Selects: How Forgiveness Works

For most of history, forgiveness fell under the domain of religion. But in the 1980s science started investigating it and found that forgiving someone is really, really good for you. Learn how anybody can be the better person in this classic, and really great, episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:02Josh Clark?

  Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and I thought for my picks this year, I would kick off 2026 with a very sweet, moving and also eye opening episode on forgiveness. It turns out all of us have the capacity to forgive, but that's not always the best course of action for any given circumstance. This episode also has a lot of really great stories of amazing acts of forgiveness by people who forgave others against all odds. It's a good episode and I hope you enjoy it and I hope your year is going wonderfully so far.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Some philosophical waxing is gonna happen in this one.

• 2:01Josh Clark?

  I think it's inevitable, Chuck.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  That's right. And Don Henley songs.

• 2:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good one, too.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Heart of the Matter?

• 2:10Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  You like it?

• 2:12Josh Clark?

  Sure, alright. That part was like, "I'm learning to live without you now." It stirs my soul every time.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Forgiveness, yeah.

• 2:22Josh Clark?

  You'd have to be dead inside to not be stirred by that part.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  It's good. Good song. But he really kinda nails it in that because he's talking about forgiveness.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  And the heart of the matter.

• 2:33Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 2:36Josh Clark?

  And he's, he wants forgiveness, he needs forgiveness, even if like it's the end of the relationship.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, even if she doesn't love him anymore.

• 2:44Josh Clark?

  Sure. So, on the one hand, that is a certain kind of forgiveness that an individual or person can, that's a path someone can set down. But there's been a lot of research, starting, starting in the very beginning stages at the, the middle of the 20th century, but really picking up in the 90s. Research into forgiveness, like legitimate scientific research, and it's a multidisciplinary thing because there's a lot of different fields.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Disciplines?

• 3:14Josh Clark?

  Sure. That have said, "Hey, this actually, this is something we can study and measure and produce articles and, and, and work on." And they have, they've produced some really good legitimate work. But what most of them have been focused on is not the Don Henley position of somebody who needs to be redeemed, who needs redemption to feel better, who needs forgiveness.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:37Josh Clark?

  But rather the person doing the forgiving, the person who was originally transgressed against. Not the offender, but the offendee. That's where most of the research has been done on forgiveness.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Right. Don Henley is a rock star, so he's, he's writing a song about wanting to be forgiven for a foursome he had in St. Paul backstage.

• 4:01Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  "Even if you don't love me anymore, can you forgive me that?" You know? "Can you blame a guy?" Is what he's saying.

• 4:11Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, I think that's probably exactly what that song's about now that you mention it.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  That's the subtext.

• 4:17Josh Clark?

  So, um, I think we should start by, um, pointing out something about forgiveness is that a lot of people, there's a lot of stories about people not forgiving. We call it revenge and people love revenge, you know? Like, think about the revenge movie genre and how many entries there are.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Pretty great.

• 4:38Josh Clark?

  Like, uh, have you ever seen I Saw the Devil?

• 4:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  Have you ever seen Old Boy?

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  Have you ever seen Death Becomes Her?

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:50Josh Clark?

  Well, have you ever seen She Devil?

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Oh, you haven't with Roseanne Barr and, um, Ed Begley and, and Meryl Streep?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Was that a revenge, uh, movie?

• 5:00Josh Clark?

  Yes. All of them. Great revenge movies.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  Can I shout out one of my favorites?

• 5:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, please do.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Like legitimately, uh, it's kind of a smaller indie movie called Blue Ruin.

• 5:11Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I saw that one.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Great, great revenge movie if you're into revenge movies and I am, I, I enjoy it. There's a catharsis involved. Because I'm a, I'm a big forgiver. So I think I like seeing movies where revenge happens.

• 5:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and we'll talk a lot about, you know, revenge because they're virtually two sides of the same coin. And they really interact in some surprising ways that are sensible when you see it laid out, but you might not necessarily be walking around thinking about. But on the other side, if you look up movies about forgiveness, almost all of them were produced by a mega church somewhere in the South. Or you've got Magnolia and then The Fisher King are like the two, like legitimate contenders for movies about forgiveness.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know, because I think there's a fine line sometimes between redemption stories and forgiveness stories.

• 6:05Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  They can kind of go hand in hand. There are plenty of redemption stories.

• 6:08Josh Clark?

  Okay, like what?

• 6:10Speaker 03

  What, redemption stories?

• 6:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean. Hoosiers? One of the great sports redemption movies.

• 6:21Josh Clark?

  Okay, I think that's a pretty loose definition of redemption.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  No, you kidding me? Former alcoholic coach who, who was not working because of some bad deeds gets redeemed by leading a team to a championship? Dennis Hopper gets redeemed as the alcoholic father?

• 6:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, wait a minute, was, uh, was, um, Gene Hackman on the road to redemption? I thought he came in and basically got Dennis Hopper redeemed himself.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  This is a double redemption. He was getting redeemed as well.

• 6:50Josh Clark?

  All right, okay, okay, okay.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  But plenty of redemption stories, and I think there's a lot of movies that wrestle with the idea of forgiveness in really weighty, heavy ways. Like, these true stories that you hear about these awful things that happen, whether a family member is accidentally killed by someone or murdered by someone, like, there's a lot of that stuff in movies.

• 7:14Josh Clark?

  Okay, so my thesis was this, and this is strictly me editorializing here, but I, I think there's some validity to it. And that is that the reason why it's much easier to name revenge movies is because revenge appeals to our baser instincts. It makes sense, it's, it's universally understood, um, and like you said, you even consider yourself a big time forgiver, and yet you enjoy revenge movies, it's cathartic for you. There's something to be delivered by a revenge movie.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:42Josh Clark?

  A movie about forgiveness, it's just more complicated, it's harder, we're not as good in, in, um, we're not as automatically adept at forgiveness as we may be with revenge. That's why I think there's fewer forgiveness movies. But that's not to say that we're not moved by it, because I think if you hear, whenever you hear real life stories of forgiveness. They just bowl you over.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:11Josh Clark?

  Even when you step back and think about like what the person's actually doing, you're like, yes, legitimately, anybody could do what they just did. It's it's akin to hearing somebody solo climbing uh, Mount Everest or something like that. It's it makes the news, literally, when somebody forgives in a in like a really deep way that the average person might not.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a a big time transgression. A lot of times you'll hear of a courtroom scene where someone has forgiven the person who like murdered their their relative or loved one or something. And that, man, that stuff is powerful. You're right. Every time you see these stories, uh, you dug up this one story from, uh, Berkeley, the Greater Good Magazine, uh, science-based insights for a meaningful life. Out of UC Berkeley of this woman who was a a nurse's aide who hit a guy she had been drinking, hit a guy in her car. He went through the windshield, uh, and was stuck there and she was so impaired, she didn't realize it for a while.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Uh, eventually realized it, got out of the car, could not get the guy out who was still alive, mind you. And so drove home and parked her car in the garage to let this guy slowly die.

• 9:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  In her garage.

• 9:35Josh Clark?

  Over the course of a couple of days and like she sobered up, would go out and chuck on him once in a while, but refused to call for help because she was too concerned about getting in trouble.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  So instead she let him die, had a couple of friends come help her hide the body, move the body. And then actually got found out later on because four months later she was at a party and she joked about it to an acquaintance who went and told the cops and this woman ended up getting 50 years in prison. That's a horrible story. Like, that's one of the worst things that a human being could possibly do. There were so many opportunities for this woman to save this man's life. And by the way, everyone involved in that court case who had a medical degree said that had she called the cops, the fire department, taken the guy to the hospital, he almost certainly would have survived those injuries. But given that she didn't for days get him medical aid, he finally did succumb to them.

• 10:29Josh Clark?

  But he probably would have survived, almost certainly would have survived. Like, what she did was about as horrific as what a person could do. It's just so irresponsible with human life. And she rightfully got a 50-year prison sentence for that crime. And yet, despite how horrific that was, what made news just as much as that is that a short time later, that man's son, the man who was hit and killed, publicly forgave that woman for killing his father.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Yes. At the sentencing, said, quote, "There's no winners in a case like this. Just as we all lost Greg, you all will be losing your daughter to her family. I still want to extend my forgiveness to Shante Mallard," was her name, "and let her know that the Mallard family is in my prayers." And this is the kind of stuff, like you said, that makes the news where I think it hits everybody because it makes everybody stop for a second and say, "Could I do that?"

• 11:33Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Could I reach that point of forgiveness? And that's a big weighty question because there's all kinds of forgiveness. There's, you know, a couple, partners together who get in a fight and someone says they're sorry for doing a certain thing and they're forgiven or not. There are situations at work where people are forgiven. There are friends who maybe betray you by like cheating on somebody with someone. I had a situation like that where I had a former friend, I felt like cheated with my barely ex-girlfriend. And I spent quite a few years being upset about that.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  And then forgave him, and it's a powerful thing. So there's like levels, but when you get to this kind of thing where someone... Caused the death of a loved one and then even laughed about it. Like, to be able to forgive like that is just, uh, that's next level.

• 12:33Josh Clark?

  It is. It is so much so, Chuck, that a group of convicted murderers who were serving sentences in prison heard about this and I guess got in touch with one another and raised funds and got a $10,000 scholarship together.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 12:48Josh Clark?

  For Brandon Biggs to go to college. The convicted murderer sent the kid to college because this, this very generous act of public forgiveness of his own father's murderer. So yeah, it is. It's an astounding thing. And yet, everything that, like, the, the research that really, like I said, started to, to take off in earnest in the 90s, um, has shown us is that we're all perfectly capable of doing that. The answer is yes. Yes, you can do that. You totally could do that. But that we don't necessarily fully understand how to. And yet, there's a lot of evidence also that it's evolutionarily wired into us to do that.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, you know, we'll get into religiosity of it, uh, a bit more in detail later, but all religions talk a lot about forgiveness. Uh, there's, you know, a pretty famous story in the Bible where Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" And Jesus said, "I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven." And Peter said, "So 490 times?" And Jesus said, "Oi, Peter, always so literal."

• 14:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Uh, that one's pretty good, but you know, you can read Hindu, you can read, uh, the Buddhists talk about it, like everyone, every religion talks about forgiveness is kind of a, maybe a cornerstone of, of the religion in some cases.

• 14:17Josh Clark?

  So much so that, um, when science started looking into forgiveness and, and, and just trying to figure it out. Generally, people just presumed forgiveness was under the realm and the domain of religion. That's where, that's where you went for answers about forgiveness. And science said, "Ho, ho, ho, we can, we can top that. Surely, we can beat that 490 number." And that's what they've said about doing.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, Jesus forgave his crucifiers. It's like, one of the few things Jesus said on the cross, according to the Bible, was,

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  And Paul Schrader.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  "They know not what they do." Like, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

• 14:56Josh Clark?

  Right. And like you said, it's not just Christianity, although Christianity gets all the, all the accolades for forgiveness. Jainism is a big one. There's a, there's a kind of a mantra from Jainism that says, "I grant forgiveness to all living beings. May all living beings grant me forgiveness. My friendship is with all living beings. My enmity is totally nonexistent." And that's, I mean, when you look at that, especially if you're not a Jainist, you're, you're like, "Wow, how would you ever, how would you ever reach that level?" And I think the, the point is, is like, you never reach that level. It's an ideal, a goal that you try to achieve, probably on a daily basis, if you're a Jainist, but it's certainly over a lifetime, you know?

• 15:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I'd like to read this, again, not to pile on the religious stuff, but the Hindu one really spoke to me.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  This one part in the middle says, "What can a wicked person do unto him, or unto one, who carries the saber of forgiveness in his hand?" And that one really speaks to me in that it's, it's a powerful tool to forgive, and it's for you, as the forgiver. I think a lot of times, people think it's, can clear the conscience of someone who's done something wrong. I guess that certainly happens. But to me, it's, it's really about, it's, it's a powerful weapon you have to regain your own strength as a human.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  Yes, that seems to be the bulk of what psychology is is coming up with as far as studying forgiveness goes, that it's really the person who is who has been wronged. That's what forgiveness is is more about. That's the psychological aspect of it. Like we said, there's it's a multidisciplinary investigation. And so you've got evolutionary biologists who are like, that's really great psychology, but we found a different reason for forgiveness and it doesn't quite fit that mold. And then like the the medical field says, no, it's even better than that. You can actually like improve your health by genuinely forgiving somebody. So there's all these different inputs that are coming together to create this really

• 17:04Josh Clark?

  like complex contextualized picture of what forgiveness is and what it does for us and why we have it.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  That's right. I think it's a great setup.

• 17:13Josh Clark?

  I agree. You want to take a break?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  I might just not come back and feel so good about that.

• 17:18Josh Clark?

  No, no, we have to finish. We got to complete.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be back in a minute to talk about what I think is probably the most interesting part of this is the evolutionary aspect right after this.

• 17:49Speaker 04

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• 19:38Speaker 03

  So this was this, uh, this is Livia, correct?

• 19:42Josh Clark?

  Uh, Forgiveness was the Dave Ruse joint.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. I thought this was Livia. So yeah, thanks to Dave for this. He did a great job with this research. But the evolutionary aspect of forgiveness is super interesting to me because I think that a lot of people assume that it's what Dave calls a higher virtue. Like, you know, it is Tuk Tuk and the gang were so base as, uh, you know, kind of primitive thinkers, is that they didn't have the capacity to forgive. They would, they would smite somebody. If someone punched Tuk Tuk in the face, Tuk Tuk punched back. Or if someone attacked Tuk Tuk, Tuk Tuk attacked back, maybe even harder. And there is quite a bit of evidence that, um, they're not mutually exclusive and that, that fighting back and forgiving

• 20:29Speaker 03

  both have a big evolutionary advantage.

• 20:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so the big evolutionary advantage of revenge is if you live in a social group and somebody takes advantage of you, or they hit you, or they steal your food, or whatever, if you don't do something to right that wrong, you're broadcasting to the rest of the group that you're open for exploitation. And that's not good for you. It's also not good for the chances that you're gonna pass along your genes. And so, under the auspices of natural selection, it makes sense for you to hit that person that steals your food, or who hits you. And that's revenge. And revenge forms that function in a social group. It says to everybody, it signals to the rest of the group, "You are not to be messed with. This guy tried it, and look what happened to him.

• 21:16Josh Clark?

  Nobody else should try that. Go pick on somebody else." And there's actually been studies that have showed that, not just among apes and primates, but among human cultures, revenge is found pretty much universally. And I saw a study, Chuck, that said that the mere presence of a person, a third party, who's witnessing an argument, increases the chances that the argument is gonna come to blows. Because you're signaling to the rest of the group, and in this case, just that third person, you are not to be messed with. That that's the purpose of revenge, is to broadcast that signal.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I would say that any kind of dumb drunk bar fight, half of it is the fact that someone doesn't wanna back down in front of other people.

• 22:03Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  You know, more than half.

• 22:05Josh Clark?

  Totally.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  And that if those two guys were just in an alley somewhere, they may just hug it out.

• 22:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Probably not, but you never know.

• 22:14Josh Clark?

  That's possible, or they might talk it out, at least.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, or just agree that it's dumb and leave.

• 22:20Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  But you talked about studies in the animal world. There was a primatologist named Franz de Waal. Who looked at wild chimps, recorded 350 encounters, aggressive encounters between these chimps, and then what happened afterward. And in 51% of these encounters, the chimps would literally kind of kiss and make up, and touch each other, and embrace each other after a fight. We've seen the same thing in bonobos, in great apes. There's sheep, there's dolphins, there's goats, even hyenas have shown traits of forgiveness. So it's it's not ubiquitous, but it is all over the animal kingdom, animals fighting, and then animals making up with one another.

• 23:04Josh Clark?

  Right. So, I mean, the revenge one's pretty easy to understand, but then you're like, okay, well, why would there be the making up part? But that also ties into the fact that these same animals are also living in social, tight knit social groups. And so you have a limited amount of people that you can possibly have a dispute or a feud with. And if you're not working together cooperatively, in that sense, also your chances of survival are decreased. So what makes sense is what's called the valuable relationship hypothesis, which says if somebody hits you, you should hit them back, but then after that, you should make up with them. So you're sending that signal you're not

• 23:46Josh Clark?

  to be messed with, but then you're repairing that relationship, that valuable relationship that you depend on to help your survival in the in the social group. You're repairing it, and then you guys can move forward. And that that is the how revenge and forgiveness are basically two sides of the same coin, or at least work in conjunction with one another to keep the the group functioning at its best.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  Right. And that kind of dovetails with the second part of that thing, which is called negative reciprocity, which is if someone hits Tuk Tuk, and Tuk Tuk goes crazy, and just starts wailing on the other person who just slapped him in the face.

• 24:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  That's not good either, because everyone's gonna go, whoa, Tuk Tuk, I'm not sure I I trust him now. He has definitely burned that bridge forever between him and the other guy. And none of this is very good. So what they found is negative reciprocity. If you, if someone smites you, you smite them back the same amount and then forgive them. Like if someone takes off their glove and slaps you across the face, you don't, you don't kick them between the legs and then wail on their face. You slap them back with your glove. And then you talk about forgiving one another and everyone sees that you can work with people. You can, you can stand your ground, but you can also forgive and work with people, which means you're valuable to the group and you're valuable to have around.

• 25:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so kind of tie it into what you were saying earlier about, you know, how there's this idea that, you know, revenge is a base instinct and forgiveness is a higher instinct, rather than realizing that they're both pretty basic instincts for, for, um, in among the animal kingdom is there's this idea that in human society, we have created like these social institutions in these contexts so that the individual doesn't have to, to carry out revenge and then forgiveness, that they can just focus on forgiveness.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:52Josh Clark?

  As long as those social institutions are doing what they're supposed to do, as long as there is like a pursuit of justice.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:59Josh Clark?

  And you can rely on the idea that the, the person who transgressed against you by killing your father is going to be caught and punished and sentenced to jail. You don't have to worry about revenge. It's being, it's being conducted for you. And then you, the individual in this well functioning society can just focus on whether you want to forgive or not. And that that's that kind of higher and lower echelon. Because in the, in the opposite situation where there isn't like a good sense of justice, where it does seem like if you want justice, you have to go seek it out yourself, revenge is going to be much more, um, uh, exercised much more frequently than forgiveness will.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Which says a lot about the United States these days, you know?

• 26:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm, I'm not trying to be cynical even. I mean, that's just sort of what we see around us. I think a lot of people feel like the sense of justice in this country is pretty skewed. And that's why you might see the increases in things like vigilanteism or revenge and. Um, I don't know what societies you look to to do a study like that. I'm kind of curious on the ones that are very well policed and the justice is sort of fair and equal, but um, I think that's one of the problems in the, in the states these days, for sure.

• 27:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Without getting too far down that rabbit hole.

• 27:17Josh Clark?

  But also even, you know, it's, it's kind of eye opening to me because I, I've never really thought about the courts and the justice system is um, set up to help individuals move along.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it should be.

• 27:30Josh Clark?

  You just think of it as punishment, as a system for punishment, not for redemption necessarily, but um, but it's also to, to help the victims. I just never saw it that way before.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about that guy in court and a lot of times you'll hear the courtroom forgiveness, um, sometimes you'll also hear the opposite and you hear the courtroom like, I will never forgive you for what you did to me. And I think, not always, but it seems to be a lot of time tied to whether the transgressor has really acknowledged what they've done and sought forgiveness and said, that was the worst thing I've ever done in my life and I don't, I don't think you should ever forgive me. Like, it's an interesting sort of dance that happens there, because it's not a one-to-one thing. It's not like every time a, a bad criminal that does something really asks for forgiveness and says it was a terrible thing, the other person forgives.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  So sometimes the person could laugh it off, like this lady did, and not ask for forgiveness and the other person could forgive, which I think goes back to the notion that forgiveness comes from the forgiver.

• 28:36Josh Clark?

  Right, that that's, that, that it's really about

• 28:38Speaker 03

  It's on them.

• 28:39Josh Clark?

  The person who's been wrong.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:40Josh Clark?

  That's who it's about. And so, yeah, now we've reached the kind of psychology's domain over of the, the concept of forgiveness, which is

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:48Josh Clark?

  That it's about you, the individual who suffered a wrong, um, releasing the, the pain and the anger and the resentment and all of the negative feelings that you're experiencing so that you can feel better. And that it doesn't matter whether the other person is asking for forgiveness and that it doesn't even matter if the other person deserves forgiveness or not.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:10Josh Clark?

  That genuine forgiveness, psychologically speaking, according to some psychologists, we'll hear that some disagree, but that genuine, true forgiveness is unconditional, that you, you forgive the person whether they deserve it or not.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, and this is to where the language to me is a little.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  I could see people debating this because it is forgiveness in a way, but to me, it's almost more of just a letting go.

• 29:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I agree with you.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Uh, of an anger. So it's not, it's so tricky with the definition because when you think of forgiveness, you think I'm saying.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  And it's really not what it is. What you're not saying is it's okay what you did.

• 29:52Josh Clark?

  Okay, so yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? That's not what, that's not a key component of forgiveness.

• 29:57Josh Clark?

  No, no, it's not. You're, that's, and that's a very confusing thing for a lot of people too. Is that the idea that if you forgive somebody, you're, you're, you're condoning their behavior. You're saying it's okay what they did. That's not the point of forgiveness. From, from what psychologists who research this are coming up with, they're saying. No, what you're doing when you forgive somebody is to say, I know what you did. You wronged me.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  I know what you did last summer.

• 30:23Josh Clark?

  I can live with that. It doesn't make it any better. Yeah. It doesn't make it any better. It doesn't excuse what you did.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:31Josh Clark?

  And it does, it certainly doesn't excuse future repeated instances of what you just did. But it's saying like, I'm willing to let go of the pain I have associated with this act you, you, you did against me, that you, this wrong. And I'm going to move forward with my life. And in doing that, I'm willing to let you move forward as well.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Well, or I think sometimes in a case like this, that kind of forgiveness can make the transgressor suffer worse sometimes.

• 31:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, just out of guilt.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they want to be admonished and hated as part of a punishment. But you know, it's TS, you know, because again, forgiveness is not for you. It's for the person. Dave even makes a great point. Uh, the person being forgiven is secondary or even unnecessary to the process. And that's sort of the key. You don't even have to.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Tell that person necessarily, we'll, we'll get to later some kind of like how to forgive. Some people say that you should tell someone

• 31:33Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  out loud, like literally tell someone, but you don't necessarily have to tell that person if it's a a situation like this, or even if it's like a close personal friend, like I think usually you do when it's someone you know, because that's a part of communicating with one another in a healthy way. But if it's the person who, who killed your family, you don't have to tell them to forgive them and you can still forgive them.

• 31:56Josh Clark?

  Yes. So some psychologists define forgiveness, like a full forgiveness, as including you actually seeking out contact with that person.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:06Josh Clark?

  And that if you forgive them, but don't tell them, or you still avoid them afterward where it's like, hey, I forgive you, but good luck with the rest of your life.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  You're not in my life anymore, that to, to some psychologists, not all, some psychologists say that's, that's not genuine forgiveness. That's akin to like what you were saying, which is letting go of anger and moving on, but not really actually forgiving.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  I still say it's forgiving. I'm not one of the psychologists.

• 32:30Josh Clark?

  Sure. And it's, it's very much debated for sure. But then that also leads to another point too, that if you forgive somebody, it doesn't necessarily mean you forget.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:40Josh Clark?

  And, and that's not part and parcel to it. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. You can forget.

• 32:47Josh Clark?

  I'm actually really good at that kind of thing where like I, I forgive because it, it just, unless it was a really huge wrong, it just kind of fades from my memory fairly easily and I don't, I'm not, I don't dwell on it. So, so it can, they can go hand in hand. But if you've been deeply wrong by somebody where you're actually going through the process of forgiving, which we'll talk about, and it is a, it's a deliberate step that you're taking toward finding peace with yourself and your life again, then you know very well what that wrong was and you're not going to forget it. But eventually the aim is that you will have divorced the emotional attachment from that memory to, of that wrong,

• 33:29Josh Clark?

  to where it becomes akin to like a movie you saw once, or a trip you took once. Like it's not, it's just a thing that happened in your life rather than this, this, this crisis that is sucking up your attention and emotions.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I really like this definition from Fred Luskin, who is a psychologist and forgiveness expert, for what it's worth, director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects. And Fred's definition is to forgive is to give up all hope for a better past. And that's, that really lays it out there in this, in a very practical sense, that what, what has happened has happened. You may not be there yet in your journey to forgiveness or the letting go, but you cannot change what happened, no matter how angry you are or how much you want someone to pay for it or suffer or how much revenge you want.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  So there is no better past. It's impossible. So giving up hope for a better past, it's sort of a bleak definition, but one that I think is pretty instructive.

• 34:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but it's also a realistic definition too, if you think about it, because you can't change the past one way or another. You can only alter how you let the past continue to affect you or not. And the other thing I really want to say here right now, because it can be confusing for me too, when I, when I think about forgiveness and anger and stuff like that is like, this is not, no one is talking about a, something like throwing a switch or like, rather than feeling anger, you feel forgiveness. That's actually counterproductive, as we'll see. Like you, you, like, you can't replace anger with forgiveness. Forgiveness is meant to come after anger, because you use anger

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 35:18Josh Clark?

  or hurt or resentment or whatever your version of that is, to, to, to protect and guard your own boundaries. So it's unnatural for you to not have some sort of negative emotion or negative response to being wronged. But you don't want to replace that or try to replace it with forgiveness, because you may accidentally trip up the process and you, you're not really legitimately feeling forgiveness. You're basically just setting yourself up to be wronged again.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, my deal personally is Emily is always talks about what a forgiving person I am because I I really crave to forgive. I don't know, I was about to say crave forgiveness. I crave forgiving. I guess it sounds funny, but I just all I need is for someone to say they're sorry for something. And then it's done. Nine times out of 10, that's done for me. And as far as forgetting, like, I'm a pretty good forgetter, too. I don't know about like literally forgetting something, but I definitely look back on a lot of relationships, especially with like ex-girlfriends that were terrible and go,

• 36:32Speaker 03

  oh, what was so bad in there in that relationship? We were pretty good, right?

• 36:35Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  No, we weren't pretty good at all.

• 36:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  I just have rose colored glasses and I think you and I are both like as podcasting partners and family and team good about when we had little dustups forgiving one another. If the other person like says they're sorry, like you and I both get over that stuff pretty quickly.

• 36:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Which is

• 36:58Speaker 03

  it's very key, though, you know, like

• 36:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  You can't forgiveness is like from the heart. If you really, if you're hanging on to something, then you're not done with it yet.

• 37:07Josh Clark?

  No, but so and that is so important, Chuck. That's important for the individual to remember. That if you if you are unable to forgive, that means that you're you're still hanging on to it. That doesn't mean you'll never forgive. And that also doesn't mean you have to hurry up and forgive. It means you're still in the process of reaching the point where you can forgive. It's a deliberate choice from everything I've seen in the research. You're making a deliberate choice to forgive somebody, but it's not throwing a switch. It's part of a process. And during that process, while you're on the road to forgiving the person, you're still going to be kind of angry at them. Maybe not the whole time, but every once in a while it might hit you before you've fully forgiven them. And then you're going to be mad about it all over again. That's okay. That's normal. That's natural.

• 37:50Josh Clark?

  You can't really rush it. You can, but it's going to be detrimental. What you want to do is just kind of let it play out and have faith that if you're on the path to forgiveness, you'll ultimately will forgive the person and things will be good again.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and depending on your life and your childhood, like you probably have an inclination or an instinct to forgive or not, based on what you saw, what was modeled. There's both nature and nurture involved, but I think people generally have an instinct of revenge or forgiveness. And to do one or the other that is against that instinct requires great effort, especially in the case of forgiveness. Because you may not be inclined to be a forgiver at all. That doesn't mean something's wrong with you. That just means that's probably what you saw growing up, or maybe something happened to you when you were young that makes it harder for you. But it's still possible to get there. It just might be tougher.

• 38:42Josh Clark?

  Well, what's neat is another thing that the field of psychology is telling us about forgiveness is that it can be taught. You can learn to forgive, even if you were raised in an unforgiving environment, where you never learned how to do that. You can learn how to do it. And I say we kind of jump to those, to how to forgive, before we go into physical health, because I feel like we're kind of there right now.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, let's take a break.

• 39:09Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  Let's take our final break. And we'll talk about that when we get back, as well as this one sort of interesting study I'd like to hit real quick, too.

• 39:17Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 39:38Speaker 07

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• 40:18Speaker 05

  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard. But then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

• 40:33Speaker 06

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• 41:08Speaker 05

  I'm glad I asked for help.

• 41:10Speaker 06

  Ask your loved one's doctor about Rexulti.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  All right, so there's this study that Dave dug up that I thought was interesting. I think it's flawed, but interesting. It screams social psychology. They took 46 people. They divided them into two groups. One wrote about a time when they had something, some wrong committed against them, but they forgave. The other wrote about a time when they had something wrong committed against them, but they did not forgive. And then they told those people to stand at the bottom of a hill to estimate how steep it was. And also, in a separate part of the study, to jump as high as they could. The unforgiving group guessed that the incline was five degrees steeper on average than the forgiving. And the forgivers jumped seven centimeters higher.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  So the takeaway here is, is you literally, it's more difficult for you. You see the world as being more difficult and steeper. And you can't jump as high and you can't accomplish as much if you're holding on to that. All kinds of red flags here in this study, especially when it comes to the jumping part.

• 42:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  But I thought it was interesting, the guessing, the incline of the hill. There may be something to that.

• 42:37Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, and I mean, it is backed up Chuck by the physical, the physiological studies of how, how stress and anger affect you and how releasing those can actually help you. There's a lot of research that shows that you can suffer from chronic stress when you're angry all the time and that that's tied to everything from high blood pressure to diabetes to poor cardiovascular outcomes. Just a whole host of chronic conditions can be traced back to chronic stress and chronic stress can be traced back to chronic anger. And what they've, what they're discovering is that forgiveness can actually undo that, can actually reverse that.

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  There was a study that, that, that rated people based on the life stresses they'd had. And they apparently recruited participants for this study who'd been through a lot of stress, so much so that they were basically always chronically stressed because they have had so many terrible events in their life. And there was one group that actually did not have poor health compared to the rest of the group. And they found that when they gave them a test of forgiveness, of how forgiving they were generally, they found that this subset was actually overall a very forgiving group and that that somehow was battling back the chronic stress or the effects of chronic stress on their health in life.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think that makes complete sense. If you were someone who.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Really has a problem with forgiving and just holds on to these deep, deep resentments against people, usually against people very close to you and your family even. That, that just, that can't be good for you physically. I've seen it happen. I don't want to get too personal, but there are people in my family who haven't spoken for 20 plus years over dumb stuff that it's like, you see that kind of like stubbornness coupled with resentment and it's just, man, that is just no way to live.

• 44:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  No way to live.

• 44:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So there was another one that, another study that Dave turned up that shows that even like in a very short term, thinking about holding a grudge can actually affect you physiologically.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:05Josh Clark?

  By activating your sympathetic nervous system, as Dave puts it, the battle or skedaddle impulse. And they found that this, they, they cut these two groups into, or they cut the participants into two groups. All of the people had to think about some time when they were deeply wronged in the past.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:24Josh Clark?

  And then one group was taken through an exercise where they learned to forgive the person. The other group, this is so mean, was encouraged to hold a grudge. They were basically taught, they went through an exercise to hold a grudge and be angry and resentment.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:38Josh Clark?

  Or resentful about that. And they found that the people who were taught to hold the grudge had elevated skin conductance, which meant their nervous system was aroused, higher arterial blood pressure, not good. They also had muscle tension in the brow area, you know, when your brows furrowed when you're stressed out or mad.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 45:55Josh Clark?

  And that they, they, the symptoms, even after they went through an exercise to basically de-escalate everything, the symptoms persisted.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  And this was just a, an exercise where you were just thinking about being wronged and then holding a grudge about it, just, just like a problem, this was like an hour out of their lives. And that's, that was the effects, that was the findings of that. So it's pretty clear that. That, yes, anger can can affect you physically. And and what they haven't, we don't have the reams of data that we have supporting it like we do that anger hurts you physically. But there's, there seems to be the opposite of that holds true, which is releasing that anger, which is forgiveness, in whatever form it takes, can actually improve your health as well.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Right. Earlier in the episode, we were talking about religion. All religions talk extensively about forgiveness. And when they do studies these days, usually like questionnaires and stuff, depending on the studies you look at, you would think religiosity does play a role in that people who describe themselves as religious, supposedly in some studies, are two and a half times more likely to say that others should be forgiven unconditionally. But I know you found some studies that found that religiosity does not play as big a role as a lot of people think it does. And that sometimes religious people may be more inclined

• 47:23Speaker 03

  to say that they are forgiving when they aren't, because it's the right thing to do.

• 47:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the study found that when when you ask, basically when you survey them, that people who are religious tend to come off as more forgiving. They self-report as forgiving.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:39Josh Clark?

  But then if you ask them other certain questions, I guess in the, in real world situations, they're no more forgiving than other people. But, so that would be an interpretation, that they they think they're more forgiving or tell people they're more forgiving than they actually are. But there is another way to look at it, too. And they went back and followed up on that study. And they found that over a longer term, people who are religious actually do tend to be more forgiving in their lives. It wasn't like the most set in stone study, but I found it interesting that they were, they had it harder, the religious people in this study had more difficulty in relating grudges that they're carrying around

• 48:22Josh Clark?

  compared to the control group of people who weren't religious.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:27Josh Clark?

  Makes sense.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 48:29Josh Clark?

  There was some redemption there.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, as far as how to forgive, like we said, hopefully we've gotten it through that is something you can learn if you are not an inherent forgiver. You can learn how to through practice. Uh, there's a psychologist named Worthington.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  Everett Worthington.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Edward?

• 48:49Josh Clark?

  Everett.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  Everett Worthington.

• 48:51Josh Clark?

  There should be a third after that, if you ask me.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Totally should be. Uh, and Worthington has developed a REACH model, which we'll go through. It's, um, it's an acronym.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  Of course.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Recall is the first step, and that's to really recall the event in detail, but in the sort of an objective way, and not necessarily something that was done to you, but just to look at the detail of it and try not to judge yourself or the other person. Just simply bring that back to your mind.

• 49:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the point of that is to feel the feelings. Like we have, we humans have such a tendency to try to get away from negative feelings and run toward positive feelings. And, um, I think Worthington's position is that we have to feel whatever feelings are associated with it. And that's a huge part of it. That's, we have to go through that experience. It's part of the recall.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Right. The E stands for empathy. Um, this is one that is, I don't know about controversial, but it's, it's not everyone agrees at all on whether or not you need to actually have empathy to forgive. Um, but empathy can certainly help you forgive. If someone has, uh, broken into your home and stolen from you, uh, it might help to forgive them to empathize and think about where they may be in their life to feel like they needed to do something like that, uh, is one example.

• 50:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the, uh, he points out also, like, you're not excusing their behavior, but you're just thinking about them beyond just a villain or criminal or person who wronged you for sure. And actually, we should say Everett Worthington had to put his money where his mouth was because his mother, um, was actually murdered by a burglar.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  I think back in 1997.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 50:34Josh Clark?

  And he put himself through this, um, the, the, the REACH method. And he said he came out on the other side better off than he had been.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  And I think he was already. Doing this, right? That didn't inspire his career, did it?

• 50:46Josh Clark?

  No, no, I think he was already doing it coincidentally.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  Wow, the ironies.

• 50:51Josh Clark?

  So the A stands for altruistic gift, and the point of this is that you realize that you're actually giving a gift by forgiving somebody. Even, I guess, if you don't tell them, even if you don't necessarily empathize with them. But the way you do this, the way you recognize that your forgiveness is an altruistic gift, is to think about times where you've wronged somebody and that they've been forgiven or forgiving, and even if you didn't necessarily deserve it. And what a gift that that was, you're kind of bringing it to mind, which I think is really suspiciously kind of tied in with empathizing, if you ask me.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, he was trying to make the word reach.

• 51:33Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Commit to, this is what I mentioned earlier about telling someone else, doesn't necessarily have to be the person you're forgiving, although that could help if you want to go that route, but telling someone else, at least in Wilmington's mind, makes it, gives it a degree of permanence.

• 51:49Josh Clark?

  Makes it real.

• 51:50Speaker 03

  And basically makes it part of your story, like you're changing the story, essentially.

• 51:55Josh Clark?

  Exactly, and then hold, and this is very important, too, that we said earlier, you can forgive and it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to forget. So when you do remember that kind of thing, you're still going through the process and you're still angered by it, you're still hurt by it, but you're on the path to forgiveness. You have to hold on to the idea that you're working on forgiving them, that it's not an instantaneous thing, so you have to hold the fact that you're forgiving them, even in the face of, you know, being triggered by or flooded by this again when you think about the memory of it.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Right, Luskin has a nine-step process, which we weren't, we're not going to really get into, but step eight is interesting, just like R E M says, "Living well is the best revenge", is the sort of the nuts and bolts of number eight. And there's something to be said for that, but I think it also makes it much harder to forgive and move on if you're not able to live well. And that doesn't mean, you know, money and riches and stuff like that.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  That means just living a full life, but if you're not able to forgive and get past that, I mean, there are plenty of movies of people that have been, have some awful thing from their past that they're just wallowing in all these years later, and that's the central plot of the film, you know?

• 53:08Josh Clark?

  She-devil.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Hoosiers?

• 53:13Josh Clark?

  That's right. But that's, I mean, that's the, that's the point of forgiveness is to, is to free yourself, to find peace within yourself. And yes, it's great for the person who wronged you if you overtly forgive them and let them know, but you don't have to. And then also Chuck, there's a whole school of thought in psychology that says, not only do you not have to tell the person that you're forgiving them, you don't have to forgive them.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:40Josh Clark?

  At all. And that there's this, this whole almost kind of, um, not culty, but really kind of dogmatic idea that if you don't follow these steps and you don't like genuinely, fully forgive somebody, you really haven't worked out the process. There's something wrong with you. Maybe you're an unforgiving person and that makes you tacky. That's what psychologists call it. And there's a whole group of psychologists say, no, no, no, there's a, there's way more to this process than just, you know, nine steps or the reach method. Like there, there's, it's more nuanced than that in that you can be a fully functioning, emotionally developed person who says, you know what? I don't forgive you. I may never

• 54:25Josh Clark?

  forgive you, but I'm still going on with my life. And if the point of forgiveness is to achieve peace in yourself, if you can achieve peace in yourself and, and you do it without forgiving somebody because you don't want to forgive them, or you don't feel like you should forgive them, then that's okay too. As long as you're, you're getting inner peace. That's the point.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there is a school of thought saying that in cases where like it's a harm has been committed to you that could happen again, you may be more likely to have that harm committed to you again, if you do forgive too much. There is research about spousal abuse that when you are too, or when you're quick to forgive the abuser, then you are victimized more regularly than spouses who aren't as forgiving. And that's, that's based on operant learning. Basically, you're less likely to engage in a behavior that has a negative consequence. So they've done plenty of research on that. And a lot of psychologists say like, yeah, forgiveness is great, but while you shouldn't be bitter, there are

• 55:31Speaker 03

  a lot of times when you should not forgive somebody and that's okay.

• 55:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a whole, um, there's a article from nineteen ninety-nine on Psychology Today called "Must We Forgive?" And it is really interesting. It's fascinating. It's this psychologist writes about probably half a dozen or more people and their different individual circumstances and the reasons they chose not to forgive. And um, she kind of pigeonholes them into like three general categories, but because psychologists love doing that. But it's a really compelling article and it's definitely worth reading and it provides this kind of alternative idea that like, no, there's definitely situations where some people don't deserve your forgiveness. One of the chief among them is if you, say like a sibling or a family member of some

• 56:17Josh Clark?

  sort, um, you have a, like some sort of falling out with, or they've wronged you and you choose not to forgive them, you might feel tremendous pressure from the rest of your family to just go ahead and forgive them. That's a terrible reason to forgive somebody. And if you do forgive them under those circumstances, or say because your religion decrees it, um, you're like, that's not full forgiveness and it may actually harm you because you may suffer um, from, from a distorted self-image or, or lowered self-respect because you basically went back to this person who not only wronged you in the past, is unrepentant about it, but is just going to continue the behavior again in the future. So there's definitely

• 56:58Josh Clark?

  instances that where like you probably shouldn't forgive, but that doesn't mean that you should be stuck in resentment and anger and letting that person have power over your life. You might just need to move on without them and without forgiving them and you can make that work as well.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there was that one terrible story that you sent about the woman who as a child had this terribly bullying and abusive older brother. And we won't even talk about the awful things this guy did, but the parents were really put, always pushing like, oh, he just doesn't, he doesn't know how to say he loves you. He doesn't know how to talk to you, so he does these things and you really need to forgive him. And that's just... That's bonkers, you know, that is a situation where you're doing such great harm as a parent to, to teach your daughter to accept this kind of behavior.

• 57:49Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  And not only accept it, but forgive it. It's like just setting her up for, unless she really therapies through that stuff later in life of just a series of terrible relationships. So.

• 58:00Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yes. Yes.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  You can't, forgiveness isn't always the thing. My, I have a friend who had a terrible thing happen to him when he was younger. And he, we talked a lot about this and he has forgiven that person in his heart. And I was like, well, I haven't. And I was like, I'm still angry about it. And he was like, thanks. Like, that helps. Like, I'm angry and have not forgiven on his behalf. And I thought he was gonna say like, no, man, you need to do the same. And he was like, he was like, thank you, man.

• 58:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  I appreciate that.

• 58:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I think that's another, another thing worth pointing out too, is we have this concept of people who forgive others being saintly.

• 58:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:45Josh Clark?

  And, and it's not necessarily that kind of a thing. It's not necessarily that kind of a process. Sometimes it is just straight up self-preservation. Like you are, that's the way that you're going to get to a point where you can feel peace again in your life. And that doesn't mean you're a saint, or you're even feeling saintly, or you're conducting yourself in a saintly manner. And that doesn't matter. As long as you're feeling inner peace and your life is no longer in turmoil, and this person who wronged you doesn't have power over you any longer. That's the point of forgiveness.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that, that was totally the deal in his case, is that was his only way forward to, to healing himself. But since this wasn't something that happened to me, I was able to not forgive.

• 59:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  And, and remain upset about it. And he, he was okay with that.

• 59:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And still to this day, you won't buy that guy beers.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 59:35Josh Clark?

  So there's one other thing that has started to kind of come out of the shadows that's just getting picked up by psychology as far as forgiveness goes, and it's self-forgiveness. And we don't really have room to talk about that here, but it's worth exploring sometime, maybe in a short stuff.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a big deal. Just a lot of times when I'm beaten up on myself, Emily says, you need to be nicer to my friend.

• 59:56Josh Clark?

  Oh, I know. You've, you've told that before. I always just think that's like, one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. What a kind thing to say.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  It works.

• 1:00:04Josh Clark?

  You know who needs to hear that? Don Henley.

• 1:00:10Josh Clark?

  You got anything else on forgiveness, Charles?

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  I got nothing else. This is a good weighty philosophical discussion. I like these.

• 1:00:16Josh Clark?

  Agreed. Thanks a lot to Dave Bruce for helping us out with this one. And if you want to know more about forgiveness, you should seriously go out and do some reading, especially if you have something to forgive. It's not something you necessarily can understand just instinctively. It helps to see what the experts say. So maybe go explore that and free yourself. As I said, free yourself, that of course means it's time for listener mail.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  I'm gonna call this dental art. Hey guys, been a listener for a while. I've nearly finished with the sandwiching method before I knew it was even cool.

• 1:00:52Speaker 03

  We were talking a few shows, you were talking a few shows back before the holidays about putting a kidney stone in Chuck's replacement tooth. This would be unusual, but people actually get custom inlays and artwork made for their crowns. Inlays are generally gold or gemstone with a custom artwork and is referred to as a tooth tattoo, which is hand painted onto the crown before it gets a final coat of glaze. The most common request here in the Chicagoland area are sports logos.

• 1:01:19Josh Clark?

  Oh no.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Like a little Chicago Cubs logo on your tooth. But I've seen names, company logos, even a tiny version of Starry Night on a tooth. While a lot of modern crown and bridge manufacturing has gone digital, highly leveraging CAD and 3D printing for most restorations, tooth tattoos are a unique manifestation of the relatively unknown artistry of a subset of dental technicians.

• 1:01:42Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  While I recognize that dentistry as a whole is widely disliked and a pain to endure, I appreciate that you guys probably unknowingly helped to de-stigmatize restorative dental work by openly talking about your dealings with it. Tooth wear and decay is part of the human condition. No need for shame. After all, it will keep me and my cadre employed and happily listening to stuff you should know. Many regards. That is from Eric Crowley, or Crowley, probably Crowley.

• 1:02:09Josh Clark?

  I'm going with Crowley.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  In Park Ridge, Illinois.

• 1:02:12Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Thanks a lot, Eric. That's awesome. Can you imagine seeing Starry Night on a tooth? I gotta look that up.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Be wonderful. I'd have to scream.

• 1:02:20Josh Clark?

  That's a good one. And then you could scream whenever you reveal it, too.

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'd just freak people out.

• 1:02:26Josh Clark?

  And speaking of sports teams, Chuck, I feel like we should congratulate our Georgia Bulldogs for winning the national championship.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  Yes. Never thought I would see the day. What a great, great game. Just unbelievable feeling. Two championships in three months for this long-suffering Atlanta slash Georgia fan.

• 1:02:45Josh Clark?

  I know. It's amazing. What a great year for-

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  I don't even know how to reconcile these feelings that I'm having lately.

• 1:02:51Josh Clark?

  They'll be robbed from you next year. Don't worry. It'll go back to normal. But that is pretty great to go out on a high like that.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Probably. That was great. Go Dogs.

• 1:03:00Josh Clark?

  Go Dogs indeed. And if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I and Jerry or Frank the Chair or Harry Dogg even, we can probably pass along emails you send. You can wrap your emails up, spank them on the bottom and send them off to [email protected].

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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