Getting Unstuck: Music, Mental Health, Activism

Join Daniel Maté, an award-winning composer and playwright, into a rich journey through musical theater, mental health and activism. Co-author of 'The Myth Of Normal' with his father Dr. Gabor Maté, Daniel shares insights on 'getting unstuck' through his unique mental chiropractice and his compassionate approach to Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. His viral debates on Zionism have resonated worldwide. This episode also explores musical activism for vulnerable populations, Daniel & Gabor's upcoming book "Hello Again" which explores the quality of the adult parent-child relationship, and perspectives on trauma, healing and modern medicine.

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Chapters

• 0:00 00:00 Introduction to Daniel Maté
• 2:51 The Game: What Brings You Joy?
• 8:20 Daniel's Background and Upbringing
• 9:10 Challenges and Turning Points
• 11:57 Musical Theater Career Highlights
• 16:39 Songwriting Workshops and Impact
• 21:41 Mental Chiropractice: A Unique Approach to Healing
• 31:37 Critique of Modern Medicine
• 36:57 Exploring Relationships with Parents
• 37:29 The Complexity of Parent-Child Dynamics
• 38:07 Healing Adult Wounds
• 39:22 The Hello Again Workshop with Dr. Gabor Mate
• 42:15 Compassionate Communication
• 42:50 Debating Zionism and Palestine
• 45:49 Personal Journey and Activism
• 53:54 Groundedness and Public Speaking
• 59:02 Musical Reflections and Lyrics

Transcript

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Hello, everyone. I have Daniel Maté here, a. k. a. the other Robert Downey Jr. on Superhumanizer. He is an award winning composer, lyricist, playwright for musical theater based in British Columbia and New York. He graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing.

He also holds a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from McGill. Daniel's songs have been described as dazzling and audacious, wryly humorous and suffused with passion, and have been performed by Broadway stars on stages across the U. S. and Canada, and from Paris to Tokyo to Melbourne. Wow. His musicality is quite eclectic.

He's even been a two time finalist in the hip hop karaoke, New York city championship, which is where you adopted the RDJ stage name, which comes from everybody basically saying you look like him, which is the truth. Daniel is also an educator, teaching university level masterclasses to performers and writers, and a musical activist.

He's designed and led songwriting workshops for children, teens, and addicts. Daniel co authored the book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture with his father, the very loved Dr. Gabor Mate, a physician specialized in addiction and mental health. You can even book a walk with Daniel on his site and experience what he calls mental chiropractice to get unstuck.

I was in awe watching Daniel get Zionists unstuck on his social media while debating views on Palestine and Israel.

Daniel Mate: Or more stuck, depending on who you ask. Sometimes you have to get more stuck before you get unstuck. You have to realize how stuck you are. You know, 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: That's true. And I truly believe that many of the people watching are mostly the ones getting unstuck while you're doing that.

So truly a masterclass in grace, speaking truth to power and compassion. You're a beautiful example of music, mental health, and activism coming together in a brilliant super humanizer. Daniel, thank you so much. I'm delighted you're here. 

Daniel Mate: That's among the top three introductions I've ever had. If not the greatest, is this a video podcast too?

Or is it just audio? Yes. Okay. So look what shirt I'm wearing today.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Robert Downey Jr. The resemblance is uncanny. 

Daniel Mate: Yeah. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Do people stop you on the street? 

Once or twice? Not cause they think I'm him, but, I've certainly had, servers in cafes, people randomly, at a certain point when I was 15 or 16, I started noticing a pattern when people would approach me.

So anytime a sentence starts with, excuse me, has anyone ever told you? I just say, yes, because I know what they're going to say. 

Amazing. I love that. He's a great, great person to be compared to. I'd like to start us with a game called what brings you joy. Would you play it with me? 

Sure. Okay. I'd love to.

Daniel, my friend, what brings you joy? 

Daniel Mate: Collecting vinyl records. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Ooh, nice. , what's your favorite? 

Daniel Mate: Oh God, I can't tell you, but if I showed you, you'd be concerned for me. Just how many records there are in this place.

I've, I only just bought a record player in September and I'm just so passionate about music of all kinds. So I've got everything from underground hip hop to Palestinian and Lebanese music. I've been discovering thanks to my Instagram followers, people like Fairouz and Ziad Rahbani and Um Kulthum and all these others.

I've got. Megadeth and Metallica. Joni Mitchell and the Indua girls. I've got everything. I'm super, eclectic and every kind of music, , really feeds my imagination and my understanding of the world. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Beautiful. 

Love that. 

Thank you. What brings you joy? 

Daniel Mate: Playing 

Pathetique Sonata on the piano, and especially when I almost get it right.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wow. That's a very complicated one. My goodness. How long did it take you to be able to play?

Daniel Mate: I've been playing it since I was a teenager, and I've still never completely perfected it. I was practicing it a lot last year and getting it up to some pretty good speeds and playing beyond what I thought I could play. really experiencing finally what I never really did as a kid, which is just the joys of practice and practice 

 to really feel Beethoven, like going through you, you have to train your entire body and your brain and your hands and everything to just not have to think so I've gotten.

In the past year, since I've bought my first piano here in New York, just a little taste of what it feels like to really master something, even though I haven't mastered it. So I'm sure it's a whole other world once you do. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: I love that. And I can totally relate to that. I play the piano myself and I had to get unstuck myself with all my overthinking while playing.

 That really spoke to me of just like letting go into the music. So beautiful. Thank you. One more. What brings you joy? 

Daniel Mate: Well, I want to say my mental chiropractic work, but I'll save that because it does, but we'll talk about it anyway. I'm going to say road trips, long, long solo road trips, whether it's driving across North America from Vancouver, BC to New York, which I've done three or four times, never taking the same route or a solo road trip I did through Europe last year from Belgrade, Serbia, through Hungary, down to Italy, and then back through the Balkans.

 Really just any chance I get to spend some days in the car by myself, listening to audio books and seeing the land and seeing how the land evolves and it's happened at particular moments in my life where I really needed it.

So that's something that brings me a lot of not just joy, but serenity. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: There's so much mindfulness and all three of your choices the vinyls is the music, the road trips. It's really beautiful to see that connected and all of it. 

Daniel Mate: It is exactly that it's slowing down and focusing my attention on something that just brings me pure pleasure and discovery. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wonderful. Thank 

you. Would you mind doing that for me? 

Daniel Mate: Absolutely. I'd be very happy to. So 

Hani, what brings you joy?

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Being here with you, Daniel, really, this is bringing me so much joy. I woke up today with a pep in my step to come and have this conversation with you. And it was such a delight going into the Daniel vortex and learning more about you.

I, I knew you were an awesome human being. I knew that already but when you learn more, there's, there was so much joy in doing that. So you bring me joy. Thank you 

Daniel Mate: god, doctors should prescribe coming on your podcast as the best antidepressant in the world.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Thank you. 

Daniel Mate: Hani, what 

brings you joy? 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: I'm going to actually, , steal one from you. A good song really brings me joy. , especially during this time. I love that you're discovering Fayrouz and Um Kaltoum. I'm Lebanese by origin. Growing up there, music has so much emotion in it.

And, of course different kinds of music, whether it's country music or hip hop or electronic music, house music. Like I love it all. And recently in all this tragedy, music has really been something that's helping me through it. especially one country song, which country is not usually my favorite, but this one song has been , really helpful to me. It's called 

Daniel Mate: what's it called 

wild world. Okay. So I think, do you mean. Ooh, baby, it's a wild world. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: No, not that one. 

Everybody thinks it's that one. It's actually a country song.

It's Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. It's not very well known. 

Daniel Mate: So it's not the cover of the Cat Stevens. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: No, it is not. That's the well known one. 

Daniel Mate: But also by a, by probably one of the most famous Muslim artists in the West.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: What? 

Daniel Mate: Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam back in the 90s. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wow. Amazing

did not know that. And that's a great song. 

Daniel Mate: It is a great song. That's great. you talk about Western and Eastern music. Western music has always been influenced by Eastern music. 

Jay Z sampling Bhangra and the Beatles playing sitar and Arabic influences on all kinds of things.

But I've been listening to Ziad Rahbani, who just is like the funkiest dude playing this cool jazz and fusion, just really cool with some Arabic touches, 

back to you. What brings you joy? 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Recently it's been cold around us here in the desert. It gets really cold or really hot. Like the three seasons we have here are hot, cold wind. But when it's cold. We can turn on our fireplace, which I absolutely love. I love the sound of the fireplace.

It really calms me, especially when it's in the background while I'm playing the piano. , I see it as a mindfulness exercise cause I have to go back to it and then put the logs a certain way in the fire and not just throw it in take my time building that fire as it goes along.

 Thank you so much. I really enjoyed playing that game with you.

Tell us about you where you're from and your background. 

Daniel Mate: I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, so up the west coast from where you are. And I was born and raised there, lived there until I was 18. And Vancouver is a beautiful place to grow up.

Full of natural beauty, the Pacific Northwest, it's like Seattle, but I'd say even more pristine. it's a real hub for outdoors activities from forest to snowy mountains, to the ocean, culturally, it's not the most lively place, but. It definitely imports a lot of culture. there's an, there's a strong influence of first nations cultures there. increasingly as we, as Canada starts to reckon with its past of , oppression and violence. there's more and more space for indigenous artists to share their work. So that's a healthy development, I think. But yeah, Vancouver at a certain point. I grew out of it or grew away from it. And I went to, , I spent 10 months, , in Israel, actually on a kibbutz on a youth program trip, which I'm sure we can talk about as a result of the summer camp that I'd gone to all my years, left wing kibbutz socialist, social justice oriented Zionist, which may sound to some people like a contradiction.

And in fact, it was, but we didn't see that at the time summer camp. My entire family had gone there, including my father at one point. It was complicated because my father was anti Zionist, whole set of contradictions. so I did that program and I wouldn't say I fell in love with the place, but I certainly learned a lot and was fascinated by it.

then I went to McGill in Montreal for four years. I ended up studying psychology there, which was a kind of a default choice then I spent my twenties working odd jobs in Vancouver, selling Persian carpets, delivering organic groceries in a big truck, and working with drug addicts in the downtown east side, which is where my dad did his work.

 he wrote a book about that. , and then around 28, 29, I decided, you know what? I only get one life and I've got these talents that I can either put to the margins of my life and do in a amateurish, independent hobby way, or I could take them seriously. And I chose to do that. I found a program at NYU that combined two of my favorite things, music and theater.

 I'd been an actor and a director. And here I was stepping into being a writer and I'd always loved writing, songwriting, for the stage and how to write the stories around them that support the songs. Then I lived in New York for nine years. Left New York at the end of 2014, had a marriage misadventure back in Vancouver. It was one of the, one of the several catastrophes in my adult life.

 and catastrophe is actually not a negative word. If you go look at the Greek root of it, there's a kind of necessity to it. You don't have a choice and it's a kind of going down into the depths of whatever it is and probably working through some illusions and hopefully getting through it and coming out the other side reconstituted.

And I've had several of those in my life. My marriage and divorce were one, going to jail in Mexico a couple of years ago for three and a half weeks and getting COVID in a Mexican jail and getting deported was another. And that , experience led me to move back to New York. I came back and I dedicated myself to building a life here that really matched what I want. No longer chasing a relationship or avoiding anything. That's around the time that The Myth Of Normal came out, having worked on that with my dad for a couple of years.

And so that book allowed me to, for the first time, really be able to afford the artist's life in New York. And it's allowed me to be able to afford the, Instagram activist life too, because that takes a lot of time and it doesn't pay. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Oh, I'm so grateful that you found your gifts after a lot of self reflection and difficulty. You came into your gifts and then you pursued them with this amazing musical theater career.

 I hear a lot of vulnerability in your sharing. What you went through and how you got to where you are. That probably spilled into the book, the myth of normal. I'd love to explore to start with this amazing musical theater career

you've been having you received the prestigious Edward Cleban prize for the most promising lyricist in American musical theater and the Cole Porter award for excellence in music and lyrics for your song cycle, "the longing and the short of it". I never knew what a song cycle is until Googled to learn more about this amazing work , which features six characters who are neurotic and searching for peace of mind.

Sounds familiar, through intimate personal stories and the cycle examines the complexities of human connections. Would you start by explaining to our audience what a song cycle is? And then how did you use that? How did you create those stories? 

Daniel Mate: Technically the word song cycle comes from classical music and art songs and a composer would work with a librettist who writes the words and create just a set of thematically connected songs that fit together as a piece.

 My song cycle, these characters of different genders and ages and very different situations, but they all were coming from my consciousness in some way, which meant that they were all people with busy minds.

And a lot of self awareness that wasn't helping them be happy. Like they knew a lot about themselves, but they were so self conscious that somehow the self awareness didn't lead to peace. I decided to bring some of them to a friend of mine who's actually a Tony winning, actress who's on Broadway right now.

 Victoria Clark, who had directed another one of my shows. I said, do you think there's something here? And she said, yeah so I wrote a few more songs to round it out and it became this show called the longing and the short of it. So it starts with these neurotic, usually comedy songs, people just in ridiculous situations or being nuts, and by the end of it, they start dealing with the pain underneath that.

 Then start seeing some new possibilities. Without really having to change who they are, but inside of their fallibility and their vulnerability and their neuroticism, something calms down. Hopefully the experience of seeing six people on stage together at different ages, men and women, gives people a sense of more possibility in themselves than they might have known about. So that show won some audience awards and did win that Cole Porter award. We had a world premiere for one of my shows, one of my favorites, slated for March 12th, 2020 in Seattle. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Oh, okay. 

Daniel Mate: And then, you know what happened. On that, the world shut down, literally the next day was the imposition of lockdown in Canada and the U. S. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that. 

Daniel Mate: it's just how it went. So yeah, but thank you. A lot of artists went through that. I have a couple of shows now that I'm You know, shepherding along. I'm going to make a, an album of one of them, which is a show for tweens middle school mystery show, a sixth grade film noir detective story.

, that's a lot of fun. I hope we'll have schools want to do it, which is where it should really be. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: I really hope that you pick right back up at some point from what happened during the pandemic. That is so tragic. I got to explore so much of your music, leading up to this interview. It's really is very beautiful. I'm not the biggest musical theater fan, but I know good musical theater music when I hear it and listening to your SoundCloud playlist, which has all the songs from the longing and the short of it.

It's really beautiful. It was a journey. I could hear the brilliance. And there was, a lot of love and self reflection that went into each one of those songs. I have no doubt that as you're deepening your mental health journey and deepening your musicality, those things are going to keep merging with each other in such a beautiful way.

 I hope one day we can all come to your show, the same one , that was victim to COVID 19. I'm so sorry to hear that. 

Daniel Mate: I very 

much hope so too. Things work out strangely, like suddenly I have a platform that I never had before and people want to hear what I have to say and these kinds of things can lead to interest in the other things I'm doing, I used to get up in arms about, it's not happening the way I want it to, and this means people don't see me for who I am really just, me finding evidence for my deepest fears about myself.

 But now that I'm seeing me for who I am a lot more of the time and finding all kinds of ways to express that in ways that feel right to me, I'm no longer so concerned about what it means, whatever happens to be happening, 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Beautiful.

, it sounds like you got unstuck right there. 

Daniel Mate: For sure. That is getting unstuck. A good friend of mine who won the Pulitzer for his musical, A Strange Loop, his name is Michael R. Jackson. He has a lyric in one of his songs, he says, the industry will always be the industry. So I have given up giving a fuck what others think about me.

And it's, it's good words to live by. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Agreed. I'm so grateful for how you are showing up in that space. You show up in so many spaces with this like compassionate heart wanting to help.

 you worked with children, teens, and addicts through music and songwriting. You even contributed a theme song for the Dreamcatchers, which is a musical theatre piece performed entirely by teens from across Canada, and it was even performed for the prime minister. What's it like working with these populations in music?

Daniel Mate: Yeah, and those teens were primarily indigenous teens first nations teens. A Dreamcatcher is a spiritual kind of craft object, an important part of many of those cultures. And , this was a project where there was a team of guest artists who went around the country interviewing kids and teens from these communities mainly, and just asking them about their dreams.

 For , each province or territory, there was a different guest artist chosen, either a choreographer or a rapper, or in my case, a singer songwriter.

 I went to one of these communities in Northern British Columbia, which is quite impoverished, working class, and a lot of First Nations people. And we did a day long workshop with these kids, learned about them, and based on what they said, I wrote a song called Know Me by My Dreams, which ended up being the finale number for that Dreamcatchers project, which included all of the works that were created by the guest artists based on the kids interviews.

It was very cool. Not that I'm a fan, but Justin Trudeau got to watch the show. 

 I used to lead songwriting workshops, both for adults, other musical theater writers, teens. young kids and like you said addicted populations or populations in like halfway houses. Teaching them how to produce beats on Logic Pro, like hip hop beats with live instruments, but also programmed drums and stuff, and then helping them write lyrics.

And, I remember one incident that I'll never forget. There was a young man. Who unfortunately I found out a couple years later died of an overdose. So , he wasn't able to, overcome his demons , for too long, but, he was very angry. He was this kid who'd had a really tough life and a tough kind of front, a tough persona.

Of, not giving an F and just, nothing can get to him and not taking anything seriously. And he would goof around on the microphone. And I said, okay, it's time for you to bring in some lyrics. He's like, you're not going to like it. I said, try me, he comes in one day and we'd created this beat and he lays down his verse.

And it's basically I'll kill your family and rape your mother on your kitchen table, and I'm so tough, and I don't have any feelings, and I do more drugs than you, now 

I'm, not averse to hardcore rap lyrics, , I listen to everything, sometimes I cringe a bit, , but , if the flow is good, And the voice is good and the beats are dope.

 It's a certain kind of expression that I can fully get into. And in hip hop karaoke context, I would get up there and do it myself.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yes. Amazing.

Daniel Mate: However, in this context, when everyone else was bringing in really thoughtful, vulnerable, poetic stuff, I just had this gut feeling that this was not the real story.

 He actually gets off the mic and he looks at me challengingly and says, I told you it'd be too much for you. And I said, it's not too much for me. It's not enough for me. It's not enough you. This sounds like a Hollywood movie of Robin Williams or some teacher coming in, but I was like, yeah, no, it's not enough

you, I don't buy it for a second. Actually. I don't think that's who you are. I have no problem with your aggression. I have no problem with your sexuality. I have no problem with your hostility or your pain, but you're not sharing your pain with us. You're just acting it out and creating a character. And it's not even that interesting, a character.

 I want to know about you. Like, where's that all coming from? And I challenged him to come back with something, I said, it's just an invitation. You don't have to. And the other men in the room were like, yeah, come on, son, step up challenging him to actually do the courageous thing, and he came back the next week.

I wasn't sure if I was ever going to see him again. He came back the next week. He said, I've got something. He was very quiet and he stepped up to the microphone and he laid down the most beautiful verse. angry, heartbroken, still plenty of cursing in it, but included stuff about his mother and watching her get sick and being beaten by his dad and just opening up the door to exposing himself and giving us a different view of what that hostility is about and being a human being.

And I just, I was so proud of him and he was just beaming afterwards, you know? so songwriting is such a powerful tool for writing about the world, for writing about oneself . So I just love giving people the tools they need to, , express themselves in song. I just wrote a parody song that's going to be made into a video about Gaza, but I won't give that away. It's coming soon. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Oh my 

goodness. I can't wait for that. 

That's wonderful. I'm so grateful for your dedication to humanity on so many levels through musicality through mental health. I actually run our addiction clinic here in town, which is the only one for about 200 miles around us.

 So I care for that population and I know how hard life is for them. And they need every single tool that could be helpful. And there's perhaps no more of a reflective tool than writing songs, writing lyrics. Writing is coming from the higher brain and that musicality is coming from the heart.

Putting those two things together, especially for tragedy and triggers. There's so much healing that goes into that. So thank you so much for doing that. And now for doing it for places like Gaza, which is even more amazing. I want to explore more of this mental health approach that you have that you call mental chiropractice, where we can even take a walk with you.

I feel like I've been walking with you since the beginning of this conversation. You describe it on your site as in the body, for example, if there's a vertebra out of place or a pinched nerve, it's going to cause stress and compromise the overall functioning. Same thing goes for the mind.

When your thoughts and emotions and the perceptions and beliefs that they come from, your values and your intentions are aligned, things just work, which I like to call things also just flow. It's a sense of flow. Tell us more about that.

Daniel Mate: This emerged out of my work with or near my dad.

There was a time around my marriage where I was attending some of his workshops almost as an apprentice, which never felt quite right. Cause I never wanted to be him, but for reasons having to do with the sort of details of that marriage.

I found myself at some of his retreats and, Eventually I led a few circles of my own with people in the psychedelic context. Now, my dad, for those who don't know him, he's everywhere in the algorithm, just keeps serving him up to me 

 It's funny because it's true. He's very trauma focused, which means he's helping people connect the dots from what they're going through now understanding that it didn't start any time recently, it's a consequence in many ways, or an expression of the life they've lived.

And as we write about in the Myth of Normal, which I came aboard as a co pilot to write. Your childhood is heavily influenced by the world around your parents as they were parenting you by their own childhoods, which means it's intergenerational, all this stuff.

So in other words, helping people have compassion for themselves in the moment, which itself is a huge piece of healing. Where there's compassion, there's healing. The two things just go hand in hand. Now, trauma has never really been my thing. It's not that I don't believe in it.

And it's certainly not that I don't have it. I absolutely do. But my skill what lights me up, what focuses me in is not a long journey back to someone's past. I just take for granted that everyone's traumatized at this point.

I have this the expression, I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. You've heard that before? No. That's a kid's expression, probably from England or something. But I like to say, I'm traumatized, you're traumatized, we all scream for ice cream. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: well said. 

Daniel Mate: What I focus on 

and what I've always been interested in is where are you stuck now?

And what's possible now? Ever since I realized around age 29, that I could shift my own perception by getting to the root of what's bothering me and what's stuck and giving up whatever there is to give up that's not aligned with my intentions. Given that points of view are optional, once you realize it's a point of view, you could shift it.

All we have is, life happens and then we interpret it a certain way. We make decisions, we draw conclusions, and then we live inside of those decisions and conclusions and we forget that we're the ones who decided it. And our trauma will lead us to certain kinds of conclusions. So I don't take people on who say, I want to heal my trauma.

I'll say if that's true, go see a therapist, preferably one who's been trained in my dad's approach. What I take on is people who say, I'm stuck. And that's a very different statement because it's not a long term process that you're opening up. It's saying that right now in the present, there is a situation in my life.

And sometimes it's existential, like it's your whole life, but that's rare. Most people can say, 80 percent of the areas of my life are working just fine. That's how I know that these two or three areas are not working because it doesn't flow and I can't bring my best qualities to bear and everything I know, all of my insights, all of my skills, my best parts of myself just aren't carrying the day I'm stuck.

Everything I try leads me back to the start. I don't see any good options and it's having this impact on my nervous system or my peace of mind and all that. So that's the starting point for me. If that's true, then we don't need to heal your trauma in order to get you unstuck, all we need to do is first of all, to set an intention that would override that stuckness. Cause when we're stuck, there's always a part of us that's comfortable there. It's part of being stuck. We're stuck inside of protective coping mechanisms, beliefs that may suck and they may be painful, but at least they keep us safe because they're predictable and familiar.

So if we set an intention that will fuel our conversation. And this is all done during walking. And when you say take a walk with Daniel, it's not metaphorical. Literally, you're walking where you are. I'm walking where I am. If we're in the same city, then we're together. If not, we're on the phone. And I do this with people all over the world.

 Over the course of that walk, once we set that intention, then it's just a matter of showing you And we explore it together, but I'm pretty good at excavating and showing people. Where is the out of alignment in the hidden parts of your mind? You must be assuming something that you decided a long time ago, but is that actually true?

And if you keep assuming that, is it ever possible that you'll have the freedom or clarity or peace or whatever it is that you're actually intending? If clarity, freedom, peace, intimacy, is truly your intention, then at the very least you should know that by keeping this point of view and being right about it, you are preventing that from happening and you should just admit it.

But most people, once they see that it's a point of view, because until then it's just the background, it's the context they're looking, it's the matrix they're in, it's the virtual reality helmet. Once you take it off and you say, Oh, that was optional. Okay, but I'm a little scared. What else is there? then you get creative. , what else is there? Within the span of 75 or a hundred minutes, those are the two lengths that I do with people. I help them discover or invent a way of looking at the exact same situation without the situation changing at all in the span of that time. But when they come out of the walk, they have a completely different experience of it than they did.

 It's not always bells and whistles or fireworks, but often it's a pretty striking shift because the state of being stuck and the state of being not stuck are on different planets. I live for that. That moment where people, their experience and their perception gets crystalline and crystals, if you think about that image, they're well defined, they have clearer edges than rocks do, because they've been compressed and honed, so there's a sharpness to them, there's a clarity, they're translucent, they're, they're prismatic, you can see light through them in different directions, they're beautiful, they're precious, and so there's a quality to, getting unstuck where things actually crystallize.

 If I look at the other things I do, including musical theater writing, it's all about trying to bring more of that into the world. So I consider that my calling and mental chiropractic is my modality that I've developed. I have an event coming up in Ireland in March, where for the very first time I'm going to present about it to a group of therapists and counselors.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: I love it. I love the name.

I love the approach. I think so much of healing comes in different languages and the languages just keep getting more and more relatable. And the way that you've, , phrased this, comparing it to this metaphor of the vertebras and how really the vertebras here are the way that you're seeing things, where you're coming from, your intention, how they really honor your values and what you want out of life putting those things together, things just happen. And I love that you do that in the form of a walk because walking is already putting yourself in the higher brain already. Just by taking that walk, you're putting yourself in a better mindset where you can explore these things. And there's so much power that comes from intending to heal, especially with somebody you trust.

Daniel Mate: Yeah, and also the bilateral brain, right? You're using both hemispheres, you're moving your arms and legs and all that. Another thing I do is I challenge people's prejudices just the things they assume are true or the cliches that they've developed to explain things.

So I have a lot of people come to me, for instance, and say, I have imposter syndrome. I really want to work on my imposter syndrome. I want to believe in myself more. That, every coach in the world will take on your imposter syndrome and be like, okay, we need to build up your self esteem, right?

Because we need to convince you basically, we need to trick your brain or hack your brain to convince you that you're not an imposter. You're the real thing. And you need to build up your self respect and we're going to overcome the imposter syndrome. And that's not my approach at all.

It's never worked for me. Because the same mind that made up the imposter syndrome thing is the one that's trying to convince itself, as Audre Lorde said, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, ? I'm more interested in, okay, if you feel like you have imposter syndrome, what's the definition of the word imposter?

What would you say the definition is? 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: A stranger, somebody that's not me. 

Daniel Mate: An imposter is someone who is pretending to be someone else. So Matt Damon in the talented Mr. Ripley is an imposter. He's knowingly inhabiting a character that he's not.

So then I say to them, if you have imposter syndrome. Maybe there's somewhere that you're pretending chronically. And then you're ashamed that you're pretending. And then you develop this theory called imposter syndrome as if you have a disease.

No, maybe it's just worth looking at where are you pretending. And always people can see it pretty quickly and when they see that, now you're addressing the imposter syndrome at the root instead of just trying to make it go away with nice sounding spiritual language or affirmations.

You're saying no, actually I'm responsible once I see it. For the ways in which I go through life pretending. Now, of course, it's not my fault. None of this has anything to do with fault. And I come by it honestly, because if I've learned to pretend, where did I learn to pretend? I wasn't pretending on day one of my life or even day 10 of my life.

Babies can't, but at some point I learned that to get through this world, there's certain things I can't show. And there's certain things I need to always show. And so these strengths get exaggerated. They become superpowers. So it's just little reframes like that. Usually when someone is stuck, no matter what , they say is the problem their explanations themselves are part of the problem that are keeping them stuck.

So I'm there to like unplug that machine and plug in a different one that actually moves. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Beautiful. It's like you're helping them write a new lyric about the same problem that they're facing. 

Daniel Mate: 100%. Yeah, someone in my, on my testimonials page said something close to that effect. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wonderful.

, you challenge stereotypes, you challenge, all these paradigms , the book is called The Myth of Normal. Like normal is a myth that we are challenging. And I love that you, your approach goes into the underlying issue. And in your book, you actually criticize traditional approaches to health and modern medicine because they fall short of their own myths of what is normal and treating health and me being an integrative medicine specialist.

This really resonated with me because I know that the paradigm of medicine today doesn't always go into the root causes of illness, which is what you guys really go into. So would you say a few words about how medical care today generally falls short when it comes to health and well being? 

Daniel Mate: Sure. And here I'm veering outside of my own area of expertise and I'm only able to speak about this by virtue of working with my dad and this is his wheelhouse, so if you want to get more into this, you can go listen to his interviews or read our book.

But Western medicine commits a few major fallacies from the start. It assumes that human beings are individuals with discrete biology that is not affected by each other. When that's transparently false, it's obviously false. And indigenous cultures have always understood this, but science is now showing that our biology is interpersonal and we go through the evidence in the book.

It's like Western medicine doesn't even learn its lessons from its own research. It doesn't incorporate the lessons on, say, the effect of trauma on health, which are ample from the science, but it's not taught in medical school. You know, the word trauma isn't mentioned, much to my dad's consternation. Western medicine also separates mind and body, and it separates the individual from family and from society.

And it treats diseases as discrete things, as if they're entities, bad guys, villains that come in to mess up our lives, as opposed to perhaps a dynamic and alive biological and even spiritual and psychological process that's manifesting in a certain life at a certain time, and it expresses something. So it's not a thing.

We have a chapter called It Ain't a Thing about how disease could be seen as a process. And again, it's you can pick your point of view. We don't even need to say we're right. It's just a question of what sort of medical system does one of you give you versus what possibilities does another view open up?

And we don't have to reject Western medicine. Western medicine has produced some pretty miraculous, incredible discoveries, absent, a true understanding of how human health works, not just human illness, but human health. It's really hamstrung when it comes to healing root causes. At best, it can just treat symptoms and in an emergency, do invasive corrective things like surgery, which are often life saving.

You know, nothing wrong with that at all. So Western medicine, just divides people into parts , into atomized individuals. It doesn't see the common links between many different afflictions and it can't account for the rising preponderance and rates of all kinds of chronic illnesses and addiction and suicide, which is not attributable to genetic factors because gene pools don't change that quickly.

And yet, genetic explanations are always the ones that Western medicine defaults to. So in a way, Western medicine is every bit as superstitious as the spiritual traditions or religions that fundamentalist atheists and science heads want to ridicule, because it just ignores the evidence in favor of some pretty unsubstantiated and out of date assumptions and working theories about human beings.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yes the way that science and the way that we approach research and medicine is set up reduces much of the science that we have about mental health and lifestyle change and nutrition, because it doesn't fit a certain criteria called randomized control trial every time.

And so as soon as it doesn't fit that mold, it's shot down, even if there's evidence that spans generations, thousands of people, which is truly unfortunate. We are catching up now with things like ACEs, adverse childhood events, which measure childhood trauma. And now we know that with each number of ACEs, you can have an increase of up to 800 percent of chronic conditions, whether that's lung conditions or addictions, and we know that in a survey done across 25 states in the U S at least 60 percent had one ACE.

So most people in the world have some form of trauma that happened to them. And that just measures childhood trauma doesn't take into account adult trauma. So we're all carrying some form of trauma. You're writing a book with your dad called hello again, a fresh start for parents and their adult children.

And you're doing a workshop along those lines. , the question that first comes to mind is this is a workshop for adults and their adult children. People that have some form of adult wounds that need healing. My first thought is, does this come from something personal?

Daniel Mate: Sure it does. Where else would it come from? I mean, yeah. My adverse childhood event was called my childhood.

 I'm sure I'm not the only person who would say that. Look, someone who knew us both thought we'd be good on stage together and said, what could you do a workshop about? And I suggested this topic. not so much about adult wounds, but just about the simple fact that this is a relationship that no one talks about and yet everyone's living it, but no one looks at it or deals with it.

And I think that's because we assume that it just is what it is. Once, a child becomes a grown up, their relationship with their parents is cooked. It's done. It's baked. It's whatever it's going to be is what it's going to be. And then the parents will die and then the child will miss them or grieve them or whatever and then they'll do therapy to work out whatever. We go to couples counseling to make that relationship work. We go to parental counseling to become better parents. We go to individual counseling to work out our relationship to ourselves. Why are we not examining this relationship with our parents while we're grownups? it must be assumed that it just is what it is. You can't do anything about it or that it's not important. And the truth is it's optional. You don't have to be in relationship with an adult child or with your parent when you're a grownup in a way it is done. But if you choose to be in their lives or to have them in yours, then the question is what's the quality of the relationship.

And there's all kinds of reasons why that would be among the most challenging relationships to figure out. Because it started off in the most unequal way possible. One person brought the other one into the world without their consent, then had all the responsibility in the relationship. The other one had all the need and all the dependence.

Whatever didn't go right or was left out or was stressed in that relationship is gonna have lifelong implications for the child, including when they were grownups. So they're still carrying the wounds. And yet their parents can't heal their wounds now. It's on me to heal my adult wounds, but when I'm around my dad, boy, those wounds and my mom, those wounds are going to scream louder than ever.

 If my spouse or my partner or a friend or a coworker triggers my deepest wounds, they're reminding me of other people because those people were not present in my childhood. If my parents at Thanksgiving or Hanukkah or, whatever else, or a birthday trigger my deepest wounds. They're reminding me of an earlier version of them and now I'm doing the time warp and then from the parental side, you've watched this person grow from a little seedling into the person they are now It's tough to update your operating system to see them as a fully grown adult. A lot of parents have emotional needs that their children can't possibly provide a lot of parents Have guilt that they're not letting themselves feel or shame that they're resisting or guilt that they're indulging in or worries about their kids that just get in the way of seeing them and relating to them as a present moment adult human being.

You're never going to be exactly equals because there is that generational gap and depending on what culture you're in, there may be a sort of obligation for the adult child to honor their parents in a particular way that's not necessarily reciprocal. It doesn't have to be exactly equal, but that's culturally mandated, I think.

But the question is, what is each one carrying and are they able to see the other one clearly? And that's why we call the subtitle of the Hello Again workshop and book, a fresh start for parents and adult children, not a happy ending or a complete healing or something like that. It's not about that. It's about freshness.

And I think a lot of people, if you actually ask them, how much would it be worth to you if you could go home this Christmas, and have a new kind of conversation with your parents, or at least have the old predictable one that sucks your energy and that you're dreading and that you have to recover from for two months afterwards not happen.

A lot of people would say that would be worth its weight in gold. That'd be priceless. So that's what we're aiming for, new possibilities. And for those who choose not to be in their kids lives or their parents lives once both are grown up, there's still a question. What's the quality of that estrangement?

Where is it coming from? What's the spirit of it? What are you carrying? A lot of people don't talk to their parents, but they still carry them with them everywhere. And they still have a relationship with the parents in their heads. And that goes if your parents are dead or dying or demented or otherwise unavailable.

Or you've cut them off because some out of control life issue that makes them dangerous or difficult to be around. You still have a relationship to the relationship and that's what our workshop and book are about. Not so much helping the two have tools and communication tools.

That comes later. The first thing is each person works on their relationship to the relationship because that's actually where the action is. It's like mental chiropractic. What's your point of view that's keeping you stuck? So in a relationship with my parents, I'm not seeing them. I'm always seeing them through a point of view.

But if I don't know, it's my point of view, I'm going to think it's them. And then I'm going to cope with them the way I think they are. And then I will find ways of confirming that they are that way, because people always live up to your lowest expectations. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yeah. There's always an I, and there's always a you in the us relationship, and you are helping people see the I in it all before they can approach the us, which is really beautiful. I love that. I would have thought it's about here are some tools for you guys to do better with each other. But it's actually way more profound than that, knowing that it's a reevaluation

Daniel Mate: yeah, in the workshop, which is two or three days long, depending on the venue.

And I don't know that we'll be doing it. Anymore. I feel like we've perfected it. It's been filmed. It's going to be an online course. It's going to be a book. The first thing we do on the first day is there's a big slide that says, do not sit with the person you came with.

You're not qualified yet to work on your relationship. So for the first 75 to 80% of the workshop. They're separated and they're sitting next to, if I'm an adult child there, I might be sitting next to someone else's parent and we have parent sharing. So I get to for myself, work through what am I carrying?

And only then towards the end, do we bring people back together, let them communicate some things and start to imagine what else is possible. And we have people come to the workshops who aren't there with anybody. They're just there to work on a relationship with someone who's not there. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Gorgeous.

Absolutely wonderful. I can't wait for that book to come out. I know I'm going to learn so much. There's such an emphasis in the book and the workshop and really in your work in general, just everything you're sharing on compassionate communication. I saw you embody that in such an exemplary way, I learned so much.

 Personally, I'm somebody who believes in compassion as a way of life, the way of heartfulness. When I saw you debate with these people who identify as Zionists, They're people first and foremost. You really brought in that compassion piece, but at the same time, you didn't take any BS.

That's for sure. You're not the type of person that takes BS. So I'd love to hear more about those debates, which, obviously now, everybody knows who Daniel is because he's so good at debating Zionists and for many other reasons, but especially today for this. I'm curious first, where did your awareness of Palestine come from in the very beginning?

Daniel Mate: Great question. So my awareness of Palestine started as a kid when I was going to Hebrew school, Sunday school in preparation for my bar mitzvah, but they didn't just give us training in the Jewish religion. They give us training in the Zionist religion, which is to say, teaching us a certain version of Israel's history in which it's the victim of everything in which the Arabs are the aggressors.

The word Palestinians was never used. We played a board game once in class where there was a square you land on that says talk to the PLO, move back three spaces, it's pretty right wing synagogue. Somehow my parents sent me there. And, I came home and told my dad some of what they taught us.

And he said, these are lies. It's not true. There's a people called the Palestinians and Israel's built on their dispossession. And I started to watch him as he spoke out publicly in op eds and on the radio, especially as the first Intifada was starting, this is 87, 88, and seeing the hateful, hostile reactions he would get from the Jewish community or the dismissals, , the dismissing reactions, the JCC, the Vancouver Jewish Community Center, not letting his group Jews for a Just Peace meet there.

And just sensing that there was something going on here that the mainstream of my community, almost everyone in the Jewish community was clinging tightly to something and they weren't open to an opposing view, and my dad's views sounded more consistent with the social justice principles that I'd grown up with than what they were talking about.

I didn't trust the nationalism. I didn't feel this connection to this flag or this country or this army. I just didn't buy the story. It just didn't move me and yet my father sent me to a Zionist summer camp, this left wing Zionist summer camp called Camp Miriam, which is part of a worldwide group called Habonim Dror affiliated with the kibbutz movement in Israel. Habonim dror means the builders of freedom in Hebrew.

And this was a place that fancied itself quite progressive and left wing, and we were learning about the Intifada. There were a few counselors who would bring in articles about torture and repression. And there was criticism of Israel's excesses, but there wasn't particularly a questioning of the fundamental principles of Zionism.

And around then I started reading Noam Chomsky and after that it was all over. Just once I saw the movie manufacturing consent, I think I saw it in high school in a history class or something, props to the teacher who showed that to us. It just revolutionized my understanding of the world.

Cause I just, I could just, I just started to see through media lies and then the propaganda I was being fed at camp, I saw through it as well, but I guess I felt like there was enough room for me to dissent there that I stuck around for a while and I became a counselor and an educator. I was Seth Rogan's counselor one summer.

Which was a whole little adventure, long before he was a star, of course. By the time I emerged from that at age 21 or 22 and stopped participating, my mind was pretty made up, and I don't know if I was calling myself an anti Zionist then or a post Zionist or a non Zionist, I don't know, but I was over it for sure.

 Anything Noam Chomsky puts out I'm going to watch. Anything Norman Finkelstein puts out, Rashid Khalidi, Nora Erekat Ilan Pape. These are all voices that I liked hearing from say, when they were on Democracy Now!

 I would post on Facebook whenever Israel did one of its so called mowing the lawn massacres in Gaza. But, , most of my friends on Facebook weren't trying to hear about it. And then October 7th happened, and you've seen what I've done with that. All of a sudden I had, I don't know, I think I had about 20, 000 people following me at that point, mostly to do with the myth of normal, but it's exploded since then, more than tripled.

And I think it's because people are really hungry for something that I guess they're not getting elsewhere. And I'm not exactly sure what that is, but people tell me that it helps them regulate themselves, it helps them understand. It's not just information, but it's bringing a perspective that makes things coherent.

It's funny that you talk about my compassion. I'm glad that comes through in these debates.  I've only done two real debates, one with an Israeli soldier, which was very hard for me. It was very long and he was very slippery and skilled at changing the subject and making up his own definitions of words.

So it's hard to have a debate, but I think. if there was any value to it, it exposed people to what someone in his position has to argue and has to believe and the people who already agreed with him, probably most of them didn't change their mind. But I've heard from some people that said they at least got to understand where Jews like me are coming from.

Before that, it was just perplexing to them. And that's, A service in itself. But as far as the compassion piece, yeah, I call it ruthless compassion. I have enough compassion for you that I think you're stuck inside of an ideology that's hurting you. I think it's probably very uncomfortable for you. I think you're doubling down on it, especially in this moment.

I don't have any sympathy for you, but I have compassion for you. And there's a difference. Sympathy means I'm going to buy into your story. Compassion just means as a human being, I know what it's like to be trapped inside of an illusion that isn't going anywhere. And then it's ruthless. And I respect you enough that I'm going to say it to your face, I, and that you can handle it. If someone engages in a conversation with me, I'm going to tell them exactly what I think. And I'm pretty frank. There's other side to me as well which is this very snarky satirical side. Particularly on Twitter and I post a lot of screenshots from my Twitter stuff on Instagram.

And people love that too. And that's, I don't know if you think that's compassion. It's pretty mean. Like I get pretty sharp, but at the same time, the people I'm targeting are not ordinary, ,Joe Schmo on the street. It's professional propagandists. It's academics, it's Israeli government officials.

It's celebrities with a lot of power who I think are misusing it. And for me, among the best of the Jewish tradition, Is to take the piss out of power. Nevermind speaking truth to power, power is never going to listen to truth. I want to puncture power. I want to take it down a notch. I want to expose it for the fraud that it is.

And in this case, the fraud with murderous consequences. And so I have a lot of spite and scorn. And even if I have compassion in that moment, My compassion for the victims of that propaganda leads me to just swing out and take my best shot, and I guess people find that cathartic to see too, but I try to mix it up.

Like I, there's a softness to me. , there's a hardness and a sharpness to me and sometimes I can get carried away. so that's just the line I have to walk, but I'm not like some gentle I was doing a, there's a lot of people in the spiritual world who have really just dropped the ball on this.

Just, 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: that's right 

Daniel Mate: probably out of concern for their bottom line and their followerships. They don't want to take too hard a position. I was talking to one of them. I did a Instagram live early, in the days after October 7th. And this person, was basically saying he agreed with me, but then he said something about how he quoted Ram Dass, and I was already suspicious.

I'm like, Oh, here comes a Ram Dass quote about both sides or something. And he said, until Israelis and Palestinians can sit together and grieve together, there will be no peace. And I was like, okay, but what would it take to get to that day? See, if you just say that, and you don't acknowledge the massive power disparity, and the fact that one side has all the obligation here, and the other side has all the rights here, which is fundamentally a true statement, if you look at the legalities of it and the moralities of it.

 I Then that sentence can either be a vision of a day when justice and truth , have won the day or it can be a kind of bypass to say, Oh, both sides need to forgive each other. And so on and so forth, as if it's a remotely equal situation. It would have been like saying until American

bomber pilots and Vietnamese peasants can sit together down together and grieve the Vietnam war will never end, or I could pick a historical example from Jewish history and it would go, in the opposite direction. It's absurd and it's quite insidious, I think, so trying to call out that kind of, sort of mushy gentleness, mushy compassion that has no discernment to it, that has no precision.

Again, it's not crystalline, it can't cut through anything. It doesn't have any power except the power to obfuscate and keep things exactly the way they are. And that's ultimately not compassionate. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yeah, it's really a spiritual bypassing just to hook onto something that feels nice on a spiritual level, but bypass the actual problem that needs to be talked about. When you are coming from a place of compassion, I saw a lot in your conversation with, I think his name was the butterfly man or something.

Daniel Mate:  Not quite, but I like that. The dandelion King. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: The Dandelion King. Right, right, right. Something. Yeah. Butterfly Man, the dandelion King. 

Daniel Mate: His real name is Zachary.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Zachary, yes. , he obviously, he was well intentioned. , he's not sitting there being directly hateful, although much of his rhetoric, alludes to hate. 

Daniel Mate: It amounts to hate. One of the things he said , 

every war in the world has involved dispossession.

Every people has been dispossessed. What the Palestinians are above dispossession. He doesn't realize what a bigoted, callous, supremacist, morally blind. I could use a whole lot of other words, logic that is, and it's the kind of logic that if it was applied towards us, We'd be rightly outraged.

So it's just, , it's a kind of moral illiteracy, and inability to actually hear the moral consequences of what you're saying, because you're so inside of your tribe and your narrative that makes you feel safe. And it makes you feel like you belong, that the truth is just a casualty of war and the people who are dying, on the quote other side are just.

collateral damage. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: That's what I loved the most about your conversation with him. You took him from a place of moral illiteracy where he was really blind to the pain and the anguish and the consequence of how Palestinians experienced this, not just from Nakba times up until now, how Palestinians experienced this, not just in Palestine, but also in the diaspora.

And you talked about the music and how you went to a festival and you saw this pain interwoven and so much of what they were presenting, whether it was the food or the conversations. And I think he was completely oblivious to that. And as you were explaining that, I saw a softening in him, but there was also a very strong attachment to that fear driven belief here of killer be killed of history can be misinterpreted.

We were there first, all the typical propaganda points, but I love that you were able to say that to him. And in that moment, even though I am somebody with Palestinian heritage and I'm Arab and you don't need to tell me about the pain of Arabs. But the way that you painted that in that moment showed, first of all, how much you understand that.

And obviously you did work to get there. You're not Arab. You went and you searched and you felt to be able to get to where you're at. And this, for me, You displaying that in these conversations, , I'm sure is having a butterfly effect for so many, especially people who are in the middle, who don't understand that pain.

And I think when people understand it at a human level, the struggle , of these people, , what matters in this moment today? Yes, there's all this history that we can debate forever, but in this moment, what is the pain? What is the anguish? what needs to happen for those two groups to sit together and grieve.

It comes through compassion and , you really exemplified that so well. How do you stay grounded in those moments? Like,, of course you get triggered, right? But you don't, you don't shout at them. You don't say hateful things. You don't tell them to shut up, right? Like, how do you stay grounded? 

Daniel Mate: one of the complicating factors here, and I should just admit it, is that we're doing this live on social media, meaning that both our followerships are watching.

And, it's like being at a Superbowl where you've got like people waving the colors of one team and it's , who can cheer louder and more likes and more comments. So it's performative. And of course he's trying to play to his audience and I'm, part of me is trying to play to mine and I try to just be there.

I was hyper self conscious of that during the debate with Rudy, the Israeli soldier. And it made it difficult to stay grounded. And in fact, I was so ungrounded and I was able to say some reasonably grounded things part of me was doing it by correspondence. I was partly dissociated, my mind was everywhere and my words, I didn't feel particularly grounded in that conversation.

And by the end of it, I had to take a bath and it took me two and a half days to recover. So I'm not always very grounded.

I wish I could say I have a meditation practice or some kind of spiritual practice at this point. I don't, I think there's something about speaking publicly that just grounds me automatically. My words, if I'm reasonably well rested and doing it for the right reasons, I seem to be a pretty faithful channel for an articulate expression of a particular point of view.

And my mental chiropractic work allows me to listen for what are the faulty assumptions that's keeping someone stuck in a point of view that's actually factually false. And I think, there's at least the humility to admit that I could be wrong about something or to catch myself when I overstep, because I actually can feel the energetic difference between landing a point that's 100 percent solid and coming from a grounded place and landing a cheap shot,

 And doing it for clicks or doing it for laughs or saying it in a way that's just deliberately provocative. And if my intention is to open the door, at least to people who don't agree with me would need to feel safe enough to come through the door to see what's on the other side. But what's funny is like groundedness has never been one of the many adjectives that people who know me would use to describe me because I've spent so much of my life up in my head or in my pain or in my feelings or in my ideas, not grounded.

And I think. My groundedness these days is that I'm grounded in a life that is aligned with who I am. And I've, I've worked for that and I've filtered out the stuff that isn't so that the architecture of my life, the life that I wake up into every day, does a reasonable job of grounding me.

I've got certain advantages that many other people don't have. I don't have a day job. I don't have to go to an office. I don't have to deal with the corporate world. I don't have to deal with any industry. I don't have to deal with. Institutions like academia or things like that where there's all kinds of pressures. I wake up, I listen to music, I take a walk with a client, I work on the book, I play piano, I compose, it's a life where if I'm living it consciously and in a healthy way, it doesn't unground me in and of itself, which doesn't mean I don't have to work at staying grounded.

And the big part of it also is just, yeah, keeping my eye on how much of my social media use is purposeful and how much of it is compulsive and addicted. Because all of the attention, I'd be lying if I said it doesn't affect me, and for a while I was high on it. And it was cool to all of a sudden have people appreciating me and appreciating me for me and , not through my dad.

, at a certain point, maybe you get used to it, or you maybe start getting hungry for something more substantial than just compliments or praise , or thanks, even though it's nice. And also just remembering that's not the point of this. This is, this is not about me. This is about a part of the world that really needs our support right now and changes that need to happen.

 I'm never not going to have an ego, none of us. Even enlightened people have egos. We're human. Yeah, I heard, , my favorite spiritual teacher Adyashanti talks about. After awakening, after an enlightenment experience, it's not that you have an ego. It's just that you wear it more loosely.

It doesn't hang so tightly, it doesn't cling to you and you don't mistake it for who you are. You're just aware of it as your sense of self and some of the baggage that comes with that. But it's not you. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: I love how complex your answer was. You started with, I wish I could say meditation, right?

which is a usual answer to that's how I stay grounded. But no, your answer was way more complex than that. And the way I'm receiving how you stay grounded is one, in your own humility, knowing that you also, may be approaching these conversations not knowing something. And I do see that in the way that you talk with them, you're always also conscious of what you're saying, how it's landing on them, even when it's something that is triggering, and you know, it's triggering.

And I can tell, because usually the next sentence after you say that is something that comes from their point of view. So it lands a little lighter on them. And you're coming from a place where, , you know, that this is not just about you. This is about talking about what's happening, about the people.

And there's something about all the work that you did, that's coming together in you being able to speak in this way. And as we're talking today, I'm really seeing that you now in your life, you've come to a full circle moment in many ways. related to your musicality or mental health.

 That coming together, that I want to say unstuckness of yourself also comes through how you stay grounded in these conversations. So thank you so much for sharing all of that with us. I'd love for you to share with us one of your lyrics.

Daniel Mate: Yeah, I wrote this , I forget when I wrote, when did I write this? 2012 or so. This is not about Palestine in particular, but it's about being like a disillusioned former socialist youth leader with dreams of living on a kibbutz, like a former utopian idealist, who was really gung ho in his youth, but now he's stuck in the corporate world.

And it's called just another schmuck at the coffee bar.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Wow. Nice title. 

Daniel Mate: And it,, and it, , yeah. And it's in this, the style is, like almost bebop jazz. , but , I won't sing it for you. , I'll just recite it. Okay. How did I get here? I was gonna keep it real and buck the whole cutthroat capitalist game. Move to a commune, plant corn, sow oats, build a new better world.

Yeah, that was the aim. And there were no two ways about my grand utopian plan. I'd say either you're down for changing the world or you're selling your soul for the man. So it's more than a little surreal. Yeah, it's really bizarre that I'm just another schmuck at the coffee bar. 

I was a rebel, full of fire, full of facts, always ready to rage against the machine.

And then the backup chorus sings, Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, , in a jazz harmony. I quoted Chomsky. Nowadays I quote online features on wine and Italian cuisine. , and then the chorus sings Northern Italian cuisine. Wow. Like it's , very Zuba Zaba, like jazz. , and I was sure as sure could be that we'd overcome someday.

We shall overcome. Keeping my eyes set on the prize. Yeah, but somewhere along the way, I put down all the banners and books and acoustic guitar. And now I'm just another schmuck at the coffee bar. And the bridge is, , Look at all these zombies, barely half awake, Driven to a distraction by a thirst they can never slake.

They don't even question, they see nothing odd. They just blindly follow the aroma, Stumbling in their caffeinated coma. This is my community. Oh my fucking god. Whatever happened to the guy who was gonna go follow his dream and start a kibbutz? And the, , The backup chorus sings, what in the hell is a kibbutz?

I don't know. , and then he sings, and how did I get here? Gritting teeth in a line as I wait for a kid half my age to prepare me a skim extra hot triple hazelnut latte with cinnamon schmutz. If I had the chutzpah, I would start some new campaigns. Consumers unite, stand up and fight. You got nothing to lose, but your corporate coffee chains.

Little Karl Marx joke there, but there's no turning back the Clark and I've come too far. And it's not about where you've been, it's about where you are. And where I am is stuck, cynical as fuck, shelling out another buck, and drowning in the money grubbing muck at the coffee bar. 

Wow. So, you know,, 

a lot of wordplay, , fun with different styles.

 That's actually in The Longing and the Short of It. It should be on that playlist. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: that was brilliant. Really brilliant. 

Daniel Mate: and it's on YouTube. There's a, there's at least one version on YouTube. One of me and then one of a fantastic New York actor named Bob Stillman singing it. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Beautiful. I did see you perform Marry Me America on YouTube. Oh, yeah, that's your mom in the audience.

So endearing. 

Daniel Mate: Yeah, I'm very proud of that song. I wrote that for a cabaret called State of the Union, which was early January 2009, which means it was in between Obama's election and his inauguration the first time. And the whole country was feeling super hopeful. And I was pretty cynical about what a black president could change.

 I had some of that hope too. And yet there was this trepidation. Will anything really change? Plus I was living illegally in the United States at the time because I had finished school and I was hoping to get a visa. So I wrote this song called marry me America, which was basically my ode to my complicated relationship with the United States as a Canadian, but I didn't mention Canada and it just ended up being a sort of anthem for the slightly alienated people who still want to love this country, but find it difficult with the ways that it carries on.

And, , acts out and, oh, yeah. There's a verse where I sing, , marry me, America, leave your misadventures, your wars and indiscretions. Let them be, such big teeth, America. We both know they're dentures. So take them out and come lay down with me. It's this, It's this come on to this over the hill faded beauty, who I'm just saying, you're still beautiful.

Just stop trying to be. , so tough, just come and just relax into your, the best of yourself, which has to do with your culture and the jazz and the musical theater and the hip hop that you've created. there's so much to love about you and your natural beauty and your people, but you gotta help me.

, help me to help you and yeah, let me in America, , something, I'll show you just how beautiful you are. And then the piano plays a snippet from America, the beautiful, 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: it really spoke to me and I thought it was so relevant for today, especially for me being a new American and knowing my taxes are going and funding a genocide and all that, but also being in love with America. I love America. I love the people of America. I love the nature. I love the culture. I love the music. I love some of the history, let's say, not all of it but at the same time, I'm having this very difficult relationship with it. And so when I heard your lyrics, it really spoke to me.

Thank you so much for that song. Such a joy and honor to spend all this time with you.

what would be your message to other musicians and artists in musical theater in this moment? 

Daniel Mate: We need you. We need people to not just express themselves, but to be prisms for the reality we're living in, to help other people see new things.

 There's a line from a Stephen Sondheim musical where it says, anything you do, let it come from you, then it will be new. Give us more to see. And, , that song is about visual art, but it goes for anyone who's creating from that place of channeling the unseen and making it seen or the unheard and making it audible.

 For those who are being silent about events in the world out of, concern for their careers, I can't tell you what to do, but I would say it's better over here. If you can find the courage, not everyone has that luxury, different circumstances, but, it somehow makes a real difference when artists can tell me, look, art is about telling the truth.

I think ultimately, and if we're unwilling to tell the truth about our world, I think it hurts the art and art that isn't healthy is not good for the culture. So I think we have an obligation as artists. That's what I would say. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Well said. Beautiful. Thank you for that very potent. So to close our time together, would you share with us a notable post, poem or piece of writing that helped you navigate the conflict?

Daniel Mate: Yes. So there's a post by someone that I've had the great pleasure and honor of meeting and doing some work with. Named Hadar Cohen. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Ooh, love her. 

Daniel Mate: Yeah. Yeah. She's, we've become quite close and she is from Jerusalem and she identifies as an Arab Jew, which growing up, I wouldn't have known what that meant because number one, I was taught the myth that Arabs and Jews are not only opposites, but opponents.

And number two, being an Ashkenazi Jew, which means a Jew from European descent. There's just a huge blind spot about the fact that a huge part of the Jewish world comes from Arab cultures, darker skin cultures that speak Arabic and, were fully integrated into Arab society. Not that it was perfect, but the rupture happened because of Zionism for all kinds of complicated reasons that you can go to Hadar's work and, , her handle is Hadar Cohen 32.

Also professor Avi Shlaim of Oxford, , who was born in Iraq has written about this. There's a lot of great resources that I'm only now discovering, but the point is born in Jerusalem, her family has been there, I think for 10 generations, also has roots in Kurdistan and, Aleppo, Syria and Iraq and Iran.

 And so that gives her a different perspective on the situation than I do. Like it's easy for me in a way to sit over here as a North American Jew and be the good guy and, have the right opinions and get credit for speaking out and all that. And I'm not ashamed of that. And I don't disclaim that role that I've got.

I sense it as an obligation and I'm really being myself, but there are limits to what I can know. And one of the things I can't know is what it's like to grow up there, to be from there, to be an activist there and to be caught in between worlds. As an Arab Jew in the age of Zionism, whose, dictates , and missions have been to cleave Arab from Jew as if it's separable, so there's a kind of compassion and also Hadar is a spiritual teacher.

Which means she brings a perspective, I bring a lot of like wit and facts and argument and that's a European kind of thing. And it's a, I've got gifts with it. I'm again, I'm not going to kick it out of bed. It's part of me and without the other component to it, which is a kind of love that comes from knowing bigger truths about

human life it's not complete. So she wrote a post. She was in Jerusalem when October 7th happened. So it just, knowing people involved and all kinds of stuff. But then she came back with this post she says, I first came to justice issues through a deep well of love for humanity within me. Love and justice seemed inseparable. It is because I love quote the other that I care for their pain too. This is the sweetest thing about life for me to look someone in the eye, to understand them, not through the lens of the.

I, like the letter I, but through the lens of them. It is unsettling to witness how love has been ripped out of the struggle for justice. I do not know what vision justice has outside of love. It feels like an endless repetition of oppression with actors changing roles. Love has the power to disarm even the greatest military in the world, and if you think believing in love. . In this time is childish, then perhaps you have not tasted the power of love. The mind cannot understand, only the heart can. 

It's just that kind of heart reminder that someone like me who is I've got a lot of heart, but it's not my home base. Where I spend most of my time, I hang out in the realm of the mind. And that doesn't just mean being cerebral, but it is a different energetic space than the heart. And I'm much more practiced at it. And people with more spiritual leanings and trainings are able to, , access love in the midst of the most horrific circumstances.

And Martin Luther King is the cardinal example of that. And of course, there's a cost to that because it means you have to feel all this stuff. And it's a lot easier not to feel all this stuff, or at least it seems easier. In the end, it may not be easier. There may be costs and consequences that we don't even realize we're paying.

So the influence of Hadar and others who have complicated my view of the situation, highlighting the ways in which I turn Israelis into bad guys, as opposed to say, ideologically captive hostages of a power system who are being induced to do great evil. And the ways that I turn Israelis into a monolith instead of understanding there is a power structure within Israeli society from Ashkenazi Jews to Mizrahi Jews to Palestinian Arabs, The situation is both complex and it's simple.

And depending on who you're talking to, they're going to put the simplicity and the complexity in different places. Cause Zionists like to be like, it's very complex. You people are so on and so forth. But then they'll tell you, it's very simple. The Jews are indigenous. We deserve the homeland.

The Arabs have never accepted peace. And I of course have a different view of it, that morally and legally, it's totally clear cut as Gideon Levy says, The Israeli journalist, it's not even a conflict. You wouldn't talk about the French Algerian conflict. But just because there are simple ways of talking about it, to clarify the history and the legalities doesn't mean that, justifies or even recommends that I lose sight of the human complexity.

Because if I lose sight of the human complexity, then I'm only going to be able to speak to people who already agree with me. I'm not going to be able to reach anyone. Who's in a different place because they're hurting. And just because I speak from my heart doesn't guarantee that I'll reach people, but at least it opens the possibility.

Plus it doesn't poison my own soul along the way, because beating a drum for an idea without heart ultimately hurts the one doing it, I think, as well as, causing mischief or worse out there in the world. So I really appreciate that sort of reminder. And, People should definitely be checking out Hadar's work.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yeah, I agree. I love her very much. She's definitely a heartful Jew witch. She's so beautiful on so many levels. I follow her actually myself and I love how you are using her approach of heartfulness to marry your approach of mindfulness. And I think that's only going to make your work even more potent.

So beautiful. Actually, the word for mindfulness in Japanese is also heartfulness. So,, 

Daniel Mate: come on. That's great. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Yeah. So it's, it's really about coming from both. I'd like to share one with you. I usually share a post or a poem. I'm actually going to share a lyric since you're a lyricist. You might recognize the song based on our conversation from, , the words.

I don't know about you, I like to tell the truth. But the truth seems to change every Tuesday. When I watch the news, man, it just gives me the blues.

No one listens, just on a mission to hear their own voice. It's a wild world, we're all trying to find our place in it. It's a wild world, and no one seems to understand it. It's a wild world, but there ain't no way I'm gonna quit it. Love is all I've got to give away. Some folks ain't got a dollar to their name, others got their own jet planes.

We all have the same blood running through our veins. Whether or not you pray, black or white, straight or gay, you still deserve the love of your neighbors. Try a little tenderness, maybe some benefit of the doubt. Another person's point of view, try to listen, not to shout. Hold your opinions loosely, maybe you're not always right.

Show a little mercy and hold on to love real tight.

Daniel Mate: Wow. , country music has sure come a long way since Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue, that's beautiful.

Dr. Hani Chaabo: That's the one I mentioned in the very beginning. It's called Wild World by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. 

Daniel Mate: I guess Lil Nas X has had a really positive impact on the culture. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: That's right. This song is pretty old, but I feel like it really exemplifies the times always and us as humans. , and also coming from a place of love, which is exactly what you were saying about Hadar. 

Daniel, this was absolutely wonderful and profound and truly such a gift to spend this much time with you. I'm , really grateful. Thank you so much for coming on. 

Daniel Mate: It's my complete and unmitigated pleasure. Thank you, Hani, for having me. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: Thank you. And I also want to announce real quick that Daniel is going to make a guest appearance on our podcast.

He's graciously accepted to interview a few heartful and profound people that we're going to invite on. So thank you so much also for doing that with us. 

Daniel Mate: I can't wait. Thanks for giving me the chance to sit in the other seat, 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: thank you. Thank you so much. So I'm going to end our time together with a small prayer.

Is that okay with you? 

Daniel Mate: I would love that. 

Dr. Hani Chaabo: May all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity and share in all our joys and freedoms. And may we see true peace in the Middle East for all in our lifetime. Inshallah and amen. Amen.