Know your neighbors

This isn't the episode we planned, but it's what is on our minds right now. We talk about the power of knowing your neighbors and a few ways in which we've found solace and meaning in building our local community. Here's a glimpse into our playbook -- tell us about yours in the comments.

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
• ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social

Transcript

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Cat 0:00

Let's start this by talking about what walking around in the neighborhood is like for our dog, because I think that's something to aspire to when Yeti walks around in our neighborhood, he sees a beautiful world where everybody is just giving him free food and attention, and in exchange, he's offering cuteness

Ashley 0:22

Yeah. He knows several neighbors. They know him by name. Even if they don't know our name, they know Yeti's name. Yeti knows where the treats are. He knows where he can reliably get treats, and the world is like this place that affords resources and friends and, and he doesn't read the news.

Cat 0:46

This morning we were planning a completely different episode and it didn't feel right. Ashley was out on a walk and I was doing last ditch research before the episode and we were doing our usual change technically thing.

Ashley 1:01

You were trying to figure out how to pronounce some researcher's name.

Cat 1:04

I was doing my due diligence on Polish surnames and um, and we were gonna tackle a, a edgy social media buzzword topic, and it just fell away. It felt like it didn't matter. Um, you wanna tell me a little bit about this change in course.

Ashley 1:24

Cat was like, don't look at the news. And I was like. Okay. And then as soon as I left on the walk with Yeti, of course, I pull out my phone and I have a New York Times notification telling me what happened this morning, which is yet another death, another murder in Minnesota. And I texted Cat and Danilo our wonderful producer, and I said, I don't know if I can do the pod this morning. Like this just feels really wrong. Like, what else should we do? Should we just cancel? Should we do something else? So we sat and talked for a little bit and we were thinking about what we can offer in this current moment, what we can even do in this current moment, and like what has been helpful for us in this past year of what feels like a relentless trajectory towards anarchy and authoritarianism in this country and civil war. And the thing that came to Cat in my mind was. Community and really specifically local community.

Cat 2:28

Yeah. Yeah. I think very deeply that taking action in these moments matters. And I think it's really important to distinguish between what kinds of actions matter, and we landed on. Getting to know your neighbors in this moment and the power of that. And you know, our eyes have been on Minneapolis, as I'm sure you know, if you listen to this podcast, yours has been too. And you know, I know maybe some folks might listen to this podcast as a bit of an escape and a comfort and you know, listen, you do you like, feel free to tune out if this is too real. But we also want to be real in how we use this space and how we use our voices and. There's a lot of parts of our lives where we encounter this stuff all the time. I mean, Ashley's not just a neuroscientist, she's a teacher, you know? And we have students and family and friends who are all being impacted by everything going on, like every day. And so this is not from the meta analysis, you know, advice, this is like. Our actual things we're trying to do, we thought we could share with you. So, you know, a story that popped up for us was we have neighbors who invited us to dinner in the beginning of 2025. And it was such a beautiful little moment. They invited the two houses immediately next to them, which so us and our other good friends who were in the house on the other side of them and we all got together and I just remember like thinking what a beautiful action. What skill they used to show up for us in this moment. Like one of our neighbors provided little notebooks as you walked into the door. He said,

Ashley 4:15

It was so cute.

Cat 4:16

just in case, you know, everything's, everything's absolutely falling down and crazy in the world and, and so how could we possibly support each other? And I think it was kind of scary to open up, you know, despite. Knowing that we shared all these values and we were politically aligned and all this stuff, it was still really hard to just like, look your neighbor in the face and say, I'm really scared and this feels so much worse than most of the people in my life are acting like it is.

Ashley 4:50

Hmm.

Cat 4:51

What do you think? And I, I found it very affirming that everyone else was there too.

Ashley 4:56

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. And I feel like there's this benefit too, of having people extremely local to you that you can turn to. And so, you know, we had that dinner at our neighbor's house and then I think it was like a month or two afterwards, and I was driving out of the neighborhood. I had left our dog at home and that already makes me nervous 'cause he has separation anxiety and so he's, he's anxious when I leave and I'm anxious when I leave. And I was driving outta the neighborhood and I saw this car like turn into our neighborhood and I. I swear, I mean, it happened in a flash, but I swear someone in this car was wearing like a hood, like it looked like a KKK hood, and it freaked me out and I, I still don't know if that's actually what they were wearing. Maybe they just had some other sort of mask on or something, I don't know. But. I texted our neighbors and I said, look, I just saw this thing, right? And they're heading into our neighborhood. I have no idea. Like, the world is crazy right now. Would you just kind of keep an extra eye out if you're home? And they angels that they are. Were like, yep, we're on it. We're gonna circle the block. We'll make sure everything's chill. You know? I was like, Yeti's at home. Like, please don't let someone set the house on fire or something, you know? And, and they were like, we're on it. And. The, the comfort that in that moment that brought me like, you can't put a dollar amount on it. Right? Like, I was just like, wow, okay. Like we, someone's got our back, right?

Cat 6:25

You know, I was out with a friend when you texted me about this, and we were out in another neighborhood in San Diego, and, and he turned to me and I was sort of, kind of in the moment, my mind was just a little frozen and I was like, oh, should I go home? Ashley just called me, you know, and, and, and he just turned to me and he said, don't let them gaslight you. Like don't, don't participate in the gaslighting.

Ashley 6:50

Hmm.

Cat 6:51

You can be scared in this moment. You don't have to explain dropping everything to just make sure you know your wife is okay.

Ashley 7:02

Hmm.

Cat 7:03

And I thought that was an important lesson, you know, and I've been thinking about that a lot. The difference between the people who are able to sort of say, yes, it is this bad and the violence is this real, versus the people who won't be real and be with you in that moment.

Ashley 7:21

Hmm. Yeah, there's a real comfort to the, to validating the feelings of it. You know, even if like, statistically the odds are low that someone's gonna just. Pick out my house to burn down on the block. Sure. Like, okay, maybe that's statistically not very likely, but the feeling of it in this current moment, given what we've been through and and on top of, just the general feeling of being someone out in the world, very explicitly gay, very explicitly doing DEI work on a university campus, like all of these things just feel like layers of. Targets on our backs, and for someone in that moment to validate it again, the comfort that comes with that is incredible and important.

Cat 8:08

Yeah. I also think how are people gonna know that you want to be there for them unless you tell them and it is so scary and like. I mean, it, it makes you feel all these things. I at least I can only speak from my experience, but I struggle with it. I feel a lot of embarrassment. I feel a lot of, am I being cringe? You know,

Ashley 8:32

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cat 8:33

one thing to write something on social media where you feel like. You're participating in a genre of kind of doing societal analysis or something, and it's another thing to drop a flyer in your neighbor's mailbox and say, here is my phone number.

Ashley 8:53

Hmm

Cat 8:53

know, let's start a text thread and they might take you up on that or they might not, but we have a text thread now, you know, and we have another neighbor who when she moved in, dropped off cards. And, I don't know, maybe I'm just not very Midwest, because you know, that it,

Ashley 9:11

the Midwest. Yeah.

Cat 9:12

that it just never, never would've occurred to me. I guess all I wanna say is these are actually very attainable things you could do. Now it's like, Hey, we have this number. And it feels so healthy to live in society with people who you otherwise might not, you know, have, you don't necessarily work with them or they're different from you or you know, but this is like the fundamentals of society and she lives alone and if she has a surgery or something, she can text us and I guess one thing I wanna say is like, that does so much for me.

Ashley 9:47

speaking of neighbors, there's someone knocking at the door, so I'm gonna get this.

Cat 9:52

Yes, in spirit, you have to get it.

Ashley 9:56

Come on back in Yeti. Yeti, come on.

Cat 10:02

This is like a staged NPR moment.

Ashley 10:04

I know it. really feels like it. I swear this is real life. Yeti. Get back inside.

Cat 10:10

That. He's not scared of anything out there.

Ashley 10:12

Come on. Well, those were, um, those were Jehovah's Witnesses.

Cat 10:23

Oh wow. Did you

Ashley 10:24

looking for Spanish speaking neighbors.

Cat 10:27

really

Ashley 10:28

don't know.

Cat 10:28

You were like, well, plenty of folks in this neighborhood,

Ashley 10:32

Yeah.

Cat 10:34

Um, I had a, a run in with Jehovah's Witnesses in the neighborhood recently, and I just, I, I, this is so funny. I, um, I can be quite a socially anxious person and so I don't expect people to like talk to me always. And, um, and these guys were, you know, very cheerfully engaging with me, sort of unexpectedly on the street. And I was walking with Yeti actually. Um, and I just yelled, I'm gay. And then to their credit,, they have well integrated this into their training because at this point, because one of the guys just turns around and he just goes, that's okay. That's great. We still wanna talk to you. And I was like, no.

Ashley 11:17

what? You're like, wait, wait, that's supposed to be an out.

Cat 11:22

But I was like, you know what? You know what? I now feel a little bit more fond of those guys and their ties when they go round. So I was like, well done, sir.

Ashley 11:31

That's, That's, amazing.

Cat 11:35

we were just talking about this this morning that we are having an inaugural launch of our little free library

Ashley 11:41

Mm-hmm.

Cat 11:42

that you built,

Ashley 11:43

Mm-hmm.

Cat 11:44

and we're having coffee and donuts. The great equalizer, you know, is putting food out.

Ashley 11:52

mm Yeah. A unifying force, the

Cat 11:55

Yeah. We were just deciding that we could use this time to talk to people about what's happening and how everybody's feeling and how this is affecting San Diego.

Ashley 12:06

Yeah. And it, and it is impacting San Diego. I mean, last year, just two miles south of here, there was a raid on a restaurant in South Park that, uh, we've been to really wonderful Italian restaurant. Yeah. So we're nervous here. Like we're nervous that stuff's gonna pick up again. And I think, I think continuing to connect with our neighbors is a really good move. I think right now the first thing you can do is you can know your neighbors and hopefully. We can, we can only hope that we won't be in the situation where we're asked to do what many people have done, which is like, quite literally stand in the gunfire for their neighbors. Um, you know, I hope it, it never comes to that for most of us. Um, but I think When you know your neighbors, when you have something to, to stand for and stand against. Like the thing we need now. I don't know. It is certainly one thing that has helped us feel safe in our house, to feel like we have people we can call on and that can call on us, and in the current moment, maybe that's what we need. So we did it, we had the free library opening at our house last weekend,

Cat 13:34

the Corner Coffee and Free Donuts. And, somebody asked me if we followed a playbook for doing this, which I thought was so cute. Um, no, we did not. The playbook came from our minds and it, it was get some donuts and I dug a piece of cardboard out of our, um, recycling and, found a sharpie. And wrote free coffee and donuts. And then I wrote ice out on the bottom of it, um, which I think was an important signifier

Ashley 14:04

of

Cat 14:04

what kind of house we were.

Ashley 14:05

It was so nice because neighbors from across the street who we haven't met, we've, we've lived in our house for more than five years now. We haven't met all of our neighbors. So the neighbors across the street who I had personally invited with a little hand drawn flyer they were outside and I handed it to them the other day and they came and, um, he. He looked at the sign cat made and he was like, oh, like, yeah, this is like really terrible what's happening right now. And

Cat 14:31

yeah,

Ashley 14:32

we had a really nice moment of connection.

Cat 14:34

It started a conversation. It was so great. And just picture like, you know, our house has some visibility on our street and, and we have this nice little space and we set up a table and put the donuts on it, and I, we got, I think almost everybody came that you said. A flyer, put a flyer in their mailbox and the vibe was just delightful. People brought their kids, um, one entire family came.

Ashley 15:02

Yeah. Yeah. It was so nice. So I guess this update is just to say, look, you can do this. We're gonna do it again. I think like we're thinking like Valentine's Day weekend, we're gonna do like a neighborhood love event where we're gonna just do the same thing. We have the playbook now, so you could do it too.