Julia Baird
speaker
52 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Julia Baird’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Some Australians who go over to America because they've got family there, they'll be hopping around all the major sites and they'll be like, oh, this is what it was like when I gave blood in Phoenix and Miami and New York and Australia. They're so committed to it. I was talking to researchers and they're like, we don't really know why people do this. Like on one level it doesn't really make sense.
Why would you go and give blood? And they talk about an impure altruism, which is when you get something from it, that warm and that fuzzy feeling that you get from thinking, oh, you know, I'm helping another human being. Someone might walk. because of this. Someone might live longer because of this. There could be some kid who could go on to have a life because of this.
And the idea of it being impure because you get something for it really kind of amused me because there is a purity to that. Like if they are the warm, fuzzy feelings and they're impure, then I say, you know, we need a lot more of them. I think that feeling is... is a good one.
Also, I mean, the converse, to be constantly in combat and angry with people and not giving them the benefit of the doubt, it just kind of eats away at your own self in a way. If you can let go of hostilities and grudges and problems you have with the jerk down the road we keep talking about, then maybe your life is better off for it.
I know. He's going to be inundated with soup now.
See how you feel.
See if he gets some warm fuzzies. And hey, yeah, I know it could be at the start of a whole thing.
I've been growing up being taught and really believing that forgiveness is a very important and powerful thing. You give someone another chance. You allow them to be better the next time. And you free yourself from any of the tight and horrible feeling of resenting someone or holding on to something they did bad, some way in which they harmed you.
And I wanted to write about this book because I did find occasions in which forgiveness just was absolutely eye-wateringly present. I talked to a man who was almost murdered when he was 10 years old by someone who put like a pick through his head, who he later, decades down the road,
That man confessed and the little boy, then a man, chose to forgive him and was the only person visiting him in the final days of his life. I find stories like that incredible. And he says to me, well, I had to show my kids that there was another way, that we have to break this cycle.
If we don't break this cycle, then we're always hating and we've always got grudges and we will never get out beyond it. And there was something quite beautiful in him personally, actually. His name was Chris Carrier and he's one of these gentle souls, but forgiveness is hard won, hard fought for for him.
Thanks so much, Mike.
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