Chris Duffy

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

The episode of this podcast that has the very worst reviews that we've ever gotten in the two years we've been making this show is an episode that we did on how to talk to people across a political divide.

And that was no fault at all of our guests.

Our guest was fantastic.

The negative reviews were basically because every single one of the questions that I asked was some version of, how do I convince conservatives to realize that they're wrong and I'm right?

And look, it's certainly not lost on me that there's a hilarious irony in me trying to host an episode about communicating across a political divide and then managing to alienate every single person who is on the other side of the political divide from me.

So much so that they felt compelled to give us zero stars and tell me that I am a condescending jerk.

And worse, they're not wrong.

I was being a condescending jerk.

So today, let's see if maybe I can do a little bit better this time.

Today's guest, Monica Guzman, is an expert in curiosity.

She's the author of the fantastic book, I Never Thought of It That Way, How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

Here's a clip from her TEDx talk.

Obviously you want to know why.

We all want to know why.

But you're going to have to stick around until after the break to find out.

We've got more with Monica Guzman right after this.

We're talking about how to have better political conversations in divided times with journalist and author Monica Guzman.

Monica, thank you so much for being here.

And maybe let's get started by talking about how you got into this work.

Can you think of a particular conversation or people who you were trying to have conversations with who inspired you to start thinking about polarization and difficult conversations?

In your book, what comes across so clearly, and I think is relatable to so many people, certainly I relate to this, is this complex feeling of absolutely loving these people, caring about them so deeply, and being infuriated because it feels like you cannot understand where they're coming from.

It feels like a lot of us tend to just avoid these topics instead.

And I know I'm guilty of that.

So what would your pitch be for why we should actually have these difficult conversations?

It was very interesting to me in your book because you talk a lot about how difficult it is to maintain curiosity and how important that is.

Because when you start to actually talk to another person, it's easy.

And I think we all, I certainly fall into this, to want to just put them in this category, which is this idea I have in my head, which is predetermined.

And the more that we get curious about people's specific situations rather than the like blanket that we think maybe they should fall into, it's harder to actually pin people down in these simple ways that make it easier to feel like we're very, very different from them.

One of the big things in your book is you're actually not about convincing people of anything.

So how do I how do I not do that?

Because I get so in the mode of I am right.

And this is morally imperative to convince people.

So how do you get past that?

I've also heard you say that we put so much emphasis on truth and journalism is this truth finding organization or institution, but we really kind of ignore the other piece, which is trust.

And we think that just by throwing enough truth at them, that will change things or change things for the society.

But we don't really have this emphasis on trust, which I think is really at the core of your book is how do you build trust amongst communities, even if we disagree?

Your book is full of like, try these, try this kind of question.

There's so many pieces of that.

And I think that one of the ones that stood out to me the most, and it's obviously the title of your book as well, but you talk about trying to get to these, I never thought of it that way moments.

You call them intuit moments in the book.

What is an intuit moment?

And what are some steps that people can take to try and get there?

It's such a challenging idea to me, right?

I am definitely in that place where I feel like my political beliefs are correct.

And so even the idea of asking people who disagree with me and not trying to convince them, it kind of feels wild.

And it feels like it feels sometimes to me like I'm in a house that is burning down and someone is like, why don't you just learn a little bit more about fire?

And, you know, it's like, OK, but the house is on fire.

It's not the time I need to start spraying water.

At a certain point, you actually address all of that head on in the book with as a comedian.

I always love like the funny moments.

And you had a very funny story about a pastor in one of these workshops who says to the organizer, like, are you trying to tell me that I should be building bridges with the devil?

And John Powell, the head of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, says, well, maybe don't start there.

And I feel like maybe that is the answer to some of my concerns.

It's like I can imagine the worst person, the most dangerous, violent person.

And I'm like, you're trying to tell me to try and understand and be curious about them.

We're going to take a quick break and then we will be right back after this.

In Monica's work as a journalist, she spent a lot of time with people who she doesn't necessarily agree with, trying her best to accurately represent their viewpoints and their stories.

That's her job.

But wow, that feels so hard to do when it is not your profession.

To me, it feels scary.

It feels overwhelming.

It often just feels impossible.

But maybe, maybe the idea of the other side that we have in our head isn't quite as accurate as we think it is.

Here's another clip from Monica's TED Talk.

Talking one of the other things that comes to mind for me is the idea of like, if you're building these smaller bridges, it also clarifies what you actually believe, right?

Like you don't want to have to defend your right to exist, but a little bit of friction on.

So why do you think that?

I don't actually naturally think that.

I know that I care about this, but why?

What's my argument for it?

I love what you said about the house that's warm.

That's not yet on fire.

Like, is this a way of maybe taking down the temperature a little bit so that we don't get to the place where things burst into flames?

All of this, to me, brings up when I think about my own life, how do I even start finding someone to have these depolarizing conversations with?

Because it feels like I am definitely in a self-selected bubble of I try to not, because I've put such moral judgments on my politics, I have felt like, well, I don't want to associate with someone who is immoral.

So how do you start to find someone who is that shorter bridge?

What would you recommend as a step to take?

You talk about this hypothetical conversation meter that has five dials that you can turn up or down and that you should think about when you're having conversations.

So can you tell us what those dials on your conversation meter are and how to think about which ones we want to be turned up and down when we're having a conversation across the divide?

I think containment is such an interesting one because these days it does feel like even non-public figures have a real fear about what will other people think when they hear this conversation.

Obviously on social media, it is hard to have a nuanced conversation because other people keep jumping in and they're trying to come in and dunk on someone.

So how do you make it feel safer for a person to talk to you about an idea that's different?

You know, we've talked a lot about your book and about these conversations, but we haven't talked a ton about the fact that you are a journalist and that you use this in your work.

So I wonder how you think about your role as a journalist in affects the ideas about supporting, trying to have better conversations and how you implement that.

The show's called How to Be a Better Human.

What is one thing that you are personally working on to be a better human right now?

Well, Monica Guzman, thank you so much for being here.

It has been a pleasure to talk to you and your book.

I never thought of it that way.

I absolutely love it.

Thank you so much, Monica.

It was really a pleasure.

That is our show for today.

Thank you so much for listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

A very big thank you to today's guest, Monica Guzman.

Her book is called I Never Thought of It That Way, How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

Monica is the Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels.

You can find out more about their work online at braverangels.org.

From Ted, our show is brought to you by Jimmy Gutierrez and Anna Phelan, who disagree respectfully.

Rathu Jagannath and Erica Yoon, who are trying their best to get curious about each other's positions.

And Julia Dickerson, who sticks to the facts and refuses to give an opinion of any kind.

And from PRX, Jocelyn Gonzalez and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, who both took my number out of their cell phones and put it into an old phone that is glued to their desks.

Thanks most of all to you for listening.

I hope that wherever you sit on the political spectrum, you got something out of this conversation and did not once again feel like I had infuriated you on every level.

If you did enjoy the show, please leave us a positive rating and review.

We would love to hear from you.

And if you hated this episode, please close this app immediately and go outside until you forget that all of this has ever happened.

We will be back with more episodes for you next week.

Until then, stay curious.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and I love my job.

I feel so lucky that I get to host this show and have conversations with incredible, interesting people about their ideas.

And yet there's this weird thing for me and honestly, for almost everyone else I know, where if you have a job that you like, that's rewarding and meaningful, you feel compelled to give it all of yourself to organize your life around the work rather than the work around your life.

But we're worth more than just the parts of us that can make money.

That's true whether you have a job you love or a job that you despise.

Today's guest, Sarah Jaffe, is a writer who has been exploring this complicated nature of work and life and self and identity for years.

She struck a real chord with people across the globe when she wrote the book Work Won't Love You Back.

How devotion to our jobs keeps us exploited, exhausted and alone.

Sarah is currently a writer and a journalist.

Her dream job.

She's doing it.

But before that, she worked a whole slew of other jobs.

And here is a clip where Sarah gives me a brief glance at some of the other items on her resume.

From random odd jobs to dream jobs, Sarah argues that no matter what we're doing, we need to re-evaluate our relationship to work and to make sure that we don't give all of ourselves away.

In her latest book, From the Ashes, Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire, Sarah takes that idea and she goes even further, weaving her own personal story of grief after losing her father with the broader societal grief at job losses and the pandemic and the climate crisis.

In both of her books, Sarah is exploring how our humanity is so often limited by the very narrow confines of the work that we can do that makes money.

These are big topics.

This is weighty and challenging stuff.

And I'm so glad that Sarah is here with us today to talk through it.

So let's start by talking about your book, Work Won't Love You Back.

You've done a lot of jobs.

You've done a lot of jobs that are service jobs and that are looking at people.

And then, of course, now you're a journalist.

So you've kind of been on both sides where you work for yourself in a more creative way and trying to cobble things together.

And then you've also been one where you're very much interacting with the general public.

Yeah.

Across the board.

The title of your book kind of says it all, right?

Work Won't Love You Back.

Can you tell us about how you arrived at that conclusion and why it's important to realize that?

When I think about it in my own personal life, I often think that like school is such a clear system, right?

Like whether it works or not for you, it's like we are doing work on this topic and there will be a test on this day.

And if you get enough of the questions right, you get this quote unquote good grade.

And it feels like one of the really important pieces of the conversation that you talked

have started with Work Won't Love You Back is that maybe the approval and the sense of worth should actually not be coming from the place that is paying you money.

I think it's really hard if you're doing work that is like, like you said, a nurse or you're working at a nonprofit that's fighting to clean up the environment or you are working on cancer research, right?

Like these things where it's like you are doing something that is so important.

Yeah.

And I'm sure it is extremely meaningful.

Right.

Maybe having a little bit more of a sense of like we can be agitating for a better world and we can push for better conditions rather than just thinking like, well, I have to take it as it is because this is the dream job or whatever.

I think that's a really different way of thinking about work than many of us have.

This is where we can also bridge the line between the two books, because you talk, I thought, very, very movingly in your more recent book, From the Ashes, about you draw a line between people who worked in coal mines and people who were working in care work and how for the coal miners, striking was very difficult.

But in some ways, the care workers struggled more with the emotional side of striking because they didn't want to leave the people they were taking care of, even though the conditions were

I also thought that a really moving piece of Kevin's story is that.

Kevin's experience of being in coal mine with a labor union involved a lot of really caring for other people, for the men that he was down there with in a dangerous situation and knowing that you could trust people and that they had your back, even if the bosses or the organization didn't.

And that that actually was a directly transferable skill to caring for people because it was in some ways that the union was care work.

It was just care work that they hadn't thought of in that way.

When I was teaching in an elementary school, it's never like I was politically right-wing.

But I realized that I had some ideas about unions that...

ended up changing because I was working at a charter school without a union.

And I believed I didn't like choose the school because I just chose it because that's where I could get a job.

But when I was working there, I believed like, oh, well, the union would just hold us back.

It would just like protect the worst teachers.

It would like make it so that.

And over time, I came to understand that like there's all these structural forces at play and there's all these reasons why this job is really hard.

And there's all these reasons why these kids are struggling or not struggling.

Yeah.

And

Having an organized piece where we all were in it together would actually be like a dramatic thing, even if this particular building didn't need it.

It's a broader thing than just that.

: This may be a kind of question that you don't get that often, I think, which is like, a person is listening to this.

Or they've read your book and they're thinking about their own relationship to work differently to their job.

Yeah.

What are three things that someone should do to start to reevaluate the way that they think about work in general and their own relationship to it?

We're going to take a quick break while I do another part of my job, which is to play you some ads.

We'll be right back.

And we are back.

We're talking with Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You Back and From the Ashes.

You talk in From the Ashes about grief, both personal, professional, and societal.

I think that a lot of us of a certain age feel like a form of grief or sadness or regret at not being able to have this kind of collective experience that it seems like existed in the past.

My dad worked for the Port Authority.

And I wouldn't say that he was ever like, you know what my passion is, is like helping manage toll collectors.

Like I think he would.

But the idea that he could like come in and do a job and have a pension at the end of his career and he would know that he was taken care of.

And he took a lot of pride in doing a job well and being a good steward of public funds.

That for me and for certainly for people who are younger than me, the idea that you would be at one job for 30 years is so the exception and not the rule.

Yeah, New York and New Jersey.

Yeah, New York and New Jersey.

Right.

So there's also this idea that we have tried efficiency and productivity.

I think a really new idea I got from From the Ashes was the way that grief works in our personal life.

How it's not linear.

It comes in waves.

It's circular.

Sometimes it's incredibly intense and then it goes away almost entirely and then it comes back and how that personal grief.

can actually be in some ways a roadmap for societal and communal ways of thinking about progress and of thinking about dealing with problems, that it doesn't have to just be this straight, incredibly efficient line from we are A, which is bad, and we're going to B, which is good, that that's not how it works.

For people who haven't read the book From the Ashes, and please tell me if I'm wrong, it's both the story of you grieving your father who passed away and it is a story of COVID-19 and deindustrialization and racism and societal failures.

You're explicitly connecting the grief of losing a person you love with the grief of losing a community or a sense of self or career, right?

How and why did you choose to do that?

We're going to take another quick break and then we'll be back.

And we are back.

You say in the book that grief does not happen on the clock of capitalism, that that's not how it works.

You're talking about how grief does not work.

And you say that.

So just to read it, many languages have a middle voice, which is less concerned with agency in the middle.

The subject does not do or have something done to them.

Neither can they simply opt out from or reverse the action of which they are a part.

They undergo change while engaged in interactive processes from which they cannot simply withdraw.

They are not and cannot be exterior to the process.

And then you say, you are grieving, but grieving is also doing you.

That really hit me in the gut.

It is both you doing it and it doing you.

And it is active and passive and both.

That messiness of grief, I think, is what a lot of people really struggle with.

And that struggle with not being able to articulate.

I want to read two quotes from the book that are from really different parts.

This first one is from towards the end.

This is why I think I cannot stomach the grief platitudes industry.

Grief is not joyful or peaceful.

It is a war inside me.

It is an alien chewing its way out.

It is a tornado somewhere beneath my lungs.

It is breaking me and somehow people can't see.

I want them to see and I'm terrified they will see.

And I am both of these things at the same time being pulled in opposite directions like there's a team of horses attached to each end.

Except somehow, unbelievably, I am stronger than the teams of horses and I do not get torn apart.

That is such a unbelievably accurate description of grief to me and yet so incredibly specific.

And that's the personal side of grief.

And then I just want to pair it with something you wrote at the beginning of the book, which is you say.

I've covered social movements for the better part of two decades.

And one thing that the ones that stuck had in common was that they provided solidarity in a material way.

They offered care that was physical food, a place to sleep, masks and hand sanitizer during COVID-19.

They offered life even when protesting a death.

We lack a word in English for this kind of life making like the missing middle voice.

And to me, those two quotes...

really capture so much of the beauty of this book and also the thread that I had never seen someone else draw between that intense personal suffering and the way that we can find a path forward together, that it isn't something you solve on your own, that it is actually something you solve in community.

Anyone who has been through grief and through suffering understands that one of the things that it does, and you say this explicitly, is that it just erodes your ability to take bullshit.

You have zero capacity for the way things are, for people saying, what's going on?

Nothing much.

You can't do that.

Sarah Jaffe, thank you so much for being on the show.

That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human.

Thank you so much to today's guest, Sarah Jaffe.

You can find more about her work, her writing, and all of her books at sarahljaffe.com.

That's S-A-R-A-H-L-J-A-F-F-E dot com.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.

How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team who I love working with and who I think are more mindful than most about finding life outside of work as well.

On the TED side, we've got Daniela Balarezo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohannini, Laini Latt, Tansika Sungmanivong, Antonia Le, and Joseph DeBrine.

This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who in work and in life,

value the facts.

On the PRX side, they grieve the audio bites that could not be salvaged while moving forward into the crystal clear recordings of the future.

Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez.

Thanks again to you for listening.

You are a crucial ingredient in this podcast.

Share this episode with a person in your life who makes your life outside of work meaningful.

We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human.

Until then, take care and thanks again for listening.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

My college friends always make fun of me for describing pretty much everyone I've ever met as one of my very best friends.

They're like, I actually don't think it's possible for a person to have 10,000 best friends.

One time I got into an argument with someone and when I told them about it, their immediate response was, oh no, are they no longer one of your best friends and now they're just one of your very good friends?

Which I have to admit is an excellent roast of me, a very precise and cutting zing.

But it also taps into something sort of essential about me.

I have always cared a ton about friendship.

I'm really interested in how friendships work.

There's so much that I want to unpack and to understand.

What are the unspoken rules when it comes to friendship?

And should those be the rules or do we need to re-examine them?

We're going to be talking all about platonic relationships with Raina Cohen, an award-winning journalist and the author of The Other Significant Others, Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center.

To get us started, here's a clip from Raina's TED Talk.

Okay, I am so excited that we have Raina Cohen here with us today to dive deep into friendship and to explore the possibilities and potential of platonic relationships.

Let's start with what is friendship fidelity and how can that enhance our friendships?

Having that idea of like, you're a fair weather friend, but you're also a foul weather friend.

I feel like we often really prize that in romantic relationships, right?

Like if someone said, oh, my boyfriend left as soon as things started getting hard, they'd be like, what a monster.

But if someone said, oh, my friend is hanging out with me less because I've been having a really hard time, we don't have the same level of judgment, I don't think, for that person.

You talk in the book about how we have these very set ideas often about what a romantic relationship is, especially what a good romantic relationship is, and how sometimes that can be really positive to have like a set clear model.

But other times it can also lead to us being not actually aware of what each of us in the relationship thinks about the relationship.

You talk about how there's a couple who are in couples counseling and they're

They realized that they had different ideas about what it meant to be monogamous and that because of that, they actually broke up because they both thought they were like doing the thing that was just a regular old romantic relationship.

But the quote unquote regular old romantic relationship was different for each of them.

And you talk in the book about how not having that kind of plug and play template for friendship is a is a strength, right?

It allows us to define it for each other, but it also can make it hard to know exactly what we want or how to how to handle those tougher conversations in that heart, those hard times.

It makes me think we are supposed to get everything from our romantic partner, that they're supposed to be our best friend and we're supposed to be extremely attracted to them physically.

And they're supposed to be a cheerleader for our professional life.

And we're supposed to be inspired by their professional life.

And they're also supposed to be great with the kids.

It's all of these things which are really not the same role over and over.

And we somehow think that like the perfect partner would have all of those at the same time.

For me, I feel really good about my marriage.

I feel like it's a strong one.

But I think that so much of what makes it strong is also that we both get pieces of what we need emotional fulfillment from outside of the marriage that we have friends.

Right.

Like.

I am a comedian.

I need like silliness and goofiness and total like someone who could just do bits.

And I also don't want to be married to that person.

It's really helpful for me to have friends who I can go and be like, we're going to spend an hour and a half just talking in accents and it's going to be totally hilarious and bonkers.

But then I like that I go home and it's like.

I can have a real conversation and she's not also like, hello, like I don't want that at night.

And then a more serious piece for me is my wife and I do different things.

And so it's really helpful to me to have friends who I can have serious, long ranging conversations about career goals who really totally get it.

And then I'm not frustrated when she doesn't totally understand all the ins and outs of exactly what my career is.

And I know it's the same for her.

She gets plenty of pieces fulfilled by people who are not me.

But sometimes that feels weird.

I think your book clarified for me that like there is this very real kind of stigma to getting that from a friend, to having a super close friendship when you're in a romantic relationship.

If you'll indulge me to like read to you from your own book, I thought this was really kind of profound.

It's like the final paragraph of the book.

You said experiencing a friendship like Andrew and Tali's or witnessing one can sharpen our vision, allowing us to notice the trellis, as Art and Nick put it, that had been directing our path all along.

An encounter with just one of these friendships can dislodge fixed ideas about who and how many people we can spend the rest of our lives with.

The trellis may be ideally suited to some of us in its use by so many others a source of meaning and its preset structure reassuring.

But for those who have doubts or are curious, these friendships can give us the nerve to detach from the trellis and grow towards the light.

I imagine anyone who heard that is going to be convinced by that.

How do you how do you figure out what it is that you really want?

Personally, one thing that I really want is for us to talk so much more about all of this.

But my bosses also want us to have a quick break for podcast dance.

So we will be right back after this.

We're talking with Raina Cohen, author of the book, The Other Significant Others, Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center.

So Raina, how did writing this book change what you think a friend is?

With that in mind, what makes a good friend?

What makes a really good friend?

There's a comedy show here in Los Angeles where I live that is literally called My Therapist Knows Your Name.

And people instantly get why that's a funny thing to name a comedy show, because I think so many people do have this experience of like, even though these are, quote unquote, not serious relationships, they often do take up so much of our mental energy and brain space.

This is a very particular type of millennial complaint, but I feel like it's quite common to hear people lament that we live in single family homes or single family apartments and that we don't live in the dorm structure that would be normal if you were living in a university where you have your friends right next door, you have your friends down the hall, you have your friends at least within a walk away.

And I feel like it's so common to hear people wish for

physical proximity to friends, to take away some of the logistics of it being difficult.

Because as you get older, there are more obstacles to hanging out.

And yet we also create these physical obstacles.

I think that regardless of what's the primary relationship in your life, people often experience

real, true, deep heartbreak when they lose a friend, whether that's someone passing away or whether that's a friendship falling apart.

And yet, once again, there's not really a structure for friend loss the same way that there is a structure for a breakup with a romantic partner or for the loss of a spouse.

Can you talk to us about what you can do if you're in that situation where you lose someone who's really important, but you feel like other people just don't get it?

When you lose a friend because it's more on the breakup or the relationship part rather than that they've died or passed away, and that's the reason for losing them.

When you lose a friend, there's this weird gray area where it's like they could float back in, right?

Like they could float back in and maybe it will just be like it was because we don't have as clear lines.

And I think in some ways that can make it harder because you're like, am I grieving something that will...

return before I'm even done grieving?

Or is it gone forever?

And it's so much harder to know, I think, than when you are in a romantic breakup.

OK, Reina, in a world where it feels like there is an increasingly wide social and political and ideological divide, do you have any advice for people to navigate friendships where maybe the day to day feels totally fine, but there's also this big weight of the broader political or ideological differences that two people might have?

If you could give people three tips or actions that they should do to nurture and strengthen their friendships and non-romantic relationships, what would you tell them to do?

I never thought about it that way.

I think...

Yeah, you just really shifted something for me in the idea of like, it's really fun to be scheming as adults.

Like we need that more scheming.

I need more scheming in my life.

I think that's right.

Okay, so the one thing I wanted to ask you about is we haven't really talked at all about the way that attraction or like a sexual relationship

Or even the possibility of a sexual relationship can sometimes change the tenor of a friendship.

Something that I've always kind of thought is like an interesting, funny little strange thing is how people complain like, oh, I just got friend zoned.

And I'm like, it's so hard to make friends.

That's a great thing.

Like you got friend zoned.

OK, maybe you're not dating that person, but like it's a good thing that you made a friend now.

And yet I think there is this tension of like.

Friend isn't as good as the other.

What happens when you have a relationship and there's this question of whether it would cross the boundary and become a romantic or sexual relationship as well?

You call this in the book a premortem.

I think that's a really great idea.

Before it ends, what would end it?

And so we can talk about what would end it and how do we want it to end when it doesn't.

Raina, that is such a perfect note for us to end on.

We need to think really deeply about what shape of our relationship is going to work for us and then put in the time and the energy and the effort to make sure that we pursue that.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks for making the time to be on the show.

Thank you for your book, The Other Significant Others.

I really appreciate the work you do.

That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human.

Thank you so much to today's guest, Raina Cohen.

Her book is The Other Significant Others.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.

How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of others who are all significant to me.

On the TED side, we've got the platonic ideal of Daniela Balarezo, Ban Ban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohannini, Laini Lott, Tangsika Sungmanivong, Antonia Lay, and Joseph DeBrine.

This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who cut everyone out of their lives who exaggerates statistics.

Who exaggerates statistics.

And sadly, that includes me.

On the PRX side, they are the gold standard of friendship.

Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez.

Thanks again to you for listening.

This show would be extremely insignificant if it was not for your support.

So share this episode with someone in your life who you care about, someone who you think would enjoy it.

We would love and appreciate that so much.

We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human.

Until then, take care and thanks again for listening.