Speaker 1: When Black Panther came out, I was like, I should
Speaker 1: have been in this. I'm not even like an actor.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm black. I should have been in this.
Speaker 1: It's like my reparations request. I have met Ryan Coogler
Speaker 1: a few times in different ways. I let it be known.
Speaker 1: It's like I'll do anything for Black Panther too, like
Speaker 1: wakandans a janitor just like in the background, like a
Speaker 1: squeaky wheel in the background. It's just more about being
Speaker 1: a part of the universe, you know, this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, I'm feeling you're going to have to run
Speaker 1: with this of curated reparation. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: some interesting I'd like to get the tea way and
Speaker 1: Jeremy Harris have to say about the Geese reparation. I
Speaker 1: want to be a Black Panther movie. Yeah, like I
Speaker 1: want massages on a weekly basis to work out the
Speaker 1: knots of races. Did that reside within my body? So
Speaker 1: it's very related, you know. And it's like a job creator.
Speaker 1: You know, that's like a real that's a skill, and
Speaker 1: I'm rewarding that skill with tax per Hello, I'm mini driver,
Speaker 1: I'm welcome to many questions. I've always loved to prous questionnaire.
Speaker 1: It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to
Speaker 1: reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions,
Speaker 1: there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So
Speaker 1: I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted what
Speaker 1: I think are seven of the most important questions you
Speaker 1: could ever ask someone. They are when and where were
Speaker 1: you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself?
Speaker 1: What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What
Speaker 1: question would you most like answered, What person, place, or
Speaker 1: experience has shaped you the most? What would be your
Speaker 1: last meal? And can you tell me something in your
Speaker 1: life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The
Speaker 1: more people we ask, the more we begin to see
Speaker 1: what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've
Speaker 1: gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am
Speaker 1: honored and humbled to have had a asked to engage with.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Barrett Tunday Thurston. Now, as you know,
Speaker 1: I ask all of my guests the same seven questions,
Speaker 1: and I choose to share with you some of my
Speaker 1: favorite conversations that emerge from those questions. However, there have
Speaker 1: been conversations where each answer provides a thread that just
Speaker 1: cannot be cut, or helps paint some new version of
Speaker 1: a larger picture. My interview with Barrett tun Day was
Speaker 1: one of those conversations, and with every single question, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to share more and more of our discussion.
Speaker 1: So I will be sharing that conversation I had with
Speaker 1: him with you over the course of two episodes today
Speaker 1: and next week. I am talking to Barrettunday Thurston. All right,
Speaker 1: when and where were you happyest? I you just you
Speaker 1: just jump right in there. Oh yeah, I'm not like
Speaker 1: we did, I thought, Okay, let the trials begin. When
Speaker 1: and where? It was the summer. I was standing on
Speaker 1: a beach facing west That beach was in Senegal, facing Westman,
Speaker 1: looking across the Atlantic Ocean back towards the United States.
Speaker 1: This was my first time having flown across any ocean,
Speaker 1: my first time having been anywhere on the continent of Africa.
Speaker 1: I had graduated high school a few weeks earlier. I
Speaker 1: was on a trip with fellow students from my high school,
Speaker 1: all black, chaperoned by our black Senegalese French teacher who
Speaker 1: was not my French teacher because I didn't study French.
Speaker 1: I studied Spanish. But he was offering trips to Africa,
Speaker 1: and we were like, we're going, And most of us
Speaker 1: were not in his French class, but we were all
Speaker 1: in in the class of black stuff. So standing on
Speaker 1: that beach, I felt grateful and overwhelmed and at significant peace.
Speaker 1: I hadn't felt that way up until that point in
Speaker 1: my life. All in one moment, and the waves were big,
Speaker 1: there was this like pacing in between them, and I
Speaker 1: walked out into the ocean and I had I had
Speaker 1: a thought that well, not sound exciting, but it was
Speaker 1: so profoundly happy. I thought if I died right here,
Speaker 1: I'd be Okay. I've had a really good life and
Speaker 1: I got to come back here and not want to die.
Speaker 1: But if something should happen, I don't think I would
Speaker 1: have massive regrets. At seventeen, I thought this to myself,
Speaker 1: and I felt happy in that place at that time
Speaker 1: in a way that still stands out to me at
Speaker 1: forty three years old. Wow, that's pretty young to really
Speaker 1: let happiness in one and have the acceptance of it
Speaker 1: being enough. Because I feel like happiness is so often
Speaker 1: quantified by that there are aspects that aren't enough. If
Speaker 1: I had more of this thing, I would be happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: happiness as more, yes, exactly. So at seventeen, to have
Speaker 1: that and also to have awareness of that is amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, Senegal's powerful place, I guess you know apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was facing west on the western shore. Yeah, looking
Speaker 1: back here, and I think I've never had that level
Speaker 1: of distance from America. I had been to Canada, just
Speaker 1: barely slipped across the Nova Scotia on a trip with
Speaker 1: my mother. I had been to Mexico by training. Again
Speaker 1: with with my mother, we did some traveling, hit almost
Speaker 1: every national park in the United States. But to look
Speaker 1: and just see horizon and know that there's this massive
Speaker 1: place on the other side that's been the source of
Speaker 1: my identity, a ton of pain, some opportunity, and to
Speaker 1: feel a totally different energy and feel probably at some
Speaker 1: level safe. It's just a relief. Yeah, And having that
Speaker 1: having that perspective quite apart from the fact that I
Speaker 1: don't know what is it. Maybe forty four percent of
Speaker 1: Americans don't have a passport, right and I almost didn't
Speaker 1: have my passport. I really dropped the ball. I had
Speaker 1: to do a name chain situation, and there was paperwork stuff.
Speaker 1: I was born with a different name that I had
Speaker 1: been using, and there was no This was the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like just go to this website and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, just go to this building and wait
Speaker 1: in line. And we had to expedite it and it
Speaker 1: came in just in time. It's very nerve wracking, but
Speaker 1: you did it and you got that, and then you
Speaker 1: had the awareness you weren't just swelling as Senegalese bear
Speaker 1: on the beach, Like that's an amazing thing. I feel
Speaker 1: like I read that your mother has been extraordinarily influential
Speaker 1: and that like this is apartheid was like the first
Speaker 1: book that she gave you or something. She laid really
Speaker 1: good ground for you to be seventeen and to be
Speaker 1: able to stand on that beach and have that that
Speaker 1: epiphany or that awareness. Yeah. She she dropped me into
Speaker 1: the deep end of the pool. So when I stood
Speaker 1: alone in a wavy ocean, I was not afraid. Mm hmm. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my happy place to I don't have the same
Speaker 1: kind of story, but put me in the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: water in the ocean and let the waves come. There's
Speaker 1: this rule. If I'm within reach of the ocean, I
Speaker 1: have to touch it. Yes, it's the thing I miss
Speaker 1: most about. I'm currently in London. I dream about the ocean.
Speaker 1: I do have run every morning when I wake up
Speaker 1: through the beach where I live, and I touched this
Speaker 1: rock at every day, which is the end of my run,
Speaker 1: and then I jump in the sea right afterwards. That's
Speaker 1: powerful sea. It comes, but it's like it's so the
Speaker 1: specific and so not a sea like you called the
Speaker 1: sea all oceans of seas if you're English, it's weird
Speaker 1: because we're parochial and we have this very small like
Speaker 1: idea the sea. It's a big ocean, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ocean does feel orders of magnitude larger. It's like this
Speaker 1: epic scale thing, whereas the sea is surmountable in my
Speaker 1: mind definitely, But the sea doesn't have surf. To me, oceans,
Speaker 1: the ocean has consequence. The sea is like it's gentler
Speaker 1: and less less aggressive, and they have personalities because it's
Speaker 1: like the sea of this and the sea of that is,
Speaker 1: whereas the ocean is just too big to have a
Speaker 1: single personality. Yeah, the ocean, sea ocean, which actually makes
Speaker 1: me feel safe. That power makes me feel like that
Speaker 1: notion of something more powerful than me in nature. It's
Speaker 1: always been that feeling. So you, this is your your
Speaker 1: unlocking something. I share that with you in that I've
Speaker 1: been drawn always to water, big water, hanging out in waves,
Speaker 1: really fun, big wind, and I loved and storms. I
Speaker 1: will go out into a blizzard. I recently went out
Speaker 1: into a sandstorm. I like the feeling of in consequence,
Speaker 1: sometimes not as a permanent state, but the moment of
Speaker 1: feeling small, feeling buffeted, feeling held by this powerful force.
Speaker 1: It's very comforting to me. I wonder if it taps
Speaker 1: into like a reptilian brain, of that notion of connection,
Speaker 1: that you cannot be anything except completely connected to your
Speaker 1: humanity and therefore your mortality. When you are feeling the
Speaker 1: power of things that could remove you if you didn't
Speaker 1: stay present and focus, or it just feels like the womb,
Speaker 1: the womb, the womb. My son said the other day,
Speaker 1: why is womb and all the hens? And I was like,
Speaker 1: because uterist just doesn't rhyme with anything. Well, it's true,
Speaker 1: and they weren't allowed to say vagina or any other
Speaker 1: part of a woman, only that life giving part of
Speaker 1: quote unquote was it for us? Let's just talk about
Speaker 1: that womb exactly. The thing was finer than the angels.
Speaker 1: Stop stop me, stop me, you stop me. I'm going
Speaker 1: to stop you with it. I'm going to stop myself
Speaker 1: with another question. You have a lot of self inquiry
Speaker 1: about you. So what quality do you least like about
Speaker 1: yourself body? Okay? This changes over time. I've gotten to
Speaker 1: know my of better over time. That seventeen year old
Speaker 1: thirty knew himself. There was so much that kid didn't
Speaker 1: know so much, And hopefully I'll say something similar about
Speaker 1: my forty three year old self decades from now. The
Speaker 1: quality about me that I like the least is my
Speaker 1: valuing of perfection, my devaluing of mistakes when I make them,
Speaker 1: my association of doing something wrong with being wrong. That's
Speaker 1: a really good distinction, by the way, learning doing wrong
Speaker 1: and being wrong. Yeah, why do you think we haven't?
Speaker 1: It comes up a lot like I would say that
Speaker 1: in my life and talking to people and asking this question,
Speaker 1: they would they would say a version of perfectionism and mistakes.
Speaker 1: But why have we not figured out that the mistakes
Speaker 1: are what what makes us grow like we know that
Speaker 1: their mistakes make a scrap. We know that there is
Speaker 1: this actually incredible force that making mistakes has, like why
Speaker 1: why do we diss it so much? So there's a difference.
Speaker 1: There are different levels of knowing. I know that mistakes
Speaker 1: are gifts and opportunities, that they are how I have
Speaker 1: learned some of my most valuable lessons. I know that
Speaker 1: perfection is worth pursuit but probably never achieved, and that
Speaker 1: is a feature, not a bug, of that attribute. I
Speaker 1: know all this. I know it in physics, I know
Speaker 1: it mathematically, I know it mentally. But then there's a
Speaker 1: level of knowing, which is being an existing and feeling
Speaker 1: and embodying. And I think that gap is a consistent
Speaker 1: thing in many forms of knowledge that we experienced. Certainly
Speaker 1: that I do more to a tangible point. I think
Speaker 1: that I have had a hard time not judging myself
Speaker 1: harshly for all manner of mistakes, because I learned that
Speaker 1: from somewhere the simple answer why don't we do this?
Speaker 1: Somebody taught us, And maybe they didn't put it in
Speaker 1: a lesson plan and make us memorize it in drills
Speaker 1: in a classroom, but by some example or by some incentsive.
Speaker 1: We learned these things, So what has to happen in
Speaker 1: the unlearning of it? Like when you're a thoughtful person,
Speaker 1: like I pay attention to my life, the lives of
Speaker 1: my community and my friends, and I listen. It's partly
Speaker 1: why I want to do this podcast, because I want
Speaker 1: to ask these questions of people. We know what certain
Speaker 1: things give us, and yet we don't let that change us.
Speaker 1: We don't let the unlearning happen. We just, at very best,
Speaker 1: maybe continue to make the mistake and have the awareness
Speaker 1: that it's a mistake, which is progress. Awareness is a
Speaker 1: great it's a great achievement. So then patients with the
Speaker 1: pro says is perhaps our best ally. And you know,
Speaker 1: we are afraid. Sometimes I'll try to speak first personally. Um,
Speaker 1: I for much of my life wasn't aware that I
Speaker 1: carried this pressure. I felt the pressure, I didn't understand
Speaker 1: its source. And becoming aware of it it's like a
Speaker 1: big thing. I think. I'm still becoming aware of how
Speaker 1: many places this shows up and like, oh, I thought
Speaker 1: I just really cared about how to use the spreadsheets, Like,
Speaker 1: but why do I care so much about how to
Speaker 1: put the stuff into the spreadsheet. Oh there's something going
Speaker 1: on here. You don't want to be judge, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be wrong, you don't want to fail someone else. Maybe,
Speaker 1: So even understanding myself and this fear that I have
Speaker 1: in this association with this part of me that I'm
Speaker 1: not excited about, I enjoy that. I'm starting to enjoy that.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to say, like, oh, that's you, though, you
Speaker 1: you gotta know yourself. Man. And I love that guy, right.
Speaker 1: I'm I've been disappointed, I've been harsh with him, but
Speaker 1: also I'm like, that's my dude, that's me, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if there's one person to love in this whole world
Speaker 1: is me and and and to get better at that
Speaker 1: will help me do that with others. So I know that. Intellectually,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to feel that in my body. The change.
Speaker 1: Change is scary. Change is why I've never done this before.
Speaker 1: I've it's been so rare. Can I Can I do
Speaker 1: it on demand? Could I become something where something different
Speaker 1: is normal? That's that's really scary and it's exciting. And
Speaker 1: I think what you said about patience is a big
Speaker 1: piece of it. And for this particular part of me,
Speaker 1: patience isn't natural because because patience means I'm not yet perfect. Ah,
Speaker 1: so I'm just making mistakes for longer? Is that? What
Speaker 1: is that? What patience? Patience is being on the car
Speaker 1: Jo and be like, yeah, I long to it there?
Speaker 1: When am I going to get that? These are questions
Speaker 1: I'm still answering, practicing answering Can I shift? Can I
Speaker 1: enjoy the process that goes from mild discovery of hidden
Speaker 1: part of self to deeper awareness of that self? Two
Speaker 1: attempts to adjust how that self shows up to persistent
Speaker 1: love of that self no matter how that self shows up.
Speaker 1: I mean that sounds great, That's very difficult. It's very
Speaker 1: difficult because circumstance, like the the wayward wild card in
Speaker 1: the pack of life. Excuse the whole analogy wayward wild
Speaker 1: card in the pack of life, but it is, it's circumstance.
Speaker 1: We can get all teed up with self knowledge and
Speaker 1: self love and patience, and then there's this this aspect
Speaker 1: which I don't know if it's spiritual, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it is scientifically based and it's purely energetic, or
Speaker 1: if it's a bittle of both. But that that can
Speaker 1: come in and as I feel like we've seen in
Speaker 1: this past year everything can shift that we have no
Speaker 1: control of her, and in a way, all you then
Speaker 1: have is your connection to self and maybe the work
Speaker 1: that you've done in order to weather. There's those conditions.
Speaker 1: I mean, you say you love storms like last last
Speaker 1: year was a storm Like it was a quiet, creepy
Speaker 1: storm and sometimes loud and rambunctious, overwhelming storm. It was
Speaker 1: many storms. Yeah, convergence of things creating a perfect storm.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I go that far,
Speaker 1: but it's a fun word to use given what we've
Speaker 1: just talked about, I know, and interesting to see where
Speaker 1: it will where it journeys too. But I do think again,
Speaker 1: it's this awareness that you seem to have of your
Speaker 1: process and of your journey and learning to love the
Speaker 1: journey that's the thing. This awareness of self and patients
Speaker 1: with self and shifting away from judgment of self are
Speaker 1: things that I preach about our collective self. Everything I
Speaker 1: just said about myself is something that I have a
Speaker 1: much easier time acknowledging about the collective me known as
Speaker 1: the member of the United States as a nation. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is not a perfect place yeah, it's okay. We
Speaker 1: gotta work on it, though. We gotta work. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, coach when it comes to seeing very clearly
Speaker 1: and trying to be motivational, etcetera. And then when I
Speaker 1: shift that grammar a little bit from we to I
Speaker 1: first person collective, first person singular, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: now it's it's really personal. Now I get it, you
Speaker 1: know a bit more. This is doesn't come naturally to
Speaker 1: many of us as individuals or as collectives. I think
Speaker 1: it's work and that deepens my my empathy for the
Speaker 1: project yea, of just being for the project of being
Speaker 1: a human, poor sweet humans. And what relationship real or
Speaker 1: fictionalized defines love for you defines love for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very present. So my relationship with my wife defines
Speaker 1: love for me. And it does so because Ah, it's
Speaker 1: been such a loving lesson and experience. I used to
Speaker 1: imagine um and think of love as this like place
Speaker 1: you get to. It's like, oh, we we fall in love.
Speaker 1: We're in a state of love. We we've decided I
Speaker 1: choose you, you choose me, and we just kind of
Speaker 1: like coast, you know, at that point. But we're in love.
Speaker 1: Therefore what I don't know. I just that's the only
Speaker 1: part that matters. But what is it? What does it mean?
Speaker 1: How do you experience it? And and what I have learned,
Speaker 1: not through reading anything or someone telling me anything, but
Speaker 1: through being in relationship is that it is an ever
Speaker 1: changing journey. And that kind of like the perfection thing
Speaker 1: we talked about. I think you pursue love and choose
Speaker 1: to commit to relating with another person in love, but
Speaker 1: you you don't rest in it. It doesn't you don't
Speaker 1: stop because they don't stop. You know, my wife changes,
Speaker 1: she wants this, that or the other. She's learning about herself.
Speaker 1: She's a bit of a different person today than yesterday,
Speaker 1: ever so slightly, sometimes dramatically, but usually usually it's barely noticeable.
Speaker 1: But over years a person changes, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: I changed too. So if we've both locked in and
Speaker 1: said we're in love and then we both change, that,
Speaker 1: what are we now, right unless we're it's a process
Speaker 1: and listening to each each other and adapting, and it's
Speaker 1: a shared journey. I just I had the simplest idea
Speaker 1: of what love was probably imported from a lot of media,
Speaker 1: you know, painting these pictures and secondhand interpretations of pop
Speaker 1: culture and other people's relationships who I could observe from
Speaker 1: a distance, but if you're not in it, you don't
Speaker 1: really know. It's like a person's mind. You can't really
Speaker 1: know it unless you're inside. And so, yeah, my wife Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: my relationship with her, I should say, defines love most
Speaker 1: of any relationship I've had, which is in part why
Speaker 1: she's my wife. Yeah, it's a beautiful journey, not always
Speaker 1: an easy journey, but that commitment and that then the
Speaker 1: knowledge that we're there for each other and growing with
Speaker 1: each other, giving each other opportunity to become more. That
Speaker 1: feels like love in a much deeper way. Romance is different.
Speaker 1: Romance is fun, that's the thing. But I think it
Speaker 1: supposed to be is we're not. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: ever evolving at the same rate. Like there there's an
Speaker 1: acceleration that can happen in each of a partnership. It's life.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend can be on fire, I mean not literally,
Speaker 1: but you know on fire is just a regular occurrence,
Speaker 1: like you see it, like it happens often. We would
Speaker 1: have all kinds of extinguishing but like he'll raise ahead
Speaker 1: and where he's at and again, whether it's circumstance or
Speaker 1: spiritual or whatever it is that I'm going through, I'm
Speaker 1: not in the same place. But you're right. Love is
Speaker 1: in the accommodation of where people are out in their journey,
Speaker 1: and it is amazing when you see them hang out
Speaker 1: and help lift you up or just hang out and wait.
Speaker 1: It's all a journey. I mean, you and I could
Speaker 1: basically distill all of this into like really cool fridge magnets.
Speaker 1: I was thinking T shirts, but productizing regardless, definitely, but
Speaker 1: for sure we could definitely monetize our shared philosophy, which
Speaker 1: is cool. Which is the point of life. I think
Speaker 1: it's the point of philosophy. Yeah, certainly, money is definitely
Speaker 1: the point of philosophy. I think that Plato missed it.
Speaker 1: He is too busy talking about, you know, the tyranny
Speaker 1: of democracy and he really need to be focusing on Like, yo,
Speaker 1: how can I make some T shirts for the promise
Speaker 1: of capitalism? How about that way? Now at the bright side, there, buddy,
Speaker 1: be a human. Don't go into politics. Tune in next
Speaker 1: time for part two of my conversation with Baratunday Thurston
Speaker 1: Baratunday will answer, what question he would most like answered,
Speaker 1: What person, place, or experience most altered his life, and
Speaker 1: what in his life has grown out of a personal disaster.
Speaker 1: Many Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver,
Speaker 1: supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown.
Speaker 1: Original music Sorry Baby by Minni Driver, Additional music by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Minnie Driver. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella
Speaker 1: and Annicke Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescador, Kate
Speaker 1: Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support
Speaker 1: Henry Driver