Weirdly Helpful (formerly The Best Advice Show)

Kamala Puligandla is the author of the novella, You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone and writes The Dyke Kitchen Column at Autostraddle.TRANSCRIPT:ZAK: It's Food Friday.KAMALA: I'm Kamala Puligandla. I'm a writer. I do a lot of things but it usually revolves around writing.ZAK: Kamala writes a column called The Dyke Kitchen and I knew I needed to talk to her after I read her piece, The Art of Salad.KAMALA: Yeah. I don't know, I love salads because I think the possibilities are endless and I think all the things that I might want to eat when I'm hungry...If I don't really know what I want, all the things I could want will be in a salad.ZAK: For people who don't feel like free-form salad musicians, how do you think one can practice becoming a better salad improviser?KAMALA: I think part of it is having a bunch of stuff ready. I always have citrus at my house. Partially cause I'm in LA because you can turn it into a dressing or you can put it in whole and it will just drip its juices in, which is one of my favorite lazy salad methods. Put a bunch of wet stuff in your salad and then you don't have to make a dressing. That's kind of one of my cheats for salads.ZAK: I consider my mom a salad artist and I think that's where I get a lot of my chops from. Pun intended I guess. Chops. Like, for people who aren't confident in making salads or think that salads are boring, how can you help them feel more empowered in making a delicious salad that's actually gonna be satisfying.KAMALA: I think that people have this notion that salads are gonna be healthy and I think if you discard that, you're more likely to have a better salad. So, the thing is it's going to be healthy if you're eating vegetables. But you still have to use fat or else it tastes terrible and also a friend of mine told me that you have to have fat in order to digest the raw ingredients, so I was like, ok, great! So there's that and you can also put spices and flavors in to your salad. It doesn't have to be a bare, acetic salad. I put chicken in there and I'll grill my chicken with fish sauce and curry paste and other things like that, so that it's definitely not a boring salad. I think all the things you might like in a non-salad food, you can have in a salad food too. Sometimes I put the seasoning that I would put in my beans in my salad dressing. And things like that where I'm just like, what is some other taste that I like and then I'll put it in a salad.ZAK: This is such good salad therapy.KAMALA: I'm glad! Wait, what are your favorite salads?ZAK: Oh, last week I made a chicken shawarma salad where the dressing was tahini.KAMALA: That sounds so good.ZAK: With pickled cucumbers and pickled radishes. Um, when your grocery shopping, do you think about the salad that you're eventually gonna make?KAMALA: Sometimes I do. A lot of times I don't. The way that I grocery shop is like, ok, I sort of set my fridge up like someone's deli bar at the store except for it's in my refrigerator. So, I'll be like, ok, here's a couple vegetable I'm gonna cook a particular way that's like, flavorful but I could always add more to it and then I also get a couple of proteins that I'm gonna do something do and then it's like, ok, do you want to have it with noodles, do you want to have it with rice? Do you want to just put them together? Do you want to put that in an egg dish?ZAK: You have them prepped already?KAMALA: Yeah, so one of my favorite things to do is just to blanch broccoli and blanch green beans and then they're pretty much ready to eat but I could cook them again if I wanted to or I could just throw them into things, like if I'm making instant noodles, I could put broccoli in there. I also roast eggplant a lot and that's one of my favorite salad ingredients. So I just have a little thing in the fridge of whatever vegetables I bought that week. I guess I'm not putting a lot of raw ingredients in the salad except for my greens. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Fox (@gdfx) is composer, drummer, teacher and coach. He was last on the show talking about the 2 of 3 rule in episode #129. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: You might remember Greg Fox from episode 129 of this show. He talked about the 2 of 3 rule. The idea is you need two of the following three things for a project that you're thinking about to be worthwhile.GREG: And those three things are, good hang, good product and three, good pay.ZAK: Today Greg, who is a composer, drummer, teacher and coach is back with some more advice and an exercise he teaches his drumming students.GREG: In my teaching, the first exercise I teach everybody is an exercise of just spending five-minutes doing single strokes while focusing on the breath.ZAK: Single strokes. Just left, right, left right, left, right. This is something you can try at home. You don't need to be a drummer to practice this. All you have to do while you're doing left, right, left, right is just to notice when your thoughts start to drift.GREG: And then bringing them back to the breath. And that practice is not about how much of this five-minutes can I spend fully focused on my breathing as some sort of measurement of success or failure. It's about those moments where you notice, oh, I'm thinking about this thing that happened yesterday or I'm thinking about this thing I'm excited or anxious about that's gonna happen tomorrow and say, oh, I am thinking about this thing. Now I'm focusing back on my breath. And that's the exercise, right? Coming back. And so if you're doing that while you're drumming, right...I am drumming and then the thoughts start to drift, I'm over here thinking about when I was in my car yesterday and had this argument with somebody...Oh wait a minute. I'm drumming. Come back here. It's not about perfectly always being in this levitated moment. It's just reminding yourself to check in and remember, oh, I'm just in this body right here in this moment. And what am I doing right now? 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexandra Cohl (@pod.draland) is the host of The Pod Broads podcast. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Are you someone who wants to be heard but you feel a little nervous to actually come out and say the thing?ALEXANDRA: And someone who wants to connect with other people and feel seen and help other people feel seen and someone who ultimately does like to share parts of themselves in a public space.ZAK: If so, you should heed Alexandra Cohl's advice, which is this...ALEXANDRA: Do not be afraid to quote yourself and share the words that you say. You have important, thoughtful, funny and quotable shit to say and you don't have to wait for someone else to do it for you.ZAK: That's Alexandra Cohl reading from a post she wrote on Instagram last year. In other words, that's Alexandra quoting herself, quoting herself about quoting oneself. ALEXANDRA: So, don't be afraid to quote yourself is essentially saying, don't be afraid to identify what about yourself is important and worth being heard. It is not atypical for woman to feel like people are gonna view them as full of themselves if they are shouting themselves out or being very confident. You know? Like an "overly-confident woman" is seen as a negative thing in society. Not with everyone of course, but as a societal structure, that's kind of a thing that goes along with it. ZAK: Yeah. Yeah. And what do you think is the difference between you before you started sharing parts of yourself and Alexandra know? Someone who posts a lot and who quotes themselves a lot. ALEXANDRA: I would say, prior to doing this I was way more stuck in my anxiety, depressive cycles and my feelings of being very alone. And I deal with PTSD and i think this has been an outlet for me to be able to come back into my power and to not be afraid to speak up in situations where in the past I wasn't able to do that. And so its really helped me cultivate and hone my own voice an opinions in a place where I get to hold the reigns and I'm not answering to anyone. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mason Currey (@masoncurrey) is a writer living in LA.Mason Currey's Subtle Maneuvers - https://subtlemaneuvers.substack.com/John Cage on music and mushrooms - https://subtlemaneuvers.substack.com/p/john-cage-on-music-and-mushroomsHow about singing the chorus to Yellow Submarine and sending the recording to ZAK@BESTADVICE.SHOW for use in a near-future episode? THANK YOU. TRANSCRIPT: MASON: So, my advice is specifically for people doing creative work or people doing work that involves a lot of idea generating or problem-solving which I think is a lot of people. And it comes from an e-mail interview I did with the artist, Maira Kalman. For my first book I was asking her about her daily routine and her work habits and in one of her replies she said, "I procrastinate just the right amount." And I remember thinking at the time, yeah, haha, me too. But since then I've come to think there's a real kernel of wisdom in that response. That, actually it's kind of an idea. To procrastinate just the right now amount because at least in the all the research I've done on writers' and artists' habits and creative process, you see how important ruminating on an idea is, letting an idea percolate in the back of your mind. I think we've all had the experience with, you kind of plant the seed and then you have an idea out of the blue while you're in the shower or taking the walk. But you need that PLUS a burst of focused, head-down work. You kind of need both things. And I think procrastinating just the right amount is kind of a great strategy or shortcut to getting the ideal balance of letting the idea percolate...letting your brain gnaw away at it in the background and then actually executing the piece of work and getting it done.ZAK: And how have you figured out how to build procrastination into your routine.MASON: I think I'm maybe a natural at that. This whole project of studying people's routines began with an act of procrastination. Many years ago I was supposed to be writing an article for this magazine I worked at, at the time. I went into the office on a Sunday afternoon. I was gonna do this thing and instead I was slacking off, surfing the internet and I was reading interviews with, like, writers about their routines cause it felt like maybe that would get me in the mood to work and I was like, somebody should start a blog to collect these little snippets. And then instead of writing this article I started this blog and over the course of many years it turned into book projects and now this newsletter, but I always felt bad about procrastinating. I never felt like I was doing something good or effective or strategic. And now I'm starting to think it's not something to feel bad about. It works for me. I think it works for a lot of creative people and maybe you should cultivate it a little bit instead of beating yourself up about it.ZAK: Yeah, that's a big point. Just the way that you view procrastination. Because if you have shame around it rather than, like you're saying, just cultivating kind of a positive air around it...the shame is going to impact the work and impact the amount you procrastinate.MASON: Also, if you get an assignment and get straight to work on it, you might be being very efficient but I think you're missing out on the part of the process that leads to the best work. You're missing out on the...you plant the seed and then let it work away in the back of your mind. That kind of efficiency might be inefficient in creative work because you're losing out on part of the process that leads to the best ideas. And then doing this effectively requires understanding yourself, understanding your own habits and your process and that is always a good thing to try to do creative work. Like, I think you should be aware of how you work best. When you've had success what kind of conditions created that? 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lorraine McDonald is a mom, spouse and family doctor living in Oregon.To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTFor a fun time, please record yourself, solo or with your pod, singing the chorus of Yellow Submarine and send it to me at ZAK@bestADVICE.show or leave it as a voicemail at 844-935-BEST. TRANSCRIPT: LORRAINE: My advice is never try to achieve a greater level of happiness with children. When your child is happy don't get in the way of that. Don't try to make it better or improve what they're doing. Don't interrupt their flow. Just let them be.ZAK: It's fantastic. Do you think it applies to adults too?LORRAINE: Absolutely. I think it applies...we learned it with out first our child in that she was a kind of sensitive baby and if you would go up to the mobile and show her, look how this bell rings...she would just start crying when she was happily looking at the mobile. So, my husband and I would say, don't try to achieve a greater level of happiness. And it works all the way up to adulthood. Imagine, you're working on a puzzle and your partner comes along and says, hey, did you know this piece goes here?! I think that it wouldn't make you happier. It would maybe annoy you and interrupt your enjoyment of what you were doing. ZAK: In a way, it sounds like you've kind of removed some of the ego from being the all-knowing mom and just to step back and watch them. How do you think that impacts their development?LORRAINE: I think it actually improves your relationship with them and as far as their development, they're more independent and courageous and willing to try things and then come and talk to you about it and that solidifies your relationship more than if you're standing over their shoulder trying to help them get to the goal faster.ZAK: Right. Yep. I find myself doing that a lot. Like, my 3 year-old is trying to do this puzzle but she's maybe not even doing the puzzle. She's just stacking the puzzle pieces. And my impulse is to get her on track. But, like, what am I doin!? She's having fun stacking the puzzle pieces.LORRAINE: Right. And maybe you can just say to yourself internally, I'm really enjoying watching her have fun with those puzzle pieces. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cybille St. Aude Tate (@cybillestaude) is a chef and author living in Philadelphia. Haitian Epis - http://haitiancooking.com/recipe/haitian-epis/I'm famished for your Food Friday Advice! Call me @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Back in episode #185, Savitha Viswanathan talked about making an Indian miraproix, a really strong flavor base you can use in a bunch of dishes.SAVITHA: Onions, garlic, ginger and green chile.ZAK: We're gonna go down a similar road today but in an entirely different part of the world.CYBILLE: My name is Cybille St. Aude Tate. I am a children's book author and chef.ZAK: More advice in packing in flavor efficiently and effectively today on Food Friday.CYBILLE: Epis is like the golden goose of Haitian gastronomy. Epis is used as a marinade for meats or for fishes. It's also used as a flavoring base for soups and stews and rice dishes. And originally, it started off as kind of being scraps or whatever you had in your fridge, kind of coming together and being pureed as something that you could just, kind of, hold and utilize whenever you needed it. So, the basis of it is a flavor-additive but it's also a celebration of all the tasty, aromatic aspects of Caribbean cooking. The beautiful thing about epis is that you can make it on a lazy Sunday and you'll have it in your fridge for weeks. It's great too because you'll pack all your flavor in there and you don't have to consume yourself with adding too much salt or sodium or extra stuff to you meals because the epis really takes care of it all.ZAK: What about ratios? How should we be thinking about how much of each thing to include?CYBILLE: That's also the beautiful thing about epis and the most frustrating thing about certain Caribbean food elements is that when our aunties and grandma's are making these things, they're just throwing things in there. So my rule of thumb is that I make to make a big batch of it...I use a lot. You can't buy half a bunch of cilantro, right? You have to buy the whole bunch of cilantro and so to control your waste with that, I'm letting those herbs that I have to buy large quantities of kind of navigate how much I'm preparing because if I don't have another use for the cilantro, it's gonna go bad. Cilantro goes bad so quickly. So, I just use like a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of parsley. A head of celery, two bell peppers. Just making sure that the ratio is somewhat proportionate and equal and even. And no epis is created equal. Someone might not like cilantro. There are so many cilantro hater out there! That's like a thing.ZAK: Yeah, it's very divisive.CYBILLE: Yeah. So if you don't like cilantro and parsley's your jam or if neither of those work for you, you can pick another herb. You can pick thyme, basil, rosemary. Just make sure that not one element is outshining the rest because you really want a nice complimentary, well-bounded flavor or seasoning because it's easier for it to adapt to the many applications of this one dish. ZAK: I put an epis recipe in the show notes today. Remember, it's interpretive. Make it what you want. You should follow Cybille St. Aude on Instagram. She's doing some really interesting work at the intersection of food and culture and community. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Niccole Thurman is a Los Angeles-based Actress, Improviser and Writer. Most recently, you could catch her on Indebted (NBC), in the movie Desperados (Netflix). A Black Lady Sketch Show (HBO) and Shrill (Hulu).To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: NICCOLE: I'm Niccole Thurman. I'm an actress. I'm a writer. I do comedy. I'm a cool aunt. Those are my jobs.ZAK: There's this mantra Nicolle has for herself. Don't get jealous. Just work harder. NICCOLE: Cause, of course you're gonna get jealous and want to be competitive. It's human nature, especially I think there's some American thing like, I want to keep up with the Jones'. I want this. I want that. You're not satisfied with what you have in the moment. But once you start to realize that getting jealous is not gonna do anything except creative negativity and take the focus off what you need to be doing. Once you realize that that's not helping you, your brain starts to rewire itself, I feel like.ZAK: How do you see or how have you noticed your work ethic evolve since you've internalized this?NICCOLE: It just changes the way you think about work because instead of working to beat someone else, you're working against yourself or you're working more within yourself so you are more focused than you would be. And I think that once you start having that mantra repeating in your head, you start working differently. You start working more within yourself and for your own goals and not looking in the periphery. You're just looking forward to what you want to do. And it's inspired by a positive reason. It's not inspired by wanting to beat someone else down or take them down. It's inspired by just wanting to better yourself.ZAK: So I just went on to IMDB and you have so many credits. It looks like you're working a lot. You're in shows that I've watched and are respected. Do you think there is a point at which you get where the jealousy receded entirely?NICCOLE: I don't know. For me, I don't get super jealous but I definitely want something more. Which is, you know, I'm learning to work through that and not do that as much because it's not helpful at all. It's also about learning to be grateful for what you have. When you say, I look at this and see all these credits and to me I'm like, Oh yeah, but they're not THE credits I want! So getting past that. But I think it will always be there. I think that's what propels you to do more but it also can hinder your work.ZAK: This is good. And I really like that Niccole isn't claiming that you can get rid of jealously. Of course you're can't but you can quiet it down. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kat Harris (@therefinedwoman) is an author, coach and host of The Refined Collective Podcast. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: You've been cheated on. You've been lied to. You've been taken advantage of. Someone stole something from you. Someone offended. Someone abused. Someone assaulted you. Before you confront the person that wronged you, maybe consider this strategy.KAT: I will write a letter to that person that I never send to them. So, let me get out on a piece of paper every thing that I want to say. You cheated on me. You lied to me. And when you did that, this is how it made me feel. And, I'm angry. I'm pissed. And I want you to know this. And so, really almost, you know...we have these fake conversations in our hand of, oh, if I got another chance to talk to that person, I would say this! Do that. Write it all out. Don't send it and sit with it for a day or two and then write yourself a letter back from that person.ZAK: Damn.KAT: What do you need to hear from them? When I've done that with people that have hurt me or ex's or family members, it's amazing how healing it actually is and how oftentimes, all i really want is to be acknowledged. I'm so sorry I did that. I wish I wouldn't have done that. I'm so sorry for the pain that I've caused you. If I could take it back I would. Just write out exactly the words that you need to hear because the reality is, you may never get those words. And when I hold on to un-forgiveness in my body, it only impacts me.ZAK: There's a time and a place, right, to do actual conflict-resolution in your life. But what you're talking about is, this is instances where it doesn't need to resolve itself?KAT: Yeah. It could be with a person in your life that maybe they're not on this earth any more. I have friends that have un-forgiveness toward parents who are no longer on this earth. It could be a person that you are not in relationship with and it doesn't feel right to have that closure with them. It could be with someone who you want to have an in-person conflict-resolution with but you first want to figure out, what am I actually upset about here. And so, before going balls to the wall in an in-person conversation or a FaceTime, Zoom, whatever that may be...You really sitting with, what's coming up for me? What in me feels pricked by this situation? What boundaries feel violated? And, what actually do I want to hear from them because I think sometimes we feel hurt and that feeling of hurt feels so big or anger feels so big but typically under anger is sadness, disappointment, feeling the rejection, not being seen. And so, really I think that letter exercise gives you that permission to let the dust settle a little bit and figure out, oh, here's what's really coming up for me. I thought it was this but really, it's this. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Evan Major is a social worker and parent in Hamtramck, Michigan. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: EVAN: My name is Evan Major and I am a school social worker and first-time parent and I got the piece of sage advice from a friend when approaching this journey that every age is the best age and that's what I wish to pass on.ZAK: I'm coming off a historically awful night's sleep. Our baby was up every couple of hours. Some type of 5-month regression or something and I was feeling so bad for myself in the middle of the night. I was resenting being a parent. I was resenting all the responsibilities I had taken on in deciding to become a parent and I was feeling pretty low. And so today I'm gonna try to be more like Evan and remember that...EVAN: Every age is the best age.ZAK: Every age is the best age. EVAN: Instead of, you know, when they're not sleeping through the night and screaming and trying to bang their head on the crib, you know, to be lamenting that and think about your level of sleep deprivation or how unsure you are of what comes next and how clueless you ultimately are as a first-time parent. It's easy to focus on those things. But just have an appreciation for every moment makes you think, wow, I really like the sound of that cry, you know. I'd like to think of it as a song. Wow, he's really trying to communicate. Wow, he's such a good communicator. Wow, this is such a special moment. It's not gonna happen again.ZAK: Yawns. Every age is the best age. Every age is the best age. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show. I want to hear your advice. Every age is the best age. Call me at 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lewis Raven Wallace is an award-winning independent journalist based in Durham, North Carolina, and a cofounder of Press On, a Southern collective supporting journalism for liberation. Their book and podcast is called The View From Somewhere. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Today on The Best Advice Show, we're gonna talk about boundaries with Lewis Raven Wallace.LEWIS: I'm a writer, journalist and podcaster. I have a book and a podcast called The View from Somewhere about the myth of journalistic objectivity and how that myth has been used to uphold racism and transphobia and the status-quo. I have a piece of advice that I give myself a lot but also that I started giving, sometimes, in work shops and sometimes to editors and just in general, which is, why don't you just google it. So, for me the context typically has to do with gender and sexuality issues. There's a lot of terminology around being trans and that terminology changes a lot and there are lots of interesting debates in the community about the terminology, but pretty much all of it is google-able. What does F to M stand for? I don't understand what trans-feminine means. I'll get into a thing with an editor or just a person in my life, who, their reaction to a piece of terminology that's really well known in the trans community is like, but I don't know what means. ZAK: And they come to you and tell you that?LEWIS: Right. Or, they have this idea that trans people specifically owe them an explanation and what's funny about is...the conundrum about it is is that there's not one definition for these words. There are all these different understandings. And so, if you google it, you can find out what the debates are and what the different opinions are and you and kind of get up to speed and asking your one trans person to explain it to you, first of all is kind of weird and tokenizing but second of all, it potentially limits your understanding, you know? Cause I feel like people are really afraid and I'm afraid too sometimes if I don't know something and as a white person about race I'll be like, oh gosh, I don't know. LEWIS: Like, for me, it's like this practice of boundaries, right? I'm 36. I' came out as trans when I was 16 so more than half my life has been as a very visible gender non-conforming person. And that started at a time when it was a lot less known about it and a lot more questions and just so much of my personal energy has gone to explaining myself to people and especially when I was younger and trying to explain and trying to be understood but at the end of the day all I'm asking for is for folks to just respect my self-determination and self-identity and that has nothing to do with how much information you do or don't have and so I think often too that people pose this sort of, well I don't understand as a defense. It's not a desire to understand. It's an excuse for not understanding and I learned that over time and became very frustrated and angry and realized that I needed to have better boundaries with that and just be like, you know what, I'm not here to help you understand. You can choose to respect and accept me or not and that's your decision AND you can use google for like, 90 percent of these things and then come and talk to me when we're close enough to where it would actually be appropriate to ask me that question. So, as you can see, there's some bitterness but also it's been such a healthy practice for me to set that boundary and to suggest that to other people and its been empowering and clarifying and clarifying for me in other areas of my life where I might have that same fear or guilt or weird navigation and then I realize, oh, I can just google it. I can take my own advice and not be that guy and just use the google before I'm like, I don't get it. I don't understand. 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---Fill out the TBAS listener survey to help Zak get to know you better.https://forms.gle/f1HxJ45Df4V3m2Dg9---Call Zak on the advice show hotline @ 844-935-BEST or email him a voice-memo at ZAK@bestADVICE.show---Share this episode on IG @BestAdviceShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices