How to talk about your body without shame (w/ Anita Rao)

Why is having the sex talk, admitting you passed gas, or being open about your body hair so seemingly uncomfortable for all of us? Journalist and host of the podcast, Embodied, Anita Rao, joins Chris this week to discuss why having open conversations about taboo topics like sex, relationships, and our bodies can help us understand ourselves better and feel less shame. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Chris Duffy?

  You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy. And today on the show, we're going to be talking with journalist Anita Rao about how to break taboos when discussing our bodies and our brains. What does it mean to have a relationship with your physical self? And how does that change over time? Here's a clip from Anita's fantastic podcast, Embodied.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Even though it's been mine for a couple of decades now, on a lot of levels, I'm still getting to know my body. I also know that my body is going to keep changing as I age, inside and out, and probably in some ways that I'd never guess. As body and sex positive as I like to think that I am, I'll admit that I'm worried. What will turning 50, 60, 70 do to my sexual desire, my comfort with and confidence in my own appearance, and my ability to welcome new relationships into my life?

• 0:58Chris Duffy?

  Keep your body listening to this show because we're going to be right back with an amazing conversation right after this break.

• 1:13Chris Duffy?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel savvy tour guide right in your pocket to let you in on all the little known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:58Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today.

• 2:37Chris Duffy?

  Donate at nrdc.org/human and your gift will be matched five times. Today, we're talking about bodies and what it means to be a human who navigates the world in a physical form with Anita Rao.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Hey, my name is Anita Rao. I am the host of Embodied from North Carolina Public Radio WUNC. It's a show about sex, relationships, and how that takes on taboo topics.

• 3:03Chris Duffy?

  It's always interesting to think about the title of your show, Embodied, but also just how we experience things in our body when you and I are not in the same room, right? You're in a closet in your house. I am in a little pod in my house. So there's something funny about the way that we connect these days that doesn't actually involve our bodies often.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so true. And it's something I have been thinking about so much. We actually started the show in the pandemic, and it was a moment where I was craving so much connection and the ability to be with people in person and doing this show about the experience of connection and connection with our bodies. But I had to do it all virtually without being with people in person. So I remember the first time we had an Embodied event where we were in person with people post-pandemic for the first time. I just felt such a sense of relief and release to be like, oh, it feels so different to be in conversation about these topics when I can actually see people's faces, when you're having, like, you're able to, like, share your physical reaction about something with someone. It's a very, very different experience.

• 4:06Chris Duffy?

  How do you?

• 4:09Chris Duffy?

  Stay in your body, especially because this is something I always think is really interesting about radio and podcasting is in some ways it's such an intimate medium because we're talking into people's ears. But in other ways, it's also very, um, I wish there was a more positive way of saying the word alienating because we talk to people who we can't see and can't really understand whether they are actually listening to us or not. I guess there's an assumption that there's an audience. So how do you stay in your body? Since I know that's something that you really care about.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's definitely a practice and something I have to work really hard to do. My dad is a physician. He is a gastroenterologist. He's a poop doctor. And I grew up in a household where like, we could really talk about our bodies and our physical sensations very openly. Like my, my friends would come over and joke that like, they could announce that they were farting at the dinner table. And like, it's not an exaggeration. Like, if you farted at the dinner table, you owned it. Like, you, that's just something we all do. We all poop. We all fart. And so in some ways, I grew up with a very like, close relationship with my like, physical sensations and no shame around like, expressing them or talking about

• 5:16Speaker 01

  them or asking questions about them. And still to this day, like, when I'm having like, a stomach issue or whatever, I will call my dad immediately, be like, here's what it looks like. Here's what my poop looks like. Here's a photograph. Like, so in some ways, I have no shame around that kind of thing. So I think that's really helped, like, me be able to get in touch with my physical body in that way. I think I am a very heady person, though. So while I can like, notice a sensation, a physical sensation, like, I'm very attuned to if I'm like, hot or cold or feeling uncomfortable. It is harder for me to like, get out of my head and into my body in the ways of meditation or sitting with myself in silence. And so that, to me, is, has been like, my work as an adult. And

• 5:58Speaker 01

  a big thing that I try to like, take home messages from the show is like, figuring out ways to actually integrate feelings into my body more, instead of just like, really living in my head.

• 6:09Chris Duffy?

  There are so many great episodes of Embodied, but certainly my favorite episode is, is one with both of your parents where you interview them and you're talking to them about growing up in a biracial family and the ways in which that

• 6:24Chris Duffy?

  Affected you and affected them and how they thought about it then, how they think about it now. And there's just, it's so wonderful because your parents are both like, yes, but also you are perfect and we think you are perfect and everything you do is wonderful. So I can imagine how, having heard a little bit of, of your mom and dad talk, that they would be like, anything that comes out of your body is perfect too, because you are a perfect creature.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  I love that reflection. It's very true. But it's so funny because like so many of the things that I have talked about with them on the show, we have never talked about off mic. There was still so much that we didn't talk about. We didn't really talk much about feelings. My mom is British, grew up in like a very British, like zipped up family. My dad is Indian and grew up in a very culturally Indian household where like, you don't talk about that kind of stuff. So neither of them really had the language to talk about their feelings and didn't necessarily like encourage that in us. So there's so much that I have like dug through with them in real time with microphones in front of us that I had never done beforehand. One of the joys of having them on the show is like actually like empowering myself to

• 7:31Speaker 01

  have these conversations with them that I don't think I would have had without a microphone in front of me.

• 7:36Chris Duffy?

  If someone is listening to this and they aren't familiar with Embodied, can you give us a little bit of the history of the show? And I know you wrote a really interesting piece about how this, the idea for the show and what it is came out of some of your feelings when you were first kind of moving into the host role on air in a public radio station.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I think so much of it was kind of this culmination of like things, realizing there were a lot of things that I was really curious about and excited about, that I feel like I wasn't, I wasn't hearing the conversations about those things in the spaces that I was a part of every single day. And at that time, that space most often was a public radio station based in the South where I was working on a statewide daily talk show. And as a producer, I would always kind of push stories to the forefront that were about like the body and about sexuality and about gender. But that would be like one hour of radio out of the, you know, five hours we did every week, out of the however many hours every month. And so it still felt like a very small portion of what we were talking about.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  On the side, my friend and I started our own radio show at a community radio station. It's a low-power radio station that didn't, like, signal didn't reach very far. And I think that was honestly really liberating, was like, great. Like, unless someone is tuned in to the livestream or within like, a 15-mile radius of us right now, we can kind of say what we want. And it was like, a great practice and freedom for me of like, learning how to be on a mic and getting more comfortable asking questions and talking about my own feelings without being worried about, you know, what would happen, what would people say, who was going to hear it. So I was doing that show on the side, and then I got the opportunity to host the big radio show that I worked for. And it was really, it started as an experiment.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Like, the host of the show was beginning to look toward retirement and wanted to start spending his summers in Buffalo, New York. And we always joke in public radio, like, the summer is when you can kind of try anything because people aren't, people aren't listening, like, as much as other times of year. So like, if it was a total flop, like, yeah, we'd get in trouble, but like, it would be more okay than if it was a total flop, like, in October. So we, I just was like, these are the things that I would love to talk about. Let's create this, like, one-time, four-part series about sex, relationships, and health. And I had such a good time doing it. We got really good feedback from, well, we got a lot of feedback, some that was really good, some that was challenging.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  But in some ways, both of those kinds of feedback empowered me to keep going on. I was really learning my own voice at the time and learning, like, how to sound like myself on the air. And a lot of the negative feedback that we got was about my voice and like, the actual sound of my voice. And it was really hard. Like, it was, I still have like, a folder in my inbox that I, I don't look at very often anymore, but like, it's where all the negative feedback goes. And it's, I think, something that happens to a lot of women in journalism, less and less so now that there are so many more kinds of voices on the air, but still in public radio, like, it's, there's still a very distinct sound. And I have, like, a pretty neutral voice. I grew up in the Midwest, I don't really have an accent, but I'm a millennial.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So I have some vocal fry and I have some up-speak. And it's those kind of things that I would get a lot of feedback about. The fact that I was talking about things that felt so important and what people were hearing was just, the sound of my voice was so maddening to me that it kind of like, lit a fire under me to keep doing it more and be like, eventually you'll actually listen to the content of the words that I'm saying, not just how I'm saying them. So yeah, I think all of that kind of combined was the personal reasons why I wanted to be on the radio and have these conversations. And then the desire that I had to hear the topics that I cared about, talked about on a bigger scale, set me on the Embodied path.

• 11:23Chris Duffy?

  Some of the feedback that you got, negative feedback about your voice and the things you were talking about, you have a folder in your email where you keep negative comments or negative emails that people have sent. I'm curious about that because to me, I would think someone sends something negative, I'm going to delete it. Like, I don't want to ever see that again. So tell me about keeping them and having them have a space and what that does for you or why you do that.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  I'm a perfectionist at my core, and I am a really self-critical person. And but I also really like feedback. And so I think for me, part of keeping it in a folder is like, I can notice what it is and I can put it there. And I can say, if you need to come back to this at some point, for whatever reason, it's there. But right now, you don't actually need to care about this. You don't actually need to focus on it. It's like a way of keeping myself from myself and protecting myself while being like, if there's ever a universe in which like, that could be helpful for you, it's there. And honestly, when I've I wrote an essay for the Huffington Post about Embodied, and I was like, I'm actually glad I have this folder. So I can go back and be like, what did people say? Like, what

• 12:34Speaker 01

  were those wacky things? So I can see my own growth and how I respond to them. But I don't necessarily need to know everything that it says. So I have to just, I have to put it somewhere in case I need to go back to it at some point.

• 12:46Chris Duffy?

  I think that probably, for a lot of the people listening, whether they're in the United States or not, and certainly whether they work in in public media or not, can relate to the idea of feeling like your voice, whether that is your literal voice, or, you know, the more metaphorical voice, doesn't fit in with what success is supposed to look like. And I think a lot of people answer that by trying to make themselves match, trying really, really hard to force themselves into the box, to change the way they sound, to change what they talk about. I think it's really interesting that you didn't. And I wonder if you could maybe, as prescriptively as you want, give people who are dealing with that feeling or that situation, some advice.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Well, to be totally honest, I did try. And I failed.

• 13:30Chris Duffy?

  Tell me about that.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  I'd notice that if I kind of like, set my voice at a in a higher range in my Yeah, in my vocal range, I might, I wouldn't have vocal fry. And so I would try to read my intros with that higher voice.

• 13:44Chris Duffy?

  Can you give us like, this is you trying to conform? And then we'll hear what it is.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so cringey. Listening back, it's so cringey. Okay. So this is like my normal range, I would say. What I tried was to do something like this, which was like, this is embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Today on the show, we're going to talk about what it's like to be in your body and have conversations about sex, relationships and health.

• 14:14Chris Duffy?

  How does it feel when you talk like that?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so awkward. Like, it's so put on. I feel like I sound younger. Like, I don't, it feels like not me. And I think that's what would happen was like, I would do my intros like that. I would ask the first question usually like that. And then as soon as I was in a back and forth with someone, it just slipped back into how I sound. And I would listen back to these recordings I did and I was like, oh, you can't do it. You can't like, ask a question authentically and like vibe with someone while focusing so hard on like, putting your voice in that range. And it just, it didn't work. And it didn't feel good. Like, it felt physically uncomfortable. It felt like I was like, trying so hard to focus on that, that I couldn't really focus on being in the moment with someone.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  And I think to me, like, the real joy of this work is when you can get into a flow with someone and when you feel like you're in sync, when you're vibing. So I realized, like, I can't vibe with people if I'm forcing myself to talk in this like, artificial register.

• 15:17Chris Duffy?

  You cannot be a fake version of yourself. You can't conform to like, who they want for very long before it's going to fall apart.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's going to get like, your self is going to catch up with you. Either through like, getting depressed because you don't feel like someone's seeing you authentically, or by the other person, like, figuring you out and realizing that it's, you're not who you are saying that you are. And I think there was a lot of freedom there in feeling, like, giving myself permission to... Let go a little bit of what I thought I was supposed to be doing, what I thought I was supposed to sound like. I feel really lucky that the show that I was working on and the host of that show was like very pro experimentation and was like, great. Like, keep doing it, keep trying it. People don't like change.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And so you just have to like, keep going for a while and see what happens. I don't know, there's like a really big exhale that you can experience professionally and personally when you don't feel like you have to like silo parts of yourself from other parts of yourself. And I think embodied, I mean, part of like the name and like all of it is about just like, yeah, let's like, stop trying to do that. And let's see what happens when we stop trying to do that. And when we give ourselves permission to integrate more, or just like, even when things are coming up against each other in ways that are uncomfortable, like, that's also okay. And like, that's also a part of like, what it means to be a human and let yourself like, feel that dissonance as well.

• 16:52Chris Duffy?

  We are going to be right back with Anita after this break, so take a moment to allow yourself to feel all the dissonance that you need.

• 17:09Chris Duffy?

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• 17:52Chris Duffy?

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• 18:13Chris Duffy?

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• 18:57Chris Duffy?

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• 19:09Speaker 02

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• 19:51Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. Here's another clip from Anita's podcast, Embodied, where she's talking about her relationship to sex and sexuality when she was growing up. And this comes from an episode where she interviewed her parents about why they never gave her the sex talk.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  So you've heard of this idea of the sex talk, which is basically when parents tell their kids about sex. You all never had a sex talk with us. Why?

• 20:17Speaker 03

  That's a great, I like dad's thought on that one.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Go for it, Dad.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  I think it is very much a cultural thing. If I had to learn about sex or porn when I was growing up, it was almost impossible. There was no books that I had access to, even the libraries. We would not get access to that. None of my parents, none of my family, we would talk about everything else. But the few issues that are generally tabooed, at least in the culture that I was raised, is talking about sex and talking about money. So we carried that same culture over to a large extent.

• 20:56Chris Duffy?

  So part of the reason why there aren't as many conversations about sex or bodies can be because there's these taboos and so people feel a little awkward talking about them. But also, sometimes the pushback is maybe more political or ideological. Can you talk about how you respond to those? How do you think about opening up space for these conversations and actually having them rather than letting these things go?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  One of the most interesting things that I have clocked when it comes to the feedback that we get about the show is, so on the radio, there are these things called promos. And it's 30 seconds where I'm teasing the show. And it airs like multiple times throughout the week in advance of the show. And the vast, vast majority of pushback and critique we get about the show are to the idea of the thing that we're talking about that someone hears in the promo. Because I'll get, I'll sometimes get these long emails on like a Thursday and I'm like, it's funny because the show actually hasn't even aired yet. The show is tomorrow. So like, I know you didn't listen to the show. I know you just can't believe we're talking about sex toys on the radio.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Like, that's, that is one of the ones that we got the most comments about. There is so much just bristling at the idea of things. And I think we have so little, we have so little shared language to talk about so many of these parts of our experiences that are uncomfortable. And there are these like words and phrases that people just...

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I don't know, develop such strong negative relationships with, I think, because they bring up a lot of shame and discomfort. And so to me, I guess, I see a lot of the feedback that we get as being a reflection of like a discomfort that's come up in the listener, for whatever reason. The feedback that I think is hardest for me to reconcile with is, like, if this promo airs in the car when I'm taking my kid to kindergarten, like, I don't want to tell them at 7:30 a.m. about vibrators. If your kid hears that and asks that question, first of all, they're listening way more than I would expect them to be listening to NPR, but great.

• 23:03Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  To like, okay, I would love if you would have language where you could respond in an age-appropriate way, but if you really feel like you can't, like, what are the things that I need to be keeping in mind about these words that are triggering for people? Not because of what they represent necessarily, but just because of like our association with what they represent, maybe.

• 23:23Chris Duffy?

  Yeah. Oh, also, this is another, another great episode of Embodied, or a thing that has come up a few times on the, on the show, is you talked about, like, you just had your laugh. I'm, as a comedian, always a connoisseur of laughs. And I know you've talked about, like, feeling some self-consciousness about the way that you laugh.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I really do. That was an interesting reminder where I was like, oh, I thought this was something I was like so totally comfortable with. And like, I love to laugh, so it's not going to stop me from laughing, but it does still, like, that kind of thing where it's like, you're expressing yourself in your most, like, unbridled, uncontained way. And when people react to that negatively, like, that can cut deep. And so it's like a self, a thing that I didn't know I was self-conscious about until I really started doing radio and podcasting, and then was like, oh, huh, okay, I have some feelings about that I need to work through.

• 24:11Chris Duffy?

  You know, you can literally host a show about having, like, open conversations about your body and bodies and sex and relationships, and still have plenty of places where you, yourself, are self-conscious or feel shame.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  So true. No, so true. It's like, it's much easier to hold space for other people and to validate them than it is to do the same with yourself. And especially when you're in these roles of host, like, I see myself as like a container for other people at times, or like, I'm a container for you to share things, but like, I would actually have to do the integration work after the fact to make that a part of who I am. And like, do I put the time into doing that every day? Probably not.

• 24:51Chris Duffy?

  We've been talking about like these conversations that you had on the show about sex and bodies and relationships and self. Obviously, most people listening are not hosting a podcast or a public radio show. But why should people be having more conversations about these topics? Why should this be the kind of thing that you do talk about openly?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  We need to be having these conversations because we don't, like, the collective wisdom around these topics is so important and is the only way to actually move things forward. I think it's like so interesting when you, when I talk to neuroscientists especially, I realize like, oh, we still don't understand so much about the brain. When I talk to other kinds of doctors, like, we actually still don't understand so much about the body. And so like, we can't wait for like, science and experts to tell us how we should understand ourselves. Like, we have to do that work ourselves. And I don't think we can do that work alone, especially around these things that make us feel shame and make us feel more alone. So I do feel like you need to have these conversations because you need

• 25:51Speaker 01

  the wisdom of other people to heal your own challenges and to make your own self better. And I think the intergenerational aspect too is so important. Like, I feel like that's one thing that I've really learned from talking to my parents and having them on the show is that like, we need more intergenerational conversations about these topics because we can't, yeah, we're never going to change if like, we don't recognize the patterns that we've inherited without realizing them and the patterns that we're passing on to other people. And I feel like we need to start these conversations. We can actually, we can realize what we're actually trying to talk about beyond the like, catchphrases

• 26:32Speaker 01

  and beyond the like, I don't know, that like, the words and the terminology that have like, put us in more isolation from each other because we feel like we don't agree when maybe underneath it, there's something that we could find a point of connection on.

• 26:47Chris Duffy?

  Something that I've been thinking about in prepping for this interview is

• 26:53Chris Duffy?

  Having conversations about sex in particular for me. On the one hand, I want people to not feel shame and I want people to feel like they can talk about whatever they want to talk about. And on the other hand, just for myself, if like sex and desire and all that is discussed so openly and so, you know, every day, does it take away a little bit of what makes it like special and powerful and unique? And I don't know the answer, but that's something that I wonder because to me, part of what feels like special about it is that it is like, it's not for everyone, like that my feelings and my desires and my sexual connection, it is really limited.

• 27:37Chris Duffy?

  And as a result, that makes it more special to me personally.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  That is so interesting. I think so much of what I'm trying to get at with talking about sex is like finding ways to reduce the barriers you have inside yourself. So, yeah, like to a degree, I like, I agree with you that like I, yeah, sharing out in the world, all of our very specific fantasies and all of the like, like details of our specific experiences of pleasure, like maybe that will take away some of the joy of discovery that you could have in a more intimate setting. But I think for me, so much of the struggles that I see in other people and that I see in myself are like, there's so many roadblocks even getting to that place where you know what your desires are.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  And like, that is the work of talking more openly about this is being like, oh yeah, like, I can't connect to my body and understand my pleasure when I'm so burnt out that I don't even like, I can't even like feel pain or sensation in this part of my hand or like that we're so disconnected from ourselves, that building that awareness is like the first step toward accessing more pleasure and accessing more sexual connection.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I think if we got to a place where, where everyone like was so much more like in tune and aligned and like actually embodied, like, maybe we would need to talk about sex less, but I feel like we're so far from that at this point that, I don't know, I imagine it would be a while before we would have that problem.

• 29:06Chris Duffy?

  Oh, that's a great answer. I love, I love that. And I think it, it really reframes it for me in a really interesting way. And, and just to say an example, that's kind of the opposite of what I was just saying. I can think of a really specific moment in my life where I was probably 16, maybe somewhere in the, in my teen years. And I was over at one of my really close female friends' houses. And she had like a box of tampons out. And I was like, oh, that's so disgusting. Oh, my God, disgusting. And she was like, why is that disgusting? And I was like, I, I didn't have any language. I was just like, it's just, that's, you're not supposed to have, oh, gross. And, you know, obviously, part of that was

• 29:50Chris Duffy?

  me being an immature teenager. But now I can look back and see like, oh, there's this really like political, cultural force that's like, whose body is gross and what parts of our body are gross. And now I look back and I'm like, wow, that was kind of a wild reaction that I had. And yet it felt so normal. What is gross about that? It's totally not gross at all and extremely normal for so much of the population.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  And it's like, you don't even know, you haven't even been able to like articulate and understand those internal scripts until you're confronted with them. Like, I remember one of our very earliest episodes was about body hair. And we were talking about like, why do we shave? Why do we spend like thousands of dollars a year on waxing? And this idea that like, we feel like hair, body hair on women and femmes is gross and grotesque. And I was like, episode, I was noticing, I was like outside with my dog. I think my dog was like playing in the grass and I was sitting down. And I literally like looked down at my legs and was like, ugh, stubble, gross. And I was like, oh, my God. Like, why am I grossed out by my own? Leg hair, like what is going on?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And it's like, you can't even realize that that is a thing until you're like forced to, like you have to confront it and you have to like realize what that internal narrative is. And there are so many moments like that for me in the process of working on these shows all the time that are like forced me to confront those internal narratives.

• 31:18Chris Duffy?

  I'm curious, as a person who has interviewed a lot of people about these pretty intimate topics and topics that can be pretty taboo. And as we talked about, you know, we don't yet live in this ideal world where people feel like they can just say anything. I imagine many of your guests are like, thank you so much for giving me the space to talk about these. Have you ever heard from a guest who shared a story on your show who then maybe felt like, oh, wow, I wonder if I was ready to talk about that?

• 31:46Speaker 01

  There is one moment that comes to mind and it was, it was a show that we did about growing up with a parent who was incarcerated. And we had like a 45 minute, I think, interview with this young woman. Like, I didn't get any signals during the conversation that there was discomfort or there were, there was tension that arose. And the next, literally the next day, she sent an email and was like, we can't air that conversation. I feel so uncomfortable. I'm not ready for this story to be shared. And it was like a week long process of as a team being like, oh, no. What do we do? Like, we thought it was a really beautiful conversation and like, how do we, we want

• 32:29Speaker 01

  to respect her wishes, but we also want to know like what the core of the fear is. And like, is that core of the fear something that her mind could be changed on? Or is it that like, no, this would feel actually like really dangerous? And so we did like a lot of interrogating, we went back and forth with her and ultimately she was like, no, I won't, I don't want to change my mind. I'm not comfortable. We didn't air, so we didn't air the conversation. We had to like pivot and do something else. Sometimes we do like re-air episodes from a few years ago and we always will check back in with people and be like, does this, are there any updates? Like, does this still feel resonant? And sometimes people are like, oh, man, I'm actually not going through that in the same way as I am, but it's okay. Like, I'm still okay with you all sharing it. And I think it's really important to do that work, but it's hard. It's like, it's hard

• 33:14Speaker 01

  to be in that role where you want to be, you are empathetic and you don't want to ever share a story that someone feels uncomfortable with, but you also feel like, oh, but there is, I can see the value in being open about this and like, other people realizing that there are so many people with this experience that may also feel as alone as you felt.

• 33:36Chris Duffy?

  Thinking about these conversations, thinking about these types of ways of opening up in ourselves to think about, talking about this, feeling more comfortable, avoiding shame when it comes to body and relationship and sex and all of the different pieces that you cover and embodied, what are three things that people listening can do to start some of that work in themselves?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the first thing is like approaching yourself with genuine curiosity and like giving yourself space and time to really name and get curious about the beliefs that you have about your physical body, your sexual self and sexual identity, your relationships. And like, start there with just like, no judgment, just curiosity, like what comes up for me around these things? Because I think there's so much that we don't realize that we're holding on to until we like, are able to approach it from a place of curiosity and not judgment.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Second, I would say like, if there is a conversation you feel moved to have with someone in your life, make sure you like,

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Actually set the table for that conversation. And what I mean is like, be very intentional. Don't just like spring up on your partner over dinner that like, you feel like your sex life is not how you want it to be. I think it's really, these topics are so vulnerable and we can get really defensive around them. So I think it's really important to like, give people time to prepare for these conversations and like, set the table in a very intentional way. So they're like, they're slightly primed.

• 35:21Chris Duffy?

  I just listened to this episode of Embodied and I think you'd really like it. And then we should discuss it.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. You can always share a resource as a starting point for a conversation. I'm so glad you shared that, a perfect.

• 35:34Chris Duffy?

  It's always possible. You always can use a scapegoat, especially a scapegoat who's not even in the same state as you.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So that's number two, set the table, whether that be like intention, sharing a resource.

• 35:47Chris Duffy?

  What about in that conversation itself? Cause you obviously navigate these all the time with so much nuance. How do you like, what are the actual moves or, or even emotional moves that can make the, the talking go better?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Like force yourself to sit with discomfort in like a very actionable, tangible way. Like literally count on your fingers to 10 before you even think about interrupting or saying something. Like hold, hold yourself accountable to creating, actually creating space, whether that is pure silence or that's like affirmative listening, nodding, whatever it is. Like, I think that that is such an overlooked element of important conversations. Like you have to actually stop and slow down and you have to realize that like, your pacing is not always someone else's pacing. So like, let them have a minute to catch up and adjust.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  I think that that, like the creating of silence is probably like the, the best, easiest attainable thing to do.

• 36:50Chris Duffy?

  Well, Anita, this was such a joy. Thank you so much for being on the show and thanks for talking to us.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. What a pleasure. Thank you.

• 37:01Chris Duffy?

  That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Anita Rao. She hosts the podcast Embodied from WUNC. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and information about my live shows and my speaking events and all sorts of stuff at chrisduffeycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a fully corporeal team. On the TED side, we've got Daniela Bellarezzo, Banban Chang, Chloe Shasha-Brooks, Lainey Lott, Antonio Lay, and Joseph Dubrine. This episode was explicitly fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Matthias Salas. On the PRX side, we've got fully embodied and enlightened audio geniuses Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Gourville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez.

• 37:45Chris Duffy?

  And of course, thanks to you for allowing this show into your ears and into your brain. You make everything possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening to How to Be a Better Human. You can listen on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa, "Play How to Be a Better Human" on Amazon Music. Wherever you are listening, please share this episode with a friend, with a family member, with someone whose body you think would enjoy it. It is a really big way that we get out to new listeners. This is the final episode of the year, but have no fear, we will be back in 2025 with more episodes of How to Be a Better Human. Have a great, great, great end of the year, and we will see you, hear you, talk to you, be downloaded by you next year. Pick your verb.

• 38:35Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court, and that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human and your gift will be matched five times.

• 39:24Speaker 02

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