The One You Feed - Life Through Poetry with IN-Q

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

IN-Q is an award-winning poet, best-selling author, and multi-platinum songwriter. His groundbreaking achievements include being named to Oprah’s SuperSoul 100 list of the world’s most influential thought leaders, being the first spoken word artist to perform with Cirque Du Soleil, and being featured on A&E, ESPN, and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. He’s inspired audiences around the world through his live performances and storytelling workshops. Many of his recent poetry videos have gone viral with over 70 million views combined.When IN-Q reads or recites his poetry, it is a moving, powerful experience. In this episode, he reads several of his poems and he and Eric talk about many aspects of life and how he expresses those aspects through his poetry. But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, IN-Q and I Discuss Life Through Poetry and…His book, Inquire WithinHow it’s easier to hate than to create but creating is a lot more satisfyingThat for him, poetry is either purging or praying or bothHow we’re all storytellersThat everything is a spiritual practiceHow we’re afraid to be a student at something, to look foolish, but if we never look foolish, we’ll never be brilliantHis poem, Inquire WithinThe way spirituality is logical for himThe role that gratitude plays in his lifeHow his work holds paradoxesHis poem, ProblemsThe ways enlightenment can sneak into our livesHis two definitions of hopeSeeing the difficult reality while also holding hope for betterIN-Q Links:in-q.comFacebookInstagramSimpliSafe: Get comprehensive protection for your entire home with security cameras, alarms, sensors as well as fire, water, and carbon monoxide alerts. Visit simplisafe.com/wolf for a free HD home security camera and a 60-day risk-free trial.Skillshare is an online learning community that helps you get better on your creative journey. They have thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Be one of the first thousand to sign up via www.skillshare.com/wolf and you’ll get a FREE trial of Skillshare premium membership.If you enjoyed this conversation with IN-Q on Life Through Poetry, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Ellen BassRoger HousdenSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every single feeling you could ever possibly have, I have had, I will have. But I can also choose how I respond to those feelings, what actions I take, and what I am choosing to focus on. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is NQ, a National Poetry Slam champion, award-winning poet, and multi-platinum songwriter. He's been named as one of the world's most influential thought leaders on Oprah's Super Soul 100 list and is the first spoken word artist ever to perform

with Cirque du Soleil. NQ writes to entertain, inspire, and challenge his audiences to look deeper into the human experience and ask questions about themselves, their environment, and the world at large. Today, NQ and Eric discuss his book, Inquire Within. Hi, NQ. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, man. It's a pleasure to have you on. We are going to talk about your wonderful book of poetry called Inquire Within. But before we do that, we'll start with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents

things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He said, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do okay i personally think they're the same wolf okay and uh yeah maybe they're you know two parts of the same wolf yeah and uh once you know that then I think you have to integrate both of them into who you are. I don't think that you can ignore fear or anger or jealousy or sadness or any of the shadow emotions.

I think you have to accept them, integrate them, and alchemize them. I think it's a lot easier to hate than it is to create, but creating is a lot more satisfying. So that's what I try to do within myself. I don't ignore the wolf that is the negative wolf in quotation marks. I just try to make friends with them. And then I try to play as much as I can with the positive wolf in quotation marks. So for you, I'm assuming that poetry is one of the ways that you alchemize those shadow emotions into the other side. Yes, definitely. That's my alchemy outlet of choice. Yeah. I've heard you use that poetry for you is either purging or praying or both. Yeah, absolutely.

I love that idea. A lot of people, when they think about doing something like poetry, they look at the craft aspect of it and they go, geez, I don't know that I can do it that well. I don't know that I can do it at that level. And so that stops them from doing it. But I'm assuming you believe that the benefits of doing that sort of thing, it's not about the end product. It's about the process of going through it that really matters as far as the alchemy piece. Yeah. And you could say that about anything, man.

If you look at anything in the entire world and you think, I have to do it at a certain level, how will you ever start? That's right. And so poetry is no different. We're all storytellers. Every single day we are telling stories to ourselves and to other people. And we're always actually like integrating the stories that are reflected back to us from everyone else. So, I mean, what is poetry if not storytelling? Right.

And, you know, you just have to choose to explore it like anything else in life. And you might be surprised at the benefits. and you might be surprised at the benefits. I've become a big advocate as I've gotten older at doing things, even when, and often especially when, I don't think I'm going to be good at them. I recently took up wood carving, and I can tell you I am terrible. I carved a bird, and it looks like, you can tell it's a bird, but it's like a bird that has serious birth defects, right? It doesn't look quite quite right, but I picked it up and I was like, I know I'm not going

to be good at it, but that's not the point. Well, what have you learned so far from your emerging wood carving career? I've learned how to protect my fingers. I've still got all 10 of them. That's a positive thing. That's a big thing. Yeah. In and of itself, to learn to be aware in the thing that you're doing to make sure that you're not hurting yourself or anyone else around

you. Yeah. I've learned how to clean up my messes. I've learned a couple of different type of knife strokes. I've learned how to sharpen my knives. I've learned some things about how to start the carving so that I don't get myself asymmetrical right out of the beginning. But the main thing is I just enjoy doing it. I just really felt like, I was like, I need to do something with my hands. I play guitar and that is one thing, but I felt like I still, I found myself wishing I had more dishes to do. And I was like, all right, that's a problem. But I liked it because it was tangible. Look, either everything is a spiritual practice or nothing is a spiritual practice.

Amen. And it's something that I'm constantly reminding myself of. Nobody likes the feeling of not being good at something. I mean, it fucking sucks to be a student at anything in life. But how are you ever going to grow unless you get outside of your comfort zone? And all of this motivational, you know, self-help stuff. I mean, you hear this over and over and over again. And yet often even the people who are saying it need to be doing it.

You know, it's like we teach what we need to learn. That's right. So, you know, or even think about kids, man. Like kids are always outside of their comfort zone. And that's partly why they grow so much is because they're not really in control of their environment and they're constantly doing things for the first time. And I think that that really allows people to evolve at a really quick pace, but then we grow up, we become good at something, we choose a career, you know, we're making a

living and then we get validated for that thing and we just stay there because we're scared to be students again. We're scared to look foolish, but if I never look foolish, then I'll never be brilliant. Absolutely. Let's move into a poem of yours before we get too far in here so that people can get a sense of you and your work. I thought I'd ask you to read the title of your book, which is Inquire Within. You want me to read the Inquire Within poem is what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. I thought you were saying you just wanted me to say Inquire Within. No, actually let's do the poem. You're like, just read the title of the book. That will be enough. And then we're done. Well, this is called Inquire Within.

I used to look up when I prayed. I would raise my head to the sky as if God lived in a penthouse made of clouds. As a kid, I thought he could hear my prayers better when I was on a plane. After all, I was closer to him. I would ride elevators to the top floor just to whisper my secret desires. I've never told anyone that. As an adolescent, I stopped praying altogether. I didn't believe in belief.

It seemed to me that people had created God to control themselves and others. It was the long con. Self-delusion as a form of therapy. I convinced myself I was stronger than that. I wasn't. As a young man, I explored spirituality. I wanted answers. I devoured every self-help book I could get my hands on. I watched The Secret two times in a row and still somehow managed to misunderstand

the law of attraction. It was quite comical, really. They say the difference between intelligence and wisdom is experience, but you can have experience without having wisdom or intelligence, so what the fuck do they know? Recently, I started praying again. I couldn't specifically tell you why, but if pressed, I'd say it had to do with a sudden and unexpected need to surrender. I felt the urge to bow in the service of something greater than myself. But I didn't want religion to get in the way. So one night, as the overwhelming silence of the city filled my empty room, I knelt at the foot of my bed and I prayed. It was oddly familiar,

except this time, instead of looking up to God, I looked inside. Thank you. Thank you. So we referenced earlier that poetry for you is either purging or praying or both. You referenced prayer in that poem there. What does that word mean to you, prayer? Well, it's constantly changing. You know, I don't think that there's one fixed definition that would be satisfactory. Probably at this point, it means manifestation. Me connecting to uh the energy you know the universal energy uh-huh and um trying to create something inside of myself outside of myself uh-huh it's a pretty good definition i find prayer an interesting thing for people who tend to not necessarily believe that they're

praying to a being that's going to answer that prayer. And so I pray often, but I don't actually believe in necessarily a God out there who's going, oh, thanks for registering your desires, Eric, or thanks for, you know, like for me, it's kind of your point about inquire within. I think for me, prayer is an intention setting vehicle. It's a way of aligning myself internally as to what's important. Again, like you, that is ever-evolving. Yeah, I mean, look, spirituality is logical for me. It's not this esoteric thing that I have to wrap my mind and my heart around.

It's very logical. The whole entire world is basically just moving energy. You know, if you focused in on any of the things that are around us, this table, the chair that I'm sitting in, I mean, there's more space inside of it than anything else. You know, it's very, very small percentages that are actually solid and then if you zoomed out in the universe it's the same thing you know go to space and it's just empty for the most part yeah and so even us we're just vibrating energy so i i look at the world like we're in a sea of consciousness and uh we're separate from it and we're also at one with it

and we're the experiencer and we're the observer of that experience you know I was thinking about gratitude the other day because gratitude I've always known intellectually that it's an important practice and I've always explored it in my work but I've had a hard time being consistent with it. And I had a breakthrough that I'll share with you. And the breakthrough is how I was looking at the practice of gratitude. You know, oftentimes, like I would get something and I'd immediately be like, oh, this is awesome. It's not exactly what I wanted, but, you know, thanks. And then I'd start to think about what

else I wanted. Like for example, I got nominated today for a Billboard Award for the best soundtrack album. That's not exactly what I wanted. I wrote three songs on a Disney movie last year, and now I've just been nominated for something. That wasn't what I was. I wrote three songs on a Disney movie last year, and now I've just been nominated for something. That wasn't what I was manifesting, but I got a gift. And imagine if you gave a gift to someone, okay? And they got it, and they literally were like, this is cool. Like, thanks. It's not really what I wanted, but I appreciate you giving it to me. And you know what I really want is that thing out there. Well, I might not think the person's an asshole, but I definitely wouldn't give them another gift.

Right. I would just give it to someone else. And why is the universe any different? If everything is vibrating energy and the universe gives you a gift, no matter if it's huge or if it's small, and you don't match up to the frequency of that vibration and give it gratitude for the present that now I find myself being intensely grateful throughout my day and, you know, at the end of my meditations. And the more grateful I am, the more presence I'm receiving. I want to ask you a question about that worldview, because I occasionally struggle with it. And I'll tell you in what way.

struggle with it. And I'll tell you in what way. Because the logical extension of that can be that people whose lives are terrible brought that on themselves. Why is that the logical extension of it? I don't necessarily agree with that, but I want to know what you mean before I respond. My view of it is saying that if I am grateful for things, I'll get more good things. But that sort of says, at least taking a logic and reversing it, would say, if I don't have good things, then that's somehow a lack of gratitude. No, that's not what I'm saying.

Okay. It's not even what I'm saying specifically. Yeah, yeah. You can be grateful for anything. Yeah. If you actually chose to start looking at the world from the standpoint of like, wow, this is all a miracle, you could be grateful for everything. That's right. There's stuff that happens that is unimaginable.

There's no way to make sense out of it. But you don't have to make sense out of things in order to accept them and find gratitude because they made you who you are. Right. So for me, that's a larger spiritual lesson. But like every day, I'm not going to get nominated for some award. I'm just having a moment with you. Yeah. I don't know you.

You're across the country and we're having a conversation and we're sharing time together. The most valuable thing that both of us have, we're choosing to share this moment together or a meal or a smile or the way the breeze hits you. I'm not saying this because I've mastered it. I'm a fucking student. I'm figuring it out on a moment to moment basis. But I'm certainly not saying that if people have bad stuff happening to them, they deserve it because of their lack of gratitude. I'm just saying that as a rule for myself, the more that I focus on what I'm grateful for and match up with that frequency of the universe, the more either I discover that I'm grateful for that I wouldn't have seen before, or the more that actually gets created. And I can't answer that,

but I'm going to keep trying. It does seem absolutely true. It's something that you do very well in your work, which is that you hold paradox really well and you explore paradox. hold paradox really well and you explore paradox. What I'm doing is I'm saying, let me apply logic to something that's spiritual. And there's a paradox to a lot of spirituality I have found for myself that's paradoxical. You're holding these different ideas at once. Like we talked about, you're the experiencer and you're the observer. And that's the paradox. You're separate and you're one. Yes. And you have to be able to hold two truths in the same space at the same time to get the cosmic joke. Yep. You know, like in that poem that I read, Inquire Within, I remember being at home alone, high as shit, you know, just so stoned, watching The Secret.

And what I said in the poem is true. I misunderstood the law of attraction. I thought it meant that you just have to go around and be positive all the time. Oh, I'm just going to be positive all the time. First of all, that's stupid. It's unrealistic. That's not the way the world is set up. It's set up as we're talking about in dichotomies. It's the good wolf and the bad wolf, and that's why they're separate, but the same. Yes. Yes. As the great Zen master Suzuki used to say, not two, but not one. I love that because it captures that, you know,

you and I are not one, but we're also not really two, you know? That's so well said. I love the simplicity of that. So yeah, I just think once I realized that I had made a mistake, you know, that year that I had spent walking around forcing myself into positivity just seems so silly. I'm not talking about gratitude, around forcing myself into positivity just seems so silly. I'm not talking about gratitude like forcing myself into positivity all the time. I get upset like everybody does. I get stressed out. I get annoyed.

I get nervous. Every single feeling you could ever possibly have, I have had, I will have. But I can also choose how I respond to those feelings, what actions I take and what I am choosing to focus on. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

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I think this is a good segue to another poem of yours, if you would be kind enough to read it for us. It's a very short one, but it's called Problems. Yes. How do we talk about the problems without feeding them? If we ignore them, we most likely keep repeating them. If we explore them, we run the risk of reinforcing them. So how, then, do we get down to the source of them? things. And I was just right up against this very recently. I had a two week vacation coming up and

I've never taken two weeks off in my life. So I was so excited. I had been planning and it was this big deal. And the night we went on vacation, my partner's mother went into the hospital and we hopped in the car and drove to Atlanta. And all of a sudden everything on vacation was whacked out. And so I'm in the midst of that moment going, okay, let me think here. Let me, let me work through this. On one hand, I'm feeling intensely disappointed and frustrated. And yet on the other hand, I also recognize like I'm talking about vacation and her mom's going into the hospital and, you know, let me keep some perspective on all these things. And so I'm balancing both those things, you know, like, and for me, I'm kind of a, you know, hold the two extremes and a middle way

kind of guy, right? That often leads to the middle way. And you know, the middle way was like, all right, well, how do I allow myself to feel what I feel and yet keep some perspective? And that's why when I read that poem of yours i was like that says it so poetically how do i do these two things and again i think we've been exploring that question on this show a thousand different ways yeah i mean imagine if you just were so angry at yourself for feeling that way wow you shouldn't feel that way eric oh you're such a bad person how does that do anything but exacerbate those negative feelings right you have to accept them whatever comes up you have to accept it and then you choose what you're going to do with it yeah um i actually have a new poem that i think really represents this would you like to

hear that i would love that okay great i like this kind of like on the fly thing that we're doing there's noises in the background alarms are going off my emails are coming in breaking loose no it's all good i just have to find it real quick okay here we go i wrote this after i came back from india and uh that was at the end of last year. This year, 2020, feels like a lifetime. I mean, it's very hard to make sense out of time. I'm in love with the part of me that hates myself. I accept the part of me that rejects myself.

I don't judge myself whenever I am judging myself. I respect the part of me that disrespects myself. I have confidence whenever I am being insecure. I am happy for my sadness. Both are welcome through my door. I can laugh at being angry. I can cry in celebration. I don't worry why I'm in the process of a transformation.

There's nothing to release. Alchemy is integration. I'll never overcome it. I've become my expectation. I'll never outrun it. I am from my destination at the summit looking up before my first step was taken. I've awakened in the dream. I am patient in the race. I am naked in belief. I am wearing every face. I create by manifesting everything in empty space. I myself am empty space. I am boundless energy. I am God inside a case. I am physical reality, the canvas and the paints. I am spiritual reality. I swallow what I taste. I am only here because I've learned that I can be erased. I've already been erased.

I will never be erased. I've buried every treasure that I've carried in my hate. Now I measure what is infinite with what can be replaced. I can weather any weather. I'm a storm inside a vase taking form for pain or pleasure. I conform to any shape. I know that time doesn't exist, although I know there's none to waste. That's why I'm sitting still and yet I feel the sun upon my face. I am faster than I've ever been. I'll never keep this pace. I've come to end where I begin, making everything but haste. On a wheel that doesn't spin, go within for inner space. I'm embracing every sin, finding home in every place.

I'm at peace with every piece. I embody what I've chased. I'm in love with the part of me that hates myself. I accept the part of me that rejects myself. I don't judge myself whenever I am judging myself. I respect the part of me that disrespects myself. I have confidence whenever I am being insecure, I am happy for my sadness. Both are welcome through my door. I can laugh at being angry. I can cry in celebration.

I don't worry why. Why? Alchemy is integration. I love it. You're right. It is right on target with so much of what we are talking about and about embracing these paradoxes. I'm a pretty serious Zen student. I don't know if you've gone very far into that particular tradition, but boy, it would be right up your alley.

Not far enough. I need to go farther. Zen is the tradition that has you do things like koans. And a koan is like, what is the sound of one hand clapping, right? Some people say this is an oversimplification, but it's basically trying to break our relying on the logical brain. It gets you to this deeper point of integration, of realizing opposites at the same time. And your poem has a lot of things that could come right out of a Zen koan for sure. know, when you're solving a riddle, you have a moment of confusion. And in that moment of confusion, enlightenment can sneak in. That's right. There's a Zen phrase, I won't get it exactly right, but it's basically great doubt,

great enlightenment. Doubt is considered a key element in Zen. Great faith, great doubt, great determination. Beautiful. Those three things, you know, and like you said, that moment of confusion, it can be a beautiful moment that not knowing. Well, we don't know anything ever at any time, period. Yeah. Let's go there because that's another really interesting part of your work. Because a lot of your work has a political viewpoint. It has a viewpoint on the way we are, say, perhaps treating the world. It has some clear viewpoints. And yet,

I think you do a really good job of honoring the fact that multiple viewpoints are valid and that people who don't believe the same thing as us are very often very much like us. a viewpoint, you clearly do have views, opinions, and strong feelings about certain things. And yet there's a real honoring of people who believe differently. How do you get there? Because I think that's a real big question for our world right now. Yeah. I don't mean to repeat the same stuff, but it goes back to the thing we said at the beginning, which is one wolf, you know, two wolves, you know, what was the thing that you said? I really want to remember that. Not two, not one. Exactly. Not two, not one. I mean, it's just so well said. That's poetry. Yeah. I mean, I have very strong opinions about the world and where I think we should be headed in comparison to where we are. But I don't think that I'm necessarily right, because there's been many times in my life when I thought I was right, and then later I realized

that I was wrong because of new experiences. And I don't think that you can invite anyone into having a difference of opinion unless you lead by example and then give them space. Otherwise, we're just at war with each other, which means we're at war with ourselves. And yet, I don't think that being silent is an option either. So we're just going back to these dichotomies. It's like, you know, you don't want to be a part of the noise. You don't want to just be making noise, but you also have a responsibility to not be silent, especially during these uncertain and important times. Yeah. And I'm finding that dichotomy harder to hold. I feel very strongly about this. I feel like I have a responsibility to speak about this. And yet, like you, I distrust certainty in all its forms.

If you act really certain about something, even if I believe exactly what you believe, I'm almost inclined to argue with you. I distrust certainty. So on one hand, I feel very strongly and have opinions like you. And yet I'm trying to hold this space for other people. And boy, I'm feeling the rub of that dichotomy a lot. How does that show up in reality for you in your life? I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's the polarization of the moment. I don't know. I feel like in the past for me, I was better able to separate somebody's political beliefs from their underlying goodness. And I'm having a harder time doing so. you know, my, as I said, purging or praying, you know, that's my heart itself. Yeah. You know, a lot of times the poems that I'm writing, I write them into existence for me. Right. You know, sometimes I don't catch up for years.

I mean, I'm not joking. I mean, it's funny, but I'm not joking. I've written things that took me 10 years to be able to have them like in a cellular way yeah it wasn't like you know seesawing back and forth you know i'll tell you i did you watch this social media documentary i haven't seen it yet it's really really great i'll just give you and everyone a synopsis because you know what it's about anyway so i'm watching it and uh you know it's all these people who created all of these platforms these tech platforms social media platforms basically saying that we created them to addict you right and in addicting you we addicted us and maybe they started out with

good intentions but ultimately they have been co-opted to the point where there is the degradation of democracy going on all over the world and no one believes in facts no one believes in science no one believes in truth and if you can't have truth you can't even have an argument yeah because you don't know what the fuck you're arguing about if you don't have like truth to look at and so these people are basically saying it is an existential crisis to humanity what it has become this monster that it has become and they're very regretful And now they're spending their time trying to do the opposite often. And they're saying in the end of this thing, they're like,

the biggest consequences could be literally like the end of democracy, you know, civil war, countries and political factions being overthrown dictatorship authoritarian regimes war like just all these crazy things and i finish it and i'm like oh my god and then i check my instagram yeah and you realize you're watching it on netflix that's right and then and then yesterday i saw that the guy who did the documentary, the main dude, has a fucking page. And I just was scratching my head. I was like, you know, I can't make sense of all this either. I'm just trying to put it into my art and I'm trying to be good to myself and good to the people around me. myself and good to the people around me? You know, I did this project for Northwell Health recently, and they're a hospital system on the East Coast, basically. And so it was a tribute

to the nurses and the doctors who are the real superheroes right now. And they animated to one of my pieces. And there was an agency that was like working the middle part of it, and they animated to one of my pieces and there was an agency that was like working the middle part of it and they were fantastic but we were on a call and one of the guys and he was just doing his job he was like you know you end it with love like the last word is love and he goes love is kind of soft to end on he goes is there any way we could end on like something that's like like harder like you know than love and i literally you know everybody's on the call i'm like dude love is not soft to me right love is fucking hard life is hard and to love through life means you have to love harder. So that's my message to people and myself is love yourself harder, love your family, your colleagues, your friends, your communities harder, and then try to love the people that

you don't love harder because they probably need it the most. You know, I consider myself a realistic optimist and I hope that what comes out of all of this is more compassion and empathy, because that's what the world needs most. Thank you. I think love is really hard. And, you know, there's another thing that I think what you just said there, did you say realistic optimist? Yeah. I've been reflecting lately on that. I feel like hope has become almost a moral obligation right now. What do you mean by that? Well, despair just seems to be just knocking at everybody's door.

And I feel like it takes a commitment to look for hope right now. I feel like the world needs love. I think it also needs hope. And I feel like the reason I say moral and the reason I say obligation is maybe that's not quite the right, because I don't know if I believe in those, but I feel like it's the right thing to do and it's the hard thing to do. And I feel like we need it. I have two different definitions of hope. Hope can be despair and disguise. Yeah. Not careful. I hope hope you can hope from a place of victimization i hope you know so i try not to do that yeah yeah there's another part of hope that is really really beautiful when it's like practiced correctly and i go through various degrees of

success and failure with that um and i was reading Unbroken. I'm like actually looking at it right now. Do you know this book Unbroken? The guy who ends up in a raft in the ocean and a POW can, I mean, shit is really bad right now. It's really bad. I'm not going to front. I'm not going to pretend it's all good. I understand the despair. I don't think that the coronavirus in general has created any problems. I think it's just brought them to light. So the systemic racism, the inequality, the lack of leadership from our politicians, our healthcare system, all of it is just being brought to the surface. And I'd rather it be at the surface than underneath. And yeah, we might deal with skirmishes of real political ongoing civil violence after the election you know is over whatever that even means um so i'm not even pretending that it's going to get better immediately but i think it's necessary number one and number two we're still a really far away

from nazi germany i mean reading this book man like yeah i'm like there's a whole thing that they talked about yesterday in terms of like uh the japanese at a certain point it was like a massacre of like a hundred thousand chinese people and yes it was insane yes the germans killed six million jews but it was like 20 million Russians, not even saying anything about, I'm sure you guys know all this, but I just, it's just when people make the comparison of that, I think they're missing the reality of our lives. If this is the biggest crazy shit that's going on right now, to be able to quarantine is a fucking luxury. It's a privilege. There's so many people who don't know where their

next meal is coming from. They don't even have time to listen to a podcast or buy a poetry book. They're trying to put food on their kids. You know, it's like we have a lot to be grateful for. We have to find ways to acknowledge that and try to be of service to the people around. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I could not agree with you more that I think that that's one of the benefits of history, I think, is seeing like, wow, holy mackerel, you know, we've got things pretty good. I often think when people think the world is disintegrating, I often think that's very much a, I don't know if I want to use this term, but I will use it, sort of a more upper middle-class white view of the world. Because if you look around the world at hundreds of different measures, the world just gets better and gets better and gets better and gets better. The number of people in poverty,

the number of people that are illiterate, the number of child laborers, the number of people in slavery, the number, I mean, all those numbers go in the right direction historically. And I'll piggyback what you're saying. I think it once again goes back to this dichotomy. A lot of times people will use that as an excuse to not pay attention to how bad the problems are now. And you have to be able to hold two truths in the same space at the same time. Shit is getting better and shit is really fucked up. And both things are true. Now what do you do? I could not agree more. Yes. I often say too, is this because the fact that the world's getting better doesn't do any good for the person who the world isn't better for now. Right. Right. There are still people suffering in ways that are unprecedented. I mean, or not unprecedented, but are terrible. So yeah, that's why I say that

I feel like hope right now is so important because I feel like what we get is so much despair. what we get is so much despair. We're sold it by the for-profit media. And I'm not shitting on the media. By the way, I cuss a lot. I apologize for anybody, if there's kids in the car or whatever. Yeah, we're marking this one explicit. But really, I'm not just belittling the media just because it's the thing to do. No, the media, I mean, journalists, I have the highest respect for every single thing that they put into their jobs and trying to bring the truth to the world, which the vast majority of them are, but we're in a system that basically sells suffering and fear and anxiety in order to get you high on that. So you keep coming back to it over and over again. And so, you know, that's why hope is so hard to find yeah because the loudest voices are fear and by the way the media is not as bad as trump is because you'd look at the uh republican national convention and it was

all fear everything that was being sold was fear in order to get people to go, oh no, well, you're the only answer to this then. So I think it's just these systems that have been created to keep people consuming, to keep people scared, and to keep people in line. I agree. I agree. And that's the hope I'm speaking of, not the sort of meek, I hope. One of my favorite stories of all time is about, and maybe you've heard of it, it's called the Stockdale Paradox. And it's a general, I think he was a general, Stockdale, he was the highest ranking prisoner of war in Vietnam. And those guys went through hell, right? I mean, starved, tortured, all kinds of stuff. And so somebody was interviewing him and they said, well, you know, so I assume it was, you know, the optimists that got through and he went, no, no, no. The optimists, they all died. They thought I'll be out by Thanksgiving. I'll be out by Christmas. I'll be out by Easter. And they died of a broken heart. And they're like, oh, so it was the pessimist. You go, no, the pessimist, they didn't do so. They didn't do so well either. Right? Like they just gave up. They just gave up. And they were, who, who, who got through? He said, well, the people that got through were the people who were able to,

to see the reality of their situation in all of its brutal truthfulness, but also never lost faith in their ability to get through it. And I love that because I think that's what you and I are talking about here is you got to see the reality to sugarcoat it, to pretend it's not there. You got to have that. But that seems to be most of all we get. Here's the brutal reality. Here's your big steaming pile of crap. But it's that second piece that I feel like is so important. That's what I love in the work that you do. And the thing that I try and bring to the show when I can is that second piece that says, hey, we've got to keep some belief that there's another side to this. Because if you don't have that belief, you can't advocate for change.

You can't keep the energy to keep going. You've got to believe that there's some way that things get better. Yeah. When I see a car crash coming when I'm on the freeway, I force myself not to look at it. I force myself. It's a conscious decision, not because I don't want to create more traffic, although that's a byproduct of it. I force myself not to look at it because it's the same thing your eyes are always going to be drawn to the destruction yeah i just want to make a point to myself to keep my eyes on where i'm going

where i want to be you know i mean if i can help i want to help i don't want to pretend that things aren't bad over there but i don't want to be a looky loo i don't want to pretend that things aren't bad over there, but I don't want to be a looky-loo. I don't think I've ever said that before. A looky-loo. Where did that come from in my mind? Wow. It's a nice one. Maybe you'll use it in a poem soon.

It's not really your style, but it's not a real hard-hitting word. The thing I often ask myself when I'm thinking about what I want to pay attention to is, is it going to influence what I actually do? You know, is paying more attention to the news, to this issue, to this thing, is it going to change what I do or is it just going to perpetuate, you know, malaise, you know, in me and in others? All right. Well, you and I have run out of time, but you're going to join me briefly in the post-show conversation. We're going to explore a couple more of your wonderful poems and your wonderful style. So thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I think this has been a really good and pretty frank conversation and I,

and I really appreciate you engaging in it. Amazing. And let me just say to anyone who's listening, the book Inquire Within is out. You can get it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can get the audio book and then I'll be reading all my poems to you. And it's really something I'm very proud of. It came out during the height of the fear and anxiety around the pandemic. It was like March 31st. Oh, yeah. It's a tough time to launch a book. Yeah. But it's done so well. I don't think that we went maybe as wide, but we went a lot deeper. And so we're still, you know, getting it out to as many people as possible because it was medicine for me to write and I hope it's medicine for people to read. Yeah. And there's absolutely a link in the show notes. You click on that link and you can purchase the book. Lots of love. Thanks. And there's absolutely a link in the show notes. You click on that link and you can purchase the book. Lots of love.

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