Baratunde Thurston (Part 2)

think it's the point of philosophy. Yeah, certainly, money is definitely the point of philosophy. I think the Plato missed it. He was too busy talking about, you know, the tyranny of democracy. You really need to be focusing on. Like, Yo, how can I make some T shirts for the same miss of capitalist How about that way? Now, look at the bright side there, buddy, be a human, don't go into politics. Hello, I'm mini driver and welcome to many questions.

I've always loved priest questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything, so I took the format of Proof's questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone they are When and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized,

defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had

a chance to engage with. In last week's episode, we heard Barritende's answers to when and where are you happiest? So standing on that beach, I felt grateful and overwhelmed and significant peace. I hadn't felt that way up until that point in my life, all in one moment. What quality do you like least about yourself? My valuing of perfection, my association of doing something wrong with being wrong? And

what relationship, real or fictionalized defines love? Fear? But that commitment, and that then the knowledge that we're there for each other and growing with each other, giving each other opportunity to become more. That feels like love. Here is the second part of our conversation. What question would you most like answered? It is my favorite question. Ah Mean, part of me is just like, what is cryptocurrency? Really Like?

I just love a good answer to that. But at a bigger scale, I'm just like in the headspace of of what we've been talking about a question I would like answered. It's a how question. I think that is exactly right, how asking how do we do something? Fix something? It's do you see? I think that's it. I think that I didn't even know that I had like this easter egg of a trick and side the question, but that's it. You just found it. Oh my god. I

feel like you need a prize. It's the type of question that's almost more important than the question itself, because that is it. It's it's how. Yeah, because I'm more interested in movement and evolution and growth, and I think there's a how question in me of you know, how do we better embraced change? How do we collectively grow? You know, we feel the potential so often we get

so afraid and we shut down. And there are these natural, probably evolutionary things triggered in our chemistry and our biology that make it very hard. Why are we scared? Like? Are we scared? Because change often requires understanding another tribes understanding of change, and that that is foreign and terrifying. Part of me knows some of the answer. Part of me will speculate irresponsibly, and that's fun. We are pattern

recognition machines. Creatures is a better word than machines. To call us machines is probably not great, but we have pattern recognition as a part of our approach right well, with cabon based carbon based meat, meat covered meat. You

can be in that band with me. Yeah. And so when something doesn't fit a pattern of experience, of visual recognition, of emotional familiarity, that's different, different could be threat and threats must be handled at a minimum with care, often with aggression, to restore ourselves to a state of a pattern that we understand and know and can be relied

upon to provide for our needs. And so some new stuff comes along, and you know, we can respond with curiosity and and we can learn to embrace the new We might even find some advantage in the new and then share that new thing with the rest of us and have a new familiarity. But that's innovative, that's risk taking, that's rare by default. I think our default, like factory settings, sticking to the meat machine metaphor, is don't trust that new stuff. It could be snakes, you know, saying it

could be bears with snake fangs. It could be a pack of bears with snake fangs and poisonous farts. Right, could be all this stuff is gonna just knock us off our path, maybe even kill us or kill our kin, which we are so connected to. So change of any kind is the new introduction threatens the pattern, the familiar, and so we are programmed somewhat to react suspiciously and against that. And so the how question is how do we do less of that? How do we do more

of the embrace of some new things. I don't think we can get rid of that, because everything that you spoke to it does feel like it's hard wade into the meat machine. But the other beautiful part about being human is taking an idea and adding it in and expanding on it. So then maybe it's about focusing on those things which embraces the little scared of the bad part and encourages facing towards everything that could help our

evolution more smoothly and certainly more peaceably. It's peaceable. Thank you. That's such a great word. Peaceably. We don't say that very much in the US, but I'd like that a key to what you said. You know, we were acknowledging the scared part right, And I think for anyone who is pro change of any kind, I mean, this could be technological change, it could be social change, it could be you know, wardrobe change. If there are members of our society who see the benefits of that thing. We

jumped straight to this is great. Why does it everybody doing this? And we skip over the acknowledgement of the human and all of us that is terrified. And if we can acknowledge that name, that hug, that love, that part right in some way, that might help us embrace an upgrade ourselves. Because the how for me is also such a technophilic person, like we upgrade our operating systems all the time, like often without consent. You know what I'm saying. I just said, I turn on the screen.

It's like updating that up? What do you got for me? Now? What you got? Yeah? Why do our brains update? Can we have updates for your humans? Oh my god? But now I'm into like some tech dystopia where there's like mandatory updates. Oh the black Mirror thing? Yeah, this is terrible. Well, we talked ourselves out of that one. We were really close to, like Shagula there, you know, I like it was just there and then it turned into a dystopic calscape. Literally,

my reptilian brain took over and I stopped embracing the change. Gosh, you we just saw it in real time. Just get the upgrades. Many everybody's doing it, Oh, Bert, don't do it terrifying. So what we're saying is it's not simple cool cool. But I like the question that you asked, and I like the most, particularly that it's a how question, because how is useful? Yes, my mother used to say, why should be taken out in the back and put in a hole and have flowers grown on top of it?

But how? Wait, that's a beautiful way to describe murder. Oh yeah, she was. She was full of making peaceable murder. No, no, no, she could definitely like she could definitely make terrible things sound incredibly kind of approachable and intellectual and and funny. I mean that is terrifying. That should be taken out back, put in the hole, but in the hole and flowers grown on top of it. But what happens in between the whole and the flowers smacked on the back of

the head with a shovel. Yes, she would love this conversation, she would think it was hilarious. But how is how has has possibility in it? Why it feels despondent and kind of whiny? I think why is still useful and just as you know, awareness is useful regardless of whether you change things or not. To understand is powerful. Yeah, so there's value to it. I don't want to dismiss why so much. But I'm a how person. I'm so glad you're a person. I mean it's literally I just

with the name of my podcast is how to Citizen? Right, It's not why are things the way they are? It also makes citizen a verb, which is another doing aspect, and not how to be a citizen? How to citizen? So it's you who has to do it. Yes, I love that what person places or experience most altered your life. There's there's an interesting way to collapse that the answers like, it's always my mother, man, I was like, well, I could overthink this. I can imagine that. It's just it's

just my mother. She was the person. So much of that influence took place in Washington, d C. On our block where I grew up. My mother she was a force, Arnita Lorrain Thurston. That was her full name. And she had experienced a lot in her life, a lot of pain in her life, a lot of courage and bravery and boldness as well, and a lot of joy. And I think I got the benefit. I certainly got the

consequence of all of her. I am you know there's a version of my mother's influence on me, which for much of my life I was like, it was great, this is just it was a simplified hero story. My mother went through a lot of stuff. She came through it, my father's murder, being one step along the journey of both of our lives. And she raises me, and she raises my sister, and she innovations, she's a computer program. Those are all true, they're not the whole truth. M hm.

And so I just I saw that influences like, yeah, this is she saved me. She made me both literally and she had an influence over me because of the experiences she had that have led me to see the world in a certain way, some experiences which maybe don't serve me that well, like seeing value in perfection to an unhealthy degree, fearing mistakes and binding up my sense of esteem in that. Can I ask you about your mama? Do you embrace the mistakes that you saw her making?

Do you embrace the mistakes that maybe you saw her making with your sister or that you felt like around parenting or whatever it was. Do you or did you? Or have you consciously downloaded that into who your mother is for you? And is your mother still alive? No, she's not mine neither, And I I think I think what I'm asking is that in your memory, does it incorporate all of those things in a way of what we've been talking about, of the mistakes at the step

so the journey. So the short answer is yes, slightly longer answer is increasingly it's to stick with the update and download kind of metaphor that is in progress. You know, it's like that progress bar when you're installing some some software, and so I'm installing a new story of my mother. Is that the installation that happens after she dies? In part, it's also just time as I get to know myself more, I start to ask why, questions about how I got made,

how I got here? Boom Wise in house they can coexist. Look at that, and so my mother is an answer to many of those questions for my own existence and my own belief sets and my own quirks, my own mistakes. And so to look back at this version of her that I have been holding for quite some time that did almost everything right, and then to see that that's not the case at all. Initially it's you know, with anger, frustration, you let you come back to life and let me

talk to you. Right, I got some I got some questions for you. I got some big questions, and I got somehow don't make how end up in in the shallow grave with the why exactly? I need some answers. So that's the first response. And then it's slower but

deeper compassion. It's like, of course, of course you're a person, right and and knowing what I already have long known of what she experienced, of course She's gonna show up in some ways that are always amazing, in some ways that are painful or even harmful to herself or two people she loves. And then I feel a sense of frustration with myself because it's like, don't even know my mom? You know, Did I let myself really know her? Was? Did I need to maintain a pattern and put her

in his box of No, She's the hero. I needed a hero to define myself, right, I emerged from these fires and she was my firefighter. And that's it. Why you gotta go complicating things? Or maybe she dropped a match mores or twice whatever, like it's you know, sticking

to the metaphor. We're playing with fire metaphors. So it's now at a point where all these things are happening at the same time, my increasing awareness of the multiple types of influences my mother had on me, positive, negative, neutral, accepting that range is more of the truth than any particularly positive thing I have clung to, and then freeing her in my mind from this standard ah, who oh,

my gosh, that's a big one, and freeing myself. Yeah, you know, because I'm like rocking around here, thinking I gotta do everything a certain way of and I'm thinking she made me do it, and I'm not giving her to grace to understand that she's actively choose, that she's responding to the stuff she went oh man. And then I feel just grateful on the best days, on the best days, in the best moments. I agree with you, the loop closest with gratitude on the best days and

the days that it doesn't. I think having patience for it being a process in your life. Can you tell me something that grew out of a personal disaster? I mean, let you in on my process. I'm catalog and personal disasters trying too came out. It was a fun inventory to just put oneself through. It's like, okay, father murder, like that counts mother's death, calling cancer, divorce that I didn't see coming from first marriage, which one of these were to pick out of the cave, Oh my goodness,

and it will health issues and things like that. But that grew from personal disaster. I think it's the idea of something which whether it forced a U turn in one's life or it was an apparently in quotes bad thing, But when you look through the lens of time or perspective in looking backwards, you can actually see the tributaries that sprang from that moment and the things that grew out of it. You know, things we call bad, they could be bad and they could also have been super

a fertile ground. My father's death, my father's murder was most definitely a tragedy, and a lot grew from that, most of me. I was seven eight years old the early nineties. I had infinitely more life without his having life than with the tectonic plates undergirding the structure. The ground on which I grew shifted dramatically when he died,

placing a ton more influence in my mother's hands. Defining or not what masculinity is because I don't really have anybody to do that, And there's so many blessings in that, which is such an odd thing to say about a murder.

They so many consequences more neutral e of that, And this journey thing we've been on has let me see that I'm still growing from his death, and not just because he wasn't around, but what it, what it meant for me, what I never dealt with because it happened and I was so young, and no one really helped me deal with it, and so I'm sitting here now like revisiting it, and Michael, that's a pretty big deal. And then it brings me to this place of knowing

myself more. You know, again, I had this simplified factual. Let's move on from Okay, agree you Daddy's not here. It's a whole bunch of stuff about his life, you don't know. It's a whole bunch of people. Part of his life you don't know anyway, life of mine, you know, and life with my mother and life with my sister and blah blah blah blah and all these things. That's been also a very public version of the story that

I've told. And to go back to that tragic moment and say like, oh, I'm still living with that death. Actually it's so so much has comfortable. I've reconnected with his family in the past few years. I've got to live in grandmother I didn't know about. There's a lot of other relationships and experiences and parts of my life

that are activated much later. But the piece of it that feels most fertile is this internal journey of who am I and how long I didn't approach that part of myself did it live in a separate place, like in a box in a room and a yeah, it was. It was in It was in a room in the house of me, and I had locked the door. Was there a moment or an occurrence that made you go and open the door and begin that work. That's it's difficult to pinpoint, but I know a precipitating moment. I

hate I hate that I get to say this. I think I have to thank Mark Zuckerberg for it. I know, I know, all right, well, well okay, but I mean I can be grateful for him if he can SA tell me, tell me it was Facebook, wasn't it? It was? It was the Book of Faces. It was that, you know, ad serving democracy, undermining birthday reminder service. Um. And I got a message on it from a cousin who saw me on TV and was it's like, I'm your cousin. Hey, I remember you from blah blah blah blah blah. We

wonder what happened with you? And I was like, everybody says they're your cousin when you're on TV, and to to tell you to so much. There's a lot of we've got a big business. Many many tunday to be our brand. I you know, I saw that message and I put it back in that locked room in the house of me, and I just ignored it. You know, I think for a couple of years, if I'm honest, I have to. I mean, there's time stamps on everything,

so I could go back and find out. But it was it wasn't the next day or the next month, because that is one't ready. And I went back and we finally, you know, we met up. She introduced me to the others. It just there's ripple effects to this, you know, in all parts of my family and and in all parts of me. So that unlocked a wing of the house, it turns out. And then I started walking down the hall and I'm like, oh, what's in this room? Oh? This relationship with my sister, what's in

this room? Oh? This is what? What? What is? What is even a man relationship in this room? Gun violence? What's in this room? Racism? Police, brutality? What's in this Oh? My goodness, there's rooms inside the rooms, and there's forgiveness in there. You know, there's updated stories of self behind those doors doors. I didn't even know we're there. That's my answer for now. I reserved the right to update, upgrade, modify,

and change these at any point. Great. I'm glad that you are in charge of your own updates and it's not Tim Cook. You are a joy. I'm so grateful. I just thank you are the best. I really did thank you so. I mean, you are the best at this. You have successfully brought me to the brink of many tears. I have successfully me to manage them. I had my communication. I was digging my nails into my palms to cry.

So yeah, thank you. Thank you for opening some more doors and for being fun about it is what I try to do, and to be in the compassionate hands of someone else who does that is I felt taken care of here. Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Season two of Barrotunday's brilliant podcast, How to Citizen is out now on the I Heart Radio app. In this season, he asked the question how can we citizen with so

much division? And I absolutely loved the first episode with the writer and documentary and Astra Taylor, where they basically talk about the Platonic idea of democracy, which, as far as I can make out, Plato sort of meant that you should just get rid of politicians and just have the thinkers lead everybody into whatever was coming next. Please check out his podcast, it is extremely edifying. Mini Questions is hosted and written by me Mini Driver, Supervising producer

Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Minni Driver, additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver