How to Be a Better Human - How to finally embrace your body (w/ Ronald Young Jr.)

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Ronald Young Jr. is an award-winning podcaster, producer, and writer and the creator of Weight For It — a podcast about his own experience with body image. Ronald explores complex feelings and asks profound questions about how we think and talk about a sometimes taboo subject: our weight. In this episode, he joins Chris to dive into why body image culture affects us all – and shares his thoughts on how to break away from our unspoken insecurities and fears. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

you're listening to how to be a better human i'm your host chris duffy if there is one thing that i know is true of every single person who is listening to this show it is that you have a body i guess as far as i know there are no disembodied consciousnesses who are just floating around listening to the show but if i'm wrong about that please send me a telepathic message i would love to know that you're engaging with this work. For the rest of you, the ones with the bodies, no two of our bodies are exactly the same and no two people have the same relationship to their body either. For many of us, our bodies are kind of mysterious. Like what is actually going on in there and why is it the way it is? And is it okay? And am I normal? I mean,

one of my most memorable times as an elementary school teacher was when I was leading this health class for the fifth grade boys. And we were really just supposed to cover like the basics, like your body is changing now. So help me out and use deodorant and try and take a shower every once in a while. But when I pulled out the anonymous question cards every day, I would get a huge range of questions of things that people wanted to know. Right. Everything from like, how do you know the night that puberty is going to happen? I get where that question comes from. And I love the idea that one night you go to sleep and you're a little boy. And then the next you wake up and you're like a big Berlin man. It happened last night.

And obviously that's not how it works, but I get why you would think that it does. Or another time someone asked like, and does the body hair ever stop growing? Or do you just need to constantly get like haircuts all over your body? There were all sorts of other amazing questions that got asked. I could talk about those anonymous question cards for hours. But the point that I'm trying to make is that even as adults, a lot of us still have so many questions about our bodies, so many things that we don't understand or are embarrassed about or are ashamed of. And today's guest, Ronald Young Jr., he is an award-winning podcaster, writer, and producer

who on his show, Wait For It, is remarkably open about his own feelings around his body and his weight. And Ronald uses his own story as a way to explore the way that these issues and these cultural forces affect us all. Here's a clip from Ronald's show. I dreamed of having the ideal physical qualities. Muscular arms. I wanted to be tall. I wanted a beard. I wanted abs. I didn't want to be afraid of taking my shirt off. I wanted to be attractive. But I knew that being fat wasn't attractive.

So I didn't want to be fat. However, one day, I got fat. It happened in the last 10 years. It felt inevitable in a way, like the people who said it would happen were prophets. They were right about my eating habits. I felt ashamed. I tried to cover it up with the way that I look and dress, even down to the smallest accessory. Anything that draws

attention away from my weight. Even my personality feels a lot like a performance. I feel like I have to have a better personality than most people because I'm fat. If I'm mean or rude or get something wrong, I know the first thing folks are going to talk about is my weight. So I try to be funny and kind and always put others at ease. I generally make an effort to be relatable and agreeable. And a lot of that is who I am, whether I was fat or not. But because I'm thinking about my weight constantly, the stakes of every social interaction feel higher to me. interaction feel higher to me. We're going to talk to Ronald about weight, body, culture, and our visions of ourselves in just a moment. But first, a quick break. And we are back. We're here today with Ronald Young Jr.

What's up, everybody? It's me, Ronald Young Jr. I'm an audio producer, storyteller, and host, and the creator of the podcast, Wait For It, spelled W-E-I-G-H-T. What is Wait For It and what made you decide to start making that podcast in the first place? So Wait For It is a narrative show about the ways in which we think about our bodies, specifically the ways we think about our weight. It's funny because as I've been describing it this year, I've been telling people it's a show about body image simply because just because I have a show about weight doesn't mean I want to talk about weight in the moment with some strangers that I just met that asked

me about my podcast. I totally understand that. So, and plus like weight is such a hot button issue. Weight for it is kind of confronting the ways in which we don't talk about weight and looking at them head on and saying, why do we think this way? Why can't we get our arms around this? I saw that people were already doing it. So I'm like, hey, let me throw my hat in the ring. What if we did a whole show about it? Because there's a lot of chat podcasts, but not a lot of narrative podcasts, like real good storytelling about it. So I saw that there was a gap there and I decided to fill it. You mentioned that that there was a gap there and I decided to fill it. You mentioned that weight is such a hot button issue. Why do you think that is? I know

you're someone who's done a lot of thinking about it. I think it's a hot button issue because image is important to us, image. And it's been made to feel important to each and every one of us. What we look like is important. We're an increasingly visual society, you know, from the dawn of photographs to videos to now, you know, social media and the way it exists now. I think the biggest jump forward was this idea that we all now have a platform. And what does every platform have? A comment section. And I feel like we've been oriented in this position for a long time. First, it was, you know, the cover of magazine is Jessica Simpson wearing mom jeans, you know what I mean? Kelly Clarkson's weight, Oprah's weight. There's ways in which

we've been talking about folks's weight, Al Sharpton's weight, Al Roker's weight. You know what I mean? We've been talking about weight in this very specific way for a long time, just about people gaining and losing weight. And it's so important to our image and what we think about each other and what type of social currency we exchange. And I think because of that, there's a way in which we shy away from it when people are gaining weight, or there's ways in which fat people are kind of isolated from normal society in a lot of ways. And when I say that, I mean, normal public society, knowing that fat folks engage with straight sized people all the time, like are in love with in relationship, have jobs, all

that. But there's also this kind of under like secret backlash that is about fat folks and how they exist and the stuff that's set up front about people, the ways in which we talk about our bodies, dad bod, any of that stuff. Like this was the whole idea is like to take the cover off those conversations and say, what are we actually saying about a fat person? Do we actually think they're unhealthy or do we just not like looking at them? Or do we think they're a cautionary tale for something that we don't want to be? We're just not saying that out loud.

And Wait For It is really a lot're just not saying that out loud. And Wait For It is really a lot about saying the quiet part out loud. Do you think that we should be having more conversations about weight and body, or should we be talking about it less, paying less attention to it, thinking about it less, or should we be paying more attention to it and making it more explicit and out there rather than having it be kind of this shameful sweep under the rug conversation? I think what you're discussing is two parts, because I think the first part is exposing it. Because the only way we could sweep it up and throw it away is if we take the rug, pick it up, shake it out, and then sweep up

all that trash, throw it away, and say, we're going to keep this maintained clean now. You know, the part one is the actual having of the conversations. Why do we feel the way that we feel about weight? Why do we, you know, discriminate against people because of their weight? Why are we talking about it this way? Why don't we look at ourselves this way? You know, I think we have to address all that before we get to part two, which is saying, okay, now that we've addressed all that, we understand that some people are fat, some people are thin, some people are healthy, some people are unhealthy, and everyone deserves love. You know what I mean? Once we get to that place, then I think we can maintain a place where conversations, inclusion is not just about whether or not a person is fat or an acceptable size or a size that we deem acceptable for them

to be included in kind of the more greater parts of society, if you will. What should people who are listening, what should they do to have better and healthier conversations around weight and body? I mean, the easiest one is to watch your mouth. What do you mean by that? Because I feel like, so I think that like, I'll give an example. Lizzo has been losing a lot of weight recently. And Lizzo is obviously she's a singer. She's been a part of the body positivity movement the longest time we've known her. She's embraced her body. She's like loves her body. She's helped other people who are also fat and plus size like embrace their bodies. Lizzo is beginning to lose weight. Now, if you look at the comments and stuff that's online, there's a lot of talk about people very much congratulating her for this, moralizing it.

So I think the first step we have to do if we want to do better is to stop moralizing weight gain or weight loss, because either one can mean it can mean a lot of different things. It can mean a person is going through something. It can mean that they're very stressed. It can mean that they're very sick. a person is going through something. It can mean that they're very stressed. It can mean that they're very sick. There's so many ways and reasons why people gain and lose weight. But oftentimes when we see people lose weight, we always think that's cause for a celebration. Oh, this person has decided to live a healthier life. You know, the first step we have to do is in our own minds, stop moralizing, i.e. good or bad when a person is fat or thin. If you could start there, I think you could branch out other ways from, you could branch out other ways to be compassionate and kind when it comes to weight,

if you just start with moralization. If you're comfortable answering, where are you in your own story of how you think about your body and how you think about these issues? I'm very complicated still. I haven't solved it for you know, like for myself. There's ways in which like a specific like using the word fat, for instance.

I still struggle using the word fat, especially amongst straight size folks. Like with other fat folks, it's easy for me to use fat as a descriptor. But sometimes with straight size folks saying the word fat, I feel like opens a door for them to kind of maybe snicker or maybe not know what to do with this word and not use it as a descriptor, like tall or short or brunette or blonde. Like they, there's no idea how to use the word fat just as a descriptor because of that. I feel like if you unpack that box inside of it, you could see that I still struggle with the concept of my own body of like still being a fat person, you know? And I feel like probably the biggest struggle for, I would say a lot of body positive influencers and people that do work like me or any of that is this idea that we have

settled in our fatness in a way that allows us to be completely uncomplicated about this moving forward. Because the truth is everyone has days where they just don't feel great about their body, you know, and when you're a fat person, it automatically is sometimes feels like it skews to this place where it says, man, I bet a lot of my problems would be solved if I were less fat. true. Sometimes I think about myself when I was like a lot smaller and a lot more straight size. And I'm just like, Ronald, it wasn't like your life was better than, you know what I mean? You just fit into the plane seat better, but it wasn't like, like all the problems were solved and you were like on top of the world or any of that. Right. As a matter of fact, in a lot of ways, I'm doing better now that I was when I was at my smallest weight. Plus like, if you couple that with image and what we see every day and what's validated and what's moralized it makes it complicated to just like exist in my body and just say i feel good today

but the ways that i i try to feel good about myself is i like embrace pictures of myself i do it through taking pictures picking out a good outfit wearing a good pair of shoes getting a haircut shaping up my beard wearing dope glasses you know what i mean like there's a lot of ways in which I try to feel good about the image that I'm putting out there, despite the fact that sometimes I feel complicated about my own weight. Because you mentioned when I go to the airport and I fit better in the airline seat, what are some of the places where you feel like these conversations become the most charged? Because I've heard a lot of people talk about like transportation. And I don't mean just about weight. I actually have heard this from

friends who are gender nonconforming, where like going through TSA is every time an extremely stressful nightmare for them to be like questioned. And does this match? Does how you look match with your documents? And I know I've heard you talk before about how getting on a plane, it's always this moment of like, is this going to go well or is this going to be demeaning? Are there other moments in your daily or monthly life that have the most charged moments? I don't know how other people know what's happening, but I could tell you the time that I felt the most internal turmoil. And it's anytime a chair is involved. When I look at a chair, I'm always looking at this chair and being like, now, is this chair going to, I've never sat in a chair that broke. I've sat in a chair that has creaked or been like, uh-oh. And I've been like, nope, get right back up. But like every time I look at a chair, I'm like, is this going to be the chair that does not hold me up?

And I'll tell you the chairs that are the worst. The chairs that are worse are if you go to a wedding, they have those little folding chairs that are like kind of they're white typically and they're folding and they look like fancy in a picture. But those chairs are not for humans. They are for children. They are not for adults at all. I've sat in one of those chairs and been like, nope, this ain't it. I'm gonna stand in the back. I'll see y'all later. So I feel like I think about it the most. If I see a big old fluffy chair in a hotel, I know I'm gonna be

all right. So I think it's like typically anything that's seated anytime I have to like scoot in front of somebody or go behind them. Or like if I have to like scoot past someone who's blocking my way, like I don't want to like brush up against anybody. So it's a constant battle to make myself smaller. Is the fear that it will break and that you will get injured or is it more that you will be humiliated because people will turn and look and maybe laugh or something like that? Correct. I do not ever think that me falling on the ground and breaking the chair, I'm going to get injured. Like the only injury I care about is the injury to my ego, the injury to my feelings. And I've had friends that have broken chairs.

And like, what do you do after that? Like now I broke this chair. And it's like, again, the conversation that we're not talking about is I got to wonder what all y'all are thinking. Oh, he's too fat to sit in his chair. He needs to lose some weight. And the easiest thing is, well, he needs to get in that gym and get to work. And like no one considers the breadth of what that means for me to sit in a chair. And this is in my head. When that happens, the thought process I think that other people are having is Ronald needs to fix himself. And I feel like what doesn't often happen is no one says, hey, somebody needs to fix that chair. I'm afraid of the humiliation, Chris, because because we're not talking about it.

I don't know what people are thinking. And all I know is what's written in blogs, what's on magazines, the jokes people are making on television and movies. That's all the stuff that I see about like fat always being a punch line or some sort of like revenge plot. Like your high school bully beat you up in high school. Now you say, oh, yeah, well, he's fat now. And it's like, why is that revenge? Why couldn't he just be like, why couldn't he just suck or have an unhappy life? And that'd be like, no, he's fat. Now, physical revenge. I make up those stories in my mind

based on what we've consumed in media over the years. You know, it's not what I'm making up is not false stories. Like, granted, they haven't actually happened, but your imagination goes wild. And that's why I never want to break a chair. One of the things that stands out to me is the, you know, the amount of like mental work that is put on you that isn't put on someone else who doesn't have to think about that. Right. Like, because it is like the stress and the consideration and the evaluation, that's a lot of mental effort to just like attend a wedding. I mean, that's the same way I feel about being black, Chris, like is like you walk in the room as a black person, as a woman, as a queer person, like there's all these marginalizations that

exist that. So I guess I'm basically saying to you, I'm used to the mental work. It doesn't feel like more mental work. It just feels like in a different, like in a different lane, if anything, right. Because there's a lot of things I think of like going to a place where I'm like, am I going to be the only black person there that is the same work that happens when it comes to being fat? So I'm up to the task in that regard, but I mean, it still doesn't feel good. It is a lot of extra effort. I just kind of, sometimes I just want to exist. And I know some people really bristle at this idea of privilege, but this is really, to me, this is definitionally what it means. It's like to have to think about things that other people don't have to think about and to experience things differently because of who you

are or what you look like. Yeah. If you were at a wedding and you split your pants, right? Oh my God, he split his pants. That's great. You be like, oh my God, this is embarrassing. You switch out your pants. When you came back, maybe there would be some jokes about like you splitting your pants and now you're wearing shorts, whatever. And it would be funny.

If I split my pants at a wedding, the narrative would be about my body like being unleashed on these pants. There's still the humiliation that exists that we're all afraid of, but there's just this extra indignity that's like, no one's blaming the pants. They're going to blame me. But for you, Chris, you might be able to blame the pants. Be like, yo, those pants were cheap as crap. No one's going to be like, Chris is fat. He was no match for the pants.

Another factor is always that the things that hit us that mean more to us personally in terms of our own identity and our own insecurities and fears, right? Because I don't have great balance. If I slipped and my pants ripped and someone said, you are horrible. That's why you're horrible at sports. I'd be like, that's a fact. I am horrible at sports and I am not coordinated. And because that lines up with my idea of myself, it wouldn't rock me or be like, oh, now is that how people think of me? Because I'm like, well, that's kind of how I think of me. And I think to add another wrinkle to it is like, what if for your lack of coordination, right? Instead of it just being something that exists, they're just like, well,

Chris doesn't play sports. He does other things. You know what I mean? He's really good at those other things. What if instead of that, people were like, Chris doesn't play sports. He's a bad person. If they moralized it all of a sudden, even if you thought, Hey, I'm fine. I don't play sports. I accept the fact that I'm smart, all of that. But if there was some sort of societal reach in there that was saying that you don't play sports, you're a bad person, or you don't play sports, you're not healthy enough like

that. I feel like that would change how you feel about falling down in front of people then chris you might be like i'm gonna stay on the edges i'm not gonna do too much walking i'm gonna stay on the edges of this party i'm not gonna go i don't want to cross nobody i don't want to do anything that's going to cause me to slip or show how uncoordinated i am because we don't moralize that thing it's very easy for us to like look at that thing and be like, oh, yeah, Chris is a klutz. Anyway, and we just move on. You know what I mean?

And you accept that, too, because being a klutz isn't inherently unhealthy or bad, you know? We're going to be right back after this quick break. We'll be right back. back after this quick break. On today's show, we're talking with Ronald Young Jr. about our bodies and ourselves. I want to play you another clip from Ronald's podcast, Wait For It. In this clip, Ronald is examining the way that his body and his relationship to his body has affected his professional and emotional life. By 2016, I was fully a fat person and struggling with that realization. I constantly felt ashamed of myself because I felt like I failed at being straight-sized. Any negative event that happened to me seemed to compound those feelings, even things that had nothing to do with my weight. I'd been laid off from an IT job and temporarily started working as a coffee barista. I was in a car accident and was

without a car for seven years by then. I felt like a loser. I was 32 in a retail job, basically broke depending on public transportation. Everything I learned from TLC as a teenager dictated that I was indeed a scrub. I was deeply ashamed of myself. You have done a lot of really powerful memoir style work, and you've put yourself out there, your own fears, insecurities, confusions, the ways in which you're on shifting territory in your own relationship with your body and with the world. Many, many, many people in my life, friends and family members have mentioned how much they really love your work. And because they feel like you have those conversations, you really do come up a lot. But I also imagine that that can be challenging to kind of put your most vulnerable self out

there and to have strangers know these things about you. I mean, it can be, Chris, but I'm being honest, it's a calculated risk because I'm not telling y'all everything. There's plenty I don't tell you. You know what I mean? Most of what I'm saying is stuff that I don't mind talking about.

It's not the only thing that I want to talk about, but it's stuff that I don't mind talking about. And because I don't mind talking about it, it's okay if people come up and share their stories and we talk more about that. I get a lot of inbox messages, a lot of emails from people telling me their own stories that we could compare notes and all that. And that feels good. I think one of the most magical parts about making weight for it is that I put out work that I'm like, I don't know how people are going to feel about this. And what I'm getting in

response is, oh, I feel this and I am that person and I get it and I have a similar experience. So it feels good to be vulnerable in that way. It's like a controlled vulnerability. But like, you know, Chris, nobody's selling anybody everything. And I really do feel like people are rooting for you. We were both at a podcast award ceremony where you won a bunch of awards and it was so great. award ceremony where you won a bunch of awards and it was so great. And I could just feel the energy in the room was so everyone is rooting for this guy and for this show in a way that I don't think would have necessarily been true if a different podcast had won multiple awards.

I think people might've been a little bit like, okay, well that's enough for that show. But for you, they were like, it's happening again. Hooray. I think there was this genuine support of you. And I think it comes from the vulnerability piece. You know, it's happening again. Hooray. I think there's this genuine, like supportive view. And I think it comes from the vulnerability piece. You know, it's tough because like, I feel like I, you know, I was raised in a church, mom and dad in the house always telling me, you know, don't get a big head, be humble, all of that. And I'm always for the underdog myself. And I feel like, you know, telling a story where I'm just like, Hey, I've made mistakes.

I've done the wrong thing. I will continue to do the wrong thing, but I'm trying to do the right thing is like a story that most people can get behind. I'm not saying I'm perfect. And I think most people know that I am not perfect. All of my friends that listen to this be like, oh, this dude is definitely not perfect. But what's coming forth in the show is a complicated figure who's trying to do good every day. I just want to do a little bit better every day. And I'm going to mess up a lot. One thing that I'm curious about is you tend to work in audio where you get to have a relationship with audiences and with the world that isn't necessarily defined by them looking at you and making a snap judgment of how you look. And the other is you do a lot of work when it's not

personal that is about pop culture, about movies. You have fantastic podcasts and shows that are you thinking about and processing movies and pop culture and film. And a lot of the way that you access those works is thinking about representation and thinking about images and the power of images, because it does seem to me like there's this question of like, what do we see and what does what we see mean to us that is through almost everything you choose to do? There's a movie I recently reviewed called Alien Romulus. And in Alien Romulus, it's like the sixth or seventh iteration of the Alien franchise.

You know, there's always an android in all the movies. And this one in particular, the android is black. And the android being black is played by David Johnson from Industry, one of my favorite actors right now. There's a way in which that they're treating this android, which makes sense because people have a lot of feelings about androids. We're afraid of Alexa. We're afraid of Siri. So it makes sense that they would treat them this way.

But also, the android was black. And so that treatment from a bunch of non-black people towards a black person, I'm like, Ooh. And so I look at the filmmakers and the filmmakers are also not black. So I feel like what I enjoy about storytelling is the lens of the storyteller and the craft of,

and the reasons and why they're making the stories that they're telling the story. Because the critiques that I have around film and television are typically rooted in the lens of the storyteller, very much shaped by the world in which we live in right now. The thread between that and the vulnerability to have in my other parts of my life is because I'm always overthinking, because I'm always like analyzing problems, it's easy for me to take that same analysis and put it on myself, my life, my friendships, my past, my future,

and then also on television and movies. And I think that's what brings it all together. So imagining that things have changed dramatically in popular culture, in ways that are healthy and productive and in ways that are maybe unhealthy and counterproductive. Where would you like to see conversations about identity and body and self? I think as long as we're growing and changing and listening and learning and listening and learning is something that a lot

of people were saying in 2020, which was a, it was a very short four years ago, Chris, like it wasn't like it was a long time ago, but there was a lot of listening and learning that we were doing in 2020 that felt like was, I thought was going to push us forward when it came to the discussion of identity and race specifically in the future. I don't know that that's happening right now. I want to say y'all can tell whatever story. There was a rumor going around that the creators of Game of Thrones were going to do a show about the, what if the Confederacy had won the civil war?

And there was this huge backlash. Oh my God, do we need that story? All that. And I was like, I gotta be honest with you. I'm a very progressive person. I really want to see that story.

Cause I want to know where they're going with this. Cause we're not going to be able to talk about it and say like do any real critique or pushback of it if it doesn't exist. If we just like critique it out of existence, it's not just about people saying whatever they want, but I want stories to be told so that we could talk about them. That's my hope for the future. I think what I'm saying is going to happen, but I think it's going to happen a lot slower than I want. Whatever you make isn't always going to be perfect. Even episodes of Wait For It, I get pushed back on sometimes in emails and whatnot. But I have to be open and self-aware enough to receive that criticism, which I do, and keep it in my head as I'm making stuff in the future. Like, well, how am I going to keep growing and changing? What perspectives am I missing? Where can I expand my view? Where do I need to narrow my focus? What does it look like to continue? So I hope that people keep making stories. I hope that we can keep talking about them.

I'm curious for you, when you do get that pushback or when you get emails, do you have an example that you'd care to share of what's something that someone has kind of pushed back on that you hadn't thought about? And then you thought, oh, yeah, I'm going to do that differently going forward. And then he thought, oh, yeah, I'm going to do that differently going forward. I was talking with a guest on my show, Martinez Evans, who's a marathon runner. And we were just talking about, you know, his life as a runner, our bodies, all that. And it came up.

We talked a little bit about Ozempic in a way that was less than favorable. And I got a couple of emails from folks that were like, hey, I'm using Ozempic and this is what it's doing for me. So I don't want you like talking really negatively about Ozempic. We actually have an Ozempic episode in the works for the future. And what those emails did was kind of inform the direction I plan to take with that episode, like really frame really what I think about it and how it's impacting me. When we get that type of pushback, it makes me pause and at least go to my team and say, Hey, are we missing something here? Did I not think of something? But I think with a show like Wait For It,

the other part of it is that the majority of the emails I get are people asking if I could do a story about blank. And the truth is, I'm not going to be able to do a story about everything. There's some subjects I'm just going to miss because of my own perspective. But if I could expand it as much as I can, getting those emails is helpful because I can at least

say, can we talk about this? Is this something that we can explore? Is this something that we can unpack? Can we change our lens on this and include some more of this? So when you think about issues around body size and weight and view of self, how much of those do you think change these days, country to country and culture to culture? How much of these issues are universal?

I think I can only talk about which ones are universal because it's hard for me to say like which ones, like culture to culture is tricky because it's funny because I get people from England that reach out and they're like, yo, this is wild. We feel the same way over here. A lot of fat phobia going on, that type of thing. Right. But I don't really have insight into a lot of other countries like views on fat phobia and on being fat. I would have to be like, do more work to understand how each country is like deals with people being fat because American culture is so dominating. It often feels like our views on things are forced upon people who maybe did not think the way we

thought at all. You know what I mean? So what does it mean when our beauty standards or like people talk about Eurocentric beauty standards are enforced upon the rest of the world and Eurocentric beauty standards are very much like something that America has embraced for many years. So what happens when like the most powerful nation in the world is reflecting that back to the rest of the world and the countries that we're colonizing? You know what I mean? Again, I can't go country to country and say exactly how specific it is, but I will say

like that isolation, that separation is something that always feels by design. And like and fat folks, I feel like especially in America are often excluded because of that. So it feels like it would not be a surprise to me if that's something that other cultures have mimicked. And again, through colonization, through imperialism, you think about like the Hutus and the Tutsis and like basically the Dutch come in and they're just like, well, these folks look better than these folks. So these folks are superior. And then you leave and there's a war. People came in and told you their preference not physical the physical that makes you inferior to anybody else if you are a jerk maybe you should be considered inferior and you can even fix being

a jerk you can stop being a jerk and then we welcome you back into society. But we always want to fixate it around things that we can't control, like race or gender or like being fat or thin. So for people who are not fat, for people who are, as you've used the term a few times, for people who are more straight sized, what should they do or change in the way that they interact with the world and have conversations around these things? What are some things that they should try and put into place in their lives? If you have fat friends and you're going out with them, try to put yourself in their shoes a little bit

and be helpful. And that could be as simple as, how are we walking into this restaurant? Which way are we going? Are we going this way that is very cramped and we have to go through people? And it's easy for me to do that, but I don't notice somebody back here is struggling. Is there another route that we can take? That's easier for them. How can I help evaluating the chairs saying what, what, how are these chairs rated? Who can sit in these chairs?

Are these the ones where I sit down and they're a little wobbly and whatever. If you have fat friends or if there's fat people in your life, and even if there's not, if you could just take a moment and look at the design of a room, the design of a chair, the design of a restaurant, any of that as you're walking into them and think about how it could be more inclusive. room or this place not serving them you would be taking giant strides forward to be able to assist them navigate a room or a chair or any of that stuff because you already were thinking about it ahead of time like my friend did this one we used to sit in the back backyards and go and have fires and then one day my friend was like hey man i bought you a chair i was like really he's like yeah man it's a camping chair it's rated super high you can have and just keep it rolled around he bought me a chair i ride around that chair in my back seat. If we go camping, any of that stuff,

I can just pull it out and I'm good to go. I got my own chair. And I feel like that's the type of things that you could do to say like, hey, I know the world wasn't designed for you. I threw you a little extra. Here you go, friend. I have a kind of a sometimes bad tendency to want a little pat on the back and to not just do things silently. And I imagine that for many people, if I was like, I walked in and I checked out the chairs and they're fine for you, people would be like, I hate you. Why did you say that? Like, how much of this should we be doing silently and keeping it to ourselves versus saying like, Ronald, I bought you a chair when you're like, that is because I can imagine

that could come across as an attack from some people. You really have to look and think about what your motivation is for doing what you're doing. And if it's because you're looking out for friends and you want them to be more comfortable, then it won't be about the pat on the back. It'll be about like it'll be about them being able to navigate a room and feel comfortable. Like I think it's quickly and quietly is the most helpful. And that understanding, especially if you have a good relationship with a person is like, it's super helpful.

I used to wear sweater vests all the time at this corporate job I have, because I didn't like tucking in my shirt because my stomach hung over my pants and everybody else's didn't, but they were the requirement was you had to wear your shirt had to be tucked in. So I'd wear a sweater vest. And every now and then I'd be like, man, I'm hot hot because i'm in a sweater vest and there'd be like some idiot is like why don't you take off that sweater vest i'm like why don't you understand this about aesthetic

here okay why don't you leave me alone you know what i mean and i remember i had to say that to someone be like i'm wearing the sweater vest because i don't like the way my stomach looks and then they felt all bad and all that i'm like yeah but you didn't think about that you're like oh ronald's wearing sweater vests every day so that he can look as good as everybody else without. And I'm like, why don't y'all change the stupid dress code? Untucked shirts are not always sloppy. Sheesh.

What is a dress code that fits everyone? So that was the question for people who are straight sized. What about for people who are bigger? What should they do to make these conversations go better and to navigate the world of talking about these issues in a better way? I think share your stories. If you feel comfortable, share your stories and trust the people who love you. Trust the people who love you because the people who love you are going to hear you. And I think one of the most popular episodes of Wait for It is called Wait, Don't Tell Me. And it's about this interaction I had with a doctor.

And one of the toughest parts about that was telling a story about a doctor that people were not going to believe unless they heard the doctor. And luckily I recorded the doctor so that people could be like, oh, we get it. So as a fat person, one of the toughest things to do is to tell someone that you're being subject to mistreatment or dismissal because you are fat. And that makes it scary to share our stories with people who love us and straight size folks because we're afraid that they won't believe us. I guess it's tough probably even for a plus size person to hear this for me to say, take the risk because you'd be surprised how many people out there are as fired up about this as you are and will care about

you and will do the work that it takes to make sure that you feel good in the next situation or that you're at least like looked out for in the future, or at least just a little bit more empathy comes your way. So don't be afraid to share your stories, be an advocate for yourself in those cases, if you can, and if you feel strong enough. I love that answer. You've had a lot of success. You've made a lot of work that really means something to people as an independent creator. And so for someone who's out there who's listening, who is trying to make work, they want to make work that's personal, that is specific. And often that's the hardest work to kind of pitch and to get some sort of like big

institution to pay for. What advice would you give that person to try and make personal work and to express their identity in a way that feels authentic to them and find a way to get it out independently? They should know is that Wait For It is my fourth podcast that I made personally. And the reason why I'm telling people that is because people will look at like a successful thing and say, wow, this person just came out of nowhere. And there was a lot of iterating that before wait for it came to be. So the first thing I would say is do not wait till it's perfect. Do the thing you're going to do now,

because there will be moments of perfection in whatever thing that you start. So I'd say one, don't give up two. You have to be committed for the long term and not the short term, because in the short term, you just people get lucky and people like sometimes lightning strikes. Sometimes you win the lottery when it comes to podcasting. But a lot of times it takes a lot of time. So you really have to be committed to the long term and just say like, hey, if I want to make some personal work, try it first and see what works. And if it doesn't, try it again, try something new, try it again, and just keep iterating until you get

to something that you really like. And then if you really like it, you'll find that other people probably will like it too. Well, Ron, it's always such a pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate you making the time to be on the show and thank you for everything you said. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Chris. This has been great. And thank you for everything you said. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Chris. This has been great.

That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Ronald Young Jr. One of his many podcasts and all of his podcasts are great. But the one that we've been mostly talking about today is called Wait For It. That's W-E-I-G-H-T. Wait for it. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects, at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team that uses only the most inclusive and

high-quality chairs. On the TED side, we've got Daniela Balarezo, Ban Ban Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Lainey Lott, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who believe that the only correct size is the true size. On the PRX side, we've got a team that knows and tells me you can fix being a jerk. Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Maggie Goreville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Just to be clear, that was a quote from the episode.

If you don't understand why I said it, it's because it was a quote from the episode. And of course, thanks to you for listening to the show. Without you, we do not have a show. So thanks for making this all possible. Wherever you are listening to this show, please share it with a friend, send it to someone who you think would enjoy it. We really get out to other people and new listeners almost exclusively by word of mouth. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for listening to the show. And we will be back next week with more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.