Hard to Penetrate with Sophia Bush

Oh yeah, oh cute. So that was fun. I remember when Connie Britton was filming there, She's like, this place's magic, come visit because it was all closed off for COVID. Mmmmmm, Hi Brad, Hi Brad you guys, Chelsea. I have to say I love that you caught the ire of Tucker Carlson and those motherfuckers. I take a lot of pleasure in that. Yeah, your response was pretty epic, though, it was pretty Oh thanks. Can you imagine having a conversation

about women drying? In twenty twenty three, somebody wrote there parodying misogyny, like it it's not even how you really are misogynistic anymore. It's so ridiculous, it's so basic intellectual like women hating. I just love men telling us how miserable we are, because what the fuck do you care what we're doing? You fucking go get a life. Oh imagine reporting on me and my childless video as a news anchor. His hot takes, his hot takes. There's any

more hot takes? We need it. It's not from Tucker Carlson. Oh my god, serio journalism. Are we calling that journalist? No, it's not journalism. I don't even think he claims to be a journalist. He's just talking. He's like an entertainer, yes, a personality, if you will, just like me, I also have a personality, indeed, you dude, And when those two personalities collide, it makes for entertainment, makes for very very

good content. You must be so sad up there, surrounded by friends and family, having the time of your life on a mountaintop. I know, I was sitting in my underwear. It was so funny. I was lying in bed, just like he thought I would be. I was lying in bed, and I was taking the day off from skiing because I had to I had to read a script. I had to read all this stuff. I'm sitting in bed and then I get all these alerts from like, you know, people going have you seen this? Have you seen this?

And after like the sixteenth one, I'm like, I guess I'm gonna have to take a shower and fucking respond to this asshole. And then the Daily Show emailed me and they're like, do you have to respond? We will help you write a response. I was like, great, this is what I want to say. They wrote it, then send it back to me, and then I edited it and like added some stuff, and then I was like, Okay. It was really funny because that's what got me out

of bed that day was Tucker Carlson. I was like, I can't believe I had to take a shower for this fucking asshole so I can film something. Yeah, oh my goodness, that's one way to do that. I can't wait to see what he says next. But it'd be funny if he got so scared that he just didn't respond again my god, all right, oh my goodness. I just added a show to Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado. Yes, I'm coming to Red Rocks, which is gonna be awesome.

That's gonna be very very cool. I know that's like one of Brad's favorite venues. Okay, So, our guest today is a friend of mine. She is a co host of the iHeart podcast Drama Queens with her co stars from One Tree Hill. She hosts her own podcast called Work in Progress, which I've been in or on, and she starts in the upcoming film called Junction. She's an actress, she's an entrepreneur my favorite word, and activist. Sophia Bush. It's here, Hi Sophia, Hi, Hi honey Bunny, Hi cutie pie.

Oh you're the best. Thanks for coming in so on such short notice. Oh my god, wouldn't miss it. How's Whistler? Pretty magical? We've been getting a lot of snow. It's been light all season and now it's coming. So yesterday was just like it was like skiing on clouds. We were just like bouncing all over. It was so fun. I gotta get out there with you one of these seasons. I just love it so much. Sophia, this is Katherine, this is my co host. How are you? I'm great?

How are you? Thank you good? Got your ice coffee? What are you drinking? Sophia? What kind of concoction is that? It's bone broth. Oh god, I knew it would be something of that elk. You know, I was wondering. I was like, is she going to answer the zoom? She going to be in like maple leaf pasties with a martini. I would have loved it, I know. I know. That's usually how I operate around here. I just go throughout the town the villages. I like to refer to it

as because to me, it is a village. Sophia. We have a lot to catch up on because you got married without my permission and I was planning being there, but then I was on tour, so I couldn't come to your wedding, which was I really wanted to be there with you on your special day. Tell me about it. I know I missed your humor. It was amazing. It was so tremendously special. Also, your tour was fucking badass. I love the New Special so much. I'm really having

a great time. I watched it three times. Oh my god, making nighttime like joy moment. So thank you. The wedding was amazing, you know it's I mean, I don't know how you feel about the weird shit that comes with what we do, but when we got engaged. It was wild to see, like the amount of attention that an Instagram post garnered. I wasn't prepared for articles and languages that I have no idea how to read, and for

it to be such news. I was like, you know, like Jennifer Aniston is famous, like Reese Witherspoon is famous, like I don't know, like I do TV. But I didn't. I didn't expect that, And it actually really enabled us in talking about how that felt and what that meant and was there a way to make it seem less overwhelming. It enabled us to figure out how, if that was going to be the sort of attention that comes from our relationship, how we could do something really good with it.

And so we went to Tulsa and it was really an unbelievable moment. And being able to use our wedding to teach folks about the nineteen twenty one race massacre and about doctor Tiffany Crutcher and all the people on the ground, the Blackwall Street Times and their staff, all the people who were doing the work to rebuild Greenwood. Getting Vogue magazine to talk about Greenwood felt really cool. So it was special for us, and it was special for our community. And did you guys, either one of

you have a tie tell Tulsa. Yeah. Grant is a fifth generation Oklahoma and he grew up in a farming family and their three hours west of Tulsa. And so when we went on our very first trip to visit his family, he was like, Hey, I have these friends working on progressive politics and social justice and Tulsa and do you want to go three hours east of my parents and meet them too? And I was like, I'm going to marry the shit out of this man. Good I do. I want to go meet that whole community.

So for the last three years, Tulsa has kind of been our home away from home. Oh cute, that's cool. I'm performing in Tulsa coming up when, oh my god, we'll come. I don't know. I have to look at my calendar, but I know I have a Tulsa, Oklahoma date. Oh great. And I don't think I've ever performed in Tulsa. I've performed Oklahoma City, which is always fun. It's always fun to go to those cities because you just like what you're talking about. There's a whole you know, undercurrent

of liberalism. Always to pocket in these cities, and so when you go there and then you meet up with

your people, you're like, oh, yeah, this is great. You know, there's like minded at people everywhere, truly, and Tulsa so special, and the sort of richness of the history there and the black history there and the progressive history there and the sort of classic Americana and the music and all the art, and it's just like a really unbelievably beautiful place and it's well, we should probably cover the Tulsa massacre for those of you who are listening who are

not familiar with what happened in Tulsa, Sophia, do you want to lead on this? Yeah, So in nineteen twenty one, a case that began very similarly. You know, most people know about the murder of Emmett Till when he was young and accused of whistling at a white woman who happens to still be alive and has never been brought to justice for what she did to that fourteen year old boy. It was the photographs of him that really helped to educate America on what the enactment of racist

violence looks like. And Tulsa is as an event the massacre of nineteen twenty one, which was inaccurately called a race riot. You know, they love to call things riots that have harmed at risk communities, and in Tulsa as well, there's so much evidence in terms of not just photographs,

but insurance records. We understand the devastation of families, and we understand not only the emotional and graphical impacts, but we understand the financial impacts of those things, which historically in violence against black communities have been harder to prove. It's harder to go back into the eighteen hundreds, for example, and have those conversations. So Tulsa is an interesting place to get educated for the breadth of information that you

can gather. And in nineteen twenty one, a young man was accused of attacking a young black man was accused of attacking a white woman in an elevator. Didn't happen. He was then taken to jail, and fathers and men in the black community came to the jail and surrounded it to ensure that this young man was not lynched by white members of the community, who publicly stated that day that they were going to bring a lynch mob to the jail that night. And the men came armed

both sides did. It turned into a pretty violent situation very quickly. And the really arresting thing to understand about Tulsa is that, with the support of the National Guard, white citizens were deputized as sheriff's deputies on the spot and they murdered hundreds of black families. They got farmers who had planes for crop dusting up in the air

and firebombed Greenwood. And many of the people who have seen the Watchman or who have looked into this, know the corner of Greenwood and Archer, and they think, like that was Blackwall Street, that street was Blackwall Street. But Blackwall Street was a neighborhood that was forty square blocks in a city forty blocks by forty blocks, and the entire thing was burned to the ground. Hotels and doctors offices and movie theaters and car dealerships. This was the

wealthiest black community in America. There were multi millionaires in nineteen twenty one in Tulsa, in Greenwood, and people didn't like it. They didn't like the success of a community that they had been trying to oppress for so long. And it is one of the most gregious violent acts that has been recorded in our nation's history, and it's heavy.

It's not lost on me, and it certainly was not lost on my husband and I that in a moment where we see so many people like Ding Dong, Ron DeSantis and every other asshole chatting on Fox News trying to literally ban our history. We know survivors of the race massacre. There are still living survivors of this massacre in nineteen twenty one, and if we don't learn our history, we're not going to see it coming when it begins

to repeat itself. And so for us, it felt really important to have our big beautiful day on a Saturday. But ask all the people who know us, it's like, look, you're gonna you're coming to the wedding of your favorite activist friend and her former public school teacher husband. Like you're gonna do some homework. And so we did this big, beautiful museum day and toured through Greenwood and met with

the Crutcher Foundation. And I have to just say thank you to everyone in Tulsa, because when I said to doctor Krutcher, who works on these justice issues every day, like can I bring two hundred people to your office? She was like what sure, okay, And so we literally split everyone into these four groups to fifty and we

rotated people through Greenwood all day. Wow, people time to process, and they've been to museums and journalists offices and the Greenwood Cultural Center and the John Hope Reconciliation Park and some people needed to cry and some people needed to

talk about it. And we rented out a bar and we were like, do whatever you feel like you need to do, have a beer when you go home, when you talk about our wedding, please tell this story because like, plenty of people get married, but we need to make sure that this is a story that doesn't get you pulled off the bookshelves and schools like we're seeing now, Wow, that's so beautiful. It was gnarly, like a lot of

people cried. But what's been beautiful about it, And what I find so special is I you know, I know it can be painful to look back at history like this. It's painful for communities, and it's hard to know that we come from humans that do this to each other, right, But what always gives me hope when I learn hard history is the people that are helping now. So it felt special to say you need to know about this, And here's all the people who have rebuilt a community

from the ground and are continuing to do so. When you want to know what to do about things that are this hard, look to these people and support their work. And that's where the inspiration comes, and that's where the joy comes. And that's where like the beauty out of things that were so ugly in the past, I think comes in the present. And I'll be forever grateful that that whole community said absolutely, tell us who you want to bring, and tell us what you want to want

them to learn about and the best people I know. Well, it's also nice to be married to somebody who's so aligned with your political leanings right and human Well, you're passion for human rights is probably a better way to describe it, because it's been past as politics and it's not political, but it has somehow has become political. Your body,

your race, all of it. So, yeah, tell me about that like kind of relationship having somebody who's totally on the same page as you, because I don't know, I've never really felt completely aligned with that person that I was dating politically, like we might have some of the same beliefs but still there's a lot of disagreement. Yeah,

I get that. I think what you first said is really important, right, This idea that people deserve to be treated equally shouldn't be political, the idea that whether you are a woman or you are a member of a historically repressed community, you're not supposed to just be there to serve the ruling class. We don't live in the French aristocracy, and yet there's a lot of folks in our country who love a modern day aristocracy because they

get really, really rich. And the lol to me is always that they're the people who yell at us for being rich. And I'm like, I'm paying a thirty year mortgage on my house, Like having had a down payment is certainly a privilege. But Tucker Carlson is so rich, Like that guy makes forty six million dollars a year and he's yelling at us. You know, we're out here like making independent movies for a dollar. I'm like, oh, fund yourself, dude. So it's not lost on me. I

won't ever say a bad word about Tucker Carlson. So don't try, Sophia. I know, I know, Chelsea, You're just you're a classier broad than I. But um, you know, it's not lost on me that people make money off convincing the populace that our basic human rights are political. And I think because things have gotten so hot, like the pot is boiling right, everybody's real jumpy and people feel like their identity is tied to politics. I don't

feel like that. I just feel like I'm not a ding dong who doesn't get that equal is equal and inequal isn't. And so that's sort of my first place. And I will say it is hard to find a partner, regardless of how progressive so many of the men we know are. You know, if you're looking for a heterosexual relationship, a lot of guys are like, yeah, I'm all in.

But then when it's their girl that's the bright, shiny one, or their girls the one who draws the attention, or their girls the reason they get invited to the White House, or their girl makes more money than them, suddenly what they say they believe in is egotistically very difficult. And so what I think is really important is for me, at least having found a human being who had entered a stage in his life where he said, okay, I'm saying I want to meet the woman of my dreams?

Where am I not aligned with what I say? But he had to confront some things, and so did I. I had to. He had to confront the ways in which he could actually tabolize what masculinity and patriarchy does in relationships, even unconsciously. For someone as evolved as he is, who has three master's degrees and loves the environment and was a teacher and all the stuff. He had to really do some inquiry about the way society kind of

steeps us in these teas that are gross. And I had to do some real inquiry and go, oh, I've been in relationships with people who didn't deserve me. It's been my fault because I've tolerated somebody's ineptitude and competitiveness. So as much as past relationships and certain circumstances were trash, I took trash home with me. So you two fault system here. And I had to really get clear on

where I was going to realign my boundaries. And I also had to get clear on how those experiences and other traumas I'd been through had made me really hard and I don't mean hard to be around. I mean hard to like, emotionally penetrate. I was going to say hard to penetrate. I'm like, what emotionally panget like hard to get into the heart all the way, I've had such walls, and I have such healthy emotional relationships with

my friends. My platonic relationships are so loving that I was kind of like, I'm good and I had to really do some work on getting vulnerable in a way where I could not only have a rallying cry for us, for community, for justice, but I could also gently cry and say this is really hard for me. I need help. This is where I need support. This is where I normally isolate and say fuck you don't. I don't need

you to carry that for me. And now I'm like, will you please just put my bag in the overhead been I'm so tired and so in a way, we had to meet on so many levels, and interestingly, in analyzing how society affects relationships between men and women, I think it made it so clear that the community politics that we believe in was like, for sure the easiest part.

Dealing with your own internal individual psychosis is way harder, at least in my recent experience than aligning with somebody politically, because every dingdong they tried to date me that then was like mad about female success. I was just like, bye, Yeah, it's very true what you say about how people say they're one thing and they're down with it and they're you know, with it, and they're supportive of women, and then it becomes a totally different story when you come

face to face with it in like a romantic relationship. Yeah, And I wonder about this for somebody like you, because you are one of the most successful women in our industry. You are brilliant, you are you're always the funniest person in the room, which has to be hard for people

who like to be funny. And you have not only always been at this level of success, but you've also so publicly shown what it's like to continue evolving and growing and getting like qushier and more tender, and your political lessons you learn out loud and in public, which is such a beautiful model for people. And like, sometimes I think about it when when men are obsessed with you as most of them are, where I'm like, you knew exactly what you were getting into, Like that's Chelsea

fucking handler. Nothing is a surprise. I know. It's like there are six books about it, so if I could pick one up and it'll cover all your bases. She's badass. She's this person. Did you think at home she was going to be like, oh honey, sweetie baby, what can I do for your feet? My apron on all of a sudden, I'm just like living two parallel lives. Okay, So Sophia, well thank you for those accolades. I feel the same way about you. You're always constantly learning and

evolving and sharing, and you're brilliant. You're so fucking smart. I remember the first time I hung out with you, and I think it was Connie Britten was with us and then Cindy leave. Not the first time, but one of the times we respect together. I was when Connie and I were driving home and I was like, fuck,

she's smart. I was like, she is Mark. And it's not I mean not to put everyone else in this industry down, but it's just always really encouraging when you sit down next to somebody at a Hollywood event and you're like blown away, you know, So there's that. Anyway, what we're gonna do is we have live callers calling in or writing in, and we're just going to tell them what to do with their lives. Okay, Sophie. I think we're totally both very well equipped for this partnership today. Absolutely.

I'm the multiple degrees I have in psychology. No, I don't make me profied for this. I'm self certified, which is much different than a degree, a certification. I'm like a masseuse, a massage therapist. And then someone goes, where'd

you train? And you're like on people University of Phoenix, Like Malcolm Gladwell has that whole ten thousand hours theory right, and I'm like, well, ten thousand hours of like therapy and psychedelic therapies and the retreats I've done and the places I've gone, and I have to be a professional at this by now. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah, And I think I don't even think it needs you need ten thousand hours. I think things, if you're smart enough,

I think you need half that time. Perfect. Okay, Katherine, what do we have in stir Oh? First we'll take a quick break and then we're gonna come right back. Okay, and we're back, Yes we are. I actually have a perfect question for the conversation we've just been having. It was question number four and now it's jumping to number one. But this is like the top forty, It's like Saturday Afternoons with Casey Kasum. Yes, so this is from back, the singer the same question, right, Just be easy. It's

a back I probably is okay. I would be thrilled to give advice to back to back, but I would exchange it for performed songs. Be like every every question is a song. Well be a concert anyway, you railed the conversation album concert. What what does Beck be easy see want to know from us? So, Beck says, Dear Chelsea. First off, I'm a huge fan of the show and have listened regularly since day one. You guys keep me accountable and encourage me to try and grow. Here's my problem.

I'm in a long term relationship with a man who has only in the last year or so started to share worrying opinions. We have one six month old baby together and another on the way. Whoopsie doodle. That's pretty quick, which makes it hard to know what is the right thing to do in this situation. My partner recently has started to openly and overtly express his opinions on an array of different groups and conspiracies of late think Jordan Peterson think, Russell Brand COVID is a hoax, women are

out for blood, the world is ending. Russia are the good guys today? He said something along the lines of today's woke agenda is so mortifying. It's all just a group of white women acting marginalized and campaigning for people who don't want their help. I bite my tongue most of the time because these conversations always go nowhere, and he's not open to hearing my counter argument. He spends all his time on YouTube, watching alien conspiracy videos and

thinking he's smarter than everyone else. This is not the man I originally started a relationship with, or even the man I planned to have children with. He seems to be going deeper and deeper into his way of thinking at an alarming rate. What the fuck do I do? Thanks back, yaikes? That is not a good situation, is no. I mean you're gonna have to skidattle unfortunately. I mean you can't reason with somebody. Anybody who's reading conspiracy theories

online is gone. They've left the building, and it's not your job to get them back. I mean, I'm really sorry to hear well. I mean I'm happy. I'm sure you are happy that you have your daughter and then you have one on the way or I'm sorry, I don't know if it was a daughter or son. I missed that part. But you have one child and you've one on the way. I understand how difficult this is going to be, but you're going to be a champion

if you just get yourself out of this situation. Because if you can't listen to your point of view and you're not having this is such a big huge sign for you to get out and explain to him that you can't be with somebody who's reading make it up stories on the internet, like the least likely scenario is the least likely scenario. So anyone who doesn't have the gift of critical thinking or has learned about that and how to understand what's true and what's not, that's not

somebody that you want, even around your children. So you immediately have to like draw a line in the sand and let him know this is a unacceptable. I'm not down with this. You're scaring me. And if you're not going to like do something about it and actually get some help, or be open minded to my opinions and actually have real conversations, which is just too far gone anyway, he's already wrapped up in his nonsense. I think you just got to get out of there, Sophia. Yeah, I mean,

I don't know how you come back from it. You know, I understand there is a toxicity in those algorithms where when you start to look, suddenly that's all you see. And I think it's important to understand that it is being under an influence. It's like this guy's doing heroin. Conspiracy theories are a drug and they are designed to make you addicted, and the psychology of them, if you do any light study, proves that the way they work is they make people feel special because they get to

say I know something you don't know. I have the information you haven't found yet. It's not grounded in reality. Something that I have found really helpful recently. I've been very horrified to learn that someone who I have loved for a very long time has gotten on the edges, sucked into the Jordan Peterson world. And the thing that I saw get through it wasn't saying Jordan Peterson defends rapists, defends the sex trafficking of children. He believes Andrew Tate

is a good guy. He is a misogynist in a suit. He's like a guy who beats his wife dressed up like a college professor. Jordan Peterson is none of that cracked. But when I said so, the generations of global study about equity aren't swaying you. But this one guy who's speaking in a way that you think is deep, who charges forty ninety nine a month to teach you how to be a man, seems like the guy, the guy with all the answers, makes you pay him to give

them to you. It's just like Tucker Carlson. He makes forty six million dollars a year to lie. And just this week all those text messages were published about him making fun of Donald Trump and making fun of Rudy Giuliani and calling them all a bunch of lunatics and saying there was no voter fraud and they all knew from the beginning, but they pushed the lies on Fox News because they made money. People are taking brains like

this woman Beck's husband's hostage for profit. And if that truth can't give him just enough of a coldwater shock, so look elsewhere. Then, you know, to Chelsea's point, he's way too far are gone and it's heartbreaking and I can't imagine having to leave the person who I thought was the love of my life. But I wouldn't let a heroin addict around my children. And that's what these conspiracy theories amen to. That. Yeah, there is no reasoning

your way out of it. I think if he'll agree to, like find some counseling with you, or maybe you just need to talk to a therapist by yourself, because my guesses seems probably gonna say no, you could try that, but it does sound like there is an exit in your future. Back yeah, and pick up some bone broth on the way. I mean, Sophia is drinking it and she's as sharp as attack, so I have heard lots of good things about it. Did you make that yourself?

Because it looks like iced coffee? Like it's that isn't thick and unctious? I make my owne. I make my own too. I did not make because it's been a crazy week. So I did the bougiel A thing and I went to Rowan and I was like cooking, maybe in. One of them paid nine for expensive chart. So yeah, on Monday, I'll be making more of my own because you have to pay. Like I said earlier, Yeah, people are always shocked. So they opened up my freezer like why are there just a bunch of bones in here? Yeah?

I keep mine in a paper bag in the freezer because it's less upsetting to the people who well come over me and the people who often come over here. I realized the like gallon ziplock was a little traumatizing, So now it goes in a brown paper bag and nobody has to know what's in there but me. Yes exactly. People were like, what'd you get your husband for your wedding? I'm like a bag of bonds. I don't know what

I would do a poor one. I know, well, I mean I just don't understand how someone how long could they have been they've had to been together or at least over a year, and how does somebody keep their opinions like that. I once had a boyfriend who blurted out something. We were going to lunch and I had dated him for a while and he hadn't said he wasn't really into politics, but like he didn't really know what he was talking about about anything, but he never

spoke about them, so it wasn't that upsetting, right. But then once we were at lunch and he goes, God, this fucking Bill Gates guy running everybody's healthcare into the ground. Why does he get to be like the health czar for America? And I remember going, what, what what are you talking about? He's like, why is everybody listening to Bill Gates? And just went on this Bill Gates And I was like, oh, you've read you're listening to people

who talk about conspiracy theories. But it's it's insidious, like there there is a person in my life who like is not conservative, and you know, they're very us dauntily independent, they vote with who they like, but every once in a while something will slip out of their mouth that's like a little little duds over there, you know, and it's just like it's in it's insidious, like some of these ideas are woven through like actual journalism and sneaks

in there sometimes depending on what you're reading. You know, what's interesting to me that I'm just from and bring about what she said, this notion that her husband is parroting the now progressive politics is just white women supporting

people who don't want their support. I'm like, oh, you can't read between the lines at the deep patriarchy and that, because what the nightmare of the conservative white man is is that the women they want to marry who look like the three of us, get over their bullshit and we join up with all the people they've been oppressing forever. So now they're like, no, no, no, don't don't let

those white women come and listen in your rooms. Oh no. And I'm like, are you worried that so many of us are going and paying attention or you know what I mean. It's such a tactic. It's like separating communities, pitting different communities against each other. And it's been so beautiful this year and this past year, I guess is more accurate in the wake of all this horrible community violence to see groups coming together, like Black and Asian

communities advocating alongside each other, Christian and Jewish community. He's advocating alongside each other historically separated groups saying no, no, no, no, we're not going to fall into those tropes. And it's not lost on me that the conspiracy theorists want to pooh poo groups of people coming together because they know that the sum total of all of us is so many more than just what's left of them, and they're still afraid. Yeah. Our next question comes from Kristen Dear Chelsea.

My husband had a heart attack and passed February of twenty twenty two. COVID played a role in his death. I'm thirty five and he was only forty two. I currently live on the East Coast. Our dream was to head west and we were in the process of figuring out our next journey there. I'm coming up to the one year anniversary of his death. I'm going to Denver to celebrate his life instead of sit in my apartment.

That's just two miles away from the hospital where he passed. Also, I'm a firm believer that being in high altitude will heal anything. I need advice as far as where to move. I've been to California. I'm about to go to Denver, and I'm very in tune with myself. I go to mediums often. I'm a very spiritual person, but it's really hard to figure out what the right move is. I can't rebuild where I lived with him. Everything I see is him. I need to go where we haven't been together.

I need to go where I have a blank canvas. I just don't know where. Kristin Cushman, Hi, Kristen, Hi. We have Sophia Bush today as our special guest. So say hello to Sophia. It's nice to meet you. Oh, nice to meet you. Thank you for your letter. And I know we're all just so sorry for your loss. Thank you, thank you. You have great brown hair. I'm a huge fan of it. We have lots of hair colors represented on this zoom girls, all of the body, I'm sure. So how are you feeling a year out

of this? How are you mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically? All great questions. So I first went to California for his birthday in December. He passed February twenty twenty two. That was magical. I found peace, I found happiness again. I could feel him there. Then I was like, you know what, let me go to Denver. We've both never been to Denver. Let me go have a week out there. And Denver was everything that I thought it wasn't going to be.

I was not ready for Denver like Denver I thought I was a free person, and I thought I was very spiritual. I looked like a goddamn Republican. I was like, I was like, okay, okay, so Denver. It made Raleigh feel more like home. It made me realize it's not a location. So how are you feeling about moving now? Is that out the window or are you still considering it? You know, I am still open to it. It's hard to find the right location because very in tuned with

myself energy is really important. Finding people who say the right things instead of like, oh, I just can't imagine what that feels like. It's like you can't imagine. You just don't want to imagine it. You know, it's like

that's not the right thing to say. You could say something like I know you're not okay, and then that will make someone relax because then you're validating them, you know, like trying to find places where people would understand me more, or stop trying to find places when someone's in grief, of displaying how good it you are for showing up

for them instead of just listening. You know, a lot of people are trying to like show you I'm here for you and this is how good I am in this situation, it's like, it's not about you, it's about the person grieving. But I also think you just answer that question for yourself. At the beginning of this call, you said, I realize it's not a location anymore, it's an energy, and that he's going to be wherever you go.

It's just about you finding peace. So that's why I'm still curious you still feel as passionately about moving as you did before. I do, I really do, Okay, I know I can feel it. I'm supposed to. And the thing is, I think if you're on the precipice and you feel the next chapter coming, then you just have to go with that feeling. That's what you know. You can't know what place is going to be right for you until you give it a shot. But what do

know is that you want to go. And we live in this moment that if we were in our mom's generation, it would have been so much harder for us to pick up and move. We're the airbnb kids. You can go anywhere for six weeks and rent an apartment or a house, no strings attached. Who cares? So go to Denver and see and then I don't know, go to San Jose and like hike in the Redwoods every weekend in California. Do whatever you and your work enables you to do. I'm assuming if you're moving you can either

work remote or there's a plan. So if you have the good fortune in terms of geography to be able to move around, go explore and to your point, see what place offers you the hikes that you want. See what place you feel him in your ear when you're out walking in the morning. See what place you meet people who feel like the kind of people you want to break bread with at the coffee shop. You're in

a moment of depth. Not everyone you meet is going to meet you in that kind of depth, but when they do, you're going to be able to go, all right, I'm gonna get out of my short term thing here and I'm gonna look for an apartment that I'm going to sign like a year lease on and that's probably gonna feel amazing. Yeah, but you have to experience it before you know where it is. You have a good community where you are. I have joined a word a group since he died, and I call them my widows.

They don't fuck around. They listen to me. I'm telling you right now, like they are sixty five and they get down and they tell me all about it. I'm like, okay, okay, Like they are perful and I'm a comic here. I have a great The community, the comedy community in Raleigh, North Carolina, is it's very strong. It's a very strong community. Yeah, it sounds like you're pretty good with your own intuition

as well. First of all, comedy is the best doing stand up is like the best outlet possible for you, you know, in this moment especially and during this time. So if there's no rush for you to leave, like it sounds like you are attuned and in tuned with yourself and with like what is right for you. So I wouldn't put your pressure on it to make the decision. I think you're gonna you have a pretty good grip on what's what is right for you, and then you're

going to handle that with a plum. I would just trust yourself a little bit, like you you're gonna know when it's time to go. You're in a good space. You seem like you're you've got a total handle on the situation and you're handling everything in the right amount of time. So I think you're coming into what you're going to be doing permanently through this grief, and the only way out is through. That's correct. There's no way to jump to the end. So to Chelsea's point, you

are making something. You can't rush it. You're the experience and you're gonna You're gonna get to the end of that road, to the last page of that book only when you write all the pages of the book that come before it. It allows me to not suppress the grief. It allows me when I get anxious, I know I need to cry. And that's a very strong woman. It's hard for me to ask help, so it's hard for me to let myself feel the feelings I need to feel. So when I feel anxious, I'm like, just cry, just cry,

just let it out. And I start writing. And I know it's unique to be my agent to be a widow. And he was really young too, and I know if I didn't do something with that, I would be doing a dishonor to him. So we'll keep us posted and let us know what you do, decide where you end up going, and you know all that good stuff. Yeah, yeah, all right, you guys taking here all right, We're rooting for you. Thanks Kristen, thank you. Bye. All right, Well,

this question is from Sarah. Sarah says, Dear Chelsea, what's considered a sugar daddy and why are there's so many opinions about it. I'm Sarah, thirty two years old, and according to my friends, I have one of these so called sugar daddies. To give a little background, I was raised with my three siblings by or loving single mother. My father was a deadbeat, so I have the typical daddy issues people associate with that. When I was twenty in a Florida college, I met an older man the

age of my father at my apartment complex. We became fast friends in a short amount of time and started going to lunch and dinners together. He always paid, and he started taking me shopping and paying for my car, oil changes, etc. When I moved across the country, he gifted me five thousand dollars to help me get started. We talk or text daily or at least every few days, and he's been such a great friend with consoling me when I had a few breakups and actually when my

father passed. He was so easy and supportive to talk to. Anyway, I feel I made a mistake telling my friend of two years about my relationship with this older man. She brings it up in front of others at social events and seems to want to make fun of me, laughing and saying I have a sugar daddy. She repeatedly tells me how she's baffled that my husband is okay with this. It's embarrassing to me the way she makes it seem like I'm having sex with the man, insinuating that I'm

doing anything inappropriate. He's more of a father figure to me than I've ever had. I have two children and they call him pop pop. He always remembers our birthdays and sends a card. I'm so frustrated with my friend and have explained to her that he's like my father as her father is to her. Should I confront her? And what could I possibly say to her now? When

it's just me and her. She's sweetest pie. Around others, she takes on this bully persona, always saying that I should have my sugar daddy pay for our dinner and drinks and letting everyone know about my situation. To me, he has no wife or children. He's wealthy and I'm not. It's very kind, all the help he's given me over the twelve years we've been close. I'm proud to have a real friendship with someone that is not a likely bestie, being that he's sixty and I'm about half his age.

Thank you and take care, Sarah. Well, that's confusing, but they're not sleeping together, I know. But it's so confusing because you're taking money from a stranger, like I find that to be. I don't know how I feel about that. Honestly, I think it lovely. This man's probably very lonely, and he is attached to this gal and her kids and

doesn't seem to be a creepy situation. I mean, first of all, you should definitely talked to your friend to sufferinging it up because that you didn't tell her for her to be making fun of you, and you're not in a sexual relationship, right, so you need to tell her. Yeah, I guess you know. I say that, yet I've given money to strangers and they've taken it, but that's not

I feel like it's different coming from a man. Yet I also understand that this man is probably like seeking out a relationship with her as a daughter figure too. It sounds like as long as he's not ever tried to hit on you, which would be completely unacceptable. So I don't know. I'm conflicted. That doesn't sound like there's anything untoward happening, but also, yeah, it's like something to think about. So you know what's interesting is I realized as you got through the letter that this is a

ten year relationship, yeah, friendship. And when she said you know that it's not a sexual relationship, I went, oh, same, Because I had a friend who was twenty one who had a fifty year old neighbor who was trying to take her out and buy her stuff. I'd be like, don't you fall down that rabbit hole? Right. However, ten years in, to your point, it really does sound like a very paternal relationship. And like you said, Chelsea, if he's never hit on her, he's never made her uncomfortable.

He knows her husband, he knows her children. You know what it makes me think of is we have this lovely neighbor. I mean, well, a neighbor I grew up with at my parents' house. Our sweet neighbor, Charlie is an elderly man in our neighborhood who doesn't have a family. He is like the Pasadena historian. He knows everything about everything in nature. He can tell you the Latin name of any tree. He is just the sweetest old man.

And when our family moved into the neighborhood and my grandpa would come visit, we'd go out on walks, and my grandpa and Charlie struck up a conversation one morning, and from that year, Charlie has spent the holidays with my family. Oh I after my grandfather passed away, we you know, we used to call him our bonus grandpa. And after my grandfather passed away, Charlie still spends all of the holidays with my family. It's it's been twenty

five years now, yea. And no, you know, Charlie's not like some man of means who's like giving money away to everybody. But he's a really important person in our life, and we are his family, and I think that those relationships are meaningful. And so I get why the dynamic of this guy being financially supportive rings the alarm bells of older guy taking advantage of younger woman. But he's

never tried to fuck hers. He seems to be seeking a family, and who is this person to judge anyone else's family and how they make it is really where I land as I go through the sort of stream of consciousness list that I'm making with you now well, and it sounds like she's not even living in the same stage him anymore, So I mean, probably not anything untoward there. My parents always talk about this concept of

giving with warm hands. My dad is in elder law, so he helps a lot of people prepare for their eventual death and where they want to leave their money. But for my parents, it's always been really important to give with warm hands, like give while they're still alive. So they give a lot to charities and they help out people that they love. They've certainly helped me out, And it sounds like that's kind of what he wants to do. You know, he has this and he's able

to do that. But I do think Chelsea's right the friend. Sometimes people will rib you about stuff and like not realize they're actually pretty offended by it. So maybe if you talk to this friend. I also think there's something that means to be explored there. And I know people get real touchy when their egos get pressed, but it sounds like this friend has a dynamic of jealousy and if she's just with her best friend, she can love

her best friend. But when she sees the way people react to her best friend, she needs to get competitive. And it really sounds like this woman. I don't think she's doing it to be mean. Maybe she's not conscious she's doing it, but it really sounds like she has some self inquired to do to figure out why she needs to neg her friend in front of other people. Why is she trying to knock her down a notch

in front of others? Like, you need friends who want to lift you up and who want to push you in front of them when an opportunity comes around, and I think you might be well off to ask your friend, why do you want to make me small in front of other people? It's really hurtful. Yeah, yeah, definitely you to confront that issue. And we've decided that the other relationship is okay, said, we talked through it. Yes, Sarah, let us know how it goes with your friend, and

we wish you the best of luck. But let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, and we're back. Hello, Well, Sophia, Is there any advice you'd like to ask of Chelsea? Oh Man, Yeah, I'm really curious about something because I'm in this process right now, and when you work on projects and you get to travel and you work with all these crews. For me, anyway, it has resulted in some really outsized nostalgia. And I'm

really curious because you do a similar thing. How do you decide what nostalgic memory items, trinkets, chatskes you keep and what goes so that your house doesn't get cluttered because your house is very organized, and I feel a little bit like I live in somebody's grandma's house, like there's just shit everywhere. Oh yeah, No, you can't be a hoarder. No, well, I have a hoarder tendency and

I don't know what to do about it. I know, but memorabilia of our own little trinkets or reminders are fine. I'm not really a sentimental person, so all of my stuff, I don't know who saves my stuff quite frankly, I mean probably my relatives or my assistants or something like. I don't have a thing about Like I opened my cabinet the other day and there was like eighty five thousand books of ours. I'm like, why are we keeping these?

I don't need my own books. Let's bring them on tour, sell them, like, get rid of them, give them some charity whatever. I have the opposite mentality, because I just feel like everything's being recorded anyway. Who cares? It's not say, yeah, all of the things you've done are like there forever and ever and ever and ever. So why are we Pictures are the most important thing to me. That's all I care about our pictures. Yeah, I have a lot

of pictures. I frame letters, but I'm one of those people who keeps every ticket stuff by from every concert of them. Oh yeah, no, no, no notable book. And I'm like, I think I'm running out of bloom. I don't know where to put things anymore. I know, I know it's good just to make as like photocopies of all of it, because what are you really ever going to do look through your tickets? I mean, who are you saving them for? Like your grandchildren? I don't know.

So yeah, I would say less is more, Sophia, I would say, get rid of a lot of things. Memories you just need, you just need the pictures of the memories. You just need a picture of you at the concert. I mean, another reason that I don't have to save anything is because I'm not having any children, so I'm not having any grandchildren. So it's up to my nieces and nephews to preserve my legacy. Whatso gone. That'll be a nice challenge for them, send them the box of books. Yeah,

thank you Sophia for being on today. I love you so much and I'm so happy we got to connect. I know too, we go connected person when I'm when I'm back in LA for sure, I'll hit you up. Otherwise I'm going to mail myself to Whistler soon. Well you can come here too. Everyone's invited to pass through. Okay, okay, thank you, Thank Sophia. You. I'm so nice to see Catherine. Likewise, bye bye, and don't forget everybody. My new special Revolution is now streaming on Netflix and it's badass. And then

I'm doing a tour a little big bit store. You can go to Chelsea Panelo dot com for tickets. I've added some new dates. I added a date in Monticello, New York. I'm coming to Colorado to Red Rocks Amphitheater. I'm coming to Kalamazoo, and then I'm coming to a bunch of places in Tennessee, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. That's May nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first. And then I'll be in Atlantic City June tenth, which is almost still doubt

so get your tickets. So if you'd like advice from Chelsea, just send us an email at Dear Chelsea podcast at gmail dot com. Dear Chelsea is a production of iHeartRadio, produced by Catherine Law and edited and engineered by Brad Dickert.