Bias with Anu Gupta, Obsessive Thoughts About Ex, Physical Pain - MINISODE

Bias with Anu Gupta, Obsessive Thoughts About Ex, Physical Pain - MINISODE

Released Wednesday, 23rd April 2025
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Bias with Anu Gupta, Obsessive Thoughts About Ex, Physical Pain - MINISODE

Bias with Anu Gupta, Obsessive Thoughts About Ex, Physical Pain - MINISODE

Bias with Anu Gupta, Obsessive Thoughts About Ex, Physical Pain - MINISODE

Bias with Anu Gupta, Obsessive Thoughts About Ex, Physical Pain - MINISODE

Wednesday, 23rd April 2025
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I'm really excited that Alipop added

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a crisp apple flavor to their

1:55

lineup. Hey, I'm Gabe Dunn. I'm

1:57

a writer, bi -con, bisexual icon, wink.

2:00

And that's so funny. I just

2:03

tried the apple Celsius, and it's

2:05

disgusting to me. Well, Celsius

2:07

seems disgusting in general. Sure.

2:09

But the apple flavor of it was like,

2:11

I was like, this is apple juice. This

2:13

is like sparkly. You like an apple flavor?

2:16

Oh, I love an apple flavor. I

2:18

love an apple juice. I love

2:20

a sparkling apple juice. I mean, it

2:22

doesn't get much classier than having

2:24

some martinellis. No,

2:27

I don't like it. Oh, so then of

2:30

course you weren't going to like, if you don't

2:32

like apple flavored things, why would you like

2:34

an apple flavored Celsius? It was like,

2:36

I guess I got sold by like Fuji

2:38

Apple. Also, sometimes I have this completist mindset

2:40

where I'm like, well, I have to try

2:42

every flavor of the thing that I like.

2:44

So I'm like, well, I should try every

2:46

single flavor. So far, I've

2:49

only disliked one flavor of Olive Pop,

2:51

which is the Dr. Goodwin's flavor. And

2:53

I think that's their attempt at,

2:55

like, Dr. Pepper. And

2:57

it's disgusting. I couldn't even drink

2:59

it. I love that all soda must

3:01

be a doctor. Well, the

3:03

Dr. Pepper flavor must be a doctor. Must

3:05

be a doctor. I love Dr. Pepper. Yeah,

3:08

of course. Dr. Goodwin's got this a

3:10

little, it's gone awry, something went awry. Maybe

3:12

if they hadn't primed you to think

3:14

of it as Doc, you know what I

3:16

mean? it tastes like cough medicine. It's

3:18

not good. But do

3:20

you think mentally you were primed for

3:22

a Dr. Pepper -esque flavor? And if they

3:24

hadn't promised no priming or lack of priming

3:26

that would have made me like that

3:28

taste. It's a bad taste. Okay, but I'm

3:30

just saying they shot themselves in the

3:33

foot for people who are expecting Dr. Pepper.

3:35

They should have just let it be

3:37

what it is so that is gross. It

3:39

should have just been flavored gross. Sure,

3:41

but like for example, you know, like when

3:43

there's a, I know what you're saying,

3:45

but in this situation, it was not about

3:47

the priming. No, I know. But do

3:49

you, what do you think about the idea

3:51

where I think about this where it's

3:53

like with Anna Kendrick's movie, Woman of the

3:55

Hour? I was like, this would have

3:57

been a really cool movie, but it's held

3:59

back by being connected to a real

4:01

life crime. Then people say, oh, this is

4:03

like interesting because it's a real life

4:05

crime. That's probably why it got greenlit. But

4:07

I'm like, No, it should have just

4:09

because the anticipation of it being related to

4:11

this other crime made it too high

4:13

of standards. It shouldn't it shouldn't have been

4:15

there shouldn't even be a conversation of

4:17

oh how close was it to the real

4:19

crime and how did she portray the

4:21

real crime should have just been a horror

4:23

movie on its own. Why?

4:25

Because it didn't it didn't live up to that

4:27

if it was just a movie on its

4:29

own about a woman like being scared whatever like

4:31

then that would have been interesting to me

4:33

because they could have had free reign. But because

4:36

they were like, oh, how close can we

4:38

get to the real story? And then if you're

4:40

you know a lot about the real story,

4:42

you're like waiting for certain things from the real

4:44

story. But it was just about, you

4:46

know, like I think sometimes they make it

4:48

part of a franchise and it could have just

4:51

or connected to something. It should have just

4:53

been its own thing. I mean,

4:55

I do think that the the main part

4:57

about Woman of the Hour was the

4:59

dating game aspect of it. And that was

5:01

based on a real thing. But it

5:03

could have been based on, but it shouldn't

5:05

have been the story of. That's

5:08

what I think. It was an OK movie.

5:10

It boxes you in. This

5:12

is just between us, a

5:14

variety show filled with heartfelt advice.

5:16

Ridiculous games. And brutal honesty. This

5:19

week, we are going to be talking

5:21

all about bias. Yes, with

5:23

Breaking Bias author Anu

5:25

Gupta. And later, we're

5:27

going to be discussing physical pain. How

5:30

do we think about it? What's our tolerance

5:33

for it? Why is it bad? This is because

5:35

you went with me to my nerve test.

5:37

Yeah, and I'm just like, my knees hurt a

5:39

lot. I don't know. It's also five years

5:41

in. I need topics. Stick around. We've

5:43

got an exciting interview with our highly

5:45

esteemed guest, Anu Gupta. Stay tuned. Welcome

5:51

back to Just Between Us.

5:53

It's time for the juiciest, most

5:55

scandalous, most controversial segment known

5:57

to all of podcasting. This

6:01

week on the show, we have Anu

6:03

Gupta, an American teacher and author of Breaking

6:05

Bias, trained as a lawyer, scientist, and

6:07

educator. Anu has trained

6:09

100 ,000 plus professionals in his

6:11

unique trauma -informed, shame -free approach

6:13

to building bridges and breaking

6:16

bias, impacting over 30 million

6:18

lives. Hello. Hello. It's

6:20

so good to be here with you

6:22

all. We're really excited to dive into

6:24

this because I have a psychology background

6:26

and I just all day long kind

6:28

of think about bias. So I'm just

6:30

like very curious, you know, how do

6:32

you define such like an important term?

6:34

Yeah, it's such a great question. So

6:36

the way I think about bias is,

6:38

you know, as someone who's on top

6:40

of all those professional things you listed

6:42

gay, I'm also a gay immigrant of

6:44

color. So for me, bias is something

6:47

that's super personal and something I've experienced.

6:49

People often see me through the lens

6:51

of those identities versus all the professional

6:53

things I've done. And what

6:55

I realized in my own journey is that all

6:57

types of biases are learned. So the way I

6:59

define bias is that these are learned habits. What

7:01

they do is that they distort how we

7:04

perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions. And

7:06

there are two dominant forms of biases.

7:08

There are conscious biases, which are learned

7:10

false beliefs. So thinking that

7:12

men are stronger than women or make

7:14

better. leaders and women, that's a false

7:16

belief, yet people hold those beliefs and

7:19

then that distorts how they perceive, reason,

7:21

remember, and make decisions. Or

7:23

they're unconscious biases, which are more

7:25

nefarious. These are learned habits

7:27

of thoughts. So these are associations

7:29

that we have. So when we think of a

7:31

leader or a surgeon or a yoga teacher, who

7:34

are the first humans that come to mind? And

7:36

then those habits of thoughts, you

7:38

know, there's a famous rule in neuroscience

7:40

known as neurons that fire together,

7:42

wire together. So it's basically like that

7:44

wiring of our brain that ends

7:46

up impacting how we see ourselves, but

7:48

also how we see others and

7:50

how we make decisions. And for me,

7:52

that is a root cause of

7:54

every single challenge we face in the

7:56

century. So would you say that

7:58

they are different in each culture and

8:00

that it is really based on

8:02

the culture that you're in where you

8:04

start to create connections between certain

8:06

groups being a certain way? Yeah. So

8:08

that's really why I wrote this

8:10

book, Breaking Bias, because you're absolutely right.

8:12

There are so many different human

8:14

identities that we have, what I call

8:16

our secondary identities. Our primary

8:18

identity is that we're part of

8:21

the same species. We are 99

8:23

.9 % identical, whether we're in China

8:25

or Brazil or the US. We're

8:27

the same human organism. Yet the

8:29

way we label that organism based

8:31

on our various identities, our ethnicity,

8:33

our religion, our gender identity, our

8:35

sexuality, those vary. Now,

8:38

for any kind of bias, there are the

8:40

same five causes. There are five causes that

8:42

make up any form of bias, any isomorphobia

8:44

we experience in our world. And for me,

8:46

that was really what got me started on

8:48

this work. I was like, wow, there's so

8:50

much promise. You know,

8:52

this is not just about addressing racism

8:54

or sexism or transphobia or something

8:56

else. It's addressing all forms of biases,

8:59

the biases that really sever our

9:01

connection with ourselves and one another. Can

9:03

you explain what those five reasons

9:05

are for biases? Yeah, yeah. So one

9:07

of the things I use in

9:09

my book is kind of bridging ancient

9:11

wisdom traditions, you know, the mind

9:13

sciences, particularly from the Buddhist tradition and

9:16

modern neuroscience. And when

9:18

we think about any kind of

9:20

phenomenon that takes place in the world,

9:22

it's really a consequence of various

9:24

causes and conditions. So bias

9:26

will be the consequence of, you know,

9:28

five causes. And the first is

9:30

really a false story. So once

9:32

there's a false story, that

9:34

story gets adopted into the

9:36

cultural norms and policies of a

9:38

nation or society. So

9:41

the second cause is policies

9:43

that are basically created based

9:45

on that false story. And

9:47

then basically all of us who

9:49

are living in the social container get

9:51

conditioned and to bias through the

9:53

remaining three causes. Social

9:55

contact, education and media.

9:58

So if you think about our

10:00

senses, our sense of sight,

10:02

smell, taste, feeling, imagination, all

10:04

of these senses get captured by

10:06

that way of dividing our humanity. So

10:09

how old is this concept of

10:11

race? Race as an identity that we

10:13

are often dealing with day to

10:15

day. And I'll give you four options,

10:17

10 ,000 years, which

10:20

is the age of agriculture.

10:22

We became settled humans, the

10:24

agricultural revolution, 5 ,000

10:26

years, biblical era,

10:28

500 years, colonialism, or

10:31

250 years, like around the time

10:33

of the French and the American

10:35

revolutions. So we'd love to

10:37

hear from both of you. And again,

10:39

no shame in the game. We're

10:41

going to take a quick break, but stick

10:43

around. I'm someone

10:46

that has always been so blown away

10:48

by other people's ability to speak multiple

10:50

languages. I even took Latin growing up

10:52

because I was so afraid of having

10:54

to take a language where I was

10:56

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10:58

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we're back. Well, it's interesting

15:03

because I think that there was

15:05

a concept of at least

15:07

class of class of person back

15:09

in the all the way

15:11

back in the agricultural times. I

15:13

think there was the idea.

15:16

It's interesting because they do talk

15:18

about slavery in the Bible,

15:20

but it's based on it's not

15:22

based on race. It's based

15:24

on like social class or needing

15:26

to provide for your family

15:29

or, you know, whatever it is.

15:31

I would say maybe the,

15:33

the, the, what was the fourth

15:35

one? The colonial times? That

15:37

was the third one. Yeah. 500

15:39

years. Well, it seems like it

15:42

would be in between the Bible and 500

15:44

years. So. Create

15:46

your own answer. I love it. I

15:48

know. Because it's not, well,

15:50

it's, is it? Okay,

15:52

is racism like aligned with

15:54

exoticism or, you know,

15:56

the use of the black

15:58

body in the freak

16:00

show or, you know, like

16:02

the idea of the

16:04

mystical oriental, you know, orientalism,

16:06

like it's tough for

16:08

what we are, what falls

16:10

under racism. But I'm

16:12

going to say biblical times.

16:14

Okay, 5 ,000 years. Perfect.

16:16

Yeah. Great. I'm just

16:18

going to guess because of

16:20

the fact that you're

16:22

asking the question that it's

16:24

500 years. 500 years,

16:26

perfect. So this is, again, you

16:29

are two very, very educated, very well

16:31

-informed humans that exist in our world.

16:33

You've shared your knowledge and your humor

16:35

with so many people. And yet the

16:37

two of you have a disagreement on

16:39

this. particular answer, right? But my disagreement

16:41

is also because I'm trying to win

16:44

the game. That's right. I'm thinking about

16:46

how you propose the question. Of course.

16:48

But that's one of the challenges, because

16:50

I have asked this question of doctors,

16:52

of therapists, of lawyers, and all

16:54

of us are working around this really

16:56

important topic of, you know, whether disparities and

16:58

suffering that people experience yet, a lot

17:00

of us aren't taught that, oh, how old

17:02

is this concept of race, you know? I

17:05

mean, the answer is actually 250 years. like

17:07

race as a human construct of

17:09

human division is a very, very

17:11

recent phenomenon that was created by

17:13

a bunch of humans, bunch of

17:15

guys, mostly, who were so divorced

17:17

from their humanity that they collected

17:19

body parts and skulls of human

17:21

beings from around the world. And

17:24

these dudes, you know, in the

17:27

mid -1700s, one of these dudes really

17:29

found one skull to be the pinnacle

17:31

of human beauty. You

17:33

know, he basically called it the perfect

17:35

skull ever to have existed. We're talking

17:37

about a skull. And the

17:39

skull happened to be of an enslaved woman who

17:41

was in the Russian court. And

17:44

what was then, you know, the

17:46

Caucasian mountains or the modern day country

17:48

of Georgia. And he

17:50

anointed it the term, Caucasoid. And

17:53

through that, a very simplistic

17:55

hierarchy of, you know, five or

17:57

six racial categories came about.

17:59

And those racial categories entered policies.

18:01

That's the second cause of

18:03

bias, right? And those policies,

18:06

of course, entered in the United States

18:08

and Canada and South Africa and Australia

18:10

and Brazil, wherever you go, and

18:12

basically began to create a

18:14

demarcation of how we as human

18:16

beings view ourselves better or

18:18

worse than one another. And

18:20

we're still in that paradigm. So,

18:22

you know, questions I went out to,

18:24

I was at South by Southwest a couple

18:26

of weeks ago, and in my book

18:29

talk, you know, one of the students asked

18:31

that, hey, like, what is the one

18:33

takeaway that you'd want folks to... from

18:35

your book and I'm like yeah the

18:37

big thing is we need a paradigm

18:39

shift around how we see ourselves in

18:42

one another and we need to like

18:44

create an objective goal that we have

18:46

to overcome how we've been racialized as

18:48

humans and really overcome this false story

18:50

of race that is ever so pervasive

18:52

in our society. And I do wonder

18:54

you know there was othering before this

18:57

right and that was very much it

18:59

was often based on religion. and what

19:01

your religious practices were. So it's not

19:03

like before 250 years ago, we were

19:05

all seeing each other as equal. It

19:07

was more just like, I'm going to

19:09

judge you based on your religion. And

19:11

then it became, I'm going to judge

19:14

you based on your religion and your

19:16

race kind of, right? Yeah, oh my

19:18

gosh. That's why there's so many identities.

19:20

There's ethnicity. There's tribes. There's religious practices.

19:22

There are gender. We haven't even talked

19:24

about that. There's sexuality. There's gender identity.

19:27

So all of these human identities coexist

19:29

within each other. So for me,

19:31

as I think about all the identities

19:33

that I have and I sit

19:36

at the intersection of, all of us

19:38

have these identities. And what

19:40

these identities are, they create these

19:42

false human hierarchies. Make us feel

19:44

better or worse about ourselves. And

19:46

for me personally, I came to this

19:48

work because I had internalized a lot

19:50

of the stories associated with my identities,

19:53

you know, with my color, with my

19:55

ethnicity, with my sexuality. And

19:57

I started being like, oh my gosh, like, maybe

19:59

there is something wrong with me. And,

20:01

you know, 16 years ago, when I was

20:03

in law school, I found myself on the

20:05

ledge of my 18th floor window about to

20:07

jump off because I was like, I just

20:10

don't want to live anymore. But after I

20:12

jumped, I found myself back in my apartment.

20:14

So was like a moment of grace where

20:16

instead of falling forward onto the midtown Manhattan

20:18

traffic, I was back in my apartment and

20:20

I called a friend who lived quite far

20:22

away from me, but happened to be walking

20:24

in my neighborhood. And she

20:26

showed up and the next day I

20:28

began my own breaking bias journey, which

20:31

was a lot of internalized biases, internalized

20:33

oppression, and the tools and,

20:35

you know, the therapeutic services I

20:37

saw were just from my

20:40

personal healing, but. the science began

20:42

to show that they actually

20:44

help break bias, measureably reduce bias.

20:47

So that's how I got started on this work. I

20:50

feel like a lot of what's

20:52

going on right now, and perhaps

20:54

even back, back, back, back in

20:56

the, in when this all started,

20:58

a lot of it is based

21:00

in fear, which is why I

21:02

even try to have empathy. in

21:05

some ways for people that

21:07

even hate me as a trans

21:09

person, because I feel like

21:11

there is so much fear. The

21:14

fear of, as Allison said, the

21:16

other, the fear of, oh, you

21:18

come from this other place, are

21:20

you going to overtake me? And

21:22

as you said, one of the

21:24

five pillars is policy and media.

21:27

And it is very... on

21:29

what is getting reported

21:32

or what is getting shown,

21:34

which creates this fear. And

21:37

I feel like people absolve themselves

21:39

because they say, well, you know,

21:41

I'm reading the news or even

21:43

the people working in media, well,

21:45

I'm reporting the news. But you're

21:47

choosing what to cover, you're choosing

21:49

what to show, you're choosing to

21:52

write five days in a row

21:54

above the fold A1 articles about

21:56

trans people, 2 % of the

21:58

population in the New York Times. So

22:01

what have you found around

22:03

like fear being a motivator

22:05

for bias? Yeah,

22:07

so the fear is a consequence,

22:09

right? So basically a false story

22:11

is created about our humanity. So

22:13

the false story of a permanent

22:15

binary gender. based on our body

22:17

parts or biology. And

22:20

some people prescribe that false story to

22:22

be the only and the right story. And

22:24

then they project it through those five

22:26

causes. And the way

22:28

that story is created is whenever

22:30

someone digresses in that story, those

22:33

people are to be feared. And

22:35

that triggers part of our brain known

22:37

as the amygdala. And it creates

22:39

this false dichotomy of us and them,

22:42

the right and the wrong. And the

22:44

challenge there is that The story

22:46

is false. The foundation is faulty

22:48

because we know that people of

22:50

different gender identities have existed since,

22:52

you know, as long as

22:54

what's interesting, right? Even with homophobia,

22:57

you know, we talk about the

22:59

Romans seemed, I mean, it

23:01

was a mess, but they seemed

23:03

fine with that. And then all of

23:05

a sudden, how does it become

23:07

like everything's fine suddenly? Oh, no,

23:09

we have to we have to hate

23:11

these people. Yeah, and for me, because

23:13

of my own identities, I go to

23:15

the research from the non -Western world. You

23:18

know, I look at the Indigenous communities across

23:20

the Americas. I look at the Asian and African

23:22

and Southeast Asian and Aboriginal communities from Australia. You

23:25

know, the vast majority of

23:27

humanity, right? Everywhere. And they've had

23:29

ways of, you know, celebrating

23:31

gender and sexuality. You know,

23:33

one of the people I spoke

23:35

with is Native Alaskan, and they

23:37

were the last to be colonized

23:40

in the 1920s. But she said,

23:42

we have memory of two -spirit

23:44

individuals in our communities. For

23:46

them, it's like, yeah, we had gender that was

23:48

so pervasive. was like five or six different types

23:50

based on, of course, our sex,

23:52

what we call sex today, but

23:54

also our gender identity and how

23:56

we saw our temperament and we

23:58

had certain social functions. you

24:00

know, in the South Asian communities, we have the

24:02

Kinner and the Hydra communities that have, you know,

24:05

many, you know, of course, a lot of them

24:07

have been oppressed and marginalized in so many ways,

24:09

but they've existed for thousands of years. There's

24:12

actually a, which I found was

24:14

really beautiful. There is

24:16

a representation of one of

24:18

the Hindu gods as a transgender

24:20

person, Ardhinder Aishwarya, right? Half

24:22

man, half woman. So, These stories

24:24

have existed, right? But we have to

24:26

then, for me, as a researcher, I

24:28

was like, well, how did it become

24:30

this? How did this idea of binary

24:32

gender become so globalized? Because this is

24:34

a problem now, not only in our

24:36

country in the US, but it's a

24:38

problem across the global South as well.

24:41

Well, this is where colonialism really comes

24:43

into place, and they created a policy

24:45

known as the Code of Religious Offenses. So

24:48

as the European powers were spreading

24:50

around the world, forced across the

24:52

US, but also Latin America, Africa,

24:54

and other places, gender

24:57

identities that were transgressive of

24:59

the binary gender were persecuted.

25:02

Folks were literally killed and shamed

25:04

for who they are. And

25:06

then that false story gets

25:08

to be internalized. And

25:11

that's how we, of course, created that oppression

25:13

within ourselves, but also in the societies we

25:15

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26:50

we're back. So this is all

26:53

white supremacy's fault, and this is

26:55

the fault of some guy holding

26:57

a skull. Is this

26:59

all that skull's fault? Well, you

27:01

know, for me, it's interesting because

27:03

I don't blame the people that

27:05

hold such abhorrent views as the

27:07

root cause of the problem. I

27:10

once again go back to the

27:12

ancient wisdom traditions, and I use

27:14

a lot of animist wisdom in

27:16

my writing and my thinking. And

27:18

the fault is really our minds.

27:20

This is where bias really begins.

27:23

So this is a challenge of our consciousness. And

27:25

there's a very beautiful story. It's

27:27

a prescribed to like the Cherokee

27:29

tradition where, you know, a Cherokee

27:32

grandfather is speaking to his granddaughter

27:34

and he's talking to her about,

27:36

well, you know, there are two

27:38

wolves that are constantly fighting. you

27:40

know, one is really rooted in

27:42

like competition and domination is very

27:44

selfish and cruel. And the other

27:47

is rooted in compassion and love

27:49

and interdependence. And the granddaughter

27:51

asks the grandfather, hey, like, which

27:53

of these two wolves is going

27:55

to win? And he says, well,

27:57

the one you feed, right? So

27:59

that's where in the indigenous traditions

28:01

of the Americas, they actually termed

28:03

they have a term for what's

28:05

known as a mind disease that

28:07

they saw in the early colonists

28:09

which is called wetiko and this

28:11

mind disease is basically when they

28:13

first met the european colonists as

28:15

they were coming in they were

28:17

like whoa like these dudes have

28:19

these people have like a disease

28:21

because they're so selfish and they're

28:23

so like in trance with just

28:25

like domination and taking and extracting

28:27

and they're not about the community

28:29

which was very foreign to them

28:31

and then i started seeing that

28:33

these similar ideas have existed across

28:35

traditions in Europe, in Africa, in

28:38

in Buddhism, in Asia and other places.

28:40

And that's what we're talking about.

28:43

It's really not the fault of

28:45

those white supremacists who collected skulls.

28:47

They were infected by this disease. And

28:50

now that same disease of wetiko

28:52

has become globalized through those same

28:54

vectors, through education, through media, through

28:56

social contact. Of course, modern day

28:58

algorithms are not helping that cause.

29:01

But I think for me the

29:03

invitation and opportunity is that we

29:05

can now use those vectors to

29:07

spread kindness, to spread understanding, to

29:09

really bridge the information gap and

29:11

correct a lot of this misinformation

29:13

so we can overcome the ways

29:15

we treat ourselves but also treat

29:17

one another. Yeah, can we get

29:19

into the strategies that you've developed for

29:21

breaking biases? Yeah, so

29:24

a lot of them are rooted in

29:26

the neuroscience and how our brain works.

29:28

The promise of unlearning bias is

29:31

really in this idea known

29:33

as neuroplasticity. The ability of our

29:35

brains to rewire itself to

29:37

unlearn old ways of being and

29:39

learning new ways of being. Like

29:42

if you were to ask my younger

29:44

self like 20 years ago if I

29:46

would be ever out and partnered and

29:49

you know living out loud as they

29:51

say, like I'd be like

29:53

there's no way. Like there is no

29:55

way because I had so much internalized

29:57

tomophobia and queerphobia that I couldn't even

29:59

imagine this was possible for me. But,

30:01

you know, that's how, but that's how

30:03

pliable and flexible our minds are that we

30:06

could create new ways of being. And

30:08

that really begins with what I, you

30:10

know, mindfulness is kind of the core

30:12

of how we break biases. So

30:14

there are five tools, what I

30:16

call prism, and prism is

30:18

an acronym for each one of these tools.

30:21

And it's really an integration of you

30:23

know, our head with our hearts and our

30:25

bodies as well as our souls. So

30:27

it's a very somatic -based practice and it

30:29

requires us to really build new habits. So

30:31

we start with M actually and move

30:33

our way up to P. So

30:35

starting with mindfulness, we become

30:38

aware of thoughts, emotions, experiences,

30:40

particularly as we contemplate around bias

30:42

that we've experienced or also we

30:45

witness in our own thoughts and,

30:47

you know, in our own minds. Then

30:49

we move to stereotype replacement. which

30:51

is really once we become

30:54

aware of stereotypes in our minds

30:56

we notice them and we

30:58

label them as stereotypes and simultaneously

31:00

bring up counter examples of

31:02

counter examples that are positive. So

31:05

you mentioned Gabe like really having

31:07

a mental model of you know

31:09

trans people that aren't just you

31:11

know drag queens or you know

31:13

performers but who are doctors or

31:15

surgeons or lawyers or writers and

31:17

knowing that And that way we're

31:19

building those new neural transmitters. I'm

31:21

okay with drag queens. I just

31:23

don't want to be seen as

31:25

molesting people in bathrooms. And that,

31:27

right? That's kind of like exactly.

31:29

So that's basically when you become

31:31

aware of the stereotypes, these false

31:33

stories, these false narratives that are

31:35

dehumanizing. So it's about

31:37

creating also a repertoire

31:39

around our human identities. And

31:42

then we move to I, which is

31:44

individuation. So being with people

31:46

as who they are versus our ideas

31:48

of them. So if I'm with

31:50

Gabe, I'm really with Gabe versus my ideas

31:52

of Gabe, because Gabe is a unique individual

31:54

with a whole lot of talents and gifts

31:56

that are unique from all the identities he

31:58

holds. So that again takes the

32:00

practices to the of curiosity. And

32:03

lastly, we move to heart practices.

32:05

So pro -social behaviors, which are,

32:07

you know, mental and emotional states of

32:09

mind that are positive. So

32:11

active cultivation of compassion. empathy,

32:14

joy, altruism, forgiveness,

32:17

even. So these

32:19

are behaviors that are prosocial, but that

32:21

require practice. And lastly,

32:23

perspective taking, which is imagine what it's

32:25

like to be in the shoes

32:27

of another person, including ourselves, so we

32:29

can practice that for ourselves. So

32:31

one of the meditations I often lead is,

32:33

you know, imagine yourself as a five -year -old

32:35

child, right, who you were back

32:37

then, and then can you hold empathy and

32:40

compassion for that being, you know,

32:42

for all the things that may they may

32:44

have already experienced and they are yet to experience.

32:47

I think this is where the neuroscience

32:49

is really clear. But these

32:51

practices are helping us do it's

32:53

they're fighting or combating all the

32:55

negative things we are fed through

32:57

the five causes of bias. So

32:59

we're beginning to shift the inclination

33:01

of our heart, mind towards what's

33:03

possible. I think that's so beautiful,

33:05

but it requires a desire to

33:08

change the people that most needed

33:10

are not going to do it,

33:12

but. Yeah. I think in my

33:14

mind, I think they can be

33:16

led there slowly. That's right. By

33:18

someone else. And like, also, you

33:20

know, it's interesting when you talked

33:22

about individual individuation, it's the idea

33:24

that, you know, there's this narrative

33:26

now where every time there's a

33:29

murder they have to report, it

33:31

was an undocumented immigrant, but

33:33

not that an individual it's a

33:35

creation of patterns where they don't exist

33:37

or because it's like oh well

33:39

you're not reporting on all the domestic

33:41

violence within like white couple or

33:43

whatever it is you know i think

33:45

that's one of the hardest ones

33:47

is the individuation not saying oh trans

33:49

people all do this or well

33:51

i know this person and this person

33:53

and this person you know i

33:55

had someone on my bad with money

33:57

podcast who Had moved her a

33:59

black woman She moved her entire family

34:01

to Ghana because that's where her

34:03

husband is from but in the United

34:05

States She was saying that her

34:07

little daughter was only seeing certain types

34:09

of black people and now in

34:11

Ghana Everyone is black so she's like

34:13

her doctor is black her bus

34:15

driver is black her teachers You know

34:17

like and she was like she

34:19

could see that that had really impacted

34:21

the daughter and I think in

34:23

like that kind of society, right? Because

34:25

I don't want to be like

34:27

everyone should be the same race. But

34:29

it's like, you're able to see

34:31

these individuals doing these things and not

34:33

like, this is a female pilot,

34:35

or this is a black lawyer, you

34:37

know I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And

34:39

I think this is why for me,

34:41

this is long term work, you

34:43

know, breaking bias, and it's the most

34:45

important work that we do. And

34:47

what it requires of us at this

34:50

time is to really reimagine what it

34:52

means to be human. And

34:54

to begin to really decolonize, you know,

34:56

what I call neuro decolonize, all of

34:58

these false stories we've been fed about

35:00

ourselves and one another, you

35:02

know, because. Exposure. Yeah. Exposure to

35:04

different types of people. If

35:07

you want to hear the rest

35:09

of this episode and let me

35:11

tell you, you do, head over

35:13

to patreon .com slash just between

35:15

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35:25

or AlisonRaskinExpose .com. Okay, that's it.

35:27

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