Listen now | Kevin is an actor, comedian, and host of the RISK! podcast — which Slate.com called “Hilarious, jaw-dropping and just plain touching,” and Rolling Stone named it one of its top podcasts.
I found the intro interesting but had a different takeaway. I try not to split hairs too much or find offense when I encounter opinions I don’t agree with, but I hope my perspective will open your view. As a woman who grew up in (and lives in) a tourist destination, I wholly disagree. All leisure travel, even the best-intentioned, is tourism. The destination benefits economically, though often marginally. The expectation on tourists to spend money isn’t unfair whatsoever - it’s at least as fair as the expectation that a traveler will be welcomed. Most people don’t realize just how much these places change and spend to accommodate the tourism industry. It’s far less beneficial to locals than the travel industry would have us believe. Even if I agreed with this point, it frankly bears no resemblance to women’s experiences. Unlike tourism, being a woman isn’t the same as being a commodity. Traveling means accepting a financial give-and-take for certain privileges. Women moving through the world are simply doing what men are doing, and that should not come with any expectation for others. We’re moving through our space. Travelers are moving through others’ space.
I wonder if Kevin has had people who, months or years after they recorded a story, ask them to take them down. I really doubt many people are aware of the powerful ramifications of having your 'riskiest' anecdotes being shutgonned into the electronic Akashic records. It feels more dangerous than having your nudes floating around 4chan.
Thanks for the conversation. Especially those part when you were talking about personal stories and how they can change over the course of time. Reason is, that I've been thinking about one's own past and how we relate to it for a while.
One often hears the phase "You cannot change the past."
Of course we can't. Or can we? Without meaning the following too metaphysically: What is the past except that, what we are remembering (or telling our stories about)? The past itself is not here, we're only living in the present. The past only "exists" insofar as we are remembering it and by doing so, we are relating to those memories mentally, emotionally and even physiologically. Aren't we all shaping our identities by the narratives we're telling us about ourselves? Again, this isn't meant as an metaphysical claim about what our identity "is", but merely the observation, that we are story telling animals and that a lot of what it feels for us to be "us", is too a large extent constructed by the stories we tell ourselves about our past.
And that's why, in my opinion, one actually can change the past. Of course not in the sense, that I can change what happened. Nobody can undo the fracture of a leg by doing some narrative time travel. But I can change how I relate to what has happened and I can alter the story I keep telling myself, particularly if the storytelling isn't that much of an explicit and detailed narrative but more the fragmentary pieces of my predominant self-story crossing my mind throughout every day's life.
In my case the story about me was one of a guy you can't really rely on. The story was like that for pretty valid reasons. However, it was a one-sided story, because even in the worst times of addictive illness, I wasn't just only unreliable, there always was more to me, better, nicer, compassioned and helpful parts. And after I had added some new, now sober chapters to my biography and had got some distance from events, I was able to tell a different story: one in which I wasn't that huge failure, which I considered myself to be and which actually I never was.
All of my life I've been surrounded by wonderful people, starting with my parents and followed by true friends as well by marvelous, kind and intelligent women, which have been my partners and still are close friends. And yet, I regularly suffered from episodes of depression. Until that one day, when I was able to tell a different story about myself. In this new story, which also has good and not made-up reasons to be told, I am no longer an unreliable person. And all of a sudden all the positive energy, which comes from that web of meaningful connections, started to really unfold it's potential within me: the depression I had for a few month at that time vanished into thin air within just 15 minutes. It never came back since. I now can feel the flow of love and meaning between us. I wasn't able to fully feel it before, because I didn't trust one particular knot in this web of relations: my position.
I was always grateful for the people around me and the help they provided for me, when I had hard times. But after I changed my narrative about my past, it was like it had melted a huge amount of energy which was frozen within the unfavorable story and that warm energy finally floated upstream, dissolving my loneliness and therefore my depression.
To me this felt and still feels like my past has changed. The facts remain the same, but the changed framing makes them look so different. As if in my memory there always were beautiful flowers, which colors I appreciated. Now I can also smell their sweet fragrance and touch their velvet blossoms, hear the bumblebees humming and feel the warm sunshine on my skin.
I’m just back from San Miguel de Allende and today was checking on a friend I met there. I told her I’m done with “the contrast”. I was three months in SMA (NYC again now) do not speak Spanish very well, and did not like standing out as a gringo, in a city, as you know, teaming with gringo retirees. Any resemblance to them I did not like. I’m not even a retiree just a bohemian elder adrift. (And fucking proud of it in a way).
San Miguel was not aggressive like that. As a matter of fact I was the one who ended up dumping money on the neighbor because I tried to get him to buy me some weed. It didn’t work out and I’m glad he got the money. I talk about it on my podcast. Only like 4 people listen to my podcast. I LOVE THAT so freeing.
So you were on this class thing with the street workers beggars whatever and then it shifted to empathy for women. I thought you were going to go into empathy for the baggers and workers because of the situation they were put in by capitalism US imperialism, etc.
But of course it is horrible to be bothered by strangers on the street want something from you no matter what it is. Desire is horrible, especially when out of control.
“Give me social media likes, but stay out of my face.”
I'd like to hear Chris's podcast on risk telling his story. Anyone know where to find it?
"It's the fault of whoever designed these torture tubes." Dr. Chris Ryan
I found the intro interesting but had a different takeaway. I try not to split hairs too much or find offense when I encounter opinions I don’t agree with, but I hope my perspective will open your view. As a woman who grew up in (and lives in) a tourist destination, I wholly disagree. All leisure travel, even the best-intentioned, is tourism. The destination benefits economically, though often marginally. The expectation on tourists to spend money isn’t unfair whatsoever - it’s at least as fair as the expectation that a traveler will be welcomed. Most people don’t realize just how much these places change and spend to accommodate the tourism industry. It’s far less beneficial to locals than the travel industry would have us believe. Even if I agreed with this point, it frankly bears no resemblance to women’s experiences. Unlike tourism, being a woman isn’t the same as being a commodity. Traveling means accepting a financial give-and-take for certain privileges. Women moving through the world are simply doing what men are doing, and that should not come with any expectation for others. We’re moving through our space. Travelers are moving through others’ space.
I wonder if Kevin has had people who, months or years after they recorded a story, ask them to take them down. I really doubt many people are aware of the powerful ramifications of having your 'riskiest' anecdotes being shutgonned into the electronic Akashic records. It feels more dangerous than having your nudes floating around 4chan.
Thanks for the conversation. Especially those part when you were talking about personal stories and how they can change over the course of time. Reason is, that I've been thinking about one's own past and how we relate to it for a while.
One often hears the phase "You cannot change the past."
Of course we can't. Or can we? Without meaning the following too metaphysically: What is the past except that, what we are remembering (or telling our stories about)? The past itself is not here, we're only living in the present. The past only "exists" insofar as we are remembering it and by doing so, we are relating to those memories mentally, emotionally and even physiologically. Aren't we all shaping our identities by the narratives we're telling us about ourselves? Again, this isn't meant as an metaphysical claim about what our identity "is", but merely the observation, that we are story telling animals and that a lot of what it feels for us to be "us", is too a large extent constructed by the stories we tell ourselves about our past.
And that's why, in my opinion, one actually can change the past. Of course not in the sense, that I can change what happened. Nobody can undo the fracture of a leg by doing some narrative time travel. But I can change how I relate to what has happened and I can alter the story I keep telling myself, particularly if the storytelling isn't that much of an explicit and detailed narrative but more the fragmentary pieces of my predominant self-story crossing my mind throughout every day's life.
In my case the story about me was one of a guy you can't really rely on. The story was like that for pretty valid reasons. However, it was a one-sided story, because even in the worst times of addictive illness, I wasn't just only unreliable, there always was more to me, better, nicer, compassioned and helpful parts. And after I had added some new, now sober chapters to my biography and had got some distance from events, I was able to tell a different story: one in which I wasn't that huge failure, which I considered myself to be and which actually I never was.
All of my life I've been surrounded by wonderful people, starting with my parents and followed by true friends as well by marvelous, kind and intelligent women, which have been my partners and still are close friends. And yet, I regularly suffered from episodes of depression. Until that one day, when I was able to tell a different story about myself. In this new story, which also has good and not made-up reasons to be told, I am no longer an unreliable person. And all of a sudden all the positive energy, which comes from that web of meaningful connections, started to really unfold it's potential within me: the depression I had for a few month at that time vanished into thin air within just 15 minutes. It never came back since. I now can feel the flow of love and meaning between us. I wasn't able to fully feel it before, because I didn't trust one particular knot in this web of relations: my position.
I was always grateful for the people around me and the help they provided for me, when I had hard times. But after I changed my narrative about my past, it was like it had melted a huge amount of energy which was frozen within the unfavorable story and that warm energy finally floated upstream, dissolving my loneliness and therefore my depression.
To me this felt and still feels like my past has changed. The facts remain the same, but the changed framing makes them look so different. As if in my memory there always were beautiful flowers, which colors I appreciated. Now I can also smell their sweet fragrance and touch their velvet blossoms, hear the bumblebees humming and feel the warm sunshine on my skin.
Probably Yip Harburg, Who was also blacklisted during the late 40s - 50s Red Scare.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yip_Harburg
That was a very interesting opening on this one.
I’m just back from San Miguel de Allende and today was checking on a friend I met there. I told her I’m done with “the contrast”. I was three months in SMA (NYC again now) do not speak Spanish very well, and did not like standing out as a gringo, in a city, as you know, teaming with gringo retirees. Any resemblance to them I did not like. I’m not even a retiree just a bohemian elder adrift. (And fucking proud of it in a way).
San Miguel was not aggressive like that. As a matter of fact I was the one who ended up dumping money on the neighbor because I tried to get him to buy me some weed. It didn’t work out and I’m glad he got the money. I talk about it on my podcast. Only like 4 people listen to my podcast. I LOVE THAT so freeing.
So you were on this class thing with the street workers beggars whatever and then it shifted to empathy for women. I thought you were going to go into empathy for the baggers and workers because of the situation they were put in by capitalism US imperialism, etc.
But of course it is horrible to be bothered by strangers on the street want something from you no matter what it is. Desire is horrible, especially when out of control.
“Give me social media likes, but stay out of my face.”