447. Middle School Divorcee | It’s Going to be OK with Elise Loehnen

We would never tell you that everything is going to be OK, but we will tell you that something will be. Today, Nora and guest Elise Loehnen share the things that make them feel like the world isn’t crumbling down around them.

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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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I’m Nora McInerny, and It’s Going To Be OK. And you’ll notice I didn’t say everything is going to be OK, because I don’t know that. I don’t believe that in general.

I think that we can all look around the world, especially these past few weeks and months, and say, oh no, those things will never be OK. And you know exactly what I’m talking about.

But if you’re joining us for the first time, you might want the origin story of this podcast, of this title of this podcast. I stole it from my dead husband. Aaron died of brain cancer in 2014.

He was a buoyant person. I was not. I have always just been a worrier, anxious about things.

And when I was worried, which again, I always was, Aaron would tell me, it’s going to be OK. And he said this when I was worried about work, you know, banner ads. I worked in advertising.

I was worried about banner ads, guys. I lost sleep over banner ads. He said that when I was anxious about the world.

He said it was going to be OK, even when he was dying of brain cancer. And you know what? I never really believed him.

I thought, no, it actually won’t be OK. It will never be OK that you died at age 35. And I was right.

And so was he. Because yes, it is true that there are many things that will never be OK. And I also know that even when everything seems like it is horrible, not every single thing is horrible.

So in a world filled with many terrible things, we are here to try to put a little bit of OK in your day. To find and share the OK that is all around us. And today we have quite an array.

We have weird children’s fan fiction. We have elderly sleepovers, not that kind. We have human design.

We have possible alien life. And we have a special guest here to go through all that and more.

It’s Elise Loehnen, who is my friend and the host of the podcast Pulling the Thread, and the author of one of my favorite books on our best behavior, The Price Women Pay to Be Good.

She is one of my favorite thinkers, one of my favorite talkers, and I’m so lucky to have her with us here today.

Elise Loehnen, thank you so much for joining me here today, and thank you so much for being gracious when I could not read a clock, which is a recurring theme in my life.

You know, I would like to say that I’m better at it than you, and maybe I am, maybe a little bit better at it, but I also was running very late, so no apology necessary.

We’re working with two things against us, time zones.

Correct.

Yeah, you did send this for 9.30 at night, so.

I did. Then I sent it for, then you said, well, now it’s the right time, but now it’s 15 hours long. I said, that’s correct.

I wouldn’t have proposed you. That’s right. Sometimes we’re on the same time zone, but here’s the thing about Arizona, we don’t do daylight savings, and I thought that would make my life easier.

And instead, it is very confusing for me.

Yeah, you have to understand where everyone else is in relation to you. It’s annoying.

Everyone else is moving around. I stayed the same. That’s not helpful.

It’s like when everyone is moving an hour, you can do that math, but when you’re not, it’s a little bit harder. I can’t explain it, but it is a challenge for me. And that coupled with just my inability to look at a clock.

And I own so many watches, Elise.

Like swatches, I would guess. That feels, yeah.

Full-on watches. And even today, I was like, I should wear a watch. And this is why.

This is why. But the problem with the watch is you have to look at it. Same thing with the clock.

You got to look at it. You got to look at it. You got to look at it.

So Elise, you are, I’ve already said all this behind your back, but I should say it to your face. In fact, I did say it to your face before I started recording, but you’re one of my favorite people to talk to because you are so smart.

You are so wise. I feel like you see things so clearly. I really love that you tolerate me while I can be just such a chaotic force in the world.

And you’re like, OK, OK, you’re such an accepting person. It’s really wonderful. So I was very, very excited that you said yes to this without any coercion.

And I am excited to get into some OK things because we are having we’re having a time in the world right now.

We sure are.

We are having a time. We are having a bad time. Mostly we’re having a bad time.

And I do think it’s very powerful. Experts agree you got to find you got to find the OK things. And I want you to kick it off and tell me what one of your OK things is right now.

OK, should we should we start at the top of my list?

Yeah, your list is your business.

My list is my business.

OK, so I have been reading. Have you ever heard of Avi Loeb? No.

So he is an astrophysicist at Harvard and he leads the Gemini Project and he’s a fascinating creature.

That’s why I haven’t heard of him.

Well, I’m interviewing him. All three of those things.

It’s a little bit not my typical fare, but I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact that this object, this interstellar object has come sort of within the distance that scientists have been able to study it It’s called Atlas III, I think.

And it’s sort of the second, I think there have been more, but there was a interstellar object that came in 2019 called Umuamua.

And Avi’s team, he is, he pushes against sort of, I’d say sort of the scientific mainstream that is just like, it has to be a rock or a comet, even, you know, it has to be a meteor or a comet, even though it doesn’t behave in that way.

And they’ve exhausted sort of all the examples of why or how this could be sort of any other piece of debris. And Avi is out there saying, I think this is a piece of alien technology.

And unfortunately, we’re not close enough to be able to really study it up close. But that he thinks, he’s like, I don’t know if it’s a buoy. I don’t know if it’s sort of an abandoned ship.

But he was like, but when you think about humans, we put so much stuff into space in an effort to sort of understand the universe that he’s like, I think this is that type of detritus. It could be a billion years old.

But anyway, his book, this first book is called Extraterrestrial and it is so right sizing and humble.

And I find it actually wildly reassuring because he’s not, he talks about sort of the ill that’s been done by Hollywood with the little green alien or this idea that aliens are imminent and they’re going to destroy us all to essentially be like,

there are, I can’t even remember the number, billions of similar habitable planets to earth. The chance of there not being other life forms who are likely far smarter than us and more evolved should be reassuring actually.

And a signal that we need to get our shit together. So anyway, I find it, I found the book really beautiful. He wanted to be a philosopher before he became a scientist.

And he just asked these really big, deep questions. That, I don’t know, it just, it puts everything into perspective. Does that make sense on a cosmological scale?

Is this only spiking your anxiety?

Did you hear me get out my notebook? Because I was like, I gotta write that down. What’s the name of this book?

OK, the first book is called Extra Terrestrial, and it’s about Umuamua.

But it’s a really interesting book. It’s well translated for people like you and me, who are not scientists in terms of like, the way that they would analyze an object like this to determine its size and what it’s made from.

And but it’s more sort of a call to all of us to expand the aperture and think bigger. And imagine, like, there’s probably a lot for us to learn outside of this planet. But we got to learn how to live on this planet before we destroy it.

I’ve never heard of any of this.

And I do, I think, make it a point to not know anything about space. Space does, it freaks me out. I don’t watch a lot of space movies for that reason.

I’m like, oh, and just the, you could just die if you, if the door opened feels so dangerous. But what you were saying that resonates is that there is something beautiful.

And I think reassuring of, like, we’re not that special is kind of what I take from that. Like, there are other, and I think it would be strange to not believe that there’s other forms of life out in the universe. Like, you think we’re the only ones.

Who are exploring. Maybe they’re just trying to explore things too, right? Everyone’s trying to figure it out.

Everyone’s trying to figure it out. So I’m fascinated. What else do you know about this right now?

Well, yeah, just that they don’t, they have no other explanation.

Essentially, the he thinks, umuamua, which I know more about because I just read a book about, is this sort of like disc shaped or cigar shaped object that was glowing and that it hit a trajectory.

It sort of accelerated away from the sun in a way that made him think it was a light sail.

And he is in the process of creating all these teeny tiny light sails, I guess, with a camera, that they’re going to be blasting out to go to the nearest habitable planet. I can’t remember what it’s called, but this is all happening.

It’s also kind of amazing as a read to be like, wow, there are brilliant people thinking and working on some of these, I wouldn’t even call them problems, maybe opportunities. And wow, I had no idea that this was all happening.

And the other thing that I think is really beautiful about Avi’s work and optimistic is his point is, and he’s like, we’re always looking for very specific signatures of life, but he was like, I think we should be looking at the moon, looking at sort

of the lava tubes of Mars for life, or not life on the moon, but that the moon sort of serves almost as a museum and of objects that have fallen. And he’s like, I think if we looked, we would see that it’s full of sort of ancient technology from

other civilizations potentially, that it just landed, like ended up there. Don’t freak out.

But he was like, think about how the world would change if we actually had evidence of other civilizations and the way it would reorient us to think about bigger, more complexity in a positive way potentially.

I’m very, very sure by the fact that there are just people out there who are still learning to learn. There’s so much certainty about certainty in the world.

And I think that is kind of where we tend to run to problems is feeling like we know absolutely everything.

I like that you went very, I mean, the biggest picture that you could get is the universe because my first OK thing is so small and it is so sweet and it makes me so happy. And it is actually something that my mom told me.

My mom is in her 70s and she is, she’s widowed, she’s in her 70s. She lives on her own. She’s a woman who’s got a lot going on, but one of the sweetest things going on in her life that she shared with me, I called the other day.

It wasn’t a good time for her to talk because she was at Mary Beth Kalinowski’s house. That’s no longer Mary Beth’s name, but that was Mary Beth’s name when my mother knew her, met her in high school.

My mom and Mary Beth Kalinowski just have sleepovers.

This is so cute.

Like they’re just still two high school gals having a sleepover and I love it. And I just, I love female friendship, especially. I love an enduring female friendship.

Is this a Golden Girls revival moment?

Are they going to move in together?

No, I mean, no, they are. They have their own things going on. They have their own lives.

No, but they want to be able to just have a sleepover, watch the movies, hang out, take a gummy, whatever it is. And I think it’s so sweet and that is what I want. Even now, I want to have like a sleepover with my friends.

And I definitely want to be having sleepovers with my friends when I’m in my 70s, because Elise, when was the last time that you got to just like live with a girlfriend? You know what I mean? Like that energy of like being young.

I was thinking about like college or like in my 20s and having roommates where, you know, even the annoying nights, it did feel like we were on a sleepover.

There’s something nice about it, too, that it doesn’t need to be planned. Like it’s not a girl’s trip.

Yeah.

My mom doesn’t do sleepovers, per se, but she is in a woman’s group that, and my father is in a men’s group that they started. It was like sort of that consciousness raising movement. Yeah.

Where they would get together, I think, monthly and talk about their lives. And they’re still in it, you know? It’s an enduring 40, 50 year group.

And they do sleepover. Like someone has a lake house, so they do sort of the occasional group sleepover.

You don’t get that spontaneity for many decades in your life. It almost feels like you’re a little bit devoid of spontaneity. I’m in one of those seasons right now.

I can’t just drop everything and have a sleepover with my friend.

We had a sleepover with Sarah Harden.

That’s right, we did.

That was fun. We sat next to each other and just clickety clapped.

That was so nice. And I love them. That is one of my favorite things.

It’s just like having a sleepover with a friend. I don’t know. It’s nice to know that I have that to look forward to.

My kids are going to grow up. I’m going to have time to say, You know what, Elise, come over, watch a movie, you’re spending the night, OK? It’s a six and a half hour drive.

It’s not that far. OK, come over and watch a movie. Oh, it’s too late for you to drive home.

You got to spend the night. We’re going to have we’re going to have brunch in the morning and watch reality TV.

Yeah.

But I just love I love that my mom couldn’t talk because she was still at Mary Beth Kalinowski’s and they were busy. They were it was still their time. And so she could not take an interruption from me at that point.

Yeah.

All right.

I’m going to jump around because my next one is also heavy. So we’ll go micro, macro. I’ll go micro, macro.

Got to give it a theme. I’m going to go. So my mom was here with my dad for the holidays.

And I didn’t realize this, that this is something that we all have to look forward to. And I’m sure that there’s interventions that my mom and I don’t know about. But my mom has white hair.

It went white when she was young, like 30. It’s very cool. Short white hair.

Wow.

Yeah.

And my mom is 75. She was like, I don’t know what to do about my eyebrows because it doesn’t look like I have any eyebrows because now her eyebrows have also changed color and they’re white.

And I had never really thought about this as part of the aging process. And so I was like, we’re going to go to Anastasia Beverly Hills.

That didn’t happen, but we did go to Sephora to get, and my mom got her eyebrows done and we bought her some Benefit pencils. And I bought a new lipstick that I love from, a friend of mine has this brand, Violette.

She’s just so fucking cool and lovely and so striking and interesting looking. And she makes these lipsticks that, and I am very low maintenance. I now get my nails done, which is quite extravagant.

Yeah. But I’m not really a makeup person except for lipstick when I get on video with people like you. And so I bought a new Violette lipstick called Bon Bon Martille.

And they’re called, I have many of these in different colors. This is a new color. They’re called Beigeu Balm, Kissing Balm.

I don’t know how she has engineered this lipstick, but it is like a powdery lipstick.

This is wild that you’re bringing this up because I have been plagued. Plagued, I mean haunted. I’ve been followed through the internet by videos of girls using this lipstick.

Shut up, and I have it in my Sephora cart right now.

Shut up. Oh my God, that’s amazing.

Why does this sound familiar? Why does this sound familiar?

It’s like a transformational formula, and I don’t say that about beauty products.

I know a lot actually about the beauty industry, but it is like soft, and it looks like the idea is like, it looks like you’ve just been making out because it’s not slick. I don’t know how to explain it. I just love this product so much.

I find it so soothing. Like if you want to be French and cool, this woman is on your vision board because she’s just so cool. Feel it.

She’s a painter who became a makeup artist. And yeah, she does these like eye paints that are so intense. I mean, I would never, but they’re cool.

Is she the one who’s in the ads?

Often.

She has like fringy bangs, long, straight, dark hair.

I have been liking all of these videos on TikTok. I feel like I at least follow her. I sent it to my friend Moe because I was like, Moe, this is you if you were French.

Like she’s so beautiful. Yes, so striking. So cool looking.

So cool looking, exactly.

This is not a paid placement, guys. This is not a full-throated endorsement. I got, so I have Amore Fou, I have Susette and this new one, which I had never seen before is called Bon Bon Martille.

This is also why I like it.

That’s great. I love discovering a new item that actually lives up to the hype. And you know what?

I actually think that it can be very powerful to just have something that makes you feel good and makes you feel pretty. Yes. And I don’t think that’s uncool and I don’t think that’s shallow at all.

I think those are important things. I’ve been trying to get ready every day. I did not today, but I’ve been trying to like put on an outfit.

I put this on two minutes before I started this, and which was 10 minutes after we were supposed to meet, by the way. But other than that, I was here in my pajamas earlier.

Are you even wearing a bra?

Yes, I am. I’m wearing a very comfortable bra. Wearing a very comfortable bra.

And also, I don’t really need one. People, people often, you know, I did. I can get away with not wearing one, but I’ve been getting dressed, doing my hair and doing my makeup most days, and it does make a difference to me.

Like to sort of it helps my insides, I think, try to like try to match my outsides. And if I had stayed in my pajamas all day, it would have been fine, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s, it definitely doesn’t feel great, you know?

Well, I think it’s like, there’s always a line, right? In the beauty industry and beauty in general is just one of those really complicated things that I think many of us hold in a complicated way.

And it has its shadow, as we know, an intense shadow, and it also has its light side.

And the light side is like ornamentation, fun, sort of the artifice, like the crafting, actually crafting, that I think is, can be quite playful and self-expressive and not cumbersome and not about covering. I don’t know, like it has its power.

And it’s really hard, it’s a tricky subject to try to pull out.

Yeah.

OK, I have a silly thing to share, but I was, and this probably will not fully surprise you, but I was, I was kind of weird in a childhood middle school, high school to this day.

And one of the weird things that I did, I don’t, you know, I think this actually kind of, who knows if this is normal? How about you be the judge if this is normal?

My friends and I were always, you know, we went to a school that was very heavy on the creative arts. So we did a lot of creative writing. We had to turn in drafts that our teacher, Ms.

Nesvig, shout out to Ms. Nesvig. I have given her her flowers, but I will give them to her again, because I think she really, really, truly shaped me as a creative person.

And as a writer, we’d have to write drafts, turn them in, do a peer review, turn that in, all these things.

So we were just cranking out creative writing all the time, and we went through a period of time where we were writing romantic fan fiction about our teachers. We changed the names. They weren’t teachers, right?

But it’s like we were, that’s what it was. It was a love triangle among our teachers that we had played out on the page. I have it in that box over there.

I may do a dramatic reading on the sub stack for people at some point. But the other day, I’m on my computer. Ralph, my son, has his own login on his own Google profile.

I’m on his, like helping him with his, you know, the time management, the homework, the canvas. I look in his school email to see if there’s anything we’re missing.

And there’s something that says, you know, this Google Sheets presentation has been shared with you. And I hope that… At first, I’m like, wow, this is like someone did a really good job on this schoolwork.

It’s not schoolwork, Elise. It is. It’s what my friends and I were doing.

But this girl has written in slideshow format, in Google Slides format, like a romance novel about the four elements.

Like Earth, Wind, Fire and Air?

Earth, Wind, Fire and Air. I’m going to get some of the details wrong, but Earth got Fire pregnant. Earth said, I’m not ready to be a dad.

Surely, Fire can raise this baby on her own. Then Earth finds out, oh no, she’s having triplets. I can’t just walk away.

This girl names the triplets as some of her classmates. The family tree goes on. There’s drama.

There’s suspense. I can only imagine how much school time was spent on this. And I love it.

I was crying reading this. And Ralph was like, he was like, I’ve never seen, like, what is this? I was like, dude, this is, I am so, I’m so heartened or I don’t know, like comforted by the fact that like, this is still going on, right?

Like there’s like just the wild creativity, the lack of focus on your schoolwork to instead create this alternate universe and share it with your friends and classmates is so wonderful.

And truly that was like a highlight of my week, was reading this story about the four elements and who were those triplets. Like the story is still going. As far as I know, it’s said to be continued.

So I hope that he is still added to this document because I will be checking in on it. I will be checking in on that.

I like positive technology stories about children, just because I feel like one of the worst things is the way that I understand it’s supposed to have, it works on a cultural level and that schools are restricting cell phones and all of this and

that’s good. But I won’t even read The Anxious Generation because I bristle at anything that puts the onus of managing technology on parents because it’s just not possible to parent against the culture.

And it feels so doomsday-y and similarly, when we were growing up, it was like TV and video, Nintendo and all of these sort of existential threats were leveraged at us. I understand it’s a whole different world.

It’s so funny to me because I am, I do go full doomsday. I go full doomsday regularly and then also, I was telling my kids that my dad would come into the room, turn off the TV and be like, it’s going to rot your brain, go read a book.

Now, people are like, if you can sit and watch a whole movie without looking at another device, congratulations, you have restored your attention span. You are doing really good work for your brain. I got so much creative energy out of TV and movies.

So I think you’re probably right. And yet I will fall back into my strident. Doomsday ways.

What’s amazing, I think for our kids, and I interviewed this neuroscientist from Stanford, who’s not the fan, not Andrew Huberman, don’t worry.

The hoop focuses on the optic nerve. I like to remind people he’s like an ophthalmologist, but I’m glad he has a lot to say about hormones and menopause.

But David Eagleman, and his point, which I think is so reassuring and helpful for anyone who freaks out about this, is that in terms of the brain and neuroplasticity, the internet is like just the access that our children have to information.

And ideally, you want it to be good, well-sourced information, yadda, yadda, yadda. But he was like, but normally, you know, when we were growing up, you would be at dinner and you would have a question.

And unless you had an updated encyclopedic series in your basement, that was the end of the curiosity. And he was like, so now the fact that we can continue to pull threads and follow and find information is so good for the brain.

And just the wiring and the neuroplasticity of it is incredible and should not be sort of lost amidst all of our anxiety. Who’s Jodi Messina?

Oh my God. OK, so I love Jodi Messina. Jodi Messina is a country music star.

She is my favorite country music star. OK, so there’s two albums of hers that are I own on CD. They’re in heavy rotation in my car.

And the first is…

You have a CD player in your car?

I have a… I drive a 2002. OK, yeah, it’s got a CD player.

OK, it’s got a CD player. And it’s, I would say, probably one of the best things is like you get to listen to an entire album because that’s your only choice. Because it’s a CD, so you got to just, you got to just listen all the way through.

And I love it. So Jody Messina has written some of my, I mean, very favorite songs. And one of them, you know, in her first album is like, You’re Not In Kansas Anymore.

In 1998, she released I’m Alright, which is, I think that is, that’s, that’s gotta be just, it’s just one of my favorite albums, period. OK, the hits don’t stop.

You know, I want a man who stands beside me, not in front of or behind me, give me two arms that want to hold me, not own me, and I’ll give all the love in my heart, stand beside me. Be true, don’t be dead. It’s such a good song.

I remember these from, like, I remember mostly songs by Harkin, listening to Delilah.

Can you sing one in the style of Lisa Barlow?

Then you have to go so many, you have to go to so many places if you have to sing it like Lisa Barlow. OK. Somebody’s going to give you a lesson in leaving.

Somebody’s going to do to you what you’ve been doing. And I hope that I’m around to watch them and knock you down. More nasal.

These songs are so good. I’m telling you. I’m telling you.

OK. Just, oh, God, they just, they just don’t stop. I mean, Heads Carolina, Tales California.

Ever heard that one?

No.

It’s so, you’re gonna love it.

This is a real education for me.

You’re gonna love it. Anyways, yes, she has recorded other albums in the meantime. You know, they didn’t hit my radar, but I started following her on Instagram and she posted a video of herself singing and dancing in maybe like her driveway.

And it just feels like 1996 again in a really good way. It really does. Like I saw that and I was like, this is what I’ve been waiting for.

I’ve been waiting for you, this voice, this vibe, this energy to come back to us. 30 years later, has it been 30? Is it 30 years since 1996?

Yeah.

Yikes.

OK, so yeah, I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting since middle school to have this feeling again. I still have it every time I drive, right?

I still listen to these albums whenever I drive, but I’m telling you, I was like, it’s, she’s back, baby. She’s back and I am ready. I am ready to go see her at whatever arena, casino, wherever she appears.

I know she’ll make a Phoenix stop and I will be there, but if she doesn’t, I will travel to see her. OK? And if you have not listened to the 1996 or 1998 Jodie Messina albums, I just want to tell you, listen to them.

It will bring you back to a simpler time. The songs are so good. They’re so empowering.

They’re so catchy. Like, they just still do it for me. And I’m excited for her to be like out there making stuff.

It really makes me happy.

I miss that era of music too. It’s like, it’s, yeah. And maybe it’s just the age that we were.

But like the Shania Twain, like growing up in Montana, like all those country music artists. I just love that stuff.

Yes. It’s very like, you know, I listened to those songs in middle school, and I was ready to be a divorcee. I was like, he did what?

OK, he’s going to regret that. And it still gives me that energy. And I’ve yet to become a divorcee, but I’m always ready.

I’m always ready because of those two albums.

Yeah. Well, you’ll have your anthems. Yeah.

Music has really moved on. Maybe it hasn’t, and I’m just not paying attention, but it feels like it left. I’m down for this resurgence.

Yeah.

I want you to listen to these after we’re done. And then text me. OK.

I’ll send you a couple songs.

Yes, some names, some specific ones that you think, where you really want me to start.

And I’ll link them in the episode description on Spotify and Apple Music in case you are unable to do that yourself.

OK, we’re going to talk about sort of old school media formats. I read, have you read, Dan? Are you a Dan Brown fan?

I would not say that I was a Dan Brown fan. I read, I don’t know if I read The Da Vinci Code or just saw the movie.

I was about to say, I know the name, but that’s because it’s Dan Brown. That could be anyone. Yes, of course I read The Da Vinci Code, and I was like, whoa.

I mean, you know, I’m Catholic. I was like, what?

Yeah.

So what? It’s sort of embarrassing to admit that The Da Vinci Code is a prophetic act, and it was a big inspiration in its own way for my first book On Our Best Behavior, which is somewhat about Mary Magdalene. And so, but I am a snob in some ways.

And so I don’t read, I haven’t read all the Robert Langdon sort of thriller mysteries. And so I’m not like a Dan Brown diehard, and he is massive, sells a tremendous number of books.

And then his latest book came out a couple of months ago, and a friend of mine who’s a Jungian therapist and interested in a lot of the same things that I am in terms of spirituality and consciousness was like, Elise, you have got to read this book.

It is so good. So it is about, it’s in some ways about the telepathy tapes, right? Like it is all about consciousness, and it’s set up as sort of a spy thriller.

And Robert Langdon for The Uninitiated is a professor, I think at Harvard, who does like comparative religion and symbology. I guess that’s his area of focus.

And one of the things that I think is so beautiful, and this is not a spoiler, but it’s a really fun book about like, and the near-death experiences and psi phenomena and the work of ions or noetic sciences.

I’ve interviewed Dean Radin, who runs ions, which also was started by an astronaut after he sort of had a…

Elise, I don’t know what you’re… What is ions? What are you talking about?

Noetics.

It’s the International Institute of Noetic Sciences. And it’s all about psi phenomena. Psi phenomena and this idea of like studying psychic phenomena.

He worked for that whole Star Wars program, the CIA program. And so it’s this idea of like, what’s actually happening with these unseen energies and intelligence and what’s happening with near-death experiences.

And it’s turned into this CIA mystery and it’s so fun. While also it’s actually built on real existing science. And so…

So that’s the novel.

That’s the novel.

That’s the book, The Secret of Secrets, which is You Will Love.

And it’s just another, I think, as people are loving the telepathy tapes and starting to sort of engage with this idea of like, we need a bigger paradigm to explain all this phenomena and like what happens after people die.

And to me, I was like, OK, Dan Brown is just like pushing the culture forward in a way that’s, I think, timely and prophetic. And it made me very happy because that’s one of the things that I love the most.

Honestly, been a long time since I’ve read The Da Vinci Code. I might reread that because I do remember reading that and being like, whoa, oh my god, it’s all there. It’s all right there.

Can Secret of Secrets, it’s new or it’s newish?

Yeah, it just came out. And if you like the telepathy tapes, et cetera, you will dig it. It’s fun.

OK, so I have one more.

The cutest thing happened the other day. I was driving Elise and there were two cars. You know, they’re older, like, I don’t know, like old cars.

Like, maybe from the 70s. They have been lovingly restored. One is bright blue.

One is bright orange. I assumed they were together, but I don’t think they were because one of them was in front of me. Another one, like, sort of passed around me to get up next to this other car, rolled down his window dramatically.

Like, is it a manually?

Two men, two men, two men next to each other at a stoplight.

The guy’s like waves, rolls down his window. The other guy looks over, they start talking and I like watch them become friends.

I think their cars were, I took a picture because I don’t know if these are the exact same car, but they looked very similar.

And I got to see, you know, two guys form like a little 30-second friendship at a stoplight over their cars, which is so cute.

And, you know, this day and age, someone like pulls up next to you hot and rolls down their window, especially in Arizona, I’m like, I’m dying.

But every once in a while, that’s someone who just wants to be friends, wants to give you a compliment, wants to talk about your car. And I thought that was so, so cute.

That is a nice human moment.

Yes, it was so cute.

OK, do you want to do human design?

All right, so I have gotten back into human design, and I’m not going to tell you its origin story because I don’t really know it, but it’s also fucking weird. It’s like a guy downloaded it, named Rama on an island.

All I can say about it is that it is an incredibly, it works with astrology, it works with Enneagram, it doesn’t sort of defy any of the other programs that you might like, but essentially, you can just go to a website like jovian.org, there are a

million, and generate a chart. You need to know your birth time, and it will give you this crazy diagram of sort of your energy centers, and it will tell you what profile you are and what type, if you’re a manifesting generator, a manifest or

generator, projector, reflector, and it tells you a lot of other information. Much of it goes over my head, but I find it to be another one of those systems that’s very soothing and helpful because you can, it feels like, oh my god, this is actually

an articulation of me. And it’s a strategic system in the sense that it’s not going to tell you the future, but it tells you how to make decisions, how to initiate projects or not, how your relationship to sort of being out in public or not.

Like I’m a 6’2, I’m a role model hermit. I can’t remember what you were, a hermit, martyr or something.

Yeah.

But it’s really accurate and it’s fun. It’s like a fun party trick. And as you get deeper into it, I find it for all of us who are like, I’m doing things wrong or I’m too laid or I should be different.

It can be sort of a nod from the universe that you’re exactly who you are and you’re right on time and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do in a way that I think is quite soothing.

I remember one of your things was like, oh, here we are, you’re a 3-5 profile generator. So you’re the martyr heretic and you’re a generator. So you’re a builder.

And I just remember that it was like people are going to come to you wanting you to solve problems for them. You have the problem solver. People see you as a fixer.

There is a magnetic quality to your energy that makes others project their expectations on to you, believing you have the solution to their problems.

You feel the weight of saving the day, which can be rewarding if you succeed, but reputation damaging if you don’t.

OK, so I have a voicemail to play.

Hi, Nora. My name is Anna and I’m calling from New York City and it’s going to be OK. And one of the reasons I know that is because when I was a kid, my great aunt had this painting, an oil painting that was hung in her apartment.

And my brother and I would run past this oil painting and try and dart from its view because it was an oil painting of my aunt that a very old cousin, maybe four generations ago, did of her.

And she always had it hanging in her apartment and it looked like Don Knotts, the 1970s sitcom fame Don Knotts. And we always thought it looked like Don Knotts and we would run past it yelling and screaming and acting ridiculous.

And fast forward to all these years later when, of course, my aunt has passed away and my mom had this painting for so long in her house.

And she finally was like, it was up in the attic and she was like, OK, what are we going to do with this painting? So I felt bad, I took it. It is hanging in my apartment in New York City now.

And it looks like Don Knotts. It just does. But I like the idea of this young aunt Dorothea sitting and posing for this painting in Italy in the, probably early 1900s at some point.

OK, that’s it. I just wanted to tell you that and I love the podcast. Thanks.

Bye.

OK, the picture is actually really, really beautiful. And kids are crazy because the portrait is beautiful. She sent a text.

I’ll put it in the post as well. But that’s such a classic kid thing to be like, it’s so creepy. I don’t want to be anywhere near it.

And then to like grow up and, you know, appreciate it and like have this heirloom that’s like lived through so much, you know? OK, I got one more.

Hi, this is Robin. It’s Going To Be OK. I have teenage children.

And even though you think you know your kids the most, sometimes they surprise you. My husband is a high school teacher of the same high school my husband goes to.

And one day at like a staff potluck, there was a paraprofessional who is in the speech class that came up to my husband and told him that our son changed her life. Apparently, he had done a speech about the benefits of listening to classical music.

And that influenced this paraprofessional in the classroom to start listening to classical music. And so she said she listens to it in the car, at home, all day long. If she’s listening to music, chances are it’s classical.

And apparently, she feels that it has improved her life greatly. Now again, we don’t always know everything that our kids are up to.

So we haven’t told our son that she said this because he gets really touchy about things like that, like embarrassed or so. I don’t know. Anyway, but it was just so cool to hear that.

So there you go. If you’re not feeling so great, maybe add some classical music to your day. It’s Going To Be OK.

That’s so cute.

And I love, like, you don’t know anything. It’s wild to me that, I mean, we know our kids and, you know, we talk to our kids and they also are people with their own lives.

Yeah.

And complete, like, interior thoughts and feelings and interests. And they have all these experiences that we will never know anything about until a random person tells us. But I just think that’s so sweet.

I think that’s so sweet. And also how awesome that a teenager is encouraging people to listen to classical music.

I know. I love it. More Jodi Messina, more classical music.

More OK things, more OK things.

Elise Loehnen, thank you so much for being here with me today and giving us so many OK things, so many reasons to feel OK. I don’t know if I did that.

I feel like I just spiked your anxiety.

But you know, you didn’t you didn’t spike my anxiety. Anyways, Elise Loehnen, thank you for being here. Go find Elise Loehnen.

Her podcast is so good. Her subs deck is so good. We’ll link to both of them in the episode description.

And also, you know what else we’re going to link to in the post for this episode?

All of the episodes that I’ve done with Elise Loehnen, because I’m such a fan of her writing and also her book On Our Best Behavior, which is one of the best reads ever. Place of honor on my bookshelf forever.

Thanks, Bubs. Bye. Poop.

A reminder that It’s Going To Be OK is a group project, so call or text us your OK things, 502-388-OKAY, that’s 6529, or IGTBO at feelingsand.co.

I’m Nora McInerny, and It’s Going To Be OK. This episode was produced by Marcel Malekebu. Our theme music is by Secret Audio.

They actually have a new album out, and you may or may not hear my voice on it, which is the worst part of an otherwise great album. It’s linked in our episode description. Grace Berry helped pull this episode together, like she always does.

We also have a YouTube, we have a sub stack. There are a lot of ways to read more, see more, listen to more. They’re always linked in the episode description, but thank you for being here, and we’ll see you again soon.