Chuck Bryant

What would I be doing. I was a writer, so I'd probably be writing pamphlets for cell phone companies or something. Oh my god, well, I'm very glad you're not. I'm very glad you're hello. I'm Mini Driver and welcome to the Mini Questions. Growing up, my family always had the radio on. I loved the ritual of listening to shows like Desert Island Discs on a Sunday morning and hearing

interesting people answer the same set of questions. Later. Whenever I got my copy of Vanity fairback when you actually bought hard copies of magazines, I would always turn to the back page first and read their version of Proust's questionnaire. I think it's the scientific method really. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make interesting

observations about the way we're the same and different. I love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. I think of this show as a mini archive, no pun intended, although it's sort of unavoidable, where I invite you to observe how these trailblazers overlap and also

where they don't. So I took the format of Prus's questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are where then? 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? And I've gathered a group of remarkable people that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've selected the ones that felt closest to their experience, or were the most surprising, or the ones that provided the most fertile ground to connect. And today we're talking to Chuck Bryant

with his co host. Chuck is the host of the podcast Stuff you Should Know, which if you haven't listened to this right after you listen to me, you need to go and listen. He's also got another podcast called Movie Crush if you're a movie buff, which I am. He's down to earth genius and he's talking to me right now. Chuck, I have so many more questions for you than the seven questions that I'm allowed, because I'm fascinated about the trajectory to the podcast that you do

so successfully with Josh Clark. I mad about Stuff you Should Know, And I was going to say, did you know a lot of this stuff before? Oh? No, I mean, it's uh, we very much kind of fell into it and and I'm very fortunate, like I feel like we sort of bought a small house in a great neighborhood years ago, almost fourteen years ago, when podcasting was in its infancy and the industry kind of just grew up around us. And I wake up every day and say thank you for this weird life that I kind of

wandered into. I'm a huge fan. The Mexican wrestling episode is one of my favorites because I thought it was just large men and masks. I didn't know anything about the history of the masks, and it's so beautiful and amazing and weird and anyway, your podcast is a mitzvah for all of us. So my first question where and when were you happiest? Well, I mean, do people cheat and sort of dabble in multiple answers? You know what, I don't know if that's cheating. I think I would

hope that you've been happy more than once. But no, do feel free to do an appetizer, main course, and

dessert if you fancy. Okay, yeah, I mean because when I think about when I've been happiest, there are my college years, when I was living in Athens, Georgia for six years, and especially as I approached fifty years old, looking back on the time when responsibility was nil and I was waiting tables and felt like I was making all the money in the world, you know, living cheaply, and just you know, these are still my friends that I have today, My like, my closest friends are from

those years, and we all live within two or three miles of each other here in Atlanta. So I think about those years. But I think when am I happiest in the present tense? I sort of, I guess would like to set a little scene, which is I'm in my sun room in my home, and it's very lovely, lots of windows, lots of sun, lots of sun. It's early evening. I've got a glass of wine. My two dogs and two cats are in there. My wife is

in the fat chair reading a home design magazine. Michael Kiwanuka is playing on the radio, and I'm playing with my daughter. I'm building something with her, like legos or magnetiles. That's when I'm happiest. Now, those are the best moments. Do you think that your awareness of when you're happy do you think that it has a sort of a knock on effect to the rest of your life, That awareness of being able to say it's in my son room, it's playing magnetized with my little daughter, knowing my wife

is close. Do you think that that reminds us to absorb it where it may not be so so obvious. Yeah, I mean, I think that's something I have to work on in the obvious moments. I very much am in that moment, like in the sunroom, you know, especially being an older father to a younger child, like really recognizing the importance of every day like that, because you know how it is, they get older and you lose those moments they get older quick. Try not to dwell on

that because it just makes me cry every time. So I try to really be in those moments, sort of step back and say like, all right, you're having one of those life moments like drink it in man. But it's something I have to work on. Yeah, I mean I think we all do. I think we all do. What is the quality that you least like about yourself? Well, I mean this is pretty revealing stuff here. It's like therapy territory a bit. I think my reticence to change things about myself that I know for a fact would

improve myself. Getting kind of stuck and letting myself up too easily, giving myself permission to not be the best me too easily. I'm too easy on myself. I think that's probably the best way to sum it up. I love them. Most people are like, I'm too hard on myself. You're like, I'm way too easy on myself. I am way too easy on myself. I really am, to my

own detriment. Part of it is procrastination, like, yeah, I'll work on that tomorrow, Like I need to drop some weight, but do I today, not today, tomorrow, and then the next day and the next day, so you know, taking the easier path. I can be a bit lazy sometimes in a lot of ways, but certainly in ways of self improvement. I gets so mad at myself that I don't hold myself more accountable, especially now with a young daughter. Like just you know how they do. They're soaking it

all in, They're watching everything you do. I know they forever change us, obviously, our children. What we forget is that they continue to forever change us because we are always being reflected back, and we have this little person. You know, when they say their first cuss word that they heard you say only yesterday, right, it's quite sobering

to know that they are these little sponges. And I can't imagine that my twelve year old will ever stop tacitly making me modify my own behavior because I see him pick up on everything that I do. Is that something that you felt like you needed a lot of work to be the best example or were you pretty squared away? And it's just little things here and there, you know what, I was really ready to be a parent, and I have a very flexible but just available view

of parenting. I feel like parenting is bearing witness. Why it's like, mommy, watch this, just watch them. Yeah, you don't have to do anything. But I've noticed that things that he's picked up on, whether it's my anxiety or some quick fire temper stuff that I go, oh, ship, yeah, I have to really look at that because I'm quite literally teaching him that this is a sanctioned basic architecture and we're all faulted humans. But it's good to be

aware of that stuff, you know. Yeah, I mean it can be so great when you see yourself in your child or you see your partner in your child, but it can also be the scariest thing, terrifying. It's terrifying, Absolutely terrifying. Then you see the generational passing on. It's like, whoa, somebody stopped this train. This is nuts, Like, but you can't do that though it doesn't work that way, does it? Know?

I think you know. It all depends on your modeling that you got growing up to and without getting too much into the weeds on that, I didn't have some of the best modeling growing up with my parents in a lot of ways. So the kid either wants to grow up and do things completely different, or the kid grows up and binding himself falling into those same traps that your parents were in. You've got a choice to make, that is it. You either grow up and you repeat,

or you grew up and you change. Because you don't want to repeat, and you're aware of that, You're right, it's a choice. It's a fork in the road. I think I probably do a bit of both. I think, well maybe everybody, if you're lucky, you do a bit of both as opposed to just repeating. My next question is what relationship, either real or fictionalized, defines love for you. Yeah, this is a three way relationship with my wife Emily and my daughter Ruby. She's adopted, and there's always just

some crazy story about that. Actual process. Ours is no different. It's never easy, it's always weird. But we had trouble getting pregnant for years and then went to Plan B, and I wasn't a d down with Plan B. I kind of thought, well, you know, if it's not gonna happen for us, maybe we have a life where we don't have a kid at all, and we just can pick up and travel whenever we want and we're beholden

to no one but ourselves. And that kind of appealed to me a little bit for a minute, and then I got on board and it all came together very fast. And you know, now I can envision my life any other way. Like if I could go back and have a biological child, there's just no way I would do it, because our life went in this direction. I can't imagine being more connected to a biological child than I am with Ruby. And you know, as apparent, it's the purest,

purest form of love there is. There's no strings attached, it's not transactional, it's unconditional. It'll get more complicated as she gets older, but those first few years, it's just that purity of love is very instructive and teaches me a lot about life, well, five year old teaching me about life. Yeah, And isn't amazing for that to become something that defines love for you when in concept it was something that you couldn't even really get your head around.

The paradigm of our hearts is extraordinary and myriad and so beautiful. I love that you could go from this idea of why I don't even know if I want to adopt, and maybe we're meant to just have this life of just me and my wife, and now you're in this place where you simply cannot imagine your life without your little girl. I love the flexibility of our hearts and the complete, unquantifiable nature of them. They're just sort of unbridled in their space and depth. That's such

an exciting thing to remember. Yeah, and in the heart. Like when I say you had to have the open heart for that, it it doesn't even have to be the castle door completely open, like you just have to provide the smallest opening sometimes. Oh oh, that's a really good point. And they can worm anything. Anyone can worm their way in and take residence there. That's a really good point. You don't have to pull the drawbridge all the way up. You can just have a little bit

up and that's going to have this massive effect. Yeah. The other leg to the tripod that is my life is my wife Emily and marry my best friend, and like, I highly recommend it. I agree, it's a good thing to do. We go at it too, and fight like cats and dogs. It's not all wine and roses or anything, but you know, we always make up. I think you've sometimes you just gotta yell at somebody. Oh yeah, that should be an Oh I want to yet somebody I want to really get. You have to yell at someone.

You have to with somebody who loves me though, that's the important part. Somebody who loves me. And that was the thing. Like I said, I didn't have the greatest modeling. A lot of yelling and fighting in my house. And the difference is, like I never really saw my parents make up. It's just a long fight. So we always make a big point to like make up and let her see that and tell her like, hey, listen, mommy and daddy fights sometimes, but we're always going to come

back together. You know. Sometimes it's the next day we never subscribed to the don't go to bed mad like No, sometimes you can go to bed mad. Oh yeah, I'm a big advocate of going to bed mad. It's sounding like a really bad night's sleep, sleeping on and waking up feeling shitty and then going you know what, I really don't want to feel like this anymore. Like I said, you know, we go at it like cats and dogs sometimes. But you know, when I'm traveling for work, I'm gone

for a day and I missed them both terribly. You know, I can still have some wonderful experiences alone. Sometimes when we do live shows on tours and stuff, I'll have some really great nights exploring in town by myself. I'll have so much fun. But at some point, inevitably I think I wish they were here with me. But with COVID lockdown too, It's like this is when everyone's metal is tested as far as who they're partnering with and who they're rooting down with. And we we've had a

pretty good time. Yeah, I gotta say I love him more now having been through this, my partner and all of this, I really do. It's interesting how you'd think you'd want to get away from people, and you do, but in not being able to get away from them. The other answer is to sort of go deeper and to laugh more. We've laughed an enormous amount, like sometimes slightly hysterically, but I always love What question would you

most like answered? I'm sure that people tend to go towards the metaphysical, the you know, are we alone in the universe type of stuff. I kind of wish I could understand true goodness and selflessness. I said, to let myself up too easily. I'm also very hard on myself mentally as far as like, I'm so selfish and and I hate it when I do selfish things. But I know people that just seem like pure goodness and pure selflessness.

I'd very much like to understand the human brain more when it comes to how much of that has learned. Obsess about nature and nurture as an adopted parent, and also am equally fascinated by true evil as well as true goodness, And I think just sort of understanding the combination of nature and nurture that make up personality and

goodness and badness. Would you like that answered, because you'd like to know how to corral that in yourself more or just because you are clearly a person who is interested in the world around you and knowing things and disseminating that information to others, so that if you could say what goodness was, then you could more easily understand what evil was. I think both, boy, that's a great question. Both I would use it for self improvement and also

with stuff. You should know, we've done so much on the human brain, and we know so much more now than we ever have, but it's still such a mystery what is going on up there and that weird looking clod of neurons that sits within our skull, Like, there's so much mystery there. And you know, we've done episodes on sociopathy and true crime stuff like the Worst of the Worst. There's so much research now on literal like brain injury early on and how that can take someone

down a bad path. And I look at that stuff and it's just fascinating to me. And there is no good without evil and evil without good. So I think it's like understanding the human brain and what nature wise brings us in a certain direction, and how much nurturer can can say no, and how much notes you could maybe heal and and change it back for sure? What do you think about nature and nurture? God? It was one of my four o'clock in the morning thoughts this

particular morning. I mean, as I lay there wondering about what on earth was going to happen with everything, like you do these days. So when I had my little tiny baby, I was a single mom and I was so scared after the first couple of weeks of being alone with him at night, because I was like, I am an idiot. I have made so many mistakes in my life. Who was entrusted this tiny being to my care? And what if something happens and I don't know what

to do. So I called a friend of mine and she went, oh, you've got to call my mate Stella. She'll come round and she'll be a night nurse with you. She'll be there with you and you can talk to her. So began just the happiest two weeks of my life. Apart from having this new tiny baby. There was this amazing woman from the north of England who would just come and she sat on my sofa while I was feeding the baby in the midle of the night, and she chat to me about children and babies and childcare

and everything that she knew. And I would just ask her endless questions in the fog of this middle of the night, heavy milk and two women sharing I suppose like it was an ancient transaction. And one of the things that I asked her was, all these babies that you've come across, can you tell me about nature and nurture and like these babies that you've seen and you've spent time with, and then who they grew up to be.

And she said, I've got to tell you beyond just like the physical things which you you can't really get away from, like colic. A baby has colic. Some babies just get colic. It doesn't matter what the mother eats and then feeds the baby. It just happens. But she's like, you see that these beings they come in with a

certain amount that is just completely and utterly them. And she said, and then you watch how the parenting either frames that and holds it in a place that it can kind of grow, or they suffocate it, or they don't really put it on any kind of pedestal at all, and so it kind of grows wild. And she said she was always fascinated by that fundamental kind of nugget of that person. I've watched with my own son because he was my only science test with this, and I

was always aware of that. I always saw from the very beginning who this person was. And I've thought about in the moments in our life together, whether I'm lifting that up, whether I'm suffocating it. Am I damaging it? Do I need to censure it? How am I framing it? Because as his custodian, that's my job. But I think nurture is huge, but you have to honor and respect that nature as the nurturer. You have to have a modicum of inquiry into what that nature is before you

can start nurturing. It's so fascinating. My daughter has a very good heart, and that is something that you can't I don't think. I mean maybe you can. In our experience, we did not nurture that into her. I mean we've tried, like you said, we've tried to reinforce that and build it up. But she just has a good heart. She's a sweet kid, and you see it in her relationships

with her little friends and how she plays. And when you see a kid that is not like that, It makes me sort of feel bad for that kid and think like that kid's gonna struggle in life, kids who struggle with their instinct being to like push another kid or to help another kid up. You know, sometimes it's as simple as that. What a gift with with that night nurse. Wow, that's amazing. Those are the heroes that like, when you hear about a person like that, it's it

almost feels like magic. Oh, she was amazing. She told me so much. Was a cool moment in my life. I mean as a person and as a new mother. It felt pretty ancient because you realize that women have been doing that forever and ever and ever that has existed in our culture. An elder woman teaching another woman because you know most you know, girls can get pregnant,

but you're not also instilled when you get pregnant. You don't suddenly have this giant download of what you're meant to do with the baby you have don't have a clue. They love doing that for my friends, of passing on what was passed on to me. It's nice. This might be my favorite question because I love food. But what would be your last meal? Well, I'm going a cheap,

big time on this one. How are you? I am, because I'm going to set up something that's not real, that's magic, which is well, I'm set up a scene. It's not just a meal. It is all my friends and family together at a big party, big pot luck, and all of my favorite foods are at the pot luck. And the magic in the big cheat is that I don't get full. Oh that's good, yeah, because feeling full is the worst. There's self loathing involved. It's like I feel full, I ate the wrong things. It's just the

worst feeling. So in this magic world, all of my favorite foods are in this big spread, and I don't get full. So there's fried chicken, and there's mashed potatoes. I'm a boy from the American South, so there's corn bread, there's mac and cheese. But there's also Chinese food and Korean spare ribs and tan doory chicken and garlic. Non I want to come to this party and hot fudge, Sunday's tea, lime pie and birthday cake. It's all there and I can have as much of it as I

want and I don't feel gross afterwards. It's so funny how something that we do every single day we eat food, we eat food for fuel, it becomes mythic as well. There are these mythic meals, meals that we've had with friends when we've visited other countries places. They're the last meal that I had with my grandmother. It's so funny how magical food is, but also how we're scared of it and we let ourselves be punished by it. So many people seem to have such a difficult relationship with

I mean, I think loads of people do. Whether it's they don't eat enough, or they eat too much, or they punish themselves for wanting to eat delicious food. It's very complicated. There's a lot two people in their relationships with food. I think if there's no magic involved, it's just literally, what do you want your last meal to be? It would be a big Southern spread of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, my grandmother's biscuits, colored greens, mac and cheese,

banana pudding, that kind of thing. Banana pudding. I love that. Do you eat Southern food? Have you had much experience with that? Have eat in Southern food? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I love Southern food. I'm very suspicious. Is this an American thing or is. I only had it in the South at Thanksgiving, this sort of green jelly. It's like jello, but it's called a salad. But it's not a salad. It's green, but that's where the likeness to salad ends. It's jello with it some sort of weird savory dressing

on it. And I've been confused by it for a long time. And perhaps you can explain it to me. I can't. God, is that a Southern food? I don't think so, I know what you're talking about. Maybe there's a Southern food. What is it called? I don't know if I love southern food. Also, my mother always used to say that if you deep fried your elbow, it would taste good, true, which I also agree with. So deep fried anything is pretty good by me now I know.

And a boy my family history of like cholesterol problems. My family was always from the Deep South, and we all just grew up with fried food like running through our veins. It's cultural, though, isn't it. That's what you grew up with. It can still be delicious as well as you know, torturously bad on one level, you can still enjoy it. My grandmother's the true old southern grandma, that would the second you walk in the door. It's

just stuffing food down your throat at every turn. I got some chicken and made a bit to pie, like have it, have it all, eat it, eat it, eat it. It's an expression of love. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, it is. It definitely is. And it's hard to untie that knot when it is bound up with all these beautiful things like love and generosity and nurturing. It's hard to then go, yeah, but some of those things are bad for me. It's it's it's complicated. Well, but then

you know so much about eating. Like you said, is the experience that you're having with another human. It's experiential. You've painted a few pictures that for you. Separating these things out is not necessarily the point. It's really about the tableau of experience. It's about the people that you're with. Your idea of happiness is to be with your family. In these questions that I'm asking about yourself, you're including

all these other people, which is nice. I mean, without any training, I would definitely say you're not a sociopath. I'm a pisces. There's nothing more important to Pisces than that support group. I gotta say, I'm with you. I'm an aquarian, but I'm a dog in Chinese astrology, so like I just want my barey rapped for people to be loyal, I'm a dog in Chinese astrology too. Oh you yeah, And you want to hear something cool, I'll tell you the short version. One of my best friends, Justin,

is from London. We went to college together years ago and remain friends. His mother, Carrie, is very much into astrology and specifically does birth charts for people. And we got a Zoom meeting together with Carrie and she did the birth chart for me and Emily and and Ruby as an adopted kid. And it was really really cool. Like she said some things, it was just sort of mind blowing that we were meant to all be together. When she looks at our chart, it still gives me

chills to think about this one part. She has this sort of push accent. She said, chuck. She said, you and Ruby have known each other for a very long time, and I was like, what do you mean? And then she started to get into some past life stuff and she was like, I firmly believe that you guys. I knew each other before, and I was like, you know, I started crying and I'm you know, children's right now

thinking about it, and I bought into all that. I'm usually not into that sort of metaphysical stuff, and I was like, I believe it. It's really really good. I always believe it. Yeah, everything's going to work out. You great, I'm in Oh this next guy, he might not be such a good guy. I mean, I'm very glad. That's really nice. I've never heard of actually having a chart cast for a family. That's really beautiful. Okay, so listen.

My last question for you is in your life, can you tell me what has grown out of a personal disaster? I hate to go back to it again, but the obvious thing is not being able to get pregnant. At the time, I guess that did feel like a disaster. It's really interesting because this is exactly it. It's like what you thought was the end of the world was actually the beginning of just another world exactly. And it

came together very fast for us. Like I said, we took our time doing all the paperwork and all the sort of work that you have to do. But once we finally got that all together, and submitted. I think it was ten days later we got the call like we think we have a match. Good God. That is fast. Holy cow. It came together very fast. And one of the things that they talk about when you adopt is the three losses. There's a loss for you as parents

to not have a biological child. There's the loss of the birth parents and especially the birth mom, and then there's the loss that your kid's gonna have to do it with eventually. So they really talk to you about like those losses are there, like you can't make them go away, you can't pretend they didn't happen. So you've got to face those things head on, and to introduce the idea of adoption as they're growing up. It's hard. It was very hard for us to sort of first

say those words like, hey, there's this thing. Uh, you're adopted, and that's this is what that means. And you're three and you have no idea what this means yet, but we're just going to plant that little seed and uh talk about it more and more as you get older. And those losses seem like a disaster at the time, very much a personal disaster that I can't even talk about it that much without like wanting to break down. No,

I'm sure. I think it's so important to examine these things that we call the end of the world without saying that they want because most often they are, but to really be able to look at and see the other things that grew out of that, and how in our to make everything happy all the time, we sometimes forget that it's really good to experience those harder moments

because they're vital. I mean, I have almost a clinical aversion to bad things like that's how much I want things to always be great and okay, and to be liked and loved by everybody and to please everyone. But sometimes it's good to wallow in the misery just for a bit. I'm thinking about like heartbreaks growing up, and sometimes you don't want to feel better right away. Sometimes you want to put on the Smith's and just sit in the dark for three days. I think it's very important.

I think it's very very important to do exactly that. I think we live in a culture, in a society and the worst where we do everything to nullify pain when an actual fact, it is Yeah, it is hard and it is awful, but it is also the most extraordinary teacher and the most fertile ground for growth. So well, I wouldn't say. I'm an advocate for pain and very interested and respectful of it, and I try to teach my kid to not be scared of it. It is

part of life. And even though all I want to do is cover him in cotton wall and make sure that he experiences nothing bad, ever, I actually know the better thing is to teach them how to handle the pay because it's unavoidable. Yeah. My wife is always really good about telling me and reminding me to reinforce with

our daughter, like feel your feelings. That you've got to feel the full range of those emotions, whereas I would much more be prone to try and like it's okay, you don't like, you don't need to cry, that's all right, because look this is this is actually great. You don't need to cry. No, let him feel it. Yeah, and you know, Pollyanna doesn't get you anywhere. I would always rather know where I stand Pollyanna. You know what, I'd

like to tie her braids to the radiator. It's really really that she really did a lot of disservice to a lot of people. Yeah, no kidding, Oh, my god, Chuck, it's been it's been a huge pleasure talking to you. I think we figured it all out. I think we

kind of did. Like stuff you should know is that someone needs to figure out how to not be full when you eat, and you need to figure out how to nurture the good in your child whilst also encouraging them to explore what's bad, but creating a safety net of love and security. And if you're too easy on yourself, maybe be a little bit harder. And if you're too hard on yourself, be a little easy right balance homeostasis, due man. I knew talking to you would figure some

ship out. I'm so stoked. There's a lot of fun. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. Everyone knows Chuck from stuff you should know, But I want you to check out his other podcast, movie Crush, which I was on recently discussing one of my favorite movies of all time. Totsie 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 and man gesh Hetty Cador Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and Unique Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, And for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver