Why do we like scary stories? (w/ Glynn Washington)

How does someone who claims having zero tolerance on watching scary movies come to host a podcast on supernatural stories? That’s the question Chris asked Glynn Washington, host of the podcast Snap Judgment and his new show, Spooked. Glynn shares how he grew up in a cult and later moved to Japan. He also talks about the traits in great storytellers and recounts paranormal stories. Featured guest Follow Glynn Washington on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/glynndwashington/?hl=enListen to Snap Judgment https://snapjudgment.org/and Spooked https://spookedpodcast.org/ Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDPods https://www.youtube.com/@TEDPodsFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksFor the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi there, better human listeners. Really quick, before we get to our episode, you would be doing me a huge favor and really helping out our show if you could take a moment to fill out our listener survey at bit.ly/BHsurvey6. That's B-I-T dot L-Y slash B-H survey six. You can also find a link that you can just click directly on, which is in our show description. Wherever you're listening to this, look at the episode description and at the bottom, there's a link that you can click directly. Please tell us what is resonating with you, what you want more of, what you'd like to see changed, topics you would like to see covered. Your honest feedback means the world to us. It just takes a few seconds of your time, and it would really help us to improve the show and have future seasons be even better.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  Thank you. It means a lot to me and to the team that makes the show. Thanks for listening, and thanks for taking a few seconds to do the listener survey. Now, on to the episode.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. It's October, which here in the United States at least, means that it's spooky season. Halloween is right around the corner. The nights are getting longer. There's more bumps in the dark. People are starting to put up witches and skeletons and vampires and all sorts of other spooky decorations on their homes. And for me, I hate being scared. I do not like this time of year at all. I would never, ever, ever, for fun, go to a horror movie. But today on our show, I wanted to talk about the allure of scary stories. And I wanted to talk about that with Glenn Washington, who is the creator and the host of Spooked, because Glenn is also the host of Snap Judgment, one of my favorite shows of all time. Something that Glenn said that I've been thinking

• 1:37Speaker 00

  about a lot is that spooky stories, tales of the supernatural, they let us talk about issues and topics that we are otherwise supposed to keep quiet about. Death, suffering, the afterlife, revenge, mortality, pain, the lines between what you're allowed to do and the things that you must never, ever do. These are all the kinds of topics that come up when we are sitting around a campfire, trying to get the other people to feel scared. Glenn convinced me that maybe there is a lot more going on than just trying to raise my blood pressure. Maybe there's something real and interesting to learn about ourselves and society in these stories. And to give you a taste of the kinds of stories that Glenn is telling, here is how Glenn introduced the very

• 2:21Speaker 00

  first episode of Spooked back in 2017.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  There are times when you're supposedly all alone, when you feel someone, something watching you. You see her, him, it out of the corner of your eye. You hear whispers, the almost voices, and you try to believe that you're imagining the whole thing. But what if you're not?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  We're going in search of the other side. Stay true.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  Okay, that's so spooky. I cannot be the only one who's getting scared right now. But is that a good thing? Why does Glenn make a show like this? What has he learned? And how would all of us benefit from spooking ourselves deliberately every now and then? We'll have the answers to all of that and so much more right after this break.

• 3:30Speaker 02

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• 5:32Speaker 00

  And we are back with Glenn Washington, host of Spooked.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  I am so happy to be here. My name is Glenn. It's funny to be here, especially during the spooky season. I'm the host of Spooked and Snap Judgment and a bunch of other things that dive deep into the stories that people sometimes don't want to tell.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Well, Glenn, you are responsible for creating one of the top narrative podcasts of all time, one of the big influences on me, a show that I love to listen to, Snap Judgment. But I'm curious, what made you interested in also producing Spooked, a podcast that focuses on scary and paranormal stories? Where did the idea for that come from?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  The idea for Spooked is one of those things that is just born of the moment. Snap Judgment, this is a weekly show. We're scrambling around for story ideas. We're wondering, what are we going to do next? And it came time for Halloween, and somebody said, hey, why don't we, you know, do a regular Snap Judgment, only just do paranormal stories? Sounded good. Sounded like a good idea. Let's go. Don't have a lot of time to think about it on a weekly show. And that episode was the very first season of Snap. We did a show called Spooked. And every year, we thought it was going to be like how The Simpsons does a Halloween episode every year.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  The Treehouse of Horror.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  The Treehouse of Horror. We thought it was going to be like that. We just kind of go back to it. But this episode, every year, ended up being one of the most popular episodes that we did. And finally, we just decided to break down and give the people what they wanted. And I went on and did a head and launched the Spooked as a separate show.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Okay, so I'm going to put my cards on the table here with you and just admit that I am so unable to handle scary stuff, scary stories, horror movies. I'm such a scaredy cat. I like will not be able to fall asleep or to be outside in the dark if I hear something that's really scary. And one of my, one of my like, personal beliefs is that they should not be able to advertise scary movies unless you are also in a scary movie. Like, I am a person where if I go to a comedy movie in the theater and then there's a horror movie trailer, I have to close my eyes and cover my ears because like, that's how scared I am. So for someone like me, what's the argument in favor of deliberately scaring ourselves? And I've heard

• 8:00Speaker 00

  you say some really interesting things about this in interviews. So I'd love to talk to you about it, because I think it's actually deeper than people might expect.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I am someone like you, Chris.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Um, I am.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  I just assumed you loved the, to be scared.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  I'm not with the scary movies. I'm not with the junk scares and stuff like that especially. I have zero, absolutely zero use for any of that stuff. I know this because my daughter loves it. I hate it. We can barely sit next to each other on a couch and watch the same film. We tried to during the pandemic. I had to give up, run away in horror.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Yes. I've literally run away in horror from just reading the plot descriptions on Wikipedia so that I could talk to my friends about it.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I am not that guy. And I, and I want to tell everybody that this is not that show. Everyone has a story or two where they don't know, they can't explain exactly how things went down. Everyone's got one or two of those shows. If this show is anything, it's more of a real-life Twilight Zone than some slasher film. That's what it is. Because I really do believe that oftentimes, we, we take the, the things that don't make any sense, kind of our eyes sometimes just jump over it. And we ignore those, you know, that glitch in the matrix

• 9:24Speaker 01

  sometimes, that dark cat walking twice past Neo and stuff like that. It's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, slow down. What just happened? What did they just say? Why did I feel the way I feel? What was that? Was that a warning? What's interesting for me is that, especially for those of us who might have left or never had a religious tradition, we don't have a forum anymore for talking about the big questions. The big questions are, where did Granny go? Where's my dog? What's going to happen when I get to the end of this life here? Why did I

• 10:05Speaker 01

  feel the way I felt? Why did I know this before it happened? What is that sense I'm getting? All these questions, we don't even have the language for. We don't have, if you say you felt something, or saw something, or believed something, you better let us keep it to your best friends. You don't want to come off as crazy.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  It really has changed the way that I think about the idea of Spooked and the idea of scary stuff in general. I think the, the sense that we don't often have a place to talk about death, or fear, or good and evil, why people are violent, all these kinds of questions that are really profound and tough questions. We don't necessarily have a space to talk about them, many people. And that this is a way that we can explore it. I, you know, I heard you say in one interview that you can tell these stories around the campfire because you don't have to look the other person in the eye. Instead, you can look at the campfire and say it without having to immediately notice whether they're judging you or not.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  I think there's a license. I'm almost going to say this.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  We're hiding behind the spooked moniker in order to tell the truth.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  We're telling ghost stories. And within that shield, we can talk about the stories that really mattered to us. What's been so interesting about it is that it felt like once I gave myself license to talk about the stories that I didn't quite understand about my own world, it felt like the finger had been taken out of the dam. Lots of people said, I've got one of those too. I feel the same way too. I don't understand this thing. I saw this. I swear to God, I saw it. And this is how it went down. You know, we're talking, these are real people telling their stories.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I love nurses, cops, soldiers, and whatever it may be, people who do stuff, people who just by the presence, their own presence, have a certain type of credibility. And they don't have any incentive to lie. I guarantee you, no one's getting paid big money to be on a spook show.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Not yet.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's for later. They tell us their stories and you, you don't, you don't think that they're lying. You can be the most skeptical. I don't believe nothing by the book. I'm a physicist, whatever it may be. You can put all that and at the same time think, yeah, but I don't think they're lying either. Which means that low and behold, Chris, people can hold two different types of ideas in their head at the same time. Who would have thought, Chris? Who would have thought that we had that power?

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's increasingly a power that I feel like it's a muscle that people are not exercising and need to be exercising more.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  When I look at your career and your work, one thread that I, that I draw through it and that is coming through in this conversation as well is a desire to have people tell true stories, but also a desire to let people process that truth in their own way. And you know, that idea, like we can hold two contradictory things or that you can disagree with the facts and yet also see that that is that person's experience. I think that's actually a very different idea of nonfiction and of journalism than many people have. So can you talk a little bit about your philosophy around that?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  I kind of think, kind of what you're alluding to right now, that the way someone processes what happened to them narratively is oftentimes more important than a recitation of the facts. I don't necessarily want to hear, you know, this happened this time. I don't want to hear a police report. I want you to tell me a story because we think in stories. We are moved by stories. These stories, even these spook stories, determine who you marry, where you live, what you do. They are the most oftentimes, most important constructs that we base the most important decisions of our life around.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I don't care if this happened in the exact same way according to the, the camera footage. I want you to tell me the story because in telling me the story, you're telling me how it moved you. You're telling me how it impacted you. You tell me how it twisted you and I tell you how it shaped you. That is for me so much more important than, than a report hard situation. I want to hear this, how this shaped you more than anything. And, and even there, even, Chris, even if you're lying to me. I want to know that too. Now, I want to, as the, every person, the, as the, as the producer, I want to make it clear that I believe you're lying.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I want to make it understood, but how you experienced your story, how you portray the story is so important to you.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  One thing that I have thought about so much in the past couple of years, and it's right to the heart of what you're saying is I read this book by a psychologist about memory. And basically he's talking about how people have this really flawed idea of how our brains work, that we have some sort of like perfect tape recorder in our head and that we can look back at the tape and it's exactly what, what happened. And in fact, people are constantly making and remaking their memories and they change a lot. And so the, the study that he had that I thought was like, just mind blowing to me is he coincidentally had a lot of undergrads in his class on the morning of September 11th, 2001, and they wrote down everything they did that morning.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  And this was before the attacks on the Twin Towers. So they wrote down everything they did and it was for an assignment that was going to be about like, do you actually remember what you did that day, a month, a month later or something like that? But it turned out that he had this great natural experiment where a giant event, a giant historical event happened. And so all these people wrote down everything they'd done that day, then they left and this thing happened that was incredibly memorable. And people said like, I will never forget where I was. I will never forget what I was doing that day. And a year later, he had them come back and without looking at the previous paper, he had them write down, what were you doing on the morning of September 11th? And what he found is that people had completely different stories about where they were on that morning.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  But the thing that blows my mind is that when he then showed them in their own handwriting from the assignment that they remembered having done, well, here's what you said on the morning, what you'd actually done. And see, it's not the same as what you say now. Almost every one of those people then came up with an explanation where they said like, oh yeah, well, I, I didn't write it down then, but I actually did do the thing that I'm saying I did now. So people had this new story and they were not willing to give it up, even when faced with their own facts about where they had actually been. And that's something I think about so much, which was what you're saying, this idea that we are creating a new story and then that story matters so much to us that we really struggle to let it go, even in the face of kind of incontrovertible evidence to the other side.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  I think I'm interested in the reasons why that shift occurs. I'm interested in the intersection of what happened and what you experienced and, and how you put it together. You know, we're all like, everything that happens to you goes through a filter of who you are and who you want to be and who you see yourself as and where you place yourself and the, the version that you have of where you are in your life arc. I love this stuff. I mean, we've done it probably, you've had, had the same questions, like, how did you get the job that you're doing right now?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I've been telling stories and then I started telling different types of stories and then I started telling this story.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  What? Now go back over time and see what I was really doing. It's fucking about.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Uh huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  It wasn't a straight line situation. That straight line is something I'd go back and put in what I'm trying to make sense of how I got to the chair right now. Everyone does that for whatever it is.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  We're going to take a short break for the spookiest thing of all, podcast ads. We'll be right back.

• 18:51Speaker 00

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• 21:28Speaker 00

  Okay, we are back. You have a background that I think is really directly connected to Spooked, but also you did a podcast series examining the Heaven's Gate cult.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  And one of the things that you said in an interview when you were talking about why you wanted to do that series is that you had grown up in a cult. That's how you described it. You'd grown up in a cult in rural Michigan and you had this real question of like, how small a change it would have had to be for you to have ended up in one of these more tragic or extreme situations that people know about, right? Like, the difference between you and the person who drank the Kool-Aid is not so great. And you wanted to understand why you ended up where you are and they ended up where they are.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Can you give people who aren't already familiar with your work, the background on where you grew up and how you grew up, and then how that has led to the questions that you ask in your work?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  I grew up, like you mentioned, in rural Michigan. We were part of a apocalyptic, end-of-days, I'm gonna say white supremacist Jesus cult. It was called the Worldwide Church of God. It was founded by a guy named Herbert W. Armstrong. And we were, you know, spent my childhood getting ready for the imminent return of Jesus Christ. But before Jesus could get here, you gotta send your tithes and offerings in right away, quick in a hurry. Some of the people, at certain times, we were in such a fever pitch that Jesus was here imminently, that people would go to sleep wearing their shoes so that they could jump up instantly to meet Him and do His bidding. This like, this intensity

• 23:04Speaker 01

  born in this community. And this community shared this same story. And it was, it was,

• 23:12Speaker 01

  it was intense, put it that way. It was intense. And when I eventually was able to put that down, put that back, and lucky to do so. I mean, that was something that I was, I grew up, I was a true believer. I was a kid. I believe I was told until my teenage years. And walking away from it was hard. It was very, very hard. And when I left, I felt tricked. I felt angry. I felt stupid.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  I felt like betrayed. And that I, I just had to get as far away from people and their beliefs as I could. And I ended up moving to Japan, which was, ended up being a great thing for lots of different, other different reasons. But I went to schools and such, and the contempt that people would have for someone who like, was in a cult like Jamestown or the Heaven's Gate cult, that, oh my God, those people are so stupid. How could you do anything like that? How could you believe anything like that? How could da-da-da-da-da? And I, you know, I tried to laugh along too. I

• 24:27Speaker 01

  didn't have that same contempt. We could easily, if our head poobah had said, drink this, I think 70% of the people would have. And at a time when I was a kid, I would have. And it's scary to think that. It's scary to know that someone else had that type of power, not just over me, but over my community. Sit, heal, kneel, drink, go, run. That someone else had that type of power.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  It's, it was just, it was such an interesting background to see it in miniature.

• 25:16Speaker 00

  The connection for me with Spooked and with spooky stories and with the whole Halloween season, in fact, is like, the idea that perhaps we are not actually as in control of ourselves and our destinies as we would like to be, and that the people who we trust might have ulterior motives, that actually there could be something sinister going on. That's the undertone of so much of scary stories, right? It's like, you're not safe where you think you should be safe. Or this person is actually not who they seem they are.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  There's that, Chris. I wanna really flag the other element that I think really runs through Spooked. I grew up certain. I knew things. This is how the world works. This is where Jesus is coming back. This is how things go. And I exchanged, you know, that type of certainty for a different type of certainty. The certainty of, of systems, of physics, of laws, of things of this nature. This is how the world works. This is how money works. This is how that kind of works. And I think what Spooked is oftentimes about is saying that all that certainty about your map of the world

• 26:33Speaker 01

  is smoke. These imaginary sort of models of the universe that we construct are just that. They're models. And they can, this veneer of how the world works can, can just vanish in an instant. You know, I listen to so many stories, Chris, and people who I trust, people who I admire, people who, who I would put my life in their hands. And they tell me things that are unbelievable. The very first Spook story, very first Spook story on Snap Judgment, a dear friend of mine, who since

• 27:14Speaker 01

  passed away, he was a, he's the father of one of my, one of my closest friends. And he tells me a story of growing up outside of Calcutta. And he was very, very ill, extremely ill as a child. And he and his family knew that he was about to pass away. He looked outside of his window and saw his uncles piling wood for his funeral pyre. His mother was walking him and weeping, and he heard a knock on the door. And there's the door. There is a monk who's tattered, torn, long

• 27:58Speaker 01

  fingernails. And he says to the family, he says, I heard the boy is sick. If there's anyone in the home who can withstand the boy's illness, I can save his life. And the mother's like, what are you talking about? I have 11 kids. I can't, what are you saying? And a person in the house came forth and said, I can take the boy's illness. What do you mean? What do you mean? I can take it. Are you sure? Are you sure? Lays the boy down, claps three times. And both of them go into a cold

• 28:34Speaker 01

  sweat. They're wrapped in, in, in linens for a day. And this man, he is shaking, shivering, fighting this thing off next to the boy. And in the morning, he wakes, and the boy is fine.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  And this is a respected physician, one of the chief physicians at Berkeley, at the hospital here. A man of science who's telling me this story about himself as a child. I'm like, Doc, come on. Doc, are you trying to tell me that a monk came through and moved this sickness into, into himself and fought it off? That's what you're trying to tell me? He's like, yeah, that's what I'm telling. Now, again, is he putting a spin on it? Whatever, whatever. To him, that happened. He

• 29:42Speaker 01

  go to a grave saying that thing happened. I'm not gonna argue this man's story. He's here to tell the story. Because of this event that shook his life, that shaped his life, the story he tells about to his kids, to his grandkids, this is a story that defines me. This happened. This, this is the story that I carried with me throughout my medical career. This is what I was thinking about when I was studying those books late night. This is what I was thinking about when I was doing those dissections. This is my story. I'm supposed to tell him his story? Am I supposed to say nah?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  That doesn't work according to the way I look at the world. I think that would be the height of arrogance. Right now, Chris, the majority of the world, the vast majority of the world.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Inhabit a world where the ancestors, the spirits, other specters are part of their living existence. The people who don't see that are a minority on the planet right now.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  I'm going to dismiss their, all their experience and say that mine is the one because I don't have the eyes to see what they see?

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Well, here's what I would tell you is I totally agree with you. It's the, the height of arrogance to tell someone else, this is not the way you should experience the world. And I would draw a line where it is people making sense of their own existence versus people trying to push you into something else or sell you something, right? Cause there's, there's the other side of this, which is because I have this story, you shouldn't go to the hospital to have your cancer treated. Instead, you should try this thing that worked for me. Or when you're eating these types of foods, that's actually not going to work for you. And instead you need to buy my supplements. You know, like there, there is a way in which

• 31:49Speaker 00

  people take these stories and manipulate and control. I mean, you saw that obviously with growing up in a cult, you've seen an extreme version of people saying, who are you to tell me that my experience is not right? My experience is the only right way? Well, I think we can draw a line where we can say there are things that are inexplicable. There are things that are beyond our current comprehension and faith and belief have a really important role in the point of being a human, but also that doesn't disregard a desire for an objective, shared reality too.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  So this is the whole deal. I'm not going to pretend, but I don't exercise judgment over whatever people tell me. I, I call BS all the time.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Early in the pandemic, my mother called me, come out, she needed me to help hook up some, it was, was the early version of Zoom. It wasn't quite Zoom, it was Blue something. I can't remember what it's called, but I'm trying to get this thing hooked up on her computer from afar. I don't, I can't, she's not listening to how I talk about it or whatever. Finally get it working. Two, three hours later, get it working. And I asked her, what do you need this thing for? Why am I doing this? And she said, well, you know, one of the ladies at the church, the doctor telling her that she need to take this medicine, but we done prayed for, we don't think she need to take the medicine no more. So we go, we just want to get together and tell the doctor she gonna be going off the medicine.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  I didn't want any parts of this.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  I regretted my role in getting the, the computer fixed up to have this conversation with the doctor. That's not just saying, look, and maybe everybody believed what they were saying. I don't have to. And that's the thing. It's hard for me to start drawing these bright lines between what I'm going to believe today and what I'm going to reject over there and those kinds of stuff. I, I don't have it in me. I've tried to make those lines and they don't fit. I think, yes, everyone's going to have a different amount of discretion instead of a general overlies principle that works in every single occasion. I, I, I don't have it. I just don't have it.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  I would also then ask you, right? Like, I know this isn't necessarily the, the register that you often sit in. You're not very prescriptive normally. Instead you are, you're a listener, you're a questioner, you provide a platform for people. But the show is called How to Be a Better Human. And I'm curious about your idea of how does exploring a little bit of our belief in things outside of our comprehension, in the paranormal, in the supernatural, in the spooky, in the mysterious? How does that make us a better human? And to be really practical, like what should people do? What are maybe three things that people should do to explore that if you think they should?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  This is what I know. Absolutely. I'd go to my grave with this. I've been very, very lucky. Like I said, I grew up in a cult. I moved to Japan for a while. That's a Ashinto Buddhist country. I lived briefly in Europe and I lived in Malaysia, which is a Muslim country, before moving to the middle of secular land, which is the San Francisco area here.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  What I can say is that every single tradition has some of the very, very best people that have ever lived. Being a good person and not being a good person has nothing to do with your belief system. And that just, I think is fundamental. What you believe is all well and good. And some of the worst people, should I say as well, believe whatever you believe. So if the belief system itself is not the demarcation line between what's

• 35:51Speaker 01

  good and what's bad, what is? It's what you do. Some people use their belief system as an engine to do good stuff. Other people use it as an engine to criticize and to bring other people down and to put people into boxes. And so I would almost say that the willingness to, to go where someone is, accept them who they are on their terms and explore their world, that doesn't mean that you're rejecting your own situation. That means

• 36:32Speaker 01

  that you're saying, all right, I'm going to see you. I'm going to see you. And I swear that, that process of seeing someone else makes you a better person. What you're doing is rejecting the trap of your own belief system. Too many people like, I believe this. Great. Great. But is that belief system such that you can't see beyond it? Or is that belief system a stool that lets you see where everybody else is coming from? And so many traditions can do either thing. And it's really important for us to ask ourselves,

• 37:13Speaker 01

  whatever we believe, whatever we don't believe. Why are we arguing over somebody's belief at the same time we're stepping over a homeless person on the street? Why are we arguing over someone's belief when we have foster kids that haven't been placed? Why are we arguing over someone's belief when we're busy chopping down every last tree we can? The belief is a trap. We need to find that we, we share too much to argue over someone's belief.

• 37:45Speaker 02

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• 38:59Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by Peloton. Sometimes the world gets loud. There's always something to think about, something to check, something demanding your attention. And one of the things I love about moving is that for a little while, you can turn some of that noise down. Maybe it's a run, a walk, a hike, whatever gets you moving. You focus on the next step, your mind gets quieter and you get a chance to be right where you are. Peloton helps you find that feeling. And now the new Peloton Tread Flex makes the joy of running feel even more accessible. It's movable, foldable and designed to fit easily into your space. All you need is a corner, not a home gym. Run, walk or hike when you need to, then roll it away when you don't. With programs for every level and instructors who feel more like friends than drill sergeants, Peloton meets you where

• 39:42Speaker 00

  you are. Let yourself run. Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 39:50Speaker 00

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• 40:33Speaker 00

  I would love to get your take on the practical side of the question. What are three things that people can do to engage more deeply with the paranormal, with these questions, with belief, and potentially being scared or uncomfortable in what they're exploring?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  I'll give you one. The best storytellers, I think about Ira Glass, I think about Jad Applemrod. Talk to them for a minute and see what happens. They're not busy telling you a story. Their ears are out. They are intense on listening to what someone else says. The best storytellers are oftentimes the very, very best listeners. And exercising that muscle so that people feel like you're hearing them. Not just for, you know, a radio show, but for life.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  You are given an extraordinary amount of grace if people think you are really, really listening to them. So that's the first thing. And that grace extends to, I think, to how they see the world. If someone tells me a story, again, I, there are some, there's some people that like to tell, make up stories and lie, but that's not the, that's not the majority of the people I deal with. Majority of the people I deal with are trying to tell me what happened as best they can. They really are. They might not have the words to express what it is they're doing, but they're trying. I hear things that I don't have an explanation for.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I could try and give them one. I could try to put my stamp on it and put my, you know, my scientific eye on their story. I don't think it's helpful. I don't, and I honestly, I don't think it's right. I think it's pretend that we have everything figured out. I think that's a pretend that I have an answer to it.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  I'm finding this so thought provoking and really fantastic. And it also, it makes me wonder, are you a poet? Are you someone who writes poetry? Because I feel you, you often speak in these really like beautiful ideas, but also you have such vivid imagery. I'm like, you, you speak in the way where I think you have poems inside you too. So maybe you, maybe you do.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  So I goof around a lot, Chris. So at the top of every Spooked episode, I tell a poem. And in fact, I just wrote this today. And it just, this is goofy. It has nothing to do with anything, but it makes me laugh, right? This is coming up on the next episode of Spooked.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Okay, I love it.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Um, you get the first thing, this is how it starts. I've been a bite of batter, but the batter bit me back. I thought there was some butter, then the batter did attack. The butter battle broke my biscuit battle platter. I bought a bat and battled back, the justice made it better. Um, the stupidest thing ever. I get to have fun with this in this show, and I love the show for that.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Just to play with sounds and with words and with the way things feel.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  But to answer your question, am I a poet? Anyone who does something that's silly better not call themselves a poet or there's gonna be letters.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  I completely disagree. Wow, I was about to say, that's definitive proof you are in fact a poet. So there you go. Well, going back to Spooked and to the show, you told us one story that has really stuck with you from the very first episode of Spooked. What are some of the other stories that have really stuck in your head? Can you, can you share one or two with us?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  It's a story I go to all the time. It's my go-to story when I sit, when someone says, what's going on out there that you don't understand? We moved to a farm. Actually, we moved to a swamp, middle of nowhere, and to a trailer home. All the new neighbors came out to greet us with the John Deere tractors and stuff like this. We didn't have any business being there, number one. But we found out when we got to this place that the all-inclusive situation didn't include water for this trailer home company. And the, uh, the salesperson calls this man over who's gonna dig us a well. We understand quickly and the farmers who are watching,

• 44:59Speaker 01

  everyone understands that every single time he digs for water, that's money. He's got this, this contraption that's gonna go just for water. And they put it down one place, put it down another, and every single time he moves it, dirt, dirt, dirt. And you can see this look of panic in my father's face. And like I said, all the farmers understand the fixed rent. Nobody's rich. Finally, somebody says, go get Kriegel. 15 minutes later, back in the pickup truck, this man Kriegel shows up. And he's got a John Deere cap like everybody else, but he's got a step like nobody else. He's like, I hear y'all need a well witching.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Now you say well witching to my family? That's bad. That's bad. Witching of any type is evil. And I think my father's gonna throw this man out, but he's desperate. And he gives a nod. And this Kriegel dude goes to a tree, cuts out a piece of it, this willow, until he's got like a Y shaped thing. He's shaving it down and he's laughing, talking about, yeah, it was a colored that taught me how to do this. So I'm gonna do it for y'all free of charge. And he takes this stick and he starts waving it around. Hey, water, water, water, hey, hey, water. Where you at, water? Come here, water. Hey, water, water, water, wait, where, come here, water.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  And I'm like, no way. Pops ain't going for this stuff. They're clowning us, they're clowning us, no way. Hey, yeah, where you at, water? Come here, water, come here, water. He's doing his thing. And this stick dives down. I see it, I'm watching it, I see it. No way. And Kriegel sees me looking at it. You don't even believe me, do you? You don't believe, come here, come here, come here, track yourself. Some people got it, some people don't. And he puts this stick in my hand. And he said, go ahead. And I'm sitting there. Come here, water. Shout for the water. Come here, water. I'm doing the thing with the stick.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  And I get to the spot, Chris. And it dives down in my hand so fast that the bark strips off of my hand. They move the contraption over.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Water. Wow. And I don't know how that happened, Chris. Google it, whatever you want to do, people, there's people who do this, people who can, people who can't. It's all over the world, people who supposedly have the gift, some people don't. I don't know.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  For someone who's listening to this, the next time they hear a friend's scary story, or a story that is about something that is inexplicable or defies our current understandings of how things are supposed to work, what questions should they be asking? What questions should they ask themselves? And what questions should they ask the person who's telling them the story?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  They should hold off on a question because what they're receiving, Chris, is a gift. When someone tells you a story that has a supernatural element to it, they are inviting you into their world in a way that's really kind of hard to even almost understand. They know they're breaking a rule. They know their story doesn't make a type of sense. They know this already. And they're telling you this story oftentimes because it's the most important story they have. These stories that touch on these elements of supernatural

• 49:00Speaker 01

  are almost always the most important story someone has. Give them a minute. Find out why the story is so important to them. It's often about someone who is extremely important to them that triggered this thing that happened, whatever it may be. And I'm a kid you not, these are the biggest stories they have. And you are lucky to be, that you have someone who is willing to share with you the most intimate story they have that they don't tell anybody. Lean in. Lean in first.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  This has been such a pleasure. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for the work that you do. And thank you for honestly really convincing me that there's some real value in being spooked.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Come on, Chris, come on over to the dark side. We can't wait. We can't wait to have.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Appreciate it, Chris.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much to today's guest, Glenn Washington. You can listen to his shows Snap Judgment and Spooked wherever you're listening to this. I am your host, Chris Duffy. You can find my book, Humor Me, in bookstores, and you can find information about my projects, my live shows, and my comedy online at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. This episode of How to Be a Better Human was dug up out of a shallow grave. On the TED side, our show is made by a team working in the shadows, never revealing their true identities, other than the names Daniella Bolarezzo, Ben Ben Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanimi, Lainey Lott, Tansaka Sugmanivong, Antonio Lay, and Joseph DeBryan. Ryan Lash put together this video in the darkest hours of the night,

• 50:44Speaker 00

  and Mateus Salas made sure we avoided the spookiest thing of them all. A factual error. On the PRX side, our show is experimented on in a remote laboratory by Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Please send this episode to someone who you would want with you in a haunted house. We will be back next week with even more episodes of How to Be a Better Human. Until then, lock the doors and keep the lights on.

• 51:23Speaker 03

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