EP. 209 — The Age of Magical Overthinking with Amanda Montell

Jameela [00:00:14] Amanda Montell. Welcome back to I Weigh. How are you?

Amanda [00:00:17] I’m great. I remember the first time we recorded together on your show, you asked me, “How are you?” And I froze and panicked because I was intimidated by your beauty, obviously, and I said “I’m gorgeous.” And I was so embarrassed for months. For months.

Jameela [00:00:41] I don’t even think I clocked that because I think you are so gorgeous, so I was like, “Facts. Factual.”

Amanda [00:00:48] Hahaha!

Jameela [00:00:48] She remains a factual truth teller. And that’s why I love you.

Amanda [00:00:52] Aw, I appreciate that.

Jameela [00:00:54] And so you’re back. You’re back. You’ve written another fucking book. You are so intimidating that I could punch you in the face. It’s so annoying how well researched and clever and important this book is. How dare you!

Amanda [00:01:09] Oh, oh my God, thank you. Thank you for this violent compliment.

Jameela [00:01:15] This book is so good. Haha!

Amanda [00:01:16] Appreciate that.

Jameela [00:01:18] I’m so annoyed. Okay, so before we get into your book, which is about magical overthinking, I want to first understand what magical thinking is just for anyone who might not be aware.

Amanda [00:01:32] Yeah. Magical thinking is a habit that all human beings have, and we have since the dawn of our species, our very mystical species. It describes our proclivity to think that our internal thoughts and emotions can affect external events. So I was first exposed to this idea in Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which is about the untimely death of her husband. And in the wake of that tragedy, she noticed herself start to make these really irrational cause and effect connections. So she told herself, like, if I get rid of my husband’s shoes, there’s no chance he’ll come back. But if I leave his shoes in the closet, maybe he’ll return. So basically, in the wake of feeling really out of control because of this tragedy, feeling really lacking in agency, in the midst of grief, she started to make these connections that made no sense, and I started to feel like we are all experiencing magical thinking on this mass scale in society right now, due to the excess of information which can be really, you know, in many circumstances, traumatizing. Overwhelming. Confusing. We are in this age of not just magical thinking, but magical overthinking, which I’ve been describing as this time when the information age, this glut of data and other social identities that we’re forced to contend with every single day are clashing with our innate irrationalites and mysticisms as human beings.

Jameela [00:03:13] Yeah. And I think I remember, you know, and you talk about this as well, your own experience with this, that especially as a teenager, genuinely starting to feel like the universe is working against me. And there’s like a certain phase in my, I guess, ovulation cycle where I start to believe that again, where it feels as though the universe is conspiring and I’m on The Truman Show and this is a reality TV show and everyone’s watching and I’m being fucked with. And that obviously becomes a more comical belief later on in life for some of us. But it is something that I think everyone at some point has been like, have I? Did I sleep with someone’s husband during another life, like the husband of a god? And now I’m being punished. And so I guess that is a kind of more relatable way as well for some people to maybe identify when because some people might think, oh, I’ve never indulged in that type of thinking. It’s like, we’ve all fucking been there in some way.

Amanda [00:04:07] Oh fully. It’s  like when my computer stops working, I’m like, why is my computer doing this to me? Is it because I cut someone off in traffic? You know, we, like we misattribute our thoughts, behaviors to effects that, like, truly are not connected, but we want life to feel sensible. Like the seeds we planted early in our lives are blooming into something, even if negative, we’re like, “Oh, that all makes sense. That all checks out.” My life is a movie, you know?

Jameela [00:04:44] I want to be fair to magical thinking in that it has existed for thousands of years, and I can understand the logic of trying to make sure that people engage in more positive thought than negative thought, because it would make sense that positive thoughts would create a more positive outlook, and surely that’s healthier for all of us, right?

Amanda [00:05:06] Totally.

Jameela [00:05:06] And I’m English, so we are obviously born with the most negative outlook on it, so I can’t even imagine it. But I want to give like due respect to this kind of cultural thing that’s existed for a very long time, but the explosion of magical thinking in the last sort of maybe probably since the 60s, it started to erupt. But it feels like because of social media now, it has like fully taken over. And, you know, you have so many people talking about manifesting. I think the book The Secret was the first time it became very, very mainstream in a bestseller where it’s like, you can, you are the master of your own fate which I think a lot of people at the time didn’t realize was then also saying that people who get cancer or are born with HIV, you know, or are born into poverty or have a terrible have a car accident that’s terrible, so those people are then inherently being blamed for their own circumstances. Right? It’s like, well, these peoples were not positive enough, and so that’s why they live culturally in dire circumstances. And so that’s that’s the moment at which I was immediately like, “Nope”, when it came to the secret and that form of manifesting. But I think because social media and the internet and the news cycle, everything feels more out of control and more intangible that we’re not supposed to be, I guess, exposed to this much information, this many world events. Right? People feel like they are spinning out in a way that we have never spun out before. We’re not in our little villages, were not living little lives.

Amanda [00:06:34] Correct.

Jameela [00:06:34] We are exposed to the whole world all of the time. And so there’s a there’s a sort of need for some form of autonomy, right? A feeling of self-determination. So you’re like, “Okay, I can think my way out of this. I can crystals and chanting and moon ceremonies and all these things.” And I don’t mean this at all in a patronizing way. I’m totally open to any of these things, within reason. It’s just that how much it has now kind of crossed into capitalism.

Amanda [00:07:07] Right.

Jameela [00:07:08] I think has been the cause for concern, right?

Amanda [00:07:11] You’ve summarized the whole thing so perfectly.

Jameela [00:07:13] Oh God, sorry.

Amanda [00:07:13] Yes. Yes. No no no. Oh my God. Please, I’m like, so thankful for that. Yeah. I found that our brains developed our decision making tactics.

Jameela [00:07:26] Yeah.

Amanda [00:07:26] In a culture that does not resemble the modern world, right? Like we’re not built to process limitless identities in the course of a single scroll. We’re not built to contend with an onslaught of traumatizing news, some of which affects us directly and some of which doesn’t. And so we respond to this overwhelm of information and challenges and traumas with the decision making tactics that developed when all we had to contend with was survival 20,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago.

Jameela [00:07:58] And what are those decisions? What were those decisions supposed to look like?

Amanda [00:08:02] They’d be like

Jameela [00:08:02] Is this berry poisonous?

Amanda [00:08:03] Yeah. Is this berry poisonous? There’s a rustling in the bushes. Should I run? You know, like someone in my community is competing for a mate that I also want. Like, how should I treat that person? How should I behave? Or like, I need to seek out a role model so that I don’t, you know, die of starvation? Like who in my community should that be? We are applying the same decision making strategies to much more complex, abstract, disembodied challenges. And we’re doing that subconsciously, like without being aware that we’re doing it. And so like we as innately mystical, sort of irrational human beings are experiencing the fallout of that, which is like really miserable, as it turns out. And so I just want to sort of highlight those things so that we can become a little more skeptical of ourselves, but also compassionate toward irrational behavior in others.

Jameela [00:09:03] Yeah, because that irrational behavior is something that you yourself have noticed in your past. Right? So

Amanda [00:09:10] Absolutely.

Jameela [00:09:10] You, you refer to your own, you know, sort of conspiracy theory existence. Can you tell me about that?

Amanda [00:09:20] Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a chapter in the book that I open with the line, “I was a conspiracy theorist once.”

Jameela [00:09:26] Yeah.

Amanda [00:09:26] Which I just thought was kind of like a poetic line.

Jameela [00:09:29] Yeah.

Amanda [00:09:29] But what I want to communicate in that chapter is this idea of proportionality bias, which is a cognitive bias. This book is dedicated to 11 different cognitive biases, which are like these mental magic tricks that we play on ourselves in order to make decisions, and we do so unconsciously. Proportionality bias is this one that underlies a lot of really destructive, conspiratorial thinking, but it also shows up in our everyday lives in ways that we might not think would be similar to conspiratorial thinking. So proportionality bias is basically this penchant to think that a big event, or even a big feeling must have had a big cause. So, you know, in the context of a classic conspiracy theory, it might be, oh, Princess Diana passed away. That is such an epic, insane tragedy that could not have just been the product of, like, this random car accident. The royal family must have killed her. Like, we make these sort of mis attributions of cause and effect because they make proportional sense. It’s like we like harmonious proportions as a species, you know, we like

Jameela [00:10:36] Does it make us feel safer, right?

Amanda [00:10:37] Yes.

Jameela [00:10:37] It, there’s a it gives us some idea that then we have the ability in our brains being built to predict and protect means that then, that we’re creating a pattern that gives us this this sense that, like, “Well, I’ll be able to see this coming next time,” you know. So again, when then when we see like Meghan Markle or indeed recently like Kate Middleton, you know, she’s subjected to that same sort of like public like scrutiny and, and bullying. It’s it’s so interesting that we’re sort of like been like, “Well, we’ve seen this before and that makes us feel safe. We feel like we’re in control because we can identify the patterns.” We just want to identify the patterns, right?

Amanda [00:11:13] Totally. And that becomes especially important to us during times of crisis, turbulence, mass confusion. During times of private tragedy and grief, we sometimes get a little bit irrational. Like if you’re really afraid of flying, you might, you know, do a little ritual like a superstitious behavior before you get on a plane every single time, because you want to feel like you’re in control of that situation. And we’re engaging in those sort of superstitions on a huge collective scale now, as a result of living in the time of excess information and social media, so, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. We want to feel like we have agency. We want to feel like we can make predictions that will help us move forward. Like the future is scary. It’s unknown. So if we can make those cause and effect conclusions, even if they’re totally irrational, to our brains, it doesn’t matter. It’s like good enough. You know, I get to feel like I’m in control and that’s actually okay. Like engaging in a certain amount of delusion in your everyday life, like doing your vision board or whatever. Like, I love a delulu. It helps us cope with, like, the mass confusion of life on Earth. It’s like, why are we here? And I get that. It’s when exactly what you said, we’re living in this, like, hyper consumerist, hyper capitalistic, social media driven age when there are more than a few people who are willing to to take advantage of those innate superstitions and mysticisms for their own gain. So it’s one thing to make a vision board, you know, with your friends at home and do that with like a grain of salt, a skeptical twinkle in your eye, you know, like, if these vision board dreams don’t come true, I don’t have to blame myself. And it’s another thing to see a manifestation guru type figure online take those pretty pure aims and say, actually, I have my own bespoke manifestation technique and if you pay $30 a month for my course, then I can guarantee your success. And if that success does not come to fruition, well, that can’t be because me, it’s because of you.

Jameela [00:13:16] You just didn’t do it right. Yeah.

Amanda [00:13:17] Correct.

Jameela [00:13:18] Yeah. And the thing is, is that the reason that’s important to be vigilant about this, the reason that this book is so well timed is that God, especially now that ChatGPT has entered the race and AI and deep fakes are so deeply accessible, it means that we are in a misinformation age that I’ve never witnessed before. This is this is beyond anything I’ve ever been able to comprehend because it’s not just institutions spreading. You know, we’ve had huge eras in and every country in the world has experienced some era of a dictator, you know, controlling the media and putting out propaganda. And that’s the only access to information, you know, that you have, but what’s different here is that this isn’t media institutions anymore circulating this news. So we can’t be like, “Well, I’m skeptical of the news” because now it’s people that you know, or people that you follow or people that you respect, or it’s scientists and doctors or former members of the FBI coming out and saying all of these things. And so we are in a hyper overstimulated state. We are completely terrified. And there’s, we don’t we can’t tell anymore what is real and what is fake. So of course,

Amanda [00:14:24] Of course

Jameela [00:14:24] We are going to grip onto anything that makes us feel like we are even vaguely able to make sense of stuff.

Amanda [00:14:33] Yeah. And, you know, like talking about it like this, it sounds really doomsday. It sounds really sort of apocalyptic, but I actually don’t feel pessimistic about the current age and

Jameela [00:14:46] How are you managing that?

Amanda [00:14:47] Well, you know, great question. I do sauna cold plunge. I’m just kidding. I actually no, I do do that, but that’s not what helps me. Talking to scholars, like talking to the academics who I interviewed for this book was randomly so healing because they are all actually really optimistic about the future. There’s this one chapter of the book that talks about nostalgia and the cognitive bias that kind of goes with nostalgia is called declinism, which speaks to our pension to believe that life is just getting worse and worse and worse and worse, and it’s all downhill from here. And we like naturally think that way. We naturally lean on the past as this like idealized, romanticized moment, even though all of these scholars reflected that like actually, objectively, now is the best time for civil liberty and for for access to, for the democratization of information. Like, of course, the democratization of information has come with a double edged sword, like there’s a lot of misinformation, too. But I would not rather live in a time when, like, the only people who could know things were like high priests, you know, and it’s hard to recognize that when the present feels painful and we lean on nostalgia during times of present misery as a coping mechanism, like sort of sinking into that warm bath of fuzzy memories helps us kind of envision a better future, which is nice, which is good. It’s again, that weaponization of it when a populist figure comes down and has us catastrophize the present and then makes up some illusion of a past we never knew in order to sell their vision of the future like that’s when it becomes dangerous. But every scholar I spoke to for this book philosophers, folklorists, psychologists, like really smart cookies, they were like, “Dude, I know life feels bad right now. It really does. We feel ennui. We feel languishing. We feel traumatized every time we open our phones. That sucks. But you and I are having an exchange of ideas from across the world, and we’re able to talk about how we feel. And that wasn’t even true 20 years ago. 20 years ago. We had to just, like, suffer in silence. We were just as irrational 20 years ago. It’s just the world is becoming more complicated and that’s okay.” And so like talking to these really, really smart people always makes me feel better because it makes me feel like there’s hope.

Jameela [00:17:16] Well that’s the experience I’m having right now with you. And the nostalgia thing is so interesting because the way that we watch it be weaponized in you know, like American politics at the moment, the tagline Make America Great Again, which I think is assigned to Donald Trump, but it’s back from like Reagan and Nixon like this, this existed throughout presidential campaign.

Amanda [00:17:33] Totally.

Jameela [00:17:34] And so there is this ability when you just say that sentiment for people to remember the most innocent time of their youth. You know, we always categorize it as like, people wish that there were slaves again, and I don’t think that’s necessarily what is happening with these people, right? They are just remembering a happy time riding on a bike with an ice cream where they weren’t bombarded with the news, and we didn’t talk about politics all the fucking time. And yeah, and the world felt like a simpler place.

Amanda [00:18:03] Totally.

Jameela [00:18:03] What they mean, really is MASA, Make America Simple Again, right?

Amanda [00:18:08] Haha!

Jameela [00:18:08] It,  I think.

Amanda [00:18:10] I love that.

Jameela [00:18:12] But that’s what I think is happening and is being, I’m sure some people wish for a terrible, terrible time in history where women and people of, you know, minorities and gay people have no rights. But I think the vast majority of people are just just longing for a time that didn’t look like this.

Amanda [00:18:28] For sure. And like, let’s even simplify the acronym. Like, it’s not Make America Simple again, like, America was never simple. It’s maybe like, maybe it’s MLS. Make life simple. You know, I think it like I was talking to this really smart nostalgia scholar named Clay Rutledge recently who has written a whole bunch about this topic. And he referenced a study where participants across the spectrum of generation were, reflected that they long for a time before iPhones. Gen Z long for a time before iPhones. Boomers long for time before iPhones. And actually, the majority of survey participants also responded by saying they think that life was better in the 1950s if you just ask the general question. But then when you get more specific about it and you ask things like, well, would you rather your daughter have to go back to a time before she could get a credit card? Or like, would you rather go back to a time before, like current cancer treatment advancements? Like would you actually rather live in the 1950s? Once you get a little bit more surgical about the questions, people walk it back. They’re like, “Actually, no, thank you.” But the reason why we’re nostalgic for a time before iPhones is because more specifically, we are realizing that there is something in these phones that’s making us stressed, that’s making us feel isolated from our communities, not more connected. That’s making us feel like brutally hallucinatory, like there is something going on there. And so we’re longing not for a time necessarily in the past where we were more connected. We’re actually longing for a future where we can, like, eat whole foods and commune with our family and like, there’s something in our phones that that’s preventing us from doing that. So when you apply like a more specific and thus a more generous lens to the equation, it’s like, oh, I’m not actually nostalgic for like a trad wife era. I just want life to be a little better.

Jameela [00:20:21] Yeah. Talk to me about anemoia. I loved this.

Amanda [00:20:25] Oh my god, anemoia. I wish I coined this frickin term. This is from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which is a beautiful chef’s kiss of a book written by a dude named John Koenig, and it describes nostalgia for a time we’ve never known. And I am so susceptible to this. The other day, I spent $130 on this L.E.D. candlestick that I walk around the house holding in like a little nightgown, pretending that I’m a tuberculosis ridden child, being like, “Winston, where’s my tea?” Because I’m just like I do fantasize about the 1800s. I don’t want to go back there. I do not want to go back there, but I do. I’m like, I just want to live a simple life where I like, don’t do podcasts. Thank you so much for having me. And like and I just find that there is this mass attraction to fantasies of a simpler time, a time we’ve never known. And that can be a really beautiful thing, that type of fantasy and imagination. That’s what nostalgia is. But I find it ironic that, like, I’m using tools of the present, like this literal L.E.D. lamp to fulfill that fantasy, which is so funny. I’m interested in creating nostalgia for the present. I coined the term for that, which is called Tempeser. But yeah, I’m just interested in like how we can take these delulu habits of ours and actually use them for good.

Jameela [00:21:50] Tell me about your one. Break it down. Break down the latin.

Amanda [00:21:53] Well, I’m fascinated by the upside of nostalgia. It’s use as a coping mechanism. And I was thinking like, if nostalgia is such a beautiful tool for managing the unpredictability of the present, like, what if we could actually create nostalgia for the present as a way to express gratitude or even, like, optimize our life such that when we look back on it, we are able to very easily and sort of rationally idealize. So I was talking to that guy Clay, and he was like, it’s a very interesting exercise to try to create nostalgia for the present, because sometimes what I’ll do is when I feel stressed about getting older, I’m like looking in the mirror and I’m like, she’s tired. And I start to think about my adolescent years as better somehow, which is so delulu, because I fucking hated being a teenager. I will do this exercise where I imagine that I’m actually 72, I’m 72 years old, and someone tells me all of a sudden, “Guess what? At the snap of my fingers, you get to go back and be 32 again,” and then suddenly I’m like, so grateful to be only 32. I’m like, “Oh my God, I have my whole life ahead of me.” And we can sort of optimize our life for nostalgia based on what science says about memories that we tend to perceive as warm and fuzzy, like time spent with family, highly social connections, even if they’re not fully positive, like, you know, going and visiting with a loved one who’s unwell, reconnecting with a friend who we once cut out as being toxic, and some people are meant to be cut out. But I think we’re very quick to cut people out these days. Nostalgia is like bittersweet, right? And like, we love the feeling of nostalgia, but when we think back on those memories, they’re not wholly positive. And so I love that idea because I’m like, I am truly spending too much time on memories that I will not look back on fondly, like no one ever is nostalgic for like, all that time they spent making amazing Instagram Reels. Like your nostalgia for time that you spent with those who mean a lot to you, like looking at the sky so

Jameela [00:24:02] It’s funny you say this. This is literally my life.

Amanda [00:24:04] Haha, yeah.

Jameela [00:24:05] In the last few years I’ve become obsessed with looking back on my life later because and you know, I’ve said this a few times on the podcast, I got incredibly sick at the end of 2022, and it was after an incredibly successful run in my career, and I should have been on cloud nine, but my body was fucked. My brain was fucked, I was lonely, I was sad, I missed my friends, my friends missed me, and I, I was like, what if this is all over now? What if my life is over or my life as I knew it is over, would I be thrilled about the way that I spent the last few years or the last decade? No, I’m very grateful for the adventures I got to have, but but I don’t think that on my deathbed I’ll take those memories with me apart from meeting Keanu Reeves. You know, apart from that one which actually was worth it. It was worth all the pain, but I, I it’s sent me into a spiral of existential I don’t even want to say crisis because it was like an existential breakthrough where I was like, “Oh, no, okay, I’m making all the memories.” And I have started taking like, one second videos throughout the day when something really wonderful is happening, like a moment of friends laughing or googling gossip together, or eating a really good pastry with my boyfriend, or going for a beautiful walk in France, like, I’ve started to live my life intentionally. And I don’t put these videos out publicly. They’re just private videos for us to be able to remember the moment. And I watch these videos shortly after because I realize how quickly I’ve forgotten everything I did that week or a month ago.

Amanda [00:25:45] Yeah.

Jameela [00:25:46] So I constantly watch these videos, and I get that immediate tingle, that dopamine rush

Amanda [00:25:51] Yes.

Jameela [00:25:51] That comes with the nostalgia. And I have become obsessed with doing this and obsessed with living a cheaper life. That means that I have a richer existence, right? We have we have completely shifted the idea of what rich means, and we think it’s just having money, and we don’t talk about what you have to do and sacrifice to get that money. I’m now obsessed with having a truly rich life, and that involves looking into the eyes of my dog, not looking at my screen.

Amanda [00:26:17] Yes.

Jameela [00:26:18] Looking at my friends, being there for the big moments that I can be there for and and letting them into mine. And my big moments are, are ones of true like emotional transition rather than an award that a movie studio paid for for me.

Amanda [00:26:33] I know isn’t that wild, like I am working so hard to achieve these career milestones, but when I think about it, I’ve never been nostalgic for a career moment. You know, like, those aren’t the memories that I cherish. And it’s so validating to know that there is a cognitive bias underlying why we sometimes over romanticize the past, or why we allow people with nefarious intentions to weaponize that like really pure thing that we do, which is declinism, that cognitive bias. And it’s so inherent to us. And this also reminds me of another study that I quote in, in this book, because it’s such a lie that by like achieving some capitalist milestone or by, you know, making more money or posting more online that that will somehow make you feel fulfilled. But I think that ties to this, oh God this study that lives rent free in my head that talks about additive solution versus subtractive solution bias. So there’s a chapter in the book about the sunk cost fallacy, which is our pension, to think that resources already spent on an endeavor justify spending even more so not just money or time, but sometimes emotional resources like hope.

Jameela [00:27:46] Where you talk about, for example, being in a relationship that you put loads of years into, it doesn’t feel like it’s actually giving you anything, but you’re like, “Well, I’ve already fucking put all these years into it. I just have to make it work otherwise the time was wasted.” Which it never was cause you learned things and you did stuff and

Amanda [00:28:00] For sure. And as I was writing this chapter, I came across a study that presented participants with a puzzle involving colored blocks that they could solve by either adding colored blocks or taking colored blocks away. The vast majority of participants solved the problem by adding a whole bunch of colored blocks, but the much simpler, the less obvious solution was just simply taking one block away. We as human beings are naturally inclined toward solving problems by adding a million variables in a cumbersome way to an equation when the much better, more efficient solution would just be to subtract one.

Jameela [00:28:43] Give me an example.

Amanda [00:28:44] Yeah. So during the most painful moments in that relationship that I was in, it never occurred to me to break up like literally never because I was like, “You know what we need to solve our pain, go on another vacation or get another cat.” I do not regret any of my cats, but they did not solve my relationship problems.

Jameela [00:29:04] Yeah.

Amanda [00:29:05] Or like I need to post a whole bunch of more happy looking photos of us on Instagram surely that will solve my problem. When really the much more effective solution would just be to scale back, stop sending text messages begging him to treat you well, like stop going on splashy vacations. Stop posting. Just slow down. Perhaps take something away. And this is something that I like apply to so many arenas of my life now because like literally just the other day, I was looking at my junk drawer and I was thinking, oh God, it’s a mess. I need to get some really aesthetic drawer organizers that will solve my problem. I need to, like, go to the Container Store. It’s like, bitch, just throw the junk away. Like we growing up in consumerist society, but also, like, naturally, we think in order to solve any problem, a relational problem, a junk drawer problem, an insomnia problem, whatever you need to add a person, a supplement, a vacation. Sometimes you just need to take something away. So I think that really says something about how we’re approaching all of our emotional like existential issues, like we’re overcomplicating them.

Jameela [00:30:12] This is so funny because it’s making me think about how when I was 28, I was like, my life is a mess. I feel very suicidal. My relationship’s sort of a mess. My relationship with my family is a massive mess. I am not happy in my career. I am not stimulated. I feel trapped where I am. Do I need to move house? Moving house doesn’t really change anything. I am in a lot of toxic cycles. I have got to do a lot of work to repair my generational problem with my family. I’ve got to repair my relationship, this, that and the other. And then one day I was like, I’m going to fucking leave and not give anyone my number. For ages. And I was heavily criticized for that, understandably, because it felt like a very drastic move. And it also felt like I was quote unquote running away from my problems. Now, what I will say is that in hindsight, I can look back and see how it looked that way. But what I did was move. Cut everyone off. And then slowly, like an elimination diet, reintroduce things and people back into my life after a year. And then I was able to find a healthy balance to be like, “Oh, nope, that doesn’t work.” Or “Oh no, this was actually really good for me.” And I’m very lucky that I was able to bring certain things back, but and not everyone will be, but the right things tend to return and the right people tend to return. And so sometimes you do have to just throw the drawer of junk away, or you do just have to pick up if you can. If you don’t have children or, you know, it’s not too complicated for you to leave, like just get up and do something drastic that gives you the fucking space to see what needs to be changed. Because it’s very hard when you’re in the middle of all of this stuff to even identify where the problem is coming from. You’re just in complete chaos.

Amanda [00:32:04] Yeah.

Jameela [00:32:04] Just get out for a minute. Look at it like, zoom out.

Amanda [00:32:08] I know.

Jameela [00:32:08] And that’s hard to do when you’re right in the thick of it. I’m glad that you brought that up, because it was something that I’ve never really like, sort of settled with myself.

Amanda [00:32:15] Yeah.

Jameela [00:32:16] Is that was that a reckless or irresponsible thing to do? But I look at my life now and it’s so much better, and I’m so much more of an honest person that I think now, ultimately, that was for the best.

Amanda [00:32:27] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is so much pressure in our culture, especially with the, like, limitless, judgmental eyeballs on social media to make it seem like you have everything under control.

Jameela [00:32:40] Yeah.

Amanda [00:32:40] Like every choice you’ve made in your life has led up to this one, that your life is actually a well plotted script and that you’re the main character.

Jameela [00:32:49] Yeah.

Amanda [00:32:49] Even if the world is unpredictable, you are very predictable. You are consistent. You are a protagonist whose choices make sense. And it’s like sometimes chaos is like a decent approach, despite what the judgmental eyeballs might say. Like, sometimes you need to infuse a plot point into your story that doesn’t track, so to speak, in order to just feel better. Like life is not a well plotted movie, and sometimes you need to make a left turn or take something away, even if it looks chaotic.

Jameela [00:33:31] Something else you you know, when you were talking about how pure this is, how natural this is, something else you talk about in the book, I thought was really well executed was, I guess, fandom, right? How we become obsessively in a kind of almost cult-like way obsessed with idols of politicians. And you use Taylor Swift as a really interesting case study as to how her fans engage with her.

Amanda [00:33:55] Yeah.

Jameela [00:33:56] And what’s happening to our brains when we become obsessed with something or someone like that?

Amanda [00:34:02] Yeah.

Jameela [00:34:02] Can you expand on this phenomena?

Amanda [00:34:05] Happily. So, the first chapter in the book, which was one of my favorite ones to write, is called Are You My Mother, Taylor Swift: a note on the halo effect. And the halo effect is this cognitive bias that describes our tendency to admire one quality in a person, and then jump to the conclusion that they are perfect overall. So we admire an influencer’s fashion sense or a celebrity’s pop music, and we jump to the conclusion that they must be outgoing, worldly, educated, that they hold our same political beliefs, etc. and

Jameela [00:34:41] I was telling you over the phone about this that this happened to me, where when I first came into prominence as an advocate, even though I’ve been doing it for such a long time, in about 2018, I came out, realized everyone was taking me very seriously and hanging onto my every tweet and word, and I was like, “Whoa, whoa whoa. Okay, guys. I was like, before we start, you know, turning me into some sort of a saint, remember that I was a massive slut shamer like five years ago and a huge misogynist. And I’m just a feminist in progress. Right?” I coined that term in 2018, begging people to not overestimate me or over congratulate me and reminding them how flawed I was. My pinned tweet was like everything I ever slut shamed famous women with. And like, I just it was like a list of all of my shit. And yet still

Amanda [00:35:28] Oh, they still do.

Jameela [00:35:29] When I said all of that everyone was like, “No, you’re just humble.” And I was like, “No, no, no, I’m not humble. Like, I’m ignorant, I’m ignorant. I have been I’m literally not educated.” And then I was crazy for a decade. Like, truly crazy, like, like so, so far gone from reality. Couldn’t have taken in any pertinent information like not not your leader, not your leader. Please don’t follow me. And then people were just like, “Oo, no, no, no, no, you’re you’re the female hero that we need.” And I was like, “I really think that’s not a good idea.” And then when it turned out that I was indeed fallible and uneducated and all the things that I’d said I was, people were like, “You fucking lied. You said you were the best. You said you were a saint. You said you were the feminist hero we need.” And I was like, “Fuck, I really didn’t.”

Amanda [00:36:18] I know.

Jameela [00:36:19] Go back like, look at all my interviews like

Amanda [00:36:22] I know.

Jameela [00:36:23] I was so clear, but people wanted to project. Why do we want to project?

Amanda [00:36:28] Yeah. Well we were saying on the phone like you got in front of it in a way that I have never seen and it didn’t matter.

Jameela [00:36:34] Didn’t make a fucking difference.

Amanda [00:36:35] It did not make a difference because of this bias. So this this is like exactly the perfect example of one of these moments where I’m looking around at these cycles of celebrity worship and dethronement, these like intense, voracious fan, borderline Stan Idol dynamics. And I’m like, everyone is not okay. Like we are not okay. And it makes me like, mistrust my fellow human on this earth because I’m like, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. And as it turns out, it is this deeply ingrained bias that developed in ancient human communities in order to identify role models for survival purposes. So when we were living in small villages, you would see someone with, say, big muscles and you would jump to the conclusion that they were a skilled hunter. Ooh la la. I’m going to align with you because I’m going to be able to eat the meat that you catch when you hunt. And that was, you know, maybe not a perfect conclusion to jump to, but it was good enough. And that’s how we found our role models. But nowadays we are mapping that same decision making strategy onto modern parasocial relationships. And that is going haywire because it’s causing us to elevate celebrities onto this pedestal that is so godlike and so dehumanizing. It’s like, oh, it would it would be amazing to be worshiped. No, to elevate someone to godlike status or to dethrone them to like, devil status, both are dehumanizing. When you elevate someone that high onto a pedestal, you eliminate their margin for error. You completely obliterate their capacity for complexity, error. And so when they do something that disappoints you in scare quotes, you want to punish them not unlike how when you’re a teenager, and it occurs to you that your parents are human beings for the first time, you feel the need to punish them. You know, like, I make this comparison in the book because we apply the halo effect to our mothers in a very similar way that we apply it to our celebrity mommies. You know, like we are calling Taylor Swift and Toni Collette and Cate Blanchett and Beyonce mother because we’re worshiping them in in a very similar way. But that’s not the same kind of relationship. It’s parasocial, it’s illusory. And so that is causing these like serious mental health concerns.

Jameela [00:38:59] Right. And you say that there is a sort of a vulnerability in the people who get really, really caught up in the fandom in a very extreme way, right? We can all be fans of things, but there is a noted adjacent vulnerability in some of those people.

Amanda [00:39:16] Yeah, yeah. So there is a spectrum of celebrity admiration from the healthy to the like, truly deleterious, which has the wildest consequences. There was a 2014 clinical examination of celebrity worship that found that side effects or I guess, like the consequences of elevating a celebrity to that status, ranged from narcissistic personality traits like negative body image to criminality, addiction. Like it, it’s really bad and it’s getting worse every year.

Jameela [00:39:48] And so to just just so that it doesn’t feel like we’re being judgmental of those people just to like, break it down further, so are you saying that it’s someone with something vulnerable in their life, there’s something missing in their life. And so they are they have an extra likelihood, an extra propensity to want to project something fantastical onto someone else.

Amanda [00:40:07] Absolutely.

Jameela [00:40:07] As if, like, this person is my savior. This person sees me, understands me in a world where, as you said in the book, like my family don’t, you were saying that there’s a special reason why I think, like a lot of LGBTQ people admire people like Madonna or Taylor Swift or in very, very intense way because they don’t feel accepted at home and it feels like she accepts them. She loves them. She makes content for them.

Amanda [00:40:29] Yeah.

Jameela [00:40:30] That is, that feels specifically for them. And so that that means that that vulnerability, that that void is able to be filled easier by.

Amanda [00:40:40] Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll provide some cultural context and some psychological context just to like really break it down.

Jameela [00:40:46] Yeah.

Amanda [00:40:47] Basically to uplift a celebrity, an entertainer to a status where we look to them for our political beliefs, our spiritual beliefs, it doesn’t make inherent sense. We’ve only really been doing this since the Reagan era. He was our first celebrity president. We never had a celebrity president before. It’s like not a natural fit for an actor to be a president. But he was viewed as this insurgent outsider in the 1980s. We had just gone through that very culty period of the 60s and 70s when, you know, events like the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement had created, you know, sociological rifts. And so we had lost trust in the government and the health care institution, like so many of these organizations that were supposed to provide us with our support systems and what to believe. And so we’re like, “No, not not paying attention to the government anymore. Who’s my new role model? Who’s my new daddy?” And Ronald Reagan entered the picture. And that sort of set a precedent for celebrities to be expected to swerve out of their lane into political life, into spiritual life. And so now we expect our celebrities not just to amuse us, but to save us. And that has only become more intense in the era of social media, when, like, you can actually engage with a celebrity in your comments and that makes you feel like really, really close to them, almost in a way that you would feel really, really close to your family members. And so these relationships have started to become more blurry. It’s like, well, that’s not just a politician or a celebrity like this, this is sort of my best friend. And so we project this role model seeking tactic onto them, which is a natural thing to do. But I found in so many of the studies that I’ve looked at that we, because we are living in this time of incredible isolation, those who are lacking so-called positive stressors in their real life from their communities or their parents, they then tend to hyper focus on what’s called trauma in the virtual world or like drama within their stan communities. And we don’t have that social glue that we have in our actual families or in our communities to create empathy and for us to see like, oh, that’s just a human being. That’s not a god. They’re fallible. Or maybe like, there is no evidence to suggest that they are politically aligned with me, but when we don’t have any of those things, then we tend to spin out. We tend to project like all of these value systems and expectations onto these celebrities. So then when they disappoint us, we feel like we’re going through a parasocial breakup you know. Like, have you ever seen someone comment on a celebrity’s Instagram post that like the fan was disappointed with and they’re like, “I am so upset with you.”

Jameela [00:43:38] Happens to me every day.

Amanda [00:43:39] Yeah. So you’ve probably seen it in your comment section. I’ve even seen it in mine, where someone will be like, “I can’t believe that you haven’t spoken out about this, or like, I can’t believe that you hold this opinion about this subject matter. I’m unfollowing.” And then there’s a trend of people responding to that and being like, “This isn’t an airport. You don’t need to announce your departure.” Have you seen that?

Jameela [00:44:00] That’s literally happening this week because I’ve been getting my tits out on Instagram in order to point out the fact that when I do that, the algorithm puts me at the top of everyone’s, which I’ve been, like, buried for months and months and months and hidden, was that when I’ve been talking about politics and what’s been happening like in the world and global politics and I, you know, got mysteriously buried by the app. And so I’ve been talking about it while shaking my breasts at the camera and being able to finally have a vehicle to talk about it because it, my Trojan horse was my tits. And there are people who have misunderstood my satire, who’ve misunderstood that I’m satirizing the way that we are forced to only engage in one behavior that we should be free to engage in, but not forced to engage in.

Amanda [00:44:47] Totally.

Jameela [00:44:48] In order to reclaim the algorithm’s favor. And they’re like, “I can’t believe you have resorted to this. Like, I miss you making intellectual statements, I am unfollowing, I’m so disappointed.” Or like, “I can’t believe you would do this during Ramadan.” And I’m like, “Well, first of all, I’m not a practicing Muslim. And second of all, like, this isn’t supposed to be, this isn’t me doing this gratuitously. I’m just trying to make a point. And how, the fact that you are so disapproving of this that you can never look at me again is extreme.” It’s totally your freedom. And I’m a very big fan of people unfollowing what they don’t like, but

Amanda [00:45:24] Sure.

Jameela [00:45:24] It definitely is striking how emotional the response was.

Amanda [00:45:30] Yes. So there’s so much going on there. Like, first of all, the amount of information available in today’s society is actually causing the global attention span to shrink. I am so shooketh to the core when people don’t, like, finish reading a very short caption that like reveals all the information they could possibly need. And then I remember that there’s evidence to suggest that, like, it’s just too much. It’s all too much. We cannot spend our entire day reading people’s captions, so it’s fine. But I find that when people feel the need to announce their departure, as the very clever internet has, has now like coined that behavior, it’s because they are going through a breakup. Like you are a very, very important person to them, and they have invested a lot of time and emotional bandwidth in their one sided relationship with you. Normally when you go through a breakup in real life, there’s like a hullabaloo and maybe there’s yelling or crying. It feels like very satisfying and climactic, but when you go through a parasocial breakup, like, if you don’t comment, “I’m unfollowing,” you just have to go through that like, delulu breakup of of a relationship that didn’t even really exist all by yourself? And we don’t like that. We like our relationship breakups to feel meaningful even if they feel bad. And so when yeah, when a celebrity that we’ve like projected so many expectations on to then disappoints us if we’re just to quietly unfollow, it feels like what was all of that for? Like, I loved them. I saw this last night. I was checking up on these two influencers that I’ve, like, followed on YouTube for some time who haven’t posted in a while. It’s okay. They’re real people. They’re living their life. Their comments section has flooded with people being like, “How dare you not care about us?” It’s like they don’t know you, but it’s the halo effect. It’s the halo effect.

Jameela [00:47:22] It’s so fascinating. It’s so fascinating, and it just makes so much sense, right? It’s this this idea that when we’re 18, we’re supposedly adults and now being much older than that and realizing that only now by starting to figure out adulthood, right? I can’t believe that we’re just cast off into the world and told, like, “Go on. Piss off. Just off you go.”

Amanda [00:47:45] I know.

Jameela [00:47:46] You’re an adult now. Make all your decisions by yourself. Govern your entire future after your meals were decided for you, after your studies were decided for you, after you were told when to hand in homework and what to do. And Friday’s test was the biggest event in your life and suddenly be cast aside and be like, go to university, don’t go to university, marry, have a baby, don’t do whatever you want. And so I think a lot of people feel, you know, I think that’s why religion had, you know, so many places in a chokehold for such a long time because it was the idea of, you know, a forever parent who, it didn’t matter how old you were, they would guide you. They always had your back.

Amanda [00:48:22] Right.

Jameela [00:48:22] Everything was predestined. Everything was planned. So when something went wrong, it’s like, it’s okay because this is part of the plan that he has for me. You know, I’m learning. I’m suffering. Jesus suffered, you know, for us. And I’m going through that. It’s all for a reason. This is formulaic. This is this is not a surprise. This is fully in control. And I think that was very comforting to people. I understand religion, especially in that way. I also think it brings community and lots of lovely things. But I do think the the way in which some people gripped onto the idea of God as this sort of all knowing parent, symbolize that absence of feeling guided. And then as religion took a dip, as you were saying, you know, and belief in the government took a dip, it became celebrities. And it makes so much sense that we are so desperate for someone to look up to. And also we have become so much more aware because we’re so much more skilled in understanding psychology generally

Amanda [00:49:16] That’s right.

Jameela [00:49:16] From a really young age, we’re so much more aware of how flawed our parents are and how fucked our families are, and we have, you know, when I was little, I didn’t know how fucked up my family was because I just didn’t really see anything outside of that, you know, apart from The Brady Bunch, which is clearly comedy. I never saw stories of other families. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t have anything to read about what’s normal and what isn’t normal. So I just sort of, you know, made the best of my lot. Now we almost know so much. In a way that’s great because as you said earlier, we’re better informed and we should want to be informed, but it’s overwhelming, so we just need fantasy. We desperately cling to fantasy. And I think that’s what, that’s why the appetite is so ravenous now.

Amanda [00:50:00] Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think like the crux of this whole thing, like what it all boils down to, is life on this planet is, like, so confusing, and it’s becoming ever more confusing. It always was confusing like, we came out of our wombs when we were like Neolithic humans, and we were like, “What the literal fuck? Like, how did I get here? What are these leaves?” And we developed coping mechanisms then that we are now mapping on to a much more complicated world. And some of that mysticism is really beautiful. It’s magical. It’s the magical and magical overthinking, you know, and I think I don’t I never want to sound judgmental of the various delulus that people participate in because we’re all just doing what we can to cope with the confounding ridiculousness of life on this planet. But our, but human life is becoming more complicated. It just is. And yet our brains have not caught up. And so I find that, like the way that we’re going to survive this sort of like existential crisis of now, which I do think is unique because of these extreme technological shifts, is being able to sort of stomach a sense of irresolution, which is we don’t like that, like we don’t like unpredictability and like unease as a species. We do everything we can

Jameela [00:51:25] It’s against the coding of the brain.

Amanda [00:51:27] Fully, fully.

Jameela [00:51:28] We’re supposed to be able to predict

Amanda [00:51:29] Yes.

Jameela [00:51:29] Everything.

Amanda [00:51:30] Totally. But human beings are actually, like pretty good at learning how to do things that aren’t natural to us. You know, it’s like we shouldn’t kill people even if we want to, and we’re all pretty good at that. So I find that, like, the next challenge of our species in order to, like, survive this very fraught time is to learn to live in that in-between of, like, head and heart, of knowing and not knowing of information and misinformation. There’s such a pressure to be right about everything, to have the most cogent hot take. And if we expect certainty in other people all the time, then they will invariably bullshit us. And I just don’t think we should accept that. So like learning to stomach that in between that like sickening cognitive dissonance that we’ve so long just wanted to put to bed is, is kind of that’s like that’s my whole shtick, like that’s my whole mission. I just like, want us to live in that in between and be okay with it. To be, like, skeptical of ourselves, compassionate of others’ irrationalities, like, that’s the way.

Jameela [00:52:34] So what you want people to take away from this is to understand why they might be, or people that they love might be drawn into this type of magical overthinking is to ask themselves if they participate and to recognize whether or not that’s helpful, you know, or a hindrance may be to your happiness, because this stuff can be temporarily. It’s like a Band-Aid. You know, it really does release, our happy neurochemicals for a while, but then it can become a bit destructive, as we’ve seen on the internet. And then also, I mean, it’s a big it’s a big ask. It’s a big ask. It’s it’s a completely sensible ask, but given that our brains are built to predict and protect, I’m not sure how we override that anthropological urge.

Amanda [00:53:22] I know. I keep going back to just the optimism of all these super smart people that I talked to for hours.

Jameela [00:53:27] We have to get there, therefore, we will get there. Right. That is evolution.

Amanda [00:53:31] Yes, yes, I think it was, it was James Baldwin who said, like, “I’m an optimist. If I’m not an optimist, then that means that I’m treating human life as an academic matter.” Like, I love that quote and I refuse, I refuse to think that we’re doomed.

Jameela [00:53:46] No, and you know what, you know, you know how I know you’re right is that you and I are like this. Not to say that we are especially evolved or perfect, but you and I already are open to someone’s mistakes, someone’s fallibility, someone working it out, the society working things out the way that human beings naturally overuse and then abuse everything before the pendulum swings back from one extreme to another, right to the middle. We accept that balance takes time. We accept moderation. We accept incremental change. I’m doing a lot of talking for you, but we have had so many conversations in this area.

Amanda [00:54:22] I’m trying, I’m trying.

Jameela [00:54:23] I think we’re probably still working on it, right?

Amanda [00:54:25] Always.

Jameela [00:54:25] But oh, I think that through my own recognition of how deeply, you know, I fail and so frequently I fail has just gone like, “Well, okay, it’s not just me. It’s all of us.”

Amanda [00:54:35] Yeah.

Jameela [00:54:35] And I have to give myself grace and I have to give the world grace. And it has led to a more peaceful existence for me. I have no more, what is it? Desire is suffering. I have no desire for perfection in myself or in others. And it’s how I’ve been able to let go of my body image stuff and skin and aging and and and imperfection and public imperfection and public humiliation is just to go, “This is how it is. It’s a fucking mess.” And I let go. I and and I think that letting go is is I think ultimately the objective of the book.

Amanda [00:55:07] Yeah, totally.

Jameela [00:55:08] Is to understand and therefore to be able to let go with agency.

Amanda [00:55:11] Yeah. It’s it’s a push pull. It’s like grasp and let go a little bit and then grasp again, you know, it’s that irresolution thing again. It’s that like swing between head and heart and yeah, I mean, oh listen, I oh God. I, I find myself still like expecting people to live, public figures that I admire, to live up to unreasonable expectations. But then I catch it.

Jameela [00:55:34] No, I’ve met too many of them.

Amanda [00:55:34] Then I catch it. No, I know fully. Oh my God, actually, literally.

Jameela [00:55:38] Everyone’s trash.

Amanda [00:55:40] Everyone is trash. And actually, you know how they say like, never meet your heroes? It’s like, no, meet them because you will see how

Jameela [00:55:46] Yes.

Jameela [00:55:46] Fucked up they are.

Jameela [00:55:47] Yeah, truly, truly.

Amanda [00:55:48] No, like fully.

Jameela [00:55:49] It’s part of what made me not really want to go for any kind of, not to say either I could actually achieve extreme success, but it made me not want to do any of the things that would get me there, or go to any of the parties or the meetings or anything, is because I met so many of the people who’d achieved it, and they were all miserable. I’ve been speaking about this for years publicly.

Amanda [00:56:08] Yes.

Jameela [00:56:09] And I was like, “Oh, this is this is very important information for me to have

Amanda [00:56:13] I know.

Jameela [00:56:14] At this early stage of my career.”

Amanda [00:56:16] Dude. It’s so it’s it’s so tough because like, we are sort of geared toward progress as a human species. So it’s like so hard to resist that desire to want to move on to the next thing and do better and like, meet your heroes or not, as it turns out. But I yeah, I was like, just having dinner or dinner or breakfast, some meal. What fucking time is it? I was just having a meal with a mentor today who was like, “Amanda, you should start a production company like Amanda, don’t stop now. Amanda, take over the world.” And I was just like, I don’t know what to do with this because it’s like, there is so much conflicting messaging of like, don’t sell yourself short, but like, don’t be a narcissist. But like, you know, I’m just like, I’m so confused about my own relationship to my own ambition. It’s like, don’t have imposter syndrome, you’re like disempowering yourself, but like, be humble, you know? So I’m just like

Jameela [00:57:11]  I think I think the balance is, in my opinion, if I may, right, something like that

Amanda [00:57:16] Yeah

Jameela [00:57:18] Is for sure, move towards dream, but this hyper individualistic idea that you start the production company on your own and it’s got your name on it, and when you win awards, you’ll go up there on your own and accept that award and you’ll be on the cover of the magazine. That’s the shit that I rail against where I’m like, there are ways. We we need ambition. We need people to, you know, invent amazing things. We wouldn’t have the science breakthroughs that we have now if there weren’t people who were willing to like, do or think or dream or create the impossible. But let’s not do it alone.

Amanda [00:57:53] Yes.

Jameela [00:57:53] Those are labs and labs and labs all over the world, full of people who are, you know, sharing their research with one another. We have to be the same. Share the goal, share the dream, share the glory and share the burden. And so, you know, as I’m building my company with my way, I’m only doing it if it can be as collaborative as possible. I’m making sure that that I do not have to be the the be all and end all of this. That’s where we are broken. We’re broken because we’re all told as individuals to start each startup

Amanda [00:58:23] Completely.

Jameela [00:58:24] Each be our own boss. And it’s like,

Amanda [00:58:26] Totally.

Jameela [00:58:26] Why don’t we all become the boss and leaders of these things together, get there faster and have more of a communal and exciting time on the way.

Amanda [00:58:35] I know.

Jameela [00:58:35] Have a witness to your journey.

Amanda [00:58:37] Completely.

Jameela [00:58:37] It’s so fucking lonely otherwise. So I think there’s a way to achieve great things, we’ve just got to stop trying to do it for ourselves, by ourselves.

Amanda [00:58:45] That’s so true, and it really is full circle because it comes back to the nostalgia thing. Like who is nostalgic about something they did completely by themselves, like,

Jameela [00:58:55] Oh my God, true.

Amanda [00:58:56] Never. Like, you’re always nostalgic for memories that were shared and that were collaborative and collective, even if they were painful and challenging.

Jameela [00:59:04] Unless it is times that I have ordered Postmates and I have sat in my bed watching the TV that only I want to watch that no one else wants to watch.

Amanda [00:59:13] No, no, you’re so

Jameela [00:59:15] So I am nostalgic for that. But apart from that, yeah.

Amanda [00:59:17] I am nostalgic for meals that I shared with me, myself and I in Italy like that, that pasta, that was a relationship. 100%.

Jameela [00:59:26] 100%. That’s a moment. Well, look, let’s end this on my favorite meme that I saw this year, which was May your delulu come truelulu.

Amanda [00:59:37] Love that. I’ve even seen one more that was like delulu is the only solulu to make your dreams come truelulu.

Jameela [00:59:43] Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and research by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording, sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Listener [01:00:21] I weigh my whole self. I weigh having survived 25 years of life. I weigh being a good daughter and always trying to be a good sister. I weigh getting to live life with the love of my life. I weigh the love of my dog who recently passed away. I weigh having lost a dad at 22. I weigh my friends who have become my family. I weigh my ideals and values. I weigh the love for my city. I weigh my loyalty, empathy, and patience. I weigh my intrusive thoughts and my organization skills. I weigh my queerness and womanhood. I weigh all of me.