Intuition

[00:22] Matt: Name is Matt Schultz.

[00:24] Rory: And this is how to be the.

[00:26] Matt: Podcast where we discuss ancient wisdom, modern hacks, paperback self help books, and pithy.

[00:33] Rory: Platitudes in the hopes of figuring out the best way to live this one precious and wild life. As you go through life, do you trust your gut? Rely on the little voice in the back of your head? Prefer to follow your heart? If so, join us as we discover intuition. Hey, Matt. Roar. Oh, my gosh. Sam did something last night that annoyed me so badly. Like, I can still feel the annoyance running through my body.

[01:26] Matt: And what might that have been?

[01:28] Rory: He just made such a meal out of a sneeze.

[01:33] Matt: Wait, what do you mean making that sounds?

[01:36] Rory: Oh, he just put his whole body into it. The noise, the sneeze. He was laying on the couch. He sneezed. His leg flew up in the air twice because it was just the sneeze just overcame him.

[01:58] Matt: Are you saying that after 14 years together, he can’t sneeze till you want him to suppress his sneeze in your presence?

[02:06] Rory: Sneeze what? A sneeze is a tickle in your nose. Why are you being attacked by a spirit? Because you have to release the tickle in your nose.

[02:19] Matt: A man’s sneeze.

[02:22] Rory: Oh, I am still, like, reeling from it.

[02:25] Matt: A man’s sneeze is bigger than a woman’s sneeze.

[02:29] Rory: It’s unbelievable.

[02:29] Matt: It’s like, look at that little nose you have. What do you know about a sneeze?

[02:34] Rory: Okay, all I have to say is that you go.

[02:40] Matt: Haven’t you ever heard that a sneeze is the speed of a hurricane?

[02:47] Rory: You know what? That’s funny, because I was thinking about your sneeze attacks on the phone, which are also incredibly dramatic. And you know what you kind of sound like? You sound like a hysterical woman in an old fashioned film. Being attacked by the wind.

[03:03] Matt: That’s what a sneeze is. You’re being attacked from the wind, by the wind from within the wind within.

[03:10] Rory: It’s unbelievable. I’m still like, really? Your leg needed to fly up in the air.

[03:20] Matt: He wanted to cut loose.

[03:26] Rory: No, thank you.

[03:31] Matt: And you’re suppressing so much else in that household.

[03:38] Rory: No, we are not. And also, he’s the number one.

[03:41] Matt: So you’re not burping in front of each other. But Sam is the real doing the other thing. I can’t even say it to you.

[03:53] Rory: No, we’re very modest people, and that’s really Sam’s lead on that and I appreciate it.

[04:00] Matt: Yeah.

[04:00] Rory: So why not throw the sneeze in there, too? A nice victorian sneeze.

[04:06] Matt: I would love to know the evolving social mores around the sneeze.

[04:13] Rory: Me, too.

[04:15] Matt: I mean, obviously, there’s the bless you.

[04:19] Rory: Yeah, of course.

[04:20] Matt: Contingency. It’s the only thing that a body does that we have a little word for that we say when it happens.

[04:30] Rory: I know, and I really wish there was something for a cough, because sometimes a cough can really silence a room.

[04:38] Matt: Well, a cough is uncomfortable. It’s impolite to draw attention to someone’s cough, whereas it’s impolite to not acknowledge someone’s sneeze, which is very strange because they can both be signs of illness. But a cough, I would imagine this, in the old world, a cough was a little bit more of a sign of, you’re going to die.

[05:05] Rory: Well, didn’t the bless you start from, is this a fact we all know?

[05:11] Matt: Yeah. Like, you’re sick, so you need to be blessed.

[05:16] Rory: Oh, no. It might be apocryphal, but I think it started because they found out really early on that when you sneeze, your heart stops. And so it was a final blessing in case it never came back.

[05:27] Matt: They found that out. Is that true?

[05:30] Rory: Yeah. Everything stops, right?

[05:33] Matt: I’m giving that some side eye.

[05:35] Rory: Well, that’s why I said I’m not really sure if it’s true, but that’s an origin story of the bless you.

[05:43] Matt: I’ve heard that, and I don’t believe this, that it’s because your soul is escaping out of your nose and you have to bless it, and blessing it sends it back in.

[05:54] Rory: Did you just make that up or did you really hear that?

[05:56] Matt: I’ve really heard that. Air conditioner? A little bit. It’s cold. Can I show you something?

[06:05] Rory: I know that it does come from the plague, too, as well, because everyone was like, when the plague happened, suddenly not just priests were allowed to give last rights. Everyone could give anyone last rights.

[06:18] Matt: Oh, everyone was deputized to do that.

[06:21] Rory: Yeah.

[06:22] Matt: You know, they’re always giving each other last rights casually in outlander. Can I show you something?

[06:29] Rory: Yeah.

[06:30] Matt: This is very exciting. Okay, hold on. Let me grab it.

[06:33] Rory: Are you about to do a backflip? Let me show you my backflip.

[06:39] Matt: I’m about to wow you. I’m about to wow you with my.

[06:43] Rory: Follow through, your paint by numbers. Oh, I forgot to do that.

[06:48] Matt: I am holding up to the camera. Two jars of rice, one that says love ahava. I did English and Hebrew and one that says hate sina, and it’s plain white rice. And two clean new jars with water in them. It’s cooked rice. And then I poured water in on top, which was what I was told to do.

[07:15] Rory: Okay.

[07:15] Matt: By the Internet. And I’m going to spend the next few months telling this jar how much I love it, because I do. I love you. I love you so much. And I’m going to tell this jar. Now, that’s easy for me to say, because I do love rice.

[07:32] Rory: You love rice?

[07:34] Matt: I love rice.

[07:35] Rory: But I’m a little in love with your rice. I’m a little in love with this jar of rice.

[07:44] Matt: No, I’m just saying, like, how am I going to work up the hatred for this rice? I hate you.

[07:51] Rory: Well, apparently you, I think, in the episode, said it’s just the words. There doesn’t need to even be feeling behind it.

[07:57] Matt: Yeah. I hate you, Hitler Larice.

[08:03] Rory: I can’t wait to see what happens.

[08:06] Matt: And some people I’ve seen on the Internet also have a third jar that is just neglect. A control jar. Yeah. And what it said was love protects, hate destroys, and neglect fails to protect. So the neglect, it just became subject to rot.

[08:33] Rory: Okay, what’s your hypothesis? Now that you’ve actually put rice and jars and written hate and love on tape on them, what do you think will happen?

[08:49] Matt: I think the hate one will rot hideously.

[08:52] Rory: Oh, my God.

[08:55] Matt: And the loved one will last forever.

[08:59] Rory: Will you eat the loved one in the end?

[09:06] Matt: Um, now, no. That I don’t know. That’s a good question. Then what do you do with it? You keep saying, you see how long you can keep it going? I love you. Just keep loving it, blessing it. It’s like an adoration in Catholicism. An adoration?

[09:27] Rory: Yeah. Maybe it’ll start crying, blood, tears, and take the shape of Mother Teresa.

[09:36] Matt: What do you think will happen?

[09:37] Rory: I think that they will both rot at different paces. That is completely devoid of connection to what piece of tape is written on them.

[09:52] Matt: Yeah. Let’s just say I’m not going to call it. I don’t want any edge cases here. If I’m going to believe in this, I want it to be quite clear. I don’t want it to be like, ooh, the mold in the loved one is a little less gnarly.

[10:09] Rory: Yeah.

[10:11] Matt: Also, like, maybe you’re saying love to the mold and the mold is thriving.

[10:20] Rory: No, you’re not. No. Mold doesn’t speak English either. It’s crazy. I know. Or Hebrew.

[10:30] Matt: So we’ll see. Apparently it takes months so get ready to hear check ins on this for the foreseeable future.

[10:40] Rory: It takes months for rice to rot.

[10:42] Matt: Wet rice, when you’re blessing it to prevent it from rotting.

[10:50] Rory: Okay.

[10:51] Matt: I hate you. Sorry. I’m just telling the one I hate how much I hate it.

[10:55] Rory: You can’t tell the one you hate that you hate it more than you tell the one you love that you love it more.

[11:00] Matt: I love you. You’re my guy.

[11:10] Rory: Okay, well, I guess we’re speaking to both of our intuitions today.

[11:15] Matt: Yeah, we have different intuitions about how this is going to play out, but you need to get moving on this.

[11:24] Rory: Oh, you want me to do it, too? Yeah, I should do it, too. I said I would. I’ll do it today.

[11:28] Matt: You need to do some method acting. I know you’re not a believer, but you need to actually love the rice and hate the rice.

[11:37] Rory: Yeah, I can already see where this is going. If the results are different between our two, you’re going to be like, you weren’t committed enough, you didn’t manifest the rice. Staying alive hard.

[11:49] Matt: No. If it works, it should work. It’s like what we said about manifesting. If what it takes for it to work is a Buddha level of enlightenment and a complete, perfect faith in what you’re manifesting, then it might as well not, you know, but if we figure this out, this will be good during the water wars to keep water safe, to keep our food safe. Just like you have someone in the pantry always blessing the food, right?

[12:27] Rory: Exactly. Pause, people. Matt’s taking the longest chug of water in the world. Speaking of water and the way he chugs today, we’re talking about intuition. What do you think of when you think of intuition?

[12:51] Matt: A preternatural knowing that comes in before the conscious mind. Sometimes overriding the conscious mind, sometimes overridden by the conscious mind. Okay. The other day I was walking to this plant store where I know they have good deals, but there is all this construction, and I had to walk in this narrow alley with like a construction fence on wide. And I got the Willys and I was like, I’m going to walk around. So I start walking around from the other direction, which is a really long way. And after walking a few steps in that way, I’m like, wait, why was I scared to walk down that alley? There was nothing scary about it. Conscious mind. Conscious mind couldn’t figure out what was scary. So I went back, got in there again.

[13:54] Rory: You were like a little fork in the road. You were doing a sliding Frasier. So sliding doors.

[13:59] Matt: Sliding.

[13:59] Rory: Frasier.

[14:00] Matt: Yeah. It’s like, wait, what? I got scared of walking down that direction to the store that I’m going to. That doesn’t make sense.

[14:07] Rory: Okay.

[14:08] Matt: Then I went back. Intuition picked right up again. I was like, I cannot be here. Willys, Willy, Willy, Willys and I fled.

[14:18] Rory: I wish we could ever find out. That’s the problem with intuition, is like a lot of times you don’t know if it was right or not because it isn’t a movie, a sliding doors movie, where you get to see both outcomes.

[14:31] Matt: I don’t necessarily think it was right or wrong. I didn’t interpret it as something bad will happen if I go down this way. I more interpreted it as there are signs of danger that my primal brain is picking up on, that my conscious brain is not trained to look for.

[15:03] Rory: Okay.

[15:05] Matt: Because it has a presumption of safety.

[15:08] Rory: Okay. So if you had gone through, nothing bad would have happened, but you just didn’t want to.

[15:18] Matt: Yeah, there were signs of unsafety. Maybe something bad would have happened. Maybe I would have run into some bad characters. But who knows? I don’t think it was psychic.

[15:31] Rory: I want to see that movie is what I mean.

[15:34] Matt: Yeah.

[15:34] Rory: Of where you go down the alley and like a piano falls on you or something or a rat king comes out.

[15:42] Matt: There was definitely a rat king. But do you hear what I’m saying? I’m saying I don’t think it was a psychic prediction. I think that if you were to. I’m trying to think of an example. The intuition was correct, that it was like bad vibes in there. A place where normal people wouldn’t tread.

[16:13] Rory: Well, I guess that’s the question. Is intuition correct just because the alley was scary?

[16:24] Matt: Yeah. I think there are two ways we talk about intuition. They’re very different. One is like, what are you picking up on in your gut? And based on just signs that your is reading and the other one treats it almost like that. Plus a little psychic element.

[16:48] Rory: Yeah.

[16:50] Matt: You can tell this man is going to murder you.

[16:53] Rory: Absolutely. So the first one that you’re talking about, one where it’s just like a gut feeling that doesn’t have to do with consciousness or logic. Let’s say your brain is assembling something. It’s like a knowledge on a deeper level. Let’s say a primordial level.

[17:11] Matt: Yes.

[17:13] Rory: But that isn’t always right by any means.

[17:18] Matt: When is it wrong, in your opinion? When it’s like about a person being sketchy or dangerous.

[17:25] Rory: Yeah, that’s an example. Or for me, I get this very visceral anxiety about flying. And it’s like, yeah, of course. My deeper self is like, this isn’t normal or natural.

[17:41] Matt: Yeah.

[17:41] Rory: To be in a little tin can in the air or like a situation. I mean, there’s so many situations where your intuition can be just off, and it’s because of all of these reasons within ourselves where logic actually is the right mode to take.

[18:06] Matt: See, I don’t know if I think of it as, like, intuition being right or wrong the other day. So I live in kind of a neighborhood where weird things happen a lot.

[18:18] Rory: Yes.

[18:19] Matt: A lot of homelessness and drug addicts. So as walking down the street early in the morning, I was the only one on the street, and this guy was coming towards me, and he was talking to himself and moving erratically. So I intuited danger, and I started giving him a wide berth. And then he saw me do that, and he didn’t like it, and he started chasing me.

[18:47] Rory: Oh, my God.

[18:49] Matt: I know. He gave up pretty quickly, but I had to run. I was, like, running. So I don’t think it’s that my intuition was right. I think my intuition was correct that someone acting erratically in the street is more likely to mess with you than someone who’s not acting erratically in the street. But whether or not he actually started chasing me or didn’t doesn’t mean my intuition was right or wrong. I think we’re like, we’re working on the intuition is like a big picture thing. It’s like, oh, this kind of situation is risky.

[19:33] Rory: Okay. I guess I’m looking at it through the lens of decision making, which you don’t necessarily have to do at all.

[19:41] Matt: I gave him a wide berth.

[19:43] Rory: That’s true. But was that lot? I feel like that’s almost logical because he’s just, like, acting insane versus a man walking down the street where there’s no visible signs of him being insane. But you intuit, oh, God, I feel like something bad is going to happen.

[20:01] Matt: Yeah. So then there’s that other type of thing that we call intuition, where maybe you’re like, I have a feeling that this plane is going to crash. Yes. And it’s not based on, like, you saw the mechanic visibly drunk, like, pieces falling, but you have a strong tummy located sense something’s going to happen.

[20:36] Rory: Right.

[20:37] Matt: In that we treat, like, a little bit psychic, and it’s like, yeah, we’re often wrong about that. And then when we’re right, we’re like, the gut knows.

[20:48] Rory: Well, yeah, it’s like confirmation bias. You know what I mean? Obviously.

[20:54] Matt: Yeah. When it’s right, we tell that story for years and years and years.

[21:01] Rory: Whereas how many times have I thought a plane is going to go down and it’s never gone down. I’m never telling that story.

[21:08] Matt: Exactly.

[21:09] Rory: And I thought the plane would crash, but it didn’t.

[21:11] Matt: But it’s a terrible story.

[21:15] Rory: I know some people who would tell that story because they’re bad at telling.

[21:22] Matt: Yeah, definitely some people. That’s like in 30 rock. This is one of my favorite 30 rock jokes. I don’t think we ever talk about it, though. Kenneth is like, and I saw a man on the subway who only had three fingers, but then I realized he was just holding his hand like this. There is an impulse to tell that kind of story sometimes, even though it’s.

[21:53] Rory: A terrible story, at least it’s a short story. A long, bad story.

[22:00] Matt: Yeah.

[22:01] Rory: I need to send these people to storytelling class. But here’s the thing also, though, about storytelling, it’s people who consider, like, people who go to storytelling classes, like Glenn Washington on snap judgment, the worst storyteller in the world, actually.

[22:17] Matt: Yeah. We hate Glenn Washington.

[22:19] Rory: The present tense. Stop telling stories in present tense, people. It’s weird.

[22:24] Matt: Oh, you don’t think it adds a little urgency?

[22:32] Rory: That’s a Frasier reference he’s making, writing a present tense as urgency story.

[22:37] Matt: It’s a constructive comment Frasier makes.

[22:43] Rory: Okay, so I was doing a little intuition research. The research conflicting. So some of the studies I read, like on psychology today, were talking about how they would show test subjects, images of people, and the people were able to discern the images were able to discern from the images if a person was gay or not. Sexual orientation, let’s say, better if their conscious mind was distracted than if they were paying closer attention to it and then asked to write out all the reasons why they thought this person was gay or straight.

[23:30] Matt: Interesting. The knowledge at a glance, yes.

[23:36] Rory: But then there’s also this confidence we have in our intuition that actually makes our intuition worse. Like, the more you believe you’re an intuitive person at times or you’re a thought, the more you are attached to an intuitive decision. Let’s say actually instead, that’s more accurate, the less likely that decision is to be true.

[24:02] Matt: What does it mean for a decision to be true?

[24:06] Rory: Okay, for example, if you are an economist predicting stocks.

[24:20] Matt: And you got an intuition.

[24:23] Rory: Yeah.

[24:24] Matt: To sell, sell, sell fiber. I’m such an intuitive person, I got to trust my intuition.

[24:33] Rory: Yes. And then there are just certain jobs that lend themselves to intuition better because they are more obvious patterns. So a firefighter can assess a fire really quickly on an intuitive level because there’s physics behind it, versus, for an example, an economist, where there’s just way too many factors to almost be able to assess the situation so quickly from that unconscious level.

[25:04] Matt: Yeah. Our brain is always doing this, seeking patterns and making predictions. And in things like a fire, that will be useful, and in things that are so complex, like the market, it will just be an illusion.

[25:23] Rory: Exactly. That’s what some of the research says, which I think makes a lot of sense, obviously.

[25:29] Matt: Yeah, that does make sense. Now, there’s also this vision of intuition that’s not about right and wrong, but is just about, do you want to go to law school or not?

[25:46] Rory: Yeah.

[25:46] Matt: And that’s where thought of people who want to make decisions from that place. What do you think about that?

[25:55] Rory: I mean, that’s the thing I struggle with the most, especially because I’m kind of a spiritual person and am very keyed into sort of the occult spiritual community. But I’m also a person with anxiety. So my entire life I’ve been trying to ask spiritual teachers and doing research, how do I know if it’s intuition or anxiety? This is a fixation I have.

[26:21] Matt: Oh, my God. Let me tell you something, and let me see if your reaction to it is what my reaction to it was. Did I show you my talking to someone about an ayahuasca ceremony and what you experience? And they said that after about an hour, you start to see some colors and feel different temperatures, and then a spirit guide will come and deliver you a message. I thought that was so terrifying. A spirit guide telling me a message?

[27:03] Rory: Well, there’s no way that you have to take that advice. That’s what I would feel.

[27:08] Matt: I would be like. I would put such a premium on whatever the spirit guide said.

[27:17] Rory: That’s what I’m saying. You have to believe the spirit guide.

[27:22] Matt: Yeah.

[27:23] Rory: And what if it’s something you don’t want to believe? What if it’s like your biggest fear? Especially because we are scared of what we believe, you and I. Yeah.

[27:31] Matt: We have fears about what we believe. Does that make sense? If you get it, you get it. And, yeah, it’s just, oh, the terror. And then it’s like if someone comes in a spirit guide who has some privileged information from the heavens.

[27:53] Rory: Yeah, absolutely. Not doing ayahuasca. Absolutely do not want a conflicting message from the great beyond. Thank you.

[28:04] Matt: Yeah, save it.

[28:05] Rory: I can’t believe there are people in the world who want a message from a direct message from a spirit guide, and that doesn’t cause them anxiety because they have such a belief that in the spiritual world, this spirit guide is going to come to them and say, it’s all love, baby, or let go, baby. Something really positive that we would value in our current growth, modern world. Whereas you and I do not have that illusion.

[28:34] Matt: Honor your fans. Take better care of your fans. That’s another Frasier joke. Frasier. Let’s take this moment to plug that. There will be a Frasier reboot soon.

[28:52] Rory: Yes, there sure will be. And we will be doing bonus episodes, recapping the Frasier reboot. So everyone sign up for Paramount plus immediately because that’s where it’s going to be streaming.

[29:07] Matt: Now, I don’t know if everyone here in the room with us knows we watch a lot of Frasier. I’ve watched all eleven seasons of Frasier once a year, every year for the past decade and a half. That’s insane. That makes me sound like an insane person.

[29:29] Rory: Well, I think I’ve watched it more.

[29:33] Matt: Than once a year. The full eleven.

[29:38] Rory: I love doing a full eleven.

[29:41] Matt: A season. A month with a month off.

[29:44] Rory: No way. Don’t do a month.

[29:46] Matt: Yeah, no way. It’s eleven seasons in eight days.

[29:55] Rory: It actually, I want to talk about Frasier and intuition. Okay. Because I was also researching. Do you know Daniel Kahneman?

[30:09] Matt: Oh, yeah. Thinking fast and slow.

[30:10] Rory: Thinking fast and slow. So he writes a lot about intuition. So I listened to an interview with him and the host was like, I heard someone say that you make decisions by flipping a coin. And he was like, I never make decisions by flipping a coin. But there is the value of assessing your emotional state by flipping a coin, which is a famous frasier scene that I often hearken back to when I’m making a difficult decision where Frasier, one of the many times he’s deciding between two women’s and Niles, his brother says, let’s flip a coin. Heads it’s Faye, tails it’s Cassandra. And Niles flips the coin and then he goes, admit it, Frasier. You wanted to say one more than the other.

[30:55] Matt: Yes, Cassandra, right.

[31:00] Rory: I think it’s Faye. And then he goes to break up with Cassandra and she’s dating Slade or Sloan.

[31:07] Matt: Sloan, I hate Cassandra. Would have been a very easy choice for me to make because her wiles didn’t work on me.

[31:17] Rory: Well, also, Faye is jewish.

[31:20] Matt: Yes, Cassandra is a great jewish character.

[31:22] Rory: Cassandra is very christian looking.

[31:27] Matt: She’s kind of a Samantha. Hi, boys. I’m Samantha.

[31:34] Rory: Okay. But anyway, back to the point. The coin flip.

[31:39] Matt: The coin flip, it reveals to you your desire, which perhaps you couldn’t cop to or admit to. I mean, do we, like, when we’re making tough decisions, sometimes I feel like. Really don’t know what? Like, this. This was a decision that I agonized over after college, moved to Israel or moved to Chicago.

[32:10] Rory: Oh, right.

[32:12] Matt: I agonized. Eventually, I moved to New York because I couldn’t make the decision. And I did flip a coin, and it landed on its.

[32:23] Rory: That’s great. That is kind of crazy. That’s a weird spiritual sign.

[32:28] Matt: Yeah.

[32:28] Rory: The spirits were like, me would take that as a spiritual sign.

[32:32] Matt: Yeah. The spirits were like, if you’re going to get a message from us, you actually have to pay 999 a month. We’re not giving out free messages. You have to pay for the ayahuasca to get a.

[32:49] Rory: That’s the coin to say.

[32:52] Matt: I don’t know. I think maybe that’s what I wanted to say.

[32:56] Rory: Yeah. A secret third thing.

[33:00] Matt: A secret third know. And I was in New York at the time, pointing right down towards the ground.

[33:07] Rory: Well, I was really agonizing over a job offer recently, as Matt will remember from season 35 of my life, episode 21. I was really agonizing over a job. But really, in the end, in hindsight, which may or may not be accurate, I was never going to take job. Like, in my gut, it was not a job that I wanted by any means, but I absolutely had to get my logical side on board with it, and I had to get everyone whose opinion mattered to me on board with it, too.

[33:49] Matt: Yeah. Sometimes we just want that synthesis.

[33:52] Rory: Essentially, what I did was try to explain to everyone how terrible this job would be.

[33:58] Matt: Yeah. You went on a disinformation campaign.

[34:01] Rory: I went on a smear campaign against.

[34:03] Matt: This job, a media blitz, which, in.

[34:07] Rory: All fairness, was not hard to do. It was not a job I wanted. So it was really easy to point out why I didn’t want it on a logical level. But really, it was an intuitive decision. When I was thinking about working at this place, I was, like, filled with misery.

[34:25] Matt: Yeah, there you go.

[34:27] Rory: Are you excited? Are you filled with misery? Or are you excited to. Do you have a little pep in your step?

[34:34] Matt: Well, I am listening to an audiobook right now.

[34:41] Rory: I’m listening.

[34:43] Matt: I’m listening to an audiobook about the philosopher Hegel.

[34:49] Rory: Heard of him.

[34:51] Matt: So also, I’m on this kick right now of trying to have better mental health. I’m really investing in it so I’ve deleted all apps from my phone, including podcasts. I’m like, no, I can listen to enriching books.

[35:13] Rory: Oh, man. Is this really what’s going to be better mental health for you?

[35:18] Matt: Yes. I can’t be listening to all these podcasts. All this noise, culture wars, politics, past the future debates. No, I see. Bad. For me, it’s noise. Yeah. Because I was listening to very fiery political podcasts. Anywho, Hegel says that we are not actually free because our emotions can be so manipulated and you have to get to this purely rational state behind your emotions 100%.

[36:04] Rory: It’s not even just our emotions that manipulate us. It’s like every situation we’re in. And speaking to that, these studies I was reading about, many findings highlight the unconscious processing built into moral judgment. Often we base opinions on things we never factor into a deliberate decision. In one study, participants approval of sex between cousins depended on whether someone had secretly deployed fart spray nearby. Visceral repulsion led to moral repulsion. In another study, participants were asked whether it was okay to push a large man off a footbridge to block a trolley from killing five other people. If they just watch a clip from Saturday Night Live versus a documentary, their mood was more positive and they were four times more likely to approve.

[37:01] Matt: Yeah, that is insane. But also makes a lot of sense. I’ve definitely had an experience where I’m walking and I’m thinking about something and then I walk through a really bad smell and it becomes knit up with what or who I’m thinking of and I become repulsed by that person.

[37:23] Rory: Yeah.

[37:24] Matt: Smell is really not in a lasting.

[37:27] Rory: Way, but sure, at the time. But I think that goes to what you were saying about what Heigl says. Our emotions are very manipulative, but also our emotions are easily manipulated by our environment.

[37:42] Matt: Yes. So this idea of the book is talking about how our typical view of freedom is free to do as you please. But what do we then do with the fact that what we please is so manipulatable.

[38:04] Rory: On an intuitive level, too, even as a like, obviously you’re not going to ask your parents if you can go do something when they’re in a good mood, not when they’re in a bad mood.

[38:15] Matt: Yes, again, sliding Frasier’s Martin makes that dumb joke. And in one universe, Frasier grumpy is like, dad, will you shut up? And in the other universe where he’s happy, he just got a date. Chuckles and bats it know.

[38:39] Rory: That’S like yesterday we had a little tift over. I forgot what it was. Oh, peacoats. And I wanted to tell you a story, and I wanted you to be on my side with the story. So I knew I had to wait till later in the conversation after Pico Gate had passed.

[38:59] Matt: Okay. But it’s like you can never. Our emotions, essentially, are how we make decisions. Like a truly rational decision cannot really be made without. I don’t know, it’s just like, I don’t know if it’s actually possible for us to get through life without desire, repulsion. Like these things move and shake us.

[39:33] Rory: Yeah. I mean, is it even a rational decision if you ignore the emotions of it? Yeah. What’s the point of the life you build if it’s not emotionally comfortable for you? If it’s only rationally pleasing, appealing?

[39:53] Matt: Yeah. And rationally to what end? All these things are very thorny. And this is why sometimes I’m so turned off by philosophy, because I feel like I prefer that eastern approach to philosophy, which is just meditate and focus on your breath, and eventually you’ll just get it.

[40:20] Rory: I mean, it’s really hard to read a philosophical book and feel like it really checks all the boxes. It’s like the economy versus fire in a house. It’s, like, impossible to fully encapsulate the human experience through thought, through ideas.

[40:46] Matt: Yeah. Also, I’m like, what is philosophy? It’s just like someone writing down how they think the world is.

[40:52] Rory: Yeah. Sparks their interest.

[40:55] Matt: It’s very weird. And they do it always in the most boring way possible.

[41:00] Rory: Through axioms, through, like. That’s the most boring kind of philosophy, is the problem solving the proof philosophy?

[41:09] Matt: Yeah, the proof of God.

[41:12] Rory: Ontological proof of God. Hell to the no, don’t want to spend my time reading that. What about a woman’s intuition? A mother’s intuition?

[41:25] Matt: Oh, yeah, mother’s intuition. A woman’s intuition. I mean, I think that mothers are good. What? They know what’s going on in the house.

[41:41] Rory: So, Matt, have you ever had witch vibes? Like spooky intuition? Like, oh, my God, I know that. A dream of portend or I can just tell that I’m going to find my grandmother’s ring today. It’s a lot of grandmother jewelry stuff, let’s say. Yeah, well, no, you are a man.

[42:03] Matt: Unlike women, women have a natural connection to the other side. Intuition. The other side. I got a dream about a mutual friend of ours. And in that dream I learned some stuff about his family.

[42:21] Rory: Oh, right.

[42:23] Matt: And some very specific things that turned out to be true.

[42:30] Rory: Well, let’s get I don’t think he would mind us saying it. You had a dream when you. No, Matt had a dream.

[42:38] Matt: You say you’re closer, obviously one of.

[42:41] Rory: My nearest and dearest, when we were staying at his family’s lake house, about his mother miscarrying a little girl. And in real life, she did miscarry a little girl.

[42:55] Matt: And I think the timing was correct.

[42:57] Rory: Yes.

[43:00] Matt: In the dream, she said it was six years ago. Would that have been about right?

[43:04] Rory: Oh, I don’t remember that. But maybe she was six months along.

[43:09] Matt: Okay.

[43:10] Rory: Yeah. That was very spooky. And that house was very spooky.

[43:14] Matt: That house was so spooky. The bed spread. The wallpaper.

[43:22] Rory: Yeah, if your bed spread matches the wallpaper.

[43:25] Matt: And it was like a baroque red and black print on the bed and on the wallpaper with red light bulbs in the ceiling.

[43:34] Rory: Yeah. It’s like you’re asking to be haunted in a house like that. Right?

[43:38] Matt: Yeah. Try not to have an intuitive dream. Oh, my goodness. I’m glad I didn’t get abducted by aliens that night.

[43:50] Rory: The thing is that I’m always looking for the intuitive answer, even though it’s geological person. I’m like, if I can just get down to what is supposed to be. Which is why I struggle so much with decision making. Because I am a libra also, and because I am logical. But ultimately, at the same time, I was raised in this spiritual sense. It’s a terrible limbo to be in.

[44:19] Matt: Well, another thing from Hegel is he makes quite a big deal about the fact that the Greeks were great. The Greeks had all this wonderful philosophy, and they started thinking about freedom, but they were still a little bit too primitive in that they consulted oracles for things. And part of what the oracle would do would be to cut open an animal and as a sacrifice, and then examine its organs for science importance. Now, I think that sounds like as good a way as any to get information.

[44:56] Rory: It’s like a poem reading, right?

[44:59] Matt: Yeah. This is part of being like a postmodern human. If the premodern person believes that there are signs in the organs, and the modern person believes that there are not signs in the organs, and that that’s just superstition, the postmodern person thinks, why not? There are. If you want there to be.

[45:28] Rory: More about that, like you think we’re having intuitive renaissance, a spiritual renaissance, in the sense of the other side of the veil, can be almost true.

[45:45] Matt: I see it a lot. Obviously, in jewish terms. In the Middle Ages, you had the birth of jewish mysticism. Very esoteric, very magical, the sort of farthest reaches of it, sort of touching alchemy and things like that. Spells, that was all part of the mystical movement.

[46:10] Rory: Yeah.

[46:11] Matt: Then you had this move in the modern era towards rationalism and people being like, no, we’re going to cut all of this silly mystical, alchemical stuff, mystical, kabbalistic, whatever, out of Judaism, because we don’t believe that that’s not how the universe works. We’re scientific, good people. We’re going to keep the ethical monotheism and we’re going to drop the rest. I think that in my generation of Jews, you have people who are hungry to touch that kabbalistic, magical stuff again.

[46:49] Rory: Yeah, absolutely.

[46:51] Matt: And we believe in it, but not literally. And I think that that ability to both believe and not believe in stuff like that is of a postmodern mind.

[47:05] Rory: And why do we believe in it? Because it’s an experience that can’t be denied.

[47:11] Matt: First of all, I think we kind of believe that any system of belief is an approximation. We go into the world with that attitude.

[47:23] Rory: Yeah.

[47:24] Matt: So then we’re like, okay, what does astrology bring to the table in this conversation that I want to have right now about my life? And we’re not necessarily signing on to the belief that Jupiter is going to bring me wealth in this very literal way. We don’t feel the need to go all in on a belief. We’re like, all beliefs have their truths and they’re not truths. And I think we have a situational way of thinking about these things. What’s that going to bring to the table in this discussion? What language is it going to give me for discussing something slippery? What’s it going to make me feel? Is there some sort of truth that’s hiding within it?

[48:19] Rory: Well, yeah, I think that people like you and I, who are postmodern.

[48:31] Matt: And.

[48:31] Rory: We all are, we’re postmodern dancers, but there are some people who are like, who are very attached to only the rational mind. That’s their mindset of being is rational. And there are some people who are only empirical or only spiritual. But a person like myself, I guess I can only speak for myself of wanting to find a blend of both. It’s just having the need for a spiritual experience and sort of to account for things beyond the logical sense is something that resonates with me and seems to have resonated with thousands of years of people and also understand, I think, the way that I logicize it, logicalize it? Rationalize it is by saying that the human mind has limits in its understanding. And so the experience in and of itself doesn’t need to be understood by the human mind.

[49:28] Matt: Yeah. And I think that these mystical things. And it’s like, what, so you believe in angels and demons? It’s like, no, that’s not quite accurate. But what I’m talking about when I talk about this stuff is that I think that there’s this other realm that is not graspable by the rational mind, as you said. And these other languages of angels, demons, stars and stones are actually more fitting for hinting at that realm.

[50:14] Rory: Yes.

[50:15] Matt: And I don’t believe that we can get then, when people try to really apply the rational mind to the irrational, that’s when I get really turned off. When people are like, oh, yeah, this crystal will help with your gingivitis. I’m like, no, I’m into the idea that a crystal is, like, this really cool mathematical manifestation of matter that stirs the imagination. What if, right at the crossroads of spirit and matter, let’s not get too hard about it.

[50:58] Rory: What about a crystal to heal a psychic problem? Like your heart chakra being blocked?

[51:06] Matt: I’ll give it a try.

[51:07] Rory: You’ll give it a try?

[51:11] Matt: I’ll definitely give it a try.

[51:14] Rory: There was that year that I was feeling really ungrounded, and so I started carrying smoky quartz in my pocket.

[51:21] Matt: Yeah.

[51:22] Rory: And it worked.

[51:24] Matt: I do think that it’s more about how. I don’t know. I guess humans, like, we like crystals for some reason.

[51:35] Rory: Yeah. We needn’t rationalize it.

[51:38] Matt: We need him rationalize it.

[51:40] Rory: We do need to use fluoride in our toothpaste.

[51:44] Matt: What’s that guy’s name? A new earth?

[51:46] Rory: Eckhart toll.

[51:48] Matt: Eckhart toll. He loves crystals and flowers. He thinks that they’re teachers. He’s not claiming they do anything magical. He’s just saying that there’s something about the way they look and feel and are that speaks to the human spirit. Yeah, he’s clearly right.

[52:10] Rory: Does it need to be even more than that? Why does it need to be more than that?

[52:13] Matt: Why does it need to be more than that?

[52:15] Rory: I watched a question about him. Someone asked, is it my ego or my intuition that wants to write a book?

[52:27] Matt: What did he have to say?

[52:29] Rory: The answer wasn’t particularly satisfying to me. Just like no spiritual teacher can ever help me seem to understand what the difference between intuition and ego or anxiety is. The crossroads of my life.

[52:43] Matt: Mine, too, in some ways, when I really think about it.

[52:47] Rory: He said to ask yourself, would it be really cool to write a book or is there something that you absolutely have to say and get out in the world? But that just wasn’t enough for me.

[53:00] Matt: Yeah, I guess just jumping back the OCD, an obsessive compulsive thought is right there, which we both deal with. That thinking, behavior, that type of thought. It’s right there at the crossroads of this very question. Am I having an intuition that the house is burning because I left the stove on?

[53:33] Rory: Right.

[53:34] Matt: Is the fact that the image came into my mind meaningful?

[53:38] Rory: Right.

[53:39] Matt: Or is it just an image that came into my mind? And the wisdom that anyone who has healed from OCD will tell you is that it’s just an image that came into your mind.

[53:52] Rory: Yeah. It’s almost impossible to hold those two beliefs at once. That intuition exists and that your thoughts are not to be believed.

[54:01] Matt: Yeah. Your thoughts are just thoughts.

[54:04] Rory: And it’s like, how can both. And I want to believe in intuition really badly. So I’m constantly trying to reconcile the two. What our therapist, Rafi Coleman, our OCD therapist, say about intuition.

[54:19] Matt: Oh, no. Should we get him on the line?

[54:21] Rory: He would be like, I don’t know. I think he would say, who cares? Does it serve us?

[54:28] Matt: Yeah, that’s definitely what he would say. He’s always saying cute stuff like that. Maybe. Whatever.

[54:39] Rory: Sometimes I feel like I have health intuition. Like, when I had this ear infection, and I was, like, trying to explain to my doctors that this was the ultimate ear infection, and they’re like, it’ll go away in a day. And then it lasted for a year.

[54:52] Matt: Well, there’s.

[54:53] Rory: The second the water got into my ear, I knew that this would be a problem for a lifetime, basically.

[55:00] Matt: Yeah. It was my understanding, type of intuition. In the office, Michael Scott says, it was my understanding that I would not be punished for this. And his boss is like, why did you think that? He goes, it was my understanding. And sometimes we just have an understanding, and sometimes those understandings were correct. One that I like to brag about is it was always my understanding that you could not get Covid from a bag of chips. I was never washing my groceries. I was always quite sure that that was not just the way it would play out. Just didn’t feel right to me. Didn’t make sense.

[55:55] Rory: But at the same time, there are people who are like, it is my understanding that wearing a mask will give you carbon monoxide poisoning. Dioxide poisoning.

[56:05] Matt: Yeah. Their understanding was wrong. Mine was right. And I had other understandings, of course, that were wrong as well. Many Covid understandings were wrong, and many were right. And part of that had to do with the fact that we had a lot of thoughts about it. So some were right and some were wrong.

[56:33] Rory: You know what I was thinking about?

[56:36] Matt: Tell me.

[56:37] Rory: I’m going to tell you. Tell me right now. Matt’s reading persuasion and how that’s a book with a theme of intuition without it explicitly saying it, I guess. Yes, and a sliding doors book. So the book opens with the main character, and several years after, she turned down someone she loved. Proposal, because he was not a man of status or means.

[57:08] Matt: Well, yeah, because people told her not to marry him because she was going to marry him anyways, regardless of his lack of status and means.

[57:21] Rory: And then it’s about her. He comes back. He is a man of status and means, and her grappling with that decision. And even I think the reader is left to be like, well, he left, she turned him down, or ended the engagement, and then he became a man of status and means. So was that the right decision for her to not follow her tuition with intuition? Because then he comes back jaunty and wealthy.

[57:48] Matt: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s interesting, the dimension of status and means in this story. That’s certainly one way to think about this book. She dumped him because he didn’t have that, and there was pressure on her to do so, and he came back with all those things. And, look, she made the wrong choice by listening to those people, but maybe she made the wrong choice anyways because she loved him and she was happy and there was no other happiness waiting for her. That was the man she chose. There was no one else for her. And she gets what I consider to be an absurd amount of proposals in the course of her life, detailed in the book.

[58:45] Rory: Yeah. But I feel like even in that book, as with. What’s it, Mansfield park, there are these men who offer themselves, but these main character women have the. They seem perhaps like they’re good marriage proposals with good men, but their intuition comes into play and it turns out that these men were not quite. They had fallible characters.

[59:15] Matt: Yeah. I mean, in pride and Prejudice also is classic book about not trusting your intuition.

[59:21] Rory: Yeah, it’s the opposite, actually. It’s opposite? Opposite?

[59:25] Matt: Yeah. Your intuition. It wasn’t even intuition. She just had bad info.

[59:31] Rory: Yeah. Just bad first impressions, actually.

[59:35] Matt: Yeah. I don’t really know that book so well at this point. I’ve forgotten. So, like, all I know really is Bridget Jones, but I doubt that Mr. Darcy. She believed Mr. Darcy had slept with his friend’s wife. That wasn’t it.

[59:54] Rory: But this is the thing with, like, I think it’s the most opaque when it comes to the authors intentions for what the readers to think.

[01:00:07] Matt: Yeah, it’s complicated. It’s complex.

[01:00:11] Rory: It’s very complex.

[01:00:12] Matt: And there’s a general air of uncertainty about the future in that book. Was it like, where was it in her career?

[01:00:24] Rory: Her last book? I think it was published posthumously.

[01:00:28] Matt: I was just going to intuitively say, was it her last book? There’s something like.

[01:00:37] Rory: Yeah, it’s kind of like older woman written. Written by an older woman.

[01:00:42] Matt: It’s written by an older woman. Anne sees this old friend of hers from high school who’s now like, an invalid in bath and has lost her fortune. All throughout the book, there’s uncertainty about the future, and there’s people whose prospects look bright, who are brought low, and people whose prospects are low who are brought high. Which might be to say that your intuitions about where people will end up are innately infallible. I mean, innately. And, you know, her silly, superficial father who’s always poring over that family book because he’s so anxious about how’s the story going to end?

[01:01:34] Rory: Oh, right.

[01:01:35] Matt: Will I rise or will I fall? That’s what we say on Rosh Hashanah. We say, who will rise this year and who will fall?

[01:01:43] Rory: And you know what? Everyone has to fall somewhere on that wheel of fortune, right?

[01:01:49] Matt: Yeah.

[01:01:50] Rory: You can’t live your whole life rising to the top.

[01:01:53] Matt: No, you cannot. A time to live, a time to die, a time to be born, a time to. Time to die. Ecclesiastes read during the holiday of Sukhot, which is now.

[01:02:13] Rory: So I guess, obviously, I believe in intuition on that psychic level, too, because I consult psychics. And as we were talking about that Ayahuasca story and the fear I have of a spirit guide telling me something definitely indicates that. I believe in spirit guides who have a deeper knowledge of my past, future, and present.

[01:02:37] Matt: They know something. But as one of my teachers once told me, spirits can have their own baggage.

[01:02:42] Rory: Oh, yeah, I’ve definitely seen psychics who say, oh, your dead grandmother says you should wear. She doesn’t like what you’re wearing, you should wear more blue. But you don’t have to take her advice. Even ghosts have egos.

[01:02:57] Matt: Yeah, this is not the godhead on the line, okay? It’s just some lady.

[01:03:05] Rory: God never wants to come and tell you directly what they think.

[01:03:10] Matt: Yeah, ghosts have ego. I mean, we’ll get into that during our ghost episode, which is the next one right around the corner in time for spooky season.

[01:03:28] Rory: Okay. So, yeah, I think I’ll be continuing on my journey of trying to suss out a thought versus an anxious thought versus an intuition. But I will continue flying on airplanes, and if I die on one, we’ll know my intuition was right.

[01:03:46] Matt: Yes.

[01:03:48] Rory: If I don’t know it was anxiety.

[01:03:52] Matt: My how to be on this is listen to your intuition as a source of knowledge about how you feel about things, not as a psychic channel into what will happen or not.

[01:04:08] Rory: See, I’m kind of like, hone those psychic skills, Mallory. Psychic says ground yourself more if you want to hone your psychic skills, but also do exposure response therapy to overcome your OCD.

[01:04:22] Matt: Yeah. Can you do both of those things?

[01:04:25] Rory: All right, Matt, always a pleasure.

[01:04:27] Matt: Always a pleasure. God bless. God bless you.