Podchaser Logo
Home
Reality: Stories about one's perception of real life

Reality: Stories about one's perception of real life

Released Friday, 24th November 2023
Good episode? Give it some love!
Reality: Stories about one's perception of real life

Reality: Stories about one's perception of real life

Reality: Stories about one's perception of real life

Reality: Stories about one's perception of real life

Friday, 24th November 2023
Good episode? Give it some love!
Rate Episode

Episode Transcript

Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.

Use Ctrl + F to search

0:00

This holiday season, give the gift

0:02

of glow with Osea's limited edition

0:04

Super Glow Body Set. This three-piece

0:07

kit has everything they need to exfoliate,

0:10

hydrate, and glow all over. For

0:12

a gift that will impress, give Osea's

0:14

Super Glow Body Set. Right now,

0:17

you can get the Super Glow Body Set valued

0:19

at $126 for only $79 when you use code GIFT at oseamalibu.com. That's

0:26

code GIFT at oseamalibu.com.

0:32

A science story, huh? Is

0:35

NYU a scientist?

0:36

I felt it. I was so happy. I

0:40

figured it out. It was that golden moment.

0:43

Because science was on my side.

0:55

Hey everyone, welcome to the Story Collider, where

0:57

true, personal stories about science help us

0:59

to discover how weird and wonderful

1:01

it is to exist in this world and be human.

1:04

I'm your host, Misha Gayeski, and this week, our

1:06

stories are all about reality,

1:08

and perception, and the doors of perception,

1:12

and how we never know if this is real

1:14

life or just a fantasy.

1:17

Stop me before I include any more classic rock

1:19

references. Up first, Sean

1:21

Musgraves. Sean knows little about questioning

1:24

reality. He's a lawyer, journalist, and

1:26

lawyer who represents journalists. His

1:28

work has appeared on Politico, The Verge,

1:30

Vice, The Intercept, The Boston Globe, as well

1:32

as the Netflix docuseries How to Fix

1:35

a Drug Scandal.

1:36

His story was recorded at Smitty's Bar in Washington,

1:38

D.C. in April this year. In

1:41

Sean's story, he can't figure out why it always

1:43

feels like he's experiencing déjà vu.

1:46

A true mystery worth investigating.

1:49

Here's Sean. Sean

1:56

Musgraves So

2:00

my whole life I've been the smart

2:03

kid. That was essentially my

2:05

entire personality in high school. I

2:07

was obsessed with cramming for timed tests

2:10

and my SAT scores, my AP

2:12

scores, ask any of my high school friends, I was

2:14

so obnoxious. My

2:16

greatest asset was my smart kid

2:19

brain. Now, fast

2:21

forward from high school to December 2012.

2:25

This smart kid that stands before you

2:27

has finished college and finally

2:29

accepted that I'm queer and

2:31

had been dating a guy named Santi for

2:33

a few months. I switched

2:35

majors constantly in college and

2:38

at the end it came down

2:40

to journalism or go to law

2:42

school. I figure

2:44

let's give journalism a shot and then maybe we'll

2:46

try law school in a few years, we'll see and

2:49

on this day I'm doing my

2:51

first serious interview for

2:53

a serious story. I'm

2:56

interviewing the deputy chief of police in

2:58

Somerville, Massachusetts, which is just outside of Boston.

3:02

I ask another question, we're almost

3:04

done, and all of a sudden this

3:06

intense wave of deja

3:08

vu just hits me and

3:10

my stomach sinks because

3:12

I know what's about to happen. It's

3:16

very, very hard to describe, but

3:18

even more than 10 years later,

3:21

but it's like a dream

3:24

or a movie starts playing on

3:26

top of reality. I

3:28

don't lose consciousness and I can still see

3:31

this deputy chief of police that I'm interviewing,

3:33

but I can't hear what he's saying in response

3:36

to my question and I actually

3:38

can't speak for about 30 seconds, I

3:40

just

3:41

sit there.

3:43

This has happened to me before and it's actually

3:46

happening to me pretty frequently at

3:48

this point, but I have no idea what these

3:50

spells are, how to make them stop. I

3:53

actually think that they might be hallucinations and

3:55

so I am terrified to tell anybody,

3:58

my family, my closest friends. My

4:00

as-yet-unofficial boyfriend named Santi.

4:05

Whenever I feel the deja vu start,

4:07

I usually just run and hide

4:10

in the bathroom until the spell passes,

4:12

but I can't always do that, like when I'm

4:14

interviewing the deputy chief of police. So

4:17

I just sit there nodding along. I

4:19

can't hear what he's saying, but I nod along, and

4:22

I wait for it to pass, and

4:24

then I just quietly pack up my things

4:26

and leave. Soon

4:29

this is happening every single day, then

4:31

multiple times a day, and finally,

4:33

after way too long, I go see

4:36

a neurologist, and he immediately diagnoses

4:38

me with epilepsy. These are

4:40

actually seizures that I've been having, and I'm relieved

4:43

that they're not hallucinations, but I'm

4:45

still really confused. These

4:47

are called absence seizures, which

4:49

are entirely cognitive. They don't have any muscular,

4:52

like convulsive component, and

4:54

a lot of the times they start with what's called an

4:57

aura of deja vu, just like

4:59

what I've been having. Now, I have never

5:01

heard any of this. This is pretty overwhelming,

5:03

and then I tell Santi what's going

5:05

on, and he immediately says, oh, those are absence

5:07

seizures that you're having, right? He's

5:11

a scientist. And

5:17

these types of seizures often come

5:19

from your temporal lobe of the brain, which

5:21

plays a really big role in memory

5:24

and language, and sure enough, I get an MRI, and

5:26

there in my left temporal lobe is

5:29

an abnormality of some kind. My

5:32

first neurologist thinks that this is damage

5:35

from a minor concussion that I got a few

5:37

years ago. It's a totally separate

5:39

story, but the smart kid, the

5:42

summer before college, basically belly

5:44

flopped off of a cliff into

5:47

a small pool of water. Totally

5:50

separate story. But I got a minor concussion,

5:52

and so my first neurologist thinks that I basically

5:56

given myself epilepsy for

5:58

the rest of my life by... to coming to peer

6:01

pressure as a teenager, which

6:03

is crushing, of course. Thankfully,

6:07

the belly flop theory apparently was

6:09

total bullshit and did not hold water for very

6:11

long. Hold the water. My

6:15

second neurologist thought it was absurd.

6:19

She looked at a new MRI and said,

6:22

oh, this is actually what's called a cavernous

6:24

malformation. It's basically leaky

6:28

blood vessels in your brain that can cause

6:30

ears when they bleed a little bit. Small

6:34

crumb of good news that I didn't actually give myself

6:36

epilepsy. It was probably congenital. So

6:39

I start on anti-seizure medication, and

6:42

I hate it immediately.

6:45

Anti-seizure medications work by

6:48

basically slowing down your entire brain

6:50

to prevent misfires. And so

6:52

they turned this fast, smart

6:55

kid brain into a drowsy,

6:58

sluggish, lethargic

7:01

brain. There was also a little bit cranky,

7:04

Santi noticed. And

7:07

so all of a sudden, I needed to sleep tons

7:10

more. I needed coffee to get going

7:12

every morning, which was not the case before. And

7:15

I actually had to really concentrate

7:18

on thinking and speaking

7:20

and reading. I hated it. And the drugs

7:22

didn't actually always work. I

7:24

would start a drug and have this honeymoon

7:27

period for a few weeks or a few months.

7:30

And then the seizures would come back, including some really

7:33

big convulsive seizures in my sleep,

7:35

which were terrifying to both of us. And

7:38

then surgery came up, actually

7:40

taking out this part of my temporal lobe.

7:43

And I said to, by now, my third neurologist,

7:47

that kind of sounds like a lobotomy. I was joking.

7:51

And he makes no eye contact with me

7:53

and says, well, technically, it is a

7:55

lobotomy. And I

7:57

asked him, we stopped talking about lobotomies again. But

8:02

then I had to take more meds

8:04

because the seizures came back and so neurologist

8:07

number four makes eye contact with me and

8:09

brings up surgery again.

8:12

Surgery

8:14

could set me free from

8:16

seizures and from the medication,

8:18

but obviously there are a lot of potential

8:21

risks from operating on your brain like dying.

8:25

And also maybe impairing your

8:27

speech, impairing your memory depending on what

8:29

they need to take out of this part of your brain. And

8:32

so I hold it together during that conversation, but I just

8:35

fall apart outside the hospital. I'm terrified

8:37

of what the surgery could do to me

8:39

if it goes wrong. And

8:43

then we finally find a combination of three

8:45

different anti-seizure meds at pretty high dosages

8:47

that keep my seizures under control. So

8:50

we drop the surgery conversation. It's

8:53

about 2018 by this point. I decide,

8:56

sure, I'll go to law school. And

8:58

we move across the country to California

9:01

and I still hate the

9:04

seizure medication. I have to ask for extra time

9:06

on the LSAT and exams, which would have mortified

9:10

smart kid Sean. But

9:12

for all three years of law school, I don't have a surgery

9:14

and I accept that this is just my

9:17

steady state now. I'm drowsy,

9:19

I'm grumpy, and I'm just a pain in

9:21

the ass to get out of bed every day. This

9:25

detente with my drowsy brain

9:27

though ended last year after

9:30

I passed the bar and was representing

9:33

reporters now as my clients.

9:36

I have been stable for a

9:38

while and so my neurologist refers

9:41

me to an expert to just see how often

9:43

should I be getting MRIs now.

9:45

Turns out this expert is

9:47

also a neurosurgeon

9:49

and he did not read my referral

9:52

or chose to ignore it because as soon

9:54

as he sits down and looks through my scans,

9:56

he says, I get why you're here.

10:00

an excellent candidate for surgery.

10:02

And I'm blindsided.

10:04

We're here to talk about something totally boring

10:06

like how often should I stick my head in an MRI

10:09

machine and he wants to talk about cutting

10:11

my head open. But

10:14

he has this bizarre salesmanship.

10:16

He has this little, he

10:18

has this model of a brain that he keeps taking

10:21

apart, like

10:23

pointing to different parts. And

10:27

so he says

10:29

to me, listen

10:32

you're on a lot of meds. Do you like

10:34

that? Do you want that for the rest of your life? Of

10:37

course not. I hate my meds and they might

10:39

not even always work. This just might be a particularly

10:41

long honeymoon period. But what

10:43

about risks? He says, he

10:45

talks about the risks like they're nothing. It's like he's taking

10:48

a bug out of ice cream. It's just

10:51

like this is such an easy surgery.

10:54

Timing though. At this point,

10:56

Santi and I were about to move back from

10:58

California to the East Coast in just like a

11:00

few weeks. So what about timing? He

11:03

says to me, you will be back behind

11:05

the wheel of a car a week after

11:07

surgery. That

11:10

sounded impossible. So I've, so

11:12

but he's selling this thing. He's selling

11:15

me surgery so hard. And

11:18

after three years of being on drugs, I

11:20

despise and I can't even remember

11:23

what it feels like to think without

11:25

them. I'm so

11:27

hope

11:29

and I go home and I tell Santi,

11:31

I think I want to have brain surgery like next

11:33

month.

11:37

And then we have some more level-headed conversations and

11:39

decide and decide not to sneak in a quick brain

11:42

surgery before a cross-country move. But

11:47

last month on June 8th,

11:51

I walk into New York Presbyterian and

11:53

I go into the operating room and I

11:55

lay down. At this

11:57

point, I am so calm. and

12:01

so ready for this after that

12:03

pitch and several rounds of like second opinions

12:05

and tests. It

12:09

turns out to be a five hour long

12:12

operation and I actually had to be awake

12:14

for 45 minutes of it because

12:16

before they were going to take out any tissue they

12:19

needed to confirm that they could

12:21

take it out without impairing my verbal function

12:24

or my memory and so they would stimulate

12:27

one part of my temporal lobe which deactivates

12:29

it and then give me some quizzes and

12:32

it's incredibly foggy my head was open. But

12:40

I do remember one which

12:42

is what is a mythical

12:45

creature with wings that

12:47

breathes fire?

12:49

I got it right.

12:53

And at one point the neurologist and I

12:55

just chat for a few minutes

12:57

about how I got to New York and

12:59

then I'm pretty sure she held my hand as they put me

13:01

under for the rest of the surgery. They

13:04

ended up taking about a ping pong ball sized

13:07

part of my temporal lobe out and

13:10

when the pathology results came out it

13:12

actually turned out twist not

13:14

a cavernous malformation. It

13:16

was actually a low-grade tumor. Specifically

13:23

a it's called a plenty is

13:25

the acronym a polymorphous

13:28

low-grade neuroepithelial

13:31

tumor of the young. The

13:33

young.

13:40

And it was also like

13:42

really calcified it was like basically like

13:44

a rock in my head they were they were dazzled.

13:47

They were and

13:56

so now we knew what's been in my head this entire

13:58

time not. belly flop

14:00

scars or a cavernous malformation,

14:03

a low-grade tumor of the young. It was

14:05

great. The

14:08

recovery also was incredibly easy.

14:13

I was walking like a couple hours after

14:15

surgery. They discharged me the next

14:17

day. Within a few days I actually

14:19

dragged my mom to the Met just

14:22

to get out of the apartment and then

14:26

a week after surgery I

14:29

was approved to get behind

14:31

the wheel of a car just like

14:36

salesman surgeon foretold.

14:40

It was unbelievable. It was so

14:42

easy. Now

14:45

even a few weeks after surgery we don't

14:47

know if it worked, if my seizures are actually

14:49

gone. I have to be on my meds for a few more months

14:52

and then after New Year's I'll gradually

14:55

ease off of them and I got to choose

14:57

which one we're getting rid of first. I

15:00

know which one we're getting rid of first. That was so quick. So

15:04

far it seems like it was the right call to cut

15:06

out a ping-pong for my temporal lobe

15:09

to do a lobotomy

15:12

technically.

15:13

That

15:28

was Sean. To learn more about him visit our website

15:30

storyclutter.org. Being a storyteller

15:32

on our stage is just one way to make story clutter

15:34

happen but if standing alone in

15:37

the spotlight in front of an audience doesn't

15:39

speak to you maybe becoming a story

15:41

clutter donor might be more your speed. Story

15:43

clutter donors play a vital role in our ability

15:45

to bring you this podcast. We're in this together.

15:48

Story clutter is one big experiment that's designed

15:50

to connect us around our love of discovery

15:53

curiosity in the natural world. If

15:55

you believe in the power these stories have in this

15:57

mission please donate to the story clutter. The

16:02

most popular level is $10 a month and

16:04

you can make your tax-deductible donation at

16:07

storyclutter.org. But

16:09

really, any level makes a difference and we're so

16:11

grateful to everyone who supports StoryClutter. Hey

16:14

everyone, I want to talk to you about something pretty cool,

16:17

especially if you run your own business. You

16:19

know how when your business gets to a certain size

16:22

and the cracks start to emerge, things

16:24

you used to do in a day are taking a week

16:26

and you have too many manual processes? If

16:29

this is you, you should know about these three

16:31

numbers. 36,000, 25,000.

16:33

36,000, that's

16:36

the

16:36

number of businesses which have upgraded to NetSuite

16:39

by Oracle. NetSuite

16:41

turns 25,000 this year. That's 25

16:44

years of helping businesses do more with less,

16:46

close their books in days, not weeks, and drive

16:49

down the costs. Then, because

16:51

your business is one-of-a-kind, so

16:53

you get a customized solution for all

16:55

your KPIs in one efficient system

16:57

with one source of truth. Manage

16:59

risk, get reliable forecasts, and improve

17:02

margins. Everything you need, all in one place.

17:05

Here at StoryClutter, we're a small team with a lot

17:07

on the go, so it can be hard to keep track of everything.

17:10

But having all our information in one place would totally

17:12

help us be more efficient and make better decisions.

17:14

That's why we can't wait to start using NetSuite

17:17

and get all our information in one place. And

17:19

thanks

17:20

to the unprecedented offer NetSuite is providing,

17:22

our dream of having all our info in one spot

17:24

is actually possible.

17:26

Right now, download NetSuite's popular KPI

17:28

checklist designed to give you consistently excellent

17:31

performance, absolutely free, at

17:33

netsuite.com slash collider. That's

17:36

netsuite.com slash collider to get

17:38

your own KPI checklist. Netsuite.com

17:41

slash collider. Our

17:43

next story is from Shane Moss. Shane is a comedian

17:45

and podcaster who's appeared on Conan, Kimmel,

17:48

and Comedy Central. The story was recorded

17:50

at our go-to spot in New York, caveat, in

17:52

April this year. And strap in, because

17:54

Shane goes there. He is the guy who's going to

17:56

give you a hilarious view of life inside

17:59

his bipolar

17:59

Very

18:12

big fan of science. That's

18:14

something I didn't see coming when I was a kid.

18:17

I was raised in a small

18:20

wholesome Wisconsin

18:23

town. I had a very aweschucks kind

18:25

of Pleasantville upbringing,

18:28

and I didn't fit into it in any way.

18:30

I never liked church, and I didn't

18:33

like all of the rules. I

18:35

didn't like authorities, that sort of thing.

18:40

Great people. In

18:42

fact, many of the people that I grew up

18:44

around, they even went on to make America great

18:46

again. But

18:51

I didn't fit into it in any way. It

18:55

felt like blasphemy just to ask

18:57

just basic questions about life,

18:59

and it was very alienating for

19:02

me. That wasn't until I

19:04

was 10 years old, and I discovered stand-up

19:06

comedy, and I fell in love with

19:08

it. Comedians could talk

19:11

about all of the things that you weren't supposed

19:13

to, and nothing was off limits. Stand-up

19:16

comedy became my church. I was just obsessed.

19:19

I knew I was going to become a stand-up

19:21

comedian.

19:22

As a teenager, I got into

19:24

science

19:25

a little bit, because

19:29

I never cared about school or anything. I didn't

19:31

know how that was going to help my comedy

19:33

goals. But I got into science as a

19:35

teenager just to argue about religion

19:37

with people. I basically learned physics

19:41

and evolution just to be a dick for

19:43

the most part. And then I went

19:45

on. I became a full-time

19:48

stand-up comedian, got to be

19:50

on TV and all these things. And my

19:53

love of science never left me. As

19:55

I started touring, I started a podcast called

19:57

Here We Are in every city that I went to.

19:59

I looked up

20:00

universities and random scientists to

20:02

ask about life and how the mind works and everything.

20:06

And learning about the mind, it changed

20:08

my relationship with myself and

20:10

how I understood life. And

20:12

it even helped me get my mind

20:15

back one time. And that's what this

20:17

story is about.

20:18

So I was in, it

20:20

was

20:21

early 2020.

20:22

I was touring

20:25

about four cities a week and COVID

20:27

shut everything down. And I lost

20:30

just everything that I did. I stopped

20:32

through my hometown to

20:35

like, oh, I'll visit my folks

20:37

for a few weeks until things blow

20:39

over. And got a hold of some

20:41

past virologists and epidemiologists

20:44

that I had interviewed years before to

20:47

ask them what was going on. And I was like, oh, I think

20:49

I live with my parents for the

20:51

next two years is what I'm finding

20:53

out. And I lost

20:56

all of my income. I lost the ability

20:58

to pay a team of people that I

21:01

had working with me. I lost a girlfriend

21:03

at the time over the whole thing. It was

21:05

awful. And I was, soon

21:08

after I lost my mind, I'm

21:12

bipolar, manic depressive.

21:14

If you don't know, that means I like to dream big

21:16

and give up. And so when COVID happened,

21:22

I went hypomanic right away. Hypomania is

21:24

like a more mild form of a full-blown

21:27

man. Very exciting. You don't need

21:29

as much sleep. A lot of good ideas. Like,

21:31

oh, what if I turn toast into bread? A

21:35

lot of weird inventions you're coming up with.

21:39

And nothing too crazy, very excited.

21:42

It's a good state to be in if you're trying to rework

21:44

your entire life. And I was

21:46

like, oh, I'm going to be in here. It's a good

21:49

state to be in if you're trying to rework your entire

21:51

career when the rug's been

21:53

pulled out from under you. And, but

21:55

usually hypomania lasts for like a couple weeks.

21:58

It's like an inspiring. couple weeks,

22:00

but this lasted for months and

22:03

it started leading to full-blown

22:06

mania, which for me it starts

22:09

a lot of synchronicities happen and

22:12

a lot of reading into

22:14

things, putting together patterns

22:16

that aren't really there, like reading secret

22:19

messages and signs that only you

22:22

can see and you're getting special insights

22:24

from the universe and

22:26

this is getting worse and it

22:29

was May 2020 and now

22:31

it's full-blown, I'm only sleeping like

22:33

a couple hours a week of full-blown

22:35

mania, having

22:37

psychosis and

22:40

I'm becoming more and more detached from

22:42

from reality and then

22:45

May 25th, 2020, I turned 40, that's my birthday,

22:50

I turned 40 living in my parents basement

22:52

and it was also the day that George

22:56

Floyd was killed and then

22:58

a few days after that, Minneapolis,

23:02

very close to my hometown, protests

23:05

happened, fires, everything else and something

23:08

just snapped in my mind and I just completely,

23:10

it wasn't like I felt like

23:12

it was a nightmare or something, it was I

23:15

completely lost sense of reality, I had

23:17

no bearing on anything,

23:19

I was convinced that nothing was real, I

23:22

needed to tell everyone else

23:24

in reality that nothing was real,

23:27

they didn't seem to believe me

23:29

and so I felt I came up

23:31

with this idea that I needed to like confront

23:33

all of my fears, to convince

23:36

myself that this wasn't real and that I

23:38

needed to like do crazier and crazier

23:40

things to like snap

23:43

out of a dream state, I thought I was dreaming,

23:45

so there I am naked and

23:48

confronting police officers and

23:51

and I'm explaining

23:54

to them that they aren't real and

23:58

they weren't taking me terribly serious

24:01

And so I very calmly explained

24:03

to them, guys I've been a comedian for 20 years,

24:06

I have dug deep

24:08

to expose every skeleton in my closet

24:11

and be as vulnerable as possible, it's

24:13

generally effortless for me. This

24:15

is what I would call a big share. I told

24:22

the police officers

24:26

that to convince them that

24:28

they weren't real, that I was

24:30

going to jump up

24:33

their urethras like Ant-Man

24:37

and then expand and make

24:40

them explode. That's a real

24:42

thing that I said well make it to

24:44

police officers. Again

24:46

they didn't take me very seriously and

24:49

I don't know if I

24:51

thought it was like if Neo

24:54

in the Matrix was a comedian

24:56

that told too many dick jokes or

24:58

something. I actually

25:01

told the story on a podcast once and

25:03

someone wrote me and I guess there is a scene

25:05

like this in this comedy

25:08

superhero series The Boys. I've

25:10

never seen that show so

25:13

great minds think alike. I guess... And

25:20

so anyhow that

25:22

was I was taken to a psych

25:24

ward that night believe it or not and

25:28

I went into the psych ward and

25:31

it was very scary and

25:33

I refused meds and

25:36

I was I just

25:38

kind of took on as much

25:40

curiosity as I could and tried to appreciate

25:43

that I had an opportunity to be a bit of

25:45

an anthropologist and get some

25:48

insights that I wouldn't normally get

25:51

and I'm really into cognitive biases. I

25:54

like neuroscience and psychology and how the

25:56

mind works and evolutionary psychology

25:58

and biology and stuff. And so, and

26:01

psychoware is a great place to see it. So egocentrism

26:05

is like a really clear cognitive

26:08

bias. Cognitive bias is just like the predictable

26:10

ways in which the human mind will often

26:13

err. And so egocentrism,

26:15

we're all born in this world thinking we're the center

26:17

of our own universe. We tend to accidentally

26:20

mistake that more things relate

26:22

to us than they actually do, that sort

26:24

of thing. We also, we have evolved

26:26

to overperceive patterns in

26:28

things because perceiving like a

26:31

pattern and shape in the cloud didn't

26:33

have a big cost to, compared

26:35

to like missing a useful pattern in life.

26:39

We also tend to perceive, overperceive

26:42

agency and minds in things because

26:44

I was so useful to evolve and

26:47

the cost involved of like talking to

26:49

your plants or something like that, or,

26:51

you know, your old vehicle or appliance

26:54

or computer takes on a personality

26:56

when it gets a little wonky and has a mind of its

26:58

own. These are all normal

27:00

things that we all have, but in a psych

27:03

ward and under stress and

27:05

under mental health issues, they're very amplified.

27:07

So everyone in the psych ward was,

27:10

you know, exceptionally talking

27:13

to things that weren't there and

27:16

working on grand puzzles and

27:18

putting things together. Everything was

27:20

about them, very self-referential. And

27:23

I'm like, man, these people are so crazy.

27:26

And then I remembered the

27:29

objectivity illusion, which is that

27:31

we tend to perceive ourselves as

27:34

more objective and logical

27:37

and rational than others. And

27:39

then I realized that all of these mistakes

27:42

they were making were the ones that I was making

27:44

as well. And once I learned that,

27:47

then I started noticing

27:49

when my mind was making errors and

27:52

I was able to create a little bit of

27:54

separation between having those thoughts

27:56

and acting on them. And my mania

27:59

just started dissolving. without any

28:01

meds or anything in just a few days. And

28:04

a few days later, the fear went

28:06

away and the

28:08

paranoia went away, and I was actually

28:10

just like very comfortable being

28:13

in a psych ward. If you want to know the trick to

28:15

getting out of a psych ward, as soon as you're okay

28:17

with being in a psych ward, they let

28:20

you out of the

28:22

psych ward. And

28:25

it was

28:28

a powerful experience for

28:30

me. I always,

28:33

as a kid, I wanted to be a big star and

28:35

a big deal, and I suppose we

28:38

all kind of do. And after

28:40

that, I just no longer really

28:42

felt very attached to

28:45

being like some big deal or anything

28:47

like that. I'm quite

28:49

happy to know that I'm not

28:52

the center of the universe, actually,

28:55

you know, a lot of pressure. And what

28:57

great news for pee holes everywhere,

28:59

too, because that

29:02

kind of power goes straight to the heads, guys. So

29:05

thank you guys very much.

29:17

Our

29:24

website is just one way to connect with StoryClider, but there

29:26

are so many other ways, and we hope you'll use all of them.

29:28

You can always follow us on social media. We're

29:31

on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

29:32

Head to StoryClider.org to become a financial

29:34

supporter. Or if you want to come to one

29:37

of our shows or want to start your own StoryClider

29:39

show in your community,

29:40

you can learn all about that on our website, too. The

29:44

StoryClider is very grateful for the support of Science Sandbox,

29:47

the Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone

29:50

with

29:51

the process of science. The StoryClider is produced by me, Misha Gajewski,

29:54

along with Nikisha Roberts-Washington, Jen Chen,

29:56

and Aaron Barker, executive director and co-founder

29:58

of the StoryClider. The stories featured

30:01

in today's episode were produced by Shane Hanlon, Miriam

30:03

Zaring-Hulam, and Paula Croson, and

30:05

Christine Gentry. Special thanks goes

30:07

out to the Story Clouder's board and staff, including

30:10

Anne Marie Lonsdale, Leslie Brimson, and Lucy

30:12

Cooper. Our theme music is my ghost,

30:14

and next week, I'll be back with stories that a core

30:16

would have liked to be and a testament to some research.

30:19

You won't want to miss it. Until next time, thanks

30:21

so much for listening. Ladies

30:37

and gents, jazz up your New Year's Eve with the

30:39

renowned Jeff Hamilton organ trio. Swing

30:41

in the New Year at the Lincoln Theatre with an unforgettable

30:44

evening of soulful Hammond B3 organ

30:46

sounds by Akiko, Suruga,

30:49

and dynamic guitar work by Steve Kolbicek

30:51

led by renowned drummer Jeff Hamilton. This

30:53

trio is a powerhouse of talent that will get

30:55

you movin' and groovin' into 2024 with style.

30:59

Join us December 29th at the Lincoln Theatre. Visit

31:01

jazzartsgroup.org for tickets and

31:03

information.

Unlock more with Podchaser Pro

  • Audience Insights
  • Contact Information
  • Demographics
  • Charts
  • Sponsor History
  • and More!
Pro Features