On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Susan Cain ON: Why It’s Okay to Feel Sad & the First Step to Healing Emotional Trauma

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Today, I talk to Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent seven years on the New York times bestseller list and has been translated into over 40 languages. It was named the number one best book of the year by Fast Company, which also named her as one of its most creative people in business. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications and her records smashing Ted Talk, which was where I first discovered her, has been viewed over 30 million times on ted.com and YouTube combined and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all time favorite talks. Now her most recent book is called Bittersweet: How Sorrow And Longing Make Us Whole, which has become an instant #1 New York Times bestseller.Susan explains the reason behind why we process pain differently and why moving on is doable for others after some time but seems difficult for some. We also discuss how some people were able to turn painful experiences into inspiration and achieve creative success, the importance of shared connection and how we can find balance in expressing, accepting, and addressing our individual pain through these connections, and finally, the first step to healing is acceptance.This conversation shows us how we can choose to wallow in grief or in pain and allow it to control us or embrace these bittersweet emotions to fuel our motivation to heal, to connect, and to be a new you.    What We Discuss:00:00:00 Intro00:03:33 How did you start figuring out pain?00:05:52 Acceptance is the first step00:09:16 The union between souls00:12:05 Connection is the most healing of all00:16:19 The power of music00:22:01 Turn your pain into a creative offering00:24:21 Connection is the key00:28:25 We keep the memories of the people we lost00:30:42 The movement for compassion00:36:57 What is disenfranchised grief00:40:10 Finding balance in expressing and accepting your pain00:49:36 What can leaders do?00:54:37 Our culture of compassion00:57:39 Susan on Final FiveEpisode ResourcesSusan Cain | WebsiteSusan Cain | LinkedInSusan Cain | FacebookSusan Cain | InstagramSusan Cain | TwitterSusan Cain’s CoursesBittersweet: Practices & ReflectionsQuiet at WorkDo you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on CalmWant to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty  https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box-top. And into the city of the rails, there I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there, and if you want to play with the devil, you're going to find them there in the rail yard. Undenail Morton. Come with me to find out what waits for us and the city of the rails.

Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or cityoftherails.com. Our 20s often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be keptfree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind

our experiences. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable, now more than ever. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed Podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin.

I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression, and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The one you feed has over 30 million downloads and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple podcasts. Oprah Magazine named this is one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself. The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better. It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations with world-renowned experts,

and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. There's many, many ways in which these emotions show up. And one of the things that psychologists talk about is this phenomenon that they call disenfranchised grief, which basically means that there's a thousand and one versions of these griefs and these separations that are not socially acceptable to mourn. And so we don't mourn them. We don't even name them to ourselves as something that requires morning.

Because we don't think of them that way. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now, you know how much I like research, how much I like psychology, how much I like the mind, and how much I love learning from people who deeply take the time to understand complexities, challenges, life situations that we all go through. And sometimes we don't really have deep

insight on some of the biggest emotional challenges of the journey of our lives. And today's guest is someone who does just that. And I've been wanting to have her on the podcast for a long, long time, probably a couple of years in the making, and we're finally doing that. So I'm very, very grateful. Today, our guest is none other than Susan Cain,

the author of Quiet, The Power of Interverts, in a world that can't stop talking, which spent seven years on the New York Times' best-seller list and has been translated into over 40 languages. It was named the number one best book of the year by Fast Company, which also named her as one of its most creative people in business. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications, and her record-smashing Ted Talk, which was where I first discovered her, has been viewed over 30 million times on Ted.com and YouTube combined, and was named

by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks. Now her most recent book that I highly recommend you go and order right away and you're going to want to, especially during and after this conversation, is called Bittersweet. How sorrow and longing make us whole. Please welcome to the show, Susan Cain. Susan, thank you so much for being here. Really grateful, really excited to learn from you today.

And these are actually my favorite conversations on the podcast, sitting with someone who has studied and deeply absorbed a theme, a transition of life that is often not spoken about enough. So thank you so much. Well, thank you so much, Jay, for being here. It's just such a joy I've been a fan for a long time. Well, the feeling is very mutual.

Let's dive right in because I think, you know, the work that you've done up until now on being an introvert and being quiet and stillness is really powerful. But this new book, Bittersweet, what I find really interesting about this is I find that as humans, and I'm speaking on my behalf, and I think a lot of my community feels this way as well, is that we've never been taught about what to do with pain. We've never really been taught about what to do with the feeling of loss or sorrow. We don't really know what to do with it, and the generic advice we get with is, well, it will heal with time or it will go away naturally. And I wanted to ask you, like, where did you start on this journey of figuring out what

to do with pain? And when you started that journey, what surprised you the most? I had had experiences in my own life and the generations of my family before I even entered into this world. It had experiences in their lives that I think kind of set me up to be thinking about these kinds of questions. This particular journey really started for me when I noticed that I was drawing, I mean, I love music of all kinds. I love happy upbeat dance music,

but I found myself drawn especially to minor key kind of longing yearning music. And I started to notice that that music had this effect on me that wasn't about sadness. The only word I could use is love, actually. I mean, the music would give me a sense of uplift. And I realized that the uplift came from love. And it was because the musician composing music like that, they are expressing the pain that all humans experience at one time or another. And they're basically saying, we all feel this some of the time. And I'm letting you know that I,

I, the musician, have felt that way. Everybody else listening to, to this has felt this way. And, and the music is, then going to take this extra step of turning the pain into something beautiful, which I think is, is kind of the call that we all have in this world. And so anyway, it was really trying to understand like what that music was all about that got me started on this inquiry

of what bitter sweetness is. And I started looking at all these different traditions from all over the world and across time. And they're all telling us that the willingness to accept the fact that life is a mix of joy and sorrow is one of the great bonding agents we have because we all are humans who are in that same state of being. So it's a great bonding agent and it's the source of our creativity and it's the source of transcendence. But it all started with music and it probably started before that our creativity, and it's the source of transcendence.

But it all started with music, and it probably started before that, with various family experiences that had primed me to be thinking in these ways. And do you believe that it's a avoidance of that idea that life is both bittersweet and that life is both joined sorrow? Is it the avoidance that causes us more pain or causes us more stress and pressure?

And is that's why we need acceptance, is acceptance the right word? How are you constructing that door process for us? I would say acceptance is the first step. We do have to accept and acceptance, by the way, looks like many different things. It doesn't only look like kind of sitting calmly and letting things wash over us. It's it's also Understanding that some of the time we're gonna feel overwhelmed or angry or whatever it is in response to

a verse of event and being okay with All of those kind of chaotic emotions that come up, but all of that that's only step one of those kind of chaotic emotions that come up. But all of that, that's only step one. There's a guy named Stephen Hayes who's developed this thing called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and it breaks down this process. Acceptance is stage one, commitment is stage two. What commitment looks like is it's identifying the source of your pain and realizing that the only reason you feel pain in the first place is because something has happened in an area that matters to you. So to use it as a kind of signpost of, this is what matters to me. Maybe just had a break up or a bereavement or whatever it is and you realize, wow, this

thing that I've lost, this matters. So now you want to commit yourself to that area of life because now you know how much it matters. So now you want to like commit yourself to that area of life because now you know how how much it matters. And we see people doing this in different ways all the time. They're just not always aware of it. Just as examples after 9-11, suddenly in the United States there was a huge rush of people signing up to become firefighters. And in the wake of the pandemic, there's a rush of people signing up to become firefighters. And in the wake of the pandemic, there's a rush of people signing up for medical school and for nursing school. And you could say both of these decisions,

they're kind of counterintuitive. It's kind of like people are signing up to be closer to the source of the thing that has brought us pain. But what humans wanna do ultimately is humans wanna create meaning. So like, if we can accept, but then also take that extra step of making meaning out of, out of the thing that has caused us pain, or making a kind of human connection out of it, that's really what brings us closer to wholeness.

That's such a beautiful answer. And I love hearing that from you especially because you've spent so much time in this space. So it's almost like acceptance with meaning that turns into action. Like some sort of, as you said, the examples of the firefighters and the healthcare workers of people opting to take action because of some meaning that they've gained. I think often we're scared of transforming sorrow or loss or pain into acceptance or meaning because it means we have to spend more time with it, right? Like it's, when you open up the wound, you have to spend more time with the wound.

And so it's often easier. How do we, is it courage that's needed to look at a painful area? And I love what you said about ultimately, if something caused you pain, it's because it matters to you. What is required to take a closer look at what matters to you that's caused you pain?

Is it courage? Is it curiosity? Like what is that? What have you seen that gives people the resilience required? Or is it resilience that's required to actually assess that? I mean, I suppose it's all those things, but I think one of the biggest factors

that we overlook all the time is connection. There's no pain that exists that many other people haven't been through, or that people who have been through it could still gather around together. But there's a reason, for example, with alcoholics and onumus, like, what do you do? People gather around together to lift each other up.

They don't do it by themselves. Or I think of someone who I talked about, who I quoted really in Bitter Suite, she was describing the funeral of her grandfather, and she was describing how she had never before seen her father cry. It was her father's father who had passed away. And she said, you know, it was incredibly sad and group of friends gathered together, and they were like a barber shop chorus,

and they sang this beautiful tribute in honor of her grandfather and the tears were streaming down her father's face. And she says which he remembers of that moment most was actually not the pain. It was what she calls the union between souls that happened at that moment. And there is something about these painful moments that can open us up to that union between souls. And I think we need to look for that everywhere we can. And you see it everywhere around you, once you become aware of it. This is one of the reasons that I think it's such a problem that in our culture, we don't like to talk about stuff like this.

We see it as kind of just tasteful or maybe't like to talk about stuff like this. We see it as kind of distasteful or maybe a little bit weak or something like that. But God knows we need more of a union between souls right now. We have nothing but division. This is actually one of the things that most opens us up and most joins us. Yeah, that's such a great reminder. And you're so right that we, I feel a lot of us, including myself at times in my life, I've had the feeling that no one understands me and only I'm going through this.

Like only I'm struggling. And I think today, if we take a look at it through the angle of social media or the idea of yeah, anything from Instagram through the TikTok, through the Facebook or social media or the idea of yeah anything from Instagram through the TikTok through the Facebook or whatever it may be and people are looking at that going well my life doesn't look like that my life's a lot worse than that and that comparison or that judgment constantly makes us feel like we're more alone in our experience of pain.

How do is that unhealthy to feel that our pain is unique? Or is it useful to feel that your pain is unique to you? I'm fascinated by the uniqueness of pain, especially when you're talking about the idea that actually pain is what connects us, but often our experience of pain is, well, no, no, no, my pain is what connects us and but often our experience of pain is well no no no my pain's different or sometimes it's my pain's worse than yours or sometimes people gain perspective by thinking what someone else has it worse off and so I'm intrigued by is pain healthier to see it when you see it as unique or when you see it as connecting. Oh that's interesting. I mean, so I would always say every single person's life story is unique. And of course, there are some pains that are more difficult

than other pains for sure. But yeah, at the end of the day, understanding the connection is the most healing of all. It really is. There's a Japanese Buddhist poet who I talk about in Bittersweet. His name is Issa. I, I, I, SSA. He's one of the great famous poets of Japan. And he had this life experience where he kept, he married late and he and his wife kept giving birth to children who didn't live. They would die like a stillbirths.

And then, and then finally finally they had this daughter, Sado, and she was healthy and beautiful and beloved. And then she too, like the age of two or three, she dies of smallpox, and he's utterly heartbroken. And he's also trained as a Buddhist monk. And so he's trained like in the idea of impermanence, you know, in the idea of accepting impermanence. And so he writes this poem after his baby's death

he writes this poem. He's basically saying, I get this world of do is just a world of do, you know, meaning it's just do drops I get it everything's impermanent. And then he says, but even so, but even so. And he's basically saying, you know, like even I who's trained in impermanence, even I am going to say this hurts, you know, for my baby daughter to have died this way, this really hurts. And you have to ask, like, well, why are we, why, first of all, why did he write that poem? And second, why are we reading it 200 years later? And the answer is that he wrote it because he knows that everybody has trouble with that idea of impermanence. No one fully accepts it. Everybody grieves.

And we read it 200 years later because our lives are completely different from his and yet they're exactly the same. We would grieve too in the exact same situation and 200 years later we'll still read it and That's one of the great sources of uplift that we have It's one of the great truths, you know that we're we're all in this kind of like amazing state of like constant Love and loss that go together as humans that is that that's our situation and we're in that together and there's something incredibly beautiful about that. It's why we listen to music, it's why, or like one reason, one big reason, we listen, one big reason we consume art is because we're kind of allowing our artists and musicians and the allusions and everyone else to tell us these truths on behalf of all of us and join us together that way. Yeah, that that truly is I'm really glad I asked you that question because I hearing you deepen that understanding for us around what we're looking for in that connection and transitioning the music.

I realize that a few years ago when you know you're traveling all across the world and I know you do too and you're speaking or you're doing events or you're meeting people and you realize that everyone's playing the same music in every single country often and I know every country has its own traditional music as well of course which is beautiful but I also find that often you find that music just you you know, crosses language, crosses boundaries, crosses barriers. But I think one of the interesting that you bring up is that normally people would think that we listen to happy music to feel happy and sad music when we're sad. But you talk about how sad music can transform into something beautiful that can uplift someone and bring them

closer to a feeling of joy. Walk us through that concept. Yeah. I mean, so we know this that the music that reliably gives people shivers and chills and goosebumps, it's the sad music. It's the sad slow music. And people will tell researchers that when they listen to sad music, they feel connected to states of wonder and awe and transcendence. And sad music is incredibly uplifting. It

lifts the mood. It lifts the spirits. I'm sorry, I meant happy music. I'm not sure what I just said. But anyway, but it's the sad music that makes us feel like, you know, we're touching something higher. And I think this is because as humans, we all enter this world. It's like part of our emotional DNA to feel that we belong in another more perfect and more beautiful state. Whether you use religious terms to express that, that we belong with the divine, or in the Garden of Eden, or in Zion, or in Mecca, or whatever it is, there's this feeling of we belong somewhere else. And the Wizard of Oz, we belong somewhere over the rainbow. That's a state that human beings feel on a fundamental level. Sad music, minor key music puts us in touch with this state. So instead of making us feel sad,

it's making us feel connected with the more perfect and beautiful world to which we feel we belong. And you're talking about different cultures, you can see this in music all across the world. There's like in Portugal in Brazil, well Portugal is the music of Fato and Portugal in Brazil. They both have the idea of Soudaje, the idea of the longing for a lost love

that you may never have experienced in the first place. And this is embodied in the music. And as I understand it in Hinduism, there's an idea of Viraja, which is the same idea, kind of like longing for a lost love. And the idea there was that the legend has it that music and poetry began with that sense of loss. And there's like a tale of a bird that is weeping because its lover was killed by a hunter's

bow. And that moment of the bird's weeping is said to be the start of all, of all art and poetry. So there's something very deep in us that feels these things, um, but is uplifted by them because we're together in that state of exile and we're together in that state of longing for a better world that we're always reaching for. Hiring is challenging, especially right now when you have so much on your plate. Luckily there's one place you can go where hiring is simple, fast, and smart. A place where growing businesses connect to qualified candidates.

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I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen, or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw this tax of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, what is that? That's so interesting and I agree with you and you're spot on that, especially in the Bukti tradition, there's a statement similar to Viraha, it's called Vipra Lumber Bhav, which means service in separation or love in separation.

And love in separation or longing is seen as higher than love in connection because there's a deeper longing, there's a deeper sense of connection and intimacy that is experienced in wanting to be reunited with a loved one whether that be the divine in certain traditions or whether that be a person but What I find really interesting is how some of these concepts can be so easily Misconstrued or swayed like the idea that I Think a lot of people would feel that longing for a better life actually causes a lot of pain as opposed to the idea that you're really putting forward is longing of knowing that there is more. And I'm just trying to really get into that subtlety of like longing for a better life actually causes us

More pain and stress sometimes Whereas what I think you're saying and I'd love to clarify that more deeply is longing knowing that there is more There is meaning there is purpose to this experience. Could you does that help? Is that and I'm really allowing my mind to like connect random dots right now? I'm not following my my notes or my questions at all because I just feel like there's so much depth here to uncover. I hope you don't mind me doing that by the way Susan. Are you kidding? Oh my gosh, I love that. No, no, no. I think it's a spot-on question.

And I think that what you might be getting at is the difference between longing for material things or that kind of thing versus a more existential longing for that which is beautiful, good, true longing for like perfect love, longing for the divine. Those are very different kinds of longings for, you know, like I'm longing for a nicer car. Maybe we're using the same word to describe two very different states of being. Yeah, no, no, that clarifies it. I think that's a great, great thought that affects that. And for me, I think what I love about what you're saying in this book is that artists and musicians, most of the time, get their inspiration from sadness, darker emotions and experiences,

and it's often a really painful, traumatic transition in their life that creates their greatest art form. You gave the example of the bird just a few moments ago. And do you think that the opportunity to transform pain into something creative like music or art or poetry is possible for everyone or is the right way for everyone. When a lot of people would say, well, I'm not poetic or I'm not artistic or I'm not creative Is that still what you've found and discovered to be a really healthy form of healing? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad that you have that question because I use the to when I talk about this and I do say you know Whatever pain you can't get rid of make that your creative offering But I'm using that word creative in a very loose sense.

Like it doesn't have to be, you know, the painting hanging on the wall. It could be like the cake you bake or the organization you found or you know, the time you reach out to the friend who really needed to hear the thing that you just said at that exact moment. You know, there's a lot of different kinds of creative acts. The real

creativity is the transformation of pain into beauty and beauty can take endless different forms. In the book I talk about a lot of different people who do things like this. You know, like the mother whose whose child is killed by a drunk person on a highway and starts mothers against drunk driving. You know there's a thousand examples like this. So I was hesitating as you could see, even to give that example, because I also wouldn't want people to feel like,

well, it necessitates starting some gigantic, famous organization. It doesn't take anything like that. It just takes some kind of act. It could be an act of extremely modest and private transformation. But I think the transformation is the key. Yeah, I love that as a solution.

I think what I notice in my work is that often for people to get started, even when things are somewhat more stable, starting is so difficult. And the idea of starting anything when you're in trauma or pain and You are right that when you look at some of even the greatest careers of musicians or actors often What they create is To heal their trauma, but they don't necessarily heal their trauma in that journey What do you think's the difference? There's two questions here. Let's start first. I'm really getting excited about this topic.

Let's start first with, how does someone start? Simply, when they're in so much pain, they've gone through a really tough difficult situation. They're not Buddhist monk trained, they're not exposed to feeling that they're naturally creative in what the world considers to be creative. I agree with you.

This could be a business. It could be a painting. It could be a room in your home that you redesign. It doesn't need to be an entity or a huge charity. How does someone just start when they're actually like, how can I start? I'm just so stuck in my pain. Well, I mean, the first place to start, remember at the beginning we were talking about before there's commitment to the thing that you value, first there's acceptance, and

acceptance includes kind of like sitting with the wash of pain. So it may be that you're not really ready to do any kind of like grand act or modest act of transformation for quite a long time. And, and that's okay, you know, and to accept that also, to the extent you start to feel like open and ready to it, connection really is the key, you know, and maybe it's one other person who you're connecting with, and maybe it's a person you don't ever meet in real life, and it's just somebody you're you're connecting with over the internet.'s a person you don't ever meet in real life. And it's just somebody you're connecting with over the internet. You know, here I'm like coming from my introverts background

of knowing that people have very different wishes and how they want to connect. And you should be honoring your own wishes. You know, some people will want to be in a room a full of friends or strangers. And some people really don't want that. And all that's fine. But I do think that connection of one kind

or another is always going to be the key. It's what humans want most and all that's fine. But I do think that connection of one kind or another is always going to be the key. It's what humans want most of all. I'm just thinking of somebody who I talked to a lot for the book and I wrote about her. This is my a good friend of mine. Her name is Lois. She's my sister's mother-in-law and she she lost her daughter, Wendy, to a variant cancer. And they were like incredibly close. And Lois is an incredibly upbeat, cheerful person by nature. She's not a bittersweet type at all. But she kind of went into a time of really dark despair.

And it was something like two years, you know, that she was like in her house and hardly coming out. And she said just kind of like creating a shrine to her lost daughter all over the house. She said, like she was hanging pictures of her, like up at all these crazy angles all over the house. Like she didn't even have the wherewithal to hang them straight or in any way that made sense. She was really in an altered reality. And what started to bring her out was realizing that she still loved her husband deeply, loves her other children deeply, her grandchildren deeply, and feeling that the message that she was sending to them was that maybe they shouldn't be moving forward with their lives, or maybe they didn't matter so much because she was so lost in the love for her one daughter.

And it was that was one of the things that most pulled her out. And it doesn't mean that her grief has gone away at all. But there's this incredible way of putting it that comes from the writer, Nora McInnerney, the difference between moving on versus moving forward. You know, the message we get in this culture is, you know, eventually you should move on. Like, get over it. That's the message we're getting one way or another. And instead, we can move forward, which means That's the message we're getting one way or another. And instead, we can move forward, which means you do go on with your life,

but you're carrying the lost person with you always. You don't ever have to leave them behind. They have shaped you, they will shape you forever, they will always be a part of you. You're carrying them with you, even as you move forward. And I think that's a much healthier and more manageable way for people to deal with

their lost belevids. And with all of that, I think connection is at the heart of all of these ideas. Whether any specific example you saw of how people carry someone with them long term in a way that becomes healthier and healthier for them, as opposed to more and more de-abilitating for them. What were some of those examples? I mean, Treg does to how someone who's had a really, like you said, like you're talking about people who've lost children or people who've lost partners or, of course, parents, like what was the healthiest way or methods that you saw people keep people in their lives without it impacting their current relationships and their current outlook as well.

Well with Lois who I just told you about who lost her daughter, she often talks about how she really wants to still be talking about her daughter all the time. And she said people around her would very understandably often, like, not talk about her daughter because they were afraid to, like, remind her and upset her. But of course, you know, someone in that situation doesn't need any reminding. They haven't forgotten anyway. But much more to the point than that, they want the person still to be part of their lives.

So they want them to, they want to be able to talk about them in everyday life and just bring up their name naturally. Now I'm not saying every single person feels that way. And if, like, if you know someone like this in your life, it's probably a good idea to ask them what their preference is. But, but I do think many people feel that way. And then another example is from Nora McKinnerney, who has this idea of moving on versus moving forward. And her situation was that she had lost her husband when she was still quite young. And she did end up remarrying, but she says that the marriage she has now and the relationship

she has now with her new husband is the way it is because of her lost husband. You know, she is the person who she is and she is the wife and partner that she is because of the experiences that she had with her lost husband. And so he's still present with them and a part of her and and and it's all integrated. It's not like there doesn't have to be this stark delineation, you know, between that which was and that which is. It's more like it's all one continuous flow. How do we need to adapt as a society do you think to allow for this kind of healing, this kind of life? Because as you said, most often we don't want to talk about it. If someone does talk about someone they've lost in their life, it can be quite unsettling and uncomfortable.

A, because I think people are not used to talking about these themes as we discussed previously, but also because people are scared of saying the right thing or the wrong thing and they'd rather not. And then ultimately it's about, well, when is it right to talk about it? I think there's a lot of aspects of this that make it complicated. What are you seeing a good progress? to talk about it. I think there's a lot of aspects of this that make it complicated. What are you seeing a good progress? Did you even come across any communities or any tribes or societies or places in the world or people that you found were having healthier conversations around loss? Do those even exist?

Yeah, there's actually, and I don't know if I'll be able to give you names at my fingertips, but it's actually fascinating. I would say there's a movement now that has sprung up to talk more about death and grief and loss and all of it. It's a broader movement with many different subgroups to it. I think we kind of reached a tipping point. It was around the early 20th century that we started moving loss and death and all of it, completely off stage.

It was like seeing as being completely non-appropriate, don't talk about it ever. This was a period where it also became like out of fashion even to talk about bad weather. Like you weren't supposed to notice anything negative at all. And I think there's a reclamation process that's going on right now with people realizing we will actually be more whole if we can integrate all of this into our daily lives. It's not about a love of the macabre or the more a bit of it. It's nothing like

that. It's just like tell the truth about being alive, like integrate it all. And so yeah, these movements are springing up. And then I think you see it in other ways too, you know, like, you know, the last 10 or 20 years, it's become increasingly common to talk about things like compassionate leadership. And what does compassion mean? We think, it means, yeah, be nice. The word compassion, it literally means to suffer with someone. That's what it means.

And so this movement for compassion is really talking about making a place for people to be able to bring their joys and their pains and for other people and colleagues to be there with them. And of course it's uncomfortable and messy and no one has the answer yet of exactly like how to do business with all our lives and all our emotions out there too.

It's complicated, but I do think we're starting to wrestle with it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that at least being able to have honest, transparent, non-judgmental spaces seems to be a good beginning point. And I think that that requires a lot of openness because often there's a judgment on how we want to be treated about our loss. And then there's a judgment from the people on the outside of how you should be reacting to your loss. And so there's this mishmash of expectation based on judgment, which seems

really uncomfortable. Like if you've just gone through a loss, but then you're expecting that people should deal with you a certain way, that's really tough because chances are most people are not equipped with the tools to know how to interact with you, but then those people are also expecting you to get over it, as you said, or move on instead of move forward. And so I find that there's often this, yeah, there's this tension between these two sets of expectations that ends up causing a bit more stress. So it really requires a lot of openness and non-judgment from everyone.

One of the most moving moments I've ever seen at a conference came when the organizer of the conference asked everybody to write down on a piece of paper, just something that they had been through recently or were going through, you know, some like life trial. And people wrote these things on their pieces of paper and put them in a hat and they all went up to the front of the room and then the organizer sat and on the stage and he's just started pulling these pieces of paper out of the hat and reading them aloud. And it was so profound because it was like, you know, one person was going through like a terrible divorce and another was dealing with an illness. And you know, it was just like one thing after another and you realize, if you had looked around at these people, all

of them cheerfully milling around the conference and, you know, like happily shaking each other's hands, you'd have no idea of what their true stories are because we don't present that particular face to the world. That's not what we do. And so just the moment of being reminded of all our complexities that are existing behind our smiling faces, that was very profound. And I think there's probably a lot of different ways that we could do that. You know, like in schools, they sometimes have what's called a parking lot of like a whiteboard where the kids could write down what they're experiencing or feeling or thinking or whatever.

And they don't have to put their names. You look at the whiteboard and you suddenly see like a picture of the emotional and experiential state of the class. And I think we could be looking for more and more ways to do that with each other. So that, so that even if we're not too skilled yet at dealing one on one with how do I, you know, how do I talk to you about what you personally are experiencing collectively, we can, we can see each other a little more clearly. Yeah. Did you find a difference in approach, Susan, to people who lost someone to death, are you passing away, et cetera,

or losing someone who is still alive, who may even still be in your life to some degree, who may be, maybe they're geographically distant, but they're still present, they still have their own life. You may be aware through friends or through social media. What was the, was there a difference in approach to dealing with those two types of loss? Did you see different ways of emotionally regulating or reacting to the different types of loss?

I think what we've been talking about now, especially with the examples you've shared, have been very much, you know, losing a child or losing in that sense. But what about like losing a partner or losing a long-term friend or someone in that capacity? Yeah, it's funny. Actually, or not funny, but that we went in the direction of bereavement because I mean, I talk about bereavement in the book but that's not really the focus. The focus is much more and just like in general the fact of of, you know, this human condition of there being a pain of separation and a desire for a union that animates us in so many ways. So, yeah, to your question, of course, it depends on each individual circumstance, but people do go through quite profound losses and separations. There's many, many, many ways

in which these emotions show up. And one of the things that psychologists talk about is this phenomenon that they call disenfranchised grief, which basically means that there's like a thousand and one versions of these these griefs and these separations that are not socially acceptable to mourn. And so we don't mourn them. We don't even name them to ourselves as something that requires mourning, because we don't think of them that way.

If you broke up with somebody, yeah, everybody knows that you might have a few tissue boxes out for a few days or something, but nobody thinks of it as a subject of mourning. And other people aren't primed to react that way. You know, your colleagues aren't primed to support you in the way that they would if you were having a classic bereavement. So I think the real difference has to do much more with our expectations for ourselves

and what we expect of each other in terms of how we process all this. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior in words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was loved by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help.

As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissists in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslightings, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to navigating narcissism on the iHeartRad app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. from my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm gonna end up, and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters, living outside

society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom, this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you can have this incredible rebirth,

and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or cityoftherails.com. A good way to learn about a place is to talk to the people that live there.

There's just this sexy vibe and Montreal, this pulse, this energy. What has been seen as a very snotty city? People call it Bosedangeless. New Orleans is a town that never forgets its pay. A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Newton and not lost as my new travel podcast where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party. Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party.

It doesn't always work out. I would love that, but I have like a Cholala who is aggressive towards strangers. I love you, dogs. We learn about the places we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm gonna die alone when I'm traveling,

but I get to travel with someone I love. Oh, see, I love you too. And also, we get to eat as much... I'm very sincere. I love you too. My life's a lot of therapy goes behind that. You're so white, I love it. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I think as I'm talking to you and I'm listening and thinking about some of the areas I saw in the book, what I'm always fascinated by is the balance of how do we encourage people and ourselves to talk about our pain, to discuss it as we're encouraging here, and to be more transparent about it. What is the balance that allows you to use that to then turn it into something creative or action-based or meaning or moving on and becomes like a form of self-expression. And when does it actually limit you? Because I think we experience both, right? Like so you see people build empires

out of their pain and no one knows they're going through anything. So they can build something really phenomenal coming from a place of lack during their childhood or their pain or whatever it may be and no one even knows and no one's unaware and we've seen that play out in unhealthy ways, but you also see the opposite where or you see two other ways where someone is expressing their pain, but they're constantly in their pain. They don't, they can't find a way out of the cycle. What is the balance between expressing accepting, finding meaning and discussing your pain

on a daily basis versus being able to transform it as you're encouraging? And to me, like, what have you seen as that difference maker? Because I think we are encouraging people to share more and that's massively needed, but I guess what is that? What creates momentum towards a shift? And like you're saying, there's this tyranny of positivity, right?

It's not about just, well, we should just be positive or you should look at the bright side. Like that's, we know that that's out of date and that should not be amplified across the world. But what is the balance? I think it's a common concern. It's like, well, if we let this in, maybe it'll take up all the oxygen, you know, maybe there won't be space for anything else.

Maybe I'll kind of like never come out of it again. And I guess that's where I think that the bitter sweet view of life is so helpful because it's say the bitter sweet view of life is saying life will include pain, life will include sorrow, but it also will always include joy and beauty. And so the, you know, the job is to like never forsake one for the other. You know, so if you, if things happen to be going amazingly for you, don't forsake the fact of the tragedies in the world that exists now and may one day exist for you. But by the same token, if things aren't going well, don't forsake the miracle of this world. Don't forsake

that either. And I think that, that's really useful. And I'll tell you this one parable that I came across, that I found so helpful for framing all this. This one comes from the Kabbalah, which is the mystical side of Judaism. And the parable is that all of creation was originally an intact and divine vessel that then shattered and that the world that we're living in now is the world after the breakage. So it's a broken world, but it's also a world in which scattered all around us are the shards of light from this vessel. And the job for all of us is to bend down and pick them up. And you're going to notice different shards of light from the ones that I notice,

but we each have the capacity to be aware of the breakage and to turn in the direction of beauty. Like those two things always can and must coexist. And the idea of this parable is to kind of like bring more of the divinity into this kind of lower realm in which we live. And whether one takes that in literal religious terms or as a metaphor, I think makes no difference in terms of how helpful it can be and how to live.

Yeah, and that is the hardest part I find that from people I speak to, when they look at what's happening in the news and happening around us and happening all across the world, I mean, it just feels bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter. Like, there's not really much sweetness, or the sweetness feels very fleeting, or the sweetness feels very fleeting or the sweetness feels

very short-lived and the sweetness is more ephemeral than the bitter and the bitter feels so bold and large and big that it just overshadows. I'm sure you have the same conversations and I've found that getting to that balance of seeing both and recognizing that it's tough. I find that it's tough for people to understand that. And that's just a reflection based on what you were just saying. I agree that the balance is useful and powerful and recognizing where we can support and help. To me, that's always been the greatest lesson I think I learned was, you know, in times of uncertainty,

don't look for certainty, look for service, like look for meaning, look for purpose, because you will always find meaning and service and purpose in life. You will not always find pleasure and happiness and joy, which are not possible. And when I looked at, I think the work of Edith Eger in her book The Gift or Victor Frankel in Manseuch for meaning and two people who lived through incredible atrocities, like they turn towards finding meaning and finding purpose. And so I loved what you said at the beginning.

And so to me, that's always been what creates the balance is, you can't just look for joy. I think looking for joy or expecting pain are both really tough places to live. Because if you look for joy, you may not always find it. And if you live in pain, that's really difficult. And so looking for meaning, service, and purpose seem to be

parts forward to me at least. I agree with that and I would say to each individual person listening to use the word and the ideal that speaks most to you. You could speak of truth, you could speak of beauty, you could speak of love, but basically it's talking about like look for the higher ideals because those kind of like transcend whether you happen to be in a state of joy or sorrow at any given moment. There's still the higher ideals on top of all of that for which we can live. And I'll tell you, like, just for me personally, one exercise I found myself doing over these last few years. And I just kind of stumbled into it. But I start, or I try to start most of my days,

especially my work days with an act of beauty. So I look at a lot of art on social media, and almost every day I share art on my social media feed. And it's like one of the first things I do and I start working that morning. And it's attracted all these other people who love that too. And it's become a kind of community based around that shared ideal.

And it's a small act, you know, it's like, here's a piece of beauty to start our day with. It's not going to save the world. But there's something about stepping in that direction that I think is, it is just incredibly helpful in uplifting. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. How do you think we can, what I love about this book is that, you're obviously talking about the individual,

but you're also talking about organizations and companies and systems and, one of the things that fascinates me is this idea that you bring up about. How do you think we can end the, the whole winners and losers idea? And tell us a bit about that. I thought that was really interesting. You know, people say, well, why do we have this whole toxic positivity thing in the

first place? And I kind of went back and looked at our history. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that around the 19th century, when things became very focused on business, people started asking the question, if somebody is a successor failure at business, is it because of good luck or bad luck, or is it because of something in the person? And increasingly the answer became, it's because of something inside the person. And so, and we started looking at people

and characterizing people as either winners or losers. And over time, the use of the word loser has increased astronom And over time, the use of the word loser has increased astronomically over time. And if you think about it, if we're all afraid to be losers and don't want to be associated with being a loser, then of course we're going to avoid any discussion of anything that has to do with loss or pain or sorrow or longing or anything that we're talking about, you would want nothing to do with it. Basically or sorrow or longing or anything that we're talking about. You would want nothing to do with it.

Basically, what it's meant is we're existing in this false dichotomy. So we have to get to a place where collectively in our organizations, we can just kind of be more comfortable with integrating all of these things together. And that's so tough season because like, and I worked in the corporate world for a few years and I felt that they were really trying to develop that culture and investing in it and they did a pretty good job

and that was around nine years ago now where they were doing a good job, which I'm sure it's improved even since then. But I think that it's tough because like you said, when you're chasing promotions and pay rises and career growth, turning around and saying, Hey, I'm really struggling at home. It's very hard for an untrained manager or leader to recognize that those things can be connected, but also disconnected.

I have a team today, and I know that I have team members that could be going through something at home, but actually being at work is what lets them get away from that and channel their pain into work. So what they're doing, what you're saying, which is they have a painful environment, whatever that it may be, but they're doing, what you're saying, which is they have a painful environment, whatever that it may be, but they're fueling their work with that passion and momentum to say, I'm gonna be more creative.

I'm gonna love this. So it's not necessarily that because they have a troublesome home that they're going to perform less at work, but I think that that requires a lot of emotional maturity from leaders and managers to recognize that work performance is not directly correlated with home situation and that it's a lot more complex than that. So is there something that leaders and managers and people who lead people, even if it's two people or one person, like even if it's leading your family, you know, it's like how do you, how do we help people develop that emotional maturity?

Because most of us, and I know I would say that if I told my boss that I, you know, even if you told your boss, like I'm feeling like I've got a headache this morning, that would feel like, oh no, no, I can't say that to them because if they think I have a headache then they won't challenge me or they won't think I'm reliable or they won't think that I'm someone they can trust because they're worried about me. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense. And you're reminded, I used to be a corporate lawyer before I became a writer and I remember so much this feeling of like, I mean, I did this in the 1990s. I stopped in 2001. It was actually really before anyone was talking about this stuff, but I so remember the feeling of walking into work and feeling like I had to put on a kind of emotional superhero costume.

Like, you know, everything had to seem like completely together all the time. And there was a way in which that would make you feel really good in the short term because you were wearing the superhero costume and that feels good. But in the long term, you get kind of burned out from it. So what can leaders do? As with everything, it's so helpful when leaders go first, you know, like for leaders to model, being able to talk about something that's going on with them

at the same time that they're equally committed to their work. That's opening the door. Let's showing other people how to do it and let it can be done. And I do want to say, and again, this is me wearing my introvert hat here, I want to say, like a lot of people don't want to show up to work and divulge everything that's going on in their private lives. So I'm not talking about some kind of expectation or obligation to be able to do that, but rather, for all of this to just become a more matter of fact, no big deal way in which we relate to each other on a daily basis. You wouldn't hesitate because why would you? Any more than you would hesitate to say that you're moving from one house to another. There's no real reason that these topics have to be so loaded.

Yeah, I really feel what you're encouraging is really healthy and powerful. I went in my own subjective experience. When I train to be a coach many years ago and today I do a lot of coaching whether it's private clients or exact coaching or corporate coaching and I find that the greatest skill that I gained through my monk time and in my coaching work is the ability to hear someone's experience without projecting my own value onto it. So the challenge with the human mind is when you hear someone has a headache, you think, well, when do I have headaches? How does that affect my performance? Oh, not good. That means their performance won't be good. Or even in a positive sense, if we feel we are trustworthy people, when someone

says something that sounds trustworthy in our vocabulary, we project that they are trustworthy. And so it works both ways. Like we, we give people benefit of the doubt because of our projected self-valuation. And then we also project our negativity or flaws onto other people as well that if we would lie in a situation we're more likely to think someone else is lying in that situation as well. And so there's this projection mechanism

that's going back and forth. And so it really requires so much emotional stillness to hear someone's experience and to truly believe that that is just what they're going through and that we need to almost be investigators, not interrogators, curiously of what that means for them. And I think that's that balance that I'm trying to do as a coach, but even through the monk tradition was like, I think often in the corporate space, especially there's an interrogation

versus a intrigue around someone's current experience. So, you know, it's safe, someone's not performing well, we interrogate them. Why are you not performing well? What's going wrong? Like, why haven't you shown up? Like, why are your numbers down? Right?

Like, there's that interrogation. But because we are thinking, well, oh, if I was performing badly, then there must be something wrong. Rather than the intrigue of like, well, is there something happening? Like, is there some way we can help you or do you wanna talk about anything, which is far

more of that intrigue versus interrogation? But that requires a lot. It's so easy to slip into interrogator mode, isn't it? Yeah, I think this is one place where culture can really help. And here, I'm thinking of one organization that I looked at in the book. It was a University of Michigan case study by Jane Deatton and others. And it looked at this organization called Midwest Billings. And Midwest Billings was basically, they were bill collectors for a hospital.

So their job was to collect the unpaid bills of people who had been in the hospital. So this is not a fun job. No one likes this job. The turnover in the industry is really high, because no one wants to do it. But at Midwest Billings, they somehow developed this culture of compassion where everybody just got really into helping each other like in this joyful way. And you know, so if somebody showed up with a cold, like they, they were running to CVS to get the box of tissues, you know, and if somebody was going through domestic violence, they were like, you know, gathering around to support them. There's this one amazing quote from a woman who had lived all her life with her mother. Her mother was her best friend, her everything, and then her mother died unexpectedly.

It was the worst time of her life. She says, she remembers how she felt like when this happened, she's like, I have to get back to the office. I have to get back to the office. I have to get back to the office. And she said it was partly because she knew it would take her mind off things. But she said, she's like, to this day, I'll never forget the look of love on Latisha's face. Latisha was her colleague.

And she's like, you don't expect that from your coworkers. I will never forget that love. And this unit, their turnover, it was something like 2%, it was like nothing compared to the rest of the industry. They got their bills collected in record time. And it was because they had this culture where it was like pro-active compassion. It was like they were all looking for the chance to do it.

So as opposed to the attitude you were talking about of an attitude of interrogation and inquiry, it was more like, yay, when do we get the chance to be helpful to each other? And that's just a very different emotional starting place. Yeah, I mean, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. And I can only hope and wish that more and more

we can move towards that. And I think the best thing you've just said now as well is that it's something we have to create in our families, in our communities, in our towns. It's not something we can expect from leaders or decision makers. It's something we're gonna have to bring to the spaces where we have influence.

Susan, I could speak to you for hours and hours because I feel like the work that you do and the way you write and even this conversation, I feel like you've really given me permission to kind of really reflectively have a conversation with you rather than systematically interview you and I appreciate you for that and being able to go there as well. But we end every podcast and on purpose episode with a final five. So I'm going to ask you a final five. And this is called the fast five

where we answer every question in one word, to one sentence maximum. Okay, which is terrible at. No, no problems. I'm terrible at sticking to it myself. But let's try. So the first question is, what is the best thing you can say to someone

who's going through something painful? I love you. That's beautiful. What is the worst thing you can say to someone that's going through something difficult? Get over it or you know or some variation or anything that you do that signals that. What that thing? What's the first thing you do every morning and the last thing you do every night? I'm laughing at myself because the I want to say the first thing that I do every morning and the last thing you do every night. I'm laughing at myself because the, I want to say the first thing that I do every morning is listen to music, but honestly the first thing I do every morning is look at my phone and I'm really trying to get out of that. What, what music would you do?

What music would you like to wake up to? I like that answer. That's beautiful. Oh, you know, I, I just kind of like go to my playlist. I, I should say by the way, I have this bittersweet playlist that I created. It's on Spotify and it's on Apple Music if people want to go there. So lately, I've been going to that.

Is it a whole just bittersweet? Yeah, like if you Google my, or look in Spotify under Susan Cain and Bittersweet, you'll find it. I love that. That's so cool. I hope everyone goes and downloads the playlist. That's great.

I love that. All right, well, question number four, loads of places. That's, that's great. I love that. All right. Well, question number four. How would you define your current purpose? Yeah. Telling the truth of what it's like to be alive, you know, like, hopefully like, and talk, talking about the things that people don't feel like you can chit chat about at the grocery store, but the things that matter the most. That's beautiful. I love that. And fifth and final question, if you could create one Lord that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? I don't know what to say because I'll tell you the very first thing that I thought of is

be kind, but I'm really, I'm resisting that only because I think that when you start mandating or regulating kindness, that's often like the road to hell. So it is my highest value, but I don't like to associate it with law or, you know, or a compulsion. It has to come from a different source than that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Susan, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your presence in this conversation, your vulnerability, and for everyone your presence in this conversation, your vulnerability. And for everyone who's been listening and watching, I hope you're going to grab a copy of Bittersweet, House Sorrow, and Longing Make Us Whole.

We will put the link to this in the caption in the comments. Please please please go and grab a copy of the book if you enjoyed today's conversation. If you want to learn more about how to deal with loss, how to deal with sorrow, how to deal with pain in the workplace and your life when you're seeing it all around you. And the book evolves into the conversation. We actually started with which is also dealing with death and loss in that way. So I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation.

Susan and I would love to see what resonated with you, what connected with you. So please do tag us on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, on whatever platform you use. Please do let us know what would the insights that you're going to practice or remember, what's going to change the way you think about something. And I'm hoping that this episode makes you reach out to someone and say, how are you doing? How are you doing really? What is it that I don't know about you? What is it something that we haven't spoken about in a while? So please do share this conversation with the loved one as well. Susan, any last words or anything you'd like

to share with our community? No, I mean, thank you so much for having me. So wonderful and unique to talk to you. And I don't know, to the community, I guess I would, I'll repeat something I said from the very beginning, but it really is to me one of the biggest takeaways of this whole

quest that I've been on for these past seven years of writing this book is the idea of that whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering. I love that. Yeah, and I hope that we can stay in touch through social media and I have a newsletter which is seasonkane.net. You can find it. But yeah, this has just been wonderful to spend this time. So thank you. Yeah, and I love that. I'm so glad you ended on that season. I think that's such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful

practical actionable takeaway for all of us is any pain we're going through, turn it into something creative, turn it into something beautiful, turn it into something transformative for yourself and others. So, Susan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for being here. And for everyone who's been listening and watching, I appreciate you. I'm grateful to you. And I hope you'll pass this on to someone else as well. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis, new nom. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bond-vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about.

And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner, where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get invited to a local's house for dinner? Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party? It doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Shatekler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe.

You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Miyaan Levan Zant, and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues.

Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Does your all are just flopping around like fish out of water? Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.