Podcrushed - I Weigh: Jameela Jamil interviews Penn

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Today we bring you an episode from "I Weigh", the podcast against shame hosted by Jameela Jamil, where she sits down with Penn for a wide-spanning conversation. From Jameela's feed: "Actor, podcaster, and most thoughtful man Penn Badgley joins Jameela and the two ponder life, love and fame. They discuss his experience becoming an adult in the limelight, what it feels like to be heavily sexualized, why they both don't enjoy sex scenes, how his fame affects his children, his personal journey with finding peace and happiness, and together they ask the toughest question - what is love?" Follow Podcrushed on socials:  TikTokTwitterInstagramSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada Hello and welcome to another episode of Eyeway with Jamila Jamil, a podcast against Shame. So this week I have the Internet's boyfriend on the podcast. His name is Penn Badgley. You may know him from Gossip Girl or one of the biggest serial killer shows in the world, you, in which he plays an extremely handsome and strange and charming. serial killer and I didn't really know a lot about Penn Badgley like to me he kind of felt more of a mysterious member of the kind of gossip girl crew and so I wasn't super familiar with him until you know obviously I'd see like pictures of him on the internet or videos and stuff and he would seem like a kind of like funny sweet man but it wasn't until I went on his podcast podcrushed which is incredibly good and incredibly relatable and fun in which they talk about the kind of

ways in which your teen experiences shape you. I highly recommend listening to it. But it was when I was a guest on that that I really kind of got a chance to witness him and just totally adored him immediately. He's such a sensitive, kind, intelligent man. He gives women space to fucking talk and think. And he just seems like he's really on a journey of constant self-reflection, self-improvement and just a better understanding of the world. And so I asked him to come on this podcast because I think he's fascinating and I think he's gone through a lot of fascinating things. I mean, he's had a wild career becoming so famous and being so objectified at such a young age. And that's a lens we don't really talk about a lot because when it's happening to women,

we're more familiar with what that situation is and a lot of us object to it. And yet when it's happening to men, there's no real discourse around how dehumanizing that can also be for a guy, especially a young man who's going through that. So we sort of get into that in real depth in a way that I think you'll find incredibly relatable and I think it's such an important subject to be able to discuss what that does to the brain. And in this episode, we discuss society's obsession with romance and the difficulty of being sexy on screen.

We discuss how his fame has affected his children's experiences. We discuss his journey with his mind and his emotions and where he is with finding peace. We discuss sensitivity within men and thinking within men. It's just a lovely, fun, warm and deeply personal chat. And I love hearing these kinds of conversations from men. We need so much more of that. We have such a rise of such toxic ideology rising from men on social media and to have a voice like pens in this world just makes you feel like, oh, thank God, thank Christ.

There's someone out there who's sane. And so I think for that, reason and just the fact that he's so interesting, you're going to really enjoy this chat. He's a wonderful human and I like him very much and I think he will too if you're not yet familiar with him the way I wasn't before. So without further ado, this is the totally adorable and brilliant Pen Badgley. Does anyone else ever get that nagging feeling that their dog might be bored? And do you also feel like super guilty about it? Well, one way that I combat that feeling is I'm making meal time everything it can be for my little boy, Louis.

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current diet. My dogs are like my children, literally, which is why I'm committed to giving them only the best. Hold on. Let me start again because I've only been talking about Louie. Louis is my bait. Louis, you might have heard him growl just now. Louis is my little baby. And I'm committed to only giving him the best. I love that nom nom nom nom's recipes contain wholesome nutrient rich food, meat that looks like meat and veggies that look like veggies, because shocker, they are. Louis has been going absolutely nuts for the lamb pilaf. I have to confess that he's never had anything like it and he cannot get enough. So he's a lambie laugh guy. Keep mealtime exciting with nom-num available at your local pet smart store or at Chewy. Learn more at trynom.com

slash podcrush spelled try n-o-m.com slash podcrush. Why do we do what we do? What makes life meaningful? My name is Elise Lunin, and I'm the author of On Our Best Behavior and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread. I'm pulling the thread. I explore life's big questions with thought leaders who help us better understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. I hope these conversations bring you moments of resonance, hope, and growth. Listen to pulling the thread from Lemonada Media wherever you get your podcasts. Penn Badley, welcome to Iowa. How are you? I am good. I'm good. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. It's so nice to see you. We only met for the first time recently when I was on your excellent podcast, podcrushed. Thank you for having me. And I was pleasantly surprised as to how well we all got on. Yeah, yeah. I think that's fair. You never know. I think when you've sort of grown up watching someone on TV, you have no idea what their vibe is like. And you have been until recently an incredibly private person as far as my person. deception is. And so I didn't really have a sense of you. And it's been really nice to kind of in bits and bulbs get to know you now. You're the second person in an interview in the last like week who has said that I am very private. And I don't feel that way at all. I mean, I feel like there's a whole lot of me that is very public. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, we'll get into that.

What metric for private are we using here? No, but I think that I maybe it's also that, you know, when you were coming up, people were less asked about their opinions and feelings on things. You know, they wanted more media trained. You know, I was around at that time. I was an interviewer. I would never have asked for your opinion from anything. We just wanted to play stupid fucking games. Dating advice for cosmopolism.

Exactly. So I think it was also a different time for actors. It's almost become a bit weird how much we ask everyone for their opinions on every single thing. I think it's kind of ruined the way that we perceive a lot of actors because we can't see them as the character anymore. We see them as their full identity. I have to say, I think.

about that, well, I shouldn't say a lot, but when I do, the conclusion I've come to is like, I think it would be better if we just didn't have, how could actors not be famous? Is there a way? Can we, I mean, surely there's a way. It just feels like you know, you know. There was a way. But then they were like iconic at the level of a demigod and that was problematic too. I feel like I can't, for me, I mean, because I come from the world of film and TV and I know everything about how something is made. So it's already hard for. me to actually watch something, you know, and not... Dissect it.

Yeah, just sort of know how the sausage is made and just not be able to enjoy it. But I think furthermore, when a performance is good, especially by those who are like really, really good and become very, very well known for how good they are, all I can think about is the real person giving a great performance. I'm almost never, almost never. And I think I mean that, enjoying something that I'm watching, like, just for what it is, just for and it really suspends my disbelief you know yeah do you like expressing yourself and your opinions and your feelings now or some people i mean some people do i think i think at the beginning i really

enjoyed it because i really liked to have a real conversation i can't i can't stand trivial interviews i can't stand small talk it really like brings out something almost emotionally violent in me so i enjoyed being able to have a real chat what i couldn't have accounted for is like little parts of my real chat being taken and blown so wholly out of proportion where they no longer become my words and I kind of become quite dehumanized. So I feel like I started and I was so open and then have now wanted to kind of start finding a way to pull it back and that's why it's nice that we have our own podcast because we have a kind of safe space where whoever wants to know the context of what we think can opt in. Yes. Well that's that go yeah I mean theoretically but I think

even that. I just recently said to my co-hosts, Navakavlin and Sophie, and Sari, they're both former middle school teachers or administrators, and I'm not trying to bump my show. I'm just giving context here. But it is called Podcrushion. It's available in all platforms wherever you. I'm terrible at advertising for the podcast, so, but I recently said to them, we were thinking about a question to ask somebody, and this matter of like safe space. I don't think we have it on our own show either because it's still, I don't know how this one works for you, but you can't make anything if it's not generating some kind of like interest and income, right? It's just not capitalism doesn't allow for it. The companies that we work for don't allow for it. And that's understandable. It's not even a grave judgment. So everything is constantly sort of needing to be exploited in order to generate some kind of interest or income. You know, it's just so, you know, I've said things that have felt innocuous or things that are definitely not innocuous on my own podcast. And then there's this moment where, you know, my co-producer and the PR kind of person at Stitcher will be like, hey, we're thinking this is a, you know, a good little sound bite to run

with. Are you cool with it? And I'm just like, um, let me think about it, knowing that everybody wants me to say yes. And I'm like, sure. And then, you know, invariably, there's, there's been at least several times where a headline from my own show is taken out of context is something is is just something where I'm like I really wish I didn't have to do that I really wish that conversation didn't have to go so public and and sort of have to exploit itself well I mean what part of our chat like one line that I'd said went so fucking viral after I went on your podcast it was about how I had not auditioned for you uh your show as in not for you oh right badly uh as I had not auditioned for your show because I didn't want to do sex scenes.

Oh, right, right. And then when the show came out, it turned out you'd also like massively pulled back on sex scenes. I was like, fuck, should have gone for the audition. But they framed it as though I walked away dramatically from your show after being pressured specifically by you to get my tits out. To do a sex scene. Yeah. Yeah.

So I was, I was really frustrated with the way that got portrayed. It was like such a laughingly like throwaway comment. Yeah, it was just a moment. where I was just saying, I didn't do an audition, a big fucking deal. But it made it look like, you know, that role was mine. But you guys were begging for my bum hull. And I said, no. First it was hits and now it's bum hole.

It escalated fast, yeah. But it was surreal to see how viral that went, like how much press that picked up. And I definitely got like a kind of taste of the machine. So can we get into that subject a bit? The one that, you know, has already, people have such an out of context idea of because I thought your perspective of that was much more interesting than mine. Because we so rarely hear men talk about this, I would like to get into this with you on your own kind of terms. But you've been speaking, I think, in a bit more detail as well recently about the fact

that the reason that you had pulled back so many sex scenes in your show you, which has a lot of sex scenes given the nature of the character and the story that you finally said, because you weren't comfortable from the beginning, right? You almost walked away from the role. Yeah, I mean, yes, to put it simply, having, like, that all explicit love scene, something that I, of course, very familiar with, it was just from back in 2017 when I was considering taking the role, it was something that I thought was possibly for me at this point, a no-go in my, in myself, you know, for myself. And so it, of course, led me to think, like, am I going to have a career? How do I have a career? Considering where I, I've come from and what I'm known for and what the opportunities that are available to me or will be available to me. How am I going to make that work? You know, that was a very real question.

I mean, such a real question that it was like, wow, what am I going to do? You know, like, am I? Yeah, it's make or break. And that wasn't the only thing, by the way, at all, but it was one of them. And, you know, of all people, my wife encouraged me at the time to among the many things, not to prioritize that one as much. because in a way the way that I was trying to weigh

it all was actually you know I was trying to make such moral decisions in a way that it left me that it afforded me very little opportunity to say yes to anything in my industry I think there were about a billion misunderstandings when you first came out and spoke about it

in a way that really stunned me like hey just how many opinions people have about what someone chooses to do with their own body is very odd but some people were upset because you said that you kind of it felt like an element of infidelity, and it was around the time of your marriage to your now wife that you were choosing to, not you might choosing that you were starting to feel that extra discomfort. Is it because of marriage and the infidelity aspect that you kind of feel

around being so physically close to and intimate with someone? Or is it just generally something that you're a little bit uncomfortable with? I mean, I think it's both. I think so like getting away from the, and I'm saying this more to me than I have to you, but getting away from like all the intellectual kind of gymnastics that we all have to perform trying to talk about a lot of this stuff it comes down to like some very simple feelings part of it is love and affection part of it is trust and fidelity part of it is intimacy and boundaries and physical touch but it's just at the end of the day like how many people know what it's like for work to have to generate what we call chemistry between yourself and another person who you who you had no real part in choosing by the way

and then acting like you're in a relationship and fostering at least some form of those feelings, at least some form, whatever that form is. I go ahead and I challenge anybody to lay out empirically what forms those are. It's just like what is that? It's also very silly to act like that doesn't have any kind of intimacy

because loads of my friends who are in this industry got together. Exactly, that's what I'm saying. Playing lovers or left other relationships Because they had to fall in love with someone on screen And then they found the sex scenes really fucking hot Even though of course we're not supposed to Because we're just always to be Unix Like it's not not a thing

It does feel fucking mental Right let's back away from the intellectual gymnastics We all perform around this and be like Come on guys first of all there's very few people Who know what it is to actually do this So I appreciate your opinion and feelings But they're not as valuable to me When I'm making this decision because I know what it's like

Yeah and intimacy co-ordinated doesn't change the biology of your brain It makes everything safer and more This is the chance for exploitation is what it does. 100%. Yeah. And it keeps everyone, you know, working within their own, like, boundaries. And you know exactly what's going to happen. I think freestyle sex scenes are truly one of the craziest phenomena of our time, you know,

where people were just sort of told, well, have at it. And that rarely happens anymore, thank God. But I find kissing someone else fucking mental. I find it mental. Yeah, I don't like it. I mean, it's, yeah. And by the way, like, let's stop performing intellectual gymnastics. that's fine and normal.

It's fine and normal to not to feel weird about having to kiss somebody and touch somebody who you are not spontaneously and voluntarily doing it with. Most of us, and then by the way, I'm still kind of performing intellectual gymnastics.

It's not the person you like. It's not the person you love. I mean, if we were the most spiritually enlightened version of ourselves and we were all, and our boundaries were exquisite and immaculate, and we all knew every gradation

of, you know, like physical and emotional stimulus and response and boundary and consent and all that. Okay, but that's not the world we live in and that's not who we are. So, like, it's just kind of preposterous to me that there's so much intellectual resistance and emotional dishonesty around this very simple matter. Like, who the fuck hasn't basically felt the most feelings around the tiniest of little things when it comes to love and touch and sex. Show me a relationship that's really working. Show me, you know, people who are very happy in their love lives.

Show me anybody. Like, come on. It's dehumanizing for us to think in this way that we can just separate. Like, I'm aware that acting is acting, but also then at the same time, we all say that, you know, one of the reasons why it's important to have people from lived experience be more likely to get cast in the roles that suits them as because there's more authenticity because they're drawing from themselves.

You know, you're drawing that chemistry and that passion and all these different things from within yourself. I mean, I've only kissed six people off camera. And so, you know, like it's something that I am especially like precious with, you know, we discussed my discomfort even with watching sex scenes that other people are in when I was on your show. And so, you know, I've only kissed, I think, Mani just into like Tim Meadows and Flula. Three lovely guys, three lovely guys kissed them.

And it was like the most because I only do comedy roles and I turn down anything that I would required to be sexy or sexual in. So it massively like reduces the amount of work that I can do because so when people look at me and because I've, you know, I'm voluptuous or whatever, they think of me immediately in the kind of loving roles. And unfortunately, so many of these things involve so much intimacy. And I never know why, because I've personally never been that enlightened as to a story by the fucking sex scene. I know that it is important. So I think especially within you, I could see, within you the show, like, I could see why it would be relevant. But it's so rare that you need, like, what happened to the, what happened to the

beginning of the kiss and then cut to the crashing wave? Or the champagne being, you know, popped open. Like, I liked the innuendo days. I don't want to see everything. Like, it feels like a, it feels like a big deal kissing someone who isn't my partner, you know, and people might mock or ridicule that, but it just is what it is. And a lot of more of us are feeling that way than we say, but we don't feel like we're allowed to object. Right, but this is the thing. Even this, the fact that we still feel they need to make disclaimers, you know, first of all, there's no one present in this conversation other than you and me. And so, so unfortunately, in these kinds of scenarios, all we can do is imagine some kind of response of the proverbial them, you know,

just like, as we all do in our heads and our minds, which goes back to childhood experience and goes back to a lot of things we could dig into, but, you know. Oh, we will. Right. I just think that it's like, what you just said is the crux of it. I, feel something like I feel weird kissing someone who is my partner and you know maybe that's uh you you could you could make all kinds of clarifications but guess what what's the most important thing to everybody at the end of the day usually it's love in some form in in actually in its in its primary forms which is through family and through partners and through friends that's just what matter if that wasn't true we wouldn't watch shows that are all about these relationships we watch more

television than ever. We watch television probably more than anything and what is it about but love in family, in friends, and most of all in romance. So if we don't care about these things as much, we should stop telling these stories all the time and watching these stories all the time. And if we didn't care about when you kiss somebody other than your partner, when your partner kisses somebody other than you, or more than that, if we didn't think it was a big deal, then why the fuck is every story also about that? Why is every love story? And I'm of course generalizing, but why are so many love stories told about that specific feeling, that specific feeling, and not any other.

So therefore it's fair for us to have certain kind of emotions around it. I'm not even saying fair. Can we, like, we live in such an intellectual and emotional and spiritually dissociated time. Mm-hmm. Is it fair? No, it's how you feel. There's no fairness in feeling.

It's how you feel. It's also how seemingly, I believe, everybody feels. We could intellectualize. around all these things around other ways of forming relationships. But the truth is, to me, my understanding in all of my experience, is that takes such a hypothetically advanced trust and boundary keeping, which in and of itself, it's a snake eating its tail. It's like if we want to talk about boundaries and trust,

it's between people. Like, again, I'm saying this because we're in the conversation, and I know that for myself it was a very clear and simple boundary. It just was not clear and simple how I was ever going to. said it or if I could. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I also think, you know, I've spoken about this in the fucking past plenty of times in interviews and people didn't really blink. No one, there was no backlash against me when I said it about myself. But there is, you know, we touched on this a bit on your podcast that there is an extra special double standard that we reserve for especially handsome

men who feel this way where we just can't compute it because I think the understanding of men amongst far too many people, not all people, is that you're all just like rabid sex dogs who will eat what they're given. And it feels very affronting to some people in a way that really stuns me whenever it happens. It happened to, you know, my friend Lucas Bravo, who's on Emily in Paris, where he was like, I feel uncomfortable with how much I'm being objectified. And the backlash against him was so vile and weird. And people really turned on him and then turned on the character just because a young man said, oh, it's making me a bit. It's just a bit uncomfortable.

Like, I want to be seen as more than that. Any woman said that we would all rally behind her. But it is especially discombobulating, yeah. It's the plight of men. I mean, I would like to just call it the plight of men. That's the entire theme of this podcast. So welcome. But it is, it is very strange.

And it's as if men don't have sensitivity or don't have any discomfort around these issues. It also feels like some people try to turn it into, you must not have a very trusting relationship if you don't feel safe having intimacy scenes when you have a wife and they were almost blaming her for it it was crazy

it got fucking crazy she she domino got a lot of hateful sort of messages in her in her inboxes in her various inboxes and you know again that whole thing of the inevitable exploitation of all people and things

surrounding you know and for what By the way, by the way, let's be real. Like, I can feel all my feelings about it. Everybody, anyone who wants can feel their feelings about it. But at the end of the day, what happened was I said something in the context of a conversation on my own podcast. It became a news item for a little bit. And then, you know, so many people became invested in what can't be called a conversation, by the way.

It's more like, let's all play darts at the same time. And there's just a bunch of darts being thrown at the wall. And everybody's trying to say something in response to a conversation they weren't a part of and are still not a part of. You know what I mean? What I'm trying to outline is like, what's actually happening? Like we call it a conversation. We call it like discourse. But sometimes I'm like, this is all so chaotic.

No, it turns into gladiator. All right. So let's just, let's just real talk, as they say for a second. That's a little bit of an aged thing to say now. That dates me, doesn't it? But no, real talk. How important is your health to you? You know, on like a one to ten?

And I don't mean in the sense of vanity. I mean in the sense of like you want your day to go well, right? You want to be less stressed. You don't want it as sick. When you have responsibilities, I know myself. I'm a householder. I have two children and two more on the way. a spouse, a pet, you know, a job that sometimes has its demands.

So I really want to feel like when I'm not getting the sleep and I'm not getting nutrition, when my eating's down, I want to know that I'm being held down some other way physically. You know, my family holds me down emotionally, spiritually, but I need something to hold me down physically, right? And so honestly, I turn to symbiotica, these vitamins and these beautiful little packets that they taste delicious. And I'm telling you, even before I started doing ads for these guys,

It was a product that I really, really liked and enjoyed and could see the differences with. The three that I use, I use, I use the, what is it called, liposomal vitamin C, and it tastes delicious, like really, really good. Comes out in the packet, you put it right in your mouth. Some people don't do that. I do it. I do it. I think it tastes great. I use the liposomal glutathione as well in the morning.

Really good for gut health, and although I don't need it, you know, anti-aging. And then I also use the magnesium L3 and 8, which is really good for, for, I think, mood and stress. I sometimes use it in the morning, sometimes use it at night. All three of these things taste incredible. Honestly, you don't even need to mix it with water. And, yeah, I just couldn't recommend them highly enough. If you want to try them out, go to symbiotica.com slash podcrushed for 20% off plus free shipping. That's symbiotica.com slash podcrushed for 20% off plus free shipping.

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How does it fuck with your brain? Which part of it? The intimacy part or just the, the objective, no, the objectification, like, because there's no space for permission for men to talk about the fact that this feels. They're treated like they're ungrateful. I know that no one actually needs permission, but I'm saying that the backlash implies that you do not have permission to be able to complain because you are being ungrateful for women's support. And again, that's just like, It's such a crazed double standard that we all need to really check ourselves for. But can I ask what that was like, the pressure of that much fame and specifically fame around your appearance? Yeah.

Well, I would say that there's no overstating, really. It's effect on me in my life. I don't know how to measure it or explain it entirely, but it's influenced my life so much, so much. So far, there's been at least two points where I've questioned whether or not I continue doing it. One of them was right before I took Gossip Girl. The other was right before I took you, this show. So if I try to just stay in my feeling, then I can say simply what it feels like. Well, let's start with the feelings.

Yeah, so the feeling really is not a good one. It's complex. What it feels like is objectification. What that feels like is objectification. like is not good. It feels like being taken advantage of. Not being seen and not being understood. It feels like those things. And I'm not, again, I know intellectually that it's not just those things. It contains some of those things, but it's not just those things. But that's a lot of times what it feels like. Do you feel like it's harder, especially at 20, like it's harder to get, I don't know, are the guys or people to take you seriously as someone with brain and sensitivity?

I mean, I certainly tried to, if that wasn't happening and I could feel it, I would try to force it. And I did try to speak quite transparently about this back then. And I was called ungrateful or too serious. And, yeah, I think my feelings account for something that is true and maybe objectively true. Like all people experience some of these things, all people in my position experience some level of these same feelings. And depending on their experiences, especially childhood experiences, that may or may not be more or less magnified. You know, like, I am oriented because of some childhood experience so that I'm especially sensitive to the feeling of exploitation and manipulation. Not everybody is.

I think a lot of people are, but not everybody is. And so some people might feel that and be like, eh. Is that because you started as a child star at like, you know, 11 years old? Well, it's because I started as a child star and then other stuff before that, which is just part of my own childhood experience, you know. like and it's not like I'm not willing to talk about that but at the same time it's I mean you are you are welcome to share but I also don't want to overstep any of your personal boundaries I think for the time being I probably I won't but but just because of childhood experience and my understanding of how that shapes people it's also not to

horribly generalize actors but like you know very few that I have ever met didn't come into this strange profession because they yes were not in some way quite fragmented because of their childhood. It's like you're looking for like love from the world or community or to live as a different person constantly than who you actually are or looking to communicate so you never used to know how to communicate with people so you find this medium. So you know you're very much so not alone and I also have a very complicated past in these areas and so I definitely feel you.

Yeah, I definitely know that. And that's why I'm erring in the side of caution and by saying maybe it's just me, but I do think it's most or all people working in this industry in the way that we work in the industry as actors, specifically as performers, you know.

And let me say actually that that's not about art and performance, that's just about people who become successful in this industry performing, because this industry looks to a few things, you know, how you look and how you act and how you look while you're doing it. I don't think these things are true about

artists, period, but I think it's, I think it's, I think it's almost universally true about, about actors in Hollywood who are successful. Mm-hmm. You know. Yeah. Yeah, that's what you're pulling from somewhere, but you were saying that so because it's like amplified because of previous experiences when you were young. And, and then also, you know, it starts to define you.

We watch it happen to women all the fucking time. We know, we know what this is. And that's why I always get so confused when we feel so. about criticising a man who says the same thing. Like it's a tight rope to walk between the fact that it's flattering and it's nice and you get lots of attention and you get extra opportunities and you want those extra opportunities and there is a privilege to it. But at the same time, it then overshadowed so much of what people see in you then

because you become that character in people's hearts for a really long time. And Natalie Portman was speaking about this recently that after realizing how much she was being sexualized from kind of Leon onwards where she was I think like 13 in that in that film she became like a very very deliberately very serious person publicly and became obsessed with getting people to take her seriously and chose the type of roles people wouldn't expect her to take and was like very very very conscious very hyper conscious of every single thing she did and said to to seem as intellectual and as not just that one thing as possible so that she felt in control of the way that she was perceived. And that probably robs her. I mean, I haven't spoken to her about this on this

podcast yet. But I imagine that's also, that also takes something a little bit away having to try and always force this other side of you. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's a form of masking. I mean, my brain goes, yeah, it's, that's a lot there. It's not just a form of masking. It's not really knowing who you are. I mean, when you strip this stuff away, some, I think for some people it's hard to know who you are. It really does become so pervasive in your life and influences every single interaction you have with everybody around you. And I think anyone can relate to it regardless of that. Yeah, exactly. And there's some really interesting universal truths buried down in this stuff, which I meditate on. They're hard to explain with language. I don't have enough

perspective yet or enough wisdom and experience. But I hope in time to be able to distill it, because it is fascinating. I feel like if fame and all of this is, it's some part of real human culture that affects us all, but there's very few of us who get the experience of being on the other side of it. And so I do feel like there's some kind of wisdom to be shared from it. And I don't hear it that often because I think it ends up kind of eating up and clouding most people's vision. But also people are afraid to fucking talk about it because they get treated like ungrateful. So I mean, I feel like I've made it my life's work in a way in the last five years to talk about it in a way that is meaningful and effective and

walks the line successfully enough that I don't get constantly dismissed as ungrateful or navel-gazy. And of course, sometimes it happens. And by the way, it's coming from a place where I think like there's something, many things, quite wrong with our social world, with our society. There's something quite toxic about our culture. And so I'm being given, along with a select few others, this front row witness to an experience of how this part of the sausage is being made. I'm going to reference sausage as many times as I can in this interview metaphorically. You know, like, fame to me is a product of a sick culture. So I'm not a doctor, but I am at least being shown that sickness up close.

There's hardly anyone I interact with where this isn't a part of, it doesn't influence interaction in some kind of way. You know, I have two kids. My 14-year-old has actually asked for me not to come along to certain kind of things because it will change the experience we all have as a family. My two-and-a-half-year-old, of course, hasn't thought to do that yet, but is noticing that people stop his dad a lot. And recently, you know, he'll say as we pass someone who's just stopped us, strolling, whatever, he'll say, who's that? He's been saying that. Child is Russian. Oh, is he he's he Russian? Yeah.

They all have accents as they're coming up for the, you know. But I mean, he does actually often sound like he's some SNL skit version of an Eastern European accent. He's like, that is so crazy. But he'll be like, who's that? And I'll have to think of some kind of genuine answer to give him, right? And I do. And I've started to say. One of daddy's worshippers.

Yeah. And like, you know, I'm not, look, I'm not complaining what I'm saying is like, but look, there it is. It's unusual. Yeah. It's unusual. And I have to think about it. And so, okay, there it is. That sucks about your 14 year old. I completely understand where they're coming from. It's just a weird thing where everyone, you know, no one knows how to navigate this shit perfectly. But that must be a little bit surreal for you. I mean, all of this, because one thing I would love to talk to you about, because you've been so open about it in the past is your mental health. This is a mental health podcast. And I imagine all this kind of like feeds in. But you've had anxiety since around the age of 12.

I mean, I think it's probably more lifelong, I guess. Yeah, why did you name 12? Did I say that? Because you named 12, yeah, when you were talking about it. So all I have is your words to regurgitate back to you. Why aren't you reading my mind? But maybe that's when you were able to name it or when it became really like really palpably noticeable.

Because also when we're young, we don't really know maybe what we're feeling. I had probably anxiety from the age of about three or four, but didn't really realize it until it had surfaced. alongside the combination of hormones, but generally with your mental health, what has been your journey? What have been your biggest struggles? I mean, I'll be honest. It matters so much to me. The way I experience it and interpret it, I don't use the word mental health, but for the sake of others. I mean, what is mental? If we're talking about health, like, what is mentality? And I'm not going to go into that. I would, but there's no enough time and nobody else is probably interested in

what I think about that. But it's seriously. I think of emotional, I think of when I talk about it, I think of emotional stability, right? Things that can rock us off our course of just feeling level. Right. So actually, I love what you just, you just, so, but what you did though is you went from mentality to emotionality and you talked about feelings rather than thoughts. And I think, like I said earlier, I think we live in a time that is so dissociated from feeling. So dissociated. We let our feelings kind of guide us wherever, but that doesn't mean that we are master. them. We're dissociated from them. And we've never named them more. We've never named or pathologized them more. Right. But we're not actually feeling safe to feel them. But we're dissociated from like love.

Like define love, please. Every story is about it. Every song is about it. Please define love. You know, like it's a completely confused notion. And yet we talk about it on one hand, like it's the most powerful force in the universe. And then on the other, like it's pathetic and can't accomplish anything. Whitney Cummings defined it really well where she said, love is being willing. to die for someone that you yourself want to kill. Actually, that's, she's not wrong. She's not wrong. You know, I've actually been reading, no joke, incredible resource recently.

It's old at this point, but it's by Bell Hooks called All About Love. And it's something that I passed by because I sort of thought like it was, you know, things can become so canon that you just, you yourself haven't read it, but you're like, I guess culturally. You feel like you've absorbed it. culturally we've absorbed it and we've moved past it well by the way no it's not the case at all like something that's truly masterful and radical it's we have not culturally absorbed it at all it's been more or less culturally ignored and dismissed even as it's lauded which is a sign of true genius i mean i'm actually going to read to you how she defines love as best as i understand it i'm working through the book but she she starts to give a working definition of love because she

suggests that without a universal definition we'll all just stumble around and never be able to actually experience and give love and she's echoing the work of well she's quoting M. Scott Peck from a classic called the Road Less Travels and he's echoing

the work of Eric From and I'm saying all of this because this is what Bellford says. And they all got what they're saying from me so I think they forgot to credit it. So this is how they are defining love. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth and then explaining further he continues love is as love does love is an act of will namely both an

intention and an action will also implies choice we do not have to love we choose to love so anyway that's like maybe a little bit intellectual but but i thought that felt i thought that felt very relatable yeah i mean what i understand of this book one of the things And that I'm understanding in life is, like, how it's very hard to accept how little love we may have gotten and given. It's very hard. And so as a result, we sort of keep a lot of relationships, if not all of them, very superficial. This is the defining trait of masculinity, by the way. This is, you know, I was joked earlier about the plight of men.

I think this is actually a real plight of men, but which men are, of course, We're all responsible for, so I'm not saying it's like, um, it's, it's forced upon us. I mean, as human beings, regardless of sex and gender, is technically all forced on us as children. Exactly. But, right? So, but like, and then as men, we perpetuated and perpetrated ourselves grotesquely, awfully so. Yeah, but it's in a pervasive and constant subliminal and aggressive messaging, like, so what is anyone supposed to do? It's the same for all the genders.

That's a good question. No, that's a really good question. What is anyone supposed to do? And that's a, so how do we get on here? Because we're talking about mental health and then I brought up, yeah. I actually think like, I've had such a profound mental health journey that I don't, I don't identify with the phrase mental health personally, but I use it, of course, because it's the one to use now. But think about how reductive it is. First of all, it assumes that there is a health you're missing because why? Why? Is it because of you in your brain? Is it just simply the chemicals in your brain? Or is it because you haven't experienced love, which you deserve? And what is mentality, by the way? What is the mental, what is the origin of our consciousness? Like, these are very profound questions, which if you want to roll your eyes at, guess what? You got some work to do, you know, like, as we all do, by the way. I practically roll my eyes at it, which is why I make the disclaimer.

It's very hard for us to talk about this stuff. We currently call mental health, what I think can be boiled down to, it is the condition of your soul. It's the condition of your feelings and your heart. It is, and it influences. It's also contextual to like what we. at society deem as like the ever-changing standard of normal, quote-unquote, normal behavior. So, you know, women who were gay, people who were gay, were considered mentally ill and thrown in asylums for the rest of their lives.

Women in particular used to be institutionalized for hysteria. Hysteria, you know, or for having any feelings or dissenting in any way for being a bit cold, like autistic women who didn't know they were autistic. All of these people just locked up, thrown away, told that they were. they're crazy. And now we've changed what acceptable behavior is. But I think that that could change again in 10 years time where we, you know, have a new way to identify in pathology, normal human reactions to our society. I think it was like Esther Perra was talking about the fact that like, are we all depressed? Do we all have clinical anxiety? Or are we living

in a world that is not designed for human wellness? Are we living in a world that is constantly anxious, constantly makes us feel unsafe? Are we having normal? human reactions to a very, very, like an increasingly eroding society, and then that is being diagnosed and medicated. This is not me saying that mental illness doesn't exist. I totally, I think it does. I've had it. But I'm just saying that the numbers very reasonably correlate to the decline in our society. And yet we pathologize and medicate it and name it rather than actually looking at the source and fixing the cause of so many people's feeling of irregulation. How can anyone feel regulated in such an irregular society?

Yeah. And again, earlier you asked, like, so what is anybody supposed to do in the face of such a systemic and huge problem? And I actually think that's a very serious question. What are we supposed to do? You know, again, I... I'm supposed to bully each other and win on social media, Penn. Yeah, right.

Or start podcasts. I'm supposed to clap back and slap down. You know, I do have answers to that. Supposed to message actors' wives and have a go at them for the actors' adult decision. I mean, first, everyone seems to have to surmise some kind of answer to that question for themselves. So what do I do? I mean, yeah, I do have some answers. They're kind of hard to talk about.

Like, I mean, for me, it is like going back to that definition of love that Bell Hooks offers. and that at least two other men agreed with was it contained the word spiritual in it. You know, for me, it's, it has to do with the human spirit. Like, it's really important and relevant here. You know, for me, meditation and prayer are foundations of my mental health. But, you know, you build on top of foundation. So then beyond that, I mean, let's go back to that definition.

It said, it said, the will to extend oneself, extend oneself, the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. So like actually being a father is really great for my mental health. There's a razor thin wire to balance on there because the stress of parenthood in such an unsupportive culture is so great that it of course can be quote unquote bad for your quote unquote mental health. But then, of course, the whole question is like, well, what the hell are we even doing here? If being a parent is that bad for your mental health, what good is your mental health without doing things that you want to do and love doing and being a part of a community, part of a

family, part of a home, whatever, you know, it's, you can't separate yourself from the hole, but you as an individual can't single-handedly change the hole. So we're up against a giant, giant, giant challenge. And I don't think of mental health on the reductive terms of the pop science kind of perspective, which I think is, it's just, you know, I mean, I have people very close to me who suffer immensely from mental illness. I don't think recognizing all of this and also recognizing the mental illness is real are in opposition with one. They're not conflicting. No, they're not conflicting. I think we're just talking about the phenomena. The explosion of it.

Right, there is an explosion. And I think it has to do with this deficit of love that we have. But love as a truly radical force, which we do not understand yet at all. You know, something that Bell Hook says in this book, which I also love. Because everything that she's saying is not a surprise, but it's like confirming to what I've been slowly building of my own perspective and experience. And she says that abuse cannot coexist with love. and that's very very challenging to most people's definition of love because you would say oh i know my parents loved me or oh i know they loved me i know so-and-so loved me

but if there's abuse in that relationship i mean if we're going by this this definition and of course i think we have to remember that it's it's a definition should be treated like a like a like a hypothesis but if it's true let's try and see if it's true like if love and abuse cannot coexist in the same relationship that would mean necessarily that we've had profoundly less love than we believe we have or that we say we do and to acknowledge if that's true that's very very sad there's no other word for it there's no other word we should try to intellectualize around it's very sad and to really be with sadness is a hard thing that we spend so much time distracting ourselves from enter phones need say no more you know like

we just spend a lot of time distracting ourselves from our feelings because of how much sadness we carry so what has been your personal journey then with all of this like having struggled for a long time did you evade it for a long time were you all over it i actually think i tried to look at it pretty directly and that's why i was considered a more serious 20-something than most of the 20-somethings around me, and it led to increasingly less sustained friendships. I mean, I was always, I always had the capacity to be very social, but, you know, my memory, I don't know that this is really true, but, like, my memory of the Gossip Girl days is, like, everybody who's wanted to go out, and I would always sort of resist it, and I'd always get the

sort of, like, oh, it's so foam you come out, bro, like, come out, you know, you never come out with us, and it's like, whether it was a cast member or crew member, and it's just, that was, you know, was because of this. It was because I, that way of socializing and being has always seemed so coarse and arbitrary to me. It's funny, you're the only cast member I didn't used to interview all the time. Oh, really? Yeah. I interviewed everyone else from the cast like frequently with every season and I never got to interview you. I never met you. Well, in what context were you interviewing them? We were in England, like over in England and we would do all these like incredibly stupid and reductive interviews and I'm so sorry to the cast of Gossip Girl and everyone else I interviewed,

but it wasn't my fault. I was 22 and I was made. do it by producers i would have loved to have had proper chats with all of you but yeah i never got to kind of witness that side of you or that period yeah so i mean i mean if it was press related i i kind i had to do the press that everyone else had to do i don't know that i would have oh you would have all just been divvied up you were probably somewhere else i was saying i never got to kind of i never got to see you at that point so i can't really just sort of listen but i was just it just struck me i remember i was out with um most of the cast one time and there was somebody who was not a part of the cast who I shall not name but was famous at the time and who said it was a

woman a young woman so I was probably 23 she was somewhere around 25 I don't know a lot of people would know who this person is so I'm just giving you just it's like a moment like this person you think who's Dan Humphrey and this other young famous woman who you know you've had ideas about this is how a very brief conversation between us went at a club in like the West Village you know on some night some arbitrary night of the week, she asked me, why are you so serious? And, you know, I had nothing to say to that, because it was like all of this kind of sort of. Where we were was just kind of a dumb place. Everybody was carrying on in the way that you have to in those sort of scenario, which by the way, like so many people have social anxiety, which I think is an appropriate response

to these places we choose to go where you have to yell over that, whatever. Yeah, I won't get into the whole thing. you know and i just remember feeling so deflated then because i was trying to put on a face i was trying to go out you know and um like look fine you could you could you could you could you could think that i was too serious and that i shouldn't take it all so seriously and get over myself okay fine but whatever the my but my experience was and my feelings were like oh fuck i i i'm trying right now i'm really trying i think so many people can relate to that and they're told like, oh, you're young, you're in your 20. It's like, smile. Smile, have fun. It gets harder after this and you're like, yeah, but you know, I disagree with

that, by the way. I'm not going to be able to handle that. It gets so much easier. And the more older people I talk to agree. We actually just interviewed Julie Lewis Dreyfus the other day for our podcast. By the way, again, podcrushed on every podcasting platform. Oh, fuck off, Ben. There's the soundbite we're looking for. People are going to think that we've entered into a really abusive relationship. Love cannot coexist in this. I know.

I knew you were going to say that. Go on. Tell me about Julia. Louis Dreyfus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In her interview with another national treasure, Jane Fonda, on her podcast, which is available on every podcasting platform, Wiser than me. It's in the premiere episode. Go ahead and look for it.

It is actually really good. Jane Fonda and Julia Lewis Dreyfus agree at least that being young is hard. Yes. I also agree. It sounds like you agree. And again, why is it hard? I think it's because we're being introduced to all of these inanities and insanities of our culture. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

So the world's fucked up, whatever. Yeah, I grew up very attuned to that sadness. Didn't feel like it was worth dismissing. Tried to. At one point, used a fair amount of weed and alcohol to administer to that sort of pain. really didn't work very well for very long at all and by the time I was 17 I couldn't smoke weed and by the time I mean I've now been I haven't had any form of substance uh for probably eight years or so now but you know I stopped enjoying drinking a lot more or less by the time I

was like 22 23 I think everybody has these experiences in some form or another but it gets magnified and fast-tracked when you have the celebrity company yeah totally and it was you know it was a very specific era where the industry really encouraged you to go out and not get into trouble, but, you know, make the splash and TMZ, you know what I mean? Yeah, that was, oh, totally. I think they want us to behave a bit better now. 2007, 2008. Us misbehaving was kind of like almost better for your name back then, whereas now it's more

encouraged to like talk about green juice on the old Instagram and working out for mental health and being a, you know, a good egg. Yeah, right, right. And people really only want to see you out at Marches. They don't want to see you out in the club. I think people care. I love it when people refer to the club, but then also go the extra thing and go the club.

It's de club. Yeah. Because saying the club in my accent makes it feel like a tennis club. With old people. I don't know that people really care. I think people are losing interest in what celebrities have to say. Thank God. Yeah.

Well, but then we're going to lose our podcast, won't we? It is what it is, Penn. There's always going to be casualties. I'll sacrifice a podcast for the sake of social. Yeah, a bunch of out of tune people speaking on these massive issues. I think we just need to get back to balance. We didn't have it in the 90s. We talk about the good old era. We just need to find more balance. I think that there's more of a like a democracy to it all. And I think that's probably the good side of us all oversharing as everyone's gone, maybe they don't need to share it anymore.

I'm pretty sure you already think this and agree that I'm just going to clarify like I don't think there's a back to, I don't think there was a balance. I think we do live in a new age. I think like, yeah, you look at, we're just, we're in, we're in an age that humanity's never been in before. We've, like, and it's hard to contextualize for ourselves, but like, before the mid-1800s, you know, in the first 50 years after like, you know, 1844, when the first telegraph was sent, there was more scientific innovation and invention than there had been in all of humanity's history. That's just the first 50 years. That was like, you know, barely into 1900. Now we're in 2023, and AI is happening. And it's like, guys, we're not at least in

the physical evolutionary level, the biologic. Yeah, you don't need to do sex scenes anymore. People will just make their own. We're not, we're not yet adequately prepared for what we're going through. And I think that's why a lot of us feel this way. I'm not saying that we can't get prepared, but I think we need to take stock of what's actually happening. And there's a whole hell of a lot happening. And when people just sort of try to shrug it off and dismiss it, like, ah, you know, lighten up. I think that's disingenuous. I think like the like anxiety is at an epidemic level or is it do we say pand? It's just a huge. Epidemic. And then um like loneliness is the highest it's ever been in a time where we're the most connected and loneliness is being connected to more health

issues than I think smoking and and alcohol now because of the impact it has on your stress and the lack of touch what that does to your impact we had Dr. Vivek Murphy on the podcast at the very, I think was like the first episode, and he was talking about it back then, and that was before either of us knew there was about to be a pandemic. So it was crazed timing. It was like the first week of March that I interviewed him. That's very cool. And two weeks later, the world would go inside. That's amazing. So it was, so if those were the statistics, and that was the problem before the pandemic, yeah, he needs to write another book real fast. Or just, or just a really long, you know, when there's like a, like a preface, like for the second edition? Yes.

Very long asterisk. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Asian women were often reduced to overtly sexual and submissive caricatures. The geishas of the book-turned film Memoirs of a Geisha, the lewd twins in Austin Powers, and pinup goddess Sung He Li. Meanwhile, the girls next door were always white.

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Therapy, yes. Therapy. Although, you know, the place I've gotten to with my therapist is, like, you know, I'm, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. The place I've gotten to with my therapist is, like we use them as like prolonged meditation sessions where I'm again like I did earlier and I don't know if it I don't know if you'll cut it or if it resonates with anybody but um this like sitting with feeling like I you know for whatever reasons I have enough intellectual capacity that um I don't need to figure things out intellectually anymore like I don't need to parse things out intellectually I need to sit with how I feel we all do and um that's what I do. I kind of meditate. My therapy these days is really sitting with feelings. And then I can introduce thought like when I've really let the feeling be for a while. Well, this takes us back to when you were saying like, you know, this all goes against what it is to be a man, the plight of man. Like that is not something that you often hear a man talk about or hear a man encouraged to do even though it's the thing the emotion do. Do you feel as though that has been especially hard for you to do or just something that you weren't told to do to connect, really just sit in the feeling, not the thought,

because our hemispheres, you know, work slightly different as males and females, apparently, allegedly, according to the old science. Yeah, I've definitely heard things like that. Yeah, there's a difference in our connectivity because of white matter between the hemisphere stuff, you know, so there's a difference in how we think. Was that something that was hard for you to do? Connecting to feelings. Yeah, yeah.

And I think my parents, if anything, were the liberal-leaning sort of people who would have if they had more ability to encourage me to feel but they did not at all realize how they were perpetuating

some of the worst tropes in the way that they understood how and were able to parent and so yeah connecting me, look the reason that I speak the way that I do I've become conscious of recently is because I've realized how much

I've had to think my way out of feeling very sad because of a lack of love in my home. That's just true. I can say that also somewhat confidently on a podcast, knowing that those who were a part of my home, may or may not hear it, but I'm addressing it directly enough that this will become, as no surprise to them.

So, because this is a part of our relationship now, is this acknowledgement. And I actually have the utmost, I always try to have more and more compassion for my parents because it's like, look, they, as essentially all people do, they were trying. Yeah, now that I'm at the age that they were when they were doing it.

I'm like, oh, oh, okay. And that doesn't, you know, excuse everything, but they'll somehow explain, and I find there to be empowerment and explanation. Yeah, there's some kind of, you know, it's like if they didn't know how to establish the right kind of boundaries and give actual love, well, they did give, there's something,

I'm learning how, and I'll be able to give more to my kids, and at some point they'll recognize my flaws and do a little bit more. And then in a couple generations, there'll be a lot more. you know a lot more like a few generations ago the badgley's were who god only knows what they were doing before world war one during world war one and two yeah so that's evolution that's social evolution that's spiritual evolution and so now do you feel like you have a handle on your feelings

your kind of feeling level no i think i'm i'm just no i don't mean handle on your feelings that's the last thing i would want you to have yeah you asked me to bottle it up after i've just dripped out one drop So do you feel like you can stop being such a fucking pussy now, Penn? There, does it sound like number two. I love that one. Oh, my God. No, that's great. By the way, I really, I really rate you.

I think it's so special to hear someone talk about this. It's so special to hear a man talk about this sort of stuff. I think that we should hang out. I think my boyfriend's going to fall madly in love with you because I think you're very similar. It's very rare that I get to hear people talk from this. point of view. Yeah. And it, it means a lot. I've never said anything about your boyfriend, but I do love him. Oh, well, I mean, there it is. It's a date. A lot of people. It's a date. I mean, I'm going to

crowbar my way in there, but I mean, it's just that you two are just going to be off, off together into the sunset. I can tell immediately, because he speaks a lot like this. And it's, it's really nice to find more people, especially men who feel safe enough to talk about this stuff and stay safe enough to go against the, you know, there's this weird push back against that. That's kind of like spawned during the pandemic of men gaining a lot of traction for speaking the opposite way to this and being like, boys shouldn't cry, men should show this kind of weakness. And we need traditional women and success. No man wants a successful woman. We don't want an alpha woman. We want this. And it's a grow. It's not a

minority. It's like it might be a minority now, but it is growing in numbers that like make me feel physically uncomfortable because it's the antithesis of what I see boys need. And this is advice is gaining a lot of traction. And so voices like yours are needed more than ever. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Because even the men talking about this stuff, they don't seem well. Of course not. They seem like they're speaking from a large place of fear. I don't mean that in a judgmental way. It has to be. It's pain. They're speaking from a place of fear and pain and disassociation. Yeah, definitely. They sound disassociated and they think their safety and disassociation. I think we've all felt that. You and I've both gone through that when we were younger.

There is a safety and disassociated for a while. In the moment. But then you become so numb and far away. That's what trauma is. Like, it's, it's not what happens in the moment. In the moment, there's actually a really lovely built-in response to dissociate, which helps you through. It's that for the rest of your life, if you haven't really recognized and processed that event, the trauma is, again, not what happened. It's the way you feel and respond to events that have nothing to do with that original event.

And you're constantly imagining it and having this same response throughout life. life. Yeah. That's my understanding of, I've done a lot of reading of Gabramate. Also been on my podcast. Oh, my good.

If you're trying to get me to swear at you. Third time on my own podcast, because you are entrapping me into some sort of a scandal. I love him. I think he's so fantastic. He's brilliant. Yeah, I'm going to get him on my podcast.

You could definitely get him. I'm going to get him on my podcast. Start a podcast. We'll also, let's be in a movie together and play asexual. let's do it let's start that fucking trend right that's an interesting idea i think i think it would be great james can do the music it might be a little bit like the jonas brothers wearing purity rings though that's fine you know what i okay yeah sure i'll take it um let's shake shit up

let's shake shit up all right i so appreciate this chat please come back truly anytime i'm happy wait did you answer the question as to whether or not you feel more levels because we keep going in like 9,000 directions. Yeah, I didn't really. I've just begun to really take account of the lack of love. And, you know, yeah, I've just begun. But that's the beginning of being able to love. Well, you know where the problem is.

And so now you know where to pour in. I mean, it still makes it sound so much easier than it. is, but yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm happy that you have a supportive home and I'm happy that you've even got to the place where you can identify what's really going on. And I'm, I feel, I feel confident with absolutely no educational schooling that you will have a very positive. That's where confidence comes from. Yeah, exactly. That's how you become the president of the United States. But I, I think that you have a good chance of finding that piece because you are coming at it from. a place of such focus on love and I think if we could all focus more on that rather than just

like labels and pathology I think that we would all find ourselves in a better state to be able to together take on the cause of most of our problems which is the sickness in our society we just have to get ourselves we have to love ourselves before we can start to love each other that way you summarise things really well you summarized I noticed that when you were on our my podcast i won't do it again uh i noticed that you summarize things very very well yes that is happening thank you what you just i appreciate that i appreciate that yeah and oh you know what actually one thing i did want to add about that is is that it's not a linear

process at all and there are moments throughout every day where i glimpse and feel you know the handle that you were talking about it's not at all like it is in a container and you pour it out or pour some in it's it's it's a far more multifaceted experience and that's where i think the the reason prayer meditation even does anything is because it's a it's a really vast expansive kind of landscape our interior and those things are our tools that are suited to it you know and yeah i just i just think that it's like it's for for all of us like the little bit of encouragement maybe I can sort of like adorn this with is um it really happens in the smallest of moments and you can have utter clarity like utter clarity i was working with a professional

who specializes in like trauma recovery and he said and he's been doing it for 40 years he's like he's a he's a real master he said uh you know much earlier in life when he was like in his 30s or something he had this moment where he said like it all came into folk focus and the work that he was studying, which he has now been doing his whole life, you know, all of the, basically everything we've tried to cover in this interview, he was like, all of it, you know, kind of came into clarity. And I had such peace and such like, and these are now my words, but what I understood is like, you know, I had such like a confidence and stability and groundedness in this moment of clarity. And guess what? I never became that person. Like, I didn't just suddenly have that. and become that person who is that all the time and wields it, you know, for themselves. It's nice to know what it looks like.

Yes, exactly, yeah. And so I'd say that's what it is. It's like we glimpse these things, you know. It's, it's... We glimpse enlightenment. Yeah, we glimpse enlightenment. And by the way, just throw, I'll throw in a little bit of perspective,

you know, my understanding of our spiritual reality is that the reality of our essence, continues beyond the transition we call death, there is some sort of experience in reality to recognize and speak to, yet we, of course, cannot know it, but for glimpses. And we are in some sense preparing for that reality in these moments, you know. I mean, I'm going to hell, but sure. Yeah, so you're preparing in those moments. Yeah, I'm preparing. I'm preparing. Yeah, I'm preparing. You're just going on sunblock. Yeah, I have a hot water bottle on me right now to get used to those hot, hot temperatures.

But yeah, I agree. I agree and I think this has been wonderful food for thought. Will you please tell me, Pem Badgerty, what do you weigh? What do I weigh? You know, it sounds so trite to people who, I think to people who don't have kids,

it's family for me. Like, it's specifically, like, there are three things that I weigh myself by and sometimes I'm coming up real emaciated I'll recognize is my relationship with my stepson kind of first and foremost actually

because it's the most challenging my wife and my biological son and they're all at such completely different ages and it's also different that you know it's like a great Venn diagram

if they're all in some kind of good place. It's a really great sign and a great feeling. And then I suppose another thing that I'm feeling my worth through is converting all of this kind of stuff we were talking about earlier in terms of fame in my career. I really want to convert that into something lasting and meaningful and, you know, what that means, we'll see in time. I'm trying to do things. But yeah, you know, trying really trying to convert all of this because i've put so much time and energy into into this whether or not i've wanted to i've kind of had to at points and i really would love for it to mean something to others that's like that's like really helpful and valuable even just for these

special little moments so that's yeah so those are those that's four things that's solid i think you're doing a pretty bloody good job especially of that last one i can't speak to your family life, but everyone's still alive. Well, you know, my phone's been on an airplane for a little bit. We're not sure. No, don't say that for fuck sake. Jesus Christ. But I think you are doing something meaningful.

And thank you for being so thoughtful today. And let's all hang out soon. I'd love to meet your wife. Yeah, that'd be great. All right, then. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. I Way with Jamila Jamil is produced and research by myself, Jamila, Jamil, Erin Finnegan, and Kim. Jimmy Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson and the beautiful music you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. If you haven't already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It's a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jamila Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month of Stitcher Premium by going to stitcher.com forward slash premium and using the promo code IWay. Lastly, over our Iway, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voice. email at 1-818-660-5543 or email us what you weigh at IWaypodcast at gmail.com. And now, we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. Here's an I-Way from one of our listeners.

I weigh discovering that I'm autistic and holding on to that identity even when everyone around me seems to question it. I weigh my strong sense for justice and my desire to help others. I weigh giving myself a break to recover from burnout. I weigh taking medication for my mental health and fighting the stigma around it one step at a time, and I weigh my love for nature and for our beautiful planet.