Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather. I'm joined by Modest Mouse.

We have the most special guest today. I can't believe this happened to us.

Some people in the comments sensed the Easter egg, which I didn't mind at all because they were as excited as we were about it. Our very favorite therapist from our favorite show, which is called Couples Therapy, our doctor in residence on couples therapy, Orna Guralnik.

Orna is here.

Orna. Oh, my God. What a thrill this was.

I wish I could measure how much brain space I give to Orna, how much I think about her and her advice and her abilities.

I want her advice. Me too.

Yeah. Spoiler, we did the right thing, and we didn't take up this interview asking personal advice. But it was tempting. Sometimes it came out a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit happened right out of the gates, I think. Okay, Orna is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst. She is on the faculty, NYU, Postdoctoral Institute for Psychoanalysis and at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. Season 4 premieres tomorrow on Paramount with Showtime. Couples Therapy, Season 4. We've seen it. It's spectacular. It's so good. So please enjoy Orna Gralnik.

He's an objets, man.

Is that Nico?

You're alive waiting to meet Nico.

There's a fox in the attic.

It's a wolf, not a fox.

No, she's a fox.

She's a wolf. Hi, sweet wolf.

She's a wolf in fox clothing, which is a rare. Almost never occurs.

She's actually A human in a wolf's clothing.

Hi. Hi. I'm Dax. Nice to meet you. We're so excited. Thank you for inviting me. I brought a fam. If you can indulge us with some Fandam. But you're on par with Nico for me, so I'm going to take my moment because I'm getting a nice push against my body.

She's smiling.

Do you say, Mom, I have a friend?

How old is Nico?

Nico is almost eight. Nico, why don't we just show you getting friendly? I'm not going to do, but she's almost eight.

Her face is so youthful. Oh, another friend is here. A small guy is here. Nico's here.

Hello. Oh, small girl. Excuse me. Sorry. You're very popular.

Very.

Nico is a- Kind of like the dog in Anatomy of a Fall.

Was that a dog's name, Nico? No, but just- Holding a lot of secrets. Oh, thank you.

Hi, Monica. It's so nice to meet you. I'm I'm thrilled to have you.

Yeah, you're in the right place. It's only once in a while we have someone that is in something we consume pathologically. Yeah, because there's only so many shows. So it's like once in a while, someone from our very favorite show comes in. It's extra exciting.

Well, if Nico needs anything, I'm in the house.

If she needs a potty break, I'm happy to take her out.

Have a wonderful time. I can't wait to hear it.Hi.

Mommy.hi.

Buddy.hi. You're fine on your trip? So much fun. Have a wonderful time, you guys.

Love you. Monie, how was your two days? It was fine.

It was fine? Yeah. I had a little bit of a meltdown. I have a big update for you.

Oh, my goodness. Involving the people on the sidewalk?

No. Okay. I haven't seen that. Oh, actually, I do have an update. So I've been...

I'm curious. What's happening?

I've been going on runs, and there's a group of people who stand in the middle of the sidewalk for an hour. That's obviously a place they've decided to congregate. And talk? And talk. Walk. And it's a lot of people, a lot of dogs, and they don't move when you're coming, when you're running down the street. And it's been making me crazy. And Dax suggested I take another route. That's the obvious Like...

I hit her with the serenity prayer from AA. Yeah. Just might bond in the category of things I cannot change.

It's the obvious solution.

Yes, but you don't want the obvious.

I don't. You want to fight. Actually, I don't want to fight because I would... You just want the world to to change. I do want the world to change. And to be fair, to me, the other route would require the run to be a lot harder because it's all outside.

So you're just lazy.

God. Oh, no.

This is awful.

This is That's awful.

You know what's amazing is you're getting to do something you don't actually do on the show, which is like, you run right at it. I'm going to solve all this in eight minutes, not 10 weeks.

No, I did change. I changed my time. There we go. That's not the update. The update is that I know I've talked about it on here. So my passive-aggressive hope was that maybe it would get back to them. And I don't care if they stand there. I just want them to step out of the way when people are coming. Anyway, one of our friends knows one of the people standing there.

As you might guess from your reaction, and I had a certain one, it's been a polarizing topic in the comments. Oh, it has. Oh, it has. I don't need the. There's a lot of team Monica, and there's a lot of people going...

Saying what? That I should run in the street?

No, more what I brought up, which is like, if you look at it from a utilitarian point of view, it's like, you know what? You're one person. There are 10 people communing. This is just measurably more effort.

More effort for them to not-For 10 people to adjust what they're doing versus the one person. Even though what they're doing is-Also, if they're standing and talking with their dogs, it's probably a nice thing.

Community.

But in the middle of the sidewalk where everyone's walking.

Sidewalk.

Do you think the sidewalk is for standing and taking up space while moving? I need you on mic for this. This is huge. This is huge.

Analysis of an ever evolving crisis here.

This has been a situation.

Yeah, for a couple of days. There's always a situation.

This should cue you into our level of privilege that this is the enormous issue in our combined life. It's symbolic. Enormously. She is a minority. This is the majority.

Oh, right. There's minority also.

I didn't even think about that. All right.

I need to readjust. Okay.

There we go. You forgot I was a minority in this world.

Specifically from Georgia, so from the South. I think that group does represent something a little bigger. So the group needs to immediately move.

No, they don't need to move. They don't need to stop congregating. They just need to take one step out of the way when someone is coming through. I just can't imagine someone running at me and me just staring at them and not moving. I've had to move. I mean, maybe this is a minority thing. I have to move my whole life. I move around people.

There's also an interesting dynamic that you live in New York, and we live in LA, which has its own cultures about moving about. What is the culture here? You know what's funny?

If you're in a car, you never stop.

Right. You try to run everyone down. You have this illusion of anonymity in it. And so you behave in a way you would never on the sidewalk. That's fascinating.

Which in New York is not true. The pedestrian It's totally rule. Yes.

And it's incredibly democratizing. Even if you're a billionaire, you have to walk on that same sidewalk.

In New York, if it was crowded, if someone did that, people would freak out. If someone did what? If they couldn't get through.

You're constantly in situations where you have to maneuver around everything, whether it's the city drilling into the street for the 100th time. That's true. Or like a line for something for a show or a bus. I mean, you're constantly maneuvering around a lot of people, and you just adjust, you just move around. You're just cool with it.

There's also randomly 700, 800 bags of trash. It's trash day, and now there's a mountain of trash in the evening. Yeah. I'm not being disparaging. It's just a reality of the logistics of the city.

I haven't noticed the trash. You haven't?

No. You're probably not out late enough. Now I know something about you. I'm out early.

First of all, I want to ask a quick question about headphones.

I'm just curious. You don't have to wear them or you could.

I don't want to wear them.

Great. I was curious because it would not feel nice. You're like, I don't want that feeling.

I never wear headphones on interviews and stuff like that. I don't understand why people do it actually.I.

Could tell you.Tell me. From my point of view, it eliminates and reduces the stimuli to just your voice and Monica's. It's a It's a very focusing, auditory experience for me, which a lot of people don't need.

I don't need that. I have super focus, and I actually like to hear all the ambience so it feels real. If I'm too in the headphones, I'm like, Wait, am I in reality? Is this pretend?

It makes you self-conscious of what you're hearing or overly aware of it.

It's just super focus. I don't need the super focus. I have my own bizarre dissociative focus. I don't need more of that. I want to feel in reality.

I like it. Okay, so when did you move to New York?

1990.

From Israel?

Yeah. I was born in the States. I was born in Georgia. Oh, my gosh. No. No, I was born in DC and lived in Georgia. What part? Actually, I was born in DC. I don't know. You don't know. Atlanta. I don't know the neighborhood in Atlanta. Suburban. Yeah. Moved to Israel when I was seven. My parents are Israeli, and I lived in Europe. I lived in all sorts of places, but came back to the United States in 1990 for grad school. At NYU? Went to grad school at Einstein, which is in the Bronx. Okay. I did NYU later when I did psychoanalytic training.

I wanted to actually start with more of an umbrella question. There's obviously numerous reasons why a therapist keeps their private life private. I mean, you could list them, but there's quite obvious ones. It's a pretty important place for boundaries.

Can you tell me what your-Assumption is?

Yeah. My assumption of why that wall should exist to some degree, I think that knowing a lot about you distracts the person to some degree, and probably you are are unavoidably drawn to make comparison. If you have children, and I have children, and I'm dealing with something, I'm going to start using a lot of shortcuts. You know and you understand. I'm going to be incorporating you a lot more than probably is fruitful. Is that some of it?

That's a lot of it. When you know too much about another person, at least some of us feel inclined to then start taking care of them. Yeah. It takes the focus away from you, as you were saying, whether it's comparison or caretaking or assumptions that, Oh, I'm gay, they're straight. They're going to judge me. It brings a lot of extra data into the room that gets in the way.

It's why you have a therapist, to have it be a third party.

Yeah, and then there's that thing called transference. You want the option for there to be somewhat of a blank screen so that you can project all sorts of things that you don't know and assume about your therapist. And that's part of the work. That's really interesting.

Yeah. I would imagine, too, I could easily hear some details and now ascribe an archetype to you that is already triggering to me or resembles some parent or some teacher or whatever the thing is.

Or you'll hear some details and it will rob you of an archetype that you really needed to work on. Let's say you wanted to think that your therapist is a bigot, and then you find out actually they're married to a person very different from them, and it ruins the fantasy.

Given that, do you have certain reservations and misgivings about doing press and letting people get to know you and doing interviews?

And doing the show? Right. Let's start with that. First of all, I do keep certain boundaries, even when I do press and I have people do profiles on me. I did draw certain boundaries that I thought would be just too much for my patients. But I think it's cost my patients something, the fact that I'm more of a public figure, that they know more about me.

Has anyone said anything?

It's interesting. Patients that have been with me since before I became this public figure, they've said all sorts of things, lots of things. Yes, they've said they've suffered. They've carried a certain burden, but it became part of the work, as most things are. People that joined my practice since I've been doing it, it's just like a given.

Okay, it would be impossible that you're not experiencing a lot of the things. And actor experiences when they become known and the people in their life, it's a very triggering experience because the first knee-jerk fear is like, Well, I won't be as important as this new status, or they're going to a status that I will get left behind. So that's the story. So then the confirmation bias takes over, and they look for only signs that that's happening. And I think it can dramatically affect. So yeah, I would imagine some patients of yours are probably like, What am I? She's now on TV, and she's everywhere.

Yes, I think many patients have had that question, and it keeps coming up. If I have to, let's say, cancel a session or now I'm traveling, certain patients will be like, Oh, of course you're leaving me or canceling my session because Hollywood.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Have you figured out an incredible technique to mitigate that? Because I could sure benefit from that.

My real work, my real life is my practice. I love doing the show and I love everything I've learned from it. It's a really interesting world to visit, but my real life is my practice. That's where my heart is. That's what I really, really love doing.

Yeah, that's your real identity.

I mean, everything is real, but that's my home. That's what I care about the most. When patients bring up these questions, it's an opportunity for me to check in with myself and see, am I still following what really matters to me? Am I getting distracted? So I welcome it when people bring things up.

You're right, because it has a power that's very hard to observe.

Right. There's a draw to the public and to press and all of that, a certain world of its own. It's great to have a real check-in when people say, Are you too busy for me? I'm like, Let me think about that.

Let me be honest about that.

First of all, with myself. So I encourage my patients to call me on it if that's what it feels like. Yeah.

Given that, are you comfortable telling me about where you're from and all that? Yeah. Okay, good.

So seven years old- Folks are asking.

Yeah. Because I guess, let me even be more transparent. We interview people Robert Sapolsky. We interview- I don't know anyone.

Okay. That's the most embarrassing thing. I don't know anyone.

That's wonderful. He's not a celebrity. He's just an intellectual guy.

He's incredible. Eric Lander, head of Brode Institute at MIT, people who study things that are really, really complex, and they have this enormous brain that they bring to bear on it. Then what I also think is interesting is very few of them, I think they take for granted the thing that interested them was innately interesting, and they're not really curious so much about why that was a comforting pursuit. I'm most always interested when I talk to people of how we think we ended up here and why that looked like a comfortable- You're thinking like an analyst. Okay. I'm wondering, I would be guessing, but moving a lot, all those dynamics and being in-group, out-group, and how are people thinking, and being very incentivized to understand how people think. Was that happening?

Totally. I was always with one foot in a culture and one foot out. My first language was English, and my parents spoke Hebrew between them. I was the only Jew in my first elementary school. I was always navigating a few different cultures at the same time, and like you're saying, trying to figure it out.

Do you find that you would code switch? We maybe call it code switching. And then you even get curious, do I even know? Can it get a little fragmented in a way?

It certainly helped with creating what we call in jargon, multiple self-states. So I have all sorts of self-states. When I'm speaking Hebrew and I'm with my peers, I have a certain slang and a certain way of being that's me. And then when I switch to English and speak with my colleagues, I'm a different part of myself. So I code switch a lot. And I think when I was a younger person, there was some confusion about, wait, what part is authentic? What part is real? Where is my real home? Over time, you figure it out and you find that you're living in the in between and it's all different versions.

Yeah, you figured out, you used to get comfortable. You're going, Oh, yeah, I'm all these things, and that's just fine.

I'm all these things. It's not always fine, but I'm all these things. I think in a way, switching between all these different options has become my life project in the sense that when you work with couples, really what you're trying to do, both as a therapist and what you're trying to teach people to do, is to hold multiple perspectives in mind. You have a version of what happened. The person next to you has a very different version of what happened, and they might actually be totally valid. There's also my version looking from the outside. So there's validity to all of it, and there's interest in the tension between. So it's become my life project, living multiplicity. These are my politics as well. I made it work somehow.

Yeah. On the show, you do get to see that because what I love about the show is we see you with your mentor. With Virginia? Yeah, who seems amazing. And then you're with your other colleagues, and then we see you in practice. And you are a bit different in each of the surroundings, which is cool, and it is what we all do. Aren't we all?

You're right. It's really fascinating for ease of generic title. You're the boss in the room. You sit in the seat, and then you go sit in this other seat, and it's like, Oh, it's a circle. So then this is more egalitarian. And then, yes, there's this advisor role, and we get to see you take on these different-I like that. Layers in the hierarchy, which is fun. Now, you got your PhD in the '90s. There were options on the table at that time. Cbt is already an approach, and a lot of these things are approaches, so why specifically psychoanalysis? I think it would be helpful for you to explain to us.

To describe the difference.

And maybe the evolution from Freud psychoanalyzing until now. That's awesome. Really? Yeah. In an article you wrote that I read, you gave us a really concise layout of that.

Oh, that's fun. Should I start more with theoretically or should I start about my own journey?

Yeah, tell me about your journey because you're taking an intro to psych at some point.

Right. My intro to psych was not in college. My intro to psych was as a teenager. I had, let's say, a very active teenage life, tumultuous, wild. I got really, really lucky where my parents, who were clueless, but they somehow found this incredible analyst for me who changed my life.

At what age?

Sixteen. I started reading Freud and Minuchin and Ardie Lange, and my whole world just opened up. That's really my introduction to the field. It tremendously helped me understand myself, my family, what's happening in the world, all this mess of feelings that a teenager experiences. It all started to make more sense. It was already a very psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach. That's what helped me. Now, just to divert and say a few words about what's the difference. Some therapies are aimed at very direct problem solving. That's when you have behavioral therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, where you target a problem and you analyze what leads to a certain behavior, how do you eliminate it, what leads to certain distorted thoughts, and how do you confront them logically. You can include all sorts of things like EMDR, all sorts of other more physiological-based ways to, let's say, calm anxiety or regulate emotion, all very helpful techniques of solving problems and dealing with more or less the here and now. Psychoan Analysis takes somewhat of a different approach where the primary assumption, first of all, is that we're guided by deeply unconscious forces, and those are really interesting and really impactful to discover.

There are all these different psychoanalytic techniques that basically open up a space of exploration internally where you make sense of much deeper layers of what's motivating you and what's motivating the world around you. That can include early, early experiences in your life that shaped your way of thinking. It can include ways that your mind is driven by all sorts of impulses that society doesn't allow you to think about and you repress or dissociate from, and psychoanalysis helps you find a language for. Something that myself and my peers have been very busy with is also ways in which all sorts of socio-cultural factors come into us and shape how we feel and think, and we're not used to thinking about it consciously.

That's what your article I read was about.

That's the piece in the Times, probably.

Yeah, about the impact of BLM and #MeToo materializing in these relationships. I think people understand this intuitively. We talked about it just now when Monica sees this group on the street, and they're all the hegemonic group. That means many things. It means the immediate thing, which is it's an obstacle, and then it means potentially other things from the subconscious.

You had to mention it. I didn't even clock that as a factor.

But I know her so well.

You would have within five minutes of talking, probably. You didn't have much time with me to get there. I don't know.

I think if I wasn't, quote, white, probably I would have been more sensitive to that.

I would have thought about that. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about it until he said that. Good for you. I still don't know if it...

You're a star. She don't want to give me a star.

I don't know for sure.

At least to think about it. At least for it to be one of the dimensions.

I can give a personal anecdote, which is just, generally, I get along so well with our nine-year-old. We have a very nice symbiotic flow. Boy? Girl, both girls in the The nine-year-old is very much like my wife, so I have a lot of practice. And then, similarly, the eleven-year-old is like me, and she does very well with her. So we rarely have a thing. We're laying in bed and we're debating whether this math problem we did the day before the answer was this or that. I No, it was this. And she said, No, it was not. It was this. You said that. That's what it was. She said, No, you said the answer was this. And I said, Well, no, I would have never said that because this times this is that. So I would have said that. And now we're getting into the weeds, and we are now arguing about what I said and what I didn't say. And it's uncharacteristic. And I go to bed that night, and I'm like, That was out of the blue. And then the next day, I said to her, Honey, I'm so sorry. You stumbled into my primal fear of being dyslexic and stupid.

It's so important to me that you know I'm smart and I got that right. I was just emotionally so activated by that. But it's from when I was your age, and I'm so sorry. It doesn't matter what I said, and probably you're right or whatever, but that's what was happening. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. So it's like, yes, she and I are having on the surface is we're debating whether I said this or that.

But actually something quite profound is happening for you.

Yes, and the stakes are high. If there's anyone I want to appear to be smart in front of, it's my children. Of course. So that would be my subconscious, right? Yes. Does it frustrate you? I get a little frustrated because we do interview people that practice many different approaches to this. Are you annoyed by the techniques being pitted against each other? Because I feel like, what are we talking about? Is a jog great or is lifting weights great or is Pilates great? All these things are probably beneficial health-wise.

I agree with you. There is a way in which I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about these shorter term techniques. First of all, there's the way in which managed care has taken over medicine and the mental health field and has demanded a certain level of superficiality that I find really troubling.

It's like they want results and they want a timeline.

I don't know what they mean by results. Stop complaining and just be quiet. Medicate yourself and just stop complaining. That's not results for a psychoanalyst. A lot of the complaining is about things that should be complained about and need deep addressing. In that sense, I have a bit of a chip about shorter term techniques. There are CBT techniques that can be incredibly useful, and sometimes you do need quick and short term solutions for things. But as a way of living, I'm pro the examined life. Take your time, slowness, go deep.

I guess I'm suggesting it's all a false dichotomy, which is you could be doing that work, and you could also assemble a toolkit for these acute periods periods where that's appropriate. That's the tool to pull out at that moment.

Yeah, and I refer to cognitive behavioral therapist or to EMDR. I like working with people that work that way.

It's just funny to see tribalism percolate up in something so like...

Right. I think when it's tribalism, that's just ego. So it's not interesting.

Now, take us from Freud's primary concept with the subconscious and then where we're at now.

In terms of psychoanalytic thinking? Yeah. Fun questions.

Thank you.

So Freud, he introduced a few hugely important revolutionary concepts. First of all, the idea that we are governed by many forces of motivation that we are unaware of. Just the fact that we're governed by an unconscious was a huge revolution. We all now take it for granted, but that was huge. This is like Victorian era when everything is about just regulating behavior, corsets. Then he introduced the importance of sexuality as a driving force, libido, sexuality, that it's already alive and kicking in children. The children are motivated by all sorts of sexual fantasies. These were all very big concepts that, again, we take it for granted now, but it was huge.

Yeah, and dangerous.

And needing to be regulated. We're always regulating sexuality. Society is always super panicky, anxious about sexuality and all about regulation.

I find uniquely here, but maybe not uniquely.

We're particularly good at it in America.

Yeah, we're high on the spectrum.

Then came people after Freud, like the Kleinians, the British Object Relations School, that started looking not only at drives, like sexuality or aggression, but they started looking at early childhood and what happened, for example, between mothers and babies. It doesn't have to be mothers, but they particularly looked at mothers and really early experiences, even at the breast, where what we like to think of as these beautific moments of bliss between mother and baby, actually they hold within them huge traumas. You remember from raising your kids, the baby can be blissfully happy, and Then 20 minutes later, they're wet and hungry, and they're like, screaming, and the world is ending.

Worst and best day of their life within 20 minutes. Yeah.

The great mom that was there a minute ago, the great dad that was there a minute ago, are now the most hated object in the world because they're not able to supply the food fast enough, they're cold, or they're, I don't know, busy on the phone. Those switches between love and hate and between those extreme ways of being are where we all start. Whether the caretakers are going to do a good job of mitigating that daily crisis is going to shape what we expect for the rest of life. Is the world going to help me when I'm in need, or is the world just basically abandoning and sucky?

Is this the birth of attachment theory? Yes.

For example, attachment theory and all sorts of other ways that we learn to organize our inner world. It's attachment theory. It's the defenses we will use, psychological defenses. A lot gets organized early in life. So that's the object relations school. Then came all the American schools, like the EgoPsych schools. I got get into that.

Blow right through that.

Yeah. But then came a very important American school, which is the Interpersonal School, which really focused on the quality of relationships, both between caregivers and growing children, but also just generally between people, and how the quality of the relationship shapes the inner world, which is a very American way of thinking in a good way. I'm not being critical here. That changed psychoanalysis a lot. The Europeans are still dragging behind on that. And nowadays, there's what we call the relational school, which applies all of that into how we conduct therapy. So we changed from the caricature of the analyst as this remote blank screen that sits there behind the couch and says nothing, scribbling. And if you say to your classical analyst, Well, you hate me, the analyst will say, Well, what makes you think that?

Four sentences.

It must be about your father. So nowadays, we don't do We involve ourselves more in the sense of, Well, what have I done that gives you that feeling right now? Let me bring myself in here as part of what's going on in the room. How am I contributing to what's going on in the room? I'm not like an omniscient know-it-all analyst communing with God and delivering interpretations, but I'm part of what's going on in the room, and I'll take responsibility. So that's where we are now.

Do you only do couples?

I see individuals. I love the work with individuals. I like the combination.

Yeah. The couples are so fascinating.

I would like you to tell me what systems thinking is because I know that's a big aspect of this.

Systems thinking is super important when you work with couples and when you work with groups. The idea with systems thinking is that we each bring into the world a set of inclinations and traits and characteristics. But then when you're joining some group or system, it could be a group of two, it could be a team, it could be a family. The system needs all sorts of things from its members. It needs someone to volunteer leadership capabilities. It needs someone to be the caretaker. It needs someone to be the critic. We need all these functions. When you join a system, the system calls upon its members to volunteer certain functions. We're each more and less inclined to volunteer certain things, but it will change depending on what team we join. Like with some teams, you'll find yourself, Oh, I'm a leader here. And with some teams, you're like, Actually, I'm a follower because there's someone else that's doing it differently and better than me now. So when you work with a couple, you try to understand how they're each drawn into certain roles based on what the couple as a system needs. So it's a very different way of thinking about, let's say, a crisis that a couple goes through.

You're trying to understand what's going on with the system, with a unit as a whole that leads them to this crisis. How did they each take this role? When you're raising kids, there are certain things that need to happen, and not everyone can do everything.

What I was going to suggest as an example that people, I think, experience most strongly is they go out into their adult life and they gravitate toward a system that they wanted, and then they return home for the holidays, and you can feel yourself click into the role you were ascribed in that situation, and you're like, No, I don't want this role anymore. I feel like that's when people are really aware of it.

Yes. And that's why around the holidays, I cannot go on vacation.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Experts. If you dare. Moni, what do you think is your role?

In my family? Yeah. Well, I'm about to go. I'm going home tonight, and I'm already anxious. How are you feeling? Already. Where's home? Georgia. They're still there. And I was with them also a couple of weeks ago. And I have an incredible therapist as well. And I got back from there and I was like, I can't shed this. We talk about it so much, and it still here. What's happening? If they don't know how to do something or they ask a million questions, there's always a million questions. Okay, so when we were at the-Can I add so you know, they both moved here from India. Yes, but my mom grew up- They being parents. Yes, my parents. But my mom grew up here. She came when she was six. And so they came to my hotel, and they called, and they're like, Is it this hotel? And I was like, Yeah, that's the hotel I sent you. Yes. They're like, Okay, well, it's going to be 30 minutes. Great. Then they call again 30 minutes later. We're here. What about parking? Just park. Park your car. Yeah. I have done a lot of- Don't leave it in drive.

Do not leave it in drive when you get out. That one's not going to work.

And I've done a lot of work on this, so I was like, Don't get mad. Yeah. They don't know where to park. It's fine. Just valet. Valet is easy. You can just drive right up and give them the car. Okay. Okay, bye. And then they come. Everything's great when we're And then they're getting ready to leave. And my dad is like, What about the valet? I was like, What do you mean? What do you mean? What's the problem? These are easy things, but there's a million questions because of their anxiety.

Speaking of role, is it also because you're born here. You're the one that knows, and they get to lean on you.

And it's dangerous, actually, if they expose how out of step they are with what everyone else knows. For me- They're exposing their otherness.

That's how I think my subconscious is working, right? It's always when we're at the dinner, if I perceive that my dad doesn't know how to pronounce something, I feel like I have to be the one to order it because I don't want anyone- To translate, to mitigate. Yeah, to not draw attention to the fact that we're different.

You're so wonderfully different, though, by the way.

I know. I know.

I know, logically. I just wanted to add that.

And he doesn't consciously have any of this. For him, he's just like, I want to know about the ballet. I've made it this existential thing where How is he living without me, essentially? Here to answer all his questions.

Can I ask you, speaking of systems thinking, when you're not around, he probably knows how to deal with it that way. Exactly.

He's quite successful.

Yeah. They are both totally functioning. That's a system thing. And that's what my therapist is always like, They are fine. They're living, they're successful, they're doing just fine. But I've made it, if they don't know how to go deal with the valet, they're going to die. I've I made it so extreme in my head because I have a ton of anxiety, too. I think their anxiety makes me angry because that's where I got this. You're the reason I have this. It's like one silly thing.

Again, it's symbolic of everything. I get it.

It's intense. I totally get it. These parental, these family arrangements. Then my brother's just there, doesn't care.

Because he's not the girl.

He's got a great role in the system.

Yeah, he's second, eight years younger than me. He's got what?

He's got a great role in the system. What's his role? He doesn't have to deal with any of this shit, and he's just hanging.

Sometimes I look at him and I think, why aren't you feeling this stress that I'm feeling? But that's my issue. Anyway, I forgot. Oh, yeah, holidays.

And systems, trying to evaluate. I think what's interesting, we've had a systems expert. Talking about systems in general, they're very interesting. They are perfectly designed to produce the outcome you're observing. You have to almost work backwards with systems, right? It's like, no, no, this is the outcome they produce. To think that this system will produce a different outcome. We already know what the system produces. Yes. You have done a lot of work on disassociation. Maybe we could dig in a little bit of what that means for people. I think it's very common. It's a spectrum. The one I'm not familiar with that seems like a sister state is depersonalization. I don't know what that is.

Generally, dissociation, going back to Freud, you really introduce the concept of repression, that if there's something you don't want to know about yourself or something happened to you, you repress it, meaning it happened, you registered it, and then you push it out of mind, you forget.

That was in quotes.

That was in quotes. Dissociation is a different model of mind. It's when things happen that are either traumatic or to some degree, something you can't tolerate, you either don't process it, you leave it hanging and not fully comprehend what it means, or you shunt it towards a part of the psyche that is not your main part of your personality. You keep it to the side to a part that's not me. That not me over there just registered all those bad things that were happening over there, but I'm not going to pay attention to it because the me that needs to keep functioning is moving ahead in the world.

That always happened to someone else because to take that on would be too much.

Exactly. There are many ways to dissociate. Some extreme ways would be multiple personality, what we call dissociative identity disorder. You really shunt parts of the psyche to the side, and they develop a whole world of their own.

This one is so extreme that there's almost a lack of awareness that the other states exist, right? Right.

One of the ways that we think about multiple personalities is that one part of the psyche doesn't even know about these other personalities, or there's amnesia for what the other personalities are going through. I treat people with multiple or GID. You've seen that? Yeah.

Well, this season, we have someone that's approaching that. Right. Yes, Alexis.

He has a dissociative disorder.

And to the degree where he doesn't remember the arguments he's having with his partner.

Yes. Alexis, what happens to him is he's very afraid of his own rage, and there are all sorts of reasons why. When he gets triggered and gets enraged or triggered into a trauma zone, he really switches and becomes a very different person.

Who can defend himself.

Who can defend himself more.

He's trying.

Globally, he's actually making much more pain for himself.

That one is hard to watch.

And going back to depersonalization, when people depersonalize, what happens to them is in a way, they remove themselves from what's happening. They either really numb out the feeling or they leave their body and look at what's happening from the ceiling.

Okay, that's what I relate to. You do? Yeah. Having gone through experiences where I go like, Okay, we're going to not pay attention. This is going to exist. I can observe it, but I'm going to be over here distracting myself with my own thoughts and fantasies, and this will end at some point, and then I'll rejoin. Yeah. Yeah, I've had a lot of those experiences. Interesting. So I really relate to that one. I guess I would have thought that was dissociation.

It is dissociation. When we call it depersonalization is when you suddenly find yourself feeling like, actually, this doesn't feel real. It feels like a movie.

Yeah. That's depersonalization. Or I can't feel the things that are happening to my body, which I know are happening.

That's depersonalization. When it's mild, it can be a superpower. But when it's not mild, it's extremely uncomfortable.

And it works. I have done it in the past when it wasn't necessary. Yeah.

Do you want to say something about it?

Oh, just like, there I was molested, so that was an experience. As a kid? Yeah, as a kid. There was a lot of violent stepdads in the mix. Addiction galore. I'm an addict. I've done weird shit. I think it was a very useful tool as I was walking into a crack house in downtown Detroit at 4:00 in the morning going, Well, this is dangerous for him. Right.

But I'm just floating.

Yes, I am. I will have the thing I want at some point here in the near future, and then I'll rejoin him.

When your actions aren't matching your identity, what you think of yourself as and your actions are not matching up, I think that is common, right? Where you just separate.

What is that, specifically? Is that the same?

When your actions don't match what you say, that could be simply hypocrisy.

Right. They're just be bad behavior.

We have plenty of people like that in the government. But when you're in a way splitting yourself, when there's a part that's almost zombie-like doing something and your mind is over here, that's dissociation.

Specific example would be when I was a thief, when I was an addict. Oh, we were at a person's house. That person was nice. And then I noticed they had extra drugs, and then I stole from them. And I go, We don't do this. And so there's a disconnect while that dirty business happens. It's like, I'm trying to artfully hit pause on the experience so I don't have to take on the reality of my behavior in that moment.

That's a really great way to describe dissociation.

Being in a relationship with someone like that in this season- Like Casimir and Alexis. Yes, feels so I hate impossible. He doesn't have memories that the other person has that are painful and aggressive and hurt them, but they don't even know that they did it. It just feels so epic.

Yeah, it is epic. I mean, you saw the two of them, what they had going for them is their deep psychological insight into all of this. And first of all, their profound love for each other. They were in process of working on this stuff. Alexis knew and wanted to get better at They were an incredible couple to work with. Yeah, I bet.

I want to earmark that case because it actually got personal to you. We saw maybe one of your bad word for it, but Achilles. Yes. Because, of course, as a show, you're the hero of our story. So it's interesting to have a pretty insatiable desire to know about you, and there's not a lot of info for us.

Well, there is.

There is and there isn't. I don't know your history. I don't know about your children. I learned you're from Israel or spent time. Little It's all nuggets here and there. But a lead character normally would have had an introduction where we get the backstory, and then we take a journey with them. So it's part of the fun of watching it, is you yourself, as the lead character of a story we watch, is a mystery to us, which is very Go ahead.

I have to respond to that. First of all, it's uncomfortable. Sure. Just characterologically. But the therapist, in a way, is to some degree the lead character in a therapy, but also not at all. I'm doing the work. I'm the theory.

I was really unspecific in what I was talking about. There's the reality of what's happening that happens to get captured. And there you're right, you're not the hero of that. Then there's a documentary series. That's another thing.

I guess I'm less connected to that.

As you should be. I'm almost letting you into the perspective- Of the viewer. That would be hard for you to probably touch, which is I turn on my television, there's a program presented to me, The couples change. One person stays consistent. The blueprint of my brain for story is that's my lead character. That's my hero. Now, that's not the reality of what's happening in the room at all. I'm not suggesting that.

Right.

This is great. This is uncomfortable, right? Yeah.

What about it is uncomfortable?

I could guess. Well, first of all, I'm not... Look, people go into the profession of being a therapist or an analyst because they're actually quite private. Yeah, yeah. I like being private. I like the story being someone else. I don't like the idea of me being the main character. But I also have a theoretical belief. I understand what you're saying, but you're joining me not in being myself. You're joining me as the viewer. You're coming with me on this journey to understand how to think, how to listen, not me personally. We're together. We're thinking about what is this human thing, this human journey we're on.

If I had used the word guide instead of hero, would that be less... Triggering.

I don't know.

It probably feels like you're dishonering, really dishonering what's happening. Yeah. By claiming to be the hero of it.

Yeah. I'm channeling what I've learned to do.

And you are. And I would feel that exact same way.

Yeah.

I would think, no, no, no, no, over a little bit because we are learning so much about the couples.

We know everything about these couples.

And you're learning how to think like an analyst.

Exactly. And then I think human curiosity starts coming into play where you do start thinking like, what's Orna's deal?

But I think that curiosity goes down.

Mostly when we talk about it, I don't know if it's come back to we talk about couple therapy all the time. On the show, yes. I've been on multiple first dates that I bring it up. Like, have you watched this? You should watch this. It's a prerequisite, almost. Yeah. But everything we're talking about are the things that are arising within the couples, but then how you handle it is part of the conversation. So I think what your hope is, is happening. We are taking in how to approach these different conversations.

I'm talking about this vague concept of story. I'm acutely aware of story and the power of story and what we do in the format we somehow innately acquire or just were born with, right?Archetypes.

And story.We want story. We understand the world through story. I mean, even my dog does, honestly. I think a mammal does.

I would agree.

Wait, you did this? Why? Where are we going? There's an arc here.

It's how we're computing this reality we're in. See, multiple things are happening at once is really what it is. It's like you're having your real life experience. The couples are having their very real experience, and they are our immediate story where we meet them, we know there's a problem. This is very archetypal. We're going to slay the dragon together. But unfortunately, you're the dragon slayer a little bit in that. Yes. I'm going to be interested in you. I want to know about I watch you and I'm very drawn to you. I appreciate what you do. And then, of course, I want to know everything about you. Yeah.

So the Achilles heel with Casimir and Alexis, you were referring to my savior fantasy?

Yes, which, by the way, I was so glad you labeled it that because I suffer from that as well. If I feel like there's someone to be protected, I'm there. So you have a touch of that, I guess? Yeah.

I mean, you picked the right profession for it.

But I can't imagine it's universal among psychoanalysts.

Yeah, I think it is. You do? I mean, not everyone.

I could see someone actually having just an innate desire to solve problems. How about that? And in that case, maybe they don't even have that hero complex part of it.

Those probably will go more towards CBT. Interesting. Manual-driven, evidence-based. You do A, B happens.

A little more mechanical. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

I hope I'm not offending anyone.

No, I don't think so.

I said mechanical, you didn't. Maybe I offended somebody. We're almost to the show, which is you have a practice. You've had it for years. You also teach at NYU. Had you been aware of Mating in Captivity? Yes, of the book. And the podcast?

Yeah. Her podcast has a different name.

It might have a different name.

Oh, I think you're right.

It has a different name. But yeah, Esther Pirel.

We've interviewed her a couple of times. I adore her to no end. She's awesome.

Where should we begin?

Where should we begin? Where should we begin? I heard that. I love it in the same way I love couples therapy. In a weird way, I'm going to compare it to AA, which is this person has a very similar problem I have, and I'm hearing them out loud talk about it. But I'm not getting defensive because it's not aimed at me. I have this little bit of arm's length to recognize and relate and hear a solution that may or may not work. But it was no one pointing a finger at me and saying... It doesn't trigger any of my defensiveness. Got it. I'm so much more open to hearing it when it's not personal to me. I think listening to Where Should We Begin had that power where it's like, wow, I'm getting to hear her say things to these people that if it were directed at me, I probably would get defensive, but I can hear it because I'm not in the room. It's a huge gift.

That's a good way of thinking of one of the reasons this works.

I think that's why the show is, we'll get to why it's so comforting. But I'm just curious, I have to imagine there were reservations, and is this something that should be consumed by people, or should this remain private?

Big reservations. First of all, as you know, generally, when you do therapy, there's this really, really intense firewall of confidentiality. I never talk to people about my patients, ever. It's really sacred. And the feeling is that without that frame, it's not going to work. That's the basic of trust. And then the idea of doing a documentary where you're completely letting go of that, it's like, what's left? Can you even do therapy? Does it even feel like therapy? That was a big concern. Is it ethical? When people are consenting to it, do they know what they're consenting to? We had a lot of reservations. A lot.

Are they going to be honest? I mean, that's a huge- Then is it going to work?

Are they going to be honest? Is it just going to be fake. There were many reservations. Then not to mention that people told me, this is absolutely going to ruin your career. I had a good career. What are you doing? People are going to hate you. There were many, many fears and reservations. But it turned out that it's definitely different doing it without the frame of confidentiality. But there was so much else going on there that created a different holding and frame for the participants that it worked.

Well, I would argue what happens in there often happens in this room, which is people have an awareness that this will ultimately land in millions of people's laps, but also they forget that regularly. And I I get that.

I'm forgetting that right now. Yeah, totally. It's easy. Yeah.

It seems almost impossible, but then when you're experiencing it, you're like, Oh, no, it is quite possible. But you originally were just coming on as an advisor. Is that accurate?

Yes. My first degree I did in film, and I was like, Oh, this sounds like a really interesting project, but I'm worried because they're going to find someone who's going to botch the job, and they're going to portray the therapist as this narcissistic person. I'm like, Oh, my God. Let me see if I can influence how they're going to do it.

Oh, interesting. So it started as an effort for you to protect-This is the field. The field itself. Yes.

Then I started talking with Elise and with Josh, the directors, and they're just such amazing people. Their ethics, their creativity, the way they think of documentary. We talk so much about the parallels between documentary filmmaking and psychoanalysis, and probably also what you do here. There are many, many parallels. It just became suddenly a really exciting project.

It required a lot of trust from me because I will say I give them an A+ on not being ever exploitative.

They're amazing.

Which is very, very hard to do. It's not an easy task. You could even set up with great intentions, but that doesn't mean it's not. It's so clean.

We've been doing this for years now. I've witnessed them in certain very key moments when there's, let's say, a certain pressure from the network or test moments where it was like, are they going to go for commercial or are they going to go for ethics? And they always went for ethics. Always. And if any of us had any concern, ethics was always the top, top, top. They're amazing people.

Because I would guess, and I didn't even know this until I started researching you, but that you do do more than the couples we see. There are other couples that we don't follow them. And I would I can imagine in that situation, there were some that would be great for TV.

Do people apply?

They have a whole recruiting casting arm. They interview thousands and thousands of couples.

I imagine. Every single couple across all seasons has been incredible. Incredible. Even though there's issues that span across every single couple, they're all so specifically juicy. Oh, it's so good.

And very lovable people.

Yes. You love every single one. Even at first, sometimes you don't.

I think that's part of the gift of the show is that you can see how you can even feel repulsed by someone. But if you really take the time to listen, you're going to love them.

All right, so now we're at the show and I have now a million questions. There's just a lot of things you exhibit that I really have a hard time believing someone's capable of it. So, okay, and we will not name names. We've had to edit stuff out when we talk about the show because I don't want to get sued.

We talked about one person and we had to cut it because Dax felt we might get sued. Oh, my God. If we said something disparaging about- Well, I was specifically labeling somebody with a condition.

I think that could be liable because that could impact their- This is someone from our show? Yeah, previous season. That could obviously impact someone's employment and everything else. We can do this without making it specific to anyone. It starts with a question of maybe, do you even believe in certain labels? Because the thing I'm astounded by with you is I will often I'm going to watch someone in the couples dynamic, and I will say, Oh, this person's clearly a narcissist. Okay, when someone's a narcissist, now there's a known pattern that we expect. I want that, generally, woman out of that situation, my protectiveness, you really seem to resist getting stuck on a label and assuming there's a predictable pattern that needs to be interrupted. How on earth do you do that? Do you believe in labels? Do you believe there are people that are X, Y, or I have a complex response to that.

I think diagnostic labels are sometimes good as quick shortcuts to capture a bunch of information, but they always leave out a huge amount of who the person is. And similar to what we were saying earlier about systems, that systems can call out certain qualities in people, you can be in a certain environment that will, let's say, call out for a lot of narcissism. And you can be in a different environment that is very safe or supportive. And somebody that you thought was really a terrible malignant narcissist suddenly becomes completely capable of caring and seeing another person.

Okay, right. It's just really deep belief in the system.

But it's also deep belief in humanity. We're all very complex and we're capable of a lot, a lot of different ways. We can all be. You're telling me a little bit, you've been a thief, you've been an addict, you've been this, you've been that, and now you're like... A dad. A dad and full of goodwill. I can feel it.

Oh, if I were AI and I was a probabilistic predictor, yeah, I'm not in any of these situations. But do you at all have to fight?

The inclination to diagnose? I don't have to fight it. I just know I can diagnose. I've been a diagnostician earlier in life. That's how I got myself through grad school. I did thousands of diagnostic interviews, and I can diagnose a person like that. Sometimes it's useful when you have to triage, when you have to make a decision, Okay, does this person need to be hospitalized? I can do that very quickly, and it can be very useful. Sometimes when I work with people, I can say to myself, Okay, narcissism or schizoid or something like that. But it's a temporary station on the way to being a more full, whole person. To use narcissism, if someone has really intense narcissistic defenses, there are techniques that we have nowadays to help the person through that stuck way of organizing their psyche towards the capacity to actually see be another person.

Another way I might label what I think I observe is you have an endless optimism in a whole.

I do. I have really strong optimism. I'm romantic. I believe in a better world despite evidence to the country. What's happening right now. Evidence to the country. I believe Israel and Palestine can find a way. I do.

Well, you have to. You have to. You can work backwards.

I'm going to pee my pants.

Oh, wonderful. This never happens.

The second time this has happened in six years.

The first time, yeah, six and a half years. Okay.

I'll be Goodbye.

I'll go, too. Do you have to go?

No.

Oh, okay.

I'll drink some coffee. I'll drink my coffee. No, no, no. I'm good. I'm a camel, a Mediterranean camel. Okay.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Okay, thanks for bearing with us. It's our first time ever, all three of us, having to go to the bathroom at one time. Oh, man.

So sorry.

That was really unique.

I never have to pee.

Am I making you all nerfed?

No.

Maybe.

Well, there is, of course, when we see how observant you are, it'd be crazy to not assume that when we chat, you're probably going to see the reality of what we are.

Which is awesome.

Well, yeah, I feel- I'm liking you a lot. Oh, good. Okay, so I understand the resisting the labels and it not even being useful, but I also think we are intuitively pattern recognition machines. I agree.

That is useful.

Useful and an Achilles or no?

I don't think it's an Achilles. What I was trying to say is not that diagnostic labels are not useful. They're stations on the way to something better. They help you organize information. They help you see a pattern. Let's use another thing, not narcissism. If I see that someone is organized around what we call a schizoid personality organization. What's that? The tendency to retreat from too much social stimuli and encapsulate one in a very insular personality organization. Closed off, not too much feeling. That's people's way of defending against too muchness.

It's not my place to say it, but that would be the couple this season Rex and Joey.

Yeah, I know. But then, yeah, I won't spoil.

As a clinician, it's helpful to identify those patterns so you're not wasting your efforts treating someone as if they're suffering from bipolarity. It helps. If you realize someone is bipolar or has that inclination to be intensely consumed by really intense shifts in mood, it's really helpful to know it. It doesn't define everything.

But you have a bit of a playbook. Yes. You minimally know what stuff will set them off.

Right, exactly. Yes.

If someone is bipolar, you know to understand if they're showing up and they're looking disheveled for a few weeks, you're like, okay.

Or on a ramp up. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. By the way, I imagine that's exactly what would keep your job endlessly interesting is you're adjusting and react... Or not reacting, we like a better word for react. We don't want to react, we want to respond. Yes. That's good. I said a no-no word. So yeah, you want to respond accordingly, and I bet that it keeps it almost endlessly novel. So you get two things are happening. One is there is this pattern and that's observable, but then there's all this novelty intermixed.

And all these diagnostic entities, you can think of them as just ways that a person Even figured out how to organize themselves, whether it's because they were born with an inclination to go that way or things happened to them. But a person is capable of much more than just that. And that's why a therapist is there.

You have taken me personally, Monica and I have talked about it, Monica as well. It's like, you have with your endless optimism and hope, there are people that I wrote off in many seasons, and we get to episode 8, and I'm like, oh my God, yeah, they're fucking suffering person, all of us. I'm so glad she was patient. I wouldn't have been. And now I'm here. Thank you for bringing me along with you.

Yeah. If one of us is a few episodes ahead, and then the other person be like, oh, this person is doing this, normally it'll be like, just wait.

Monica generally is going like, Oh, we'll just wait till episode seven. It's beautiful.

I feel that this is going to sound very braggy, but I feel that a little bit about this show, we'll have people in and people have preconceived notions about a lot of these people. And I think what's nice about it is when you really get to hear someone and hear their story, you like them. Agree. It's the same with all these people. They come in and I'm like, and then I miss those people on the next season. It's nice.

What I can tell you just from my experience sitting here is that you guys are doing the thing that, for example, an analyst does. I feel like you're offering a lot of negative space in terms of poetry. You're really curious and you're giving a lot of space to think and talk. It's a particular interview. You're not sitting here with your agenda, but you're curious, curious and opening a space. And I feel like, Oh, I'm enjoying this. Yeah.

By the way, I bet that also parallels being a new therapist and being one that's been doing it for a while. Yes, at the beginning, out of fear, I think I did drive a more linear line through all this. And then over time, when I was very confident and comfortable, something arose that was much greater than the thing I was aiming at, and then learning to trust that as its own skillset.

That's what an analyst does.

Should we trade jobs for a couple of weeks?

What's your job like?

You're seeing it. Yeah, this is my job.

It does look like fun. Yeah, right?

Yeah. Just a whirlwind of really fun interesting people cycle through. The one thing I... But we're doing it right now. So my wife and I are watching season five. Four. I feel like I'm already going to know the answer to this. No, but do you have a belief that everyone can be a couple? Because often I go, I know why they're attracted to each other, but this is really a match made in hell. And I think they both be better off finding some of it. Do you enter it with a belief that everyone can make it if they do the work, or are there times where you feel like you have to help them exit this peacefully?

I generally don't feel like it's my job to make that decision unless there's a really abusive situation where I feel like people get caught in the addiction of abuse. Then I feel like my job is to at least to help them break that. But that's rare. Most people are not caught in that. Even people who are temporarily caught in that, they want help. They want to get out of it, and then I try. But other than those cycles of S&M abuse and mutual destruction, it's not my job to say who should stay together or who not. I'm going to help you try to stay together and bring out the best in you, the best version of what you can be.

I'm not here to levy a verdict. Right.

People are incredible. They do all sorts of really amazingly surprising things, who they choose to be with and why and what couples end up having a long, long, long marriage that you never would have predicted. And others, you thought they're a match made in heaven and they break up. People are unpredictable, thank God.

Well, we even talk about this success rate for arranged marriages. You have to take that on board, too. That's a reality.

Right. I can't predict what's going to work or not. I try to help people just make the best of what they want to do.

It sounds like it's an incredibly low percentage, and that makes sense because there's some self-filtration penetration process that they would end up in front of you in the first place. You've definitely weeded out some sector that's on some hell-bent collision course. They're not looking for help. But on the occasions where it has happened, do you ever break the bond of the system? Do you do it in the room, or have you had to sidebar a member of the couple and say, I'm worried about you? And does that feel like a betrayal if that has happened?

That's a really good question. It's a technique question. You're asking a technique question, right? Not about the show. Correct.

Yeah, sorry, we're dipping in and out.

I rarely see people separately. I like to see couples together because of my strong leaning on systems thinking. But once in a while, I've had situations where I've asked one person to actually leave the room so I can talk to one person and talk to them really face to face, head on, about how abusive they're being, and I didn't want to humiliate them in front of their partner. So I've had that. I've had situations where I felt like someone is really not at all acknowledging the degree to which their alcoholism is getting in the way of anything that could be possible in the room. And again, not to humiliate them, I would have their partner leave the room and talk to them directly. But most of the time, I try to keep it in the room.

You have this incredible optimism and understanding, and then also you have this very sexy set of boundaries and directness. Now, this is where I think there's a little bit of the Israeli in there. Totally. When they're a highly disagreeable group in our societal studies, is it easier for you to be direct like that?

Yes, it's totally an Israeli thing.

Yeah, it's very cool. It works so perfectly. I'm really impressed the way you wrangle some tigers.

That's Israeli. Have you ever been to Israel? No, I haven't. Everyone's like that. It's all wrangling tigers.

Well, we have a lot of sociologists on, and we'll talk about these different indexes cross-culturally, and we all have these fun things. And fear of power. Brazil is very high in their fear. Israel has zero fear of power. America is close. So I think it's really fascinating these different cultural differences.

Yeah, the patience you have with some of these people. What season was it? It was a Jewish couple.

Michael and Michal. Yes.

I ended up loving them. I loved her.

I know. Let's be honest, her.

Yes, but at first- Both of them.

At both of them. Yeah, but at first she was a lot. She was coming in hot. Yeah, she was coming in hot.

Very.

I was like- You're a loser.

Blately calling them like a loser. Yeah. That's a rough first sell.

I I was so impressed by you not immediately jumping on her. I was like, get her out of here. I would not be able to handle this. So I do think you and probably couples therapists in general have to have an extreme level of patience. And then also, do you think you care a lot? How do I ask this? Do you care a ton about justice?

Yes.

Not in the world, but my running thing. That's a justice issue for me. I'm way too easily triggered by, quote, injustices, not real heavy injustices.

Those are fine?

No, those are way worse. But my guess is most people have a problem with that.

Pull pot, you get a pass. Do There's just fucking people on the sidewalk. Well, everyone's just a person.

I don't know. But no. So I would guess that it's actually a little lower because some of the people in your office are committing these, quote, injustices a lot. Even that, even that example of just straight up like, You're a loser. To me, that's horrible. You can't talk to someone like that. And that's my own trigger. I would assume you don't have that or you turn it off.

It's a good question. I mean, if you saw with Ping and Will, did you see Ping and Will? Yes. I confronted her very harshly about the way she was talking to Will. That's true. I don't know if I can figure out the rule here or how it works for me. It's some gut feeling with Michal. I could sense that with all the... I'm going to use a label like histreonic suffering. I could sense her suffering under and that she needed to be calmed down. She was like a fussy baby.

Telling her to stop wasn't going to work.

She needed to trust you.

Yes, I needed to build trust.

In the moment that was the salient knockout punch, my wife was watching this and heard this in a way I've never heard, you said, And that's your anxiety. Yes, exactly. That was the moment I thought all that goodwill got you to the point where you could say, And that is your anxiety. And that's why you're suffering from it because it's in you.

Yes, which I had to say many times, she wasn't that open to that, but eventually, yes.

You really brought her there. It was really beautiful to watch. So I have different triggers. I don't necessarily watch it and think something's unjust. I also go to the person who is generically subservient in this. And then I'm more curious, why does that please you? You have found yourself in this situation.

Well, that's systemic thinking.

Okay, right. Okay, yeah. Because I'm like, no one's a victim. No one woke up. Here's your partner. Fuck you. Deal with it. So we're all getting something out of us and trying to figure out why is this soothing to me is interesting.

I agree.

That was the most interesting piece of in the first season, there's a couple that we've referenced before. Again, upon first glance, the male seems to be very controlling, let's say that. But actually what me and Dax ended up talking about a ton was what was she getting out of the relationship? That was way more interesting, actually.

And she was getting a lot.

Yeah.

Okay, let's talk about the thruple.

They're not a thruple? Oh, so sorry. They're a polycule.

A poly what?

Polycule.

Cule?

Polycule. Polycule. Polycule. Polycule. Yeah. Okay, great. A thruple is when all three are-Oh, they're all engaged with each other. Sexually intimately involved. They're not.

Great distinction, and I didn't mean to screw that up. Now, full disclosure, I was in an open relationship for nine years. It was lovely. But our rules was like, I want you to like me, so I'm just going to say, we met cheating on people. I was 21, she was 20. I very much loved her. I said, I think if this is one of the requirements for you and I to make it long term, I'm afraid we're going to break up over this, and I don't want to. I would like to have a baby with you. I want to stay together, and we've demonstrated we're bad at this. What about that?

We demonstrated we're bad at monogamy.

We both were cheating on... Yes, we're bad at monogamy. Let's call this what it is. And then many, many talks. Our arrangement was basically, I don't really care if something happens and I don't know about it. I have no desire to hear about it. And that was the thing. So that worked pretty darn good for us. There was evolutions over the course of nine years. All that to say, the Poly scenario seems so complicated because you have three relationships happening. You have the two individual relationships that are happening, and then their collective relationship.

And they all have other relationships. Yeah.

And now I'm going to expose my old foggy puritanicalism. I have I have a hard time watching it going, Guys, this is not tenable. I know. I have a pessimism about how tenable that is. Again, it's almost impossible for two humans to cohabitate. It's so hard. And it's not just it's twice as hard. It's a permutation math equation. It's actually nine times harder. There's some math there. And so has that even been hard for you? Or does that challenge your optimism? Or you seem to be very optimistic even about the polyandry life.

Polyandry. I love that.

I fucked that up. The poly life. That just means women, I think, who have multiple partners. Polyandry.

I'm learning from patients and participants about the world of non-monogamous, different social structures. My patients and the participants on the show, in a certain way, they're my teachers. The way I'm thinking about it, what I've come to this far is when you're in this poly arrangement, there are heavy prices to pay, certain kinds of safety, possessiveness that we all have. We like to know what's ours. This is my toy. Am I the most special? There are all sorts of things that most of us want and need. But what I'm also learning is several things. They're gaining what they've said to me many times, more love, more joy, more sex.

They've got more. As an addict, that sounds very appealing.

It sounds appealing. I'm joining you, whatever works for you, as long as people are not getting hurt too much, as long as truth is being preserved in a certain way, you're respecting each other's contracts. I'm learning with you how this goes. I don't know. I don't have a conclusion.

You did at one point this season have sessions with the two unique pairs within.

They wanted it. They wanted it like that.

Would that have been an instinct of yours?

My instinct is always, who's my unit? If this is the system, I'll meet all three of you. But they taught me that it's not necessarily the three of them that is the unit. They have this other map.

Yeah, they're dancing I'm going to get around this term primary partner. Yeah. And there's some hesitation on one person to declare a primary partnership.

It's really interesting. But I also, this is not what you're asking, but I'm just going there. Please. There's a way in which I've come to think about all these new structures of relationship as a way that the younger generation is organizing in response to the big things that are happening now, like climate crisis. Interesting. And ways that the general social structures have collapsed. They're looking for new ways to be. They're looking for how can we live as a community that is not about each tiny little unit circling the wagons around our little unit and everyone else is an enemy. They're doing something that I find really interesting and politically interesting.

Inclusivity.

Inclusivity in a big way.

That's a very interesting take on it. It's almost like I see the generation before me. I see their approach. I see the outcome. I see the system and the results of the system. So maybe I'm rejecting all parts of the system or many parts of the system. This one would be the most fundamental for minimally American history.

The family unit. Yeah. Family values. They're looking at us and they're like, You guys suck. What have you left us?

Yeah, what are you preaching about?

You're either together or you hate- You're either together and you hate- You're either together and you hate each other.

Or your divorce. Congrats.

Things are zero if we fuck this up. One of you is going to be so poor, you're going to be homeless, and then who's going to support you?

But it's hard, though, because I love that. I love this idea of inclusivity and do what you want and make your own arrangement.

It's not do what you want. They don't live, do what you want.

Well, within the rules that they build.

They're very conscious of ethics and of respect.

But it's a new arrangement that they've created, and I'm for that. But then you see these sessions and you see this unfold, and it is hard not to watch and think, but we're just humans at the end of the day who want, yes, to feel special, to feel picked, to feel like someone's person and only person. These very primal things are sprouting up within the new arrangement.

Right. Although humans, I mean, if we think not only with Western eyes, humans have all sorts of social structures. Bedwins live very differently. Yeah.

Historically, 95% of the time we've been here as a species, we were not monogamous. We have much, much proof in the archeological record that generally high status people had multiple partners and wives, and it was communal. So yeah, it is new.

But then why did monogamy evolve?

Well, there's a ton of people who are anti-monogamy that I'll tell you a lot of it is transference of property.

Yeah, it has ties with capitalism.

Yes, and the ability to join families, join alliances, the control of I'm putting this daughter with that king's son, the Catholic Church.

Okay, so maybe I shouldn't say why did monogamy evolve? Why did jealousy within these constructs evolve? If we didn't even really- Then we get into another thing that we don't have anymore is a really clearly defined hierarchical order of the group we're in, which would have been 100 members.

So all this anxiety we have about where we are on the status ladder would have been assigned and defined. You actually wouldn't have spent much time thinking about it. You would have said, Oh, I'm Gamma in this situation. There's no aspiring to hire. I'm here. So in a bizarre way, things were much more defined. But here in this individual, you could be the highest status person in America in 10 years. You could be the lowest status. We don't know. And then we look for all these symbols to alleviate our anxiety about that hierarchical status. And some of those involve a single partner and the most desired and all these different things. So I definitely think it's cultural. I don't think it's primitive or biological. Agree.

It's complicated, and that's why they're very devoted to study relational dynamics. People who live in these alternative arrangements, they put so much work into how to relate. It's so much work.

Yeah, people think it's just an easy way out.

It's hard. No, no, no. It's way more work than a couple.

The one in particular on the show this season, I'm looking at it and I'm like, Oh, my God, it's two wives is what it is. It's hard enough to just be with one person, and you're just doubling that.

It's a lot of emotional labor. Yes.

I guess I want to end with the thing that I think is the biggest gift the show, at least for us and a lot of other couples I know that watch it, it is so comforting to see that it is hard, that it's not a fairytale, that it's a lot of work, it's a lot of communication, it's a lot of thoughtfulness of where you're trying to go. You won't just get there. The simple fact that every single patient you've had on the show, one person wants more sex and one wants less. I mean, that's almost universal in a couple. Totally. That's comforting. You just, minimally, you go like, Oh, yeah, this is normal.

They're all different.

Radically different and all the same thing. That's the comfort of AA. It's like, I'm not alone. Knowing you're not alone is so deeply comforting. I think you really put on display how much you can tackle these things. Your hopefulness is really quite infectious. I think that's my summation of why.

Well, as a single person, I'll say, I watch it and I think, whoa, maybe Maybe not.

It is still hopeful.

It's like, maybe this is fine, my situation. Because you always want what you don't have. You're walking around, I'm feeling like, I'm missing this piece. And that's the reality of it being in a couple. It's work. Yes.

Okay, I have one last personal question for you, which is spending your days in your emotional energy waiting through all of this, how has that impacted your own life in partnering?

My life in partnering.

Meaning in your personal life, does it have an impact then for you partnering up with somebody?

Well, let me first talk about life in general. Okay. I have a close friend. He's actually in the peer group Ayal, and we often talk about what does it mean to be living day in, day out as an analyst. Yeah. In certain ways, it's like an incredible profession. I learn something every day. I love the people I work with. I feel so lucky to be doing what I'm doing. I get to care about people, to develop trust.

To be trusted It is one of the most beautiful feelings.

It's beautiful for people to give me their trust and to show up for that. It's an incredible thing. But it's also really heavy. I carry within me a lot of difficult stories, a lot of pain.

You're a cop in a way. Yeah.

Who sees it all. Who sees it all. Yeah, who sees it all. Luckily, I see other things than what cops see.

But an inordinate amount that a human is probably not designed to observe.

It's hard. I guess if I applied that to relationships, It's a mixed thing. I know a lot about human relationships, and I know a lot about myself in human relationships, so I can be very wise in certain ways. But I think I've developed, and I think a lot of analysts are like that, I've developed a certain remove that is probably not easy for people who are romantically close to me and not easy for friends. There's a certain level of like, I've seen it all. I know. Right. Yeah. Then they're done that. I know how this is going to play out.

I'll add there's the housekeeper who doesn't clean their own house. I was a car prepper for 14 years, and I had the dirtiest car in the world. I'm not going to wash my car after I've been washing cars. So I can imagine also a little bit of a fatigue. It's all day, and then you walk in the kitchen. I'm like, Oh, fuck. Now I got to do this for me now.

I know. Yeah, there's some of that. But I think the remove is probably the... That's what Ayal and I often talk about. Whoever's really in our lives and close to us have to suffer that.

Yeah. Well, Orna, this has been so wonderful.

For me, too. Really. You guys are awesome.Oh, thank you.You're awesome. Oh, thank you. You're awesome. Really, really awesome.

Yeah, talk about privilege, like to fall in love with someone on TV and then actually get to sit with them and then swap pheromones.

It was a joke at first. We were like, Do you think we could ever have Orna on the show?

Yeah, so this is a huge for us. So yeah, it's really good. Very, very exciting. I love this show so much. Monica loves this show so much. The new season is out on the 31st. Do you know where it streamed? Now, I'm a little confused by that. It used to be on Showtime, but they don't have it happening.

It's on Showtime, which is now Paramount Plus.

Okay, great. It's on Paramount Plus.

Not the new season, but they're showing other seasons on other platforms, I think on Hulu or something.

It's on some airplanes. I know a lot of people have seen.

Definitely on a airplane.

That's how I discovered it.

I know.

Shout out to our friend Jedediah Jenkins. We were interviewing him, and he proselytized how we have to be watching couples therapy. Then, ironically, I was on a flight. Three days later, I'm scrolling through. I'm like, Oh, there's that thing. Watch two. Got to my hotel room. Okay. Must find out what's going to happen.

Once you start, there is no stopping.

Cannot recommend it enough. It's so comforting, whether you're in a relationship or not, but I find it enormously comforting. I hope we get to do this again. Yeah, me too. Nico, great job. Nico's here for the listener. If you do watch couples therapy and you know about Nico, the dog, Nico joined us and was a very good girl.

Yeah, look at her. Look at her.

You know, at first, I think because you said, Can I bring Nico? Or someone reached out to us, and we were like, Of course. Then I thought, stupidly, I'm like, Oh, I wonder if Nico is a comfort dog. Then I read enough interviews about you that actually Nico has a tremendous separation anxiety.

I was like, Talk about that you just can't endlessly find your way into these situations.

Like, your dog is a patient.

My patience makes so much fun of me about my dog having separation anxiety.

Nico knew that she was being talked about, so now she's showing up. Yeah. Okay. So much fun. Adore you. Everyone watch season 4 of Couples Therapy on the 31st. Next off is the fact check. I don't even care about fact check. I just want to get in your pants.

Wow.

I put this on for you.

I love it.

I just took off my super filthy. You didn't wear that on the airplane? No. Lincoln was wearing hers, so we got plenty of-You were laughing. Attention, yeah. Oh, you were recording here last. Probably. I can always tell with your headset volume. Yeah. Yeah, my long sleeve T-shirt that I've been in for 25 hours was so filthy, so I had to quickly put on-Stains? Yeah, stains everywhere. That off-white color, not a great choice for an airplane ride. Sure. And then I quickly grabbed a shirt and I thought, God, I'm wearing my Taylor Swift shirt for you.

Wow, I love it. I don't have that one. I don't have it in black.

Oh, you have it in white? Yeah. I do, too. How many? Oh, my God.

Okay, first of all, before you reveal too much, remember, we aren't editing.

Yeah. Oh, right, right, right, right. And I'm a little loopy. Be careful what you Yeah, so this could be a high risk scenario.

Be careful what you say, be careful what you wish for. Okay.

Well, I already got what I wish for. But boy, was it eventful? I mean, did you already hear any of the drama?

No, you texted Rob and I on Friday, right? On Friday, and you said, Hey, you're supposed to be home yesterday. And so you said, Hey, due to a crazy chain of events, I won't be home until Tuesday at 3:00, so we need to record at 5:00, whatever. And I thought I knew what happened.

Okay, you hit me with what your theory is.

I thought, Oh, no.

Because I would imagine this could have traveled through the pod by this point.

Well, I thought, oh, no. Well, oh, my God. I already want to edit. You're so stressed. I'm so stressed. Okay. Okay. The next day, you sent Connections in. Yeah. So I knew nothing so bad was happening.

Right. I wasn't in the hospital. Well, though, you could play Connections in the hospital.

I would be so mad if you were in the hospital and I didn't know.

Right. And I just was playing Connections like nothing happened.

Yeah, exactly. But you were playing Connections, and you said, I'm in France. I'm sending this from France, so blah, blah, blah. And I thought, Oh, I know what happened.

Okay, what do you think?

The Portugal concert was for next weekend.

Oh, that's a good pick.

And France is this weekend. So I've rerouted. So you had to pivot.

Okay, it's much worse than that. Oh, my God. And we're not editing, so this is going to be a tricky story to tell. But for reasons, it'll become obvious. Okay, so Thursday morning, Lincoln and I get up. We're so excited. I cannot express how excited we both were for two whole weeks leading up to this. It's like the most excited we've been about anything ever. So we are on it. We leave early. We ride the motorcycle to the airport. We're there so early. I've got the bag It's like fucking bungy, not bungy, but ratchet strapped to the side of the motorcycle. Oh, my God. Carry on only, we said, so that we could ride the motorcycle. Smart. We get there, we're high-fiving. We're already celebrating. We're We're supposed to be there 2 hours early. We're there 2 hours and 15 minutes early. Wow. Checking in on a United flight, which is supposed to go from LA to... Fuck, now, I can't even remember where we were. We had a layover- Washington, DC. Oh, my God. Yes. We were flying to Washington, DC, and then from DC, direct to Lisbon. So we're checking in. I'm feeling so good.

We're so happy. And she's scanning Lincoln's passport, and she does it five times in a row. And she looks at me and she goes, There's a problem with your daughter's passport. It's expired. And my whole soul left my body. Oh, no. Because this isn't something you can solve.

Right. You can just buy another ticket.

The way this is going to shake out with everything going perfectly is we're going to get there Friday afternoon, and then we're going to have Friday night. And then Saturday is the concert.

Okay.

It's 11:00 I don't even know what time it is. Lincoln immediately starts crying, as you'd expect, because this isn't like...

This isn't Disneyland.

It's not Disneyland. And there's nothing to replace it with. I have this immediate thought of like, Oh, what now? What do we do? How do we salvage this? There's no salvaging it because it's Taylor Swift, and it's Saturday. There wasn't a bunch of other flights, even in the best case scenario. We don't have a passport. I immediately call everyone I know that might know someone that has a fixer. And also trying to act like to Lincoln, we're going to solve this. And in my mind, we're not going to solve this. You were.

You were like, it's done.

No, because how am I going to get a passport in the next few hours, then return and hope there's a flight that night that gets us in it?

Was there a Sunday show also? You could maybe try to get tickets for- No, there's no Sunday show.

It's Saturday. That's it.

Saturday or bus?

Yes. And And so many things are going through my mind. It's like, this isn't going to work, but I'm going to act like, we're going to just keep trying. And also what would be a backup plan? So I'm also like, filing through. Do we go to Orlando? Again, nothing's going to... What we're going to do, and I know we're going to drive home and have the worst weekend of our life because we're so excited.

Oh my God.

So I basically get on the phone with a fixer. The fixer says, I can pull a bunch of strings. It's so much money, and I can get you an appointment at 10:00 AM on Friday. That's the earliest. And I'm like, That is not going to help. And he's like, That's all that can be done. And I'm like, Goodbye. I go, Let's go, Lincoln. I strapped the luggage back to the motorcycle. We then raced to the federal building on Wilshire.

In Santa Monica?

Yes, Wilshire in the 405.

That far from the airport.

But a mess. It's like, Traffic City. We get up there, we walk in. Well, we don't walk in. You're not allowed to walk in there. Okay. This part of the story is going to get dicey.

The fixer part wasn't already dicey. Well, it didn't work.

It didn't work. It didn't work.

We-whatever. This is the reality.

We get up there. I don't want to get anyone in trouble.

Okay.

Bottom line, let's just say this. A complete miracle happened. I was able to enter there, but you need both parents. You can't get a passport for your kid without both parents because that could be a parent stealing the kid. So I am like, calling Kristen, and you know she won't answer. I text her, this is emergency, you really need to answer. Luckily, she then FaceTime me. Okay. I go, you need to get to the federal building right now and get her birth certificate from home, which I don't even know if we know where that's at, right? God bless Kristen. I don't know how... She was in a rehearsal for Reef Her Madness in a theater there. In Hollywood. In Hollywood, and she squoaled up to the federal building like 24 minutes later with the birth certificate.

Oh, my God.

Long story short, We walk out of there at 3:00 PM with a fucking passport. And now I'm like, How do we get... I find a flight that leaves at 07:00 PM that goes to London, that then goes to Paris, that then goes to Lisbon.

That was the France.

Wow. So now we have four plus hours in the airport. We got there at 11:00, the flight's at 07:00. We had this trip to the federal building, but it's a long day. Now, a really nice icing cherry on the cake was we're checking in, and I hear Lincoln go, Hi, Lauren. I look behind me, Lauren Graham is checking in for a flight. I'm like, Oh, my God. I'm I was like, You're not going to believe... She's like, Where are you going? I go, No, you're not going to believe this. We didn't have a passport. I go through the whole story. So we hung out with Lauren and Sam Pancake for two of the hours, which was really, really fun.

What's Sam Pancake?

Sam Pancake is a great actor and one of Lauren's best friends, and he's super funny and wonderful. And they were going to Scott one together or something.

Oh, fun.

So whatever, we kill another three hours in the airport, and then we fly to London, then we fly to Paris, then we fly to Lisbon, and we get in at basically 1:00 in the morning on Friday night. So all told, we only lost 12 hours.

Okay, not bad.

Not terrible. I mean, I really up until... When we landed Lisbon, I've never felt like I pulled off the impossible more than any other moment in my life. Wow. Oh, the stakes were so high.

Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad it worked out. Yikes.

Oh, my God, No passport. That's so sad. Yeah, this is done. So then Saturday, we were like, Are we going to walk around a bit? But we were fucked from the day before. Also, our adrenaline dump for those three hours before we got the passport, riding the motorcycle.

How was she? How was she during all of this?

Well, I'll tell you, she cried intermittently, but she had her shit together. And then it was time to get on the motorcycle. She was all business. And then when we got to the thing and found out you couldn't go inside that building, she started bawling. Yeah. The perfect time imaginable. Oh, yeah, sure. But we were like, You know what? We're not going to be ambitious on Saturday. We woke up, we went down to the pool, we took a swim. The whole hotel is Swifties. Oh, I missed the best part. When we got in at 12:30 or whatever, when we pulled up to our hotel, we found out she was staying at our hotel. No. Stop. Lincoln stayed on the balcony of our room waiting for the police motorcade to bring her back, which she saw. So Lincoln was screaming from the balcony. I'm like, Girl, play it cool. You got to play it cool because if we pump into her, you can't be fucking hollering.

No, of course she can. Of course she can.

If we have any shot of getting invited to lunch with her or something, we got to be like, huge fan, but I'm not going to freak you out.

No, Taylor loves kids. I saw a video of her head down, trying to walk out of a building. Everyone's screaming her. And then there was a little kid, and she turned around and went and hugged the little kid. So you got to use these powers while you can.

Okay. I had bigger fantasies. I'm like, we're going to bump into her, and we're going to have lunch with her or something. Oh my God. This was my fantasy. Anyways, so everyone at the hotel is Swifties. Wow. So it's really fun already. Everyone's like, are you here to see Taylor Swift? So all the little girls are talking, right? And I'm the only dad there, as you would imagine. It's just like a bunch of moms with their daughters, and I'm at the pool. And then we go to the show, and this is... Now, listen, we like winks.

Okay.

I'll let you decide.

Oh, no. Oh, God.

In fact, I know we're not editing. Yeah, I'm scared. We're in a little bit of a time crunch, but I am going to try to quickly just send you one video while I tell you about the show kicks off. You know better than anyone. You've already been. It's incredible, right? I'm in all pink, I should say. I got a full pink outfit so that I'm... Because you have to go as an album, as you already know, and Lincoln wanted me to go as Lover. So I had a whole outfit. So I was head to toe pink. Okay, I'll see if this video went through. Because to my knowledge, this song has never been played at a Taylor Swift show. Okay, hold. Crank the volume. Wildest dream's I. That's my song that she wrote about me. If I need to remind the listeners.

You do.

You do need to- He's so tall and handsome as hell. He's so bad, but he does it so well. When she fucking played Wildest Dream, I lost my mind. Okay. Because she doesn't play that song. That's what I've been told.

Well, that's okay. So I'm not going to look it up because I don't want to ruin it.

To destroy my fantasy.

Was she playing that as one of the secret songs? Because she plays two secret songs at each show. Okay. Oh, it It was an acoustic.

It was not acoustic. She played a bunch of songs off of the- TTPD. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Department.

But she also does two secret. Rob, can you look up the two secret songs from this Portugal show? I'm curious.

Oh, okay. Okay, because she also played... So my three favorite songs are Wildest Dreams, Lavender.

Yeah, yeah.

Wait, did she play that when you saw her?

Yes, that's in the set. I don't know how to handle this. And then Willow.

No. That's in there, too?

Yeah. Lavender Hayes. Yes. Okay. But I got to set up just really quickly.

Of course, my joke for two months has been that she's going to play Wildest... Because I tell my children that she wrote this song about me. I know. It was a long-standing thing that Taylor has written a song about your dad. And fucking, by God, she pulled that out. And Lincoln was like, She didn't play that in LA. I'm like, Duh.

Okay. I think that could be true. I don't really think it- I don't want to... I mean, I don't think.

I got...

Okay.

Clearly, I'm joking. I'll be very clear right now, I'm joking. But I did let my imagination wander. Of course. And I was like, What if she's a goddamn huge fan of the podcast? I know. Just because she won't do it doesn't mean she's not a huge fan. And I was talking about going to the show, and I've also talked a million times about the songs about me. I don't really think that happened, but I let myself, for 1% of my brain, fantasize that that was what was happening, and that she loves winking, too. Why not?

Yeah, why not has been winking.

People love to wink. This is my conclusion.

People do love to wink. I have a feeling if she was a fan, it would have got to us, even if she didn't want to come on the show.

She's not a fan.

I don't really think that- I mean, maybe one day- She could be, though.

Why couldn't she be? We don't hear about everyone that. Often we have a guest come in, and all of a sudden, they tell us they love the show, and that blows our mind.

It's shocking. But I do think she makes it known. I think one time she wrote a note to Allison Roman.

Okay.

That's huge.

It is huge, but that's not to say she's writing a note to every single person she likes. That's true. Also, Allison's more of an underdog.

She had a spell. She had me. She had me. She had a spell. She had me.

Did you figure it out, Rob? It wasn't one of the surprise songs.

Okay. What were they?

The Tortured Poets Department. Spoken intro. Contains elements of Now That We Don't Talk, and You're On Your Own Kid. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, cool.

It delivered for me, though. Wasn't it so good? I got those three songs. It's so long. I looked, it was, I think, 3 hours and 30 or 3 hours and 40 minutes. Yeah. But in reality, it only felt like an hour and 45, and we didn't have seats. We were standing the entire time.

Were you on the floor? Yeah. Oh, got it. Cool.

I exchanged bracelets with people. You did? Yes, of course. I brought bracelets back for the people that worked at the hotel because they couldn't go to the show. That's nice. Yeah, I got into the spirit of it. It was really fun.

Isn't the energy so special?

It is. It totally is. I was crying. I didn't cry as much as I thought I might because I was pretty busy dancing. Oh, sure. Although I did cry a little bit while I was dancing. Oh, fuck. Because at one point, we were really dancing, Lincoln and I. It was so fun.

That's so fun.

Try not to clear your throat.

I normally cut those.

Okay. It's going to be hard because I'm a little bit of a mess right now. Okay, so I'll just speed through the rest. Then Sunday, we decided we're going to walk Lisbon, all of Lisbon, which we damn near did. We walked miles and miles and miles and miles. We took a tuck-tuck ride. Oh, ding, ding, ding. I did a Tuck Tuck tour of the city, and then had them drop us at this big castle. And then I said to Lincoln, Lincoln was all over the map. She's just like me. She's just such a control freak. And I said to her, I'm going to ask you to really roll the dice and trust that I can walk from this castle back to our hotel, and I'm not going to look at the map or anything. And it was all twisty, crazy, Portuguese, Lisbanese streets. And I walked us straight to the hotel. And she declared, I'm going to trust you now for your directions, forever. I'm sure that'll change on the next trip. That's good. But it was great. It was such a medal of honor, valor. What a moment. Band of honor. I was so proud of her because she's 11.

But she walked the entire time. I bet we walked 10 miles, 12 miles.

Did you guys eat anything yummy?

Mcdonald's that night. That was her big reward. You know what's funny is, of course, you don't want take your kids to McDonald's because you're in another country and you want to try something fun. But then I remember when I went to Germany with my mom in high school, all I wanted to do is eat a McDonald's. I wanted to do so bad. She let me once, but it was a battle. And I'm like, I'm going to do it. Where are you going to eat a McDonald's? It's the nicest McDonald's I've ever been doing in my life.

Did they have Portuguese items?

Not that I noticed. No, it was pretty standard McDonald's fair. Okay. And then Monday, we'd already walked the city We were like, Oh, let's go explore this park. So we explored the park. And then I was like, I really want to ride a moped around the city, a scooter. And she's like, Look it up, see if there is one. There was one like 0.1 miles away. We walk into this place, Eurocar. We've got like 20 motorcycles you can rent. Ten minutes later, we're driving away. They got helmets. And then we ripped through Lisbon all day on a motorcycle.

Nice.

A scooter, like a 250. It went pretty fast.

Nice.

Yeah. So scootered all day yesterday and then had to wake up at 3:00 AM to get in the car at 4:00 to be at the airport for our 6:00 AM flight to Germany, and then 3:00 3-hour layover. All that to say, I got up at 3:00.

Sure. 3:00 yesterday?

Which it was 6:00 PM yesterday.

Got it.

Yeah.

Rob, did you get us a best boy statue?

They sent another one. They sent us a second one because they heard our shout out.

Oh, that's so cute.

Good eye. Well, of course. I I'll ask you at the motor scooter. Oh. Your eyes started wandering. You were realizing there was the new items in the attic. I'm like, what is she looking at? When they started talking about the CCs, that was probably where you went. Yeah.

Went a wander. I don't know about that. All right. Well, that's so fun.

Yes. It was incredible. Really special.

I'm glad you made it there. Unreal.

I mean, that's the most adrenaline I've had in some time. I think it took a year and a half off my life, which I think is worth it.

It's a good trade. I think it's worth it because it was with your daughter, but I also don't like you saying that because I have death on the mind because of 6 feet under.

You've continued on.

I've continued on.

Because the last fact check, you were like, I remember why I stopped watching it because of all the death, which made me fearful that you were then going to bail out.

No, I'm What? Sounded like you burped.

No.

Oh, I got scared.

Did I? I might have. I just had a big...

You did have a big drink. A big slurp. Anywho, so yeah, I am on season two now, and something really bad that happened. What? I found out a spoiler. Oh, yeah.

I'm sure. It's like the most famous ending of a TV show. Is that what it was, the spoiler?

In the Flightless Bird episode, we play scenes of our favorite episodes. And so David's episode is that finale, and he shows it, but I hadn't seen it yet, so it didn't matter. It didn't spoil anything. I just was like, Oh, this does seem sad or whatever. But I didn't It didn't bother me. But then I was editing that episode, and I decided to go back and watch it again, the scene.

Okay.

And then that viewing-Turns out there's a huge spoiler in that.

Yeah. I haven't even seen it. I haven't seen the last season. I think I watched the first three seasons. Got it. But I do know what happened. I think most people know what happened.

Well, I don't want to spoil it for anyone.

Okay, yeah. Who's just starting it. Yeah.

So that was sad.

Oh, last thing. I watched the Bookie on the Flight Home, Sebastian's show. Yeah. I love it. Great. It's fantastic. Nice. Yeah. I can't wait to see the next season. Yeah, he's filming the second season right now. I think so. Yeah. Cool. I was delighted.

Love that. What time do you think you're going to go to bed?

What's your plan? Well, we have two guests tomorrow. So Yeah, I have a little bit of anxiety that I'm so upside down because right as we about to... We semi got adjusted there where we woke up at 8:30 and it felt normal, to immediately then wake up at 3:00, which didn't match anything. Now we're waking up at 7:00 PM last night here in America land. So I'm like, Fuck, now we're flipping it completely upside down. So I'm hopeful that my fantasy, my dream is I go to bed at 8:00 PM and sleep till 7:00 AM till I take the kids to school. If I can somehow manage to get 11 hours, I feel like I'll be good. That would be good. But I'm a little anxious that my clock has adjusted to that other place.

I think you can do it.

Okay. I appreciate your optimism.

Okay. There's not very many facts, which is good because we'll keep it short so you can go to bed. But this is for Orna.

What a joy to meet Orna.

Oh, my God. We have been wanting it for for so long. We willed it.

She's better in real life, which I was nervous. She's so comfortable in her practice, and you get to see such a privileged side of her, right? That only her patients would. So I don't know. But in person, it way over delivered for me.

Do you want to know a BTS that you might not know or maybe I told you?

Oh, no. Yeah, tell me.

I I almost started crying in the beginning of that episode when we were talking about- The sidewalk?

The sidewalk. Because that was also the day... Yeah, you found out some bad news that day.

The day before, yeah.

The day before, right.

Which is coming up on another episode. Listeners will hear more about that on another episode. Right.

So there's a lot happening.

I was not doing great that day. I was a little like, anything could cause tears. And then-So when you were editing, did you start crying? No, because I'm better now. Yeah.

I think I've had the experience where I was watching myself in Parenthood in a scene that I was sad in, and I got sad hearing myself sad, like a mirror neuron myself.

That's interesting. Okay, so when I was editing it back, of course, everyone's just being so playful. It's fun. It's totally fun and fine. And of course, no one knows that I'm feeling fragile.

Right. I had no clue.

Right. And obviously, she doesn't. I didn't feel like I should start with that energy.

You would have felt a little unprofessional.

Yes, exactly. What I really didn't want to do is cry and then make her feel bad that she contributed to me crying.

Yes, that's the guess. I'm trying to imagine if I came on to any show and one of the hosts started crying right at the beginning because of me. That'd be hard to recover from. I know. I'd feel really guilty.

Well, good thing I didn't do it.

Yeah, good job. I'm going to applaud. Generally, you should express your feelings, but I'm really glad you didn't because that's too much if you make the host cry.

I mean, I would have pivoted smartly and made it about only you, right? That I was just upset by you.

But she would have known. She had the same opinion as me.

And it actually it wasn't the opinion. I mean, it was the opinion, of course, but it was that.

I I don't think you got a soft petal your way out of that. If you started crying right after she said something, and you go, No, it's about him. If anyone could have handled it, it would have been her.

Well, exactly. Well, true. I did contemplate. She's unflappable. I mean, She's a therapist. Pre-session. Exactly.

We've done that to other therapists.

Yeah, we have. Wendy. It's gone great.

Yeah, I like it. Me too. I wanted to get into that a little bit.

I know. But I think that's why, because She started it just fun as a guest, not as a therapist, which is correct, right? Yes. And then, and I think I was expecting a therapist, and then I felt a little combined attack a little bit, and I wasn't in the head space for that. Right.

It was a big moment.

That's BTS.

Memorable.

If you go back and listen, I don't think you'll hear it. I think I do a good job. Okay, great.

And you didn't, to answer the question, you didn't go like, Okay, now I'm going to let this out as you were editing. No. You didn't get taken back to that feeling.

I didn't, but I did feel like, God, they really are ganging up. So anywho, that's that. Okay, so you said Polyandry, and then you- She corrected me. Well, she laughed, and then you said, Oh, yeah, polyandry is just when a woman has more than one husband. And that's right.

Right. Yeah. There was only one example of that in the Anthropology. And I want to say it was in The Andes or the Himalayas, it was some really high up, snowy, high elevation place, where that was the system that made the most sense.

Because they needed more men to keep them warm? Well, In a pile?

I can't remember the details of why that environment demanded that arrangement. Sure. But anyways, there was a group had an ethnography done on them that was- Yeah.

Well, there's a few research about polygamy in the world, and it's mostly confined to a few regions. Only about 2% of the global population lives in polygamous households. And in the vast majority of countries, that share is under 0.5 %. So it's most often found in sub-Saharan Africa, West and Central Africa, including including- The dudes in the Middle East have a lot of wives.

Yeah, they got many, many wives.

Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria. In these countries, polygamy is legal, at least to some extent. Muslims in Africa are more likely than Christians to live in this type of arrangement. Many of the countries that permit polygamy have Muslim majorities, and the practice is rare in many of them. Fewer than 1% of Muslim men live with more than one spouse in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and Egypt.

All countries- What about Saudi Arabia?

Polygamy is also legal in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. Emirates.

U. I. E.

No. No. Edits. So I get nervous. But these were not included in the study due to data limitations.

Okay.

Says, The Jewish, Torah, and Christian Old Testament refer to several instances of accepted plural marriages, including by Abraham, Jacob, and David. Anywho. Okay. One in five. This is interesting. One in five US adults believe that polygamy is morally acceptable.

One in five? Mm-hmm. You had only practiced by 0.5..

It says, The share has almost tripled since the question was first asked in 2003, but it's still among the least accepted behaviors. Interesting.

Very.

She mentioned the Bedouin people, and yes, they live in polygamous society with the patriarchal system. Okay.

But there was some really specific nomenclature she hit me with, the big actual group on that, because I think I called them a thruple, which was a no-no.

You did, so did I, and that was wrong. And then the word is polycule. You misheard it as polycule.

Okay, polycule.

C-u-l-e. Oh. Well, P-O-L-Y, C-U-L-E.

Right. What if I thought that's what it was, the polycule?

The poly silent. The poly silent. But yeah, because a throuple is real, but that's when everyone's in a relationship.

Right. And an exclusive relationship to those three people? I think. Yeah, the Polycule. They were- Cule. Cule. Very cule. They were- No edits. They were free to mess about as much as they wanted in any direction.

They had other partners outside of the Polycule. That's right. Yeah. Guys, watch this show. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. What a season.

Seriously. Okay, Eric Lander, you mentioned, I thought you said Road Institute, but I think you said Broad Institute, which is correct. But I misheard it.

Yeah, but spelled weirdly.

B-r-o-a-d. I think. Okay.

Maybe that's not too... Silent Poly? Poly silent on that? That's how it's spelled. Okay, great.

Let's see here. Attachment theory. Can we talk about attachment theory for a second? That's fine. Yeah. Well, you tell me what you think your attachment is, okay?

Oh, are you going to give me a list? Mm-hmm. Oh, great.

Secure attachment. A toddler who is securely attached to his or her parent or other familiar caregiver will explore freely while the caregiver is present, typically engages with strangers, and is often visibly upset when the caregiver departs and is generally happy to see the caregiver return. The extent of exploration and of distress are affected, however, by the child's temperamental makeup and by situational factors, as well as by attachment status. A child's attachment is largely influenced by their primary caregiver's sensitivity to their needs. Parents who consistently or almost always respond to their child's needs will create securely attached children. Such children are certain that their parents will be responsive to their needs and communications. Securely attached children are best able to explore when they have the knowledge of a secure base to return to in times of need. Oh, God. I'm so stressed out. Normally, I would have cut half of this. Okay, I think that was pretty good.

I feel attached. Was that what you're asking?

There's secure attachment. There's anxious ambivalent attachment. There's anxious avoidant and dismissive avoidant. Okay, I'm going to go with secure. There's also disorganized and disoriented. I think I have anxious. You're anxious. Anxious attachment.

Oh, okay. Did your mom work when you were a baby? Yeah. Okay. My mom, I had the luxury of pros and cons. She didn't work until I was three. So I had her attention all day long, although I was colicky and she wanted to kill me for the first year.

She gave you corn syrup.

Well, caro syrup for nourishment. And then an opiate to get me to shut the fuck up. That was adorable. She was in here and just... She remembered the name of it, but she didn't really ever explore what it was. Right. Remember, we looked it up. It was like, Oh, is this an eye dropper full of opium?

Oh, no. Oh, my gosh. Also, it's impressive that your height-I often think that I probably was destined to be like 6'5 or something. Yeah. As tall as max.

Shut up. How dare you? I'm talking about being ganged up on? What were we talking about?

Anxious attachment. Oh, yeah.

But I wandered around and I talked to adults and stuff.

Right.

I explored.

Yeah. A child with an anxious ambivalent pattern of attachment will typically explore little in the strange situation and is often wary of strangers, even when the parent is present. When the caregiver departs, the child is often highly distressed, showing behaviors such as crying or screaming. The child is generally ambivalent when the caregiver returns. That's interesting. Yeah.

Well, that's what Gabor was. He was ambivalent when he was reunited with his mom.

This will sound apocryphal, and I can only tell you what I've been told my whole life.

We lived in the country, and I would play in my sandbox most of the day with my Tonka trucks, and we had a German Shepherd named Dog, which you've heard this. It was our neighbor's dog, and then we ended up... He slept at our house. He would only go home to eat, and finally, they brought the dog dish over. And we always called him Dog because we didn't know his real name.

Oh, I didn't know that.

He just be like, Dog is here. Best dog we ever had, German Shepherd. So he would stay out there in the sandbox with me while I played, and my mom would do chores around the house, and she looked out the window, and I was not in the sandbox. So she went out in the backyard, and I was not in the backyard.

Oh my God, dog ate.

And the driveway was very long. It had to be an eighth of a mile long. It was in the country, and we shared a driveway with a couple of other people. Dirt, little dirt driveway. And my mom It sounds like looking all through the backyard, and she hears honking, tons of honking.

Oh, no.

And she runs in the front, and she follows all this honking. She runs down the driveway, and I am in the middle. Oh, broadly, it's actually called Middle Road. We lived off a Middle Road. I am in the center of Middle Road. There's a bunch of traffic backed up in both directions, and dog is with me. I'm playing with a Tonka truck in the road. No. Yes. And anytime someone tries to get out of their to help the baby out of the street, dog goes bananas and chases them back to their car, and then just goes around in a circle of me. And then my mom comes out there and picks me up.

How old are you? It takes me two. Oh, no. That's so scary.

She made you fucking losing your kid in the country. We lived in the country.

And then finding them in the middle of the road.

In the road, your worst nightmare.

That is my worst nightmare.

By the way, it must have taken me... I don't know how much she's claiming she looked at the window.

That would have taken you an hour.

It would have taken me so long to get from the backyard down to this road.

And you probably forgot your truck and had to go back and get it and walk back over.

Maybe you rode him like a horse. Maybe he took me down there. What a good dog, though, right?

Yeah, sweet dog. We love dogs.

Ding, ding, ding.

What? I was called her Wina. Orna brought her dog.

Oh, my God.

That's the most important thing. Nico.

Were we talking about it in the episode at all? Yes. Other than Matt, that might be my second favorite dog I've ever met.

That's my favorite dog.

It was a person.

I know. And it was really chill, and it smelled good.

And smiled a lot.

Yeah, I know.

And it was so fluffy. She would just smile up a storm if you pet her.

I remember she had an anxious attachment.

Yes, she has.

She has separation anxiety.

Yeah. There's It wasn't a firm attachment somehow.

She was really cute. If I found that dog, I would have a dog.

You'd be a dog owner. I think anyone would. I mean, that dog was really something.

Yeah, you'd have to really hate dogs not to want that dog, Nico. I didn't know you had... How many dogs did you have?

Well, I had that dog. And then my dad, when I was in about fifth grade, got married for a year or so, and he bought a house, and I think he was going to do the whole thing. Sure. And he bought a Newfound.

Oh, you like those?

Yeah, because of this dog. His name was McKever. Mckever was the cheapest dog from this litter because... By the way, the stepmom wanted a Newfound for whatever reason. She had some affinity for Newfound. They had picture books in their house in Traverse City of Newfound. Anyways, this one was cheapest because what What he told us was the mom sat on his tail when he was a puppy, so he didn't have a tail, and he was so fluffy. I would walk him in my dad's neighborhood, and all the little kids thought we had a bear. Everyone in the neighborhood thought we had an actual bear. He looked so much like a bear. The dog was not well taken care of while we were not there on every other weekend. Oh, no. Okay. Let's not keep coming. I have a real sad spot in my heart for Newfies.

The Keavers.

They were very much McKeever. And then that makes me love Newfies. They're so sweet, those dogs. Really?

Yeah. They're really big, aren't they? Huge. Oh, yeah. Bear, you said.

Yeah, he was 160 pounds. And their job, you know how the St. Bernard's would find alpiners and bring them brandy. They had a little thing of brandy on their neck, and they would lay on them. Do you know this? That's what St. Bernard's are. They're avalanche dogs. They would rescue people that were stranded while out in the- Rob, who sent that?

Who sent?

Oh, my Oh, that was really good. I fell for it. Justice Monuments. New Orleans are the water version of that. Got it. They would swim out when there were shipwrecks, and men would put their arms around those Newfilins, and they would swim them all the way to shore.

That could be a good dog for me since my swimming is not great.

Oh, you'd be free to drown all you want. Wow.

Yes.

Okay, I'll consider. Although the St. Bernard does have booze around its neck.

I like that.

I'm pretty capable of getting my own booze, though. Well, it would be nice, though, if your dog brought you booze. It would be. It would be nice. You need booze way more than you need rescuing from drowning. That's a certainty.

For now, yeah. Yeah.

That's true. Maybe as you age, you'll switch to a new view.

Okay, so that was that. Dogs. Nico. Nico. Nico. Love Nico. Really, really cute dog. I did look up... There are multiple theories about why humans have become monogamous. And one that is interesting is that men... Okay, I'm going to read this. Okay. I'm going to try to read this. Okay. The brains of infants, humans, were larger than previous generations and required more attention and lactation from their mothers, resulting in females being less readily available to mate again after giving birth. Males in the group are basically sitting around waiting to mate with the female. It would therefore pay for the man to kill the infant so he can mate with the female. As the fathers would want their offspring to survive, they would nurture and protect them as necessary by pairing up.

A different man would come in. This is what lions do. When a lion... Don't look at the statue.

I will. I'm ready to listen.

When a lion overthrows a pride and becomes the new alpha, the first thing he does is kill all the kittens in the litter. So that all the chicks will go into estress. Okay. It is believed that that happened when invaders came into human villages and whatnot, that they would also want to get everyone pregnant as quick as possible. But a dad would never kill his own offspring to get the mother to go back into estres.

That defeats the whole purpose. Because then it's still... I know. They were still killing offspring.

Yeah, so I think they're referring to competing males would be incentivized to do that. Maybe.

I don't really believe it anyway. Yeah. There's a health theory. Okay. Reducing diseases spreading. Oh.

Where did all these come from?

This is from CNN Health.

Cnn Health, okay. Well, in Anthro, we learned it was just an economic system. Right. And so as economies changed, people went to single family dwellings. There's all these many property ownership, passing of property. Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure it's a combo of so many things.

Yeah.

Because I think health must play, or maybe not health, but something deeper has to be playing some part in this because I feel like we would just not care that much. I mean, I guess a lot of people don't care that much.

Well, but even in ones that were polygamous, there was a very rigid system in place. A male got access to many other females. Males, but the lower-ranking males didn't have families. So it wasn't like willy-nilly. It was very controlled, even though it seemingly is just go hook up with people. Even when it was polygamy, I don't think it was just go hook up with people.

Yeah. What I just looked up is infidelity common in Europe. Denmark, close to 46% of people admit to sleeping with someone else outside of the marriage. Okay. Infidelity is relatively common in Europe. Infidelity rates by country 2024. World Population Review. There are several countries in which cheating is relatively common. Thailand is an outlier, but it is also at the top of the list. More than half of the people in Thailand who are married admit to committing infidelity at least once during the course of their marriage. Of the week. It sounds like you said their week.

I might have.

Oh, God. Okay. Then infidelity is relatively common in Europe. In some situations, there might be relationships where people are allowed to sleep with other people outside of the marriage. In Denmark, close to 46% when I said. Germany and Italy are not far behind, where 45% of people who are married in both of these countries admit to committing infidelity. Belgium, Norway, and France also have infidelity rates that are 40% or higher. Interesting.

Is the US of A on that list?

The US- I feel like you'd have a hard time getting people to admit to that here. Here, exactly, which is why I think- I think half of people.

I think that's still roughly what happens here. I just don't know if I would believe that people would admit to it here.

Yeah, this is a tricky chart.

Let's Let's see. Us World Health and Report. Is that what you said it was?

It's worldpopulationreview. Com.

Okay, worldpopulationreview.

Com. Greenland has the lowest reported infidelity rate.

Well, there's nobody there to cheat with.

West Side Spouses are most likely to cheat with a friend. Anywho.

Oh, there was one. Sorry. Yeah, guys. Shit.

There's been a Yeah. That's it.

All right. I'm glad. Orna wasn't dropping tons of stats on us.

No, of course not.

She was dropping her- Knowledge.unique, dialed in. God, she's so cool.

She's so cool.

God, is she cool? She looked really cool.

I know. She didn't give a fuck about approval.

No, seemingly not. But also seemed fun. I know. I really got a hunch like, Oh, yeah, she'd be a fun person to have dinner with.

Do you want to know something since you've been gone? Yeah. I've had a chicken burrito from Erwan every day.

Oh, by the way, your skin looks great.

Oh, my gosh. My skin has pretty much fully pealed.

You're completely molted. I've molted. Yeah. Do you feel babylike?

Yeah, parts feel babylike. Remember, it was only some parts of the face.

We're going to be baby-like?

I wish we had just done the whole face.

Yeah, you went through the torture of it all.

Yeah. Why not do the whole thing? I agree. But now that I like it, I'm nervous I'm going to get a little addicted to it.

Oh, how often can you do it? I'm not so sure. What will the dermiset tolerate?

I don't know, but I want to find out. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay.

You got to really get our guest schedule ironed out before you connect to these.

I know. Tell me about it. But maybe I won't care. It'll become such an obsession.

But you were telling me about what your diet was. You ate a bunch of what?

Oh, Erwan chicken burritos. Oh, really?

What are those? 30, 40 bucks? They're $20.

Oh my God, that place. I know. I was not... I would have probably caught that.

Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot to not ask you anything like that.

Okay, you know what else we did? We were all hanging out on this weekend, friends, and I told Eric that, and he said, How much are those smoothies again? Some of the smoothies there are insanely expensive.

Yeah, I don't want to misrepresent the place, but I do think I had a friend that was telling me he was going there and getting these $36 Yes. If you get the add-ons going and stuff.

Well, exactly. So that's what we were testing. Just based on Postmates, maybe if you go there, you could do even more damage. But we picked the most expensive smoothie, which was 2650, I think. Wow. Bace. Bace. And then we did a whole bunch of add-ons, and I think we got it to $45. Yeah.

Okay, great. Then my claim wasn't-I didn't order it, to be clear.

No, yeah. I just wanted to see. But the chicken burrito is so good.

Is it?

Yes. And it has a salatra rice and the perfect amount of cheese. And it is a soft spinach tortilla. It's so good. You want one right now? I can tell. I already had one today.

Oh, you did? Yeah. Have you had two in one day yet? No. Okay. Well, today might be that day. Maybe. All right. I love you. Welcome back. Thank you. Great to see you. You, too. What's funny is it only feels like five days since you saw me, but it feels like three and a half weeks. You know when you have those trips?

Yeah. It feels like I haven't seen you in a long time.

Okay, right. But the passport fiasco? Oh, yeah. That was like two weeks ago for us.

Yes, totally. Yeah, so long ago. You crammed in so much. All right. All right. Love you. Love you.