would squeeze
Speaker 2: a character into these displays that were sometimes horrific but
Speaker 2: so human that it allowed us to kind of explore
Speaker 2: these darker aspects. And I just I loved.
Speaker 1: That as having a child changed your perspective on kind
Speaker 1: of the business side of things. I'm assuming that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, are you touring with the kid at home?
Speaker 2: You know, I was funny about my career. I was
Speaker 2: just covered when I was homeless. But I almost didn't
Speaker 2: sign the record deal because I knew that somebody with
Speaker 2: my emotional baggage, God forbid someone like me get famous.
Speaker 2: It's you know what every TV movie or movie's ever
Speaker 2: been about any musician. I didn't want to be a
Speaker 2: statistic and so I had to have a plan in
Speaker 2: place that meant that I wouldn't become a statistic And
Speaker 2: for me, that meant like what I called my north
Speaker 2: Star decisions. My number one goal was to learn how
Speaker 2: to be happy. Was it a learnable skill, was it
Speaker 2: a teachable skill? And I'd have a plan around that,
Speaker 2: How did I know if it was working? Then my
Speaker 2: number two job was to learn how to be an artist,
Speaker 2: and then under that was my subcategory. I wanted to
Speaker 2: be an artist more than I wanted to be famous,
Speaker 2: So every decision I made on my career was just
Speaker 2: very loyal to that. That's why I took two years
Speaker 2: at the height of my career after hands I quit,
Speaker 2: like my label was like, you know, mental health breaks
Speaker 2: weren't a thing, but I knew I was going to
Speaker 2: have a breakdown if I didn't figure out how to
Speaker 2: comprehend what my life had turned. And the level of
Speaker 2: fame I got was that, you know, you can't go
Speaker 2: to the bathroom without people following you, and it was awful.
Speaker 2: It felt like a prison, And so I had to
Speaker 2: give myself permission to be like, what do I want
Speaker 2: to do something else? Would I rather be a photographer?
Speaker 2: And then for me realizing I didn't like fame that much,
Speaker 2: it didn't do it for me. I liked invention, I
Speaker 2: liked trying new things, and so just learning to build
Speaker 2: my career for solving for what actually made me happy
Speaker 2: and being willing to let go of the rest. And
Speaker 2: so it meant I always took big breaks. I switched genres,
Speaker 2: you know, always upsetting people, always starting over after my divorce,
Speaker 2: taking seven years. It's unheard of, and it's terrible things
Speaker 2: to do for like momentum that the best thing for
Speaker 2: me is a human I want my life to be
Speaker 2: my best work of art. I don't want my songs
Speaker 2: to be my best work of art. And that means
Speaker 2: I have to approach mothering artfully. It means I have
Speaker 2: to approach, you know, hopefully all aspects as thoughtfully as
Speaker 2: I can. And a big part of that has been, yeah,
Speaker 2: mothering and taking the time to mother.
Speaker 1: Wow, and you started this inspiring children foundation, but that
Speaker 1: was twenty one years ago, and just tell me the
Speaker 1: genesis of that. I mean that, like, twenty one years
Speaker 1: ago is not I don't know how old you are,
Speaker 1: but but I'm guessing that it's not the moment in
Speaker 1: most people's lives where they say, Okay, I've become an
Speaker 1: incredibly successful at my chosen career. Although I understand that
Speaker 1: you were having doubts about it. But now I want
Speaker 1: to just give back and do something that's outside of me.
Speaker 1: I mean, what was the inspiration for that?
Speaker 2: When I moved out at fifteen? You know, I just
Speaker 2: it was very depressing to think that what about kids
Speaker 2: like me? I don't have access to therapy, I don't
Speaker 2: have a support system, like do kids like me get
Speaker 2: to learn how to be happy? And what an equal
Speaker 2: opportunist misery is? It doesn't care if you're black or white,
Speaker 2: or rich or poor, or famous or homeless. If you
Speaker 2: were raised in misery systems, it's perpetual. If you're going
Speaker 2: to learn how not to be miserable, if you're going
Speaker 2: to learn how to be happy, that means education, and
Speaker 2: education is money in our country. And so I started
Speaker 2: developing these skills that really worked for myself, looking at
Speaker 2: nature versus nurture and habit loops and dilation and contraction,
Speaker 2: all these skills that I just was thinking about and
Speaker 2: teaching myself how to practice things, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: see if they would work for other people like me,
Speaker 2: kids without other options. And so we started inspiring children,
Speaker 2: and it turns out it works really well. We don't
Speaker 2: use psychotherapy, not that I'm against it. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you got that and it works for you, I'm so
Speaker 2: for it, But what about the people that don't have access.
Speaker 2: There have to be systems that we can offer that work,
Speaker 2: that make real differences in your choice making and then
Speaker 2: your happiness, right is a side effect of choices. You
Speaker 2: can't just be happy. You have to make different choices
Speaker 2: that lead to different outcomes. And so it's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. It's the most fun I've ever had is
Speaker 2: working with our kids.
Speaker 1: That is amazing. That is amazing.
Speaker 5: If you are inspired by today's episode, please join us
Speaker 5: in supporting six degrees dot org by texting the word
Speaker 5: Bacon to seven zero seven zero seven zero. Your gift
Speaker 5: empowers us to continue to produce programs that highlight the
Speaker 5: incredible work of everyday heroes, well also enabling us to
Speaker 5: provide essential resources to those that need it the most.
Speaker 5: Once again, text b a c N to seven zero
Speaker 5: seven zero seven zero or visit six degrees dot org
Speaker 5: to learn more.
Speaker 1: I want to bring in Ryan Wolfington, who is the
Speaker 1: president of Inspiring Children. Hey, Ryan, welcome to the show Man.
Speaker 1: Hey doing Kevin, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. It's
Speaker 1: been really fun for me to be chatting with Jewel
Speaker 1: and and you know her story is obviously so inspirational,
Speaker 1: and the fact that she started this in a very
Speaker 1: very specific and direct way. How did you two meet
Speaker 1: and how long have you been with this organization?
Speaker 4: So my twin brother worked with Mark Burnett, and I
Speaker 4: guess Mark and Jewel. They were at a dinner at
Speaker 4: his home and my twin said, Ryan, you really got
Speaker 4: to meet Jewels. She's your real twin because she still
Speaker 4: went to the emotional mental health stuff. I remember this
Speaker 4: is years, you know, a long time ago, but not
Speaker 4: a lot of people were talking about this. So he
Speaker 4: kept saying, you got to collaborate with her. She's really
Speaker 4: doing the same work, really a lot of the same
Speaker 4: healing that I did in my own life. She had
Speaker 4: been doing her own life in parallel. And then when
Speaker 4: I met her the first time, she sat there and
Speaker 4: spoke to a young woman for like three hours. A
Speaker 4: young girl tried to end her life twice, and when
Speaker 4: she was in the hospital she was listening the Jewels
Speaker 4: song Hands on repeat to give her hope. And you know,
Speaker 4: we're Richard Branson's Island. All these people running around they
Speaker 4: want to meet Jewel, and it's a pretty good group
Speaker 4: of people. But Jewel said, I want to sit here
Speaker 4: for three hours with this young girl and help her heal.
Speaker 4: And that's when I knew my twin brother really had
Speaker 4: nailed it. That that's when she loves.
Speaker 1: More than any Wow. Wow. So can you describe to
Speaker 1: me the mission?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, Jewels probably better at words than I am.
Speaker 4: I'll let her take a crack to that, but I
Speaker 4: would just say, like, giving young people what I think
Speaker 4: we wish we had we were little.
Speaker 1: And what are the ages?
Speaker 4: You want to get children as young as you can
Speaker 4: get them, because the habits get formed early. But our
Speaker 4: really robust program is like twelve forever. It's like a
Speaker 4: forever program. It's not till they graduate high school. It's
Speaker 4: until they graduate colleges, kind of forever. And we have
Speaker 4: children that are first generations thirty five years all now.
Speaker 1: And what about that Jewel, I mean, how would you
Speaker 1: describe the mission?
Speaker 2: We wanted to create a holistic healing environment that wasn't
Speaker 2: based on like one hour of psychotherapy, but an entire
Speaker 2: three dimensional model where they were getting educated, where they
Speaker 2: were getting exercise, and where they were getting equipped with tools.
Speaker 2: There's something I called as a kid philanthropic paradoxical reflux.
Speaker 2: It's this idea that you know, like I lived in
Speaker 2: the projects and Anchorage for a while and we'd be
Speaker 2: part of toy drives, right, people would come bring our
Speaker 2: neighborhood toys, which was so great and we were so appreciative.
Speaker 2: But I instantly felt as soon as like the thrill
Speaker 2: of getting the present wore off, I instantly felt really
Speaker 2: crappy about myself and it was so intolerable that I
Speaker 2: resented the person who gave me the gift. It sounds
Speaker 2: so terrible, I know, but it's a very real thing
Speaker 2: because of just this kind of psychological reflex of you
Speaker 2: feel so bad about yourself and so you try to
Speaker 2: make yourself feel better by creating this otherness. And so
Speaker 2: with the Foundation, we really wanted to solve for that.
Speaker 2: So we don't actually give anything. We give skills, period,
Speaker 2: and kids earn their way up into kind of different
Speaker 2: programs within the foundation.
Speaker 1: Building brick and mortar building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we're based in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Why Las Vegas is just out of curiosity.
Speaker 2: Ryan actually founded the foundation and he was in Las
Speaker 2: Vegas and the very first kid that he started mentoring
Speaker 2: just happened to be there. And then it evolved from
Speaker 2: that and.
Speaker 1: How do the kids find you or do their parents
Speaker 1: find you or where's the how do you build your
Speaker 1: the group?
Speaker 2: Well, it's overwhelming need. Sadly, it's all been through word
Speaker 2: of mouth. So we're a physical program. We focus on tennis,
Speaker 2: onrepreneurial skills, and then mental health skills. We have three
Speaker 2: homes so that if there are kids who aren't safe
Speaker 2: with their family or just can't be with their family
Speaker 2: for some reason, they can live with us in a
Speaker 2: safe place. Otherwise, we work with kids, you know, they
Speaker 2: are living at home, and we work with the whole
Speaker 2: family system and the kids are they with us about
Speaker 2: six days a week. They do core curriculum maybe a
Speaker 2: couple of days a week, and then all the rest
Speaker 2: is project driven learning, so running the foundation, doing the
Speaker 2: video editing, the photography, running events, running fundraisers. So they
Speaker 2: just end up becoming incredibly capable. And then when somebody
Speaker 2: trauma triggers, or when something happens, we're able to deal
Speaker 2: with it right then and there and just a real
Speaker 2: group setting, because it's life that triggers us. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not like Tuesday at two o'clock. It happens while
Speaker 2: you're with your therapist. And so we've found that this
Speaker 2: model of where it's just a living lifestyle change skill
Speaker 2: growth based model to be incredibly effective.
Speaker 1: Ryan, let me ask you, have you seen or felt
Speaker 1: that given things like starting with yeah, nine to eleven
Speaker 1: school shootings, climate change, a global pandemic, there is a
Speaker 1: rising need for this kind of work.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean twenty one years ago when it first started,
Speaker 4: we might have had ten percent of our children might
Speaker 4: suffer with suicide attaps, or maybe thirty percent depression, a
Speaker 4: lot more with more teenage addiction issues. Now, our last
Speaker 4: graduating class three years ago during COVID, half limit either
Speaker 4: attempted to end their life, were seriously harm themselves, and
Speaker 4: one hundred percent of the pad anxiety and a large
Speaker 4: portion of them had some form of depression and some
Speaker 4: issues with the addiction. I think most children are being
Speaker 4: born into addiction to technology, being exposed to stimulation and
Speaker 4: distraction much sure than we were, and so we've watched
Speaker 4: it dramatically increase. It was a huge issue long before COVID.
Speaker 4: I remember Jewel did pressed the first week of COVID
Speaker 4: and she said the silent symptom of COVID is mental health.
Speaker 1: Like right.
Speaker 4: She just said, we knew right away this is gonna
Speaker 4: have a real serious impact. And what's interesting about you know,
Speaker 4: you know Jewel's involvement is you know, it's not like
Speaker 4: a typical celebrity that gets involved. I'm talking about fifty
Speaker 4: to sixty percent of her career is devoted to working
Speaker 4: and helping these children.
Speaker 1: Her taught wow from.
Speaker 4: Retreats at her house too. You know, in a few
Speaker 4: weeks we'll be taking a bunch of children up to
Speaker 4: stay and spend the holidays with her, over Christmas, to
Speaker 4: even just work things. She's devoted her whole business side
Speaker 4: of her life to mental health, and the children sense
Speaker 4: that sense of sincere. You know, they can call her
Speaker 4: up and be like, I'm having an emotional conflict right now.
Speaker 4: I know you were homeless, I know you had trouble
Speaker 4: with your dad. You know, how did you deal with it?
Speaker 4: And the insight that she's able to give is so
Speaker 4: unique because of this situation she's been through as a person,
Speaker 4: and children are no no bs like they see not
Speaker 4: They can tell if you're for real or not. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they do you know something where I may not be
Speaker 4: to get through, she's able to do that.
Speaker 1: Wow. Julee. That is that is really kind of incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the thing that you're the most
Speaker 1: proud of around around this this organization and the work
Speaker 1: that you do.
Speaker 2: Just the kids. You know, our numbers are incredible because
Speaker 2: of the gauntlet the kids choose to pick up every day.
Speaker 2: You know, when when I see a kid, you know,
Speaker 2: willing to stop being mad at their environment, at their situation,
Speaker 2: at their family, and say, all right, but what am
Speaker 2: I willing to do about it? You know, I'm responsible
Speaker 2: for my own happiness. What am I willing to do
Speaker 2: about my choices? They are unstoppable. Like once once a
Speaker 2: kid like hooks onto that concept and it's just fun.
Speaker 2: I mean, we became the number two tennis academy in
Speaker 2: the country. We didn't mean to be number one and
Speaker 2: number three are just tennis academies. They're recruiting tennis players.
Speaker 2: We're just helping kids, and we've become the number two
Speaker 2: tennis academy. All of our kids start their own businesses
Speaker 2: and they learn to put that hustle into a really
Speaker 2: great life affirming way into helping them make money and
Speaker 2: most importantly, learning these these skills. Our graduation rates are incredible.
Speaker 2: But it's all just byproducts of these kids choosing happiness,
Speaker 2: and as you know, healings hard, it's very difficult, and
Speaker 2: so I just find it incredibly heroic that these kids
Speaker 2: just keep choosing it.
Speaker 1: And how many kids have cycled through the program?
Speaker 2: Just wondering that. Do you know from the beginning, Ryan.
Speaker 4: It's it's thousands in person, but online, you know, Jewel
Speaker 4: helped bring a nationale platform, so it's millions online, but
Speaker 4: the leadership program, it's it's thousands in person. You know
Speaker 4: what's interesting is a lot of people this summer we
Speaker 4: took a bunch of the children on her tour, and
Speaker 4: I'm like, I forgot you're like a freaking unbelievable rock
Speaker 4: star because we get to see this other talent that
Speaker 4: she has to heal a human being. And you know
Speaker 4: what's more worthy of celebrity somebody that can help a
Speaker 4: child go on to want to live again and then
Speaker 4: not only want to live again, but to just love
Speaker 4: life and become their best or the beautiful music. Now,
Speaker 4: luckily we don't get to choose. But the hidden talent
Speaker 4: that I think a lot of people don't know about
Speaker 4: her is as a clinician, as is somebody who can
Speaker 4: heal not only herself but other people. And it's profound.
Speaker 1: That is really amazing. That is really amazing. Plus she's
Speaker 1: also has one name, which makes her even cooler. You know,
Speaker 1: people who have one name are very very cool. I
Speaker 1: once had the absolute joy of introducing ludicrous to Sting.
Speaker 1: It was it was a great moment in my life.
Speaker 1: Where how can people help out? What's where's the website
Speaker 1: and uh social media handles? I want to I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that anybody listening to this can can
Speaker 1: can reach out and and and support the good work
Speaker 1: that you guys are doing.
Speaker 2: We're called Inspiring Children, so it would be Inspiring Children
Speaker 2: dot org and we're inspiring children on Instagram. I also
Speaker 2: have a mental health platform of the exercises I've been
Speaker 2: talking about, where we put them on a free mental
Speaker 2: health website. There's very practicable simple skills to kind of
Speaker 2: thanks to you know, uh, just neural wiring, starving old
Speaker 2: neural patterns and building new ones through behavior. And so
Speaker 2: people can find that at Jewelnever Broken dot com and tell.
Speaker 1: Us about what the Not Alone Challenge was.
Speaker 2: The Not Alone Challenge was an opportunity for us to
Speaker 2: bring together so many walks of life to talk about
Speaker 2: mental health. So we had celebrities, we had CEOs, we
Speaker 2: had business people, we had athletes all coming together to
Speaker 2: talk about the fact that everybody is a brain. So
Speaker 2: at some point or another, people are going to have
Speaker 2: an issue with anxiety or whatever it is, and that,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a tragedy that fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: people that need mental health tools don't have access to them.
Speaker 2: I find that unacceptable and so the Not Alone Challenge
Speaker 2: was about raising awareness and then raising funds to be
Speaker 2: able to scale proven tools digitally. And so one of
Speaker 2: the first things we've been doing with that is we've
Speaker 2: started been you know, scaling up the tools that have
Speaker 2: been proven to work in our foundation that are skill based,
Speaker 2: as well as we founded a mental health app in
Speaker 2: the metaverse. It's called Inner World, where we take a
Speaker 2: lot of these skills and created the three dimensional virtual
Speaker 2: reality for healing.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you that Inner World. We showed it to
Speaker 4: some of our children. Jewel was putting it together for
Speaker 4: quite some time, but when she revealed it to them
Speaker 4: with the co founder with the founder of the Uneral,
Speaker 4: they started crying because they're like, geez, I can see
Speaker 4: exactly how that would have helped me when I was
Speaker 4: thirteen or I was fourteen. And it's like almost like
Speaker 4: a virtual healing center that people can go into no
Speaker 4: matter where they are. And people have asked Jewels for many,
Speaker 4: many years, how do you scale this? How do you
Speaker 4: get this other places? And it was really cool for
Speaker 4: her to be able to team up with this gentleman
Speaker 4: from Vanderbilt to take the stuff that helped her and
Speaker 4: then put in on this metaverse where it feels so real.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which have you have you all ever thought
Speaker 1: about expanding to different cities, starting other centers in other
Speaker 1: places on the is that the the in the future.
Speaker 4: There's organizations that are now scaling pieces in twenty two
Speaker 4: cities pieces of what we do. And then right now
Speaker 4: the goal is Jewels put this not Lo challenge together
Speaker 4: to raise funds in order to curriculuatize our twenty one
Speaker 4: years and expertise and make you real simple for other
Speaker 4: organizations to plug play.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what makes us special is our curriculum
Speaker 2: and the skill based tools, and we want to be
Speaker 2: able to start scaling that to other foundations that are
Speaker 2: doing the work or even other work like let's say
Speaker 2: it's an LGBTQ plus community center, and you want to
Speaker 2: be able to have a mental health toolkit. We want
Speaker 2: to be able to have that curricularized, so anybody in
Speaker 2: any foundation can start to get yeah, good results in
Speaker 2: mental health.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I just want to say I think
Speaker 1: you should both be very very proud of the work
Speaker 1: that you're doing. It's it's it's a beautiful thing. I
Speaker 1: love hearing all about it, and I'm so grateful that
Speaker 1: you were willing to come on and talk about it
Speaker 1: today and take a big chunk out of your day. Julie,
Speaker 1: I know you got to go pick up your kid,
Speaker 1: So thank you and thank you Ryan for being here.
Speaker 1: And I've really really enjoyed this.
Speaker 2: Likewise, I've been such a fan of yours and I
Speaker 2: have been loved checking music out, and of course i've
Speaker 2: been a fan of your acting. So it's a treat
Speaker 2: to get to talk to you. And thanks for taking
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thanks for listening. Can you believe that Who
Speaker 1: Will Save Your Soul was the first song that Jewele
Speaker 1: ever wrote? I mean, that's crazy. I was so interested
Speaker 1: to hear that.
Speaker 6: So anyway, if you want to learn more, about the
Speaker 6: Inspiring Children Foundation and all the work great work that
Speaker 6: they are up to. Head to their website Inspiring Children
Speaker 6: dot org. You'll find the link in our show notes.
Speaker 1: You can find six Degrees with Kevin Bacon on.
Speaker 6: The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: See you next time.