Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are talking about ch-ch-ch-changes. Yeah, we asked you … Changing your mind. We asked you, where we ask these questions, which is Twitter, on the Mythical account, to tell us a time that you changed your perspective on something. Could be small like a food preference, could be something big like a major belief and why. And we got a lot of responses. Yeah, I’m excited about talking about this. Yank in your laptop here so we can look at some responses, but, you know we wanted to talk about this because, and kind of mission accomplished as far as I’m concerned here, because we were hoping that it would just be a refreshing sensation of people sharing how they changed their mind. And I don’t know, there’s a humility associated with saying, “I once thought this.” And even if it’s a minor preference, “But now I think this, “I disagree with my former self about this thing, “big or small.” It’s something to celebrate in this day and age when people just dig in and there’s no conversations. And not that this conversation is gonna get political, necessarily. I mean, we got some lighthearted stuff and some heavier stuff, but it really doesn’t get into, ’cause we, you know, we talk about those things in other, well, there’s one thing that kind of gets a little political in this, but anyway, one of the reasons I was so excited about talking about this is all the things that you just said. But also I think that, you know, there’s a little bit of a selfish, a self-interest in this, which is like, you know, in ways that we have shared on this podcast we’ve changed our minds. And I’m kind of fascinated with the reasons why people change their mind. Because I think a lot of times it’s not the reason that you state, you know? And there’s just all kinds of factors. And I think we got some really honest, honest responses and I’m just fascinated with the concept of perspective change and what leads to it. And like you said, I just think it’s so timely, because it seems that there’s so many people spending more of their energy attempting to change other people’s minds in ways that we haven’t really seen before in like discourse, right? I was talking to Jessie the other day and I was like, you know, she hates going on Facebook, because Facebook has become a place where you kinda just say, “This is who I am, this is what I believe.” And then argue with people who differ with you. You know, I think at first it was kind of like, “Hey, I’m having a baby.” Or, “Look at what I did with my friends.” And then it would be like, okay, maybe once every four years during the presidential election people might start like saying what they stood for or whatever. But now it’s like a really high percentage of the dialogue is just people arguing with each other. But no one’s actually moving on anything, like you said, it’s just people continuing to polarize and kind of align themselves with other people who all agree with them. And it’s just, there’s no end in sight, right? It’s discouraging. Yeah. I mean, so we’re making a choice to not celebrate people who’ve said, “I changed someone else’s mind.” Yeah, right. “But I changed my own mind.” And to see the things that lead to people changing their minds. And let me just say, of all, we read through almost all the responses, Kiko definitely read through all the responses. None of them said, “I used to think this and I changed my mind “because someone on Facebook argued with me.” That didn’t happen in any one of these. Nobody said that. Right, yeah, so let’s get into this. I think that we can start with Aleda. @aleda25543612. There’s a lot of those already taken. Wow, there’s a lot of Aleda’s out there. 250, 2,554,000. Nope, 25 million. There’s 25 million. Is that a phone number? Can we put commas in your username so we know what the number actually is? Let’s call that number and see if she answers. Oh, yeah, it’s not a phone number? No, it’s one, two, it’s one less digit. We can probably figure it out. Yeah. All right, we’re calling an audible. This episode is now devoted entirely to … Trying to get in touch with Aleda. She responded to us at Mythical. “I absolutely hate the sound of children singing.” So you thought we were gonna start all serious. No, we’re not. It’s gonna take us a while to get through it. I don’t know, I think this is serious to her. She says, “I used to love it, “but then all those singing idol shows came out “and now it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. “P.S. I’m an elementary school teacher.” Wow. So I wonder if it’s the culture of amateur singing in general that maybe inspired a change in the youth that then she experienced personally? Or is it just the idea of seeing so many, I mean, how old do you have to be to be, you got to be like 13 to be on American Idol. Yeah, I think what she means is that, you know, she’s surrounded by these elementary school kids who were like singing in chorus and stuff like that. And it’s what wasn’t necessarily pro by any means or splendid, but still cute, lost all of its luster to the point that she actually said, “You know what? “I don’t like kids singing anymore.” Oh, I hate it, I hate the sound of children singing. “You ruined it for me.” Television idol, singing idol shows ruined it for her, but she made a decision. She’s like, “You know what?” Or, sometimes you come to grips with how you’ve changed and you just, and so that’s kind of like a backdoor decision, right? “Well, I don’t like this anymore and I’m okay with it.” So the decision is owning it. Though it would make her life easier being an elementary school teacher if she would find a way to like it. Well, she’s not, she’s not the choral. She didn’t say that, but if she said, “I am an elementary school chorus teacher.” Yeah, it would be tough. We would be outing her right now, first of all. Well, she kind of outed herself on Twitter. This makes me think of something. But it’s not something you’re supposed to, it’s something you’re supposed to like. So I do applaud her in saying, “It is a preference.” But she’s standing by it. This is what I’m getting at is, I actually recently rediscovered how much I do like the sound of children singing, and this sounds weird, I understand, but let me just … You talking about Christmas boys’ choir situation? I’m talking about Moonrise Kingdom, which I watched recently with the family. Me and Jessie and Shepherd watched it. And I’m beginning to really kind of understand Shepherd and understand the kinds of things that he will like. And so I was like, “Shepherd, I have a movie that I want you to watch, “that I know you are going to like.” Of course this is Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. And right at the beginning, I kind of look at him and he was just seeing the way things were unfolding and the way things were being described. And he just had this little smile on his face. And then he just kept looking at me and he was just like, “I love this.” He was like, “This is the kind of movie that I really like.” And he wasn’t just saying that because I had planted the thought in his mind, but anyway. Great movie. It’s a great movie, and I feel kind of bad about how much I didn’t … I loved it, I really liked it when I watched it in the theater. But I didn’t realize that this might be my favorite Wes Anderson movie. Oh really? Like it wasn’t in like the top three for me, but I feel like it is now. Anyway, lots of boys’ choir. You changed your mind about it. Lots of boys’ choir, which I’ve always kind of liked the sound of like a boys’ choir. I’ve just thought that it’s got this sort of angelic sound to it, but like the way that he uses that music in the movie. There’s a time and a place. It’s so good. It’s just so good. So I like the sound of children singing. Well, you like the sound of professional children singing. Yeah, yeah, right, not amateurs. Yeah. Professional children. Kyna is the name of the next respondent @therealkhaki. “I started drinking my coffee black “over the past couple of years. “It’s important to assert dominance over beverages. “#EarBiscuits.” Wow, there’s a lot to unpack here, Kyna. Because, man. The way that I kind of interpret this is I totally relate with the idea that there’s something more respectable, and I’m not saying this is true. I’m saying I have this perception that lives within my mind that there’s something more respectable about drinking coffee black, that it’s ultimately better. Like if you had to like rank five people and there was a person who put a bunch of sugar and a bunch of cream in their coffee on one end of the spectrum, and there was a person who drank their coffee black on the other end of the spectrum. I would respect the person who drank their coffee black. And I don’t exactly know why that’s the case. It’s more hardcore. It’s like it implies a toughness Because there’s something to protect yourself from when it comes to coffee. Because coffee is always bitter. It’s an acquired taste. Yeah, when you add cream or sugar to it, as you take a sip of your cream-laden coffee. Yeah, we’ll get to that in a second. Any sugar in there? No sugar, but … I’m a no sugar. I’m a but cream man. A butt cream man? I use butt cream as well. But every morning, every single morning, you know what, I’m realizing this. When I make my coffee and it’s going down into my mug and then I go over to the fridge and I reach for the half-and-half, I have a pang of guilt to this day because, and because of this sentiment of it’s, you know, you’re a bad-ass if you can drink it black. And here I am, you know, it’s like pouring defeat into my coffee. Yeah, okay, I have a theory about this. I think there’s two things going on, right? So the legitimate side of the migration from a lot of sugar and a lot of cream in your coffee to black coffee is a legitimate scientific process that happens with things that are an acquired taste, right? So it’s like, “Oh, I don’t really like alcohol. “Oh, but you know what? “I had a wine cooler and now I drink just white wine. “Oh, I’ll drink just a white wine. “Well, you know what? “I tried a red, I tried a Pinot Noir at this party “and it was pretty good.” And then you work your way up and the next thing you know you’re just putting back like 20 year aged scotch. You know what I’m saying? That’s a scientific process of your literal face and mouth adjusting to an acquired taste. And I think the same thing happens with coffee. So, there’s an achievement. Right. You know, it’s kind of like winning at something. If you want to look at it that way. It’s almost like there’s a purity of experience, especially when it comes to good coffee. That’s why when you go to a place like Intelligentsia and they’ve got like, you know, an $8 pour over coffee and you ask for cream in it, they look at you with disdain because they’re like, “You’re not, you’re actually taking …” “You’re not woke.” “Yeah, well, you’re not getting the experience “that was intended by the person who made this coffee. “You’re taking the edge off of something “that doesn’t need the edge off, this isn’t Folgers.” So I respect that. But I also feel like if you like cream in your coffee more than you like black coffee that trumps this, if you’re not there yet or you don’t want to go there, listen, I tried for like a year to do black coffee and I was, you know, I had multiple motivations. One was like, “Okay, it’s more healthy.” ‘Cause there’s no, you know, there’s less calories in there if it’s just coffee, but also it’s more bad-ass. But then I just came to the conclusion I’m not gonna try anymore. And then during the pandemic I’ve become what I would call a Cafe-Au-Lait-man. I mean, I’m basically … You got that extra time to whip it up. I’m just saying that I’m about 50% milk, 50% of coffee if I can be. And you know what? I love everything about it. So you changed your mind and I thought I had too, but I clearly haven’t fully changed my mind to accept my preference and not judge myself. I think that, you know, there seems to be a tinge of pride in her post. “It’s important to assert dominance over beverages.” Well, I think what she is doing … She might have been baiting you, ’cause I think this is something that you … Listen, she’s obviously saying something slightly tongue in cheek, but I think it is reflective of that sort of cultural expectation of drinking black coffee being more respectable. Which incidentally we’ve paired this with another question. I’m sorry, before you do, I did want to acknowledge that like when I was thinking of the ways that I’ve changed my mind over the years, like I made a decision to start drinking coffee in college because it’s like, “What am I missing?” And is it, you know, “Is this gonna be helpful to keep me awake?” And you know, so I actually, I changed my mind about coffee. You felt like you were becoming a, me too, we both started drinking coffee in college. And I think many people do, because you’re becoming an independent adult and you’re like, “This is what adults do.” It’s the same reason a lot of people start drinking alcohol and don’t like it at first. I don’t think that that social pressure is all bad or even bad at all. I think it’s just a natural part of life. And you actually, sometimes social pressure to mature and become an adult and actually go through the process of acquiring a taste. There’s some people who are like, “Okay, the whole acquired taste thing is just bullshit, “because what you guys are saying is “that you don’t really like it “but you’re making yourself like it. “So I’m never going down that.” But there’s a reward at the end of an acquired taste journey. Yeah, someone else made a post about whiskey. Exactly. It’s a super common process. I don’t think that’s all bad, but there is a negative element to it, which you’re kind of getting at with judging yourself in the midst of the process, right? Mm-hmm. And that’s where I think that Arshia, mythical Zan Scaz, on Twitter is kind of tapped into something. And this is what they have changed their behavior about, changed their mind about. “My behavior, I’m a textbook people-pleaser, “a very anxious person and I have abandonment issues. “All my life I’ve tried never to say no to someone, “tried to fit into social norms and be the ideal person. “Now after therapy, “I prioritize myself and my mental health.” Thank you for sharing this, Arsha or Arshia. This is by far the most common response that we got to our particular post was, you know, related to the topic of … Another way to put it is realizing that your life is your own. And if you start to trace the motives behind the decisions you’re making, if you start pulling on those strings and they go out to other people or to just other ideas outside of yourself, I think it can lead to problems, right? Well, it is an interesting balance, right? Because I do believe that social pressure in general, there’s a reason that social pressure exists and there’s a positive reason, right? We are a collective organism whether we like it or not and whether Facebook seems to reflect that or not, we are members of a community, we’re members of a collective and there’s a lot of aspects of our personalities and our biology that are kind of tuned towards us getting along in the context of a group. That’s where like the concept of shame, like the concept of shame is not intrinsically bad from a biological perspective. It comes from something that was actually useful, but in the modern world it’s mostly toxic in the way that we experience it, right? And apply it. I mean, yeah. So it does bear saying that there are certain things that no one should get away with just because it’s their prerogative. Right. Right. There’s a whole litany of those things. Yeah. But there are, you know, if you’re a well-meaning person with a certain level of humility that, you know, starts to understand themselves, like this person is saying through therapy and understanding that you’ve deprioritized yourself to the point that the fact that it’s your life is not entering the decision matrix. Right, because when you make decisions that are about your health, prioritizing your mental health and making you a better person, you actually become a better member of the collective. And you can, so you can, it’s a win-win situation when you understand yourself, right? And so I definitely, listen, I so relate to this, especially, I mean, the part about you know, being a people-pleaser, there’s things that I continue to unpack in therapy about just, you know, my personality and why my personality is what it is, but I am a people- pleaser. It’s difficult to say no, I do have this sort of idea of what is expected of me. And also a lot of times I evaluate the things that I’m doing in the context of how I will be perceived about them. And I have to continually catch myself doing that and then be like, “Hold on, are you doing this? “You’re doing this for a bad sort of like social reason “so you you’ll be accepted “or people will perceive you in a certain way, “or are you actually thinking about yourself “and what you actually like “or what would be good for you?” You don’t want to prioritize yourself selfishly so that then it takes advantage of people, because that’s a whole different, that’s a completely different concept, right? This is just about realizing when you don’t need to be making a decision, because someone else’s preference or someone else’s perception is the thing that’s driving you primarily. Yeah, you can become enslaved to other people’s expectations and opinions. Yeah. And you can die inside. Yeah. And, but realizing that opens the door to changing your mind, you know? It’s, you know, going back to the beginning, you know, I think about the phrase of, it’s like when, if somebody says something that makes you change your mind, I was thinking about the phrase, if you do want to say back to them, “You changed my mind.” And just the idea that, well, you know, sometimes you can realize that your mind has changed. You can realize that someone has had an influence over you and that it could be a true statement, “You changed my mind.” But it seems like the more healthy disposition and approach is to say, “You know what? “I am the one who changes my mind. “I can choose whether I allow someone’s influence.” Or, you know, not just a person, an experience, whatever the case may be to influence me. But it’s, you know, giving someone the power, it’s giving somebody power over you if you’re saying, you know, and maybe it’s semantics, but saying, “You changed my mind.” Versus … I think it’s important. … “You helped me change my mind, “but I’m in charge.” Again, this is my life. The decisions that I make, the perspectives that I have, the actions that I take, you know, I’m ultimately culpable for those, you just can’t say, “Well, somebody told me to do it.” Well, therapy’s the perfect example, right? Like that’s why good therapists and most therapists don’t give advice and they don’t tell you what you should think. They ask questions and they lead you through a process of self discovery, because they understand that first of all, it ain’t gonna last if it’s not a personal motivated change. And second of all, it’s like they don’t have the power to do it. Like you don’t really have the power to change someone’s mind. And this is coming from a person who tries to be persuasive, has a very sort of, “I’m out to change people’s minds” natural disposition that I have to kind of keep in check. Just reminding myself that people don’t change their mind because of those kinds of things. Now, before we move on, we’re gonna take short break in a second, but I do just want to, a related thing, just because I was thinking about it when we were talking about shame and like changing people’s minds and social media and all that stuff, is Brené Brown. I was listening to her recently and she was talking about how shame is not a good tool for social change. In other words, the way to get someone to realize that what they think is wrong, if that’s what your goal is shame is not a great motivator. It actually doesn’t do a lot to change people’s minds. It just makes them feel shameful, which then kind of, shame usually leads to worse behavior, not like actual changing and good behavior, but it seems that that’s something that happens on both sides of the, and I don’t like to do the whole both sides thing, but one of the things I’ve observed like as our country has gotten even more polarized this year than it ever was in a time when it seemed like we had a great opportunity to kind of come together, we got more polarized. Both sides tend to point out things about the other side, mischaracterize things about the other side. And in the process, the goal is like, “I’m shaming you because you think this, “or you believe this or you’ve identified in this way. “And that is shameful.” It might be true that it’s shameful. There are behaviors that are shameful. There are things that you can say and do and things that you can believe that are truly shameful, but shaming someone about them doesn’t tend to be a great way to change their minds about them. Just a sidebar there. We got more questions, but we also have a Pop Socket to tell you about. We’ve got multiple Pop Sockets, but the one that we … Is your phone falling off of your hand? Well, you need a Pop Socket. This one has the GMM logo. Available at Mythical.com. There’s also like a Feel Good Mythical Morning. Yeah, there is. And another one, maybe a Mythical one? Are you looking for another way to fidget with your phone? You’re gonna want one of these. A Mythical Pop Socket available at Mythical.com. Oh, yeah. Pop it, socket. Pop it, no, this is not a bop it ad. I like this one. Jade Marie posted, “I used to say that I hated all country music “when I really just hated the uncle “who would always listen to country music. “No one wanted to hear that opinion though.” Yeah, again, this is a … We did. … this is a case. This is a case of your perception on, your perspective of something is influenced by a relationship in a negative way. Yeah, I get it. I mean, didn’t you, you told me … But then you realize you’re making a decision. You told me a story, you may have told them the story about how you made a decision to not like music because your stepsister liked music. Yeah, when I was like in grade school, I don’t know. You know, it was just, it’s not that we hated each other, but there was this … She was your stepsister. Stepsister, there was this implied, I mean, we would argue we had to share a bathroom, you know? I didn’t … Let’s see, she was probably, you know … She was like a teenager. At least six, you know, maybe five years older than me, you know? And she, she was, she was not, she was just acting on teenage instinct. Well, you were thrust into each other’s lives at a really interesting time, right? Yeah, so I was like, “You know what? “I’m not gonna like anything that she likes.” Including music, and all music. Yeah. It wasn’t a genre. It was just like music as a thing. There was definitely, I’m sure that that was a statement. “I don’t like music.” I mean, now music is one of my top passions. Right. But, so there was a point when it was like, I think once we started, once I started going over to friends’ homes and like, “Oh, they’re really enjoying music. “I got to change my mind about this, or I’m gonna be, “I’m gonna check-out of the zeitgeist.” I think that those were the terms I used as a third grader. Yeah, zeitgeist. It’s like, “Man, I gotta get this new tape. “I gotta start listening to tapes.” Well, and specifically … I changed my mind, I’m proud to say I do like music now. A lot of people don’t like country music because of the association. And, you know, whatever you associate that with, right? If it’s the parts about the South that embarrass you, which there are parts about everywhere that embarrass everyone who’s from them. And if it feels like … Maybe it’s just the twangy earnestness of it. But I’m saying that it represents or is associated with a distillation of the things that embarrass you about a place. There’s a lot of people, we grew up with a lot of people who are like, “I think that country music isn’t sophisticated “so I’m going to not like it.” And sometimes you don’t even give it a chance. Now I will say, I went through a phase, now we always liked country music, but we always liked sort of classic country music. And there were a few sort of modern artists. Like I went, I was really into Garth Brooks in the early ’90s. I did not follow him into the Chris Gaines era, okay? I’m proud to say that I didn’t do that. Not because it wasn’t country, just because it was horrible. But I think that, and then as an adult, like, even like right after Jessie and I got married, we went through a couple of years phase where we would listen to like 94.7 in Raleigh, like the modern country. Modern country. And it was so positive and so sweet that there was this sort of like young love, married, starting a family kind of vibe that country music sort of just un-ironically embraces that we liked. Now when we go back, I don’t listen to much modern country at all right now. Yeah. I mean, I love Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson, but they don’t really, they’re not considered country by a lot of the country people. But when we go back to North Carolina one of the things that I do as a habit is we listen to local country radio whenever we drive in the car just to like kind of just dip in completely. And it’s difficult for me to take, I gotta be honest. Yeah. It’s pretty difficult. But like eradicating and writing off an entire genre of all country music, or, you know someone made the same post, but about electronic music, and then started, described how they began to understand the craftsmanship around it. And they changed their mind about the, well, true music has to be created with actual like acoustic instruments. Yeah. Or, you know, like playable instruments. And even that, I don’t know, they say the dichotomy a little bit differently, because you would feel, sense and things like that Yeah, a big boomer perspective, like the way boomers think about rap, like, you know, I’ve heard many boomers talk about rap as if rap doesn’t take any talent, right? Like, “Oh, these guys are just standing there, “and like go see him in concert. “There’s just music playing and they’re walking around.” Right. I think we have an appreciation for it, because we’ve tried to do it in parody form, you know? We’ve tried to be like, “All right, we’re gonna do this rap.” And when you recognize how hard it is to make it sound good or make it sound anywhere close to what a professional would do, you start realizing that this is, same thing with like, I’ve always had this thing about poetry, which is like, “Okay, so what’s the deal with poetry? “Especially poetry that doesn’t rhyme.” You know what I mean? It just, yeah. there’s a couple of, a smattering of words and a random indention, and then another smattering of words, then it’s over. I’ve lived long enough to know that if I were really to dive into the world of poetry, I would be like, “I see what makes a good poet.” I gotta say, I’m an unsophisticated country boy from North Carolina in a lot of ways. And one of those ways is that my favorite poet is Shel Silverstein, right? Happy to say it, but I’m sure that if I understood like the reality of what makes Emily Dickinson good that I would be like, “Oh, this isn’t just something that somebody determined. “Like there’s actually a reason for this. “And I couldn’t do it. “I couldn’t just start writing things.” Everybody thinks that they can write poetry, right? Yeah. But that’s not how it works, it’s more complex. I think that’s all I have to say about country music. John Mueller gets, you know, gets really honest here. In fact, begins to post with, “Honestly, y’all … The way he changed his mind was related to Black Lives Matter. He says, “Honestly, y’all, Black Lives Matter. “I was one of those dumb people who got mad at Kaepernick.” Kaepernick. I’m gonna say that wrong. When I see it, I’m like, “I’m gonna say it wrong.” Well, you did. “… Kaepernick “about his protest, but what happened throughout last year “really galvanized a 180 degree change for me. “Hat tip to Michael Che Matters and Dave Chappelle as well.” Hmm. Yeah, again. Thanks John, for sharing that. Yeah, thanks for being honest and vulnerable, you know, publicly. It’s not something that happens a lot, especially, you know you don’t hear it a whole lot from white guys who say y’all, you know? That this is something that they changed their minds about. So thanks for doing that. I think that, you know, we feel like we can speak with some authority on this issue, because we are white boys who grew up in the South and had perspective on these things that we don’t think it was really based in reality and was ultimately, could ultimately be described as racist, right? Not in your classic, external explicit expressions of racism that you’d see in like a movie about the deep South, but more this, this is something that is in the fabric of the way that we think and we see the world that ultimately is rooted in this idea that whiteness is the standard and whiteness is normal. And it’s, you know, it’s taken years to deconstruct that, deconstruct that and to see all the places that it impacted and all the ways that it impacted our thinking. I mean, I talked a little bit about this in my letter to a white man that I wrote. A lot about it. That was the point of it. Yeah, that was the point, was to talk to my former self. But I mean, in general, when you say, “I changed my mind about blank.” But then specifically if it’s I changed my mind about systemic racism and, or the Black Lives Matter movement, you know? That’s a loaded statement, right? Because it implies that you’re coming from a place that is rooted in the opposite, rooted in, as you just said, like in racism. Yeah. Maybe it’s not on the surface, but if you trace it back you have those tendencies and it’s been baked into your psyche and you’ve got to scrape it out over time, so there’s a confession in there. For real, yeah. You know? So that’s why I applaud John. John, whenever you say you change your mind about something there’s all there is, it’s that level of humility to say, especially on this topic that like, “I was wrong about one of the things that like … ” You know, if you could just say “I adopt, yes, I support Black Lives Matter.” And you just say only the positive, you know maybe that’s great, but to say, “I’m coming to grips with what I used to believe “and I’m changing.” I think that humility is called for, it has so much more of an impact on others as well. It’s much more powerful. I mean, listen, the reason I put that article, I wrote that article in that way for two reasons, one is I wasn’t trying to be like, “Hey, I’m an authority on this.” It was more like my primary goal this year, as it relates to these issues is just to listen and learn, because I don’t, I’m not as well educated and I don’t have the personal experience of people of color and what they’ve gone through. But the second thing was this is the only thing that might have been meaningful and impactful to me in the past is just hearing someone that I could relate to talk about these things, right? And that’s why I kind of wrote the letter to my former self. But this is a really difficult thing to change your mind on especially when you’ve got lots of people in your community and in the world, frankly, who find all kinds of ways to discredit the movement, right? So it might be anything from like, “Okay, well let me tell you what Black Lives Matter did, “Black Lives Matter was responsible for violent, you know, “riots or however you want to, you know?” So saying that because there was violence or that property damage or whatever that took place as in conjunction with the BLM protest, therefore the underlying thing that’s being fought for is illegitimate, and you can just write the whole thing off. Or you can mischaracterize the movement as “This is just a Marxist movement that’s designed to “completely rip apart the fabric of traditional America “and therefore I’m going to, again, write off, “I’m not going to entertain any empathy for this “and I’m not going to try to address “the central issue that’s being talked about.” There’s so many sort of corners that you can crawl into to avoid actually dealing with the central issue of the history of systemic racism and the way that it has morphed and changed and gotten even more sort of conniving in the more recent past and not as obvious, which makes it even harder to sniff out, but it just takes, honestly, it takes a lot. It takes a lot for people to experience this kind of change. And we personally have a lot of empathy for the people who are resistant to that change and are experiencing that change. So, you know, again, like Link said, kudos to John for sharing this, because it’s really the only way that we can see real change is the people who are holding back the change are actually experiencing the change. And I just think that it’s powerful. And it just bears saying again, because it’s, you know it might be easy for us just to say all the positive things and to say the right things about the Black Lives Matter movement now, because we are in front of these microphones and you could argue that we have something to lose by saying the wrong thing. Yeah. I hope you know that’s not what’s going on and that we’re, you know, we’re sincere about this, but part of that is saying we’ve had to change. You know, I think that’s kind of the proof in it is saying, “Well, it’s not that I’ve always been “on the right side of this. “I’ve been, I was, you know, “I grew up on the wrong side of this.” Yeah. And so making that change is nothing to brag about. It’s something that instinctively I’d rather not talk about. Yeah. But again, that’s why in general we’re championing people who say, “I changed my mind.” Yeah. Yeah. Which implies that like John was saying that 180 degree turn. Well, and I think it’s significant that, you know, he points out Michael Che and Dave Chappelle, right? And you know, both of those guys tend to be pretty polarizing figures in their own right, right? You take Dave Chappelle, Dave Chappelle says a lot of things that are offensive to a lot of people. He tends to be a very polarizing character, but I find it interesting that somebody like John would say, “Well, you know, Dave Chappelle was actually responsible, “partially responsible for me changing my mind “about this central issue.” And I think, again, that goes to that, this is not some clean process. There’s not just this, you know, everybody who thinks right about this is on this side and everybody thinks wrong about it is on this side. And you have to be, you have to talk about this stuff and you have to be right in every single way that you talk about it. And you have to be super, super consistent. When we insist on this absolute standard of excellence and complete wokeness in order to accept people, one of the things that we do is we lose the ultimate mission, which is not that we all just think exactly the same way and agree on every single thing and have some standard that we hold ourselves accountable to. No, we’ve got a whole lot of people that we’re trying to move in the right direction. The goal is for all of us to collectively get better, and that you have to take into account process. Right. And ethicacy, and I think people might change. I think, honestly, I’m not saying that, again, me saying that I think Dave Chappelle has been a force for good in this particular regard as John is pointing out, does not mean that I endorse all of Dave Chappelle’s comedy or all of Dave Chappelle’s perspectives. But all I’m saying is that I don’t have to agree with every single thing that somebody does or says in order to be able to say that they’ve been a force for good about this particular issue and be like, “You know what? “You did some good work there and that’s great. “You changed somebody’s mind.” That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to change peoples’ mind. We’re trying to, like you said, become better as a collective. We’re not just trying to be like, “Here’s the fence between the two sides “and I want to make sure that “I keep putting up boards on that fence “and make sure everybody’s over here on this side. “And let’s keep building that fence “higher and higher and higher.” No, what we want to do is we want to bring the fence down lower and lower and continue to bring people over it, you know? I would much rather be friends with someone who was not on the right side of an issue, but demonstrated a sincere open mind to it. Yeah. Than someone who believed all the right things and was firmly in the right. If, you know, if you’re able to assess that by, from any vantage point. You know, it’s just that that’s not, there’s no grace. That’s not a reflection of humanity and how, you know, the human experience of, you know, everybody’s somewhere and is not going to be right about every everything. And they’re not … You’re gonna be wrong about most things. You’re gonna be wrong about most things. Everyone is going to be wrong about most things. It’s easy to put it in the poetry example. Again, you know, if someone said, you know, “I don’t get poetry.” It’s like, “You know what?” And if I was a poetry scholar … You could have been. Or let’s say that’s what I was most passionate about. Could have been. It’s not … You have glasses. I’m with you, I don’t get poetry. But I just wouldn’t, I don’t know that I would want to converse with someone who says, “You know, I hate poetry.” Right. You know? It’s just … Versus I don’t think I understand poetry enough. I hate jazz. I don’t think I understand poetry enough to really appreciate it. That’s one way to say it. You know what I mean? And so, yeah. And again, I think that we talk about, we talk about these things in a way that may be, again, it’s, what I am saying is that I have empathy for people who disagree with me because I disagree with my past self. Right. It’s as simple as that. And I don’t know, I get so frustrated with the nature of dialogue on both the left and the right, because it’s as if the goal is to solidify the ranks versus actually make progress and move the collective in the right direction. And I don’t know, I just feel like, ’cause we get into a place where it’s just like, “Oh, that person said this thing that offended me. “And therefore every single thing they’ve ever done “or will ever do is illegitimate.” It’s like, well, I don’t want to treat myself in that way. I don’t want to treat anybody in that way. I wouldn’t want to be treated that way. Because I’m gonna be wrong. I’m gonna say things that are wrong. I have said things that are wrong. I’ll tell you something I was wrong about. And it’s this next one. Okay. Just to get, just to lighten it up a little bit. Rachel said, “I insisted we would never have pets inside the house. “Then we got our cat and I insisted “she’d never be allowed in the bedroom, “but now both our cats sleep in the bed “and I would kill a man if either of them requested it.” Oh, wow, kill a man if the cats requested it, talk about a reframing of allegiance. But I mean, yeah, for years I was like, you know, “I am not gonna have pets in the house. “I am not, you know, that’s not who we are.” And then I came up with other reasons to tell the kids why it wasn’t gonna happen. But like, I just, you know, I didn’t like the idea of hair. I didn’t like the idea of the poop, even if the poop was outside, I mean … You don’t even want poop on the perimeter. Every single time I’m just, you know, doting over Jade or babying her. You know, the kids still love to point out like, “Aren’t you glad that you were wrong about that?” It’s like, you know what, and it’s an opportunity for me to say, “You know what? “Kids, I’m glad that you forced this issue. “Lily, in particular, with the dog.” I’m gonna save any conversation about the cat that does live in our home for a subsequent thing. Yeah. I will acknowledge that there’s, we now have a dog and a cat animal living inside of our house. Mm-hmm. But I try to acknowledge. Yeah, I take it as a moment to be like, “Yeah, I am grateful that I have done a complete 180.” Like my life is so enriched and then I’ll just start gushing about Jade. But really I see it as an opportunity to, in an innocuous way, on an innocuous topic, to say, “You know what? “I changed my mind.” I did change my perspective. It wasn’t about being right or being wrong. It’s not about morality here, but it’s about humility. Of saying, “You know what? “I did change my mind and I disagree with my former self. “And my life is better because I changed “than it was before.” And don’t you think that’s really the heart of it? Is the fact that when you didn’t have animals in the house, the only thing that you had to go on was the perceived negative aspects of having animals in the house, right? It’s like you can’t really perceive positives without experiencing them, but you can kind of anticipate negatives. It’s much easier, I don’t know why, it’s just the way our brains work. But then when you began to experience the love that you can have for a dog, which started, you know? And a love that wasn’t the same kind of love that like we had for our dogs growing up, that like were like out in the shed in the back kind of thing, you know? They were more like, we had just had like a wolf that we happened to round up. No, an inside the house dog that like you receive this physical love from on a regular basis. Like your standards will begin to change very quickly, because you see the other side of the coin, right? And then you’re like, “Oh. there are going to be some inconveniences.” I mean, one of the things that I think about, and we’ve talked about this is when you decide to love something then you start thinking about the fact that this thing is not, this thing doesn’t live as long as me. Like this dog will die most likely before I will, right? If we both live to our general life expectancy, I’m gonna outlive Barbara. And now I think about, “Dang, that’s gonna be really difficult.” But I’m still willing to make the sacrifice, because of the positive that I’m experiencing right now. It’s really about, and too, if you try to take that and map it onto something that is more moral, or, you know, I don’t know exactly know how you do that. Like, how do you get someone to, I think it goes back to what you said, which is you got to make the experience personal, right? It’s not something that you’re just gonna, you can’t just sit and think about the idea of a dog in your house in your head and come to some conclusion to be like, “I love dogs in my house.” It’s like, you got to have a dog in the house, you know? You gotta have a friend who challenges your perspective. You gotta see something in somebody. You have to have a personal experience in order to change your mind about something ultimately, right? In your personal experiences it’s with having a dog in the house and now a cat in the house. And I’d much rather convey that principle to my kids than having all the answers or being right. It’s being willing to be, to admit when you’re wrong or when you’ve changed your mind on something that’s not about right or wrong even. Yeah. It’s more important than being right at any particular moment, you know? Because think about how miserable you’d be if the only thing you were doing was focusing on continuing to bolster your predetermined argument that having animals in the house was bad. I can imagine that there are dads out there, moms, brothers, sisters, who I was dead set against having a dog in the house, and now that there’s a dog in the house I’m the person who doesn’t like it and I spend all my time pointing out all the things that the dog is doing that are bad. Like what a miserable existence versus accepting it and staying positive. Yeah, because then you’re like secretly petting the dog. You don’t want to be seen, right? You have a secret relationship, and then that gets weird. You know? Right. Secret petting. Well, you know, there’s other ones, but we’re not gonna get to them for the sake of time, because … We’ll do this again. But the fact that we did have such great responses and we still want to continue to encourage people to respond. And you know, one of the things that we were talking about that I want to talk to them about, I want to talk to you about is if you’ve never responded to a prompt on Ear Biscuits, maybe that’s because you don’t follow us on Twitter or you’re not the type of person to respond to just open ended questions associated with this show. On the internet. Or on the internet in general. But we want to invite you to take a risk and do that. So if you follow our @Mythical Twitter account, or our personal accounts, we can try to do a better job of re-tweeting those prompts as well. But definitely if you follow the @Mythical account you can see every so often when we post these prompts like this one about, “Tell us about when you changed your mind.” We just want to hear from more of you. We enjoy the familiar faces and the familiar names and you really get that sense of community. And so we’re not complaining about that, but we do think there’s a whole group of people who … Just kind of watching. You know, I bet you’re a thoughtful lurker and we want to hear from you on these topics. And sometimes the questions are tough. It might take a little time to think about it, but you don’t have to answer immediately. You can come back and we usually give, you know, at least a day where you can come back and add to it before we roll everything up. Yeah, I mean, like Link said, we definitely appreciate the folks who always respond to the prompts, but we are, you know, really interested in hearing from people who’ve never responded, who might say, “I created a Twitter account just so I could respond.” So #EarBiscuits. You can continue to talk about what we talked about today, but also be looking for that next prompt that we’re gonna put out there to get your questions. And now I’m going to give my rec, ’cause it’s my week. On Disney Plus, there’s, you know, you can search by all the different brands that they own like Marvel and Star Wars, and it goes on from there. And, you know, they’re doing a lot of things where they’re creating content around content, like behind the scenes series for the Mandalorian series, which is absolutely amazing. So I got curious, and I was looking around. There’s lots of that in Marvel, the Marvel section as well, but there’s one show called Marvel 616. And it’s basically this concept of taking principles around the Marvel properties and just exploring these like tertiary ideas or behind the scenes type things. They’re all, each episode is completely different, and I’ve only watched one. So I’m only recommending episode one, which is about the Japanese Spider-Man. Hm. Now I have, I’ve had a tee shirt for years that had Spider-Man, and then it had Japanese writing underneath it. And I just thought it was a cool tee shirt. Well, it turns out there’s, Marvel licensed Spider-Man over in Japan, too. And then they created a television show for Spider-Man and it was entirely different. It was, you know, there was some emissary who pitched it to Marvel. And then, it’s a documentary on creating an alternate universe, basically a Japanese version of Spider-Man that is totally different. Does he have a suit? He looks the same, it’s the same suit, but he’s, the action adventure that he’s in, like it’s not Peter Parker. Well, that makes sense. Right. And he’s not in New York, but I mean, like he fights robots, he like drives vehicles. He still behaves like a spider, and they talk about like how they made the show. And it’s just absolutely fascinating. Is this a one-off documentary or? It’s a one-off, just that one, the one episode. And, you know, it’s all of the people who were involved in it. They even talked to the stuntman who were like, there’s this iconic tower in Tokyo. I think it’s called the Tokyo Tower. I’m probably getting all this wrong, but … Well, that’s a good guess. Well, I mean, they tell the story of him showing up, of the stunt man showing up on one of his first days and he puts on the Spider-Man costume and then they just tell him, “Okay.” He’s just showing up for work to be Spider-Man and they’re like, “Climb the tower.” With no net, no safety mechanisms. He free climbs this tower and then they use that shot in like the closing or opening credits of the show. I mean, you want to get your money’s worth if someone’s gonna put their life on the line. But all the stuff this guy would do, like they would, they didn’t have any budget, but they would, it was important that they were like high-action. What years are we talking about? This is the ’70s. Okay. And like, so he would fight these gigantic robots, because you had to have gigantic robots in Japanese shows. Right. That’s what all of them were. Right. So it’s at every turn in everything they do, it’s just splendidly strange to us as Americans who know our Spider-Man, but because, you know, they were able to separate things and there was no internet. And like, they didn’t share shows. And Marvel said, “Do whatever you want with Spider-Man “to make it work over here in Japan, “but it can’t leave Japan.” Right, and it could be contained at the time. And it could be contained. And so now if you watch these clips, it’s just like bonkers to us and the stories are equally bonkers. So I would definitely recommend that, Marvel 616 episode one. Episode one, maybe you’ll watch episode two. Thanks for joining us. #EarBiscuits. To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of Ear Biscuits click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your mythical best.