Transcript of Marc Brackett (on emotional intelligence) New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Randall Shepherd Cobb Tex Hobbs, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

That's boring.

I know, it's too many.

You know what, it's okay, it's okay.

It already tipped in the first one. Uh, today we have Mark Brackett. He is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yale University. He He's also a bestselling author with the book Permission to Feel. And of course, the book he's here to talk about, Dealing with Feeling. Beautiful episode.

I've already recommended it to a few people.

Yeah, he's a special, special dude. Including yourself. Yes, it's incredible. If anyone has a kid at a school where the curriculum is SEL, social emotional learning, That's Mark. Yeah, that's his curriculum. Anyways, please enjoy Mark Brackett. Hi there. Welcome, Mark.

Nice to meet you.

I'm Monica.

Nice to meet you, Monica. Nice to meet you.

Where do you live, Mark?

I live in two places. I live in New York City.

Okay.

And I live in the countryside of Connecticut.

Oh, okay.

Speaking of merch, you have a nice sweater on.

Yeah, you do have a nice sweater on. There's a lot of fun colors around the collar.

I actually was like, wait a minute here, I'm a little matchy-matchy with my socks and my thing.

It's nice.

You do.

And Monica's the perfect person to observe this 'cause she's a fashionista.

Oh, okay.

I do like fashion. Look, the collar's kind of mad.

They kind of mad.

I worked hard to get this collar.

They did not want to do it.

Yeah, you're very stylish. You have beautiful Adidas, and these Adidas are of the current trend. I've noticed the cooler people at my kids' school are wearing—

Where do they go to school?

This charter down the street.

Okay. Because I do— I work with thousands of schools.

Your curriculum is at this school, the SEL curriculum?

It is.

It is.

Oh, that's amazing.

Probably rare that you would be interviewed by someone whose child is the product of your brainchild.

Only two people. Chrissy Teigen.

Oh, okay, okay. But let's start at the beginning, which would be New Jersey. My first question is, how does one determine whether they're gonna spell Mark with a C or a K?

I mean, my hunch is that it's a Jewish thing, actually.

Oh, okay, that makes sense.

I don't know why. I grew up Jewish, and Mark in the Bible is with a K. I don't know, something. Okay.

And your dad was—

my dad is not Jewish.

He's not Jewish?

No, he converted.

Was he a charismatic man?

I wouldn't say charismatic. I don't know what I would say.

Depends what day it is.

Is he still alive?

No, they both— my parents have died, so it's easy for me to write about them and talk about them.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have that luxury too with my father.

A good guy, but charismatic, I wouldn't describe him.

Okay. Just salesman. That's generous.

Well, he wasn't. No, he wasn't. He was a repairman.

Oh, he was a repairman. And tell me about your mom.

She also was a character. She grew up In the Bronx. My grandfather owned a liquor store. I think he was a crooked liquor store owner.

Oh, wow.

One of his clients was Jake LaMotta, I remember.

Oh, the boxer.

Yeah. From my mother's gathering, he would pour half the bottle and put water in it because he was so drunk that he could sell half the bottle. Oh, okay. Yeah, my uncle was not known for his scruples.

But was she tough? If you're from the Bronx and dad owns a liquor store.

No, she was neurotic.

And how did that manifest?

I think she was more overly attentive to what wasn't happening for her.

Oh, okay.

Um, that's why I'm a psychologist.

Research is me, sir.

Yeah, we're all trying to get some answers that eluded us in our childhood. But tell me about childhood.

I grew up in northern New Jersey. Two parents.

Does that mean it's close to Manhattan?

Yes. 25 minutes outside the Lincoln Tunnel. Little town called Clifton, next to a more poshy town called Montclair. Which people have heard.

I've heard of that.

That's where Bobby Brown restored that amazing hotel. Yeah, I believe, right?

I think you're right. I don't go back too often. So yeah, two parents, mom, dad, two brothers. They're technically half-brothers. My first book, which is called Permission to Feel, I go into a lot of detail about that, which is that, you know, from the age 5 to 10, abused by my parents' best friend, which was a neighbor. Yeah.

Also a Cub Scout.

He was a worker at the Boys Club where I would go after school. And yeah, yeah. But that lasted, unfortunately, for 5 years.

Yeah, that's an eternity.

That's double your life. Yeah, half your life. The same amount of time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say, wait a minute.

Sorry, I'm really not good at math, but yeah.

At 10, you had already spent half of your life in this situation, in this dark secret.

Yeah, because I never disclosed it.

Can you remember the motivators of not disclosing? Was it that threats had been made that someone would get hurt, or just your shame of being involved in some sense of responsibility for it all?

I think it's an all the above kind of thing. You know, I joke now after 20 years of therapy and a PhD in psychology that my father, he also was from the Bronx originally, from Manhattan actually, but, you know, the tough side of Manhattan. My father would say things like when I was a teenager to give you a clue into his charisma, like, "Son, I used to beat kids up like you." Sure, that's comforting. Yeah. Okay, Dad, we could talk about that in your parenting class.

Yeah, he really wanted you to be alpha macho.

Yeah. I don't know a lot about his childhood. My hunch is that it wasn't I mean, I know it wasn't a healthy one. His father would, like, burn cigarettes. My grandmother, I'm pretty sure, was schizophrenic. I only remember— I'm having a flashback. So when I was around maybe 9 or 10, my grandmother, to make money, lived in a house in upstate New York in Cooperstown, this little nowhere land. So I'm like 9 years old. It's a spooky house. I mean, this house is not like a nice country house. It's like Spookville. And my grandmother used to take care of old people with mental illness to make money. So like Elsa would be sitting there rocking in the chair. I'm like 9 years old.

It's a house of horrors.

Yes. And my grandmother promised me a horse. And I'm like, okay, where's the horse?

Yeah, yeah.

So that's a glimpse into my childhood. That's my father's side. My mother's side was a liquor store owner. And then, you know, my grandmother had terrible bipolar disorder and was treated with electric shock therapy, and my mother took her for that.

The immediate silver lining of this is, on paper, no shot. You're going to be riddled with mental health issues. You're going to repeat the cycle. And I'm not betting on you.

Right.

So, like, that's—

you are betting on me now. I hope immediately—

now, immediately, the silver lining is like, yeah, it doesn't necessarily matter what ingredients go into it.

Well, that's, you know, as a psychologist who does research, Part of me really doesn't like to do these predictive studies because if you would have, like, measured my social and emotional capacities, my mental health, my relationships, I had self-hatred, I had an eating disorder, I was lonely, depressed, everything. And you would say, "Okay, that kid—" I know the percentages.

80% chance you're gonna be an addict. Right. 55% chance of this. Educational achievement— Yeah. —is this number.

Exactly. I'm not a big fan of that because I think that's too deterministic. Deterministic. Mm-hmm. Just to go back, 'cause the real critical element in my childhood was basically a magic wand that happened, which was I had an uncle. Marvin. Yep, who was a middle school teacher in the Catskill Mountains by day. By night, he was a band leader at the Concord Hotel, these famous Borscht Belt hotels. How fun.

Did he play the clarinet? You just mind your own business. He was a trumpet player. Oh, trumpet player. Okay. Sorry. So was he dazzling? He was in show business in some regard?

You can't even picture this. Imagine like the Robin Williams character in Dead Poets Society singing La Bamba at a Jewish resort in the Catskills who teaches social studies by day.

Wow. Yeah, it's— what's the Patrick Swayze movie? Yeah, Dirty Dancing. It's Dirty Dancing meets Dead Poets Society.

Exactly. So he happened to be going to grad school near my hometown in Jersey, was staying with us one summer, and we're sitting in the backyard And he just looks at me like no one else had ever looked at me before. And he's like, "Hey, Mark, how you feeling? How's it going?" Yeah. There it goes. Everything comes out. I hate my life. I'm being abused. Oh, wow. All this happened. It was a pretty crazy moment.

Do you think what made him a good candidate in some ways was simply also the knowledge that he was gonna leave?

Like, he might take your secret with him. Yeah. I don't think so. No, okay. 'Cause I've now done research on these people. I call them the Uncle Marvins in our world. Uh-huh. And I think he had a number of key qualities. Number one, he was nonjudgmental. He was so curious about my life. He just asked all these great questions. He was warm. Now, my parents were kind of warm, but my mother would be triggered with that, like, you know, I could do that and she'd be triggered. Yeah, that's— And my father was the same. That's— yeah. Yeah, my father was the same. Like, you know, who do you think you're talking to? And I always say that with a father who just tells you to toughen up all the time and a mother who's gonna have a breakdown no matter what you say, like, I'd be bullied and I'm getting bullied. Oh my God, I can't handle it. I'm gonna have a breakdown. I'm like, I'm the one having the breakdown.

Exactly. Yeah, you're either too fragile to exist or you need to be this hyper-masculine, bulletproof figure. Exactly. Uncle Marvin was different.

He was warm, he was nonjudgmental. He listened. He was compassionate. I'm sharing with you, like, the results of 75 studies that I've done. After I wrote this thing called Permission to Feel, this term I kind of wrote about, I decided, like, that was an anecdote. I decided that my uncle gave me permission to feel. And I was wondering how many people have an Uncle Marvin or an Aunt Maria or whoever, someone in their lives that create the conditions for them to be open and honest and truthful about their feelings. And what my research shows across the world is only a third of us—

Eee! —have someone like that in our life or in our past. Yeah. The only way I was able to say out loud that it had happened, my motivation was very much, I'm defective, like, no one's gonna love me if they know this. Yeah. Two, I'm gay. Where I grew up, at the time I grew up, that meant I was gay.

I knew what the—

label of gay meant, which was ostracized from everyone in school. So, yeah, the stakes of it felt really enormous. And then I carried that for, I guess, probably 10 years. And then a girl in my senior year, while talking at a Burger King on the hood in the parking lot, told me that she had been raped that summer by somebody and was just so available and honest. It would have felt like a crime to not match her vulnerability, right? It would have felt really disingenuous. So then I told her, did Did you have an Uncle Marvin? I would say she was, right? I think she's the person that got that out of me. I don't know when it comes out, if ever it comes out without her.

Yeah. Well, I think you were. He was. That's why she said it to him.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I was.

You were that person for each other. Yeah.

I was warm and nonjudgmental. Maybe she felt comfortable to tell me that, and then I felt like I owed that back to her.

Yeah. What about for you? Did you have an Aunt Maria or Uncle Marvin?

No, I wouldn't say anyone in my family could hear anything super sensitive.

Bonnie's first generation Indian.

Yeah. Yeah.

So emotions are probably to be avoided.

Emotions are to be, or they're scared. Like, it's not that you can have them. It's positive emotions only. Yeah. Otherwise it feels like you're burdening them because then they're worried. It's kind of the same. It's not like, even still it's like that. It's like, okay, I have to tell you something. And then you see the stress on there.

They're trying.

They're trying. Trying to be there, but they're like, okay, it's— yeah. And I'm like, oh no, now they're so stressed about this thing. So no, I don't think I did. But I didn't have any— I mean, I did have friends. I did have a lot of friends.

Yeah, do they have to be older?

No. I didn't have capital T trauma to report.

I mean, everybody's got a story. I think that what's critical about this going back to the research for a minute, is that it does predict a lot about our lives. And so I've done studies where it's like, you have one, you don't have one, what's different about your personality? What's different about your mental health? What's different about your life satisfaction? And I find huge differences. Yeah. Like 15% differences in people's purpose and meaning in life.

Can I add one thing, which is kind of comical, is like, you would think abuse is so specific, but at the core, You and I have the same fear, which is you were Indian, did not want anyone to know 'cause that would lead to exclusion. I was secretly gay 'cause I had been molested and was gonna lead to exclusion. Like, funny enough, the driving force is still like, I'm not gonna be part of my community from the shame, yeah.

Yeah, and I was gay or am gay. Yeah. And so I was, even when I was like a teenager and I was having some courage to talk about it, my parents blamed it on my abuse. It's like, oy. Right. You know, it's like, you just think you're gay because you were abused. I'm like, well, actually, it's like a really different phenomenon. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Yes. And it implies that what you have is damaged. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Very complicated. I mean, I grew up in New Jersey where the only gay guys that I had access to in terms of like knowing what it meant to be gay was like my mother's hairdresser. You know, it was like flamboyant Teddy. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm not Teddy.

Yeah. There's two questions I have about your childhood. One is there was somehow media attention that followed the revelation. Unfortunately. This sounds terrible. Please, what happened?

So it just so happens that my parents had a friend who was a psychiatrist who happened to be writing a book about pedophilia. And I'm kind of the same today as I was when I was a kid. I was precocious. I got a lot of grit. I'm a very, like, persevering kind of guy. However, it's like, you know, development matters. Yeah. So, like, when my parents' friend said to my parents, "I'm gonna be on television, and I think Mark should join me to share his story." Oh, God. And my parents told me about it, which they probably shouldn't have done to begin with. I was like, "I gotta do this." Yeah. "I'm gonna protect other kids. I'm gonna tell, blah, blah, blah." Yeah. And I did do it. 12. Ooh. Yeah. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I mean, national television. It was like a big station. I forget what it was back then. I think it was WPIX New York. And so here I am. And of course now my secret, which I had disclosed to my parents and to my neighborhood, which became also a really weird place to live because the pedophile, he got arrested but then returned home for a year before he went to prison.

So like every day I'm driving, going to school, like seeing this guy's house. His kids were my friends. It was very awkward. And then it becomes on national television. Now I'm like a pariah, you know, just— it was terrible. No one realized, like, wait a minute, people don't know how to deal with this. At home, nevertheless in the world. Here's 12-year-old Mark who's like going to like 6th grade. Yeah, yeah. Oh, forget it. My friends' parents would like, don't play with Mark.

Now you're a liability.

Exactly. I mean, honestly, it was horrific. It led to a lot of bullying, an eating disorder. You had bulimia?

Yeah. And I think we have a pretty common understanding that that is generally a search for control. Yeah. Is that what it gave you?

I mean, I was so distorted with my self-perception. I had body dysmorphia. I would look in the mirror and just see something that wasn't there. It was like a teenage kid next door who was very fit, and I just lived in envy of that. Everything just messed with my brain.

Well, yeah. Also, if everyone's— the world is telling you you're bad or stay away from you, and you're like, but I'm trying to do the right thing. This is so confusing. For an adult, it would be confusing identity-wise, let alone a kid.

Yeah. Being applauded for your bravery, I'm sure. But then the results are like, nobody wants to be around you.

Trauma. Like, more double trauma. Yeah. It's like, I disclose it to get rid of the trauma. Now I'm double traumatized. So did Uncle Marvin tell you to tell your parents? Oh, yes. That happened. Like, my brother was there. It became this, like, moment where my father took a bat, was going to kill the man. Oh, wow. My mother called the police. He got arrested immediately. Happened to be that one of our neighbors was a police officer who kind of helped facilitate all this. But then we realized, like, there were a lot of kids on my block. I was the only one who disclosed it, but other kids then. And then, like, his nephew lived on our block and he said, oh my God, not again. Like, dude, like, you let your uncle who abused you move to our block and, like, you've suppressed it. But now, like, we're all victims of it.

That's not cool. Well, again, that becomes— we just had an expert on who— she's the head of the Johns Hopkins Center for studying this. And I have lived with the guilt of like, well, I never told anyone. I don't know if that dude went on to do that a bunch more. And a little bit relieved that she told me like 70% of sexual abuse towards minors is from other minors who don't necessarily ever do it again. Yeah, I was comforted by that. Like, well, God, I hope that was the situation because I have the guilt because yours was a teenager. Yes. Yeah.

I had that too, actually. So another neighbor, you know, also decided that that was another opportunity. I tried to tell Monica this.

I don't know if it's where I grew up or the era I grew up on, but there was so much fucking perversion happening all around at all times.

It's still, by the way, the data are terrible in terms of how much abuse there is. Some of us get through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I dedicate my career, my life, my health, my wellness to my uncle because he gave me something to focus on. Yeah. Which was basically how to be open with my emotions and then how to regulate them. Right.

I'm surprised you went to Rutgers. I might have wanted to get many, many states away.

It was because it was state and cheap.

Okay. So you went there and you did undergrad there.

Did undergrad there, majored in psychology and Spanish. I'm like one of those people that has a very non-traditional career path. I taught martial arts.

What version?

It's called Hapkido. So I got a 5th-degree black belt in Hapkido, became very, very competitive and taught it for years. And then I also sold skincare with my mother, which I'm not sure why I just told that to millions of people. And then nutrition products. And that was a whole nother—

That was a multi-level marketing company, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.

I was like, I'm going to be a diamond. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

And while you were studying for GRE, your mom passed?

Yes. Bombed the GREs, got rejected from graduate school the first year. All of them. Nobody accepted me. I'm sitting with my mother, 23, in a diner in New Jersey. She was not feeling well. I later learned that she had pancreatic cancer.

Which is very accelerated. She died 4 months later.

Yeah. I'm selling skincare. I graduated college. I am teaching karate. I'm teaching aerobics. I'm teaching all these things and trying to figure out who I am, what I'm gonna do in my life. I had a girlfriend for many years, and my mother just looks at me at this breakfast table, and she's like, your father and I have determined that you're a loser.

Oh my God. Yeah. Tough love time.

Oh yeah. And I looked at her and I said, go fuck yourself. And I couldn't help it. Yeah. And she runs out of the diner screaming and crying, literally having a total breakdown. She's driving the car around in circles in the parking lot. Oh my God. I run after my mother. No, Mom, it's going to be okay. I promise you I'm not a loser. Oh. It was a really big moment in my life. Of course, who do I call?

Uncle. Uncle Marvin.

Round 2, you're sitting down. I'm not kidding though. It's like road trip to Fort Lauderdale because he had retired there. And actually, I really bonded for a second time with my uncle, and we just started talking through things. And I like, I had to get out of my situation. It was eye-opening. It wasn't like the most emotionally intelligent way of motivating your kid. Yeah, would not recommend. But exactly, it could have been done with a little bit more compassion. But anyway, it did force me to go to Florida to be with my uncle for a little bit. And that's when I decided to pull him out of retirement and we would write a book together. I was like, 24, what do I know about writing books or curricula? My uncle is in his mid-60s, retired. And just a little side story about this. So my uncle was this incredible person, not only for me, but for his community, for kids. But his program was so provocative in the 1970s and '80s that the parents forced him to retire. There's moments where I walk around, you know, 5,000 schools use our program now. We've reached 10 million children across the world.

And I think what I get accolades for, what I get to talk with you about, is what got my uncle fired. Yeah, yeah.

It's crazy. So that's what he was— pursuing was some kind of emotional education.

He realized it was a missing link in education, and he was really ahead of his time in terms of this field called SEL, which wasn't there 50 years ago now. And so I pull him out of retirement, we start writing this curriculum, and then I realized, like, I have no credibility. Right, right. Like, who's gonna buy a book? You need to be anointed. Yeah, I need to get a PhD. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I decided to apply for my PhD. I just thought, oh, there's these researchers. One is at Yale, one is at New Hampshire. I wrote to them both. They both agreed to meet with me for lunch. The guy from Yale said to me, you're a great guy, but you're never gonna get in. Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. And the guy from New Hampshire said, I'll give you early admission. Yeah. I guess I'm going to New Hampshire.

Yeah. That was also a shock. That wasn't John Mayer that you met with? Yes. It was? Yeah. Okay, so John Mayer became your supervisor. Yeah. And tell me a little bit about John Mayer and his contribution to this. And I think now would be a great time to define emotional intelligence.

Good idea. So John Mayer, or Jack as he goes by—

Do you think they've added the D to his name on Wikipedia because of John Mayer the musician? Did he always go by John D. Mayer, or is that new?

Academics always add that. Oh, okay. But maybe. Yeah, that's a good point. And then the other person is Peter Salovey, who became the president of Yale. These two guys wrote this theory called emotional intelligence that I was using to guide my curriculum.

What was novel about this term emotional intelligence? What were they doing? How were they approaching it gave it validity.

Historically, I mean, you think about it. When I say the word emotional, what comes to mind?

Quick. You always think of women. Yes. It's very gendered.

Feminine. What else? I think like loss of control.

Yeah. Right? Angry, sad.

Yeah, like hysteria. Hysteria. Emotional, like you can't handle it. Yeah. Well, that's the opposite of emotional intelligence.

That's emotional stupidity.

Yeah, or emotional bankruptcy, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Emotional intelligence is using your emotions wisely to achieve your goals. I mean, that's a broad definition. Now we get specific, and this is where my research has gone. So Peter and Jack wrote this theory, they proposed a set of skills, and then what I've been doing for the last 25, 30 years is kind of fine-tuning it all.

Really quick, so the traditional intelligence has metrics, or we attempt to, right? We have IQ tests, we have different tests to assess the aptitude of your intellect. Did they propose a scale to even evaluate? So how does that scale work?

So let me tell you the skills and I'll tell you how they're measured. Okay. So the first skill is about perceiving or recognizing emotions. So I'm looking at your facial expression right now. I'm looking at you. I'm like, is this going well? Is this not going well? Right? It's self-awareness and social awareness. Uh-huh. Obviously, coming from my background, I'm more vigilant than maybe other people would be because I got to like, you know, am I going to get beat up here or, you know, am I safe? And we're doing that subconsciously from the moment we wake up and we have a feeling in our bodies and our minds, to the walking into the set, to going to a school, our brains are making predictions. It's incredible.

It's astounding we can do it. Well, but a lot of us don't do it so well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like this underrepresented area of intelligence, or intelligence that we don't give enough attention to. Hence the work that we do in schools to try to make this part of the curriculum. Which, by the way, if you want to talk about that, is so much pushback right now on this. Really? Oh, really? Political. It's been polarized. Why? Because people say it's like soft?

It's woke. Yeah, it's woke.

Well, I'm not— it is not woke. It's not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it seems to overlap with this endlessly progressive, let's all talk about our feelings. No one's got to be tough and just fucking show up and do the job. I get it. It's not hard for me to lock into what they're feeling. Yes.

And the thing is that the way you said it is not what it is. Correct.

As someone who's observed it in my children. Yeah, that's not what it is.

I don't want kids.

No, it reduces fragility. Funny enough, the fear is we're making all these kids so fragile that they can't even function. But yes, the opposite is true. This makes you incredibly resilient.

And the irony is that people who normally are saying it and saying it in that way are the people that have no emotional tools. Yes. Generally, because that is the fear response. And are hiding something else.

You know, scarier than anything else.

Yeah, I think they're scared in a way that is— Yeah. They're not locked into what it's like to have emotional tools.

I think to be compassionate to those people, yeah, when they consider being emotional, they have the sense that to do so would be to completely destroy them permanently. Yeah, yeah. And there'd be no coming back. So I feel that's a person who's carrying a tremendous amount. They need tools.

Yes.

Again, I always say the dude in the pickup truck that's jacked up with the nutsack hanging out the back that flips me off, that is my hardest guy to have the compassion for. And it is the one that needs the most compassion. It's funny you say that.

So I'm giving a speech. I do these reunion speeches at the university all the time. There's hundreds of alumni. I love doing these speeches. I can just joke with all the graduates. And then I'm driving home. I'm literally on Route 95. And this massive truck drives by with a flag and it says, "Fuck feelings." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't make it up. I'm like, "Did they know I was giving the speech 15 minutes ago?" Anyway. Fuck feelings. And it's like, really?

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Here's what I find, and I want to go back to the skills in a second, but what I find is that people have a misunderstanding of what it is and that they're against something that it's not. So when I meet people who are against the work, I just say, "Well, what do you think it is?" And then I say, "Well, let me share with you what it is. How would you feel if your kids had good strategies to manage stress and anxiety?" Definitely want that for my kid. How would you feel if your kid had a better vocabulary so they can describe things and write better? That's important. I said, well, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So, okay, first skill, by the way, the acronym is RULER. So recognize emotions, paying attention to other people's emotions, face, body, voice, behavior, paying attention to my own emotions. What's going on in my head? What's going on in my body? Boom.

I'm so sorry to interrupt. That's all right. It just crossed my mind. We know that for autistic— I'm good. I don't mind. It doesn't bother me. You can diagnose me as ADHD at the end of this interview.

I have it too.

Okay. We know that for autistic kids and adults, it is harder for them to read some of the cues that would let them know what the other person's emotions are. Do they have the same difficulty identifying their own? Oftentimes, yes. Yeah, okay. So that's a struggle for— It is a struggle.

Yeah.

Which probably causes some of the outbursts and stuff. It bottles up. We've worked with many schools that serve children on the spectrum, and we've had great results. You just have to go slower, use more cues. What's interesting is that oftentimes interventions have this weird thing, "Oh, we're gonna make the kid less autistic." That's not our goal. Our goal is to help the child be who they are but have slightly more skills in that space.

There's also this very annoying thought which is like, anything short of perfection is proof that it doesn't work. So even if you take the autistic kid to 1 on the scale to 3, their life experience is gonna be measurably better. Completely.

I live in the world of everybody's got to have the Perfect everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

Recognizing emotions. We're good with that one? Yes. Yeah. All right. Next one is understanding of emotions. So this is really trying to understand why we have feelings and where they come from and the differences between and among them. So I'm gonna give you a little test of emotional intelligence. What is the psychological difference between anger and disappointment?

What's the psychological?

Anger is outward and disappointment is inward. Okay. Oh, that's really good.

That's a good one. It's good.

It's not correct. I got to go.

It's a B. Sorry.

Fuck. Yeah. But on that same train, I would say anger generally you assign responsibility to something outside yourself and then the other one you're responsible for. Yeah. It's like a shame.

No, shame is shame.

I guess it can come externally.

Yeah. You can be disappointed in others, I guess, too.

Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe it's— Okay, I want to keep— I want to disappoint.

You want to be perfect?

Oh, I do. Yeah, we're all aiming for it.

In fact, ideally before the other one is perfect. Yeah, exactly.

You should never ask us questions or we're going to be here for so long.

There's like a sadness and disappointment. You let me down. Like an expect— maybe expectation.

There you go. So disappointment comes from unmet expectations. Anger comes from perceived injustice. Perceived injustice. Like, that's not fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, you have kids, obviously. Yeah, yeah. If I come home from school, "I hate school," how am I feeling?

I would say frustrated. Something is frustrating.

How do you know?

I just think because it's, yeah, it's all-consuming. Anger is like a really—

You have a physical response.

Developing condition you have temporarily, yeah, where it's just like, Your amygdala's on fire, right? You're not running anything through the frontal lobe.

You're assuming that from my behavior. Yes. This is where emotional intelligence comes in really handy, because we tend to overly diagnose emotion from behavior. When we observe a behavior, we think we know how the person is feeling based on their behavior. Got you. And I could be feeling shame, I could be feeling sadness, but I'm a boy who's gay, I don't want anybody to know, and I'm feeling inferior or whatever, and I'm just gonna look tough, I'm gonna I try my best to look tough, and you're gonna be my dad, and you're gonna get triggered by my anger expression, and then it's gonna be a whole thing until you can lower your emotional temperature to be more present with me and help me lower mine and get to know the why and the understanding. You're not gonna know that it's actually someone spit on me on the bus and I hate myself. Yeah. And I'm afraid to go to school tomorrow. Yeah. Or whatever it is. Yeah. Here's the research. We grossly overestimate our skills. Yeah. You know, I think I'm great at this. And it's like, well, let me give you some feedback. Ah.

And so you think about how many people misperceive our facial expressions, our body language. I get misperceived all the time. People always think like there's something wrong when they come near me. And I'm like, I'm actually pretty content. But I think because of being a scientist, I'm literally always thinking about stuff and I make weird facial expressions. So when I'm walking, I'm not like walking like, And I'm looking like, huh? And people are like, what's wrong? Nothing. I'm just thinking about something.

Yeah. You're like grinding through a thought a lot of times. Yeah. Well, even worse, I think, is like, yeah, you have what you interpreted, which is often wrong. But then I think even worse than that is you immediately run it through your narrative. So it's like your kid comes home frustrated. Your overarching fear for me is like, oh, my kids don't know how good they have it. They've grown up in abundance and I'm so fearful they're not right.

They have no gratitude. Yeah, they have no gratitude, no understanding.

So anytime they're unhappy, it sends the alarm bells that that other thing's happening. So my inclination is to figure out a time where like, oh, well, no, were you inconvenienced? You know, did you have to wait in a line? You know, my fear of what could go wrong is likely what I'm going to attribute it all to ultimately, like attribution error. That's what it is.

It's attribution errors. It's a misattribution of emotion. And so this skill of recognizing other people's emotions is tricky because, A, we hide our emotions a lot. So understanding emotion is understanding the causes of emotion, the consequences, the differences. And I think the key here is You know, going back to our stories of growing up as a gay guy, there's a lot of homophobia in our society.

Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Especially when we grew up.

Yeah. And even still right now. And so as a gay guy, I might be more triggered by homophobic jokes than you would be or you would be. Right. Totally. You might be more triggered by race stuff.

Oh, I am. Yeah, we get— we do get into it. We do get into it.

Yeah. I have the luxury of pretty much thinking everything's funny because I'm a very tall, white guy. Straight. Exactly. You're good. They rarely come for us in the jokes.

We've gotten in a lot of fights about like what's mean and what's not mean. Yeah, what's mean? It's really interesting because like for me, I'm like, that's mean. He's like, it's not mean. Well, there you go. Yeah. He's like, nobody's here to be upset about it. But for me, it's so deep being called something or made fun of in that way.

Even without your knowledge is the ultimate fear. Are they being nice to me here? But when they're by themselves, they're like, she's so brown. Yeah.

So I just like put myself in every— even if it's not a race joke, but it's just like something. I'm just like, no, you can't do that.

And I think what you're getting at here is the core of understanding. So going back to anger, perceived injustice. My husband is Latino. He's dark-skinned. And so we've been in situations. We were in a restaurant in Connecticut, and this is the best. We're getting sat to sit down. And the host says, "Where'd you get your tan?" Oh, boy. And he's like, "My mother." Oh, my God. I mean, he's dark. Yeah. He is not, you know, like a WASP who has a tan in Connecticut. Anyway. He's the real deal.

He's what us whites are going for with that tan.

Yeah. Exactly. Now, he's an immigrant, so his relationship to the American kind of thinking around race is different. Even though he's my husband, we've been together 32 years, long time. I cannot relate to what it feels like to be a man of his skin color walking around a store in Connecticut and being monitored. That doesn't happen to me. Just like— well, he can't really because he's also gay.

He's got double— but I was gonna say, I a little bit reject that. Say more. You cannot experience those exact details, but those human emotions you can.

You're making a good point, which is that I can relate to the shared emotion.

You've been in a locker room with a bunch of straight dudes that somehow are speaking some language so organically, and you're like, what the fuck?

Correct. So I can't relate to the experience, but I can relate to the emotion associated with the experience. Which are unifying, which is beautiful.

Humans have the same emotions.

And that's why it's so important to get at the emotion level. I can't talk about what's going on in your head when someone's monitoring you as a person of color. Just like you as a straight guy, you have some background in this, but you're not gonna feel the same way I'm gonna feel or, or have the same experience psychologically as I'm gonna have when I hear people making jokes about Jews or homophobic stuff. But we can have a shared emotional experience. And that's what emotional intelligence really at the understanding level is, is I need to have empathy and compassion and curiosity about what makes you feel the way you do so I can be a better friend. Yeah, totally. Otherwise, if I'm like, "Well, why would you feel that way?" That's not emotional intelligence. Then there's the L, labeling emotions, getting super precise about our feelings. And we have a tool that we call the Mood Meter, which you may have seen. It's in schools. It's a 2x2 grid of colors to help people describe their feelings. Actually, quick side note, is during the pandemic, the co-founder and CEO of Pinterest reached out to me and he's like, "I read your book and I really would love to work with you on an app." And so we created an app called How We Feel that is free forever.

We have 3 million people using it now every month. That's incredible. And it is a tool to help build emotional self-awareness. And so it's fantastic. Check it out. But the idea behind it is that it takes the science of emotion. So emotions have pleasants associated with them, and they have energy or activation levels. And you cross these two things and you get yellow, red, blue, and green. Yellow is high energy pleasant, like happy, excited. Green, pleasant but low in energy, like calm, content. Blue, low energy but unpleasant, sad, disappointment, lonely. And then the red is the upper left, which is high energy unpleasant, anger, anxiety. And so we put 144 words to map that out. With their definitions so people can build their emotional self-awareness. And the key of labeling is just precision. Let's try one. Can we try another one? Yeah. Anxiety, stress, pressure, fear.

What's the difference? Anxiety is, I think, unique in that, or specific in that, you are very fearful of the outcome of something which is unknown. Stress to me can be much more predictive. I've had the same job for 35 years. I'm in one right now. Like, we always have to stockpile this time of year so we can have a vacation. It is what it is, but I already have had the experience of doing it. I know I'll get through it. So it's like, I don't have anxiety about it, but I have the stress of the workload. What were the other two? Pressure. Pressure and fear.

I think there's no difference.

I want you to get your PhD.

I thought that was a trick question. Oh, that was a trick question. I did. I did.

I thought it was a trick question. Don't be too clever. I was. I mean, that's what a lot of people say. They think I'm like Mr. Neurotic Emotion Labeling Guy.

And then pressure to me is just stakes. It means it's something of value. It could be an indicator that you value this thing. That's why you feel the pressure of it.

Yeah, I don't think pressure is negative necessarily. No. It could be, but it doesn't have to be.

Okay. And then fear?

Fear to me is related to anxiety. In that it's generally an outsized feeling about something that when you're in, you'll just walk through. There's some asymmetry to fear.

Let's get really— let's get to the—

Let's get granular.

Yeah, that's the word. So anxiety, it actually is the word, emotion granularity. So anxiety is about uncertainty, perceived uncertainty around the future. I get anxious when I can't make the prediction. What's gonna happen? Stress is having too many demands and not enough resources. Can't do it all. I'm finite. Yeah. Pressure, something at stake, is dependent upon your behavior. So the pressure for me to get through this podcast, I'm not anxious about it necessarily. I'm not stressed. It's pressure. Gotta perform. And fear is impending danger. Now, why does this matter?

I would say that most people are really prone to label those things interchangeably. Yeah. Yep. And all 4 have much different solutions.

That's the key. That for yourself, for your loved one, for your kids, for your colleague, really getting at that level of granularity will help you have a solution. So for example, if you're anxious about something, you're gonna ruminate likely. You can go for the walk, you're gonna come back and ruminate. You can take your deep breaths, you can do your yoga, you do your downward dog and you'll still come back like, What's gonna happen? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So matching the emotion to the strategy is key. That's my new book called Dealing with Feeling, which is to help people make that connection. Because most people, even, I'll give you an example, Yale, all these bright people, all my students said they were stressed. I was like, come on, stressed? I mean, I had empathy because they were 78% of the time feeling that way. But at the same time, I didn't believe it was actually stressed. What do you think the number one emotion actually was?

Anxiety.

Yeah, that would be my guess. You're at this really interesting phase of your life where they're giving you 4 years to figure out exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life.

And the future is very uncertain.

Yeah. And how does one know if they've picked the right lane? It's all about the future. And did I pick right? And am I rising to the occasion?

And the answer is none of the above. Okay, great. Okay. That was a trick.

That was a trick. He finally got it. Yeah.

You knew he was gonna slide a trick in. Sorry. The answer is envy. Oh. Envy was the— They're mislabeling stress for envy. Oh. Because they're sitting in class thinking, you study for fewer hours and get better grades. Your father's famous. Your mother has connections to Wall Street. All they're doing is making social comparisons about physical appearance, about you were the real valedictorian. And so I did this research with them where I had them journal about all their feelings. And came back and found that the real understanding of emotion showed up. It was envy, not stress or pressure. And I think that's important because what you would do to manage envy is way different than what you would do to manage anxiety or stress. Right. Mm-hmm. So the core of my kind of newer work is really helping people make the connection between their emotional experience and the selection of the best strategy to regulate it. Crazily, what do you think the number one hoped-for emotion is? Like, how do you want to feel at school, at the university?

What their answer would be?

Yes. Oh.

I mean, would they be honest enough to say? I think everyone just wants to be adored. It's close.

It's loved. Yeah, loved. I mean, yeah. But that one really surprised— the envy one didn't shock me because, you know, everything's about social comparison these days. But the loved one— was a little sad for me, especially on college campuses. So I did some more research about that. And here's the sad part, which is that the number one reason was they said they felt manufactured. They felt manufactured? Yeah. They felt like their parents, their school they went to, to get to be at a place like Yale, they just needed to like— Perform? Perform, like play this sport, do this instrument. Be a patriot. Yeah, yeah. Get this thing, get this thing, SAT scores, GPAs. You know, traveled to this country and they felt like they didn't have an identity, which is unbelievable.

And it would be very easy to assume that you were loved because of those accomplishments. Yeah. As opposed to like, you're just intrinsically loved because your parents—

Yeah, they feel it's all extrinsic. That's heartbreaking.

Yeah. But very predictable. It is. For like these elite schools. Yes.

Also, don't you think that's everyone's answer in the whole world? For different reasons.

How do I want to fill in my Marriage, definitely loved. But how do I want to feel at work? I don't want to feel loved. That's too much for me.

And just—

You want to feel respected.

I want to feel valued, appreciated, supported, connected.

But some people do want to feel loved at work. They want—

Yeah, and that's not—

That's probably not healthy.

But if you're going to a college where 2.5 was the average admittance, no, that's not how your— Your parents picked other things. They were like, Tony's so funny at a party. He's so good at talking to adults. He's a great athlete. Soon, in absence of great accomplishments, the things your parents will call out about you are probably more character-driven. Yeah. Which feels more substantive or more intrinsic, which is like they'll say he's so nice to kids or he's so good with, you know, whereas if your kid just got a 4.0 and got a fucking 1800, that's what you're going to hear them tell their friends.

Well, hopefully you'd hear them say like they're hard worker, like something still intrinsic.

That's what you want. So going back to what we started talking about with Uncle Marvin and permission to feel, is that the challenge for most of my students is they don't feel they have the permission to feel. That's why they're dying to feel loved. Yeah. And most of them, and most people in my research, say they feel judged from the moment they came out of the womb. Like, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're too dark, you're too light, your nose is too big, your nose is too short, those pants don't fit you right. From the moment you come out, it's like judgment, judgment, judgy, judgy, judgy. That's why the number one characteristic that people are saying they're wanting in other people is nonjudgmental. Mm, that makes sense. So we got through recognition, self-awareness, social awareness, understanding, why am I feeling this way, understanding how people feel. So then the understanding, the labeling, the expression, this is where the cultural differences really show up, where it's kind of knowing how and when to express emotion with different people across contexts and across cultures. My work is translated now to 33 languages. And so I've gone all over the world and we have a center in Italy that does trainings in all throughout Tuscany and Italy.

And, you know, I go there, Marco, where have you been all of it? Mm, mm, mm. I'm like, oh, I love Italy. You know, I go to Hong Kong, Mark Sun, you know, everybody bows to me. I go to Wall Street. I always joke about this because I gave this talk at a big hedge fund in New York City and the guy came out in his Versace suit, you know, with the perfect tie, perfect side comb, and he's like, "Hello, Dr. Brackett." You know, it's like, "I need a little testosterone for this presentation." Yeah, yeah. We have this, whether it's downtown New York or whether it's in England or in Italy or in Hong Kong, there are differences, and let's just acknowledge that. Yeah, oh yeah. People don't express emotions the same way, like in India. I've had a lot of Indian students, and one of the things that I found interesting, and I don't know if you can relate to this, in education in India, there's not necessarily a lot of asking you for your perspectives. There's a lot of sage on the stage. You are the learner, I am the knower, and I do that.

Interesting. And so when I have graduate students and I'm like, it's time for you to come up with a research project, like, I've done this already. And they struggle for the first while of like, I have the autonomy to like— Right.

They want to be told what to do. Yes. That's interesting. I get—

can you relate to that or no?

Well, my mom grew up here, so I have to take her out of it. I would say, I think my dad, I don't know. He really has a lot of opinions and is fine sharing them, but he's also pretty meticulous. He's an engineer. He just retired. So yes, he is also good at following instructions. Very good at it. He's kind of an anomaly.

I'll tell you my experience over the last, 11 years being around Monica and the thing that I was completely wrong about and shattered my naive realism, which was, I'm like, "Your dad, I don't care where he's from, he would love for you to call him and say, 'I love you so much.'" And she's like, "You really don't understand. That would just make him quite scared." Why is she sharing this? Something must be wrong. This is so out of the pattern of what's normal. It would just elicit fear. And I have tried to intervene. I like flew them secretly to a live show we did so they could watch her on stage. And I had all these expectations of how that would go. And at the end of the whole thing, I had to go, yeah, ma'am, you got to accept it's different. You want there to be this universal thread. That's not— it stops there. Yeah.

And that's okay. Totally. Yeah. There's nothing wrong.

I'm not judging it. Yeah. I kept telling him, I was like, it doesn't mean they don't love me or I don't love them. And we aren't confused. We aren't like, oh, if they don't call me and tell me this, do they love me? We know. You don't. From the outside, it might look like it's not there, but we know it's there. I don't know. It was very cultural.

I've been to all over Asia, and what I found is that in certain cultures, just cooking together is a symbol of love.

Mm-hmm.

That was the last thing that would happen in my household is like, let's chop Let us do whatever we want. Right, right. You know, again, the point of this is that how we express emotions does vary by personality. I'm an introvert. People think I'm outgoing because I do a lot of public speaking. Even here, I'm traveling for some work here in LA. I'm not gonna go out. It's not my thing. I get drained from it. My brain is so occupied in what I do and what I think about that to unwind, I want to go to a hot yoga class. Yeah. I want to have a glass of wine with a friend. I don't want to be that social. It's taken me years to really own that. And that's part of the work on emotional intelligence. Like, knowing my personality will help me find better strategies too. Again, expressing emotions, you can express them in art, you can express them in spoken word, you can express them through music. But we got to get it out. Unexpressed emotions end up being like a debt.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We have someone we love so much who has the most paralysis around the expressing, and it's so painful to watch. I can feel the clamped tightness at the thought of it. Yeah. And it's heartbreaking.

That's really heartbreaking.

Yeah. And so that's part of being what I call an emotion ally, is trying to figure out your way in to give them that opening. It is hard, but sometimes Just doing nothing is something in terms of presence. By the way, going back to this kind of emotion ally thing, which is the Uncle Marvin in a psychology term, is that a lot of parents, a lot of people at work, their excuse is, "I don't know how to do it. I don't want to open this up because it's going to open up and I'm not going to be able to handle it," or, "I'm afraid that I'm going to look bad," or things of that sort. And I say, let's go back to the characteristics. 5 basics: nonjudgmental, listener, warmth, compassion. No one's asking you to solve their problems. No one's asking you to fix them. Nobody wants to be fixed. As a matter of fact, in my research, no one ever says that their Uncle Marvin or Aunt Maria was a fixer or an advice giver. And that's really important for people who are listening because there's an inhibition to showing up because you think you actually have to do something that's gonna change that other person's experience when that's not what they're actually looking for.

Okay, so the last one is regulating. And to me, that's where your book dealing with feeling really comes into play. This last component of RULER.

And that's the big one. I'll just share with you what happened for that. So here I am. It's the pandemic. So Horacio is the name of my husband. His mother's name is Irene. She lives in Panama. And my colleague was getting married. March 7th, 2020. Oh boy. And so we— Irene loves this colleague of mine, Robin. And so we fly Irene up from Panama to come to the wedding, gonna come for a couple weeks. Lo and behold, March 13th, every flight to Panama gets canceled. I think she was scheduled to go home on the 15th or 16th. So we're like, all right, whatever, you know, we'll get through this. 8 months later, 8 months. With your mother-in-law? Yeah, she couldn't get home. There was no flights. Yeah, yeah. And so about 3 months in, she's 81. She was very upset. She had a dog and a parrot we had to figure out how to deal with. I was out of my mind busy, 'cause everybody's freaking out, and, you know, masks and no masks and anxiety and fear. And Horacio's a filmmaker, he's a cinematographer, and so he's, like, out of work, 'cause nobody's making out on a movie set, you know, in March and April of 2020.

So, it gets really kind of ugly in my house. Everybody's tense. And one night, my mother-in-law looks at me and she says, "You know, are you really the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence?" Because you've been being shitty. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, I love you, but not tonight. It's going down. We were just at each other's throats. And then of course, since late, go to bed. I went to bed thinking to myself, Mark, you're the director of the freaking Center for Emotional Intelligence. Like, how is it possible that you could not regulate? Yeah. Like, how could you not apply your own stuff? For 25 years you've been teaching this, writing papers. And I realized I really was struggling. And I was not eating healthy. I was not exercising like I was. I was really negative. And obviously it was a pandemic. It was weird. But nevertheless, I thought I could apply my stuff to that moment. And I was really not doing well. And so I woke up the next morning. I said, "I'm gonna start a study. I'm gonna study thousands of people around the country and find out what they're doing with their feelings and how are they doing." And what I found was people were not doing well.

Only 10% of people felt like they had good strategies. Most of the people said they were drinking, they were eating, they were avoiding, they were being self-saboteurs, they were scrolling on Instagram and social media. And it was really eye-opening for me that people were desperate for healthy strategies. And because I was so overwhelmed and I, I'm an academic and I really had no place to go, I'm like, what I could do is I could lock myself in a room, do research, and write a book. And so that was my strategy. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Well, the book heads straight at a pretty frequent debate we have on here. Okay. I love how it starts. So it starts with You urge people reading to ask yourself this question: look over all the times in your life that your emotions influenced you to act one way or another, and then ask, did those actions help me or did they hurt me? I think so often people are trapped in whether they deserve to have those emotions or if they were unavoidable. And there's this sense that they're a given and that's that, that you have some kind of autonomy over that. And the other thing you say in that same paragraph is the degree to which you will get what you want out of life is equal to how well or poorly you deal with your feelings. I love that. This is a setup for the book, which is— it's real simple. Do you like the outcome of when you were, I would say, maybe a victim or a passenger to your feelings? If so, keep going. If that's your conclusion at the end of it, then cool. You like being upset. It doesn't seem to bother you.

The outcome's not bad. Who gives a shit? For you and other people, it's not just about you. Okay, great. Elaborate on that.

Well, like, my father would be like, "Son, this is the way I deal with my feelings. You're gonna have to get used to it." I'm like, "Okay, Dad." Right. Let's talk about having a little bit of an other mindset, other orientation. Like, this is a family. You blowing up every night is not great. Yeah, maybe great for you.

You might be at peace with it.

You're fine with it, but what about everybody else?

And then a thing that I think is quite liberating and hopeful is you also write in that same section, "Many of us believe that the way we respond to our emotions is an intrinsic part of ourselves, a fixed attribute." aspect of our personalities, which is simply not true. There's another thing I think people are like, yeah, fine, you don't mind that, but I do. Yeah, I like that. That feels liberating that you're not born— not born that way.

Yeah, it's an important distinction between temperament and personality and emotional intelligence and emotion regulation. I, for example, going back, we're talking about our childhood traumas earlier. When I was in high school, I mean, really struggling with coming out of the bullying and identity.

Everyone in your school knew you were a molested. I mean, that's an insane experience.

Exactly. Pre-social media. I still can remember— Actually, this is even later. This is when I met Horacio. I met him on a movie set. I was hired as a stunt coordinator.

Oh, for a fight sequence of a— Okay. What movie was it?

It was a very, very early movie. It's an independent movie called Ten Benny with Adrien Brody. It's his first leading role. We made it to Sundance. This is 1996. Shot in New Jersey. I had a karate studio. I got hired. I was never a stunt coordinator again, just so you know. Mm-hmm. But I got my love of my life. I see this exotic guy named Horacio. All being said, he's this gorgeous human being. I mean, he's just very good-looking, and he's got great genetics, and I hate him for that, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm the Jersey boy who's in the closet, and this exotic guy comes in with his black long hair and his perfect features, and he's like, "Can you stand in for Adrien Brody?" I'm like, "Yes, yes." I had done my little experimentation, but this was the first kind of thing. And I remember coming home that night, 'cause I had moved back in with my dad after my mother had died. This is all around the same time. And just going into my room and crying for hours and saying, "This is my life. How can I do this?

How can I fall in love with this exotic thing? And what's gonna happen in my life? What am I gonna be? And what are people gonna think of me?" And I just was so distraught. Of course, call Uncle Marvin again. The key there was that, A, I didn't realize there was something you could do with your feelings. I just thought you experience these strong negative feelings, they pour through you, maybe they'll dissipate over time, but there's nothing I can do in the moment. And that is so far from the truth.

And I'll say even worse, when you're in those states, you're most convinced this feeling is permanent. Despite the fact that none of your other feelings are permanent, when they're negative, you're like, well, this is the rest of my life.

It's the rainy day, it's a thunderstorm, it's gonna turn into a hurricane.

It's not gonna pass. No. What's our debate in this?

I'm not following.

Well, like, you'll have the woman at the store and then you'll be— mad at her and upset. And I'm like, first of all, why would you give that person that much control over your emotional state? Oh, I see. That's like a recurring thing. We have these debates where she's like, no, objectively, people are terrible sometimes, and you should feel that way as a result, right? Is that a fair—

well, no, I don't think I would ever say objectively people are terrible. I, I don't think that. I think there are people doing bad— not the lady in the store, but there are some people bad actors in the world doing things that hurt people. And I think it's okay to react to that, to feel that.

That's correct. It's an injustice. The right thing to do is say, hey, not cool. You're being unkind.

Do you let that take you on a ride? Well, my question— no, it's that—

well, yes. Let me just tell you what I'm thinking is that The principle that emotions are impermanent is that the rainy day is going to last forever and that there'll be no more sunny days. And objectively speaking, that's not biologically possible. Yeah.

And I don't have that. No, I definitely am of the, like, every feeling is temporary. I don't operate like that. But we get sometimes in a debate where he's like, if you are upset by something, don't let that upset you. And it's like, that's upsetting.

Well, don't let it have power over you, I think you're getting at.

Well, a lot of things. Why am I upset? What did it trigger? If you're focused on that person, your life for the rest of your life will be out of your control. If that person has the power to dysregulate you, as opposed to that person triggers this fear in me that I have control over addressing, and that when I get my arms around that fear, lo and behold, that person who I said was objectively offensive, I'll magically discover isn't that offensive. I believe that to be very true. There are a lot of negative things you could say to me, but it requires that I carry my own insecurity about that to be affected. There's a lot of things being said about me that are probably objectively negative that have no impact on me whatsoever because they don't trigger any of my own fears. So my point is, these people are roadmaps to your work. I agree.

At the same time, it depends how intimate you are. If it's your husband, your wife, your partner, your mom, your dad, your colleague, and you can't get out of that relationship, it does make it tougher. Sure.

You need a lot more tools at your disposal.

And if you don't do something about it, it can move into the realm of gaslighting. Sure. If you're going along with it. Yes. But if you're not— No, if you're not, it doesn't change the feeling. Right.

Right. That's the thing.

Because the feeling is an accumulation of your whole life experience. It's not just that moment.

It's almost assured it's not that moment. Exactly. That's kind of the point I like to make is like, this person gave you kind of a little gift. Why would this stranger with no impact on your life have the ability to alter your mood? That's a great clue as to what work we get to do. Correct.

It is. But you are like, in that moment, don't be offended. I'm allowed to be offended in the moment when someone says or does something that is offensive. I mean, this sort of does go back. I do think I spent a lot of my life having to, like, turn the other way when a lot of offensive things were happening. So I'm very acutely aware of, I don't like that. I don't like the way it feels.

But my question is, do you think that that's a given, that you will always feel that way in response to that person? Or do you believe you might be able to change yourself and have a different experience of that person? That's my curiosity.

I guess the truth is I don't care to have a different opinion of the person, the stranger. Yes. If it's someone in my life and I have to live with them and understand them and know them, that requires some real, like, we got to work things out. I got to figure out who I am in relation to you, whatever. But if it's a stranger at a store who said something offensive or did something offensive, do I I feel like I need to bypass— I don't—

I wouldn't want you to deny your feeling. I'm not asking you to deny your feeling. My question is, do you think you might do some work that may result in you not even having the feeling in the face of that person?

I don't think it's possible to not have the feeling.

I can give you my own anecdote where this was the breakthrough of all breakthroughs to me. 2011, I'm directing a movie, maybe 2012. My mother has come in. She's doing craft service. It's a family affair. It's a small-budget movie. There is a PA on the movie that has a terrible personality. Now, I had been anointed the most important person on the set 'cause I'm the director. So I have no insecurities about my role whatsoever. And I would come home at night, and I would be talking with my mom at the end of the day, and she'd be like, "Oh, I hate that guy. He's so condescending. He says blah, blah, blah, and he treats me like shit." And I just had this moment where I was like, "Oh, yeah, he talks the same way to me, but I know it's on paper. I'm above him. I have the power." So what I know about this person, he's not being condescending. He just has a shitty personality. From that moment on, I, as a comedian, was like, oh, well, if I always felt that way, if I always felt secure, I don't think I'm going to deal with as many problems.

And I think that's true.

But you're getting at a power dynamic, and that's a critical thing. People with greater power have less to worry about.

They have a luxury. Yes. Of not succumbing to this inferiority. But if it's a racist boss— We got to bracket racism.

Yes.

But it's part of my whole history. I know, but racism— if she said something racist to you, I'm not asking you to not care about that. But if she says something that implies you're not worthy of being in the store, I think that's your thing.

But it's a whole accumulation of— I mean, what are you thinking about this?

Yeah, you're now a marriage counselor.

I was going to say, this is reaching, you know. And here's what's tricky.

Put on your Orna hat. We do fact checks here, so it's like we come in here and we tell stories about what happened that weekend. So that's when that story comes up, right? That lady, I did not think about her. I wasn't for hours after like, God, that bitch. I forgot immediately. And then I was like, what did I do this weekend? Oh, I have a story. It does not rule my life, but it's an incident that does cause an emotion in the moment.

But I just think it's fine to have emotions. I have tons of those. I don't think you're unique in that.

I think what we're getting at here I think what you're saying here is this nuance, which— let me try to say it my way, which is that the assumption that we make is that when we feel a strong, unpleasant feeling in a moment is that we're gonna have a strong, unhelpful, automatic, unhelpful response. And that's where I think you're connecting here, which is that noticing, having— like, I could be enraged, doesn't mean I have to throw something. But we make an assumption that if I'm enraged, it means I'm out of control. Not true. I have lived with anxiety for 56 years, and I'm pretty freaking good at dealing with it. Most people think I'm the most even-keeled, calm person. I'm like, I'm a mess, but I'm very skillful. I have tons of strategies for different situations. Sometimes I'm like, hey, anxiety, welcome. Good to see you today. Have a good day. Bye-bye. And there are other days when I have to work a lot harder at it. And there are moments in life— I was in a taxi coming from the airport the other day, and the guy was driving like 500 miles an hour.

I'm like, dude, you gotta slow down. It's like, this is like not safe.

And he got pissed. He got embarrassed.

Yeah. And I said, you know, respectfully, I'm an anxious passenger. I'm not, but I was in that moment, and I just needed him to slow down. I didn't need to like scream at him. Like, if I had a friend of mine with me who I won't mention, But she would have been, like, out of her mind. Fight or flight. Yeah. About it. And again, the big question for these experiences is, how do we feel at the end? If you feel like crap because someone was not kind to you, you gotta observe that and say, am I giving them too much power? Am I not giving them too much power? Do I need a better strategy? Am I ruminating? Am I not ruminating? And that's where I think the science of emotion regulation is so critical. Because no matter what, we have to have a belief system. This is kind of where the work began. Do you even believe that you can do it? Yeah.

That's why I like the rejecting you're intrinsically set with this reaction. Exactly.

We're all in learning mode here.

But that's a mindset, which you talk a lot about. Like, so let's start with the mindset. Do you think you might feel different? Is that an option?

Is it possible that you could learn helpful ways to deal with your feelings? No. I think a lot of people would just say no. Exactly. And that's what we call a fixed mindset. And that's going to impact your choice of strategies. It's going to impact your willing to learn new ones. So we've got to work on the mindset piece first. In my keynote talks and my presentations, a lot of my work is giving people the science behind the mindsets. Oh, it's possible. Oh, there's no bad emotions. Oh, emotions are impermanent.

I like the call to self-evaluate because again, you're not saying there is a threshold by which you're suffering from your reaction. It's just saying, when you look back, do you think you would have better outcomes by regulating differently? And do you want different outcomes? If it's no to the first and no to the second, then keep it moving.

Keep going. Have a great life. Yeah.

But if you want to emotionally regulate and learn to do that, by God, you have a system laid out. So I guess I want to first start by— What is the actions of emotional regulation?

The way I like to think about it is that emotion regulation is a set of goals and strategies. Simple. I can prevent an unwanted emotion. So let's say I thought I would be anxious coming here today. I got a 15-minute taxi ride to do some breathing exercises, give myself some positive self-talk so that way when I get here, I'm already kind of present. A lot of people don't think about preventing unwanted emotions. They get into a situation, uh, and I gotta deal with in the moment. Prevention is really important. Preventative and proactive is way better than reaction.

And we should add, emotional regulation is not getting rid of emotions. No, never. That's not the goal. The goal is not to not experience emotions.

I mean, that's not even possible. The goal might be to shift from one emotion to another. So if I'm feeling anxious about to go on stage, because I had this happen once where I was in a place where I was not going to be welcome. It was actually 1,500 police officers.

I was going to guess a rodeo, but it was smaller.

Yeah, exactly. I've been around. For some reason, I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing, and I got on stage and they were introducing me, and I see 1,500 guys mostly with their guns, and then they're like, "Mark is here to talk for 3 hours about emotions." Oh, God. If you would have just watched the room. And I was like, okay, this is not gonna go well. Mark, totally different person. You gotta figure this out in the moment. You gotta play around. The moment I just felt terror and then like transfer the terror into inspiration, transfer the terror into humor.

Harness this energy source. Yeah.

I actually turned into a great talk. But that's in the moment. I'm reducing the anxiety and trying to move it to something else. But one thing that's interesting about emotion regulation is that we can intentionally initiate an emotion. So like your kids are coming home, you notice this, and you're like, I want to just like, let's do something playful. Let's just create an emotion that's very different from the one I'm seeing here right now. You can maintain an emotion. Have you ever had a good day?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, tons.

Anytime you ever had like a good day, but then there's someone who calls you or gets in your life, they're trying to like, bring it down, the kind of dream stealer type. So how do you bounce back? How do you like, you know, something like, I want to prolong this feeling. I'm really in a good place. I'm going to take a little bit of a longer walk. I'm going to call someone else to like tell the story to because I want to like relish it. And then we can also kind of boost or enhance emotions. So those are the goals. The strategies are what the whole book is about. And so the first strategy is shift your mindset. You can do this. You haven't learned it yet. It's possible. The second is you gotta have the language. You gotta know what you're feeling. So we've covered those a bit. The next one is the basics. You gotta have the skills to deactivate. You just have to be able to take that breath. And I know people think breathing, it's overrated.

And I see it feels patronizing.

It does.

People are convinced like there's no way that tiny solution could solve this big problem. It almost seems offensive.

And if I say it in my office, it is offensive. 'Cause I'm always like, I think we need to take a deep breath. And everybody's like, that's a trigger. You know, it's like, obviously we need to take two deep breaths. But the truth is that when our nervous system is activated, like giving that example, imagining I'm your kid, I hate school. My mother in that moment is activated. Her whole life is coming through her. I'm a terrible mother. My kid is being bullied. I don't know what to do about this. And so what do I do? I yell, scream, go to your room. I just eliminate you. Yeah. Instead of, oh my gosh, my job is to deactivate. I gotta take a step back. I gotta take a deep breath. I gotta figure out a way to help my kid deactivate so that we can actually have a conversation because it's impossible from a brain science perspective to have any communication when you're both in fight or flight.

You can't talk to someone's amygdala, basically. No. This would be a nice time to just— there's some physiological imperatives, right? As your cortisol goes up and your heart rate goes up, up, we can watch it in an fMRI. You're shifting. Think it's just automatic. You go survival mode. And so first thing you have to acknowledge, and I resisted this when my wife was pitching it to me, because, you know, when your kids are acting insane, you want to in that moment teach them this lesson that would have prevented them from getting in this state or whatever it is. And my wife was just relentless about going, hey, they can't hear anything you're saying to their back online. Like, whatever impulse you have to do this in this moment is just a waste of your time because until they're calm, no progress can be made. And like, that was hard for me to accept, and I have, and yeah, what a difference if you just chill.

'Cause you want your need to be met in that moment.

Yes, 'cause now I'm uncomfortable.

Listen to me, listen to me. And there's no listening.

Yeah, I wanna heal my discomfort.

Or what my mom did was eliminate the discomfort, which was, go to your room with your father. Bang, shh, get out of my face. There's too much going on in front of me and I have no clue what to do about it, so it's fight or flight. Flight. Yeah. The other piece of that deactivation, though, is not just about lowering kind of the arousal. It's also about stilling the mind. I don't know about you, but we were talking about ADD, ADHD earlier. I mean, that's a lot of people's challenge these days, but we're really trained to be distracted in our society. We're not trained to be still. I mean, how many people spend 10 minutes a day just doing a do breathwork or a mindfulness exercise to really just still their minds? It's very few. How many people spend 5 hours? How many teenagers spend 6 to 7 hours a day on their phones? On the stimuli. 95%. Yeah. So once we get through the deactivation and the mindfulness piece where we can actually be present, then we have to also learn the cognitive strategies. To me, these are the master strategies. It's the self-talk.

It's, "Mark, take the high road. Mark, you got this. Mark, you know this feeling is impermanent." It's that self-talk that works for you, and you have to cultivate your own. I can't tell you what it is. You gotta kind of figure out the phrases that work for you, but it really works, and especially when you do it in this third-person sense. So it's like you say to you, "Mark, you got this." I'm showing empathy to myself like I would to a best friend. And so by saying that, "Mark, you got this," it's like literally giving advice to Mark. Yeah. As opposed to me in the moment who's ready to murder that person or whatever is happening. There's a million of these techniques. My other favorite one for people who have trouble with interactions, like relationship stuff, where someone might get aggressive or kind of be unsettling, it's called spatial distancing. This is the one I use with my dad a lot. So my dad, he would get triggered. And then he'd go on and on. "You think this, and you think that." And then I would just make him into a movie.

I literally— Put him in a box.

Put him in a box, in a frame.

I'm like, "Wow." This is like a Nicholson character. Exactly. Totally.

Yeah, yeah. B-level, but nevertheless. Yeah. And the way I think about it is what it's doing is it allows you to observe and not absorb. Mm-hmm. That's a big difference. Yeah.

Observe instead of absorb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. That's great in partnerships.

Another one that I use pretty much daily is temporal distancing. Like, I'm the scientist, I use spreadsheets, I'm a director of a center, and Horacio is an artist. We have very little in common when it comes to planning, when it comes to details, and it's okay. That's why our house has great lighting. Mm-hmm. But I don't want to pay for the lighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the joke is, He says, we have to have this thing. And I'm like, I have to take a moment. I'm like, Mark, A, can we afford it? Can we not afford it? B, how much does this matter to you? The house is going to look great no matter what because he's going to do a great job. Is this a massive credit card debt or is this something you can live with? And that's hard in relationships because we're so freaking controlling. I mean, at least I am. And even like stupid little things. And I'm like, Mark, are you going to not sleep tonight because we bought this stupid little thing? No, you don't give a shit. Let it go. Walk down the other aisle. Wait in the car.

So those cognitive strategies in those moments when you're like, that's a ripoff, which is what I can go with that direction really fast. Yeah. You know, you're a sucker, Mark. Whatever. Does this really matter? Does this really matter? And a week from now, am I going to be still angry about this or am I going to forget about it?

Most likely going to forget about it. Deathbed check's good at this moment. Am I going to care on my deathbed?

I also think punting it is kind of good. Like, okay, well, if I still care about this next week, maybe I can bring it up.

Then we have a conversation, but not when we're in the middle of buying it when we can return it.

Exactly. How does co-regulation work?

That's the next key thing, which I think is so important, which is that, A, we overdo in, especially in Western society, this like self-control, self-regulation. I can do this on my own. Why should you suffer by yourself? Because it's strong. Which is ridiculous. There's a phrase that I love. It's never worry alone. Like, why? I'm not weak because I worry. Yeah. I'm worried for a reason that's legitimate. And guess what? I could use someone sitting by my side. I could use a hug right now. I could use someone just saying, you want to go for a walk? That's co-regulation at the highest level. It's noticing and saying, I can be supportive to help this person manage their feelings. I'm not going to fix them. I'm not going to tell them what to do, but I'm going to make some offerings. And it's not coddling, which is what people sometimes think it is. It's not like, it's going to be okay. No, don't worry about it. Mommy will take care of it. Daddy will do it for you. That's not co-regulation. That's unhealthy co-regulation. Co-regulation is your kid is climbing a rock. If you're my mother, you're gonna fall.

That's unhealthy co-regulation. That's creating fear. Healthy co-regulation is the kid is climbing the rock. The mother's a little nervous that the kid's gonna fall because it's a little risky because they're tiny. But we're gonna play this out and I'm gonna say, honey, that looks really steep. I believe you can do it. I just want to be super careful, so I'm going to come closer and be there for you. That way, if anything goes wrong, which I don't think it's going to, I'm there for you. Totally different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One is rescue or get down. The other is I actually believe in you. It's building the resilience in the kid, building the confidence in the kid, but providing that little bit of support. I mean, we're endlessly co-regulating. We're co-regulating right now with each other, whether we're conscious of it or not. Right. Right. You're saying something, I'm responding. If I don't agree with you or you don't agree with me in that moment, you get a little feeling, you're like, whatever, it's only a podcast, let it go. And, you know, it's like we want this to be inspiring and engaging for people. I hope that they're going to learn something from it.

So we're purposely telling stories that are aligned with that. That's co-regulation in action. Yeah.

I mean, I want everyone to get out of this. Yeah, you're going to have emotions. They're going to be strong.

They're going to be uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable, and there's a version where you do the best with that that you can.

Exactly.

That's what the goal is.

And by the way, part of the co-regulation thing that's so important is that when you try to be the fixer or the advice giver or the solver, you're not actually helping the brain develop. As a parent, I need to be uncomfortable. I don't want to be in a situation where I'm going to die. Right. But, you know, I can get up on the rock. You know, I can be a little exploratory. And I need to know that I can talk to myself in a way that says, "Mark, you can do this." I need to know that I'm gonna fail. I need to know that it feels shitty when you fail. I need to learn what to say to someone who treats me in an unkind way. We have to build that muscle. And you don't build that muscle by learning nothing, by no one being there. And you don't build that muscle by coddling. You don't build that muscle by controlling. You build it by— co-regulating and scaffolding and building it.

It's amazing how much vestigial shit we're still dealing with when early enlightened writers split the emotions and the intellect into two separate things. Yeah. The great question would be like, why don't we know any of this? Why has this never been taught? Why did no one take this seriously? Because, oh, emotions are something to be ignored, avoided, and controlled, and intellect is something that'll bring you everything. Yeah. And so why would we spend 5 minutes learning this thing that we're supposed to avoid in place of more math that could take us further? And it's kind of crazy that at best we're 50/50 analytical and emotional creatures, but in reality we're like 85% emotional. Yeah.

And we've just ignored it. Emotions drive everything. They drive our attention, our learning, our decisions, our relationships, our health, our performance, our creativity. There is no correctness here, and I want to say that loudly. There is no correct strategy. This is a game we play in our lives.

But one thing you can say is if you've misidentified the emotion, you have no shot at combating that. You're chasing a different issue. It seems most logical to actually start with a true understanding of what you're feeling, which is way more complicated than people give it credit.

Self-awareness is a gift, and most people don't have much of it. Uh-huh. It's funny, when I was writing, I knew a lot of it, but then I had to do research for a lot of it because I'm not an expert in everything. The pieces that I had to really study so that I could write about them were the pieces, of course, that I procrastinated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would just get so overwhelmed, and I would try to, like, Mark, you're a professor, work through it. And every time I tried to do that, it got worse. Every time I just shut the computer and went to work out, I came back in flow states. I remember joking with myself, you know, you may not finish the book, but you're gonna be in the best shape ever. At least you get one outcome. Could turn into a fitness book. Exactly. The point I'm making is that life is a rollercoaster ride of emotions. You know, I didn't know my mother was gonna die when I was 24 years old of pancreatic cancer. I didn't know the same year I'd find the person who I was gonna be with for my whole life.

I didn't know I was gonna become a professor, I didn't know I was gonna run a center, I didn't know I'd be traveling. Like, all these things happened and if we just observe that and say, okay, life is a rollercoaster ride of emotions, I think I'd rather have more pleasant ones than unpleasant ones. Let me do some self-evaluation of where I'm at in my life, and let me be a scientist about my strategies. Are they working for me? Are they working against me? Because by the way, all the unhealthy ones are okay too. Drinking's fine, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Eating a little bit of sugar, whatever. Distraction, fine. Yeah.

Avoidance works for me sometimes. Yeah, binge a TV show, it's great.

But, you know, when I used to be a fitness instructor and I'd see people on the treadmill for 8 hours, I'm like, "Eesh, now you're like not dealing with the real feeling." Right. Yeah. Right. So everything is a balance. My hope for people is that they learn the strategies and practice those strategies and then just take some time, you know, monthly to say, Is my life working for me or against me? Yeah. And at some point in our lives, we can blame our childhoods and blame our parents and blame everything, or we can wake up and say, you know what? I'm gonna be my own Uncle Marvin today. I'm gonna look in the mirror, have a little less judgment, gonna be a little bit better listener to myself. I'm gonna have some self-compassion, gonna be a little warmer to myself. And what the research shows is that will make a difference for you. You can cultivate Uncle Marvin-ness in yourself. And here's the more beautiful thing from my perspective, and I'll just share one last story, which is, so I'm giving a speech in a town in New York State, and I'm talking about my uncle, which I didn't normally do in my previous presentations.

And this one guy looks at me and he's like, "Are you talking about Marvin Moore, the 6th grade social studies teacher from Monticello, New York?" I said, "I am." And he's like, "Mark, your uncle was my Uncle Marvin." Aww. I said, "What do you mean?" He's like, "He was my 6th grade teacher 50 years ago. And I will never ever forget the twinkle in his eyes, the way he smiled, the way he taught us about emotions and history." And like, the guy just kept on talking. And I said, "Well, I gotta finish my speech, but can I interview you afterwards?" And he stayed, and I talked with him about a half hour, videotaped this interview with one of my uncle's own actual students. But I share that with you because at the end, he looked at me and he said, "It's pretty darn clear the impact that your uncle has had on your life." And I said, "Of course." And so he said, "I'm just curious, Mark, for whom are you and Uncle Marvin?" And it just hit me. I'm like, I like to do the research. Yeah. And I realized I was not showing up as that nonjudgmental listener for my uncle.

My significant other, for a lot of other people, and I made it a goal. And I share that because what the research shows is really interesting, is that when we can show up for you, for you as that character, as that ally, we see the benefit in the other person. That's the co-regulation. I can see your life is improving as a result of my co-regulation. And by me watching you have a better life, it makes my life better. So it's a twofer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's where it begins. I love that.

The book is called "Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want." Dr. Mark Brackett, this has been so fun. Yeah, thank you. I enjoyed this so much. I can talk about feelings forever. Feelings are important.

We don't wanna do that, we wanna limit that.

Yeah. Find the right time and place. Be well. Good luck with everything. I hope you have a great rest of your tour. Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a rerun of one of our favorite Fact Checks. Hello. Hi. I'm excited to be here today.

We haven't recorded in a couple days. Uh-huh.

Yeah, I missed you. I was out of town for a few days. We like a 5-day break. Yeah, Thursday or Tuesday, is that 5 days? Thursday, Friday. Yeah. Wow.

It's like a full week. Full Thanksgiving.

Speaking of which, I really have the, the tinglies about it being here.

I'm excited too. Yeah. Are you excited about your secret turkey?

No. I mean, receiving it or preparing one? Preparing one. No, I'm not. You know, this is a big shortcoming of mine. I'm bad at gifts. I'm just bad. Like, I'll tell you, I, I, um, I think about it 30 minutes a day, which leads to depression. I spent 30 minutes thinking about this and I have nothing and I'm going to do it tomorrow. How great it is. It's fantastic. It's a great thing. I'm not creative in this space. Sure. It's a shortcoming.

To remind people, if they don't know about Secret Turkey, Erica Molly's daughter invented it, which is great.

And she invented it like 3 years ago.

I think so. So she was like 12 or 13.

The first year we were all together.

And she, she was like, everyone pick a name out of a hat. And this is a very— what's the word to describe Lily? Great sense of humor. She knows herself really well already. She's very self-assured. Yes. Like during COVID and stuff, she would put on all these plays. Every time we would go on a big pod trip, she would organize a play.

She makes movies with the kids and she directs all of them. And there's babies involved and she edits them all. She's really good at that.

Can't wait to hire her in 8 years. But yeah, no, she's wonderful. Special girl. Very, very special. Young lady. She came to us, whatever, and was like, pick a name out of the hat. And there were people's names. And then also we had to pick another thing that said like, write a story or origami or something. Poem. Yes. And you had to match the two and do this by the end of the night. And I was annoyed.

We all were. Yeah. We were all annoyed. Oh my God, we have homework now.

Yes. I was like, I just wanted to relax today and now we have to figure this out. And we have to because it's for a child, right?

Can't break her young dreams. Yep. And we did it and it was spectacular.

It was the best thing we ever, ever did. It was so heartwarming.

And then the next year, which is great, is I had never received a text from Lily and it just said, your secret turkey is blank. Yeah. And I didn't even know what that meant, but it was just an order. Yeah. Which was really fun. Yeah.

So for the past few years, we've received with some weeks in advance our secret turkey, someone in our pod, and we have to make the gift. Correct.

And or if you're Charlie, you, you say you made it, but you really hired an artist.

Exactly. Which is very good. Yeah. And then we go around and we present our secret turkeys and it's a really special thing to do. And right now you're in that phase where you're stressed out about it. Yeah, but you're gonna feel good once you accomplish it.

It'll be wonderful. It's, it's the best part of Thanksgiving.

I haven't started mine, but I know what I'm doing. Okay, great.

I'm excited to see who you have, and I'm excited.

Really? Well, everyone's a good person.

Yeah, I basically have a lot of— as much excitement as I have, I also have a ton of holiday anxiety because it's also, um, limited sweatshirt edition time. Yeah, so this is the time of the year where I've got to let go draw, and Every time I enter it with the same anxiety that— because I can't draw very well. So that's not true. Yeah, okay, thank you. Yesterday I sat down with an idea. It was actually your idea. So I, I, I had to draw 3 different things. I drew the first thing, I was like, oh my God, this is great. I sent it to you.

Yeah, really good.

And then I tried to draw the next thing for hours and I just couldn't. I'm like, why can't I draw that thing and not this thing?

Yeah, it is weird, kind of. Were you looking at an image?

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, it was just very frustrating and I couldn't— I couldn't do it. And then I was like, and I can't bring in someone to do one of the three pictures. No, it has got to be from me. Now, I did order a device this morning, I'll have you know, that I think might help with this.

But also, I think you are overthinking it, and this is because you actually are good at drawing, that your bar is much higher. The thing— I guess, can we say?

Yeah, I wanted to do a crow, a mouse, and cherries.

Yeah, which is so cute. And then you were able to accomplish the mouse.

Yeah, in fact, regardless of that, I do want to— Merry Christmas! I'm gonna frame that for you for Christmas.

Oh, that's so sweet. Yeah, yeah.

The problem was the mouse is good enough that the crow looked like a crayon drawing. Like, they have to be somewhat comparable. I know. Well, in detail, it's not like one can be a caricature and one can photo-realistic.

And then, yeah, because the mouse is photo-realistic, it has like hairs. Yeah. And it's so deep, it is so detailed, and it's really, really good. But maybe you could dumb down— give me that for Christmas. But then maybe you could do a version that's more crayon, like the crow, so that it matches.

But so I ordered a light board today, an artist light board.

What's that?

So So I trace the outside of a shape and then I do all the stuff, and the crow is just a big blob of black, and it just— I couldn't even get the shape right. And then to get into the feathers, and there's something— there's so many patterns that go all these different ways or whatever. Now, a light board emits bright light behind the images you're doing, so like I could put an image and trace it. Yeah, I guess it's a cheat. No. Anyways, light boards are really popular, and I realize a lot of people are using light boards because once I got on there, there's all these different options, and then the stuff I was looking at, I was like, oh yeah, I see that all the time. People are definitely using light. Oh my God. Anyways, I ordered a pretty nice light board today. You're turning into a real artiste. Yeah, maybe this will send me on some kind of a trajectory.

You could probably use your light board to make whatever your secret turkey gift. True. That's a good point.

Okay, great idea. You're marked. Okay, I have a few funny stories I want to tell you. Okay. When I work out, there's a lot of mirrors in my gym and there's a lot of backlight. And I don't know, when I look in the mirror in my bathroom, there's zero backlight. It's all front light. And so what I see— and that's going to be a ding, ding, ding— when I see what's so backlit, that's where I'm seeing like, oh my, Jennifer, I have so much hair growing out of my trapezius, my deltoids, my back. And then I see like really long stray hairs coming out of my neck, which are disgusting. And while I'm working out, all I can do is focus on those. Of course. So it occurred to me, I'm going to keep scissors in my gym now. Oh wow, okay. So that I can get the things I'm seeing. So yesterday I fully was just going to work out, okay? And I cut some hairs, then I cut some more hairs, then I— oh my God, I gave myself a full haircut when I was—

how can you read?

Like, do you notice my hair is cut from the last time you saw me? I got like a fresh cut right now. That's because I gave myself a full haircut in the gym and I put a towel down and I would go over the mirror and I would just start cutting. And then I would walk outside and shake all the hair off. I'm like, that's it. Now get back to your workout. Work out a little more. Oh, I missed that spot. This spot. So I was in there working out for about an hour and 45 minutes and I got a terrible workout and I came out with a fresh haircut.

You have an unusual marriage to your hair. Uh-huh. In that you, you sometimes have to like change it immediately. Like, remember when you, you had to buy those shavers? You had to buy a razor when you were on vacation with Delta to shave your face in the parking lot, right?

Because I just hit a maximum capacity. I was like, this thing is way too long, I gotta get it off my face. I felt like claustrophobic for it. And then I also, when I'm depressed, I'll give myself a radical haircut. But that started in junior high, and it's kind of like a coping mechanism. Oh, it's not like we're gonna reset that there's a new me and I'm not— and also I tend to trim my hair. Kristen points this out all the time. If she sees me like almost like 5 nights in a row doing some trimming in the mirror when I brush my teeth, she knows I have a lot of anxiety. So yes, I currently have a lot of anxiety, and yes, so that you're, you're right about that pattern.

Well, do you want to talk about why you're depressed?

I have a lot of work anxiety.

Yeah, there's a lot of work anxiety right now.

BTS. BTS. We're like, I'm some days at 8 going like to the family, may I go to bed?

May I just go to bed? Now if, if this was happening with a family member, yeah, what advice would you give them? What happens all the time, you know? And what advice do you give?

Yeah. Oh, so you know, Kristen has depression, so she'll— hers won't necessarily be incident driven, right? It's not like she has a specific thing. She'll just have a wave of it. And yeah, she'll sleep a lot. And there's really— there's nothing I can do, or nor do I think I should do. I just go like, oh yeah, yeah, she's kind of in a slump. She's going to sleep a lot for a while, and then she's going to come out of it. Now, earlier on, that used to scare me, and I was like, is this gonna be forever? And I've just gone through the cycle enough that now I just go like, all right, Yeah, she's gonna organize for a couple days really, really intensely, and then she's gonna sleep a lot for a few days, and then it's gonna be over.

I guess I'm asking like, what would your recommendations be if there was a prolonged period of what you felt was not a great state?

Yeah, well, yeah, there's steps. One is like, I will gently and have, have, like, hey love, have you, um, have you checked in with your psychiatrist lately?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, I'm not saying you need to do anything, just like, have you checked in with your psychiatrist? Yeah. So that'll be like one thing I can do. It's evolved because I used to try to fix it. Yeah, that's my nature. Yeah. And I used to try to talk her out of it or tell her what's good in her life, or, you know, gratitude list. One thing I'll still do, and she likes this and it's not— it doesn't trigger feeling judged about being sad is, let's go for a walk or let's go for a hike. Like, just encouraging, let's go, you know, move around. But I'm still moving around. I'm still doing all my workouts. That's good. Oh, another great update. So I got the toe thing looked at. Yeah. Guess what I'm doing tomorrow? I'm going to the dentist. Wow. First time in 10 years.

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, guess what else I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna have my teeth cleaned. Oh wow.

Yeah, what do you think about that?

I think that's great.

I've been seeing a lot of pictures of myself from olden days, and I realized my teeth used to be so much whiter. Oh, I had, you know, I had 4 or 5 years of tobacco use. Sure. Yeah, coming up on a year without. Are you worried about it being too bright?

Oh no, but that is a really funny episode of Friends. Yeah, yeah. Um, No, but like, it hurts.

Oh yeah, it hurts really bad. I remember because I did it like 18 years ago. Yeah. And it was miserable. Yeah. But I think I'm going to— and they won't like this, but I'm— well, at least when I did it before, you did multiple sessions. And I'm gonna go, I can handle just a lot, a little bit of lightning. I don't got to go all the way and have the insane tooth pain. Like, I won't trade off. I'm willing to just do halfway. Okay. I feel like I wasted some money but not— yeah, because when I did the first time, it felt like ice picks in my teeth.

Yeah, no, first—

if you— you haven't had it done, have you? No, no need.

What a bitch. I use that Arm Hammer, you know. I, I don't— I keep telling you, and you can do it, it's, it's at your disposal, but you just, you just don't.

Yeah, but also you never chew tobacco and you're new to coffee. I drink a lot of red wine.

Yeah, that's problematic.

I'm like, God, imagine what they would look like if you didn't drink so much red wine.

Do they not look good?

They're so white. They're very enviable. It doesn't help that I work with you because I'm staring at like as white as they can get all the time. Natural. Now you're right, you can go way too far. Yeah, you can.

And you can tell— to me you can tell. I guess this is the reverse veneers conversation. Yeah, you got to be careful.

It's a fine line. Yeah, we'll find— you'll see Thursday.

Okay, great. I'm excited. I'm excited. Now, I just remember we were on camera, so I showed my teeth and I remembered something else. People will definitely say, Monica, do you have a hickey?

Oh, let me see.

And do you? I don't. Oh, do you see it though?

I do not. Oh, really? Will you point to where it's at?

Well, I don't remember. Oh, on that side. A little bruise. Yeah, it's a bruise, which is a hickey. How'd that happen? I had a refresh of my Botox. Oh, okay.

And they do your neck?

Yeah, they do, because I have a very strong neck. Uh-huh. And so they have to put some Botox in there.

Okay.

To make it less, less strong. Yes.

What if you woke up in the morning and you went to lift your head up and you couldn't, and you came into work and your head was like this, and you go, and you go, you ever get toothpaste?

Here we go.

Full talks. Oh, um, okay, so in this episode, Anna goes into the bathroom, and while she's in the bathroom, you're telling me about your potential cashmere sweater that you're gonna make out of your back hair. Thank you. That you, I guess, made— you collected some more yesterday.

No, I didn't, I didn't, but I see that a new crop is coming in. Did I already say, in case you missed that episode, basically I discovered I had all this back hair from the backlighting of the gym. I was saying it out loud to my family and Lincoln said, do you want me to shave your back? Which I think is a dirty job. I would have never asked her to shave my back. That sounds, well, first of all, like very vain on my— like I've got my kids grooming me now. Yeah, but she offered. And, um, and I shave her legs for Yeah, that's cute.

And so have you thought about combining?

That's a great idea. Well, maybe, um, two different sweaters. So anyways, so I sat on the edge of the bathtub and she shaved my whole back, and then I collected it to throw it away, and I couldn't help but notice, by George, this is the softest hair I've ever felt in my life. I didn't— would have never thought my hair was so soft. So then And then Lincoln and I decided that I should start collecting it because it's cashmere. Sure. And that at some point, maybe when I'm 60 or 70, I'll have enough for a sweater. Yeah. Yes. And so, so you brought it. I brought it and I keep it in this bag now. I don't know if that's how you spell cashmere. And as you can see from the amount in it, it's gonna take a long time. It's really, really gonna take, um, but I really wanted you to feel it because I, I think, um, anyone you tell this to is like like there's no way it's what you say it is, but you're very objective and you don't ever lie to benefit, right?

I did.

I want you to take it out and touch it. And Rob, you're invited to too, but be careful you don't get any stuck to your fingers. I don't want you to—

you can't waste any.

No, I don't have enough to spare. Yes, yes, definitely dry your fingers off. I know.

Okay, yeah, there's really not a lot to work with here.

Um, you can pull it all the way out. Oh wow. And you want to go like this between your fingers as if it's a cashmere sweater. Okay, it's okay, everything's okay. I'm scared of dropping some. Really enjoy it. Okay. Wow. Think it— go ahead and touch it with your other fingers.

I'm good. Um, wow, it, it, it is really soft. Have you ever felt hair that soft?

I haven't. Hold on, let me— yeah, use both hands. Well, no, I want to do like a comparative. Now you could make a snowmobile suit in like a day, but, but not— this hair is coarser, right? They're very different.

Yeah, it's really soft. Hold on, what about arm hair?

Yeah, I imagine that might be similar.

I have a lot of arm hair. That's when they said I was a wooly mama. I mean werewolf, one of them. A wooly werewolf. Okay, it's really nice.

Rob, do you want to grab a little— Rob, do you want to keep your job? He doesn't want to.

Don't make him. Okay, but it is starting to fall apart. It's okay. Do you love it? It is soft. Oh, Rob, don't downplay it.

It's very, very soft.

It's impressive. Yeah, I, I did that on purpose.

Where is it? Oh my God, here.

Oh my God, guys, guys, that's so hard to come by. That's like rare earth metals.

Yes. Oh my God, get this back in here. This is so rare.

And to remind people, this is my competitive product to Brad Pitt's God's True Cashmere. My company is going to be My True Cashmere.

Oh no, it should be called Bax True Cashmere because it's almost your name and it's your back.

Bax with an X. Yes, Bax Cashmere. Wow, guys, that's a great—

How do you feel about me like just putting a tiny bit of my arm hair in?

Oh, that would be great. That would be great. That's similar to Pee Baby. Okay, got a couple. You did? Okay, great. Yeah, just add it to the Wow, it's pretty special, right? Like, it feel— I feel like that came off a baby. I can't believe— wait till I have a gallon-size Ziploc bag. Oh my God, oh my God. I don't know if this is the best, um, vessel, vessel, because there's little— I see little hairs all over. They're not in the little ball they were in.

Every time you touch it, it does lose a little bit of its quality.

Thanks for being willing to touch that. I hope it delivers. I'm gonna give it a touch too. Oh God, I'm gonna see, because I was just talking about— in a way that now I'm wondering, is it as soft as I remember? It got smaller, which is a little concerning. Well, I didn't get smaller. Yeah, it's— wow.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Yeah, we don't have much left after that little— that might be the last show and tell of my cat.

Wait, no, now it's just more compacted, which you're gonna need to compact it.

I gotta learn how to spin yarn too, because that— isn't that part of what I'll have to do? Yeah.

Okay, so that's a fact because you said that cashmere comes from a goat's chin— chin hairs. It does. It comes from the soft undercoat of cashmere goats.

Ah, and they're, they're like, um, they're up in Tibet.

Yeah, no, India.

Kashmir, India, with the K. Okay. Oh right, Kashmir.

Well, we were in India. I did get myself some cashmere scarves from, from Kashmir.

I presume they grow them elsewhere, but it's like champagne.

Yep. Where you're only really drinking champagne if it comes from Champagne Speaking of things to consume, I just saw Enora, right, in the movie theater. It's a movie to see in the movie theater, currently out. It's so good.

It is. What's it about? Are you— can't tell? I don't really want to say too much. I prefer that. Yeah. Is there anyone in it I know?

I don't think you probably know anyone in it, right? But you will. I think she's definitely gonna get nominated and like might win. And she is so good. And I mean, everyone's so good in it, but the main actress, Mickey Madison, she is a revelation. It's really something to see. It's so weird because it's like a— it's sad. Like there's like sad things that happen, but there's also like there's, there's such comedy throughout. So tonally, and sometimes I don't like that when tones are sort of all over the place, but they nailed it.

I like multiple tones in things.

Sometimes I think it can feel forced. Yes. Um, but it didn't here.

But like, Hit and Run was like a car chase movie, but it was a relationship movie, and it was— but tonally it was one.

It had one tone. It was different genres were mixed.

I think you can do multiple tones if you're the writer-director. It is. It's Sean Baker.

He did, uh, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. Yeah.

Okay, that makes makes a lot of sense.

I think if you're a writer-director, like, I would be thinking about this when I was doing Hit and Run, because there's like, there's some broad comedy scenes with nudity and old people, then there's some really violent scenes. But the, the unifying tone is it's everything I like. So it's bizarrely consistent tonally, even though it's like everything I like in one movie, right?

It's such a good movie. I'm gonna see it. Really Highly recommend it. Been some good movies lately. Substance, Minora. Substance, Substance again.

Yeah, uh, Poor Things last year.

Yeah, so, uh, woman of the hour, ding ding ding. Do you love it? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's dark, dark. Yeah, but yes, so well done.

It's very well made. She killed it. The notion that she pitched herself hours before they had to have a director and then had 6 weeks of prep and then executed do that is hugely impressive.

It really is. Really is. Very good job. Good job, Anna. Okay, I have an update. A huge update. Uh, ring's back. My ring is back.

Yeah, but it's a little smaller now.

Yeah, so I got it soldered back, and I, I think it's a mix of it being maybe a teeny bit smaller because of like, you know, they probably have to overlap it a tiny bit to solder it would be my guess. Maybe not. But anyway, it might be a little bit smaller, and I think my knuckle is permanently bigger now, a bit bigger from the bee. So I had to really shove this thing on. It took a while. And while I was doing it, I was like, is this a— this is a— what am I doing? I'm doing— I'm setting myself up for another horrible situation, right? But I kept going.

And we say doing the same thing and expecting different results.

I know they say that in AA. They also say it everywhere, I think, too. Yeah, there's a quote that Einstein says that's like, insanity is the definition of insanity, is doing the same thing over and over again. Anyway, I worked really hard to get this on. Yeah, it is never coming off.

Well, maybe I'll— you know, at any moment you want me to take it off, we've gone down this road, I can get it off in seconds.

I hope I die with it on.

Okay, I hope that's in 100 years, but yeah, that sounds fine.

At first when I put it back on, I I had so much fear that I made a huge mistake and that I should not have put it back on and that I'm jinxing.

I, I, well. Oh my God.

Now it's like, it's a triple jinx. Yes. It was, it's a reverse back jinx. Uh-huh. Because I really started to believe that the ring was the cause to a lot of bad stuff that's going on in the world and personally. Yeah. And you did try to tell me me that it wasn't the case. You said I'm not that powerful. Yeah, which was a nice thing to say, but I don't believe you, uh, because a lot— also one of my favorite restaurants closed, like, oh no, things started to really unravel. Shit really started to unravel. Yeah, so, uh, I had to get it back on, but then as soon as I did, I thought, oh, maybe you're not supposed to go back. Maybe this is a lesson in not going back, right?

Not trying to go back to high school or recreate, recreate. No, it's a cute ring. It looks great on your hand and you love it, and it really symbolizes something beautiful, and you should continue to love it and embrace it. Your first big job, and you got a reward for yourself. I did. I love it. So maybe, can you wear it on a different finger that's smaller?

I can't wear it anywhere again because you can't get it off.

Yeah, fuck that. Yeah, that makes me panic.

But I did make a joke that I think the bee that stung me was of a different political party that I'm affiliated with. Uh-huh. Really got in there, you know. Yeah, did some dirty work. Sure.

You know, one of the scariest I've ever been is I have— I have since this moment been stung enough that I know I've outgrown my bee allergy. You know, infamously in second grade, my whole face disappeared and I almost stopped breathing.

Yeah. And so I had— you also almost stopped breathing because he put a sheet on your face.

Yeah, put what, washcloth on my face? Similar to what we did to Bubba Bob. And I carried an EpiPen and whatnot, and then I got stung, and then I went to the hospital, and they just monitored me, whatever. Um, I now wouldn't have this fear, but when I was in an archaeology class and we were digging up in the Santa Monica Mountains at Stunt Ranch, a swarm of bees was migrating, and you all of a sudden heard it. And then, crazy enough, our archaeology teacher, he had been on a dig in South America, and, and a student got killed, a graduate student, by getting attacked by bees. So I only imagine what his PTSD is about all this. He calls it out. He's like, everyone's still. And you can hear like, and you start hearing it, hearing it. And we just all sat there. And this, it was like biblical.

Oh, it was a cloud.

And when they went overhead, now mind you, they were still probably 60 feet above us. It's not like they were coming down, but there was a moment where it was a visible black loud. And the amount of noise they made was on par with when a helicopter— when an LA police helicopter flies over. It was so loud and so many quadrillion of them. And I'm thinking I'm allergic to them still. And I remember just like, should I run? Should I not run? Should I run? Should I sit here? Should I run? And I just— I stayed. And then they passed. Obviously I didn't die.

Good thing you stayed.

Yeah, you think I would have caught their attention?

Yes. Your teacher said specifically don't move.

I'm glad you listened.

That's interesting too, because part of the reason the, the student had died was that everyone ran and he ran kind of up a hill and he got stuck. He couldn't climb any higher. Oh my God. Yeah, sorry I brought that up. It's a horrible story.

It's not a good story. And I brought— very my girl. So anyway, so Ring is back. We'll see how the world Yeah, takes that in. TBD. Uh, one other thing I want to say really quick. So I almost did something bad.

Oh good, but I didn't. I like bad stuff.

Tell me. So I was at a restaurant the other day and I went to the bathroom. Very rare for me, right? Yeah, I don't pee a lot. If the bathroom smelled so good— oh good, also very rare. Yeah, to go to a public restroom and it smelled good. Yeah. And when I was peeing, I saw there was this can— this like big candle lit. Uh-huh. I was like, that's the— that's the cause of this delicious smell. And I went, I was trying to see what the brand is and what it was, and I couldn't find it. So I went back to my seat and I asked the server, what is the candle in the bathroom? I really like it. He said, yeah, we get this a lot. It's— it's specifically made for us. You're in a bazaar. Star pattern. No, it's that I know how to sniff out limited edition. Yes, you do. And, and he said, oh yeah, where were we?

Where you wanted to get the candle holders off the table, remember that? Oh man. And I tried to find those can— again, back to my bad gift giving— and I tried to find those candle holders and I was unsuccessful.

Shoot, I don't even remember.

Okay, so many things you like at restaurants, it would be hard to—

when I walk through the world, I am like—

you're like Terminator, but instead of scanning for, uh, risks or threats, yes, you're scanning for items.

Beautiful items. That is how I operate. So he said it's limited— with different words, he said it's limited edition. Then a manager came over and I said, oh, is this about the candles? And she said, yeah, so we get a shipment every Monday, so we'll be getting more tomorrow. You have a big purse. I don't know if you want to— if you want to go in there. He said that— she said there's a— there's a lot in there. So there's multiple in there.

Oh my God, she was giving you—

she was giving me permission, which is why this was tricky.

Can I just say one— one of my favorites, early, early SNL sketches, was I think Eddie Murphy or one of the Black cast members went in whiteface race. And it was like a fake documentary, like a '60s documentary, so he experienced what it was like to be white. And he goes into a shoe store, he tries on some shoes, and he goes, oh yeah, these are great. And the guy goes, take them. And he finds out that like white people aren't even— just give it— paying for anything. Just take them. And everywhere he went, it was like that.

Oh my God, that's hilarious.

That's basically what happened to you. The owners She's just like, just take it. Yeah.

Wow. Not the owner, the manager, which is why I'm not going to say the name of the place. I don't want her— I don't want to get her in trouble, right? So I went in there with my bag, really excited, and I opened the cabinet. There's a bunch of these candles. Oh wow. And so I do— I take one, I put it in my purse.

You have the weirdest life.

I started washing my hands. And I thought, I can't do it.

Oh, I can't do it.

I took it out and I put it back.

Yeah. And, and that's kind of good karmically. I don't know, you just gotta figure out how to buy them or talk about them enough on here.

And I— now I can't say the place, so I really put myself in a pickle.

Now I went back to that place and like, will you be in bed thinking about what you're in the mood for to eat and then you go, and then in your calculations, like, I don't even know what I want to eat, but I want to smell the candle, so I want to go eat at that restaurant, or I want to see the mugs, so I want to eat at that restaurant. Like, are you, are you deciding to go to places for smells and the trinkets they have? Um, okay, so twofold.

Yes, in that I will pick locations based on ambiance, right, right, and vibe. Yeah. But no, like, I wouldn't have gone run back to Budanoki just to see the mugs, right? Because that's in fact taunting.

Yeah, okay, I got you.

I have to have it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, of course.

I wonder what that's about. I don't feel safe unless I have it, right? Seeing from afar is lame, right? Having it is un-lame. Write that down. That's a quote. That's a new Yep. Now anyway, I was back there with some other friends and a friend offered to take my purse and go get it. This person has not very many morals, right? I know who you're talking about. No, you don't. Okay. I know who you think I'm talking about, and it's not him. It's not him. It's not Jess. I would have thought Anna too. It was Anna. Yeah. Well, you know who I hang out with, so that's part of it.

But yeah, but it's deeper than that. I know Kelly didn't do it. I know, I know Rachel wasn't going to do that. I'm I mean, Kelly, it's not gonna be Laura, it's not gonna be—

you might do it.

She might. Yeah, she's a little bit—

she's a rascal. Um, oh, I shouldn't say that. She's— she would never do something like that. Some of Kelly's co-workers listen, I just found out, which is exciting.

Oh yeah, yeah. Hi, co-workers!

So anyway, and I said no again. Yeah, great. And then that— and I really hesitated because I thought, well, I'm not doing it.

It's the same thing. You're gonna get something you didn't pay for, and you know, you'll know it. I know, but I'm saying good job.

I know.

Yeah, yeah, but I do want— you're gonna be able to figure out who makes this candle.

No, I'm gonna be fine without it.

Oh, okay. That's also a good—

I'm gonna be fine. I don't need it. What's it gonna do for my life? Nothing. I mean, it is gonna make my house smell so nice, but, but you already have a lot of— I have a lot of candles. I have a lot of great candles. Um, none smell like that, but that's okay. And I'll get through this.

You'll be stronger for it.

So that, that was my almost stealing. Maybe because I stole when I was young, and I— that's like, that was really bad. Yeah. And apparently my mom cried. Well, that's what my dad told me happened.

What had you stolen more than the cookies?

I stole the cookies, and then I stole the boy's sand art.

And your mom cried over that?

Well, my dad told me that, but I think he was lying.

I don't think she I did.

Yeah, I think he was trying to guilt me.

Yeah, and it worked.

I know. I don't steal anymore.

It was a good— what are you gonna say?

Like, wow, that's good parenting. It is.

It's great parenting. Your mother has— your mother was inconsolable for a week.

Like, she seems fine. At night she's been crying in bed. I don't steal next to me. Well, you tried to steal a, a parking meter.

Well, I did steal a parking meter, so I don't try to rob a 7-Eleven. Yeah, what are you talking about?

I had a compartment my head, right?

Yeah, when I was younger and an alcoholic. Oh, I'm gonna say this one thing.

We're going too long in our new goals, and I go so long.

I know, but I was just in Kauai. That my 40-hour trip was Kauai. I have not been there in 20 years since my last week of drinking.

Oh wow. Yeah. Was it— what did it— how did it feel?

It felt great. Like, I saw the guardrail me and the dude smashed into on the way to buy ice. I saw the crazy hotel Dean and I were at that I went jogging after being awake for 3 days. Like, I saw all the stuff and I thought, wow, we're back here. Yeah, look how different— yes, everything is. You should be so proud. You made the right turn when you left here. It was a bizarre way to reflect on like, what was my life like and my mental well 20 years ago when I was there, and what is it like today? Yeah. And such an obvious decision was made, and I'm now there with a family, and I'm healthy. And yeah, it was, uh, it was, it was rad. Wonderful. Yeah, I liked it a lot. I love that. I kind of thought I would never go back there. Yeah, I got invited to go there, so I don't even know I would ever picked it because it's— yeah, it's my last week, and it was a gnarly week. Um, but it was very fun to be there and just go like, oh man, did we dodge a bullet.

If we would have stayed the course, A, we wouldn't be alive right now, and B, we would just not have the life we have. So it was—

yeah, it was cool. That's lovely. Yeah, great time to reflect. Well, did that do anything for my work anxiety?

Yeah, yeah. My, my time there was a beautiful— I did— I left all of my worries in Los Angeles and did have a totally carefree, wonderful 40 hours? Is that what you're asking?

Well, sort of. I guess like the, the reflection, like, oh, did it help me with my current— to really, really have a physical reminder of where you were and where you are and understanding like the, the stuff that's happening is really be really, really frustrating and not really— not fun. Yeah, but in the grand scheme, like, look where you are and what you're doing.

Yeah, I'm aspiring to be there, but I'd be lying if I said I, I could. Um, I mean, one of the tools I'm employing is like, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything, everything at this point could get destroyed and I'd still be very fine. Yeah. Yeah. So I am cycling through that reminder when I'm doing the other things to help, and then I just get caught in the loop, you know, I get caught in the rumination, you know, my sense of injustice going crazy. And so I— yeah, and then I get stuck in it, and then I say, you're stuck in it, but it has no effect on being stuck in it.

I know. Have you considered reaching back out to your therapist?

I didn't consider doing it, but I did have a moment of like, why aren't you talking to your therapist? This would be a time.

It's a good time. Yeah, yeah, it did kind of cross my mind. Maybe it's also easy to forget when you've been out of it for a little bit how helpful it is.

Yeah, but yes, I, I agree with you, and that's probably a good idea.

Yeah, I don't— I think it might be a good idea. I had therapy and it was helpful. Oh good. Okay, so, uh, are 90% of Asians lactose intolerant? Um, 70 to 100% of people in East Asia are lactose intolerant. Yeah. So yeah, '90s, right in there.

You know what would make you proud of your girl Lincoln? She had to name all 32 countries on a map of Asia for a test, and she got 32 out of 32.

Wow, that's incredible.

She even hit me with the name of a country I didn't even know. She knows now. She now— awesome. Yeah, I thought she was making one up. I had to get out my Google Map.

Okay, when did Missoni and Target do the collab? 2011. Mm-hmm. Okay, the seahorse situation, uh, where you said they're made of dust. Those are sea monkeys.

Those are sea monkeys, and a lot of commenters pointed that out.

Yeah, they're sea monkeys, and sea monkeys is a colloquial term for shrimp brine. Shrimps. And it's really just— and it's a powder. Yep. Yeah. And it's very disgusting. Yeah. Oh, and then I'm going to play one clip before we end here. Okay.

I love a clip. Most memorable moments from the Newlywood game. What's the old urban legend? You know, where's the strangest, most unusual place you ever made whoopee? That was— that didn't make it on the air. But she actually said that? Well, she said worse. All of a sudden, there was an urban legend that went out there that said I said, where's the strangest, most unusual place you've ever made whoopee? And the lady was supposed to have said, well, that would be in the butt, Bob. And that never happened. That never happened. About 5 years ago, I get a call from Game Show Network, and they said, you better come down here and take 'Look at this.' So I go down and take a look at it, and there's this little Caucasian lady from Pennsylvania, right? Her name was Olga. And I said, 'Where's the strangest, most unusual place you've ever made whoopee?' And she says, 'In the ass.' I said, 'No, no, oh God, no, no, no, no, no!

It has to be a location!' Oh, sorry, you know.

So that asshole— That didn't make it on the air. We cuckooed that one out also. What's his name? Bob Eubanks. Bob Eubanks. Bob Bob, if the, um, person in your story's name is Olga, you don't have to say Caucasian. We could definitely context clue that. You know what's funny?

I, I almost said I like that he said that because people would say Black.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. What's the other one? There's another really famous funny one which is, um, karate.

Yeah, karate class. Karate class.

What one's— what's the setup for that? Um, is it condiments?

I think it is condiment.

Oh, is it?

What's your favorite condiment? Karate class. What's your husband's favorite condiment? Karate class.

I don't think— I think—

here, I can email you it. What will your husband say is his favorite condiment?

Oh, I would say his pool table upstairs, definitely.

Oh, that's interesting.

Annette? I never heard that word before. I need to start this karate school. Karate school? What will your husband say is his favorite condiment?

Karate school?

No one knew what condiment was.

No, I would have thought they would confuse it with condom, but they confuse it with like recreation, right?

Interesting. Very. All right, so that's it. We love Anna Kendrick. We were so delighted she came back to us. We love her, love her, love her. And oh, do you want to—

she came to Halloween. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So on the episode she said she felt bad that she ghosted, and then we invited her to Halloween and she was very, very brave, came all by herself and joined our family, uh, outfit. She did. She was Claire Corningstone or whatever. Veronica. Veronica Corningstone. Yeah, from Channel 4 News. Yeah, anchorman. Good job, Anna. Yeah, that's called Growth.

Growth. We love it. We love to see it.

Um, all right, all right, love you.