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On this week's episode, we're talking about how technology and social media impact our mental health, and has led to a mental health crisis that some have called “the next global pandemic.” From the algorithms that decide what we see to the marketing tricks designed to keep us constantly engaged, we explore how our assumptions about work have led to a feedback loop that keeps us feeling worse about ourselves for longer. But never fear! At the Tech Humanist Show, we're about finding solutions and staying optimistic, and I spoke with some of the brightest minds who are working on these problems. Guests this week include Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips, John C. Havens, Rahaf Harfoush, Emma Bedor Hiland, and David Ryan Polgar. The Tech Humanist Show is a multi-media-format program exploring how data and technology shape the human experience. Hosted by Kate O'Neill. To watch full interviews with past and future guests, or for updates on what Kate O'Neill is doing next, subscribe to The Tech Humanist Show hosted by Kate O'Neill channel on YouTube. Full Transcript: Kate: Hello humans! Today we look at a global crisis that's affecting us all on a near-daily basis… No, not that one. I'm talking about the other crisis—the one getting a lot less media attention: the Global Mental Health Crisis. In December, Gallup published an article with the headline, “The Next Global Pandemic: Mental Health.” A cursory Google search of the words “mental health crisis” pulls up dozens of articles published just within the past few days and weeks. Children and teenagers are being hospitalized for mental health crises at higher rates than ever. And as with most topics, there is a tech angle: we'll explore the role technology is playing in creating this crisis, and what we might be able to do about it. Let's start with social media. For a lot of us, social media is a place where we keep up with our friends and family, get our news, and keep people updated on what we're doing with our lives. Some of us have even curated feeds specifically with positivity and encouragement to help combat what we already know are the negative effects of being on social media too long. There's a downside to this, though, which I spoke about with Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips, the author of The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World. Kaitlin: I wrote about this a little bit in an article about mental health culture on places like Instagram and Pintrest where you have these pretty images that have nice sayings and sort of the commodification of things like anxiety and depression and it's cool to be not okay, but then you're comparing your ‘not-okay'ness to other people's. Kate: We've even managed to turn ‘being not okay' into a competition, which means we're taking our attempts to be healthy and poisoning them with feelings of inferiority and unworthiness, turning our solution back into the problem it was trying to solve. One of the other issues on social media is the tendency for all of us to engage in conversations–or perhaps ‘arguments' is a better word–with strangers that linger with us, sometimes for a full day or days at a time. Kaitlin explains one way she was able to deal with those situations. Kaitlin: Being more in touch with what our boundaries actually are and what we're comfortable and capable of talking about and how… I think that's a good place to start for empathy for others. A lot of times, when I've found myself in these kind of quagmire conversations (which I don't do so much anymore but definitely have in the past), I realized that I was anxious about something, or I was being triggered by what this person is saying. That's about me. I mean, that's a pretty common thing in pscyhology and just in general—when someone is trolling you or being a bully, it's usually about then. If we get better at empathizing with ourselves, or just setting better boundaries, we're going to wade into these situations less. I mean, that's a big ask. For Millennials, and Gen Z, Gen X, and anyone trying to survive right now on the Internet. Kate: But social media doesn't make it easy. And the COVID pandemic only exacerbated the issues already prevalent within the platforms. Part of the problem is that social media wasn't designed to make us happy, it was designed to make money. John C. Havens, the Executive Director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, elaborates on this idea. John: Often times, the value is framed in exponential growth, right? Not just profit. Exponential Growth is an ideology that's not just about getting some profit or speed, it's about doing this. But when you maximize any one thing, other things by definition take less of a focus. And especially with humans, that can be things like mental health. This is not bad or evil, but it is a decision. And in this case it's a key performance indicator decision, the priority is to get something to market, versus, how can we get something to market focused on well-being? How can we make innovation about mental health? Kate: The upside is that our time indoors led some people to more quickly realize the issues with technology and its effects on us. Early in the pandemic, I spoke with Rahaf Harfoush — a Strategist, Digital Anthropologist, and Best-Selling Author who focuses on the intersections between emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture — about what she learned about our relationship to technology during that time. Rahaf: For me I think it just amplified a lot of the issues with the way we were using tech before. I noticed in my social networks and friend groups, people were home more, so what can we do but turn to our online, to this never-ending content and distraction and connections. And in the first couple weeks, everyone was about the Zoom everything, and then there was a Zoom burnout… for me, there's a couple big issues at play. The first is that we have more bandwidth because we're at home, so we're consuming more information. A lot of these platforms leverage this addictive constant-refresh, breaking-news cycle, and with something as complex and nuanced as COVID, a lot of us were glued to our screens refreshing refreshing refreshing… that was not the best thing I could have done for my mental well being or anxiety. At one point I was like, “i need to step away!” because I was just addicted to the news of instead of increasing knowledge. And the other thing is that for many people, the forced pause made us realize that we use productivity as a coping mechanism, and what does it mean that we have more time? A lot of people started trying to make their personal time as productive as their professional time—pushing themselves to pick up 10 new hobbies and learn 10 new languages and take 10 new classes! One or two of those things is great, but I really saw people loading up. That was a good indication to me of our lack of comfort with not doing anything. I noticed I was guilting myself for not writing and not learning and then I was like, you know what? we're undergoing this immensely traumatic, super-stressful thing… it's okay to not do anything, like that's fine. Kate: If you're anything like me, that's a lot easier said than done. Even if you've mostly resumed your life as normal, you're probably still in the habit of working all day, and then filling your free time with more work, hobbies, or time on social media. I asked Rahaf what someone trapped in this cycle could do about it. Rahaf: Your brain needs at least a week to just unwind from the stress of work. If you're just constantly on planes and in deliverables and client stuff… you're never going to take the time to imagine new opportunities for yourself. The trick is we have to balance periods of actually producing the thing with periods of intangible creativity. A lot of the thinking you can't see—in our culture, we don't like things that we can't see. But how many of us have gone for a walk about got that idea, or were daydreaming and got that idea? So creatives, we need that downtime. And by the way, downtime isn't taking a coffee break and being on social media. Downtime is really downtime. Daydreaming, just letting your brain go. Which is why we need a different framework, because for a writer or strategist, like you, you spend so much time thinking about things… but to think about things, you need the time to think about them!” Kate: Most of us don't have the luxury to just shut off our Internet usage entirely. If you're someone, like most of us, who needs technology to get by. , how do we find that balance? And why is it so difficult? Rahaf: I think it's because we've shamed ourselves into thinking if we're not doing stuff, it's a waste. And that's the problem, the problem is intentional recovery, prioritizing and choosing rest, that's really hard for us, because we constantly hear these stories of CEOs and celebrities, and Elon Musk sleeping on the floor of his factory, and Tim Cooke waking up at 4:30 in the morning, and we think, I can't take a nap, I can't watch a movie, I can't go for a walk, because then I'm not really committed to being successful! And that's the most toxic belief system we've incorporated into our society today, especially for creatives. The breakthrough that I had was that it's not actually about systems or organizations, it's about us as people. We are our hardest taskmasters, we will push ourselves to the limit, even when other people tell us to take a break. If we're gonna move to a more humane productivity mindset, we have to have some uncomfortable conversations about the role of work in our lives, the link between our identity and our jobs and our self-worth, our need for validation with social media and professional recognition, our egos… all of these things battle it out, which is why I can't just come on here and be like, “okay guys, take a break here, do this…” we're not going to do it! We really have to talk about, ‘growing up, what did your parents teach you about work ethic?' how is that related to how you see yourself? Who are the people that you admire? And then there are statements you can ask yourself, like “if you work hard, anything is possible!” All these things, you can start testing your relationship with work, and you start to see that we have built a relationship with work psychologically where we feel like if we don't work hard enough, we're not deserving. And not only do we have to work hard, we have to suffer! We have to pull all-nighters! Think of the words we use, ‘hustle' and ‘grind'… these horrible verbs! The reason that's important to dig into is that our views about our work become assumptions that we don't question. We don't ever stop and say, ‘does this belief actually allow me to produce my best possible work, or is it just pushing me to a point where I'm exhausted and burnt out? The second thing is, a lot of the stories we've been told about success aren't true. As a super-quick example, if there's an equation for success, most people think it's “hard work = success.” But in reality, while hard work is important, it's not the only variable. Where you're born, your luck, your gender, your race… all of these things are little variables that add into the equation. So what I don't like about “hard work = success,” it's that the flip side of that tells people, “if you're not successful, it's because you aren't working hard enough.” And part of the awakening is understanding that there are other factors at play here, and we're all working pretty hard! We don't need more things telling us that we're not enough and we're not worthy. Rahaf: When I had my own burnout, I knew better but didn't do better. That was really frustrating to me, it's like, I have the knowledge, why could I not put the knowledge to practice? And then I realized, all these belief systems and stories are embedded in every IG meme and every algorithm that asks you to refresh every 10 seconds, and every notification that interrupts your time, and the design of these tools to socially shame people for not responding fast enough. With Whatsapp for example, the blue checkmark that lets you know if someone has seen your message. What is that if not social pressure to respond? We've also shaped technology to amplify the social norms that if you're ‘left on read,' that's a breach of etiquette. Kate: We, as a culture, believe things about success that aren't true. Then, we program those beliefs into our technology, and that technology ramps up and exacerbates the speed at which we're exposed to those flawed ideas. It creates a downward spiral for the user — or, the person using these platforms — to believe these untrue truths more deeply, broadening the disconnect between our ideal selves and reality. And yet, despite these outside forces at play, there is an urge to place responsibility on the user, to say that each of us is solely responsible for our own mental health. Emma Bedor Hiland — the author of Therapy Tech: The Digital Transformation of Mental Healthcare — calls this “Responsibilization” Emma: I draw from the work of Michelle Foucault who writes about neo-liberalism too. So the way I use it in the book is to say that there is an emphasis when we talk about neo-liberalism upon taking responsibility for yourself, anything that could be presumably in your control. And in this day and age, we're seeing mental health, one's own mental health, being framed as something we can take responsibility for. So in tandem with this rollback of what would ideally be large-scale support mechanisms, local mental health facilities to help people in need, we're seeing an increasing emphasis upon these ideas like ‘use the technology that you can get for free or low cost to help yourselves.' But at the same time, those technologies literally don't speak to or reflect an imagined user who we know in this country need interventions most badly. Kate: Thankfully, we live in a world where once a problem has been identified, some enterprising people set out to design a potential solution. Some of those solutions have been built into our technology, with ‘screen time tracking' designed for us to think twice about whether we should spend more time on our phones, and Netflix's “are you still watching?” feature that adds a little friction into the process of consuming content. When it comes to mental health specifically, there is a growing Telemental Healthcare industry, including online services such as BetterHelp, Cerebral, or Calmerry. These, however, may not be the solutions we want them to be. Emma: “A lot of my research, it's so interesting looking back at it now, my interviews with people who provide tele-mental health were conducted prior to the pandemic. It was really challenging at that time to find people who were advocates and supporters of screen-based mental health services, they told me that their peers sort of derided them for that because of this assumption that when care is screen-based, it is diluted in fundamental ways that impact the therapeutic experience. Which is understandable, because communication is not just about words or tone or what we can see on a screen, there's so much more to it. But when interactions are confined to a screen, you do lose communicative information. One of the things I've grappled with is I don't want it to seem like I don't think telemental health is an important asset. One of my critiques is that a lot of the times in our discussions, we assume people have access to the requisite technologies and access to infrastructure that makes telemental healthcare possible in the first place. Like having smart devices, even just Smartphones, if not a laptop or home computer station, as well as reliable access to an internet connection, in a place where they could interface with a mental healthcare provider. So a lot of the discourse is not about thinking about those people whatsoever, who due to the digital divide or technology gap, even using technology couldn't interface with a healthcare provider. Some of my other concerns are related to the ways our increased emphasis and desire to have people providing screen-based care also are actually transforming people who provide that care, like psychiatrists, psychologists, etc, into members of the digital gig economy, who have to divide up their time in increasingly burdensome ways, and work in ways where their employment tends to be increasingly tenuous. Relatedly, I am also worried about platforms. I know people are becoming more familiar with the idea that these places exist that they can go to on their laptops or wherever, assuming they have that technology, and be connected to service providers, but as we've seen with Crisis Text Line, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about those platforms which become hubs of collecting and aggregating and potentially sharing user data. So while I think telemental healthcare services are important, I'd like to see dedication of resources not just to technologically facilitated care, but using that care to direct people to in-person care as well. We know due to the COVID Pandemic, we saw so many people offering services that were solely screen-based, and for good reason. A lot of clinics that provided healthcare for people without insurance or who are living, considered in poverty, relied upon in-person clinic services, and haven't been able to get them due to their shuttering due to the pandemic. So I worry about the people who we don't talk about as much as I worry about the negative consequences and affects of mental healthcare's technologization Kate: So while some people's access to mental healthcare has increased with technology, many of the people who need it most have even less access to help. On top of that, the business model of these platforms makes it so that healthcare professionals have to work harder for longer in order to make their living. On top of all this, as a means of sustaining the companies themselves, they sometimes turn to sharing user data, which is a major concern for myriad reasons, one of which is people who use that data to create predictive algorithms for mental health. Next, Emma elaborates on this concept. Emma: People have been trying this for a number of years; aggregating people's public social media posts and trying to make predictive algorithms to diagnose them with things like ADHD, depression, anxiety… I'm still unsure how I feel about trying to make predictive algorithms in any way that try to make predictions in any way about when people are likely to harm themselves or others, simply because of how easy it is to use that type of software for things like predictive policing. I write in the book as well that people want to harness internet data and what people do on social media to try to stop people from violent behavior before it starts, so it's very much a slippery slope, and that's why I find data sharing in the realm of mental health so difficult to critique, because of course I want to help people, but I'm also concerned about privacy. Kate: For those saying, “but what about the free services? Things like Crisis Text Line or Trevor Project?” Emma: Crisis Text Line, when it comes into fruition in 2013 and it says, “we can meet people where they are by allowing them to communicate via text when they're experiencing crises”… I think that's a really laudable thing that was done, and that people thought it was an intervention that could save lives, and based on research from external and internal researchers, we know that is the case. But for people who might not be aware, Crisis Text Line doesn't put people in contact with professional mental healthcare workers, instead it's often people who have no background or training in mental healthcare services, and instead go through training and serve as volunteers to help people in dire moments need and crisis. In Therapy Tech I also describe how I perceive that as a form of exploitative labor, because although in the past there were conversations about whether to provide financial compensation for volunteers, they ultimately decided that by emphasizing the altruistic benefits of volunteering, that sort of payment wasn't necessary. And then I compare that to Facebook's problematic compensation of its content moderators, and the fact that those moderators filed a lawsuit against Facebook—although it hasn't been disclosed what the settlement was, at least there's some acknowledgement that they experienced harm as a result of their work, even if it wasn't volunteering. So I do take some issue with Crisis Text Line and then, in relation to neo-liberalism and responsibilization, again I feel that CTL is not the ultimate solution to the mental healthcare crisis in this country, or internationally, and CTL has created international partners and affiliates. I underwent training for a separate entity called Seven Cups of Tea which is both a smartphone app as well as an internet-accessible platform on a computer. And Seven Cups of Tea's training, compared to what I know CTL volunteers have to go through, is incredibly short and I would characterize as unhelpful and inadequate. For me it took 10 minutes, and I can't imagine it would take anyone more than a half hour. So the types of things I learned were how to reflect user statements back to them, how to listen empathetically but also not provide any advice or tell them what to do, because you never know who's on the other end! At the time I conducted the research, I started to volunteer on the platform. A lot of the messages I got were not from people who were experiencing mental distress necessarily, but from people who just wanted to chat or abuse the platform. But even though I only had a few experiences with people who I felt were genuinely experiencing mental distress, I still found those experiences to be really difficult for me. That could be just because of who I am as a person, but one of the things I've realized or feel and believe, is that my volunteering on the platform was part of a larger-scale initiative of 7CoT to try to differentiate between who would pay for services after I suggested to them because of my perception of them experiencing mental distress, and those whose needs could be fulfilled by just being mean to me, or having their emotions reflected back to them through superficial messaging. I very rarely felt that I was able to help people in need, and therefore I feel worse about myself for not being able to help as though it's somehow my fault, related to this idea of individual responsibilization. Me with my no knowledge, or maybe slightly more than some other volunteers, feeling like I couldn't help them. As though I'm supposed to be able to help them. I worry about the fatalistic determinism types of rhetoric that make it seem like technology is the only way to intervene, because I truly believe that technology has a role to play, but is not the only way. Kate: Technology isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So if the products and services we've built to help us aren't quite as amazing as they purport themselves to be, is there a role for tech interventions in mental health scenarios? Emma explains one possible use-case. Emma: I think technology can help in cases where there are immediate dangers. Like if you see someone upload a status or content which says there is imminent intent to self-harm or harm another person. I think there is a warrant for intervention in that case. But we also know that there are problems associated with the fact that those cries for help (or whatever you want to call them) are technologically mediated and they happen on platforms, because everything that happens via a technology generates information / data, and then we have no control, depending on the platform being used, over what happens with that data. So I'd like to see platforms that are made for mental health purposes or interventions be held accountable in that they need to be closed-circuits. It needs to be that they all pledge not to engage in data sharing, not engage in monetization of user data even if it's not for-profit, and they need to have very clear terms of service that make very evident and easily-comprehendible to the average person who doesn't want to read 50 pages before agreeing, that they won't share data or information. Kate: Now, I do like to close my show with optimism. So first, let's go to Rahaf once again with one potential solution to the current tech issues plaguing our minds. Rahaf: To me one of the most important things that we need to tackle—and I don't know why we can't just do this immediately—we need to have the capacity on any platform that we use to turn off the algorithm. Having an algorithm choose what we see is one of the biggest threats, because think about all the information that you consume in a day, and think about how much of that was selected for you by an algorithm. We need to have an ability to go outside of the power that this little piece of code has to go out and select our own information, or hold companies accountable to produce information that is much more balanced. Kate: And that sounds like a great solution. But how do we do that? We don't control our technology, the parent companies do. It's easy to feel hopeless… unless you're my friend David Ryan Polgar, a tech ethicist and founder of All Tech Is Human, who's here to remind us that we aren't bystanders in this. I asked him what the most important question we should be asking ourselves is at this moment, and he had this to say. David: What do we want from our technology? This is not happening to us, this is us. We are part of the process. We are not just magically watching something take place, and I think we often times forget that. The best and brightest of our generation should not be focused on getting us to click on an ad, it should be focused on improving humanity. We have major societal issues, but we also have the talent and expertise to solve some of these problems. And another area that I think should be focused on a little more, we are really missing out on human touch. Frankly, I feel impacted by it. We need to hug each other. We need to shake hands as Americans. I know some people would disagree with that, but we need warmth. We need presence of somebody. If there was a way that if we ended this conversation and like, we had some type of haptic feedback, where you could like, pat me on the shoulder or something like that… everybody right now is an avatar. So I need to have something to say like, “Kate! You and I are friends, we know each other! So I want a greater connection with you than with any other video that I could watch online. You are more important than that other video.” But right now it's still very two dimensional, and I'm not feeling anything from you. And I think there's going to have to be a lot more focus on, how can I feel this conversation a little more. Because I mean listen, people are sick and tired right now, ‘not another Zoom call!' But if there was some kind of feeling behind it, then you could say, “I feel nourished!” whereas now, you can sometimes feel exhausted. We're not trying to replace humanity, what we're always trying to do is, no matter where you stand on an issue, at the end of the day, we're actually pretty basic. We want more friends, we want more love… there are actual base emotions and I think COVID has really set that in motion, to say, hey, we can disagree on a lot in life, but what we're trying to do is get more value. Be happier as humans, and be more fulfilled. Be more educated and stimulated. And technology has a major role in that, and now, it's about saying how can it be more focused on that, rather than something that is more extractive in nature? Kate: Whether we like it or not, the Internet and digital technology play a major role in our collective mental health, and most of the controls are outside of our hands. That can feel heavy, or make you want to throw in the towel. Those feelings are valid, but they aren't the end of the story. I asked David for something actionable, and this is what he had to say. David: Get more involved in the process. Part of the problem is we don't feel like we can, but we're going to have to demand that we are, and I think frankly some of this is going to come down to political involvement, to say ‘we want these conversations to be happening. We don't want something adopted and deployed before we've had a chance to ask what we actually desire.' So that's the biggest part is that everyone needs to add their voice, because these are political issues, and right now people think, ‘well, I'm not a techie!' Guess what? if you're carrying around a smartphone… Kate: All the more reason we need you! David: Right! We need everybody. Technology is much larger. Technology is society. These are actually social issues, and I think once we start applying that, then we start saying, ‘yeah, I can get involved.' And that's one of the things we need to do as a society is get plugged in and be part of the process. KO: There are a lot of factors that contribute to our overall sense of happiness as humans. And although it may sound like a cliche, some of those factors are the technologies that we use to make our lives easier and the algorithms that govern the apps we thought we were using to stay connected. But that doesn't mean things are hopeless. If we keep talking about what matters to us, and make an effort to bring back meaningful human interaction, we can influence the people building our technology so that it works for our mental health, instead of against it.

Connect with DataDx on the Azure Marketplace: https://bit.ly/3aYRTwC Kate Othus is the CEO of DataDx, a company that provides the insights medical practices need to achieve long-term and sustainable business results. Kate is interviewed by Tyler Cohen Wood, an 18+ year veteran of the Cyber Intelligence industry and healthcare entrepreneur. As part of this discussion, we shared how their partnership with Microsoft, their use of Azure, and the Azure Marketplace has empowered them to scale and grow their business. Web: https://datadx.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/datadx/ Twitter: @DataDxInsights Instagram: @DataDxInsights Azure Marketplace: bit.ly/3aYRTwC Contact Tyler: Web: http://www.tylercohenwood.com/ Twitter: @TylerCohenWood Contact Avrohom: Web: https://asktheceo.biz Facebook: AvrohomGottheil Twitter: @avrohomg Instagram: @avrohomg INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS: [00:41] When it comes to digital transformation, we typically think of large enterprises and global corporations. But really, every sized business is going through a digital transformation in their own unique way. Since your business focuses on individual medical practices, what are some of the challenges that doctors and small and medium healthcare providers face when trying to go digital? Kate: That's a great question, Tyler. Healthcare, in general, is experiencing significant challenges, especially right now. Predicting volumes and effectively managing operations to meet those changes is a struggle. Having appropriate cash and inventory reserves to sustain any changes in practice patterns, is another. And in addition, there are a lot of clinical initiatives that are changed, due to policy regulations and whatnot. And sometimes, even the thought of a digital transformation is quite daunting and quite expensive for healthcare businesses. So, they struggle to afford it. It does force them; however, to continue to operate on antiquated, and sometimes, even analog systems. Those issues end up compounding into one pretty incredible issue, which is, the inability for healthcare at large to predict and calculate the cost per unit of care. So, as patients, when we go to consume care, we often walk in not knowing what it's going to cost. Whether that's to the doctor or for a hospital visit. [02:57] DataDx recently launched a new offering on the Microsoft Azure marketplace to address some of the challenges we just discussed. Tell us about it. [06:36] What are the key drivers for success in a pediatric practice? [08:06] How would a healthcare provider use your solution with Azure? [08:30] How can customers find out more about the DataDx solution, and procure it through the Azure Marketplace? Kate: You can access it at https://bit.ly/3aYRTwC. [09:01] How has partnering with Microsoft helped DataDx scale and grow your business? [10:12] How do people connect with you? Kate: You can connect with us on our website at https://datadx.com/. We’re also on social media. You can connect with us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/datadx/ and on Twitter and Instagram at @DataDxInsights. [10:39] How can people find out more about Microsoft partnership opportunities for healthcare partners? Kate: For more information, you can send an email to HealthcareIndExp@microsoft.com. [10:58] Do you have any parting words of wisdom that you’d like to share with the audience? [12:12] What inspired you to build DataDx? #AskTheCEO with Kate Othus

SEASON 2: EPISODE 4 Meditator Kate Johnson explores the connection between car horns and anonymous comment sections. ABOUT THE GUEST Kate Johnson teaches classes and retreats integrating Buddhist meditation, somatics, social justice and creativity at the Rubin Museum in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Kripalu Center and the Omega Institute. Kate works as a culture change consultant, partnering with organizations who are pursuing noble goals to achieve greater diversity and sustainability. She is also an utterly unprofessional dancer and performer who earned a BFA in Dance from The Alvin Ailey School/Fordham University and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.  Producer: Devon Guinn  Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue  Mixer: Andrew Litton  Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver  Theme Song: Jeff Hiller  Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NEIL GOLDBERG:  My favorite New York biking experience is going over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. There's that long, gentle curve as you exit into Brooklyn, and you also don't have to pedal because you're ... KATE JOHNSON: Going down a hill. NEIL:  ... going downhill. KATE: I know what you're talking about ... NEIL:  I live for that. KATE: ... down to Jay Street. NEIL:  Yeah, exactly. And I also love that moment, especially at night, coming from Brooklyn into Manhattan on any of the bridges, and when you reach that midpoint where you can stop pedaling, you're over the water, and you can basically just glide all the way back into Manhattan. KATE: Yeah, from the peak, right? NEIL:  Yeah. KATE: Oh yeah, that is beautiful. Yes. I actually crashed my bike once on that because I was just having this peak moment as I was looking out at the water, then I hit the side and scraped my knee and hobbled the rest of the way. NEIL:  Hello. I'm Neil Goldberg and this is SHE'S A TALKER. Today, I'll be talking to meditation teacher Kate Johnson. But first, here's the premise of the podcast, and I like to say it's better than it sounds. I'm a visual artist, and I have this collection of thousands of index cards on which I've been jotting down thoughts, observations, reflections for a good 20 years. They were originally meant just for me, maybe to hold onto something I wanted to remember, or maybe to use in a future art project. But in SHE'S A TALKER, I'm using them as prompts for conversations with some of my favorite New York artists, writers, performers, and beyond. NEIL:  These days, the cards often start as recordings I make into my phone here and there throughout the course of the day. Here are some recent ones: English. Double letters are okay, triple letters are too much. I'm kind of surprised Trump likes Sharpies. Have to get home to feed one animal to another animal. NEIL:  I'm so happy to have as my guest, Kate Johnson. Kate teaches classes and retreats that integrate Buddhist meditation, social justice work, and creative practice at places like the Rubin Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philly, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Kripalu Center, among others. She also describes herself as an utterly unprofessional dancer who earned an MA in performance studies from NYU. We talked in January at a recording studio at The New School near Union Square in New York City. NEIL:  I'm so happy to have Kate Johnson with me today on SHE'S A TALKER. Thank you, Kate, for being here. KATE: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. NEIL:  I want to start with a couple questions I ask everybody. The first question would be, what is the elevator pitch for what it is you do? KATE: Oh my God. I am a mediation teacher and organizational consultant, and I often work at the intersections of spirituality, social justice, and creativity. NEIL:  Whoa. That is an elevator pitch. KATE: Right? NEIL:  That absolutely is. KATE: I pulled it together. NEIL:  I can really see how that triad could inform each other. Spirituality, social justice, and creativity, yes? KATE: Yeah. I mean, I also feel like those are the things that I just like and am good at, so there's not a whole lot else, I think, that's for me in this world. I try to just make them go together whenever I can. NEIL:  Right. Oh, isn't that what we're all doing? Just make the things that we like go together. Do you have parents, grandparents who are still around? KATE: Yeah. I have parents who are still around. NEIL:  What, let's say, would your parents say to their friends when their friends ask what you do? KATE: Oh. My mom would say that I'm a spiritual teacher, and my dad would say that I'm a writer. NEIL:  Oh, that's interesting. What's that split about? KATE: Well, my dad was a writer. He was a journalist, and so I think that he always really supported my love of language and saw that part of me. Then my mother, recently she started getting really into meditation, so she practices twice a day, she comes to mediation retreats that I teach. I don't know, I also feel like there are certain people in life where when you talk to them, your wisdom kind of comes out, and I think that my mom and I are that for each other. NEIL:  Oh, that's wonderful. KATE: So I see her as a spiritual teacher, too. NEIL:  Do you get nervous when she comes to a meditation retreat? KATE: A little bit. I mean, partially because I kind of have an internal commitment, even when I'm in meditation spaces, to really be honest about the way that I hope that our spiritual practice can inform our political lives. So oftentimes that means talking about my experience as a black, mixed race woman, and I have a white mommy. And so part of, I think, what's spiritual about our relationship is the willingness not to give up on each other as we have these conversations about what it means for me to be a black woman in America, what it's like for her as a mother of black children, and the ways in which, as a white woman living in kind of a middle-upper class area of Chicago, the things that she doesn't see or the attitudes she unconsciously picks up she didn't mean to. And so I think it's amazing. It's also frustrating in some ways to be in this long-term relationship with this person where we're not going to give up on each other because we have different views. KATE: But just to go back to your question, I'll often look out and be talking about experiences of racism, both within meditation centers and outside, and I'll look out at her and just wonder, "What's she thinking?" Does she feel bad that she couldn't shield me from those experiences? Is she feeling like, "Is Kate making this up? I don't know what she's talking about." So sometimes I'll try to read her face, but most of the time I'm just happy she's there and that she's ... I mean, she raised four children pretty much by herself, so I'm happy she has a little time to relax. We probably terrorized her. NEIL:  You mentioned not giving up on each other. I mean, that's such an interesting way to put it. KATE: Well, every family's different, everyone's relationship with their parents is different. A lot of the people that I interact with often in my social life, they have a relationship with their parents, and I think sometimes with the elder generation in general, where there's a sense of ... I don't know, kind of objectifying them. Like we might have seen them once and then saw a mixed bag, as we all are, someone who in some ways has it together or is loving and in other ways maybe carries outdated notions of themselves or other people, or uses embarrassing language to describe a particular ethnic group. Then we just kind of ... There's this dulling of the perception that happens after that where we no longer are seeing that person, we're seeing our memory projecting it out and then reacting to our own projections. And so- NEIL:  Oh my God. Story of my life. KATE: So I think not giving up is being, in some ways, willing to allow each other the grace that is actually offered to all of life, which is that we're all always changing and to be awake to each others' evolving experience and to be willing to be honest about what our experience is and shape each other. I think that's the other way in which I've seen friends give up on parents, is that they stop really telling the parents who they are. We fear we may not be accepted or parents just don't understand, that kind of thing, and sometimes that's true. Sometimes we have that fear and it's confirmed, and that's really hard. So it's like you can't have your whole sense of worth wrapped up in what a parent thinks, but also what if they couldn't see us once and then one day they could? And we kept kind of showing up and allowing ourselves to be seen, if that's not dangerous to who we are. I like to be surprised. NEIL:  Shall we go to these cards? KATE: Cool, yeah. This is actually the part that I'm most excited about, so ... NEIL:  All right, well. The first card I have is, "Patience always feels somehow wrong." KATE: The wrongness. I relate to the discomfort of patience. I think one of the blessings of Buddhist meditation training is it kind of gets drilled into your bones that just because something is uncomfortable doesn't mean it's wrong. I think to the point where it can even go a little too far and people can become scared of pleasure, and that's also not the point. In the Buddhist tradition, the word that's translated as patience is called khanti. It's K-H-A-N-T-I and it's one of the virtues, and so it's not different than other traditions where patience is a virtue. We often translate it as patience, but it means something like forbearance, also. KATE: So for me, when I learned patience as a child it was like holding on like hell until you get what you want, like, "If you're good, then you can have this treat when you get home." And so you just hold your little hands, you just sit on them and wait until finally, "Oh, I get what I want now that ..." I have a sense of relief and the patience that is talked about in the Buddhist teachings, which I also relate with ... and it's a little bit of a perspective shift, but it's like not just patience until I get what I want, but the patience that one has when we may never get what we want, or whether what we want is gone and will never return. The kind of patience that we have with our bodies as they get older and we go to do something that we used to do effortlessly. The suggestion, I guess, is that we can meet that experience with patience. NEIL:  Yeah, there's so many different types of patience, too. For a long time, I supported myself in a day job that involved a mix of computer graphics and IT work. Working with people around computers brings up, for me, the deepest level of patience or challenges to patience. KATE: Because they're not going fast enough? Is that- NEIL:  You could take the keyboard and mouse out of their hands and just do it absolutely in two seconds, but it is important to develop that muscle memory of using the mouse and the keyboard and da da ... going through the steps and having it be imprinted on your body in that way. KATE: Yeah. I mean, we're talking and I'm like, oh, so much of patience for me is about pace. It's about I either want a task to go faster than it's going, I would like time to go faster than it's going, and the frustration that it's actually not ... It's difficult. It's difficult. I don't know, would you say it's wrong? NEIL:  That really segues, interestingly, into a card I have about honking. "People honking are not where they want to be." KATE: That's deep. I mean, that's really deep. Yeah, I mean, gosh, to just be able to make a noise and be like, "I'm here and I don't want to be." NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: It makes me want to have a horn to just carry around and be like ... NEIL:  Oh my God. KATE: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think it's like they don't want to be here, but also, "I want someone to know that I'm here and I don't want to be. I want to make that heard. I want to make that visible." I can relate to that feeling. NEIL:  Oh my God, yeah. God, that horn would be on frequent blast in my life. KATE: Yeah, yeah. Or when you see a child have a tantrum and it's just like, that's them honking their horn being like, "Something is not right." NEIL:  Right, right, right. That's so true. Oh my God, the horn is metaphor. But I bike a lot, and I was stopped at a light where someone was honking the horn, and the biker next to me ... I love the conversations you'll have occasionally at a stoplight with someone else in the bike lane. He said, "Car horns should be just as loud inside the car as outside." KATE: Yeah, that's a cool idea. I mean, I can't imagine any car manufacturer picking that up, but you know. NEIL:  I know, right. I think that's also a connection between honking and vulnerability. As a bicyclist, do you ever kind of make that connection? I often feel like when people are honking at me, they're actually expressing a fear of hurting me. KATE: Oh, oh. NEIL:  Have you ever had that, or ... KATE: Yeah. I guess it can be like that the same way a parent will yank a kid, like, "Why'd you do ..." When they're doing something that they feel is dangerous. Yeah, I think the feeling of being in this giant metal thing that's hurling through space that could totally kill somebody is really kind of jarring. NEIL:  Absolutely. KATE: I mean, I love that you're giving people the benefit of the doubt like that, like, I startled them and they don't want to hurt me. I think that's a wonderful attitude to take. I didn't often think that. I often felt like there was so much protection or something that, I don't know, they felt they could do whatever they wanted. I often would pull up next to a car at a stop light and look over and when the person looked at me, the impression that I had is that they forgot that they could be seen inside this compartment. NEIL:  Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. KATE: So it almost is like an anonymous comment section or something where they can say whatever they want with their ... and then no one has to know it was them that trolled this nice biker. NEIL:  Honking is like the anonymous comment section. That's fucking brilliant. The card says, "Childish laughter at Buddhist lecture." You know what I'm talking about? Any kind of spiritual lecture ... First of all, the teacher will often embrace a kind of, "The bird doesn't worry about da, da, da." You know, say something kind of like that. KATE: Oh God. Yeah. NEIL:  And then in turn, the audience will laugh but it's not funny, and it's a childish kind of laughter. KATE: I was talking with a friend about this recently because we were talking about the kinds of Dharma talks or spiritual teachings that become ritualized to the point that this person is telling a story that they have actually told many, many times. You've heard it on a podcast and you've heard them say it at last year's retreat and they're telling the same story and there's the same punchline and you laugh again and it's like, "Why?" We were wondering if it's less about novelty and more about familiarity, kind of like there's a sense of, "Oh, I know what's coming and it's comforting to me and I laugh because I know what to do here." NEIL:  I hear that. It's why we like sitcoms. You know the joke's about to come ... certain types of sitcoms. KATE: Right. And it also depends on what's coming before it because sometimes I think that Dharma talks can also bring up heavy stuff, like death and aging and heartbreak of various kinds. And so it builds up a kind of energy that can actually be difficult for us to contain, and so there's this sense of it's powerful, but it's almost uncomfortable because it's building up this energy, then wanting it to release in some way. So even if the joke is bad, just being excited that there's a release valve that you can pull. NEIL:  Next card. "How I sometimes keep my shoelaces untied as a kind of mindfulness reminder." I'm aware that my shoelaces are untied as I'm walking. They become untied, it's not like I purposely don't tie them. They become untied and I kind of hold off on tying them just as a way to be like, "Got to walk mindfully." KATE: Oh wow. What effect does it have, or how does it work? Does it help your mindfulness? NEIL:  Absolutely because it's like you don't want to trip. It then becomes a walking meditation. But also, it really makes you aware of how many people will tell you, "Hey, your shoelace is untied." Which is why New York is great. KATE: I was thinking about that. I was like, "Oh my God, do you know what you're doing to people? NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: For me, I get so scared when I see someone with their shoelace untied. I'm like, "You're going to fall." But I kind of love that. I also think it's ... Walking meditation can be kind of boring. I mean, all meditation can be kind of boring, so it's like ... NEIL:  Right, exactly. KATE: ... juicing it up a little bit, living on the edge, walking meditation. I like it. NEIL:  Because you could trip, as mindful as you're trying to be. KATE: Right. The wind blows a different way, it swings that little lace underneath you're other foot, and then you're just- NEIL:  Exactly, you're down. KATE: Yeah. But I'm glad you haven't fallen yet. I think that's cool. NEIL:  May you not fall. KATE: May you ever be upright. NEIL:  Do you have any little tricks like that, like meditation hacks? KATE: Yeah. I mean, I think Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition is really amazing for this kind of thing because they talk about mindfulness bells and the way that you can ... And bell is a metaphor, it's something that makes you remember, and so you just ... It can be a bell, like every time your phone rings, you take a deep breath, feeling your feet on the ground before you pick it up. Or every time you touch a doorknob, you allow yourself to begin again, whatever that means. There's ways to do that. NEIL:  Oh, I love that. KATE: I think for me now, a lot of my mindfulness bells are internal. I'll actually notice a disturbance in the field. I'll notice that my chest tightened up a little bit or my belly kind of swerved, or I feel something inside and use this moment to kind of actually pause and notice what happened there, and if necessary, to care of it. I'm big into letting my body talk to me these days as a practice, after having really ignored it for many, many, many years. I'm like- NEIL:  As a dancer, or in dance work? Or just as a human being, or ... KATE: Yeah, definitely in dance work, although ... I was going to say, although I don't know if it started there. I might have ... But in dance for sure, there were ways of moving my body that didn't feel good, but then I thought, "Well, this is what the choreographer wants, so I'm going to do it." There's an element of dance training that is about don't pay attention to what you're feeling and just get it done, and that is capitalism. That's not- NEIL:  Dance is capitalism. That is hilarious, oh my God. KATE: I think, right? It's like what matters is production and not necessarily your human feelings and needs, and so as humble as it is, actually paying attention to what your body is feeling and being willing to attend to that ... at least with your attention, if not with your actions ... is kind of this radical anti-capitalist act. NEIL:  I love it. KATE: For some reason, from a early age I was really drawn to these European concert dance forms. I was really into ballet and then I was really into Martha Graham technique and some parts of the Horton technique, which I ended up in when I went to The Ailey School. They're not actually meant for everybody ... NEIL:  Yeah, everybody. KATE: ... and I'm not even sure if they're meant for anybody. It's kind of this idealized form that we're all ... So anyway, I don't know if feeling or feeling good is always a part of dance for the dancer. I think sometimes it's helping other people feel something. But I don't think that's what dance has to be and I don't think it's what it is at it's best, but I think somehow that's the kind of dance that I end up doing most of the time. NEIL:  That's an interesting way of thinking of it. It's almost like this Christlike thing of, "It doesn't feel good for me, but it makes someone else feel good." KATE: Feel amazing. NEIL:  Right, yeah. "I could imagine thinking as I'm dying, 'Here we go again.'" KATE: Where did this come from? NEIL:  I just had the idea it could have a sort of familiarity to it, in the same way that falling asleep has a familiarity to it or something. I mean, of course, the beauty of it is I'll know but I won't be able to have a followup podcast episode about it. I think. KATE: You'll just have to send us a sign or something. NEIL:  Yeah. And it's not even for me about necessarily believing in reincarnation, which I don't know if I believe in. But I don't think beyond that. KATE: The thought that I had just now was like, I hope I'm familiar enough with death by the time I experience it myself that I can think, "Oh, this is normal, this is natural, this is the way of all things," instead of, "Oh, why is this happening to me?" Which, I think, from talking to people who volunteer in hospice and stuff, that can be the thought. Like, "Why me, doctor? Why me?" And it's like, "Well, you're 90." NEIL:  "Why not you?" KATE: But yeah, so there's a lot of Buddhist practices that are preparations for death and dying, and some of them are visualizations, some of them are reminders. There's one that's, "I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to become sick. I am of the nature to die. Everything and everyone I love will be taken from me and I am the owner of my karma, it's my only true inheritance." KATE: I mean, I think that one of the things that make Buddhism a hard sell is that it can feel like a downer to be like, "Okay, we want to talk about suffering. We're going to talk about impermanent." The paradox is that somehow being in touch with those things lends a sense of, "Oh, I'm actually alive now and this is what life is," and maybe even a sense of urgency around understanding, "This will not always be the case, so I don't just have forever to bumble along until I finally decide I'm going to do the thing that I need to do." And that leads to a kind of freedom and happiness that denial of death and denial that things are changing actually ... We will never win that game. NEIL:  Right, oh wow. Yeah. KATE: We will never succeed. This is a setup, actually, but it's a setup that you can buy a lot of products and goods on the way to realizing that's possible. So it's good for the economy, but it's not necessarily good for our spirits. NEIL:  Capitalism again. What's a bad X you'd take over a good Y? KATE: A bad X I'd take over a good Y. So first thought is a bad day sober I'd take over a good day drunk. NEIL:  Are you in recovery, can I ask? KATE: Yeah. Almost nine years, which means I was definitely meditating before I got sober. I was trying to become less attached to wine without actually having to stop drinking wine. But that didn't work out as well and I think that the meditation practice helped me to get real enough with myself to be like, "Oh, this is actually never going to work out. No matter how I dress it up or dress it down, it's never going to work out for me." Yeah. NEIL:  What is it that keeps you going? KATE: Oh man. I think it changes. A couple of answers came to as I was letting your question resonate, and one is a sensory sense of smell kind of thing, like being able to smell a different future that's ... I think it's something ... What keeps me going feels like it's something in a future that is looking back or calling to me from a future moment, saying, "You really want to get here, actually. Keep going. I love you. Keep going. You're doing great." NEIL:  And that connects to smell for you? KATE: Yeah, it's like a whiff. Having a whiff of something that is just kind of like cooking. I genuinely want to see what's going to happen. Like, "What's going to happen today?" It's very close to anxiety, but it's not anxiety. I know that there is kind of a way that anxiety can get people up in the morning for momentum, and I had that experience also, and this one is just a half-step back from that and it feels a little bit more sustainable for my system just to be like, "I wonder what's going to happen?" NEIL:  That seems like a beautiful place to end it. Kate Johnson, thank you so much for being on SHE'S A TALKER. KATE: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. It's been awesome. NEIL:  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of SHE'S A TALKER. Before we get to the credits, there were some listener responses to cards that I'd love to share. It's a new thing we're doing in season two. NEIL:  In my conversation with artist and baker Andy Hawkes, we talked about the card, "Leftovers as a kind of embodied memory." In response, Lex Brown wrote, "More than memory, leftovers make me think of the seemingly endless future of packing my lunch in middle and high school. I thought it would never end. Gladware, monotonous future food, foggy plastic lids, leftovers for school night dinner or for lunch the next day." John Pilson wrote, "I feel like the leftover with teeth marks deserves its own category, probably a name other than leftovers. Maybe evidence?" And finally, [Com and See 00:27:59] wrote, "One of my uncles in Hong Kong as a personal rule never keeps leftovers, even if he's making lobster or crab or abalone or delicious meats. It's so ruthlessly unsentimental, it breaks my heart every time I eat at his table." NEIL:  Thanks to everyone who wrote in. I loved all the responses. If you have something you'd like to share about a card on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at shesatalker@gmail.com or message us on Instagram @shesatalker. And also, as always, we'd love it if you'd rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend. NEIL:  This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Devin Guinn produced this episode. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, and Jesse Kimotho. Our card flip beats come from Josh Graver, and my husband, Jeff Hiller, sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to all of them and to my guest, Kate Johnson, and to you for listening. Jeff Hiller:                       (singing

We all probably have different definitions of what high performance means, but we can probably all agree that we want our marriage to perform well. And there are even a few simple tactics than any couple can implement to make their marriage work even better. Meet out Guests For this discussion, we’ve brought in a high performance couple, Kate and Steve Dahlin. The Dahlins are marriage mentors at the Two-To-One marriage ministry through North Point Church in Atlanta. Kate is also a life coach, who writes her own blog called Creating Exceptional. If you read the MarriedPeople blog, you’ll likely read some of Kate and Steve’s posts on marriage. The Dahlins live in Alpharatta, Ga., with their two young children.  A reminder for our listeners - we have a new resource we’ve created called MarriedPeople Membership. It’s an online library for married couples just like you. And it only costs $8/month or $80/year to get access to all of our premium resources in one place. The Interview Tell us a little about yourselves. Steve: Kate and I have been married for 11 years. We met in college on the beach and got married the weekend after graduation. We honeymooned, got married, and got our first jobs all in the same month. God has blessed us with two great kids, ages five and three. Kate: I started in the dancing and arts world late in life. I was with a company in Alabama and went up to New York in the summer with this group who brought in kids to see what your life would look like if you did that. I learned that my heart was in the teaching world. How do you use your marriage to pour into other people? Steve: We both had separate ministries up until we got married. Kate was with women’s groups, teaching, and kids ministry. I have a music background, so mine was in music. We really wanted to do something together. When we started attending Buckhead Church, they made an announcement around the pre-marriage mentoring, and we both felt a prick in our heart. We were so passionate and they had such a need. Kate: At the same time, I was growing my lifestyle coaching business. When we got married, I went from dancing straight into being a mom and was comfortable there. I was playing it safe and felt God nudging me that there was more I needed to be doing. That turned into writing and lifestyle coaching, which dove tailed into the marriage mentoring. Did you guys grow up seeing healthy marriages in the home? Kate: Yes. My parents are married today, love each other to death. They have five kids and were a great role model. I think it was very rare because we both came to the table with that. Steve: My parents have been married for 40 years this year. They both grew up in a religious background, but found Jesus together around the time I was born. We both benefited a lot from the upbringing. It’s very rare nowadays. What did you guys see in their marriages that made them successful? Kate: They learned to grow together as a team. For our grandparents, there was just this level of consistency. They were going to stick it out, it’s what you did. There was no other option. They truly loved doing life together and being a team. Steve: For me, the spiritual foundation is crucial. My parents were not on the same page when they got married, and once the alignment came and they started building that platform on Christ, everything changed. We’ve had some family drama just like every other family, but you can see that spiritual foundation woven through. What have you guys seen in your parents that you wanted to do in your marriage? Kate: They were very open communicators. When I was younger, there was a little fear seeing them fight it out, but we learned how to work it out. Even as kids, they’d tell us they love each other, they just had to work it out. Steve: Respect is what stands out in my mind. The recognition of each party and what they bring to the table. That mutual respect is what I took away. How has your life coaching impacted your marriage? Kate: I was a stay-at-home mom and God laid it on my heart that it was time to do more. I started seeking him on what I’d done in my past that I could leverage for the future. Teaching someone really resonates with me and the business just evolved over time. It started out with fitness and personal training—ballet, health, and exercise. It was easy for me to do that as a side gig. As I started doing that with women, it began encompassing whole health. Once they started getting their fitness and health under control, I you could see that effect all areas of their life. So it grew from there. What’s the difference between an exceptional life and the perfect life? Kate: For us it’s about bucking the status quo. I’m a high achiever, Type A, oldest child. It’s not perfection, it’s about excellence. I had a mentor say, “It’s not about excess, it’s about excellence.” Steve: An exceptional lifestyle is not about performance—it’s about the outcome. When you think about people getting wrapped up in trying to perform, that’s not what this is about. It marriage, life, and career you’re going to have ups and downs and you can’t avoid those. But you can control how you’re going to respond to those. What do you mean by a ‘high-performance marriage’? Kate: The definition for high performance is that you’re producing superior results. It’s not about perfection, but you’re definitely not the norm or average. Steve: In my sales background, they pull the top sales rep up on stage and ask how they’re doing it. For us, that is going to be the outcome of a high performance marriage. People are going to see something in you that’s different. They’re going to want to know what your secret is. What’s the first characteristic of a high-performance marriage? Kate: The first characteristic is dreaming, which is about perspective. We like to take a positive spin on the relationship. No matter where you are, the dreaming aspect gets you out of the daily ground and answer the question, “where are we going?” One of the biggest things for us is an adventure you can go on together. The best advice we would give someone is to go and travel. To get away and pull back from the daily grind. We try to get away every single year. Sometimes it’s just a hotel down the road for one night just to sleep. We encourage couples to start this tradition of getting away every year. Steve: We’ve found when you do this, you can start dreaming about other areas of your life that matter. Your dating life, even your sex life. It’s a great opportunity to connect as a couple. What happens to you as parents when you spend time just as a couple? Kate: You’re recharged and you can dream. When you’re in the daily grind of work and schedules and school, and it can just get busy. When you get away and pull back, you can have rest and the opportunity to think bigger. Steve: I’m always drawn to the movers and shakers in life. A lot of them have to get up early to make space and function. You look at Jesus—how many times did he retreat and pull away so he could come back recharged? From a marriage perspective, if you’re not doing that you’re going to burn out. Do you have a system for dreaming together, or does it happen organically? Steve: For us, vacation is vacation. We make sure we’re going away just us. We’ve done a couple trips with other people or visiting aunts and uncles. But making sure it’s just the two of us is important. Even the kids are starting to understand that. There have been times there was a book or podcast we wanted to pull in and talk about. But most of the time it’s amazing what comes out in that dead time. I’m in sales, so I could talk forever. For some people it may be harder to start. We’ve tried to do some things around creating conversation and it’s amazing what happens. Kate: The things to consider are: date, place, position, goal. What’s a date you’ve never done before? Where’s a place you want to go? Position has to do with your sex life. For goal: pick something really big you want to accomplish as a team. The second characteristic is dating. How often do you go on dates? Kate: We do date night every single week. Twice a month we actually go out. We get a babysitter; it’s in our budget. The other dates are home dates. We’ll feed the kids chicken nuggets, we’ll cook, play games. Making it a priority helps make it happen. When you call it ‘date night,’ you treat it differently. We treat it like a business meeting—we minimize distractions. We try not to talk about the kids or vent about the week. And we silence our cell phones. Steve: Early on, I confused hanging out all the time with dating. Then, a mentor asked how much I spent every month on car payments. Without missing a beat, he then asked how much I was spending dating my life. It’s not about the dollar amount. My focus on dating completely changed. Kate: If you don’t have the finances for a babysitter, you can swap time with another couple with kids. Just make it a habit. Don’t allow the busyness to squeeze this out. The third characteristic is growing. How do you grow together? Steve: I love the verse in Ecclesiastes that says two is better than one. This talks about the couple, but also the network you begin to build around you as you grow as a couple. You’ve got to find people in your phase of life who can walk beside you. The next step is to find a couple a few steps around you who have already walked that road. For us, it’s creating that environment with peers and people ahead of you. Next, it’s looking to the next generation. You grow a lot as a couple when you start pulling up the next generation. Having that network around you is so crucial to growth. Your one simple thing this week Pick one of the three characteristics of a high-performance marriage and work on it together. Dream: Write down one goal that you want to accomplish in your marriage during the next 10 years. Grow: Pray together so you can grow deeper as a couple. Date: Do something you’ve never done before on a date night. Show Closing Thanks for joining us for the Married People Podcast. We hope you’ll subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and leave a review—they help us make the podcast better.  We want to hear from you! Share with us on Facebook, Instagram or our site.  If you want more resources, check out the MarriedPeople membership.  You can find more from Kate on her blog or site.

Kate writes, “Hello Susan! Thank you so much for all the educative videos! I have a question about cheating: once a cheater, always a cheater – true or false? All of your videos have been truly helpful! Thank you again! Best Wishes, Kate” For more information please visit my website at http://www.susanwinter.net/

Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Kate Travers In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks to Kate Travers who was a student/apprentice with the Flatiron School and now is on staff as a software engineer. The panel and Kate talk about adopting Elixir at the Flatiron School and Pattern Matching. Watch Kate’s talks about the topic; links to these talks can be found below. Show Topics: 1:08– Hi from Kate Travers. 1:16 – Chuck: Background? 2:20 – Kate gives her background. 2:30 – Chuck: We had another Flatiron alum from an extra show. 2:44 – Kate: Yeah – she’s great! 2:48 – Chuck: Flatiron mostly focused on Ruby and JavaScript. Has that changed or? 3:02 – Kate: For the students we are teaching the Rails focus on the backend and React on the frontend. Times might be changing. What else is out there for functional curriculum? Our lead engineer is super motivated introducing some Elixir. Our engineering team might be the first to go in that arena. It would be absolutely fantastic to 4:02 – Chuck: Awesome! I would like to see the boot camps take on Elixir. 4:15 – Kate: Yeah, there are many benefits of doing that. 4:57 – Chuck: You see some Reactive, some... It is interesting to see how it comes together and 5:16 – Kate: Yeah we see this as a support – delivery of curriculum. When you start out you are writing in a functional style. You are essentially writing TLI scripts – functional manner. Now in the curriculum we are training people to think, and to get away from that script-way, and think in terms of objects. 6:11 – Panelist: I think that is interesting. Some of the difficulty of teaching Elixir is to UNLEARN some of their past education. Start teaching people FUNCTIONAL, might help. 7:04 – Chuck: I have been starting a new project... What is going on here? Oh yeah I have to think about it. 7:20 – Kate: Yes. We have spun up – we have one core Elixir project. We have been on that for a year. We have spun up some smaller projects. On these projects this is the first time these people have used Elixir. It is interesting to see the difficulties that they are seeing for the first time. 8:09 – Chuck: I want to talk to adoption for a bit. So as your school has made this transition, where are you seeing the (first of all) where is it easy to get buy in. How did Elixir get into Flatiron? 9:06 – Kate: It is not apart of the school’s curriculum. How we started using Elixir was because our technical lead he is super loud / elegant voice for this language. Elixir might solve some of the problems that we were facing. When we adopt new tech it’s because we have thought about it heavily. We don’t adopt new technologies “just because”. The perfect opportunity came up, so this lead into why and how Flatiron started using Elixir. Kate goes into more detail. 15:24 – Chuck: Learn.io – check out outside of the school? 15:35 – Kate: Yep! There is even some interview prep; also, intro to Ruby, intro to JavaScript, and someday intro to Elixir? 16:06 – Chuck: As you brining people into this how do you transfer them to Ruby to Elixir? Do you throw them into the deep end? 16:26 – Kate: Sure! If someone is interested we will. It is something our team tries to prioritize. Kate goes into more detail. 18:43 – Kate: We didn’t expect for these book clubs to keep going. We will do a little workshop as part of book club. 19:18 – Panelist: Question to Kate. 19:25 – Kate: Yes, so everyone has a NEW lead each week. Folks of ALL different experience levels. What is different about our team is that we have tons of people who LOVE to blog. If you check-it out as they are learning Elixir they are writing posts. 20:21 – Question. 20:29 – Kate answers the question. 20:49 – Chuck. 20:55 – Kate: Steven suggested a new way to cement the things you are learning. 21:28 – Chuck: Yeah – Flatiron labs. Now that I have been playing with Elixir with pattern matching. At first it’s scary stuff. 21:49 – Kate: It is a head-trip. 22:00 – Chuck: ...wait...wait... 22:10 – Kate: Multiple binding? 22:16 – Panelist: My first introduction to outer matching was seeing a... 22:39 – Kate: Great first introduction. Not the textbook example, you will get to see the real-world situation. Yeah that is a really, really good example. 23:05 – Panelist: Pattern matching for me became a superpower! It was my first real love of the language; before concurrency, and others. Pattern matching helped with a lot of the pains that I wouldn’t have to encounter. You are poking this big object to figure it out. Then it’s easier because if the shape matches, then it matches. Mental flip – and I get it! It felt like a superpower. I liked your talk, Kate, about pattern matching. 24:41 – Kate: Yeah, totally. Pattern matching. Like learning a musical instrument like a guitar. When you start learning something like this you have these high ambitions. You are learning to be a rock star and you want to be David Bowie. But when you start you couldn’t be further away from that goal. At the beginning you are learning chords and it’s so easy to think: “I am terrible, I suck...” you quit and never keep going. To prevent this you need a hook to keep you going. You just need to learn that really sick rift. Oh yeah, NOW I can start seeing my rock star abilities; same thing for Elixir. Pattern matching was my really sick rift. 27:38 – Panelist chimes-in. You have that excitement about the new language. But they get frustrated because they are a beginner. I do think that you nailed it there. If people can latch onto something fairly quickly, then it gives them a reason to keep coming back to learn more and more. 28:25 – Kate continues this conversation. 28:48 – Panelist. 28:54 – Advertisement – Code Badges! 29:32 – Chuck: Most important / interesting thing you’ve learned about pattern matching? 29:48 – Kate: It was the different things you can do with... 30:23 – Kate: The concept is that Elixir provides... 31:42 – Chuck: I didn’t know that you could do that! 31:56 – Kate: The benefit only comes from legibility. 32:13 – Panelist: Guard clauses and pattern matching. I think it would be a mess if I weren’t use Elixir. 32:31 – Kate: Yes, definitely. 33:10 – Panelist: Yes, my first project with Elixir... 34:47 – People should go and see your talk and it’s in the links. 35:00 – Kate: Thanks! Kate talks about dodging bullets and code.  36:04 – Chuck: have you seen other languages using/trying to use Pattern matching? 36:10 – Kate: Yeah, there are talks about Ruby and JavaScript for introducing proper pattern matching in BOTH languages. Ruby is interesting. I don’t know how much traction we have on these, but people seem really into program matching. 36:36 – Panelist: Yeah, I think people come to Elixir and see pattern matching and they get excited. 36:55 – Kate: Yeah, I would be interested to see if the proposals go through or not. There is a conference on my WATCH LIST and I want to see more about it. 37:26 – Panelist: It started off as a prologue that’s what you need. 37:37 – Kate: If it wasn’t designed that way in the beginning it will be a problem. If it’s not apart of the system in the beginning then it could be a problem. 38:14 – Chuck: Yeah, the flipside is... 38:34 – Panelists: I don’t know. 38:44 – Panelist: One of my concerns is object oriented programming. I imagine (nightmare) pattern matching in Ruby and all match onto this object – after it’s there – it’s inside my function – runs another thread – comes back to me – that object is modified and now it’s there, and not be completely invalid. It’s not RUBY anymore. 39:36 – Panelist: Pattern matching could bring them over and bring them over the gap. I am worried that if this is more widespread then we will hit a much worse. 40:06 – Kate and Panel: Yep! 40:12 – Chuck: Anything else about pattern matching and/or adopting Elixir? 40:18 – Kate: I don’t want to rush into this too quickly, but if we are on the topic of bringing people to Elixir. It came up at this conference. Ruby Rails coming over – RR refugees. The question that they post: People are hyped about Elixir about Phoenix. What is going to be the thing that brings people over? 41:15 – Panelist answers Kate’s question. 41:29 – You can’t do live Vue in other languages. If you are really experienced... 42:08 – Chuck: You have to learn 2 technologies. You can adopt a frontend and backend technology and you can get SOME of that. I know a lot of people are invested in the frontend technology or the backend. I think that is how you are going to convert. 42:43: Panelist chimes-in. Panelist’s friend asks: Is it an appropriate tool? 43:30 – Kate: Our team is super excited about it. Our team has mostly been working on the backend. We need to deliver on the frontend with updates. What if we had it – out of the box with Phoenix? Yeah people are over the moon. 44:06 – Chuck talks about what he is using. What if I didn’t have to do any of that garbage? 44:23 – Panelist: It is a NICE experience when you have to do it. 44:38 – Chuck: If you need a killer feature for React or Vue – why can’t you build a frontend... 45:00 – Panelist adds in his comments/thoughts. 45:30 – Chuck: Anything else? 45:38 – Picks! Links: Flatiron School Our Courses – Flatiron School How We Built the Learn IDE in Browser – Medium Flatiron Labs Elixir – Flatiron Labs Elixir – Guards Kate Travers Kate Travers’ “Pattern Matching in Elixir” (3/14/18) Kate Travers’ Dev.to Kate Travers’ Twitter Kate Travers’ Talk on YouTube: “Pattern Matching: The Gateway to Loving Elixir – Code Elixir LDN 2018” Kate Travers’ Code Sync Ruby Elixir JavaScript Vue React Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Digital Ocean Code Badges Cache Fly Picks: Mark Ericksen Value Teach something to someone else. It helps you grow. Book - Leadership and Self Deception Josh Adams Ethdenver Charles SCALE Brunch Kate breakinto.tech Kusama: Infinity

Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Kate Travers In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks to Kate Travers who was a student/apprentice with the Flatiron School and now is on staff as a software engineer. The panel and Kate talk about adopting Elixir at the Flatiron School and Pattern Matching. Watch Kate’s talks about the topic; links to these talks can be found below. Show Topics: 1:08– Hi from Kate Travers. 1:16 – Chuck: Background? 2:20 – Kate gives her background. 2:30 – Chuck: We had another Flatiron alum from an extra show. 2:44 – Kate: Yeah – she’s great! 2:48 – Chuck: Flatiron mostly focused on Ruby and JavaScript. Has that changed or? 3:02 – Kate: For the students we are teaching the Rails focus on the backend and React on the frontend. Times might be changing. What else is out there for functional curriculum? Our lead engineer is super motivated introducing some Elixir. Our engineering team might be the first to go in that arena. It would be absolutely fantastic to 4:02 – Chuck: Awesome! I would like to see the boot camps take on Elixir. 4:15 – Kate: Yeah, there are many benefits of doing that. 4:57 – Chuck: You see some Reactive, some... It is interesting to see how it comes together and 5:16 – Kate: Yeah we see this as a support – delivery of curriculum. When you start out you are writing in a functional style. You are essentially writing TLI scripts – functional manner. Now in the curriculum we are training people to think, and to get away from that script-way, and think in terms of objects. 6:11 – Panelist: I think that is interesting. Some of the difficulty of teaching Elixir is to UNLEARN some of their past education. Start teaching people FUNCTIONAL, might help. 7:04 – Chuck: I have been starting a new project... What is going on here? Oh yeah I have to think about it. 7:20 – Kate: Yes. We have spun up – we have one core Elixir project. We have been on that for a year. We have spun up some smaller projects. On these projects this is the first time these people have used Elixir. It is interesting to see the difficulties that they are seeing for the first time. 8:09 – Chuck: I want to talk to adoption for a bit. So as your school has made this transition, where are you seeing the (first of all) where is it easy to get buy in. How did Elixir get into Flatiron? 9:06 – Kate: It is not apart of the school’s curriculum. How we started using Elixir was because our technical lead he is super loud / elegant voice for this language. Elixir might solve some of the problems that we were facing. When we adopt new tech it’s because we have thought about it heavily. We don’t adopt new technologies “just because”. The perfect opportunity came up, so this lead into why and how Flatiron started using Elixir. Kate goes into more detail. 15:24 – Chuck: Learn.io – check out outside of the school? 15:35 – Kate: Yep! There is even some interview prep; also, intro to Ruby, intro to JavaScript, and someday intro to Elixir? 16:06 – Chuck: As you brining people into this how do you transfer them to Ruby to Elixir? Do you throw them into the deep end? 16:26 – Kate: Sure! If someone is interested we will. It is something our team tries to prioritize. Kate goes into more detail. 18:43 – Kate: We didn’t expect for these book clubs to keep going. We will do a little workshop as part of book club. 19:18 – Panelist: Question to Kate. 19:25 – Kate: Yes, so everyone has a NEW lead each week. Folks of ALL different experience levels. What is different about our team is that we have tons of people who LOVE to blog. If you check-it out as they are learning Elixir they are writing posts. 20:21 – Question. 20:29 – Kate answers the question. 20:49 – Chuck. 20:55 – Kate: Steven suggested a new way to cement the things you are learning. 21:28 – Chuck: Yeah – Flatiron labs. Now that I have been playing with Elixir with pattern matching. At first it’s scary stuff. 21:49 – Kate: It is a head-trip. 22:00 – Chuck: ...wait...wait... 22:10 – Kate: Multiple binding? 22:16 – Panelist: My first introduction to outer matching was seeing a... 22:39 – Kate: Great first introduction. Not the textbook example, you will get to see the real-world situation. Yeah that is a really, really good example. 23:05 – Panelist: Pattern matching for me became a superpower! It was my first real love of the language; before concurrency, and others. Pattern matching helped with a lot of the pains that I wouldn’t have to encounter. You are poking this big object to figure it out. Then it’s easier because if the shape matches, then it matches. Mental flip – and I get it! It felt like a superpower. I liked your talk, Kate, about pattern matching. 24:41 – Kate: Yeah, totally. Pattern matching. Like learning a musical instrument like a guitar. When you start learning something like this you have these high ambitions. You are learning to be a rock star and you want to be David Bowie. But when you start you couldn’t be further away from that goal. At the beginning you are learning chords and it’s so easy to think: “I am terrible, I suck...” you quit and never keep going. To prevent this you need a hook to keep you going. You just need to learn that really sick rift. Oh yeah, NOW I can start seeing my rock star abilities; same thing for Elixir. Pattern matching was my really sick rift. 27:38 – Panelist chimes-in. You have that excitement about the new language. But they get frustrated because they are a beginner. I do think that you nailed it there. If people can latch onto something fairly quickly, then it gives them a reason to keep coming back to learn more and more. 28:25 – Kate continues this conversation. 28:48 – Panelist. 28:54 – Advertisement – Code Badges! 29:32 – Chuck: Most important / interesting thing you’ve learned about pattern matching? 29:48 – Kate: It was the different things you can do with... 30:23 – Kate: The concept is that Elixir provides... 31:42 – Chuck: I didn’t know that you could do that! 31:56 – Kate: The benefit only comes from legibility. 32:13 – Panelist: Guard clauses and pattern matching. I think it would be a mess if I weren’t use Elixir. 32:31 – Kate: Yes, definitely. 33:10 – Panelist: Yes, my first project with Elixir... 34:47 – People should go and see your talk and it’s in the links. 35:00 – Kate: Thanks! Kate talks about dodging bullets and code.  36:04 – Chuck: have you seen other languages using/trying to use Pattern matching? 36:10 – Kate: Yeah, there are talks about Ruby and JavaScript for introducing proper pattern matching in BOTH languages. Ruby is interesting. I don’t know how much traction we have on these, but people seem really into program matching. 36:36 – Panelist: Yeah, I think people come to Elixir and see pattern matching and they get excited. 36:55 – Kate: Yeah, I would be interested to see if the proposals go through or not. There is a conference on my WATCH LIST and I want to see more about it. 37:26 – Panelist: It started off as a prologue that’s what you need. 37:37 – Kate: If it wasn’t designed that way in the beginning it will be a problem. If it’s not apart of the system in the beginning then it could be a problem. 38:14 – Chuck: Yeah, the flipside is... 38:34 – Panelists: I don’t know. 38:44 – Panelist: One of my concerns is object oriented programming. I imagine (nightmare) pattern matching in Ruby and all match onto this object – after it’s there – it’s inside my function – runs another thread – comes back to me – that object is modified and now it’s there, and not be completely invalid. It’s not RUBY anymore. 39:36 – Panelist: Pattern matching could bring them over and bring them over the gap. I am worried that if this is more widespread then we will hit a much worse. 40:06 – Kate and Panel: Yep! 40:12 – Chuck: Anything else about pattern matching and/or adopting Elixir? 40:18 – Kate: I don’t want to rush into this too quickly, but if we are on the topic of bringing people to Elixir. It came up at this conference. Ruby Rails coming over – RR refugees. The question that they post: People are hyped about Elixir about Phoenix. What is going to be the thing that brings people over? 41:15 – Panelist answers Kate’s question. 41:29 – You can’t do live Vue in other languages. If you are really experienced... 42:08 – Chuck: You have to learn 2 technologies. You can adopt a frontend and backend technology and you can get SOME of that. I know a lot of people are invested in the frontend technology or the backend. I think that is how you are going to convert. 42:43: Panelist chimes-in. Panelist’s friend asks: Is it an appropriate tool? 43:30 – Kate: Our team is super excited about it. Our team has mostly been working on the backend. We need to deliver on the frontend with updates. What if we had it – out of the box with Phoenix? Yeah people are over the moon. 44:06 – Chuck talks about what he is using. What if I didn’t have to do any of that garbage? 44:23 – Panelist: It is a NICE experience when you have to do it. 44:38 – Chuck: If you need a killer feature for React or Vue – why can’t you build a frontend... 45:00 – Panelist adds in his comments/thoughts. 45:30 – Chuck: Anything else? 45:38 – Picks! Links: Flatiron School Our Courses – Flatiron School How We Built the Learn IDE in Browser – Medium Flatiron Labs Elixir – Flatiron Labs Elixir – Guards Kate Travers Kate Travers’ “Pattern Matching in Elixir” (3/14/18) Kate Travers’ Dev.to Kate Travers’ Twitter Kate Travers’ Talk on YouTube: “Pattern Matching: The Gateway to Loving Elixir – Code Elixir LDN 2018” Kate Travers’ Code Sync Ruby Elixir JavaScript Vue React Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Digital Ocean Code Badges Cache Fly Picks: Mark Ericksen Value Teach something to someone else. It helps you grow. Book - Leadership and Self Deception Josh Adams Ethdenver Charles SCALE Brunch Kate breakinto.tech Kusama: Infinity