Just double triple checking. Okay, and apparently let me burn my coffee out. Okay, hold on, okay, stop me and gross from womenary. This is here to slay the black feminists just a touch gross. When I'm recording Before Night Therapeutic Podcasts of your Dreams, I am Trusty mcmillancottam y'all, and I'm rocking slaying gay on Slay. Trustie and I talked about our problems, and by problems I mean everything from racist vote suppressing Republicans and we need Democrats who do nothing, to the student loan debt that increases with every moment and goes on addressed by the president, and of course global warming that is boiling our planet. And you know, just couple of the regular things. We also like to talk about. Our personal problems are saying, although I would suggest that most of our personal problems are other people. I don't have problems. I got problems now. We have people, and people tend to come with problems like my mother's God love them, God love them. I have my mother with me right now on vacation. Uh. And I did that to myself, so I can't even that was that was a choice. We talk about good time, fine dining, travel, all of that good stuff, speaking of which I'm hungry right now. I certainly know a thing or two about hunger. But when we're not working out, we also bring in someone else to talk with, women, mostly black women, usually women in the arts, politics, media, women who are getting ship done like us, big girl. Hey, hey, West Coaste. I know, and I'm thinking just long enough where I'm not jet lad, but I'm definitely not on East Coast time anymore, but not completely on West Coast, so I'm a little loopy, but I'm definitely closer to your time zone than I usually am. I am glad to hear that. I have enjoyed watching the images on Instagram. It seems like an ideal trip to the Pacific Northwest. Just lovely. Yeah, so we're splitting the difference. This is a mother daughter triph. So let me tell you what this is. This is me pre empting my mother's request to do something. So see, I have to jump out there ahead of her desire. So part is, you know, part of your job as a daughter of a black mother is anticipating what she needs. Okay, So I knew she wanted to do something, and I knew if I let her decide, she want to do it at the worst possible time, you know, the beginning of the semester or you know, going into the holiday season. So this was me forcing her hand on a trip when it was most convenient or me and when I could still have some input over what we were doing. So yes, I've taken my mother to the Pacific Northwest, which I really liked. I thought it would be like a good compromise between like being in l a or California, with some of more of what I enjoy, which is a little bit more outdoor stuff, but still enough shopping for viving. Because let's be real, what my mother wants to do and she wants to shop and she wants to eat, right, so we needed a combination of those two things. In the Pacific Northwest fit the bill nicely. We went out to Bainbridge Island earlier this week and I've decided to move there roxing Bainbridge looks gorgeous, Absolutely freaking love it. And one of the things that I found fascinating is I have friends who live in Martha's Vineyard, and so I've done Martha's Vineyard several summers at my friends insistence, and I really hope she doesn't hear this. By the way, listen, I like Martha's Vanyard, and I'm supposed to like Martha's Vianiard for our listeners who don't know, Martha's Vineyard is like the gold standard of black bouge leisure, right, so black bougie people love to go to. Martha's Vineyard is absolutely a state assemble all of that good stuff. And Bainbridge reminds me of Martha's Vineyard, but somehow feels a little bit more welcoming. I said, I hope I know everybody's get rey be mad at me. Listen, I like Martha's Vineyard. I do. It's bougie capital b you know. I feel the need to have on an outfit when I'm at Martha's, you know what I'm saying. And outfits to me aren't vacation you know they aren't. And I also, I haven't been to Martha's Vineyard either because it looks so bougie. And I'm not afraid of bougie, to be clear, right, I just want to say, but it's not my kind of bougie. Yes, It's like I don't want to get on a boat. I don't want to happen. You know, I'm not trying. Oh girls so much serious side mean, it's just too much. I'm like, y'all keep that, it's fine, and I love us. But all of the girls with the hair, they on the beach, but they still have the hair, you know, and again the ensembles, and I just you know, it's so much. So I love my people. But Beanbridge Island is very much environmentally like, very much like Martha's Vineyards. Small, cute downtown, but still enough of the stuff you want. They got a cute little museum, They've got enough restaurants where you won't get bored with the food. Um, and you can get around the island really easily. But nobody had on an outfit, and I think that's why I feel really comfortable there. So I love being Bridge. Mother loves Seattle and is dragging me all across this place, going from boutique to boutique. So I think both of us got what we needed out of this place. The other reason I chose it is because the covid rapes were doing pretty good here. I was gonna ask with all that because you seem to be doing the most. And after I saw that picture of that dude with his leg up on the railing air and himself out, I was just like, I wonder what there? He was airing out his ball I am free to baby, And he kept it there the whole time. I kept clocking him because I was like, how long is he gonna do it? Okay, so it's got his leg propped up y'all on the fairy banister, and he was looking around and he wanted you to look. I mean, he he was pretty I'm sorry, but right the picture was not a secret, by the way, directly at him. I pointed the camera and kind of nodded at him, like okay, and he smiled, he smirked. He totally. He was into. Yes, he kept that leg propped up there that entire ride, airing out that whole situation. What you gonna listen? Good for him. I just it was very performative. But yeah, the COVID rates I think are fairly good here. Washington State is a bit of a mixed bag overall because there are some strong conservative leaning pockets across the state. But Seattle and certainly the places that we've been going to have been um pretty good, and I paid attention to, you know, how much there was to do outside. So Seattle also had that. Going forward, we've mostly spent our time outside, So I felt like it was a pretty good compromise of still being cautious, not in lock damn, still being cautious, which, as it turns out, we still need to be very hyper vigilant because the COVID trend lines aren't going the way we hope they would be going. At this point, I think it's a new normal, a new way of living where sometimes we're gonna wear masks in public and sometimes we're not. And my in laws arrived today, this time with my niece and nephew, Rebecca and Jackson, who are ten and thirteen, and so I have planned an extravagant itinerary for the week, involving Lego Land and Disneyland and Universal Studios, and as one one does, it's going to be very summary. We're sending the parents to Hollywood Bowl on a little romantic day. It's gonna be fun. But I was making all of these plans, I kept thinking, Wow, how safe is this. Fortunately, like you, most of what we're doing is actually going to be outdoors, you know, there's this new sense of caution about making plans and we're hanging out with friends now. We just went to a lovely, lovely wine bar on Sunday. A Net Benning and Warren Batty walked behind us and we were like, we just had an al hanging in there. They are secializing, and you know, it was great, and we looked around and the restaurant was full. I just kept thinking, things are different. We're trying so hard to pretend everything is normal, and I wonder how long this is going to last. Yeah, that is a bit exhausting to me, as we've been tentatively making our way back out into the world the same thing. I went to a sorority function for my sorority last week. I'm going to a concert in Vegas. I'm joined the US Residency with my sister. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm going to see Arch your baby. Very tentatively, but I do feel the need to sort of pretend like everything is normal when we're out and about, because you want to squeeze everything out of those moments because they do still feel kind of special and that makes things a little weird. And we wanted to explore some of that weirdness that we think many of us are feeling as we try to get back to the new normal, we might sing in our relationships. Um A few weeks ago, we had a conversation with a family and marriage therapist, Kiandra Jackson, where we talked about what happened to our relationships during COVID, how to maybe restart some of them as we re emerge, and which of those we want to leave behind. And more recently, we had the wonderful opportunity to explore these questions with another therapist, the one and only as the parrel As there is a psychotherapist, and she specializes in relationships and sexual reality and how these things work together or don't. Her most recent book is The State of Affairs, Rethinking Infidelity, which is such a great title and a great subject to explore. And she has hosted not one, but two podcasts, How's Work and Where Should We Begin, which takes us into her therapy sessions with couples. And I actually listened to I don't listen to many podcasts, but I do listen to Where Should We Begin? And it's fascinating. It is fascinating tons of people apparently, do people lost their ship when I said we were speaking with a stare. By the way, um, they wanted me to bring all of these questions to her. We began our conversation with a stare by asking her, now that we're re emerging from our bubbles, what happened to us collectively? What happened to us? And where do we go from here? What's going on with us? And where do we go next? We are unsure, but we are unsure of how long we're going to be I'm sure, and so we are constantly assessing risks, management of risks, fighting over what are the risks that we want to take with the people that we love but who think differently about those very same risks. And this prolonged uncertainty has also been combined with the state of I think we could all agree that this is a collective grief that is broad. You know, it's the grief over loss, but loss can be you know, the death of people, But it's also the death of intangibles, of the way that you've conceived of normality, the death of spontaneity, the curiosity that usually propels us towards others, and who now suddenly became you know, any spontaneous meeting could be a spontaneous contamination. What a crazy thing that is that we are flipped on ourselves. And the sense of ambiguous loss the notion of things that are physically present but psychologically absent, like office hours and people parents, grandparents, who are emotionally very present and physically absent and we are unable to see them. That is the ambiguous loss. So it's that kind of stuff that we have really or grappled with everyone and every community in different ways. It is interesting that you talk about the scale of loss being varied invariable. I'm I'm working on a piece right now where one of my arguments is that we have a language for the big grief that you're talking about, death right, And it's not the best language, you know, we don't do it well in the West, but we do it. We have a language for death and I think sudden trauma. I am thinking as much though about the loss of the things that comprised our identity, like our relationships to each other are as much about our everyday identity, who we are, who we are in relation to others. What that says about us? Do we have a language like how should we talk about what is a good way to think about what has happened to our closest relationships, which tend to be the ones that we build the foundation of our own identities on. It's interesting you ask, because in the middle of the amount of April, I went ahead and did a series for where should we begin? That was just with couples in lockdown Nigeria, Sicily German in New York. You know what was happening to relationships under confinement? Where do people find freedom when they are locked in together? You know? What is the power of the imagination? What are the ways that we negotiate self and other? What stands out around the identity is the sense that when you lose your job, you're not only losing income, you lose a part of yourself. You lose your status, you lose your role in society. So identity, who am I? You know? What matters to me? What are my priorities? That gets always shaken up when you have a disaster or a pandemic. Disasters are like relationship accelerators. You have mortality that is right behind you. You sense the fragility of life, and suddenly you say, what is important to me? What matters what are my priorities? Where do I put meaning? And you begin to say life is short? What am I waiting for? And what am I waiting for? Is about what is essential to who I am? What must I still do? What must I no longer live with? What decisions had I've been holding off making. It's those essential questions of identity that are very much at the forefront when the stakes are all heightened. Have you noticed anything a common thread through a lot of the people you've been speaking with about what this relationship accelerator has done to them? Because I think that can either mean good or not so good things, depending on the state of your relationship. Well, it's good about being more clear, yeah, regardless of the outcome, right, regardless of the sense of not only who you are, but what you want out of a relationship correct or your own responsibility to the relationship as well. So in general there is a sense that if life is short and what am I waiting for? There is often the drive to let's move in together, let's have a child, let's buy that house, let's move to the other side of the country, let's do those things we've been meaning to do. And then on the other side it's life is short. I've waited long enough. I'm out of here. I'm not continuing this. This is a compromise that is no longer acceptable to me. So it goes in both directions. At this moment, as we are not experiencing a type of a of a reopening, there is a proliferation of divorces and breakups. I mean this, this is not new. This is not the first time. This is happening in the aftermath of a disaster. But it's about clarity, it's about resolve, it's about mutuality and reciprocity, and it's about responsibility. We are thinking a lot about what intimacy means in our lives because of the way the mortality, as you talk about, is like the wall now up against our backs, or has been for quite some time. And for some of us that is a more familiar position to be in than it is for other people. I think about how different that feels for some people. Some people live under the threat of life or death decision. That's exactly yes, do we define intimacy the same way depending on our relationship to risk, and how should we be defining it in our lives. I actually think that the definition of intimacy is primarily influenced by the way that we conceive of ourselves in an individualistic framework or in a more collectivist framework. What I mean, but that is, for most of history, intimacy has been living life together, sharing the vicititude of everyday life, working the land, raising the children, developing companionship, economic support. Intimacy in the modern ideology of love has become into me see and to me to see. Intimacy is a discursive experience. It's a communicative experience. It's how we open up in front of each other. It's how I disclose myself in front of you, and you will listen to me, and you will empathize with me, and you will validate me, and you may make me feel that I am not alone. It's intimacy as a bulwark against isolation, atomization, and aloneness. That is pretty much the definition of intimacy in our Western modern romantic arrangement. You know, it's interesting when the pandemic started, my wife and I decided to live together for the first time, and at the time we were not married yet, we were just engaged. It was interesting to find that level of intimacy later in life I'm forty six, she's fifty nine, And do you have advice for people on how to find intimacy later in life, Because one of the things we learned when we started to live together is that we are really set in our ways and we are used to managing households alone, right, right, right, right, So, I mean, there's various ways to answer this, right if you take this very same definition of into me c When you're twenty five, you sometimes want somebody else to love you so that you can love yourself a little more. Yeah, you know, there's a different transaction going on. You don't say that, but that's the fact of what you're really hoping for. The big thing that happens, hopefully with age and maturity is that you've come to know yourself, and hopefully you've also come to accept yourself, and you've come to tolerate the ambivalence of the things you do like and the things you like less. And so when you meet somebody, on the one hand, you have yoursel at ways, but on the other hand, the nature of your dependence and interdependence may be very different. It's you don't need the other person to agree with you on everything in order to know that you write in order to know that what you think was what happened is really what happened. You can understand that you have a version, and you can coexist with someone who has a different version next to you, and those two shall live side by side perfectly fine. It's that notion that you know you can be closer to someone without being afraid of losing yourself, and you can be closer to someone without being afraid of losing them. You know, the way I like to to imagine imagine it is that in many relationships you will often find that one of us is more afraid with the lose, the fear of losing, the other with the fear of avernment, and one of us is more afraid with the fear of losing ourselves, the fear of suffocation. And it's that dance in a couple. That's the thing that you check right now when you say you know I'm older and that is older. That thence if you ask each other how was that before in your previous relationships, you may begin to see how it has evolved over the decades, the fear of losing oneself. How close can I get to the thing that I desire without losing myself? Can you negotiate that with another person without having figured it out for yourself first? There. I think this is a moving target throughout life. It's not a static thing. You know one day you've got it, then you hold on to right. That's what I'm always hoping for, By the way, because I'd like to check it off. I want to say I've accomplished this level. I'm now ready for the next step. So you're telling me I can't check this off. Trust when I you know about the fear of losing One said I made a mistake about something, and I talked to me, said, I said, it's okay, it happened. You'll be able to go back and do it better. Bread through this, you know your whole life isn't destroyed. And I was thinking, as I'm doing this inner dialogue, I'm thinking message, I'm so glad this didn't happen to me twenty years. I would have been at my wits end for three weeks. You're not sleeping thinking all of that. I should have I could have. Yes, I used to live those moments over and over again for years. I've got one moment in particular, professional moment I said that I didn't let go. This happened to me maybe I was twenty four. It was one of my first jobs, and I let a manager call me stupid in front of the other people in a meeting, and I didn't say anything, and neither did anybody else. That's right, Well, that's fair, that's fair. But I only held myself accountable. I mean, I've replayed that moment for twenty years. It would come to me in the middle of the night, so I say that, I say, that's why I'm so obsessed with the with the fantasy of being able to finally overcome a moment and move. But you see, when you obsess, you're saying why didn't I say something? And I think that the real shift is to obsess and to say why didn't nobody say anything? Or at best, why didn't I ask everybody? Are you just going to sit here and let that happen? Yeah? Right? You know, because when you humiliated or ashamed in front of the whole group, it's the last thing you can do, is kind of you know, yes, yes, yes exactly. Do we put too much pressure on our relationships? You mentioned the atomization of modern life, which is something I'm obsessed with, by the way, because I just don't think we were meant to live this way or we haven't evolved for this kind of way of life. Right, absolutely, And you talk about how badly we want our romantic relationships in particular to be the bulwark against that. Basically you're talking about like a fundamental fissure or separation that's happened where we're want to cut off from collective life. How do we build a life that has intimacy that's not only just about our romantic partners. That's a great question. So I address it with two texts. One it is I do think we put a lot of pressure and expectations into our romantic relationships, more than we ever have. We still want all the things that we wanted in the past, from companionship and economic support and feminine life, but we also want the best friend, and we want a trusted confidante, and we want a passionate lover to boot and we want all of that. Well, we live twice as long in one person. Yes, that's why we live twice as long. I haven't thought of that. That's right, We're living so much longer. So I often see you know we are asking one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide the research of life. Think in is all or nothing. Marriage is very interesting about that because the people who do manage to climb mounto Olympus actually having relationships today. The good relationships of today are better than most relationships of history. But the fact is that only a few people can climb them mountain because the view is more beautiful, but the air is also thinner till you get there. On the other end, what he says is that what allows you to have a better relationship is the diversification of needs, and that means people need friends, people need family, people need neighbors, people need mentors, people need activists that they collaborate with, people need co creators in their artistic pursuit. They need a village. This idea that one person is going to satisfy all your needs and vice versa is really a toll order for a party of two, and they crumble under the expectations. Exactly, I put so much pressure, and I can even look at my own romantic history, and for most of my adult life I did sort of expect to find that all in wine, and it was until I realized, Oh, I can have that kind of friendship over there, and I can get this over here, and then my wife and I can just focus on the things that really matter to us without this unrealistic expectation. And I know a lot of people have found sort of a greater sense of who they are and what they want in the pandemic. What are we doing to move forward with everything that we've gained and come to understand about intimacy in our relationships, regardless of what decisions we've decided to take. So when you were talking about these expectations, one of the big things that has changed is that in nineteen sixty people in their twenties were married. Today in their twenties are merit in the US. What does it mean is that you have a moratorium a period from about eighteen to twenty eight where people are in nomadic relationships. They move from one relationship to another. We one day the hope that they will meet the soul made, and the soul made for most of history has always been God. It hasn't been another person. Oh stare, Oh that's yeah. I felt that one profoundly, you know, And this is a union analyst Robert Johnson, who explained it really well. You know, people want in their relationship, they want transcendence and meaning and ecstasy and wholeness, all these existential spiritual needs that people used to look for in the realm of the divine and romantic love now has become this religion and that is a real challenge. So and I don't think the pandemic has changed any of that. What the pandemic maybe could help us with is to understand that love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm. It's a verb. It's an active verb. For example, it was very easy when people are in confinement together to just start snapping at each other and just noticing the stuff that noise us, because normally you could go and say this to somebody else, you know, and then you're go on for eight hours and then you come back home, and then you've had time to kind of breede and be seen by other people, and the stuff that annoyed you in the morning is kind of dissolved a little bit. At at this moment, you know, everything collapsed, all our roles collapsed in one place. Right. You are the cook, and you are the your owner of your gym, and you are a teacher, and you are a parent and a friend and the child of a colleague and the CEO and whatever else and a podcaster, all of this generally without even having to change clothes, go anywhere or change seat exactly. While that happens. When I found myself doing a lot is telling people you have got to do active what you would call intimacy right into me cy gestures of appreciation. And the appreciation isn't just you know, thanks for bringing the coffee. The appreciation is thanks for being so thoughtful, because then you see the person rather than just the action. The gestures and providing a service. That's to recognize the emotional care that the service has done. Also, don't pretend that you know everything about the person just because they're next to you. And then you start to have the most boring conversations when you're talking with your friends. I hate that life stage. Yeah, I hate that that relationship stage. I should say, when you're all your conversations are about and then I had lunch and you know, they didn't even bring me my lunch at work, and it's like this laundry list reporting of your day, and I'm like, what happened? Didn't. We used to talk about, like I don't know, politics or climate change. We used to talk about like these really big ideas or really deep intimate things, and some stage happens in a relationship where it's just a laundry list of items. So I had a very fun experience last night. Right. Part of what I tried to do in response to this, you know, languishing as well, or like the vodage right now and lack of curiosity and interest, was that I created a game, right, yes, the game and I played last night. So the game is called where should we Begin? Like the podcast, but it's a game of stories, because that's it. What your conversation is a list of items that's not the same as the conversation. That's a story where then you're interested, then you pocked up and you want to hear what happened, you know. And I played We were eight of us, and I played with my husband and he got a card that asked him about something and you know when he was young, and he started telling a story. We are almost forty years together, I've never heard it. Yeah. Then you then he said, wow, you know, the person who is next to you is forever somewhat unknown, mysterious and elusive, if you can allow yourself to actually remain curious rather than to be made anxious like that because you think that by now I should have figured you all out, and I should know before you talk what you're about to say, and then I can complain about bon And we have this cultural narrative that it's really important to know everything about your partner. But I hope I don't ever know everything about my partner, because then where is the mystery? What is left to talk about? If you can't discover new things in each other? Correct, This is a paradox that we live with right on some level. The unknown for some of us brings curiosity, mystery, anticipation, desire. For some of us, the unknown is more connected with fear, with anxiety, with unsettledness, etcetera. UM. I think that got intensified in this whole past year for sure, because for the first time this unknown was actually life threatening. This unknown was people who didn't know if they should protect their family or go to work. This unknown was if I come too close to you, what could happen to me? And then we would go out, and then we would come back and say oh, shoot, I shouldn't have done. It's like you you what, what am I going to pay for this? And then you count the days? Then you know, everyone went through various phases, you know, like that more or less, even if they want to went to the denial of it. The denial of it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that you will you're willing to suppress it. So the paradox for me is it's an existential reality that we all have two fundamental sets of human needs. We all want security, stability, predictability, reliability in life and in our relationships. And we also all want freedom and openness and change and novelty and risk in our relationships. And I often call it the tension between love and desire, because in love, you want to know, you want to narrow the distance, you want to minimize the tension. But in desire, you actually don't want to go to something that is foregone conclusion. Why bother if you know in advance where it's going to take you all the time, you want the experience something new happened to you, something even to yourself, you know. So these two they relate and they conflict, and he realized the mystery of eroticism. And some of us come out of our childhood wanting more freedom and wanting more novelty and change. And some of us come out of our childhood having had so much unchanged and so much case. We just want a little corner calm and stay exactly, and we tend to mate with a person who is often on the other side. That's the part I'll never figure out. We are attracted to that person who wants the exact opposite of what I think we secretly crave, but they are attracted to the part of us that we would like to leave a little behind. It goes both ways, both ways, okay, and there's yes. Because you offer me some structure, you offer me reliability to you offer me solid, You offer me you know, dependability, And I offer you to stretch a little bit beyond your boundaries, to look outside, to be more curious, to be more expensive, to take risks and trust and risk. They are in the dance with each other in permanence. How did you even come up with an idea to create a game to talk about developing intimacy with other people? The first part of the pandemic I was doing a lot of YouTube series on love, loss and loneliness in Lockdown. Then I did a whole season of couples in Lockdown for where should we begin the podcast? Then I went to look at the hard conversations that people are craving to have at work in the Housework podcast, and then I said, there is another side to this. This is the serious part, but there is an antidote to that seriousness, and that is playfulness. That is the way that we do remain connected with our aliveness, with our vibrancy, with our vitality. And I want to create something about that. It's not enough just for me to say we need to be more playful. I want to create an experience of that playfulness. I missed my dinners, I missed my friends, and so I thought, I want to create an experience that allows us to remain connected like that. And literally did I know that It evolved to the perfect timing of the re entry and the re entry anxiety and the way that we need to now deal with the social atrophy that we have experienced. And so it became a game to connect and to reconnect. So the game is if you're on the first date that you can play it. It has a whole deck of just sexuality questions which you can take out if you want to go or keep. It's about the best friends, but it's also about people who are just meeting. I mean, I've now tried it just yesterday. It was a whole group of people many of us had never met, and we really left everyone remembering not so much what we ate, but every story we heard. We live. Two stories are relationships, Sarah. Story we tell our lives to story is we remember people through stories, and I thought that if we stay connected to those stories, we will stay connected to our aliveness and our vitality. You know, I come from a storytelling I'd like to say, a storytelling people my family, uh, my father's side of the family does. Competitive storytelling is what I call it. You know, which story can beat the person's story, but the other person's story, who has the right version of the story and the idea? Until you said it just now, it's like, oh, yeah, that's what we do. We're playing like a competitive story game. Play gives you a container. Play gives you just enough structure to then be able to be spontaneous. When you play. You can tell a story without realizing you're telling the story because because you would ever have told the story if somebody had just asked you the question. But it's framed in the game. It's a kind of the space in suspension. We're playing. Well, speaking of games, trasse, Uh, do you want to play? Maybe? Do you play fair? I always know, see, I can see. I know my friend is a poker player. So I have to ask question. No, let's play, let's go, girly, let's go. Okay, let's see. This is yeah, I'm gonna actually go with the first question. Okay, I would quit my job if you'd pay me to. Okay, it's not gonna be at all what people expect, because you know, there's a certain stage where we get to in our careers. Everybody expects you to quit your job, by the way, and that came a calling for me, like over this past year, people are asking me and I said, no, I'm not quitting my job. You know, if anything, I don't need my job now, so it's a whole lot more fun. But there is one thing I would quit my job to do, and it's not at all what I presently do. I don't even know if this is a real job but if there was something where my life was connecting people the thing I really love That happened this week. A friend of mine wants to relocate, and you know, I'm all over that. Let me do all the research for your new place. Let me introduce you. I'm in a network of real I've got a guy who will help you with this. I'll set up the exploratory tour. Here's a notebook of some things you need to consider. I made her a notebook I love. And then I want to walk away. I don't want to actually have you be there when you buy the house. I just want to get you all set up to make the best decision of your life, introduce you to the people to help you, and then I walk away. That's not a job, is my problem. It's probably something that Stair pointed out early. It is probably something that used to happen in a village context, where you would know people and you have these really deep relationships. But we don't have that anymore. And I love doing that for people, like let me sort out your stuff. You want to be like a house hunter, but like a house hunter concierge. Yes, yes, I really do. Again, the problem is that girl I thought, I thrived at it this week. Like you are setting up this house, you are letting her get, you know, the community. That's right. I set up different lunch sites so she could see different parts of town and experience the walkability of the neighborhoods. I wanted her to see what her commute would be like. So we had something mid morning. Oh I thought it all through and I had a blast. But you know what pressy is also that you were in a full blown daydreaming. You got to fantasize a whole yota about yours talk about the that's right, the trade off between security and freedom. That's right. I got to play in her life and then come home to my nice, safe little house, which I adore. I love my safe little house bubble. I call it my bubble. You're exactly right, I said, I hadn't thought of that yet, And I had a ball. It was like taking a vacation. I was so refreshed from it. I went, I came back, and I had to do nothing. That's my favorite fantasized. That is my absolute favorite part. I had to do absolutely nothing. All right, my friend, your turn, you're up. Okay, um okay From your team age point of view. So this is the prompt card. Okay, from your teenage point of view, Okay, that's the prop that's the promm. That's going to be the lens to which you're going to tell the story. Okay, Okay, this is a dream you've never shared, A dream you've never shared. Oh, from my teenage point of view, you know a dream I never shared. From high school. I went to a high school with people who were very athletic and sort of and we had to take jim every single year and we had to do we had to do actual sports. So I was like I was on the little prep crew team, things like that, things I had no aptitude for and no interest in. But I always dreamed of being one of the athletes on the varsity teams and having like the letter jacket, and more than that, having the physical competence to be that person to like run the cross kind treat race or play on the hockey team. Because my little stint with the hockey was not good. And you have a hockey stint. I did because it's New England. And also I've done I've done um hockey, I've done lacrosse, I've done field hockey. There is nothing I have not tried, and I just always dreamed of like really being competent at it and being good at it, because I was kind of like, at least academically good at everything else, and this was not the thing I was good at and I knew and everyone else around me knew. And so they do seem like they're having so much fun they do, and like they seemed like so at ease in their body, just like when my very fucked up relationship with my body began, where I was like, I don't want anything to do with it. This is not my problem. I am in my head and my body is a vehicle. And to see these people who would like just run up and down a field for seventy five minutes, like football or whatever, I just always was very envious of it. Because I also had brothers who were incredibly athletic. One of them played professional soccer or football depending on the country, Urine, and and so I just thought, that's never going to be me, but I sure wish I could. There was a little bit of a myth as well, that the people who are the athletes fundamentally positive relationship to their body that necessarily it looks like it. On the other side, those things you nimble, you move, you're in your right. And what's interesting is, as an adult, I realized how many of those people were pressured into playing those sports and it was really their parents that encouraged it or their communities, and they had not and they like when they graduated, they never returned. At least they liked it when they started, but they stopped making it right right, And so we I think we tend to idealize realities that are not ours. And at least for me, I always look at people like who are super athletic, and I just think, oh, your life is perfect, don't cry to me. And I know now, of course, as an adult, that that's not the case. Like people are complicated. Life is complicated, and which is why this game would be so much fun. People are complicated, and that's what we're supposed to be discovering about each other, right, I think. So they're complicated. Sometimes they're just filled with contradictions. Sometimes they're just so funny and absurd. Sometimes they're just so tender and moving them. Actually, it really covers the range of you have another one, yeah, yeah, we have a few questions actually I would love to ask you a question. Alright, let's see share something risk So that's our prompt card. I get it now, So sharing something risky is the prompt, the context. Okay, taking a risk. Yes, I've never shared the whole story about the time. I have never told the whole thing. Oh god, there's so so many. I used to have a lot of fake ideas. Huh. I had a fake student idea that went well into my lead twenties and it was still by handwriting, so I would just change the numbers from you from one to three. And I actually got caught, uh. And I got caught in a tiny, tiny village as I was traveling in Turkey and I was trying to go to an archaeological site, and of all places, the guy looks at the card and he says, this is not a real card at the archaeological side, but in a tiny village, like far from everything, And I'm thinking, you are going to tell me I cannot go in here after everybody else has allowed me to enter different museums, different easy. And was this the point, by the way, of you having the fake student id? It was to get into museum. So it's not even to like go. You were doing this for cultural institutions, because in Belgium you don't need a fake idea to enter a bar. That's fair, Okay, we can enter clubs and bars you no, no, no problem. I primarily used it actually to enter shows and museums and different sides. Yes, I had this thing about you know, I'm still a student. You know. I tried to bullshot this man and he wouldn't let me. But I've often told the story that I actually could get my word, and that I did convince him because I had convinced everybody else. And you can't accept this one to merit on your record, on your perfect record. So when you tell the story, you convince the Turkish I didn't get in. If I see I get in. I went to buy a freaking stupid ticket. It wasn't the point. Became a sport, you know, ruined at all. Well, this has been absolutely wonderful. I love the idea of re entry through really nice, not controlled, but thoughtful groups of people telling stories with each other to remember who we were and remember how to speak to each other. It's only when you go back in person that you realize what you have missed. You can say it, but you don't nearly feel it in such a visceral way when you actually are standing in front of people. And so, how is the pandemic? Right? Yes, where did you start? You know? Where should we begin? We start with the game and give you. I'll give you tools to actually not feel like do you really want to know? You want me to really tell you what it was like, because for some of us it really wasn't an easy thing, and for others it was the continuation of a shitty life that we have had all along. Others it was the break of every plan. Not no graduation, no marriage, no anniversary, no this, no that you know, and for some of us it's never saying goodbye to the people that passed away, etcetera, etcetera. There is so many stories that people want to tell, and sometimes it's just at the game a voracious reader, I became a voracious bread baker, whatever it is. But there is so many stories. People have been talking to their walls for a while, you know. Yeah, I think it's so important to acknowledge that we did all have different experiences and they are more complicated than what the news might convey because so many different things happened. We had this political thing happening, and we had this incredible pandemic that we didn't know was going to end, and at some points it kind of felt like it wasn't going to end. And so I love that you are giving people tools to talk about it, because it seems like we are just rushing forward just culturally, and there doesn't seem to be any space for reflection or mourning or frustration or anger. It's just like, okay, we're opening back up, take your masks off, or reuniting or normalizing or asking people what happened to you this year? What happened you know, what was going on in your family? What about election? Do you know how many people am hearing now about weddings where half the family doesn't come because there are entire fishers in the family. Around the vaccination? What what happened around race in your family? What happened around politics in your family, what happened around wildfires in your family? I mean, this was a year. It's just like when you put it together and the general ideas, sometimes it's back to normal, you know, as if this is what people can actually do. You don't go back to normal because you have a different sense of what is important, and so you actually are doing what you've always done, but with a complete different intensity and intentionality. That's the new normal. In many ways, we need to re meet each other. We have an opportunity to actually meet each other in ways that we often long to but don't know how to. Uh. Well, as there, you have left us with a lot to move forward with. And I know that Truscy and I will probably be playing this game because it's actually really interesting. And I think, especially at a dinner party, give you something interesting to talk about beyond work, Like I don't know, I don't think we need to talk about our jobs today. Let's let's and it's not that. Yeah, that doesn't feel interesting enough either or meaningful enough in these moments. And you know, I think this is wonderful. We talked recently on the show how many of us lost friendships during the pandemic because it just became so much to manage the ties, because we just was trying so hard to survive in our own ways. And I'm thinking, Roxane, I'm going to use this to try to reconvene my friend group. Oh that's a beautiful idea, great idea, that is a great So you won't tell them in advance necessarily that you will play. But what you can tell is this, many of us have lost touch in this past year because it was challenging to actually stay connected to that many. And part of coming back is weaving back those social threads. Ah, that's exactly. I love that analogy, weaving as it threads back together. I came to fetch you. Trust you have to let us know how it come. I will, I will, And I like what you just said us there. I came to fetch you. I think so many people just want to be remembered. Just come acknowledge me, come get me. I'm ready, beautiful, Yeah, wonderful, thank you, Thank you so very much, a Stare for joining us on the show. It has been a joy and a delight. Same here. It's a pleasure. And uh, I hope we see each other again. Indeed, likewise, yeah, I'd get together and drink with us. Stare absolutely absolutely, And she is very chic in person. When we had lunch with her, she was wearing these beautiful like shambre slacks. I mean, I was just like, we are not the same size, but that's said, We're did you get those pants. They were really nice. I love it. We can't link to as stairs pants, but we can link you to information about her card game. Where should we begin, which we're gonna do in the show notes. So this is actually our last show of season two of Here to Slay, and we are going to have to call this season our pandemic season because every interview we did and every show we produced took place with COVID and an election happening around us we recorded. I can't believe we survived this. I honestly, you can't believe we surround me. I don't know how we did it, but well I do know how we did it. We have had wonderful producers supporting us every step of the way. That helped tremendously. The conversations kept happening, uh, and we had some really really good ones, and we want to reminisce with you all about a few of them. Maybe you remember this one. This one was back in November. It was right before Thanksgiving. We were all trying to figure out how we were supposed to have a family meal during the height of COVID shutdowns and lockdowns. We spoke with a chef, Sola l Wiley, who maybe fan girl just a smidge. I think she almost passed out trying to talk to rock sayd if you remember, she got herself inside a little tent so the sound quality would be good, and she told us how it feels to have made it now that she's a huge YouTube star in the cooking space. I feel exactly the same. Everybody thinks that I must feel so great and on top of the world, but you know, everything inside my soul is the same. I still feel the same. I think it's going to take a long time to emotionally get past everything. I'm just like really confused. I'm like, why are people nice to me? Why are people listening to what I'm saying? Why am I being treated with respect for the first time? And I'm very suspicious of all of it, to be honest, I'm like, am I in like the Truman Show? And I'm going to find out it's all fake? Um? Because it's been a really dramatic shift, like overnight, I feel like people are just treating me very differently, and I still feel the same darkness inside. Hello darkness, my old friend. I really appreciated speaking with Sola for a lot of reasons. One, I was actually familiar with her work well before the whole conflagration over at Bon Apetite, and I really enjoy her way of cooking. But I also liked her frankness in our conversation that she admitted she was overwhelmed and didn't quite know what to think or how to feel about this newfound public attention, you know, because a lot of people wouldn't admit that, but she did. And she's also like keeping her eyes on what she wants to do. And uh it was. She was lovely, She really was, and not just because she fanned girls absolutely a doll um. In December, again, still in the middle of that holiday season. I think by this time we were all feeling a little drained by the pretense of trying to have the holidays. But we released an episode featuring one of the most delightful men that we have had on the show. You know, we take that very seriously. Uh, if you hear a man on here to slay, it means he's really really good. And Jericho Brown is really, really really good. The election, it just happened, the second wave of COVID was building. We began, as we often do, by asking Jericho just how he was feeling about things. How do I feel at this moment? Uh? You know, we're all on a constant cycle of disappointment with this nation, and disappointment is probably not the exact right work, because it's something lower than that rights, something that's sort of you know in your gut. Do y'all know what I'm saying? Absolutely everything you know to be true, You're suddenly reminded of right and and I would love to die in a country that loves me, But it looks like I'm not gonna get that chance. Closer and closer. Um, and we all we hope for that right. We would like to all die in a country that we knew was on our side, right and over and over again, this nation proves itself not to be on our side. That one really lingered with me. When you think about not the country you want to be born into, but the country that you want to die in, the politics of everyday life feel really urgent when you think of it that way. What do we have to do to make this a country one where I can die in peace? I think that pieces something we're all looking for and one of the things that I love about Jericho's poetry is that he shows us the sort of work that he's doing to get to that place. And I know that we will definitely have him on again. But February was a red letter month for Here to Slay. We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with country singer rec Palmer, who spent time in court to get the rights back to her own name as a performer. And it was messy, she said, especially when you can go to Google and find the court transcripts and like, my whole personal life is in it's on the internet. Like it's because I had to tell the truth about some things in order to get out of my deal. Because nobody was like everybody was just like, what's not that bad, Like you'll get it, you'll get an advance. I'm like, no, no, no, Like I have to leave because there's a lot of just not good And so I had to show. Yeah, I had tell a lot of things that I like, I had to sit down and have a conversation with my mother before I was able to go into court because I was like, some things are going to come out and you need to know this. Ye. So yeah, it was traumatic. Yeah, is that why the new album is called Revival. Yes, yeah, we're on it in a way. Sometimes we can catch we catch things sometimes. Recy I've got to tell you it's having a bang up year. If you go check rec out on any of our social media platforms. Um the racist reckoning that has happened in mainstream country music and pop music at large has rediscovered a knew what many of us always knew. That Recy is a superstar. She's now a host at the Country Music UH Television cmt UH. She did the Country Music Awards. She was instrumental in getting the first black woman country music artists UH recognized for her lifetime of achievement work at the Country Music Awards this year. Reese's having a bang up year. I hope that that that whole traumatic event is far, far far in her rear view mirror right now, because her girlfriend is having a real moment. She is, and she seems to be handling it and rising to the occasion. Because you know, that's what we do with black women, whether we want to or not, we stay ready. Exactly. Speaking of staying ready, we spoke with a woman who was trying to keep our little happy gasses ready. Dr Ebony Hilton trying to save us from ourselves. Listen. Dr Hilton was a hoot, by which I mean she was very depressing, because I left that conversation with her very concerned. She's an anesthesiologist and an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Virginia Medical Center. She is also fly to death talk about being fly girlfriend came. She was online. She was red d that camera turned on, and we were like, what the hell. We moved immediately wanted to just turn our cameras off. I think I remember actually kind of dimming the light in my roomle and I was like, we don't need to see me right now. She's been very outspoken about what the pandemic is doing to communities of color. She reminded us how little we know about COVID their studies. Now they are coming out that they actually infected rats with COVID to see what happened, right, and when these rats passed away, they weren't detecting virus any longer in their lungs, but they were actually detecting the virus in their brains. That's horrifying to me heart to think. So for the So for these people who are losing their sense of taste and smell, and people like, oh, all I did was lose my taste and smell. Yeah, okay, but what what is that doing? If that means that that that virus invaded your neror runs, and I don't know why that brings the sense of safety to people, because what does that do to your trajectory of whether or not you're going to develop Parkinson's? What does it do to your trajectory whether or not you're going to develop um all sides? What? That was my first thought Alzheimer's. These things are clearly at least originating from the same place. That was my first thought, Like, what are the waves of neurological diseases we're gonna see across the lifespan of what did you say? Eight million people? And at and at what age? If you look at There were studies at the University of pen that of their athletes who had mild or asymptomatic COVID nineteen infection, so barely any symptoms at all, when they did a scan of their heart, they found that thirty of them had inflammation around the heart, absolutely positively horrifying. I think of that interview with Dr Hilton at least once a week. By the way, I do too. Every time I see her on social media, I think, look at her. She is continue in doing to fight the good fight and especially advocate for us and I, you know, I don't think she gets nearly enough credit for not only the work she does as a doctor, but the work she does as a public health official. Yeah, she's a phenomenal science communicator. She is. She distills what we need and makes it really accessible. But we also spoke with a couple of politicians in season two, which is a different way of approaching many of the problems that we talk about on the show normally. I think both of you and I agree on this. Politicians don't make for the best conversations because they just have their little talking points and they don't really want to go beyond the talking point. They don't want to engage with anything, they don't want to get in trouble, and so they just stick to these talking points and it's like, I don't need to be here for this conversation exactly exactly. Elizabeth Warren did have her talking points. In February, she wanted to talk to us about how student loan debt is destroying so many lives. But when Elizabeth Warren talks, there is something incredibly powerful about how she lays her case out. We need to cancel student loaned it, not only because it's good for all the people who are struggling with student owned it, but because it's good for our economy overall. Even before the pandemic, what we were seeing is that increasingly young people, because of student loaned it want buying homes, weren't starting small businesses. Think about that because the student loaned it held him back. So I look at it this way. You cancel that student warned it. It is the single most effective thing that President Biden could do right now to lift this economy up and to lift millions of people up in this economy. Unfortunately, Biden still hasn't done a single thing about student loan debt, which is infuriating. Well, I guess he has done that one thing for the for profit students, which is wonderful and necessary, But still there are millions of borrowers who are waiting and hoping that this is that moment when they finally do something about this. Some of our listeners know my very first book uh lower ed was about for profit colleges, which is bound up in the student loan UH debt crisis, which is why I spent a lot of my academic career researching and writing and talking about student loan debt, how it's constructed and why we won't forgive it. And I gotta say, Roxanne, I was never very hopeful that Biden was going to do mass student loan debt forgiveness. I know the people that he's appointed to those committees um and they just do not think of student loan debt as a political problem. And that's on us to change. That's on us to change. We got to push them on. It is all right. That is our show for this week and for this season. Yeah, season two did it. If you don't already, please do keep up with us on Twitter and Instagram and Gmail at h E A R to Slay to see what happens next from Luminary Here. Display is executive produced by us Roxanne Gay and Trusty mcmillancotton. Our senior producer is Curtis Fox, our producer is Katherine Finaloza, and our associate producers are Ali Vi Pearson and is Saphie Samuel production support from Lauren Garcia and Caitlin Adams. We never would have made it through covid at season two without Dead Team