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Vibes Drop In
"Drop In" is where the Santa Cruz Vibes team slows it down and leans into real conversation. Around here, we believe stories have the power to connect us — to each other, to our community, and to the place we call home. This isn’t about quick soundbites or surface-level chatter. It’s about intimate, thoughtful exchanges that dive into what matters: creativity, culture, resilience, and the people shaping life on the coast.
True to the Vibes ethos, we’re creating space that blends storytelling with community impact. Just like in our magazine, on SCVM TV, and across our platforms, 20% of what we do is always dedicated to uplifting local nonprofits and causes. On this podcast, that spirit carries through. You’ll hear voices that inspire, challenge, and remind us why Santa Cruz is more than just a backdrop — it’s a living, breathing community worth celebrating and investing in.
"Drop In" is your invitation to join us in the lineup of conversation — honest, local, and grounded in the belief that when we share our stories, we build something bigger together.
Vibes Drop In
Episode 1: Kyle Thiermann
What if the most important conversation you’ll ever have is one you’ve been putting off your whole life?
In this episode, Kyle Thiermann — Santa Cruz local, surfer, filmmaker, podcaster — drops in with a story that hits close to home. After hundreds of interviews with fascinating people, he realized he’d never really interviewed the two people who shaped him the most: his parents. That realization came after a podcast he recorded with his dad, who told him afterward, “If this wasn’t a podcast, you never would have asked me those questions.” Then his mom suffered a serious accident, and suddenly the urgency of those conversations became real.
What started as a one-off recording turned into a three-year journey of sitting down with his parents, asking the questions he’d never asked, and ultimately, writing a book about it. Along the way, Kyle explored the neuroscience of memory — how every time we retell a story, we’re not remembering the original moment but the last time we told it. As memory expert David Schenck told him, “Memories endure because they speak to our identity.” By helping our parents share their stories, we’re not only preserving their lives but also reinforcing the very pathways that make them who they are.
Kyle also breaks down how the simple act of putting a microphone on the table changes everything. It shifts us out of the old parent–child roles we tend to fall back into and creates space for a real adult-to-adult conversation. As he points out, we spend 90% of our lifetime with our parents before we’re 18. After that, every moment matters more than we realize.
This one will make you think about your own family differently. Grab a mic, hit record, and ask the questions you’ve been avoiding. Because, as Kyle bluntly reminds us, “The point of that relationship should be to have as good a relationship as you can before they die.”
vibes drop in here with kyle tierman. How are you doing, brother?
Speaker 2:I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 1:It's nice to see a big fan of the magazine yeah, you've written an article in there right on one of our first couple. Did you do that through neil, or am I misremembering that?
Speaker 2:I may have. So I was doing a lot of writing, uh, with santa cru Cruz Waves magazine way back in the day and I was sad to see that go, because having a local magazine is, I think, important for a local community. There's something that you get, with a singular perspective on a community, that you don't necessarily get from just social media. You know, now it's like everyone has their own tiny TV networks but the curation aspect of what's good and what's bad is lost. So I was really happy to hear that you guys picked up the torch and seem to be growing it like crazy.
Speaker 1:It really is. It's funny, it's the. You know I always tell everybody, if Ken Whiting ever closed a churros down on the boardwalk, I would open a churro stand on the boardwalk. And when Tyler for you know, for all of his you know right reasons sunsetted the print edition of Waves still very active in the social community and all of his nonprofit work I was lucky enough to do a drop in with Tyler about a month ago at Sandbar.
Speaker 1:But you're right, I think, growing up around here, it's this fundamental right. This is fundamental right of like this, this county's narrative, the human connection, good times, waves there's always been sort of this thing on the ground. That's free in Santa Cruz, that's a way for us to connect to other people. But let's go backwards a little bit here and kind of do this proper. I know, you know, surfer, podcaster, entrepreneur, author. I think I even read something in Clip that it was a little small, maybe comedian for about two minutes in your life. But tell us, tell our audience, because it is a different demographic than waves, different than even good times that we're reaching here. Kyle, that's the, that's sort of the. That's not who you are, that's the things that you do. But let's kind of start with the who you are right now and then we'll get into the things that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Who I am and the things I'm doing. Yeah, it's hard to delineate between the two. Yeah, santa Cruz local boy was born on Cayuga Street, right on the Midtown, and then parents split up. When I was pretty young, Dad moved to the east side. Dad moved to the east side, mom moved to the west side. So my childhood was unique in that half my friends were on the east side and half my friends were on the west side.
Speaker 2:I could go over and surf the lane for half the week and then go surf Pleasure Point for the other half, which is great because half of the best waves in town are on the other side of it. A little rare. Yeah, it's such geographically not very far away, but really they are two different cultures and even were more so when I grew up, so really was indoctrinated into the Santa Cruz surf culture early on. Um, you know, and I was big skateboarder actually when I was really young. So I would, I would spend my days at, uh, the fun spot down If people are were around to remember this skate park down by the wharf um, I would just spend day, day and night at the fun spot on that six foot ramp.
Speaker 2:Um, and then when I was um in in junior high. Um met Nat Young he was. He was one of my early first friends there and we just got into surfing together. Um, he was one of my close friends all the way through high school and and still is incredible to see what he's been able to pull off in his career.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't too far after college that, and really even in high school, that I found a real love for storytelling, whether that was short form, documentary storytelling. All my friends and I just you know, getting amongst it and just doing these crazy like renditions of old surf movies that we love Amazing, that's amazing. People will be familiar with Kyle Boothman, but like he's made the Get Rad series and we would just go around and shoot crazy stuff. You know, it was the era of Jackass, it was the era of, like CKY Um and just just fell in love with um storytelling generally, right. And then for a long time it took me um a bit of time to figure out what my avenue for storytelling really was that I could leverage best. Um, and I started my own podcast um about seven years ago.
Speaker 2:The initial conceit of it was to interview big wave surfers.
Speaker 2:I was getting into surfing waves myself and I figured that, um, getting to sit down with some of the best big wave surfers in the world could give me an edge. I could learn more about what was really going on out there and talk to these guys about. You know, after a big Maverick session we'd both come in and talk to each other. Yeah, really quickly realized that I didn't need to limit the podcast to just surfers. And in Santa Cruz, we have some of the most interesting people in the world in this town, whether it be from the UC, whether it's from authors, whether you know astrophysicists, sex therapists, educators, like we have a very free thinking town and the podcast was a way for me to sit down with people who otherwise wouldn't make time and ask questions that might otherwise be too awkward. And that really was a shift in my life with the podcast, because you know better than anyone that question asking is a skill and most of us are pretty bad at it Because we're not taught to ask questions.
Speaker 2:We are taught that asking questions makes you look stupid right In junior high or elementary school, the kid who asks questions, you get snapped on by one of your teachers early on and you never ask a question again, exactly, and it's a really big misnomer that people will move through the rest of their lives with this idea that asking questions makes you look stupid. It's the opposite Asking questions is a portal into the unknown. And it really wasn't then until years into my podcast that I had my dad on. His name is Eric Tierman. People call him ET. He's lived in Santa Cruz for 40 years. Old documentary filmmaker, classic dude Goes to the flea market every weekend. Has never met a secondhand trinket that he didn't want to buy.
Speaker 2:Love it, he would go to the flea market and he would bargain with sellers.
Speaker 1:That's how it's done, son, that's how it's done.
Speaker 2:And then he would pay the original asking price.
Speaker 1:Oh, just for the dopamine of the.
Speaker 2:Just for the barter, just for the barter, just for the rush, and so I had him on the podcast. It was a really fun time. But he said something to me afterwards that really stuck with me, which was he said if this wasn't a podcast, you never would have been asking me these questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And Kyle, the thing is you're talking before we get too over. It is this format, this platform. The last two and a half years I've always been sort of a. I've always been a narrative based guy. I want to. You know, I'm always trying to find engagement, trying to find, like, more empathy.
Speaker 1:But this one where whether it be through the print, the podcast, management, hosting, being a guest, you know, I think what I found, because the one thing you get when you podcast is you do get these transcripts, you do get analytics. And the one thing that really stuck to me early, kyle, was when we were doing this transcripts give you a percentage of who talked how much. And it was very interesting to me when you kind of look at a transcript and theoretically I was having a guest on, but I think my insecurity or my pattern of question asking early it was never outrageous, but it was 60, 40, 50, 50 guest Brian. Then I realized I can ask 20 shitty questions or I can listen, I can actively listen and ask eight like really freaking great questions, you know. But I think the, the, the. If I were to do a you know, an elevator pitch to somebody about how to ask great, great questions. It would end up being active listening.
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot of times we're always thinking about the next question as somebody's talking and I think we're going right by that moment where they're kind of being transparent, they're being open with us and within them, being like transparent and open, the question's going to come to you, and so that's the first thought I had. And the other one is also, you know, I know I know we'll kind of piggyback this, you know we'll kind of lead this into the book, but I do think that you know, I spent four decades of my life with the same sort of like hang up, which was that was some kind of a weakness, questions and or even sort of like, you know, having, you know, some kind of vulnerability. And then I realized the last two decades of my life is that those are like a threefold return Transparency and basically vulnerability. Even with the toughest of your friends, the people that you think you're trying to impress the most, opens up new levels of friendship.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, questions will save the world. If there is one skill that I hope to teach my kids, other people, it is how to ask a question, because if we're to deconstruct what a question is, it's an acknowledgement of ignorance and it's a willingness to change your perspective, which you can't do with statements. So if you get good at asking questions, your world gets bigger immediately, opportunities come up immediately, you get closer to people immediately, and it is a skill that you can learn. Most people just were never taught that skill. So for me, what hit hard and caused me to spend the next three years writing a book was that I had spent all this time getting good at asking people questions, but I had never turned that skill around and asked my parents any questions. And then my dad sent me an email the day after our podcast and he said uh hey, thanks for thanks for having me on your podcast. It made me feel like what I had to say was important.
Speaker 1:So it was. Yeah, and hear that from your dad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes you feel like man I've been blowing it. And also it spoke to this, I think, deeper cultural malady that we have, which is we don't ask elder people questions, we don't value their wisdom, and when we don't ask those questions, those stories are often lost forever.
Speaker 1:Especially in Western culture. In Western culture we want to set them to the side. You know you get farther Eastern culture, different thought and elders are elevated. Their status within, you know, culture and groups is sometimes elevated. That's not the world we grew up in.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, uh, we value, we're a culture obsessed with youth and we put all of the attention on people who don't know anything yet. Right, um, never thought of that way, but you're right. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:Um so I uh yeah, the podcast was fun with that I did with my dad um, I had a ton of people reach out and say, hey, I'd love to interview my own parents, how do you do that? Um, but it and I and I would respond to the emails, but I still didn't have the idea that, hey, this is a book here. And it wasn't actually until two years later. Um, my mom was, uh, in a parking garage with a friend. She was, and she was helping the friend back up out of this parking garage and she didn't see the, the lever coming down behind her that thing that lifts up when you pay to leave and it came crashing down on her head and she broke her left hip and femur. She's in her mid 70s. A broken hip is often this. Yeah, that's it First domino that leads to death.
Speaker 2:Right, it made me realize, holy shit, if that thing would have killed her. There are so many stories that I have a vague understanding of in her life, but don't really know for sure, and there's actually not any evidence that I could then come back to if she had died, right Like there's a couple of photographs. There's some things that she may have said, but it's fleeting, but there's no historical record per se.
Speaker 1:You know there's no and even if it's not a historical record and you're documenting it, sometimes even stopping and like getting back to your point, asking the question. It's like when you try to remember somebody's name, you say it a few times or you do an association with you have a better chance to remember it. Maybe, kyle, this is a path down, whether it's written word or even the moment you had. Maybe just these moments to stop and ask the question does embed a memory a little more than it would have been in passing over a Thanksgiving dinner or some shit like that.
Speaker 2:Sure Well, it's amazing what we don't remember until we're asked about it specifically Like it's, it's you know.
Speaker 2:So I then spent the next year of my life conducting a series of long form interviews with my mom, my dad and my stepdad, and the amount of times that I would have to ask a really specific question what was Berkeley like in 1970 when you went to college? What was the culture like? And my mom was able to go into this vivid story of protesting on the streets, um, during reagan like, but she probably would not have remembered that unless I would have asked about it. So, conversely, by asking about it, you can, uh, get your parents to remember more totally.
Speaker 1:Did you ever see that movie? This is a real left turn, but it's on topic is uh, do you ever see that movie Inside Out? It's an animated movie.
Speaker 2:No, I've known what you're talking about, but no, I've never seen that.
Speaker 1:That's, it doesn't matter, it's not going to kill the conversation here. Believe me, I wouldn't do that. It's a simple. I'd recommend watching it from an emotional standpoint. It's a simple, you know movie and one part of the movie is that it's got like our inner feelings are sort of controlling us and they animate these characters like anger, fear, all these things. It's pretty rad.
Speaker 1:But the one part that you're talking about is there's a, there's an imaginary world which is ourselves and our consciousness, and it has all these little glowing balls which are all the memories we have in stories and there's one crew that's basically to make room for new memories. They dump old ones. And because the lesson Kyle is in the movie is that if you don't read, basically connect, or you don't stay connected to some of these core memories, you will lose that memory. And I think that's it's a weird. You know, shout out to Pixar, get some money for that, kyle.
Speaker 1:But that's it's a real tie into what you're talking about. Like we need to nurture it, we need to kind of keep fanning the flames of that one and it serves two masters. One of them is you know, you know, for you, you kind of become maybe more of a whole person, the other one, it lifts them up. It lifts them up, you know, as far as being recognized, because in this short little run that we're doing on this planet we're sort of expressing ourselves in different ways, you know. And for somebody to kind of rekindle a memory and rekindle, I was rat, I was a protester, I was here. It's just, it just allows. There's nothing wrong in kind of giving somebody a little bit of space in the room and lifting them up for a little bit.
Speaker 2:So throughout the book I interview a number of experts in these various aspects of interviewing, and one was an author named David Schneck who wrote a book called the Forgetting, which is about Alzheimer's. So he is an expert in how memory works and it turns out that when you recall a memory, your brain isn't recalling the original event. You are remembering the last time you told the story. So it's like a gravel path that gets a little bit of pebbles on it every time you tell a story, and the more you tell that story, the more gravel you put on that path. Right, there are a few stories that you have in your life that you will remember forever because you've recounted it so many times, you've thought about it so many times. And what he told me is that the memories endure. Endure because they speak to our identity. So what that means is Dude that. So what that means is Dude that Jeez.
Speaker 2:So he told a story when I interviewed him about being in the fifth grade. He was a nerdy little guy. He didn't have many friends. He was playing dodgeball. There's this big bully who threw a dodgeball at him and he caught.
Speaker 1:That's the point of the game.
Speaker 2:And he caught the dodgeball and the big bully, like he got the bully out right and he's like I remember that moment so much because it changed my identity as someone who could act in the face of intensity. He's like you would have to literally cut that memory out of my brain and I still recall it to as evidence of how I should move forward in the future whenever I'm faced with any kind of situation of adversity. So the point of this is that whenever you act well in the world in a way that you want to, you should actively recall that memory because it is evidence for how you should act in the future. That's really the point of memory is it provides evidence for the kind of person you are and who you can be in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that is such a I guess in a way, Kyle, it makes me think about that book. The Tipping Point, and it's sort of that was a business book I read way back in the day, but it makes me think of that book as far as it's talking about like a business. Businesses have these tipping points and the tipping point you should cut bait and get out of the business. There's tipping points where you've established a brand, the narrative, and you're kind of in the zeitgeist of everything going on and you're now, just now, you just are Patagonia, now you just are Apple, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:But I think that story you just told me made me think we, without recognizing it, have these individual little tipping points in our life. When do we become confident? When do we become? And I'll ask you a question Maybe you've never been asked it before on this level, in that the macro is that you're this amazing dude, author, podcaster, surfer, world traveler but do you have a story like that from you know, let's say the, you know the bully in the dodgeball game, do you have one of those? And let's keep it isolated, let's just say, in surfing, do you remember a singular moment or a window of time where you're like I'm good at this and this is something that I want to do more than just on a Thursday after school yeah, yeah, there is.
Speaker 2:I think that. Um, I think that for a long time, and even still today, I've had a story in my brain that I am not as good at surfing as my peers. Uh, partly that's because the kids that I grew up surfing with were really fucking good and I always felt yeah just one step behind, like when it came.
Speaker 2:You know, going surfing with nat young, you're just always one step behind and even though I was, the story I had in my brain was always like one of insufficiency. And I remember one of the first times I went up and surfed Mavericks it was with Sean Dollar and I remember being pretty comfortable the first time I did it and he was like, dude, you're pretty good at this.
Speaker 2:And I remember thinking like I'm taking that memory and I'm just burrowing it into my brain and that, I think, got me to continue to do it. Like a lot of what we do is the result of what other people tell us we're good at. So I remember hearing him say that and being like okay, I'm going to take that and actually be good at that. Now, knowing how memory works and how it shapes the decisions that we make, I'm pretty intentional about what compliments I'll take on and how I then use those compliments to form an identity Because you like. The idea that you're just you is not true. You're just you is not true.
Speaker 2:Like you are a verb that is constantly changing, based on what people are telling you about yourself what experiences you're having and when you realize that, um, you can actively start to take on certain stories that help you act better in the future. Um, beyond that, like part of the reason why I thought why interviewing your parents can be such a powerful tool is because it can provide a sense of legacy that otherwise you don't have access to act in the future. It can get a little dangerous if you have bad stories about your parents, but chances are you're letting those stories run your life without even knowing it right. So it's like the Joseph Campbell quote until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you'll call it fate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So how big of a step was this for you, kyle? As far as I know, I read a couple of things doing my homework a little bit that you know you had this pattern writing for Service, journal writing as a career, doing what you were doing podcasting but this book was all consuming right A time frame and the just a different. It was a left turn for you.
Speaker 2:I, it was a bigger project. So if I had been running, if I was a runner and had been running five to 10 miles, this was an ultra marathon. More than anything, a book is just a series of articles, but you just need to hold it all together, and that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life was to pull off this project.
Speaker 1:Unequivocally, this was the most difficult thing I've ever done and most rewarding. Did you, as opposed, I would imagine, and did you find yourself? I just get the sense sometimes, like in your publications and the work that you've done, it's sort of like a mix of a moment, an opportunity, a pitch, something that you're committed to do, or just part of the culture that you're in. But that's sort of the way you write and that's sort of. This one is more of a and there's no other way for me to say it right now but this one is a commitment, it's a job. Did you find yourself having to like, find a different pattern of like time in your day to commit to the book, as opposed to your prolific writer? But this is more than just being that.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm. The best analogy I can make to writing a book for someone who may want to do it is athletics. I really took this on as an athletic endeavor. It wasn't waiting until I felt inspired to write. It wasn't writing while distracted. You don't work out while you're texting or on your phone, right? You work out in a one to two hour session. If you really want to get in shape, you try and do it at the same time every day and people see the results of what it's like to really commit yourself to getting in shape when they do it. I joined a writer's group of other people who were working to write their first book. You know that's the equivalent of like going to your hot pilates class every week um 100 percent.
Speaker 2:So it just accountability yeah, it just removed the choice for me to uh, to write like, and I mean, if people are listening, they won't be able to see it, but they can see this. This is a, a timer that I use, called the time timer. You can get it for like 10 bucks and every single writing session I will set a timer and I will just sit down and write for that timer, uh, and I force myself to not get up, um, and, and then that turns great, yeah, it just turns into a discipline rather than a creative art and if you do that discipline enough times, eventually you'll end up with a book like that's.
Speaker 2:That's the way that it it's amazing happens yeah I like it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it's really cool. And then you know, statistically I there's no way for me to know you would know a ballpark, but I mean between athletes, surfers, artists, um, and then 370 at least something. Podcasts, right, uh, you know interviews that you've done. I got to imagine it's into the thousands of interviews you've done in your life on some level or the other, just as a number. The hat you put on interviewing you know top level athlete. It's got to be a different, is it a different tone and a different Kyle interviewing your parents?
Speaker 2:In a sense, the stakes felt higher by interviewing my parents. Yeah, yeah, and there's a lot of uh. There's a there's no two ways about it. Like it in Tim, interviewing your parents is an intimidating process and you may have a lot of resentment against your parents, as I did in certain areas of my life, and I write about all of it in the book. It's a very personal part memoir how-to, and part of the reason for writing the book was that I was able to turn some of those resentments into humor.
Speaker 2:That's, I think, the real power of writing about difficult material and even interviewing your parents is just even if you're not going to write about it afterwards is you can take the hard stuff and the resentments and it's great material, right. So that's the power of taking out of the son or daughter identity and into the journalist identity. You are reporting on the behavior of people and the stories of people, and it can create a kind of alchemy that I think is really cool and it can allow you to see that person from a different perspective. It doesn't mean that you won't still have difficulty with them, but when it comes to your parents, the point of that relationship should be to have as good of a as. Uh, the point of that relationship should be to have as good of a relationship as you can before they die, and whatever that means.
Speaker 1:No, that's it. That's it, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that should be what we can do, and unfortunately, I think, for a lot of us. For my case, with my dad, I just had never taken the time to ask him questions and then, as a result, I didn't really know him, like there was just all this shit that I didn't know about him.
Speaker 2:Um, when it came to you know my mom like our relationship had frayed in in recent years because she fell to what I would consider to be a lot of conspiracy theories that made conversations about the world be difficult. It was hard to talk about the world. No, it is dude, yeah, yeah. And to ask her questions about her life and about her history and figure out who she is beyond politics and beliefs about the world helped, I think, right-size who she is to me in a very healthy way, Like shit works.
Speaker 1:I think that's great. It does dude, it does. My dad passed three years ago and I don't think it was until I was reading the marketing material you sent over about this concept and I'm like, ah shit, I didn't know my dad. I didn't know my dad that way, I didn't get on the road. I think you take your folks on the road to ask the questions. Is that right? Did you like get them out of the normal environment? How did you ask these questions?
Speaker 2:I was living on the road for much of the project so I was living out of a 1997 Ford RV named Starflight. So that is the physical vehicle and narrative vehicle for the book where I travel around the country and meet with experts in all these different fields around the process of interviewing. And then some of the interviews that I did were in the RV but others were just in their house.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's a lesson in there, kyle, in the fact of like, here's the deal you're going to end up because of this book, because of you know your position. You're going to be a thought leader of some kind in this category and the thought leader will be in this, this specific narrative, because you just wrote out what you want. People are going to want to do this, so they're going to want to talk about it and you're going to get some feedback saying like, okay, what if? What if one's gone once here? What if I had trauma? What if I have all of these things?
Speaker 1:And I think you, you, you know that going into it, and I think for me, you know it's it's, I think, the blueprint that you've set out there. It's interesting because I think it works in so many different capacities. I think the organic thing you're doing is like yo interview your parents before they die, cause it's a cool thing to do, like that's the, that's the superficial part of it is get to know your parents better before they go. But that is the literal tip of the iceberg as far as what people can get out of this. Because I do the more I'm thinking, talking to you today, looking at the material. I do think this thing could serve a purpose which is a great way to bridge the gap between trauma and something you want to talk to your parents about isn't out of the bounds kind of. You know, we're not, like you said, we don't ask these questions, but if it's intentional, I'm going to interview you. It sort of it takes down some of the barriers, possibly in a conversation, correct?
Speaker 2:Interviewing gives you the opportunity to ask questions that would otherwise be awkward. So it creates a container both for you to ask those questions and to really give your parent the stage, and it also gives you the chance to your petulant little shit high school self. We have this weird I do it Happen, I do it Right. Yeah, when we're around our parents, where we tend to become less mature, and then it's weird what happens, because we spend roughly 90% of the total time that we'll ever spend with our parents before the age of 18. So it's common that when we go back and spend time with our parents during the holidays, we turn into our 18-year-old self.
Speaker 2:Process is, I think, cool, because you're no longer your parent's son or daughter, you're a journalist. When they say something that might offend you or you would typically respond poorly, your only job is to sit there, pause, ask the next question, like it really is a fun and novel way to put on a different hat and I think that is. You know, that is partly the value of it is like you get to mature a little bit and maybe nothing will come right. Like who knows what will happen? No, right, the thing that I say in the book is. Interviewing your parents is like a psychedelic trip. It's useful for most life-changing for some, but not for everyone. You don't know what's going to happen as a result of a psychedelic experience, and I can't tell you what's going to happen as a result of interviewing your parents, but something big might happen, so it's worth doing it over the holiday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that lands heavy too, cause I'm thinking about it. We've had this conversation with my kids and they don't like this conversation. That came off a comedian I heard I think it was Aziz Asari, I think it was. Anyways, he talked about, didn't talk about the data I'm going to say right now, but the gist of it was the same, which is, you know, we have these 365, 18 year sort of like relationship with our parents, right, like you just alluded to 18 years, generally by law, even where we live.
Speaker 1:You're basically in that narrative 100% of the time, seven days a week for that long, and then you get into your 20s, and even 20 to whatever your lifeline might be. You actually have to stop referring it to it as that immersion to a singular number of hangs you're going to have with your folks. So zero to 18, thousands of interactions, 20 something, 30 something to their lifeline and or yours or yours, singular, singular conversations, singular hangs, just because of logistics. It's just the way it goes. You never, ever, get that 365 times.
Speaker 1:You know, back again and I think what happens there is we do diminish is the word, I think in a positive way. As their narrative begins, they start traveling, they start having kids, they start having their own exciting life. The role of that 365 times 18, diminishes. And I think I love this book, kyle, because what you're sort of doing is putting a chip back in front, sort of taking a front seat, even if it's for a period of time or a day, and I think what you're going to find here is I don't think there's a timeframe on this, I don't think you have to be in your 30s or 40s. I think interviewing your parents quote unquote before they die that's any time between this very minute right now, and, you know, the normal span is going to have a positive impact and I think it can fundamentally change your relationship with your parents and maybe, maybe, sort of lift it up for that last stretch, for whatever it may be, um, and see each other in a different light.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, I hope so. Uh, I hope so, and I you know, I think that you can take this, this idea, um, and you can. You can minimize it down to a 10 minute car ride with your mom or dad. Just pull out your phone and say, hey, can I ask you five questions? I want to do a little mini interview with you. Um, like, for some people, the idea of interviewing your mom or dad is incredibly uncomfortable. So I recommend asking yourself what is the smallest possible version of this. And maybe it is like, hey, we're going to be in the car together, we won't even be looking at each other in the eye. I'm going to pull out my phone and ask a couple questions, but if you ask, the right ones, it can reframe things really, really quickly.
Speaker 2:I talked to an author named Charles Duhigg. He's actually a Santa Cruz guy. He wrote a really famous book called the Power of Habit a number of years ago and then a new one more recently called Super Communicators, which is all about how to have better relationships, how to communicate better, and in the interview that I did with him he said the number one skill of question asking is this thing that he calls deep questions. So the basic idea of what a good question is is don't ask your parents about the facts of their life. Ask about how they feel about their lives. So, rather than asking you know, like when did you become a doctor? Ask what made you want to become a doctor, and all of a sudden you're getting into an emotional feeling about the event.
Speaker 2:Rather than, like you know, you can ask, hey, where were you during the Vietnam War? But then ask, like, how did you feel about it? How did that impact you? Um, do you have a story or a specific moment that you remember from that? And then, all of a sudden, you're, you're in story time, you know. Now, all of a sudden, you're getting to know both the content of that person's life and the context and their emotional relationship to it. So that's a real simple skill that you can practice in daily conversation, like ask about the feelings of someone's life and ask about specific moments in their life that they get. That can kind of allow them to hearken back to a story. Oftentimes the questions are too broad and that's hard, and I do also have a huge list of good questions that I recommend people ask. But also you don't even need to buy the book. Just sit down for 20 minutes and write a bunch of questions that make you curious about your parent and see what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes me think there's something to this, because my wife and I have done a podcast for two and a half years and it's just a fun. Little date challenge started but it took off a little bit and it's just a relationship podcast where we ask increasingly intensive, more intimate questions. Three questions each podcast, increasing level of what we call intimacy, but it could just be a heavier question and it does its thing. It's fun, kyle, but the number one episode we ever did was sort of a special episode with my buddy about three years ago. He was terminal and we knew we were down to months, months before he was going, and we did a two hour podcast just me talking to him about his life and it was. It's not this book, but it was very similar. I probably I ended up, having just doing my research.
Speaker 1:I had like 100 questions that you would ask somebody that you love that's going to die and I just kind of picked a few of those and then also had some fun ones to play along, but the long lasting effect of that. Not just that that humans want this, because my statistics show that. Here's our downloads per episode doing ours with a few guests here and there. Here's one talking to a dude that's going to die. That's very vulnerable and open. It wasn't like overly emotional. He was a funny guy. We talked about gambling and all the stuff that he did, but I think there's something to that moment and where it lives on is it lives on as a little memory where this one's audio this was recorded. His kids have called me since then and they like checking in on that podcast to hear his voice. They like checking in and hearing him tell stories about them and what the because clearly it got towards the end of it.
Speaker 1:What do you want for these two kids? You're not going to be here Like. We got into the heaviest stuff and I think you're on the edge of that, kyle. I think you're on the edge of like maybe spreading something where you know we all are kind of like I said at the beginning of the podcast, we're just these small expressions in a very short period of time and all that's going on right now, people to think about these human relationships in a different way. I think it's super meaningful, you know, and I kind of acknowledge you for that. There's no question in there. It's just like a tip of the hat to what you're doing.
Speaker 1:But to finish it off, I think I just had a couple questions to finish this off, and then I hope this isn't the last conversation we got, because I've got a lot more. You know that, I think, is tied into this and and maybe what we'll do is before, cause it is our, our one that kind of gets the biggest reach is maybe before now in the book um Stacey and I'll have you on Broken Tiles and we'll kind of do that little question game within the questions of you know it kind of it's the, the, the sub, the subtitle of ours is question everything.
Speaker 2:And so it's a perfect tie in.
Speaker 1:you know question everything, so it's it ties in.
Speaker 2:But I think I've got two questions for you to push into that uncomfortable territory, because that's if that's the magic spot, right where people and the the dance of the interview, which you clearly are adept at, which is you don't want it to be too comfortable of an interview, right, like you want it, you want to be asking those questions that can allow for more intimacy, but there's no intimacy without that tension. So, like what was it? I'm curious, like what was it like for you to ask this guy who's dying, like what do you want your kids to remember after you're gone? Yeah, it's heavy like that kyle.
Speaker 1:I felt like I was watching a movie that I didn't know what the ending was. It was like I was. I was like I had this dopamine, it was like this energy and it's a weird thing because it wasn't just somber moment. But I realized I had these certain questions I knew I'm going to get. That were the heavy ones. Was he afraid? What did he want for his kids? Like the, those, those heaviest questions, and when I was asking it I just right now I just got it talking about it get like chills a little bit, because it's the weirdest space to be in. You can't wait for the answer. You feel a little guilty asking. You feel like you're with somebody that you shouldn't be asking this question but to answer your question overall, in the midst of it was the weirdest feeling. I felt like I was getting some. I was grieving. I was grieving, but that was very helpful for me.
Speaker 1:When he actually did pass that, I felt like that interview, that moment, those two hours, was the beginning of. We even had a moment after that when the last we had a breakfast and it was it. He was going into hospice and he said he didn't want me to come visit. He wanted the last memory to be the podcast. That breakfast he basically said that's how I want you to remember me, but specifically for me, those two moments, you know, I think for me like it does tie directly into what you're doing with this book is I think I'm glad I pulled that bandaid, I'm glad I did it with him.
Speaker 1:I felt closer to him than I ever did before. You know, as far as you know, because of those questions, not because of the games we'd gone to, the things we had done, the poker tournaments we'd played in together, those were all I realized. Those were meaningful and incredibly superficial, as opposed to the way I did have a regret that we hadn't had him on earlier or I hadn't had that conversation with him over a beer 30 years ago. You know we'd been. You know we've been friends my whole adult life and we'd never I'd call him my closest friend but we'd never been intimate until he was dying. And so it was. It was, it was great, but it was a little late. You know, as far as that goes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was a good question, kyle, you're good at this.
Speaker 2:Thanks for sharing that. Well, you spoke to something that I think is worth bringing up, which is I am friends with a hospice nurse and she's a major part of the book because I keep kind of coming back to her and asking her questions, um, throughout the process, and she's the most comfortable person with death of anyone I've ever met. Um, she really is just around it all the time. So it's not a big deal to to talk about, it's just something that happens to everyone.
Speaker 2:Part of the reason why people don't want to interview their parents is because of what you just said. When you do this, there is an element of grieving while you're sitting across from the person, because you know they know that you're doing this because, in part, they're going to die and you want this to be around later and you want to go into this right now because it might not happen later. And I felt I mean it's so funny that you're saying this, because I felt that for the whole year that I was writing the book and and interviewing my parents, like I would leave these interviews and be like fuck, like, oh, like my heart like this is in totally intense, like you don't necessarily leave the interview. It's like a, a psychedelic trip. You don't leave a psychedelic trip and be like woohoo, that was great. You're like Whoa gnarly.
Speaker 1:Right, that's exactly it, yeah.
Speaker 2:But on the other side of that, having done this, I'm more prepared for my parents' death than I would have been. And I'm thankful my parents are still around. I hope they still have, you know, a couple decades left, but having done this work, like it is a stoic memento mori style practice that allows you to act better around them in the future.
Speaker 1:That's exactly it, dude, that's exactly it, and I think you nailed it and this is a perfect way for us to wind down, because I got to give up this room in a second here at Cruiseio. But I think the other positive thing I thought of on the last sentence you just said there is it doesn't have to just be that one time. That doesn't have to be your last interview with your parents, and I think that's the beauty of being, you know, being lucky enough and maybe doing it early enough and having an opportunity, or, at the very least, what you've done is you opened up a different pathway. So there's a small 20 percent interview sort of expectation in casual encounters, so that you guys are kind of connecting.
Speaker 1:The last question I had for you, kyle, is the one where you're going to do so much promotion for this. You're always on the other side of the mic. You're doing these ones. I'm not going to ask you. Ask yourself the question that you know that you've never been asked, cause that's cheesy. I think the thing for this book is like you're so good at this. Ask yourself right now the question you know. As far as if you were interviewing Kyle, um, you know that you would want to be asked about this book or just answer it straight out. Like, just imagine a question right now. Of all this shit that we've said and we've kind of gone through, what part didn't we get to in this little interview? I'm not asking global, just a little bit. Is there a question you can ask yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I. I think that the question that I would want to be asked would be around it's oh man, that's a good one. I think that one question would be um, like how, what's, what's the process of taking painful material and making it funny? Like, because the the book is funny but it involves a lot of real personal pain, and that is it's something that I'm still figuring out, but it's why writing is so fun for me and why I'm so connected deeply to it, almost like on a religious level, because it is a little jujitsu move that you can do with life, whether or not you're going to write a book or not, the hard things that happen to you and the real painful resentments that you hold against your family. Like you can eventually laugh about those moments if you re-contextualize them and it's like it's so powerful.
Speaker 2:Yep, you know, and I like I don't know if you're familiar with the writer David Sedaris. He's a really great humor humor writer, just hilarious dude who writes about his family all the time. Uh, he's made a career out of writing about his crazy family and his alcoholic dad just this cyclone of uh chaos that he grew up in and he does it in such a funny way I would.
Speaker 2:I would wake up in in the morning and I would literally copy two pages of David Sedaris writing in a notebook to get his rhythm down and just find that humor in a really hard moment. And then I would switch to my own material and say, okay, I have this interview with my stepdad and it totally went off the rails and it was a failure and like I left that interview so mad. Okay, this is going to be the funniest chapter in the book, like yeah, yeah, I love it, I love it you know, and it's just like holy shit, you can do that with enough time with, with material, whatever your art is like.
Speaker 2:That's the value of art. There's a an alchemy that can happen. It's not about avoiding these hard situations. It's about like taking them and being like oh my God, this is gold, this is the material that is going to make the book or going to be in the painting. So if you start to take your life from that approach and like use that inquiry to the shit that you really are avoiding, that's going to be the best art that you make.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's a perfect end for this. Right now we're going to roll this one. I hope this isn't the last one we do. We'll find a different way to get you on, but this was amazing and I think if this is a corner of a little, you know, teaser for what you know, the book is going to be not on point, but I think, over the overall. You know, kyle, the last word I kind of get in my mind as we drift off here is, I think, the pain to humor all the things you talk about. It's really you're in the perspective game and perspective is a slippery thing, but I think the more you can become a master of perspective of yourself, your place in this universe, your relationship with your parents perspective is hard to find, but I think this is a toolkit that you're creating with this book and these conversations you're going to be having for people to have more of that.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I also say, you know, if this is a Santa Cruz audience, we're going to be launching the book on November 18th and we're going to do a big event at the Patagonia store Patagonia outlet Many people will be familiar with a few days after that. So, um, if you're in Santa Cruz, we'd love to um see you in person.
Speaker 1:Chachi, and I'll put it on the TV network for you.
Speaker 2:Great Please.
Speaker 1:Brother, this was great. Thanks so much, Kyle, and we'll. We'll catch you around the next time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're a great interviewer.