Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 272: When Have We Changed Our Minds? | Ear Biscuits Ep.272

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

From not liking music to changing self-perception and behaviors, R&L discuss moments when they've changed their minds on a certain issue and why on this episode of Ear Biscuits! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time, I'm Rhett. And I'm Link.

This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are talking about ch-ch-ch-changes. Yeah, we asked you. Changing your mind. We asked you where we ask these questions, which is Twitter on the Mythical account, to tell us a time that you change your perspective on something, could be small, like a food preference, could be something big, like a major belief and why.

And boy, we got a lot of responses. Yeah, I'm excited about talking to you. You know, yank in your laptop here so we can look at some responses, but you know, we wanted to talk about this because, and kind of mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned here because we were hoping that it would just be a refreshing sensation of people sharing how they changed their mind.

And I don't know, there's a humility associated with saying, I once thought this, and even if it's a minor preference, but now I think this, I disagree with my former self about this thing, big or small. It's something to celebrate in this day and age when people just dig in and there's no conversations and not that this conversation is gonna get political. Yeah, we didn't necessarily.

I mean, we got some lighthearted stuff and some heavier stuff, but it really doesn't get into, because we talk about those things in other, well, there's one thing that kind of gets a little political in this, but anyway, one of the reasons I was so excited about talking about this is all the things that you just said, but also I think that there's a little bit of a selfish,

a self-interest in this, which is like, in ways that we have shared on this podcast, we've changed our minds and I'm kind of fascinated with the reasons why people change their mind, because I think a lot of times it's not the reason that you state, and there's just all kinds of factors. And I think we got some really honest responses and I'm just fascinated with the concept

of perspective change and what leads to it. And like you said, I just think it's so timely because it seems that there's so many people spending more of their energy attempting to change other people's minds in ways that we haven't really seen before in like discourse, right? I was talking to Jessie the other day and I was like,

you know, she hates going on Facebook because Facebook has become a place where you kind of just say, this is who I am, this is what I believe, and then argue with people who differ with you. You know, I think at first it was kinda like, hey, I'm having a baby. Or look at what I did with my friends. And then it would be like, okay,

maybe once every four years during the presidential election people might start like saying what they stood for or whatever. But now it's like a really high percentage of the dialogue is just people arguing with each other, but no one's actually moving on anything. Like you said, it's just people continuing to polarize and kind of align themselves with other people who all agree with them.

And it's just, there's no end in sight, right? It's discouraging. Yeah, I mean, so we're making a choice to not celebrate people who've said, I changed someone else's mind. Yeah. But I changed my own mind. And to see the things that lead to people

changing their minds. And let me just say, we read through almost all the responses, Kiko definitely read through all the responses. None of them said, I used to think this, and I changed my mind because someone on Facebook argued with me. That didn't happen in any one of these.

Nobody said that. Right, yeah. So let's get into this. I think that we can start with Aleda. At Aleda, 255-4361-2. There's a lot of those already taken. Wow, there's a lot of Aleda's out there. 250, 2,554,000.

Nope, 25 million. It's 25 million. Is that a phone number? Can we put commas in your username so we know what the number actually is? Let's call that number and see if she answers. Oh yeah, is it? It's not a phone number.

No, it's one, two, it's one few, one less digit. We could probably figure it out. Yeah. All right, figure it out. Yeah. All right, we're calling an audible. This episode is now devoted entirely to- Trying to get in touch with Elena. She responded to us at Mythical, "'I absolutely hate the sound of children singing.'"

See, you thought we were gonna start all serious. No, we're not. It's gonna take us a while to get through. I don't know, I think this is serious to her. She says, I used to love it, but then all those singing idol shows came out and now it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. P.S., I'm an elementary school teacher.

Wow. So I wonder if it's the culture of amateur singing in general that may be inspired a change in the youth that then she experienced personally, or is it just the idea of seeing so many, I mean, how old do you have to be to be, you gotta be, you got to be like 13 to be on American Idol. Yeah, I think what she means is that, you know,

she's surrounded by these elementary school kids who are like singing in chorus and stuff like that. And it's what wasn't necessarily pro by any means or splendid, but still cute, lost all of its luster to the point that she actually said, you know what? I don't like kids singing anymore. Oh, I hate it. I hate this sound of children singing.

Television singing idol shows ruined it for her, but she made a decision. She's like, you know what? Or sometimes you come to grips with how you've changed and you just, and so that's kind of like a backdoor decision, right? Well, I don't like this anymore and I'm okay with it. So the decision is owning it.

Though it would make her life easier being an elementary school teacher if she would find a way to like it. Well, she's not the choral director. Well, she didn't say that, but if she said, I am an elementary school chorus teacher. Yeah, that would be tough. Maybe, yeah, we would be outing her right now,

first of all. Well, she kind of outed herself on Twitter. This makes me think of something. But it's not something you're supposed to, it's something you're supposed to like. So I do applaud her in saying it is a preference, but she's standing by it. This is what I'm getting at is,

I actually recently rediscovered how much I do like the sound of children singing and this sounds weird, I understand, but let me just- You talking about Christmas boys choir situation? I'm talking about Moonrise Kingdom, which I watched recently with the family. Watched, me and Jesse and Shepherd watched it. And I'm beginning to really kind of understand Shepard

and understand the kinds of things that he will like. And so I was like, Shepard, I have a movie that I want you to watch that I know you are going to like. Of course, this is Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. And right at the beginning, I could kind of look at him and he was just seeing the way things were unfolding and the way things were being described. And he just had this little smile on his face.

And then he just kept looking at me and he was just like, I love this. He was like, this is the kind of movie that I really like. Like he was, and he wasn't just saying that cause I had planted the thought in his mind. But anyway. Great movie. It's a great movie.

And I feel kind of bad about how much I didn't, I loved it. I really liked it when I watched it in the theater, but I didn't realize that this might be my favorite Wes Anderson movie. Oh really? Like I did, it wasn't in like the top three for me, but I feel like it is now.

Anyway, lots of boys choir. You changed your mind about it. Lots of boys choir, which I've always kind of liked the sound of like a boys choir. I've just thought that it's got this sort of angelic sound to it. But like the way that he uses that music in the movie. There's a time and a place.

It's so good. It's just so good. So I like the sound of children singing. Well, you like the sound of professional children. Yeah, right, not amateurs. Yeah. Professional children. Kina is the name of the next respondent,

at the real khaki. I've started drinking my coffee black over the past couple of years. It's important to assert dominance over beverages. Hashtag ear biscuits. Wow, there's a lot to unpack here, kinda. Because, man, the way that I kind of interpret this is I totally relate with the idea

that there's something more respectable, and I'm not saying this is true, I'm saying I have this perception that lives within my mind that there's something more respectable about drinking coffee black, that it's ultimately better. Like if you had to like rank five people and there was a person who put a bunch of sugar and a bunch of cream in their coffee on one end of the spectrum,

and there was a person who drank their coffee black on the other end of the spectrum, I would respect the person who drank their coffee black. And I don't exactly know why that's the case. It's more hardcore. It's like it implies a toughness. Because there's something to protect yourself from when it comes to coffee.

Because coffee is bitter. Yeah, when you add cream or sugar to it, as you take a sip of your cream laden coffee. Yeah, we'll get to that. Any sugar in there? No sugar, but. I'm a no sugar, I'm a butt cream man. A butt cream man.

I use butt cream as well. But every morning, every single morning, you know what, I'm realizing this. When I make my coffee and it's going down into my mug and then I go over to the fridge and I reach for the half and half, I have a pang of guilt to this day because of this sentiment of it's,

you know, you're a badass if you can drink it black. And here I am, you know, it's like pouring defeat into my coffee. Yeah. Okay, I have a theory about this. I think there's two things going on, right? So the legitimate side of the migration from a lot of sugar and a lot of cream in your coffee

to black coffee is a legitimate scientific process that happens with things that are an acquired taste, right? So it's like, oh, I don't really like alcohol. Oh, but you know what? I had a wine cooler and now I drink just white wine. Oh, I'll drink just a white wine. Oh, you know what? I tried a red, I tried a Pinot Noir at this party

and it was pretty good. And then you work your way up and the next thing you know, you're just putting back like 20 year aged scotch. You know what I'm saying? That's a scientific process of your literal face and mouth adjusting to an acquired taste. And I think the same thing happens with coffee. So there's an achievement.

Right. You know, it's kind of like winning at something. It's the purest experience. If you wanna look at it that way. It's almost like there's a achievement. Right. You know, it's kind of like winning at something. It's the purest experience. If you wanna look at it that way. It's almost like there's a purity of experience, especially when it comes to good coffee. That's why when you go to a place like Intelligentsia and they've got like a $8 pour over coffee

and you ask for cream in it, they look at you with disdain because they're like, you're not, you're actually taking. You're not woke. Yeah, like, you're not, you're actually taking- You're not woke. Yeah, well, you're not getting the experience that was intended by the person who made this coffee. You're taking the edge off of something that doesn't need the edge off.

This isn't Folgers. So I respect that. But I also feel like if you like cream in your coffee more than you like black coffee, that trumps this prog, if you're not there yet, or you don't wanna go there, listen, I tried for like a year to do black coffee. And I was, it was multi, you know, I had multiple motivations.

One was like, okay, it's more healthy, because there's no, there's less calories in there if it's just coffee. But also, it's more badass. But then I just came to the conclusion, I'm not gonna try anymore. And then during the pandemic, I've become what I would call a cafe au lait man.

I mean, I'm basically- You got that extra time to whip it up. I'm just saying that I'm about 50% milk, 50% coffee if I can be. And you know what? I love everything about it. So you changed your mind and I thought I had too, but I clearly haven't fully changed my mind

to accept my preference and not judge myself. I think that, you know, there seems to be a tinge of pride in her post. It's important to assert dominance over beverages. Well, I think what she is doing- She might have been baiting you because I think this is something that you- No, listen, she's obviously saying something

slightly tongue in cheek, but I think it is reflective of that sort of cultural expectation of drinking black coffee being more respectable, which incidentally, we've paired this with another question. Well, and I'm sorry, before you do, I did want to acknowledge that like, when I was thinking of the ways

that I've changed my mind over the years, like I made a decision to start drinking coffee in college because it's like, what am I missing? And is this gonna be helpful to keep me awake? And so I actually, I changed my mind about coffee. You felt like you were becoming a- We both started drinking coffee in college and I think many people do

because you're becoming an independent adult and you're like, this is what adults do. It's the same reason a lot of people start drinking alcohol and don't like it at first. I don't think that that social pressure is all bad or even bad at all. I think it's just a natural part of life. And you actually, that social pressure is all bad or even bad at all. I think it's just a natural part of life. And you actually, sometimes social pressure to mature

and become an adult and actually go through the process of acquiring a taste. There's some people who are like, okay, the whole acquired taste thing is just bullshit because what you guys are saying is that you don't really like it, but you're making yourself like it. So I'm never going down that, but there's a reward at the end of an acquired taste journey.

Yeah, someone else made a post about whiskey. Exactly. It's a super common process. I don't think that's all bad, but there is a negative element to it, which you're kind of getting at with the judging yourself in the midst of the process, right? And that's where I think that Arsha,

mythical Zanskaz on Twitter is kind of tapped into something and this is what they have changed their behavior about, changed their mind about. My behavior, I'm a textbook people pleaser, a very anxious person and have abandonment issues. All my life I've tried never to say no to someone, try to fit into social norms and be the ideal person. Now after therapy, I prioritize myself and my mental health.

Thank you for sharing this, Arshia. This is by far the most common response that we got to our particular post was, you know, related to the topic of, another way to put it is realizing that your life is your own and if you start to trace the motives behind the decisions you're making, if you start pulling on those strings

and they go out to other people or to just other ideas outside of yourself, I think it can lead to problems, right? Well, it is an interesting balance, right? Because I do believe that social pressure in general, there's a reason that social pressure exists and there's a positive reason, right? We are a collective organism, whether we like it or not,

and whether Facebook seems to reflect that or not, we are members of a community, we're members of a collective, and there's a lot of aspects of our personalities and our biology that are kind of tuned towards us getting along in the context of a group. That's where like the concept of shame, like the concept of shame is not intrinsically bad

from a biological perspective. It comes from something that was actually useful, but in the modern world, it's mostly toxic in the way that we experience it, right? And apply it. I mean, yeah, so it does bear saying that there are certain things that no one should get away with

just because it's their prerogative. Right. There's a whole litany of those things. Yeah. But there are, you know, if you're a well-meaning person with a certain level of humility that, you know, starts to understand themselves,

like this person is saying through therapy, and understanding that you've deprioritized yourself to the point that the fact that it's your life is not entering the decision matrix. Right, because when you make decisions that are about your health, prioritizing your mental health, making you a better person, you actually become a better member of the collective.

And you can, so you can, it's a win-win situation when you understand yourself, right? And so I definitely, listen, I so relate to this, especially the, I mean, the part about, you know, being a people pleaser, there's things that I continue to unpack in therapy about just, you know, my personality and, my personality and why my personality is what it is,

but I am a people pleaser. It's difficult to say no. I do have this sort of idea of what is expected of me. And also a lot of times I evaluate the things that I'm doing in the context of how I will be perceived about them. And I have to continually catch myself doing that. And then be like, hold on, are you doing this,

you're doing this for a bad sort of like social reason so you'll be accepted or people will perceive you in a certain way. Or are you actually thinking about yourself and what you actually like, or what would be good for you? You don't want to prioritize yourself selfishly so that then it takes advantage of people because that's a whole different,

that's a completely different concept, right? This is just about realizing when you don't need to be making a decision because someone else's preference or someone else's perception is the thing that's driving you primarily. Yeah, you can become enslaved to other people's expectations and opinions. Yeah.

And you can die inside. Yeah. But realizing that opens the door to changing your mind. Going back to the beginning, I think about the phrase of, it's like when, if somebody says something that makes you change your mind, I was thinking about the phrase,

if you were to say back to them, you changed my mind. And just the idea that, well, you know, sometimes you can realize that your mind has changed, you can realize that someone has had an influence over you and that it could be a true statement, you changed my mind. But it seems like the more healthy disposition and approach is to say, you know what? I am the one who changes my mind.

I can choose whether I allow someone's influence or not just a person, an experience, whatever the case may be to influence me. But it's giving someone the power, it's giving somebody power over you. And maybe it's semantics, but saying you changed my mind versus- I think it's important versus you helped me change my mind. Yeah.

But I'm in charge. Again, this is my life. The decisions that I make, the perspectives that I have, the actions that I take, I'm ultimately culpable for those. You just can't say, well, somebody told me to do it. Well, therapy is a perfect example, right? Like that's why good therapists and most therapists don't give advice

and they don't tell you what you should think. They ask questions and they lead you through a process of self-discovery because they understand that, first of all, it ain't gonna last if it's not a personal motivated change. And second of all, it's like they don't have the power to do it. Like you don't really have the power

to change someone's mind. And this is coming from a person who tries to be persuasive, has a very sort of, I'm out to change people's minds, natural disposition that I have to kind of keep in check. Just reminding myself that people don't change their mind because of those kinds of things. Now, before we move on,

and we have a short break in a second, but I do just want a related thing, just because I was thinking about when we were talking about shame and like changing people's minds and social media and all that stuff, is Brene Brown, I was listening to her recently, and she was talking about how shame is not a good tool

for social change. In other words, the way to get someone to realize that what they think is wrong, if that's what your goal is, shame is not a great motivator. It actually doesn't do a lot to change people's minds. It just makes them feel shameful, which then kind of shame usually leads to worse behavior, not like actual change and good behavior.

But it seems that that's something that happens on both sides of the, and I don't like to do the whole both sides thing, but one of the things I've observed, like as our country has gotten even more polarized this year than it ever was in a time when it seemed like we had a great opportunity to kind of come together, we got more polarized.

Both sides tend to point out things about the other side, mischaracterize things about the other side. And in the process, the goal is like, I'm shaming you because you think this, or you believe this, or you've identified in this way. And that is shameful. It might be true that it's shameful. There are behaviors that are shameful.

There are things that you can say and do and things that you can believe that are truly shameful. But shaming someone about them doesn't tend to be a great way to change their minds about them. Just a sidebar there. Shop Best Buy's ultimate smartphone sale today. Get a Best Buy gift card of up to $200 on select phone activations with major carriers. Visit your nearest Best Buy store today. Terms and conditions apply.

Okay, this one's from mythical.joe. At Joe Mythical. Two different ways. I've changed my perspective on sick days. Before, I took pride in never being out sick because I'm tough, reliable, resilient. Since COVID, I'm conscientious of being potentially infectious

and of other people's vulnerability. Also, tough folks deserve the rest too, dang it, or deserve rest too. Yeah, I remember the, you know, when the flu or sickness was coming through in years prior, be like, well, listen, you know, you'd have to reassure people. It's like, if you don't feel good, don't come in.

It's like, remember, you can give it to people and then it, you know, it creates a problem where more people are out than just you taking one for the team. I honestly don't think that I thought about sickness in that way. I did not think about disease spread. I just thought I don't feel good, so I don't want to work.

And there's a such a thing as sick days, but at no point would, if you had given me like an opportunity to list the reasons for why sick days exist or why people should stay, if you would have given me like an opportunity to list the reasons for why sick days exist or why people should stay out, I would have eventually gotten to, oh, well they can also spread the disease, but I just didn't think about disease spread in general.

We think about it now though, don't we? Yeah, we do. I mean, because every connection could mean life or death, serious illness, not to death, serious illness, not to mention, at certain points, it's like, okay, shutting down production, our entire work sphere kind of a thing, if we were to get it or certain key personnel were to get it.

I was reading a heartbreaking article last night. There's a lot of those going around, but it was a nurse talking about basically what her day has become is setting up phone calls and video chats with family members saying goodbye to the people who are dying of COVID. And that the thing that's happening now is it's younger people saying goodbye to their dying parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, as they apologize for having given them COVID.

Oh gosh. Because they got together for the holidays. And she said, it's just like this heartbreaking thing where people like the last thing they're saying is that, I'm sorry that I didn't take this seriously because now you're dying. We know that you're dying. There's nothing else I can do.

And it's because I had COVID as a 40 year old or whatever. And it was, I was okay. But you weren't because you're old. Obviously it affects older people more severely in general, it affects everybody at times, but that was just, yeah. I mean, the way that, which is something we've been talking about since the beginning of the pandemic is like,

oh, like now if it's, I would say a year from now, two years from now, if it's, you know, I would say, you know, a year from now, two years from now, if it's the winter months and you're going to see your older relatives, especially people who might be compromised in their immunity in some way, you might wear a mask when you go inside. It's like, right?

It's not a violation of your freedom. It's a, it might be a gesture that makes sense to save somebody's life. Or if you, especially if you're going to like a nursing home to visit somebody. Right. Like where disease can spread so quickly, like we're seeing with COVID,

like wearing a mask as a visitor in a nursing home will probably become the expectation, if not the rule. That's not a bad thing. That's just, we've learned something, you know? And if you live close by and you're like, I can see you today or, you know, I'm feeling under the weather, meemaw. I'm gonna wait until next week to see you.

Right. I would hope that that's now part of, you know, the social dynamic that enough minds have been changed. Yeah. You know, I think to use this as an example, when someone close to you gets severely sick or passes away, it really helps change your perspective on something like this.

In general, when you can personalize things, like if you have a, you know, if you don't have anyone in your life that's different than you in a certain way. Yeah. You know, it could be a myriad of ways, right? And, but then through connection with individuals and it makes a difference and that's what change,

that's the power to change people's minds is inexperience in relationship, like in contrast to shame and argument or public embarrassment or, you know, it doesn't negate the need for repercussions at a certain point for certain actions, but in a general, like we're all human here, experience and relationships are so important

to changing minds. I would say it's the most common factor, both for maybe giving people the wrong perspective about something, but also giving people the right perspective and having them change their mind. Like rooting them in something and then also taking them, uprooting them is usually related to a person.

But before we move on, I will just say, as an employer, as we think about Mythical moving forward, when everybody gets back to the office, whenever that is, I do think that the perspective on sick days, there has been a cultural shift. And I think it's gonna be, I would say it's gonna be more like, yes, if you think that you might have a cold or whatever,

don't come in and now we've really sort of made the whole concept of staying at home and working from home is like, oh, oh, I can be a part of this meeting, I'm on a video chat. Everybody's doing that right now. We've made that so much more of a normal thing that even if somebody's like, I don't really know if I'm sick a video chat. Everybody's doing that right now. We've made that so much more of a normal thing that even if somebody is like, I don't really know if I'm sick or not,

but I think I should stay home to protect you guys and I'm not gonna compromise the work environment. That's going to be a very common thing. So it's not just gonna be like, if I'm sick, I'm taking a sick day and not coming into work. There's gonna be this gray area, which is we're gonna call something.

There's gonna be like an official corporate name for it. There probably already is, which is like, I'm sick, but I'm working today. So I'm not taking a sick day, but I'm not coming in. Like that's going to be a big part of the experience and employment moving forward. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic?

Well, for us, and I'm gonna guess for some of you, that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. With the best celebrity guests.

And hot takes galore. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. I like this one, Jade Marie posted, I used to say that I hated all country music when I really just hated the uncle who would always listen to country music. No one wanted to hear that opinion though.

Yeah, again, this is a case of your perception on your perspective of something is influenced by a relationship in a negative way. Yeah. I get it. I mean, didn't you- But then you realize you're making a decision. You told me a story, you may have told them this story about how you made a decision to not like music

because your stepsister liked music. Yeah, when I was like in grade school, I don't know, it's, you know, there was just this, it's not that we hated each other, but there was this- She's a stepsister. Stepsister, there was this implied, I mean, we would argue, we had to share a bathroom. You know, I didn't,

let's see, she was probably, you know, at least- She was like a teenager. Maybe five years older than me, you know? And she was just acting on teenage instinct. When you were thrust into each other's lives at a really interesting time, right? Yeah, so I was like, you know what? I'm not gonna like anything that she likes. Including music and all music.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't a genre, it was just like music as a thing. So there was definitely, I'm sure that that was a statement, I don't like music. I mean, now music is one of my top passions. Right. But there, so there was a point when it was like, I think once we started,

once I started going over to friends homes and like, oh, they're really enjoying music. I gotta change my mind about this or I'm gonna be, I'm gonna check out of the zeitgeist. I think those are the terms I used as a third grader. Yeah, zeitgeist. You know, it's terms I used as a third grader. Yeah, zeitgeist. You know, it's like, man, I gotta get this new tape. I gotta start listening to tapes.

Well, and specifically- I changed my mind. I'm proud to say I do like music now. A lot of people don't like country music because of the association and whatever you associate that with, right? If it's the parts about the South that embarrass you, which there are parts about everywhere that embarrass everyone who's from them.

And if it feels like- Maybe it's just the twangy earnestness of it. But I'm saying that it represents or is associated with the distillation of the things that embarrass you about a place. There's a lot of people, we grew up with a lot of people who were like, I think that country music

isn't sophisticated so I'm going to not like it. And sometimes you don't even give it a chance. Now I will say, I went through a phase, now we always liked country music, but we always liked sort of classic country music. And there were a few sort of modern artists, like I was really into Garth Brooks in the early 90s. I did not follow him into the Chris Gaines era, okay?

I'm proud to say that I didn't do that. Not because it wasn't country, just because it was horrible. But I think that, and then as an adult, like even like right after Jesse and I got married, we went through a couple of years phase where we would listen to like 94.7 in Raleigh, like the- Modern country. Modern country. And it was so positive and so sweet

that there was this sort of like young love, married, starting a family kind of vibe that country music sort of just unironically embraces that we liked. Now when we go back to, I don't listen to much modern country at all right now. Yeah. I mean, I love Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson,

but they kind of are kind of, they don't really, they're not considered, they don't fit that category. They aren't considered country by a lot of the country people. But when we go back to North Carolina, one of the things that I do as a habit is we listen to local country radio whenever we drive in the car,

just to like kind of just dip in completely. And it's difficult for me to take, I gotta be honest. Yeah, but- It's pretty difficult. But like eradicating and writing off an entire genre of all country music, or, you know, someone made the same post but about electronic music and then started, described how they began to understand

the craftsmanship around it and they changed their mind about the, well, true music has to be created with actual like acoustic instruments or like playable instruments. And even Or, you know, like playable instruments. And even that, I don't know, they say the dichotomy a little bit differently because you would play synths and things like that. Yeah, that's a big boomer perspective.

Like the way boomers think about rap, like, you know, I've heard many boomers talk about rap as if rap doesn't take any talent, right? Like, oh, these guys are just standing there and like you go see them in concert, there's just music playing and they're walking around. Right. I think we have an appreciation for it

because we've tried to do it in parody form. You know, we've tried to be like, all right, we're gonna do this rap. And when you recognize how hard it is to make it sound good or make it sound good or make it sound anywhere close to what a professional would do, you start realizing that this is, the same thing with like,

I've always had this thing about poetry, which is like, okay, so what's the deal with poetry? Yeah. Especially poetry that doesn't rhyme. Some of you. You know what I mean? It just, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just, there's this couple of smattering of words

and then a random indention and then another smattering of words. But I've lived long- Then it's over. I've lived long enough to know that if I were really to dive into the world of poetry, I would be like, I see what makes a good poet. I gotta say, I'm an unsophisticated country boy from North Carolina in a lot of ways.

And one of those ways is that my favorite poet is Shel Silverstein, right? Yeah. Happy to say it. But I'm sure that if I understood like the reality of what makes Emily Dickinson good, that I would be like, oh, this isn't just something that somebody determined. Like there's actually a reason for this

and I couldn't do it. I couldn't just start writing things. Everybody thinks that they can write poetry, right? Yeah. But that's not how it works. It's more complex. I think that's all I have to say about country music. John Muller, you know, I think that's all I have to say about country music. John Mueller gets really honest here.

In fact, begins the post with honestly y'all, dot, dot, dot. The way he changed his mind was related to Black Lives Matter. He says, honestly y'all, Black Lives Matter. I was one of those dumb people who got mad at Kaepernick. Kaepernick. How do I say that wrong? When I see it, I'm like, I'm gonna say it wrong.

Yeah, well you did. Kaepernick, about his protest, but what happened throughout last year really galvanized a 180 degree change for me. Hat tip to Michael Shea matters and Dave Chappelle as well. Yeah, again. Thanks John for sharing that. to Michael Shea matters and Dave Chappelle as well. Yeah, again. Thanks John for sharing that. Yeah, thanks for being honest and vulnerable publicly.

It's not something that happens a lot, especially you don't hear it a whole lot from white guys who say y'all, that this is something that they changed their minds about. So thanks for doing that. I think that, you know, we feel like we can speak with some authority on this issue because we are white boys who grew up in the South

and had perspective on these things that we don't think was really based in reality and could ultimately be described as racist, right? Not in your classic, external, explicit expressions of racism that you'd see in like a movie about the deep South, but more of this, this is something that is in the fabric of the way that we think and we see the world

that ultimately is rooted in this idea that whiteness is the standard and whiteness is normal. And it's taken years to deconstruct that and to see all the places that it impacted and all the ways that it impacted our thinking. I mean, I talked a little bit about this in my letter to a white man that I wrote. Well, a lot about it.

That was the point of it. Yeah, that was the point, was to talk to my former self. But I mean, in general, when you say I changed my mind about blank, but then specifically if it's, I changed my mind about systemic racism and or the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, that's a loaded statement, right?

Because it implies that you're coming from a place that is rooted in the opposite, rooted in, as you just said, like in racism. Yeah. If maybe it's not on the surface, but if you trace it back, you have those tendencies and it's been baked into your psyche and you've got to scrape it out over time.

So there's a confession in there. For real, yeah. So that's why I applaud John. John, whenever you say you change your mind about something, it's that level of humility to say, especially on this topic, that like, I was wrong about one of the things that like, you know, if you could just say, I adopt, yes, I support Black Lives Matter,

and you just say only the positive, you know, maybe that's great. But to say, I'm coming to grips with what I used to believe and I'm changing is, I think that humility is called for, it has so much more of an impact on others as well. It's much more powerful. I mean, listen, the reason I put that article,

I wrote that article in that way for two reasons. One is I wasn't trying to be like, hey, I'm an authority on this. It was more like my primary goal this year as it relates to these issues is just to listen and learn because I'm not as well educated and I don't have the personal experience of people of color and what they've gone through.

But the second thing was, this is the only thing that might have been meaningful and impactful to me in the past is just hearing someone that I could relate to talk about these things, right? And that's why I kind of wrote this letter to my former self. But this is a really difficult thing to change your mind on, especially when you've got lots of people in your community

and in the world, frankly, who find all kinds of ways to discredit the movement, right? So it might be anything from like, okay, well, let me tell you what Black Lives Matter did. Black Lives Matter was responsible for violent, you know, riots or however you wanna, you know. So saying that because there was violence that property damage or whatever that took place

as in conjunction with the BLM protest, therefore the underlying thing that's being fought for is illegitimate and you can, therefore the underlying thing that's being fought for is illegitimate and you can just write the whole thing off. Or you can mischaracterize the movement as, this is just a Marxist movement that's designed to completely rip apart the fabric of traditional America and therefore I'm going to, again, write off,

I'm not gonna entertain any empathy for this and I'm not going to try to address the central issue that's being talked about. There's so many sort of corners that you can crawl into to avoid actually dealing with the central issue of the history of systemic racism and the way that it is morphed and changed and gotten even more sort of conniving

in the more recent past and not as obvious, which makes it even harder to sniff out. But it just, honestly, it takes a lot. It takes a lot for people to experience this kind of change. And we personally have a lot of empathy for the people who are resistant to that change and are experiencing that change. So, you know, again, like Link said, kudos to John for sharing this

because it's really the only way that we can see real changes is the people who are holding back the change are actually experiencing the change. And I just think that it's powerful. It just bears saying again, because it's, you know, it might be easy for us just to say all the positive things and to say the right things about the Black Lives Matter movement now,

because we are in front of these microphones and you could argue that we have something to lose by saying the wrong thing. Yeah. I hope you know that's not what's going on and that we're sincere about this, but part of that is saying we've had to change. I think that's kind of the proof in it is saying,

well, it's not that I've always been on the right side of this. I've been, I was, I grew up on the right side of this. I've been, I was, you know, I grew up on the wrong side of this. Yeah. And so making that change is nothing to brag about. It's something that instinctively I'd rather not talk about. Yeah.

But again, that's why in general, today we're championing people who say, I changed my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Which implies that like John was saying that 180 degree turn. Well, and I think it's significant that, he points out Michael Shea and Dave Chappelle, right?

And both of those guys tend to be pretty polarizing figures in their own right, right? You take Dave Chappelle, Dave Chappelle says a lot of things that are offensive to a lot of people. He tends to be a very polarizing character. But I find it interesting that somebody like John would say, well, you know, Dave Chappelle was actually responsible,

partially responsible for me changing my mind about this central issue. And I think, again, that goes to that, this is not some clean process. There's not just this, you know, everybody who thinks right about this is on this side and everybody who thinks wrong about it is on this side. And you have to be, you have to talk about this stuff

and you have to be right in the every single way that you talk about it. And you have to be super, super consistent. When we insist on this absolute standard of excellence and complete wokeness in order to accept people, one of the things that we do is we lose the ultimate mission which is not that we all just think exactly the same way and agree on every single thing and have some standard

that we hold ourselves accountable to. No, we've got a whole lot of people that we're trying to move in the right direction. The goal is for all of us to collectively get better and that you have to take into account process. Right. And efficacy of change. I think honestly, I'm not saying, again,

me saying that I think Dave Chappelle has been a force for good in this particular regard, as John is pointing out, does not mean that I endorse all of Dave Chappelle's comedy or all Dave Chappelle's perspectives. But all I'm saying is that I don't have to agree with every single thing that somebody does or says in order to be able to say that they've been a force for good

about this particular issue and be like, you know what? You did some good work there and that's great. You changed somebody's mind. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to change people's mind. We're trying to, like you said, become better as a collective. We're not just trying to be like,

here's the fence between the two sides and I wanna make sure that I keep putting up boards on that fence and make sure everybody's over here on this side and let's keep building that fence higher and higher and higher. No, what we wanna do is we wanna bring the fence down lower and lower and continue to bring people over it. I would much rather be friends with someone who was

not on the right side of an issue, but demonstrated a sincere open mind to it. Yeah. Then someone who believed all the right things and was firmly in the right, if you're able to assess that from any vantage point. You know, it's just that's not, there's no grace, that's not a reflection of humanity and how, you know, the human experience of, you know,

everybody's somewhere and is not gonna be right about everything and they're not gonna- You're gonna be wrong about most things. And you're gonna be wrong about most things. Everyone is going to be wrong about most things. You're gonna be wrong about most things. Everyone is going to be wrong about most things. It's easy to put it in the poetry example again. You know, if someone said, you know, I don't get poetry.

It's like, you know what? And if I was a poetry scholar, let's say- You could have been. Or let's say that's what I was most passionate about. It's not actually- You have glasses. I'm with you, I don't get poetry. But I just wouldn't, I don't know that I would want to converse with someone

who say, I hate poetry. Right. You know, it's just- Versus, I don't think I understand poetry enough. I hate jazz. I don't think I understand poetry enough to really appreciate it. That's one way to say it.

You know what I mean? And so, yeah, and again, I think that we talk about, we talk about these things in a way that maybe, again, what I am saying is that I have empathy for people who disagree with me because I disagree with my past self. Right. It's as simple as that. And I don't know, I get so frustrated

with the nature of dialogue on both the left and the right, because it's as if the goal is to solidify the ranks versus actually make progress and move the collective in the right direction. And I don't know, I just feel like, because we get into a place where it's just like, oh, that person said this thing that offended me and therefore every single thing they've ever done

or will ever do is illegitimate. It's like, well, I don't want to treat myself in that way. I don't want to treat anybody in that way. I wouldn't want to be treated that way. Because I'm going to be wrong. I'm going to say things that are wrong. I have said want to be treated that way. Cause I'm gonna be wrong. I'm gonna say things that are wrong. I have said things that are wrong. I'll tell you something I was wrong about.

And it's this next one. Okay. Just to lighten it up a little bit. Rachel said, I insisted we would never have pets inside the house. Then we got our cat and I insisted she'd never be allowed in the bedroom, but now both our cats sleep in the bed and I would kill a man if either of them requested it."

Oh, wow. Kill a man if the cats requested it. Talk about a reframing of allegiance. But I mean, yeah, for years I was like, you know, I am not gonna have pets in the house. I am not, you know, that's not who we are. And then I came up with other reasons to tell the kids why it wasn't gonna happen.

But like, I just, I didn't like the idea of hair. I didn't like the idea of the poop, even if the poop was outside. I mean- You don't even want poop on the perimeter. Every single time I'm just, doting over Jade or babying her. The kids still love to point out like,

aren't you glad that you were wrong about that? And it's like, you know what? And it's an opportunity for me to say, you know what, kids, I'm glad that you forced this issue, Lily in particular with the dog. I'm gonna save any conversation about the cat that does live in our home for a subsequent thing. I will acknowledge that we now have a dog and a cat animal

living inside of our house. But I try to acknowledge, yeah, I take those moments to be like, yeah, I am grateful that I have done a complete 180. Like my life is so enriched and then I'll just start gushing about Jade. But really I see it as an opportunity to, in an innocuous way, on an innocuous topic,

to say, you know what, I changed my mind. I did change my perspective. It wasn't about being right or being wrong, it's not more about morality here, but it's about humility of saying, you know what, I did change my mind and I disagree with my former self and my life is better because I changed

than it was before. And don't you think that's really the heart of it is the fact that when you didn't have animals in the house, the only thing that you had to go on was the perceived negative aspects of having animals in the house, right? It's like, you can't really perceive positives without experiencing them,

but you can kind of anticipate negatives. It's much easier. I don't know why, it's just the way our brains work. But then when you began to experience the love that you can have for a dog, which started, and a love that wasn't the same kind of love that we had for our dogs growing up that were out in the shed in the back kind of thing,

that were more like we had just had a wolf that we happened to round up. No, inside the house dog that like you receive this physical love from on a regular basis, like your standards will begin to change very quickly because you see the other side of the coin, right? And then you're like, oh, there are gonna be some inconveniences.

I mean, one of the things that I think about, and we've talked about this is when you decide to love something, then you start thinking about the fact that this thing doesn't live as long as me. Like this dog will die most likely before I will, right? If we both live to our general life expectancy, I'm gonna outlive Barbara. And now I think about, dang,

that's gonna be really difficult. But I'm still willing to make the sacrifice because of the positive that I'm experiencing right now. It's really about, and if you try to take that and map it onto something that is more moral or, I don't know exactly know how you do that. Like, how do you get someone to, I think it goes back to what you said,

which is you gotta make the experience personal, right? It's not something that you're just gonna, you can't just sit and think about the idea of a dog in your house, in your head, and come to some conclusion to be like, I love dogs in my house. It's like, you gotta have a dog in the house. You know, you gotta have a friend

who challenges your perspective. You gotta see something in some, you have to have a personal experience in order to change your mind about something, ultimately, right? And your personal experience is with having a dog in the house and now a cat in the house. And I'd much rather convey that principle to my kids

than having all the answers or being right. It's being willing to admit when you're wrong or when you've changed your mind on something that's not about right or wrong even. Yeah. Is more important than being right at any particular moment. You know, it's-

Because think about how miserable you'd be if the only thing you were doing was focusing on continuing to bolster your predetermined argument that having animals in the house was bad. I can imagine that there are dads out there, moms, brothers, sisters, who I was dead set against having a dog in the house. And now that there's a dog in the house,

I'm the person who doesn't like it. And I spend all my time pointing out all the things that the dog is doing that are bad. Like what a miserable existence versus accepting it and seeing the positive. Then you're like secretly petting the dog. You don't want to be seen. You have a secret relationship

and then that gets weird, you know? Right, secret petting. Well, you know what, there's other ones, but we're not gonna get to them for the sake of time. We'll do this again. But the fact that we did have such great responses and we still wanna continue to encourage people to respond. And one of the things that we were talking about

that I wanna talk to them about, I wanna talk to you about is if you've never responded to a prompt on Ear Biscuits, maybe that's because you don't follow us on Twitter or you're not the type of person to respond to just open-ended questions associated with this show. On the internet. Or on the internet in general.

But we wanna invite you to take a risk and do that. So if you follow our at Mythical Twitter account or our personal accounts, we can try to do a better job of retweeting those prompts as well. But definitely if you follow the at Mythical account, you can see every so often when we post these prompts like this one about,

tell us about when you changed your mind. We just wanna hear from more of you. We enjoy the familiar faces and the familiar names and you really get that sense of community. And so we're not complaining about that, but we do think there's a whole group of people who- Just kind of watching. You know, you're a thoughtful lurker.

And we wanna hear from you on these topics. And sometimes the questions are tough. It might take a little time to think about it, but you don't have to answer immediately. You can come back and we usually give, you know, at least a day where you can come back and add to it before we roll everything up. Yeah, I mean, like Link said,

we definitely appreciate the folks who always respond to the prompts, but we are, you know, really interested in hearing from people who've never responded, who might say, I created a Twitter account just so I could respond. So hashtag Ear Biscuits. You can continue to talk about what we talked about today,

but also be looking for that next prompt that we're gonna put out there to get your questions. And now I'm gonna give my rec, because it's my week. On Disney Plus, you can search by all the different brands that they own, Like on Disney Plus, there's, you know, you can search by all the different brands that they own, like Marvel and Star Wars and it goes on from there. And, you know, they're doing a lot of things

where they're creating content around content, like behind the scenes series for the Mandalorian series, which is absolutely amazing. So I got curious and I was looking around, there's lots of that in Marvel, the Marvel section as well, but there's one show called Marvel 616. And it's basically this concept of taking principles around the Marvel properties and just exploring

these like tertiary ideas or behind the scenes type things. They're all, each episode's completely different and I've only watched one. So I'm only recommending episode one, which is about the Japanese Spider-Man. Now I've had a T-shirt for years that had Spider-Man and then it had Japanese writing underneath it. And I just thought it was a cool t-shirt.

Well, it turns out there's a, in Marvel licensed Spider-Man over in Japan and then they created a television show for Spider-Man and it was entirely different. It was, you know, there was some emissary who pitched it to Marvel and then, this is a documentary on creating an alternate universe, basically a Japanese version of Spider-Man

that is totally different. Does he have a suit? He looks the same, it's the same suit, but he's the action adventure that he's in, like it's not Peter Parker. Well, that makes sense. Right, and he's not in New York, but I mean, like he fights robots, he like drives vehicles.

He still behaves like a spider, and they talk about like how they made the show and it's just absolutely fascinating. Is this a one-off documentary? It's a one-off, just the one episode. And you know, all of the people who were involved in it, they even talked to the stuntmen who were like, there's this iconic tower in Tokyo.

I think it's called the Tokyo Tower. I'm probably getting all this wrong, but- That's a good guess. Well, I mean, they tell the story of him showing up, of the stuntman showing up on one of his first days and he puts on the Spider-Man costume and then they just tell him, he's just showing up for work to be Spider-Man.

And they're like, climb the tower. With no net, no safety mechanisms, he free climbs this tower and then they use that shot in like the closing or opening credits of the show. I mean, you wanna get your money's worth if someone's gonna put their life on the line. But all the stuff this guy would do, like they didn't have any budget, but it was important that they were high action.

What years are we talking about? This is the 70s. And so he would fight these gigantic robots because you had to have gigantic robots in Japanese shows. Right. That's what all of them were. Right. So at every turn and everything they do,

it's just splendidly strange to us as Americans who know our Spider-Man. But because they were able to separate things and there was no internet and they didn't share shows and Marvel said, do whatever you want with Spider-Man and make it work over here in Japan, but it can't leave Japan. Right, and it could be contained at the time.

And it could be contained. And so now if you watch these clips, it's just like bonkers to us. And the stories are equally bonkers. So I would definitely recommend that, Marvel's 616, episode one. Episode one, maybe you'll watch episode two. Thanks for joining us, hashtag Ear Biscuits.