May 15, 2023 • 60 mins
Can you heal pain by focusing on joy?
Baratunde Thurston gave what’s been called “the greatest TED talk of all time.” He’s written about being Black in America, he’s got a podcast about community involvement called How to Citizen, and he’s got a television show that explores the beauty and diversity of America.
There’s a duality running through all of this work, and in Baratunde’s personal life: mourning and celebration. From the early death of a parent, to men’s emotional health, to violence against Black men and boys, to the healing power of play and community, this week’s episode is a fascinating discussion of both grief and celebration - and why you don’t get one without the other.
In this episode we cover:
- Baratunde says he’s “wired for optimism” - which makes identifying his own grief… complicated
- Transactional emotions - for example, feeling your grief so you can “get beyond it”
- The need for Black male role models
- How you can lose a parent at a young age and not recognize the impact until you’re an adult
- Why seeing other people be good parents can bring up grief
- What it’s like to see violence against people who look like you - over and over and over
- Black joy and mens’ community (plus the hashtag #BlackMenFrolicking)
- Why is it hard to play as an adult - and find other adults to play with?
- How to use your powerpoint slides to keep emotions in check (and why Baratunde isn’t using slides in his talks anymore)
- The nature of our interconnectedness as a species and a planet
Notable quotes:
“I'm looking at other joyful, hopeful ways of being that don't require waiting for someone to (change), or accepting suffering as the main narrative. Those don’t fit me anymore. And so I acknowledge parallel paths to freedom - things like joy and silliness.” - Baratunde Thurston
“We're about men's business which is stoicism and pain and suppressed human experiences. That's what it is to be a man.” - Baratunde Thurston
“My hope is grounded in our creative possibility, in our own creativity. We can be destructively creative, but I also think we can be beautifully, you know - hopefully, creative.” - Baratunde Thurston
About our guest:
Baratunde Thurston is an Emmy-nominated, multi-platform storyteller and producer operating at the intersection of race, tech, democracy, and climate. He is the host of the PBS television series America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, creator and host of How To Citizen with Baratunde, and a founding partner of the new media startup Puck. His comedic memoir, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED talks of all time.”
Baratunde serves on the boards of BUILD.org and the Brooklyn Public Library and lives in Lo
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm wired for optimism and possibility. I'm predisposed to a
positive interpretation of the world around me, and some of
that is genetic, some of that is probably biochemical, and
some of that is survival.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is It's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, author, speaker,
podcast and television host Baritunde Thurston joins me to talk
about grief and joy, and investing in relationships and the
subversive nature of play, settle in Everybody. All of that
and more coming up right after this first break. Before
(00:46):
we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
to your work. Hey, friends, there's so much to celebrate
and there's so much to mourn. With this week's guest,
(01:07):
Baritunde Thurston, this week's episode is so stacked with joy
and silliness. I cannot wait for you to hear it now.
This week's episode also talks about pain with grief stemming
from personal losses and racial violence and generational grief, grief
over the changing planet, and I can't wait for you
to hear that either. Barratunde is an Emmy nominated storyteller
(01:31):
and producer, operating, as he says, at the intersection of race, tech, democracy,
and climate. He's the host of the PBS television series
America Outdoors with Barratundi. Thurston, creator and host of the podcast,
Had a Citizen with Barratunde, and a founding partner of
the new media startup Puck. His comedic memoir How to
Be Black as a New York Times bestseller, and in
(01:53):
twenty nineteen he delivered what MSNBC's Brian Williams called one
of the greatest Ted talks of all time. Baratunde is
also really funny and kind and thoughtful and totally willing
to explore topics a lot of people would probably like
to avoid if they were given the chance. Nobody's given
(02:17):
the chance to avoid the stuff when they're hanging out
with me. But some of the things that we discussed
in our time together, Marratundai's father died when he was
a child, and we talked about how that didn't seem
like a big deal when he was a kid, which
is really interesting for a number of reasons, but one
of them is that he's the second or third guest
this season to have a parent die in their childhood,
(02:38):
and they didn't really realize that there was grief involved
there until much later in their lives. We talked about
how he learned that there was grief there by getting
emotional when he saw his friends being good parents to
their own kids. Also fascinating, there's so much grief we
don't recognize if we're not looking for it right. It's
fascinating to know also that I am not the only
(03:00):
only one who feels sadness well up in me when
I see somebody being kind to someone else, Like, even
if I am completely not involved in the thing, like,
seeing somebody be kind and amazing is really emotional for me.
So if that's you too, the whole somebody being kind
makes me a weepy thing. You are not alone in
(03:20):
that baratunde. He's with you. I'm with you. We also
talked about the kind of more obvious in your face grief,
the constant news cycles of black men and black boys
being killed, what it's like seeing people who look like
you suffering and being harmed on a regular basis. We
talked about what it's like living in a world where
(03:41):
you can be killed for just existing, And we had
this really cool conversation about getting to decide what you
look at like, how you see yourself and the people
who look like you being portrayed. What images do you consume?
Are you like consuming only painful images? What else is
in there? That led us into a slightly subversive conversation
(04:02):
about play and joy and the healing power of community.
We talked about a lot of stuff. I found this
conversation to be so nourishing, so life affirming in the
face of cascading pain and losses personally and collectively. There's
so much bad news in this world. I don't know
(04:24):
if you've noticed. We don't need a distraction from the
bad news. We have things we really do need to face,
but we might need to find ways to let more
joy exist alongside all that pain. As you'll hear Baratunde
say when we get into his hope for the future,
there's a lot of power and potential in our human creativity.
(04:45):
So if you've ever wondered how to create a life
that includes both grief, and joy or wondered if that's
even possible. This episode is for you. Here's my conversation
with the excellent Baritunde Thurston, Mary Tony. I am so
glad to have you here with me today. There are
(05:05):
so many places that we could begin our conversation. But
I was telling you before we started rolling that I've
been like living in your collected works for the last
couple of days, and there's just there's so much joy
in what you do and how you show up in
the world, even when so much of what you're covering,
(05:26):
what you're discussing, what you're getting into, is really serious
and really painful. And I just like, I feel like
there's this combination of celebration and grieving threading through all
of your work. Does that feel I am? I accurate?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Grief and celebration is a really accurate way to encapsulate the.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Wide range of things I'm up to.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You know, I write about my host shows about I
talk about race and technology and democracy, really easy stuff
that always brings people joyed.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Me bring in the joy.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
They can be very heavy and there is a lot
to mourn, you know, there's a lot to mourn with
our planet and with our relationship to nature. There's a
lot to mourn with the racial history in the United
States and our unwillingness to integrate it as a full
part of our whole history, but instead try to like
pretend it didn't happen, which just makes it fester and
(06:24):
come out sideways. There's a lot to mourn in our
loss of ritual and habit and tradition. Because things are
changing so quickly within a single generation, we are losing
touch with ourselves. We had millennia at least hundreds of
years where a great great grandparent had the same life
as their great great grandchild, and now an older sibling
(06:47):
and a younger sibling or speaking different languages. That's worth
acknowledging the loss of pattern and legacy in that.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And we're up to dope things.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
You know, we still have We always have a chance
to create something new. I think we have a better
shot at it if we acknowledge the loss, as opposed
to pretend this death didn't happen. But it's not the end.
Loss is not the end. Death is not the end.
There's a cycle to all of this, and so I
(07:24):
get self motivated by remembering the cycle and trying not
to get stuck in any particular piece of it, especially
the grieving part of it.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
No one has.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Encapsulated or tried to summarize what I do as that
as grieving and celebrating, and it's this duality that I've
carried for a long time. So thanks for seeing that.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean, that's part of my lens on the world, right,
Like that is that is how I see all of that.
I love that you brought up acknowledgment, right that for me,
the entire thing here is to acknowledge what's real and
tell the truth about how hard it is to be here,
sometimes tell the truth about really difficult things.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I don't always go with so that we can celebrate,
because there can be something kind of transactional in that
for me. And again I come back to you, like
the cadence in the way that you speak about things,
the pacing with which you speak about things. I never
got that sense from you in listening to your Ted
talks or your podcast or reading your writing. I never
(08:31):
got the sense that you were acknowledging so that you
could move past, but that there was a twinning.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I mean, if anything, my practice of acknowledgment has deepened
over the past few years. So I'm wired for optimism
and possibility. I'm predisposed to a positive interpretation of the
world around me. And some of that is genetic, some
of that is probably biochemical, and some of that is
(09:01):
And you know, when faced with a certain challenge, you know,
you can see it play out in my patterns with
my wife.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
She might bring up something uncomfortable and I'll try to
flip it to the pie. We're good. And I don't
do that so much anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I think for a long time I didn't trust existing
in the grief, and you know, and if I did,
it was intuitive but not a self aware choice. It's
increasingly a choice to kind of sit with the pain,
that discomfort, the loss of the morning and try to
(09:38):
even be grateful for that feeling. You know, it's such
a human feeling and and to your point, not to
too quickly try to transact out of it. Okay, I did,
I did my grieving things today. That was five minutes
a grieving and now I.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Can sadness the day I got this.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, now now we got this.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
But the rest and and that's not true or real
or honest or ultimately useful. So I don't think I've
been escaping it, certainly not publicly. But you mentioned the
TED talk that talk about deconstructing racism, and I wove
in personal story, which was a choice encouraged by others.
(10:21):
I had a stellar, clever, smart, funny talk with a
bit of anger prepared about racism.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I was good to go, and my wife was like,
you can go deeper.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And actually one of the people at TED kind of
nudged me get more personal, get more vulnerable, since there's
more there.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
What's going on there. So I had these two women
in my.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Life who were encouraging me to not race through, and
the final version of it, I didn't. I paced it,
I sat with it. I slowed it down and it
was much more powerful for me. And when I left
that stage, which people didn't see as I exploded into tears,
just absolutely a release, physical and emotional. And that was
(11:14):
a sign for me of how like real that moment was.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, it is such a push right, Like I know
this as a as a fellow speaker, and how those
talk whisperers are like, no, you have to you have
to bring your heart to the stage, otherwise this won't
reach other people's hearts and that's difficult. It's difficult on
a lot of different levels. But I think, like we well,
(11:40):
I don't want to answer I don't want to answer
this question. I want to ask this question, like I
want to talk about like role models in grief and
grief in the black community, and grief for men, and
grief for the age in which you came up, and like, yeah,
I think all of that can sort of be covered
by a question like what has been your relationship with grief,
(12:04):
you know, coming from your childhood experiences and then up
through and where you sit with it now. I know
that's a really big, like dense, dark matter kind of
question which we could take like five, we could do
an entire like series on just answering that question. But
if I if I ask you that, like how has
your relationship with grief changed over the decades, bringing in
(12:29):
all you know about role models and what is safe
and what is not safe to share with yourself or
share publicly.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, when I was seven or eight. I really should
fact check the timeline. I'm always thinking I'm seven or
eight and there is a there's a noble there's a
noble date here, But I don't know what this second.
When I was young, my father was killed.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
He was shot. It was in the middle of the night.
Maybe it was a robbery. No one was ever found
for it. I remember getting.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
The news from my mother, who was living separately from
him at the time, so I lived with her and
occasionally saw him, and I didn't know him that well.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
He was like, he was the father you're supposed to
it is your dad.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And I was given the option of going to the funeral,
and I was like, now, I'm good. I don't looking
at a dead body does not feel like a good
time to this child. I will pass And I cried
and I felt sad, and then I just kind of
closed the door and I lost contact with his family.
(13:38):
So I just had my mom and my sister, my
older sister, helping bring me up. And I thought, when
I thought about him, I think I'm good here right
like I'm I'm supposed to be sad or lost my father.
I also know things about him that make it more complicated.
You know, he had a lot of demons and they
(14:00):
showed up in some nasty ways, and I missed exposure
to a lot of that, and whatever supposed to happen
in my life is happening. So I'm grateful for the
life I.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Have and this mom. She loves me, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Healthy, and I've gone to college and I've got jobs
and paying back loans and falling in love and just living.
And I had not really dealt with his death. I'd
never fully grieved. I grieved my mother's death more when
she died in two thousand and five. That hit me
(14:32):
months later, almost a year later, just got knocked on
my ass. And I'm still processing her loss because she
represented so much. She was both parents and a village
at times, and with my father, I found myself on
this journey prompted by the universe to reconnect with that grief.
(14:53):
A cousin found me on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I saw you on TV.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I think I'm your cousin, Like every black person thinks
I'm your cousin when they see me on time.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
This is not special. But she had the paperwork to
prove it. She had the long form birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
She had photos of me when I was a baby,
and I was like, I know what I look like.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I was super cute. That's me. Those are my cheeks,
you know.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So that begets a relationship with my father's mother, also
known as my grandmother, who I had totally lost touch
with with his brother and but most importantly with a
version of him. I started like having these conversations and
moments and angry tirades, just stuff I clearly needed to
(15:35):
get off my chest. And the evolution continued. I'm a
part of a men's group. It's a group of black men.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We kind of we hold each other.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
We hold each other up, we hold each other accountable,
we hold each other emotionally. I've never had anything like
this in my life see dead father above. So I'm
in this circle with many men who are fathers, and
I'm finding I'm getting so emotional about something about them, like.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Oh, you're being a dad.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I don't know what that's like. And I'm low key jealous.
And I'm also like feeding off of their fatherhood energy
that was completely missing from my construction, from my experience.
And I've grieved that, you know, you can grieve. I've
grieved the person. I've grieved the miss opportunities. I've grieved
(16:28):
the the inability for the person who was my father
to heal himself from all the things that ailed him
and caused him to ail others that's that's very much
a journey from you know, the kid who didn't want
to go to the funeral and thought he was okay
until thirties. I'm forty five now and still adjusting that
(16:52):
relationship with grief. That's one version of an answer to
your prompt and your question. So as distant as my
relationship with grief was as a child, there was another
example which made it very close, and it was an
example of collective grief. I was at this private school
in DC starting in seventh grade, Sidwell Friends School is
(17:14):
pretty famous now, small black community of students and parents.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
My mother is a member of the parents a black
students organization.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Organize a gathering like a meeting, like a little revolutionary
sleeper cell meeting, that's what you know we do in
white schools. And we were She organized us into a
circle and we all closed our eyes and she had
us imagine that we were in the bowels of a
(17:47):
ship being brought here and just to feel is what
does that feel like?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
What are you hearing? What are you sensing?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Can we feel gratitude for those people who made it
through that journey so that we could be here on
this stage, in this meeting room wherever, and she asked
us to mourn. There's so much of the black experience
here that is about persevering, making a way out of
(18:20):
no way. There are literally thousands of songs that channel
the same energy, resonate at pretty much the same frequency
of like just getting through it and not pausing to
acknowledge it. And that was a really early modeling for
(18:42):
me of the power of pausing of collectively mourning and
grieving and acknowledging the hurt and the pain. There's a
lot of racial movement education stuff which is trying to
get like white people to acknowledge and get.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Men to acknowledge what they've done to women.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
That's all kinds like in the power dynamic at the
powerful quote unquote to admit or acknowledge.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
But we all have a.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Version of that, and I think there's a lot of,
you know, experience in the black community that's like I
don't want to I don't want to touch that.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
That's too painful, that connects too many dots. I don't
want to see that picture.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And it's really hard, it's really hard to do it
to like sit still with it and then I breathe
through it and shed the tears and then find, hopefully
through the other side of it, ways and reasons to
keep going. The duality I'm holding right now is I'm
(19:45):
pretty exhausted of the struggle and pain story. I'm exhausted
of the like convinced white people to be better humans
so that I can be human story. And so I'm,
you know, looking at other joyful, hopeful ways of being
that don't require waiting for someone else or accepting as
(20:10):
the main narrative suffering that just doesn't It doesn't fit
me anymore. And so our acknowledgment and evolution transcendence parallel
paths to freedom like joy and silliness. That's also really,
really really important to me increasingly.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
You know, I think about your writing about the killing
of unarmed black men and black boys. I think about
the rage and the grief and the morning you've written
America's addicted to watching me die, to watching itself die.
And as I was getting ready for our conversation today,
(20:53):
I was like, there's a reason why I started with
your joy when we are talking about what it's like
to be black in this community. And I'm saying this
as a white person who doesn't fucking know anything about it,
But like there is this like relentless narrative of pain
and suffering, and you have to fight to not be
(21:16):
only identified as that. Yeah, which is just like hello,
it's already exhausting to stay alive in a system that
keeps trying to make you dead and hold you down
and hold you back, and we also have to fight
this hard to have joy, to access joy, and that
(21:36):
that joy is really hard won, right, Like we prize resilience,
right instead of addressing the systems that force you to
be resilient, right, I mean, it's just such a it's
just such trash, and to be able to ferociously hold
onto joy is such a powerful thing, you know, Like
(22:00):
I can talk myself in circles on this one, but
I think that there's there's also something in what you
said that leaving the white folks aside for a moment,
Like it's it's hard to get people to continue to
hold their gaze on how much pain and suffering there is, right,
Like seeing black men die over and over and over again,
on the news, seeing black trans women die over and
(22:22):
over and over again on the news, seeing high maternal
death rates for black women, Like it's just fucking relentless. Yeah,
and touching the grief of that, Like, I get it
that people don't want to touch that. We don't want
(22:43):
to touch grief in general, right, Like we don't want
to talk about any kind of grief. And you start
to get into the complex systems of grief and the
overwhelming grief and the preventable grief, and it just sort
of fries the circuits. Is there a way that you
have found to not do the transactional joy to celebration thing,
(23:05):
but to speak into that grief and that anger in
a way that feels like it it does the grief
justice in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
When I do public speaking since COVID, during COVID, during
my public talks during COVID, I dropped a lot of
my put on diplomacy. I'm a natural peacemaker. I was
in my family as a kid. I helped my mom
negotiate with an angry motorist or neighbor, or I'd write
(23:43):
letters on behalf, you know, to try to get through
some challenge in a peaceful, diplomatic, positive way. And so
I'm the family diplomat, and I've worked in school in
certain circumstances and that's just I honed that for a while.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I thought, Oh, this is just who I am.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I'm just this naturally positive person, and that's a part
of the story. I also think there's a part of
it which is like, for me to show real rage
and anger, it can be threatening to people and become
a threat to myself. So I have to manage those
weightier emotions, those more volatile parts of myself, because that's
(24:22):
just a story that I've seen too many times. He
was in a rage, he was coming right for me.
He looked threatening. He reached suddenly. I'm like, I'm not
reaching for nothing. I staple my driver's license to my
forehead when I drive. Now it's a little special holder
in the baseball cap.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So you know, this is a reasonable solution to an
unreasonable problem. Just baseball cap visors for your license and
registration pre shipped to all people of color. I found
during COVID I lock. I lost the ability to maintain
that diplomatic air, and I just let more of the
(25:00):
anger show. There's a there's a physical kind of metaphor
for this. When most of my presentations pre COVID I
had amazing slides.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Megan, I'm so good at like.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
PowerPoint keynote I have, I could just work, give me
like some giddy images, a little bit of photoshop, my.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Font selection, you know, good sans Sarah font like, oh,
let's go, let's crush this.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
And part of the show, even the Ted talk we
mentioned that's a slide show.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That is a slid show.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
There is, it's timed, it's color coded, it's almost a game,
and I was I really prided myself on that. That's
also a shield, you know, And so I put that down.
I don't use slides anymore. Now that we're back in
person doing live events, they're like, what do you need
for AV Just a microphone and light and a backup
(25:50):
mic in case something goes wrong, that's all.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Maybe a chair if I get tired, don't want to.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Strut around or lean on it with a smooth affect. Yeah,
a little prop But I I was not one prior
to let anger into my talks. I let it flow
now it comes across in my writing much more. My
way of not transacting through to get to the joy
(26:17):
is to like fully experience the grief, the morning, the anger,
the rage, and communicate it much more than I'm used to.
I've got to let it out when it's when I
hold it in, when I suppress it with a perfectly
timed in place but not heartfelt bit of humor.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Ill looked at it.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Okay, my voice goes up on the black of its
re All fine, that's that's a telltale sign. I have
learned the physical tells of myself. When am I holding back?
And I'm with my partner Elizabeth, you know she I
am blessed and cursed with a partner who has an
incredible radar, incredibly emotional radar, so she knows when I'm
(26:58):
not being fully forthcoming, like there's no faking it till
you make it with her, which is a real problem.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Man.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
It's like real like you gotta be able to keep
some stuff from your part not like you know, crimes.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I'm just like, just bake, did you buy the thing? Yeah?
I was going on? Oh man, she go.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So I've got more reps in and practice and my
most you know, intimate and close relationship with what happens
when I open that door, and it's it's harder and
it's better, right, I won't. It's just it's not like
oh yeah, I just I experienced my grief now and
all of my darker emotions and life's great, you know,
(27:41):
like every moment is just what that's not the story.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
It is not a quick fix. This is not.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
But going through the experience, it just increasingly feels like
me like the right thing, and then you know, I
can seek out other types of experiences. There's this thing
flying around black men frolicking. The stilly is TikTok Instagram reels.
(28:14):
I don't know who started it, but it's just you know,
dudes holding up the selfie cam their arm as selfie stick,
running through fields.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Oh we frolicking. I didn't they tell me we was frollicking?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yo.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And one of I have this this brother, our Juna O'Neil.
He's a coach and men's leadership counselor and I've been
working with him and becoming friends with him at the
same time, and he shared.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
This with me and he did a video.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I'm like, I want to frolic this is this is amazing.
We never see men frolicking, right, We're not supposed to.
Like frolicking is what girls do or children or these
like weaker beings that we crush in our minds because
we don't want to be anything like that about men's business,
which is stoicism and pain and suppressed human experiences.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
That's what it is to be a man, to let
your inner.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Child run rampant through your adult life because you know
no one modeled for us how to deal with these
things except through maybe violence or alcohol or some other
substances or just deep, deep silence. So I really kind
of experience those joyful moments more fully when I myself
(29:33):
have gone through the mournful moments too.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, there's something about finding ways to be real like that, Yeah,
with yourself, with people with whom you feel trust, who
who can be trusted with that depth, right, and then
being able to bring more of that self out into
the world. Right. It's like, it's not the math equation
(29:59):
of of like feel the pain, go get your joy.
It's more the more you come into relationship with what
is true and real for you and find ways to
communicate and connect inside that, the more of everything becomes available. Right.
And you you mentioned like I love that frolicking TikTok.
(30:20):
It's awesome. I will link to it everybody, But like,
there is something dangerous in being playful or something not
allowed subversive subversive in being playful, and you know, you
think like, oh, it's easy, like just go do this
and this. But like we were talking like decades centuries
of so many things that say exactly how you described it, right,
(30:42):
Like play is weak, joy is weak, and it takes
a lot of strength and trust to play with other grownups.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, it does. That's a good one. That's a really
good one.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I remember a poster from maybe the nineties. Everything I
needed to know I learned in kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Oh right, Oh my gosh, yeah something was that guy's name.
Oh I'm gonna have to go look it up. But yeah,
we're both like, where is it in the brain library?
Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten. It's
about like sharing and taking turns and like not wiping
your nose on your.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Sleeve, all all.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Of that stuff. But there is, like there is there
is something very scary about joy and very scary about play.
And if there is anything transactional in exploring the depth
of emotions or the truth of emotions, it's that, you know,
the the more you come into connection and relationship with
(31:46):
yourself in that stuff, the more you can come into
relationship with that stuff in others. Absolutely, And I think
like this this sort of also brings us to again
listening to your collected works and reading you and listening
to your podcasts and watching your talks, Like not only
does joy and celebration weave through so much of who
(32:06):
you are and how you show up, but also community
as restorative medicine, as necessary medicine for surviving what needs
to be survived. So if we bring community into this,
I feel like that's a nice dovetail from being safe
enough to play with grown ups, Like, yeah, where does
community come into all of this conversation? For you?
Speaker 1 (32:29):
As yearning and longing in part as I'm still relatively
mobile in my life and I'm feeling needs to root
more dig into where I live as urgency given age
and the steady realization like oh there may be some
(32:51):
maybe less time ahead than behind, like that kind of moment.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
I will live to one hundred and thirty.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Absolutely, if I'm keeping myself in the range of regular mortality,
then you know, forty five is a good time to
start thinking about that kind of stuff. And you know,
who do I love? Who am I spending time with?
Like who's my chosen community? Whose emails I'm going.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
To read first, you know, like this could be my
last email.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I can sense the overthinking.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, okay, all right, so maybe I shouldn't be reading email.
I think I'm just appreciating the specialness of trusted community.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Increasingly.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
This Black men's group I'm a part of has been
so healing and beautiful to have a community of fellow
men who are being emotionally open with each other, really open,
who are nudging each other toward that vulnerability. I'll bring
that challenge your face into the group. There's some things
(33:56):
we cannot do alone, and most things worth doing we
probably you know, shouldn't do alone. There's just more, literally
more with others, and we can share burdens and there's
a lot of practical values to having other people around.
So yeah, I think I'm becoming more conscious and more
(34:18):
actively aware of like why I'm drawn to people, what
groups of people in community kind of.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Bring out in me.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And there's a magic and an alchemy in a community
setting of being there for each other in different ways,
in different moments, and becoming one through the group.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Like a forest does.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Everything is everything, and then we're just trees with thumbs
and you know, more selfish and tendencies. But the idea
that these trees have this you know, underground root system
and they hook each other up and one is low
on nutrients and one is disease to transmit information back
and forth through fungi maybe like community is a life thing, right,
(35:08):
It's not just a human human thing. And so I
just I'm in awe of that. I love it.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
It makes me want to be a better community member
and be more intentional with like who I'm in community
with and what am I doing?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
What am I bringing to you know, community, What am
I offering to a community? Which is and in a
non transactional sense, right, just for the relationship value. You
know that our men's group is not a finance group.
We're not like investigating each other's company. That might happen
at some point, but that's not the goal. It's just
to be in relationship. And that's so it's a real
(35:47):
prerequisite I think for a whole life.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Bartune
day Thurston, I want to tell you about a new
way to get answers to your questions about grief. Each month,
every month, I host a live video call in Q
and a session just for patrons. If you've ever wanted
to know of what you're feeling is normal, come ask me.
If you want to know how to have that conversation
(36:20):
with your nosey relative who keeps butting into your business
with their ideas about what your loss or your experience
should look like, come join us. I'll help you figure
out how to communicate a boundary where there needs to
be a boundary once a month, every month. If you've
ever wished you could talk to me directly and get
your questions answered, this is by far the easiest way
(36:41):
to do it. All of the information is at patreon
dot com, backslash Megan Divine, or you could find the
link in the show notes. I hope to see you
there this month. All right, let's get back to my
conversation with author, speaker, television host ridiculously awesome human being
baratun Day Thurston. We have this pace in our conversation
today of like personal collective, personal collective, personal collective, which
(37:05):
I love. I love a micro macro pacing here and
a lot of what you're talking about in your own
personal community building. That's part of how to citizen right
is how do we become a true collective culture. How
do we show up in our local communities? How do
we show up in the larger world? Right, there's there's
(37:28):
something and.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
The good, the the you know, citizen as a verb
is our whole thing, and you can't citizen alone. It's
it's it's antithetical to the idea of being a member
of society and being in a membership club. Like that's
what social belonging is, whether it's formalized as a democracy
(37:51):
or a voting precinct or not.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
We're all part of many communities and we have power.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Even if we're living in a explicitly authoritarian state, we
still have some power to shape how that community operates.
You know, what we give to and what we get
out of it and the good news, you know, in
terms of this personal communal micro macro vibe that I've
been learning that.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I had a very formal idea.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Of citizen ing and it's like, oh, we we elect
these people and we go to community meetings.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
And very external Megan, it's very like the world out
there is broken.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Let me go with my virgo neess and my male
fix it, and let's let's fix it. I've identified problems.
I have this brain, I'm going to use it to.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Help the situation out. That's what we need.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
And yeah, but also inside you know, in here, you know,
invest in relationships is one of our pillars of what
it means to citizen, and the long version is investing
relationships with yourself, with others and the planet around you.
And so in order to have a relationship with the
city council or your block committee or your office working group,
(39:09):
it really helps to have a relationship with yourself. And
so we can start citizening and experiencing and practicing and
benefiting from community in way more tangible, close and proximate
and informal ways. And that just out of that was
a relief for me. I've ben't I think I've been
(39:31):
inundated with a kind of civics education model, which is,
you know how Bill becomes a law and you write
Congress and you put a change dot org petition and
you give all your money that like Brian Stevenson for
the Legacy Museum at the Lynching Museum or whatever.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Like you watch Black Panther all the time, right, and
you buy it all Blu ray and DVD and all.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
The streaming services so yes, there's a lot of external
stuff that we got to do and that is aided
by doing internal stuff too, And it's just the bar
of entry is actually just it's very low. Frontline is
us and that's I find that very freeing, like destressing.
(40:13):
It's like, okay, we all we literally all have something
we can do.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah right, yeah, coming it's terrifying, but it's not complicated,
yeah right, coming into relationship with yourself and practicing telling
yourself the truth and listening for that and being brave
enough to play and find joy and all of the things.
I love that you just said the frontline is in
us because this is this is so much of what
(40:38):
I feel like I want to talk about and am
talking about. Like, there is liberation in telling the truth
about how hard it is to be here sometimes m h.
There is real community to be found when you allow
what is real to be real, and it does unlock
(40:59):
joy and connect and community and the change that we
need to bring forth.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
There's a study that we came across in making this
season of the podcast. The season is all about how
do you create a culture of democracy?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Now? How do you change the makeup of Congress? Right?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
How do you change the kind of soil that Congress
emerges from. And because they all come from somewhere, absolutely,
they all come from next door, right, They come from
the classroom next door, the house next door, the office
next door, And so we're in community with all these
eventual leaders, including ourselves. In the Conflict Resolution.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Episodes, one with Prea.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Parker and one with a group called Beyond Conflict, there's
a study that reveals that we're basically not as divided
as we think we are. That the way I think
Republicans think of me is far worse than what they
actually think of me, which is terrifying because IM pretty
sure I don't think too money now undermining the science.
But we would we would know that for ourselves if
(42:07):
we showed up honestly in our relationships, right, if we
trusted ourselves to be ourselves with each other. And instead,
a lot of what has happened is we've outsourced that
trust and faith to mediators, technological mediators, journalistic or allegedly
journalistic mediators who have a profit motive to convince us
(42:30):
of something that isn't as true as they want it
to be. You know how devastatingly and intractively divided we
are how much trash so and so thinks you are.
You hear what they said about your mama, Like that's
the business model for a lot of news media.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
And you believe what they said about your mama? Who
said what about my what? Oh? It's on right.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
And to be in real relationship doesn't mean one of
us has to interact with all eight billion of us.
That doesn't scale. It can scale at intermediate steps. If
I'm more real with you, more real with my partner,
more real with my team and my staff, that's a
little permission structure for all those people to mirror that
(43:11):
back and be real with me and each other and
the relationships that they're a part of that I'm not
a part of. And then we get this ripple effect.
I wouldn't call it trickle down. I'd call it kind
of bubble up as a different kind of metaphor, so
that we end up creating.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
The environment and the culture we want.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
That's some of the power of that authentic experience and
that real experience of pain, sometimes of anger, sometimes of joy.
Sometimes I bring your real some of us smother our
joy too. Is inappropriate, It's inappropriate.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
This is a professional book.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
This is a professional and serious times we are living
in Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, and you see, you know, and then we are
coached to perform that as evidence of leadership.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Well, real leaders can jokes in a meeting, adding gifts
to the slack channel. Greholders might think you're not serious
about maximizing their value.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
You're right back to pillaging and destroyer, right, I should say,
laser focused on that.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
You're right, yeah, no distraction.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Well, and this is this is true, right, like that
we can destroy others and the environment when we otherize
them and when they aren't human, and when we don't
have that limbic resonance with them to go all dorky
for a second.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
When we think of them as them.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yes, right, Well that thing over there, that forrest, that tree,
that nation, that person, that not me is what we're
saying that that other, you know, as you said, so
if we can shift that. Valerie Corps our very first guest.
I can't talk about her enough because she set us
(44:53):
on a certain path with her book. See no Stranger.
The stranger is just a part of me I do
not yet know. That's the summary of the book. You
should still read it, but that's the basic point and
so if we can internalize the external, then we're actually
being very selfish when we care for others.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
That's a neat little.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Thing, a little semantic act. And we we are a
part of and not apart from. And so I keep
I keep bumping into this annoying lesson Megan in like
different areas of this, Like, Okay, I did a podcast
about citizen in cool, cool, cool, Yeah, we're all one.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Great. And then I've got a little men's group over here.
Oh we're all one. Here we go again, here we go.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I'm out in the woods making them this PBS America
out doors.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Oh we're part of nature, not apart from we're all one.
What's with the oneness?
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Who's writing these bullet points?
Speaker 3 (45:46):
In my pros?
Speaker 2 (45:47):
I have actually in my notes this whole like concept
of like we're all one. So like I'm apparently I've
been I've been conscripted to be part of your bullet pointing.
Here's but here's the thing, right, is that same topic
different tones? Right, Like this is something that happens very often,
(46:09):
Like when we start talking about race and inequality and injustice,
you've got some folks being like, but we're all one.
There's no difference here. We're all just can't We're all
just oh my god. Right, But there's a way that
we can talk about our interrelatedness and our interconnection as
(46:30):
a way of bypassing the real work that needs to
be done, and there is a way to engage with
our interrelatedness that actually makes things better.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Thank you for that distinction, yes.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Because the whole we are one thing is really irritating, right,
But so much of what you're doing in this whole
like we are one thing, and I hear that, and
I see that theme running through in the way that
you're claiming it, and it's like there's this drive to
embrace the complexity and that you don't have this part
(47:06):
without this part, and you don't have the healing or
the restoration of this part without this relationship. And it's
all about relatedness, not about the erasure of difference.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Absolutely absolutely that that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
And the people who want to skip to the happy ending,
you know, they're just kind of like reading that last
sentence out, Oh we're all one cool, Then I don't.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Have I don't have to do any I don't have
to do anything.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
That's the bypass thing that you talked about.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
So you know, the healing it requires acknowledgment of injury
and pain, and so there's some necessary sequencing of some
of these steps.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
I do believe they head in that same direction.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
I think, you know, we've created a lot of compelling
fictions for ourselves that draw lines between us, and then
we've built powerful structures along those fictional minds to make
the impacts really felt. And that's the that's it's almost
a paradox. It's certainly a kind of a conundrum.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
You could take it as well.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Okay, race isn't scientifically real, but it's a socially constructed
thing that was based in law and finance and physical
labor and actual abuse and real blood. So racism is
that's kind of a logical slippery thing.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Race isn't real.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
How is racism real? Because we made it real. That's
the power of our minds and our collective minds. The
US dollars not real. Actually, it's just like a collective
shared delusion that's powerful enough to get us to go
to work and pay for food and housing, right with
(48:48):
this made up thing that has no basis in like
physical reality. So fiction is powerful things that aren't real
can make the be real and that is a that's
a beautiful confusion and then a beautiful tension and paradoxical thing.
(49:09):
But I think some of the best things in life
are right, they are and they aren't at the same time.
It's they're they're That's kind of a quantum thing. Keep
bumping also into quantum. Stuff keeps coming stuff from Sam Raider,
she talks about quantum all the time, and you know quantum.
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Marvel keeps launching these quantum movies. So from from pop culture,
it's like deep you know.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Emotional and psychological work. Quantum keeps coming up, So there
must be something to it.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
There must be. I mean, biggest living organism in the
entire world is microhizome, right, So like that's quantum is
and the symtemat.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
That's really what is what is your biome telling you
to say.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
That the visible in the invisible world? Oh my gosh,
I'm not going to keep you for the next three
years here on this. But like we didn't even get
to talk about like forest ecology and how that like
all of the all of the things. So I I'm
going to pull my own brain back from the radness
of quantum overlaps with everything and set us up for
(50:13):
the last complex thing that we'll discuss on our time together. Great,
all right. At the end of your twenty nineteen Ted talk,
now Helen Walters ask you a question, and I'm going
to completely paraphrase here. She said, basically, there's so much
ugliness in our culture, everywhere, all around, and she wondered
if you had any hope, and going back to what
(50:35):
you just said about the power of fictions that we
create and the power of stories that we create. Your
answer back then in twenty nineteen was about freeing ourselves
from the lies that we'd been told. And so we're
sitting here three years later. You've already talked about how
things have changed for you, about what you're willing to
do and how you're willing to show up in those
three year sense, But I want to revisit that question. Yeah,
(50:59):
knowing what you know and living what you've lived, knowing
what's unfolded since that stage three years ago, what does
hope look like for you?
Speaker 3 (51:08):
Now? Hope looks like a tree.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
It's deeply rooted and it's striving to grow. It's willing
to change, it's not threatened by growing a new limb,
or maybe losing one. It's just this in the nature
of treeness to experience all these things. And I think
there's something for me about hope that it has to
(51:34):
remain very grounded. There is a fleeting ethereal wispy hope
that you can't grab onto. It's like smoke. I don't
like that one. I think that one's less useful. It
makes for pretty words, but maybe not much else. So
I hope that's grounded. I hope that grieves so that
(51:59):
you know it's some point it can help celebrate. That's
more of my flavor. The thing that I was feeling
in that stage moment, which is a very unscripted moment
by the way, I caught me off guard.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
I was like, I'm done, I'm good.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
The fiction part that we were just talking about is
so it's it's kind of the whole thing. My hope
is grounded in our creative possibility, in our own creativity,
and we can be destructively creative, but I also think
we can be beautifully, you know, hopefully creative. And so
(52:40):
when I look at when I'm grounded in the evidence
of what we've chosen to make real from our fiction,
it's pretty devastating, you know, there's there's a you could
have an indictment sheet from a grand jury for abusive
imagination by the human species and never finish reading out
that list. But but there's a lot more to it,
(53:01):
and we're capable of a lot more So, even even
the devastating things we've done to ourselves and each other
is evidence that we can create anything that we think
serves us and then follow through on it. And it's
not just a negative example. There are many positive examples
of what we have created, whether systems of government, beautiful
(53:24):
works of art, collaborative, cooperative economic things like we can
use tech differently, we can use money differently, like we
can be in relation to all of these tools in
a way that really serves a collective us, allows us
to be collectively selfish. So my hope is grounded in
a lot of dirt, you know, and pain, and in
(53:46):
the knowledge that ultimately we just make things up. So
if we are aware of that more, can we choose
more consciously to make up something that's.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Better for all of us? And I believe we can.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
That's awesome. It is such a joy to spend time
with you. Thank you so much for being here with
me and with us. Obviously, we're going to link to
everything and everywhere that people can find you, your Ted
Talk and your podcast in America outdoors in the show notes.
Is there anything else you want listeners to know about
where to find you?
Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, I'm wherever Baritun Days are found.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
I've been witch. I'm pretty much I'm not the only one,
but I'm like the easiest to link to.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
There's a Baritune Day in Atlanta who I'm a big
fan of. I have to meet him at his new
business he does. He does nanotechnology stuff, he's as science.
He have Baritune de Colao. Check out the other Baritun Day.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
So what you're saying is you're googleable.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
I'm google doable, so find that.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Now we're just you know, I've been writing a lot
with this new media company, Puck to at puck dot News,
and that's where I'm exploring more slowly and deeply. A
lot of these themes raise tech, democracy and our possibilities
with all of that.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
So if you.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
Want to have a textual experience, check out what I'm
up to at Puck and what my colleagues they are
up to. I'm proud of all their reporting. I am
not a reporter, but it's good to be in the
company of people who really really do that job while
I get to opine on things and process my emotions
and feelings through words on a screen. This has been
(55:31):
I feel like I need a nap. This has been
an experience that is so beautiful. It's been this really
like heart forward, heart open journey. Thank you for inviting
me into what feels like kind of a sacred space here,
and then for what you're doing to help us all
be okay with not being okay and to explore our
(55:52):
relationship with grief and with hope.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Thank you so much. All Right, everybody, stay tuned. I'll
be right back with your questions to carry with you
right after this. Each week I leave you with some
questions to carry with you until we meet again. You
(56:18):
know what really struck me through this entire conversation with
Baritunde was how easy it was, how easy it was
to weave through all the different topics and aspects of life.
We discussed, like there's something in that for me that
when you're living this stuff, when both joy and morning
or celebration and grief. When both of those things are
(56:38):
welcomed and acknowledged in your life, it's just like it's
easy to move back and forth between them. Being okay
is normal. There's no need to like set aside a
special scheduled time to like talk about heavy discussions about
like you don't have to do that stuff. When you
have relationships where everything is welcome, you just do it.
(57:00):
You talk about what's there when it's there, and it's
so easy. This whole conversation made me feel really hopeful
about the joy that I stitch into my life, that
there's joy in building relationships and friendships that include everything
whatever is up at any given moment. It also really
stressed the importance of play, which is something that I,
(57:24):
full disclosure, often forget to prioritize in my own life.
And I love what Baratunde said about his hope being
bound with the human power of creativity, Like how can
we not have hope knowing what's in our power to create?
That's a really interesting idea. What about you, what's stuck
with you? From this conversation, everybody's going to take something
(57:48):
different from the show, but I do hope you found
something to hold on to If you want to tell
me how today's show felt for you, or you have
thoughts about what we covered, let me know. Tag at
Refuge in Grief on all the social platforms so I
can hear how this conversation affected you. You can follow
the show at It's Okaypod on TikTok and Refuge and
(58:08):
Grief everywhere else to see video clips from the show.
Also use the hashtag It's okaypod on all of the platforms.
Not only so that I can find you when I
go looking, and I totally do search that hashtag so
I can see what you're talking about, but use that
hashtag so that other people can find you too. It's
a really cool way to start building conversations and community.
(58:31):
None of us are entirely okay, and it's time we
start talking about that together. Hashtag's just one tool in
building the world that we want. Yeah, it's okay that
you're not okay. You're in good company. That's it for
this week. Friends, Remember to subscribe to the show and
leave a review. Your reviews help make the show easier
(58:54):
to find, which furthers our mission of getting more people
to have interesting conversations about difficult things and Your reviews
are really special to me and I love to read them.
Coming up next week, musician and author Sarah Raimi joins
me to talk about chronic illness and why having your
music show up at a hit TV series is a
(59:14):
mixed bag of awesome and exhausting. Follow the show on
your favorite platforms, friends, so you don't miss an episode.
Want more on these topics, Look, grief is everywhere. As
my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief
that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
this stuff without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
(59:37):
is an important skill for everyone, whether you're trying to
support a friend going through a hard time, or you
work in the helping professions, or you just want to
be better at humaning. Get help to have those conversations
with trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book, It's
Okay that You're Not Okay, plus the guided journal for
Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that You're Not Okay.
(01:00:03):
That podcast is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio
Logistical and social media support from Micah. Post production and
editing by the ever patient Houston Tilly, music provided by Wavecrash,
and today's background noise provided by the Endless Spring drone
(01:00:24):
of chainsaws cleaning up after the La winter rains
I'm wired for optimism and possibility. I'm predisposed to a
positive interpretation of the world around me, and some of
that is genetic, some of that is probably biochemical, and
some of that is survival.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is It's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, author, speaker,
podcast and television host Baritunde Thurston joins me to talk
about grief and joy, and investing in relationships and the
subversive nature of play, settle in Everybody. All of that
and more coming up right after this first break. Before
(00:46):
we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
to your work. Hey, friends, there's so much to celebrate
and there's so much to mourn. With this week's guest,
(01:07):
Baritunde Thurston, this week's episode is so stacked with joy
and silliness. I cannot wait for you to hear it now.
This week's episode also talks about pain with grief stemming
from personal losses and racial violence and generational grief, grief
over the changing planet, and I can't wait for you
to hear that either. Barratunde is an Emmy nominated storyteller
(01:31):
and producer, operating, as he says, at the intersection of race, tech, democracy,
and climate. He's the host of the PBS television series
America Outdoors with Barratundi. Thurston, creator and host of the podcast,
Had a Citizen with Barratunde, and a founding partner of
the new media startup Puck. His comedic memoir How to
Be Black as a New York Times bestseller, and in
(01:53):
twenty nineteen he delivered what MSNBC's Brian Williams called one
of the greatest Ted talks of all time. Baratunde is
also really funny and kind and thoughtful and totally willing
to explore topics a lot of people would probably like
to avoid if they were given the chance. Nobody's given
(02:17):
the chance to avoid the stuff when they're hanging out
with me. But some of the things that we discussed
in our time together, Marratundai's father died when he was
a child, and we talked about how that didn't seem
like a big deal when he was a kid, which
is really interesting for a number of reasons, but one
of them is that he's the second or third guest
this season to have a parent die in their childhood,
(02:38):
and they didn't really realize that there was grief involved
there until much later in their lives. We talked about
how he learned that there was grief there by getting
emotional when he saw his friends being good parents to
their own kids. Also fascinating, there's so much grief we
don't recognize if we're not looking for it right. It's
fascinating to know also that I am not the only
(03:00):
only one who feels sadness well up in me when
I see somebody being kind to someone else, Like, even
if I am completely not involved in the thing, like,
seeing somebody be kind and amazing is really emotional for me.
So if that's you too, the whole somebody being kind
makes me a weepy thing. You are not alone in
(03:20):
that baratunde. He's with you. I'm with you. We also
talked about the kind of more obvious in your face grief,
the constant news cycles of black men and black boys
being killed, what it's like seeing people who look like
you suffering and being harmed on a regular basis. We
talked about what it's like living in a world where
(03:41):
you can be killed for just existing, And we had
this really cool conversation about getting to decide what you
look at like, how you see yourself and the people
who look like you being portrayed. What images do you consume?
Are you like consuming only painful images? What else is
in there? That led us into a slightly subversive conversation
(04:02):
about play and joy and the healing power of community.
We talked about a lot of stuff. I found this
conversation to be so nourishing, so life affirming in the
face of cascading pain and losses personally and collectively. There's
so much bad news in this world. I don't know
(04:24):
if you've noticed. We don't need a distraction from the
bad news. We have things we really do need to face,
but we might need to find ways to let more
joy exist alongside all that pain. As you'll hear Baratunde
say when we get into his hope for the future,
there's a lot of power and potential in our human creativity.
(04:45):
So if you've ever wondered how to create a life
that includes both grief, and joy or wondered if that's
even possible. This episode is for you. Here's my conversation
with the excellent Baritunde Thurston, Mary Tony. I am so
glad to have you here with me today. There are
(05:05):
so many places that we could begin our conversation. But
I was telling you before we started rolling that I've
been like living in your collected works for the last
couple of days, and there's just there's so much joy
in what you do and how you show up in
the world, even when so much of what you're covering,
(05:26):
what you're discussing, what you're getting into, is really serious
and really painful. And I just like, I feel like
there's this combination of celebration and grieving threading through all
of your work. Does that feel I am? I accurate?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Grief and celebration is a really accurate way to encapsulate the.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Wide range of things I'm up to.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You know, I write about my host shows about I
talk about race and technology and democracy, really easy stuff
that always brings people joyed.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Me bring in the joy.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
They can be very heavy and there is a lot
to mourn, you know, there's a lot to mourn with
our planet and with our relationship to nature. There's a
lot to mourn with the racial history in the United
States and our unwillingness to integrate it as a full
part of our whole history, but instead try to like
pretend it didn't happen, which just makes it fester and
(06:24):
come out sideways. There's a lot to mourn in our
loss of ritual and habit and tradition. Because things are
changing so quickly within a single generation, we are losing
touch with ourselves. We had millennia at least hundreds of
years where a great great grandparent had the same life
as their great great grandchild, and now an older sibling
(06:47):
and a younger sibling or speaking different languages. That's worth
acknowledging the loss of pattern and legacy in that.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And we're up to dope things.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
You know, we still have We always have a chance
to create something new. I think we have a better
shot at it if we acknowledge the loss, as opposed
to pretend this death didn't happen. But it's not the end.
Loss is not the end. Death is not the end.
There's a cycle to all of this, and so I
(07:24):
get self motivated by remembering the cycle and trying not
to get stuck in any particular piece of it, especially
the grieving part of it.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
No one has.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Encapsulated or tried to summarize what I do as that
as grieving and celebrating, and it's this duality that I've
carried for a long time. So thanks for seeing that.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean, that's part of my lens on the world, right,
Like that is that is how I see all of that.
I love that you brought up acknowledgment, right that for me,
the entire thing here is to acknowledge what's real and
tell the truth about how hard it is to be here,
sometimes tell the truth about really difficult things.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I don't always go with so that we can celebrate,
because there can be something kind of transactional in that
for me. And again I come back to you, like
the cadence in the way that you speak about things,
the pacing with which you speak about things. I never
got that sense from you in listening to your Ted
talks or your podcast or reading your writing. I never
(08:31):
got the sense that you were acknowledging so that you
could move past, but that there was a twinning.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I mean, if anything, my practice of acknowledgment has deepened
over the past few years. So I'm wired for optimism
and possibility. I'm predisposed to a positive interpretation of the
world around me. And some of that is genetic, some
of that is probably biochemical, and some of that is
(09:01):
And you know, when faced with a certain challenge, you know,
you can see it play out in my patterns with
my wife.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
She might bring up something uncomfortable and I'll try to
flip it to the pie. We're good. And I don't
do that so much anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I think for a long time I didn't trust existing
in the grief, and you know, and if I did,
it was intuitive but not a self aware choice. It's
increasingly a choice to kind of sit with the pain,
that discomfort, the loss of the morning and try to
(09:38):
even be grateful for that feeling. You know, it's such
a human feeling and and to your point, not to
too quickly try to transact out of it. Okay, I did,
I did my grieving things today. That was five minutes
a grieving and now I.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Can sadness the day I got this.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Yeah, now now we got this.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
But the rest and and that's not true or real
or honest or ultimately useful. So I don't think I've
been escaping it, certainly not publicly. But you mentioned the
TED talk that talk about deconstructing racism, and I wove
in personal story, which was a choice encouraged by others.
(10:21):
I had a stellar, clever, smart, funny talk with a
bit of anger prepared about racism.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I was good to go, and my wife was like,
you can go deeper.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And actually one of the people at TED kind of
nudged me get more personal, get more vulnerable, since there's
more there.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
What's going on there. So I had these two women
in my.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Life who were encouraging me to not race through, and
the final version of it, I didn't. I paced it,
I sat with it. I slowed it down and it
was much more powerful for me. And when I left
that stage, which people didn't see as I exploded into tears,
just absolutely a release, physical and emotional. And that was
(11:14):
a sign for me of how like real that moment was.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, it is such a push right, Like I know
this as a as a fellow speaker, and how those
talk whisperers are like, no, you have to you have
to bring your heart to the stage, otherwise this won't
reach other people's hearts and that's difficult. It's difficult on
a lot of different levels. But I think, like we well,
(11:40):
I don't want to answer I don't want to answer
this question. I want to ask this question, like I
want to talk about like role models in grief and
grief in the black community, and grief for men, and
grief for the age in which you came up, and like, yeah,
I think all of that can sort of be covered
by a question like what has been your relationship with grief,
(12:04):
you know, coming from your childhood experiences and then up
through and where you sit with it now. I know
that's a really big, like dense, dark matter kind of
question which we could take like five, we could do
an entire like series on just answering that question. But
if I if I ask you that, like how has
your relationship with grief changed over the decades, bringing in
(12:29):
all you know about role models and what is safe
and what is not safe to share with yourself or
share publicly.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, when I was seven or eight. I really should
fact check the timeline. I'm always thinking I'm seven or
eight and there is a there's a noble there's a
noble date here, But I don't know what this second.
When I was young, my father was killed.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
He was shot. It was in the middle of the night.
Maybe it was a robbery. No one was ever found
for it. I remember getting.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
The news from my mother, who was living separately from
him at the time, so I lived with her and
occasionally saw him, and I didn't know him that well.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
He was like, he was the father you're supposed to
it is your dad.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
And I was given the option of going to the funeral,
and I was like, now, I'm good. I don't looking
at a dead body does not feel like a good
time to this child. I will pass And I cried
and I felt sad, and then I just kind of
closed the door and I lost contact with his family.
(13:38):
So I just had my mom and my sister, my
older sister, helping bring me up. And I thought, when
I thought about him, I think I'm good here right
like I'm I'm supposed to be sad or lost my father.
I also know things about him that make it more complicated.
You know, he had a lot of demons and they
(14:00):
showed up in some nasty ways, and I missed exposure
to a lot of that, and whatever supposed to happen
in my life is happening. So I'm grateful for the
life I.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Have and this mom. She loves me, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Healthy, and I've gone to college and I've got jobs
and paying back loans and falling in love and just living.
And I had not really dealt with his death. I'd
never fully grieved. I grieved my mother's death more when
she died in two thousand and five. That hit me
(14:32):
months later, almost a year later, just got knocked on
my ass. And I'm still processing her loss because she
represented so much. She was both parents and a village
at times, and with my father, I found myself on
this journey prompted by the universe to reconnect with that grief.
(14:53):
A cousin found me on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I saw you on TV.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
I think I'm your cousin, Like every black person thinks
I'm your cousin when they see me on time.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
This is not special. But she had the paperwork to
prove it. She had the long form birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
She had photos of me when I was a baby,
and I was like, I know what I look like.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I was super cute. That's me. Those are my cheeks,
you know.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So that begets a relationship with my father's mother, also
known as my grandmother, who I had totally lost touch
with with his brother and but most importantly with a
version of him. I started like having these conversations and
moments and angry tirades, just stuff I clearly needed to
(15:35):
get off my chest. And the evolution continued. I'm a
part of a men's group. It's a group of black men.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We kind of we hold each other.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
We hold each other up, we hold each other accountable,
we hold each other emotionally. I've never had anything like
this in my life see dead father above. So I'm
in this circle with many men who are fathers, and
I'm finding I'm getting so emotional about something about them, like.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Oh, you're being a dad.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I don't know what that's like. And I'm low key jealous.
And I'm also like feeding off of their fatherhood energy
that was completely missing from my construction, from my experience.
And I've grieved that, you know, you can grieve. I've
grieved the person. I've grieved the miss opportunities. I've grieved
(16:28):
the the inability for the person who was my father
to heal himself from all the things that ailed him
and caused him to ail others that's that's very much
a journey from you know, the kid who didn't want
to go to the funeral and thought he was okay
until thirties. I'm forty five now and still adjusting that
(16:52):
relationship with grief. That's one version of an answer to
your prompt and your question. So as distant as my
relationship with grief was as a child, there was another
example which made it very close, and it was an
example of collective grief. I was at this private school
in DC starting in seventh grade, Sidwell Friends School is
(17:14):
pretty famous now, small black community of students and parents.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
My mother is a member of the parents a black
students organization.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Organize a gathering like a meeting, like a little revolutionary
sleeper cell meeting, that's what you know we do in
white schools. And we were She organized us into a
circle and we all closed our eyes and she had
us imagine that we were in the bowels of a
(17:47):
ship being brought here and just to feel is what
does that feel like?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
What are you hearing? What are you sensing?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Can we feel gratitude for those people who made it
through that journey so that we could be here on
this stage, in this meeting room wherever, and she asked
us to mourn. There's so much of the black experience
here that is about persevering, making a way out of
(18:20):
no way. There are literally thousands of songs that channel
the same energy, resonate at pretty much the same frequency
of like just getting through it and not pausing to
acknowledge it. And that was a really early modeling for
(18:42):
me of the power of pausing of collectively mourning and
grieving and acknowledging the hurt and the pain. There's a
lot of racial movement education stuff which is trying to
get like white people to acknowledge and get.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Men to acknowledge what they've done to women.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
That's all kinds like in the power dynamic at the
powerful quote unquote to admit or acknowledge.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
But we all have a.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Version of that, and I think there's a lot of,
you know, experience in the black community that's like I
don't want to I don't want to touch that.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
That's too painful, that connects too many dots. I don't
want to see that picture.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And it's really hard, it's really hard to do it
to like sit still with it and then I breathe
through it and shed the tears and then find, hopefully
through the other side of it, ways and reasons to
keep going. The duality I'm holding right now is I'm
(19:45):
pretty exhausted of the struggle and pain story. I'm exhausted
of the like convinced white people to be better humans
so that I can be human story. And so I'm,
you know, looking at other joyful, hopeful ways of being
that don't require waiting for someone else or accepting as
(20:10):
the main narrative suffering that just doesn't It doesn't fit
me anymore. And so our acknowledgment and evolution transcendence parallel
paths to freedom like joy and silliness. That's also really,
really really important to me increasingly.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
You know, I think about your writing about the killing
of unarmed black men and black boys. I think about
the rage and the grief and the morning you've written
America's addicted to watching me die, to watching itself die.
And as I was getting ready for our conversation today,
(20:53):
I was like, there's a reason why I started with
your joy when we are talking about what it's like
to be black in this community. And I'm saying this
as a white person who doesn't fucking know anything about it,
But like there is this like relentless narrative of pain
and suffering, and you have to fight to not be
(21:16):
only identified as that. Yeah, which is just like hello,
it's already exhausting to stay alive in a system that
keeps trying to make you dead and hold you down
and hold you back, and we also have to fight
this hard to have joy, to access joy, and that
(21:36):
that joy is really hard won, right, Like we prize resilience,
right instead of addressing the systems that force you to
be resilient, right, I mean, it's just such a it's
just such trash, and to be able to ferociously hold
onto joy is such a powerful thing, you know, Like
(22:00):
I can talk myself in circles on this one, but
I think that there's there's also something in what you
said that leaving the white folks aside for a moment,
Like it's it's hard to get people to continue to
hold their gaze on how much pain and suffering there is, right,
Like seeing black men die over and over and over again,
on the news, seeing black trans women die over and
(22:22):
over and over again on the news, seeing high maternal
death rates for black women, Like it's just fucking relentless. Yeah,
and touching the grief of that, Like, I get it
that people don't want to touch that. We don't want
(22:43):
to touch grief in general, right, Like we don't want
to talk about any kind of grief. And you start
to get into the complex systems of grief and the
overwhelming grief and the preventable grief, and it just sort
of fries the circuits. Is there a way that you
have found to not do the transactional joy to celebration thing,
(23:05):
but to speak into that grief and that anger in
a way that feels like it it does the grief
justice in a way.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
When I do public speaking since COVID, during COVID, during
my public talks during COVID, I dropped a lot of
my put on diplomacy. I'm a natural peacemaker. I was
in my family as a kid. I helped my mom
negotiate with an angry motorist or neighbor, or I'd write
(23:43):
letters on behalf, you know, to try to get through
some challenge in a peaceful, diplomatic, positive way. And so
I'm the family diplomat, and I've worked in school in
certain circumstances and that's just I honed that for a while.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
I thought, Oh, this is just who I am.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I'm just this naturally positive person, and that's a part
of the story. I also think there's a part of
it which is like, for me to show real rage
and anger, it can be threatening to people and become
a threat to myself. So I have to manage those
weightier emotions, those more volatile parts of myself, because that's
(24:22):
just a story that I've seen too many times. He
was in a rage, he was coming right for me.
He looked threatening. He reached suddenly. I'm like, I'm not
reaching for nothing. I staple my driver's license to my
forehead when I drive. Now it's a little special holder
in the baseball cap.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So you know, this is a reasonable solution to an
unreasonable problem. Just baseball cap visors for your license and
registration pre shipped to all people of color. I found
during COVID I lock. I lost the ability to maintain
that diplomatic air, and I just let more of the
(25:00):
anger show. There's a there's a physical kind of metaphor
for this. When most of my presentations pre COVID I
had amazing slides.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Megan, I'm so good at like.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
PowerPoint keynote I have, I could just work, give me
like some giddy images, a little bit of photoshop, my.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Font selection, you know, good sans Sarah font like, oh,
let's go, let's crush this.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
And part of the show, even the Ted talk we
mentioned that's a slide show.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
That is a slid show.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
There is, it's timed, it's color coded, it's almost a game,
and I was I really prided myself on that. That's
also a shield, you know, And so I put that down.
I don't use slides anymore. Now that we're back in
person doing live events, they're like, what do you need
for AV Just a microphone and light and a backup
(25:50):
mic in case something goes wrong, that's all.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Maybe a chair if I get tired, don't want to.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Strut around or lean on it with a smooth affect. Yeah,
a little prop But I I was not one prior
to let anger into my talks. I let it flow
now it comes across in my writing much more. My
way of not transacting through to get to the joy
(26:17):
is to like fully experience the grief, the morning, the anger,
the rage, and communicate it much more than I'm used to.
I've got to let it out when it's when I
hold it in, when I suppress it with a perfectly
timed in place but not heartfelt bit of humor.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Ill looked at it.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Okay, my voice goes up on the black of its
re All fine, that's that's a telltale sign. I have
learned the physical tells of myself. When am I holding back?
And I'm with my partner Elizabeth, you know she I
am blessed and cursed with a partner who has an
incredible radar, incredibly emotional radar, so she knows when I'm
(26:58):
not being fully forthcoming, like there's no faking it till
you make it with her, which is a real problem.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Man.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
It's like real like you gotta be able to keep
some stuff from your part not like you know, crimes.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I'm just like, just bake, did you buy the thing? Yeah?
I was going on? Oh man, she go.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So I've got more reps in and practice and my
most you know, intimate and close relationship with what happens
when I open that door, and it's it's harder and
it's better, right, I won't. It's just it's not like
oh yeah, I just I experienced my grief now and
all of my darker emotions and life's great, you know,
(27:41):
like every moment is just what that's not the story.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
It is not a quick fix. This is not.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
But going through the experience, it just increasingly feels like
me like the right thing, and then you know, I
can seek out other types of experiences. There's this thing
flying around black men frolicking. The stilly is TikTok Instagram reels.
(28:14):
I don't know who started it, but it's just you know,
dudes holding up the selfie cam their arm as selfie stick,
running through fields.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Oh we frolicking. I didn't they tell me we was frollicking?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yo.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And one of I have this this brother, our Juna O'Neil.
He's a coach and men's leadership counselor and I've been
working with him and becoming friends with him at the
same time, and he shared.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
This with me and he did a video.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I'm like, I want to frolic this is this is amazing.
We never see men frolicking, right, We're not supposed to.
Like frolicking is what girls do or children or these
like weaker beings that we crush in our minds because
we don't want to be anything like that about men's business,
which is stoicism and pain and suppressed human experiences.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
That's what it is to be a man, to let
your inner.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Child run rampant through your adult life because you know
no one modeled for us how to deal with these
things except through maybe violence or alcohol or some other
substances or just deep, deep silence. So I really kind
of experience those joyful moments more fully when I myself
(29:33):
have gone through the mournful moments too.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, there's something about finding ways to be real like that, Yeah,
with yourself, with people with whom you feel trust, who
who can be trusted with that depth, right, and then
being able to bring more of that self out into
the world. Right. It's like, it's not the math equation
(29:59):
of of like feel the pain, go get your joy.
It's more the more you come into relationship with what
is true and real for you and find ways to
communicate and connect inside that, the more of everything becomes available. Right.
And you you mentioned like I love that frolicking TikTok.
(30:20):
It's awesome. I will link to it everybody, But like,
there is something dangerous in being playful or something not
allowed subversive subversive in being playful, and you know, you
think like, oh, it's easy, like just go do this
and this. But like we were talking like decades centuries
of so many things that say exactly how you described it, right,
(30:42):
Like play is weak, joy is weak, and it takes
a lot of strength and trust to play with other grownups.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, it does. That's a good one. That's a really
good one.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
I remember a poster from maybe the nineties. Everything I
needed to know I learned in kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Oh right, Oh my gosh, yeah something was that guy's name.
Oh I'm gonna have to go look it up. But yeah,
we're both like, where is it in the brain library?
Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten. It's
about like sharing and taking turns and like not wiping
your nose on your.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Sleeve, all all.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Of that stuff. But there is, like there is there
is something very scary about joy and very scary about play.
And if there is anything transactional in exploring the depth
of emotions or the truth of emotions, it's that, you know,
the the more you come into connection and relationship with
(31:46):
yourself in that stuff, the more you can come into
relationship with that stuff in others. Absolutely, And I think
like this this sort of also brings us to again
listening to your collected works and reading you and listening
to your podcasts and watching your talks, Like not only
does joy and celebration weave through so much of who
(32:06):
you are and how you show up, but also community
as restorative medicine, as necessary medicine for surviving what needs
to be survived. So if we bring community into this,
I feel like that's a nice dovetail from being safe
enough to play with grown ups, Like, yeah, where does
community come into all of this conversation? For you?
Speaker 1 (32:29):
As yearning and longing in part as I'm still relatively
mobile in my life and I'm feeling needs to root
more dig into where I live as urgency given age
and the steady realization like oh there may be some
(32:51):
maybe less time ahead than behind, like that kind of moment.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
I will live to one hundred and thirty.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Absolutely, if I'm keeping myself in the range of regular mortality,
then you know, forty five is a good time to
start thinking about that kind of stuff. And you know,
who do I love? Who am I spending time with?
Like who's my chosen community? Whose emails I'm going.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
To read first, you know, like this could be my
last email.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I can sense the overthinking.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, okay, all right, so maybe I shouldn't be reading email.
I think I'm just appreciating the specialness of trusted community.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Increasingly.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
This Black men's group I'm a part of has been
so healing and beautiful to have a community of fellow
men who are being emotionally open with each other, really open,
who are nudging each other toward that vulnerability. I'll bring
that challenge your face into the group. There's some things
(33:56):
we cannot do alone, and most things worth doing we
probably you know, shouldn't do alone. There's just more, literally
more with others, and we can share burdens and there's
a lot of practical values to having other people around.
So yeah, I think I'm becoming more conscious and more
(34:18):
actively aware of like why I'm drawn to people, what
groups of people in community kind of.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Bring out in me.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And there's a magic and an alchemy in a community
setting of being there for each other in different ways,
in different moments, and becoming one through the group.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Like a forest does.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Everything is everything, and then we're just trees with thumbs
and you know, more selfish and tendencies. But the idea
that these trees have this you know, underground root system
and they hook each other up and one is low
on nutrients and one is disease to transmit information back
and forth through fungi maybe like community is a life thing, right,
(35:08):
It's not just a human human thing. And so I
just I'm in awe of that. I love it.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
It makes me want to be a better community member
and be more intentional with like who I'm in community
with and what am I doing?
Speaker 1 (35:24):
What am I bringing to you know, community, What am
I offering to a community? Which is and in a
non transactional sense, right, just for the relationship value. You
know that our men's group is not a finance group.
We're not like investigating each other's company. That might happen
at some point, but that's not the goal. It's just
to be in relationship. And that's so it's a real
(35:47):
prerequisite I think for a whole life.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Bartune
day Thurston, I want to tell you about a new
way to get answers to your questions about grief. Each month,
every month, I host a live video call in Q
and a session just for patrons. If you've ever wanted
to know of what you're feeling is normal, come ask me.
If you want to know how to have that conversation
(36:20):
with your nosey relative who keeps butting into your business
with their ideas about what your loss or your experience
should look like, come join us. I'll help you figure
out how to communicate a boundary where there needs to
be a boundary once a month, every month. If you've
ever wished you could talk to me directly and get
your questions answered, this is by far the easiest way
(36:41):
to do it. All of the information is at patreon
dot com, backslash Megan Divine, or you could find the
link in the show notes. I hope to see you
there this month. All right, let's get back to my
conversation with author, speaker, television host ridiculously awesome human being
baratun Day Thurston. We have this pace in our conversation
today of like personal collective, personal collective, personal collective, which
(37:05):
I love. I love a micro macro pacing here and
a lot of what you're talking about in your own
personal community building. That's part of how to citizen right
is how do we become a true collective culture. How
do we show up in our local communities? How do
we show up in the larger world? Right, there's there's
(37:28):
something and.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
The good, the the you know, citizen as a verb
is our whole thing, and you can't citizen alone. It's
it's it's antithetical to the idea of being a member
of society and being in a membership club. Like that's
what social belonging is, whether it's formalized as a democracy
(37:51):
or a voting precinct or not.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
We're all part of many communities and we have power.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Even if we're living in a explicitly authoritarian state, we
still have some power to shape how that community operates.
You know, what we give to and what we get
out of it and the good news, you know, in
terms of this personal communal micro macro vibe that I've
been learning that.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I had a very formal idea.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Of citizen ing and it's like, oh, we we elect
these people and we go to community meetings.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
And very external Megan, it's very like the world out
there is broken.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Let me go with my virgo neess and my male
fix it, and let's let's fix it. I've identified problems.
I have this brain, I'm going to use it to.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Help the situation out. That's what we need.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
And yeah, but also inside you know, in here, you know,
invest in relationships is one of our pillars of what
it means to citizen, and the long version is investing
relationships with yourself, with others and the planet around you.
And so in order to have a relationship with the
city council or your block committee or your office working group,
(39:09):
it really helps to have a relationship with yourself. And
so we can start citizening and experiencing and practicing and
benefiting from community in way more tangible, close and proximate
and informal ways. And that just out of that was
a relief for me. I've ben't I think I've been
(39:31):
inundated with a kind of civics education model, which is,
you know how Bill becomes a law and you write
Congress and you put a change dot org petition and
you give all your money that like Brian Stevenson for
the Legacy Museum at the Lynching Museum or whatever.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Like you watch Black Panther all the time, right, and
you buy it all Blu ray and DVD and all.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
The streaming services so yes, there's a lot of external
stuff that we got to do and that is aided
by doing internal stuff too, And it's just the bar
of entry is actually just it's very low. Frontline is
us and that's I find that very freeing, like destressing.
(40:13):
It's like, okay, we all we literally all have something
we can do.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah right, yeah, coming it's terrifying, but it's not complicated,
yeah right, coming into relationship with yourself and practicing telling
yourself the truth and listening for that and being brave
enough to play and find joy and all of the things.
I love that you just said the frontline is in
us because this is this is so much of what
(40:38):
I feel like I want to talk about and am
talking about. Like, there is liberation in telling the truth
about how hard it is to be here sometimes m h.
There is real community to be found when you allow
what is real to be real, and it does unlock
(40:59):
joy and connect and community and the change that we
need to bring forth.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
There's a study that we came across in making this
season of the podcast. The season is all about how
do you create a culture of democracy?
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Now? How do you change the makeup of Congress? Right?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
How do you change the kind of soil that Congress
emerges from. And because they all come from somewhere, absolutely,
they all come from next door, right, They come from
the classroom next door, the house next door, the office
next door, And so we're in community with all these
eventual leaders, including ourselves. In the Conflict Resolution.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Episodes, one with Prea.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Parker and one with a group called Beyond Conflict, there's
a study that reveals that we're basically not as divided
as we think we are. That the way I think
Republicans think of me is far worse than what they
actually think of me, which is terrifying because IM pretty
sure I don't think too money now undermining the science.
But we would we would know that for ourselves if
(42:07):
we showed up honestly in our relationships, right, if we
trusted ourselves to be ourselves with each other. And instead,
a lot of what has happened is we've outsourced that
trust and faith to mediators, technological mediators, journalistic or allegedly
journalistic mediators who have a profit motive to convince us
(42:30):
of something that isn't as true as they want it
to be. You know how devastatingly and intractively divided we
are how much trash so and so thinks you are.
You hear what they said about your mama, Like that's
the business model for a lot of news media.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
And you believe what they said about your mama? Who
said what about my what? Oh? It's on right.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
And to be in real relationship doesn't mean one of
us has to interact with all eight billion of us.
That doesn't scale. It can scale at intermediate steps. If
I'm more real with you, more real with my partner,
more real with my team and my staff, that's a
little permission structure for all those people to mirror that
(43:11):
back and be real with me and each other and
the relationships that they're a part of that I'm not
a part of. And then we get this ripple effect.
I wouldn't call it trickle down. I'd call it kind
of bubble up as a different kind of metaphor, so
that we end up creating.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
The environment and the culture we want.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
That's some of the power of that authentic experience and
that real experience of pain, sometimes of anger, sometimes of joy.
Sometimes I bring your real some of us smother our
joy too. Is inappropriate, It's inappropriate.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
This is a professional book.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
This is a professional and serious times we are living
in Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah, and you see, you know, and then we are
coached to perform that as evidence of leadership.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Well, real leaders can jokes in a meeting, adding gifts
to the slack channel. Greholders might think you're not serious
about maximizing their value.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
You're right back to pillaging and destroyer, right, I should say,
laser focused on that.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
You're right, yeah, no distraction.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Well, and this is this is true, right, like that
we can destroy others and the environment when we otherize
them and when they aren't human, and when we don't
have that limbic resonance with them to go all dorky
for a second.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
When we think of them as them.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yes, right, Well that thing over there, that forrest, that tree,
that nation, that person, that not me is what we're
saying that that other, you know, as you said, so
if we can shift that. Valerie Corps our very first guest.
I can't talk about her enough because she set us
(44:53):
on a certain path with her book. See no Stranger.
The stranger is just a part of me I do
not yet know. That's the summary of the book. You
should still read it, but that's the basic point and
so if we can internalize the external, then we're actually
being very selfish when we care for others.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
That's a neat little.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Thing, a little semantic act. And we we are a
part of and not apart from. And so I keep
I keep bumping into this annoying lesson Megan in like
different areas of this, Like, Okay, I did a podcast
about citizen in cool, cool, cool, Yeah, we're all one.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Great. And then I've got a little men's group over here.
Oh we're all one. Here we go again, here we go.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
I'm out in the woods making them this PBS America
out doors.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Oh we're part of nature, not apart from we're all one.
What's with the oneness?
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Who's writing these bullet points?
Speaker 3 (45:46):
In my pros?
Speaker 2 (45:47):
I have actually in my notes this whole like concept
of like we're all one. So like I'm apparently I've
been I've been conscripted to be part of your bullet pointing.
Here's but here's the thing, right, is that same topic
different tones? Right, Like this is something that happens very often,
(46:09):
Like when we start talking about race and inequality and injustice,
you've got some folks being like, but we're all one.
There's no difference here. We're all just can't We're all
just oh my god. Right, But there's a way that
we can talk about our interrelatedness and our interconnection as
(46:30):
a way of bypassing the real work that needs to
be done, and there is a way to engage with
our interrelatedness that actually makes things better.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Thank you for that distinction, yes.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Because the whole we are one thing is really irritating, right,
But so much of what you're doing in this whole
like we are one thing, and I hear that, and
I see that theme running through in the way that
you're claiming it, and it's like there's this drive to
embrace the complexity and that you don't have this part
(47:06):
without this part, and you don't have the healing or
the restoration of this part without this relationship. And it's
all about relatedness, not about the erasure of difference.
Speaker 3 (47:20):
Absolutely absolutely that that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
And the people who want to skip to the happy ending,
you know, they're just kind of like reading that last
sentence out, Oh we're all one cool, Then I don't.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Have I don't have to do any I don't have
to do anything.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
That's the bypass thing that you talked about.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
So you know, the healing it requires acknowledgment of injury
and pain, and so there's some necessary sequencing of some
of these steps.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
I do believe they head in that same direction.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
I think, you know, we've created a lot of compelling
fictions for ourselves that draw lines between us, and then
we've built powerful structures along those fictional minds to make
the impacts really felt. And that's the that's it's almost
a paradox. It's certainly a kind of a conundrum.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
You could take it as well.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Okay, race isn't scientifically real, but it's a socially constructed
thing that was based in law and finance and physical
labor and actual abuse and real blood. So racism is
that's kind of a logical slippery thing.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
Race isn't real.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
How is racism real? Because we made it real. That's
the power of our minds and our collective minds. The
US dollars not real. Actually, it's just like a collective
shared delusion that's powerful enough to get us to go
to work and pay for food and housing, right with
(48:48):
this made up thing that has no basis in like
physical reality. So fiction is powerful things that aren't real
can make the be real and that is a that's
a beautiful confusion and then a beautiful tension and paradoxical thing.
(49:09):
But I think some of the best things in life
are right, they are and they aren't at the same time.
It's they're they're That's kind of a quantum thing. Keep
bumping also into quantum. Stuff keeps coming stuff from Sam Raider,
she talks about quantum all the time, and you know quantum.
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Marvel keeps launching these quantum movies. So from from pop culture,
it's like deep you know.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Emotional and psychological work. Quantum keeps coming up, So there
must be something to it.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
There must be. I mean, biggest living organism in the
entire world is microhizome, right, So like that's quantum is
and the symtemat.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
That's really what is what is your biome telling you
to say.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
That the visible in the invisible world? Oh my gosh,
I'm not going to keep you for the next three
years here on this. But like we didn't even get
to talk about like forest ecology and how that like
all of the all of the things. So I I'm
going to pull my own brain back from the radness
of quantum overlaps with everything and set us up for
(50:13):
the last complex thing that we'll discuss on our time together. Great,
all right. At the end of your twenty nineteen Ted talk,
now Helen Walters ask you a question, and I'm going
to completely paraphrase here. She said, basically, there's so much
ugliness in our culture, everywhere, all around, and she wondered
if you had any hope, and going back to what
(50:35):
you just said about the power of fictions that we
create and the power of stories that we create. Your
answer back then in twenty nineteen was about freeing ourselves
from the lies that we'd been told. And so we're
sitting here three years later. You've already talked about how
things have changed for you, about what you're willing to
do and how you're willing to show up in those
three year sense, But I want to revisit that question. Yeah,
(50:59):
knowing what you know and living what you've lived, knowing
what's unfolded since that stage three years ago, what does
hope look like for you?
Speaker 3 (51:08):
Now? Hope looks like a tree.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
It's deeply rooted and it's striving to grow. It's willing
to change, it's not threatened by growing a new limb,
or maybe losing one. It's just this in the nature
of treeness to experience all these things. And I think
there's something for me about hope that it has to
(51:34):
remain very grounded. There is a fleeting ethereal wispy hope
that you can't grab onto. It's like smoke. I don't
like that one. I think that one's less useful. It
makes for pretty words, but maybe not much else. So
I hope that's grounded. I hope that grieves so that
(51:59):
you know it's some point it can help celebrate. That's
more of my flavor. The thing that I was feeling
in that stage moment, which is a very unscripted moment
by the way, I caught me off guard.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
I was like, I'm done, I'm good.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
The fiction part that we were just talking about is
so it's it's kind of the whole thing. My hope
is grounded in our creative possibility, in our own creativity,
and we can be destructively creative, but I also think
we can be beautifully, you know, hopefully creative. And so
(52:40):
when I look at when I'm grounded in the evidence
of what we've chosen to make real from our fiction,
it's pretty devastating, you know, there's there's a you could
have an indictment sheet from a grand jury for abusive
imagination by the human species and never finish reading out
that list. But but there's a lot more to it,
(53:01):
and we're capable of a lot more So, even even
the devastating things we've done to ourselves and each other
is evidence that we can create anything that we think
serves us and then follow through on it. And it's
not just a negative example. There are many positive examples
of what we have created, whether systems of government, beautiful
(53:24):
works of art, collaborative, cooperative economic things like we can
use tech differently, we can use money differently, like we
can be in relation to all of these tools in
a way that really serves a collective us, allows us
to be collectively selfish. So my hope is grounded in
a lot of dirt, you know, and pain, and in
(53:46):
the knowledge that ultimately we just make things up. So
if we are aware of that more, can we choose
more consciously to make up something that's.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Better for all of us? And I believe we can.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
That's awesome. It is such a joy to spend time
with you. Thank you so much for being here with
me and with us. Obviously, we're going to link to
everything and everywhere that people can find you, your Ted
Talk and your podcast in America outdoors in the show notes.
Is there anything else you want listeners to know about
where to find you?
Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, I'm wherever Baritun Days are found.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
I've been witch. I'm pretty much I'm not the only one,
but I'm like the easiest to link to.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
There's a Baritune Day in Atlanta who I'm a big
fan of. I have to meet him at his new
business he does. He does nanotechnology stuff, he's as science.
He have Baritune de Colao. Check out the other Baritun Day.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
So what you're saying is you're googleable.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
I'm google doable, so find that.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Now we're just you know, I've been writing a lot
with this new media company, Puck to at puck dot News,
and that's where I'm exploring more slowly and deeply. A
lot of these themes raise tech, democracy and our possibilities
with all of that.
Speaker 3 (55:08):
So if you.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
Want to have a textual experience, check out what I'm
up to at Puck and what my colleagues they are
up to. I'm proud of all their reporting. I am
not a reporter, but it's good to be in the
company of people who really really do that job while
I get to opine on things and process my emotions
and feelings through words on a screen. This has been
(55:31):
I feel like I need a nap. This has been
an experience that is so beautiful. It's been this really
like heart forward, heart open journey. Thank you for inviting
me into what feels like kind of a sacred space here,
and then for what you're doing to help us all
be okay with not being okay and to explore our
(55:52):
relationship with grief and with hope.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Thank you so much. All Right, everybody, stay tuned. I'll
be right back with your questions to carry with you
right after this. Each week I leave you with some
questions to carry with you until we meet again. You
(56:18):
know what really struck me through this entire conversation with
Baritunde was how easy it was, how easy it was
to weave through all the different topics and aspects of life.
We discussed, like there's something in that for me that
when you're living this stuff, when both joy and morning
or celebration and grief. When both of those things are
(56:38):
welcomed and acknowledged in your life, it's just like it's
easy to move back and forth between them. Being okay
is normal. There's no need to like set aside a
special scheduled time to like talk about heavy discussions about
like you don't have to do that stuff. When you
have relationships where everything is welcome, you just do it.
(57:00):
You talk about what's there when it's there, and it's
so easy. This whole conversation made me feel really hopeful
about the joy that I stitch into my life, that
there's joy in building relationships and friendships that include everything
whatever is up at any given moment. It also really
stressed the importance of play, which is something that I,
(57:24):
full disclosure, often forget to prioritize in my own life.
And I love what Baratunde said about his hope being
bound with the human power of creativity, Like how can
we not have hope knowing what's in our power to create?
That's a really interesting idea. What about you, what's stuck
with you? From this conversation, everybody's going to take something
(57:48):
different from the show, but I do hope you found
something to hold on to If you want to tell
me how today's show felt for you, or you have
thoughts about what we covered, let me know. Tag at
Refuge in Grief on all the social platforms so I
can hear how this conversation affected you. You can follow
the show at It's Okaypod on TikTok and Refuge and
(58:08):
Grief everywhere else to see video clips from the show.
Also use the hashtag It's okaypod on all of the platforms.
Not only so that I can find you when I
go looking, and I totally do search that hashtag so
I can see what you're talking about, but use that
hashtag so that other people can find you too. It's
a really cool way to start building conversations and community.
(58:31):
None of us are entirely okay, and it's time we
start talking about that together. Hashtag's just one tool in
building the world that we want. Yeah, it's okay that
you're not okay. You're in good company. That's it for
this week. Friends, Remember to subscribe to the show and
leave a review. Your reviews help make the show easier
(58:54):
to find, which furthers our mission of getting more people
to have interesting conversations about difficult things and Your reviews
are really special to me and I love to read them.
Coming up next week, musician and author Sarah Raimi joins
me to talk about chronic illness and why having your
music show up at a hit TV series is a
(59:14):
mixed bag of awesome and exhausting. Follow the show on
your favorite platforms, friends, so you don't miss an episode.
Want more on these topics, Look, grief is everywhere. As
my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief
that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
this stuff without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
(59:37):
is an important skill for everyone, whether you're trying to
support a friend going through a hard time, or you
work in the helping professions, or you just want to
be better at humaning. Get help to have those conversations
with trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book, It's
Okay that You're Not Okay, plus the guided journal for
Grief at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that You're Not Okay.
(01:00:03):
That podcast is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio
Logistical and social media support from Micah. Post production and
editing by the ever patient Houston Tilly, music provided by Wavecrash,
and today's background noise provided by the Endless Spring drone
(01:00:24):
of chainsaws cleaning up after the La winter rains
Host
Megan Devine
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