ASM168 Merry Christmas 2018

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[Music] well what do you know my podcast microphone still works hey everyone uh science mike here just wanted to wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year and a happy holidays if you don't practice christmas it's been a while since we've talked quite a while actually to the point i've gotten a few emails let's see november 6th was the last time i released an ass science mic so it's been over a month and a lot of dead air what has happened oh my gosh uh well a lot of things have happened uh it's a weird season for me falls are always really busy with travel and it's hard to get the podcast done easier when my events are ask science mike live but there weren't that many of those this fall so a demanding travel schedule i am working on you know wrapping up my second book if you haven't heard it's called you wondrous you and it'll be coming out uh a year from you know next month so it's quite a while out uh but i'm finishing up and i'm really excited about it uh but usually i would still have the podcast going even with those kind of things and yet here we are with a really low production ass science mic here i don't have any questions that i'm answering other than the big question science mike where have you been if you've been listening to the literature's podcast when it comes out uh i've still been over there and we've been keeping the alien the robot going which is our patron only liturgist podcast but this hasn't just been a busy season for me in traveling this hasn't just been a busy season for me in book writing i've been going through what i've kind of been thinking of as a second wave personal transformation what do i mean by a second wave well the first transformation i went through was becoming an atheist and then returning to some form of mystical faith and kind of losing one community and moving away from one city and moving to another i'd lived in tallahassee florida my whole life and now i live in los angeles i'd never had a transition like that ever in my life and there was a period of of stress and upheaval in that transformation and that transition and then i got to a place where things felt good and felt normal what what did that look like well i was a full-time author and a podcaster and i didn't have to be terrified about paying my bills doing that anymore at first it was very scary i mainly lived off my savings that i built up in an advertising career when i first became science mike and then i hit this period where um i i got into a groove of being an author and a podcaster and a speaker and and relating to all of you as an audience and it was great it really was great and is still great this is not a farewell episode of ask science mike by the way i'm not leaving the liturgists either i could kind of hear some of those pulses quickening on subways and in gyms all over the country as people listen to me talk here and i don't want to give you a bad impression about where this is going this is where i've been for the last few weeks six weeks whatever it's been eight weeks i don't know i'm not good with weeks but it was good i moved to los angeles and i've got friends out here kind of found a new life for me and my family across the country from where i grew up and in a different cultural context right uh if there's anything that's true about my life it's that um i'm not an evangelical church insider anymore by any any stretch of the imagination it felt good it felt great then i got settled in and i thought okay this is it we just ride this out uh for the next 10 to 50 years however long this this vibe can keep happening and i just want to do this forever um because there's this thing that happens when we go through growth and we go through transformation it's difficult and we want a new place to settle we want a new thing that's normal and i thought i had found that uh and then something terrible happened my friends something really awful happened my work kept growing this thing i do as science mike and the stuff i do with the liturgists it keeps getting bigger so usually when i go into a room to talk to people it's at capacity not always but very often probably 80 percent of the time or more every seat in the room that can have a person in it has a person in it now that sounds wonderful doesn't it and in many ways it is um but it also means a lot of people would like to see me and were unable to when you hit room capacity it also means the reason so many people are in the room is because many many more people multiple times of people are listening to me when i talk on the internet so hundreds of thousands of people listen every week to ask sciencemike and to the liturgist podcast every week hundreds of thousands sometimes millions in just a week millions of people in just a week and that generates boy a lot of weird stuff it it really does so here's what i mean uh when i first started podcasting it was an audience of thousands of people and when you have an audience of thousands of people most people listen to most episodes and they follow your work over an arc or a journey and it's wonderful having that relationship with people but when the work gets bigger and friends tell their friends and their friends tell their friends and their friends tell their friends some people come in and hear one episode of your work completely out of context of your larger body of work and then respond to that in some ways that could be talking about it on social media that could be looking up my contact information and sending me an email or or mailing me a letter and boy people mail me a lot of letters and what i began to become aware of gosh is just how much i think of all of you i know it's weird to hear my voice in your ears and to know that for the for most of you we've never met i've never seen your face and yet i think so fondly of you i realize that there's frequently things i tell you that i tell no one else it's easier for me to talk to you about my life and my feelings and what i'm going through in many cases than it is for me to talk to my wife or or my very close friends i often say things on stage in the room with you i've never told anyone because i know the reason you follow my work is in some way you suffer too in some way you feel lonely or rejected or lost or confused and so we have this solidarity together you and i and at first that's how it all was but as the work has grown uh the chorus of people who don't like what i'm doing has grown it is still a tiny tiny fraction of the messages that i receive in total a tiny fraction of the messages i receive in total but it's now thousands of messages telling me that my work is in some way hurting someone or in some way doing harm and i don't have the psychology equipped to cope with that well so so what what our work together has been is i'm kind of honest and vulnerable and open with all of you in a way that many of my friends who do public work say is not healthy and so what i've learned is as i tried to process all of the feedback i got from the public it was becoming very destructive to my personal mental health i started having some thoughts of suicide i started struggling with some pretty severe depression my friend and colleague hillary mcbride who's a co-host on the liturgist podcast and also a licensed psychotherapist encouraged me based on some observations to seek out a trauma therapist and she actually recommended one in particular and i started seeing this therapist and together we have learned that i have yet more transforming to do and this is what i mean by it's been it's been a busy year forget all the travel dates and forget writing a book this year let's see i've learned that i am an adult with autism spectrum disorder something i never knew in my life that seems rather obvious in hindsight this year for the first time i told anyone and and actually told all of you at the same time that i'm a survivor of sexual assault and now i have learned that i also part of the reason i have so much difficulty with public feedback and the idea of hurting people is i have ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder now i was very skeptical of that um and i'll i'll have more stories to share about that in the future as i process it it's too fresh right now for me to go through in a way that would necessarily be super helpful for you but what i wanted to is explain where i've been where i've been is trying to get emotionally healthy enough to continue to do this work in a way that helps you and is sustainable for me so that's why there's been no episodes of ask science mike that's why although i've been on the liturgist podcast i've been much much more quiet than i have been historically i've been wrestling with a lot of things in my heart and in my feelings now why tell you that right now well one you asked and the highest value i hold on this podcast on ask science mike is to honor your questions with sincerity dignity and honesty so where have i been in trauma therapy working through ptsd but i do care about you and i do care about not just sharing for my sake in many cases it's it would be easier right now not to share at all but this is a hard time of year for many people it really is you know the statistics tell us that the idea that people are uniquely depressed at christmas is is probably not true we become more aware of it we talk about it more in some ways but people right now uh if you're estranged from your family that's especially poignant if because of something in your life your family doesn't want to be around or your family is really toxic or dysfunctional that is really present for you right now if you have been exiled from a community of some kind as so many of us who've gone through faith transitions know all too well this is a very difficult time and so the reason i tell you that right now i'm going through some of the most intense emotional hardships of my adult life is for those of you who are as well and who are wondering if it's just you no my friend it is not just you it is not just you something i've learned recently going through trauma therapy is there are some specific experiences in my life that are strongly associated with tinsel on a christmas tree lights and christmas carols that are responsible for this emotional baggage i've buried so deep down inside of myself i've always been a ba humbug kind of person and i thought that was because i was more of an easter person theologically but i'm learning that it's actually the result of traumatic experiences so when i say i wish you a merry christmas i don't wish you that superficially what i mean is that if you are surrounded by friends and family and community that you take this season to relish that to celebrate that and connect with those people in a way that you never have before but if you find yourself some way in pain or in exile my christmas wish for you is that you would know in fact you are not alone and that you would be able to find a chosen family and a supportive community that can know you and can love you where you are today that's it that's what this episode is about lonely souls uh maybe being just a little less lonely actually feels good to hit record on this again i'm gonna my goal um i can't promise it but it's gonna be my goal is after the new year to return with some normal ass science bank episodes with your questions and my best researched answers we'll get we'll get that going again in january uh if not january certainly in february uh in the meantime there's two things i'd like to tell you about uh very much and the reason i want to tell you is because uh the rooms i go to are so frequently sold out so if you want to see me i'd like for you to have that opportunity i'd rather you my listeners here get the first chance to see me when i travel so um i'm putting on an event with a homebrewed christianity and the rewilder podcast called the cosmic campfire some of you joined us for our book club and that's going to be like a deep conversation about science and faith and philosophy deep ecology cosmic origins human evolution and personal transformation with an incredible lineup of thinkers and contributors and that is going to be february 1st and 2nd in chapel hill north carolina you can go to cosmic campfire.party that's that's rio cosby campfire.party to learn more about that and then february 10th in atlanta i'm going to be part of something called theo ed and that's going to be uh you know kind of a ted style presentation of some ideas who will be there well i'll be there diana butler bass will be there pete ends will be there and patrick reyes will be there so that's a pretty amazing lineup that i'm a little surprised that i am on and right now you can use the code early bird for a discount when you register so those are two things coming up real soon which is why i i know it's weird to have such a sincere thing for the first part of the podcast but this is a sincere announcement if you will because those things are coming up in january and i want you asking mike listeners to have the first shot at attending those things so believe me when i say that i wish you the merriest of christmas seasons and a truly happy new year and i'll talk to you in 2019