Down the Wormhole

Episode 92
When is non-neurotypical behavior something to be 'cured', and when is it something to be celebrated? Is ASD a problem to be solved, or is society itself simply too inflexible to respond to that which does not easily conform? Have our religious institutions provided outlets for neurodiversity or are they a part of the problem? Let's talk about it! 
 
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produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Adam Pryor 00:05
My name is Adam Pryor, I work at Bethany college. My favorite Halloween decoration is a giant, hairy spider that my wife got pretty early on when we were married. And it's motion censored so that when someone walks up to the door it goes. But oh, no, it's gonna do that. And it also shakes and it terrifies small children. Because it's like the size of the small child
 
Ian Binns 00:47
and is in the bay?
 
Adam Pryor 00:50
Yeah. Yeah, we we usually put it in a big web. And then it makes the whole web vibrate too. And it's made toddlers cry at our door, which I think is the goal of Halloween.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 01:07
So, Kendra Holt-Moore, assistant professor of religion at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas, and my favorite Halloween decoration is probably anything skeleton, but especially those skeletons to like sit in the rocking chairs on the front porch and just kind of like look out over the street watching people walk by they may or may not have motion sensors in them, but they still have life in them.
 
Ian Binns 01:38
Ian Binns social professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. My favorite Halloween decoration and we don't really decorate in our house, but I love walking through the neighborhood and just just seeing which house goes the most crazy, right? And how impressive it is almost like you know from home improvement that show when they would always go bonkers. It's like the TV shows always do the best Halloween things I love to see of houses come up with something like that. So it just varies every year on what my favorite would be. Which is not really answering the question. But as I said, I'm a little tired today, Punchy.
 
Adam Pryor 02:22
And I couldn't break the rule of
 
Ian Binns 02:25
Alright, right, Adam? So. Okay, so to segue into,
 
Adam Pryor 02:30
there's no, there's no good segue. So as we've been like, as we've been talking about religion, mental health and issues of mental wellness. And, in particular, sort of focusing on different aspects of that the area that I was most interested in, when we started talking about taking this up were areas of mental health, mental wellness, where we, we really look at ways in which the world gets sees seen differently. And so the one that comes to mind for me, always sort of right out of the gate is thinking about the autism Asperger's spectrum. And a big part of that was in the summers, my wife wisely requires me to read some things that are not theology, especially when I was doing my PhD because I was a little mana maniacal. And so occasionally, she would go to the library and just bring something back and be like, just read this and stop for a while.
 
Ian Binns 03:45
And she still does that, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Because
 
Adam Pryor 03:51
there's yeah, there's a there's a rule of how many workbooks I am allowed to take on vacation. Good. Um,
 
Ian Binns 04:00
yeah, Kendra, listen. Yeah, it
 
Adam Pryor 04:03
continues to get smaller and more irritating. But that's a difference. So So anyway, this this, this one year we were we were there. And she was like, You should read this book. I just finished it looks really, really good. And it was The Curious Incident of the Dog and the nighttime by Mark Haddon, which has now become a play as well, but I kind of encountered encountered it as the book. And the idea is that it's it's a mystery novel about the death of a dog, unsurprisingly. But the the central narrator is Christopher, who is a 15 year old boy. And Christopher, you learn as the book goes on, is sort of dealing with a nonspecific version of Asperger's. There's autism spectrum. And the author is just deeply clever about the ways of revealing these different experiences of the world that he has. Right. So the like, I remember sitting and being both, like irritated and sort of in awe of when the chapters suddenly skipped. So there was 123. And then it went to five, and there was no four. And I was like, bamboozled. And I kept flipping through the book and trying to figure out what's going on. And all of the chapters are prime numbers. Right. So there's the little, little details, right, that are intentionally put into the book to sort of create this, this sort of effect. What struck me about this as that may be a little different than some of the other disorders we've spoken about, but in some ways that are resonant as well. Autism Asperger's spectrum has a, I would argue, a generally more positive place in public discourse. Then some other mental health issues that we've that we've discussed. But also, there's this sort of interesting overlap with how it is that we raise up or minimize the voices of folks who have these experiences. Part of what struck me the very first time I was Reading this book, as being so important was that it did two things that I think are really impactful and important for thinking about in terms of religion, and mental health. One was that it humanized. The experience of living with Asperger's autism, in a way that as you were Reading the book, the book wasn't about someone with Asperger's, it was about Christopher Wright. And I thought that was really important and effective to remember, right. The second piece that I thought was really, really, really interesting out of that, was that it I found it at least sort of strangely affecting my teaching. And the ways in which I thought about engaging other students in the classroom. And this is the part that I don't, you know, that totally worked out. But one of the pieces that I thought was really interesting, and that is really important for me, as I started thinking about religion and mental health is that we, we make intentional choices about how, how to lift up, or how to cast to the side, non normative experiences. And religion, science, and I would argue, higher education, have a lot of roles in the ways we choose to or don't choose to do that. And so I found this book really meaningful, amusing to me, because it forced me to look at the ways in which I was treating non neurotypical students in ways that treated them as a disease vector in the classroom, not a human being. So, what's attracted me to sort of like thinking about autism, why I wanted to sort of pick this particular topic is that I think there have been so many really interesting accountings of trying to help people understand what experiencing the world, from this perspective is, like, in a way, this may be a little different than other mental health pieces, right? So like, yeah, I read The Curious Incident of the Dog of the night, but there are things like the good doctor, there have been blogs from Autism Speaks, that really, really work on helping people understand the variety of ways that this this experience occurs. And also, which I think is interesting, whether or not it should be cured. And what that even means is really really difficult when you talk about this topic. So I'm a little sad that that can rage on here cuz I wanted to like really poke at like, boy, but that's different in a religious community setting than it is where I am. But I'm curious. Just to sort of like start with like, what has been your experiences with Working with folks who would, quote unquote, be non neurotypical?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 10:09
Yeah, I could say, just, you know, what I was thinking of when you were talking are not necessarily the people that I know personally who were not neurotypical, but like people I know, people I know who I'm close to who are close to people with autism. And listening to the way that they have spoken about autism, like in my presence over the last, I don't know, five or so years, and how that has just been really interesting and eye opening. For me, and some of the ways that you're talking about Adam, of just like, you know, asking these bigger questions about what autistic people, like how autistic people see the world and how that, like there are aspects of that, like way of being in the world that it doesn't quite make sense for us to, like, pathologize, in the ways that we have, and, and so, you know, I don't, I don't know that I am aware of anyone that I'm close to who has autism. But yeah, it's just, it has been really enlightening, I guess, to hear people talk about the ways in which autistic people have like, sometimes a very hyper logical way of seeing the world and how that could, you know, be like, useful in different like problem solving settings that is just like a different kind of, like mental proclivity that like not everyone has even, even if you're just talking about like neurotypical people. And so, you know, they're, like, the neuro diversity of people. There are there, there are other like forms of neurodiversity that we just have decided, she's like, not categorize for whatever reason. And so, autism is something that we've like noticed as a pattern and have categorized it as autism. But if you think about what it means to be neurotypical, and this, like much broader sense, and like what neurodiversity is, in this broader sense, then it just makes sense. Like, it's just intuitive to, to think that like, Okay, we talked about people being like, right brained or left brained, and it would be probably odd for a lot of us to be like, Oh, the right brained people are, you know, they have a disease or something. And we, you know, it's like not, not to diminish the, like, difficult aspects of someone living with autism, because there's, like, you know, definitely, it's just true that, like, the system's not really built to accommodate them. And so that leads to a lot of problems for them, and in the classroom, and at work and in relationships. And so there's definitely, like, that's definitely there. But it's just interesting to think about how, like, maybe, maybe we could have systems in education and at work that actually did accommodate neurodiversity. You know, autism being an example of that. And, you know, maybe we could have systems that accommodate these people, and how would that how would that make the world different? How would that how would that change, like our social structures if we were including people who see the world really differently as people that were like in charge or had power in various ways to, to make us who we are? And and so that, I just think is like an endlessly fascinating question, especially listening to people. You know, try to like answer that question when they are living in like very close proximity to people who are very neurotic, neuro diverse and in different ways.
 
Adam Pryor 14:36
No, so, what I was like what I was thinking about, Kendra, it's, it's that question of pathologizing. That I think is really, really interesting, right? And how we choose to how we choose to pathologize and what the consequence of pathologizing various mental health orders or disorders is is I think, really, really interesting. And, at least so far as we've been talking about this, right, when we've talked about depression, when we talked about anxiety, the way in which those get pathologized feels a little different than something like autism Asperger's spectrum.
 
Ian Binns 15:18
Can you unpack that? What makes it feel different?
 
Adam Pryor 15:22
So well, and that's like part of what I can't, I can't quite put my finger on it. Because but he like each week, we've been talking about it, I'm going like this is there. There's something here that's not quite the same, right? So like, there's an element with like, Ian, when both you and Zack have talked about anxiety and depression, right? There's a social stigma that this is inherently unacceptable, right? And there's sort of this element of like, I'll put it crassly like, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you'll be fine. Get over it, get over it, right. Whereas with like autism, Asperger's spectrum disorder, there's a little bit less of the like, get over it. Element. Right. But also, right, there's this like, very clear element that like, people would be comfortable with me talking about someone with Asperger autism spectrum as non neurotypical. And I don't know if somebody would be comfortable with me saying like, Oh, you suffer from depression, you're not neurotypical. Right? Like, there's even this like disjuncture, in the language of how it gets pathologized. That I think is really is really fascinating. And makes me wonder, are the the ways that we talk about those, the ways that we talked about the impact of religion and science on that intersection with these mental health issues? Does that just look really different? In terms of how to how to move forward?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 16:59
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. And I like do you think out on that, because I also have that sense of, like, there's something different here. But as you're asking the question, I'm wondering, like, is it in part wrapped up with the fact that things like depression and anxiety, they're more centralized in like, the emotional aspect of a person's being, whereas something like autism or, you know, various other conditions are more, I'm not sure how to say it, but like, mental is not quite the right word. But like, they're, they're more integrated into, like, every aspect of a person's being. And it's not necessarily just about like, an emotional like, disorder, disordered experience. But it's like the way that you think the way that you feel the way that you take social cues the way that you you know, like, other behaviors that are not necessarily emotional, you know, at their core, but things like depression and anxiety, I see those as much more emotional in nature. And and I think this like, piece of how, like religious, I mean, not even just like religious people and traditions would maybe talk about them is that it maybe feels more acceptable to be like, Oh, someone with depression and anxiety like this is, this is not actually like a part of who you are, we, we, you know, can like help you, we can pray for you, we can, you know, get you counseling, do all these things to help restore you to like your person, whereas, I think not that people wouldn't also say that about other things like autism or other other conditions, but I think the approach in general would, would feel a little different. It's like, oh, this is who you are. So let's just accept you and love you and try to find a way to integrate you into our community in a way that is like loving and compassionate is like the kind of language difference that I would anticipate.
 
Ian Binns 19:23
Well, I also wonder to the idea that when we think about anxiety and depression, it at least the the thought is from from some people is that like, so for me, where I want to talk about me, I have not had to deal with anxiety my entire life. It has not always been part of my life. Right? I still also deal with depression and that has not been part of my my entire existence. Whereas someone who either his, you know, either has Asperger's or autism that, you know, the and you know, to my special friends out there may want to beat me up later, I'm sorry for lack of a better understanding of the language to use and everything but you know, that it's almost like, well, it's something you're born with, or that's just part of who you are from the very beginning or, or something along those lines. Right. And so that there's a distinction there that people may view it as I'm not saying that's accurate. But I'm just wondering if that's part of the thing of as you as we were talking about, you know, toughen up when it comes to anxiety or depression is the mentality that some have, whereas with Asperger's, or autism or something like that, it's, you don't approach it that way. Right? Because it's part of your identity of who you are.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 20:51
Yeah, that was those basically what I was saying it, but I also want to add that, like, I, I think that there, it would be, this is something I think that Zach, especially would have something to say. But I think people who have like, severe chronic depression, and have like, had it since their early life would maybe resist the idea that like that's not inherently like part of who they are. That's, that's not the way that I tend to think about it or have, like, tended to talk about it. But I wonder if that's the case for someone like that, and with anxiety too, but I think like what I've tended to experience and notice in most of the people that I know, who deal with those things is that even in chronic cases, they're like, their highs and lows. And, you know, it's, it's yeah, it's just usually spoken about in these different ways.
 
Ian Binns 22:02
Yeah. And just as a caveat, or a disclaimer, to anyone listening, please understand that, you know, I personally have been on some form of an antidepressant most of my life. So I do not, you know, my perspective minute ago is not something I necessarily hold to. I just wanted to say that that, you know, that is not how I view, anxiety or depression, you know, and we have had conversations before about when it comes to like, antidepressant medication and stuff like that, is that when I'm on that, does that is that the real me? Right, we've had those types of conversations in the past and how I am adamant that yes, that is the real me. Because that's the me that I want to be with. Right? So anyway,
 
Adam Pryor 22:48
I think there's this like, question of identity that is wrapped up in all of the versions of like, how we've talked about the intersection of religion and science with mental health that I think is really important and interesting. And so like, you know, coming back to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night, right? Like, despite my wife's best efforts, immediately after that, like I was deeply, deeply curious about, like disability studies and disability theology. And like, I just spent a lot of time immediately diving into this. So doesn't work. But
 
Ian Binns 23:26
then what was the name of the book? Again,
 
Adam Pryor 23:27
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime.
 
Ian Binns 23:31
Okay, thanks.
 
Adam Pryor 23:33
So, in what strikes me about that, and, and to me, the resources that religious traditions have been producing in disability theology over the past 25, or 30 years in particular, are so important, are just so important for it, for helping folks start to tease out how it is that we, we talk about this intersection of identity, and disability and pathology in ways that can be really effective, but also really challenging, right? Like, to my mind, the fact that we're having this conversation, and it's really hard to figure out like, Well, where do I categorize this? Like, you know, as human beings, we like nice, neat boxes that we can put these things into, right. And I think one of the really important things that disability studies has done and disability theology in particular has done has said, hey, look, those narratives that we've had in our traditions about healing and wellness, and in provement, and salvation, even can have really detrimental effects on the way that we think about and pathologize those who don't fit into the norm both in terms of physical health, but also mental health. in ways that can be either really helpful or really destructive. So, like, early on, Kendra, you mentioned this, like, it made me think of like doing like a thought experiment, right? Like, what? What would it start to look like if your social structures around you were designed for and put in place to facilitate engagement with folks who are non neurotypical? Right. Like, and I guess this is sort of like a, this is both, uh, something I think about a lot. Now that I do, I don't know, administrative II things. But also, like, I think a lot about in terms of like religious communities, right. Like, what are the things that we do that accidentally exclude people? Even though that's not what we mean to do? Oh, I
 
Ian Binns 25:54
think that happens all the time. Yeah, I mean, I think so. The reflective process is what makes it challenging, because you have to really be willing to look at yourself to see how do you do that? Which I think takes a level of vulnerability. Because you're, at least to yourself admitting that, oh, I put people in boxes, by others, I other people, right.
 
Adam Pryor 26:25
And, um, I guess there's like, part of me, that starts to wonder then, like, what's the role of religious communities in facilitating changes in that regard? Like, what are the steps that we would want? None of us are, you know, clergy, but I look at it sort of to go, you know, maybe into our own context to like, what are the things that we would look at around us and go like, that would really need to change?
 
Ian Binns 26:53
Well, so. So for me, and this will actually tie into the book I want to talk about, at the end of the show, is, over the past year, and especially throughout the pandemic, you know, I've really struggled with how people, you know, aspects of society have approached the pandemic, with lack of empathy for others. Right, and like, what I perceive as a lack of caring, and it has led, especially me with it coinciding with such a toxic political timeframe in our country, for me to have very judgmental views of others, not necessarily other people that I disagree with politically, like someone who identifies as Republican versus Democrat, that's, that's not it, it's more of the extremes. Right. And so, I have found that I'm in a place where I struggle with that a lot. And so I've purposely been selecting different books and different resources to read as a way to get back to the point where, while I may disagree completely with someone and what it is they believe and stand for that I can still see them as a person. Right, not less than not inherently evil, or something like that, that I you know, but I'm aware of that, as I said, you have to be aware of those things happening.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:47
Yeah, I mean, I guess, when I think about like a religious context, again, not a clergy person, but it you know, if we're talking about, like autistic people in particular, I did attend a church. This was when I was in undergrad at church. And there was, there was a young man who started coming really regularly to the college ministry stuff. Who was on the autism spectrum. And I think that, you know, kind of reflecting on that experience, and just what it felt like on a Sunday morning to, you know, to speak with him and to like, watch them interact with other people. I think that like using the autism spectrum, as an example, the greeting time in the morning, in like religious spaces, and again, you could apply this to other organizations in which there's like this kind of loose social time of interaction where people are expected to greet each other or, you know, in like a conference context to like network with each other? Like, what is that? What does that look like? And how do you be accommodating or like welcoming to someone who might like, say something unexpected too. And if you're like, expecting a neurotypical person to be in those interactions, you might respond differently or be like, feel something like off putting or, you know, I don't know, feel awkward in a way that, like, shuts down this possibility for relationship. And I, I think I noticed, in general, like years ago, attending this church, that people, I think, for the most part really leaned into it, it was like, Oh, good morning, let's talk about the 20 pages of like, song lyrics that you wrote last night, and, like, let's like, do a deep dive. And that was just like this kind of particular interaction that you would have with this person. And, you know, maybe the next person you spoke to is just a brief handshake and like, a good morning. But it's just, I don't even know, like, how to speak about that in terms of like a system change. But it's just, I think, kind of a letting go of like expectations of what someone should, like offer you or like, bring to you. And I don't think that's always very easy to do. And it's also like, kind of exhausting to do that, if you are in a space where you're talking to, like, hundreds of people. So, you know, like, it's, I think it's a hard question to figure out what that would mean, to make a shift or like a transformation on a structural level. So I don't know, like, that's what I think of, when I'm thinking of like, the religious context, just like that particular example. But then I think in the academic context, like in my teaching, which, you know, there's like, a lot of things about being like a, in my first year as a professor that I, like, I'm learning a lot about, like my own pedagogy, and what's working and not working. And one of the things that I always feel very sensitive to, because of my own experience, as an undergrad and graduate student, are just people who are like, a little bit either, like a little bit are definitely diagnosed, or somewhere in between, really struggle with like, a DD ADHD type symptoms. And I think, like, that's, that's, it just changes the way like, you have students who are going to, like, read every single word of the page, and always do the Reading, like three weeks early, and, like, come to class and like, know exactly what they want to say. And then there are people who are just like, perpetual, like strategic skimmers, and our, you know, like, they have questions, but they kind of come in the moment, and it's not, it's kind of hard to, like, prepare how to, like engage in the classroom. And then, you know, they're like students who are just like, disengaged, they don't care. There's like, you know, a lot of things going on, or maybe they're just lazy. Like, there's a, there's a bunch of different student experiences. But I, I feel that, like, I have always sort of struggled with the, like, I don't have a diagnosis of ADHD, but I have struggled enough with like symptoms of that, that I have been tested, and have like, tried different, like medication and stuff for it. It's also the case that like, women are, in general, like less likely to have a diagnosis for that kind of thing. But it's been an inflamed part of my experience as a student during my PhD work, especially. And so I just feel like when I'm in the classroom, I try to figure out a way to, like, reward the students who are doing all the things like clearly excellent students, and then reward the students who are really trying, but they just like, there's just something about the process of like being a student, that's really difficult, but they're putting in the effort and they're showing up and they're trying to participate and so to like, do things in class that are engaging and that allow you to enter into the conversation, even if you didn't read and like remember every single person's name and every date and like, you know, all the like super specific details that some students that feels natural to them. And, and so I don't know, like I feel like that's the example that comes to mind because it's like in this, I think conversation of like neurodiversity, but you know, a different kind than what we've been talking about, but just figuring out how to like, have something for everyone to the extent that they feel that they belong either in the conversation, or in the religious community, or whatever it is. And that's really not easy to do. But I think it's worth it. If the goal is community, if the goal is inclusion, if those are really central goals to your organization, or religious tradition or whatever, then you have to do those things. And you have to figure out, I think, like how to reasonably pursue those goals. Always. So yeah, I don't know, those are, those are things that come to mind.
 
Adam Pryor 36:07
Yeah, I mean, I, to me, it's interesting that the, like, the the two things that that stand out to me, or like the conversation can kind of broaden or narrow, right, because there are certain elements that I think overlap. Anytime you're trying to figure out how to discuss engaging neurodiversity, right, even if it's different types of neurodiversity, but also, right, there's this element of being really aware that the that the specific dimensions of that neurodiversity matter for what any, like whatever practical steps you would take. Lest I don't answer my own question. Yeah.
 
Ian Binns 36:54
I mean, you've ever done that? No,
 
Adam Pryor 36:57
it's not like I it's not like I make a habit of doing that. So I, the the piece that has come to mind for me, the more that I've thought about this, and I think just by sheer happenstance, I have ended up almost every semester that I have been teaching, like on a regular basis, I have had a small, not a majority, by any stretch of the imagination, but a small cadre of students who are not neurotypical. In fact, this may be the, like, the first semester where I don't. And it felt kind of weird. But I think one of the things that I've noticed about myself in those contexts is trying to ask over and over what are the expectations that I have of this situation, that privileged people like me? That if you are just a little bit more like me, you do better here? And how is it that I, what then is my responsibility to try and create a situation where I minimize that as much as possible? So the two instances that have come to mind for me are like, and I noticed, I just try really hard not to do any more. But in religious communities where I've been a participant, and I know there are folks, in this case, generally around Asperger's, Autism Spectrum Disorder, that are non neurotypical. The question that keeps coming up for me is, why do we preach every week? That seems really silly. And not a great way of interacting with those folks as part of the community. And I don't know, at least for me, having a week off from somebody giving a sermon feels like a good idea. Because that that's not my jam. And in a similar way, right, like when I think about, like, my time in the classroom, I think about in real instances, right? Like, where are the places that my my expectations about? Well, you would just do a little bit better if you could read the text more like me, or if you could sit still long enough, Ian, to actually just engage the way that I want you to engage. Right? Like I I find myself doing that. And like, for me, the step that comes out of this is to say like how do I how do I prevent myself from asshole mansplaining?
 
Ian Binns 39:58
Yeah, before We can do that. Yeah, I just wanna say I don't mind. I still love you, buddy. It's okay even though you call me out, you know, and everyone can hear it. It's okay.
 
Adam Pryor 40:16
Yeah, it's good. People don't see that he just wanders around while we're doing this.
 
Ian Binns 40:21
Yeah. I'm still listening, though. But if I get hungry, I got a.
 
Adam Pryor 40:25
Just I know. Yeah, I think I think wireless headphones were designed just for you.
 
Ian Binns 40:32
This is probably true. Yeah. If the wired ones I had word noise canceling, I think I would probably pay attention a whole lot better to life. Right. So, yeah, anyway.
 
Adam Pryor 40:46
No, but so these are the things that like I think about when I when I when I think about this piece, and it in terms of the religion and science conversation, I think the question that comes to mind are like, one, how do religious traditions decide whether or not they're responsible to folks in their communities? Who are not neurotypical? Like? What does it really mean to take responsibility for that? So that's one side. And then the other is, which we didn't talk a lot about today. But that's okay. Because there are always ways to talk about this, like, how much does science give us an out? I kind of wonder if science is giving us a Get Out of Jail Free card, right? Insofar as it lets us pathologize things. Right, like, I can only call out even if I pathologize the behavior that he's doing in a certain way, which science lets me do a lot better than I could previously. And in like that tension is something that like, as we talk about, like other elements of mental health, and religion and science, like I'm really interested in, in trying to tease that out. In large part, because I don't think it's really hard to do. And it's not something that's like intuitive to us, like, I can't rely on my common sense to find a way out of that. And also, like, they're not my stories, I am like a remarkably weirdly neurotypical, white cisgendered reader of tax who the system was designed for, like, if anybody should be able to be successful on it, it would be, you know, the guy given all of the privileges that the system was designed to foster and develop. So how it is and what then My responsibility is, as I hear narratives that don't fit that neurotypical neurotypical schema is, is, I think, really, really important. Because it can't, it can't just be the job of folks who aren't neurotypical to advocate for themselves.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 43:12
Right. And that question is such a, you know, like, to what extent is science give us an out? It's, it's just so hard because that that feels like a question that is like, this universal question. When in fact, like, there's so much about the context in which you're in, that I think changes the way that you might pathologize this behavior in one setting, but in another, maybe not so much. And that, you know, like, I think that's why there's, there's something really valuable about you know, the, the like, quizzes, I mean, some of them are not that good, but like quizzes or just like databases that try to connect people to different vocational goals based on personality characteristics is one thing but you know, like tendencies towards certain behaviors. And I don't know like I sort of see that as this like soft way of trying to address this issue of like where you fit like if you're someone who is high energy and easily distracted and you like love to talk to people. Maybe you shouldn't be like doing super mundane tasks and a dark office in the corner never having to speak to a human for like 16 hours of your you know, day. Like things like that that are really simple. And I think kind of taken for granted sometimes is this like, fun little self reflective task, but I actually think there's like maybe Maybe it's things like that, that are just resources available for people and to get people to self reflect in a more serious way about what your own strengths and weaknesses are and to not pathologize something that is a weakness and to not like, overvalue something that is like labeled a strength. But just to understand that, like, these are your strengths and weaknesses in this role. And to just I don't know, like, change the way that we value different behaviors and skills. Because there are so many different ways to apply those behaviors and skills in different like vocational organizational, like family, social contexts. And so I think, to some extent, like that will never be this simple question, it will entirely depend on how much time we're willing to invest in helping people develop self reflective skills to put themselves or like, you know, attempt to put themselves in situations that benefit their own, like proclivities, intellectually, and emotionally and physically and all of those, all of those things. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's a lot of work and people like that, it's, it's so easy to not want to do that work, because you have to kind of give attention to like, every person, and you can't rely on these generalizations. But like, it's just the nature of being human. And using language, we do generalize, we do other people, because it's convenient. And that sometimes is like, easy, unnecessary to do in certain situations. So it's like this constant tension of, you know, meeting the needs of the particular versus the, you know, General.
 
Ian Binns 46:57
Well, that can be exhausting. Right? to I mean, it's, it takes a lot of effort, but then can be tiring, when you're trying to put forth that effort. For others, right, especially if you if you go all in, and you're always trying to be that way. Yeah, it can be tiring, and some people, you know, and there are times where I've just been, you fall back on the generalizations of type of different people just because it's easier. But then you realize, too, that if they're if it's a particular topic of something that you're focusing on as a way to instill some sort of change in people's behaviors, including your own, then you realize you need to take that step back momentarily, but then get get back to, to the work to the hard work. So you know, so it goes away from that whole notion of other people who are different?
 
Adam Pryor 47:54
Well, we should probably move on to the ending part of the episode. Do that, edit that into? No, I don't want to say anything. Why would I want to say something, I don't want to make it easy for him. I want him I want him to really struggle with how it is that he's gonna try and wrap that up. Not here to defend himself. I'm not gonna give him anything easy. By which by which to do that. In good fashion, you probably should just leave this as my closing remarks so that everybody knows that it was my fault I've done as much cheery, happy as I could do today. And so I need some suffering to come out of this episode and that are really
 
Ian Binns 48:50
proud. Well, yes, I am proud of you, buddy. Are you gonna go throw up after this?
 
Adam Pryor 48:54
Probably. It's probably going to be like rainbows and sparkles.
 
Ian Binns 49:03
That's how you got to end it and back back and be part of the title, rainbows. So okay, so for my little tidbit, at the end, my little thing I want to focus on, and I'll try it once or twice just to see how it works is I want to do a kind of talk about and reflect on a book that I either am currently Reading or have recently finished Reading. And yeah, so the book that I chose today actually, is called hold it up for the two of you but you belong. A call for connection by seven is a lossy, she is her description down here on the bottom. I love this nerdy black immigrant, Tomboy Buddhist weirdo. She describes herself but I learned of seven philosophy from 10% happier she's one of she's actually the most popular coach on 10% happier. And I've one of the many meditations in the beginning that I really liked that she did. But it was actually one of her, she's very much in to social justice work, and has a fascinating background. And one of the things that I, one of the meditations I do at 10%, happier that made me shift away from other meditation resources was one that she did about racism. And it was a very, a 20 minute guided meditation, that was a very deep dive into racism, and and trying to, you had to be willing to deal with your own level of vulnerability. Because it was not a deep dive necessarily into societal racism, or where it comes from, but looking within and reflecting on yourself. And so it was raw. And it was incredible, because I just loved how she approached it. And then I learned of the book that she was working on this book book called you belong. And instead of kind of start taking with different notes last night, that I had written throughout the book, but I just want to kind of give the general idea of what her whole argument is. And what she's trying to point out, is that she talks about in here, when she says you belong, is recognizing what the whole point of belongingness. And so she says early on belongingness truth, and it is the fundamental nature of reality right here now, whether we feel it or not. And so what she's trying to argue throughout this entire texts, is that belonging is everywhere, it is natural, that happens, everything is connected. And she very nicely kind of throughout, the entire text does a very good job of talking about how more things like ancient ways of knowing ancient wisdom. That, you know, the more scientifically minded individuals would say, is not real solely based on either, you know, something from different religious perspectives, or indigenous perspectives, and how modern science is starting to show, you know, the notion of connection, that everything is connected. And we've known that for a while now based on science, but that how that's been an argument or a part of the belief that people would call it based system within different as I said, you know, religious traditions or cultural traditions that have been going on for centuries, if not millennia, about this connection to everything. And that now science has shown it that that makes that real, right. And so how we kind of limit ourselves with our ways of knowing. And so throughout this, one of the things I really love about it, that she kind of really helps us understand. And this is one of the quotes, I love that she talks about. That she says. So I'll just read this, when you don't like the joke, you belong. When you're the only one of your race, disability or sexuality, you belong. When you're terrified to speak in public you belong, when you feel hurt, or when you hurt, have hurt someone else you belong. When you're down to your last dollars, and the rent is due you belong. When you feel overwhelmed by the horrors of human beings you belong. When you have a debilitating illness, you belong. When everyone else is getting married, you belong. When you don't know what you're doing with your life, you belong. When the world feels like it's falling apart, you belong, when you feel like you don't belong, you belong. And then she helps us kind of delve through helping us see how it is we belong. And so I just wanted to point out a couple other things and then I'll stop rambling, but she nicely sets sets us up sets up the reader as pointing out, you know, the importance of grounding yourself, especially when it comes to like things like meditation, knowing yourself loving yourself. So this is stuff that Adam you would totally love. Right? And there's a whole chapter about self love.
 
Adam Pryor 54:15
I can go I feel I can feel ready to engage this text.
 
Ian Binns 54:20
You should because it's something that will contrary Yes, this is Oh, I'm going to tell Rachel This is the book that she should recommend to you for the summer. Oh
 
Adam Pryor 54:29
my god, you
 
Ian Binns 54:31
Yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna fact I'll even buy it. Right. I'll buy it and connect yourself as another one. And then finally learning to be yourself. And so some of the things that really helped me along through this and it took me a very long time to read it because I just kept getting really interested in everything that was she was talking about is that she really does a nice job of helping us see the ways that we are connected. And as I said, one of the things that I'm starting Dealing with personally, is two people that I who, so individuals who identify, maybe they don't claim themselves as white supremacists, but their arguments indicate that they more long, you know, Lie with that mindset of white supremacy, that they are still a person, right, we may disagree completely on that perspective of things, but that they still do matter, they still are a person, we are still connected in some way. And learning that, that doesn't mean I have to agree with them, it just is recognizing that they are still a human, you know, and that they still do matter in some way. There's a great time where she talks about putting yourself in an ad in this kind of talks about what you said, if you do not have, if only you could do things the way I do things, you know, then this right, and then he joked about with me walking around and moving all the time. And seeing things and how that's something that I do a lot too. But what she did, she didn't talk about her own personal story without of learning on this journey of hers that she went through learning that we are, we are all connected in some way. And we all belong, is that she there was during the time of George W. Bush presidency, and how she completely disagreed with everything that he stood for. But that she started thinking, and she would always put herself in the I don't understand how you could come to that conclusion on these things. That doesn't make any sense, right. And we always do that. And I would argue I do that a lot now, especially with with the last presidency, and then you know, the situation on January 6, and all those things of how do you not see these things like it doesn't make any sense to me. That one thing it's important for us to understand is that we did not grow up in that person's life, that even if you know, we like to say that I like to think that if I were in that mindset that I wouldn't do those things. But that's not truly possible, because we don't have that person's life experiences. And so part of her process was recognizing that, while she may have disagreed completely, with what Georgia decisions made by George Bush, that they were still connected, and that she'll never truly be in that in his shoes, because she was not raised the same way. Right. And so trying to better herself and better understand where people come from. And so the last thing I know, I'm all over the place, and I apologize as usual. But one of the things I really like about this, because she kind of goes through, as I said, this whole notion of learning to look past or to recognize the role of your inner critic, and what the inner critic does for you, but not letting the inner critic takeover, the comparing mind of comparing ourselves to different aspects of society. And the dangers with that is that she says near the end, if you want a different world, we must imagine it, to imagine it, we must become intimate with our deepest wishes, we cannot imagine without a desire for creation, without longing for something different. We cannot connect our deepest desire without simply being we cannot long if we cannot, if we can't feel what it is we long for. And then she goes into meditation, I'm not gonna make you guys do that. But anyway, but what it did for me was is and it's still a work in progress is still trying to recognize that the role my inner critic place, as I talked about, in the last episode, the role that my anxiety plays. And and recognize instead of, because when I start going down that spiral with my anxiety, you know, one of the first things I'll happen is I'll fight the feeling of anxiety. And so then I'm now fighting two things. And so it's trying to remind myself that, while I don't like that feeling, I get during a very anxious moment that there is a reason it's happening. And so to, you know, treat it as, as I said, Last on our persona of saying, I know you're there, you're there to take care of me, but I'm in charge, right. So welcome to the party, but I'm in charge. And so that's that was really nice for me in this book. And so something I definitely recommend, again, it's called you belong by seven is a lossy. And it's just a beautiful book about learning about who you are and where you come from. So
 
Adam Pryor 59:26
that's all it was. It was so nice. I felt like it would go very well
 
Ian Binns 59:31
with one that Adam was leading to end with that. And as I said, Rachel prior, I will shout out to you that I will make sure that I get a copy of this book to you sometime before next summer. So that you can have it ready to go when you recommend a new book for Adam. And then he can give us his his view of it
 
Adam Pryor 59:54
might be a fun point counterpoint version of what to do at the end of episodes. You could read a book and I could read one and We'll see what we both find.
 
Ian Binns 1:00:01
Yeah. And then I'll have seven is the lossy they're ready to roll and she can come in. Just take us
 
Adam Pryor 1:00:10
straight through
 
1:00:11
yeah

Episode 91
In part 2 of our mental health miniseries, Ian leads us through an achingly vulnerable and well-research exploration of Anxiety. What is it and how is it different from fear? What about anxiety disorders? Can you meditate your way to happy times, or are there too many complex chemical processes at work? Is Elf on a Shelf ruining our children and turning every waking moment into a nightmarish prison-scape? The answers to all those questions and the first ever "Dead Christian Story Hour" on this week's episode! 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 

Episode 90
Welcome back to the podcast! After a brief break, we're back with new episodes to usher in our third year of podcasting.  We're getting started on a personal note, delving into the science, spirituality, and personal experience living with major depression. What is it and what makes it difference from normal sadness? How do antidepressants work? How do our religious traditions affirm or condemn us in our time of need? All that and how to cure your sadness with electric fish and cocaine. 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson  00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Rachael Jackson  00:15
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas Israel congregation in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and my superpower is my level of patience and ability to keep going.
 
Ian Binns  00:34
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, and I believe my superpower is teaching Adam Pryor.
 
Adam Pryor  00:43
I work at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas. My superpower is the ability to suck the energy out of a room at any moment I choose.
 
Zack Jackson  01:01
Or infuse it at any point.
 
Ian Binns  01:06
It's like the de luminator from Harry Potter, instead of taking the mite away. That's right, all the energy that's right.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  01:14
Kendra Holt-Moore Oh, wait, though. Assistant Professor of religion at Bethany college and Lindsborg Kansas. I'm my superpower is the ability to not sleep whenever I have anything that needs to be done. So much so that it disturbs everyone around me who loves me and there is a name for this creature that no longer is Kendra. But instead they call our neck, which is my name, but
 
Zack Jackson  01:58
it's a great name, though.
 
Ian Binns  01:59
Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson  02:02
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading Pennsylvania, and my superpower is the same superpower as Abraham Lincoln. Once Abraham Lincoln's superpower, I'm so glad you asked. Because that's what I want to talk about here at the beginning of this episode. Wait a second, actually, my superpower is transitions because oh, man, that was a good one. You don't make that transition. Even better is talking about the transition. Oh, man, everything is Christian. I'm so happy to be back. By the way, this this break to had was helpful in planning. And I know all of our lives are going crazy right now. But like Rachel said, It is good to be back. So um, this being a science and religion podcast, I do think it's important for us to instead talk about American history.
 
Ian Binns  03:04
Another one of those transitions.
 
Adam Pryor  03:07
You're gonna work Abe Lincoln in there, no matter what.
 
Zack Jackson  03:11
It's, you know, year three, and Abe Lincoln is starting like your one did with Thomas Paine. We're just gonna name drop along the way.
 
Adam Pryor  03:21
I can't hate on Abe Lincoln, though.
 
Zack Jackson  03:28
Oh, man. But I want to talk for a second here at the beginning about the difference between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, because there's a lot of differences. And way back in the day in 1858, the two of them were locked in a tight Senate race in Illinois. And, you know, a Senate race in the Midwest in the 1800s was not all that exciting, generally speaking, not like Senate races today. But this one was special. This was the very first instance of American political theater, which we all have come to know and love slash hate. today. Most of that being the fact that it seemed like the issue of slavery was finally going to get talked about because it's been kicked down the road by generations and generations. But now with new states forming now we had to actually talk about the thing. And these two men, they stood on opposite ends of that spectrum. And also, there was a whole lot of new fancy technology that was making this local race into something more national, there was this newfangled thing called the electric telegram, which allowed news of things to spread hundreds of miles 1000s of miles, like in an instant. They also had all of these new trains all throughout the Midwest. And what would happen in these debates is these two men had Is that there would be stenographers there, and they would be writing down the transcript in shorthand as they went. And then at halftime, because there definitely was a halftime, they would give their notes to a person on a train. And that person on the train would write out the shorthand into long form. And then at the end of the train would hand it to the typist at the newspaper, who would then start and then at the end of the debate, the second half would get there. And so by like an hour and a half after the debate was done, the full transcript was already written and ready to be printed in the newspaper, which then got sent all over the Chicagoland area and out into the Midwest and like, this sort of thing had not happened before. So these men were not just talking to, you know, the good folks of Freeport or Galesburg, or whatever, but they were also talking to people in New York, in Virginia, they have this, this debate about slavery became bigger than just this local race. So on one side, we've got Stephen Douglas, a man that is not on any dollar bills. Because he though he won this race, spoiler, sorry. History kind of forgot about him. He was a little guy with a big mouth. He was known by his contemporaries as the greatest debater in generations, if he couldn't convince you and the crowd of the truth of what he was saying, then he would find a way to destroy his opponent so badly that everyone thought the other person was an idiot. He was he was amazing at what he did. He was confident. He was well known. He had the backing of the well established Democratic Party, he had great hair. And then on the other side, we've got Lincoln, a man who was six foot four, and 178 pounds, like literally a scarecrow. And he had a high pitched squeaky voice, and wore a giant hat that made them look even bigger and skinnier, like visually, not a great guy. He was also the member of the Republican Party, which was brand new, didn't have a lot of support. And at the time, he was neither pro slavery nor pro abolition. So he made everyone mad, and nobody really appreciated his position. So like on paper, this should have been such a landslide that we never heard of this Abraham Lincoln guy ever again. But Mr. Lincoln had a superpower. He did a superpower which would propel him into the national spotlight and eventually lead to his presidency. Abraham Lincoln's superpower severe clinical depression. That's right. Severe clinical depression though they didn't call it that. Back then they call it melancholia. But now if he were to be diagnosed, that's exactly what he would be diagnosed with. Which Same as me. So me and me and Ava were like the same guy. Except he was six, four and 178 pounds and I'm six, three and 270 pounds. So you know, a little bit bigger. But anyway, six, three, I am six, three.
 
Ian Binns  08:26
I did not know that.
 
Zack Jackson  08:27
I know. I'm only about four inches on your screen. But yeah, real life.
 
Adam Pryor  08:32
Okay, carry on. Sorry.
 
Zack Jackson  08:36
So, there are a couple of times in his life that he he went on, like an unofficial sort of suicide watch, where his family, his friends and family in the neighborhood would take turns checking in on him every hour or so. He couldn't get himself out of bed. And his people were worried about him. They removed every sharp thing out of his house. They brought him meals, and this would happen for like weeks at a time. He told a friend of his once that he never carried a pocket knife on him because he couldn't trust himself. There was one time when he was running for Senate, a little girl came up to him with her autograph book and asked for an autograph. And he wrote in this autograph book. The girl's name is Rosa. Rosa. You are young and I am older. You are hopeful I am not enjoy life. Eric grows colder pluck the roses air they rot
 
Ian Binns  09:38
Wow. Just makes you feel
 
Zack Jackson  09:43
warm. fuzzies right. For a little girl pulled out and looked at it was like Oh, thanks. I guess it's I think maybe he had some of Adams superpower in there too. Yeah. So, us, people, we people who live with this sort of depression, we kind of, we find ways to cope with it in the day to day grind, how to get through the day when we feel like our souls being sucked into a black hole. For me, I have always found music to be a good outlet, writing music, playing music, or being in nature has always been helpful. For Lincoln, it was being overly productive. He just worked himself until he fell asleep. And really sad poetry, which he wrote, and which he memorized other people's and used to recite at dinner parties. And that would suck the energy out of the room when he did. Or horribly inappropriate humor. He loved dark humor, too, I think most of us who are depressed, like dark humor, but those fixes are kind of like insulin for a diabetic. They, they help you get through the day. But they don't cure anything, they don't fix anything. So his his real transformation came in 1842 when he was 31 years old, and he checked himself into a hospital and received intensive mental care which 1842 this is before there was real medication, or this is pre Freud, and all of that. And so intensive psychiatric stay in those days meant a lot of sleep, quite a bit of cocaine, and Mercury and perhaps some electric shocks. Which by the way, on a side note, people have been using electricity to try to solve head problems since at least the first century. I found I found this out from there's a doctor named scrub bonitas largas. And he writes that if you have a headache, all you have to do is catch yourself a torpedo, which is a type of electric Ray, like, like a sting ray that lives in the Mediterranean, and then put it on your head, and let it electrocute you a few times, and then throw it back in the water and then you'll be fine.
 
Rachael Jackson  12:21
That's genius.
 
Zack Jackson  12:23
Yeah, so we've been electrocuting ourselves to make ourselves feel better for a very long time. And we're still doing it. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that later. But whatever he did in there was enough to get him well enough to get out and to get a mission. Like he started to see his depression differently. After that, like it was it was less of something that he suffered through and more of something that he could use for a better purpose. He, he he decided that he should use his suffering, to help alleviate other people's suffering. You see, studies have shown that happy people are really bad at fighting injustice, like truly awful. And I'm sorry to all of you happy optimists out there. It's just not your gift. Happy people tend to overestimate their abilities. They trust people too much. They see the world through rosy colored glasses. And so they don't see the need to change things all that much, because things don't look so bad to them. But we people with depression, we are under no such delusions, we think we can't stop seeing the things that are wrong, because that's just how we see the world. And we're a lot more able to empathize with the downtrodden because we are so often downtrodden ourselves. So our superpower kind of also our kryptonite, also. So Lincoln took that melancholic heart and He pointed it towards the systems that kept kept people enslaved. And while other people talked about slavery as a political issue, as issues of, of, of laws and regulations and logic and history, and blah, blah, blah. When he got up there, he spoke from his heart. And people like modern historians would say that, like, you felt what he felt when he spoke, like when he spoke, you knew that every word that came out of his mouth was coming out of his heart, and that he wasn't just a politician, that he wore his heart on his sleeve. And that level of authenticity is just so rare, that vulnerability and authenticity is so rare in in people that when a person like that comes around who's willing to speak so freely from their own feelings, it's like people listen, you know, Fred Rogers style, people connect with that on a deep level. So that was what came through and all of the communications all of the The newspaper articles that came out, they'd be like, wow, yeah, Douglas was great. But man, Lincoln really believes what he says. And that kind of authenticity became the fuel that would propel him into the White House. Eventually, he, he turned his coping mechanisms into the keys that would unshackle millions of people. His love of poetry became these heartfelt speeches, his need to stay busy kept him focused on the work of emancipation, his dark humor became something that endeared him to people in ways that other politicians didn't, he was just such a unique person who learned how to use his, his depression, for good. And that's something that I can relate with a lot, as somebody who has spent my whole life struggling with depression, and not naming it until I was, I don't know, maybe five years ago, or so, I've talked about my own journey of mental health a bunch of times on this podcast. So suffice to say, I only started seeking treatment a few years back. And it was only when I realized that I wasn't really able to be the father that my son needed that like, I couldn't get myself up to care for this baby, I couldn't feel deeply for him, I couldn't. And I had this this struggle, this debate, when I started taking my first medication. It was like, I stopped being able to be so creative, because music and creativity was one of my outlets for my depression. And so I'd only known how to be creative in depression. And so without the depression, I stopped being creative. So I had to make a choice. At that point, it was like, do I focus on the, on my son on parenting on trying to empathize with him? Or do I focus on my creative pursuits. And that was legitimately hard, because a lot of my identity was wrapped up in that. And sometimes I still wonder, like, what it would be like if I was not on any medication, but I, I'm really grateful that I have chosen to stay on. And from what I've learned about, like, what the signs of depression is, really confirmed that, that it's really important to stay healthy, and not just to get better for a while. And I'll explain why in in a bit after our first break, but yeah, so so my own personal journey, I feel like has mirrored Lincoln's, in some ways, obviously, on a much smaller scale.
 
Ian Binns  17:51
So far,
 
Zack Jackson  17:53
so far, sure. But in realizing that the thing that has been my burden my whole life, this depression, actually has become one of my superpowers, not only being able to empathize with people, and to be present in suffering, but to also have the ability to speak from a place of knowledge for people into people's lives who are suffering is not something that somebody without depression can do. And so I'm coming to terms with then how to see that in myself, I'm starting to see it more in characters in Scripture and throughout history. And we'll talk about that in just a minute. But let's take him just just a brief moment. 20 seconds to breathe, because that was pretty heavy. So one of the most helpful books for me. It's written by Andrew Solomon, it's called the noonday demon, an atlas of depression, which if you haven't read, you should if you suffer from depression, it's really helpful. And if you don't, it's really helpful in helping you to empathize with someone else. In trying to define even what depression is. It's very difficult, but he says, grief is depression in proportion to circumstance. So everyone has grief. Depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance. It is tumbleweed distress that thrives on thin air growing despite its detachment from the nourishing Earth. It can be described only in metaphor and allegory. St. Anthony in the desert, asked how he could differentiate between angels who came to him humble and devils who came in rich disguise, said that you could tell by how you felt after they departed. When an angel left you, you felt strengthened by his presence. When a devil left you felt horror. Grief is a humble angel who leaves you with strong, clear thoughts and a sense of your own depth. Depression is a demon who leaves you horrified. Which has totally been my experience of the thing. Again, it's a great book, because it's really hard to describe the, what it feels like to be depressed. And it's even harder to describe the physicality of depression. Can I tell you on a personal note, when I first saw my psychiatrist, and I was like, Hey, can you explain to me what's going on with my neurotransmitters? Like, I've heard I don't have enough serotonin, or I don't have enough of what is this? And it's making me and he said, Oh, well. Alright. So there's a certain sort of neuro mythology out there. That which is a great word, by the way, neuro mythology, that the only thing that is wrong with a depressed person is they have some bad chemicals. They don't have enough of them, or they have too much of them, and there's just out of whack. And if you fix the chemicals, you'll find it. I say it's neuro mythology, because it's too easy. It gives an easy answer to a complicated question. When in reality, we don't entirely know. So we kind of accidentally stumbled into these medications called SSRIs, or Selective Serotonin re uptake inhibitors. And they seem to boost the level of serotonin, which seems to make some depressed people better. So then by correlation, perhaps a lack of serotonin was the reason for their depression. And that's kind of we're just kind of trying things, throwing them out the wall. And if it raises your levels, you're fine. Because the thing is, you can't tell what your what the levels of neurotransmitters are in your body without a spinal tap. Because of that whole blood brain barrier. So there is no way for them to know what your chemical levels are like, and what your neurotransmitters are able to do. And so we just kind of throw things at a wall until they work. So just like on a very basic level, throwing these words around, when any part of your body wants to communicate with any other part of your body through your nervous system, it there's an electric charge that goes through the neuron. And then it gets to the end, where it releases a number of different neurotransmitter chemicals into the little space in between, they call that the synapse. And then they float around and they go over to the next neuron. And when they touch that there's receptors, and they kind of like, you know, the square one fits in the square hole, and this one fits in the circle hole. And they, they go in, and when they latch in there, that tells that neuron Oh, okay, so that's the thing we're doing, okay, cool, and then sends electrical signal down again. And so if you lack a certain type of, of neurotransmitter of chemical, then the transmission is less than good. And so like serotonin, we have found is really important for mood regulation, and for self control for energy. So like, we just assume that people who show these symptoms maybe lack these neurotransmitters. And when we do experiments where we boost them, pay, they get a little bit better. So we assume that they're connected, but we don't honestly know how. And it seems like there are some things having to do with maybe damage in the brain itself, or chemical levels. And then obviously, there's a part of it that's like learned that psychological where it's like you're dealing with trauma, and it's so complicated. And I wish it were as simple as just take a pill, and then you're fine. Me too, right? Ian and I are on the same medication. So we have some solidarity there.
 
Ian Binns  24:35
I feel like it's a hit or miss process.
 
Zack Jackson  24:37
And it really is and you don't know if it's going to work for like two weeks and then could either
 
Ian Binns  24:43
be okay or utterly miserable.
 
Zack Jackson  24:47
I was transitioning medications at the beginning of the pandemic. And then during Holy Week and Easter in a pandemic while transitioning medications with two small kids at home, and it was the Worst couple of months of my life, because all of my chemicals were thrown out out of balance because of that, you know, and then life itself circumstances were awful.
 
Adam Pryor  25:11
I feel like the short answer, whenever you end up talking about brain chemistry is like, it's not simple. Like, there should just be like an Asterix by every study about brain chemistry to be like, maybe
 
Rachael Jackson  25:27
for these particular people only.
 
Zack Jackson  25:30
Yeah, I mean, the future of this is in figuring out the genetic markers that cause certain things. Because we know that mental illness can be hereditary, I could trace the, the melancholia, in my own family, between, especially through the men in my family, and all of the men in my family chose to deal with it in different ways. Some of them through alcoholism, and secret vices, and some of them through religiosity and prayer. And some of them like me, through medication, and, and therapy, we kind of have all found ways of dealing with this thing that's gone through our bloodline. And my doctor tells me, you know, once we can isolate a bit better, which genetic markers are involved there, we can then just take a DNA test, and then they can create a medication for you, that is tailored to you. And so now it's just like, hey, here you go. Rachel made me a wonderful cross stitch, and sent it to me that says, If you can't make your own seratonin storebought is fine. And I love it and it's in, it's on my wall. Because I need that reminder, the storebought is fine. It's way more important to stay healthy than it is, even if I don't understand the process of it, even if it's like, I hate the fact that my happiness comes from a bottle, I should be able to do this on my own. I'm strong enough now that I don't need this anymore. And I've done this to a bunch of times where I've been like, well, I've been good for six months now. So I'm going to tell my doctor, I want to get off this medication. And then he'll be like, Well, okay, if you say so. And then I'll, I'll have a horrible regression. And then it will be like, Okay, we got to start again. And then it takes me a while to get back on. And it's just the whole thing, because my goal is to get off of the medication and to stop having to have my happiness in a bottle. But the problem is that depressive episodes are a bit like concussions in that every time you have one, it gets easier to have another and they last longer. And they're a little bit worse, actually. Jon Gruden, who's the department chair for Lopez and young. He studies long term effects of sustained stress in the depressive episodes. And he wrote that if you have too much stress and too high level of cortisol for too long, you start to destroy the very neurons that should regulate the feedback loop and turn down the cortisol levels after stress is resolved. Ultimately, this results in lesions to the hippocampus and to the amygdala, a loss of, of neural networking tissue, and the longer you remain in a depressed state, the more likely you are to have significant lesioning which can lead to peripheral neuropathy. Your vision starts to fade in all kinds of other things can go wrong, which reflects the obvious fact that we need to not only treat depression when it occurs, but also to prevent it from reoccurring. Our public health approach at the moment is just wrong. People with recurrent depression must stay on medication permanently not cycle on and off of it. Because beyond the unpleasantness of having to survive multiple painful depressive episodes, such people are actually ravaging their own neurological tissue.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  29:03
Hmm. Blood Pressure just spiked. Listening to that.
 
Ian Binns  29:10
My watch did tell me to take a breath,
 
Zack Jackson  29:12
your cortisol levels just went up hearing that and you need to find a way to get him back down again. Sustained stress is bad for you. There are natural ways, right? Y'all I'm sure have natural ways of calming yourself. Right. What do you all do when you're in this sustained periods of stress?
 
Rachael Jackson  29:38
I crossed it.
 
Zack Jackson  29:40
Yeah.
 
Adam Pryor  29:43
I ride my bicycle.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  29:47
I paced around the living room. physically exhausted myself.
 
Ian Binns  29:54
I will go out, sometimes about side. Sometimes I'll meditate. Though the Lego do a puzzle, something like that. I picked up golf again, on vacation. So there are times when I've gone to the driving range, if I have the time, I found while on vacation, there was a we always play when we're down there. And the last few times we've gone I haven't played I'd started to bring my old clubs that my dad gave me years ago. So they're very old. And we, I would play with play with my father in law and brother in law down there and I was hitting it pretty well. And it's just like, it's kind of fun. I'm not taking it seriously. I'm just out here enjoying myself and then one afternoon while we were there. It was a lot of downtime. We weren't doing anything. And so I just kind of look my wife and said, Honey, I think I want to go play nine holes by myself. You're out with it. She said sure. So I've called the course because I made some courses right there and they said Yeah, come on. So I went play nine holes by myself put my headphones in and listen to a podcast. And it was a great two hours. Like it really helped. And so we found that Wow, that's so now I bought a new set of clubs. not expensive though. But it's it's very therapeutic. And I found that it's nice for me to go out there and just do that this time for myself to think and and just or let go.
 
Zack Jackson  31:20
Yeah, well, I was gonna say I hear two themes that the neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has talked about a lot in his books, the the arousal and acquiescent systems in your body, the the ones that you get pumped up, and the ones that you get brought down. And in both of those, if you overdo it, you're the thinking part of your brain starts to shut down, as it focuses on just that part. And you get out of your spatial awareness you get out of your cognitive areas, the parts of your brain that are overthinking that are causing the feedback loop of cortisol to keep going. And so when you work yourself out, like on a bicycle, or walking or running, you're flooding your body with such high levels of these, these chemicals that it's like whoosh, wash afterwards, or if you're doing something repetitive, like cross stitch, or knitting, or golf, or meditation or something that does the opposite, that relaxes you so much that it gets you out of that, that cycle than that to, then once that stupid thinking part of your brain is done overthinking, then the natural parts can get through and flesh it all out. I mean, you see this in religious ritual, right? You either have things like tribal dances, right with the drums and the repetitious things, or you have something like a meditative, like the home, the sound of a slow Bell or something. You even see that that's the difference between modern Christian worship songs and old timey hymns is, is the same kind of deal. You're trying to either raise yourself up and do it an ecstatic state or bring yourself down into a lower state. But both of them are trying to get out of your own head to let your brain fix itself. And that's so important.
 
Rachael Jackson  33:17
I love I love that I love this idea of especially in religious contexts, without even necessarily knowing why we're doing those things, right, as you're saying those. In Judaism, there's a there's a word for it called a knee goon. And a goon is a wordless melody, or a repetitive, a few words melody that will come up frequently. And we'll just say the same thing for 235 minutes, it'll be the same thing. And there's really something very powerful about that. And so it's nice to know why it works.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  34:16
Think it's also really scary, like the people that I know who have depression and have tried, or are in the process of trying all the various medications and nothing's working. It's just scary to her. I feel very much for those people who want a medical solution and are not sure how to navigate like, at least in the meantime, until something works if something is going to work. Not everyone knows how to navigate like other activities to help manage those symptoms. And that When people become really desperate, and so, yeah, I just, I, I know that that is a very scary process for people to just mean it's hard to like go on antidepressants anyway, like it takes, there's an adjustment period and all of that, but for nothing to work, I know people who are like, you know, trying the last thing before they go into like anti psychotics. And that's a whole other category of drugs. That is very, I mean, like, you don't want to mess with that stuff, if you don't have to, because, you know, that's, you have a whole other set of issues that can come up with, with those things. And, yeah, it's just, it's a lot, it's a very confusing puzzle that for some people seems to like not really have a solution, except, you know, whatever it is that you can try, that makes life a little bit more manageable. And like, giving you that ability to reach, not not happiness so much, but like a state of equilibrium. It's like all people really want at that point.
 
Zack Jackson  36:15
There's some really exciting breakthroughs in transcranial magnetic stimulation. Previously, the last ditch option for people is to, like knock them out unconscious, and then electrocute them a bunch of times in the head, electrode thought shock therapy, it's silent and can lead to memory loss and all kinds of things. But this technique, which is been approved, but your insurance won't pay for it until you've tried, literally everything else takes off course, right? focused electromagnetic stimulation into very specific portions of your brain. So they do a brain scan first. So they can identify where exactly your how your brain is situated. And then they'll do these wonderful tests, where they'll like, they'll, they'll try to locate your like motor centers. And then like, once your hand twitches, they'll be like, oh, yep. Okay, so that's where that is. And then Okay, your nose switched, okay, that's where that is. And then they can triangulate where your mood centers will be. And then use this magnetic stimulation through, like this special hat, it looks like the kind of thing that you use at a like a beauty salon to dry your hair. And it just stimulates that one part. So it's really focused on just that one part. And it, it basically exercises it because the theory is that it's underdeveloped. And so it's like it's massaging it, and it's helping it to move and whatnot. And so you do this for every single day, it's a half hour sessions every day, for a month. And then after that, most people are fine. And they might need to come in for a tune up every couple years or so. But instead of like medication that increases the, the chemical levels in your, in the synapses, this goes straight to the brain, and tries to help massage an underdeveloped part. And it seems to be working really well. And there's a lot of new breakthroughs in the technology. And if insurance would catch up and help more people get it, then it would be it would be so helpful. But I love the fact that we discovered 1000s of years ago that you could electrocute your head and feel better and that we are still doing the same thing but with science.
 
Rachael Jackson  38:52
It was science back then, too. They just didn't know why.
 
Zack Jackson  38:56
I call it that. Yeah, he also used to use sting rays while the electric rays to cure hemorrhoids too. But I didn't look into the specifics of how that word
 
Rachael Jackson  39:08
awkward interesting.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  39:09
I have so many questions.
 
Rachael Jackson  39:12
I don't want to know the answers. I love this idea. And I think and without getting so much on that soapbox. I'm just moving past that conversation guys. Without getting so
 
Adam Pryor  39:26
jealous derailing. Like, no, no, no. That's all I'll do. I'll stop I'll stop
 
Rachael Jackson  39:35
is one of the challenges that we have in westernized medicine. And I'm framing it that way because I think even in places that have universal health care, which you know, America certainly needs to get on that bandwagon. But even in those places, it's still crisis management. It's not actually preventative or care. It's It's, it's all emergency medicine, it's all Something is wrong, let's treat what's wrong. Not let's actually figure this out way upstream. So the insurance industries, but also just our frame of mind of saying, we don't have to wait until we see where something is wrong, to try to help a person live the best life that we know they can live. And I think if we change our mentality with that, where we can catch up for a holistic perspective of what life can look like, will enable each other to to thrive in ways that we're not yet capable of. And then I also just want to respond to partly what you were saying, Zach, but not directly to you, but to the concept of this mental health and this, so several people very close in my life also suffer from deep clinical depression. And I suffer so and I have suffered from not clinical depression, but situational. And so it's very, very different than that. But having said that, when I look at our screen, three of us are wearing glasses, right? And we hear this idea, or you have said yourself, sack, you know, I wish, I just wish I wouldn't have to take it out of a bottle. And I wish, you know, I could just find happiness this way. And we've learned that health is health, regardless of whether it's mental health or physical health or emotional health, health, spiritual health, right? It's health. And if we're unhealthy, then we need to do whatever it takes to get us healthy. And none of us are going to be like, Oh, I just wish my eyes would work. And I'm just not gonna wear my glasses today. Because maybe today will be the day that they just decide to work. Maybe today, I'll wake up and my, my astigmatism will magically mend itself. We never ask a person to make that kind of ridiculous jump. And that because we recognize that that's just not going to happen. I'm never going to not need my glasses. Unless perhaps I go through some sort of surgery, in which case, it may or may not help it, but probably not like, especially with my astigmatism, I'm always going to need glasses. And, and there's nothing wrong with that. And so I think if we get to the point of as a society, and then hopefully internally to say, okay, so there's something going on with the physical part that we don't fully understand. We don't know why this is happening. We don't know why this part of your brain needs to massage or is underdeveloped, or these chemicals are or are not working. We don't have the why yet. But if we can get to a point of at least saying, great, we have something that's working. Why make a person feel bad about that. And don't expect yourself to be any different tomorrow. Adam, you don't like this?
 
Adam Pryor  43:19
Wow. You know, like no
 
Rachael Jackson  43:22
poker face.
 
Adam Pryor  43:22
I'm not on board with like shaming people about mental health. Let me start there. That's not okay. Clear? Yep. I'm on board like, okay, so like, usually when I disagree with you, it's just like, full like, No, it's not that
 
Ian Binns  43:42
nobody can see, can I stop just for a minute? Can you make sure you include all of that in this transition? Cuz fumbling is is awesome. Sorry. So
 
Adam Pryor  43:52
here. This is what I wonder about though, right? Because I like the I like the eyeglasses analogy, right? So nobody says I'm going to wake up in the morning be like, Ah ha, today, I won't wear my glasses, and my eyes will work. But also, right, like, this is a problem that's really well explained by the reductionism of science. Right? Why do I put a lens in front of my eye because I have a very clear understanding of how the light is refracting into the wrong spot. Right
 
Rachael Jackson  44:21
now, but 500 years ago, we didn't
 
Adam Pryor  44:24
know but those pieces of being able to answer the why and the development of the technology were much more parallel than what's going on here. And I think this is the place where I look at I go like, I wonder if issues of mental health fall into a very different category, because I'm not sure there is a good reductionist answer to the why. Like, there's a little part of me that says, like, is this a problem at which science starts to break down in its investigation, because the rules of how science investigates things can't ask all the right questions
 
Rachael Jackson  45:03
while still living within an hour, an ethical and moral way of treating human beings. Absolutely,
 
Adam Pryor  45:08
absolutely. Right. Right. But even I mean look like even if you do some of the things that aren't moral or ethical, you may run into some fundamental problems were because these issues, bridge that element of the reductive descriptive nature of neurotransmitters, and big feelings. You know, as my teenager is having, right? There's some, there's some drugs that should be invented for puberty, I've decided
 
Ian Binns  45:48
a couple of years.
 
Adam Pryor  45:51
So this is like, I do sort of wonder like, does this become a space, particularly in things like religion and science conversation, where it doesn't follow the neat categories that we have to talk about that. And I think the the hope, especially in Western culture, is that we've put in medical science to be able to do those sorts of things, or are in to heal in very specific ways, the bounds of what that means are really stretched in this case, which, you know, only adds to the feeling of anxiety and depression in the situation.
 
Zack Jackson  46:54
So what has been your experience from the religious side of depression?
 
Adam Pryor  47:02
I actually wanted to ask you Zack, like, do you use any, like, specific religious traditions?
 
Zack Jackson  47:09
In what way
 
Adam Pryor  47:10
in terms of thinking about ways of, of managing or, or trying to address those feelings of depression,
 
Zack Jackson  47:18
or when you're talking about managing religions have done a great job with that, I mean, they always talk about doing yoga, for example, doing something to get into your body, or meditation, something to get into your mind. prayer and whatnot. You know, I, personally, I've said this before, too, it's kind of my religious tradition, when I was discovering my depression said that you're too blessed to be stressed, and that depression is a problem for atheists and not for Christians. And, you know, so I know I've worked with, I've worked with my therapist on this, I know that those things are not true. I find more comfort in looking at some of the people in Scripture, like Jeremiah, for example, the weeping prophet literally wrote a book of the Bible called Lamentations. All he does is cry. He is a sad emo boy, who felt so deeply the destruction of Jerusalem, that he couldn't help but weep and his weeping became the song of a generation, and helps other people to deal with the trauma that they were experiencing. And it's something that probably only someone who feels the depths of despair like that can can do. And so like God using him, not in spite of his depression, but because of it was something it's just important for me to, to help categorize my feelings, give them validity.
 
Rachael Jackson  49:01
I'll add to the religious side to that. In our tradition, it's not necessarily taboo. And it my heart just hurts hearing this idea too blessed to be to be depressed, like it just is revolting. But also we have this term called Shonda, right? It's public shame. So don't talk about it. We're not going to tell you you don't have it. Y'all feel it, but we don't talk about it. And that's where I've decided to make a big change, right saying no, absolutely. We talk about it and using those subtle signs as well as the obvious science, like on my bulletin board in my office, I have, you know, the here's the suicide hotline, business card, and here's the phone number for Nami. National Alliance of mental instant National Alliance of Mental Health Institute, something of that and on my bookshelf, like it's here's the Here's how Judaism and depression looks right. Like I make it very obvious. And then when I talk in my classes and my sermons, I totally talk about it. Right? My sermons at least once a year or during the big holidays, I talk about mental health this year included in this year, I'm using King Solomon. Right? I mean, Zack, right in Jeremiah, I think King Solomon, who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, he is right, all is futile. You kidding me? Right? Like, all is futility? utter futility. Right? Like there's an entire chapter on how utterly futile all of life is you telling me he's healthy? That is not the sign of a healthy, well rounded person who's saying these things, right? There's existential issues going on. So recognizing that they exist in our tradition, and that we should talk about it right? daska, like, we have to talk about these things. And I think that's the role that science has made that religion can play is allowing people to explore this need of themselves and encouraging them to utilize the best science that exists. To find this way I love the word they can do use equilibrium at a bare minimum, and then hopefully grow from that point.
 
Ian Binns  51:20
But how do we reach those who mean we talk about instant places in the Bible, that based on how we interpret it shows that you don't need to have shame? If you suffer from depression, or you have depression, right? And yet, the Bible is still as we know, with everything, right, the Bible is still used to instill shame on some people. So reaching the individuals who still feel shame because of someone else, telling them the Bible suggests it. And I know I'm majorly paraphrasing, making this easy, or simplifying it, but those are the people that need to be reached. Right? And we need to be helped.
 
Rachael Jackson  52:08
And I think the best that we can do is try to make broad, build those bridges of making that happen. Right, that I'm not the person who would have ever said those things I'm right, that that would never, that would never be my way of thinking. Right? But if I can't reach out, they're not coming to me, perhaps I can reach someone who is talking to them. Right that, that in my way of saying these things, I am opening doors for people to open other doors for other people to come in. Right? That that that's that's our way of reaching people that don't want to be reached also is not through us talking. But it's through the overlap. Got to bring in a Venn diagram sometime today. I can't talk directly to the said person. But perhaps we share a person in common that would then say, hey, look at this, here's an alternative to what you've learned. So I don't know if that?
 
Ian Binns  53:11
Does. That's my first
 
Rachael Jackson  53:12
offensive.
 
Ian Binns  53:14
No, no, no. I think part of the issue we're dealing with here too, though, around mental health, and something that we can address throughout this series is that, you know, if you pull back from the role of the Bible, there's a major stigma in this country around mental health. And I know there are elsewhere but let's just focus on where we are right now. But there's this whole notion that if you have struggle with your mental health in some way that you're not supposed to talk about it, because of the shame associated with that. And then we see the number of military personnel or retirees who you know, it's like 20 or 22, who take their lives every single day. Because they're, you know, taught that and a lot of them are typically men, and they're taught that you know, you're supposed to be a hardened warrior. So you can't talk about these these touchy feely things, and then they end up dead right? We lost that workout group I'm part of that three. I did not know him that well. We met a few times he took his life about a month ago. Because and people were shocked people were like, I have no idea I had no idea is struggling I had no idea that struggling and I didn't know him that well. I'm certain the signs were there but we don't know to look for them if because of the shame he he may have felt but that stereotypically goes with mental health is that that's one of things i've you know, Zack as I've once we met and as we got to know each other, I've always appreciated how on Facebook when you talk about your struggles with depression in your, in your journey with your depression, that you have equated it to things like us. Or arm or something with your heart or something that people tend to talk more freely about than they do if it's something with your brain, right, and that is just another part of your body. So that's that I approach it a lot that way ever since I saw you do that. I thought that made a lot of sense, right? Yeah. And so it's, and we've had many conversations on the show about who is the real me, based on the meal medication or the Minato medication.
 
Zack Jackson  55:30
You know, one of my favorite things about the Bible as a whole. Both the Hebrew and Christian versions is that unlike most ancient texts, it doesn't seek to idealize people. Like, if you if you're Reading about some Babylonian king from the Babylonian texts, you'll read all about how handsome he is, and how muscley he is and how he never loses and how he's God's favorite person, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like you read about King Saul, or David or Solomon or like, like David is lifted up as the greatest King ever. And he's written all these songs, and he's such great guy, but man, the Bible tells you all about all the awful things that he's also not. Right. So like the gospels were written by the or supervised by Jesus's disciples. And so they're the ones writing this book, and they are portrayed as such nincompoops in there. Like, they did not try to sugarcoat themselves, they presented themselves as they are. So you can read this. And you can see yourself in it. And you don't see some idealized version that you can never live up to. You see people who struggle, people who are honest, sometimes up How about what they're feeling, and how they're struggling what they're dealing with. And then you see a God that is still good. And that uses, uses their weakness, as as their strength as their superpower. And that is one of the overarching themes of Scripture, as always been that that's why I have these two scripture verses tattooed on my wrists that the one is from Psalm 33, I believe that he spoken all things came into being and the other ones revelation. At, behold, I'm making all things new, that the beginning and the end of the story of the Christian scriptures anyway, begins with his creation on both ends, that it's taking the old in the broken and making something beautiful with it, like, like a mosaic, and not just shaking up the edges sketch and starting over again, because this one got broken. I love that. And I need that, as somebody who dwells in darkness on the regular. That's actually how I met Rachel, was I said that story about how the Bible begins and ends with creation. And she said, whose Bible? my Bible doesn't end that way. And I was like, this person, this person is going to be my best friend, but it's gonna be great. My life is so much richer, because she's in it. Oh, hey, Rachel, I didn't see you there.
 
Rachael Jackson  58:34
I want to say thank you for taking us down this journey. And for being again, so open and vulnerable with us. Not just the five of us, but anyone who's listening and anyone who feels like we can share this. That we can really share this with others. So please do so right. Even if even if you've never shared an episode or a podcast before with someone, I think having this open conversation about struggles is really important. So please feel free to share this and any other episode.
 
Zack Jackson  59:13
I just want to say one final thing as we as we wrap up that and then to read you a poem that I discovered that the goal as we often see, it is pure bliss, and hope and joy and laughter and all the good things. And we imagine that mental health is some mental illness is something that is keeping us from that pure bliss and only if only we had just the right combination, we would be happy all the time. And we think of hope as something so blessed and wonderful and I want to affirm the grittiness of life and of you the listener and you my fellow hosts and to say that Sometimes life is dirty and the bloody and is still is beautiful. And so I wanted to finish this by Reading a poem by a poet named Caitlin seda. That's called hope is not a bird, Emily, it's a sewer rat. This is directed at Emily Dickinson, who wrote a lovely poem about how hope is this flattering bird that comes in on the wind and I found this one to be much more inspirational. Also, there's a couple of expletives in there. And so, if you're listening, and you're a child, maybe plug your ears. Also, if you're a child, you're a super cool kid for listening to this podcast so good on you. Okay.
 
Adam Pryor  1:00:48
And probably you don't need to plug your ears at this point.
 
Zack Jackson  1:00:54
Hope is not the thing with feathers that comes home to roost when you need it most. Hope is an ugly thing. With teeth and claws and patchy fur that seems some shit. It's what thrives in the discards and survives in the ugliest parts of our world, able to find a way to go on when nothing else can even find a way in. It's the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as optimism, persistence, perseverance, and joy. transmissible as it drags its tail across your path and bites you in the ass. Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird, Emily. It is a lowly sewer rat. That snorts pesticides, like there were lines of coke, and still shows up on time to work the next day, looking no worse for the wear,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore  1:01:52
huh. Now I want to cross stitch of that monster, that monster
 
Adam Pryor  1:02:03
feels like one that could go in my office. snore snorts lines of coke and shows up for work the next day, who's pull that right.
 
Rachael Jackson  1:02:28
And on a different note, we have decided this year, year three of our podcast at the end of every episode, each one of us is going to share something. And one of the things that I Rachel love to share our stories from my tradition. And so I hope that you enjoy this story this week. And next week, we are going to be so excited to hear from one of the other hosts and each week, we will rotate what our story is. Sometimes it will be connected to what we are talking about. And sometimes it won't. So stay tuned for the end of every episode and let us know what you think. Today I wanted to share a story with you about prayer. And just a note about many Jewish Oh folktales whatever, they always have men as the primary. So if you've heard this story, I'm just gonna change the gender because I don't think men get up all the fun. So just putting that one out there. So once upon a time, no, not really. One day. There is a farmer in the field. And she is tilling away. And she's working really hard because every farmer I've ever met works really hard sunup sundown 365. incredibly hard work. And this person, because she is a farmer, she doesn't have time to study. She doesn't have time to pray. She doesn't have time to be a learned scholar. She does the best she can. She prays to God, whenever she needs to, in whatever way she feels she can one day or very learned scholar comes along, is driving his carriage and he stops and he sees her praying in the fields and he says, What are you doing? And she says, I'm praying. And he responds, you can't pray right now it is not the time for prayer here. Let me teach you. And she says, okay, I've always wanted to be a good Jew. I've always wanted to be a good pray er, and so she agrees. And this very learned scholar comes and lives with her and in the house. And every day for six months. He teaches her When to pray, what words to pray, how to pray exactly the right things, to do the choreography, when to bow, when to shuffle all this stuff when she learns it, because she's a great student. And then he says, Thank you for giving me this opportunity to teach you the right way to pray. And then he moves on. And he leaves the house, and she is still a farmer, tilling the soil every day harvesting and reaping when necessary. And day after day, she slowly forgets she forgets, is it two steps forward? Or three steps forward? And then how many steps back Do I have to take? And do I go left first or right first, I don't know which way to bow. And she starts getting confused. And she starts getting upset because she knows she's doing it wrong. And so she stops praying. And she no longer goes out into the field and says the prayer of her heart. She no longer prays when she's moved to. And that's how she lives her life. And the learned scholar dies. And he goes up and he meets God. And God says, What did you do? to this farmer, he went, God, I taught her. She was such a good student. She learned she learned all the prayers. And after six months, I felt my job was done. And I moved on. He said, I thought I was doing exactly what you God would have wanted me to do. And God responds, how dare you? How dare you. She has not prayed a day since you told her that she did it wrong. She was my best prayer every day, she would pray to me. And she poured out her heart to me. But you came along and told her she did it wrong. And now she hasn't prayed. That is not your role. How dare you. What we learned from this is even if we have all the rights and the rituals, the smells, and the bells and the choreography, there is no right or wrong. The best prayers are the ones that are genuine, whether they be written down, or whether they be in our hearts, whether they be a prescribed times, or it's spontaneous ones. The ones that affect us are the ones that we feel there is no wrong way to pray.
 
Zack Jackson  1:07:49
This has been Episode 90 of the down the wormhole podcast. If you enjoy this podcast would you do us a favor and share it with your friends. That's a simple way that you can help our third year to be our best year yet. Thanks also to our Patreon supporters for helping us to make this podcast happen. If you'd like to donate to the cause, you can find [email protected] slash down the wormhole podcast. We'll be back in two weeks as Ian helps us to understand the science and spirituality of anxiety and how mindfulness meditation has helped him to persevere. We'll see you then.

We're back with new episodes starting next week, but in the meantime, we want to make sure that you are all aware of the incredible science and religion symposium that is happening this weekend at Palmer Seminary. Zack has put a lot of time and energy into making sure that this is an event that is worth your time. Check out the website to register for in-person or online space. It will be recorded and available after the fact as well, but make sure that you register to get the link! 
 
https://www.palmerseminary.edu/science

While we are hard at work on the next season, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. Way back at the beginning of this awful pandemic when everyone was stuck inside binging on Netflix, we did a series on some of our favorite movies. This episode was simultaneously spiritually uplifting, raucously funny, and somewhat NSFW (depending on your tolerance for eyeball hooks and heavenly orgies). If you haven't seen Star Trek: Generations, make sure you watch it before listening or else much of this will make no sense! 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
 

While we are hard at work on the next season, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. This one was our fifth episode way back on September 4th 2019. When we recorded this, we had no idea how the battle for scientific and religious authority would devolve into a battle for our very lives. Should we trust the institutions that created these vaccines? Should we trust our religious leaders who claim to speak for God? Should we trust what the internet has to say about health when we can't even trust it to tell us the truth about the hit 90's cartoon, Street Sharks? 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
Produced by Zack JacksonMusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
PS - Zack's audio did not record properly, so we had to use the backup recording which is why it sounds so bad compared to the others. 
Show Notes:
Street Sharks and the problem with history:https://www.geek.com/tech/how-i-used-lies-about-a-cartoon-to-prove-history-is-meaningless-on-the-internet-1656188/
The definitive guide to the Denver Airport conspiracy:https://www.denverpost.com/2016/10/31/definitive-guide-to-denver-international-airport-conspiracy-theories/
Hawaii Telescope Project, Long Disputed, Will Begin Construction:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/science/hawaii-telescope-tmt-mauna-kea.html
The Oven of Akhnai:https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.59b.1?ven=William_Davidson_Edition_-_English&lang=bi
Note from Zack: After editing the past few episodes, I realized that I've mentioned Thomas Paine at least five or six thousand times. This is because I just finished a massive biography on him, and have had no one to process it with. I do apologize and will henceforth make every effort to diversify my 18th/19th century pop culture references in future episodes. I will leave you with this gem from the October 1783 edition of The Onion...https://www.theonion.com/historical-archives-i-cannot-help-that-women-are-oft-a-1819584502

While we are hard at work on the next season, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. This one originally aired on January 15th, 2020.
 
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Our Human Origins miniseries keeps rolling as we explore the implications of art, social structures, and burials among Neanderthals and early Homo Sapiens in the Stone Age (specifically about 65,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE). How much can we infer from the clues they left behind? What of the small idols that predate all known religions by 15,000 years? Was God speaking to early humans like God speaks today? Are we making too much out of too little? Why does spirituality always seem to pop up whenever humans are around? 
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
 

While we get the next season of DtW ready, we are re-releasing some of our favorite episodes. This one was especially fun.
 
This episode originally aired on June 16th 2020
 
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We are thrilled to welcome Dr Scott Sampson to the DtW podcast! Those of you with small children probably know him best as Dr Scott the Paleontologist from Dinosaur Train, but there is so much more to him than time traveling cartoon dinosaurs! In his book, "How to Raise a Wild Child", he explains how he left his dream job in academia and devoted his life to spreading the love of science and nature to the next generation, because unless we become a people who love and understand our world, we're doomed. We get into some of the teaching strategies that he has developed to help all of you parents who suddenly became home-school teachers, as well as practical ways to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. He casts a vision in which humankind rediscovers their love of the natural world, develops technology in tandem with it, and becomes a force for good for the sake of all living things. All that to say, it's no accident that the answers to life, the universe, and everything are contained within episode 42. 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis