Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 253: An Uncomfortable (But Meaningful) Conversation About Race | Lama Rod Owens

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

Many of us come to meditation for comfort. But, especially for white people, right now is a time to embrace our discomfort. Lama Rod Owens encourages me to step way out of my comfort zone in this conversation, and I am grateful to him for it. Owens is the author of the soon-to-be-released book, Love and Rage. As it says in the bio on his website, his story sits at the "cross sections" of so many aspects of American life "as a Black, queer male, born and raised in the South." He was officially recognized by the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism after he completed a three-year silent retreat, during which time he says he dealt with years of past pain and trauma. As you will hear him say in this interview, he "worked his butt off to feel ok." After retreat, he completed a Master of Divinity at Harvard. I hope you get as much out of this conversation as I did. Where to find Lama Rod Owens online: Website: https://www.lamarod.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lamarod1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lamarod/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lamarodowens/?hl=en Books: Love and Rage - The Path to Liberation Through Anger / https://bookshop.org/books/love-and-rage-the-path-of-liberation-through-anger-9781623174095/9781623174095 Radical Dharma - Talking Race, Love and Liberation / https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Dharma-Talking-Race-Liberation/dp/1623170982 Ten Percent Happier Challenge Update We've decided to postpone the Pandemic Resilience Challenge while we recalibrate it to better meet the needs of this moment. We want to make sure we're supporting you in coping with our current social crisis as well as the pandemic. We're not cancelling the challenge, just postponing - if you signed up for updates, you'll continue to receive information. Thank you for your patience and for giving us the time to get this right. You can find updates on the challenge at tenpercent.com/challenge Other Resources Mentioned: Narrative 4 Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App access for Health Care Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/lama-rod-owens-253 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey everybody, I think many of us come to meditation for some sort of comfort. But right now, especially for white people, it may be a good time to embrace our discomfort. In this episode, you're about to hear Lama Rod Owens encourages me to go well outside of my comfort zone and I'm very grateful to him for doing it.

Lama Rod is the author of the soon-to-be-released book Love and Rage. As it says in the bio on his website, his life sits at the end of quoting here, cross sections of so many aspects of American life as a black queer male born and raised in the south. He was officially recognized by the Cogu School of Tibetan Buddhism after he completed a three-year silent meditation retreat during which time he says he dealt with years of past pain and trauma As you're gonna hear him say in this interview he worked his butt off to feel okay After that retreat, he completed a master of divinity at Harvard and I hope you get as much out of this conversation as I did. So here we go with Lummer Rod

Nice to see you even under the circumstances. It's nice to see you. So thanks for doing this. Absolutely. Yeah, I just want to point out just from the jump here that one of your requests going into this, well, the only request you really had was that you preferred this to be more of a dialogue than a straight up interview. It might be interesting to hear you explain why that's preferable to you.

Yeah. Well, I think it's important right now that we model conversation around difficult issues. And from my perspective, I'm coming from this experience of being a person of African descent, Black American, and you coming from someone who's white, identified. And I think this is the space that we're struggling to come into, is to be in this space where we're trying to relate to each other really through, you know, I mean, centuries of conditioning,

you know, within this country, you know, and this conditioning has determined how we're relating to one another, you know, and there's a lot of discomfort, you know, and for me, my discomfort arises from the ways in which I feel as if I am often having to justify the way that I feel as being, you know, victimized by, you know, systematic racism, you know. And I can't speak for you as to what your discomfort is by wonder what your experience is moving into the space right now. Well, it's not all there is a lot of fear and I'll talk about that, but there's also a lot. There are also constructive or not constructive. I'm not going to say that fear is because sometimes fear can be waking you up to something important, but there's also some positive emotions, you know, or or mental states like curiosity and interest. And a desire

to use this platform to help out at a really wrenching point in American and human history. But on the fear, I think it's, you know, I talked about this a little bit the other day and the podcast I did with 7A Solace, that there's just a fear of saying the wrong thing and being humiliated. And I remember talking to a black friend of mine who was saying that every time she posted on Facebook about anything, her white friends like it, but anytime she posts about race issues, it's crickets. And finally, she started asking them a lot of, why are you not saying anything when I post about racial issues? And they're like, well, because we're just afraid of saying the wrong thing.

And I think that fear, I don't have survey data, but I have a suspicion that the fear that I feel is not uncommon to white people, especially right now. Yeah, I can relate to that experience from your friends, you know, absolutely. And I wonder, and I hear the feedback often of, well, I'm afraid to say the wrong thing. And I can relate to that, particularly when I'm talking about issues that I'm not particularly deeply impacted by, you know, so I can sense that. But when I, when we talk about race and I hear this feedback from my folks about, well, I'm afraid of saying the wrong thing, I just, I wonder what that really means. Like what is that? What, I wonder what's actually being communicated, you know, what does it mean to have a fear

to say the wrong thing? What is the wrong thing? You know, I Think there's again, no, I don't want to be a spokesman for white race But yeah, if I look honestly at my own mind there are things in there that are really Yeah, that are I'm not proud of but I think there's just there's some resentment too. You're making me uncomfortable And I saw I was just, there's some resentment too. You're making me uncomfortable. And I saw, I was just reading an essay from you about about, you wrote an essay before all of this

about, and there was a line in there that really resonated with me. You wrote this essay about how protest is your, is a spiritual practice for you. And, and you talked about how you don't see other Buddhists at these protests. And if I'm paraphrasing you correctly, you talked about how Buddhism has become an upper middle class white pursuit in America and that people go to the practice for comfort.

And engaging in protests and engaging in conversations like this is uncomfortable. And so there is some, yeah, I don't wanna feel uncomfortable. I came to this meditation thing to, you know, soothe all of that. And here you are, you're making me extremely uncomfortable. So I hope that's a full sum answer to your question. Well, I think that's really important to point out. I think what you're doing is something really important for the folks that follow you.

Because I think that we're looking for why to identify folks to kind of step forward to start actually articulating these deep fears. to start like actually articulating these deep fears. You know, and the fear also is really about the ways in which I can mirror back, particularly to white folks, you know, all these things in which whiteness has conditioned you to bypass, you know, And I believe, you know, if you read my work,

you know that I talk about the hard break, I talk about the suffering that we all are experiencing, right? You know? And this work is deeply influenced by the work of James Baldwin who talked about this over and over again, what is this deep pain that white folks are avoiding, which actually contributes to the level of violence that they inflict on people of color, black people in particular.

And I can hold that expression in these conversations, like I am resource and prepared to hold that, you know, and I think part of the fear around the conversations also that, you know, the white folks who are just like, I don't want to make your burdens, you know, more intense, you know, by making you listen to, you know, the ways in which I struggle with whiteness or the ways in which I struggle with racism. And that's okay. And so I can hold that. I'm not speaking for all black people here. I'm speaking from my experience as someone who's trained really deeply to hold suffering,

both my suffering and other people suffering, I can hold that. So that's really important to know, but we have to be able to check in with our black friends and to say, you know what, I want to share this. Is it okay if I do this? Because some black folks can really step up and hold the space and some of us can't. That's a really good step forward is asking consent, you know. And then that consent makes it easier for life folks to step into this material that they're just not sure about, you know, you know, that the ways in which their beliefs, their ideas will be exposed. And we need to do more of that exposing that vulnerability work with each other. I think why folks need to do it with themselves.

And I think when why folks come to people of color and black people, there should be a win which we ask, you ask consent for that openness to happen. Well, I have so many responses to so many things. You just said, I don't know how to get it all out. Okay, let me see if I can put this in some order here. On consent, I think that's a great piece of advice.

But I wonder if there isn't another thing that white people can do when approaching black people, especially at this time, which is I made this mistake the other day with on a text chain with two black friends where I sort of just launched into the discussion, not only did I not ask for consent, but I also, as we pointed out to me, didn't even say, how are you? And so that strikes me as a pretty good first step. You don't need consent to ask somebody how are you? Exactly.

That actually is like the first step towards consent. Actually, it's like, let's check in. Like, how are you? What's up for you? A really powerful, kind of statement is, or a question is, how is your heart doing? That can open the gate for a lot, hard doing. You know, that can open the gate for a lot, you know, of sharing and it can make it easier for consent to happen or it can make it easier for you, you know, to understand that maybe right now my friend can't really hold this thing that I'm about to share because their heart sounds really heavy. You know, I mean, that's so incredibly important that you know, I think this is what practice is helping us to do, to develop this sensitivity, you know, to get some space around what's coming up for us. So we can have a thoughts that's empathic or empathetic, so the experiences of others. I heard that move toward an empathic leap

in your reference earlier to James Baldwin and trying to understand the pain that white people are trying to avoid that may then explain some of the violence that they then act out. Can you unpack some of that because I am intrigued by that, but I didn't fall fully, grok it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I think that this is a really interesting conversation that we're stepping into because I want to share my experience of what it's like to hold the violence and the broken hardiness of surviving a racist system, you know. And I think it's really interesting for you to also just kind of share what is your relationship to how black people respond to systems of racism, you know, because this, like, you know, the march is the protest, the riots that we're experiencing, it's very American. protest the riots that we're experiencing, it's very American. There's nothing more American than a riot. But what's also very American is the ways in which certain groups

get to riot and have access and space to riot where other groups are quite disciplined and demonized for their writing. So I want to step back first into James Baldwin. James Baldwin, and not James Baldwin, but just so many other writers. Over the past 100 years, I would say even more, really spoke about this reality of black pain. Of course, in my work work I call it heartbreak, black heartbreak, but we all experience heartbreak. But black heartbreak is really rooted within this experience

of a deep disappointment. So I grew up with this heavy disappointment because I was born into a system that I did not consent to. And I'm talking socially, I'm talking about systems of power and hierarchy and discrimination like racism and so forth, the patriarchy. I was born into systems that had no say in but been deeply conditioned by it. That conditioning, particularly talking about racism, has restricted many resources that are related to how I can experience health, you know, and well-being and happiness in this life and in this body. I'm really

deeply disappointed by that, and that deep disappointment gives rise to a deep anger and rage, you know, that systems have been created to a race, to bypass, to ignore. You know, and that actually intensifies the anger, this, this, this, this like feeling of being erased and ignored, you know. And so I'm reminded of Dr. Kane, you know, in a speech called The Other America that he

offered in I think 1968, where he talks about how riots are the language of the unheard. You know, and that really holds my experience right now, you know, looking out into the world for me when I see people out. and I come from activism as well, right? You know, so I've been in a lot of organizing, you know, and community work and so when I look at the rise, I see people expressing their hurt. You know, within the system that actually cannot hold their heart break or their anger. So that's my experience, right? But what is your experience of all of this? What is your reaction to everything that I've just shared? Well, I'm still curious about this notion that the racism that courts is often unseen,

but definitely seen, too, through our culture is causing white people paying that we don't want to reckon with that makes everything worse. I want to interrogate that. But in terms of what we're seeing on TV, just to clarify your question about how I'm reacting to it, are you asking how am I reacting to the scenes we're seeing on TV of civil unrest? Well, let me just actually clarify that more because there's something happening in the conversation now, which is the ways in which the sharing from black folks becomes this intellectual thing that white folks want to analyze and get into, and some of the words curious, interrogate, those can be really harmful words when someone has shared

something that's really deep and personal, you know, and triggering, you know, so I, you know, one of the things that I really appreciate is, you know, I love to hear how people are feeling when I'm, you know, after I've shared something, you know, and I love to check into how I'm feeling when someone else shares something that's really vulnerable, you know, after I've shared something, you know, and I'd love to check into how I'm feeling when someone else shares something that's really vulnerable, you know. So I guess the question now is not what you think, but how do you feel right now? Like how do you feel? When I get anxious, there's a buzz in my chest. So I definitely feel that.

And then you're right, there is an urge to intellectualize. There are so many questions I have. And yeah, your point about curiosity and interrogation, lands well with me. I definitely hear that because that's going on for me too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And for me, when I check in with my body, I'm just sensing my heart rate, you know, has increased because I've entered into this really vulnerable place, you know. And it's not that I don't trust you. You know, it's really not the case. I so much of what I do is about being vulnerable and I can hold that. But I think I feel the anxiety, I think, is because of, you know,

the risks that I'm taking, you know, to ask you to check in with your feelings and the ways in which I've had to survive retaliation. You know, because one of the expressions of whiteness and white supremacy is that I think white folks are trained to bypass the feelings, you know, and to actually bypass the body, and to stay in the head, to stay in the, what I call the analytical mind, instead of touching down into the feeling body of these experiences,

and that keeps us riding above the waves of oppression, but for people who hold power And that keeps us riding above the waves of oppression. But for people who hold power within systems of oppression, you can ride above it if you can't fill it. If you can't fill my pain, then you're not gonna help me disrupt the systems that perpetuate the pain. So even for you right now,

after having done the amount of work that I know you've done on these issues, thinking, talking, engaging, your heart rate is elevated, having this conversation with me. Yeah, and it's not, you know, it's not overwhelming, you know, but I can notice it, I just notice it,

you know, it's not distracting, it's not causing me to shut down or to back away, but I'm just noticing. And that's all I'm doing. It's just noticing. You know, I think the problem is sometimes we notice and then we get distracted, abide. And then the distraction eases us into shutting down and backing away from the conversation when instead we should be leaning more into it right. You know, and the thing that's also happening is that there's trust. This building between us right now because you've been willing to engage. You know,

and I really appreciate that the work that you're doing right now. You know, there are these subtle experiences of whiteness and white supremacy that refuse to be names. And so many of these experiences are rooted within the body. You know, and so to name it, to notice it really begins the work of divesting from whiteness and white supremacy. And that's incredibly hard work. It's really uncomfortable. So I just want to point that out that this is part of the work. Like we have to we have to

desenter comfort and then allow discomfort to be centered. You know, in the discussion. And that disc everyone's uncomfortable. That's the thing. You know, I don't know of anyone who enters into this dynamic space of conversation around these issues that have so impacted our lives. I don't know anyone who doesn't experience really strong intense discomforts. And I think we have to own it and embrace it. I'm going to ask this question. I'll be aware of the fact that maybe it's somewhere in the neighborhood of being too intellectual.

But I do notice as I pay attention to my mind, body, as you're talking, you've done this a couple times where you've said nice things about thank you for doing this work, thanks for engaging. And I'm aware that there is this, I've heard it described a trend among white people doing this work, and I see it in my own mind as I've, to the limited extent that I've engaged in this work of cookie seeking. You know, white people looking to feel like,

good white people for doing this work and looking for the praise. I can see the dopamine go off in my own mind when every time you say something like that. And I just wonder if you see that arise and the work you've done over the years in this area. Yeah, absolutely. And I completely agree. And I have colleagues who refuse to offer appreciation to actually acknowledge the work, the white people

doing these conversations. And I get where people are coming from. But I think in this moment, when my experience is, I'm experiencing appreciation, you know, for this work, and it doesn't take energy from me. I'm not, you know, I'm not disrupting any experience that I'm having in particular, but I'm just noticing, you know, the level of work that you're trying to do, and I just want to point that out. But having said that, I also say too, is that like, and this is also the minimal

as well, like, this is just the beginning. You know, that like, yeah, this is good, but there's so much more work to do, you know, because the ways in which we've been conditioned, particularly under within systems of power and privilege, it's, it's elusive. The conditioning is extremely elusive. So you may, you may tap it here, but it's going to like skirt away, you know, and hide away and other things, you know, and we have to be vigilant, you know, and we have to be vigilance, you know, and for me, the vigilance is rooted within just always dropping back into my body over and over and over and over again letting my body tell me what's happening, what's going on, where is my fear,

where is my discomfort, you know, where is like the tendency for me to shut down? I can feel that in my body, and I can stay open to it. And for why folks really wanting to have this conversation and wanting to understand, you have to be in connection with the body, the body is telling you what's going on. If you don't hold space for the body, then you, your mind, the mental and a little whole experience will begin to shut the body down, you know, because it's unsafe. You know, you have to understand, like the body tells a truth, you know, and the mind comes

in and says, no, we can't handle that truth. You know, in many ways, the mind is the enemy of liberation. You know, particularly in untrained mind. You know, so I say all that to say, please continue, that I appreciate it, but please continue to be uncomfortable. And I can hold that. All right, don't take the cookie and go back to watching uncomfortable. And I can hold that. Right. Don't take the cookie and go back to watching Netflix. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I did. Message received.

Let me ask you the question that I failed to ask my friends on the text change the other day. And I'm curious about, I mean, you talked a little bit about how you are in this moment, although that was 10 minutes ago or something like that. And so it may change, it may have changed. Everything's changing all the time. But generally speaking, we're in to state the blazingly obvious in the middle of really tumultuous time. And I asked you before we began rolling how you are, but I wanna hear more now, how are you taking all of this in? Mm-hmm.

You know, in a really basic level, my heart is broken. And when I say broken heartedness again, as I just talked about earlier, it's about the steep disappointments. And I'm disappointed again, as I talked about earlier, it's about this deep disappointment. And I'm disappointed again, because we still have to do these things to be heard, to be seen. And I'm even more disappointed because we're at the same time

still struggling through a pandemic. And a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting the lives of people of color, particularly black Americans. So not only do we, are we fighting for our lives socially, we're fighting for our lives medically, you know? And that's a position that in my experience, we've always been in from the very moment, you know, my ancestors were introduced into the American context, as slaves, we've just always been fighting for our lives, you know, and that is a kind of trauma that Shes is passed from generation to generation. And so also what I'm seeing is the expression of trauma, you know, that has not been taken care of. And which is hard to take care of when you're trying

to fight for your life in a system that actually wants to annihilate you. Like racism is a system that's about annihilating people, erasing people, you know, white supremacy to a very real extent is also about the same things about annihilating people, right? So white supremacy doesn't care about anything, including white people, you know, white supremacy is about power. It's about disconnection, you know, it's about distance, it's about disembodiments, you know, and so we're all struggling, you know, but it's white folks who have to do the work of undoing whiteness because I've not been conditioned as a white person. I have an experiences of whiteness, I have experiences of being in a relationship with white people, but I do not have the experience of being conditioned as white within the American context.

Whiteness of course is different across the world and different countries, different ethnic and cultural and national context, but in America, whiteness is a very specific condition that only white people can disrupt through their divestments. But this brings me back to another question, which is like, how do you feel? How do you really feel about what you're seeing? You know, so many things.

Yeah. Well, you know, just express them. You know, the space is open. Um, well, first and foremost, when I look at that video, I feel horror and anger. And when I, to the best of my limited abilities as human being, make the empathic leap into the shoes of a black person watching that video, I think about the trauma that you described, the trauma of 400 years, the trauma of or 401 years, I guess, and how that all gets activated. I feel uncomfortable because I know that we really have to have these conversations and I need to have the conversation, I have a responsibility to have the conversation on a human, human level with the people of my life who don't share my whiteness and also publicly. Because that's where I landed. This has to be on me right now,

given the platform I have. But that's really uncomfortable because I've had experiences in my past where I've had these conversations and they haven't gone well. Well, that's not really true. I'll tell you, there's one experience that I had when I was a kid.

I'm gonna tell you this experience and I'm very reluctant to share it with you. In part because it's embarrassing, it's probably the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me, but it's also in part because I am very aware and I did talk about this the other day with 7A. I'm very reluctant to put black people

in the position of comforting white people right now because you've got enough stuff going on. You don't need to, you know, what it said, say the other day, in our podcast that posted the other day, she said something like, don't, you know, like sometimes black people feel forced to play mommy. But I'll tell you this because you're asking me how I feel and this is coursing through my body and mind as every time I have this conversation. And I'm only, I've only really come to terms with it recently. And I don't know if I've come to

terms with it is the right expression, but maybe it I've become aware of the continuously recurring role it plays in my psyche. When I was 10 or something like that, I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, which is not far from where you are right now in Boston, in the Dorchester section of Boston. And it is a leafy suburb, but it also is actually, and certainly was when I grew up, quite diverse, but diverse in a pre-PC and just post-bussing crisis Boston. So for those unfamiliar with the busing crisis, there was a move to desegregate Boston schools by busing black children into white neighborhoods and vice versa, I believe, and it caused civil unrest, slash a riot, ongoing upheaval. So I was not sentient at that time. I mean, I was, I guess I was technically sentient,

but I wasn't watching the news. But that was the environment. So in the 80s, in the 70s and 80s, I'm going to elementary school, yeah, 70s mostly. So this stuff was happening. But so it is diverse in my neighborhood. There's kids bust in from the city. In my neighborhood, there was sort of middle class, upper middle class houses, and also housing project. But it wasn't diverse in a touchy field of way.

It was diverse in like everybody made fun of everybody else. So I'm Jewish and you can get made fun of for that. You can make fun of for being black or Asian or Hispanic. And I was part of a crew. And I have this memory of being part of a group of kids that was bullying other kids. And I say this is a kid who was bullied and did bullying. So that's a big dynamic in my mind, actually.

And we were bullying, I think we bullied many kids, but one day a pack of us were bullying a kid who was half black, half white. And I don't remember everything that happened, but it wasn't good. And by bullying, I don't mean we physically type, but we're just haunting him.

The memories are all very foggy. What happened next was that we got in trouble, but the way the story shook out was that I was really the only one who got in trouble, is my memory of it. I don't remember the technical details, I was like, little kid. But I remember feeling like I was the only one who got in trouble, is my memory of it. I don't remember the technical details, I was like, little kid. But I remember feeling like I was the only one

who got in trouble, I was the one who got called to the principal's office and it became a big deal, a really big deal. I don't know if I was suspended or what, but it was a big deal in the school and in, you know, between the two families and there was reconciling that happened, but I felt both rightly accused and wrongly accused. So that mix for me has been very difficult to deal with where I felt.

Yeah, I was part of this, but I also didn't want to admit that and also there was a lot of stuff allegations level that I didn't think were true. Anyway, I'm getting to the details here, but I was very activated by this. And I felt deeply ashamed. And so every time I have a conversation like this, that danger alert gets sent up for me in a very big way. Long answer to your question, but there it is. Well, that's important.

I think that's like, I think we all carry things from our childhood. Now, we're conditioned through these experiences in childhood that actually began to impact our developments in our adult years. And these things come back and they like, they impact how we're able to relate to folks. You know, this thing happened to me when I was 12 or 13 or 14 and because that happened, I can't do this thing right now. You know, so that's really important, you know, to kind of put out there. You know, and I appreciate you sharing that, you know, opening that up, you know, because I think we need to share stories like this, you know, and I share so much, I share so many of these stories in my writing,

you know, in the books that I write articles and talks, you know, because it's important that we know where people are coming from. You know, I think there are like, there's like two big things, you know, that I think it's important to point out. I think one is there's this practice that I think is important to point out. I think one is there's this practice that I developed and I don't know, I don't think anyone told me or taught me this, just something that just kind of came up with was that, you know, I started thinking about all the difficult situations I've had with people in life, you know, just, you know, there are arguments, disagreements, whatever, the drama. And I started thinking, particularly after I started practicing, you know,

meditation was that, God, I wonder if this person, you know, that I had this struggle with, I wonder if they were struggling with something else at the time. And I wonder if our conflict was really about us or was it really about something that they're working through in the moment and then just kind of blew my mind open. And I hope me to have this practice of saying, you know what? Maybe people are doing the best they know how to do in the moment. Even if it's difficult, maybe this is the best that they can do. And how can I actually bring some empathy to this? Whereas not so much about me, but it's also about the recognition that people are struggling with whatever limited resources that they're working with in the moment.

You know, and I think we all carry these hidden stories around, but we, because we don't know these stories about each other, we just make things up. We're like, oh, that person is an asshole, that person is, you know, they're just like hard to deal with, you know, instead of saying, oh, I wonder if this person survived abuse growing up. I wonder if this person had enough love in their life. I wonder if this person's ever experienced, you know, being marginalized or erased, and that pain, that's accumulated from that erasure, maybe they're just like really struggling to be with that, and that makes it difficult for them to be in relationships with maybe me. That's often the heart so much. You know, but we don't tell these stories enough.

We don't tell these stories of the time when I was a teenager and I got into this trouble and this thing has stayed with me my whole life and this is why it's so difficult for me to be open and vulnerable about these issues. This is why things don't go well for me because I'm reliving that trauma from something from another time. And that's why I want to really point out to all the listeners too,

is we have to take time to tell stories. Storytelling is such an important part of liberation. You know, liberation. You know, there's an organization called Narrative Four, you know, which is a nonprofit and they teach, they go around teaching storytelling. You know, they go into schools and community organizations. I went through a training with them a couple of years ago and you go off, you know, and you sit with someone

and you tell each other stories about your life. And it's so simple, but it's so revolutionary to tell a story. I think about all the protests, particularly from the Make America Great Again folks. And look at the protests that they were during earlier in the pandemic, taking guns around and disrupting all this stuff complaining about how we need to open up. And on one hand, I can just shut down and say, you know, they're idiots, You know, which is what I think a lot of us, particularly maybe listening to this podcast, want to say, you know, these people are idiots. But I think the harder path and more liberating path and more compassionate

path is to say, are to reflect or to wonder, oh, I wonder the pain that they're experiencing that drives them to be out in public during a pandemic, you know, wanting us to open up, you know, so they can get access to more resources. I wonder what pain drives them to do that, you know. And sometimes I want to hear those stories, you know, sometimes I don't, and that's okay. As the same with black folks and marching, and demonstrating, it's like, as white folks, I think it's important for you all to say, I wonder what would drive black folks out into the streets like this. Why risk so much to do this?

Why is that so important? And that can open up a gateway of a lot of material, but that's going to, again, require us touching into the body and being with discomforts You know You know, and I love you know what seven a You know was shared you know seven is also you know a dear friend of mine as well Who I don't talk to as much I could use some of her wisdom sometimes, you know But you know it is important to point out that that I think people of color and black people,

Indigenous folks as well, are put into situations where we have to do emotional labor for white folks in order to survive spaces in order to get the resources that we need. And that's just something that we have to do as a survival strategy. And we have to be aware of that. But for me in this moment, I have full agency over the emotional labor that I'm doing for myself and the emotional labor that I'm offering you.

I am not being forced to do anything. I'm doing this also because I am really resourced right now, which means that like I'm really in my body, I'm taking care of myself, my heart is open, I'm not tired, I'm not resentful, I'm holding space for everything, you know, and that helps me to offer consent in doing this, you know.

And again, this is something that we have to ask folks before we have these conversations, are you resource enough to do this? You know, are do you feel as if you have to do this because you're afraid of being barred from getting resources that you really need to be well? You know, I mean, I'll just tell a quick story too. You know, just, and this is in love and rage is in my next book, I tell the story about kind of growing up, I grew up in the South in North Georgia and still a lot of clan activity, a lot of like white supremacist activity, especially now in these

Trump years, but I was raised to speak to everyone. And so when I say speak to everyone, we had to acknowledge everyone. You know, I take knowledge, you know, white people, black people, any people, you know, but we especially had to acknowledge white people. You know, because that was, you know, a generational thing that was passed from generation to generation because my ancestors knew that if they didn't acknowledge white people that that could put their lives in danger. You know, we would be labeled as being, I don't know, rude. You know, and that kind of rudeness really costs like people. All over the country, but especially in the South, they're lives. That could begin a lynching for black people if they didn't recognize white people. And so that's been something that I've been really consciously working with, that conditioning

that I have to acknowledge white people because they have a right to be here. And if I don't acknowledge them or do work for them or do emotional labor or anything for them, then my life will be at risk. You know, and now I don't think that like my life is at risk, but I do think that sometimes if I don't acknowledge why people in certain spaces, then there are sources they get restricted.

You know, I saw that in academia too in my time in graduate school where it's like, oh, like, whiteness has to be recognized or as a black student or as a black academic. I actually, you know, I, there are resources that get withheld for me because I'm seeing as being rude, as we would say back home, I'm seen as being rude as we say back home I'm seen as being opody you know I don't know my place and that's the conditioning that a lot of white people are carrying around that like black people have a place and they don't have a right to do certain things like they don't have a right to be marching and demonstrating you know they don't have a right to that. That's that's their place.

They should be they should go back to their place, which is being silence, erased, marginalized, because that helps me to remain comfortable about my situation and my positionality and whiteness. You know, and I think that's something that we have to, you know, if my folks have to talk about, you know, maybe the negative feelings and negative reaction towards black people out on the streets is really about the ways in which it pushes up against the conditioning that black people are stepping outside of the place that they've been put and they need to go back. And I know lots of folks love to cite Dr. King and Dr. King was vehemently peaceful, non-violent

protests up until the day that he died, even though he was getting more radicalized. But again, he was just like, yes, I will always be about nonviolence, but I'm also about black people being heard and seen. And sometimes a riot is how we have to be seen and heard. And he was so, so against this idea that like, maybe we should just wait. You know, like, maybe, you know, maybe we should just wait. You know, like maybe, you know, maybe black people should just wait and stay in their place and things will get better over time. He's vehemently against that as well. You know, like this waiting was just another tool by white supremacist culture to keep black people in place.

You know, um, yeah, so I mean, that's a lot, you know, of being up. And so again, like my question, you know, how do you feel, you know, what are your feelings now? How are you feeling where you're at in your body? Oddly actually telling that story mitigated my anxiety markedly. I the buzzing in my chest has diminished and or maybe I'm just bypassing and reverting to the intellectual and ignoring the body, but one or one or both of those things is happening to answer your question. And also just I notice because I'm a trained interviewer and you're asking me to interrupt those patterns.

My habit is I heard three questions I'd like to follow up on but I'm trying not to revert to the intellectual. So yeah, there's a lot going on in my mind. It's interesting, you know, that the intellect is where It's interesting, you know, that the intellect is where there's a safe place that we can retreat into to bypass the experience of the body. You know, you described that before as being a part or a hallmark of whiteness. Yeah, based on what?

Why is that a white thing? Or is it not just a human thing? Well, I think it I think on a level yes it is human absolutely but there is a way in which whiteness demands disembodiments you know and so the intellect is where one goes when one is disembodied you know so to return back to the body actually means that you have to like grapple with the level of trauma from condition whiteness. You know, and so when I, you know, when I've had these conversations with white folks, particularly intellectual white folks, you know, white folks with following and power,

you know, and all of that, you know, the intellect is where is a really safe space, you know, the intellect is where I can go as well, but because of my practice, you know, my meditation mindfulness practice, I know that like my work is as much as possible is coming back to the body over and over again, knowing that like the intellect is something that's really important. And I need that, but it's not actually going to help me work through the trauma of my body. You know, the woodiness of my body, you know, and the easiest way for I would say, like, white liberal folks is to move into the intellect. You know, that can be really quite harmful, particularly if you're in a conversation with someone talking about feelings and sensing, you know, and being in the body and then the response is very like analytical. You know, this is what I think. Words like phrases like that, this is what

I think, or I'm curious about that. It's not authentic to the conversation. You're no longer communicating. If the conversation is about the felt experience, of the impact of oppression and privilege, then you have to stay within the language of that felt experience. And so when someone leaves that level and goes into the intellect, and not skillfully going into the intellect because we can go into the intellect to get perspective

on what the body is doing and how we're experiencing things but we have to return back. So I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about going in and out to get a deeper awareness of it. I'm just talking about escaping the whole thing and moving into the intellect and just staying there because yeah, that level of communication is just too much. I can't deal with it. You know, I feel like you're describing my conversational style forever. It's a really good point.

I think it's a really good point. I can interview people. I mean, this again, part of my training, yeah, I'm not talking about this podcast per say I'm talking about 30 years of being a journalist all over the world, interviewing people and all sorts of horrifying situations. My survival mechanism is keep it intellect. I don't, it's not going to help me right now to feel everything you're feeling. This is the story I've told myself.

To the extent that I was even aware of it. I got to get this sound bite and then I got to get it ready for tonight's news. Exactly. And if I'm overwhelmed with emotion, I can't function. Yeah. So I guess the whiteness you described or the disembodiment you described on steroids. Well, I think you bring up something really interesting

is that we can flate professionalism and whiteness together. You know, I think that's been, I think professionalism has been a really interesting cover for whiteness. And that's of course been something that's been used against me. And it's like, oh, like, you know, you should be more professional. You know, I've had to, you know, use my insurelacts to interrogate that because that's important to go back into the answer elect and to say, oh, what do they mean? You know, what does it mean to be professional? You know,

and I'm thinking about so many folks that I know, you know, you talk about hair in the black community, like the ways in which our hair is policed in professional spaces. You know, and not, you know, thinking about some of the stories that we've been hearing over the past couple of years, particularly where students, you know, high school students, they go to school and they get suspended. You know, black students get suspended for having, you know, dreadlocks or aphoros, right? And people say, well, it's not professional to the school environment.

And that's frankly just a cover for whiteness, you know? Your hair makes us feel really uncomfortable and it's not aligned with our standards of what it means to assimilate within a system that we dominate. More of my conversation with Lamarad after this. Life is short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean?

How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is short with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly,

the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times, but if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it?

Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon music or wonder yeah. How would you feel if I asked you a question right now? I don't want to deflect, but I do have a question I'd like to ask. No, go ahead. You mentioned the title of your new book. I think it's an excellent title and it's very intriguing. And I see these two things coursing through this conversation one more than the other frankly, but I'd like to hear both love and rage. I don't see that much rage. It feels to me like you're not in a disembodied way, but you know, reasonably dispassionately pointing out what you've experienced in what black people have experienced in this country, but I guess I project a rage on to it Not because you are who you are, but because if I was feeling that I would feel right, right? And then I see this incredible generosity

Like when you described can I look at these people who I might disagree with and think what stories that they have That would motivate them to do this, whatever it is they're doing, you can disagree with. So I see this combination that you've aptly paired these two human capacities in the title of your book. So I'd just love to hear you say more about that because it seems deeply relevant to everything that's gone before it in our conversation. Yeah, thank you for that question. That's very full. There's a lot in

that question that I want to address. I think the first thing that I want to just touch on in your sharing is the statement of, I'm sorry, next to you is your exact words, but something along the lines of like, I'm projecting my rage or how I think you should feel on seeing how you should feel, but now I would feel on you. Right, how, yeah, exactly. You know, and that's something that like,

I've really struggled with, you know, where I've been in conversations with my, I'm not saying it's happening now, but I'm just saying in other conversations where it's been like, you know, there's a questioning actually of my blackness because I am not in rage and performing rage and anger in the conversation. And so people look at me and they say,

and particularly from YP, and sometimes like people as well as like, are you really struggling with these things? You know, are you really, are you really oppressed? Are you really tied into racism? This is really an experience because you don't sound like, and that's the, that's the statement. You don't sound like, sound like fill in the blank. Like you don't sound like you're a victim. You don't sound like you're you know experiencing racism. You don't sound like you know that is one of the most disruptive things you can tell someone particularly someone who experiences victimhood and survive a hood from something really intense. It's like well you, you don't sound like you survived that. You don't sound like a victim of sexual assault. You know? And so I just want to point that out, you know, because so much of my experience is always

being told how I should feel. Because then you've got the insult of the actually enduring whatever you endured and the injury of being told that you're not performing it well enough. Exactly. And then your credibility is actually compromised because you don't fit the performativity that someone's actually expecting. You know, just for the record, I wasn't driving at that.

Oh, no, no, no. No, I completely understand. Like, I didn't feel that at all. But for the listeners, I think this is something that we can learn from, you know, because I see that here at all I've done that before like when I'm talking, you know, having conversations or seeing something, you know, on in the media about someone talking about surviving something and a thought sometimes pops up and goes, wow, they don't seem like, you know, they actually experienced this thing, you know. But you know, so now going back

to the book, yes, love and rage. I started with the title of the book before I even had a book. I just felt like the title, the pairing of these things really begin to drive the content. Can I get this subtitle too? Absolutely. Because I think it's important. Love and rage, the path of liberation through anger. Yes, through anger. That's the key.

I'm not bypassing the anger. I'm not going over it. I'm not going around it. I'm talking about going through because going through it is when we actually begin to understand what anger is and how to use anger, you know, and not for anger to have agency over us but for us to have agency over the anger. That's the key. That's the that's the heart of the book, right? And so I've had to kind of put myself on the line here.

Like I've used myself to really talk about how I've worked with anger. And that's also what the book about. The book is really just about me, you know, and my relationships to anger. And all the practices that I've used, so work with anger, right? And so over the years, I've been, you know, roughly, I've been practicing meditation for

about 20 years. I started a mindfulness and then got into Buddhism, but I've done this incredible work to cultivate the spaciousness around my anger and my rage. Around all my hurt, actually, right? And so there's a sense of agency over what I experience. And when I say agency again, I say there's a sense of space around what arises for me, both mentally and physically, there's a space. When I am in conversations like this, I am speaking from the space, but the material that the space is holding is informing the conversation. So I know, like, in this, I know I'm frustrated and angry and enraged and traumatized and hurt and hopeless, like all of that,

you know, but I'm holding it, you know, love is important here because love is the strategy that I'm using to keep the space open. And love for me is an expression of acceptance. So I am accepting without judgment, everything that's arising in my experience and that acceptance helps me to disrupt the ways in which I may cling to things coming up, the ways in which I may fall into the narratives around the material that is coming up, and the less clinging that I can do, the more likely it is that the space around me, around the material stays open, or rather, it's more likely that I can remain aware of the spaciousness around the material that's coming up.

And that's how I'm able to move to the world, and that's taken almost 20 years of practice to do that. You know, some people may say, oh my god, 20 years, but you have to understand this is like, it was life and death for me. Being contracted around my emotions and the trauma and the heartbreak felt like death to me. You know, I'm talking about being in my late teens

in my 20s, it was just so, so much suffering. You know, and so when I started this path of meditation, it was incredibly difficult to do this. It was incredibly difficult to do this. It was incredibly difficult to sit and watch my anger. I didn't really believe that I had agency over any emotion, especially anger. But the more you sit, the more you watch, the more you begin to understand that thoughts and emotions,

they're just things. There's these, they're their experiences, passing through the mind, passing through the body. You know, they're like clouds passing through the sky. You know, they're like waves, like rising from the ocean. You know, the waves don't overcome the ocean. That's impossible, right?

The clouds can't overcome the sky, even though it's overcast, the sky is still there and spacious and boundless. And the clouds are just a temporary experience. You know? So that's how I relate to the material in my mind. This is what gives rise to the relationship of love and rage. You know, it might be useful to point out that as far as I know,

the work that you just described, which is pretty incredible, you can't do this work if you're disconnected from your body. Yes. Yes. And I want to, you know, just, you know, point out something too, which is that, yeah, all of our bodies have very different narratives, you know, which simply means that like, we all have different levels of trauma, you know, in our bodies. And this kind of work of bringing attention back to the body can be quite dangerous of bringing attention back to the body can be quite dangerous for many of us. And so I can definitely find myself in a line of teaching where I'm over-emphasizing the importance of the body and maybe making statements that say, you know, you can't possibly be well if you can't pay attention to the sensations of the body. You know, I don't want to say that, you know, because it is,

it will be really difficult for many of us to do that. But what I do want to say is that we have to at least acknowledge the body and the practice. You know, I may not be able to get into sensations, but I need to at least have a practice that says, you know what, I have a body and that's maybe all that I can do in the practice. And that's enough. And I want us to go to where we're at,

or rather go to what's appropriate for us in the practice and work that space. So if you have to maintain some space outside of the body because of trauma, that's the space you're you have to maintain some space outside of the body because of trauma, that's the space you're going to have to work then. And you can experience a lot of benefit from that. Other people can go deep into the body because the experiences of trauma may be lesser or not existent. And that's wonderful too. So we have to all do the practice where we're at. too. So we have to all do the practice where we're at. I think sometimes it's meditation teachers as particularly mindfulness instructors, which a lot of

folks are listening in, who do identify as mindfulness folks? And also yoga folks, yoga teachers, well, I think sometimes we have to be really careful about teaching from where we're at. So for someone who has a really great relationship with the body, we just have to be very careful about saying and making statements about, okay, if you're not where I'm at, then you're not doing the practice right or you're wrong. And so I don't want to say that. I want to say that whatever is appropriate for you to practice, that's right for you. That's appropriate for you. So in love and rage is the same thing.

It's like, yes, I've done this incredible work with anger and rage and disappointment and heartbreak, but I want you to start where you're at. And the book has a lot of practices to help you start where you're at. You know, and this is the kind of book that I wanted to write. I just, I didn't want to just talk about anger, right? I wanted to give you practices to work with anger, you know, in the book. And you just pick the practice that's appropriate for where you're at. And that's it. And you work it. You know, I experience, you it. I experience an incredible amount of spaciousness. Like I'm not being arrogant, I'm just pointing out something that's really my experience.

It's like, yeah, I have a lot of freedom. Because I've done this incredible amount of work, not just in mindfulness and meditation and Buddhism, but in different traditions and lineages, spiritual lineages and so forth. And all that work comes together so I can be in this time, in this place, in this body, to be in the pandemic, to be in an uprising, to be in an economic collapse, and be in political turmoil, and just actually be able to be okay. You know, okay is such a strong place for me. It's not about being great, it's not about being good, or super fantastic, or any of that.

It's about being okay, and okay is about being in a place that I can like manage what comes up for me, and that's all. That's all I'm trying to do. I think that's all we should be doing is having the practice to manage what comes up for us. You know, to be with it in a way that makes sense for us in a way that helps us to experience safety and choice. And that's it. That's all I want in the practice for everyone. And whatever comes from being okay, that's great. If you're happy, if you're joyful, if you're anything that comes from that is wonderful, you know, absolutely. But just being okay is so I've busted my ass to be okay.

And I'm so grateful for it. I've busted my ass to be okay. It's a pretty good title for a book. Like don't steal that. That's mine. It's public. If I steal it, everybody's going to know I stole it. Let me ask you one last question or just have one last dialogue around something. I'm sensitive to your time, but I'm asking this from a position of whiteness of being white. I think for me, it is possible that we will go through this period of time as we've gone through other periods where race becomes salient in the popular consciousness and I will lean in and

engage and then Some other story will come along and capture our attention and I And then some other story will come along and capture our attention and I Will have the luxury of disengaging because I'm not walking around with black skin and therefore don't have to be Thinking about it all the time. I Worry about that I don't know. I just wonder if any of that for what any of that provokes for you and any thoughts you would have on how to stay engaged. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, I'm just used to that.

That's not really like a new thing for me, that we have a short attention span, particularly if you're someone who doesn't necessarily have the same experiences as another group. And of course, of course, we can get distracted, start thinking about other things that are much more pertinent for us, right? I think that one of the things that we can do is, again, I believe in relationships and I think relationships are the key to having an equitable society and culture in the long run. And so we have to stay in relationship to black people.

You know, like I stay in relationship to my immigrant friends, because I want to stay connected to issues that immigrants are experiencing in this country. And so with white folks, you have to stay in relationship. You have to be in the lives of black folks. And that's another particularity of whiteness in this country is that there are many white people

who will never have a significant relationship with someone of any other race, not just black, but in the other race, there is a way in which you can concune yourself or isolate yourself within white spaces, which is a privilege that people of color do not have. You know, and people can say, oh, you know, but like there are, you know, these black neighborhoods or Jewish neighborhoods that people can say, oh, but like there are these black neighborhoods or Jewish neighborhoods that people can isolate. But you still have to, you're still surviving within a dominant culture, whom you rely

on for resources. So even then, we have to go outside of our communities into other spaces where we're not reflected in. But again, cultivating relationships with people who are different than you. You know, there are co-workers that many of us have, they're, you know, neighbors, you know, whatever it may be, and just like learning how to have conversations, to check in, like, how are you doing? It's again such an important starter. And then you, you know, like you, even if the new cycle changes, you know that like your friends are still struggling with this issue and you stay connected.

And the more you stay connected, the more you're going to develop, care, love, compassion for, for your friends, and you start having this personal emotional connection, not just to them, but to what they're struggling with. You know, And I think another thing we have to do is educate ourselves. We have to read. We have to, particularly in America, we have to understand how America was founded and how America perpetuates itself, to really to understand what's happening now. You know, nothing that we're experiencing from politics to the demonstrations to the economics to the pandemic, nothing is random. You know, nothing just, there's very little that just happens.

There are systems in place. There are things that have already been going on for centuries that have made it possible for these things to be happening right now. We have to study that. A lot of it is based on race. We say that all race was over when Obama got elected, you know, and that was, that was that line, oh, we're in a post-racial America now. If we're in a post-racial America now, we wouldn't be experiencing this at all. We wouldn't be experiencing Donald Trump, especially, if this is a post-racial America. So we have to read and understand and study. You know, there are many great people who have done this intellectual work for us, this intellectual academic work to understand this. There's all this great work within the contemplative literature right now, you know, and philosophical literature as

well, where people have done this work for us to understand how this is feeling for us in our bodies work for us to understand how this is feeling for us in our bodies as well and how to really undo these systems. So we have to do all of that. And lastly, I would just say that we just have to know that we have this ability to bypass. We have this ability to skip around and not to stay focused. And we have to intentionally learn how to bring our minds, our awareness back. Just in our basic meditation practice, right? We're using our anchors about bringing the attention back to the anchor over and over and over again. In the same way, we bring our attention back to the social reality of wherever we're living. Be it America or other countries. Bring our attention back over and over again.

And again, if you're going to do that, you're going to actually at the same time be de-centering comforts. And that's part of the price of the ticket is actually coming back into embracing discomfort as this place from which realization and awareness emerges from about relationships and how we're living together as a society. Would you argue there's to an individual white person? No, there is no question in my mind at least that embracing the discomfort of having these conversations, keeping it alive in your own mind, whether it's top of the news cycle or not,

would be good for the world. Yeah. But what about for an individual person? Because I have this incoincense, this nebulous, but hard to articulate sense that actually doing this work, engaging in this way, no matter how uncomfortable it is, actually feels better than living in denial,

but I can't quite put it into words that it feels like there's an upside to me to embracing this discomfort from a moment-to-moment life perspective. But does any of that make any sense to you? Absolutely. I think what you're trying to articulate is that this work helps us to be freer. You know, and that's something that's hard to articulate if you actually have never had this experience of really living in the truth of reality. You know, but that freedom, that that that freedom for me, it's about authenticity, it's about actually fully acknowledging

what's happening. Enemy in around me. That emotional labor that we're doing is like touching into that helps us to release all these hidden, repressed things within our experience. You just feel better. Yeah, and at the same time, yes, it's uncomfortable, but that discomfort is held by the space that begins to open up around this tension, this repression being released. But you have to believe in that kind of freedom through discomfort. Which is, again, this is what Love and Rages about,

it's like, let's go into the discomfort in order to get free, which sounds really like, you know, paradoxical, you know, but you have to get more uncomfortable to get free. Absolutely, because we have to hurt more to heal. You know, you have to rip the scab off, you know, for that wound to get healed, you know, or whatever it may be, I'm not a doctor, but like, you have to experience the pain and orders to understand what the pain is. And in our case,

we have to experience pain and orders to let the pain go. You got to bust your ass to be okay. Yeah, exactly, right? Exactly. You can't let go of something you have an experience. You know, so experience and then you have agency over it. Then in that agency, you're like, okay, I don't need this. And then you let it go. Then all of a sudden, you start interacting and being with people in such a different way. Like you begin to express liberation within a conversation, within interaction, because you know, like you've experienced or discomfort in your pain, and you know what causes discomfort in pain within other folks. And you know that, oh, I'm not going to say that. You know,

I'm not going to make this assumption. I'm not going to skip into my intramolect. I'm not going to stay in my body because this is how I'm going to reduce harm for myself and for the person I'm with in this moment. Well, thank you for busting your ass to be okay. And then thank you for coming on and doing the the labor to talk about what's going on for you and to make it okay for me to talk about what's going on for me. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Again, big thanks to Lamar Rod. I was meaningful for me. And I hope I hope for you as well.

Again, check out his book, Love and Rage comes out soon. It's available for pre-order right now. As always, big thanks to the team that works incredibly hard to put this show together on quite a cadence now. Samuel Johns is our lead producer. Our sound designers are Matt Boynton and Anya Sheshek from Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wartel is our production coordinator. We get a ton of incredibly valuable input from TPH colleagues like Jen Poient,

Nate Tobian, Ben Rubin, and of course, a big thank you to my friends from ABC News, Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan. We're going to be back on Friday with a bonus episode and then on Monday, an episode all about white people talking to white people about whiteness, which is an important thing to do. So we're going to try to model that and we'll see you soon with much more content. Thanks for listening. Hey, hey, Prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen

early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.