The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 306: Celeste Headlee Can't Say A**hole on NPR

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

The radio host, journalist, and best-selling author shares insights from her viral TEDx talk, 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation, and discusses neuroscience & FMRIs, empathy & compassion, Homo sapiens & Neanderthals, food pantries & squirrel treeing. Oh yeah, and how to tell when you might be the A-hole, which of course is a word Celeste cannot say on NPR.

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This one is called Celeste Headley. Can't say asshole on NPR. I hope she doesn't mind, Chuck. I hope she doesn't either. I believe it was she who said, I can't say asshole on NPR. So she was kind of enjoying herself saying it with us. I laughed, you laughed, she laughed. And of course, it's true.

You can't say that word on NPR. But apparently you can say it here on the way I heard it. Here we are. Celeste Headley is somebody who I've wanted to meet and talk to now for nearly a year. I stumbled across a TED talk that you'll hear me recommend repeatedly over the course of our conversation. And I'm going to recommend it right now as well. This is a woman who's really on a mission to help people have better conversations, to help people who might disagree about any number of things,

find a common ground, and enjoy each other. company. It just seemed to me then, as it seems to me today, that there's never been a more important time to figure that out. So I invited her on just to see where the conversation went. Obviously, we talked about a lot of the stuff I wanted to discuss, but what I loved about this, Chuck, is that we actually had a conversation in the course of talking about how to have a conversation that was not the conversation I thought we were going to have. Correct. It went a lot of different places. It was a lot of fun. I think you definitely want to stick around for the end of this conversation because it gets pretty sporty and fun.

It gets downright unusual, but she's really smart this woman. She's been with NPR now for a couple of decades. She's done lots of different shows with them. She has three books that are out there right now. They're all terrific. The most recent is called Do Nothing, which I'm desperate to try. What are the titles of the other than Shuck? So I get them right? We Need to Talk. which is how to have conversations that matter, do nothing, how to break away from overworking, overdoing, and underliving. And speaking of race,

why everyone needs to talk about racism and how to do it. So she doesn't shy away from the big issues, but she's just really warm and fun and human, and she has a dog that can climb a tree, and she has a food pantry she put on her front porch, which you will experience momentarily. That's right. And she's busy, and she cares an awful lot about the people that she interviews.

She's awfully good at this kind of thing. She's a better interviewer than I am and probably a better guest as well, which is good news for you because we speak for approximately seven hours. I'm kidding, of course. It's a perfectly normal conversation over a perfectly rational period of time with some wonderful sponsors, one of which I'd like to introduce to you momentarily, but not until I tell you once again. It's episode 306.

Celeste Headley, can't say asshole on NPR. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Rowe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work. Carl Noble did for a living.

Trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org.

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Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Good God, what an absolute pleasure. To actually lay eyes on you, Celeste Hadley, an honor. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. You first tripped across my, what, my conscious? I can't even say consciousness, because I'm not sure I was totally conscious.

I was on a vacation. I was in a recumbent position going down the TED Talk rabbit hole that I know you know, stumbled across your little, I'm going to call it a manifesto, even though it was only 12 minutes. And I immediately called Chuck and I said, look, I don't know this woman, but I just heard more truth in 12 minutes than I've heard in a very, very long time. And so what I'd like to do for the next hour, obviously, is have a conversation. But just so you know, I'll be sort of retrenching into my PSA state of mind because what I think, think you have to offer is a guidebook and a survival guide of sorts, really, for our times

in the way of making conversations better. So no pressure, but we're all counting on you to save the world, Celeste Headley. We're all counting on you. It sounds like that line from airplane. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. You're welcome. Yeah. A manifesto can be short, by the way. I mean, a manifest doesn't have to be 99 pages of Screed, does it? I mean, aside from you, when's the last manifesto you read that came in an easily digestible format? It's a great question. I'm trying to think of maybe some of the essays written, but they were easily 100 years old. It's true. The modern manifesto is too long.

And it's grand. Maybe if you write a manifesto, you're not open to editing. Perhaps. Perhaps. I mean, obviously, you're a fan of the language, and it's fun. Isn't it? You call a thing an essay, and that sets a certain expectation. Call it a manifesto. And, you know, maybe I just overreached with that. Call it some random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon and nobody takes you seriously. So. It's true. I know. Yeah. Were you about to say Carl Marks? I was. I was. What? She made the case sound, and I said manifesto, and I thought she was going to know, yeah, Carl Mark sat down on a Sunday afternoon. It was like, oh, I have some thoughts. Well, you know what I think of when I hear the manifesto, the word manifesto, I think of someone with three names who, you know, is an assassin of some sort, you know, who's written some manifesto before they went off and did something horrible. Ted Kaczynski. Yeah.

Right. Well, yeah, we have all those manifestos from a lot of horrible races, too, right? For some reason, racists feel the need to defend themselves at length. I was not going to say Karl Marx, by the way, but it's interesting that your mind went there. Carl Reiner. Carl Reiner, there you go. All right, which is all a very long way of saying, your TED Talk is not a manifesto. But it is, in fact, chock full of useful information. And I had heard you on NPR, but I hadn't placed you with the person I saw

giving the TED Talk until later. And that's when I reached out to Chuck, and I said, I think this person needs to be heard far and wide. And even though we don't really go far and wide, We have literally dozens of viewers, Celeste, and I would hope that they'll benefit hugely from your thoughts. Can we just start then with, I'm just going to randomly pull something out of the air, but I think I heard you say a debate is not a conversation. And that's what got my attention the first time, because it seems like everybody's debating these days. Yeah, isn't that interesting?

And I'm not entirely sure how we got here, except that people's success in life, in many cases, whether you're an influence or a pundit, sometimes hinges on how much of a ripple you can make in the social waters. And so everybody wants to be a champion debater on Twitter, which is ridiculous. But, you know, this idea that a debate is a good conversation, I don't even know how people make that connection. I mean, do they enjoy listening to the debates that happen when they're watching, like, cable news? very much doubt it. The surveys show that they aren't. But a debate is exactly what we think of

when we think debate. You know, one person takes one side, the other person takes the other side, and they have all their facts and figures laid out, and they're presenting their case. And it's much closer to what an attorney does in a courtroom than an actual conversation. You're just making a case, which of course means that you already know everything you're going to say. There's no spontaneity in a debate? Well, the debate notion presupposes the idea that I'm going to try and change your mind. And if I show up with either the hope or the dream or the expectation or the assumption that I might be capable of doing that, then I guess I'm not really in a conversation. I'm in a contest. And right, somebody's going to listen and somebody's going to judge and then we're going to

decide who won because debates have winners and losers and good conversations don't. Yeah. This idea that you can win a conversation is, of course, antithetical to the idea of conversation. But the other thing about, I mean, I don't mean to jump to neuroscience this early on in the conversation. So much for foreplay. I know. Sorry. I know. Sorry.

Right to the main event. Sorry about that. How about it is? You know, you cannot change anybody's mind over the course of a conversation. I mean, scientists have been trying to find some evidence that that's possible. for decades now, and it's not. And, you know, now that we have more ready access to the fMRI, the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, we know why that is, right? We know what a brain looks like when it's receptive to new ideas. We know what it looks like when it's not receptive.

And when you go into a conversation prepared to tell somebody you're wrong, here's why you're wrong, and here's what you should believe instead, that to the human brain is interpreted as an attack. And literally your brain and your physiology is going to go through the exact same process as though someone just tried to punch you in the face. So of course that's not a good conversation. You're sparring with one another. And if that's what you think is good social interaction, then let me then take you to sociology, which shows that all conversations are good for you except for the ones that are hostile or competitive in tone. those are bad for you. So I understand the FMRI.

This is a thing that can essentially observe my brain waves and your brain waves. And if two of those things are hooked up contemporaneously, we can compare the brain activity in both parties who are having the conversation and then learn what exactly? Yeah. So the FMRI, actually what it does is it measures the blood. flow so it knows which part of the brain is getting more blood which tells us which part of the brain is more active right so essentially we're mapping the activity of the brain and because we have a limited but better than ever in history understanding of how the brain works um we know for example what parts of the brain get activated when there's empathy and compassion involved right it's right here um we know what part of the brain is activated when you're thinking about fear and threat it's your amygdala, your lizard brain at the top of your spine. We know what part of the brain gets activated when you're engaging in executive decision-making, critical thinking, which is right

here behind your forehead, right? So we can watch two people engaging in conversation with one another, and we can see that perhaps one of those brains is now going into fight or flight mode and is preparing to either flee, you know, flooding things into the muscles so that you can quickly get out of there or fight. We know what that looks like. And, you know, if you ever had in a performance review, I'm sure for Mike, it's been quite some time, I assume, since someone sat you down and said, let's go over your performance. This morning?

It did not go well. Nobody enjoys a performance review. Why? Because somebody is sitting down there and telling them all the things they've done crappily, how they've failed to make the mark, where they have room for improvement. And that's essentially what you're doing when you're debating somebody. Let me explain what a crappy think or you are you are, and all the ways in which you're wrong and have completely missed the mark and are clueless. And I'm doing this, of course, out of the generosity of my heart. And so you should

enjoy this and change your mind. I mean, come on. Well, it's not persuasive. And even though I know that's a debating term, I kind of feel like what was simmering under your TED talk. And a lot of the other things I've seen you do is sort of a tacit homage to that which is persuasive versus that which is not. And tell me if I'm way out on a limb here, because I don't want to drag that level of premeditated thought into a conversation. But our our willingness to be persuaded and our ability to persuade seem to be elevated nowadays. So talk about that, if you would, in terms of, you know, are you trying to help people be more persuasive or is just simply more present or is it a distinction without a difference?

I actually am trying to help people be more persuaded. I think we spend so much time worrying about whether or not we're persuading other people. We don't give any thought whatsoever to whether we are ever persuaded by anything. We spend so much time worrying about what we're going to say to somebody else. We don't spend very much time thinking about what we can learn from them. And because there is not really any possibility that what you say is going to change somebody else's mind, there is, however, a great deal of possibility that you can put yourself into what scientists call transformative listening mode and open yourself up to the possibility of being transformed by what you hear. And that's entirely within your control. Now, that makes sense,

but you kind of glossed over the part where nobody is ever going to change their mind as a result of somebody wanting their mind to change. Is it, I mean, do we know that to be true or is it anecdotal in your experience? We pretty much know it to be true. I mean, there's exceptions to everything, but it's extraordinarily rare that over the course of a conversation, someone's going to have their mind changed.

You know, the last book, my most recent book, speaking of race, one of the things that I did was do all these case studies of extremists whose mind had been changed. Just to see how, how? How did that happen? and every single one of them happened over a period of years. And they were all a result of self-persuasion,

intrinsic motivation, not external. Okay, this has always interested me, Celeste. I believe it's true. I think it's a frog in the boiling water, in the best way as well. Think this all takes time. But isn't it funny how many books are on the shelves these days that really focus on that moment, that peripity, right?

that parapetia where the author looks back and says, ah, and I'll never forget the moment where the stars aligned, right? And suddenly I was blind, but now I see, you know, and I'm on the road to Sarsis, right? Right. I mean, can both of those things be true? Yes, you can have that moment of Paul on the road to Damascus of insight. You can have a flash of insight.

What generally happens is, okay, so there's two situations I'm going to talk about here. Let's talk about the first one in terms of that flash of insight. Our brains are on all the time, taking in all this information, and they take that information back to our research librarians in our gray matter, and they sit there and file stuff away, and every so often they'll bring out the information we've learned and say, hey, how about this? Is this good context? what about this? Is this connected? And over time, as our subconscious works on the information

that we get, we can make these unexpected connections that to us feel like, oh my gosh, I just had an epiphany. But what's really happening is that this has been work that's been going on in the back of your mind for a very long time. That's the most common scenario. However, there is one thing that has been shown to be effective at actually reaching other people. people. And that is when you can make an empathic connection with another person. So I'm going to steer us back to the neuroscience again. I apologize in advance from her my wonkiness. You love that neuroscience, don't you? So there's this great work going on that started at Princeton into a phenomenon called neural coupling. And essentially, they would bring someone in and they would put them in an

FMRI and they would record them telling a personal story. It's a family show, by the way, Celeste, before we get too deep into the coupling. Okay? So the very first experiment was a young woman who was telling the story of her truly tragic and awful senior high school prom. Then they brought in a whole bunch of other people, hooked them into an FMRI and had them listen to her telling her story. And here's the thing.

When these people began to really hook in and actively listen to her to her telling this story. They found something they did not expect, which was that the brainwaves of both the speaker and the listener began to move in exact sync. And in some cases, the sink was so exact that the listener's brain would anticipate changes in the speaker's brain by a fraction of a second. I mean, that's the kind of empathic bond you can create using the very analog technology of your voice and your ears. I mean, this is what we try to replace with emojis and Slack messages. There is a kind of really deep interconnected communication that a human being is capable of that does have the power to open another person's mind. But it's not built on facts and

figures. It's not built on how well you argue your case. It's built on the empathic connection that you make with another human being. So then how do you do it? I hate to sound like a broken record here, but especially on a podcast, but you have to listen. I mean, you'll notice that what I talked about there was that this all began when people began to really actively listen to her and focus in on what she was saying. There is a power to listening. We know that, for example, the less you talk in a conversation, the more you enjoy a conversation. It's a direct proportion.

We know that listening lowers the level of cortisol in your bloodstream, the stress hormone. It lowers your heart rate. It relaxes you. It relaxes your muscles. It's good for you. It doses you with oxytocin and serotonin, the neurotransmitters that make you feel good and make you more generous, more compassionate of a person. It's as close as we get scientifically to magic. It's magic.

Well, okay. Then let's take the illusion to the next. Right? It's not just so people understand listening is not not talking. It's not simply being in the room and not making any sounds. Listening is exhausting actually. Yeah, it is. Right? But like exercise, it's also very satisfying when you get to the end of the set. So I'm not sure what the clinical term is active listening, engaged listening, immersed listening, something like that. but it's not nearly as passive, I think, as a lot of people assume it to be. That's correct. A lot of people assume when they talk about listening, they're talking about hearing, which is physiological. Listening is cognitive. Wow.

I'm just thinking about hearing aids versus listening aids. Come up with a listening aid. We'll make a fortune. I'll take one of those. Yeah, exactly. And think about how much time we spend training people. in public speaking. And we spend no time training them in how to listen,

which is actually the harder of the two. Do do do do do do do do do do. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page

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Pure talk. One of the things I took away from your TED Talk, which by the way, congratulations, it's almost up to 30 million views. I mean, did you have any idea when you were doing that, the degree to which the needle could move as a result of being on that stage? No, I didn't think anyone would be interested in that. I mean, you talk about conversation, people tune out. If I had known I would have done my hair and put on makeup. It's so good, Celeste. It's so good. But the compliment that I meant to pay you was that I did one of those like 10 years ago back in 2008. I was unprepared. I didn't even know what I was getting into. I understand that setting and how intense and interesting it can be.

but they cut away from you a lot to the audience, which is something you don't see in most TED talks. And those people were listening. They were listening. They were like, if they had room, they'd have been on the edge of their seat. And so I just thought it was important, whoever the director was that day,

to make the point. And it certainly speaks well of you because you were not just, you give them 10 basic rules. You tell them what you're going to do, then you do it, and they were with you every step of the way. And then you went off the stage. You're the only person I've ever seen to do a TED talk in less than the allocated 20 minutes.

I think it's down to 18 now. I think you did it in like 12 minutes. And your last point was be brief. So it just killed me. It was just terrific to hear somebody say, be brief and only take two words to do it. Yeah. I mean, part of that comes from being on the radio, right? I know, you know, if you have to talk about what's happening in the Ukraine war and you've got 30 seconds, then you learn how to be brief.

But, you know, the other thing is that being on the radio has taught me anything. It's that even when you're the only one talking, you still have to allow the audience to be engaged by allowing them to respond, right? You know, in that TED Talk, I tried to include as many questions and touchstones as possible so they could feel like they were involved in making that speech with me. Yeah. But my point, back to that naughty thing you were doing with the cognitive coupling, right? Right. We see that in the talk because we're given the point of view of the audience. and it just reminded me of something,

I forget who told it to me, but I just couldn't agree more. The sensation of telling somebody a story or trying to share something and seeing them nod their head and maybe even saying, do you understand what I'm trying to say, and them saying, yes, I do,

and you actually believing it, right? That is about a simple but a profound thing that two people can do. And if the brain waves, that you're talking about somehow sinking up are just the neurological manifestation of a person nodding their head because they're genuinely engaged and genuinely listening, then I get it. I could be a neuroscientist. You could be.

You know, we have these mirror neurons in our brains. And what we've, scientists have found out is that even a baby, if a baby sees someone scald their hand on the stove, for example, the baby's mirror neurons will have have many of the same reactions as though they themselves were scolded. We are evolutionarily designed to feel for and with one another. I mean, there's limits to empathy as there is with anything at all. But empathy is part of our survival skills. I mean, you know, you talk to business people about empathy and they're like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, this is lovely. Let's get back to a stock market. But people really underestimate the fact that human beings, Homo sapiens at least really should not have been the human species to survive. Like if you look at Neanderthal, we give Neanderthal a bad name.

They were impressive. They were incredibly flexible, agile, strong, much more resilient than We are. They had bigger brains than they did. Neanderthal practiced a rudimentary form of dentistry. So how did Homo sapiens as fragile as we are?

You changed the temperature in your heating in your HVAC system and people will notice. Like, we're fragile. How did we survive? We survived because we have this ability to collaborate and communicate on a level not seen by any other species as far as we know. It means if you are messing with one human being, you are almost always messing with more. It means there's only two species that can take down a bison and they are both pack species and they are us and wolves. Because we know how to collaborate. And it's partly because of that empathic connection we could make with one another that says, I feel with you and I don't want that to happen to you because I wouldn't want it

to happen to me. Why then do you reckon, as I suppose you do, that empathy is in such short supply these days? What happened? In decline. So the big decline in empathy, as far as they've measured it, began in the early 2000s, early 2000. Does anyone remember what happened around their early 2000s? Couple things happened, yeah. Yeah. You know, we're using, we're becoming addicted to technology like smartphone, which is awesome, but it's also pretty anti-human.

And we're, for some reason, we are continually inventing communication tools when the last thing Homo sapiens needs is a better way to communicate. we have the most sophisticated communication technology inside our bodies. So there's plenty of other things we should be innovating. Communication is not one of them. You know, I asked one scientist if at some point even written communication would equal verbal communication in terms of its effectiveness. And she said it's possible in 5 to 10,000 years.

So there's all this research showing us that when you remove the voice from our communication, it tends to dehumanize us. So we are using all these different methods of communication that are less human and encourage us to dehumanize one another. So there's a quote from Huxley, I think, Brave New World, right, when he's talking about effectiveness versus efficiency. And he says the greatest threat to freedom is total anarchy. but the second greatest threat is total efficiency.

And I wonder if somehow empathy is more aligned with being effective, whereas automation and technology and AI, I mean, talk about, I mean, that's got to be kind of chilling, right? The whole voice being replaced with an artificial voice might be more effective. I'm sorry, it might be more efficient, but I don't know that it's more effective. We're certainly more human. Yeah, you know, the voice, we haven't even plumbed the depths of the power of the human voice. We really haven't. You know, they have technology in Japan that can, they can install it inside a cockpit and it can detect fatigue in a pilot's voice at least 30 to 60 minutes before he begins, he or she begins to feel any sign of fatigue.

You're kidding. No. That's amazing. Isn't it? Well, I mean, think about it. You call up a friend on the phone and they say hello and you say, what's wrong? I mean, think how quickly you have just absorbed some incredibly sophisticated information. And that's empathy.

And that is empathy. It is the empathic connection that we can make with another human being when we use, again, this analog technology here. It's so small. Have you ever seen a larynx? And these things. Your ears. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I have seen a larynx. I've also seen the little sphincter right under it, which is uncommonly familiar. I mean, I guess you've seen one sphincter, you've seen them all. I don't know that that's true, but let's assume it is for a second. Well, I mean, if you break the magic, you mentioned magic before. Like the closest thing we have to magic is watching these two. brains and these two different bodies sink up. Mind meld. Yeah, right. And while looking at a larynx and a sphincter and vocal cords are interesting from just a basic curious anatomical point of view,

there's no magic in them, right? Like the magic is the fact that you see the face in front of these things and the skin that's around them. And sometimes I just wonder when we, when we crack the thing open and start looking at its various component parts real close, you know, I think that's why a lot of very smart people don't go into the medical profession, because there's just something, something about that that is both totally human and critically important, but also unreal, you know, looking at these little tiny parts. Is that your, you got to, son over there or a dog or a cat what do you got what behind me yeah i thought i saw you looking around it looked like something oh there's somebody coming to my door i built a little food free food pantry on

my property and i think he's trying to tell me that it's empty so there's somebody out you need to go get him some food or no it's okay we can wait do we are three extraordinary we're very empathetic people we're very empathic we're very on your front porch looking for food i'm perfectly if you don't mind i'm going to go get in some food. Please. Please. You're kidding me. So the first time this has happened in the history of the way I heard it, we're in the

middle of a conversation talking about the importance of empathy and listening. And Celeste has noticed a person on her front porch who's come to see if there's anything in the food pantry and it's empty, so she's remedying the situation. Chuck, this is, I mean, you can't script this sort of thing. You know, I almost felt like it was sort of a, like you were slipping into a golf announcer voice there that, you know, as you were describing what's going on, Celeste has disappeared. It's my NPR voice.

Oh, right. I'll tell you, if they ever play golf on NPR, it would just be like, I mean, there's a match waiting to happen. Yeah. Right? No, I should ask her about that. The whole business with, remember Alec Baldwin and Molly Shannon and that, the whole skit on Saturday Night Live? And they were doing about the, oh, what's his name, Shweddy? Oh, the Shetty balls, yeah.

Shwety balls, right. You're going to like my Shetty balls. They're very shuddy. I wonder if Celeste has shwety balls in her house and if she's giving them to this guy now. Do not. I can't help but wonder it now that you've mentioned it. It's all I can think of now. It was the furthest thing from my mind until you set it out loud.

I'm feeling very empathetic at the moment. I am too. Hey, thanks everybody for sticking with us during this conversation. Oh, I can call all this out. Oh, no, no, no. We're not going to take all this. Are you kidding me? This is podcast gold right here.

Incredible. I've heard someone say that you can't feel experienced true empathy unless you've experienced the thing that the person you're empathizing with experiences. So I'd be curious as to the difference between the two, sort of, because, like, I don't think a man can empathize with a woman who is giving birth. Sorry about that. No, that's okay. No worries.

We were having our own talk about empathy after we did our NPR slash golf voices. So it's kind of fun. I would like to hear the NPR voices. Well, we were channeling that skit on Saturday Night Live when Alec Baldwin came in to discuss his sweaty balls. Shreddy balls, yes. Right. But you guys, Mike Rowe is not a very NPR name, is it? You'd have to come up with something that's closer to like Sylvia Pogholi.

Or Mandalay del Barco. Yeah. Miguel. Miguel Rowy. Now, you're right, it doesn't work. It doesn't come off the tongue. So mission accomplished? Did we get him some grub?

Would you do? Yes. He came by the other, like a week ago. He just lost his job. So are you in Georgia? No, I'm just outside D.C. But you do the NPR show is a Georgia production or am I just conflating things? I stopped doing.

No, it's okay. I was doing that up until 2018 and then I moved back to D.C. And now I just host NPR shows from my basement. And there, gosh, I hope I'm not outing you in some crazy way, but there's a food pantry on your front porch people should know about. It's actually. If you're in the D.C. area and a bit peckish, you may want to stop by Celeste Tedley's house. She makes a heck of a pie. Next to the sidewalk to give people privacy.

There's a solar light in there if they want to come at night. You know, it's just during the pandemic, there's a Mercado up the street. And this Mercado at one point started off. offering a bag of free groceries and the line was like down two blocks and me and my neighbors were like you know you should never be hungry right you should yeah so um the three of us together got together and installed a we just i bought a one of those free libraries that they make the little free libraries and i just turned it into a pantry instead so you're a better person than i am and i did a show for years called Returning the Favor on Facebook, where I went in search of better people than me.

And I found a lot of them. And one of them, we went out of production for a while, but when we came back during the lockdowns, it was you, basically. This couple, they just started putting food out, right? They opened their garage, and they started to do it twice a week. And then they started doing it every day. And we got wind of it, and we wound up giving them a big mobile, basically a mobile, home they could drive around in with their food and it just became a thing. But I'm just always taken with, you know, the most empathetic, I mean, since we're on the topic, is it easier to look after your neighbors who are hungry if you've been hungry yourself? Is that what empathy is? Or can you have never experienced that kind of want and still have that same level of do-goodery or desire

to help? Yes, I think you can. I mean, I have been busted, busted, broke myself. But our minds are really responsive to visualization. If I were to walk you through a visualization and tell you to close your eyes and you really engaged with it, your body might experience made of the same things that you would if it was really happening to you. If you spend your time, if that's important enough to you, just really think about, I wonder what that's like. Then yes, you absolutely can feel that level of not just empathy, but compassion, right? Compassion is almost the more important. Well, it starts with empathy, and then it can move to compassion.

And compassion is the one that doesn't care if it likes you or not. It's there to help, right? Empathy, I hope, would transition into compassion, which is the one that's like, what can I do? Where does sympathy fit in? Sympathy is like, well, I feel for you. That's awful that's happening to you. No emotional connection.

Well, it can be emotional. You can feel that connection, but you're still keeping a distance. Like you don't feel a need to help or take any action. Compassion always involves action. Compassion is the one that says, what can I do to fix this? So who was more compassionate in this last five minutes? Was it you for going out and giving food to a person who knocked? Or was it me for saying, hey, don't ignore that person knocking on your door. It's just a podcast for crying out loud. Can you throw me a bone here, Celeste? It might have been you. I was ready to, like, continue talking. Yeah. Come back later, pal. I'm busy.

Yeah. You know who I am? Do you have any idea who I'm talking to? Here. You've thrown some jerky. You've probably heard of Mike Roe. Yeah, right, exactly. D-Dum.

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humor. Because I think if the overall goal is to have a better conversation, and if part of the strategy to do that is to be more empathetic and listen twice as much as we talk and so forth, your TED Talk made me laugh out loud three times and I never laugh out loud when I'm alone, right? Because I just, it just seems odd. But you elicited chuckles. Does humor matter more than ever? So humor is great if you're a funny person.

So like I train people in how to have conversations about diversity and inclusion. You know, I have a whole nonprofit that does D-EIB work. And this is one of the things I sell that. time is like if you're funny absolutely use humor and if you're not funny please don't try to use humor like and it can't be you asking yourself am i funny it has to be have other people said to you you're funny right because if they haven't you're probably not funny chances are you're not funny yeah it's the whole foxworthy you might be a redneck if right right you might not be funny if

if no one ever laughs at anything you say. Right. Or if the laugh is like, huh, uh-huh. Oh, yeah. They're just being kind to you.

When people try to be funny, I mean, you've heard that. I mean, we've all heard, like, those speeches from CEOs where they open up

with their great joke, and it's just, it's so painful. Yeah. There's a moment in your talk, and surely you must have thought this through. Some of it, I'm guessing,

didn't, but most of it you must have, where you talk about the importance of going with the flow, right, and not always knowing what you're going to say next and having the courage to start a sentence that you might not have an ending already worked out too, and referring to notes, I think it was. And when you began to talk about the kiss of death with referring to notes, you were reading off a note card. I thought that was terribly clever. Using irony to increase the empathy. This is something I always joked with Chuck about because he hates the fact that I'm not prepared, but these are the questions I want to ask you, right? Zero.

Meanwhile, he's got all this stuff. Yes. Oh, I've got emails. Chuck has sent me. But isn't it, Celeste, kind of like the biggest enemy of a good plan is a perfect plan? And the biggest enemy of an actual conversation is the expectation or the rigor or the production that you've already put into it. I wonder how many times you've interviewed thousands of people. What are your favorite interviews and how close do they go the way you thought they might?

So when I'm doing a script, I will have like a piece of paper that has bullet points of like interesting facts or notes on that. But I essentially, if a producer's writing a script for me, I say, okay, fine, put the first question in there. I might change it, but put the first question in and then let's agree on where we're going. like where we want it to end and leave everything else in the middle. Because I mean, you know, I've heard so many interviews where, in fact, I'll give you a good example. I heard an interview where a local NPR host was interviewing an artist who was coming for a music festival. And the host said, you know, how did you get involved in music? And the guy says, well, you know, blah, blah, blah.

I had such a tragic and abusive household that, you know, I ended up spending a lot of time on my own. And then the host says, and when is your next album? coming out. And I was like, well, no empathy there. Well, he was just reading, you know, he was just going down the list of questions, right? I was like, dude, abuse him. Feel good hit of the summer. Yeah.

And so I learned that lesson early on is that I have no idea where an interview is going to go. If I, you know, the best play plans of mice and men often go agly. If you try to make a plan, as you say, you're going to murder the, great in search of the perfect. And the best interviewees are the ones who don't have come prepared knowing what they're going to say. That's what makes celebrities, no offense, such horrible interviews in most cases. Because... Who's worse? A celebrity or a pundit?

Oh, the pundit. The politician is even worse. But of the three, the worst is the politician than the pundit than the celebrity. But they, you know, it's not, I'm not coming down on them. And they've been ask those questions so many times. And they have been drilled by the PR marketing department for whatever project they're working on. And they're like, okay, make sure you say this and use this adjective and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just makes it very, and not surprisingly, that I don't want to be revealing the tragic and abusive childhood they grew up in. You know, they don't want to be revealing it. And I get that. Well, they don't want to reveal. I mean,

like, I can't speak for anybody but me, and I can barely do that. But I can tell you, they don't want to have that conversation in 10 or 15 minutes. They don't want to have it in a series of sound bites. They don't want to have it with splashy graphics, dramatic music, and then some voice of God saying, stay tuned, right? This whole notion of the sound bite seems to be the enemy of conversation. And I did everything wrong on social. I still do. My first Facebook post was 4,000 words. Everybody said, no one's going to listen. No one's going to read that. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan is doing four shows a week, three hours a piece, I kind of think maybe people are starved, and maybe some celebrities would give a better conversation if they thought they had the

time to do it, and if they trusted the people and the platform that they found themselves pontificating on. Okay, so I'm going to give a shameless plug here and say, you're preaching to the choir because I work for NPR. And Terry Gross on fresh air will sometimes have a very well-known. person come on and be extremely honest and forthcoming because she gives them an hour and she really listens to them. So yeah, you're preaching to the choir. I work for an outlet that doesn't have any ads. We don't have to break for an ad. We don't have to have the Chiron down at the bottom telling you that Mitch McConnell ate a raw muscle or whatever the Chiron is. And tripped on the way out. Exactly.

And tripped on the way out. I'm sorry. You know, the title is. for these episodes almost always come from the guest and something they just say. And could you just repeat that? What did she say, Chuck? Mitch McConnell ate a raw muscle. And tripped on the way out. Please don't make that my headline.

Just the title, Celeste, just the title, not the headline. Okay. Choir, you've said preach to the choir twice. That's musical. That's my cue to ask you about music. obviously you're awfully facile with the language but for me math and music are the languages that make the most sense music more than math to me I spent seven years in the Baltimore opera impersonating a singer carrying a spear mostly but I got some little parts here and you're a baritone uh-huh a bass baritone if you must know yes or a as my friend Michael gallert said a a martan have you heard of the martan

Yeah, you have the basso Profundo. Whatever it is. The role of music in your life, I'd like to hear about it, but I'd also like to hear about, is there music in good conversation? And if you're not a musical person, can you somehow think in terms of music when you talk? I think so. You quoted Alice Huxley earlier,

and I will remind you, he also said that after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexperienced, expressible as music. I may have screwed up that quote. But I think that one of the things that helped me out when it came to having good conversations and being a good interviewer was that a musician is one of the few professions that will train you how to listen, that very intentionally and carefully trains you how to listen. And it requires training to become a better listener. And so I think that good conversation has music to it and that it has a landscape. It has highs and lows.

It has lows. It sometimes has silences. And a musician is also often comfortable with silence in a way that many Americans in particular are not. So I also feel like when I talk about the landscapes, I think that I think I expect the dynamic change, I guess, of a conversation. I don't expect someone to be on 10 all the time. I expect some of it to just be boring. It's funny because people will apologize when they're saying something that's boring

and I'm like, how are you going to talk for 20 minutes without being boring at something? Like, of course you're going to say something about your dog. Although that's not really boring. But you know what I mean. Or your sourdough starter or whatever it may be. Like I think that music has a variety in it

that so does conversation. Music has nuance. The best music has nuance. It has dynamic contrast. and it has silence. And it also requires you to really remain engaged it all the time. What is your favorite kind of music today?

What do you listen to primarily? Well-written music. Honestly, there's very few types of music I won't listen to other than like acid jazz or heavy metal. Like the ones that are really going to hurt my ears, I don't like a lot of modern country, the commercialized country, but I like the drive-by truckers very, very much.

Sure. Outlaw country. Yeah. I like, you know, things bother me when they're badly written. And then I can't listen to a song anymore. So when there's like just a stupid, stupid progression of chords, I'm like, come on. Like, this is dumb. But if it's well written, I can put up with a lot. No, it's interesting, though. When you talk about music that's well written, you're referring to the instrument

as opposed to the lyrics? Both. Both. Yeah, you can't get away. That's not sure. If it's something really well-written music, I'll kind of, I'll give you a pass on some of the lyrics. But on the other hand,

a really, really clever lyric, you know, it goes a long way. Like if you think about, what was the song, I'm Too Hot. Oh, Bruno Mars, yeah. Bruno Mars. Called a police and a five. man too hot. Yeah, but then he says makes a dragon want to retire. I mean, think about that lyric.

That's how hot he is. The dragon's like, I'm done. I mean, that's a great freaking lyric. Yeah. And something like that, I can go back and return to that again and again and again. I wonder if there's some weird parallel between what's happened to music in a very general way and what's happened to conversation and why. why so much modern music sounds the same, to me anyway. And, you know, when I look at everything from autotune to just the way a song winds up getting touched and shaped and the things that happened to it before we ever get a chance to listen to it, you know, I mean, it is a language. Conversation is language. Is there something there? Or am I just out there without a mess? So allow me to maybe present an alternate view. which is that if you actually listen to the radio in 1952 or whenever,

95% of that music was crap. I mean, if you go back and listen to the songs that have not survived from earlier eras, they're horrible. They're badly written. A lot of the early Beatles was just stupid. Wait a minute. She loves you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You don't like those lyrics? With a love like that. You know, you can't be. You know, music from earlier eras were a little bit biased in our evaluation of it because the stuff that we know, the stuff that still survives is the best of that time. Right. And so right now, we're in the present where 95% of the stuff we're listening to will not last. But the stuff that does last, just like the stuff in the 70s and the 60s and earlier, is going to be great.

And later generation is going to be like, oh, man, I wish they were still making music like they did in 2023. It's just a little bit of our bias. You're not buying it. You're right. I mean, when I think of the classics from the 40s and the 50s, I don't think of crappy classics because I probably don't know them. You probably don't. Right?

Because who the heck would play them 60 years later? Have you stumbled across Rick Biato yet? No. I'm going to change your life. No, yeah. You're going to love Rick Viato. He's our age. I'm 60. I'm 50.

Yeah. All right. Good for you. Congratulations. You win. I'm 50. I'm 53. I'm a conversation. I thought we were just sharing our ages.

Everything's a competition. I'm sorry to let you know. Rick has a channel, but he also has a specific series called What Makes This Song Great? He's a producer. He's produced number one. songs. He can play any instrument. He's played in many bands. And he's one of these guys. His kid has perfect pitch. And years ago, he put his kid on YouTube demonstrating not just perfect pitch, but perfect relative pitch, right? Oh, that's much better. Oh, you just play a tonal cluster

and say, where's the F sharp? Right? And he's right there. Not only that, but he can repeat each of the notes in the cluster, a totally discord and chord that's not even a chord. It's just a mess and he'll sing every one and tell you what it is. It's crazy. That is crazy. So Rick's decision to put his kid out there to demonstrate what you earlier referred to as the closest thing we have to magic in that sort of neuroscience way. It's the same thing here. To be able to name all those chords, that's magic, right? And a lot of people saw Rick and his kid doing that. And Rick can almost do it. They've got the same kind of brain. Anyhow, he will decont. He will decontal. He will decont. construct an early Beatles song or a later one or a great one or a not so great one.

But, and what makes this song great, they're always great songs. It's the stuff we grew up with. And he'll take 40 minutes and he'll isolate the parts and he'll play the whole thing for you. And he'll just force you to listen to a thing in a different way. I think you'd really enjoy it being a musical person. But also just being a curious one, it's always interesting to learn why you like the thing that you already liked but didn't quite know. Why? Now you can articulate it. There are some songs that I would consider to be damn near perfect.

There's Sowing the Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears. There's Welcome to the Black Parade. X Factor, Lauren Hill, is pretty much a perfect song. Frankly, like maybe Redbone. Purple Rain is often thought of as being perfect. You know, there's some songs that are really close to perfect. And, you know, I can listen to those be discontinued. all the time, but frankly, I also totally enjoy imperfect, terrible songs. I mean, I get

call me maybe stuck in my head. And, you know, Taylor Swift, not a great singer, can't dance, but man, she can write a hook. She can write a hook. She can write a hook. Very hokey. Yeah. I'll tell you the one that gets me, since you mentioned the Beatles. I don't know of a better song than Eleanor Rigby. That's a pretty great song. I haven't gone through in like, analyzed it. Well, I won't analyze it. I'll leave that to Biato, but the super, super short version is

two amazing melodies. You got da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then you got da-da-da-da-da-all-the-loly people. And then just for fun, they put them together, and they sing them at the same time, and they fit hand and glove. And then just for even more fun, I guess it was George Martin says,

ah, you know, what if we put in a string quartet instead of the usual thing? And like all of a sudden all these new things happen. And what came out the other side was a kind of a kind of him. I love it because it was totally collaborative and totally unexpected. I bet you will be listening to that one, 40 years from, well. Oh, sure. I mean, it'll endure.

I want you back the Jackson Five. That's a pretty perfect song. My Girl, The Temptations. I mean, there are lots of songs that are so good. Frankly, some of them have been written recently. They're not all old stuff. It's just we're not going to be listening to the crap. We won't.

And thank God, you know, there's the giant sieve of history. Make me smile. Make me smile, Chicago. That's a pretty great song. Yeah. That's a great song. Yeah. God only knows the Beach Boys. Also good.

Also good, yeah. Perfect song. In my life, the Beatles, similarly, that one. In my life, there are places I remember. Yeah. So do you think of conversations the same way when you reflect back on the many interviews you've done and the many conversations you've had? Would you ever like rank them or have a compendium of like really great exchanges that you look back on and they just make you smile? Yes.

There are definitely interviews that I think of. I mean, there's a difference between the interviews that I think that were just I could listen to it again and again. And that usually means I was really good at drawing out the guest and really highlighting the expertise of the guest. And there's the ones that I personally love because I did a great job. I crushed it. Yeah. Yeah, I freaking crushed a difficult interview. For example, I was covering the opera Margaret Garner that Tony Morrison wrote the libretto based on Beloved. And Tony Morrison is known as an extremely difficult interview. Very difficult.

And I freaking crushed that interview. I mean absolutely. She didn't want to leave the studio. Nice. And also like John Updike, I interviewed him about one of his novels and he's also a tough interview. Not tough. And he

loved it. He told his press person he'd come back only and talk to me anytime, which from John Updike is like... That's some high cotton. Yeah. It's good. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing.

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U.S.S.S.S. USA. Yeah. So there's those that for me personally, and then there's the ones like I did an interview. I remember with Bobby McFerrin. He was actually in town, this is in New York, because they were honoring his dad, Robert McFerrin, also a baritone, who was the first black man to a star at the Met and the first one to have a leading role in any major opera in the United States. And so he was there to honor his dad. And we had this really just a lovely conversation about being. being the descendant of a famous black musician. And it was just so, you know, and it's Bobby McFerrin. He was demonstrating by like doing the percussion on his chest and singing along and stuff. And like, I mean, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. So yeah, I don't know that I rank them, but I remember him. Tell me about your granddad real quick.

So people understand exactly, you know, from when she came. Sure. He's considered to be the dean of African American composers. So the list of firsts is extremely long. the first to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, opera performed by a major company, first to have an opera televised, very, very, very long list. But he was born in 1895, obviously not a whole lot long after the Civil War ended to a mother who had been born on a slave plantation in Georgia and, you know, went on to be championed

by Leopold Stikowski and Howard Henson and Ubi Blake and W.C. Handy. So he's just a towering, towering figure in American history, not just black history. Chuck and I had a mentor of sorts growing up, a music teacher in high school named Fred King, and Fred knew Ubi Blake. And Chuck, I don't know if you knew this, but Fred arranged. Ubi Blake did a tune called Memories of You. Oh, yeah, I love that song. Waking skies at sunrise, every sunset.

to seem to be bringing me memories of you, right? So Fred was the king of the barbershoppers and a pretty great conversationalist in his own world. Like he was literally, he directed a chorus that Chuck and I sang in that won the international prize, whatever it was, the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet singing in America.

That's, I mean, talk about an insular group of incredibly passionate people who loved a very particular kind of music. music. And that was just a portal that he opened for us. And it was not just music. It was fellowship. And it was diversity, too. I just remember him talking about U.B. Blake, who I think was from Baltimore. He certainly lived there for a time. He and my grandfather were really good friends. In fact, my grandfather played Obo in the pit orchestra of Shuffle Along with Ubi Blake at the piano. And it was while grandfather's playing in Shuffle Along that Gershwin stole the melody.

for I Got Rhythm. And Ubi Blake was pissed about that for the rest of his life. Never. Wow. Like he would bring it up in interviews. Ubi could not let that go. You know, but yeah, he and my grandfather were really good friends all the way until they died. And I think Ubi died in 83, just a few years before my granddad did.

Do you think of your granddad every day? And does he inform a lot of the work that you've done? Yeah. I mean, he was my favorite person. I just loved him with all my heart. You know, there's so often when you learn about a great person and you're so disappointed because they were terrible. And he was just the nicest guy.

He was just a great grandfather. I had no idea he was famous until he passed away and people put it in the newspapers. He made the best toast ever in the mornings. And he built toys with his bare hands and little tiny train sets and gardened and took baskets of food around to all of his neighbors. He was just a really nice guy and this incredible capital G genius.

So, yeah, I think about him all the time. He's probably my biggest influence. We actually come from different places, you and me, but we do have a lot in common. My grandfather's the same person. My career is an homage to him, dirty jobs, the foundation I run. It all kind of trickled down from that. and I guess maybe I'm going to be respectfully your time,

but the grandfather thing is so important. Like empathy, they're in short supply. Like the impact of the grandfather once upon a time seemed very, very different than it does today. I think anybody who was fortunate enough to have a decent relationship with their granddad was and is truly blessed. I would agree with that. And, you know, seeing

what he went through and what he struggled through, I think is part of what has made me a compassionate person, at least set me up for it. You know what? There's also a certain amount of humility that comes from being the descendant of somebody who has been through much more tough things because whatever it was I was going through,

it wasn't as hard as having to go to Mexico in 1942 to marry your wife because she was Jewish and you're black. Like nothing that happens to me, as annoying as it is, is going to equal that. Honestly, I don't know if you find this in your own work, but that also is helpful to me when I'm interviewing people, because especially as an NPR host, I can come into the office in the morning and be like, ah, the drive was terrible, and there was so much traffic,

and my coffee mugs spilled and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the very first person I'm interviewing is, you know, a woman who worked for the CDC and is studying Ebola. And I'm like, oh, I guess. I'm the asshole. Yeah. See, that's a rule to live by. If you're not sure who the asshole in the room is, ye. It's probably you, right?

You're right. If you meet an asshole in the morning, you've met an asshole. If you meet them all day long, you're the asshole. That's right, yeah. I've heard it in threes. It's like, you know, if you meet three assholes, chances are you're the asshole. Yeah. So the story of the guy who's sitting home and he gets an invite to lunch and he says,

I'm sorry, I can't come out. He's like, why not? He goes, I've already met two assholes today. Doesn't want to take the chance. See, I don't even get to say it. Asshole in NPR or PBS. Looks like we have a new title, Chuck. I've already met two assholes today.

No, no, Celeste Headley can't say asshole in NPR. Oh, right. They're strict. Yeah. But anyhow, to go back to your point about grandfathers, I agree. There's something about the relationship with your parents is almost always going to be fraught in some way.

But the relationship with your grandfather, if you're the type of person that can accept the sort of wisdom that they have earned over their decades of life, I think that's going to stand you in good stead. Where did your granddad live in proximity to where you lived? Well, he lived in Los Angeles,

near Pico and Crenshaw, right? It was actually the first black middle class neighborhood in L.A. And my mom was in Orange County, but my dad died when I was nine months old. And so we were at grandparents' house all the time. We would drive up there most weekends. Yeah. I just asked because proximity matters, you know, a lot. It does matter. It does.

And it's so easy to overlook it. But geography, my pop lived 150 feet from us. And it was just the two families up on a hill and a little farm in Baltimore County. And so that's what I meant before when I was saying, that level of presence, to have two dads, two great dads I had, you know, and I still have one, thank God. But it's like my father would give me the hard news, the bad news, the commands, the commands, these are the things that have to be done. And I'd say, yeah, I don't want to do any of that. But then he could point to my granddad as the guy who always did it. So, right?

So there was this constant example in my life of a much older man who had done, in my estimation, a lot of good things. That's rare. And my grandfather talked a lot about his own mother. I'm actually writing a book about her now, but it led into this whole idea of like the values and the work ethic you hold yourself to. When he would talk about that, he was talking about his own mother who was, you know, like I said, born on a slave plantation, got a teaching degree at Atlanta. University not long after it opened, went to Mississippi. Her husband was murdered by the KKK, came back to the Little Rock and founded the NAACP there and helped found the National Association for College Women's Club and opened the very first library for blacks in Arkansas.

So he would point to her and say, this is your ancestor. Like, don't disappoint her. She didn't. No pressure. Right. So eat your toast. Yeah, eat your toast, damn. He eat those broccoli. Yeah, but there is that pressure, which I don't think is always a bad thing, that feeling of duty to those who went before you. I think most people see that as a burden. I don't think it's always a burden.

I think sometimes it's a gift. Oh, it's a challenge. You know, to be given a challenge that is both daunting but within your grasp, that is truly a gift. I mean, look at you. You're 53 years old. or so you say. And you've got this platform, right?

You've got a devoted audience. You're on a mission. Your books all rhyme in a very cohesive kind of way. I don't mean like the cat in the hat. You know what I mean? Yeah. You have a clear and present. Nothing wrong with Theodore Geis.

He could turn a phrase, but I think you're doing even more important work. You can have a talk or take a walk, but you can't. But on the mound, you mustn't balk. We have a responsibility. And I don't use that word a lot. But whether it's a podcast that reaches, you know, a couple million people or a radio show or a TV show or books, you know, to be able to have the conversation that you want to have. And from time to time, to be able to have it with people who you actually like and admire. is a consummation devoutly to be wished, I reckon, you know?

And I applaud you for doing that. And I just think it's so cool that in these crazy times, I can Forrest Gump my way across your 12-minute TED talk, make a call to an old high school buddy and then sit here for an hour or so and solve the problems of the world with you when you're not distracted by hungry people on your front porch. It's perfect.

You couldn't have scripted that. And if I had a plan for the conversation, that wouldn't have been in it. And we would have been poorer for it. Yeah. Right. I mean, ditto to things you just said, not to diminish them, but just because I can't say them better. And I would also say that, you know, I have people in my family who achieved things that I don't aspire to achieve. And that's not a humble brag or anything.

Literally, my grandfather's always going to be more important than I am. And honestly, I love that. I mean, I feel like it relieves pressure off of me. I'm not trying to race to be the most famous person in my family. I'm not trying to like reach some bar done so I can do what I want. Like there's a certain amount of freedom in not having to be the one. And there's also, there's amount of freedom in the fact that I don't have to bust down any doors. He and the other people like him who were the first to do all those things, that's freaking

rough. That is tough. And it's been done for me. Like somebody sacrificed so that now I can sit in my swacket and do this podcast interview from the comfort of my comfortable

home. A swacket? Yeah, it's a combination of a sweater and a jacket. Oh, I'd gone with jitter. But either way it works. Yeah. I think there's a way to reframe most of the things people complain about. to turn them into gifts and not burdens.

All right. Well, because you're too humble to say it, let me throw that back at you. Yes, you're sitting in your swacket and you're doing nice things for your neighbors and you've got a lot of opportunity. But seriously, if you pull this off and by this, I mean,

if you affirmatively change the way, people can converse. And if you affirmatively, demonstrably and somehow measurably change the discourse in our country right now. If you're able to magnify civility and lean into empathy and compassion and teach people how to do that with their larynx and their little sphincters and their vocal chords and all the other stuff we talked about, I just like to say sphincter, Chuck.

I know. I know you do. It's kind of a conversation killer, Mike. Really? I'm not going to lie. Okay. Well, you know what? So is a pantry box, all right?

but we all just, we play the cards we get. You say sphincter, the one in your throat is not the one most people think of. No. Oh, there's another one? At a glance, though, if you've ever looked at the top of the digestive track in the very end of it, they're identical. They sure are, yeah. They sure are. Surely there's some wisdom you can glean from that as we sum up this conversation.

The similarity of sphincters? Yes. Yes, that. Good God. Some of the most useful items are not pretty... Perfect. Perfect. Celeste Hadley on the similarity of sphincters.

Coming up next on a very important episode of the way I heard. Fine, but then my title for you is going to be Mike Roe really likes to say sphincter. You know what? You have me on your little program anytime. I'll be there with bells on. I do have one last question for you. Yes.

This took me aback. Going back to your 10 rules from your TED Talk. And here's the shameless plug that I promised before. Shameless plug. Folks, go listen to it. It's 12 minutes of your life. You're not only going to get a bunch from it. You're going to share it.

And you're going to thank Celeste. And then you're going to thank me, more importantly, for bringing it to your attention. But here's one thing. thing. Humility is not on this list anywhere. There's nowhere on the list. But the most important thing on the list is number nine. It's not number 10. It's not number eight. Why did you do that, Celeste? Why do you have so little regard for chronology that you would put, that you would bury the most important thing in number nine? Well, first of all, I had to end with brief, because that's the

joke, right? Be brief. Okay, and now I'm going to end. That one had to be the last one. Yes. And you can't put the most important thing at the beginning because people always remember the last thing you say. So I had to put it close to the end. I also feel like there's a certain amount of, and this may have been me overthinking it while I was writing it, but I feel as though people were assuming that at some point I was going to say, you have to listen. And so there's a little bit of even subconscious anticipation built up before I finally get there and say, of course, listen. And so, you know, is TED Talk is short. I wanted to keep it brief, as I mentioned, and so I wanted to over the course of that, build up a little bit of drama.

You did it. It wasn't a criticism. I was just curious that you would put such, such weighty import on your penultimate point. Yeah, that's why. I was just trying to build attention. And I don't know, I just didn't see any way around having number 10 B, about keeping it short. Listen to her talk, read her books. In no particular order, do nothing. And you also have taught, we need to talk about race, that thing? Speaking of race.

Speaking of race. And then we need to talk. We need to talk about speaking of race while we're doing nothing. Have you thought about putting all three of these together into a really engaging tone? No, you can't multitask, Mike. Do not multitask.

That's rule number one. That's true. It's true. Right. Yeah. He makes a good thing. So if people want to follow you, they can find you at Celesteheadly.com. Anything else you want to shout out?

I have an Instagram account where I post pictures of dogs. People love dogs. Study show. Yeah, and trees. And, uh, yeah. Dogs and trees. Is it at Celeste Headley by chance? Yeah, it's all Celeste Headley.

I'm the only one that I know of, so it works out. I actually saw a picture of a dog and a tree the other day. I have one of those dogs. A walking coonhound? Really? Yes, those dogs are incredible. You've got that dog? I have.

She's killed so many things. She's killed so many things. Sorry, new title. Celeste Headley's dog is a serial killer. You know, they go so fast that they can run up the trunk of a tree. And I saw her once, the squirrels will sometimes run up the tree trunk and stop. Yeah. And she just ran, bad choice.

And snatched it right out of the tree. Dead squirrel. It's the circle of life. You've got to put yourself in the place of a squirrel for a minute. Like you think you've got it all worked out. This can't be happening. The birds, they fly, right, the dogs they run and they bark, the people, the bipeds. I can get halfway up a trunk and I'm cool.

Nope. Nope. Nope, you're not. Squirrel. Yeah, and the worst part is I'm a Buddhist. So I'm like, oh my God. FU squirrel, I'm a Buddhist. Please stop killing things.

Celeste, Hedley's empathy stops with squirrels. Up next. No, my dog's empathy. My dog's empathy. Uh-huh. All squirrels are sacred. Got a soft spot for hungry people, but if you're a squirrel, boom!

F you squirrel! F you squirrel! Nam ya ho ringeke, kill. Damn it. All right. Well, look, I don't want to overstate it, but that was a fine conversation, Celeste. How did I do? Be honest, rank me as a...

Yeah, okay. Surprisingly good. I guess that a lot. Well, no, it's that normally when I go into a podcast with a known name, it's all about them. So I'm surprised. He cleaned it up for you. I tried to be mindful. But look, in the remaining time, I would like to share with you a couple of, hey, did you see Miami?

Can you see my name? Say goodbye, Mike. Say goodbye. No, no, no. I don't want to make it all about me, but I've got this amazing foundation. and these awards are just stacking up like cordwood, Celesto. Oh, God. It's such an embarrassment.

You've been very generous with your time. Thank you for doing what you're doing. Please keep doing it. Your books are amazing. You're a delight. Keep singing. If you do keep the thing about the pantry, I have a go-fund me for our neighborhood pantry.

Oh, you hit that. Are you kidding? People empty it like almost every day. So let me get you the link because I think it's like pinned at my Twitter thing. Let me look and find it here. It's probably right next to a picture of a dog eating a squirrel alive halfway up a tree. It might be.

I mean, it could be that, yeah. My dog has, she snatched two birds out of the air as they flew by. Wow. Do me a favor. If you put a dead squirrel and a couple of dead birds in that pantry box, will you post that on Instagram? That's not happening. Yes. If I do that, I will post it on Instagram.

There's your out. So you seriously do. don't have the website for your GoFundMe? I do. I just found it. Not at the tip of your tongue? She's looking into it. She's got a lot going on, Chuck. There's a very, very busy day over here. I just found it. All right, what is it? For all you bloody do-goaters, here's

where you go. It's called. Stock the free food pantry. That's what it's called. Wait a minute. How can we say this? Stock the free food pantry? I'd say it like that. Is there a dot or a com or something like that? GoFundMe.com slash stock the free food pantry? Yeah. Is that how? Yeah.

Okay There's three professional communicators We'll figure it out I get paid for this I gotta go fund me paid Squirrel Squirrel

Get squirrel If you like what you heard And even if you don't Won't you please Won't you please Pretty please Subscribe Well I hate to beg

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