The Rich Roll Podcast - Like Streams To The Ocean: Jedidiah Jenkins

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Today we get esoteric on the things that matter most—ego, family, friendship, love, work, death, and the soul. The value of living an examined life. And how sharing our uniqueness gives glimpse into the universal. Returning for his third appearance on the podcast, our cipher for said exploration is one of my very favorite humans—a former social entrepreneur, human rights activist, and lawyer turned world adventurer, magazine publisher & mystic memoirist. Meet Jedidiah Jenkins. Several years ago, I stumbled across Jedidiah’s Instagram feed. His photos are always great, but it was his prose that altered my state. Enamored by his unique lens on the human condition, he quickly become my favorite follow. Determined to learn more, I invited Jedidiah on the show (RRP #186), wherein he shared insights gleaned from an epic sixteen-month, 10,000-mile bike journey pedaling from Oregon to Patagonia. This conversation remains one of my favorites to date. I then made him promise to return (RRP #395) upon completion of his first book, To Shake The Sleeping Self. A coming-of-age memoir set against the technicolor backdrop of his bicycle adventure, the book went on to become a New York Times bestseller, crowning Jedidiah as a new and compelling literary voice. An exquisite storyteller with an elegant gift for exploring the interior landscape, Jedidiah has continued to mature as a writer. His latest New York Times bestselling flex, Like Streams To The Ocean, is a touching and immersive deconstruction of the things that make us who we are and the decisions that shape our one and only life.  His best work to date, it’s a masterclass on leveraging the specifics of one’s experience as a vehicle to better connect with the universal the resides within us all. So here we are again. Me wanting to know more. This conversation isn’t about any one thing. It’s kind of about everything. We discuss the writing process. How to find a voice. And what it means to be an observer of both nature and people. We talk Enneagrams, the commodification of ‘authenticity’, and how to cultivate focus in a distracted world. It’s also about identity. Belonging. Finding meaning in work. And what it means to live a creative life. It’s about the empathy required to find common ground with people of divergent world views. And why cultivating community is critical. But more than anything, this is a meditation on who we are. Why we’re here. And the struggle to glean truth from the intangible. FULL BLOG & SHOW NOTES: bit.ly/richroll582 YouTube: bit.ly/jedidiahjenkins582 As brilliant in conversation as he is on the page, I relish our conversations. And this one does not disappoint. Let your love affair with Jedidiah begin! Peace + Plants, Rich

It's not everyone's duty to change the world. Changing someone's life right in front of you is so cosmically significant. And if you overlook that, then you damage and disrespect the impact you've already had or are having. Finding words for things that are bothering me helps me. And I just believe that if something helps you,

it probably helps someone else. And so tell people about it. The interesting, fascinating moment in time we're living in is that every human being, if you have a smartphone and Internet access, can create a window into their life that is highly curated or just is what it is. And just me being myself, being an outdoorsy, gay, irreverent, but also like culturally Christian Southern boy who spends most

of his time in Los Angeles, like this combination of traits, whatever that cocktail mix, me just existing in that way, I get messages and emails all the time of somebody that's like, just watching you live makes me think I can live. Like watching the way you talk to your friends makes me realize my friends don't talk to me like that. And maybe I should try to like find people who are more similar to me or whatever it is. It's there's so many unintended consequences to just living out loud. Yeah. And I mean, for me,

they've been enormously positive. I'm Jedediah Jenkins, and this is the rich roll podcast. The rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody, what's happening? How you doing? What's the word? I'm Rich Roll.

So if you're looking for my podcast, you are in the right place. Pull up a chair. Good to have you. My guest today is Jedediah Jenkins, back for his third turn on the RRP merry-go-round. What a beautiful and extraordinary human writer and storyteller this man is. Jed's books, To Shake the Sleeping Self, a coming- coming of age memoir set against the backdrop of his 10,000 mile bike journey from Oregon to Patagonia. And his newest, which is called "'Like Streams to the Ocean,"

examines the things that make us who we are and the decisions that shape our lives. I think it's his best work to date. In any event, both of his books are New York Times bestsellers, which is not surprising because they are, in my opinion, masterworks, each of them. In addition to being my favorite follow on Instagram, at Jedediah Jenkins, check it out. Jed is also the executive editor of

Wilderness Magazine. His work has appeared in the Paris Review and Playboy. He's been covered by National Geographic. And our two previous conversations, episodes 186 and 395, really live and breathe among some of my very favorites, as does this one. And I think that's because Jed has a very curious and idiosyncratic lens on the human condition, as well as a distinctive, elegant,

and purposeful way of exploring and sharing the specifics of his internal landscape in a way that really elucidates the universal, that which we all share, in a way that can't help but make you laugh, ponder your own life a little bit more deeply, and perhaps leaving you feeling just a little bit less alone in the world,

which is a good thing. I adore this man. This one is small talk free, and it's all coming up in a few. But first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

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again, go to recovery.com. So this is a conversation about kind of everything. We talk about the writing process, finding a voice, being an observer of life, leveraging the specific to connect with the universal. We discuss identity, friendship, family, love, work, specifically how to find meaning in our respective occupations.

And what else? Death, authenticity, community, finding common ground with people who see the world differently, you know, just the small stuff. Jedediah is one of my very favorite people. He's a brilliant conversationalist. I relish our talks.

And this one, not unsurprisingly, does not disappoint. So here we go. I mean, it's awesome to see you. And I was realizing that the full extent of our entire relationship is based on this. I know. And yet we go so deep together. I know. And yet we go so deep together. I know.

And then we always depart with grand designs. I'm like hanging out all the time and then that never happens. And you accused me of living in Dubai. Well, that's true. Yeah. I mean, as an East Sider making the hikes. East Siders, it's just a lifestyle over there.

I mean, when you live this far out, is it more of an understood burden that you're the one that goes or to your friends? A hundred percent. I mean, the consensus is you essentially live in Santa Barbara and if you wanna see your friends, like you're the one who's gonna have to make the effort more than them because it's such a schlep.

Or you plan out a dinner party way in advance. Right. And like hope there's not a pandemic. Right. But yeah, exactly. Like good luck with that right now. So the sole extent of my social interaction, like everybody is either on Zoom

or in the few rare and beautiful instances that I can cajole people like yourself to come here. To have even distanced real human interaction is a treasure. So how's it been for you? Well, I'm a double extrovert as you know, and I need- Enneagram seven. Enneagram seven, full on,

like not built for a isolated pandemic. But living in Los Angeles to the degree that I do, I feel very lucky that we live in a place with you can be outside. And there's so many places to hike and walk. And I've been able to go on neighborhood walks with friends and things like that, go to the beach and whatever it is, even go camping way out in the desert.

And that's been a lifesaver just to have something on the horizon, like a camping trip in a month. For an Enneagram seven, we're always looking to, we just need the next adventure in the calendar to like be able to exist today, which is probably a problem. You still live with roommates? Yeah. You do.

So you have a bubble of friends and stuff like that. I've never lived alone. I'm a full on grown adult man, never lived alone. And I'm curious. I think if I am uncoupled when I enter my forties, I have decided that that's something I wanna do. Try living alone. Even though I, it just feels like a performative gesture

of experiment because I don't want to. And I love my roommates. And I love coming home to, they're watching some show I've never heard of, or they're making some new cocktail that they saw on TikTok. And I'm like, ooh, what's that? And then there's something happening,

which I enjoy the energy of that, as opposed to coming home and then I'm home. And then I'm like, hmm, I wonder what my friends are doing. I guess I should reach out. And then if they're. And then I'm like, hmm, I wonder what my friends are doing. Right. I guess I should reach out. And then if they're busy, then I'm like, well, I guess no one wants to hang out with me.

Like I just can see myself going through a spiral. Well, there's a weird sort of cultural negative, pejorative veneer over the idea of an adult living by himself or herself. And if you have roommates after a certain age, that's frowned upon, but we're genetically engineered to live as a village in a community of people. And my favorite, some of my most favorite memories

are being in a dorm or living in a group house. And why can't we do that for our whole lives? Why is that? Why would that be considered, you know, going awry as opposed to the preferred state of existence? I think, and we've talked about this ad nauseum on this podcast, but I think- I forget it.

I don't even remember what we talked about. Well, but just in the sense where growing up evangelical Christian and then having my homosexuality like uproot or like cause the deconstruction of an entire worldview that I was raised in and taught, this is how the world works. And then this one factor of my identity

sort of like pulled the thread of the sweater and started to unravel the sturdiness of that worldview that has like given me this like comfort in not doing what I'm supposed to do. Right, like being outside the paradigm. Yeah, like you should be married by this age. You shouldn't live or should live with roommates. You should do this.

Like I just have exercise. I've exercised that identity muscle of being like, well, that's not what I wanna do. So I'm not gonna do it. Right. So as an Enneagram seven, I'm a four with a wing of five. I'm still not sure what exactly that means, but you seem like somebody who understands

the Enneagram pretty well. Like how does a four slash five interact with a seven? Well, we tend to like each other because as far as I understand, when a seven, so my wing is a six, which is loyalty and following the rules, which would make sense because I'm fun, but I also wanted to be such a good Christian boy that I had my first kiss at 28.

It's like, I'm crazy, but at the same time, I didn't lose my virginity till I was 30. So it's like, there's like aspects to my major number. So a four being the individualist doesn't wanna be put in a box. Like you find yourself to be profoundly unique. And so any like categorization of you in a generality is offensive.

And then a five is like insatiably curious about like the way things work. So you being a successful podcaster where you dive into very complex, nuanced issues with people in an intimate conversation feels very four wing five. Yeah, and I like the one-on-one. Like I get nervous and anxious around, you know, group settings and things like that.

And, you know, I think I'm fundamentally an optimistic, somewhat joyful, but maybe traumatized individual, but I like my alone time. Like I would have no problem being alone. I just spent essentially a month in Hawaii by myself. And it was the greatest, which is not an Enneagram seven trait at all. Well, when I say I like my alone time,

I mean three hours. Right. Like, oh my God, I was alone. I went on a walk. I just thought about some things and I'm recharged. Let's party. It is interesting.

I would suspect most writers though are not sevens. I think you're right. Yeah. I don't, and my writing practices when I'm working on a book is I can really only focus for two to three hours a day, like on one thing. So I write, I'm freshest in the morning, I wake up and I wrote this book,

I finished this book in February of 2020. So that's right when I turned it in and it was done, done, done. And I was like free, the world shut down. But I mean, luckily it's not like I lost my job. I was like, I was meant to be doing nothing that time. Right. So that's interesting.

But in my normal world behavior, I wake up, I go to the coffee shop. I have to find a coffee shop that serves food, a full menu because I'm gonna sit there for two meals. I have breakfast and then I sit there all the way through lunch. But you have to be around other people in your solitary moment.

The buzz of others. Well, and also as a writer, I don't have like an office and to separate work from home is like somehow psychologically, symbolically important to me to like go to work and then come home. And so a leaving my house is important to me. And also the harm of others. Cause I also don't have coworkers,

which I really miss from my days at invisible children and in school, just having other people in common endeavor. I have my editor and my publicists and the people at the publisher, but they're all in New York and they're just an email relationship really. And so I miss that. So going to a coffee shop,

the barista knows what my order knows me, knows where I sit. It's very like, it's as close as I can get. And it's just a lovely lifestyle. I love it. It's pretty good. Well, this new book is fantastic. I loved it so much.

And all the praise that you're getting, I know it just made the New York Times bestseller list. It's unbelievable. And it's just, there's something so specific about your style. I can't quite put my finger on it, but when I'm reading your writing, I always know that it's you.

Like, do you have a sense of what that is? Like, could you define that? Or is that just, it's just such a natural extrapolation of who you are as a person that it's one in the same. Well, thank you for being so kind to me. Yeah, I mean, I do love the book. I have so many things I wanna say about it, but go ahead. The only thing I know is that I write the way that I speak

and I don't labor over the crafting of a sentence. I don't, I'm not very precious. I labor over the crafting of my understanding of an idea. And so I try to write something out to the point where it makes sense to me. And so however my brain uses metaphor and whatever that is, once I've laid it out and I'm like, there it is,

that's what I was trying to think about. And that makes me feel like I'm at least getting some sort of touch on the idea. Like I can finally, this gray fog in my mind, I can now touch it. There's something physical there. And so I've just been, it's one of those things. I've been told that I have a writing voice.

I don't know it, but it's funny when my editor, or if I write something for a magazine or for my editor for the publisher, sometimes they'll reword something or send me back like some changes. And the slightest change in the sentence, I'll be like, I would never say that. You know it right away.

You're like, that is not, I don't know if you've ever been like driving with someone in the passenger seat and you hand them your phone and you go, Hey, can you text Sarah that it'll be like, I can't come right now, but I'll come tomorrow, whatever. And then they type it out. And then I say, let me see what you wrote.

And it's like, I would never, I would use an exclamation point, not a period. And my smiley faces do not have a nose. That's insane. It's like, you can immediately see that that's not how you type. Yeah, so it's more that, it's not that you can define what it is

other than what it's not, right? Like you can immediately identify what it's not. And I would say that it is true that it's about the idea that you're trying to present and you don't get overly caught up in the prose. The prose is uniquely yours, but it's not about the trappings of language

because the way that you write is very, in a good way, like plain spoken. It's not about big words or anything like that. It's about conveying an emotion or a feeling or an experience that is specifically yours. And I think the two things when I think about this book are first of all, it's a masterclass in this precept of writing, which is you find the universal in the specific

and these are your experiences, your memories, there are stories from your life and they're so specific to your experience. And yet within that, there's something about the way that you convey these ideas that makes them unbelievably like universal and such that the audience can really emotionally connect with them.

Like our life experiences are very different, but when I read your writing, I feel less alone, because you have such a, you're so in touch with your interior landscape and there's more that we share with that than what differentiates us. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, what you're describing

is exactly the reason why I wanted to be a writer because I loved nothing more than the feeling that writers gave me when I would read their books. And I read mostly whether it was straight dead men or black women or these people that I would read who obviously have a different life experience than me to some degree. And I would just ache with being seen

and even where their lives diverged from mine, they had a way of pulling me into their experience where it was as if I was them. of pulling me into their experience where it was as if I was them. Because that's maybe the most important evolved characteristic of the human mind is the concept of other self, of empathy, of the idea that I can picture what it is like to be you.

And that is what creates community and charity and morality and everything is this idea of the concept of self. And that's really like the humming truth behind the concept of consciousness. It's the like, what would it be like to be you? And if you can answer that question, then the thing might be conscious.

Am I remembering that right? Cause it's like, I would never say, what is it like to be a table? You would be like, it's like nothing. You're a table, that doesn't mean anything. But if I said, what's it like to be a dog? You could kind of feel something there. You'd be like, I can kind of feel like,

I know what my dog is thinking a little bit, like squirrel food, lick me, I wanna lick you. I got it, you know? And then as it goes up from there, but I feel like the best writers can make me feel what it is like to be them. And so for me, I learned it's, if I just tell a very specific story about my life

and how it made me feel, a reader, they're like active empathizing with me, pulls them in and they feel very much like they know me, which is an interesting side effect of being a memoirist. I mean, you know this, you've written extensively about your life. It's inviting someone into your story is such a unique, it's such a unique job because when people walk up to you

and they say, I feel like I know you, they kind of do. They kind of do, yeah, 100% they do. And there's a vulnerability with that, but it also, it's nice. I love it. It's such a shortcut to being able to connect with people. You know what I mean? If you read my books and then you still wanna talk to me,

then we probably would get along. But the downside of that is that if someone is to write a critical review of your books, it's they're criticizing you, you know? So I asked- You know what I mean? I asked Ann Patchett- Because there's no arms length.

I forget if I told you this story before, forgive me if I did, edit it out. But Ann Patchett is a very famous, fantastic novelist from, she lives in Nashville. And I've met her a few times, we've had some great hangs. She's just radiant. And I asked her, would you ever consider blurbing my book? This was for to shake the sleeping self.

And she said, no, I will not. She goes, I do not blur memoirs because she goes, if I don't like it, then if I don't like a fictional story that you write, I can say why I can say this story didn't land for me. Oh, I don't really connect with Somali pirates. I don't really know. But if she says your life story doesn't connect with me

or bores me, or that is such an indictment of my ideas. So she goes, I just learned, I do not blur memoirs. And I was like, that's a good rule. Yeah, that is. Well, the other thing is that, and then I'll get to my second big observation of your book. But the other thing is that there's this idea that, and you see this in movies and in screenplays,

that the protagonist or the character has to be somebody that we can all relate to. And my relationship with books and why I love reading memoirs is at odds with that. Like I wanna inhabit the interior experience of somebody who's lived a life, nothing like me. And within that, you know, I can find something to grab onto or identify with,

but I'm not interested in somebody dumbing down their story so that it can be widely appealable. Like it is that like fidelity to being super specific to your own experience that makes the book work or not. Well, you're a type of person because you've spent so much time examining your interior life and your own influences and desires.

I think you're curious about expanding that self-knowledge through the human experience mapped onto other life experiences. A lot of people, they don't have the bandwidth to worry about someone else's lessons. They're still trying to figure out why am I sad? Why am I unhappy? And so the closer the story is to them,

that's like a step in the direction towards expanding those neurons of human understanding. For me, I'm like tired of thinking about myself. I wanna know something. I wanna know an experience so different than mine. And I think about, do you ever watch a movie that you feel like no one else saw? And I think about, do you ever watch a movie that you feel like no one else saw and you didn't even know you liked it at the time

but it like haunts your mind for years. There is a movie, I forget which book I mentioned it in but it's called Away From Her. And it is this movie about this old couple and the wife gets dementia, Alzheimer's, I don't know the difference. And she began and they're in love. They're like love story, married for 30 years, blah, blah.

She begins to forget him and it's his experience losing the love of his life, but she's right there. And then she loses the ability to live at the house cause he has to go to work or whatever. So she has to go into a home and then he visits her. And then over the course of the movie, he'll visit her and she's scared of him because she doesn't know who he is.

And I mean, it's this heart wrenching story of loss and like aging and all of these things I know nothing about, except that movie sits in my heart. It's weird because of the power of storytelling, I feel like that could happen to me. And there's like some, I have some immune response to it now.

It's almost like storytelling is the vaccine of the mind. It like primes your brain to be prepared for scenarios that haven't happened to you. Or you experienced that in a past life. Do you believe in past lives? Do I need to believe in that? I'm ready. I'm not against believing in that. Me neither.

Don't say that. I have friends who are V into that, very, very, very. And I mean, energy cannot be created or destroyed. So it's like. Right. But I'm sure you've had those experiences where you've encountered something and it has, I mean, what the story you just told is an example of that, like where it has an outsized impact on you,

given what you would anticipate it would. Yeah, like I could have just seen that movie and forgot about it. Right, and so why is that so resonant for you? Well, maybe there's something there, Jed. I like that. But on that subject of you talking about, the reader asking themselves the question,

like, why am I sad? Your first book, to shake the sleeping self in many ways, and tell me if I'm mischaracterizing this, but it's like a coming of age story set against this bike trip, where you ride your bike from Oregon to Patagonia. And I knew, you know, before reading your book,

like, oh, I know this next book, it's kind of gonna be lifted from his blog posts and his Instagram posts. And, you know, by the way, you're my favorite storyteller on Instagram. I just, I love everything that you share there. You and Josh Brolin are my two favorites. Oh my God. He's amazing, right?

Oh my God, he's the best follow. When is he gonna write a book? I know. It's incredible. When he shares a story, I read everything. He is wild on there. He surprises me constantly. I know. I love. It's completely not what you think it's gonna be

every time, right? And I'm like, where is this? The profundity of his thought process is unbelievable. Mixed with the playfulness of it. Yeah, yeah. And there's something, you know, what you share is different, but there's a specific sensibility to it, I think.

And kind of having that understanding going into your next book, I'm like, I wonder, is this just gonna be a hodgepodge of like Instagram posts? But what it really is, and I'm interested if anybody else has had this observation, this book is a Trojan horse because it's really a disguised self-help book shrouded in your personal stories and experiences.

And it's kind of amazing because the other idea thought I had thinking about what's Jed's second book gonna be about, it's like, how much life has this guy lived since his first book? Like, has he tapped out yet? Like, is there more in the well? And I was delighted to find out there, is there more in the well? And, you know, I was delighted to find out there's a lot more in the well.

And as a, you know, it's not a self-help book, but it really is. And even though the architecture and the way that you've laid it out, you know, categorically by going through, you know, ego and friendship and family and work and all these different categories, it lays out this framework for a young person

or anybody who's asking themselves these questions about who am I, how do I fit in, where do I belong? What is it that I'm here to express? Like you speak to all of these things and with a confidence and a kind of effervescence that is really connective. Like I just loved it. So yeah, it's great, man.

Thank you. I mean, the funny thing is, and the whole premise of my first book was, I wanna be a memoirist, my like heroes, like whether it's Henry Miller or Donald Miller when I was younger, these people who were writing these books from their own personal experience. I was like, this is my dream to be able to do this.

Like Joan Didion, Fran Lebowitz, these people. And yet I was in my twenties when I had this realization. I was like, how embarrassing? Like, why would anyone listen to me? I just got here. So then it was the idea of the Benjamin Franklin quote, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

So that was the like major impetus for going on a trip. And then, so then when my publisher was like, okay, let's do another book. And I was like, well, I don't have a gimmick. Like, why are people gonna read this? And, but at the same time, I felt very affirmed. Well, okay, this is just an interesting journey of my life. So I gathered a readership of my live experience

writing about my bike trip. Like tens of thousands of people started to care about what I was doing on my bike trip. When I finished the bike trip, I was completely prepared for them all to leave because it's over. Right. So the reason you're paying attention is now over.

So leave, great. And not only did they not leave, but the following like doubled and tripled. And I didn't, sometimes I would write about, what does it mean? What does Michael Jackson's musical legacy mean? Hmm, I can't stop thinking about this. I'm just gonna write about it

because I have a captive audience. Like maybe they'll hate me, maybe. And things like that would be spread all over the internet. And so what I slowly realized was, oh, okay, my imposter syndrome was telling me that the only reason they're here is the gimmick of an adventure. But actually the reason people are subscribing

to the magazine of my Instagram and the things I write is they're just interested in the angle with which I see the world. Yeah. Like the framing of an idea, not that I know what the truth is. It's not that I have answers. It's just, I have reflections and responses to things.

And for some reason, because it helps me to like finding words for things that are bothering me helps me. And I just believe that if something helps you, it probably helps someone else. And so tell people about it. Yeah, and you're working it out in real time, not from a position of authority, but as somebody who's struggling just like everybody else and doing it in a very authentic way

that engenders that kind of like kinship with the people that are following you. And I think there was a timing aspect of it as well, because if memory serves me, initially on Instagram, they would cap out like how many words you could make your caption. Like you couldn't write like a full blog post. And at some point they broadened that.

And you were one of the first people who kind of used it as your personal blog. Like it was more just a one know, a one line caption. Well, and I used to roast people for doing that. When they first started it and they would post this long thing, I'm like, I'm not on Instagram to read, get this out of here. I mean, and before the, like the algorithm,

your friend would go to Paris and come back and post 42 pictures of the same cathedral. Bleed the feet. And so you're scrolling down and you're like, I'm furious that I am now inside this person's camera roll. And they're just like in Paris, like get out of here. I'm here for a different experience. But what I found was as I was on my trip,

the longer the thing I would write, the more response. People were like wanting to be on the trip with me. And it was, I mean, I think at least my life has very rarely been a strong decision against the current. It's always been like, is it called tacking when you say, oh, where you zigzag? It's like responding to the movement of the wind and the current and just kind of trying to make headway

towards a life that I wanna lead, but really responding to the environment. And so, oh, people seem to like it. If I write more, I'll write more. Oh, cool. Okay, they like it if I write a lot more. Okay, and then, oh, wow, they're still here. So I'll just keep thinking.

And I would say just as a fan that, whether you're sharing, you're doing an Instagram story of you and your mom Barb, traveling through Europe or talking about whatever frivolous thing, like the Britney documentary or something like, I'm just as interested in that as you riding to Patagonia because it is your frame. That's what I'm dialing. That's what I'm tuning in that as you, you know, riding to Patagonia because it is your, it is your frame.

That's what I'm dialing. That's what I'm tuning in for. Well, and I think the interesting, fascinating moment in time we're living in is that every human being, if you have a smartphone and internet access, can create a window into their life that is moderate or is highly curated or just is what it is.

And that also is interesting. Like I know that just me being myself, being an outdoorsy, gay, irreverent, but also like culturally Christian Southern boy who spends most of his time in Los Angeles, like this combination of traits for whatever, whatever that cocktail mix, me just existing in that way, I get messages and emails all the time of somebody

that's like just watching you live makes me think I can live. Watching you laugh, like watching the way you talk to your friends makes me realize my friends don't talk to me like that. And maybe I should try to like find people who are more similar to me or whatever it is. There's so many unintended consequences to just living out loud.

Yeah. And I mean, for me, they've been enormously positive. Right. When I think of your work, I think you mentioned Joan Didion, Fran Lebowitz. Did you watch the Fran Lebowitz documentary? And I'm devastated that they took, did you see the original one called Public Speaking?

No, I went, but I did go onto like a YouTube deep dive after watching the documentary and just watched a ton of her stuff. So I don't understand why this is happening, but in 2010, Martin Scorsese made a documentary just like Pretend It's a City, but it was two hours long. And it was for HBO and it's called Public Speaking. And back then I saw that and became friends.

Like the one person in the world, I saw her walking down the street in New York five years ago and I about self-emulated. I was so overwhelmed by the sight of her. And of course I would never talk to her. But, and I went to see her speak when I was in Austin, I'm just love. And then they took the documentary away,

which I don't know why. And then pretend it's a city. Maybe it's because of that. Cause they're very similar. The structure is identical. But a lot of the things she says in public speaking have shaped so much of the way that I see the world. Like she really brings the heat in that one.

Yeah. And I wish it would return. So if I ever find it, I'm gonna send you the link. It's cool, I loved it. And I was delighted with just how in love Martin Scorsese is with her. You know, like he just can't stop laughing throughout the whole thing.

And it's kind of flawed. It's like, how many times do we need to see her walking into the club? And it's a little bit weirdly repetitive with her meandering through the mini New York City. Well, it's when Netflix asks for six episodes and he's like, well, I have four episodes of content. And he's like, film more walking. And he just tees her up to do her thing

and say the things that she says. I mean, the difference, if I was to draw a distinction between how I perceive you and her, I mean, she's, you know, there's a relish in her being contrarian that isn't really kind of what you're about. Right.

But she's so convicted in her opinions and her like her hand mannerisms and just her, just everything about her, you know, is kind of, it's just amazing that she exists in the world and the world is better for it. Well, it's one of the things around comedy as a structure is so often flawed and a lot of comedians don't age well or their comedy doesn't age well

because you realize they were punching down, not punching up. And she has just been really good about punching up her whole life. Like when she makes fun of something, it's either a structure or a person in power and not the easy jokes of people who can't defend themselves.

And so I think that's why she's making political statements and punching in the direction that you should punch if you're gonna swing. Yeah, I mean, the other influences on you, clearly Cheryl Strayed and Elizabeth Gilbert. I know you, didn't you do like a panel with them? Maybe we talked about that last time. Well, I mean, I spoke at a conference with Cheryl

and she is just, there's just, it's like, I was just as impacted by her book, Tiny Beautiful Things as I was with Wild, which is so interesting because this is similar in that structure of one is an adventure and well, Tiny Beautiful Things, I don't know if you've ever read it, but it's- I haven't read that one.

She has an advice blog she used to call Dear Sugar and people would write in. Yeah, now it's a podcast. Yeah, fantastic. But she, for years, they didn't know who she was, but they would write in and say, I mean, I was abused, I had an abortion, I have guilt, I have shame, all these things.

And then she would just write her responses and they became very popular. And so she took those and put them in a book. And that was an inspiration for this book in a sense where it was small stories, but like they landed on me so hard and it was such a, it was an enjoyable reading experience because you could just sit down with your coffee

and have a moment, like a encapsulated moment that morning that you had done something like reading a New Yorker article or Atlantic. It's like, I completed this moment and I feel good about my day, which I wanted with this book to, you were able to have like small meals.

Yeah, I liked how you talk about Liz Gilbert as like this idol and how you fantasize or imagine her in this perfect life where she's just sort of effortlessly gliding through her house and dropping amazing advice on people and without a care in the world and it's all coming very easy. And of course she's a human being, but that is not how you imagine her to be

when you're kind of trying to channel that influence on your own work and then turning, like flipping the script and understanding that perhaps there's people that are looking at you in that same way. My friend, Jackie Tone just had, wore this shirt the other day that I immediately had to have.

And it just says, remember when you wanted what you currently have. And it just landed on me like, wow, what an amazing thing to write on your mirror or think about every day. Is remember when you wanted what you currently have. Or I remember hearing this pastor say that there's someone in a hospital bed right now,

begging and praying God to just be doing what you're doing right now. The mundane thing you're doing right now is their ultimate dream. And just like framing things like that are very powerful to me. And yeah, I remember so clearly, wow, I want to write a book. I want to see it in a bookstore. Wow. On a shelf. And like for it to say New York Times bestseller on it wasn't even

a thing. I don't even, cause I still don't really understand how that happens or what that is. So it's not a, I almost have no visceral response to that. It just was so beyond. I was just like, I wanna hold a thing that I wrote because I love a book in my backpack and flipping through it. And the reverence with which I would like hold my first books

and I would just flip the pages and like watch them fall. And I just amazed that that's all my brain in there. And it now, my agent was saying this yesterday. He was like, books have this effervescence of permanence different than like, if you write an article on medium, great, but if you have a book that just feels

like it's been placed in this longevity, it's sunk its roots into the earth and we'll be here for a while. And that has weight and that is so true. And so even though I can logically understand that the difference between Elizabeth Gilbert and me is, I think she's a better writer and a better speaker, but I know that she's just a normal person and probably a great hang, but there is really, I mean, anybody, I mean, literally anybody,

no matter if you're Barack Obama, they're just people that have been put in these situations that are extraordinary. Yeah. And I find idolatry and like idolizing people to be a very young trait. And I think we're probably evolved to be that way. You look up to a role model, to a mentor and you-

It's important. Cause it like, it gives direction to your life. Yeah, you can latch onto an aspiration and it's embodied in somebody that allows you to visualize it and perhaps like map your own path forward. Those people are super important. Yeah, and that does for me, it has faded as I've gotten older, just understanding more

about the human experience and also achieving dreams and being like, I mean, let me be very clear. I am a writer and I have the best life. I love it. I am so happy. I'm obsessed. I can't believe I get to do this as a career.

It is everything I dreamed. I get to speak on stages. I have strangers writing me letters. I have strangers coming up to me and telling me that they came out of the closet because of my book or they understand their daughter or son better or they quit their job and booked a trip to Angola. I don't know, like incredible stories.

What a privilege, what an honor, what a dream. And yet I'm still me. And sometimes I sprained my ankle and I'm like, why? And whatever it is, it's you never stop being a human no matter what you achieve. Yeah, but on the subject of the t-shirt and remember when, how does it go exactly?

Like remember when you- Wanted what you currently have. Wanted what you currently have. I've heard you speak about the idea of, you know, pursuing your passion and this sense that you have, like when you were working with invisible children, you were, you know, maybe it wasn't your dream, but that you loved it and you were making an impact

with the work that you were doing and placing this idea of work and passion and all this pressure, I think that particularly young people feel like if they don't know what their passion is, that they feel somehow inadequate, like to have a broader lens on what that means and how you think about work.

I really think that the idolatry around passion and feeling like your work completes you that the idolatry around passion and feeling like your work completes you is really strange and problematic. I mean, I'm such a sucker for biology and anthropology and like the concept that we lived in tribes for a million years and then we discovered cities 10,000 years ago. It's like the way we live now is so weird, strange to what our body is.

And for a million years of our existence, you either caught an animal to eat it or grew, you didn't even grow anything. Maybe you foraged some mushrooms and some berries, I don't know. And then you had babies and you like hid from animals and you'd like tried not to eat something that was poisonous.

And so it wasn't like hunting fulfilled your spiritual soul. It was that these things were very cause and effect. There was clarity in the cause and effect. If you ran faster and longer than the gazelle, you got to eat it and now you're full. So the effort you put in had a reward. If you raise this child, then that child can not only love you and you love it, but then it can also help you hunt and it can help you farm and it can help you raise the other children. There was such a clarity. And I think as we stratified and expanded

and built the concept of an economy and industrialize the world and this and that, and that linear relationship between cause and effect and reward was removed. Of course that creates a crisis in mental health. Right, it's a crisis of meaning. The more comfort and luxury and free time that we have, the more we're allowed to kind of indulge with,

you know, the interior life. And there's something about that that is aspirational. Like you wanna be engaged in that. You wanna be asking the big questions and wrestling with your place in the world and what does it all mean? And that's great. But at the same time, it creates this sense

of disengagement with the world or what's really important. Like it's not in its proper context, right? Like if you're not pursuing a career that, you know you're waking up every morning, like, you know doing jumping jacks, cause you're so excited that somehow you're a failure or you're not doing it correctly. Yeah.

We have social media and algorithms and you know what we're fed on our devices every day that just foment that sense of less than. Well, and you have a lot of like podcasters and books and like, here's how you go chase that dream and whatever. I mean, even me and to shake the sleeping self, it's like quit your job and go bicycle to hello. That's it.

I mean, at the same time, the wrinkle in all of that is that's what I did. I felt a calling in my heart that I wanted to be a writer. And so I took a risk, quit my job and became one. And I really am that fulfilled, happy person doing their dream job. I am the thing that I'm critiquing right now. And I'm saying that by me doing it, it worked.

And I'm the happiest person I've ever met. So take everything I say with a grain of salt. But I do believe that sort of when you were saying about my experience in all of my twenties, working at Invisible Children or going to law school, not knowing what I was supposed to be doing. By the way, as an aside, the whole thing that you did on law school was so great.

Like here's what happens when you go to law school and you kind of, as you know, I went to law school too. Like here's how it unfolds. I mean, that's exactly the way that it happens. And I was on the precipice of becoming that person and got out of it. I've seen so many people walk that path and become that person to the extent that at one point,

I thought, I wanna put together like a keynote, like a speech and just tour law schools, and just get up there and go, here's what's really gonna happen when you graduate from here. Right, you get on this assembly line and it's this like, it's an entrapment that you've constantly told yourself

you will not be entrapped by. And yet they just lead you down further and further. You just keep moving the goalposts and making excuses for yourself. And to sort of fill the gaps in your lack of fulfillment and what you're doing, you gird your life with all of these material possessions and you become indebted to them

and your life becomes more and more complicated. And you ratchet up keeping up with the Joneses and then you're 50 years old and you're a senior partner at a firm. And you're like, well, I guess in the next life. Right, and you don't know your kids or what they're into because you work all the time and then they're mad at you. And you're like, look what I bought you.

And they're like, we hate you. and you're like, look what I bought you. And they're like, we hate you. And you're like, what? But so all that to say, I didn't know I had this like passionate calling to be a writer until I was close to 30. I thought I was burned by this idea because when I was a little kid, I saw Jurassic Park when I was 10 years old. And I was like, this idea because when I was a little kid, I saw Jurassic Park when I was 10 years old.

And I was like, this is the best movie that's ever been made. And I am gonna dedicate my life to dinosaurs. And then I realized I have to become Steven Spielberg. I have to, I'm so obsessed. I, that was my first like true idol. And then I was obsessed with all his movies and James Cameron and George Lucas

and that generation, obsessed. And I started telling people, well, I'm going to become the next Steven Spielberg. So buckle up. And so all of middle school, high school, everyone knew this. They were like, everyone was like, oh, Judd's gonna go off and make movies. He's gonna move to Hollywood. And I'm like, everyone knew this. They were like, everyone was like, oh, Jed's gonna go off and make movies.

He's gonna move to Hollywood. And I'm like, that's right, I am. And to the degree where when I graduated high school, teachers asked for my autograph. Because they were like, wow, here he goes. He got into USC. But props for the conviction. And I think it speaks to how powerful it is

when you kind of declare this is who I am and the world kind of coalesces around that idea. And they're like, yeah, I guess he is gonna be that. I mean, there's also the tall poppy syndrome where people wanna cut you down for having a big dream, but for whatever reason, I was encouraged. So I moved to LA and I go to my film classes and I realized-

You go to Spielberg's film school. Yeah. And you made that happen. Yes, but it was all rooted in this idea that I thought I knew that I was supposed to do that. And then I actually started doing it. And I realized not only is this horrible, that I will be horrible at this and I hate this.

And I had this major in college, this major identity crisis of, I promised everyone I would do this thing and now I'm doing it or trying to do it. And now I don't wanna do it. And so what do I do? And I mean, ultimately I just had to give up because I just knew I'd be terrible.

But then I was this rudderless boat. My whole developing brain in adolescence had had this very bright North star that was just now wiped blank. And so then I spent college undeclared, not knowing, finally declaring English. Then I went to law school because I was like, well well now I have no skills

except I know how to read a book. So I'm gonna go to law school. So I have like some tangible skill. And then I discover my friends have started this nonprofit and they need a lawyer. And I'm so like exhausted from working in the like legal jobs that I had in law school. I was like, I just need to be around a community

of people doing something inspiring. So what it was, I was just kind of walking through any door that was open that felt right at the moment. Right. From 19 to 27, I would have said, I don't know why I'm on this planet. I have no idea.

You know, and then it was really the slow, what do you love and what loves you back? This idea that I started at Invisible Children writing a lot of the campaigns and then being encouraged by them like, ooh, we liked the way you said that. Will you, you come into this meeting and help us write this. I'm like, oh, okay.

And then that flowed into them like, we need you to be our head writer. And I'm like, really? They're like, we like the way you articulate. And so, and I loved that so much. It was sort of this ebb and flow of actually paying attention to the winds in the sails of my life of where the wind is moving and like use that to go forward.

And so it was almost like uncovering the writer inside me. And then once I started doing that and it bore fruit, it made me feel very accomplished and it made me feel very worthy to be alive. And so if I really extrapolate what that means, it's not like I think everyone has some specific dream career. I think everybody wants to do something that feels useful.

And I found that for myself. But it's in the doing that you have that discovery and the tacking, like making little adjustments along the way that are based on external feedback that you're getting from others. Like, hey, you're pretty good at this and realizing, oh, I actually like that. And let me just maneuver, you know,

what I'm doing a little bit in this direction until one day you're like, I guess I'm a writer. It kind of happened to you in the process of you just moving forward with your life as opposed to declaring in middle school, like I'm gonna be X before you even know what that means. Right? Exactly. But not for nothing,

I actually think you would be a very good filmmaker, good director. What if I come back and I do that? Like what if I did? Maybe not like a Jurassic Park, like I see you more as like a Mike Nichols. Like you're somebody who I am certain would work very well with actors in an emotional setting

and could make like a wonderful movie like that. Wow, well, see, I mean, God knows I love the idea, so. But back on this idea of, you know, like the pressure to find your passion or to have this career that's gonna, you know, be sort of, you know, big in the scheme of how culture perceives these things. You talk about your friendship with Tom, right?

And I can only assume this is Tom Shadyac. It is. It is, right? Of course it is. It's like, this is definitely Tom Shadyac. And he has this great line where he tells you, your generation has an idolatry of magnitude. And it's probably one of my favorite lines in the whole book.

So let's spend a few minutes talking about what that means. Well, I remember he originally said that talking about invisible children. And he was, because we were at invisible children, not only were we trying to arrest Joseph Kony and end the longest running war in Central East Africa, but we also wanted to change the world. We wanted to bolster international human rights.

We wanted war crimes against children to be something that everyone on the planet cares about and rallies around. It was such this like giant thing and pinning it all on arresting Joseph Kony and seeing him tried before the ICC was such this like, if we haven't done that, we have failed. And he would always say, he's such a mentor in our life. He's like, you have put thousands of kids through schools.

You have built schools. You have awakened hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Western teenagers to international human rights, to caring about something outside their building and their small world. You have gotten bills passed through the Obama administration

to help with the pursuit of these war criminals. You've done so much and you can't see it because you've decided if you do not turn the world upside down and change it, then you have failed. And that robs you of both the stamina provided by incremental success. And also just the reality of understanding that it's not everyone's duty to change the world.

Changing someone's life right in front of you or one child's life or five children's lives, whatever is so cosmically significant. And if you overlook that, then you damage and disrespect the impact you've already had or are having. And I think a lot of people, whether it's, I talk with my agent and my editor about this a lot, because I get asked by people, how do I get published?

How do I get noticed? How do I get an agent? And the question is that my agent calls it the hidden desire behind the question. It's like, what is the spirit of your question? Because is it actually, how do I get validated for my writing and I need validation. He says, it's also the hidden desire

in the question when someone says, how do you handle the critics? And that the hidden nature of that question is how do I, I really care what people think about my products so much so that I'm so afraid of putting it out there because what if someone doesn't like it and I need validation for my work. And so there's just this like idea

that if I'm not published and on a bookshelf, if I'm not this or that, if I haven't achieved A, B, C, D or E, then I'm not a real blank. Right. And I think in the journey of figuring out what you're good at and what you love and what loves you and what you're supposed to be doing

and how you can be useful and helpful in this life is if you feel a pull towards something, no matter how big or small, then like in some way, try it. And that was my entire intention with writing to shake the sleeping self was, I don't know if I can write a book. I actually might be bad and I might embarrass myself, but I'm willing to try and put it out there.

And I'm so happy to self-publish because I just wanna hold it in my hands and know I did a thing. And then I can move on with my life and find some other job or if the wind doesn't tack in that direction, I'll tack the other way. Great, I can do that. But life and find some other job. Or if the wind doesn't tack in that direction, I'll tack the other way. Great, I can do that. But the writing was a compulsion.

It was something that had to be birthed. You had to express it. There was a call to the doing of it. It wasn't about, can I get an agent or a book deal? It was about basically the process of giving voice to this thing that was inside of you. Totally, the writing in and of itself is the thing I wanted to do,

because I had learned that when I would write something, originally I had a blog on blogspot, which then became Tumblr, and it was called the water is black, which I loved that title, which came from a poem about being gay and God hating me. And so I would write my thoughts about my like sexuality and Christianity on this blog,

just so that because they, when something would really bother me, this happens to me now, like something will really eat up my mind, but I can feel the war of ideas in my head. And then it's like, I just need to go sit down and write about this and do some research and figure out what I think.

Right, so it's the writing that gives you clarity on what you actually believe about a specific thing. Well, I don't know. If you go for a number of days without working out, my body starts to like ache, hurt. It's like, I don't know if that's atrophy or just stiffness, but it's like, if I don't exercise, then my body bothers me. And so then I go sweat and I get the endorphins

and I feel limber and gray. In the same way, if I don't like, if I'm absorbing the world and something's happening, something complex, like, if I'm absorbing the world and something's happening, something complex, like right now I'm fascinated by the concept of multiculturalism and assimilation into a nation right now with the whole conversation around France and what they're doing with so many Muslim immigrants

and how unlike America, which is famed for being a melting pot, France is like a really old country with like a very established multi-thousand year old traditional indigenous identity. And so them processing that is so short-circuiting to my mind because I see both sides of the argument. And I mean, it's obviously short-circuiting

lots of people's minds, but it like, so for example, I'm gonna eventually have to write this out even if it's just for me, because it's really, it's something I can't get ahold of and it's like bothering me. So originally I would do that with my sexuality and my faith and I would do it on this blog. And one time, and I don't know why,

but I just felt really fired up and I posted it on my Facebook. Just like, I don't know why I felt ready to do that. And I did. And it was that where people, a lot of my friends read it and then they sent it to their friends and their friends of friends and then they sent it to their friends

and their friends of friends and strangers were messaging me saying this was so helpful. And that was like some moment in my life where that felt really, where I did something that was good for me and I discovered it was useful for someone else. And that like really pulled me forward in loving that. Yeah, it's amazing how powerful a small,

seemingly small thing like that can be in giving you the courage, the gumption to push forward on something and kind of, you know, broaden the spectrum of what's possible for yourself. Cause in the moment, it's not a big deal. Like a couple other people read your thing and thought it was cool, but how meaningful that was. And even now you look, oh, you know,

New York Times bestseller, but it's, I'm sure for you, it's the handwritten letters that you get in the mail from some kid in the South who feels alone. That's exactly how I feel. I remember, I forget if I write about this in like streams, but I remember realizing even before I had had a book out that I already had the very thing I dreamed. Like, remember when you wanted what you currently have?

I had it, which was, I get to write things that make me feel like I understand my own mind that then strangers respond to and say me too. And they take time out of their day to tell me what it means to them. This was such a, that lands on me so tenderly and means so much to me because I'll never forget when, and we talked about this on another podcast,

but when we made Kony 2012 and it was like, everyone was loving it and then there was the backlash and everyone was hating it. There was a whole lot of weirdness. And just getting like, just getting so much hate mail, but then understanding that more people liked it that didn't like it, but the people that didn't like it were so loud and so hurting our feelings.

And I remember thinking, why aren't more people encouraging us? And then at the time, my favorite thing in the world was Ira Glass and Jada B Bomrod and Robert Krolwich. So like Radio Lab and This American Life, where all I did all day was listen to every episode and love them. And it never crossed my mind to write them an email

and say, thank you. I never would have done that. And they're literally, I'm a super fan. A lot of handwritten letter. Yeah, like I'm a super fan and they have no idea. Granted, they can see that someone listened, like one tick on a number in some spreadsheet, but like they have no idea.

And so now when someone writes me to tell me, and this happens all the time, I always respond with, thank you for being the type of person that would take the time to tell me this. Cause you could just not said that, how easy. You could have just liked that and be like, oh, that was great.

I've like never left a Yelp review. I've never left, I don't review anything. When you were 10, you did write a letter to an animator. Eric Goldberg. Right. That was one of those nudge moments, those little moments in your life that changed your trajectory.

Miles Adcox who runs onsite the most incredible, like I don't even know what to call it, like retreat center for like self expansion and learning. He always says, he uses the boat analogy, sort of like tacking where he's like, if you're crossing the Atlantic Ocean and you turn the boat one degree early on or whenever like over the course of time is the difference between South Africa and Ireland right you know like you just go and then it's and

for me I really do believe that was such a moment where I'll tell the story really quick. I was, this is okay. The year before Jurassic Park, I was obsessed with Aladdin. Okay. This was great time to be a kid, these movies. And I was obsessed with the genie and Robin Williams and my mom, I mean, and I loved drawing. So I would draw the genie all the time. And my mom goes, you should write the animator a letter. And of course I knew the animator, everything about them.

Cause I would go back then in the malls, maybe they still have these, the Disney store where it was like fully vertically integrated consumer world where you could just give all your money to Disney, which I'm sure you still can. Now more than ever. Now more than ever, exactly. Star Wars, they just give all your money to Disney, which I'm sure you still can. Now more than ever. Now more than ever, exactly. Star Wars, they actually take all my money, still.

They own more now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would get these behind the scenes books of how they made Disney movies. And I would learn all about these animators and how they draw. And then I would watch these on the Disney channel. I would watch them work.

So I just, I thought Eric Goldberg was God cause he could, he created the genie. He drew this genie and this is 92. So we didn't have the internet. If we did, it was the most rudimentary but I don't think we got the internet until 94 or 95. And so somehow my mother said, draw him a picture and I will find out where he is.

We will mail it to him. And I was like, mother, you are so naive. You know, me at nine years old, you can't just talk to these people. They are in Burbank, California, whatever that was. And this magical wonderland. And so somehow she got on the phone and figured out, I don't know what she did,

but she got an address and put it in the envelope and mailed it away. And I just, it wasn't even like waiting and checking the mail every day. I just thought it was like burning it. Like, okay, bye. And then however much time passed, I got the letter back and he drew me a picture, an original picture of the genie

that said, yo Jed, I ain't never had a friend like you. And wrote me this letter encouraging me to keep drawing and like chasing my dreams. And it just like whatever neural pathway that did in my brain to be like, there is no one you can't talk to. And there's like, no one is beyond reach. Like it's fine. Everyone's a person.

Like it just did something to my nine-year-old brain that I still have with me now where I am completely unafraid and of talking to anybody. And I feel very natural in any space. But you know, of course, like this guy's not a household. This is not writing Steven Spielberg. Like it was probably very meaningful to him. I'm sure that guy, you know, as talented as he is,

is toiling behind the scenes. He's not getting handwritten letters from anybody, right? So it was probably, you should look him up. Is he still alive? Yes. Try to find him. No, someone I think got me his email. I have to go back.

It was like in a very busy time, but I posted about this story and someone goes, you know, he still works at Disney or something. It's like, and here's his email. And I mean, even at 37 years old, I was like, Eric Goldberg, I can't email him. I can't email him. But I really do want to send him a copy of the book. You have to do that. You have to. It changed my life. And I love how your mom took it upon herself to like figure it out. Like what

a beautiful thing. And you know, Barb is wonderful and complicated. And can we talk about her a little bit? I listened to the podcast that you did with her, which I thought was really interesting. A neat little addendum for the book. Yeah, I think that I did a podcast with my dad. I think everybody should do a podcast with at least one of their parents. There's something about the formality and the structure of it that lends itself

to a kind of conversation that a child and a parent just ordinarily are unlikely to have. And not to even share it with anybody, but just to like have it for posterity, I think is a cool thing. I think about my beloved Mimi, who I write about in this book,

my grandmother, my mom's mom, was such an incredible person. And I don't have really her voice recorded almost anywhere. There's one, I have one video on an old Vimeo account where we were playing cards and I just like had gotten a digital camera somehow and like uploaded it. And just to hear her say three words,

like rockets me to this like nostalgic warmth and also melancholy of missing her. And if I had like a full on interview with her, I would just melt. I would listen to it all the time, but of course I don't. And so I think that's such a great idea and so easy. You can do it on your phone. I recorded that entire podcast with my mom on my phone. Oh, you did?

Yeah. Sounded great. We both, we got, we laid on her bed and I put pillows in between us and I just set it right here and we like talked like this, really close. Well, what I got out of it and what I think is instructive about it is that

it was a beautiful example of how to dance with somebody who sees the world differently and do it with respect. Like clearly, you guys have gone through a lot and you have different worldviews, but there's a deep love there and how you try to find a way to establish that common ground is almost like a test case for this moment that we're in right now,

where we're seeing this breakdown in our ability to effectively communicate and we're become, every issue is partisan and we're unable to kind of remember that we're all humans, spinning around on this planet in equal time. And I didn't know what to expect when I was listening to it, having some sense of the background and everything that you've kind of endured with her

and what happened when the first book came out and her reaction to reading early drafts of that. But I came away from that experience with an understanding that like, A, you've done a lot of work to be able to bridge that gap and kind of be there for her in a way that maybe without that growth, you wouldn't be able to. And just her deep love for you,

like that was the more surprising thing because I'd never heard her perspective on any of this before. That was also when I decided to do that, I wanted to give her the chance to really speak because her ultimate critique with the book, even though she came to love it, when she was reading the manuscript before anyone else had, she thought that I was mocking her or making fun of her.

Whereas my editor was so genius. He goes, ask her to go in to all of your conversations where she feels like you're misrepresenting her words and have her write what she would really say, which was such a genius thing because not only did it make it truer, it made it better because her perspective is real. And it's like, and like my,

the way it made me feel doesn't change because her putting her true words in there are just more accurate to the way it makes me feel. But I just really wanted her to feel like she had her say. There's sort of the idea of memorializing a relationship by recording a podcast with a parent or a grandparent. I haven't landed on this idea, but I eventually wanna do it in some form,

whether it's my next book or not, but to go on a road trip across America with my mom and record the whole thing. And we interact with people of different faiths and political ideologies and we both process it together because like you're saying, I think we are in this moment of like conversation crisis that, I mean, I'm very progressive lefty.

I mean, I'm centrist left, but like I see the way the left dunks on the right constantly and just dehumanizes them. And like, basically because they believe that their ideas are dangerous and dehumanizing that they just dehumanize them to a degree that is hilarious because any psychologist,

any person who understands human behavior knows the only thing you're doing is making them dig their heels in more and making them love someone like Donald Trump. That's the only, you are creating this. And I remember I saw this with my aunt. My aunt lives in rural Missouri and we've always like loved each other.

She's an artist, she's like creative, gardening. And then I started when the rise of our last president started happening and I started posting just like, oh, this is not good. I don't, this person is not good for America. I don't think. And she came at me with such rage which we had only ever loved each other our whole life.

And to the point where I had to like block her on Facebook, because I was like, what is happening? It was very strange to me where I'd never had someone that I liked out of nowhere attack me and call me a liberal elite and a snowflake and a blinded this and whatever. And I was like, what are these terms? What is happening?

And it was this idea. You're blind to it, Jed, because you live in Hollywood now. Exactly, and I am in a siloed media stream and so is she and so are so many people. And it's like, she was responding to a feeling that the left was just making fun of everyone else in America and the coasts or whatever.

And that is enraging. And so you just double down and you like, I'm just like, we cannot survive this as a culture or a country. I'm right now reading Jill Lepore's fantastic book, These Truths, and it's this incredibly sweeping overview of American history. And you realize that like,

this is exactly what we've been doing the whole time is like figuring out how opposing ideas, like the Federalist Papers, they're all arguing the same things of like big government, small government, does giving people money help them or does it make them lazy? Like everything we argue about, we've been arguing about. But now everybody has a megaphone

and we're in a culture where for whatever reason, like it's become more difficult to hear or listen to each other. It's all about, you know, it's all about amplifying one's voice and being heard, but without the hearing. Well, there's, and it's also the structures of the way that these megaphones are built.

It actually doesn't help for me to give some long nuanced perspective in a post. Right. Especially in certain algorithmic social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook, where people that are not part of my community are able to see that. So if I tweet something and somebody,

strangers can now see that and respond to it. Whereas if I post something on Instagram, if you don't follow me, you're not gonna see it. And so it's just a different energetic conversation, which is why I found myself writing on Instagram and trying to have more nuanced conversations on there. Cause I was like, I'm super down to be challenged, but there's cache in Twitter or Facebook

where I can write something really complex and nuanced. And then on Twitter, someone can pull one sentence out of that and like then dunk on me and like make some really hyperbolic statement about whatever. And then there, because they are so black and white and starkly bright in their language, that gets the attention and then like taints the entire conversation above it.

It's just a different energy. That's why I don't really have conversations on the other platforms because I don't like the way it feels. I mean, you spend your time either in Los Angeles, but you spend a lot of time in Tennessee, right? So you have your foot relatively firmly planted into very different cultures.

So you have a sense of this divide that is more boots on the ground than the average person. So as somebody who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about their perspective on things, like what is the path forward here? I mean, we can throw out perfunctory terms like, you know, we need to lead with curiosity

and we need to, you know, be patient and it's about nuance and all of that. But like practicing that or, you know, like how do you transcend the bubble and, you know, live in the experience of others so that, you know, we can heal some of these wounds. Cause I do despair about the future. Like where is this headed if we don't course correct

in some real fundamental ways? I actually thought that something like a pandemic would help. I remember when this first- It's made it worse. I remember when this happened, I go, oh my gosh, well, we're all gonna go through something together. And this like, cause I remember one of my heroes,

Jonathan Haidt talked, he's built his whole life studying like the left, right divide. And his theory was unless aliens from another solar system invade us, we are not gonna get along anytime soon. And I was just like, oh God. Now I think if aliens came, we would turn it into some kind of weird partisan thing.

Oh, totally. It would be like, they're not really here. And then until you get zapped, then you're like, well, that was actually paid actors. You know, it's like, there's no hope. But so to be honest, to answer your question, the only thing that made me remotely balanced and understanding is personal relationships

and immersion with people that believe things different than me. Like I went to my step-mom's neighborhood in middle Tennessee, and there was a full on Trump parade this past fall. And it was the time of their lives. These people were so kind. It was not racially homogenous.

There was like different, I mean, it was mostly white people, but it was a very strange, jovial, non-redneck moment. And I was just, I was like, wow, these people are fired up. And if you are in that, it's so interesting. If you are in that world and at these parades,

you do kind of think, and you never go to Los Angeles or Berkeley or whatever. You really do think everyone around you is voting for Trump. How could he not win by a landslide? Everyone you know voted for Trump. So how could he not win? And then when he says, I won by a landslide and they're trying to steal it from you,

you're like, well, maybe he's not lying. And then Rudy Giuliani is up there sweating his face off saying there, we got all the proof. Because if you don't have access to the other side and you don't engage with them personally, I don't know the way forward. the other side and you don't engage with them personally, I don't know the way forward. Yeah.

I truly, the thing is I feel to some degree, I am an observational human, not a doctor. And so, and this has a lot to do with the fact that I think because of realizing I was gay in my adolescence, my defense mechanism for that was disassociation. Right. It was floating above my own life and just watching it curiously rather than feeling hurt

by being called words and whatever. And so I think that defense mechanism has influenced my entire life and become my career as a writer and observer. And I do feel like I observe humanity in the sense where humanity is an experiment of evolution that might not work. Like we might not be able to do this.

And that's in my mind, fine. Right. Okay. Like we had quite the run. This experiment may come to an end or we'll just invent some AI to be the next evolution of what we were meant to be. Yeah, I just, I love humanity.

I'm so glad we're here. I'm so, I think it's very cool to be alive, but also I was not alive for a few billion years before I was and I didn't seem to mind. So if we go away and this is a failure, I just like, I really hope we don't, but there's just when you mix things, when you throw things into the mix,

like humans are, the human brain is pretty wired to like sway conservative or progressive, just the way that it is. I mean, you look at almost every family and within a same cluster of children who grew up in the same house with the same parents, they can be politically divergent. And oftentimes there's one or more that are, and you're like, they house with the same parents, they can be politically divergent. And oftentimes there's one or more that are,

and you're like, they're eating the same food. They're in the same place. How does this happen? And it's just because we've evolved to do that. One is like scarcity and one is curiosity and one is openness to experience. And one is like preserving what the gains that we've made in the past.

And these all have varying benefits. I mean, you think about the American ethos of individualism and liberty is something that we are so proud of, but it made us incredibly bad at responding to a pandemic. Whereas China, which squashes descent and potentially commits genocide on ethnic minorities is completely homogenous in their messaging and whatever. And they lock that shit up.

Right. And so if this pathogen was actually worse, let's say it was more like AIDS where it actually lays dormant in you for six months or something and then kills 30% of the population. Or if it like AIDS was a hundred percent, every American would be dead. Cause if there was that incubation period, no one would believe it's real. And like Dr. Fouch would

be like, we can detect it. We know it's real. And they'd be like, it wouldn't matter. Ain't nobody dead. This is fake. They're trying to control us. And it's just like, and so you see how this experiment of humanity, you put moral judgments on the way people behave, which I think you should, it's like the pursuit of thriving, but there are different ways of existing. And in the experiment of, we don't know what the future holds, the fact that everyone does things a little differently

and cultures are expressions of like that, sometimes one culture works better than another one at responding to a specific problem. Yeah, yeah, the individualism that is, you know, part and parcel of our DNA as Americans is certainly aspirational, this idea that we can all, you know, kind of create our lives in the vision that we would like in a perfect world.

But it's also, it's shrouded in this patriotism, right? But that patriotism doesn't mean anything if we can't cohere as a nation when we're faced with a crisis. So we're seeing this fracture. And I think, to speak to the solution, as long as the wealth gap continues to increase, it seems hopeless in my mind.

Like the more the haves get and the less that the have nots are, have access to, it's only gonna ratchet this whole thing up. And that doesn't bode well. I mean, that's the French revolution. Yeah, exactly. It will end in some kind of similar cataclysm.

And maybe we need that. I mean, that's the like brutality of human history. You look at, it's just bloodbaths. I'm curious if there's certain aspects to our political culture that are encouraging to me. Obviously a capital insurrection is not encouraging, but a super divided government is interesting to me in terms of like the evolution of society,

because if 50, like our Senate is 50, 50. Right. Right. And that's like, if you are debating over really complex problems that literally one out of every two people can disagree on, then the problem is, then you're probably living in a pretty advanced society. If we can live in the same world

and two people in the same room can believe opposite about something. If the room was literally on fire and your skin is burning, you're not gonna argue over the fire department. They're coming. That's a very clear, that is such a cause and effect problem

with no gray area. But if you're talking about what makes the economy work, what rises people out of poverty, is it this or is it that? What is actually gonna change the climate crisis if there is one or is this just the natural? You know, like those things are so complex and they're very serious

and may cause the downfall of our society. But in terms of, it's pretty remarkable that you can have like the leaders of the country divided down the middle. Yeah. That just means that society is now so complex that we solved a lot of the most obvious problems. But that complexity leads to a certain paralysis when government is divided to that extent.

But then if is paralysis, if it is divided to that extent, hopefully in a democracy, even though ours is a to that extent, hopefully in a democracy, even though ours is a little screwy, it doesn't necessarily represent that half the country believes this, but a large amount of them believe one way and a larger amount believe another.

But if it was less divided and yet there were that same division of beliefs in the country and they just like forced the other half of the country to be doing something they didn't wanna do, that would lead to, I think more insurrections and more. Well, I think that's a function of the caliber

and quality of those beliefs. Are those beliefs deeply held values or are they surface level beliefs about, you know, things more trivial. And when you get into a real differentiation of value systems, I think that's where it becomes, you know, very difficult to reproach. Well, I mean, and that's the genius behind lobbyists

and marketing is if you make something like gay marriage, which the evangelicals in this country, it's like, if I get gay married over here, that doesn't affect your straight marriage and your family. But then they sell it as this like cancer that will erode all marriage. And it will not only that, but it will erode the sanctity of scripture,

which you've built your whole life on. Like they give it the power to destroy everything else. And so they make it a symbol, this like seemingly small thing. And so any, that's what lobbyists do is they try to make it where, oh, if you take away the soybean subsidy, you actually destroy ABCD and E in every direction.

Well, on the gay marriage thing, I mean, yeah, then, you know, culture shifts and people's perceptions. I mean, that, you know, it was interesting to hear Fran Lebowitz talk about that because she was like, that's never, you know, it's never gonna happen. Right.

And she was as surprised as anybody that actually like took place. I even think about, I mean, to bring it back to Britney Spears, watching. Of course. Well, watching that documentary was really. I watched it last night. Was really interesting to me because 2007, 2008

was not that long ago. And it was just open season to make fun of these women and to make fun of these women and to make fun of substance abuse and rehab and mental health, like dunking on them, slam dunking. And what's even interesting now is that made me think about Kony 2012 and my best friend, Jason Russell,

having a mental health crisis in public and then having everyone make fun of him and South Park make a whole episode about him. And like, even now, I feel like 10 years later that would be so unacceptable to like mock somebody having a mental health crisis like that. We even just have a different language around it that feels to look at the way that people spoke about that.

And I remember because it happened to me and my community, I felt the claustrophobic trauma of, wow, people do not understand the gravity and realness of this. And it's a joke to them, which is certainly what Brittany felt being like haunted and then mocked on national television. I mean, it's so sad watching that and seeing what that young girl had to endure.

It's just, it's heartbreaking to watch it. And to see like the one thing I didn't realize is like how deeply strange her Instagram is. And it's clearly like somebody who's not as mentally fit as they could be. And I don't know whether they need a conservator. I mean, that's a whole other subject, but you know, this woman has endured a lot.

And it is interesting that it wasn't that long ago. And when you see those interviews, it's just, they don't age well. And now that's brought up a broader issue about this. We're seeing like the Lindsay Lohan interviews and kind of how she was treated by the public and the whole, those events coincided with the explosion of the paparazzi media and all of those tabloid magazines

that were profiting off of all of the schadenfreude. And it's, I'm glad that these documentaries exist now and that there is a kind of cultural agreement that that was not handled well. And we should have a more meaningful conversation about mental health and a recognition that these people are human beings with feelings just like everybody else.

I really hope so. I feel like, one of my favorite things about any documentary is when it expands my understanding and empathy for a situation. I just also watched the Tiger Woods documentary. I saw that too. It's a similar story in many ways. It's so funny like Fran Lebowitz being surprised

about gay marriage and the Me Too movement. I hadn't realized until I watched the Tiger Woods documentary. I was sitting there with my roommate and he goes, okay, so he cheated on his wife. Isn't that private? Like, why do we care? And I hadn't even thought of that.

I was like, you're right. It feels really invasive and violating for like me to have an opinion about his marriage. He's a golfer, he's not a marriage therapist. If my marriage therapist is cheating on their spouse, well, that's the whole point of why I'm paying them. So that's relevant, but why? And I was raised in the South and in Christianity.

And I remember as a kid, when Bill Clinton was being impeached, the progressive media being like, why do we care what's going on in his marriage and if he's being faithful to his wife? And my family was like, well, that impugns everything. If he's actually not honest in this way, then he's not honest in another thing.

And so he must be impeached, which is hilarious that they voted for Donald Trump. But it's just the way things change where I'm watching this tiger documentary and I'm like, I don't think that we should be involved in that at all. And yet they're like selling these stories and he's losing endorsement deals.

Who cares? Yeah, and the kind of disturbing glee with which that national inquirer, right? The guy with the bow tie. Oh my gosh, he's such a cartoon. How like sort of excited he was about being able to like uncover this. It was like big game hunting for him.

It's really, yeah, disturbing. I understand like humanizing gods, you know, like trying to find them. I get that inclination, but it's just like. But to draw a parallel between Tiger and Brittany, these are people who were foisted into the public eye at a very early age. And were subject to image crafting

where a lot of interested parties who had a lot to gain financially through their success were heavily invested in kind of controlling their lives and the narrative around their lives. And part of that was this wholesome image, right? With Brittany, at least in the early part of that was this wholesome image, right? With Brittany, at least in the early part of her career and Tiger just being this super clean cut guy and something's got a crack,

like humans aren't wired for that. And at some point, it's gonna go haywire and it does like every time. So whether it's shaving your head or escaping to Vegas, people need an outlet. What is your, how old are your kids? The boys are 25 and 24 and the girls are 17 and 13. Okay, what is it like raising a Gen Z?

Cause my friends who have kids who are like able to talk and like 10 or older, you ask them what a kid wants to be now and they say a YouTube star or a TikTok star. I'm like, whoa, that's what they're like. When it was my age, I wanted to be a Marine biologist or Steven Spielberg. But so what is your, and I don't know your kids at all, but are they like, if they were like,

I want to be TikTok famous, would you be like, go for it? Here's a camera. Or would you be like, go for it, here's a camera? Or would you be like, not till you're this age? What's your philosophy on that? I would be very circumspect about that. And my kids aren't necessarily a proxy for the average kid. I mean, my older boys are the most analog people that I know.

Really? They are rarely, I mean, they're on Reddit and they read stuff online, but they don't have social media presences at all. And they're artists and musicians and they live in Echo Park, their home for the pandemic, but they're trying to pursue a music career

and are kind of immersed in that culture. Do you see like a Luddite revolution amongst young people? Yeah, I mean, they're kind of the, I mean, they wanted to record their album analog and they listened to albums and it's like- It's the ebb and flow of humans. You just respond to what was before you as like, I'm gonna do something different.

It's a desire for something that's tactile and real. And they like read books, which is an act of revolution when you're in your twenties, in this age. And then my 17 year old is in, she goes to a visual arts high school downtown and she's all about painting and she's got like a screen printing business. And, you know, so she's online,

but it's mostly like Snapchat with her friends. She's not trying to build a persona online. And then our youngest had a flirtation with TikTok. And there was a moment where she had like a really, a lot of people who were like watching her and it freaked her out and she deleted her account. Oh, it freaked her out. It didn't freak necessarily you out.

She had the self-awareness to realize that it wasn't good for her. And I think there was some bullying involved in some, you know, kind of weird negative feedback, but she also had a lot of people who were kind of watching her do her thing and then she got rid of it on her own. And now she's like writing a book and writing poetry

and doing other cool stuff. So I don't know that that's the typical experience. And I would agree with you that there is a whole generation that aspires to be a quote unquote influencer or a YouTuber or a TikToker. And that's what they're like, look, my 13 year old doesn't even, I would be surprised if she knew who Brad Pitt was, but she knows who all these YouTubers are

and that's what's meaningful and important. So that's a huge cultural shift. So those are the people that they're looking to for, you know, everything from, you know, how to stuff, like how do you make a cake or, you know, all the kind of YouTube stuff where you can learn stuff. You know, how do you take care of a snake to, you know, the vloggers and, you know,

the people that are doing beauty tutorials and the like, like that is their culture. I wonder if I'm realizing as you're speaking, if we're going to observe, if you are a kid now, you know that everything you do is documented online. I know some of the kids that I know and the younger people that I know, it is very normal for them to just delete old tweets

and delete things and delete everything after a little while, just so it doesn't just live online forever. Where when me being gen X millennial cusp, like an elder millennial, I have a lot of life, especially when we were using early social media, where it didn't cross your mind that like this embarrassing and appropriate picture now lives forever.

And 15 years can pass and it will resurface or whatever. Like that's maybe like, that is just a curse of this specific moment of generation, but the younger people know that that's just what happens. Like, yeah. Well, I think the distinction is that we're the, I mean, I'm older than you,

but when I went to college, there was no internet, you know, and thank God. And that, you know, started mean, I'm older than you, but when I went to college, there was no internet, you know, and thank God. And that, you know, started to percolate up, I think, like you said, around 94 with email and the like. But, you know, I am the last generation of knowing, of being kind of adult enough to know what it's like to not live with the internet. And then, you know, being in this place now

where it's all about that, whereas the, you know, Gen Z has never known anything different. So their relationship to privacy is extremely different. They don't calibrate it in the same way. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, dunking that goes on on younger generations by older people. But what I see is, you know, such a greater receptivity and sensitivity to issues of disenfranchisement

and exposure, a global exposure to things that are going on in the world and, you know, counter narratives to traditional notions of history and politics that, you know that we just had our textbooks and that was the definitive word on everything. And there was no discussion that expanded outside of that because unless you went to the library and dusted off some weird book by some crazy professor,

you weren't gonna get any other ideas. I was 26 working at Invisible Children surrounded by a bunch of activists and someone gave me a people's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. And I read the part about dropping atomic bombs on Japan. I had never thought about the fact that we dropped atomic bombs on civilians.

Atomic bombs on families as anything, but like, wow, World War II, what a time. Like I, America won World War II. It never crossed my mind, the like moral implications of that action until I was 26 years old. Cause when I was told about World War II, no one gave you a counter narrative at all of like,

not that- I did read that book in college though. And I remember it blew my mind because it runs so counter to just what you absorb in high school. And you're just, you don't, you're not really raised to question anything. You're like, here's the thing, read this and memorize it. And we'll test you on it.

But I mean, that's- It wasn't a discussion. The flip side of that is without patriotism, without agreement showing the flip side of that is without patriotism without agreement showing the flip side of every argument is very hard to create any kind of cohesion in society which is the very thing we were talking about is hard for us to move forward

when we all are skeptical about everyone else's ideas and we just don't have much in common except we like siphon ourselves into these other, these communities of like-mindedness where you think everyone must be like you and everyone outside of your community is an alien, which we're just becoming tribal again,

which is how we started. Yeah, but I think, you know, that's one of the reasons why I really, I love your reading and I like talking to you because you do, you know, you have such a reverence for your roots and the community that you came from, even though nobody would disparage you for saying,

showing at the hand and saying like, these are the people that bullied me who didn't understand me and they're in my rear view, but you go back and you love them and you understand them and you're able to communicate a compassion and an understanding of a culture that's different from your own. And I think that that's really powerful as this observer

who can on some level like disassociate and look at things from 10,000 feet. Well, I think every defense and coping mechanism is an experiment in survival. And so some people, when they feel unsafe, they run away. When some people feel unsafe, they fight back. For me, my, for whatever reason, defense and coping mechanism was to disassociate and engage.

Like, and figure out, okay, you're a human. You're in the hallways in seventh grade and people are picking on you, making fun of your voice, making fun of your clothes. Like you can like rage against the machine or you can figure out why the machine works the way that it does and survive. And that was just the way that sounded best for me. And then that percolated. And then I saw the fruit that it bears, which is the older I got. And then I had all these friends who are conservative Christian jocks and this and that raised in Tennessee.

Then they find out I'm gay. And then by through relationship with me, it transforms their understanding of what a gay person is, because it's not what they were told at church or saw on TV. So through that personal relationship and friendship, it like for the rest of their life, they had a different perspective, which they wouldn't have had necessarily without me.

And so I think that influenced the way that I see any meaningful change is through screaming at someone that you're wrong and shaming them. I mean, you just see it, it turns people sour and it turns people defensive and angry. And I don't know, I would be very curious to see a study on this of like how often shaming

really works. I will say one thing that it sort of worked is growing up with no smoking commercials. Like if you smoke, you will die. I mean, I was like, oh my God. So, I mean, but that's- I think that there is a place for shame in some regard. I think it can be,

like we're in a shameless society right now, shame's out the window. And there is something to be said for that kind of like, it's not okay to do. Oh, I think we're in a hyper shaming society. Online at least. But we have, you know, we have people in leadership positions

who are utterly shameless and people who are living their lives performatively in a shameless way, because that satisfies the algorithms and becomes a way to enrich oneself. Yeah, I mean, what we have right now is just access to see the complexity of everything. So sure, we have very shameless politicians

and shameless people in power, but then you have, if you have a minor player that posts a dumb tweet and gets fired from their job and is like wiped out. And is like, they said something that is like insensitive or stupid, or they did something 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And so that. And then they're piled on and like- The weaponization of shame to eradicate people. And I think the weaponization of shame to eradicate people

is part of what gave us such hyper shameful politicians because they're actually people tired of that social immune response, respond and do the opposite, which is elevate somebody who just says F you to everybody. They're like, yeah, finally someone's saying it. And like, if enough of us are like, yeah, let him say it, then maybe they'll shut up and we'll show them who has power.

Maybe we should all go back and read the Scarlet Letter again. It's so funny to me when you read classic literature or you read American history, you realize how everything feels so new, but it's just, everything is a remix. I know. Which is a great YouTube series.

Back to Barb for a second. When listening to the podcast with her, and talking about the, how do you reconcile your love with somebody who's living their life in a way that's difficult to understand? What I keyed in on with her is how she's put her faith in this position of intermediary.

It's like, she clearly struggles with you being gay because it's at odds with her faith, but rather than castigate you or have judgment on that, she puts God in between you and just says, I believe that God has a plan for Jed. And that gives her comfort, right? Which I thought was really interesting. I mean, you perfectly understand the situation,

which is she loves me and knows that like, God is more powerful than her and that her job is to love me and not push me away and not push me away from God. Cause she also feels like a representative of God's love. And so it's just such an interesting relationship because also her biggest fear kind of happened, which wasn't just that I'm gay.

It's that the fear that she was sold, which is if you pick and choose what you want from the Bible, then that negates the whole damn thing. Like if you can just decide that you're not gonna follow God's words here, you do whole damn thing. Like if you can just decide that you're not gonna follow God's words here, you do the other thing. And what's funny is I was sold that, which kept me celibate and in the church for so long.

But then once I started unraveling that sweater and I was like, well, why is this word? Why did Paul write this? And why is this in Leviticus and Deuteronomy? And like, who wrote the Bible? And then I'm like, whoa, why is this interpol Leviticus and Deuteronomy? And like, who wrote the Bible? And then I'm like, whoa, why is this interpolated here and translated here? And what's the council of Nicaea?

And how come these people are deciding what goes in? And what about the Apocrypha and the Gnostic gospels? All of a sudden I'm so deep, I'm like, well, if I had just been allowed to be gay, I would have never known any of this. And I would have just loved Jesus all my life and never asked all these questions. But because this deep interwoven piece of my identity

caused me to become hyper obsessed with knowing what's true, it unraveled the whole damn show. And now I can never go back. Right. I don't know never, I mean, God has a plan, right? Right, right. I love how you characterize identity. I think this is, never. I mean, God has a plan, right? But right, right. I love how you characterize identity. I think this is a quote from the book,

the braided marriage of circumstance, ego, and soul. I mean, that is, we are where we came from. We are what we think we are and then how we feel about what we think we are. And those like, the tension between those things is this dance of, I mean, identity is almost like the Bible which is if you look at the concept of your soul or the I, the ego, the who you are,

you look at it too closely and it starts to disappear and unravel. Like what made me want a breakfast burrito this morning? I don't know, but that was me that wants it, but who wants it? Like, what does that even mean? So you can't look too close. I wanted to find this.

Oh, here it is. I thought this was so interesting because these words, what do they even mean anymore? Authenticity and community. We love to bankrupt words by overuse. Be authentic and like find your own community. And they've been so commodified and overused that they've been drained of any kind of weight

that they carried at once. And I love this passage, so I'm gonna just read it. The words authentic and community don't mean anything on their own. Some things are meant to be byproducts, not causes or aims. We are desperate for authenticity and community and in our haste, we mistake them for goals. But these things are like friendship,

like flirting, like humor. If you talk about them, they retreat like a shadow in the light. You cannot discuss pheromones while flirting and expect your knees to keep touching under the table. Some things, some beautiful things are the smoke and not the fire. In the same way, you cannot will community into existence.

If you gather people around you and squint and smile and say, we're such a community, how amazing are we? Watch your friends run. I believe that's true. It's so good, right? Well, I mean, there was a season for a minute. I was like going to all these conferences and all these things and that was just such the buzz of like building, everything was building a community.

Every company was building a community. And I was just like, what are you talking about? What is this? And then I realized the best community I ever had was at Invisible Children. But we didn't try to build a community. We tried to end a war. Like we had a very sharp idea of what to do and how to do it, which was through creative storytelling

and inspiring the young people of the world. And that pointed desire and intention attracted types of people and like a diverse body of types of people into that mission. And then as we were all facing in the same direction, working towards something, you look to your left and your right, and you're like, wow, well, this is dope.

Like this feels really good to lean on each other, to use our skills in pursuit of the same common goal. That's community. But if you just all stand next to each other and talk to, it's like, that's fine, it's great, but it's not gonna make you feel that thing that I felt at Invisible Children. Right, the idea that community is a function

of an activity or a purpose, right? You talk about your trip down the Colorado river and how that bred community because it was an adventure, right? It was a collective that came closer together as a group of people because you were all doing one thing. It was mission-based. Yeah, and I mean, there's one of the reasons

I love Fran Lebowitz so much is because she talks about how lazy she is and that one of the jobs of a writer is just to hang out. She's like, it's part of my job to just like smoke a cigarette and hang out and talk about nothing and not do anything. Cause it's the aggregate experience of collecting things to process. And so I do think about like a lot of my best friends

that I would call my community are actually, we're just all doing different things. And then in that friendship, we don't have a common purpose. We just like hanging out and like brighten each other's days and that's fine. But I would also say that is not nearly the same thing as like a cohesive powerful community that changes your life.

One is like a restful resource and like a respite and amusing. And one is just this energetic organism. And that is just a powerful feeling. I do think that those conferences have their place though. Like I've met, like I met Tom Shadyac. Oh, me too, I love them. And like, I just, I'm so delighted that like,

I got to have an experience with him. And the other person that I met as a result of, you know, doing a lot of these kind of events that don't exist anymore because of the pandemic is I got to spend time with your friend, Ruthie, who's a big part of this book. Truly, yeah, I think her name's in there like 25 times. Right, and you say like spending time with Ruthie

is like a poem or a sermon, right? Well, so she, this is sort of what you were saying about experiencing reading a book or watching a good movie or whatever, you experience someone else's truth and life that is not your own. And that is interesting and edifying and valuable. We have enough in common.

We think we like the same music. We like road trips, we laugh, but she has such a different life than me. She is a six foot tall, drink a water woman with nerve damage in her spine that causes her to have incredibly debilitating chronic pain for her whole life. And to the point where she lived in her bed for seven years on the maximum legal dose of fentanyl every single day.

And that didn't even help. And so she weaned herself off and now just lives with it. And there is an access to truths that she has that I do not have. And through our friendship, I learned so much about so much. And through, and she says that she learns through me, through whatever my life experiences are.

And it just feels like this very healthy, educational, delightful dance that we have. Yeah, there's a weird alchemy between the two of you. And I mean, I think the greatest friendships in our lives, at least to me have that. It's that magical alchemy where the, whatever chemical they are and whatever chemical you are, when you pour those two things in the beaker, like light and smoke happens.

And it's just, that's a special combo. Whereas I have other alchemies with other friends where it's a totally different experience, but equally as powerful to me. I think we all have that. Yeah, and you talk about how you're at a point in your life now where it's not about like making new friends, but it's about really honoring

the friendships that you have and like, tending to that garden and, you know, growing old together and having your lives like be, you know, integrated to such an extent that, you know, you get the richness of life as a result of those experiences. We gotta wrap this up in a few minutes. I have so many notes that I didn't get to,

but one thing I do wanna talk to you about- I love the way we talk. Is, yeah, like where did we even go today? I don't know so you can get to, but one thing I do wanna talk to you about- I love the way we talk. Is, yeah, like where did we even go today? I don't know. But one thing I love is this idea, you talk about this in the death part, like, and I've heard you talk about this, like how we scrub and whitewash death

out of our experience. We all live in this kind of collective denial that somehow we're gonna sidestep this inevitability and how we just bury people in these boxes. And I've often thought like, I don't wanna be buried in a box. Like I wanna be buried in naturally in an organic garden. And I want like amazing plants to grow out of this.

And I want all the people that I love to sit down and have an unbelievable meal and literally take my body into their bodies. Wow, that's a dope idea. Why can't we do this, right? But you would, there is a way to have like a natural burial, right? I heard you talk about this.

I didn't know that this was a thing that you could legally do. Well, it's becoming, I think it's a movement. So there's like a friend of mine named John Christian helps run this thing called Larkspur. This is a farm outside of Nashville that this woman, I think bequeathed to this organization that does natural burial.

And you go and you, I think you can like pick out where you wanna be buried. And it's basically just a gorgeous farm with hiking trails and wild flowers and a creek and a barn and trails through it. And then they just take your body and put you in the dirt. And then you just decompose. And it's like amazing.

And to me, I'm like, that's exactly what I want. And I think a lot of environmentally conscious people, which hopefully that number is growing every day, they realized, okay, obviously a normal graveyard and a box and all that is very wasteful. Cremation is actually a huge carbon footprint. It takes a lot of energy to turn someone into an ashtray, like a lot.

And so that's not actually very helpful either, but just putting your body in the dirt and feeding the soil and letting your nutrients disseminate into the ground is beautiful and fantastic. And I wanna feed a tree and an earthworm in the grass. I think that's so cool. And I, so like, let me do that. And so this place called Larkspur is amazing.

And I think I'm very hopeful that it becomes the norm. And I think it will even like baby boomers, both of my parents are like not interested in. In the typical traditional burial. No, I wanna be cremated. Yeah, wow. Well, let's close this down. I mean, what do you, like, what is your,

when you think about like streams of the ocean, I suspect that as a writer, you want the reader to have their own experience and you don't wanna taint or color that in any way. But if there is kind of an aspiration for what you want the reader to extract or get out of the experience of reading this book, can you put words to that?

Absolutely, so to bring it back to my girlfriend, out of the experience of reading this book. Can you put words to that? Absolutely. So to bring it back to my girlfriend, Fran Lebowitz said in an interview this past summer, she was talking about how she's an excellent reader and she reads more books than anybody and has more books than anybody. And she said- That's why she can't move out of her apartment.

Exactly, it's too many. She said that she doesn't read for plot or story. She doesn't care. Which made me howl laughing. And she goes, I read for language. I read sentence by sentence. And I love the flow of language. And I like the way that it lands on my mind.

I don't actually care if Sally slept with Jessica and then, oh no, there's a note under the, like who cares what happens? I wanna know how this language flows into my mind, which to me is also how I read. Like the most extravagant plot, I almost don't notice it. It's that if within this paragraph, did you make me feel some type of way

or did I learn something with each bite? It's almost like I wanna read and I wanna write the way that I eat, which is I wanna enjoy the whole process of eating, not just being nutritious and having a full stomach. I want everything that I experienced with my mouth, each bite tastes good. And so what I hoped for this book was to convey

what I love about reading, which is I'm going to pour my brain onto paper with the things that when I was working out ideas that were confusing to me, once I got them in these words, I felt like I got to exhale. And I felt that sense of revelation and joy that comes with understanding something a little better.

And that's my favorite thing to do when I read. And so my hope is the way that I felt writing this book and the way that I feel when I read books that I love is what someone reading it would feel. Wow, beautifully put. Well, that was my experience reading it. So, yeah, I've got like so much love for you as a person, as an artist, as a creative individual,

you're a gift to the world. This book is really, it's special, man. So thank you for writing it. And I can't wait to see what you write next. Are you well into the next thing? No, I'm now, I can't really work on a book until I get over the hump of a book's release because I need to like talk about it and think about it.

I can't be onto the next, but now I'm really processing what that's gonna be. And I really think it might involve a lot of Barb, which I hope so. Good, good, good. Well, it's gotta be. And I really think it might involve a lot of Barb, which. Yeah, oh, good. I hope so. Good, good, good. Well, it's gotta be challenging to try to release a book in the pandemic, you know, when you can. And as this is always hilarious to me,

like your couch as a travel writer, like I don't see you as a travel writer. I don't know why that's in your. Well, because my first book was a travel thing and I'd written for some magazines, but early on in my career I was trying to figure out what am I? And so it's like, sometimes you kind of have to either

call it forward or look back at a body of work and say, Oh, that's what you are. Like, are you an essayist? Are you a memoirist? Who knows? I just write things down. Right, I think you've transcended travel writer though. Cool.

And also I wanted to point out that, you know, Ruthie's book came out, it was the beginning of the pandemic, poor woman. Oh my God. At the beginning when nobody knew what was going on. And she's such an engaged person. Wrote this amazing book.

Yeah. And I just, I didn't know, like I wanted to have her on the podcast, but I wanted to do it in person, but it wasn't safe. And then like that moment passed, but like, I really wanna have Ruthie come on and share her story. I think it's really powerful. She would love that.

It would be great. And her book is fantastic and profound. Cool. So like Streams of the Ocean, you can find it at fine booksellers everywhere. I suspect Jed would like you to purchase it at an independent bookseller if possible. Definitely check him out on Instagram

at Jedediah Jenkins and fall in love with his writing like I have and come back and talk to me whenever you want. It is my favorite thing. I could literally, if this podcast was like nine hours long, I would just need like throat coat tea and we just go all nighters.

Right. I have no doubt that you would never run out of things to talk about. All right. Love you. You're the best. Love you too. Peace. Thanks for listening, everybody.

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