Speaker 1: You're right. Love is in the accommodation of where people
Speaker 1: are out in their journey, and it is amazing when
Speaker 1: you see them hang out and help lift you up,
Speaker 1: or just hang out and wait, I mean you and
Speaker 1: I could basically distill all of this into like really
Speaker 1: cool fridge magnets. I was thinking T shirts, but productizing regardless. Definitely,
Speaker 1: for sure, we could definitely like monetize our shared philosophy,
Speaker 1: which is cool. Which is the point of life? I
Speaker 1: think it's the point of philosophy. Yeah, certainly, money is
Speaker 1: definitely the point of philosophy. I think the Plato missed it.
Speaker 1: He was too busy talking about, you know, the tyranny
Speaker 1: of democracy. You really need to be focusing on. Like, Yo,
Speaker 1: how can I make some T shirts for the same
Speaker 1: miss of capitalist How about that way? Now, look at
Speaker 1: the bright side there, buddy, be a human, don't go
Speaker 1: into politics. Hello, I'm mini driver and welcome to many questions.
Speaker 1: I've always loved priest questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth
Speaker 1: century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature.
Speaker 1: But with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity
Speaker 1: to expand on anything, so I took the format of
Speaker 1: Proof's questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of
Speaker 1: the most important questions you could ever ask someone they
Speaker 1: are When and where were you happiest? What is the
Speaker 1: quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized,
Speaker 1: defines love for you? What question would you most like answered,
Speaker 1: What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most?
Speaker 1: What would be your last meal? And can you tell
Speaker 1: me something in your life that has grown out of
Speaker 1: a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more
Speaker 1: we begin to see what makes us similar and what
Speaker 1: makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable
Speaker 1: people who I am honored and humbled to have had
Speaker 1: a chance to engage with. In last week's episode, we
Speaker 1: heard Barritende's answers to when and where are you happiest?
Speaker 1: So standing on that beach, I felt grateful and overwhelmed
Speaker 1: and significant peace. I hadn't felt that way up until
Speaker 1: that point in my life, all in one moment. What
Speaker 1: quality do you like least about yourself? My valuing of perfection,
Speaker 1: my association of doing something wrong with being wrong? And
Speaker 1: what relationship, real or fictionalized defines love? Fear? But that commitment,
Speaker 1: and that then the knowledge that we're there for each
Speaker 1: other and growing with each other, giving each other opportunity
Speaker 1: to become more. That feels like love. Here is the
Speaker 1: second part of our conversation. What question would you most
Speaker 1: like answered? It is my favorite question. Ah Mean, part
Speaker 1: of me is just like, what is cryptocurrency? Really Like?
Speaker 1: I just love a good answer to that. But at
Speaker 1: a bigger scale, I'm just like in the headspace of
Speaker 1: of what we've been talking about a question I would
Speaker 1: like answered. It's a how question. I think that is
Speaker 1: exactly right, how asking how do we do something? Fix something?
Speaker 1: It's do you see? I think that's it. I think
Speaker 1: that I didn't even know that I had like this
Speaker 1: easter egg of a trick and side the question, but
Speaker 1: that's it. You just found it. Oh my god. I
Speaker 1: feel like you need a prize. It's the type of
Speaker 1: question that's almost more important than the question itself, because
Speaker 1: that is it. It's it's how. Yeah, because I'm more
Speaker 1: interested in movement and evolution and growth, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a how question in me of you know, how
Speaker 1: do we better embraced change? How do we collectively grow?
Speaker 1: You know, we feel the potential so often we get
Speaker 1: so afraid and we shut down. And there are these natural,
Speaker 1: probably evolutionary things triggered in our chemistry and our biology
Speaker 1: that make it very hard. Why are we scared? Like?
Speaker 1: Are we scared? Because change often requires understanding another tribes
Speaker 1: understanding of change, and that that is foreign and terrifying.
Speaker 1: Part of me knows some of the answer. Part of
Speaker 1: me will speculate irresponsibly, and that's fun. We are pattern
Speaker 1: recognition machines. Creatures is a better word than machines. To
Speaker 1: call us machines is probably not great, but we have
Speaker 1: pattern recognition as a part of our approach right well,
Speaker 1: with cabon based carbon based meat, meat covered meat. You
Speaker 1: can be in that band with me. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: when something doesn't fit a pattern of experience, of visual recognition,
Speaker 1: of emotional familiarity, that's different, different could be threat and
Speaker 1: threats must be handled at a minimum with care, often
Speaker 1: with aggression, to restore ourselves to a state of a
Speaker 1: pattern that we understand and know and can be relied
Speaker 1: upon to provide for our needs. And so some new
Speaker 1: stuff comes along, and you know, we can respond with
Speaker 1: curiosity and and we can learn to embrace the new
Speaker 1: We might even find some advantage in the new and
Speaker 1: then share that new thing with the rest of us
Speaker 1: and have a new familiarity. But that's innovative, that's risk taking,
Speaker 1: that's rare by default. I think our default, like factory settings,
Speaker 1: sticking to the meat machine metaphor, is don't trust that
Speaker 1: new stuff. It could be snakes, you know, saying it
Speaker 1: could be bears with snake fangs. It could be a
Speaker 1: pack of bears with snake fangs and poisonous farts. Right,
Speaker 1: could be all this stuff is gonna just knock us
Speaker 1: off our path, maybe even kill us or kill our kin,
Speaker 1: which we are so connected to. So change of any
Speaker 1: kind is the new introduction threatens the pattern, the familiar,
Speaker 1: and so we are programmed somewhat to react suspiciously and
Speaker 1: against that. And so the how question is how do
Speaker 1: we do less of that? How do we do more
Speaker 1: of the embrace of some new things. I don't think
Speaker 1: we can get rid of that, because everything that you
Speaker 1: spoke to it does feel like it's hard wade into
Speaker 1: the meat machine. But the other beautiful part about being
Speaker 1: human is taking an idea and adding it in and
Speaker 1: expanding on it. So then maybe it's about focusing on
Speaker 1: those things which embraces the little scared of the bad
Speaker 1: part and encourages facing towards everything that could help our
Speaker 1: evolution more smoothly and certainly more peaceably. It's peaceable. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's such a great word. Peaceably. We don't say that
Speaker 1: very much in the US, but I'd like that a
Speaker 1: key to what you said. You know, we were acknowledging
Speaker 1: the scared part right, And I think for anyone who
Speaker 1: is pro change of any kind, I mean, this could
Speaker 1: be technological change, it could be social change, it could
Speaker 1: be you know, wardrobe change. If there are members of
Speaker 1: our society who see the benefits of that thing. We
Speaker 1: jumped straight to this is great. Why does it everybody
Speaker 1: doing this? And we skip over the acknowledgement of the
Speaker 1: human and all of us that is terrified. And if
Speaker 1: we can acknowledge that name, that hug, that love, that
Speaker 1: part right in some way, that might help us embrace
Speaker 1: an upgrade ourselves. Because the how for me is also
Speaker 1: such a technophilic person, like we upgrade our operating systems
Speaker 1: all the time, like often without consent. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I just said, I turn on the screen.
Speaker 1: It's like updating that up? What do you got for me? Now?
Speaker 1: What you got? Yeah? Why do our brains update? Can
Speaker 1: we have updates for your humans? Oh my god? But
Speaker 1: now I'm into like some tech dystopia where there's like
Speaker 1: mandatory updates. Oh the black Mirror thing? Yeah, this is terrible. Well,
Speaker 1: we talked ourselves out of that one. We were really
Speaker 1: close to, like Shagula there, you know, I like it
Speaker 1: was just there and then it turned into a dystopic calscape. Literally,
Speaker 1: my reptilian brain took over and I stopped embracing the change. Gosh,
Speaker 1: you we just saw it in real time. Just get
Speaker 1: the upgrades. Many everybody's doing it, Oh, Bert, don't do
Speaker 1: it terrifying. So what we're saying is it's not simple
Speaker 1: cool cool. But I like the question that you asked,
Speaker 1: and I like the most, particularly that it's a how question,
Speaker 1: because how is useful? Yes, my mother used to say,
Speaker 1: why should be taken out in the back and put
Speaker 1: in a hole and have flowers grown on top of it?
Speaker 1: But how? Wait, that's a beautiful way to describe murder.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she was. She was full of making peaceable murder. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: she could definitely like she could definitely make terrible things
Speaker 1: sound incredibly kind of approachable and intellectual and and funny.
Speaker 1: I mean that is terrifying. That should be taken out back,
Speaker 1: put in the hole, but in the hole and flowers
Speaker 1: grown on top of it. But what happens in between
Speaker 1: the whole and the flowers smacked on the back of
Speaker 1: the head with a shovel. Yes, she would love this conversation,
Speaker 1: she would think it was hilarious. But how is how
Speaker 1: has has possibility in it? Why it feels despondent and
Speaker 1: kind of whiny? I think why is still useful and
Speaker 1: just as you know, awareness is useful regardless of whether
Speaker 1: you change things or not. To understand is powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's value to it. I don't want to dismiss
Speaker 1: why so much. But I'm a how person. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you're a person. I mean it's literally I just
Speaker 1: with the name of my podcast is how to Citizen? Right,
Speaker 1: It's not why are things the way they are? It
Speaker 1: also makes citizen a verb, which is another doing aspect,
Speaker 1: and not how to be a citizen? How to citizen?
Speaker 1: So it's you who has to do it. Yes, I
Speaker 1: love that what person places or experience most altered your life.
Speaker 1: There's there's an interesting way to collapse that the answers like,
Speaker 1: it's always my mother, man, I was like, well, I
Speaker 1: could overthink this. I can imagine that. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just my mother. She was the person. So much of
Speaker 1: that influence took place in Washington, d C. On our
Speaker 1: block where I grew up. My mother she was a force,
Speaker 1: Arnita Lorrain Thurston. That was her full name. And she
Speaker 1: had experienced a lot in her life, a lot of
Speaker 1: pain in her life, a lot of courage and bravery
Speaker 1: and boldness as well, and a lot of joy. And
Speaker 1: I think I got the benefit. I certainly got the
Speaker 1: consequence of all of her. I am you know there's
Speaker 1: a version of my mother's influence on me, which for
Speaker 1: much of my life I was like, it was great,
Speaker 1: this is just it was a simplified hero story. My
Speaker 1: mother went through a lot of stuff. She came through it,
Speaker 1: my father's murder, being one step along the journey of
Speaker 1: both of our lives. And she raises me, and she
Speaker 1: raises my sister, and she innovations, she's a computer program.
Speaker 1: Those are all true, they're not the whole truth. M hm.
Speaker 1: And so I just I saw that influences like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is she saved me. She made me both literally
Speaker 1: and she had an influence over me because of the
Speaker 1: experiences she had that have led me to see the
Speaker 1: world in a certain way, some experiences which maybe don't
Speaker 1: serve me that well, like seeing value in perfection to
Speaker 1: an unhealthy degree, fearing mistakes and binding up my sense
Speaker 1: of esteem in that. Can I ask you about your mama?
Speaker 1: Do you embrace the mistakes that you saw her making?
Speaker 1: Do you embrace the mistakes that maybe you saw her
Speaker 1: making with your sister or that you felt like around
Speaker 1: parenting or whatever it was. Do you or did you?
Speaker 1: Or have you consciously downloaded that into who your mother
Speaker 1: is for you? And is your mother still alive? No,
Speaker 1: she's not mine neither, And I I think I think
Speaker 1: what I'm asking is that in your memory, does it
Speaker 1: incorporate all of those things in a way of what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, of the mistakes at the step
Speaker 1: so the journey. So the short answer is yes, slightly
Speaker 1: longer answer is increasingly it's to stick with the update
Speaker 1: and download kind of metaphor that is in progress. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like that progress bar when you're installing some some software,
Speaker 1: and so I'm installing a new story of my mother.
Speaker 1: Is that the installation that happens after she dies? In part,
Speaker 1: it's also just time as I get to know myself more,
Speaker 1: I start to ask why, questions about how I got made,
Speaker 1: how I got here? Boom Wise in house they can coexist.
Speaker 1: Look at that, and so my mother is an answer
Speaker 1: to many of those questions for my own existence and
Speaker 1: my own belief sets and my own quirks, my own mistakes.
Speaker 1: And so to look back at this version of her
Speaker 1: that I have been holding for quite some time that
Speaker 1: did almost everything right, and then to see that that's
Speaker 1: not the case at all. Initially it's you know, with anger, frustration,
Speaker 1: you let you come back to life and let me
Speaker 1: talk to you. Right, I got some I got some
Speaker 1: questions for you. I got some big questions, and I
Speaker 1: got somehow don't make how end up in in the
Speaker 1: shallow grave with the why exactly? I need some answers.
Speaker 1: So that's the first response. And then it's slower but
Speaker 1: deeper compassion. It's like, of course, of course you're a person,
Speaker 1: right and and knowing what I already have long known
Speaker 1: of what she experienced, of course She's gonna show up
Speaker 1: in some ways that are always amazing, in some ways
Speaker 1: that are painful or even harmful to herself or two
Speaker 1: people she loves. And then I feel a sense of
Speaker 1: frustration with myself because it's like, don't even know my mom?
Speaker 1: You know, Did I let myself really know her? Was?
Speaker 1: Did I need to maintain a pattern and put her
Speaker 1: in his box of No, She's the hero. I needed
Speaker 1: a hero to define myself, right, I emerged from these
Speaker 1: fires and she was my firefighter. And that's it. Why
Speaker 1: you gotta go complicating things? Or maybe she dropped a
Speaker 1: match mores or twice whatever, like it's you know, sticking
Speaker 1: to the metaphor. We're playing with fire metaphors. So it's
Speaker 1: now at a point where all these things are happening
Speaker 1: at the same time, my increasing awareness of the multiple
Speaker 1: types of influences my mother had on me, positive, negative, neutral,
Speaker 1: accepting that range is more of the truth than any
Speaker 1: particularly positive thing I have clung to, and then freeing
Speaker 1: her in my mind from this standard ah, who oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's a big one, and freeing myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm like rocking around here, thinking I
Speaker 1: gotta do everything a certain way of and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: she made me do it, and I'm not giving her
Speaker 1: to grace to understand that she's actively choose, that she's
Speaker 1: responding to the stuff she went oh man. And then
Speaker 1: I feel just grateful on the best days, on the
Speaker 1: best days, in the best moments. I agree with you,
Speaker 1: the loop closest with gratitude on the best days and
Speaker 1: the days that it doesn't. I think having patience for
Speaker 1: it being a process in your life. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me something that grew out of a personal disaster? I mean,
Speaker 1: let you in on my process. I'm catalog and personal
Speaker 1: disasters trying too came out. It was a fun inventory
Speaker 1: to just put oneself through. It's like, okay, father murder,
Speaker 1: like that counts mother's death, calling cancer, divorce that I
Speaker 1: didn't see coming from first marriage, which one of these
Speaker 1: were to pick out of the cave, Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: and it will health issues and things like that. But
Speaker 1: that grew from personal disaster. I think it's the idea
Speaker 1: of something which whether it forced a U turn in
Speaker 1: one's life or it was an apparently in quotes bad thing,
Speaker 1: But when you look through the lens of time or
Speaker 1: perspective in looking backwards, you can actually see the tributaries
Speaker 1: that sprang from that moment and the things that grew
Speaker 1: out of it. You know, things we call bad, they
Speaker 1: could be bad and they could also have been super
Speaker 1: a fertile ground. My father's death, my father's murder was
Speaker 1: most definitely a tragedy, and a lot grew from that,
Speaker 1: most of me. I was seven eight years old the
Speaker 1: early nineties. I had infinitely more life without his having
Speaker 1: life than with the tectonic plates undergirding the structure. The
Speaker 1: ground on which I grew shifted dramatically when he died,
Speaker 1: placing a ton more influence in my mother's hands. Defining
Speaker 1: or not what masculinity is because I don't really have
Speaker 1: anybody to do that, And there's so many blessings in that,
Speaker 1: which is such an odd thing to say about a murder.
Speaker 1: They so many consequences more neutral e of that, And
Speaker 1: this journey thing we've been on has let me see
Speaker 1: that I'm still growing from his death, and not just
Speaker 1: because he wasn't around, but what it, what it meant
Speaker 1: for me, what I never dealt with because it happened
Speaker 1: and I was so young, and no one really helped
Speaker 1: me deal with it, and so I'm sitting here now
Speaker 1: like revisiting it, and Michael, that's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 1: And then it brings me to this place of knowing
Speaker 1: myself more. You know, again, I had this simplified factual.
Speaker 1: Let's move on from Okay, agree you Daddy's not here.
Speaker 1: It's a whole bunch of stuff about his life, you
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a whole bunch of people. Part of
Speaker 1: his life you don't know anyway, life of mine, you know,
Speaker 1: and life with my mother and life with my sister
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah blah and all these things. That's
Speaker 1: been also a very public version of the story that
Speaker 1: I've told. And to go back to that tragic moment
Speaker 1: and say like, oh, I'm still living with that death.
Speaker 1: Actually it's so so much has comfortable. I've reconnected with
Speaker 1: his family in the past few years. I've got to
Speaker 1: live in grandmother I didn't know about. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of other relationships and experiences and parts of my life
Speaker 1: that are activated much later. But the piece of it
Speaker 1: that feels most fertile is this internal journey of who
Speaker 1: am I and how long I didn't approach that part
Speaker 1: of myself did it live in a separate place, like
Speaker 1: in a box in a room and a yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was in It was in a room in the
Speaker 1: house of me, and I had locked the door. Was
Speaker 1: there a moment or an occurrence that made you go
Speaker 1: and open the door and begin that work. That's it's
Speaker 1: difficult to pinpoint, but I know a precipitating moment. I
Speaker 1: hate I hate that I get to say this. I
Speaker 1: think I have to thank Mark Zuckerberg for it. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, all right, well, well okay, but I mean
Speaker 1: I can be grateful for him if he can SA
Speaker 1: tell me, tell me it was Facebook, wasn't it? It was?
Speaker 1: It was the Book of Faces. It was that, you know,
Speaker 1: ad serving democracy, undermining birthday reminder service. Um. And I
Speaker 1: got a message on it from a cousin who saw
Speaker 1: me on TV and was it's like, I'm your cousin. Hey,
Speaker 1: I remember you from blah blah blah blah blah. We
Speaker 1: wonder what happened with you? And I was like, everybody
Speaker 1: says they're your cousin when you're on TV, and to
Speaker 1: to tell you to so much. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: we've got a big business. Many many tunday to be
Speaker 1: our brand. I you know, I saw that message and
Speaker 1: I put it back in that locked room in the
Speaker 1: house of me, and I just ignored it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think for a couple of years, if I'm honest,
Speaker 1: I have to. I mean, there's time stamps on everything,
Speaker 1: so I could go back and find out. But it
Speaker 1: was it wasn't the next day or the next month,
Speaker 1: because that is one't ready. And I went back and
Speaker 1: we finally, you know, we met up. She introduced me
Speaker 1: to the others. It just there's ripple effects to this,
Speaker 1: you know, in all parts of my family and and
Speaker 1: in all parts of me. So that unlocked a wing
Speaker 1: of the house, it turns out. And then I started
Speaker 1: walking down the hall and I'm like, oh, what's in
Speaker 1: this room? Oh? This relationship with my sister, what's in
Speaker 1: this room? Oh? This is what? What? What is? What
Speaker 1: is even a man relationship in this room? Gun violence?
Speaker 1: What's in this room? Racism? Police, brutality? What's in this Oh?
Speaker 1: My goodness, there's rooms inside the rooms, and there's forgiveness
Speaker 1: in there. You know, there's updated stories of self behind
Speaker 1: those doors doors. I didn't even know we're there. That's
Speaker 1: my answer for now. I reserved the right to update, upgrade, modify,
Speaker 1: and change these at any point. Great. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: you are in charge of your own updates and it's
Speaker 1: not Tim Cook. You are a joy. I'm so grateful.
Speaker 1: I just thank you are the best. I really did
Speaker 1: thank you so. I mean, you are the best at this.
Speaker 1: You have successfully brought me to the brink of many tears.
Speaker 1: I have successfully me to manage them. I had my communication.
Speaker 1: I was digging my nails into my palms to cry.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you. Thank you for opening some more
Speaker 1: doors and for being fun about it is what I
Speaker 1: try to do, and to be in the compassionate hands
Speaker 1: of someone else who does that is I felt taken
Speaker 1: care of here. Oh, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Season two of Barrotunday's brilliant podcast, How to Citizen is
Speaker 1: out now on the I Heart Radio app. In this season,
Speaker 1: he asked the question how can we citizen with so
Speaker 1: much division? And I absolutely loved the first episode with
Speaker 1: the writer and documentary and Astra Taylor, where they basically
Speaker 1: talk about the Platonic idea of democracy, which, as far
Speaker 1: as I can make out, Plato sort of meant that
Speaker 1: you should just get rid of politicians and just have
Speaker 1: the thinkers lead everybody into whatever was coming next. Please
Speaker 1: check out his podcast, it is extremely edifying. Mini Questions
Speaker 1: is hosted and written by me Mini Driver, Supervising producer
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original
Speaker 1: music Sorry Baby by Minni Driver, additional music by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay,
Speaker 1: Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and a Nick
Speaker 1: Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescador, Kate Driver and
Speaker 1: Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver