Podcast appearances and mentions of kate bennett

Sports psychologist Dr. Kate Bennett joins us to discuss the “Way of Champions” psychological framework that leads to happier, healthier, better-performing athletes and people.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What a pleasure it was to talk to Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, about the great man himself, who was born four hundred years ago this month. Aubrey is best know for his splendid Brief Lives but he preserved a huge amount of knowledge which historians still rely on. There are many things we only know because of Aubrey—things about people Hobbes and Hooke, Stonehenge, architectural history. We also talked about Janet Malcom, the genre of biography, and modern fiction.HENRY OLIVER: Today I'm talking to Ruth Scurr. Ruth is a fellow of Gonville and Caius College in the University of Cambridge, where she specializes in the history of political thought. But more importantly, she is the biographer of John Aubrey, one of my favorite writers, who is celebrating 400 years of his birth this year. Ruth, hello.RUTH SCURR: Hi, Henry.OLIVER: Can you begin by giving us a brief life of John Aubrey?SCURR: So born in 1626, 17th-century antiquarian, collector, early fellow at the Royal Society. Well connected to scientific and the literary circles of his day. Someone who sees himself more as a whetstone: a person who could help sharpen other people's ideas. As a recorder, someone who treasured the details, the minutiae of the lives he encountered, and pass those details on to posterity.He's nonjudgmental, witty, kind, inventive. Very, very sociable. Very good friend. But he's hopeless at self-advancement. Begins his life as a gentleman, but he inherits debts from his father and he can never really achieve financial stability.Never marries, ends up homeless and worried about being arrested for his debts. And he has to sell his precious collection of books periodically through his life to raise some much-needed cash, but he keeps his manuscripts safe. And he does this at the end of his life by putting them into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, afterwards known as the Bodleian, and where they still are today.OLIVER: So how many manuscripts did he save for us?SCURR: Of his own manuscripts or other people's manuscripts?OLIVER: Other people's. Because he was collecting all sorts of precious things.SCURR: Oh, absolutely. He was the person who, when someone died, would go round if he could to their house and ask what was happening about the manuscripts. He's particularly concerned, obviously, with his friends. So he had a close relationship with Robert Hooke and he wanted to make sure that Hooke's many inventions and scientific contributions were recorded.And he has this wonderful line in the life of Hooke where he says, “It's so hard to get people to do right by themselves.” And in his childhood, he had seen the fallout from the dissolution of the monasteries. He'd become very troubled by the habit of using manuscript pages which had been displaced in the dissolution. He saw them being used in schools to cover textbooks. He saw them being used to—or he heard about them at least being used—to wrap up gloves or to create stoppers in bottles. And this really troubled him from, from a very early age.And I think he has another beautiful line where he says after the dissolution of the monasteries, whereas these manuscripts had been kept safe, they flew around like butterflies. And he wanted to catch them and preserve them and to stop people letting the papers and the precious manuscripts of their relatives do the same. So he was very instrumental in rescuing manuscripts, other people's manuscripts. And then fortunately with his own, he knew Ashmole and they had the shared astrology interest.Ashmole was a very different sort of person who basically said to Oxford, look, I'll give you my collections, but there has to be a museum for them. And luckily Aubrey was able to use that museum as a safe place for his own manuscripts.OLIVER: So we know things about Robert Hooke and Thomas Hobbes and all these other luminaries of the 17th century, thanks to Aubrey. What else do we know, thanks to him?SCURR: We know what Stonehenge looked like in his day because he was a very good draftsman. He drew pictures of Stonehenge. He'd grown up in Wiltshire, he'd known those stones from childhood. He understood that Avebury nearby was a comparable monument, and he took Charles II to see it, and persuaded the king to get the locals to stop breaking up the stones, to reuse the stones, which was the practice.He also made drawings of windows because he was possibly the first person as a historian of architecture to realize that you could date buildings by the style of their windows. So we have those drawings. He was also interested in the history of costume. He did a survey of Surrey, of Wiltshire.So these are all sort of focuses in his manuscripts and people who've used them come to really appreciate how pioneering Aubrey was. But of course he doesn't finish them. He doesn't publish those manuscripts. So it's very easy really to overlook the innovation and the contribution and the wonderful imagination that he had.OLIVER: You mean if he'd published a book, he would have a much bigger reputation?SCURR: Well, I think there's two things. Yes, but in a sense, you know, the Brief Lives have been published after his death in various forms. But I think one of the most engaging things about Aubrey is that he's a modest and self-effacing person. And I already mentioned the idea he had of himself as a whetstone to other people's talents.There aren't that many people—certainly not in my life, maybe there are in yours—but who would effortlessly describe themselves as a whetstone to other people's talents. Most people want to be at the center. They're happy to have clever and literary friends, but they want a place there at the table as well.And Aubrey really was very, very invested in helping other people to do right by themselves, as he said about Hooke. And he very movingly—this is one of the inspirations really for my book that I wrote about him—he spent all that time collating the information about other people's lives. And for his own life, he puts down a few lines, a couple of facts and everything.He says, well, this could be used as the binding of a book. You know, it's sort of waste paper really. So he doesn't write his own life. Other people's lives he's going to convey to posterity. He doesn't see his own life as really being at that level of needing the attention that he gave, for example, to Milton or to Harvey or Hobbes, as you mentioned.OLIVER: He's born the year after Charles I comes to the throne. So he obviously lives through a fairly terrible period of history and very tumultuous, changeable in lots of different ways. The new world, the new learning, new religion, new politics, everything is changing. And he's obsessed with the old ways. How did these historical events—is he reacting against his time? Is he just born in a lucky time in a way?SCURR: So he was a student in Oxford during the Civil War. And you are right. The upheaval is very disturbing for his generation. It means he gets called back from Oxford by his father because it's dangerous to be there. And he's really, really upset by that because, it's like us, when we were students or our students today. You finally get away from your family and there you are in this place with all these exciting peers and access to books that you've never had before or at least to that extent, libraries, et cetera.And suddenly there's a war on and you've got to go home. So there's that disturbance. Then there is the fact that actually he was close to Hobbes. Hobbes actually was a Malmesbury man, so Wiltshire, very near Aubrey. And had come back to visit the school where Hobbes had been, which was where Aubrey was at school. And so they had met in Aubrey's childhood, and then he would've been aware of Hobbes having to go into exile. And then Hobbes coming back, of course. And that's a very important time in his life.And it's not an accident that Hobbes asks Aubrey to write his life because Hobbes knows how careful Aubrey is. And he knows that Aubrey has information that he can convey in the life. So that is really the first life that he writes. And it's different from the others. There's a different sort of origin. And it's after he's done that, that he starts to think, well, actually, you know, I can think of at least 50, 55 other people's lives. And now I've got my hand in, I might start on those as well.So in that period of upheaval there are wonderful stories. Maybe we'll look at some of the Brief Lives, but there's this amazing story that he captures in the life of William Harvey, which is a description of Harvey having been at the battlefield in Edgehill and recording one of the people who had been fighting and wounded, surviving by having the good sense to pull a dead body on top of himself, to keep himself warm on the battlefield. Things like that, which make the war very much alive. This is brutal, this civil war. It's a long time ago and we think we passed over it, but the really brutal reality of war is captured in the Brief Lives through the anecdotes and the stories of that generation that Aubrey preserves.OLIVER: How English is he?SCURR: Well, as opposed to what?OLIVER: Welsh.SCURR: Okay. Well he goes to Wales often and is very interested in Wales. I think he sees himself as English. I think he's very invested in English customs and stories and people. He's not nationalistic in any sense like that. What he's interested in is the inherited ways of living.And he's very interested in language and different dialects. That's one of the other things; he starts to collect different words. He was very aware of the Cornish dialect, for example. So I'd say it's a very decentered England that's rooted in customs, traditions, inherited stories.And there's a big place there for both the future and the past. Huge excitement about The Royal Society, English science, what can be achieved through the sharing of knowledge. But again, Aubrey's not an insular person in that respect. So, he wished he could go on the Grand Tour when he was a student. He would really have loved to have done that. It's one of the things that he actually talked to Harvey about, going and traveling as his contemporaries, for example, John Evelyn did.But Aubrey actually says—this is very typical of Aubrey—that his mother persuaded him out of it. His mother didn't want him going off on the Grand Tour. She was afraid for him. And he regretted it later in life. But it's so typical of Aubrey that he would pay attention to his mother and her anxieties.OLIVER: This interest in the present and the past—so he loves all the history, but he's in the Royal Society. One thing I like in your book is the way he talks about, oh, my grandfather still dresses in the old ways, like he's an Elizabethan, but at the same time he's doing a very sort of Baconian project. He's influenced by Bacon. Is Aubrey a sort of paradox? Does this make sense in a way?SCURR: Only in so far as lots of other people are as well. I was just looking at the Harvey life, and there's a story there about how when Harvey was a student he was meant to be setting sail with some friends. And he's stopped and told, “No, you can't get on this boat. You have to wait.” And he says, “Well, what have I done wrong? Why can't I get on this boat?” He said, “No, honestly, we need to have a word with you. You are not going on the boat.” And then the boat sinks, everyone dies. And this is apparently because the guy who stopped him had a dream that he needed to stop Harvey going. Harvey told Aubrey that story.Harvey also is—as Aubrey sort of slightly inaccurately puts it, is the inventor of the circulation of the blood. And you think, well, that's going a little bit far, perhaps not actually the inventor, but certainly the first person to discover, to understand about circulating blood.So there's another example of someone's life includes, I wouldn't be alive unless somebody had had this premonition and dream that I was about to die. Which is from a completely different world, from the rational, scientific understanding of the body or the other scientific advances that are going on at the time.OLIVER: And Aubrey's happy to just sort of coexist with both of those because of his interest in astrology?SCURR: And not just astrology. He's very interested in astrology and nativities, as he called it. In some of the Brief Lives, you see the sort of recording of the information that would be needed to cast an astrological shape for the life.But he is also interested in the fact that people believe in fairies and ghosts. He doesn't look down on those beliefs. Nor does he say that he necessarily believes in the presence of fairies or the interventions of the supernatural. But he's got a very open mind in relation to that. And certainly being simultaneously interested in early astronomy and astrology together is, to us, very striking. But then I think it was much more normal.OLIVER: Why do you think he resisted ordination?SCURR: Because he said the cassock stinks. He considered ordination several times because he knew it would be a living, it would be a way of being able to have some income, probably not very onerous duties. Some of his friends say to him, “Come on, Aubrey, it really won't be that much work. You'll just get a curate who'll do it all, and you'll get the living, and then you won't have to be worrying all the time about your paycheck. You haven't got a paycheck. It would be a living coming to you.”And on one occasion, one of the reasons he gives for not doing that is he thinks well, what if there's another religious upheaval and I have to change sides again? What if Roman Catholicism comes back and I ended up on the wrong side of it?And, again, would it really have been that difficult to go with the flow? But I think, in his own way, he had found his way of living, which was intensely sociable. And perhaps he didn't want that constraint of being a member of the clergy around him.OLIVER: Do you think he was a nonbeliever?SCURR: Well. I don't know the answer to that. I don't think so at all. I think he probably was a straightforward Christian believer. I think perhaps he'd seen enough of the religious conflicts and wars to be afraid of fanaticism on both sides. And that would fit certainly with his relationship with Hobbes.I don't have any reason to think he's an atheist. He's got a beautiful way of writing about death and there's this wonderful line he has when he says, “God bless you and me in our in and out world.” So the fact that we refer to his works as the Brief Lives because they're short, but everybody's life is brief.And even those who live, as he did, into his 70s, it feels brief. And there's these very moving descriptions of him at funerals. I was thinking about this the other day because he often records where someone's buried. And I recently wrote my first entry for the Dictionary of National Biography. I did the one for Hilary Mantel, which was a great honor and extremely interesting.And when I came back to the Brief Lives, I thought, gosh, I wish I'd put at the end of that DNB entry where she's actually buried, that would've made sense to do that. And I didn't do it because the DNB is quite formalized; they've got their formula and you need to stick to it.But maybe I'll add it in. Because it seems to me very moving to record where people are actually buried. That would fit I think with her religious sensibility, with a regard for the afterlife, and with the rites of passage at the end of life.OLIVER: What is it that makes Aubrey such a good biographer?SCURR: So I think the modesty that is in his spirit, the noticing, the minutiae that he both notices and values and his wit. He has a sensitivity to these funny and revealing quirky stories about the people that he knows. Or he finds them in the stories he's told by people who did know them.There's an eyewitness account aspect to it as well. Or at least it's an oral history. “I was told this by . . .” He's extremely precise. He'll try to assemble the facts so far as he can, and then he'll tell you what people's close friends said about them, and he will do so very, very carefully so that you know this is a story that he's been told that he's passing on.And then he doesn't pass moral judgment. He doesn't adjudicate. And finally, he thinks of himself as doing all of this for posterity and that posterity, i.e. us or the people who come after us, will find things there and he's not going to tell them what to find. He's not going to shape the life and say, this is what you should think about it.He will give you the raw materials, he'll give you the stories, he'll give you a flavor of the details of the life, and then posterity can look there and can see, for example, the disagreements between Hobbes and Isaac Newton. There are people who've written lives of Hooke and Newton. And there are people who've written lives and you can be team Newton or team Hooke. Interestingly, Aubrey is team Hooke. He doesn't write a life of Newton. And he wants, as I said, to do well by Hooke. But his way of doing that isn't to say Mr.Hooke was fantastic and Newton robbed him of lots of his ideas. He says, let me show you, let me assemble and make a catalog, if I can, of all these hundreds of contributions that Hooke made.OLIVER: When did you discover Aubrey?SCURR: So I discovered Aubrey because I was reviewing for the LRB, The Biographer's Tale, and I had come across a really interesting—and it's still in the introduction to my book—a really interesting reflection on the difference between Aubrey and Lytton Strachey, a reflection made by Anthony Powell, and I had quoted it or alluded to it in my review. And I had gone and started to read Aubrey as a result of that. So I was led to it through reviewing, via Anthony Powell, and then into the Brief Lives.But then another very strange thing happened, which is I met for the very first time, Janet Malcolm, who is someone who became very important in my life. And because she knew or had been told that I'd written this review, she read the review before we met. And she said to me, she said, “Ruth, I read your review”—and I doubt Janet Malcolm was a massive fan of A.S. Byatt, to be absolutely honest. We never really discussed that further, but she said, “I read your review and I was really interested in this Aubrey. I was so interested in what you quoted about Aubrey and the difference between his biographical approach and Lytton Strachey.”And then it sort of stuck in my mind and suddenly as I was coming toward the end of my first book, which was a totally different book on Robespierre and the French Revolution, I just knew I wanted to write about Aubrey. And I think at the time my then-husband really thought I'd gone mad actually, because you're not supposed to do that, are you?I mean, you're supposed to stick in your period and certainly build on it. So, you know, a book on Marra or even Napoleon would've been okay, that would've made sense. But to circle back to the 17th century and write about Aubrey seemed extremely eccentric.OLIVER: Well, what was Janet Malcolm like?SCURR: Oh, Janet was absolutely wonderful. She has this reputation of being sort of terrifying. And, of course, I was extremely interested in her forensic examination of biography which we had very interesting conversations about. She was a deeply kind person, extremely nurturing of younger writers, and extremely funny as well.That's the other thing that you don't associate with her sometimes from this sort of public image of a very austere interviewer, The Journalist and the Murderer, In the Freud Archives, et cetera. Actually, she was a really warm and extremely witty person.OLIVER: A lot of historians don't think biography is real history. Why do you take biography seriously?SCURR: Well, Michael Holroyd writes Works on Paper—and I love Michael Holroyd so much. And he has this wonderful line—I won't remember it exactly—but it's about biography being the b*****d offspring of history and the novel, and both are ashamed of it.And I think some of those distinctions actually have broken down. I know lots of historians who are very interested in biographical writing. I think it depends. There are certain historical schools that maybe are not so interested in lives.And to be fair, the history of ideas is—which I belong to, and in a sense I'm a rebel from—is one of those. I remember there coming a point where I had spent so much time thinking about the constitutional ideas for the representative republic in the middle of the French Revolution, that actually the French Revolution could have been happening on Mars for all it mattered about the actual sequence of events. What mattered was the structure of the ideas.And it's difficult because the school I belong to in Cambridge wants to put the ideas into context all the time. But again, by context you don't really mean people's lives; more the discourses and the conversations and the ideas of the time that are the landscape, the intellectual landscape, if you like.So I rebelled at a certain point and I was like, well, you know, I'm actually going to go through the revolution day by day because that period is short. And I think it really matters, the lived experience there. I think many, many history books quote Aubrey with enormous respect and say, “as Aubrey says,” or, “according to Aubrey,” and pull those details forwards.I suppose some history is quite instrumental in its use of biography, so it wants to draw the reader in with a few anecdotes and a little bit of what does somebody wear on their head? And who was their first love, that kind of thing. But it's perhaps not very engaged with the real work of trying to capture the shape or the feel of a life.OLIVER: And of a temperament, right? I think one thing biography gives us is that sense that a lot of these big decisions or events in history are quite temperamental. As well as being based in ideas and events.SCURR: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.OLIVER: Your life of Aubrey, at one point you tried to write as a novel.SCURR: Yeah. I had to stop that quite fast.OLIVER: Why?SCURR: Because Aubrey is too important. I didn't want to make up things for him. As someone who's come right up to that line of the history and the novel, I do think it's very clear to be on one side or the other. And again, going back to Hilary Mantel, she wrote those wonderful Reith Lectures on historical fiction.And, like her, I think that it's not about ignoring the facts or embellishing the facts. It is about the gaps. It's about imagining what isn't in the record and should have been, and trying to reconstruct that inside the novel. But at the time, I felt that the gaps with Aubrey didn't actually matter that much.There was so much there that I could pull together to give a sense of him and his sensibility. Now actually, scholars in this field will all be very, very keen to advance our knowledge of those gaps. And that's wonderful. You know, what exactly was Aubrey doing when he visited France? You know, at the time I wrote my book that seemed very unclear.I think my colleague in Oxford, Kate Bennett, knows that now and will write her own biography. And she will fill in many of these gaps that I sort of happily included in the form that I'd found for his life because giving him that first person voice, I was able to focus on the evidence that I thought had been very underused at that point.OLIVER: Now Kate Bennett did a wonderful edition of the Brief Lives with lots of excellent footnotes and investigations. And you wrote that it gave us a new understanding of Aubrey.SCURR: Absolutely. And of the lives themselves. And Kate and I got to know each other and became friends while we were both writing our books. And people we knew before we met were very keen to sort of set us against each other. So they would wind us up. I would meet someone and they'd say, “Ruth, there you are. You've written a book about the French Revolution and now you are going to write a book about Aubrey. But don't you know there is a scholar in Oxford who spent her entire academic life working on Aubrey?” And it built up a picture of fear that you shouldn't trespass on somebody else's ground.And then people would do a sort of reverse thing to her that they would say, “Oh, Kate, gosh, you've been working a long time on Aubrey and where is your Clarendon edition after all? And did you know there's somebody in Cambridge who's going to write this popular book about Aubrey?”Anyway, finally we met at a conference and we really actually just liked each other and we decided it's fine. I was doing my thing. She's doing something very different. And we became friends, and I see that as a triumph over a sort of more traditional, maybe even dare I say, male and territorial approach to academic life and to knowledge in general actually.OLIVER: Yeah. Because the two books are great complements to each other. They're not rivalrous in that sense.SCURR: Absolutely not. Kate's book, it's not just an addition. It's as much as you can ever do. It's a reconstruction of the manuscript as Aubrey left it and intended it with all the gaps and the notes to himself to fill this in. And his changes of mind and his deletions and all of that. And so it's an astonishing thing. Because it's not just a copy of it. It takes you in, it helps you understand what he was intending with those collections, as you called them, my pretty collections.And so that edition that she had been working on for a very long time came out in 2015, the same year as my book came out. And it felt like an amazing year for Aubrey. And now, we'll be celebrating the 400th anniversary of his birth. But that year, 2015, was a very special, obviously for us, but I think for Aubrey more broadly.OLIVER: How much of an influence has Aubrey had on English biography?SCURR: As we know, there's the huge influence in terms of “Aubrey says.” Open any book on the 17th century, and it will be “Aubrey says,” “according to Aubrey,” et cetera. So a huge influence in that respect. With regard to the actual form, I think it's very, very pervasive and important, and we have to look at it very carefully.I mentioned earlier the very important difference between what Aubrey does and what Lytton Strachey did. There are some similarities in so far as Strachey will go for the vivid detail. He give you these powerful anecdotes. But actually he spins them as well.And that's what Anthony Powell so brilliantly showed. And the example was of Francis Bacon, the life of Francis Bacon who Aubrey has a description of Bacon right at the end of his life, the circumstances leading up to Bacon's death where he is on Highgate Hill and he decides to conduct an experiment to see if snow will preserve a chicken or a hen as well as salt. So he is stuffing this carcass of the hen with snow. Catches a cold, ends up having to stay with a friend, sleeps in a bed that hasn't been aired for a long time, and dies. And that's the end of Lord Bacon.So Aubrey gives us all this, and then along comes Lytton Strachey. And he takes it, and he says an old man disgraced, shattered, alone on Highgate Hill, stuffing a dead foul with snow, which makes it sound like he's lost his mind at the end of his life. And then Anthony Powell examined that and he said, look, the story of stuffing the hen with snow is Aubrey's.Bacon was certainly an old man at the time of the incident. He was disgraced. He may have been shattered. No doubt at times he was alone. But Aubrey's story of stuffing the foul on Highgate Hill shows Bacon accompanied by the king's physician, conducting a serious experiment to test the preservative properties of snow and, on becoming indisposed, finding accommodation in the house of the Earl of Arundel.And so you take that same story and, as Anthony Powell says, you combine the story, the fragment preserved by Aubrey with some epithets, and you convey an oblique point. It's a biographical method for actually building up a picture of the person. And it really matters what you do with those fragments.So I think the fact that Aubrey is pretty pure about this, he gives you the fragments and another biographer might come along and think, okay, what's going on here with Venetia Stanley and dying in her bed after drinking Viper wine? Let's build up a story about that. And there was a rumor at the time that her husband had murdered her, et cetera. Aubrey doesn't comment. He just gives you the fragment. And I think afterwards, people have not only used the fragments in their own work, but they've also developed a technique of working up those fragments into whatever picture you decide as a biographer you are going to draw.OLIVER: Now as well as a historian, you are a literary critic. You review novels. You are a Hilary Mantel admirer. Who else among the modern fiction writers do you admire?SCURR: Amongst the modern fiction writers? I'm getting quite old, Henry. Lots of my people are dead now. Alice Monroe is someone I'm extremely interested in. Hilary Manel, obviously, Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Fitzgerald. And I love the fact Penelope Fitzgerald was a biographer simultaneously with becoming a novelist.And I was thinking back to this actually, that Charlotte Mew and Her Friends—that's the title. And then the Anthony Powell is John Aubrey and His Friends. And I was thinking, is there something about these people who have a lot of friends and the biographical genre? It's interesting.In terms of younger people writing, I just read a wonderful short story by Gwendoline Riley in the latest Paris Review. “A–Z” it's called—very disturbing. Very, very good story. And Gwendoline has a novel coming out later this year, which I shall read with enormous interest. It's going to be called Palm House. I absolutely revered George Saunders, although I haven't yet read Vigil. I'm only on Substack for George Saunders and you Henry. That's it, basically.OLIVER: That shows very good taste.SCURR: Very good taste. Yeah. And a couple of others. My friend Danielle Allen's The Renovator, I also subscribe to, but very few. But George Saunders wrote a wonderful post on his Substack about maybe a year and a half, maybe more even ago, about how he found the solution to the beginning of Lincoln in the Bardo. And he wanted to find a way to tell the story of the death of Lincoln's son. It's so typical of him—and I love this—he said he didn't want the ghosts. He knew it was going to be narrated by the ghosts in the morgue. And he couldn't have them coming home one evening saying, “Oh, you know, I just popped over the wall and had a look in through the White House window. And guess what I saw?” So how was he going to get the voices in?And then he said he'd got these extracts from the letters and from the literature that he needed. And he ended up putting them all on the floor and thinking, what order shall I put them in? And that reminded me of when I was struggling to find a way to write about Aubrey. I suddenly had the idea that I could just put them as diary entries without comment.I would sort of curate these entries and things like that. So, that was a very interesting moment for me about sort of the construction and the choices that go in both to writing a novel and to writing, in my case, a sort of experimental biography.OLIVER: So Hilary Mantel, Lincoln in the Bardo, Penelope Fitzgerald, Beryl Bainbridge—there's a lot of historical fiction here. This is the genre you most enjoy. It's been a sort of golden age for historical fiction.SCURR: But those people aren't just historical fiction writers. It's very important. They have all written historical fiction, but actually they write other novels as well. It doesn't matter the order in their careers, they go in and out of it. So I would say that actually it's those people as writers and sensibilities that attract me.Anita Brookner is another example. I love Anita Brookner's novels. I also love her book on David, the revolutionary painter, that she wrote—Jacques-Louis David—that's a fantastic book. So there's a sense in which I see them as writers and the genre of historical fiction, you are right, it does cut across, but I don't think that's what I'm following. I think I'm following what I find on the page from a particular sensibility and of course a command of language, which is in all of those cases, absolutely extraordinary.OLIVER: Because they're all quite innovative as historical novelists as well. And it's not the main part of what is recognized as their achievement in a way.SCURR: No, no.OLIVER: It's been quietly a second great period of the historical novel. It seems crazy to say Hilary Mantel is our Walter Scott, but that is quite high praise.SCURR: So I think you deal much more definitely than I do with these sort of epoch-defining ideas. I think I'm just more intermittently focused on particular things that I like. I used to do an enormous amount of reviewing. I've had to stop it because—talk about being the whetstone.I was constantly reviewing when I was in my 30s and much of my 40s actually. And I don't regret it in the least. And one of the reasons I don't regret it, especially with novels, was because I would never have read all those novels if I hadn't been reviewing them.And even some of the nonfiction, I wouldn't. But here's an example: Because I'd been reviewing so much, I ended up quite early 2007, becoming a Booker judge. And part of that process is that anyone who's been on the list before they automatically get entered by the publisher—McEwen and Barnes, et cetera. Fine.And then the publisher can put forward two books they choose and they can be anything. And then they assemble a list of so-called call-ins. And those are the books where the publisher says, “Oh, please, please call this in. I mean, we didn't make it one of our two, but we think it's absolutely amazing and you must read it.” And you think, well, if it's so amazing, what were you doing not making it one of your two. But anyway, whatever, we call it in. And on that call-in list there was actually, Anne Enright's novel, The Gathering, and that ended up winning the year I was a judge.And I knew Anne Enright's writing because I had reviewed several of her earlier books, especially one called What Are You Like?, which is quite obscure. It's not the book people think of when they think about Anne Enright. But I knew because I'd done all that time in the reviewing trenches, as it were, how extraordinary Anne Enright is as a writer. And we were able to say, well, absolutely go ahead and call this in. And then sure enough it won.OLIVER: What about biography? Modern biography? You like Michael Holroyd?SCURR: Well, we've already talked about Janet Malcolm. She's a sort of anti-biographer in some respect, sort of subversive of the entire genre. I very much like and respect Antonia Fraser's historical biographies and especially her one of Marie Antoinette which, again, came out very close to when my Robespierre book came out. And it's like seeing the other side of the story and that was absolutely extraordinary.And one of the biographies I go back to over and over again I'm extremely interested in Virginia Woolf. You are obviously a fan with The Common Reader. I was looking at it, preparing for this, that she's got this absolutely hilarious short biography of John Evelyn, and it is called Rambling Round Evelyn. Do you know it?OLIVER: Yes.SCURR: It's so beautifully constructed. It's got the butterflies landing on the dahlias pretty much throughout the actual text of the short biography. But then it's got this brilliant bit where she sort of makes fun of John Evelyn. And she says, the difference between then and now is, if we saw a red admiral, we would admire it, but we wouldn't—and this is very mean of her—we wouldn't rush into the kitchen and get a kitchen knife in order to dissect the red admiral's head. Right? It's so ridiculous and it so makes fun of Evelyn.I was listening to the podcast you made with Hermione Lee. And Hermione was saying that she thought what made Woolf such a good critic was that she was very empathetic. But I also think she's capable of that kind of sharp, wicked distance as well, where she goes, I see you, John Evelyn, you are so proud of your garden, and you're actually—looked at from my point of view—a bit of an idiot in some respects as well.OLIVER: I like her because she's so judgmental, which is not a very popular thing to say, but she is. She is really capable of saying that, you know, as long as prose will be read, Addison will be read. But on the other hand, he's boring and rambling and not very good in many ways. Absolutely cutting.SCURR: No, totally, totally. Yeah.OLIVER: What about some of the sort of big names: Richard Holmes, Claire Tomalin?SCURR: Yeah. Oh, Claire, absolutely. I mean, goodness, they've been such influences on me, both of them. Absolutely Richard and his Footsteps and then of course, and those other books, The Ratters of Lightning Ridge and then The Age of Wonder. That's so important, so wonderful.Claire, I revere, I loved and still recommend to my students her book on Mary Wollstonecraft. I also, by the way, love Virginia Woolf's essay on Mary Wollstonecraft. I think that's a different sort of thing where Woolf describes Mary Wollstonecraft pursuing her lover like a dolphin. She won't let him go. He thought he'd hooked a minnow. He wasn't expecting a dolphin to come after him. It was Mary Wollstonecraft. So, Claire Tomalin, her Peyps, Hardy, absolutely hugely important books and deeply, deeply humane actually.And that's the other thing, I think biography, by definition, you do get the sharpness of Woolf or Strachey, but I think to put someone else's life at the center of your book, that's a humane act. It's to say, no, I'm going to spend this number years of my life preserving and communicating this other person's life. And that's a very wonderful thing to do.OLIVER: What do you think of the sort of standard criticism of biography, that it's just not accurate enough? So, for example, Austen Scholars will point to various things in the Tomalin biography where she's deleted the facts or said things to make the narrative flow, but it's just not really accurate enough. The novelistic tendency overwhelms the historical one or whatever. You've obviously avoided that with various decisions you made in the Aubrey book, but as a genre.SCURR: I'd never say that. That would be a real hostage to fortune, wouldn't it?OLIVER: Well, you know what I mean?SCURR: And saying, look at, look at this—OLIVER: Page 28.SCURR: —at this piece of nonsense you introduced. Well, accuracy is extremely important. What I think about that is it all contributes to knowledge. If someone comes along and finds a mistake or wants to bring in some other evidence—And actually Kate Bennett, she does this with Aubrey as well. She says that, oh, Aubrey's really got this wrong, or he's gotten in a muddle about that. She's not saying, and therefore let's just chuck it out because it's inaccurate. You need to see this as well as that. So I think of it more as a collaborative relationship about adding to knowledge and if somebody corrects a previous book or previous claim or something, or point something, then that's fine actually.Again, going back to Holroyd, he thought that that biography was an art form constrained by the facts. So he's got a place for art in it. And I know what he means by that. And I think ultimately that's probably why I couldn't write a novel about a biographical subject because of being constrained by the facts. And yet Hilary Mantel has written many historical novels that are absolutely constrained by the facts. It's just what they're doing besides the facts, alongside the facts. So perhaps some people are going to come along and contribute other information and other people will come along and contribute some imaginative answer to the whole. And both are fine. I think we should be liberal broad church here.OLIVER: Is the genre dying?SCURR: Not so far as I'm aware. We are always doing this about genres dying, aren't we? Those things are always dying.OLIVER: People talk about biography dying a lot.SCURR: Well, perhaps they do. I haven't been listening to that. Why do they say it's dying?OLIVER: Because you can't sell these 700-page lives of people.SCURR: We can't sell most books. I mean, if we're going to go buy sales . . .OLIVER: This, yeah. Well, this story in The Times recently as well, that all the nonfiction that sells now is trash and that the serious books aren't there. And the whole civilization's dying routine.SCURR: Well if it is, we just have to carry on doing what we are doing.OLIVER: Yeah. What do you think is going to be the future of biography? Because I think more than a lot of other nonfiction genres, it's so changeable, it's so flexible. If you look at any decade, you see so much variety in structure and form. What do you think is coming next?SCURR: I'm like Aubrey; I think that's going to be for posterity to decide. As long as there are human beings, we will tell stories and we will want to tell stories about ourselves, and we will want to tell stories about the people we have loved and or hated, or the people who we think matter, for whatever reason, in science, in art, in literature. There will always be a need for the story of the human life.I think it will inevitably change enormously in ways that we couldn't possibly imagine. Just as Aubrey knew that he couldn't possibly imagine what posterity was going to make of the information that he had collected, and he didn't think that was something that he should be constrained by. He thought it was about passing it on.OLIVER: And what will Ruth Scurr do next?SCURR: I'll ask her. I think she's supposed to be writing about Rousseau and is very excited about that, but has been massively distracted by the Royal Society of Literature and becoming chair of that. So, I'm trying to pull myself back into my project. And I was very excited actually, because again, when I was looking at The Common Reader I saw Woolf refer to the Montaigne, Pepys, and Rousseau as people who had provided these spectacular portraits of themselves. And I was very excited by that. So I'm going to write a book about Rousseau and his time in England.OLIVER: Very exciting. I look forward to it. Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, thank you very much.SCURR: Thank you, Henry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Lindsey Elizabeth Cortes, host of the Female Athlete Nutrition Podcast, welcomes returning guest Dr. Kate Bennett, a clinical sports psychologist, licensed Way of Champions trainer, and multiple-time national champion, to discuss her new venture, Full Send Consulting. Bennett explains that while her mental health practice (Athlete Insight) continues, Full Send was created to address the systemic gap between education about eating disorders/RED-S and rising prevalence rates by shifting from individual treatment to team- and coach-focused culture change. She outlines the Way of Champions philosophy—rooted in Eastern thought, mindfulness, values, and transformational (rather than transactional) coaching—emphasizing psychological safety, purpose, belonging, and eliminating fear-based scarcity mindsets to help teams become protective factors for athlete wellbeing. Lindsey connects these concepts to nutrition, RED-S prevention, and team-wide fueling standards, sharing an example of value-based work with a university equestrian team. They discuss how teammates and coaches influence culture, the importance of trust and accountability, and how athletes—including alternates—contribute to team success through relationships. Bennett describes how Full Send Consulting works with teams and one-on-one with coaches in customizable formats (one-day intensives to season-long support) and serves youth, high school, college, and professional teams in person, virtually, and via travel. Kate Bennett, PsyD, is a clinical sport psychologist. She is the reigning 2024 Downhill Masters National Champion in addition to being a two-time national track cycling champion. Prior to her clinical training, Dr. Bennett was an athletic trainer and cycling coach. She combines her sport experiences and clinical expertise to treat athletes recovering from eating disorders, disordered eating, exercise dependency, and REDs. Dr. Bennett authored "Treating Athletes with Eating Disorders." Episode Highlights: 01:22 Wave Bye Period Relief 03:00 Meet Dr Kate Bennett 05:41 Why Full Send Exists 10:38 From Awareness to Action 14:40 Why Rates Keep Rising 17:14 Way of Champions Method 20:30 Transactional vs Transformational 24:26 Fear and Scarcity Mindset 29:49 Trusting Teammates to Win 31:23 REDS Reality Check 32:03 Fierce Fit Fueled Support 33:55 From Rivalry to Girl Power 37:07 Olympic Alternates Matter 40:18 Team Nutrition Culture 41:33 Values Into Standards 43:01 Equestrian Team Case Study 47:53 Influence Is Never Neutral 48:48 Coaches Words About Food 53:43 Collaboration Circle Culture 54:45 Full Send Consulting Options 59:03 Final Resources and Farewell Resources and Links: FANP 215: Treating Athletes with Eating Disorders with Downhill Cycling Champion & Clinical Sport Psychologist Dr. Kate Bennett Full Send Consulting For more information about the show, head to work with Lindsey on improving your nutrition, head to: http://www.lindseycortes.com/ Join REDS Recovery Membership: http://www.lindseycortes.com/reds WaveBye Supplements – Menstrual cycle support code LindseyCortes for 15% off: http://wavebye.co Previnex Supplements – Joint Health Plus, Muscle Health Plus, plant-based protein, probiotics, and more; code CORTES15 for 15% off: previnex.com Female Athlete Nutrition Podcast Archive & Search Tool – Search by sport, condition, or topic: lindseycortes.com/podcast Female Athlete Nutrition Community – YouTube, Instagram @‌femaleathletenutrition, and private Facebook group Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this insightful episode of the Female Athlete Nutrition Podcast, host Lindsey Elizabeth Cortes sits down with Dr. Kate Bennett, a clinical sports psychologist and national champion athlete, to delve into the pressures and challenges faced by female athletes, such as dealing with societal expectations, eating disorders, and the balance between passion and rigidity in sport. Dr. Bennett shares her personal athletic journey, her transition from athletic training to psychology, and her holistic approach to treating athletes. The episode also highlights practical strategies for maintaining mental health, the importance of balanced nutrition, and the role of core values in athletic performance. Finally, the conversation addresses the nuanced decisions around exercise during recovery from disordered eating and emphasizes the multifaceted support required for healthy, successful athletes.01:29 Meet Dr. Kate Bennett: Clinical Sports Psychologist02:18 Career Evolution: From Athletic Trainer to Sports Psychologist05:04 The Importance of Mental Health in Sports12:35 Personal Experiences and Overcoming Challenges17:16 The Four P's of Confidence24:35 Balancing Personal and Professional Life27:35 Transition to Mountain Biking27:48 The Evolution of Downhill Riding28:29 Passion and Purpose in Sports30:00 Balancing Athleticism and Health31:46 The Role of Passion in Eating Disorders34:06 Coping Mechanisms in Sports41:28 The Importance of Flexibility in Training45:59 Treating Athletes with Eating Disorders48:32 Fun Fast Facts with Dr. Kate Bennett50:38 Conclusion and ResourcesKate Bennett, PsyD, is a clinical sport psychologist. She is the reigning 2024 Downhill Masters National Champion in addition to being a two-time national track cycling champion. Prior to her clinical training, Dr. Bennett was an athletic trainer and cycling coach. She combines her sport experiences and clinical expertise to treat athletes recovering from eating disorders, disordered eating, exercise dependency, and REDs. Dr. Bennett authored "Treating Athletes with Eating Disorders."Connect with Dr. Kate Bennett:FB: @AthleteInsight IG: @athlete_insight website: www.athleteinsight.coFor more information about the show and to work with Lindsey on improving your nutrition, head to:http://www.lindseycortes.com/

Dr. Kate Bennett discusses ethical boundaries, dual relationships, and power imbalances that both coaches and athletes should be aware of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the months of June and July, the Unit3d podcast will be airing great episodes from the past. These episodes have been chosen and are being introduced by students from Indiana University who have participated in a sport psychology class where the Unit3d podcast has been part of a class assignment. Please enjoy your summer, and re-enjoy the episode chosen by Grace Mangan, Gratitude is My Lifestyle.Gratitude is a practice known to improve mental health as well as performance, but Dr. Kate Bennett proclaims gratitude as a lifestyle she has lived for over 20 years. The path to success, particularly for athletes involves suffering, and gratitude can help us thrive through the difficult times we experience both on that path as well as in our life. In this second part of our 3-part pre-holidays gratitude series, we talk about gratitude coming from the heart, improving our performance, and improving/maintaining our mental health.

Gratitude is a practice known to improve mental health as well as performance, but Dr. Kate Bennett proclaims gratitude as a lifestyle she has lived for over 20 years. The path to success, particularly for athletes involves suffering, and gratitude can help us thrive through the difficult times we experience both on that path as well as in our life. In this second part of our 3-part pre-holidays gratitude series, we talk about gratitude coming from the heart, improving our performance, and improving/maintaining our mental health. 

How can employers in all sectors of the UK economy get the best out of their workers, retain experienced staff, improve productivity and increase profits at the same time? The principles of "Job Design" seem to promise all of these benefits. It's a process of work innovation which focuses on people, their skills, their knowledge and how they interact with each other and technology, in every workplace, in every sector of the economy. Proponents claim it gives workers a voice in their workplace, allows them to balance their work and home lives, stops burnout and could get more of the economically inactive back in employment. But what evidence is there that it works - and how difficult would it be to implement changes in the workplace? Presenter: Pauline Mason Producer: Ravi Naik Editor: Clare Fordham Contributors: Patricia Findlay, Professor of Work and Employment Relations, University of Strathclyde and Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research. Kate Bennett, Labour ward coordinator at Liverpool Women's Hospital. Damian Grimshaw, Professor of Employment Studies, King's College London, and former head of research at the International Labour Organisation. Dame Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor, University of Cambridge and a director of the Productivity Institute. Rachel London, Deputy Chief People Officer at Liverpool Women's Hospital. Jenna Brimble. Midwife in the continuity of care team at Liverpool Women's Hospital. Heejung Chung, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Kent. Emma Stewart, Flexible working consultant and co-founder, Timewise. Dr Charlotte Gascoine independent researcher and consultant on flexible and part-time working Paul Dennett, Mayor of the City of Salford Jim Liptrot, Managing director, Howorth Air Tech. Stacey Bridge, Financial accounting assistant, Howorth Air Tech.

Welcome to the July edition of Learning Unboxed. As many of you know, we tend to take the month of July off, but we have heard from our loyal listeners that you would love content during your summer vacation. So we have crafted a set of four episodes to run during the July holiday that are all about exploring student agency. For those working to make a meaningful shift in your classrooms, schools, and communities, the most crucial place to start is making the decision to shift from a teacher-led ecosystem to one that is student-led. But this shift can be daunting. So join us as we explore four examples of student-centered learning that demonstrate what's possible.We know that the modern school wasn't designed for education and that it's woefully inadequate at meeting the needs of today's students and the work environment of the future. So much so that small tweaks aren't enough to fix it — it has to be redesigned completely.Nathan Gorsch, Founding Principal of Village High School in Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs. Like us at the PAST Foundation, Nathan recognized that our current model of education — the factory model — did not suit kids well, and so he sought out to reinvent high school with the idea of rebuilding it from the ground up. Joining him is Katie Flanagan, a teacher at Village High School, as well as Kate Bennett and Kenny Dufalt, two students attending the school.We dive into what Village High School is, why it's a unique hybrid model, and why those out there thinking of transformative education should consider some of the components of that hybrid model.To learn more, visit: pastfoundation.orgWe unbox:The student experience as an impetus for innovation Why students are drawn to Village High SchoolThe concerns and pain points of a non-traditional educationScaling this model of education for the futureResources:Learn more: village.asd20.orgLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nathan-gorsch-759b287aProduced by Nova Media

How can employers in all sectors of the UK economy get the best out of their workers, retain experienced staff, improve productivity and increase profits at the same time? The principles of "Job Design" seem to promise all of these benefits. It's a process of work innovation which focuses on people, their skills, their knowledge and how they interact with each other and technology, in every workplace, in every sector of the economy. Proponents claim it gives workers a voice in their workplace, allows them to balance their work and home lives, stops burnout and could get more of the economically inactive back in employment. But what evidence is there that it works - and how difficult would it be to implement changes in the workplace? Presenter: Pauline Mason Producer: Ravi Naik Editor: Clare Fordham Contributors: Patricia Findlay, Professor of Work and Employment Relations, University of Strathclyde and Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research. Kate Bennett, Labour ward coordinator at Liverpool Women's Hospital. Damian Grimshaw, Professor of Employment Studies, King's College London, and former head of research at the International Labour Organisation. Dame Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor, University of Cambridge and a director of the Productivity Institute. Rachel London, Deputy Chief People Officer at Liverpool Women's Hospital. Jenna Brimble. Midwife in the continuity of care team at Liverpool Women's Hospital. Heejung Chung, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Kent. Emma Stewart, Flexible working consultant and co-founder, Timewise. Dr Charlotte Gascoine independent researcher and consultant on flexible and part-time working Paul Dennett, Mayor of the City of Salford Jim Liptrot, Managing director, Howorth Air Tech. Stacey Bridge, Financial accounting assistant, Howorth Air Tech.

In the second episode of her short series looking at why Stonehenge has occupied such an important place in the story of Britain, Rosemary Hill talks to Kate Bennett about the two antiquarians, John Aubrey and William Stukeley, who first treated the stone circle as a material object whose secrets could be revealed through careful measurement, observation and comparison, and so pioneered many of the practices of modern archaeology.Find further reading on the LRB website: lrb.me/stonehengepodtwoSign up to the LRB's Close Readings subscription here: lrb.me/closereadings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We know that the modern school wasn't designed for education and that it's woefully inadequate at meeting the needs of today's students and the work environment of the future. So much so that small tweaks aren't enough to fix it — it has to be redesigned completely.Nathan Gorsch, Founding Principal of Village High School in Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs. Like us at the PAST Foundation, Nathan recognized that our current model of education — the factory model — did not suit kids well, and so he sought out to reinvent high school with the idea of rebuilding it from the ground up. Joining him is Katie Flanagan, a teacher at VIllage High School, as well as Kate Bennett and Kenny Dufalt, two students attending the school.We dive into what Village High School is, why it's a unique hybrid model, and why those out there thinking of transformative education should consider some of the components of that hybrid model.To learn more, visit: pastfoundation.orgWe unbox:The student experience as an impetus for innovation Why students are drawn to Village High SchoolThe concerns and pain points of a non-traditional educationScaling this model of education for the futureResources:Learn more: village.asd20.orgLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nathan-gorsch-759b287aMentioned in this episode:Learning Unboxed Audience SurveyThank you for listening to Learning Unboxed! As we work on the next 150 episodes we want to hear how we can best tailor this podcast to your needs. Please go to https://www.pastfoundation.org/survey to share your insights.Audience Survey

First lady Jill Biden spent part of Mother's Day making an unannounced trip to Uzhhorod, Ukraine, a small city in the far southwestern corner of Ukraine, a country that for the last 10 weeks has been under invasion by Russia.At a converted school that now serves as temporary housing for displaced citizens, Biden met with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, who has not been seen in public since the start of the war on February 24."I wanted to come on Mother's Day," Biden said to her Ukrainian counterpart, the two women seated at a small table in a classroom of a former school that is now a source of temporary housing for displaced Ukrainians, including 48 children. "We thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people this war has to stop. And this war has been brutal." Biden added, "The people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine."Zelenska, who early on in the Russian invasion sent a letter to Biden, has exchanged correspondence with her American counterpart in recent weeks, US officials tell CNN."First of all, I would like to thank you for a very courageous act," said Zelenska, speaking through an interpreter to Biden. "Because we understand what it takes for the US first lady to come here during a war when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day, even today. We all feel your support and we all feel the leadership of the US President but we would like to note that the Mother's Day is a very symbolic day for us because we also feel your love and support during such an important day."The meeting of the two women included a closed-door bilateral, which lasted for about one hour and took place at what was a school before the war. The building has been transformed into a refuge, a collaboration between the government of Ukraine and the International Organization for Migration, the UN migration agency. Dozens of internally displaced persons now live in the building, on a leafy property near the city center of Uzhhorod.Biden, who is three days into a four-day visit to Europe to spend time with refugee families in Romania and Slovakia, traveled about 15 miles into western Ukraine from the Slovak border town of Vysne Nemecke to Uzhhorod.The first lady is the latest high-profile American and the first family member of President Joe Biden to visit the war-torn country in recent weeks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv last month; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was there last Saturday.The first lady has spent the last two days in Europe meeting with humanitarian aid organizations and government officials in both Romania and Slovakia, as well as interacting with displaced Ukrainians in both countries, her focus primarily on the health and emotional welfare of women and children.Biden's visit to Ukraine is the first time a United States first lady has visited a war zone since Laura Bush made a secret, 10-hour visit to Afghanistan in 2008. Bush made her first visit to that country, an active combat zone, in 2005. Both of Bush's visits centered around her interest and support of Afghan women.As second lady in 2010, Jill Biden accompanied then-Vice President Joe Biden on a trip to Baghdad, Iraq, over the July 4 holiday.- by Kate Bennett, CNNSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel's biggest headlines quickly dispensed.  The perfect OTC for people on the go! For the subscription-strength version, sign up for Your Daily Dose newsletter.   For more on these and other stories, visit our official website. TODAY'S TOP NEWS STORIES: RAZING AWARENESS FAIR GAME FOR THE FBI CRAPPIE CONDITIONS AT HIGHLINE A PERFECT 10

Kate Bennett, PsyD   Kate Bennett, PsyD, founded Athlete Insight, PC with one goal in mind: To serve the psychological needs of athletes.  Dr. Bennett combines her experiences as an athlete, coach, and psychologist to bring a unique perspective to her practice.  Blending the culture and demands of sport with her psychological expertise, Dr. Bennett designed Athlete Insight to meet the clinical and performance needs of all athletes.   Dr. Bennett approaches therapy with an empowerment-based model. She believes that individuals are hardwired to thrive; however, Dr. Bennett also recognizes that obstacles interfere with satisfaction and success at times. She utilizes athletes' natural strengths to support them in achieving personal goals, facilitating new insights and skill-building throughout the process. Dr. Bennett strives to empower athletes to thrive in life and sport. The end result: Confidence - Excellence - Happiness - Health - Resiliency - Success - Values-based Action Dr. Bennett is the author of Treating Athletes with Eating Disorders: Bridging the Gap between Sport and Clinical Worlds. Dr. Bennett integrates her experiences in sport and mental health to provide a comprehensive resource for all healthcare providers who support athletes with eating disorders. Traditional sport psychology interventions are translated into clinical action to help therapists align with the athletic identities of individuals recovering from eating disorders. From diagnosis and neurobiology to athletic identity and excellence, this book covers a range of topics to help readers build their own toolboxes of creative and clinically sound psychological interventions.   So you know she's legit: Kate Bennett, PsyD, is the founder and director of Athlete Insight, PC. Her professional career began at Indiana University, where she earned a BS in Kinesiology and Athletic Training.  Dr. Bennett earned her EdM in Counseling and Sport Psychology at Boston University.  During her coaching career, Dr. Bennett coached several state and national champions as well as earned two national championships herself.  Over time, Dr. Bennett recognized her desire to help the whole person rather than focus solely on performance. She returned to graduate school to specialize in the treatment of athletes and eating disorders at the University of the Rockies.  Dr. Bennett completed her practicum at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Counseling Center, and her pre-doctoral internship at the Western Washington University Counseling Center. She then completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the Eating Disorder Center of Denver (EDCD) and continued on as a primary therapist.  In collaboration with EDCD, Dr. Bennett combined her clinical expertise and sport experience to launch the ELITE Program, a treatment program designed specifically to treat elite athletes struggling with eating disorders. She is an integrative therapist, working from a humanistic foundation and incorporating other therapies such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and EMDR. Dr. Bennett is a clinical sport psychologist, licensed in the state of Colorado.

Kate's websiteKate's Book- Treating Athletes With Eating DisordersInformation on coaching-www.trainright.comKoop's Social Media-Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop

Abortion in Texas is now all but illegal after the Supreme Court declined to block the strictest abortion law since Roe v Wade. It bans abortions after 6 weeks and effectively deputizes private citizens to enforce the law. Now, other GOP-led states are considering passing similar laws. Plus, after a punishing August for the White House, President Biden hopes a Labor Day reset.  And CNN exclusive reporting: as former President Trump teases another presidential run, Melania Trump tells friends she has no interest in returning to Washington. On today's panel: Jackie Kucinich of the Daily Beast, CNN's Kevin Liptak, Molly Ball of Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal's Joshua Jamerson, CNN's Joan Biskupic, CNN's Kate Bennett, Brown University's Dr. Megan Ranney. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Katie wraps up her discussion with ChangeMaker, Kate Bennett the Administrator of the Boston Housing Authority. In part two, Katie and Kate discuss the city's investment in redevelopment, the housing shortage in Boston, and how HUD can help the BHA accomplish their goals.

This week’s ChangeMaker is Kate Bennett the Administrator of the Boston Housing Authority. Kate has worked in affordable housing development, policy and planning for more than 25 years, with a particular focus on public housing revitalization. She currently oversees public housing and housing choice voucher programs that provide affordable housing for over 50,000 people both in and around the City of Boston.

Kate Bennett is a clinical psychologist with a specialty in treating endurance athletes with eating disorders. Dr. Bennett’s website - http://www.livetrainthrive.com/athleteinsightkatebennettInformation on coaching - www.trainright.comKoop’s Social Media -Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop

Plus... Derek Thompson on "The Pandemic's Wrongest Man," Kate Bennett on the confessions in Hunter Biden's memoir, and David Zurawik on Matt Gaetz's quest for media stardom. Sara Sidner, Kethevane Gorjestani, Jim Acosta, Annie Karni, Abigail Tracy, David Zurawik and Derek Thompson join Brian Stelter. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Sami and Amanda chat with Kate Bennett, CNN White House correspondent and author of FREE, MELANIA: An Unauthorized Biography. Bennett describes covering First Lady Melania Trump during a particularly eventful administration. She gives a behind-the-scenes look at Melania’s relationship with Donald -- apparently they talk on the phone all day! -- and which theories about their marriage are actually true. Bennett also explains how Melania has defied expectations for a First Lady and why she’s never embraced the attention it brought her. Finally, they discuss Melania’s legacy and how Donald manages the tension between his wife and daughter. Headspace: You deserve to feel happier, and Headspace is meditation made simple.. Go to HEADSPACE.COM/SUP for a free one-month trial. Modern Fertility: Visit ModernFertility.com/SUP to get $20 off the test. That means your test will cost $139, instead of the hundreds or thousands it could cost at a doctor’s office! American Giant: American Giant makes clothing that’s durable, not disposable. Get 15% off your first order when you use promo code SUP at American-Giant.com

We are so excited to get requests for topics! Today's podcast is covering compulsive exercise in relationship to eating disorder recovery. Meredith and Jill first review the difference between athletes and compulsive "exercisers." An excellent resource is Dr. Kate Bennett's website: Athlete Insight.  Meredith reviews aspects of exercise that a therapist and dietitians in the field of eating disorders can focus on in the assessment process. Athletes, compulsive exercise and "over" exercise aspects are reviewed. Think INTENT and MOTIVATION.  Other resources: Dr. Brian Cook Guidelines for the Use of Exercise in Eating Disorders Treatment 

On this episode, we talk with Kate Bennett, Director of Marketing for MBA Admissions at Harvard Business School. You'll hear how Kate started her career in management consulting and then when on to explore a number of different options to figure out what would be the best fit for her. She developed passions while going along on this journey and now has ultimately tied all these passions for talent, analytics, and education into the role that she has today. If you've ever wondered if it's possible to find a job that fits all of your passions together, Kate's story offers a pretty close example on how to do it. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/howigothere/support

An interview with Ultra Runner Kate Bennett and we discuss the next 50 episodes

A conversation with CNN White House Correspondent Kate Bennett, featuring Dave Knaus and Liza Joenler, Directors at Seven Letter.

Gloria Allred is the most famous woman attorney practicing law in the world today. She is a tireless and relentless advocate for victims' rights. Her high-profile legal battles have led to many landmark precedent-setting court decisions, and have impacted law and policy throughout our country. For her illustrious life's work, she is being inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame on September 14th, along with actress Jane Fonda, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and 7 other women luminaries. Alan Gurvey sits down with Gloria to talk about her life, career, the issues of the day, as well as this monumental honor. This Gurvey's Law episode, replete with surprise guests, as well as an appearance by Kate Bennett, the President of the Hall of Fame, is not to be missed. Tune in on Sundays at 5 p.m. on KABC-AM 790 TalkRadio or hear it streaming live on kabc.com! #womensrights #attorney #talkradio #halloffame #interview #victimsrights

Amazing stand up comedian Kate Bennett guests on the show to tell us a very funny and disgusting story. Sam Fathallah, Travis Cherniss, Mallory Schaeffer, and Jon Tjeerdsma are the improvisers for this hilarious and disgusting episode.

In the textbook definition of a cult, a group must have three things: a charismatic leader, insider/outsider identity, and shared ritual. In this episode, Hideo shares some of the rituals of the Moonies and what he had to leave behind.     TRANSCRIPT News Announcer [00:00:01] A decade ago, The Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. News Announcer [00:00:08] So-called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon head of the Unification Church, who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:24] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:25] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd gen [00:00:43] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd gen [00:00:48] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:05] My name is Hideo Higashibaba. Until four years ago, I was a part of a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories from people who grew up in the church like me. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:21] In my second year of college I took a social psychology class and there was a whole chapter in our textbook about cults. And you guessed it, the Moonies were in it. I learned that for a group to be called a cult it has to have three things: a charismatic leader, insider outsider identity, and shared ritual. The Moonies charismatic leader is obviously Sun Myung Moon and we've heard a lot about the insider outsider identity in past episodes. But before we go into the next interview I want to take a minute to talk about that last thing. The rituals of the Unification Church. I have two decades of Moonie knowledge, stories, poems, chants, and songs in my head. Even after I rejected the reasons behind them, the shared ritual is in my bones. I catch myself singing church songs, what we called Holy Songs. I can even remember most of the words. Hideo singing [00:02:29] Pure new life that was sown within the gardens furtile soil. Sprouting seed has now become blossom of heavenly loveliness. Father above... Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:47] The words are bananas. That's partly because a lot of them were translated from Korean but also partly because they're just crazy. Hideo singing [00:03:01] The Father's dwelling place is the fountain of our life drawn to the light of eternal day we banned the darkness. May the Word of God... Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:19] There is no reason for me to sing these songs now but I catch myself singing them in odd moments. The lyrics kind of creep me out. Hideo singing [00:03:27] So eternally to receive his love. We shall be his pride... Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:41] Correct church etiquette dictates that one always bows in the presence of the founder Sun Myung Moon and his wife, who are called the True Parents. If they weren't around you bow their picture. There was the full bow, where you place your right hand over left. Then put your hands to your forehand as you bend down to crouch in front of the picture. Then there was the half bow, where you just bend at the waist for when you were outside or in a rush or something. Being a Moonie is made up of dozens of small rituals like this. There are way too many to mention them all here so I'm just going to tell you about three important ones. During the week Moonies were expected to read the sacred texts of the church for at least an hour a day usually old speeches and lectures from Moon. This is called Hoon Dok Hae. It's a Korean phrase that from what I can tell means get up ridiculously early to read little gems like this. Here's my editor Quinn reading from one of Moon's speeches. Quinn Myers [00:04:42] In the world today there are advanced nations and underdeveloped nations. In the advanced nations people have a lot and end up discarding leftover things, whereas people in underdeveloped nations lack many things, especially food. They may even starve to death. Twenty million people die of starvation each year. Do you think that is God's will? What the advanced nations are doing is oppressing the universe's natural system of interaction. If this continues the advanced nations will be unable to avoid divine punishment. Heaven will not let this go unnoticed. Already, signs of judgement are appearing in various places. One of the signs is the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, and another is drug and alcohol abuse. Both free sex and homosexuality are the madness of the lowest of the human race. God detests such behavior the most. Satan, on the other hand, praises such behavior the most. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:42] You heard that right. World hunger is caused by gay people. Most Moonies didn't actually do Hoon Dok Hae every day, I know my family didn't. We usually just did it on Sunday mornings before church. Other rituals were just for special occasions. There's the matching and blessing obviously but also stuff you could only do at Chun Pyung, the church's headquarters in Korea. My family went there the summer I turned eight. Chun Pyung is this beautiful white marble city. I think it's a resort town with bathhouses and a hospital. There's a lake and beautiful mountains everywhere. I think there's a big palace now too, dedicated to the founder and his family. One of the rules at Chun Pyung is that we had to wear white shirts. I have no idea why but that was the rule. When my family and I went there were 12,000 people at the same workshop all wearing white shirts and dark pants and almost everyone there was Asian with black hair. So the place looked like the static on a television screen. In the 10 days my family was there we climbed the special mountain and drink the special water on the mountain. I went to a bathhouse for the first time. Chun Pyung was very hot and not very exciting for an 8 year old. Everything was kind of different like it would be in any foreign country but not that weird. But then there was Ansu. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:18] The Ansu hall is this enormous room with hundreds of people all sitting on the floor in rows. A team of singers and drummers come on stage and start to sing the song, Blessing of Glory in Korean. They lead the crowd, stepping to the music, while the drummer keeps the beat. The crowd claps to the music for a couple of verses and then the leader signals to everyone to start hitting themselves to the beat. That's right, hitting themselves. Not just anywhere, that would be crazy! You only hit the part of the body that the leader tells you to. So they yell 'arms!' or 'legs!' and 500 people start hitting their legs in unison. Other leaders would walk through the crowd showing people how to hit themselves correctly, sometimes urging people to hit themselves harder. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:14] Why do Moonies do Ansu, you may ask. It's to free the body of the evil spirits trapped inside. Most Moonies did Ansu only a few times in their lives because it can only be done in certain places at certain times. You can just go around hitting yourself all the time! It had to be done in Chun Pyung and sometimes at one of Moon's gazillion billion properties in upstate New York. The most memorable part of my family's trip to Korea was when I barfed in the Ansu Hall. I'd been really sick for the whole trip. Somehow I'd gotten a stomach bug on the way over and combined with the jetlag, I was a hot mess. My mum and sisters and I were settling down in the Ansu Hall before a session, when I stood up too fast and projectile vomited all over the floor. All the women around us started pulling towels napkins little packets of Kleenex out of their bags to help us. The only man nearby made this disgusted noise and scooted away like, 'Ulgh!'. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:17] I was covered in vomit, so my mother grabbed me by the back of the neck and steered me out of the hall into the bathroom. I didn't have to do answer after that. I remember feeling really guilty because instead of feeling bad that I couldn't do this wholly special once in a lifetime thing I was relieved. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:45] A smaller but no less odd ritual is holy salt. The logic behind holy salt is that Satan rules over everything in the world. So, Moon told us that before we go around using all this stuff that Satan has claim over, we should claim it back. Anytime we brought anything into the house; groceries, bags of hand-me-downs, Christmas gifts, we would say a prayer and sprinkle this salt on the objects three times. If you didn't have salt handy, you could also blow three little puffs like, pff pff pff. For some reason we also did this to toilets before we sat down on them. I guess it was because you didn't want to put your bare bottom on Satan's toilet seat. All that was years ago when the founder Moon was alive. Life was good. It was uncomplicated. Then in 2012... News Announcer [00:10:39] The Reverend Sun Myung Moon who founded a global religious movement has died. His Unification Church was famous for its mass weddings in which thousands of followers often from different countries married simultaneously. At the same time, he faced accusations of brainwashing... Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:59] Since Moon's death, the church has split into factions. One is headed by his wife and the other two are led by his sons who both insist they are the true heirs. It's kind of a mess and one of the factions has gotten extra weird. News Announcer [00:11:15] Exactly two weeks after the deadly shooting in Florida, the Sanctuary Church near Newfoundland encouraged people to bring a AR-15s to a couple's blessing ceremony Wednesday. Participants say the firearms symbolize the rod of iron in the Bible's Book of Revelation. Sanctuary Church Member [00:11:33] I don't look as an assault rifle. I look at it as a as a weapon to protect my family and to protect my neighbors. Hideo Higashibaba [00:11:42] This ceremony looked a lot like any blessing in the church. The women are wearing white and the men are wearing black suits with white gloves. But here everyone is holding a AR-15 rifles and crowns made out of bullets. It's really spooky. The whole tone feels a lot different to me, but these people are definitely Moonies. News Announcer [00:12:04] They understand the controversy. Sanctuary Church Member [00:12:06] Controversy is something you expect when you're a Unification Church member, a Moonie as we're lovingly known. We've grown up with controversy. News Announcer [00:12:14] Outside the service there was a visible state police presence. Hideo Higashibaba [00:12:18] That shit was scary. A local school closed down for the day because of it. I recognized one of the women in the photos, I think she was a friend of my mom's. It was all over the internet. Everyone was talking about it and not a single Moony I know of came out against it. Hideo singing [00:12:42] Grace filling me with golden light, measureless blessing divine. God gives eternal life to me, perfectly rejoicing is mine. Glorious the song ringing in my heart for my father above... Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:00] Rituals are an important part of being a person. Every single one of us has them. Taking a shower before work, that's a ritual. So is praying before a meal or celebrating birthdays. You have rituals in your life even if you don't call them that. These are just a few of the many Moonies do. Doing rituals with other people makes us feel connected to them and that's why there's such a powerful part of cults. Because those rituals aren't just silly songs or poems. If you say them enough they start to shape your reality. The prayers I said when I was lonely also reminded me that I was worthless without God or my family. Those songs I loved so much made it clear that I was in constant danger of Satan's attack. Hideo singing [00:13:48] Grace filling every part of me blessing that never will die. Glorious the song... Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:57] Even though I don't want them anymore, these Moonie rituals are still a part of me. I can't hate them without hating myself. I want them gone but I don't know who I'll be without them. I was scared for my whole life because of this cult, but here on the outside, all this is really scary too. I have to create my own reality now and my own rituals. My own ways to make a meaning in the world. Hideo Higashibaba [00:14:38] Next time on Growing Up Moonie... Katie [00:14:41] I don't care about doctrine or dogma. I don't really care for it if it splits up people that you love. Hideo Higashibaba [00:14:49] That's next time on Growing Up Moonie. Hideo Higashibaba [00:15:02] Growing Up Moonie is written by me. This episode was edited and produced by Quinn Myers with music by Podington Bear. Special thanks to Kate Bennett for helping out with music for this episode. Please take a moment to leave us a rating and review wherever you're listening. It really helps this podcast reach a wider audience. Visit growingupmoonie.com for more info. I'm Hideo Higashibaba. Thanks for listening.  

Katie and Hideo talk about Katie’s recent marriage to another second generation, the struggle to live the values of the church, and the innate need for belonging.     TRANSCRIPT   News Announcer [00:00:01] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies News Announcer [00:00:08] So-called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:16] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:25] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:25] We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this God-given principle, they are bound to hell. News Announcer [00:00:35] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:38] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know, we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:00:43] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what keeps me in the church. 2nd Gen [00:00:48] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe, we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:00] My name is Hideo Higashibaba until four years ago. I was a part of a cult called the Unification Church. You might know them as the Moonies. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories of people who grew up in the church like I did. One of the only Moonies I still talk to is my friend Katie. We've known each other since we were babies. Her mum took care of me when my mum was a full-time missionary. Katie is a year older than me, and we were never very close, but we tried to look out for each other at workshops and church camp. After high school we lost touch and the next time we saw each other was in our early 20s in Japan. I was in Tokyo for an internship and she was visiting family nearby. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:44] We met at a cafe can caught up. It had been a tough few years for Katie. She had struggled with her health, her brother had left the church and wasn't talking to anyone in his family, and her parents had been looking for a match for her for years. She got her hopes up with each person and each time it didn't work out in money matching everyone both the kids and the parents have a say. Katie had been rejected both by potential matches and his parents and that hurt. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:17] After Tokyo we stayed in touch over Facebook and texts. We spoke in the summer of 2017 for this project and by that time Katie had some big news. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:27] You look really sleepy are you OK? Katie [00:02:30] Oh no, I'm fine. I just got back last night from Iowa. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:34] Oh, what were you doing in Iowa? Katie [00:02:36] I was seeing Kenny. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:38] Kenny is Katie's husband now. When Katie and I talked they were about to go to Chun Pyung in South Korea to be married along with 4,000 couples. It's weird, but even though we were bombarded with the matching and blessing our whole lives, neither I nor any of my siblings went through the process. I actually didn't know very much about how it works. So I asked Katie what it's been like for her. Katie [00:03:02] I started when I was 20 and the first guy was four months and we got really close to getting engaged. That one was a good relationship, but definitely not what I am experiencing now with the relationship I'm in right now. It's a totally different dimension. With that one it was more about you know doing what your parents want, like going into the process because you know it's the right thing to do and it's part of the church and you know all that stuff. And I feel like a lot of the relationships I went through was sort of on that dimension. I've been through five before Kenny and I feel like I was taking on that other perspective kind of thing where you like in it, but you're not in it, you know, like your heart isn't fully in it. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:56] When we were younger the founder of the church, Moon, still arranged marriages in what were called matching ceremonies. That's how most first generation were married. There was also something called 'parents matching' where many parents would find a spouse for their kid, and then there was a variation on that where second gen would find someone on their own and ask their parents permission. The process has modernized over the years. There's a website now like a Match.com for Moonies. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:26] Do most people find their matches through their parents through the website? Katie [00:04:31] No. These days people are actually like finding other people they think would be good matches and then having their parents, like talking to their parents about it and seeing what their parents say so that the kids are very much involved these days. Just because there's been so many mistakes and so many break ups and so many matches that broke and stuff and it's always really hard for the kid. So parents see that and they don't want definitely kids, so they're a little more loose these days. There are people who are getting blessed to people you know who are first gen outside the movement and they go to the blessing and there are people find each other like me and Kenny except not through our parents but through just like mutual friends or just they themselves met up and thought they would be a good match because they felt very connected. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:24] Are they even holding meetings anymore? Katie [00:05:26] No they're not. It just got weird. At one point they were matching people based off their thumbs. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:35] You heard that right. Their thumbs. Moon died a few years ago and his wife Hak Ja Han took over, but she did it a little differently than her husband. Hak Ja Han had men and women stand on each side of the room. Then she told everyone to fold their hands like they were praying. Then the women were told to cross the room to find someone with a matching thumb on top. But no women were moving, so they had the men choose instead. Yeah, that's when it got weird. Katie's family really wanted her to be blessed to another second gen. I think there was extra pressure to marry her off because she was the first child. Originally, she and Kenny chatted for a few months and it was going well. Then they got into a fight and Katie broke it off. But two years later... Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:26] He actually texted me out of the blue, even though I said never contacted me again. He texted me out of the blue and he said like there's so many things that I think could work out about us and things that I feel like I still think about and it's true. Like for me the whole relationship, the first time was amazing. I felt so connected to him...like it's interesting like when you meet someone and you feel like it's so different from any other person you've been with. And it just feels right. It's kind of like my last attempt to keep my mother involved in the process and to show her that you know all her attempts weren't in vain. So he was actually kind of my last chance, after him I was actually kind of thinking about dating other people and not really being churchy. So anyway it's a weird dynamic but I'm here, I'm in this life, and it's working out really well right now. So that's all I'm really grateful for. Hideo Higashibaba [00:07:37] Katie is a second generation, a Blessed Child born without original sin. The entire purpose of her life, for her entire life, was to marry another blessed child and have a family with him. To do something or be someone else felt impossible. But after spending most of her 20s looking for a match she was about to give up, try dating. She told Kenny to never contact her again, but he ignored her and they kept talking and she fell in love and found a reason to stay. She made the choice to stay. As children we were told to beware of the temptations of Satan, of outsiders. We had to protect ourselves and our purity. Katie says she worked so hard to be unattractive it just seemed impossible for someone to have a crush on her. Katie [00:08:31] If a guy was attracted to me I never knew. Because one thing, I gained a lot of weight. I was very smelly. I just never never thought that anyone would like me because I tried so hard not to let people like me so if there was someone who did like me it surprised me. It was like I was watching the world from a different perspective, like I wasn't really part of it. But I wasn't really not a part of it. If that makes sense?  I spent a lot of time in my house not really hanging out with people, just kind of on my own watching TV a lot. And I've watched the TV and definitely wanted to kiss or wanted to make out or wanted to like, really try those things and really, you know, experiment I guess? Curiosity, all that stuff, but I just never really felt like I was missing out on anything because...I feel like sometimes I'm from a different world, one where I'm and doing the right things because I know in my heart that that's based off my values. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:37] I heard this a lot when I was a Moonie. I even said it. Things like, I don't need friends or I'm not interested in dating because romance before marriage doesn't live up to my values. 'Living up to my values' was like a place holder for how I actually felt which was miserable and lonely. And for Katie... Katie [00:09:58] It's definitely made me feel isolated and lonely for sure but I don't feel like I had some support from other BCs too like I feel so much support from them. And even going to church every week I felt like I could be myself more, I felt like I was supported more. Most of my friends are BC because, you know, 'the outside secular world, you don't want to be friends with them' kind of thing. I had my community and I think that really helped me pull through the loneliness and isolation. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:35] Growing up, Katie's parents weren't around much. Like most Moonies, they worked a lot. Many of the first generation didn't finish college and spent most of their 20s and 30s as full time missionaries which made it hard to find good paying work to support a family. So a lot of church members work for companies owned by the church. My dad works for a church owned business so does Katie's mom. Katie's parents also had a flower shop they worked at on weekends. Her brother was going through his own stuff so Katie spent a lot of time alone. Katie [00:11:09] You could definitely feel that they were trying. They were trying really hard. They just wanted to do the right thing. Sometimes you didn't really found my parents but they were there which is the weird part. Hideo Higashibaba [00:11:19] Without support from her parents Katie's sole refuge became the church community. More than the teachings or the rituals, it was the people that held her up, held her together. So she was heartbroken when her brother left and stopped talking with his family. I also left and no longer speak with my family and it's hard for Katie to not think of her brother when we're talking. Her grief is so near the surface. Katie [00:11:48] And the thing is I don't care about doctrine or dogma. I don't really care for it if it splits up people that you love, people that, you know, you care about, people who are...for some people people in their family and it just hurts me that he's he just he's hurting because see he just strongly doesn't believe in the dogma and because of that that led to breaking off his relationship with us and I just don't believe in the dogma like that. I don't believe in a doctrine like that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:12:23] Oh Katie, it's probably more complicated than. Katie [00:12:26] Yeah. Hideo Higashibaba [00:12:28] It's all the more frustrating for Katie because she doesn't believe some of the church's most important teachings. Katie [00:12:35] I don't believe in True Parents being the Messiah. I don't really. It's not really something I strongly believe in. I mean I thought they brought really important ideas that the world could really benefit from. I'm here because of the community rather than because, you know, True Parents and they'll save the world from evil in return all our minds the Original Mind and all that stuff, because to me it sounds culty. It sounds very untrue. It sounds very difficult to fathom and very out there. I know it's what brought our parents to the church but it's not what keeps me in the church. Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:18] Katie's found so much love and belonging in the church, maybe it's hard for her to imagine that it's not the same for other people. And now she's married to Kenny. When we spoke just a few weeks before they got blessed she sounded so happy and content. Katie [00:13:35] It's just the connection is so magnetic and so like strong and I know it's not really like 'parent's matching,' it's not really churchy or not very by the books but it just works and is still working and I see it working for the rest of my life. Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:56] Are you in love with him? Katie [00:13:57] I am so in love with him. I am head over heels in love with him and it has been from the beginning. Hideo Higashibaba [00:14:02] I mean did you did you expect that for yourself when you thought about this when you were young. Katie [00:14:09] Not at all. For me I was just like a duty like I had to do because my parents wanted me to do it and I did it because it's like it's something I've been saving up for my whole life and it's just a bonus that I fell in love with him. Because with my parents it was over time that they fell in love with each other. It wasn't at the beginning but their love grew and actually it was what keeps them together I guess. So that's what I'm worried about is just like if if this magnetism and this infatuation phase that we're in right now when it ends will we be able to continue it. On his side, I mean, I know for myself that I committed I'm going to work through anything to be with him anyway. We'll see. It's in the future. Hideo Higashibaba [00:15:03] And that future got way harder than Katie imagined. About a year into her marriage Katie had a realization about the church: the overwork and fundraising and constant guilt weren't necessary. The church wasn't everything it said it was. Katie's doubts about the True Parents, the doctrine and practices of the church all came to a head and she had to take a mental step back. And even though Katie loves the church and the community she's struggled with loneliness and isolation. Katie [00:15:35] For me the hardest thing about being in the church, and just even being half-Asian, is that that I can't talk about it with other people because they don't understand. Like they'll never fully understand my experience. And the fact that you're so open about it and the fact that you can talk to other people about it is so amazing for me to hear that from you and that you're so open with other people because I think and I'm kind of jealous. Katie [00:16:03] I wish I could be more open but I feel...for me the worst thing for me in the world is that if someone rejects me. And I can't do that. I can't fathom the idea that someone would reject me because it's part of who I am and I realize it's very difficult to take. Hideo Higashibaba [00:16:28] The Unification Church is a cult that isolates its members by telling them to fear the outside world. And Katie was born into that fear. If she's rejected from the church she will lose everything; her community, her friends, her family. So she hides parts of herself to avoid rejection. She's not the only recently married, half-Asian, religious person in the world or even in her city. But she only feels safe with other Moonies. People outside the faith are scary to her, not trustworthy. She expects them to have an ulterior motive. She knows the church is weird but she says Moonies are just more pure. Katie [00:17:09] I know this sounds culty but just feels like pure in the sense that we know we're not supposed to be dating so we know that even if we do have an attraction it's not something that we act on immediately. It's more about like knowing that that person is for someone else and then treating them just as a friend or just like a sibling or something and then you just show real close to them and realize that you know it's not going to go further than that. Katie [00:17:37] Another thing too is I notice like, people they expect something in return instead of just giving because they want to give. People are always like kind of protecting themselves because they feel like no other person can be a complete monster. And I just never really thought that from this community I don't feel as judged. I don't feel as as much of a stranger as more of a part of their family kind of. I don't know it's just this whole bond that I feel with them is what keeps me going. I can't imagine myself leaving the church because if I left the church it would be leaving that bond and that feeling like that I'm home in that part of this family and I'm part of something bigger. Hideo Higashibaba [00:18:26] But with her new realization Katie doesn't want to just believe whatever she's told. She worries about being seen as brainwashed or delusional. We recently started emailing back and forth and I asked if she's still considered herself a church member. This is my friend, also named Kate, reading from one of Katie's emails . Kate [00:18:46] I do still go to church and I do engage with the community but it feels slightly disjointed. I'm more about the church lifestyle. I don't consider myself as having broken away but at the same time I don't consider myself as having fully stayed. Hideo Higashibaba [00:19:02] Katie is the only person I spoke to for this project who is committed to staying in the church but is also determined to think for herself. She refuses to accept the idea that you have to believe all the church's teachings to be a church member. That you have to give up your community just because you don't agree with them on some things. I wonder how hard that must be, especially on things that hit really close to home. Katie [00:19:27] One thing I really don't appreciate about Kenny's viewpoint sometimes, is that he thinks being gay is something that you can flip and that you can learn to get out of. I truly don't believe that. He said he was going to send me a book, I can't remember what it's called, it's basically 'Getting the Gay Out' or something like that. Hideo [00:19:49] That stuff is so hateful Katie. Katie [00:19:52] I know! For me my thinking is that this love and this connection that I have with Kenny is so precious to me that I know that there are people out there who happen to be same sex but I know that if they have the same feelings that I have for Kenny then I really wouldn't want them to lose that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:20:14] It's 2019 and Kenny thinks being gay is a choice and he's married to my friend. Katie is a gentle, kind, understanding person. She was very supportive when I told her I'm queer and transgender. So finding out that she's married to someone with such terrible and ignorant opinions is kind of scary for me. If Kenny doesn't have enough empathy to believe gay people exist is he really going to be able to take care of her? Katie has told me more than once that she wants to have children with Kenny. What if they're gay? Hideo Higashibaba [00:20:50] Sure, I might be overreacting. I bet there are plenty of homophobic people who are in perfectly fine relationships. But Katie is my friend. We were chatting once and she said, 'I would love for you to meet Kenny' and I reminded her that I'm gay. I don't want to meet him. Katie's intense commitment to Kenny reminds me of my parents who have been miserably married for 36 years. I'm not claiming to know anything about relationships. You might have missed it, but I was kind of raised in a cult, so I don't know shit about anything and I know that. But neither my parents nor Katie had any other relationships before they got married. I wonder if that makes it hard to know what's healthy and what's not and what really makes two people compatible. But what Katie always comes back to is the community. In a recent email she said that her choices about the church aren't just for her. Kate [00:21:46] In thinking about the future and my future kids, I think the most important thing about growing up is having a community you can turn to when things get rough. A community of people who want to support and love each other. I can't fathom not having that community of support and raising my kids alone. I have my beliefs and I believe that they are strong enough that I can teach my kids to think for themselves rather than subscribe immediately to the church doctrine. My community just happens to be considered a cult. The most important part of growing up money is deciding truly what you believe and sticking with it no matter what the popular opinion is. Hideo Higashibaba [00:22:24] Katie told me she doesn't think all of the church's teachings are bad. She still thinks that most of society's problems could be fixed by resolving quote 'familial relationships' and that it's freeing to relate to people without thinking of them sexually. Hideo Higashibaba [00:22:40] Knowing my friend believes those things is hard for me. The Christian far-right has been saying that we need to 'rebuild the family' for decades. It's a way to push queer and trans people, single parents, and survivors of abuse to the margins. And how do I explain to her that yes, some people see others just as sex objects and we all agree those people are horrible and gross but not everyone is horrible and gross. My friends and chosen family certainly aren't. But I think what Katie is really saying is that she doesn't like that people outside the church are connected to their sexuality. They aren't afraid of sexual attraction and they act on those feelings even if they aren't married or dating. Katie doesn't want to live around people like that. And she doesn't want to raise her children around people like that. People like me. What she wants is all the goodness and purity she expects from Moonies. Katie [00:23:36] I've met some people who kind of fit the bill in terms of the genuineness and the love that they have for other people. And the fact that they're constantly trying to improve themselves so that they can show that they really care for other people without the whole like, 'do they want to have sex with me' or 'are they just doing that because I know they are hurt and they act that way because they've been hurt before.' I mean obviously not church kids have that sort of feeling. They definitely have been through a lot. It's just like there are certain people who are so genuine that they've worked through all those thoughts and feelings and they have found something that really gets them through it. And get them through difficulties and I found it for myself, I think. Within this church community and within this life. Hideo Higashibaba [00:24:43] Next time on Growing Up Moonie... Hideo Higashibaba [00:24:46] I feel like the closer I get to being who I am by coming out as gay and coming out as gender nonconforming like, there is no shred of doctrine that could justify my existence at this point. Hideo Higashibaba [00:24:57] That's next time on Growing Up Moonie. Hideo Higashibaba [00:25:09] Growing up Moonie is written by me. This episode was edited and produced by Quinn Myers, with music by Podingtonbear. Special thanks to Kate Bennett. If you like what you're hearing please give us some stars or leave a review wherever you're listening. It really helps to boost the show and helps this project reach a wider audience. I'm Hideo Higashibaba. Thanks for listening.  

In this final episode Hideo shares his reasons for leaving the Unification and all he lost—and gained—when he left.     TRANSCRIPT Hideo Higashibaba [00:00:01] Thanks for listening to Growing Up Moonie. Just a heads up for our listeners, this episode includes mention of mental health crisis, rape, family abuse, death, hospitalization, homophobia, and child abuse. Please take care of yourself as you listen. And now the final episode of Growing Up Moonie. News Announcer [00:00:21] A decade ago, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon was accused of controlling the minds of young people creating so-called Moonies. News Announcer [00:00:28] So called Moonies, followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, who became well-known in the early 80s for his mass wedding ceremonies. Interpreter [00:00:36] Do you pledge to establish an eternal family with which God can be happy. Crowd [00:00:44] Yes! Interpreter [00:00:45] It. We are talking about absolute fidelity here. If anybody deviates from this. God. You may be about to go. News Announcer [00:00:55] But the church has a different plan for the second generation. 2nd Gen [00:00:58] I felt like we weren't equipped for the world. You know we aren't just like this bubble. 2nd Gen [00:01:03] To me it sounds culty. I know it's what brought our parents to church but it's not what you see in the church. 2nd Gen [00:01:08] Even if I'm not doing everything that they want me to do or I don't believe everything that they believe we still have this like line that connects us. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:20] My name is Hideo Higashi Baba. I am queer, brown and transgender. I like reading, watching TV, swimming, and hiking, and hanging out with my dog Stanley. And oh yeah I grew up in a cult. This is Growing Up Moonie, stories of people who grew up in the Unification Church, Also known as the Moonies. And for this last episode I wanted to tell my story. Hideo Higashibaba [00:01:48] For the most part before I left, I was a really good Moonie. When I was 18 I told my parents I wanted an arranged marriage just like they got. I read the sacred texts, I didn't date or smoke or drink. I got good grades and honored my father and mother. At church, I was taught the Divine Principle the sacred teachings of the church. I learned that the source of all sin was sex that I had to save my virginity for my husband. In my heart I knew what the founder Sun Myung Moon told us about the world was right and it was my job to protect myself from anything that would contradict that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:30] I am my parent's third child out of four. There are my two older sisters than me than my younger sister. Before I was born my father Shinichi prayed and prayed for a boy but all he got was another kid with a vagina. He doesn't know that I'm transgender. I'm pretty sure he would not be happy to find out. Hideo Higashibaba [00:02:51] My parents had four children in six years, and from the moment we were born we were told we were special. Unlike my classmates, their parents, the people we saw out in the world, we didn't have Original Sin and that meant we were better than everyone else. It also meant that we had to be better. Better behaved, better in school, more modest, discreet, and generous. We were literally born to save the world from Satan, to reunite humanity with God. And we could not fuck that up. Hideo Higashibaba [00:03:27] But there's something else. I grew up in an abusive family. My mom Andrea would fly into rages and yell at us until she was hoarse. She also hit us. My dad Shinichi did too. You might not know that much about abusive or co-dependent family structures; in my family, we were raised to take care of Andrea. Our needs came second. No matter how much she yelled at us or hit us. Our job was to make sure she felt OK. How we felt didn't matter. As a kid I tried not to cry when she hit me but it wasn't because I was tough. It was because I didn't want to make her feel bad for what she was doing. This co-dependent relationship and isolation from the outside world meant that our relationships with the church were inextricable from our relationship with Andrea. You couldn't get one without the other. Doing things Andrea didn't like weren't just annoying to her. She made it clear that what you were doing was a sin. Like if we tried to run away when she wanted to yell at us or hit us that was disrespecting our elders, against God's instruction to honor our father and mother. She told me that she hit us because she saw a defiance, a kind of sin in our eyes. She could tell Satan was working in us and she had to beat him out. Hideo Higashibaba [00:04:57] I was discouraged from having friends and I wasn't invited to a lot of sleepovers or parties. So I spent a lot of time at home. At the time. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. In fact I thought it was all a good thing. My family meant everything to me. They were more important than my feelings, my dreams, or anything I wanted, and that was completely normal. Sun Myung Moon told us to honor our father and mother that the family was where the love of God resides. And I believed him. Hideo Higashibaba [00:05:34] It's not that I wasn't curious or didn't have my doubts. I was told that if something didn't make sense it was because I didn't have enough faith. I just had to pray about it and God would provide me the answers. Having a different opinion or being something other than what was expected of me was not an option. My job was to prepare myself to be married to get blessed. No one asked me what I wanted because no one cared. If I contradicted my parents or the church I would be yelled at or hit. So I developed a deep denial about everything. I learned again and again to ignore my feelings, ignore my body and my instincts. So the arranged marriage, the homophobia, the self-loathing, it all seemed perfectly normal to me. When my extended family who are not in the church made fun of me for my faith I defended the church and my parents. I'm still baffled by why my grandparents aunts and uncles thought it would be funny to tease a seven year old about their beliefs. I certainly didn't have any say in the matter. Hideo Higashibaba [00:06:45] Anyway, my immediate family was controlling but I was never discouraged from learning or traveling. When I wanted to go to a tiny liberal arts college in Ohio, they supported me, but I wonder if they would have if they knew how much it would change me. In college, I met all kinds of people and it got harder and harder to maintain the bigotry I was raised with. I also started crushing on a boy almost immediately and that terrified me. I had already promised myself to the blessing and with this crush I felt like I was betraying that promise. I pushed my feelings for this person down as hard as I could and eventually I got over it. So I thought I knew what to do when another boy at school named Ian after me out a couple years later. I told him, no I don't date, but Ian was different. I don't mean that he was particularly nice or interesting or even good looking. What made Ian special was that he did not go away when I told him I wasn't interested. He just kept hanging around saying all he wanted to do was spend time with me, that he just liked talking to me, yada yada. All the things a naive and inexperienced person like me wanted to hear. And it just felt so nice to be liked and my sister had married someone outside the church. By that point it just didn't seem that bad to go out with a non-Moonie. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:17] When we did eventually start dating it was weird and awkward and embarrassing like so many first boyfriends are. Now, I wouldn't even consider it a relationship. But at the time I did. Shortly after we started dating, I left for an internship and most of our relationship was over the phone. I'm taking the time to tell you this embarrassing story about Ian because we got into a fight that shattered my faith which is where I started the story when Jenn from the first episode of this podcast asked me why I left the church. Hideo Higashibaba [00:08:52] I got a huge theological argument with my boyfriend at the time who was Jewish and he basically was like, 'why do you believe this?' And it took like three days worth of arguing with him about this particular piece of scripture, because I was like, I don't know for me, you know, for example the fall of Adam and Eve, like that's for me at the time was like this is inherently true and this is something that I can believe happened and he was like, 'well I just think that some people made it up, like some people made up the story as a way to make women feel bad and like to oppress women. And I never literally never thought about it like that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:26] We fought about the anti-Semitism of the Bible and Christianity and I defended it. It was a three day long argument over the phone, him back at school, I was back at home on break by that point. It was just a total mess. But finally, I sent a message apologizing. I said that if my beliefs were oppressive and anti-Semitic then I would have to change what I believed. I had no idea how much that single text would change my life. Hideo Higashibaba [00:09:57] I don't think he knew that he was challenging...it wasn't like an intellectual exercise for me, like, we were having an argument over like my entire belief system. Like how I made sense of the world and why the color blue was the way it was and why was born and like it was really existential and I don't think he understood that it was. And kind of spiraled out of control like that. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:24] Throughout this three day shitshow I told my sisters I'd been fighting with Ian but not what it was about exactly. I told them about the apology but not what it said. They did not like that. My sister Anshin cornered me and demanded details. She said I shouldn't change for anyone especially a boy. She was so angry and I knew I had somehow betrayed my faith but I couldn't take it back. And I didn't want to. Hideo Higashibaba [00:10:59] Later that day I heard my older sisters talking in the kitchen. It sounded serious. So I asked them what was going on. Anshin told me that our mother Andrea had been brutally raped when she was 16. My sister was the first person Andrea had told in 40 years. Hideo Higashibaba [00:11:19] The secret hit me like a punch to the gut. Like 100 punches. I couldn't speak. All I could think about was my mum as a 16 year old girl covered in bruises all alone. Then I thought about her 30 year miserable marriage with a man who she hated, who hated her. I thought about the effort they put into having children and how scary and traumatic that must have been for her. Hideo Higashibaba [00:11:48] And for the first time in my life I doubted God and Sun Myung Moon, the True Father of the movement. I didn't understand why God would put my mother in such an unhappy marriage knowing what he did about my mother's past. All my doubts, the fighting with Ian, all came to a head and in that single moment my faith was gone. I couldn't believe any of it anymore. Hideo Higashibaba [00:12:17] That night I prayed for the last time. I couldn't sleep so I went to one of my favorite spots, the top of a hill way out near the river. The moonlight sparkled on the snow and I shivered in my puffy winter coat. I asked God for forgiveness and begged for understanding. I felt God in my heart, telling me that understanding would come with time. I just had to have faith. Even if I didn't understand now, I would one day. I drove home and fell into a deep sleep. I woke up the next morning and started screaming. And I couldn't stop. Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:01] When I think about it, over the last couple of years, I think there were hairline fractures in my beliefs. Jenn [00:13:08] OK. Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:08] Like over the years. You know, one of them that I think about was when they were organizing protests against gay marriage at the State House when Massachusetts was about to be the first state to pass gay marriage, or one of the first states. And that just didn't make sense to me. Like, if God was love and we were supposed to love everyone we wanted everyone to be in the church, then like how would going to tell people that they couldn't have what they wanted going make them like us. Like, they're not going to like us after, that they're not going to want to join the church. Hideo Higashibaba [00:13:39] No one in my family ever went to those protests. But when I asked Andrea about it she said, sometimes you just have to do what's right. And that didn't seem like a good enough answer. But I was scared of my mom. Challenging her usually meant I'd get yelled at or hit. Questioning adults was disrespectful, against God's Commandment to honor thy father and mother. If I didn't get something I was told to pray so I assumed I didn't get it because I was too young or stupid to understand. Hideo Higashibaba [00:14:15] In the winter of 2014, I got suicidally depressed and what I really needed was a hospital but my family doesn't believe in modern medicine and they didn't want me to go to a psychiatrist. So, I was repeatedly telling them that I was going to kill myself, and they were basically like, please don't do that. I was going to a therapist but I didn't really think it was going to be enough and I was worried. So I moved in with my best friend's parents. Hideo Higashibaba [00:14:45] Cleo was my best friend. We'd met in college. She was worried about me and saw how awful my family was, even when I couldn't. So she asked her parents to take me in and they did. They saved my life. Hideo Higashibaba [00:14:59] I moved to Arizona and for whatever reason when I got there I stopped talking to my family. I didn't answer texts I didn't answer phone calls I didn't answer emails and of course they got worried and the longer it was the nastier the emails got because they got so, I think just because they got so worried. Hideo Higashibaba [00:15:21] I stopped answering emails and phone calls because I felt like I was going to kill myself. I wasn't intentionally setting a boundary. I didn't have any keen insight about the nature of abusive families. All I knew was that seeing messages from my family made me feel worse. Hideo Higashibaba [00:15:47] I had to move to the other side of the country to realize I didn't know why I believed anything I believed. My faith was gone. I had to figure out who I was without it. It seemed like every opinion or preference I'd ever had was handed to me by my family. Did I like music or did I just say I did because my sisters did? Did I actually think gay people were sick and evil? Was I really on the fence about whether or not birth control was OK? I couldn't tell where I ended and my family began. I had to go back and re-evaluate everything I ever believed or knew about myself. Hideo Higashibaba [00:16:31] The church, my faith, my family, gave my life purpose. My mother taught me the Divine Principle so I didn't have to think for myself. It explained everything, why the sky was blue, why I was born. It imbued everything in my life with meaning. And overnight that meaning was gone. Hideo Higashibaba [00:16:55] For three months in Arizona I spent every waking hour wishing I was dead. I fantasized about killing myself hurting myself. I went to bed hoping I would die in my sleep. I cried when I woke up, realizing I'd survive the night. But with my friends parents I got the help my family couldn't, or maybe wouldn't, get me. I was in constant crisis, but I was alive. I didn't trust anyone. I felt like my family had lied to me for 20 years controlling me into the person they wanted. My whole life I was actively discouraged from trusting my own feelings my own instincts. I was told that if something didn't make sense to me it was my fault for lacking faith. I was unbelievably angry. Hideo Higashibaba [00:17:49] I told Cleo all this. I was living with her parents and I told them to but Cleo was the only person I trusted. I was on medical leave from college but she was still at school and Ian was studying abroad and mostly ignoring my emails. It was a lot of pressure for Cleo but I didn't realize it was too much until it was too late. Hideo Higashibaba [00:18:17] After a term away from school I decided I was ready to go back. What followed was a cascade of terrible events that are almost ridiculous in hindsight. The week before I left Arizona my grandma died. I decided to not go to the funeral. Within an hour of being back on campus Ian broke up with me and I went to the hospital for a week. Then Cleo and I had a fight and she didn't speak to me or acknowledge my existence for nine months. Almost all my friends kind of disappeared, stopped talking to me or asking me how I was. I think they either chose Cleo or couldn't handle being around a suicidally depressed person all the time. Or maybe they just didn't know what to do so they did nothing. For most of 2015 it was all I could do to stay alive and in school. I dragged myself to classes forced myself to eat and do laundry. I took long breaks from homework to lie on the floor of my room in abject misery. I cut myself. I went to seven hours of therapy a week. I realized I was gay. Ally Hills singing [00:19:30] We're all the same. We just want to belong, so let me explain in the form of a song... Hideo Higashibaba [00:19:34] It took months but eventually I figured out that Cleo and I had been more than friends. More even, than best friends. I'd spent the last six months fighting like hell to be myself, without my family or faith. I combed through every thought belief or preference I'd ever had, asking myself if it came from me or my family and the church. It made sense that I had to re-evaluate this part of me too. Hideo Higashibaba [00:20:06] At first the realization I was gay filled me with dread. It made the likelihood of ever reconciling with my family feel very far away. But once I accepted it I was elated. It felt like I'd hit the jackpot of self realization. It was the best and happiest thing that had ever happened to me. I couldn't stop talking about it, honestly, I still can't. I told anyone who would listen and most of them were not surprised. Most of them thought Cleo and I had dated for two years, which I guess we had even if neither of us realized. Ally Hills singing [00:20:43] Who ever sent you this told me to say give you a hug and kiss and also wanted you to know they're gay. Hideo Higashibaba [00:20:52] In the two months after I came out I was so happy. My life was still a shambles and I still had no friends. I still hadn't seen or spoken with my family in months but I was gay and that was awesome. Hideo Higashibaba [00:21:13] Later that year my sister Anshin had her third baby and I went home to meet her and get some of my stuff. I stayed with friends and went home to visit a couple times. I wasn't gonna tell Andrea I was gay, but old habits die hard and when she demanded one-on-one time with me it all came spilling out. She said, 'you know how I feel about that kind of thing.' Later she emailed me saying she loved me no matter what. That her prayers for me were for my health and for my health only. Anshin, on the other hand, wanted me to know that she was not homophobic, but she was pretty sure I had decided to be gay. She was mad at me, but it was for other reasons not because I was gay. Hideo Higashibaba [00:21:59] I don't know what I expected. Sun Myung Moon the leader of the church once described gay people as,'shit eating dogs.' In the church there was nothing more Satanic than homosexuality. I guess I thought my family might make an exception for me. You know, their kid. Maybe if it was just the 'gay thing' my family could have adjusted. But by the time I came out, our relationship was beyond repair. I couldn't apologize for ignoring them for months and they could not or would not understand why I did. Hideo Higashibaba [00:22:43] Over months I slowly stabilized and got stronger. I worked to keep myself in school and eventually I graduated summa cum laude only six months later than my classmates. In the beginning of 2017 I got an internship in public radio and moved to Chicago. I started dating a boy. And I still could not believe how alone I felt. I told Katie about that feeling. Hideo Higashibaba [00:23:10] Listening to you talk about the church thing and you know the things that you want the things that you value and the things that people in the church value I just feel so isolated from all that and I feel so unwanted in all that and I just don't belong there at all. Katie [00:23:30] And also hard, there's so many grey areas. This makes it so difficult. Hideo Higashibaba [00:23:36]  I just really don't belong there at all. And I really don't feel like there's never been a time where I really felt like oh like this is where I'm supposed to be this is where I belong. And it's just hard to hear about, like this project has been super great but it's been really difficult you know because most people are most people are like somewhere between you and me like I'm 100 percent out. Really angry just super pissed at all times and you're going to the fucking blessing in September which is like the ultimate prize, right? And most people are like in the middle, most who I've talked to are dating other people, not in the church. Hideo Higashibaba [00:24:22] I feel like the closer I get to being who I am by coming out as gay and coming out as gender nonconforming, like, the further I get away from the people who raised me and the further I get away from the Church and the less and less I wanted. That stuff would not go down at all. There is no shred of doctrine I could justify my existence at this point. Hideo Higashibaba [00:24:50] I'm still learning to live in this reality, in a world without my family or faith or meaning, where people use facts and science to explain the world. Where everything is really complicated and there are no clear answers. Where I am responsible for my own happiness. Growing up in a cult and abusive family there were huge swaths of my personality that just didn't develop. They didn't have to because the beliefs of the church just filled it all in. Now I have to fill it all in on my own. I have to discover and develop my own personality from the ground up. Hideo Higashibaba [00:25:39] It's hard to accept that the trauma of my family and the crazy bullshit from the church will always be with me. It's hard to accept that this will always be painful. But accepting that it's shitty and heartbreaking feels good. It feels like progress. And I've learned that you can't avoid pain. All you can do is find people in your life who see you who see all of you and love you enough to witness your struggle without trying to fix it or fix you or pretend that it's not just totally awful and shitty. People who text you back, cheer you, on hold you when you cry. It has taken me years, but I am slowly beginning to believe that I deserve to have people like that in my life. That I deserve to be free. Hideo Higashibaba [00:27:03] This has been Growing Up Moonie a podcast about the children of the Unification Church, it's second generation. If you've made it this far and listened to even some of these episodes I am so grateful. A lot of love and work and tears went into this project and I am honored that you took the time to listen. I'd like to thank all my guests Jenn, Teruko, and Katie for sharing their stories with me and the world. This episode was written and produced by me, edited by Quinn Myers, music by Blue Dot Sessions Kai Engel and Alan Spiljak. The Coming Out Song is by Ally Hills. Hideo Higashibaba [00:27:39] Thank you to all the people who have loved and supported me throughout this project. First my sweet sausage dog Stanley my best friend and ever present companion. Also human beings: Lewis Wallace and Billy Dee for giving me a home and so much more, Noa Nessim and Cucumber the cat for helping me make a home. Chris Kugler for composing the music for the trailer, Katherine Kavanaugh for designing our beautiful logo, Elecia Harvey-Spain for truly living out disability justice, Kate Bennett for her can-do, how-can-I-help attitude, WUNC  for the use of their studio, Juliet Fromholt for logistical support and overall cheerleading. And every person I met in the last two and a half years who told me this was a good idea and I should keep going. Hideo Higashibaba [00:28:23] And lastly a very big thank you to Quinn Myers my creative and tireless editor who dedicated a year of his life to this project, listening to my doubts and worries and helping me make this dream come true. If anyone needs a talented skilled audio producer call me! Haha, then call Quinn. We both need the work. I'm Hideo Higashibaba. Thanks for listening.  

First, CNN's Dana Bash talks with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on President Trump pointing the blame at Democrats for the deaths of two migrant children at the US border, plus Day 9 of the government shutdown and Trump's demand for border wall funding. Then, Bash talks with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham about possible solutions to the stalemate on immigration in Congress, as well as President Trump's decision to withdraw American troops from Syria. Bash also talks with former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe about the best message for Democrats to defeat Trump in 2020, as well as his own possible bid for the White House in 2020. Finally, CNN White House reporter Kate Bennett recaps the highlights from 2018 for first lady Melania Trump.

What are we saying and doing that can be the inner voice driving athletes to make dangerous decisions regarding nutrition and their bodies? What can we do to recognize and prevent these issues before it’s too late? Tune in to this difficult and important discussion now.   Show Notes 10:35 Dr. Bennet’s daily work with athletes 16:20 Background and research on eating disorders in athletes 20:20 Eating disorders exist in men too, and we have to be willing to talk about it 22:50 Causes of eating disorders in sports 30:35 Athletes need to listen to their bodies to choose how to eat 34:50 Do not attach guilt to anything you eat 40:05 How can coaches be mindful of our words and actions 42:20 What are warning signs we should see 49:20 Dr. Bennett’s final advice for coaches   About Dr. Bennett Kate Bennett, PsyD, is the founder and director of Athlete Insight, PC. Her professional career began at Indiana University, where she earned a BS in Kinesiology and Athletic Training. Feeling compelled to help athletes on a psychological level, Dr. Bennett earned her EdM in Counseling and Sport Psychology at Boston University. She then worked at Carmichael Training Systems as a cycling coach while also racing her bike. During her coaching career, Dr. Bennett coached several state and national champions as well as earned two national championships herself. Over time, Dr. Bennett recognized her desire to help the whole person rather than focus solely on performance. She returned to graduate school to specialize in the treatment of athletes and eating disorders at the University of the Rockies. Dr. Bennett completed her practicum at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Counseling Center and her pre-doctoral internship at the Western Washington University Counseling Center. She then completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the Eating Disorder Center of Denver (EDCD) and continued on as a primary therapist. In collaboration with EDCD, Dr. Bennett combined her clinical expertise and sport experience to launch the ELITE Program, a treatment program designed specifically to treat elite athletes struggling with eating disorders. She is an integrative therapist, working from a humanistic foundation and incorporating other therapies such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and EMDR. Dr. Bennett is a clinical sport psychologist, licensed in the state of Colorado.     Getting in Touch Website: www.LiveTrainThrive.com Twitter: @AthleteInsight She provides complimentary consultations if you contact her   Join us at the Future of Coaching Conference! Future of Coaching Conference Registration Page   CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE COURSES:   Warriors, Not Winners - Want to create gritty, resilient athletes who succeed beyond the game?   Purchase Warriors, Not Winners now!   Transformational Coaching - Take your Coaching to the Next Level with Transformational Coaching.   Become a Transformational Coach Today –     If you are enjoying our podcast, please help us out and leave a review on iTunes. How to leave an iTunes rating or review for a podcast from your iPhone or iPad   Launch Apple’s Podcast app. Tap the Search tab. Enter the name Way of Champions. Tap the blue Search key at the bottom right. Tap the album art for the Way of Champions podcast. Tap the Reviews tab. Tap Write a Review at the bottom. Thanks so much, every review helps us to spread this message! Hosted by John O'Sullivan. Produced by Coach Reed Maltbie

Dr. Bennett and I discuss how she got into sports psychology and the conversation really focuses on mindfulness and how developing that can help us perform better in athletics. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/grinandgrindit/support

The Mind of the Athlete with Sports Psychologist Kate Bennett    An elite athlete herself, Dr. Bennett shares about her experiences and the tools she uses in her practice with other athletes, as a parent with kids in sport and reconnecting to her body after having her second baby.                  Kates shares her unique background of being a competitive cyclist, cycling coach, athletic trainer and sports psychologist and how she brings all of that experience into her practice. What is the mental toolbox? And how do we use this to optimize performance? As a parent, Kate discusses her perspective on raising children in this focused world of one sport specialization. Kate shares reconnecting with her body in sport after having her second baby. So you know she’s legit: Kate Bennett, PsyD, is a Clinical Sport Psychologist and the director of Athlete Insight, PC. She supports the clinical and performance needs of athletes worldwide and specializes in the treatment of athletes recovering from eating disorders. Prior to becoming a psychologist, Dr. Bennett was an athletic trainer and cycling coach. During her coaching career, she coached several state and national champions as well as earned two national championships herself. As a sport psychologist, she watched several of her athletes win national championships as well as excel as collegiate and professional athletes. Dr. Bennett has presented the American Psychological Association, Association for Applied Sport Psychology, Female Athlete Conference, International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals Foundation, and Medicine of Cycling conferences. In addition, she authored “Eating Disorders in Athletes” (Eating Disorders in Special Populations, 2017) and co-authored “Motivation and Mental Training” (Cycling Science, 2017). How to Connect to Kate: www.livetrainthrive.com facebook.com/AthleteInsight twitter.com @AthleteInsight            

Dr. Kate Bennett is a PsyD psychologist in Denver who specializes in sports performance and eating disorders among athletes. You can see her vast array of qualifications and experience on her website. I asked her to be on the podcast because eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors run rampant in the climbing community, and I wanted her to chime in to give us a little perspective. 

Over the last year there has been an increase in social movements, from the rise of The Women's March to the #MeToo and TimesUp campaigns. From politicians to celebrities to average citizens, people from all walks of life are making their voices heard. Famed fashion designer Prabal Gurung has used his platform, the runway, to show his support for what he calls the "human issues" being highlighted by these movements. In the final episode of "The Political Runway," CNN's Hunter Schwarz and Kate Bennett sit down with Prabal to discuss his personal story of achieving the American Dream and how he plans to use his prominence to continue supporting issues he's passionate about.

Many people think of Jacqueline Kennedy as the first modern-day First Lady, but in fact there are other notable First Ladies who helped set the precedent for the type of First Lady Mrs. Kennedy would become. In the second episode of their COVER/LINE Series "The Political Runway," CNN's Hunter Schwarz and Kate Bennett discuss all things First Lady, past and present, with historian Barbara Perry. They also talk with Kathleen Felix-Hager, the costume designer for Veep, about what it is like to dress a female President...at least on TV.

Over the years, politicians have developed a dress code all their own. From blue and red ties for men, to skirt suits and pearls for women, the public has grown accustomed to seeing politicians in certain attire. But why do we hold female and male politicians to different fashion standards, and what will happen as more Millennials run for public office and traditional dress becomes a thing of the past? CNN's Hunter Schwarz and Kate Bennett talk with Robin Givhan of The Washington Post about this and more in the first episode of the COVER/LINE series "The Political Runway" from CNN.

Christine Bailey, author of The Brain Boost Diet Plan, talks to Sarah Orme and Kate Bennett about what to eat to keep your brain healthy. Most diets focus on your body, so we were excited to hear about a diet that's designed to supercharge your brain. In this podcast, we're talking about what to eat when you're feeling stressed and tired and which foods can help you to stay mentally sharp. Head over to www.calmmoment.com to try recipes from Christine's new book. Feta, olive and herb muffin recipe: http://www.calmmoment.com/living/feta-olive-and-herb-muffin-recipe-by-christine-bailey/ Caramel apple pancake recipe: http://www.calmmoment.com/living/caramel-apple-pancakes-recipe-by-christine-bailey/ Chai spiced buckwheat crunchies recipe: http://www.calmmoment.com/living/chai-spiced-buckwheat-crunchies-recipe-by-christine-bailey/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In episode five of “Politics is Everything, Caitlin Huey-Burns looks at the connection between politics and fashion. She talks with Kate Bennett of CNN, who is a former fashion editor and covers the first lady, and with Robin Givhan, fashion editor for the Washington Post.

COVER/LINE dishes on everything from President Trump's latest executive orders to Melania Trump's latest fashions, from what the press corps is actually talking about to how politics is playing out in memes, on the charts, and in your newsfeed. COVER/LINE is where politics meets pop culture. From CNN's Hunter Schwarz and Kate Bennett, their daily newsletter and weekly podcast are the must-read lunch date in Washington and beyond. Experience politics the way Washington does, behind-the-scenes, when the mics are off.

In this episode of Spinal Column Radio, Dr. Thomas Lamar welcomes back the intellectual prowess of Dr. Patrick Gentempo to hear all about his "Act III" and more. Also on the program, Dr. Lamar sits down with CA-Turned-Entrepeneur, Heidi Farrell, who for the past decade and a half has maintained a vision for helping chiropracTORs and their CA's unite to create the most powerful TEAMS in the world. Plus, you've seen the viral video, now meet the woman behind it: Kate Bennett joins us to talk about "Sh*t Chiropractors Say." Also the BTOC (Big TOR on Campus) drops in to share a great interview he picked up at Cal Jam 6 with pediatric chiropracTOR, Dr. Tony Ebel. All this and more on SCR 159! (Patrick Gentempo, DC interview recorded at the 2012 California Jam, Costa Mesa, California. Heidi Farrell Interview recorded at the 2012 ChiroFest in Vancouver, Washington. This episode proudly sponsored by BalimoChairs.com).

The exhibit RACE: Are We So Different? opens on Saturday at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. WXXI’s Bob Smith and WDKX’s Tariq Spence are joined by RMSC president Kate Bennett for a preview of the exhibit. WXXI's reporting on RACE: Are We So Different? is supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities .