Evangeline Garreau writes the Good Questions newsletter. Read it!Shira Heisler is a physician and complimenter.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I'm pleased to welcome back Best Advice Show regular and the love of my life, my wife, Shira.SHIRA: If you have a compliment for anyone. Like, if it just crossed your mind and you're like, hey, that guy has beautiful eyes. Or, oh, you're really kind and generous. Or, you look pretty today. Whatever compliment you have for anybody who crosses in your life, stranger, friend, partner...tell them.ZAK: That's a great piece of advice, Shira.SHIRA: That's why it's on the show.ZAK: For sure, but I was complimenting you.SHIRA: Oh. Laughter. Good. Good.ZAK: I love this advice. I recorded it with Shira a long time ago and I finally got around to putting it together today and actually, literally, five-minutes after I finished editing this episode and uploading it, I got this voicemail on the advice hotline. This is unbelievable! EVANGELINE: Hi, my name is Evangeline Garreau and my advice is to say the nice thing. I don't remember where I first heard this but the idea is that every time you think something nice about someone, you should tell them. For me this mostly shows up with clothing. Anytime I notice a cool shirt or a nice piece of jewelry, I want to tell the person how great it is. This happened a lot more pre-pandemic but still on Zoom calls when I notice that people make an effort, I want them to know that they look great. It makes me feel good to give them a compliment and it makes them feel good to receive a compliment. And often it leads to friendship. People tend to like you more when you tell them nice things about their clothes. I also feel like it's the kind of thing that when you practice in a low-stakes context, like, complimenting someone's outfit, it gets easier in a high-stakes context like, telling someone you love then for the first time. I have an example that's not quite that high-stakes but recently I had a moment where I was feeling really grateful for my mom and my sister. We were navigating a hard family issue and I felt really good about how it was being handled. And, I had a moment where I thought, should I say something or is that totally sappy to just tell them, oh, man, you guys are so great. And then I thought, say the nice thing, and I'm glad I did because they deserve to know how much they mean to me and who knows what's gonna happen tomorrow. So, whether it's about shoes or true love...say the nice thing. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Ma'ayan Plaut (@maayanplaut) is Senior Manager, Audience Development & Engagement at PRX.Plating with Ma'ayan To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: It's Food Friday and today return contributor, Ma'ayan Plaut is here to talk about sandwiches. Not just any sandwich, though. MA'AYAN: I don't know if it's cause I miss my parents a lot right now but I've been making a lot of what my mom likes to call the two-handed sandwich. And it's actually more of an idea than it is a recipe and it's delicious because it's filled with all sorts of crunchy vegetables...usually lettuce, cucumbers, sprouts, for my mom it has to have avocado in it. If you're me, any type of savory spread, avocado included, also welcome. And the main thing here is that it's piled super-duper high. It's absolutely beautiful to look at and it's the best. First bite, last bite, all of them are great. The only challenge with the two-handed sandwich is that it's really just that. It only works best if you're holding it with two hands and whoa is you if you decide to put it down for any reason whatsoever. So, the thing is with all of those crunchy vegetables and all of the spreads, everything starts sliding in every direction, so the bread might fall off completely because of all the stacked, multiple dimensioned things on top. The vegetables, especially if they're slide-y vegetables like cucumbers or sprouts, they just slide side-ways and you kind of just end up with something I call a miserable tossed salad with bread that just so happens to be on the side or on the bottom. So my solution is actually to self-contain the sandwich and that usually comes from one of two things. It's either a well-places toothpick or you can wrap your sandwich up either in wax paper or aluminum foil and that just gives you some extra, internal stability when all of the slide-y and crinkly and gravity-defying fillings have all these ideas about what a strong, free-standing structure really should look like. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Dr. Glenn Gass is a provost professor emeritus at The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: This is Dr. Glenn Gass.GLENN: I'm a provost professor emeritus at The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and just retired this past May.ZAK: When I was Professor Gass' student in his History of The Beatles class. Yes, that's a real class and yes it was most the beloved class on campus and one night in class, professor Gass told us this Beatles story which remains one of my favorite Beatle's stories. And I think the essence of this story has a jewel of wisdom that I've been thinking about a lot, which we'll get to. But first, let's go back to the spring of 1966 when The Beatles were recording the song, Yellow Submarine.GLENN: And they had a bunch of friends over. Marianne Faithful, Brian Jones, Hunter Davies, Alf Bicknell. They just said, come on in. They just wanted normal voices singing the chorus, so it didn't sound like The Beatles singing in perfect harmony. They had Mal Evans with a parade bass drum and they had the cocktail party. That's actually Patty Boyd, George's wife that has the big shrieking, high life in the middle of that and the glasses clinking and all the sound effects. So, anyway they did this and they did the overdubs singing, we all live in a Yellow Submarine and everyone was having a great time. Who knows, it's 1966, so they're probably having a really great time. The engineer, Geoff Emerick went to lock up the tapes and turn off the lights and he came back out to turn out the lights in the studio. He walked in the control room and looked down to Studio 2 and saw everyone was still there. They were there with Big Mal Evans and that parade drum in the front of this conga line with everyone on the person in-front of them's shoulders, swaying back and forth singing, we all live in a yellow submarine. I mean there's no tape running. The song is done. They're having so much fun, they didn't want it to end. That's so beautiful on so many levels. The Beatles just want to be together. They want to sing and have fun together. You wouldn't likely do that on a George, Paul or John song but for Ringo, lets all gather round our friend and just have a good, old sing-a-long.ZAK: I love it so much. I love thinking about how, the song in this instance, maybe not with all their output, but maybe in this case, the song was just a by-product of their friendship.GLENN: Yes.ZAK: The song wasn't even the point. The point was them being together and having fun and, awesome, this amazing song came out of it.GLENN: The point was being together, having fun and the song expresses that. My friends are all aboard. Many more of them live next door. The whole song was about being together with your friends and the fact that Paul wrote it not for himself but for his friend. So, it not only is about friendship, it sort of embodies friendship.ZAK: We have these really loud baseboards cause we have a boiler with hot water heat and in our bedroom it sounds like we're in a submarine right now and I've been thinking about the song and thinking about how, all of us, are in our own...if we're lucky to have our own proverbial submarines with the people in our lives we love. Like, we're just kind of very insulated in our own yellow submarines right now.GLENN: Yeah and everyone's submarine is so different.ZAK: At the beginning of the pandemic, parents with young families were talking about how they would have impromptu dance parties. It's like finding fun where they can because we don't have access to all these old ways of having fun outside our houses. So, I feel like that's another thing that this song makes me think of. It's just like, make meaning amid the isolation.GLENN: Create the world you want to be in. Create the atmosphere you want. And damn the torpedoes we're gonna do this submarine song and we're gonna have fun with it. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Karen Semone is a senior director of innovation at Salesforce. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Warning, today's episode might put you to sleep. But if it does, that's a good thing. Here is Karen Semone's advice for falling asleep easier and dreaming better. KAREN: You basically think of a place that you loved as a child. For me it's my grandma's house. And you take a visualized tour of that house. It's not about the people in the house. It's about the place. But it's very much a sensory experience. So you really feel what the handle of the door feels like. You smell. You visualize the smell. You try to remember details of where the photos are on the photo wall, where her art was. And you walk through the rooms. And more often than not, by the time I've gone through the whole house, I'm asleep which is awesome. You enter through the garage and she has this very old-school screen door and I think it is a form of meditation because you have to be really methodical and sort of, slow. Sometimes I like to pretend like I can smell her famous pecan sticky buns that she would always make in the morning. ZAK: Is it always your grandma's house that you do?KAREN: It's funny. I change it up but it usually tends to be places I visited in summertimes as children. So I have a couple of cottages that I did or my aunt's house where she had a pool. And I think that might just be because it's light-hearted memories. Like, positive associations. And I tend to have nicer dreams since I started doing it. My name is Karen Semone. I am a senior director of innovation at Salesforce. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Tiffany Paulsen (@thetiffanypaulsen) is a screenwriter, producer, director. Her most recent film, Holidate, is on Netflix. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Thanks for listening to another episode of The Best Advice Show where everyday I talk to someone new who's got a little morsel of wisdom for you. Something you can take with you and try, hopefully immediately. I've been in touch with some listeners recently who hear my daily call-out for advice but think they don't have anything good to offer. You're wrong. You do. It doesn't have to be sage and profound. My favorite type of advice is stuff the advice-giver is still working on. So, what is it? What are you working on in your life that you think might be valuable or helpful to some other people to work on? That's the stuff that I want to hear. Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. So, that thing about the advice-giver still working on the advice. That's true of today's episode. TIFFANY: Hi. My name's Tiffany Paulsen. I'm a screenwriter, producer, director. Most recently I wrote the romantic-comedy, Holidate for Netflix. The thing that I try to do and I want to get so much better at is, do the hard thing first. Doing the hard thing first is something I'm really working on and is helping me because I find when the hard thing is out there and I mean the email I don't want to send, the call I don't want to make, the thing that's broken in my house that I have to figure out...it just hovers. It hovers in my workspace. It hovers in my energy. And it slows everything down. So, getting that thing that I don't want to do that I'm regretting out of the way is really helpful. ZAK: And once you're able to do that. Once you actually get the hard thing done first, what does that do to the rest of your day?TIFFANY: Well, first of all I find that the hard thing is never as hard as I'm anticipating that it's gonna be. So, it instantly relieves anxiety. And for me as a writer, I just feel like anything I can do to free up my creative space and my brain-flow is always gonna be more positive to my work-day and have a better outcome with my work-day. So, I really am finding that getting that, however big or small, but the thing that I'm dreading the most about the day or the thing that I just don't want to tackle. If I could just not procrastinate it, it's gonna be far beneficial to get it done. And changing that mindset of, like, ok, what is it? What do I need to deal with? I'm gonna just get it done, it's that...ahhhh. Wasn't that bad. I don't need to think about it anymore. I can put that great line on my to-do list for the day and cross it out. So, I think for me I get an instant, positive, reaction. An instant, release of some negativity or some worry. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Bob Wells runs Cheap RV Living and appears in the film, Nomadland.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: BOB: My name is Bob Wells and I live in a van and I have a website called CheapRVLiving.com and youtube channel called, Cheap RV Living and I like to tell people they have a choice.ZAK: If you've seen the new movie Nomadland, then you know Bob Wells. He was in the movie. He was in a couple scenes. He looks just like Santa Claus. Here he is in the movie which stars Frances McDormand as a woman in her 60s who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, is traveling across the country in a van. And then she meets a bunch of other van-dwelling people and we learn about their lives. One of those people is Bob Wells, who plays himself just like a lot of the characters.Nomadland ExcerptZAK:I connected with Bob last week over Zoom. He was visiting his family in the Pacific Northwest and I was in my office in Detroit.BOB: Ok, here's my one piece of advice. Our society is organized to give us the most possible menial, unimportant choices that we possibly can have. So our life is full of meaningless choices. But the big choices in life are really few and far between and we don't get to make them. So, if I could tell your audience anything, I would tell them that they have many, many more choices then they know and to stop worrying about the little, tiny ones that are meaningless and think about the big ones. Think about the ones that will impact your life and the lives of the people you love. Question everything. Look at all the possible options. Take a chance.ZAK: And what's the first time you remember consciously taking a chance on something unconventional.BOB: I wasn't brave enough. I feel in the trance and stayed there. I was deeply hypnotized. I went through a divorce so I set up two households and I couldn't afford to pay for two households so I was forced into a different choice. I had always been a camper and a backpacker. I saw a van on the way to work for sale and one day the idea popped into my head... completely unconventional choice. I could live in that van. I can live in a tent for months at a time. I can live in that van better! I stopped. I bought the van and I moved in. And at first I hated it. I felt ashamed. I felt like I was a failure. I had utterly failed in the American Dream and all of a sudden. Well, not all of a sudden. Gradually, I fell in love with that life and for the very first time in my life, I was happy.ZAK: What do you think is our species essence?BOB: It's connection. Our species essence is connection. Connected to nature. Connected to each other. Connected to the sacred. It's deep, profound. You ask any anthropologist about what humans are. We are a pack animal. That is a simple, science of humanity. We are pack animal. And instead of being a pack animal that lives in packs, profoundly connecting to each other and everything around us, we've become ants or bees in a hive. And we've lost all connection to each other.ZAK: So do you live by yourself in the RV?BOB: I do live alone in my RV but I usually have a pack around me.ZAK: Well some of us aren't going to become nomads. At least not yet. What do you think is something that we might practice today to get some of the feeling that you get from being on the road without actually packing up and hitting the road like you did?BOB: Well, you can embrace minimalism. That's one thing you have to be pretty minimal. Nomads were all minimalists. Things were a burden. The attitude always was, if I have too much stuff and I have to carry it to the next stop cause that's where the food and water is, then that stuff is a burden and I don't want it. So that is an attitude that every nomad had and you could adopt tomorrow. You can stand up right now, get a bag, go around, find a lot, a lot, a lot of crap in your house that you don't need and get rid of it. And that will free you. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Meiko Krishok is the founder and co-operator of Guerrilla Food (GF), a Detroit-based grassroots culinary team that uses food as medicine. GF is the team behind the  Pink Flamingo To Go farm-to-table carry-out restaurant in the Palmer Park neighborhood in Detroit and Pink Flamingo popular seasonal vintage food trailer that is located in a community garden in Corktown, Detroit.Growing GarlicFermented Honey GarlicTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Welcome to another addition of Food Friday where talk food advice.MEIKO: My name is Meiko Krishok and I live in Detroit. I have a food business called Guerrilla Food and run an off-shoot of that business which is Pink Flamingo Food Truck and Pink Flamingo To Go carry-out restaurant. One thing I've been enjoying that I've been learning how to do that I really enjoy doing because it's so low effort is how to grow garlic. This is the time of the year where it starts to pop-up a little but because you grow it in the fall. You don't really need to have access to water to grow it. You just need a space to put it in the group and cover it up really well in the winter time so it doesn't freeze and I just think it's like, one of the best food sovereignty things that we can be doing that's also not very hard.You know for things like onions and stuff you either need to grow the seeds or you need to get transplants and garlic you literally just take the cloves, right? Any cloves. Even stuff from the grocery store and then you just need a place to put it in the group that can go into the ground about 6-inches or so. And then you just cover it really well. I like to use leaves and then if you have straw. So, I literally don't even water the garlic. I just put it in the ground, cover it and then in the spring I uncover once it's warm enough and wait for it to grow the little garlic scapes. It grows this little curly-cue and that part will flower if you don't pick it. If you break it off of at the right time of the year, then all the energy goes down into the bulb and then the garlic grows and then you have garlic by July.ZAK: Garlic continues to be just, obviously it's part of so many recipes...but it's the thing that I'm perpetually so intoxicated by in the kitchen. It's just the best.MEIKO: Yeah. It's so good. You can do so many things with it. One thing we've been doing recently which has been so delicious is you take peeled cloves of garlic and you put em in a jar and then you put honey on top. And the honey will ferment the garlic and it just mellows it out slowly over time. But that is really delicious. You can eat the cloves of garlic or you can the honey. And you just let it sit for as long as you can and eat a little bit every day. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Taylor Cox is a writer, comedian and host of the podcast, Hills I'd Die On. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Dr. Celeste Holbrook (@drcelesteholbrook) is a sexologist, speaker and author.She was last on the show talking about the reality that one of you wants to have sex more than the other.I want your advice about having difficult conversations! Call me at 844-935-BEST or email at ZAK@BestAdvice.ShowTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: I'm excited for some more advice from Dr. Celeste Holbrook.CELESTE: I am a sexologist. I've had my own practice for 7-years and I've been a sex educator for 10.ZAK: Today's episode may not be suitable for children. But it also may be suitable for children.ZAK: I was actually thinking leading us to this interview, we're gonna need to put a disclaimer for kids at the top of the episode but I wonder what do you think about how early is too early to start talking openly about sex.CELESTE: I mean, I'm a little biased, Zak. Laughter. I definitely have told my 8 year-old not to touch their clitoris at the table. So probably never too early.ZAK: But yeah, what have you noticed in your own children or friend's children or client's children, like, what do you think is a healthy way to start talking opening about sex?CELESTE: Start early by naming body parts what they actually are. And that starts when they're 18-months old and then grow the conversation...The conversation matures as they mature. It's not just one conversation. It's not just one talk. It's something you talk about through and through, over and over. My kids knew about what was by the time they were four. We're the ones that bring all the shame to the table.ZAK: Hmmm. Uh huh. Uh huh.CELESTE: So, early. Early.ZAK: Yeah. And when you say, you know, actually name the body parts, you mean like, say penis instead of pee peep. Stuff like that?CELESTE: Correct. Plus it gives a sense of trust that you're gonna tell then the right things from the very beginning, So at age 9, you're going, it's not your tee-tee, it's your vulva. It's not your wee-wee, it's your penis and then they're going, well what other things did they lie to me about. You know.ZAK: You're giving yourself more work.CELESTE: Yes. That. *Laughter. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow

Ronald Young Jr. is the host of Time Well Spent and Leaving the Theatre and the associate producer for the Seizing Freedom podcast from VPM and Witness Docs. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Welcome to The Best Advice Show. Spring is here in Detroit. I'm grateful for the sun. Today's advice comes from Ronald Young Jr. And this is advice like all the advice on this show that you can practice as soon as you hear it. I think it's really simple but super important. Here's Ronald. RONALD: So, I went through a break-up in September. When you're in a relationship you always have at least one person that you can talk to, lean on, stay stuff to. And my life feels like, and I feel like maybe to my detriment, feels so compartmentalized outside of being in a relationship that I don't really have...like sometimes I find myself outside of all my compartments. I don't have big group of friends that still hangs out. Like, I do from college but we're all separated now. So I feel like often, I'm a single person with no kids and unmarried so it's very often...and I feel like other single will probably understand this to. Especially when you live by yourself. People just don't...It's easy to be lost in the cracks. And I only mean in terms of social interaction and communication. ZAK: I hear that. For sure. Yeah, that makes sense.RONALD: You're married, right?ZAK: I'm married and I have two kids. So, it's like the opposite. And I take it for granted. I take the morning conversation I have my wife totally for granted. RONALD: Yeah. That's something I miss. Like, with my ex-girlfriend, I miss being able to talk to her in the morning or talk to her in the afternoon or chit-chat. But what I would tell you is that you probably have a single-friend out there who's just like me. Who lives by themselves, no kids...Just reach out to them. Just say, hey man, what's up. Hit 'em up. And if you really want to do a service, hit him up regularly. I have one or two friends that I know can count on I'll talk to, probably, a couple times a week but, it's different cause you get out there and there's no guarantee that I'm gonna have regular interaction if I don't seek it out, which feels like crazy at times. You know? Cause yours comes by default.ZAK: Yep, it's a real effort that you have to make to reach out and it shouldn't fall on you entirely or even the majority. It should be, you know, reciprocal at its best, but right now, like, yeah being alone sounds really challenging right now. RONALD: And to be honest, that's the first time I articulated it. Because I don't think anybody owes it to me to reach out to me. I just think that it is something like, when I was communing to work and I was getting coffee before I went to work at the coffee shop or going in and talking to the employees or even the people that cleaned the building. I had a friend in the mail-room who me and him would have these long conversations. So, you had all these incidental interactions with people and when you're a single person and you don't live with anyone. I don't have pets, kids...those incidental interactions are all gone and I think that's something that...And I know a lot of people and families are suffering cause they're getting sick of each-other. It gets challenging and all that. And I completely understand that. And that is its own struggle. But I just feel like those incidental interactions are important. And I'm an extrovert. And I didn't say all that to say the onus is on YOU to talk to ME. It's just saying, for a lot of us singles out here. We have to generate and then the other part is, when the depression and all that stuff sets in, it then becomes hard to generate that interaction. And so, even a, hey man, what's going on? What you up to? Just one of those is nice. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Help Zak continue making this show by becoming a Best Advice Show Patron @ https://www.patreon.com/bestadviceshow---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow