491 -- Defining Typical is Very Difficult -- with Joel Bouchard

How do you know who you are, or aren't? How do you know what you're good at? What is "typical," anyway?

Guest: Joel Bouchard, From Nowhere to Nothing podcast
Spotify: Joel Bouchard

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Promo: Omen
Disclaimer: Mike Gagne
Art: Kim Erwin
Music: Jake Pierle -- https://jakepierle.bandcamp.com/

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Ignorance Was Bliss online: https://linktr.ee/iwbpodcast

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Episode Transcript

(00:13):
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(01:23):
two seven three eight two five fiveYou Matter. Hey, This is Kate.
I've asked recently on other episodes howyou define yourself, how you know
what you are and what you aren't, And this episode is kind of an

(01:48):
extension of those. I'm talking withsomeone that I would consider to be a
polymath, which isn't a word yourun across all that off. It means
someone who knows a lot about alot of things to get fairly simple,

(02:10):
wide ranging knowledge on things. AndI'm not one hundred certain that my guests
would agree with me about that,because one of the things that happens for
a lot of people when you intensivelystudy, either in a single area or

(02:34):
multiple areas, is that you startto become aware of how much else you
don't know, and you kind offocus on the empty spaces instead of on
the spaces you're filled up. Andit's not a false humility or anything like
that. It's just a simple awarenessof whoa I thought I knew a lot

(03:00):
about a thing, but look atall the other stuff out there that I
haven't learned yet. And the moregenres or skills or hobbies or just areas
that you're interested in, the moreof those spaces you become aware of.
So my guest his name is JoelBouchard. He's a podcaster. His show

(03:24):
is called The Philosophy Podcast from Nowhereto Nothing. He's also a musical artist.
And if you're listening to this episodeon the day of release July twenty
one, twenty twenty three. He'sgot new music out on Spotify called All

(03:47):
We Are. And you know,he's also a manager at a through relatively
big business, and he's also pursuinghis PhD in psychology. And do you
see what I mean? Like,he's got a lot of areas that he's

(04:10):
interested in and able to pursue.And what that boils down to is,
for those of us looking in fromthe outside, we think, wow,
you know a lot of stuff.But he says himself, I don't know
that I'm really good at anything,And I think both can be true.

(04:36):
But at the same time, Ifelt compelled to cut him off and tell
him to shut up at that pointbecause I fully disagree on whether he's good
at things. I absolutely believe thathe is, even if there's room for
improvement. Are you sure you reallywant to know? This is a rance?

(05:00):
Was bliss? My name's Joe Bouchard. Um. I'm the host of

(05:35):
the Philosophy podcast Nor to Nothing.UM. I'm a multi instrumentalist recording engineer.
I've got a new album coming outon July twenty one. Are you
Know All We Are? UM?I like to write, I like the
paint. Um, I've got abunch of different hobbies. But I'm also

(05:55):
the manager of a manufacturing plant,so as well as an army veteran and
a few other things. But isthat all like, that's that's the gist
of it. I'm a I'm aPhD student in psychology. Okay, so
you and I are best friends.As as as it starts, we're good
society. So okay, nice,nice, Um, Oh we're start.

(06:18):
Let's start. Start. Let's startwith the podcast. So I've had philosophers
on the show before, and thatoften means we're going to go sort of
deep and intense. So keeping atthe surface level to begin with, how
do you describe your podcast to people? So? Um, yeah, my
podcast is You're You're right about itbeing pretty deep and intense. What we

(06:42):
do usually is each episode is aone or two word title, um,
something like God or time, andthen we spend an entire hour talking about
that one word um. Sometimes,you know, we try to stick to
the format of looking at the formativeelements of the concept in history and then

(07:02):
moving on to the essence of it, trying to define what it is and
how are linguistic and conceptual barriers kindof prevent us from identifying it, and
then we try to finish it offby looking at speculative aspects of it,
asking questions about how this thing,now that we've looked at the historical thought
and we've tried to define it ourselves, what does it mean for us as

(07:27):
humans? You know? And whenyou say we, it's you and your
co host consistently. So, yeah, I've got a regular m I call
him the resident expert. He's aformer college professor of mine, Norm Gayford,
and he's he's the regular We've had. I've had other guests on in
the past, AI scientists and authorsand and kind of they runs the gamut

(07:53):
of people, so we I've haveguests, um usually I try to fit
them in around this time of yearwhen I'm out of cool. When I'm
in school, I usually stick tothe regular. But when I when I'm
out of school, I try tohave some new guests on. I try
to get on some other people's podcasts, like years, so I can sort
of get the word out and havesome new conversations. I'm fully not at

(08:15):
all as I fan myself on camera, not at all angling for a spot
on your podcast, just pretty Yeah, you can come on. Well,
I sure we have it on Mike. We're good, okay, Because it's
it's it's super fun to get esotericfor me, both because I've always been

(08:35):
interested in like language and relationships andcommunication. So I mean, I I
ended up taking that into a moreconcrete, tangible you know, I'm a
forensic psychologist. Like that's fairly likewhat are you going to do with this
information? But you have to takea lot of theoretical, yeah you know,

(08:58):
esoteric or just what is happening kindsof classes to get there. But
also in twenty ten, I hada traumatic brain injury. I was in
a coma for a week and ahalf and turns out brains don't like that.
And then a couple of years later, because of that, I developed

(09:18):
epilepsy, and so I have alesion in my right frontal cortex executive functioning.
And so I've gone from one ofmy first jobs was running a Learning
disabilities ADHD assessment clinic to now Ihave ADHD and never used to. And

(09:39):
I've had to spend a lot oftime explaining to other people how I think
and function now because I look basicallythe same, but my personality, my
emotions, my impulsivity, executive functioninghad just changed drastic and I'm a very

(10:01):
different person than I was before.And that means understanding to the extent I'm
able who I used to be,Understanding what people expect of me, articulating
where I'm at now, and thenfinding ways to express that and communicate that
two people around me, and that'sall. It's a lot of work,
but as long as the people aroundme aren't complete cherks, it goes pretty

(10:24):
well. Yeah. No, I'dlove to have you on the podcast because
you've already said a lot of stuffthat's really interesting. And normally the way
I do it when I have guestson is I'll let you pick you pick
one word or two words, youknow, tops that you want to talk
about, and then we can talkabout it. But yeah, you know,
just the you know what you describethere is sort of a philosophical thing

(10:46):
that's been discussed, you know sinceyou know, the original Socratics and stuff,
which is the ship of theseus?Right if you if you have this
ship and you start replacing boards onit, you know, at what point
is it is a different ship?Right? Is it? When you replace
the first board, or is itwhen all the boards are replaced or some
of it? You know, Andso that's the interesting part about philosophy and

(11:09):
psychology is looking at that and saying, you know what, at what point
would you define yourself as being adifferent person? And in most people's lives,
you know, we're talking about fairlysubtle changes. You know, Okay,
well from day to day or tenyears from now or fifty years from
now, am I the same person? But in your case to go,

(11:30):
you know, almost a one eightyfrom something that you were a subject matter
expert into somebody who has the thingthat you were studying. That's really a
fascinating that's a fascinating thing to thinkabout. My brains are brains are wild.
And you know, I've I've hada lot of time masking because the

(11:52):
first couple of years, and thisis pretty common with a lot of people
who go through traumatic brain injury kindof stuff, is we spend the first
couple of years trying really hard toget back to the person we were before.
And you don't necessarily know what thatis, but you can recognize the
facial expressions of the people around you, especially if they think they know you

(12:13):
real well, you know when youget it wrong, yeah, you know,
when you've reacted in a way thatthey look at and say, that's
not how Kate is, and I'mlike, well that's how I am right
now. Yeah, you know,And early on I would try and correct
or I would retreat from the field. You know, there are There've been

(12:35):
like family events where I've gone andhid, you know, in a bedroom
or whatever, because I couldn't keepbeing this person that they expected, because
it takes so much effort to beyourself and also present to someone else,
and I would just burn out andmelt down and have to hide away.
And then I reached a point whereI was like, you know what to

(12:56):
what end? What am I gettingout of this? I'm broken? People
break? Yeah. Yeah, AndI had a similar scenario. Luckily mine
was was sort of temporary. Butum I had an experienced years back where
um, I was shoveling snow offof my roof. I slipped, I

(13:16):
fell off of my roof, Ibroke my deck rail with my jaw,
had a pretty severe concussion. Andthen um, just as I was getting
back to work, I had anoperator drop a hydraulic press store on my
head and give me another concussion.And then there was about six months where
I was having UM disassociative episodes andvery weird cognitive things happening. You know,

(13:39):
visuals seemed kind of two dimensional andcolorful, and again just you know,
I'd look in the mirror and Iwouldn't recognize myself and stuff, and
you know, there was I keptthinking, this isn't this isn't me right,
And then eventually I did return towho I, you know, my
who I was before that. Butwhat I've thought about a lot in the
time since then, and UM,I realized I watched a documentary recently that

(14:03):
that sort of UM confirmed this.It's It was Limitless with Chris Hemsworth UM.
And there's an episode at the endof the series called Death where UM
they put him through sort of asimulated death experience. And the guy who's
leading it is a guy UM whospecializes in palliative therapy, and he had

(14:24):
an episode where UM in his lifewhere he ended up being a trip lamputee.
Both of his legs in one ofhis arms were taken off, and
he talked about that similar thing wherehe goes, you know this where he's
had years of depression. This isn'tme, right, But then he said,
you know, at some point hehad to look in the mirror and
say, this is my life,this is it, this is all I
have. And so you know,I can be depressed about it, or

(14:46):
I can I can fight it,or I can accept it and move on.
Right. And that's something that's hard, you know it. I can't
believe that the people like that andpeople like yourselves, you know how how
you you can do that? Becauseit takes a lot of strength of character,
and it takes a lot of emotionaland mental resilience to do that.

(15:07):
And that's something that um, youknow, you you really have to work
at over over years, you know. Um. But yeah, it's it
raises the kind of the myth ofthe neurotypical person anyways, right, because
you know, even if you havesomebody who, um, okay, you
know, I'm getting a doctorate,or I have all these skills, all

(15:30):
these talents, all these things,all these hobbies, right, and you
appear to be a normal person.But we're all we're all different. And
some of those things are pretty obvious. Um, some of them are not
so obvious, right, I don'thave any sense of smell. Um,
I have mixed dominance. So Iwas supposed to be left handed in kindergarten.
My teacher made me right handed.So these are little things that you

(15:52):
can't tell by looking at somebody.Um, but there's a lot of psychological
research that that's says they do havea big impact on how you function.
And so if something like that canaffect how you function, then that line
between psychology and philosophy gets real blurredagain talking about this, Well, if

(16:14):
those things aren't neurotypical, at whatpoint is somebody neurotypical and they aren't right?
Because they found even rods and conesin your eyes, you know,
they find that men have three conereceptors for seeing colors, up to half
of women have four. So what'swhat's typical? Right? So all through
from sensation, through cognitive processing,brain structures, everything else they're they're really

(16:41):
defining typical is very difficult. Andso if there's that much variation and that
much diversity, then how are yougoing to sort of pigeonhole somebody's experience of
the world, their conception of reality, and their conceptions of themselves. You
know, it's very difficult. It'sfunny it's funny that you bring the specific

(17:03):
word neurotypical up. Also, bythe way I'm saying right now, my
wordest word like that's a concept ofI had. I had complete word of
phasia when I came out of thecoma, and so the concept of communication
and assigning meaning towards it sits rightvery close to my heart. So if
possible, that's really but choosing theword neurotypical. So now I have ADHD,

(17:30):
which it's fun because epilepsy is whatcaused it, and you can't take
ADHD medication because it can cause seizures. So you know that which caused the
ADHD I cannot have treated because youknow, fine, it's fine, it's
fine, but irony and I haveI have ADHD. Two of my kids

(17:56):
have diagnosed ADHD. One has eitherOCD or autistic tendencies. Were not real
sure, it's not like to clinicallevel, but it's there and they're aware
of it and they function pretty well. So we just sort of talk it

(18:17):
through and they just they just don'tfeel like they are neurotypical. And my
youngest has autism as sort of asecondary like springing from early childhood trauma.
My youngest is adopted and has seensome stuff, you know, and so
five of us in the household areofficially diagnosed as neurodivergent in some capacity.

(18:45):
And just the other week, Iwas looking at my husband and I was
trying to explain a thing that Iwas doing and saying, I don't know
if this would be hard for youbeing neurotypical, but it's really hard for
me, so please don't talk tome right the second. That was sort
of my bottom line, and hewaited and I finished the task, and

(19:07):
then afterwards he was like, youknow, it almost feels not offensive or
derogatory, but negative when I'm hitwith the label of being neurotypical, because
I don't feel normal. I feellike I've got my own stuff going on,
and just because I've never been diagnoseddoesn't mean I function normally. And

(19:29):
it was just it sparked off aninteresting conversation of like, do you need
a formal diagnosis to be neurodivergent?And living online, I'm seeing sort of
more of an acceptance of neurodiversions,almost to the point of celebrating it,
almost to the point of looking atlike there's a you know, normis it's

(19:52):
there's there's people who refer to itas normis, as though being normal as
bad, and I'm like, it'sjust another word, you know, It's
just another label, I guess forfor a functioning level that society has decided
to value. But my husband waslike, you know, it kind of
felt almost dismissive or almost negative orsomething, and I was like, I

(20:15):
want to trade. We could trade, But realistically I get it. You
know. It's it's if it feelspejorative to you, then it is pejorative
to you. That's where it lands. Yeah, it's interesting, you know.
I think that, Um, Ithink that everybody has sort of this
internal struggle. At some level.Everybody wants to be normal, but at

(20:37):
some level people also want to beindividualistic. And it depends on what you're
talking about. If it's if it'ssomething it's difficult, right, people want
to have the difficulties that they facevalidated, or if it's something exceptional or
different they do. They want tobe recognized for the things that they do
that are that are different. Butat the same time, everybody also they

(20:59):
want to have some level of normality. So I think it's this conflicting thing
right where your husband. You know, he probably wouldn't want to trade places
with you, right he oh,well, he sees the struggles that you
facing. He goes, well,I would it wouldn't want any part of
that, right. But at thesame time, he goes, well,
I don't feel normal, And that'sbecause normal isn't a real thing, right,

(21:21):
It's just just this kind of conceptionthat is societally accepted but not defined
in any way. So what's normalfor a certain group of people is going
to be you know, very outand left field for a different group of
people. So it's all it's allgroup dynamics essentially. There's no there's no
overarching normality that exists out there somewherethat everybody is aspiring too or belongs to.

(21:48):
Some dude out there is sitting theregoing on, I'm normal, and
I'm like, oh, that makesyou weird, honestly, Yeah. Yeah.
If you fell into the fifty percentileon every single measurable category, you
would being like the one percentile ofpeople. So you'd still be out there,
right, you would not be normalby your normal. By you'd be
so normal you'd be abnormal. Atthat point, I'm saying what I'm saying

(22:14):
how how how far into your yourdoctorate are you? I'm about a third
of the way through. Um,it's just something I'm doing for fun.
I have. Um sorry, Ihave a associate's degree in criminal justice,
a bachelor's degree in independent studies,a master's degree in education, and so

(22:36):
now I'm getting a doctorate in psychology, mostly because when I was in the
army they gave me free money forschool, and so I said, yeah,
all right, I'll use it.So I just keep going and going.
What do you want to be whenyou grew up? Um, I
that's a difficult question, right.Um, I'm not somebody who has a

(22:57):
lot of worldly as orations, rightI don't. I don't care too much
about being rich. I have enoughmoney to do what I want to do
as it is. I'm not somebodythat really cares about prestige. You know.
Right now, I lead, youknow, I'm the second highest person
in the company that I'm in,and that's been true almost since I was

(23:18):
seventeen years old. But I've neverreally aspired to be at the top of
any job. It's just I justtry to work hard and then you get
recognized for it eventually, and peoplepromote you. But really, I mean
what I want to be when Igrow up as somebody who has the time
and the curiosity to do a philosophypodcast, to make albums, to paint,

(23:42):
to write, to to do thethings that I enjoy doing. You
know, So as long as youknow that crosses over to my job,
I really love my job, andif I didn't, I would find something
else to do, even if itdidn't pay the same amount of money.
Right because I'm going to spend athird of my life at a place,
I want to make sure that it'snot time that I absolutely dread. You

(24:03):
know, It's just that's not away to live. But most of my
qualifications about what I want to bewhen I grew up of involved sort of
rational or effective attitudes towards how itqualitatively affects my life versus any kind of
defined picture of what that looks like. I guess I follow completely, you

(24:26):
know. I mean, when Iwas giving my doctorate, I was initially
I just didn't want my undergraduate Iwent to Clarkson in New York, and
so I was a mechanical engineering student. And it wasn't until my junior year
where I realized I don't want todo this. I don't. I don't.
I'm good at it, but Idon't want to do this for a

(24:48):
living. And so I dropped allof my classes and picked up. I
was the only psych major in myclass, and I graduated, and I
didn't like I thought maybe it wasgoing to go into profile because I had
read Mind Hunter back then, andthen I realized I didn't want to be
a cop, and so forensic psychology. It was like a little bit of
a shift to the side, butI kept it general. So, you

(25:11):
know, I studied criminal justice andmental health counseling at the master's level,
and then my doctors is in clinicalpsychology, and then went on afterward to
do the forensic work. And youknow, somewhere somewhere between the you know,
when I was finishing up my mastersand kind of figuring out what next,
I was like, I sat downwith several of my professors, was

(25:33):
like, how do I become aforensic psychologist? How do I do this
thing? And their answer across theboard was don't do the job. That's
fine, but keep your studies asbroad as you can, and that way
you have flexibility in the world andyou can pivot without having to necessarily immediately
go back to school. And soI was like, okay, and so

(25:56):
that's what I did, and that'show I ended up working running a Learning
Disabilities ADHD assessment clinic. I neverwanted to do that early on, but
I realized at some point in thedoctorate, like my second or thirty year
at the doctoral level, that Idon't want to be a therapist. I'm
not patient enough, and I justdidn't like it. There's a lot about

(26:22):
the mental health system in our countrythat focuses on what is wrong with people
and how they are broken, andthen you have to fight with insurance to
fix them, and then you don'tget to talk to them anymore. And
I was like, I don't.I don't like that mindset, you know.
And I mean the same underlying assumptionis there with assessment, that you're

(26:45):
only assessing when something goes wrong.But still it's faster and it's more contained
and I can juggle in a differentway. And when I was in grad
school and there was a guy inTexas called Stephen and Finn who came out
with a paper talking about how agood assessment if it's done well and attentively

(27:07):
and empathically is as powerful as afull arc of therapy because in his and
I'm paraphrasing, but that the experienceof being understood, of feeling understood,
that that was one of the curativeor central aspects of therapy. And so

(27:33):
if you can achieve that with someonein an assessment situation, it's faster and
sort of more efficient in its way, and you see a more a broader
array of people and you're kind ofthrown in the thick of it in a
different way. And I was like, I want to do that. That
sounds fun. Let's do that,And so that's where I ended up.

(27:57):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds interestingand it resonates, right, because there's
nothing that's worse in a healthcare contextthan being misdiagnosed, right, or being
not understood by the person who's supposedto be providing you with care. But
yeah, psychology is really just afascinating field because you know, I think

(28:18):
that most lay people think of itas being therapists, but it really spans
a whole gamut. Right, LikeI've from the very beginning, I had
no interest in being a therapist,right. I like the research side of
it. I like the neuroscientific sideof it. But at heart, I'm
a philosopher, right, So whatI want to know is what makes people

(28:41):
tick. I like looking at thebrain regions and going, okay, all
right, medial prefrontal cortex, postyour singulate cortex. Right, here's our
episodic continuity. Can we use transcranialmagnetic stimulation to alter that? While somebody's
having a dream, and would theysuddenly realizes that it's it's strange that they

(29:02):
were in their house, then theywere in the desert, right, those
things that happen in your dreams thatyou don't give a second thought too,
you know, So these these ideasof you know, I'm an introvert by
nature, right, So I Ido not want to UM. I don't
want I don't want to sit andtalk with people and then people. You
know, I've been very fortunate inlife not to have UM. I don't

(29:25):
think of myself as having a difficultlife at all. And there's lots of
people who who have right and andto to listen to them and try to
to work out their issues. It'sit's a really noble thing, and it's
just I don't know if it's somethingthat i'd be cut out for you know,
um, but yeah, it's reallyreally fascinating. Psychology is all over
the map, and what kind ofthings you can study and what kind of

(29:45):
things you can do, Yeah,and including you know, you can end
up with a philosophy podcasts, sothat I mean yeah, yeah, So
in a in a little bit ofa shift in topics, do you mean
you do all of this other stuff? Talk to me a little bit about
writing music and creating music. Whatdoes that do for you? So I

(30:11):
writing music is something that I takea different approach to than a lot of
people do. Um. I startedI started playing what I would what I
consider late in life, right,because I think that a lot of people
who become musicians started an early age. And I think I started playing when
I was fourteen guitar and you know, me and my friends joined a band,

(30:33):
and then my drummer got married andmy bass player moved away and went
to college, and you know,I thought, you know, I'm just
starting to play music. I lovemusic, and every all my friends are
leaving, I said, so Iwant to keep doing it. So at
at seventeen, I went to GuitarCenter and I spent my whole life savings

(30:53):
on recording stuff. I bought adrum set, I bought a recording interface.
I bought all the instruments, andI didn't know how to play any
of them, but I bought themall, and um, I just started
teaching myself how to play stuff.And from there and uh, I learned
how to build computers, so Ican build a studio computer. And um,
you know, have gone through thewriting and you know the mixing phases,

(31:18):
learning the production is that's the hardpart. You know, the instruments
weren't weren't too bad compared to It'salways a never ending journey to try to
figure out how to mix a song, right. But I've always taken the
approach. You and I were talkingbefore we got on the air about how
you know you say listen, Idon't. I'm not going to addit the
podcast. If you start stumbling overyour own words, you know you're you're
on your own. My podcast isthe same way. Me and my co

(31:41):
host, We think that's really important, especially on a philosophy podcast, right
because part of philosophy is the struggleof working through something to get to a
point. Um, and I viewmusic kind of the same way. Um,
I think some of the problems withmodern music is that it's it's too
too perfect. Um. You know, so I try to do my best,

(32:05):
but I don't go through a lotof artificial stuff. I'm not going
to auto tune my vocals. Youknow, I'll tune my guitar for the
first take, but then after that, if it ends up coming out of
tune a little bit, I'm not. I'm not worried about it. I'm
I want and you know, I'mnot going to over dub over and over
again. You know, lots oftimes if you listen to a record and
you hear a piano, there's there'sactually six pianos that are playing, right.
I don't want to get involved inthat stuff. I wanted to have

(32:27):
kind of a real feel to it. So, Um, basically, I'm
I'm just about doing it as longas it's fun, right, Because that's
that's sort of my philosophy in life, right, That's why I like we
were talking about earlier, That's whyI do anything, is I do it
because I like it. So basically, I start writing a song and you
know, if as long as I'mhappy writing it, I keep going.

(32:47):
If I'm not happy. I tossit, you know, or maybe I
put it aside to come back toit later and I'll work on it.
But I'm only working on it whenI'm having a good time. And then
when I'm playing the instruments and I'mhaving a good time, when i'm makes
and I'm having a good time.When I when I it's no longer fun,
that's when I say, you knowwhat it's done, and it doesn't
matter what state it's in, rightif it's you know. Lots of times

(33:08):
I'll listen back and I'll go,you know what, I could have done
this, I could have done that. But I don't beat myself up over
it because I know that at thatpoint I had exhausted, you know what,
what I was considering the beneficial partof making music, which is being
creative and being excited about what you'redoing. And I think that that plays

(33:30):
out in a lot of my music. I've have seven albums, well,
with the new album, it'll beseven albums, two EPs, and a
ton of singles. And there's noneof them that I'm embarrassed of. There's
nothing that I go back and Igo, oh, you know that was
that was really bad? Or youknow, I regret this or that,
and I think that that's because whenI look back on it, I can

(33:51):
say that I had fun doing it, right. I think that that that's
the most important part. But yeah, so that's kind of the long version
of the process. I mean,that's very, very close to my philosophy
around podcasting. So I've been ondisability permanent disability for several years. By

(34:12):
this point, I broke my back. Don't do that. And I spent
a couple of years moping hardcore.And then I noticed that I was talking
back to podcasts. I was answeringtheir questions. They would be like,
what does it mean to be notguilty very reason of insanity? And I'd
be like, oh, ask me, I know. And then I would
realize, right, they recorded thissix months ago. They can't hear me,

(34:34):
you know. And so I wasa guest on a couple of shows.
But you know, you got toget yourself out there, and you
know, people weren't beating a pathto my door. So I was like,
all right, I'm going to startmy own show, you know,
ten or twenty episodes and then I'llstop. And here we are, almost
five hundred later, maybe five hundredby the time this one comes out.

(34:55):
And my rule, my one metricor how long will the podcast last,
is as long as it is morefun than stress, because sometimes it does
get stressful. Sometimes there are thingsabout it, either a specific episode or
a specific person, or social mediaas a concept, things like that.

(35:16):
So there's going to be some stress. That's fine, it's just the fun
has to be bigger. And themoments that I've hit where it started to
become more stressful, or when I'vestepped back and thought, Okay, what
can I change? What about thisis stressing me out? What do I
want to want to do? Somy show started as basically true crime or

(35:37):
true crime adjacent, really talking aboutthe criminal justice system and specific cases,
and then it started to feel likework without getting paid for it. I
was like, I don't want todo that anymore. Plus there were some
gate keeping from members of the truecrime community telling me that my show wasn't
really true crime because I described conceptsrather than giving a narrative stories. And

(36:04):
I could have fought back, Iguess, or I could have ignored them
and I could have remained in mylike true crime adjacent space, but instead
I was like you know what,cool, I'm going to pull the lens
back farther. I'm going to talkto whoever I want to instead of staying
in this right and it's been superfun. You know, there are times
where I still go back and dotrue crime stuff because I can because the

(36:27):
stuff I know about. But thenI also get to talk to you and
authors and actors and you know,all manner of people. And I remain
I wasn't grateful in the moment,let's be clear, but I'm grateful now
for that active gate keeping because itkind of in the moment stressed me out
considerably, but ultimately gave me this, Okay, let's change things. And

(36:50):
I changed things in a way thatmade it fun again, and now it
is. It remains my biggest hobby, my most fun thing that I could
do in public. Anyway. Yeah, it's interesting because what I think determines
success in a person's life is theability to strip away expectations of other people

(37:17):
and figure out what it is thatyou like doing. But at the same
time, I don't think there's anythingharder to do in life, because we're
social animals, right, So whensomebody has expectations, I think that there's
sort of this implicit drive to wantto fulfill them. Right. I start
doing music, and people say,you're really good. You know, you
should start running ads, you shouldpost stuff here, you should play out,

(37:39):
you should do all that. Andfor years I thought, you know,
I felt almost felt guilty, likeyeah, I should do that stuff.
And after a while, what Ifigured out is I'm not doing that
stuff because I don't like doing thatstuff. I'm an introvert. I don't
want to go play live, right. I do this for fun, you
know. I don't want to,like you said, make it work outside

(38:01):
of work, by looking at analyticsand the stats and trying to figure out
where I need to target my audienceand do all this stuff. You know,
I just I just want to makemusic, right, same thing with
the podcast. I make the podcast. Right, we sit here in this
room and we talk for an hour, and then I spend about half an
hour just doing EQ and compression andadding my intronautro music, and then I

(38:22):
upload it and that's it, right, I don't I don't advertise it anymore.
It's been listening to on six continents, right, there's you know,
work going on one hundred and fortyepisodes and we have a pretty good following.
But I've never never advertised, andI think that that's kind of what
my point is is the more trueyou stay to yourself, the more that
you try to do something that youenjoy and that you're passionate about, that

(38:45):
will come through and people will enjoythat, and you know, the other
stuff can follow if you want itto. If not, then that's fine
too. I don't care about beingfamous because I have intro for it,
right. I don't want to bein the public eye all the time because
I would rather be by myself.But I mean, I chose an auditory

(39:08):
medium for a reason, like myphotos out there, and I've been other
podcasts I've shown have videos, soit's not like I hide away. But
man, having to stare into thecamera for a recording, that's a lot
of work. I contacted a lotof work, and so not having to

(39:28):
do that in a in a professionalsort of way, and you know,
and I have done live shows.It's super fun because I don't have to
write, right, And so yeah, that's I hear you. Another thing
that you said that rang about fromme, you talked about getting into music.
Later we have the flip experience there. I was big into music as

(39:52):
a kid, you know, chorusand band, like to the point where
I didn't have lunch breaks in juniorhigher high school because chorus was like fifth
period and band was sixth period orwhichever it was, and I was in
both all the time, and thatwas my thing. That was I loved
it. I loved I wasn't Ididn't create new music. I don't know

(40:15):
whether I could have or not.I never tried. But I loved the
feeling of, you know, I'ma percussionist, and so I loved the
feeling of like hitting the pocket andjust being part of a group that's creating
this thing that is bigger than theyou know, the some of its parts.
And that was fantastic. And aroundsomewhere in my early teens, I

(40:37):
started to lose my hearing, andby the time I was sixteen, I
qualified for hearing aids. And I'vecontinued to lose my hearing to the point
where now I kind of like Ican't hear pitch anymore. I can't sing.
I went from being you know,all state chorus in high school too.

(40:58):
I can't mean tame a tune nowbecause I can't hear it. And
I don't know that until I listenedto the playback and I'm like, oh,
oh that's not good, but Ican't hear it in the moment,
and that was a hard loss,yeah for me, and letting that go,
letting that be one of those thingsof that was great, Well it
was, but now it is morestress than fun. I'm not gonna yeah,

(41:22):
yeah, it's um. You know, it's all of those things.
You have to accept where you're atin life, right and not take it
for granted, because that's that's thesame thing, um. You know,
with music. I didn't like musicwhen I was younger. I didn't listen
to music, and then when Iwas thirteen, I started listening to classical

(41:44):
music. And then when I wasfourteen, my my friends wanted to start
a band, so we all starteda band, but we didn't play any
instruments, so we just picked essentially, hey, you beat, you play
guitar, you play drums, youplay bass, and then we we figured
it out and then through that Istarted listening. But still to this day,
a lot of people, um willsay, oh, yeah, you
know this song, I love thissong about I've never heard it. You

(42:05):
know, my my experience of musicis very narrow because I don't have a
background in it. But now thatit's something that I you know, I'm
I'm passionate about and I like umevery day. You have to to to
kind of know that you know,this is something that's that's special, um.
And you know also that there's goingto be opportunities in the future,

(42:28):
right because um, you know it'sit's just a it's a journey like that.
Right. So I'm working on aPhD. And I've had straight a's
my whole life. But I failedpreschool. Right, So I went to
preschool and I didn't talk to anybodythe whole year. And my teachers said
to my mom, listen, he'snever said anything to anybody. We think

(42:50):
he might have something going on withhim. Um, you should get him
checked out. They got me checkedout, and I was fine, but
they made me go through a secondtime, and you know, I to
this the second time around. Iwarmed up a little bit. Um.
But it just goes to show youknow that again, it's the expectations,
right, what what people are expectingto see from you in a giving context,

(43:12):
UM is going to to create thingsthat you have to maneuver around and
and and sort of decide, Um, is this something that's important to me
or not? You know, haveyou ever run into something where you're really
interested in it but it turns outyou're not good at it? Um?
I don't think of myself as beinggood at much. Um. Okay,

(43:37):
I'm gonna cut in here and sayingshut up, just in a loving and
supportive way. But okay, anyway, Yeah, you know I think that.
Well again, going back to philosophy, right, Um, the famous,
most famous philosopher says, you know, the the only thing I know
is that I know nothing right.And I think that's true. I think
that the more things that you do, um, the more your eyes are

(44:00):
open to what you don't know.Because each thing that you do, each
thing that you learn, you seeall of the the intricacies and all of
the difficulties that go into learning somethingat a basic level, much less mastering
at an advanced level. And thenit gives you an appreciation for things that
you don't know about. You know, all of a sudden, you go

(44:21):
something as simple as doing your floorright, you might go, oh,
well, this will be easy.I'll just buy a bunch of laminate planks
and lay them down and that's it. But if you're somebody who has experiencing
carpentry, right, you might go, oh, well, we're gonna have
to make sure the walls are square, We're gonna have to make sure the
floors are level, We're gonna haveto make sure there's an underlayment. We're
gonna to make sure all this stuff. So I know the flooring is hard,

(44:42):
even though I've never done it,even though I've only done carpentry,
right, So I think that that'ssort of similar, is that, you
know, I think of myself asa generalist. I'm somebody who I like
to learn things until I get toa level of proficiency that I can understand
them, appreciate them, enjoy them. And then I like moving on to

(45:04):
something different, and I always goback, you know, I continue to
obviously, I continue to record musicand to paint, and to podcast and
to write and to do all thethings. But I think that there's there
always has to be something new,and that's humbling, right. I bought
a three D printer and you know, just struggled with it for three months,
swearing and you know, stuff's breakingand trying to figure out and just

(45:29):
being a newbie, right, AndI think that that experience of being a
newbie is humbling, and I thinkthat it keeps people intellectually honest and grounded.
Right. I think that if you'resomebody who just does one thing your
whole life and is the expert onit, it can really sort of um
blind you to the other things thatyou're not capable of in life. The

(45:52):
example that I ran into recently,I've been listening to um Stephen Hawkings books
on physics. You know, abrilliant physicist, you know, one of
the most brilliant mathematical minds of ourtime, but he makes a lot of
comments in there, um this sortof show that, Okay, he didn't
have a good understanding of what philosophersdo, or what you know, educators

(46:15):
do, or what other people inother practices do. You know, he
understood physics better than you know,possibly anybody on earth, but his understanding
of other parts of the human conditionwere a little bit muddied because I'm not
sure he had the time to devoteto those things. So my goal is
really I just I just want toexperience new things, and I don't shy

(46:37):
away from that. Feeling of beingnew and that feeling of failing right,
because I think that that's where themost growth happens as as a person,
and it gives you the best understandingof life as a whole. It's it's
more breadth rather than depth, butI think that by doing so, your

(46:57):
your depth of understanding the human experiencesis increased as well. We talked a
fair amount about the concept of beingneurotypical versus neurodivergent, and those are words
that are really common, almost buzzwordsin social media these days, and I

(47:28):
think it's important to give some spaceto that, to understand that on the
one hand, as Joel says,everybody wants to be normal, but on
the other hand, calling someone normalalmost feels pejorative or minimizing in some way.

(47:52):
And it's complicated this this experience ofdo I embrace the ways that I
don't function the way other people do, or do I try harder to function

(48:14):
the way other people do. There'snot a right answer, I don't think.
I mean, for me, I'veI'm forty six years old, and
so I've kind of reached the pointof of just embracing this is who I
am, and that doesn't mean I'vestopped trying to get better or stop trying

(48:36):
to learn things, but it doesmean that I don't care as deeply as
I used to about what do otherpeople think of me and how do they
see me? And what ways canI act more normal. I don't know
that that's necessarily age related, butit feels like it is to me,

(49:00):
at least it has been in termsof when I was younger, I was
very self conscious in a lot ofways, and the older I get,
the more I realize that I don'thave any control over other people in their
perspectives, and so I'm going todo the best I can to be a

(49:24):
decent human being. And if I'mnot seen as such, welp, what
are you going to do? Soanyway, Joel, thank you so much
for coming to play. It wasfascinating to get to know you, and
I still think that I should comeon your show because I have things to

(49:45):
say. That's up to you,though no hard feelings. If I don't
thank you guys for listening. Iam going to try to push out a
couple more episodes. It's over thenext several days because next week I have
another dental surgery. Scheduled, whichI'm super excited about, but I will

(50:14):
try to get more content out beforehandso that if I need to take some
time off afterward, I can doso. I hope you're all taking care
of yourselves, and I hope thatyou're okay with being as normal or not

(50:36):
as you are. You matter s