Malala Yousafzai (education activist)

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Hi. Today we have Malala Yusuf Sai.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 And guys, this is a message to me. Not most listeners will be like, oh, I can't wait to listen.
Uh-huh. But for pieces of shit like me,

Speaker 1 that are like, I don't necessarily want to go on a super emotional ride. I just want to say this is the version of Malala that is the fun, playful college student coming of age version.

Speaker 2 Yeah, human.

Speaker 1 Yes, which is really shockingly fun and uplifting. And I loved.
Loved. No, I don't want to, I want to be clear.
I read her book and I love it. It's very important.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying I'm not up for that story, story, but just, you know, I'm

Speaker 1 sure. It's a different side of Malala, which was a really fun side of her.

Speaker 2 It was great. It was great.

Speaker 1 She's a rascal.

Speaker 2 I know. She's so fun.

Speaker 1 She's a playful rascal. She's an education activist.
She's the youngest ever Nobel laureate, best-selling author, and award-winning film producer. Her books are I Am Malala, We Are Displaced.

Speaker 1 Malala's Magic Pencil, and now her memoir, Finding My Way, which is really from the moment we all kind of knew her

Speaker 1 to her trying to attempt to have a normal college life

Speaker 1 in England. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes. It's really cute.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's really special.

Speaker 1 Please enjoy Malala Youssefsai. This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple Pay.
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Speaker 3 I'm actually so excited to be here.

Speaker 1 No, you're not. Yes, I am.
You are not. You hate press.
You're so sick of it.

Speaker 2 We're so excited to have you.

Speaker 1 Are you two old friends?

Speaker 3 Technically, yes.

Speaker 3 She joined Malala Fund many, many years ago. She helped me with my work outside Malala Fund as well.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 Production company. Then she left me.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Why did she do that?

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Just start a podcast with your husband because I can relate.

Speaker 3 But she's helping me on this.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. How long is this little tour you're on right now? It's got to be extensive, I'd imagine, for a book.

Speaker 3 I have many things to do. So I'm here to do some press in LA.
Then I go to New York to more press, prep for the launch. So the launch will be in New York on the 21st.
The book will be out everywhere.

Speaker 1 It'll already be out, yeah.

Speaker 3 And then I begin my book tour.

Speaker 1 Yeah, wow. Then I come back.

Speaker 3 I go to every city.

Speaker 1 Oh, my goodness. Every day.

Speaker 1 Oh, I wrote down way too many notes for you. I'm now realizing.
We never have four page. This is too many.
I wrote down. Oh, my God.
They're a fifth. Okay.

Speaker 1 This might be a record.

Speaker 1 So you already talked to Monica one time. Yeah.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Did Kristen and I, but that was Zoom, and I don't count that.

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 3 I want to meet Kristen.

Speaker 1 Well, she's in the backyard when you're done.

Speaker 3 We have met, but we haven't met.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.
We have that with a lot of people.

Speaker 2 In COVID, we did all Zooms. And now we decided none of those count.

Speaker 1 They kind of don't count. And we'll have someone on who we had on on Zoom.
And when they come, we're like, this is the first time.

Speaker 2 The vibes in person, they're meaningful.

Speaker 3 But I love your podcast. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I loved your book.

Speaker 1 I loved it so much.

Speaker 1 And I cried this morning. Some of those texts between you and us, sir, are

Speaker 1 do you think i was a bit mean to him no there's a difference between annoying and mean do i think you were annoying sometimes because you didn't know how to handle a new love exactly yeah new first love i mean i never thought i would actually fall in love yeah

Speaker 1 and you're probably having to integrate that yourself that's a lot to process Now, I don't know if you guys talked about it the first time you met, but there's some passages in your book.

Speaker 1 I wrote them out in their entirety because I'm like, this is Monica's book. She wrote this book.
Really? Oh, wait till you hear some of the singers in here. There's a lot of overlap.
Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. I can't wait.

Speaker 3 How can we be so similar? What's your star sign?

Speaker 1 Virgo.

Speaker 1 What are you?

Speaker 3 I'm cancer. My husband is a Virgo.
Really?

Speaker 1 Which you read were great lovemates.

Speaker 2 Things go well together.

Speaker 1 Kristen is a cancer. Oh.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And she's a love mate of mine.

Speaker 1 Two of my soulmates are cancers. That's right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so rightly so. This book is about another chapter in your life entirely.

Speaker 1 But unfortunately, I'm going to have to bring people up to speed a little bit because I think there is some foundation that needs to be laid.

Speaker 3 I have so much in my life. You do.

Speaker 1 Yes. You do.
You really do.

Speaker 1 And I only know, look, my daughters have your children's book. I've read it to them out loud.
So that's kind of my knowledge of everything that happened.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, I was alive when all this went down. So I didn't miss it in the media.
Anything post that, I kind of don't know about.

Speaker 1 And even just this notion that you end up in like a high school in the UK with the snap of a finger is really kind of equally bizarre.

Speaker 1 But so for the folks that don't know, and I think maybe a couple of the details that people might not have already known, I don't think I knew until I read your book, is you were already kind of a political activist before any of this happened.

Speaker 1 You were blogging at 10 years old.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I became an activist at age 10. I blogged for the BBC at age 11.
And I volunteered to be in the New York Times documentary when schools were closed by the Taliban. Again, I was only 11.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were kind of already famous before this other thing. I guess I stupidly thought, oh, this is when she got a lot of attention.

Speaker 3 I was known in Pakistan and people had read my story. But I do think that the recognition that I received after getting attacked was very different than the recognition I had received before.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exponential. Yes.
But so for the folks who don't know that little chapter, your father was an educator and was a big proponent of girls being in school. You were in SWAT, this area of Pakistan.

Speaker 3 A very beautiful valley in the north of Pakistan.

Speaker 3 And we had a pretty normal life until this extremist militant group took over our valley and the Taliban started imposing restrictions on women and girls, including a ban on girls' education.

Speaker 3 It affected my education directly. It affected the education of all of my female friends because girls could no longer go to school.
They were punished if they dared to even learn.

Speaker 3 And it was a very scary, dark time. And that's when my journey of activism began.

Speaker 3 It's not like I was passionate about doing something for my community from a very early age, but circumstances changed.

Speaker 3 So the way I became an activist was simply because I was responding to this new reality where I could not have a future without an education. And I knew I have no choice but to speak out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Yeah, it wasn't like you sought out to be an activist. You just sought out to stay in school.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 To speak up for yourself.

Speaker 3 It's not that I was researching different topics and figuring out what am I more passionate about? Let me pick this issue. It was about our future.

Speaker 3 And we know that girls in our communities, especially in patriarchal societies, have very little opportunities if they do not get the complete education.

Speaker 3 They are restricted in exploring different careers. They cannot make a living for themselves.
So many girls are forced into marriages.

Speaker 1 Well, it would be right to say they're dependent on whatever the patriarch in their life tells them exists on planet Earth.

Speaker 3 It's your dad or your brother, and then it's the husband. And you just pray you find a kind man.
So then you could at least have a life in dignity. And it's not that of like violence and oppression.

Speaker 3 It's just a simple wish like that. I actually realized that when I started speaking to my mom more, my mom and I have struggled a bit to be friends.

Speaker 1 It's comfortingly universal.

Speaker 3 Yes, especially like till you make it to your 20s. It's a really difficult phase because I was just told off by my mom for everything, what I wear, how I dress, what I say.

Speaker 3 For her, the concern was always about what would our community in Pakistan say. She was just worried about controversies.
And I used to argue with her all the time.

Speaker 3 But later on, I realized that my mom was just simply trying to protect me.

Speaker 1 She was scared.

Speaker 3 She was scared because she had seen it in her lifetime, how girls were punished for simply daring to wear what they wanted. There was a story of a gull talking to a boy on phone.

Speaker 3 The next thing you hear is that she has been killed in the name of honor. She has been poisoned.
She has been beaten up.

Speaker 1 Well, you as a little girl were slapped by a cousin in the street because he saw you doing what?

Speaker 3 I was in the river and, you know, your clothes get wet and then they... Stick to you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, stick to you.

Speaker 3 I had gone with some boys, just the local cousins, little boys, and he just slapped me.

Speaker 1 He said, why would you go?

Speaker 3 I think for him, it was just the fact that girls, as soon as they have the identity of being a woman, they need to be restricted to the four walls of their houses.

Speaker 3 But I must say that cousin thinks very differently now, and he's a big advocate. That's good.
You know, that was once a time.

Speaker 1 These things happen when you're little that form your worldview.

Speaker 1 And what you learned in that moment was, oh, an older male thinks I'm bringing shame to the family, has the authority and the right to smack me across the face in public.

Speaker 3 It was scary.

Speaker 1 That introduces you to what world you're living in. You're like, okay, this is life on planet Earth for me.

Speaker 3 But I think my story is an exception simply because my dad was very supportive.

Speaker 2 Why was he? What about him was so different?

Speaker 3 He was so passionate about his own education. He saw his five sisters have completely different lives than him.
They never went to school while he did.

Speaker 3 So he knew if you are born a girl, it just means you do not have the same life as a boy. So he wanted to change that and he made a commitment that he would want a different life for his daughter.

Speaker 3 He didn't stop me from speaking out while other men, fathers, actually stopped girls in our school who were stepping forward the same way as me to speak out.

Speaker 3 And even if, like, a cousin or somebody tried to say something about me being in the media or me speaking out or being in public, my dad just would remind them that they mind their own business.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 You just got lucky. He just had a great person.

Speaker 3 And we need male allies. We need them to stand up with us.

Speaker 1 And when we have compassion for your mom, reading the book, I want to give her Mel Robbins' book, Let Bat. That's what I want to give her.
That's what she needs to read. Let them talk.
It's okay.

Speaker 1 Let them all think what they're going to do. That sure is different.
Well, I was going to say, your father had the freedom, really, that your mom didn't have in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 So he could have the position of, yeah, mind your own business. That wasn't really a luxury your mom had.
So it's kind of quite understandable why she has so much more fear.

Speaker 3 100%. If a man is seen as an advocate for women, people celebrate him.
It's a lot easier. It's a different story when we are praising a man.

Speaker 3 It's a very different story when we talk about women, our mothers, and how they are becoming allies of the next generation of women and girls.

Speaker 3 I feel like their initial instinct is to actually protect us, to keep us safe. For my mom, it was a whole different world to be able to advocate and change the perspectives and bring in safety.

Speaker 3 For her, the first thought was, let's do everything so that none of these horrible things happen.

Speaker 3 And if it means you obey the expected dress code or if you just follow the customs, let's just do that because in the end, what's more important is your safety and just simply focus on your education, but do not cause any trouble.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, do it quietly and do what you need to do. And in her defense, the absolute worst nightmare for a parent would be exactly what happened to you.
So you got got shot on a bus.

Speaker 1 So I'm sure she was like, we just barely avoided

Speaker 1 the ultimate heartbreak in life. Let's

Speaker 1 button it up.

Speaker 1 I know we care about these things, but not as much as I care about you being alive. I very much understand where she's coming from.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 After the attack, when I moved to a different country,

Speaker 3 we were now settled in the UK. A new culture.

Speaker 1 What is it? Eddington?

Speaker 1 No, Birmingham. Birmingham.
Yeah. It's so simple.
Not the Alabama one. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Birmingham. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Not Birmingham.

Speaker 1 Birmingham.

Speaker 3 Birmingham.

Speaker 1 Birmingham. Birmingham.
Yeah, yeah, right here. G-H-A-M.

Speaker 1 Okay, it's already a really unique life. You are on the BBC.
A doc was made about you. You're reporting as the Taliban is invading your town.
All that's crazy.

Speaker 1 Now, even if none of that happened, another crazy thing would be to come out of a coma, having been raised in Pakistan and then be in Birmingham, UK. Do you remember how foreign that all felt to you?

Speaker 3 Yes, it was a complete shock to wake up in a different country surrounded by people who were speaking a different language. I was very, very unfamiliar.

Speaker 3 And of course, I was grateful that I woke up and I finally opened my eyes, that I was alive. I was in this induced coma for a week.
And all I remembered was this last day of my school in Pakistan.

Speaker 3 And then I have these mixed memories and these visuals and pictures of attacks happening again and again.

Speaker 3 And I'm like stuck stuck in this induced coma where I just cannot wake up I feel like am I dead am I alive but the moment I woke up I was so grateful but at the same time I was just figuring out who has brought me here where are my parents when will I recover when will I be able to get back to my old normal life also when are you learning that you are now a world figure weeks later how old were you again 15.

Speaker 3 I had no idea I just thought nobody even knew so I had this tube in my neck initially so I could not speak so I had to write everything down and because my vision was so blurry i could not even write well so every time i would just ask the nurses and doctors where's my father i want to meet my family and then the second thing i would write is who's gonna pay for my hospital sure sure it looks expensive i'm sure i was just so worried i said do i have to go and get a job or something

Speaker 3 but my family arrived 10 days later when they joined that was the first time i actually cried of course

Speaker 3 because you're going through a trauma you don't even know what a normal emotion is yeah You're going through so much pain that you cannot even cry. Like, how do I become that normal person that I was?

Speaker 1 You're disassociated, right? You're out of your body. And almost the crying is you re-entering your actual body.

Speaker 3 So I saw my family. That's the first time I cried.
And even then, I thought, as soon as I'm discharged from the hospital, I'll be able to go back to Pakistan. But things changed really quickly.

Speaker 3 I was working on these different projects that I was approached with, starting Malala Fund, writing my book, giving my first speech at the UN, and then also starting a new school locally.

Speaker 3 They said, you know, we cannot let your time be wasted. So you have to get back into your education.

Speaker 3 I thought this was all temporary, but I didn't realize before I knew it, it had been a long time when I went back to Pakistan again. But this was like a whole new pathway that my life was taking.

Speaker 3 And I was like, where is this going? Where is my old life? And where am I now?

Speaker 1 Now, I find this to be the most interesting part because it's so human. So, yeah, you start this school in England and it's it's a disaster, right?

Speaker 3 I loved that school, by the way. But what was really challenging for me was making friends.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I was a completely different person when I was in Pakistan.

Speaker 1 You were popular and outgoing. You were mischievous.

Speaker 3 I was in every... competition, debate, singing, playing cricket.

Speaker 3 I had so many friends. Now at this new school, I felt like a stranger.
I just thought nobody could ever know me. I could not be that old self of mine.
I would try to have a conversation with people.

Speaker 3 You start and it dies. It's such a stressful moment.
You know, you're like, I hope somebody picks up this topic and it could be a funny thing. And it just

Speaker 1 fell flat.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You had so much shit working against you.
You're from another country. I can't imagine your English was bulletproof at that point.

Speaker 3 I mean, it was more like textbook English. Textbook English is very different than what people actually speak.

Speaker 1 You have the cultural thing. You have the fact that you're famous, which is an awkward thing.
You've also just been shot in the face. So you're not like feeling 100%.

Speaker 3 I became very self-conscious. We all look at each other and we all just think sometimes, what is that person actually looking at right now?

Speaker 1 Yes, of course.

Speaker 3 And usually they're not, but we just think that way. But I think at school, yes, I was very self-conscious and I was thinking about the facial nerve damage on the left side because of the bullet.

Speaker 3 I just was. hesitating even to smile because I now had like a crooked smile.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 When I had acne, I didn't want to go to school. When if I had pimples, I would not interact with anyone those days.

Speaker 2 It's hard enough. And you have to sort of carry the weight.
People are looking to you to be like the voice of activism.

Speaker 2 And you're 15 and you're in a new place and people are expecting wisdom from you.

Speaker 1 That's too much.

Speaker 1 Well, thank God you were kind of delivering on that front because it's a mess at high school. You're rising to the occasion.
of the political stuff and making the speeches at UN.

Speaker 1 You're crushing that part of your life.

Speaker 3 I just thought maybe at 15, this is where I'm supposed to be at these UN conferences, bilateral meetings with world leaders advocating for girls' education, running a foundation.

Speaker 3 I just thought maybe this is how my life is supposed to look like.

Speaker 1 I won't get this other thing.

Speaker 3 And to be honest, yes, I wanted all of it. I wanted to be a normal student at the same time, to have friends and to be able to express myself and to try new things.

Speaker 3 Somehow, I thought that

Speaker 3 maybe because I'm supposed to live this activist life, it means sacrificing. It's one or the other.
Of course, I'm sad and lonely.

Speaker 3 But I thought, okay, this is how it's supposed to be.

Speaker 1 You did the cutest things.

Speaker 1 You enlisted on field day to run the 200-meter dash and came in last. I know.
You did so many things. It's true.

Speaker 1 I know. It makes me love you so much.

Speaker 2 When this is going on and you're struggling at school, I think a lot of American kids, they would come home and tell their parents. And I feel left out.
And did you feel like you could do that?

Speaker 3 No, I think when you are supposed to be this strong, brave, courageous girl, you feel you cannot complain about not having friends or crying alone in the bathroom to get over this or feel like, oh, I wish more people could talk to me in the school dining hall.

Speaker 3 I never really shared it with my parents. I would just go home and talk to my best friend in Pakistan.

Speaker 3 I would ask her about everything that was happening in our neighborhood with our friends and how her studies were going and just try to like reconnect with my old life.

Speaker 3 And I knew that's just not a reality. I'm not there, but I used to just imagine myself being there and imagine what life would have been like if I were there.

Speaker 3 So deep inside, I wanted to make friends and just know who is that true malal and what would my life have looked like if none of these things had happened.

Speaker 3 So the day when I saw most of the students at my school talk to me was the day when I heard the news about the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh.

Speaker 3 So I had gone to school and I was not expected.

Speaker 1 Then I was 17.

Speaker 3 I was 17. Yes.
I was in my chemistry class. The school's deputy head teacher walks in and calls me outside and tells me that I have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, wait, what? And I'm like, oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 3 But I actually went back to my class. I finished my whole school day.

Speaker 1 In hopes that people might engage with you and show interest.

Speaker 3 Faces were looking at me

Speaker 3 that day when you when you feel noticed Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 But the day after, it was just back to normal.

Speaker 1 Everybody's looking the other way. They were all going to McDonald's and you weren't.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 What a bizarre. You're winning the Nobel Peace Prize and you're not getting invited to McDonald's.
This is too much.

Speaker 1 I loved your question, Monica, about asking mom and dad.

Speaker 1 And I'm wondering, do you think part of you did not want to share that with them because you were afraid you had already put them through so much?

Speaker 3 my parents do worry a lot they freak out yeah and for them it's just like how could you be sad don't be sad yes i'm like exactly help me please i love this exactly this has happened many many times i mean i have gone to them several times or tried to signal something initially i'm like testing it i'm like what if something like this they're like why would this even happen My dad came up to my room and he just saw I was really stressed and worried.

Speaker 3 I was worried about some work thing that was going on. And my dad was like, no, no, like we can't see you sad.
You should be happy.

Speaker 3 And I was like, dad, can you respect my right to all of these emotions? Whether that be happiness and sadness and grumpiness?

Speaker 3 I know you want me to be happy and I understand it, but that does not mean I suppress every emotion. You can't.
Because I have to make you guys happy. So he's like, when you are happy, we are happy.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, that's too much pressure.

Speaker 3 That's a lot of pressure.

Speaker 1 Also, you have to go out on the road. You're still at all the conferences and doing all that stuff.
And it's like, even more do you need when you get home to be able to be the scared, lonely kid?

Speaker 1 Because you're putting on a brave face everywhere.

Speaker 2 They have to be the landing. spot.

Speaker 1 But culturally, I think it's very, it's very hard.

Speaker 2 My dad,

Speaker 1 any of you guys. Yeah.

Speaker 2 My dad, too. He's come a long way.

Speaker 1 He tries.

Speaker 2 He'll be like, tell me what's going on. And I can see the panic before I've even said anything.
He's so panicked.

Speaker 2 And then it's like, well, I can't tell you because you're going to get so stressed out. And then that's going to stress me out.
So let's just not do any of this. And then you don't have anyone.

Speaker 2 And then sometimes the dad will be like,

Speaker 2 you need to know you can talk to us. And I'm like, well, that's not the way to say it, for one.
But I understand it because they grew up in such a different environment.

Speaker 2 And with a lot more struggle, they want their kids just to be happy.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And I fully understand that parents want their kids to know that their happiness is everything to them.

Speaker 3 But we also want our parents to to know that we go through many emotions, and sometimes it's just some space. That's all we need.

Speaker 3 It's listening, it's just you being there, but we don't have to fix it. Allow us to go through the emotion, to process it.

Speaker 1 Well, most importantly, that I would be lovable even if I'm very unhappy. Can I have my whole array of emotions and you still love me? Because that's what you want to hear.

Speaker 2 It's way too much pressure on a child, really at any age, to take on a grown-up's emotional state. Regulating their emotions by yours is just not okay.

Speaker 3 The other thing which I realized was that I had taken this adult role from such an early age.

Speaker 3 I mean, like I was looking after my family. All of a sudden, the roles had switched completely.
My dad, mom, everybody had to move to a new country.

Speaker 3 So I was doing all of these things from signing a book to a documentary to giving speeches so that I can make an income.

Speaker 3 And this has been forever part of my life to help my family and our relatives and people who need support from us in Pakistan. So there's always been that pressure as well.

Speaker 3 And I think that also somehow affected me because I thought I cannot be that child anymore. I have to be acting like an adult.

Speaker 2 I'm the grown-up here.

Speaker 1 Exactly. This is all on my shoulders.
You win cash for the Nobel Prize? They give you money?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it comes with a prize.

Speaker 1 Orally, they give you some around-sell money.

Speaker 3 I think it's usually like a million euros. Oh, really? The year I won, I had two winners.
You have to select two.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is bullshit. They need to double the.

Speaker 1 Okay. I know they should.
Don't say it's a budget.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Then you can't even root for the person. You want to be able to be excited for them, but not if you're giving them half your money.

Speaker 3 But the school that I support in my parents' village in the north of Pakistan started with the help of the Nobel Peace Prize money.

Speaker 1 Oh, it did. That's the scene.

Speaker 3 That's when I started it. And in my speech, I said, I want to build a school there because right now there's no high school for girls.
I want to start the first one.

Speaker 3 We need to be ambitious about bringing change in the world, but let's start from home. If we can make it happen there, there's hope that we can make it happen elsewhere.

Speaker 3 It's one of the most challenging areas, it's in the north of Pakistan, up in the mountains. And the literacy rate is so low, and hardly any woman, any girl, had actually graduated.

Speaker 3 There was no high school for girls, but we started it, I think, seven, eight years ago. And now that school is complete.
And this year, the first class graduated.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 And I met them for the first time.

Speaker 1 How great is that?

Speaker 3 I went to Pakistan. It was amazing.
And I shared this story in the book as well.

Speaker 3 It's really, really important to me because seeing how the lives of these girls have changed because of education is the most rewarding feeling. It's just hope for the whole community.

Speaker 3 I was just looking around, like the trees, the mountains, the river, everything is sort of like the same.

Speaker 3 But one thing that was different in the whole village was the school. And I thought that the school had given hope for the community.

Speaker 1 Incredible. Yeah.
Okay. So your book really is a coming of age story of you you entering Oxford.
And as we've already said up, you know, it didn't go well in high school.

Speaker 1 And you just have the sweetest singular desire. Like, I'm going to Oxford and I am going to make friends.
And it's so endearing and sweet. You know, Mindy Kalene, Mindy? Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I texted her yesterday, like, oh my God, I just read Malala's new book. This is the show you would make.
It's so cute.

Speaker 3 I have watched all her shows.

Speaker 1 Never have I ever.

Speaker 3 And the college.

Speaker 1 like sex or something. Sex lives of college.

Speaker 1 Sexy college.

Speaker 3 No, I mean, the title is a bit long, but

Speaker 1 not what you said.

Speaker 1 Exact lives of college. Yes, I got her.
Okay, so you arrive at Oxford and you get a dorm

Speaker 1 and then you decide to just kind of hit the sidewalk and start walking around and you're sweetly taking charge.

Speaker 1 You're just introducing yourself to people And you meet this cute girl who at first is taken back. Her name is Cora.
I mean, you're like, oh, great. We've got one friend.

Speaker 1 And then you go to the Freshers Fair. And just tell Monica what you do at this Freshers Fair.
This is such a comedy set.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, you sign up for these different clubs and societies, like rowing and jumping, running, anything you can think of. There's like a club for everything.

Speaker 1 Jazz club.

Speaker 3 Music, languages, anything. So I signed up for a few clubs, including rowing.
I had never done it and I couldn't swim. I don't know why I signed up, but I did it anyway.

Speaker 1 She signed up for everything. She left this fair, Monica.

Speaker 3 I was like, I want to make friends. I should be everywhere.

Speaker 2 But that's such a smart thing to do. I want to make friends.
I got to sign up. I got to get myself out.

Speaker 3 But it was like a real FOMO. I want to be everywhere.
in this college life. There's the Oxford Union, which is like this famous debating society at Oxford.
I was signing up for that to get membership.

Speaker 3 And then there was this big poster behind. And they had photos of all of these famous speakers who had previously spoken there before.
Oh boy.

Speaker 3 I'm looking at all of these famous names, and then I see my photo, and I'm like, ah,

Speaker 3 oh, I remember I spoke here before.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 So a little feeding frenzy. Some person wants a picture, then

Speaker 3 people are like, oh, wait a second. Is that you? People started asking for photos.
But my friend, who I had just met.

Speaker 1 Yeah, your new best friend. Best friend.
Yes.

Speaker 3 She was supporting me and she took some photos. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.
I felt so embarrassed. You know, I just do not want it to be awkward.

Speaker 3 I want my friends not to think like they're here to take photos for me.

Speaker 3 She was just so chill about it. And quickly, we were talking about next lectures and essays.
And I was like, I love it. I know that I'm meeting the right people.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare. This message is brought to you by Apple Pay.
Bunny, I can't believe it's almost the holidays. You know what that means, right?

Speaker 2 I sure do. My annual holiday gift guide.

Speaker 1 Yes, I love when you break out your gift suggestion.

Speaker 2 You're a good steward of my holiday gift guide.

Speaker 1 I'm entirely reliant on it.

Speaker 2 Well, I like doing it. I like picking out the perfect present.
Like one of my more recent ones, this, I'll give it to you now ahead of time. Okay.
For your coffee lovers, okay?

Speaker 2 There's an amazing small batch roaster downtown.

Speaker 1 The ones with those Ethiopian beans I'm obsessed with?

Speaker 2 Yes. And they take Apple Pay right at the counter, which is so easy.
So you just double-click the side button on my iPhone, authenticate with Face ID, tap and pay.

Speaker 1 That easy. What about for people who don't live locally?

Speaker 2 Well, that's where the real fun starts. I found this artist who makes these custom star maps.

Speaker 2 It shows the night sky from any special date. So you could do an anniversary or a birthday.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. That sounds cool, but doesn't all this online shopping get tedious with the different websites?

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It's so easy. No lengthy checkout forms required.

Speaker 1 Keep the suggestions coming. What else you got?

Speaker 2 Okay, book lovers. Ding, ding, ding.
I personally love supporting local bookstores. They're also just so fun.
And you can go to their website.

Speaker 2 And then for crafty friends, there are these amazing do-it-yourself kits.

Speaker 1 Okay, you really do have a gift for, well, gifts.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Whether I'm shopping in person or online, Apple Pay works at a million places.
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Speaker 1 Instead of wasting time typing in card numbers, which I cannot stand.

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I just hit up JCPenney for some holiday party looks. And let me tell you, the quality and style are great.

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Speaker 1 Yeah, but you're sitting there like, oh, this JCPenney.

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Speaker 1 jcpenny.com. Yes, JCPenney.

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Speaker 3 i missed one part though before we even get there and this is very sweet up until this moment when you leave your house your mother has dressed you every day of high school she picked out she laid out your clothes right this is what you're gonna wear so my mom prefers traditional pakistani clothes and i think for her it's like anything jeans top any of these land colors are just too boring she's like why would anybody wear that why would you not wear the traditional colorful clothes but it's also representing the culture and that's what you are expected to wear so i was looking at the bags she had packed for me for college and i was like mom if i wear this i will be instantly recognized as the public figure malala yes i just want to like mix in the students and not stand out

Speaker 3 college girl mom and i want to wear a college outfit like that's the dress score there. She would put one dress out, remove it, put my

Speaker 1 also tell Monica what you Googled.

Speaker 3 Oh, I googled Selena Gomez casual wear 2017.

Speaker 1 And what to wear to college 2017. Googled it.
Because she had never worn anything but these.

Speaker 2 What did it tell you?

Speaker 1 What did it tell you? Cardigan.

Speaker 1 Kite jeans.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, probably

Speaker 2 skinny.

Speaker 3 Necklaces.

Speaker 1 Selena Gomez casual. Don't you feel like you would do this, Monica? You would.

Speaker 2 Actually, that's really funny that you bring that up because I think Taylor Swift just went on Fallon and talked about how at Selena's wedding, which was last weekend, I guess. Okay.

Speaker 2 Taylor gave a speech and she said she made fun of the way they dressed

Speaker 1 back then when they were first friends, which is probably around this time.

Speaker 1 You're wearing what they were wearing. Hiding Taylor with the debate.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 Taylor would have braszed you.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you got your 2017 college clothes. You've met Cora, and then gracefully and luckily, you meet Hen.
Tell us about Hen.

Speaker 3 Hen is such a jolly, funny, entertaining character.

Speaker 1 She's from Zimbabwe.

Speaker 3 Yes. She just talks forever.
Like you cannot stop her.

Speaker 1 I loved her.

Speaker 3 I just, I was like, wow, I don't even have to do anything.

Speaker 3 I just have to sit and listen to her. She's got it.
She wanted to try new things and explore things and take photos. And I just love that.
I was her photographer.

Speaker 3 I would be just taking her photos all the time. We are really good friends.

Speaker 1 I mean, isn't this a 90s college movie sure we're like you meet the outgoing girl she's like i'm gonna take you under my wing are you still friends with cora i'm friends with everybody oh yes good i love this and i met really interesting people i met a lot of pakistani friends i met some friends who were very supportive at times and were also a bit mean at times yes this is your girlfriend anissa yeah she's mean she's like making fun of how you look what you're wearing

Speaker 3 i remember there was this mug you put sugar in it and then you stir it to me

Speaker 3 stirring it. She was like, that's not how you do it.
You do it like back and forth. Like, this is the more posh way.
I was like, wait a sec.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 3 Anyway, I was like, okay, I'll just stir it this way, like the way the queen does it.

Speaker 1 You should have been like, bitch, we invented tea. What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 Also, hey, I have a Nobel Prize. So I would be throwing that in everyone's face.

Speaker 1 But you're like starting to play Scrabble. It's off to a really great start.

Speaker 3 Amazing start.

Speaker 1 You're not a great student. And I like this.

Speaker 1 like this because you're the person who's praising me for not being a good student.

Speaker 1 I like this because our association with you is wise beyond her years, completely poised, can somehow write the speech, deliver the speech.

Speaker 1 We're thinking you're going to go there and this is going to be a cakewalk. And what I love is you're kind of lazy.
You're there to make friends.

Speaker 2 There to be social.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it was shocking to you as well.

Speaker 3 If I wanted to do incredibly well academically, I had to stay in the library for seven, eight hours a day. I was like, why would I do that?

Speaker 3 I want to be with my friends right now. I had signed up for every society.

Speaker 3 There were these gatherings and parties, like a Diwali ball, an Eid party, and a biryani event, like anything you could think of. I just wanted to be everywhere.

Speaker 1 I'm so proud of you for making that decision because I think you are receiving so much praise for being an adult and being a good little soldier and doing everything you were supposed to do.

Speaker 1 to let go of that praise. You would have been most praised to go there and finish the top of your class.

Speaker 3 You know, this is what my my dad was expecting. My dad was sort of mentioning now and then, like, how are you doing? And do you think what grades you will get?

Speaker 3 Or are you going to run for the president of the Oxford Union? And I said, like, dad, I don't think I'm here for any of those things. I am here to actually just find out who I am as a young woman.

Speaker 3 I was living my late teenage, very, very late in my 20s. Yeah, that's how I see it.
And it was the first time that I was not with my parents. I was living on my own.

Speaker 3 I did not have my work people around me. I was managing my calendar myself.

Speaker 1 Poorly. Really poorly.

Speaker 3 So, you know, when you see, like, you're free to explore whatever you want. And I said, I may not get this opportunity again.
I knew that I could go to these libraries anytime in my life.

Speaker 3 I could reopen these books.

Speaker 1 You did it right.

Speaker 3 Friends in your early 20s is such a blessing.

Speaker 3 And I'm so glad I met these people because they help you grow. They help you learn more about yourself and who you become.
I am who I am today because of these friends.

Speaker 1 They took her to McDonald's.

Speaker 2 Finally, you got to go to McDonald's.

Speaker 3 I learned so much, you know, like if I were studying, would I have ever learned about how to do it?

Speaker 1 No, like Chaucer, my ass. We need to know what's on a Big Mac.
What's in those nuggets? We don't need to know. What's cute is, this is so fun.
These girlfriends, they took care of her.

Speaker 1 They each decided to get her their favorite item. Oh, funny.
So you were at McDonald's, just completely surrounded by nuggets and Big Macs.

Speaker 1 Did you like it? I mean, the caramel caramel frappe, of course. Okay, that one's the one that got you.
Tell us about Tariq, Tarik.

Speaker 3 Tariq, Tarik, I mean, it doesn't matter. Okay.

Speaker 1 And this is the part I've written down. This is textbook Monica here.

Speaker 3 Chasing a guy who's unavailable.

Speaker 1 Have I ever heard of it?

Speaker 1 Just my whole life.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm just describing my story. I'm not saying anything about you.

Speaker 3 This mysterious character, he was gorgeous. He was a bad boy.
He was saying less. And I was like, I want to know what he wants to tell me.
He had nothing to care, actually.

Speaker 1 But rumored to be a drug dealer. He's from Iraq.
That's what my friends used to say.

Speaker 3 And I refused to believe that. I was like, he's really struggling, you know, with the college pressure.
And somebody needs to help him out. Many times he came to my room and he was hungry.

Speaker 3 So I was like, okay, you know, there are some biscuits and bananas. He was just eating the bananas and the biscuits.
And then, like, go back.

Speaker 3 I know. And I saw him in college.
He was sitting on this bench, which had a clear sign of no smoking. So he's smoking and he's reading a book.
And I'm like, excuse me, it says no smoking.

Speaker 3 And he's like, oh, I'm dyslexic. Oh.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Then later on, I was questioning myself. Like, he was reading a book.

Speaker 1 What is smoking after that? He probably didn't have the word smoking in his book. That's why he was able to read it.
He just couldn't read the word smoking.

Speaker 3 That's when you know you have a crush. Because you're just so nervous in front of them.

Speaker 2 You'll do anything.

Speaker 3 I know. If they say they're reading a book and they're dyslexic, I don't know.
You'll just believe that.

Speaker 1 whatever that is

Speaker 3 or if they say nobody understands them I was like yeah nobody gets it you're going through a lot let me help you and Tarek was like a vunderkin

Speaker 1 when he was young but then he was in year six at Oxford he couldn't get his shit together oh I know but you were like because he's struggling anyway he's struggling nobody's there to help him let me help him and my friends told me off they were like what are you doing the girl that was kind of caddy at times she was the real talk express she's like you're fucking delusional this guy doesn't like these hard conversations She would just tell me directly.

Speaker 3 She said, I don't care if I sound rude or not, but she said, you need to get your life together. You cannot go and like fix this guy's like.
Don't you see it?

Speaker 2 But it's hard for anyone at that age, if they have a crush on someone, to be self-actualized enough to be like, no, he's not good for me. But also, you have had experience of changing the world.

Speaker 1 Well, you have evidence.

Speaker 3 The reason that I was enjoying this crush scenario was because he was unavailable. He was not even responding.
And for me, it was this one-sided love that I was experiencing.

Speaker 3 And I was so insecure about my looks because of the damage of my facial nerve on the left side. And I just thought this love life and all of these things are not going to be part of my life.

Speaker 3 And I thought maybe the closest that I can come to it is this imaginary relationship that I have right now.

Speaker 1 This is what I wrote down. I want to read it verbatim if I could.
Walking away from her room, I felt strange. Like the spell that had brought me there was broken.

Speaker 1 I'd failed in my mission to help Tarek, and Anissa thought I was a fool for trying. She was right.
He had not asked for my help and didn't accept it when I offered. So why was I doing this?

Speaker 1 Because I enjoyed crafting elaborate narratives around our brief interactions. I could have snapped myself out of the delusion at any time, but I didn't want to.

Speaker 1 When Tarek disappeared for days, I would sit on my bed and listen to Bollywood duets, imagining the two of us embroiled in an epic love story.

Speaker 1 Then he'd show up again without explanation, eat my food, and leave. He didn't didn't want to be close to me, didn't ask about my friends or weekend plans.

Speaker 1 And that never bothered me because I preferred the fantasy in my head where everything was both thrilling and safe.

Speaker 1 Obsessing over an unapproachable boy was just another way of avoiding rejection and staying single, filling my need for connection with one-sided romance.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I had to read that. So daddy.

Speaker 1 That's Monacon High School. That's me now.

Speaker 1 That's me still.

Speaker 2 Hopefully, we'll get to is how you got over that because those are big feelings. They're

Speaker 2 so safe. I bet if he did start to like you, you would have been like, no, I don't want that.
That used to happen to me a lot.

Speaker 3 It's scary. It's scary when it feels more real.
Part of that actually did happen to me when I actually started seeing my now husband, Asar. It felt more and more real that this guy is real.

Speaker 3 The feelings are real. I am actually going through these emotions.
And it means I have have to make decisions about my future with this person. Do I want us to be together or not?

Speaker 3 That changes you as a person. Like, I felt different when I made that decision.

Speaker 3 But initially, with these crushing or like these relationships in my imagination, it was fun because I was like, what if it's just these scenarios that you are like imagining?

Speaker 3 And that's how you pass your day.

Speaker 1 You can't get hurt in them because they're not real. But when it's real, all of a sudden we can get hurt.
And then a whole nother batch of thoughts and emotions enter.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I actually did not want to be in a relationship to be honest, because I just thought culturally for many other reasons, I thought it was not for me.

Speaker 3 And I just never thought somebody would actually love me because of my insecurities. So, many reasons for why I just thought it was never gonna be the story of my life.

Speaker 3 For me, it was just reality that it's not gonna happen.

Speaker 3 I would not do it because of the culture and all of that, but also that I don't think anybody is going to love me, or I'm going to find a person. Right.

Speaker 2 Was that so confusing? Because also the world

Speaker 2 is telling you they love you. You're being praised.
You're on covers of time, I assume.

Speaker 1 You're the noble.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Ostensibly, the world is like, malala, we love you.
But then internally, you're like, but that's not real. And no one will really love me.

Speaker 3 Even this recognition that you receive or the way people imagine that you are in these circles and you are hanging out with some prime ministers and presidents every day or you're meeting famous celebrities.

Speaker 3 That's not a true picture of my life. Like, I'm spending most of my time with my family or my college friends, and not with my husband.

Speaker 3 Like, that's just a more true picture of my life, my everyday life. I'm meeting our activists and the projects that we support.
So, it's like a mix of that, but people have these perceptions.

Speaker 1 You're probably a victim of a lot of projection.

Speaker 1 For us to know that a little girl got shot on a bus over wanting to go to school is so terrible that the only way it's palatable is she's fine and she's turned it into this great thing and she's won the Nobel Peace.

Speaker 1 So it's okay. I can handle

Speaker 1 this.

Speaker 1 Yes, I need you to be this because it's way too uncomfortable for me to think a little girl got shot.

Speaker 1 So I think you probably were just this blank canvas that people just projected onto you what they wanted you to be so they could feel better.

Speaker 3 It's really hard to process the

Speaker 3 response from people because I come across all sorts of reactions. Even if we deny it, I think they do affect us in one way or another.

Speaker 3 I think in the middle of it, I just did not give myself enough time to know what I wanted. Life was moving so fast that I thought, okay, this is what's expected of me.

Speaker 3 And I'm supposed to live this way.

Speaker 3 It's work, it's being an advocate, that I'm supposed to know everything when I'm still reading a biology textbook, learning about cells, or I have to do an essay for my English subject or solve some math problems.

Speaker 3 That I somehow need to be be able to address policymakers about their budgets for girls' education. And I need to have a correct opinion about every political issue out there.
And I sort of accepted.

Speaker 3 I said, Yeah, if you are applauded and if you are recognized, then somehow you need to know everything and you need to know it the right way. It's a lot of pressure.

Speaker 3 You know, you're not being yourself anymore. You cannot make a mistake.
You're being scrutinized for it. And it still happens.
Even now, there are so many things that I actually don't know.

Speaker 3 I have principles in life that I follow. For me, the most important thing is promoting peace, promoting compassion.
It's creating equal opportunities for girls through education.

Speaker 3 And it's ensuring that we actually listen to each other and bring more harmony and stand against oppression and violence and wars. I sort of know these things.

Speaker 3 And I also know that whoever it happens to, we have to stand with them. In whatever part of the world it's happening, we have to stand up to that.

Speaker 3 But it's not that I have to like know the history and the background of every political issue.

Speaker 1 But I bet it's not enough for people.

Speaker 1 I bet you have that, but they now want you to be an environmentalist and they want you to be nine other issues that they care a lot about because they are in alignment with you on this thing.

Speaker 1 I bet you're now feeling the pressure of getting sucked into all these other political arenas that maybe isn't your passion.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the way now I look into it is I see it from the perspective of girls and I relate it to the issue of girls' education. So for example, climate change.

Speaker 3 I don't know everything about this climate change topic, but what I do know is that climate-related events are affecting girls' education.

Speaker 3 Girls' education is actually one of the top solutions to all things, including climate change. So, I think about it that way now.

Speaker 3 I'm like, I sure like I can help in some of these things, but my focus will be girls' education.

Speaker 1 Right. I think that takes courage because people want you to be all things.
And it's okay to have one message. I care about girls getting educated.
Y'all can solve the rest of the stuff.

Speaker 3 I mean, looking at all these conflicts and things that are happening in the world, like what's happening in Afghanistan or what's happening in Gaza, for me, it's girls and their future.

Speaker 3 If their schools are bombed, if they do not have an education, they are denied the opportunity to have a future. So I support the education programs.
I help bring attention to their stories.

Speaker 3 And my goal is that we promote the message that can give them a chance back to their. education.
So that means we have to promote peace. We have to advocate against wars.

Speaker 1 Okay, so Oxford's going well.

Speaker 1 You've got a friendship group you have gone to one of your rowing meets which is hysterical because you've never rowed afraid of falling in and not can't swim is another over

Speaker 1 i'll drown oh god she's still out there because

Speaker 1 the worst thing that could happen is i could drown yeah because you wear a life mask no yeah i couldn't even tell them i was just like do it once and then get out

Speaker 1 So she does this and she's walking home from rowing practice and she's wearing jeans and then a photo of of you emerges. You already have so much on your plate.
You're trying to get through Oxford.

Speaker 1 You're trying to make friends. You know, these things kind of keep bubbling up.

Speaker 3 You're like confused. What's wrong with jeans?

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 3 You know, before that, I had only worn my Pakistani traditional clothes. Even if it was a non-uniform day at school, I would just wear Pakistani clothes.
And I felt awkward.

Speaker 3 I always stand out as this public figure, Malala, because that's the clothes that she wears. The Pakistani clothes are beautiful.
They're just flashy, colorful, and I love them. And I still wear them.

Speaker 3 But in college, I just thought if I wear that, everybody's going to see me as this public figure and they're going to approach me differently.

Speaker 3 So I decided that I was going to wear jeans and these jumpers or sweatshirts, cardigans, all of that.

Speaker 1 Selena got it. Whatever Selena was on.

Speaker 3 Coming back from rowing, somebody took a photo of me in skinny jeans with a green bomber jacket. Sounds cute.
I know.

Speaker 1 Sounds really cute, right? Yeah, I like it.

Speaker 3 And that photo somehow went viral. And there was this whole social media controversy that started that was criticizing me for wearing jeans, that it was against my culture and religion.

Speaker 1 Anti-Islamic. Yeah.
You're a Satanist. Oh, my God.
Your parents now know. Your family members in Pakistan are getting heat.
And mom's, of course, freaked out.

Speaker 3 She's like, I told you. I know.
And then I opened my phone and I just check what's happening. And my parents call me and they're like, can you respond to this? Or can we help fix this?

Speaker 3 Because for them, it's like, let's fix the problem. They were getting these calls from Pakistan.
And I told my parents, I said, I'm not here for some pilgrimage. I'm here to study.

Speaker 3 I'm here to be like any other student. I said, I'm not going to be defending myself or apologizing.
I'm going to wear what I want and I am not going to issue any statement on this.

Speaker 1 And that's the right move. You did the right thing.
Yeah. And you did as well as you could to not let it affect you.
But there's a reality of, oh, that is insanely stressful.

Speaker 1 You've got a whole country up in arms right now over the fact that you wore jeans. I know.

Speaker 3 And then it just started a whole debate. People were criticizing that my dress was either too un-Islamic.

Speaker 3 And then some people were saying that she's still wearing a headscarf like a hijab and she's not fully liberated if she continues to wear that.

Speaker 1 She's wearing too much. She's wearing too much

Speaker 1 and not enough.

Speaker 3 For me, it is about the right of every girl and woman to choose for herself what she does, what she wears.

Speaker 2 Were your friends at least support?

Speaker 1 Like, were they always? Okay, God. Always.

Speaker 3 I mean, they just could not believe it. It's just a crazy world out there that no matter what women do, they're just criticized for it.

Speaker 3 You are promoting work too much or career, anti-career, staying at home. You're wearing this or that.

Speaker 1 You guys can't do it right. You just can't get it right.

Speaker 1 But you do discover 24 OBS

Speaker 1 is a party. In the wake of all this, you get invited to join a Pakistani club.
Yes, Friends Club. And so you go there with a ton of fear.
I don't know. The rest of Pakistan seems pretty pissed at me.

Speaker 1 How are they all going to feel? Yeah.

Speaker 3 It had been nearly five years i hadn't gone back to pakistan since the attack and this was the first time that i was getting so close to my country where you feel like the people who have just come here as international students for pakistani now they're meeting you i was so nervous because when your exposure is limited then you think that what you see on social media is what people think yes that's the danger i was nervous i was preparing an answer for every possible like ridiculous question i could be asked what have you done for the country and why don't you go back and all of these ridiculous things.

Speaker 3 Why are you wearing jeans? Yeah, all of that. And when I go there, they're like so excited.
I feel like they had just cleaned their living room just for me.

Speaker 1 And they're everything, just like the real world. Do you guys know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, there's like Pakistani food, and somebody's smoking weed, and somebody's not. And somebody is talking about boyfriend and girlfriend, and somebody's like, none of those things.

Speaker 3 You know, we're not going to talk about that. I was so quiet, and I was just watching.
I was just worried what's going to come next. It was such a chill, fun evening.

Speaker 3 And I ended up staying there till late.

Speaker 1 This is the rascal in her. She stays till only the people left are high.
And she will sleep till two the next day. And she'll miss classes.
Yeah. Yeah.
You'll let it rip.

Speaker 3 I know. And you danced at this one? Yeah.
To Pakistani music. And Pakistani songs are like so addictive.
And the friends were just wonderful. Like that became my...
safe space, the 24 Orbs house.

Speaker 3 It was a perfect place. I would just be there almost every day.

Speaker 3 It's kind of beautiful because in some ways you had judged them without knowing them in the exact same way that people were judging you i know and i was just so anxious like they're gonna ask me this ridiculous question the next minute yeah one of my friends there told me that i know what you might be thinking but just know that any hateful things that you come across that's not what most of the people think and that i support you and all of that and i was like oh my goodness thank you i believe more in what i experience in real life than what I see on social media.

Speaker 3 So I've been asked constantly about what do I think about the hatred I receive in Pakistan? And I'm like, what hatred? I actually receive a lot more love in Pakistan.

Speaker 3 I have been working in the country since I started this mission for girls' education. There are incredible organizations that I'm supporting through Malala Fund.
We have a school there.

Speaker 3 We're doing like so much work, and people are working together with us and they're supporting us.

Speaker 3 So, of course, trolls and these things are always there because people will be disagreeing you for one reason or another.

Speaker 1 The aesthetic nature of Twitter and all of it is it's 0.5% creating 95% of the content. It's not representative at all of anything in real life.

Speaker 1 I forgot the most embarrassing and awkward part of her journey. Uh-oh, okay.

Speaker 1 She had a full security detail for all this. So she's rolling around with two white old middle-aged cops who are living in a dorm down the hall from her.
I put them in a student room.

Speaker 3 How funny is that?

Speaker 1 I mean, you're already feeling out of place and you're trying so hard to blend in. You just can't.

Speaker 3 I made them eat the college dining hall baked beans and potatoes.

Speaker 1 And this was educational for me. So, the English, or at least Oxford, works so different than an American college.
You're there for three years.

Speaker 1 You take a test at the end of one year that tells you you're out or you get to stay for another two years. Oh, and they tell you where you rank.

Speaker 1 And so, you take the first year one, you're like at the very bottom.

Speaker 3 I was at the very bottom. I like I nearly failed my exams.

Speaker 1 Wow, yeah, they didn't kick you out, so you didn't do so bad that they booted you. They warned me, they warned me.

Speaker 3 They were like, you're going to fail your degree if you keep carrying out. Yeah.
And that's when my senior tutor had a meeting with me. She said, I'm serious this time.
Like, I have seen your results.

Speaker 3 You need to change the way you do your work. I asked her to write a letter to my parents and Malalafan team.

Speaker 1 Everybody was like, okay, you know, fine. Basically, I need to stop being on the road.
I need to stop my other responsibilities.

Speaker 3 She said, being a student means you are a full-time student. This is a full-time job.
You cannot be traveling to three different countries in a week or so. That's what I was doing in my first year.

Speaker 3 I was in Lebanon, then I was in Switzerland, then I was in Monaco. I was doing different things.

Speaker 3 Some were for Malala Fun Advocacy, really significant and important, but some were paid events where I could support my family and all of that.

Speaker 3 But they said, no, you have to do it in your summer breaks. You cannot do it during college time.
And it did affect my studies.

Speaker 3 I was, of course, prioritizing, socializing, but at the same time, I was doing work as well,

Speaker 3 which meant I had even less time for my essays. And I was so behind in my academic work.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you were kind of drowning in that.

Speaker 3 So for my second and third year, when it was like serious, serious, I said, okay, like I am going to work hard. It was quite stressful to get back into it and get it all together.

Speaker 3 But then I found out about the student support system at college. And there was this amazing person.
She was brought into college to help students who were struggling with their studies.

Speaker 3 I was nervous to go there because I thought I might be the only one who's going to be there. And I had this imposter syndrome and I thought maybe I don't deserve to be here.

Speaker 3 She told me so many students get to see her and I even saw my friends there. That gave me a bit of comfort that it's quite normal and quite common for students to ask for help.

Speaker 3 And I think we should encourage students, the sooner you ask for it, there's just small things that can significantly help you. Yes.

Speaker 1 Your friend Raja invites you and your friend to go go-karting. Do you ever see the movie Yes Man, Jim Carrey? Yes.

Speaker 1 He has to say yes to everything for a year or whatever, some period, and his life takes off. And in that same way, they're like, you want to come go-karting? You're like, let's go.

Speaker 1 And there's this boy there, and he is so funny.

Speaker 3 Oh, it was not Raja. It was Jamal.

Speaker 1 Oh, it was Jamal. Sorry.
Different friend. But you get invited.
And then there's this incredibly cute boy in town from Pakistan who's a cricket player.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was just getting over my crush who had ghosted me.

Speaker 1 Ate all your food. Ate all your bananas.

Speaker 3 I had just given up on love. And then this other guy enters my life.

Speaker 1 A new, a new guy.

Speaker 2 Fantasy.

Speaker 3 Yes. Maybe it's not a fantasy.
Maybe not this time.

Speaker 1 He's gorgeous, though.

Speaker 3 He's gorgeous. He's really handsome.
I immediately was like, wow, this is the guy I sort of used to imagine. He's very charming.

Speaker 1 She drove her go-kart directly into some...

Speaker 1 into some tires and really fucked herself up and had to get taken to the manager's office and her security had to check her vitals. It was all in front of the guy.

Speaker 1 Talk about a set piece.

Speaker 3 To be honest, so that was our first time meeting. So that's where I met Asser, who's now my husband.
Yes, this is a me.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 You totally crashed and had a big episode. And he basically talked you out of it a little bit.

Speaker 3 I know. I was like, you got to give me a minute.
This is a serious injury.

Speaker 1 And he's like, serious accident.

Speaker 3 Get over it. He's like, you were driving at like 10 miles per hour.

Speaker 1 I made some tires. He said, I think you're like, well, he should have have been like girl you were shot

Speaker 1 what are you talking about

Speaker 3 he never brought that up he never asked me about my past he never brought those things up and i instantly knew that this guy is different he was more interested in the person who i was and who i was becoming and i needed that person because you want to grow you are exploring more about yourself and i thought he's like the perfect partner because with him i can be myself i can be funny i can say silly things i don't have to think twice am i getting this right or not or am i saying something incorrect?

Speaker 1 But do you think part of it was because you were like, oh, he's gorgeous. He's out of my league.
Nothing's at risk here.

Speaker 3 A little bit, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's not to out Monica more, but the hotter our guess is, the more powerful Monica is as a flirter. We'll have Brett Pitt and she'll be like, what's up, girl?

Speaker 1 Like she'll be so confident because she's like, well, he ain't going to like me. Well, no.

Speaker 2 Yes. It's the same thing, though.

Speaker 1 It's an unavailable person or an unapproachable person.

Speaker 2 It's like, okay, yeah, there's no reason to be anything but me. Yeah, because there's no pressure.

Speaker 2 But then that's when you get into the circumstance where it's like, oh, wait, no, maybe actually they do like me.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh, there's something wrong with them.

Speaker 2 So I don't like them anymore.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I thought it would be like one of those one-sided imagination kind of love story, but turns out I was actually in love with him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's so sweet. If he's anything like how you describe him in the book,

Speaker 3 I don't want to give too many spoilers about the love story because I think this is like a really, really fun story.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 3 But at one point, I felt like it was not going to work out.

Speaker 1 At the beginning, you were very assertive. And I like this.
Yes.

Speaker 1 You knew he was leaving town and you're like, well, I got to get together with this guy. He's going back to Pakistan.
I'm going to show some initiation.

Speaker 3 It's like we couldn't say it out loud, but we were trying to like signal it to say, I'm interested. By the end of that first summer, it was 2018.

Speaker 3 I had just finished my first year at college. He didn't even communicate.
His friend told my other friend to communicate to me. So it was like a long way

Speaker 3 that, oh, well, Asir is

Speaker 3 not thinking about you in that way.

Speaker 1 Just a friend.

Speaker 3 Just a friend.

Speaker 1 And I was like, what? Yeah. Anyway, that broke my heart.

Speaker 3 I know, but then we got back together. And I don't want to, you know,

Speaker 3 people can read how it happened.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is so cute. Yeah, Monica, he's so sweet.
He's so cute. He's older than you.
His love is cricket. That's his life.
He's from a very poor background.

Speaker 3 He's had a pretty fucking gnarly childhood in his own right his father had a lot of issues so you guys knew each other we had a lot in common because we both used humor as a coping mechanism yeah so being funny is everything to us and i just realized that this guy has the best sense of humor but most importantly he finds me funny yeah so he laughs at my jokes and i love that yeah i really want to know why he first of course there's more in the book but he also tells the story that his right angel was telling him that if there's one person in the world that you don't want to hurt, it's Malala.

Speaker 3 And that his left angel was telling him, the devil, that the one person, if you hurt her, you are going to be her enemy number one.

Speaker 3 So I think for him, it was our friendship. He did not want that friendship to go away.
He also understood that we were at a different stage in our life. He was already working.
He had graduated.

Speaker 3 I had just finished my first year of university. So he knew that I was still figuring things out in life.
To be honest, I think he was thinking the right way. Right.

Speaker 1 He had also been burned. He was a sweet boy, and he was a sweet boy to a few different girls, and they kind of left him in the lurch.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and he was just scared.

Speaker 2 If Malala speaks publicly about me, I think he was just scared.

Speaker 3 Like, if we start sort of technically dating each other and then he messes things up, that he thought it's going to be over for him because the mission of Malala functiones.

Speaker 1 And you're like dating Taylor. And we are like, Yeah,

Speaker 3 we're going to come back to that, but there's this one guy.

Speaker 2 education aside.

Speaker 1 We've all come together today to talk about the educational challenges of Mongolia. But before we get to that, do you guys know this guy, Assuri? He's like, oh, I'm a cricket player.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 Oh, my gosh. Yeah, everyone would hate him because everyone loves you so much.
So I understand the feeling.

Speaker 1 Well, we hate Tarek. I hate Tarek.
I do too.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair experts.

Speaker 1 If you dare.

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Speaker 1 I mean, this is such a movie. You decide to smoke pot.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And you have what is the worst experience I've ever heard detailed from someone smoking pot. It turns into a two and a half day thing.
And do you want to try to describe what that sensation was?

Speaker 3 Of course, I had become this adventurous student at college. I was trying to try everything.
So one evening, my friends called me to the college garden and said, let's hang out. I visit them.

Speaker 3 They're trying this new thing, which looks like a flask. And it's called a bong.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I was like, huh, like, I've never seen this. What is it? They're like, give it a try.
It's just weed weed and something. I was like, okay, they said, just take one puff.

Speaker 3 And I was like, oh, what could one puff do? Sure. First attempt, I coughed.
Yeah. Second attempt, I inhaled it and it went all inside my body.
In that moment, I froze. Everything changed instantly.

Speaker 3 I was reliving the Taliban attack.

Speaker 1 And prior to this, you had said many times and maybe believed yourself that you had no memory of that whole thing. That you got on a bus one day and you woke up in Birmingham.

Speaker 3 A week-long induced coma. It's hard to know what happened, what didn't happen, what was a real memory and what wasn't.

Speaker 3 But now, seven years later at college, after this bong experience, I was reliving that flashback.

Speaker 1 It makes so much sense because when you're high and you have no experience with it, you're out of control. You don't know when it'll end.
You feel trapped.

Speaker 1 These are like all the things you experience. And it doesn't end.

Speaker 3 It went on and on for hours. I was shaking.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to move, but I couldn't.

Speaker 3 I thought I was being attacked again. I thought maybe I'm dead and my dead body is somewhere and this is maybe an afterlife.
I just could not figure it out.

Speaker 1 And you're seeing flashes of memories now. Yes.

Speaker 3 And you sort of lose that sense of reality. You feel so detached.
That whole night I was in my friend's room. I was just so scared.
I couldn't close my eyes. I couldn't sleep.

Speaker 3 Because I thought as soon as I close my eyes, maybe I'll die.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's when my mental health journey began. I had not seen a therapist before.

Speaker 1 And if you don't mind, you had a second experience too, and this all makes so much sense, which is you also go to Boston to get the nerve surgery and they put you on oxycodone and then you're back again.

Speaker 1 Really? So now we've got, again, and it's the same thing because, like, I don't have my full faculties.

Speaker 1 I'm in this purgatory nether world.

Speaker 3 I just can't do drugs, basically.

Speaker 1 Drugs are not for me.

Speaker 3 And I wouldn't do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You should, though.
No, don't.

Speaker 2 She already did it twice.

Speaker 1 She should do it.

Speaker 1 Let's try ecstasy next. Okay.

Speaker 3 I know it's on the end here.

Speaker 1 I've heard the things in here.

Speaker 3 What is it? I've heard something about MDMA. What is it?

Speaker 1 That's ecstasy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's great for intimacy at some point, Ewan.

Speaker 1 Ewan, you guys are want to rekindle. Dex, if you make a new one.

Speaker 2 Did you feel this again?

Speaker 1 No, because she's going to do all the work and she's going to decouple all that. And there'll be a moment that'll be a big signal that she has processed everything.

Speaker 1 The kissing you guys are going to do on it. Oh my gosh.
Okay.

Speaker 2 The disassociation that you probably felt in the attack is what you are also feeling on drugs. There is a disassociation that happens when you're drinking or on drugs.

Speaker 2 And so it is literally the exact same feeling.

Speaker 3 Those suppressed memories. I could not acknowledge that I had actually seen it.

Speaker 1 Yes. Again, back to it wasn't what people wanted to hear.
They want to hear that you survived and they and I want to hear that I survived and I don't remember anything.

Speaker 3 Who wants to remember that?

Speaker 1 And you said you had been given this identity marker of brave. Yes.
And now all of a sudden you're just scared out of your mind to be alive.

Speaker 3 I felt that I had failed living up to the expectations.

Speaker 1 You have this thing that so few people could relate to, but I find it so heartbreaking. You have this vunderkim thing, which is like these prodigy musicians.
They're 12. The world loves them.

Speaker 1 And it's like, where do we go from here? It's untenable. You'd have to grow up and be Beethoven to deliver on what this promise at 12 was.
It's such a kind of cruel expectation.

Speaker 1 It's dangerous to celebrate young people in such a profound way.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and I think the way we are received in media and especially now on social media, that exposure is just crazy. People then have this fixed image of you and you also internalize it.

Speaker 3 So I just thought the girl that I was recognized as being strong and brave at age 15 who survived the Taliban bullet, this is who I need to be for the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 I have to be brave and courageous. And I was actually like really happy with myself that I didn't need therapy, that I had overcome all of these things so quickly.

Speaker 3 I was now on this mission and then I was enjoying my life. And suddenly something so small triggered the whole trauma.

Speaker 1 The body keeps the score.

Speaker 3 And I felt like maybe it was all there this whole time. So this was the first time I started getting mental health support.
I started therapy.

Speaker 1 Which you had a lot of hurdles, right? You had some cultural hurdles. As you say in the book, there are 243 million Pakistanis and there are 500 practicing psychiatrists in the whole country.

Speaker 1 So pretty much tell you culturally how your culture feels about psychiatry.

Speaker 3 Growing up, we were not familiar with this.

Speaker 1 It's weak, it's indulgent, it's anti-God somehow. You should be turning to God for these solutions.

Speaker 3 It's either like you're supposed to get some medication for everything because they see it as like a real physical problem or maybe you are cursed or something.

Speaker 1 Well, generally, yeah, you were saying in Pakistan, if you're having mental health issues, that's almost a sign that you're not connected to God.

Speaker 3 I don't want to go and tell my parents because then they will think that I've gone mad or something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're crazy. Yes.

Speaker 3 I myself just thought that maybe a therapist just would not understand my situation. For everybody, it's just so unique and personal.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the thing. Your story is unique and it's not.
Exactly. Because you're just a human who's scared.
Exactly. Right.

Speaker 1 It's like we think we're so unique and you are objectively unique, but also you're not.

Speaker 2 Fundamentally, the things you're struggling with.

Speaker 1 You're afraid to smile at times. We're really doing all this.
My exams.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, I was really nervous about my exams. I was nervous about life after I graduate.
I was nervous about a decision whether to get married or not when I was seeing user.

Speaker 3 So there was a lot on my mind. From the flashbacks to the time when I started getting therapy, we're still a few months in between.
My friends noticed that I wasn't being myself anymore.

Speaker 3 And one of my friends then suggested that I see a therapist. I was like, they won't get it.
But she said, give it a try because a lot of college students do that she herself is seeing a therapist.

Speaker 3 That gave me a little comfort that I'm not the only one. And the first time I went to see that therapist, Evelyn, I told her everything.

Speaker 1 I said, okay, and now prescribe, you know, what do I need to take?

Speaker 3 Like, fix it. Tell me where I got it wrong this time.
I just wanted it all to go away. And I wanted myself to be the person who I was before the bong incident and the flashbacks.

Speaker 3 I came to this understanding that you're never going to be the same person as you were. Everything has changed.
The way you think, the way you feel, everything has changed.

Speaker 3 You have to acknowledge that and you have to coexist with it.

Speaker 1 And your therapist is like, you have PTSD. And you're like, yeah, what is that? People say they get PTSD for the line was too long.

Speaker 1 It's like been so overused.

Speaker 3 I got PTSD seven years after.

Speaker 3 It's insane. Anybody would bring up this topic and I was like, not me.

Speaker 1 But you started having panic attacks. Yes.
There's a lot going on. You move in in with your friends.
That's a little different.

Speaker 3 She diagnosed me with anxiety and panic attacks. We had many sessions together.
She told me to understand my emotions a bit, write it down, breathing techniques.

Speaker 3 Then she helped me separate emotions and thoughts and feelings from actions. And sometimes you are in this spiral of thoughts and you feel so helpless or you feel frightened.
from nothing.

Speaker 3 You're like, why am I scared? I can stand up to the scariest people who try to silence. And at the same time, I'm scared.

Speaker 1 And then you're mad at yourself because you're weak in that domain, and then you're ashamed of yourself. And that's its own fucking thing that we do.
We're so cruel to ourselves sometimes.

Speaker 3 I know, and it was just so hard to go through it. But now I still get therapy.
These kind of panic attacks and flashbacks have happened a few more times after that.

Speaker 3 I'm doing well now, but I just don't know what's going to happen in the future. The transition, the changes, just seeing new things.
But at least I know that I will always ask for help.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 I also have anxiety and panic. And for me now, if it starts to happen, it is actually a sign now that something else is going on.

Speaker 2 Because, you know, you're just going through life and then all of a sudden you're like in a zone. You're overwhelmed.
And it's actually helpful to say, oh, I'm having a... panic attack.

Speaker 2 That means I need to deal with something. Something's going on.
Yes, go talk to your therapist. It can be a good indicator if you know what it is.

Speaker 3 This is what my therapist told me. There's a window of tolerance for each of us and that can change throughout our lives.

Speaker 3 I kept questioning her that I stood up to so many challenging, difficult things in my life. Why am I scared now when this is not scary, but I'm somehow really scared? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're fighting a lion, but you're afraid of a mouse.

Speaker 3 And she said that the wind of tolerance that we have can shrink in. It can grow bigger.
at times. Right now, you might be overwhelmed with everything that is happening.

Speaker 3 You might be just scared about what life would look like for you after college or whether you should get married or not.

Speaker 1 You're dating a sir, and it's a secret. You're not allowed to be doing that.
That's a lot.

Speaker 3 And the work pressure exams, all of these things, maybe that window of tolerance has gotten a bit smaller, but it's okay because your body is giving you these signs. You are very right.

Speaker 3 It's a sign telling us something about how we are coping with the stress.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and maybe I need to be a little bit gentler with myself right now.

Speaker 1 There's something to look at. Yeah, there's something to do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something here.

Speaker 1 Now, the one thing that's going great in your life at this point is still a sir.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 1 This boy. I like him so much.

Speaker 1 The textie sends

Speaker 1 the way she does this British Vogue interview

Speaker 1 and she discusses her thoughts on marriage and some other things. And it causes yet again one of these insane out cries.
And her own parents are freaked out.

Speaker 1 And you got to know, correct this statement.

Speaker 3 I did the British Vogue cover seven, eight months before our marriage. We did not know we were going to get married, but it was the same year.

Speaker 3 The Vogue piece came out and it received this backlash and it became another controversy because I was asked by the interviewer, what do I think about marriage?

Speaker 3 And at the time, I was so stressed about this marriage decision. And I was seeing Asser and I was confused.
Like, should I get married? What about the system of patriarchy? And am I giving up to it?

Speaker 3 And what about the millions of girls who are forced into marriages? Am I losing something? Am I making more compromises?

Speaker 1 Marriage has been an instrument of oppression. Let's just say that.
exactly.

Speaker 2 You've been fighting actively against that.

Speaker 3 I know. And it's not that I was either against it or probe it, but I was questioning it.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 So I said something like, I don't know why people have to get married. Why can't it just be like a partnership or just sort of an agreement or friendship or something like this?

Speaker 3 My comments don't even make sense to me now. I'm like, what was I saying?

Speaker 1 Well, it makes sense to me because that's what you were experiencing with the server. You're like, I'm in something that's great.
And I can't say that.

Speaker 2 It also sounds like a fine thing to think.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I think we should be allowed to be confused and question these things. But people were like, oh, she's now promoting girls not to get married.

Speaker 3 And she's like against this Islamic religious ceremony around marriage, which is called niqah. And this whole thing that Malala is now promoting anti-marriage culture.
And I was like, wait, what?

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 And the parents, this one, I felt very protective of you. I was like, I don't want to be in this house right now because initially they saw it and they were so proud of this thing.

Speaker 1 And then the backlash happened and they succumbed to it. And they want her to make a statement.

Speaker 3 And then as sir's like do you want me to talk to him to your parents what a stud you know it's sort of in that moment you sort of know like i think he's the one

Speaker 1 we're here to protect we don't offer a lot but we should be protecting you and i knew he was the right one because he sort of stood up to that patriarchal narrative that misogynistic narrative he's like you look beautiful and it's a great article and let me remind your parents that they loved it too two hours ago yes i love him Oh, I love him.

Speaker 1 There's some text Monica that will make you bawl your eyes out.

Speaker 2 In therapy, I've talked a lot about this, where I just want someone who just has my back regardless.

Speaker 2 And it's really hard to find because also people are their own people and no one needs to have your back regardless. That's kind of asking a lot.

Speaker 2 But in moments where people show up for you like that, it is so meaningful. I love that you have that.

Speaker 1 So then Malala right after is like, let's take a trip. Because he's also living in Pakistan.
He's got kind of his dream job working for a cricket organization.

Speaker 1 So you guys take this lovely trip to Lake Placid.

Speaker 3 It was a long distance. It was still the COVID travel restrictions and we somehow managed to make it to Lake Placid in the US.

Speaker 3 And it was just the two of us. So it was a time where we were not thinking about anything else.
Family, culture, all of these things. It's just, what do I want? How do I feel?

Speaker 1 And you're supposed to have a talk.

Speaker 3 I know I had prepared a long list of questions that I'm going to ask him everything. Does he have any problem with a woman earning more money or not?

Speaker 3 Would he feel insecure about what I do or he has to adjust to my schedule?

Speaker 1 Are you going to feel emasculated by doing that? Exactly.

Speaker 3 Feel insecure and all of that.

Speaker 1 Because I ain't got time for it. I know.

Speaker 3 Does he truly, truly love me or not? I was so worried. Anyway, we are in Lake Placid.
It's a beautiful place.

Speaker 3 We are exploring different things, doing like a yoga session and then watching birds and walking and hiking. And then we consider canoeing as well.

Speaker 1 Again, can swim. Okay, I need your

Speaker 2 getting in boats.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 3 So we start canoeing, and the waves were really strong. So we are trying to like head back to the hotel.

Speaker 1 This is Monica's nightmare.

Speaker 3 But the waves are taking us in a different direction. And before we know it, we are like quite far away.
And we're both panicking now. We sort of see this house and then we stop by the dock.

Speaker 3 But then they have three, four big dogs and they were like barking at us. Now I'm okay, but at the time I was like really scared of dogs as well.

Speaker 1 That's okay. Yeah, reasonable.

Speaker 3 The house owner shows up and she's like, I'm going to help you. This happens all the time.
And then she drives us back to the hotel.

Speaker 1 Well, let me just add, she's a rascal. She's a procrastinator.
Okay. She's gone on this trip to have this talk and they go the entire trip and he keeps wanting to talk.

Speaker 1 And she's like, later, later, later, later.

Speaker 1 You don't want to bring it down.

Speaker 3 He's like, so what did you want to ask? I'm like, oh, this yoga session. That's going to be so cool.

Speaker 1 Let's do that.

Speaker 3 It's like, okay.

Speaker 3 Are you ready to talk now? No, no, no, let's go canoeing. Yeah.
Okay. Are you ready now?

Speaker 3 No, let's play card games or something. So, this was like the last day of the trip.

Speaker 1 Five minutes before you get picked up.

Speaker 3 And he's like, So, are we ready to talk? And I was like, I think I'm ready.

Speaker 3 And he said, To talk? I said, No, I think I'm ready to get married.

Speaker 3 To be with you all,

Speaker 1 what did you say?

Speaker 3 He was very happy.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Oh, I love it because you had such an idea of where your life was going to go and what you could have and what you couldn't have.

Speaker 1 And you got to have it all.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And then we got married like six months after November.

Speaker 1 That's another set piece that's in the book. Everyone should read it.
It's more mom stuff. Yeah,

Speaker 1 me and my mom fight all the time.

Speaker 2 You know, moms and daughters, we do it.

Speaker 1 She needs to read. I have a copy.

Speaker 3 The book. I'm going to send you with it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. What is it called?

Speaker 2 Oh, Let Them. It's up there.

Speaker 1 Do you know about Let Them? Yeah, no, I've come across it.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 1 Oh, your mom needs this book. You need to give your mom this book.
No. No.

Speaker 3 So we don't know my mom and my dad's actual, actual birthday. But I asked my mom if she has heard anything about her birthday from her family members.

Speaker 3 And she said it was Ramadan time around like 1969 to like 71. So I looked.
those years up on Google, looked up Ramadan time, which is based on lunar calendar.

Speaker 3 It was around October, november so my mom is a scorpio okay

Speaker 1 yes okay i love scorpios i mean my mom is a scorpio but you can imagine you cannot argue with her uh she's always right no see you want her to read let them malala is already letting them she doesn't need to read it well exactly so her mother is suffering out of her fear of what people think of her and her family and her friends.

Speaker 1 She's actually suffering. And I have compassion for her.
She really needs some tools to let go of what everyone else thinks.

Speaker 2 Yes, but also you can just.

Speaker 3 It's hard to unlearn if you have experienced something for decades and you have seen the consequences of what women and girls have to go through.

Speaker 1 Oh, I have tons of compassion for her and no judgment. And because that, and I don't dislike her, I think she deserves relief.
And I think there's techniques to get relief. This is my last question.

Speaker 1 Have your parents read the book? No.

Speaker 1 They haven't. They have not.
Are you sure they haven't? If my daughter writes a book, even if I say I'm not going to, I'm going to.

Speaker 3 I actually chose not to share this book with my parents. Yeah, that's this book has not been shared with anybody, friends, family members, brothers.
You know, my parents are very supportive right now.

Speaker 3 I'm sure we'll have some disagreements or something. They'll be like, did you really need to talk about this?

Speaker 1 Did you really need to bring this up?

Speaker 3 We'll talk through it.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 3 I decided not to share this book with my parents because I wanted it to reflect my feelings and my emotions.

Speaker 2 Without having to think about theirs.

Speaker 1 I think this is you claiming your autonomy. I think you're very immersed with your family and your parents.

Speaker 1 And I think that this book is kind of a declaration of, no, I'm going to be a full person now. Okay.
I'm not just going to be the person at the UN.

Speaker 1 You're going to have to accept I'm multifaceted and I'm a full person. And this is it.

Speaker 2 And that's brave.

Speaker 1 And I hope liberating for you.

Speaker 3 It's really hard to experience these different human emotions because sometimes you feel weaker and more vulnerable. When I fell in love, I felt more vulnerable.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 So emotionally, I was like, oh, love can make you feel so weak. Ew.

Speaker 3 I felt broken and so vulnerable when I had flashbacks and panic attacks. It was like, I'm failing.

Speaker 3 And now I'm more open to accepting emotions. And I am embracing them as part of my growth.

Speaker 3 I do not believe in this old version of me who felt that there's only one emotion and that is just being strong, staying so firm in what you believe in.

Speaker 3 But that means you cannot cry, you cannot feel weak in any way, you cannot be heartbroken. All of those emotions are not you.
You're only just supposed to be strong.

Speaker 3 But now I'm like, true bravery is when you go through the lowest and you still stand up and do what you believe in. That's true bravery.
That is true courage.

Speaker 3 To anybody out there who might feel that they are failing themselves or if they have any doubt, just know that for as long as you keep your work going, you are brave. You are courageous.

Speaker 1 Yes. Finding my way.
I really hope everyone reads it. It's so fun and cute.
Like I said, it's like a complete departure from the other. side we already know.

Speaker 1 And it's so human and relatable and just really well written. And it's wonderful.
So I want everyone to check out Finding My Way. And Malella, I hope we get to do this again.

Speaker 1 Yes, because this was so fun.

Speaker 3 This was so much fun. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 Oh, good.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for the fact check.

Speaker 2 It's for the party's at.

Speaker 1 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 1 Did you use that towel?

Speaker 1 Your hair towel?

Speaker 1 You did. Yeah, you can tell.
It's crazy you don't use the hair towel every single night because every time you use the hair towel, you get a compliment on it.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I know, but I can only use it on on wet hair and i only wash my hair once a month

Speaker 1 how often do you wash your hair once a week once a week yeah yeah yeah it's a lot of hair it's a big job it's a big job it's expensive you probably got to use a lot of shampoo yeah and and it gets um

Speaker 2 dry like i it's not good for me to over wash yeah it'll dry dry brittle yeah brittle bones i do need a haircut really bad osteo hair sis but one thing about the towel that's interesting is um when i use it, you know, my hair gets a little, it's very naturally curly.

Speaker 2 It's hitting its natural hair.

Speaker 1 It's bragging, but yeah, just tread lightly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, no, people like straight hair.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the funny thing. Exactly.

Speaker 2 You like grass is always green.

Speaker 1 Always.

Speaker 2 But when my hair is curly, if I brush it, it gets poofy.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 So. I haven't been brushing my hair lately at all.

Speaker 1 And do you get, you're so blessed your hair, right? Because you don't get knots.

Speaker 2 I do sometimes get knots, and I just sometimes you say now.

Speaker 1 When I had long hair, and I'm talking only like a little bit past my shoulders, yeah, every night it would get like a dreadlock in it when I slept.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, I don't have that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I had to really every morning with fucking conditioner and a comb, like get knots out because you have fine hair, thin, we call that fine hair, yeah, yeah, beautiful, fine hair.

Speaker 2 Um, okay,

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 yesterday I went to a restaurant and next to it was a bar that was playing the Dodgers. Like it's it's in the area by Dodger Stadium.
So a lot of people go to watch the game. Sure.

Speaker 2 Not the shortstop. No, it's called Little Joy?

Speaker 1 Yes. Swing stop.
You were at Quarter Sheets?

Speaker 2 Yes. Okay.
Good job. Rob put it all together.

Speaker 2 Little Joy. Really cute.
Yeah. Anyway, they sell these chips, voodoo chips, that are really yummy.
So in best case scenario, we go there. We have voodoo chips.
What are voodoo chips?

Speaker 2 It's... Tortilla chips.
No, they're potato chips.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But they have... Let's see how they're described.

Speaker 2 They're so good. Zap's Kettle Potato Chips Voodoo.
Sweet, spicy, and tangy flavor, known as people chips.

Speaker 1 Oh, New Orleans Kettle style voodoo. They're so good.
I'm intrigued.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'll get you some. They're really good.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And they sell them there. So you have a little voodoo.

Speaker 2 And then you go over to Quarter Sheets, really good pizza place. Now, we were watching the game, and then we went over to Quarter Sheets.
And when we were looking at...

Speaker 1 Can I ask who we is? You want to and Jess? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2 I just look on the website for the next reservation and I just book it because it's really hard to get in there.

Speaker 1 For the pizza joint. Yeah.
You wouldn't have noticed probably, but do they have a gluten-free crust by chance? I mean, it's LA.

Speaker 3 They should.

Speaker 1 They must. I don't think they do a lot of modernity.
Good for them.

Speaker 1 Also, if they don't, good for you guys. Don't accommodate to us.
Like, make your real thing and don't fucking accommodate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because they only have like a certain amount. Okay.

Speaker 1 It's not like a huge scarcity.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and you love it because of the scarcity. Because limited edition.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So anyway, we went, we had a great time.

Speaker 2 I have a couple alter egos

Speaker 1 that you make res's with.

Speaker 2 No, they just appear. Like, Sonica is an alter ego.
She drinks a lot of water.

Speaker 1 Interesting. Yeah.
Because she's in the sauna so often?

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. No.

Speaker 2 She just is thirsty. And so, like, every now and then, if

Speaker 2 Sonny takes over, and then I'm just drinking a lot of water.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And then it's like, oh, Sonny's here, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's another one named Flanny, and she's feisty.
Like, she's like

Speaker 2 loopy and quirky.

Speaker 1 Slapsticky.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Pervy?

Speaker 2 Sure, but

Speaker 2 I think they're all pervy.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, great. Including Monica.
Okay. So something I was like, it was like that movie split.
Like

Speaker 2 Flanny came, Sonny came. Okay.

Speaker 1 I was there.

Speaker 1 It was a carousel of characters.

Speaker 2 It was a big night. Yeah.
And then we left and we were walking back by

Speaker 2 Little Joy and it's open. So we were, we peeked to see how we were doing.
And it was 6-1. We were not winning.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we were all like, oh, God, that's bad. Yeah.
And then this guy was standing on the street and he was like, yeah, you saw it. Those guys got run over.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 I know. And we were like,

Speaker 2 what?

Speaker 2 And he said, yeah, the two people just got run over up there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it was so, it was definitely. Oh, it's a ding, ding, ding to an upcoming episode.
There's an expert we have on

Speaker 2 morbid curiosity.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 And it was a real, it was such a ding-ding-ding because he was like, you know, out there and you could tell he was like scared talking about it.

Speaker 1 You know, he was like, they got run over.

Speaker 2 I think they were homeless, but I don't know. And, and they screamed.
And, and then Jess was like, oh, I don't want to hear anymore.

Speaker 2 You know, that he kept saying they were homeless, which was, it was an interesting piece of it because I could tell he was kind of saying it so that he felt better about it, I think. Yep.

Speaker 2 You know, and he was like, they ran out in front. And, but yeah, he was just like processing it.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 And we did, this feels, we did not want to hear it.

Speaker 1 You know, this is very similar to like if a stray dog got hit by a car or someone's family pet. I think that's what's happening.

Speaker 1 Like you're trying to comfort yourself. And so you're like, but they were homeless being like, they're, you know, they're running around and they're already crazy.
You know, like somehow.

Speaker 2 Somehow it's better.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's not the big threat to the world because these people are already living on the fringes and doing wild stuff. Right.

Speaker 1 Like, but I don't even think you know you're doing that, but you're trying to go like, well, this, I shouldn't feel so afraid because it's not a normal person. It was a homeless person.

Speaker 2 Yeah. In quotes.
Yes. 100%.
Yes. That it's like, I would never be in that position because that's a different type of person.

Speaker 1 Like if a guy got hit by a car and you were like, he was a drug addict. There's something about it.
Oh, he's like slumping. He was on drugs.
That's why it happened. Yes.

Speaker 1 And there's like more culpability.

Speaker 2 But it's all made up. We're all making it all.

Speaker 1 A human died.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so.

Speaker 1 Although we don't even know if they died.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I said. I said, well, maybe they are okay because our friend Eric got hit by a car and he was okay.

Speaker 1 Ish, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, he's.

Speaker 1 Who knows what he's like before? We met him post-taxi. He got blasted by a taxi.
Yeah. In New York.
But again, no.

Speaker 1 But what's funny is it's like it was Eric and you go, oh, well, it was definitely his fault.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 Because he's so absent-minded. He was probably looking at his phone.
But if someone's really alert and they get hit, you're like, oh, no, then that could happen to me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I know.
And the truth is everything could happen to all of us.

Speaker 1 Anyone could get hit by a car.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Jess said something interesting. He was like, yeah, it also goes from if you hit someone

Speaker 2 a person that's just walking across the street if you hit them like

Speaker 2 you're a murderer uh-huh and if if it's this homeless person who jumps out in front of you or it's a bit of the collateral catastrophe that that is homelessness in la right it's like it's like a part of a bigger problem yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's we we really categorize things to make ourselves like feel better.

Speaker 2 Anyway, anyway, so that was a crazy thing that happened.

Speaker 1 And I don't. But you didn't really get many details other than that the people were potentially homeless.

Speaker 2 And potentially homeless.

Speaker 1 Ambulance come and take them away.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a lot. There were so many police cars in there.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I'm really glad I didn't see it because that is the type of thing.

Speaker 2 That

Speaker 2 is like that lady in the mall who had to get out of the wheelchair and let, or the husband had to get out of the wheelchair and the lady had to get in the wheelchair and it was a whole commotion.

Speaker 2 And I was like really upset about that for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think this would have made a similar mark.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I have to say I'm glad I did not see that.

Speaker 1 Well, what I'm hearing, which sounds like good news, is you are more affected by that than the loss, the World Series loss. I was.
Yeah, yeah. That's good.
I think that speaks well to your character.

Speaker 2 It also is so human. Like he's a stranger, this person.
He's a stranger on the street. And he really wants to connect over this bad thing that happened.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's really interesting.

Speaker 1 Well, he's, he's alone in this. Yeah.
And he needs a little connection. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I have such a warp.
So again, we're talking so much about this expert, but

Speaker 1 this morbid curiosity topic, which is great. And there's, there's categories.

Speaker 1 This person broke it into four categories of different curiosities you could have. But one is violence.
Yeah. Now, one is my great curiosity.

Speaker 1 But yeah, as we were going through some of these things and I was like, yeah, I just don't even get scared. I don't have any emotion during a scary movie.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 And yeah, I'm like really desensitized. Like I could see the people get hit by a car and I would be kind of fine.
I could walk over and get involved.

Speaker 1 Right, right. And it wouldn't,

Speaker 1 yeah. I don't know.
That's, and I don't know. I want to know if I was born that way.
I want to know if it's nature or nurture.

Speaker 2 That's okay. I mean,

Speaker 2 probably some combo, yeah,

Speaker 2 but probably more nurture, I would say, for that.

Speaker 1 Well, this guy was saying, like, when you show people pictures of violence, there's like these different levels of which if it's like, um, if it's a two guys high fiving and you're seeing a photo, you'll immediately, you'll, you'll first notice that they have contact with one another.

Speaker 1 So your eyes go to the high five, but then your eyes go immediately to their faces.

Speaker 1 Whereas if it's viol, if it's like a punch to the stomach, you your your eyes will go to that violence and it won't come away contact but then if you see it on the street you might you don't want to look or you're repelled by it yeah and i only have the attracted to it yeah you know yeah i mean i think that's nurture probably

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 you're around violence but also you have a

Speaker 2 need to help. So like you're not going to be like, I got to turn away.
You want to go towards it to see what you can do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So that would be like a good reason.
And I'm not even willing to give myself that pat on the back.

Speaker 1 Even more like when Nate and I were in Afghanistan and the base we were at got bombed and everyone was running in a very specific direction.

Speaker 1 They were running to all of the bomb bunkers, which were all around the base. And I

Speaker 1 was feel I was fighting this huge compulsion to run from where everyone was coming, run run towards where everyone was running away from.

Speaker 1 And knowing that I'm a guest here and we have this liaison that's, and I start moving and he's like, No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, where are you going?

Speaker 1 I'm like, I gotta see, I have to see what they're running from.

Speaker 2 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1 It's like, I can't almost like almost, I need to see what the threat is or the degree of it

Speaker 1 before I can possibly feel calm. I gotta first know what we're up against.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I just want to run at everything that's not good it's not a good instinct yeah no yeah i mean i do think i think something like this like someone getting hit by a car and you going towards that is nice like i i sometimes feel like i'm

Speaker 1 really bad because i i don't want to you want to pretend that you didn't it didn't it's not happening yeah

Speaker 2 yeah and you know sometimes i'm in my bed and i think i might have heard like an accident

Speaker 2 and i should go out to see it.

Speaker 1 And I struggle with this.

Speaker 2 I'm like, what should I do?

Speaker 1 You should feel guilty because there's so many people like me in the world.

Speaker 2 But what if they're not around?

Speaker 1 I more have that when I see something and I'm like,

Speaker 1 the cops aren't there yet. Yeah.
And I'm like, do I call 911? And I'm like, I'm sure someone, that's the time where I'm like, I'm sure someone else did.

Speaker 2 Yes, calling 911. It's a big, it's a big hindrance for me.
I don't want to do it. And I assume someone else is going to do it.
But if everyone assumes.

Speaker 1 But didn't you call 911 once for absolutely nothing?

Speaker 2 No, it wasn't nothing. It was important.
And then they didn't pick up. They weren't picking up.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay. There was like some guy lurking around our apartment.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's worthy of it. It was worth it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And they just kept ringing.

Speaker 1 They never picked up. No.
That's interesting. It's not good.
We've heard that on Armchair Anonymous.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare,

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Bumpa ban out. Wow.

Speaker 1 Now, back to, I do think this upcoming episode is going to be one of these ones where it's like, I think about a lot, or I start noticing. I think it really because it happened immediately.

Speaker 1 We interviewed this person yesterday and then I'm laying in bed with Lincoln last night. And we're talking about, I don't even know what we're talking about, but she just tells me,

Speaker 1 yeah, she's like, you know, I, I, uh, I spend a lot of time when I'm in my room by myself planning out scenarios where there's an intruder and they get into my room. Yes.

Speaker 1 And I have a couple different plans. Like I have this one toy I think would make a great weapon.
And so it's like, I, I have one version where I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go grab that.

Speaker 1 I forget how she determined when that's the option.

Speaker 1 And then another one is she goes onto her balcony and then hangs over the side and drops down. Yeah.
And then runs to here. She's decided she's running into the studio

Speaker 1 and locking the doors, but screaming the whole time, hoping we'll wake up. Right.
And then buying some time.

Speaker 1 But I'm kind of like impressed. Like, why not just run, run all the way, run out the house, run to the house?

Speaker 2 No, because you have to, you have to, oh, oh, you mean keep going.

Speaker 1 Well, she's going to get a distance, but she's going to stay on the property. She also has this inclination to make sure everything

Speaker 1 we're alerted. Like, she doesn't want to band in the whole situation, but she wants to build a buffer.

Speaker 1 But anyway, she's telling me this whole thing, and it was just completely random that she said this.

Speaker 1 And then I was thinking, I wonder if I hear this all the time, but I wasn't thinking of it because we hadn't done that episode. Yeah.
But I was like, oh, honey, that's this great gift of humans.

Speaker 1 We can model out the potential threats we have and we can have game plans without ever having experienced it. Yes.

Speaker 1 And now, now whether you'll be able to execute this game plan or not, like you at least have a game plan and you have a couple. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I had so many game plans. You did.
First and foremost, you get under the bed, but then you Spider-Man.

Speaker 2 You're not under, you are flush with the.

Speaker 1 You're holding yourself up like a cock.

Speaker 2 The top of the bottom of the bed. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, hair is a little bit of an issue.
They have to be.

Speaker 1 So you got to put up a corny.

Speaker 2 And then you got to like flap it so that it's also flushed.

Speaker 1 Get your towel, get your nighttime towel.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was my plan when I was a kid.

Speaker 1 But my guess is you never tried that because I don't think you could have done it.

Speaker 2 I didn't try, you're not a spider monkey, but I felt like I, in a scenario like that, life or death, yeah, I could do it.

Speaker 1 I think some of us rely a little too much. We're gonna get a big bump once the adrenaline hits.

Speaker 1 We'll know kung fu as soon as that adrenaline spike hits.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I also remember in

Speaker 2 school, they would, you know, we'd be doing like fire safety week or something. Yeah.
And they would tell you, like, have a game plan, have an escape route at your house. Have like a plan.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so I told my parents, like, we need to come up with a plan. And they said no.

Speaker 1 Oh. They had no idea.
They were not going to play that.

Speaker 2 They thought it was a silly waste of time.

Speaker 1 Now, if we believe there's any power in manifesting, which we do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we do.

Speaker 1 I was listening to your first episode of Best Girl.

Speaker 1 thank you and they're reading uh for people who haven't listened to it yet uh you're going through your history which was you were a fan of their show yeah and then you had written them emails yes and then they had access to those emails yeah it was so embarrassing were you prepared for them to that quickly be able to produce these emails from 10 years ago no he just he just did a little quick

Speaker 2 it's so easy to pull up it was so embarrassing but you say out loud on there i hope i'm a guest on your show one day I know.

Speaker 2 Isn't that wild?

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I'm like, I'm caught in the same spot you are, right? Like, I'm thinking, if I was reading, like, this was all happening to me, I'd have the same embarrassment you have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I have like some judgment of people who are forward.

Speaker 2 You do?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like, when people hand people scripts in restaurants and stuff, I'm like, no, that's not how you do it.

Speaker 1 That's how you do it. Like, you go through the channels like everyone else.
There's no shortcut, you know. But then

Speaker 1 I hear this story and I'm like, well, then also that's true.

Speaker 1 You ended up on their show.

Speaker 1 And them on yours.

Speaker 2 I did. That's right.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's so, it's funny that that's your takeaway because I, and I do think it's so specific to who you are.

Speaker 1 You know, I hate asking people for stuff, like my own hang-ups. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Um, because Ana and I were talking about this. She listened and she heard that part and she texted me and said, I almost almost started crying when I heard that email.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 She was like, it was so sweet. And you're just such a go-getter.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I thought that too. And I was like, sending emails.

Speaker 2 And then it was a weird sim

Speaker 2 because earlier that day, Jess and I were talking about hustlers. And is that learned or is that? who you are.
Is that like a nature or nurture, basically?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we were kind of talking about the group, our group of friends, and who is one and who isn't one.

Speaker 1 Oh, uh-huh.

Speaker 2 And he was like, You are one. And I was like, I am.
I am. I think that's right.
And then this was sort of like a weird confirmation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think being a hustler is as cool as it gets. I think that's one of the

Speaker 1 descriptor of me. I'd love to have someone say.

Speaker 2 I think it's just like, I don't, that's the only

Speaker 2 option. Like, I think that's the only option of getting anywhere.
Like, you

Speaker 2 waiting, waiting around, that is just not going to happen. I think there are very specific

Speaker 2 lines that I feel I know not to cross that are just

Speaker 1 the ones you decided. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They happen to be other people's lines. Like,

Speaker 1 that's all life is. Like, you, you know, you run into someone and that, that to them is also the line and then it jives.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and there isn't a right or wrong. No, there's no right or wrong.
It depends on who you're talking to, who you're connecting with.

Speaker 2 And I do think there's a, for me, I do think I also have a level of self-awareness and awareness of others, a heightened awareness of others. So I'm kind of like, that person probably is a no.

Speaker 2 This person is a yes. But even like, even with writing the letter to Jen Anne, like that is, that is just like, I'm, I'm going for it.

Speaker 2 Cause why, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Why not? I have other domains of I'm going for it, but just like reaching out and asking is so hard for me.
Yeah, I know. I'm doing it more and more and more.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know. I have to say, I just, I don't have a problem asking.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good thing.
So you can just say no.

Speaker 2 But anywho, how are we going to?

Speaker 1 Manifest. Oh, yeah.
So like you manifested that whole relationship. Right.
It's in writing. It's in circle.
Yeah. It's in writing.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've manifested a lot of relationships.

Speaker 1 And I was just like, and you, you, you explicitly state it. But while I'm listening to her response to you, I'm like,

Speaker 1 well, no doubt she's going to end up in a murky situation. Oh.

Speaker 1 Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because, and by the way, these are my favorite kind of people. Yeah.
No boundaries. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like her third response is to you is like, will you marry me? And I'm like, yeah, this is like, I'm so much like her.

Speaker 2 No, you're, I think you are boundaried. You're good at you're good at that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe more the kind of BDP. Like, I fall for people.
I love people pretty quickly. Sure, sure.
Yeah, yeah. Which lacks some boundaries.
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But

Speaker 2 you would not

Speaker 2 have

Speaker 2 found yourself in the situation she ended up in. That's true.

Speaker 1 That's true. That's true.

Speaker 1 But it just, it's like, it's all right there in the intro of this kind of innocuous, inane backstory. And you're like, well, of course, Elizabeth's going to end up in something.

Speaker 1 Yeah. There's a lot of things being examined.

Speaker 2 A ton.

Speaker 1 And I applaud her honesty and lack of any kind of, she's just very honest about it. Like, you're like, how, did your ego like getting these letters? And he's like, yes, loved it.
Yeah. Loved.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's the most complicated journey for her, definitely by far of the three of us. And

Speaker 2 she does have to confront a lot of personal things and

Speaker 2 personal behaviors throughout because it's about parasocial relationships, but both ways.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And it is,

Speaker 2 it's a tricky, it's a tricky world. It is.

Speaker 1 It is. It's a tricky world.
I just was on a hike with my brother, Peter Krause.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 And Larry Trelling, our father, our directing father. It was the sweetest hike a couple days ago.
And yeah, we were talking about

Speaker 1 between the three of us, we've all been close enough to several people who have gone to the absolute top of the status mountain.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it was our kind of our conclusion that like even the level Peter and I have is a lot to manage yeah successfully and to not become a narcissist and an asshole and all this stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And obviously Peter and I have only experienced like really a 25th of what's out there.

Speaker 1 And we all kind of concluded that we certainly know a lot fewer people that manage that successfully than we do successfully. It's it's it's such

Speaker 1 an abnormal experience for a human designed to know 100 people to have tens of millions of people love them.

Speaker 2 It's unnatural. And good luck.

Speaker 1 And I'm not judgmental of anybody who doesn't manage that well because, like, it's so bizarre.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 And confusing, I think. And ultimately, ironically, lonely.

Speaker 1 I think that's where all these, most of these cases lead to really a lot of isolation and loneliness, which is the opposite of what your fantasy was.

Speaker 2 I know. And I also think it blurred, it gets confusing.

Speaker 2 Who you're servicing in life life gets confusing

Speaker 2 and who your close people are versus who is everyone versus like I do think it's lonely and scary and hard hard to manage.

Speaker 1 I mean the thing I can relate to a lot is I think for many people, it's like they don't enjoy it and they're afraid it's going to go away.

Speaker 1 Which is the weirdest

Speaker 1 mental space to be in.

Speaker 2 Because it feels like you've lost something that you've lost, which

Speaker 2 but then it doesn't feel like love when you're engaged in it.

Speaker 1 No, and it seems to be the outcome of the goal you set. So it's like, well, if that goes away, then the thing I was chasing, I must also say goodbye to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1 My hat's off to the few that have like are somehow completely normal after that. bizarre human experience.

Speaker 2 Yeah, really strange.

Speaker 1 But there's f they're few and far between.

Speaker 2 People who have handled it well are the most evolved people on earth because you have to do the hardest thing, which is

Speaker 2 really fundamentally understand

Speaker 2 that what anyone else says about you doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 choose to chase the validation that's hard to get and not the one that's right there and easy to consume. It's almost like junk food versus protein.

Speaker 1 It's like the real self-esteem comes from the service and the being available to others and the

Speaker 1 making yourself suffer and all the things, you know, basically anything you don't want to do is going to lead to self-esteem.

Speaker 2 The human parts, not the like celebrity parts or famous parts or those things. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's like what you have this at all times, you're at a salad bar and there's like a humongous dessert bar and then there's a little bowl of broccoli.

Speaker 1 And for the few people that can just pick that broccoli. It's hard.
I think a lot of it has to do, too, with how grounding of a relationship you're in and how like equal-footed the relationship is.

Speaker 1 I think that can help people not get too untethered. Like a person I can say who's completely fucking normal and as famous as it gets is Kimmel.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like somehow Kimmel

Speaker 1 is a completely normal dude. He's the same dude I met 21 years ago.
And my hunch is he was the same then as he was 21 years before that. Right, right.

Speaker 1 And the things that are obvious to me in his life is that like

Speaker 1 he's completely surrounded by his family at all times yep he is not like at all distance himself from his family yep they all work with him they're all everywhere with him um yeah he's so loyal and a lot of his focus is endlessly on like like his his hobbies getting people present so he's like just endlessly thinking about or noticing someone like this and having something special made yeah it's like his hobby is something

Speaker 1 not self-focused. Yeah.
And then the family's around all the time. And then his wife's a gangster and not going to be out-leveraged or out-talked.
Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He should write a book, How to Be a Successful A-list.

Speaker 1 He really should. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's why that best boy award, not very many people get it. You know, it's an exclusive.

Speaker 1 Pretty rare.

Speaker 1 Pretty rare. Pretty, pretty rare.
Have you tried Capital Grill yet? No, is it good? You should try it. I want to get it.
I took my mom and Dan there yesterday. Is it in Beverly Hills?

Speaker 1 No, it's right next to Warner Brothers. Oh.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's very close. What'd you get? And they're not popular yet.

Speaker 1 So you can just go in there, which is not going to last long.

Speaker 2 Not now.

Speaker 1 Probably not now, but I also want them to stay in business because I love it.

Speaker 2 This is a steakhouse.

Speaker 1 Yes, it's very Houston's adjacent.

Speaker 2 Oh, nice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they go like artichoke and really fresh vegetables and the tomatoes are outrageous. The meat's incredible.
I just discovered it maybe a month and a half ago, and I've been four times now.

Speaker 2 What do you get? What's your order?

Speaker 1 The lamb chops.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They've got an incredible French onion soup.

Speaker 2 We love French onions.

Speaker 1 Crock or cup. Crock.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Beautiful salad, the artichokes.

Speaker 1 It's great.

Speaker 2 Sounds like it probably is a good martini.

Speaker 1 Garen fucking teeth. The bar is 29 feet.
It's longer than that. Bar is probably 50 feet long.

Speaker 2 I want to go. Maybe I'll go now.

Speaker 1 Should go in there and get shit faced in like the middle of the afternoon. It looks like a great place to.

Speaker 2 That sounds really nice. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm going to Houston's tonight.
You are? With Elizabeth and Andy because to celebrate? We launched today, and then she, uh, that's where we decided to make it.

Speaker 1 So it's a full start.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. All right.

Speaker 2 Shall we do some facts?

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's do some facts.

Speaker 2 Okay, some facts from Alala. Not very many facts.

Speaker 2 Not very fact-heavy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what are you going to say? She didn't feel lonely. Well,

Speaker 2 I did look that up.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Okay. So her friend was telling her how to drink tea properly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not hit the sides of the cup. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you joked that she should have been like, bitch, we invented tea.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I also remember you having a moment in your life where you learned how to do tea.
Did I?

Speaker 1 Maybe. I heard the whole don't hit the sides thing, and it wasn't from Aaron Weakley.
Huh. It was either you or Kristen.

Speaker 2 It was probably Kristen. Okay.
Maybe when she had lunch with the queen.

Speaker 1 She never had lunch with the queen, but in her dream. Maybe, yeah.
I mean, there was a phase. Tea phases are fun.

Speaker 2 I love tea. I drink tea every morning.

Speaker 1 You start pedestrian style. You get the bag.
Dip, dip, dip. Lipton iced tea.
Everyone's done it. Sure.

Speaker 1 Classic. And you can graduate to like raw tea and then the little steel basket.

Speaker 2 Yep, the steeping in the basket.

Speaker 1 And we were doing that for a minute. I was like really into English breakfast tea for a while.

Speaker 1 You know why I stopped? Why? Vanity. What do you mean? It's, I think, the highest on the teens teeth staining spectrum.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. How are my teeth?

Speaker 1 They're still white as fuck, but you were just, you were blessed. You've got straight, big white teeth.

Speaker 2 No, that. I didn't know that.
That's very scary. I've been drinking it.
I drink it every morning.

Speaker 1 You better brush right after.

Speaker 2 I brushed before.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. You got to change the order.
Really? Yeah. You should look up the list.
There's like, you know, between coffee, wine, but tea is is like, tea will get you, girl. Oh, shh.

Speaker 1 Have you ever noticed people drink tea? Like, it'll, it stains the cup. Coffee never stains the cup.

Speaker 2 Well, is it, but do you think maybe mine's not as bad? Because I put a little milk in there.

Speaker 1 I drink it. Well, I just put that sugar.
So you're just adding an adhesive to the drugs.

Speaker 2 No, I don't add sugar, just milk.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're saying the sugar's in the milk? Yeah, the lactose is sugar.

Speaker 2 Okay, but it makes the color much more diluted.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 It's like a very light.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, just imagine great. If your teeth were the color of your tea after you put milk in it, would you be happy with that?

Speaker 2 No, but I also have been doing this for like

Speaker 2 five years. Like I don't, and it's so far so good.

Speaker 1 Do you think they'll ever learn to tattoo teeth? And do you think people ever reject white teeth? Because like white tea, what is why we're all so drawn to white teeth? Because it looks clean.

Speaker 1 It looks healthy. Yeah.
Like it's it's a clearly some evolutionary signal we're getting that we all are universally like we'd prefer the teeth white.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 You can't see it's just like oh marketing got you. That's not it.

Speaker 2 You're right. It is.
It's like an indicator that your body is healthy. Yes.

Speaker 1 It's like the whites of your eyes.

Speaker 2 Right. How are mine?

Speaker 1 Always great. I'm envious.
I have to add, but I have to add drops. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 That's because you don't sleep well. So you.

Speaker 1 I'm an allergy machine. You know, I constantly got something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but your teeth are white.

Speaker 1 Well, I brushed the shit out of them and I did stop drinking tea specifically because

Speaker 1 I.

Speaker 2 That sucks.

Speaker 1 I don't want to drive down the tea market. I hope it thrives.

Speaker 2 Let's do. I mean, it's that's you are a negative and I'm a positive.
So that evens out.

Speaker 1 Okay, so it's neutral. Yeah.
But I do think you should look it up.

Speaker 2 Don't want to do that.

Speaker 2 What if, like, if you start noticing people's teeth are like brownish, I guess you should just be like, do you drink a lot of tea?

Speaker 1 You just go like, oh, cool. I love Ingie Brexit too.

Speaker 1 We should have a glass. What? How do you know I like English breaks? Because your tea, you're the color of a fucking bottom of a lake in the fall.

Speaker 2 Oh, man. Okay.

Speaker 1 Wow. Do I brush my teeth before?

Speaker 2 You should do it after. I think it depends on the day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in your time schedule. Exactly.

Speaker 2 I guess I should do it before and after. Although I have to say,

Speaker 2 I know. I don't like drinking something right after I've brushed my teeth because like, you know, toothpaste taste.

Speaker 1 It funks it up.

Speaker 2 But I also...

Speaker 2 do kind of fundamentally not want to put anything in my body until my teeth are clean.

Speaker 1 So you know what I do? Maybe this,

Speaker 1 so I wake up and I

Speaker 1 brew my coffee. It sits next to me while I meditate, as you already know.
But before I'm done meditating, I'm like, okay, I get to have my coffee.

Speaker 1 But first, I take a big sip of really clean, fresh water. Right.
And I even cut up just a little bit of it. I want a nice, clean palette for this coffee I'm about to receive.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So maybe just have a nice, heavy glass of a mouthful of fresh, it's got to be fresh, good water like Tahoe don't promote

Speaker 1 Tahoeartison calm

Speaker 2 shut up The issue is I don't want what's in my mouth down my gullet.

Speaker 1 That's crazy. It came from your gullet

Speaker 2 But yeah, and now it needs to come out.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 It needs to be clean the germs need to go away. Okay.

Speaker 1 Here's my pitch. Okay.
I have a spittoon that I ended up getting for Christmas the year I quit dipping. Yep.
It's a bummer. It breaks my heart.
I know. Get a spittoon like the one I have.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Big, fresh, clean mouthful of water. Gargle.
Spit it in your spittoon. Okay.
Then consume your tea. Then brush your teeth.
Okay. I'll consider that.
It's a lot of stuff to have speaking.

Speaker 2 There is a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 Or switch to coffee. I'll think about it.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 But,

Speaker 2 bitch, we invented tea.

Speaker 2 Actually, technically, China is the country that invented tea.

Speaker 1 I'm not shocked, but the Indian. Wasn't the Indian spice trade also tea and spice or no?

Speaker 2 I mean the tea

Speaker 1 the English went down to India and they wanted shit. They wanted the spices and I thought the tea

Speaker 1 Darjeeling tea.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know

Speaker 1 enough about the history of tea.

Speaker 2 I don't, except it is saying here,

Speaker 2 China. But the issue is,

Speaker 2 I do think you're right. We think tea is very Indian, but I actually think it's British.

Speaker 1 Okay, you know what? This is an old fact I've said in the past. Okay.
You're not going to believe this.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Well, this is so fascinating. Do you know how many different kinds of tea there are? Oh, one.
There's only one. You told me that.
There is only one. That makes no sense.

Speaker 1 It's how you dry it, which turns it into English breakfast or green tea or anything. Like green tea is really fresh.
It's not been dried out a bunch. Yeah.
But it's all the same bush.

Speaker 2 So the black tea versus the green tea versus chai.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all the same. So what my guess is that the bush is probably originally from China and they were probably doing green tea.

Speaker 1 And then the Indians got their hands on it and they were like, fuck, hold on. Let's drive this to high heaven and see what we can do.
Let's play with it.

Speaker 1 And I think they must have invented the third one you said. Chai.
Chai. Well.

Speaker 2 Chai, so this is one of the chai. Chai means tea.
It means tea.

Speaker 2 People like that. So it's tea tea.
K, though.

Speaker 1 People are really mad when I say chai tea. Like, they'll correct me.

Speaker 2 Well, no one needs to get mad about it, but it's also okay that it is, it does mean tea.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's that's great.

Speaker 2 It means tea.

Speaker 2 Um, but chai

Speaker 2 has more spices, like the Indian tea has more spices and stuff.

Speaker 2 Yes, my mom makes me tea when I'm home, and she always asks, Do you want like the spices and stuff in it?

Speaker 1 Okay, I normally say yes, you know, in Italy they say chai bello

Speaker 2 and bellissimo, as you learn.

Speaker 2 Um, okay, yeah, so China.

Speaker 1 Uh, well, good for them. I did watch the history of tea on the history of channel, which is how I learned that it's all one bush.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I kind of wish I remembered why India is so connected to it, connected to it, yeah, me too. So, there's two main varieties of the plant: one is in China, and one is in India.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it's the oxidation process that makes the teas different.

Speaker 2 Now, on Wikipedia, it has like nothing.

Speaker 1 Rwanda's gone all in on

Speaker 1 tea growing. Uh-huh.
And I stayed at a place that was in a tea plantation. Oh, cool.
And they're gorgeous. Like, the field of tea leaves is beautiful.
It was very enchanted. Ah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Do you think I should, at my house, do a tea bush?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do. If we have the climate to support that, which I think we might.
I don't know if it's moist enough here, but.

Speaker 2 I mean, according to my dad, it's the same as India.

Speaker 1 Well, Santa Barbara's the same as India

Speaker 2 Santa Barbara's the same okay the movie Yes Man yeah that was a year that I needed to say yes one whole year

Speaker 1 great concept yeah it is I liked that movie okay famous wonderkins oh great Mozart oh

Speaker 2 I thought it was a bug but it was actually my

Speaker 1 mouse that was embarrassing you're bringing up a really you're about to do wonderkins and I was in this really complicated dilemma Oh. Delta was reading me a story she wrote.

Speaker 1 It's awesome. She wrote this like five-page story about leaving Arizona to go to college in Cleveland.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 And her uncle's like looking out for her and encourages her to plant in this empty lot where people grow things. And then her mom gets cancer and she has to come back to Arizona.

Speaker 1 And it's just a great story. And the details are incredible.

Speaker 1 But there is a line that said, like, I was 19 and in my third year at college. And I was like, oh.
do I tell her she would have to be 16 when she entered? And people generally enter at 18.

Speaker 1 And was she a Vunderkin? And I thought, like, oh, is she, maybe I could ask gently, like, oh, is she a Vunderkin?

Speaker 1 And then I was like, who gives a fine? Yeah. I just enjoyed this story.
And I did. Good.
The better.

Speaker 1 Angels of my nature prevailed. Yeah.
But like, you're, as a parent, you're constantly like, do I need to teach them?

Speaker 2 I know. I would, I would also be struggling with that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think I chose right.
Who the fuck cares?

Speaker 2 If it's an issue i guess her teacher will say like hey ps she would have been also it's like we could just fill in our own gaps like i guess she's a wonderkind she's a wonder kid or

Speaker 1 maybe she did two years of like community college while she's going to high school and enter she just had a lot of credit yeah yeah yeah she was technically in her third year of college even though it was her first year of university i don't know yeah but i was just like it it took over for a minute My cousin's son, he started college when he was like 15.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's a good idea.

Speaker 2 He's a Wonderkind.

Speaker 1 These Wonder Kids never, I just read this terrible. There was a headline about like this.
There was a Wonderkid chess champion who just died at 29. He's like a chess grandmaster in his teens.

Speaker 1 But I just was like, the whole Vunderkind thing is scary.

Speaker 1 It's like impossible to live up to.

Speaker 2 It's really hard, and the pressure's too much because they're still a kid.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But he's giving up his career to run for city office, city council.

Speaker 1 Who is?

Speaker 2 My cousin's son.

Speaker 1 Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's. So it's panned out for him.
Yeah, I mean, he's running for the city of Redmond.

Speaker 2 Okay, Mozart,

Speaker 2 Marie Curie.

Speaker 2 I didn't know she was a Wonder King.

Speaker 1 She was.

Speaker 1 I thought she was old as hell when she.

Speaker 1 When she invented Penicillin?

Speaker 1 She invented

Speaker 2 something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think.

Speaker 1 Discovered

Speaker 1 antibiotics. Radioactivity.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Pioneering research on radioactivity with creation.

Speaker 2 Okay, so she. I also thought maybe she did the Red Cross.

Speaker 1 I think that's.

Speaker 1 What is the point of it? It's like a Joan of Arc name, I think. Okay, let's see.

Speaker 1 It's obviously not Joan of Arc, but I think it's like Clarissa Harlow Barton. Barton! Maybe she's really...
I'm Dave Buttons.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, I don't.

Speaker 2 Know why anyone goes to school because

Speaker 2 I remember doing a report on

Speaker 2 Marie Curie.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And obviously, I remember nothing. Me too.

Speaker 1 And I think she invented penicillin.

Speaker 2 And I think she invented the Red Cross.

Speaker 1 I was thinking of Florence Nightingale. Who's Florence Nightingale?

Speaker 2 She's a Joan of Arc type.

Speaker 1 Isn't Florence Nightingale something about medicine and medical English statistician? Oh, but the founder of Modern Nursing. Mauf.
There we go. Founder of Mauv.
Modern Nursing.

Speaker 1 Mar Nursing. Oh, my my God.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, there's a lot of other... Picasso.

Speaker 1 He was a

Speaker 1 Vunner Kid? It says.

Speaker 2 It says that.

Speaker 2 Your favorite guy, Von Neumann.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. But he's like the definition of a Vunner Kid.

Speaker 1 Like solving math problems no one can solve at 12 years old. Yeah.
Yeah. But he fucking delivered.
He's like one of the rare ones that delivered.

Speaker 2 But he also died.

Speaker 1 Janush von Neumann.

Speaker 2 And Bobby Fisher, speaking of chess. Yes, wonderful.

Speaker 1 Crazy doc.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I want to watch that.

Speaker 1 I need to remember.

Speaker 2 There's some other people.

Speaker 1 Doogie. Douglas Hauser.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ronan Farrow.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Ronan, famous Wonderkin.
All right. Well, that's it.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Well, that was fun. We asked more questions than we answered, which is my favorite kind of factory.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's always good.

Speaker 1 Okay. Love Malala.
Love Malala. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Love Wonderkins.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Wonderkins are great.

Speaker 1 Bye. I love you.
Love you.

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Speaker 5 Mom and dad, mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever. Parents, are you about to spend five hours in the car with your beloved kids this holiday season? Driving to old granny's house? I'm setting the scene.

Speaker 5 I'm picturing screaming, fighting, back-to-back hours of the K-pop demon hunter soundtrack on repeat.

Speaker 5 Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle. Something for the whole family.
He's filled with laughs.

Speaker 1 He's filled with rage. The OG Green Gronk, give it up for me, James Austin Johnson, as the Grinch.

Speaker 5 And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride with A-list guests like Gronk, Mark Hamill, and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are.

Speaker 5 There's a little bit of something for everyone. Listen to Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.