Can People Really Change? The Truth About Reinventing Yourself

Can people actually change… or do we just tell ourselves they can?

This week, I sit down with New York Times Magazine writer and Emerson professor Benoit Denizet-Lewis to talk about his new book You’ve Changed: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation — and why we’re living in a culture obsessed with reinvention, identity, and becoming “better” versions of ourselves.

We start with a story that genuinely unsettled me: Benoit once watched a colleague go from outspoken gay activist to “ex-gay.” How does something like that happen? And why do we react so strongly when someone transforms in a way we don’t expect?

Because let’s be honest — most of us act like a digital parole board.
 We judge.
 We doubt.
 We question whether someone’s change is “real.”

So what actually makes change possible?

We get into the psychology of self-transformation:

• Does personality really change?
• What stays the same?
• Why does doubt often spark growth?
• Why are some transformations lasting… and others temporary?

Then we zoom out- And here’s where it gets interesting:

The most meaningful change might not come from obsessing over yourself at all.

It might come from relationships. From service. From looking outward instead of inward.

If you’ve ever wondered:

• Can I really change?
• Can someone I love change?
• Or are we all just becoming more extreme versions of who we already are?

This conversation is for you.

You can write to us at: Questions@DukesDownload.com

And follow us onInstagram: 

• @jamesdukemason
• @PrideHouseMedia

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Duke's Download, my new weekly podcast. I'm Duke Basin here. And each week I'll bring you candid, thought-provoking conversations with incredible guests from the worlds of politics and pop culture. Together we'll explore the stories, ideas, and moments that shape our lives and drive change. I'm so glad you're here. Now let's get started. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Duke's Download. I'm your host, James Duke Mason. And I genuinely am so excited to have one of my favorite writers for a long time now. He's one of the most thoughtful, deeply reported, and respected voices in American journalism. And uh, as I said, on a personal level, I just couldn't be more thrilled. So, Benoit, Denise Lewis, thank you for joining us. Um Benoit is a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times magazine, an associate professor at Emerson College, and the author of best-selling books like America Anonymous and Travels with Casey. His work has been turned into a feature film, and he spent years chronicling identity, addiction, belonging, and perhaps most relevant right now, how and why people fundamentally change. His brand new book, You've Changed, The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation, which is out on April 28th, is exactly the kind of book I think we need right now that we've been waiting for. I'm reading it as we speak, and it hits hard because I've been doing a lot of self-work these past few years. I've gone through a lot of personal turmoil, transformation, you know, when it comes to physical change, spiritual sobriety, exploring that, trying to become the best version of myself that I can be. Benoit dives into all of that: therapy, religion, psychedelics, long-haul recovery, gender and sexual transformations, ideological flips, um even prison transformations. He asked the big questions what makes real change click or stick? Why does someone else's transformation so often unsettle us? And in a world that feels like it's spinning out of control, why are all of us obsessed with reinventing ourselves? Or most of us anyway. Uh Benoit, welcome to the show. I like I said, I'm I couldn't be more happy.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

That was a very sweet intro. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

It's true. Uh, I probably have been reading yours. I mean, I know you've been at this or at writing for quite a long time, but I've been reading you since I think I was probably, you know, 20 years, most probably. So again, thank you. Um speaking of sort of your origins or when you started, you know, you've been writing, as I said, for over 20 years for and for New York Times magazine. Uh, how did you first get drawn to these big messy questions and human questions of who we are and uh how we become who we become? Identity is a big theme, obviously, in your writing. Um, was there a reason for that or an origin or an early assignment that uh that that made that a priority?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, as I was working on this book for the last six years, um, which is too long to work on a book, my husband has made me promise that I'm not gonna work on a book for a few years. Uh, because yeah, it's just like you're better when you're not working on a book. But uh, so you know, I I so I I I yeah, I realized pretty young that I wanted to be a magazine writer. Um and I I think I fell in love with the idea that I could like uh sort of embed myself with people who are like fundamentally different uh from me and sort of drop in on people and have this kind of strange kind of intimate intimacy with with you know strangers and and dropping into to you know, I was really drawn early on sort of to two things. Like one was people who were very different uh from me. So whether that was like evangelical Christians, wrote a lot about religion, and and in my 20s, I I looked like when I was like 26, I looked like I was 19. So it was like very easy for me to like, and I was probably young, and I don't know. I I I I felt myself like really drawn to writing about what was going on with uh my peers. And so I wrote a lot about um, you know, I'd come out a few years before, so I I became fascinated in writing about LGBT life. Uh I was really interested in the ways that we like broadcast our identities, the ways that we um hide our identities, the ways that we explain our identities. And I think probably the the story that like propelled this idea to to write a whole book about this topic was the experience of um watching my friend and colleague at XY magazine, uh Michael Glatz, decide that um so he was like, I mean, we were 22, like living in San Francisco, working at XY magazine. I don't know if you read XY back in the day, but it was, you know, it was an incredible magazine because it meant so much to to our readers, right? And it was so important. This was like sort of the internet had it's like it was you could still feel like you were all alone as like a gay teenager or a young gay person in America. And so the magazine was really important. You know, kids would go to Barnes and Noble and like get the magazine and like put it inside another magazine if they were closeted so they could read it. And we got incredible feedback from from people all around the country about how important the magazine was to them. So that was incredible. I had just come out of the closet uh a couple years before, so and and then I meet uh Michael Glatz, who is like this seemingly like the so seemingly comfortable like in his sexual orientation and and very, very political. He was an activist, and and um we got in a lot of arguments because I was like, you know, he was like much more of a like a firebrand and an activist. He was much more of a black and white thinker than I was. Um and so and then you know, and he had this great relationship. Anyway, fast forward, uh, you know, he comes out a few years later as as ex-gay and and starts to write these really awful things about um gay people, and uh and you know, it was this transformation of his identity from you know gay, uh very, very progressive, very anti-religion, um and and and then switched. Uh and it was a complicated, it didn't happen overnight, uh, but it was a complicated series of events that you know is still a little bit mysterious, but he switched and and um became the opposite of all of those things. And and that was very disorienting to all of us who knew him. And and um, and I think that's when I started to think about, you know, like what is it what must it feel like to feel like you're a completely new person and and you know, how much doubt is involved in that process, you know, because when we when we claim new identities, it's really dangerous to admit to doubt because people we need buy-in from other people. So doubt is all over this book that I that I've worked on. Change is like so deeply connected with doubt, but we don't talk about it. We can talk about that more because I think it's really interesting. But so so Michael, you know, it was it was completely disorienting, and then you know, it was interesting to see sort of like, okay, so Michael has his experience, whatever one makes of it, and then the rest of us sort of judge the transformation as real or not real, typically based on our political inclinations or the direction that that he switches. And so we either like cheerlead those changes or we say it's not real, or he's delusional, or he's doing it for it's a grift, or you know, whatever our explanations are. So I became like I think that was a big part of then deciding because Michael was sort of like an early preview of what we've seen over the last 10 years, which is like fundamental shifting of identity in a way that like we haven't seen since the 1970s. And you know, Michael and and also he previewed the like political battles that we would have over these identity um shifts. So, because right, you know, like it's it's not just like he's become ex-gay, he's then used as as a kind of example for the far right to say that that people can um can change. And and so in the book, I explore like the sort of contemporary ex-gay movement because they've been discredited and but they've like rebranded in interesting ways and they've pivoted to gender, and we can we can talk about that. I'll say one more thing. Like, so that was like the intellectual journalistic interest in this, and then there was also the personal interest. I think so much of what I've written about is always like both of those things, and so the like trying to figure out what would change mean for me, and could I change, uh, and what whether that was possible for me and and what I wanted to become. Um, you know, I I've written publicly that I sort of struggled with addictive behavior, and so trying to figure out like, could that shift and how? And um and and yeah, and so but again, that was like both a personal thing and a journalistic thing, because I wrote a book about addiction, and I was really interested in this idea, like, so what's the difference between someone who like makes it and gets sober and gets better, and then someone who doesn't? You know, what what are the what are the like conditions or the personality traits that would um help us understand that? So I I think on a both both a personal level and a and a like a journalistic intellectual level, I've been circling around um questions of change and identity for a long time. Um I mean, I took a little break, I wrote a book about dogs, um which was fun driving around the country with my dog. But uh yeah, generally I've been really circling um these ideas. Uh, you know, I'm fascinated by people who go all in, right? They like go all into their new identity, and and I'm just not someone who tends to do that. So I find that really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

I mean, there, you know, there's nothing in a way, I guess, gender, obviously, but in religion, the race, sexuality. I mean, I, you know, those are like, in a way, the most fundamental, usually anyway, the most fundamental aspects of one's identity, you know. And so, and not just, you know, whether whether you believe that sex, I mean, which I do, but whether you believe that sexuality is an immutable characteristic or not, there's also in addition to the biological factor, there's obviously a cultural, societal identity that, you know, most gay people or LGBTQ people take on, not everybody, probably, but you know, not to get too in the weeds on Michael's story, but obviously I watched the film, I've been reading your article. Did you ever come to a? I mean, I know it's hard to read anyone's mind, uh, but did you ever come to a like what are your feelings about? I yeah, presume, actually, I don't want to put words in your mouth. How do you, what do you make of the do you think there's a do you think that his his sorry, that was such a big topic. I'm trying to articulate it correctly. Do you feel like his reinvention was from a place of true, whether it was divine, you know, divine intervention or you know, or do you think maybe it was, I mean, I well let you I'll let you explain it. But where from with all of your observations, what was your best guess about where that was coming from? The his his ex-gay transformation.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

I mean, there was so so much happening. I mean, what's interesting about Michael is that he didn't go to like ex-gay camp or anything, right? Like this was the and no one was sort of pressuring him to do the switch. So it's a combination of um, you know, uh there were some illnesses that he had that he that he interpreted in certain ways. He had sort of a a kind of a mystical experience that he interpreted it in certain ways. I think he tried for a while, we know he tried for a while to sort of say, I can be a gay man and I can be uh a Christian at the same time. So he sort of tried to hang on to those two things. Um and and then he went all in and and um but again he had doubt about it. He does he didn't talk about that much, but there's a moment in in that he told me about and uh that that he had some doubt, but he couldn't he couldn't like admit to that. Um I yeah, it's really hard to know what's in his mind. I'll say what I think is so interesting about people who undergo like these big, seemingly big shifts, right? People say, Wow, he really changed. So, yes, in some ways he really changed, right? His life, his relationship ended, he like moved, he went to Bible school, like his whole life just ended, and and there was a new one that he had to create. Um and so that's very scary. Uh but I'll I'll say like I think Michael, like on a fundamental level, and I I became really interested in this throughout everyone that I was writing about in the book. I'm like, what changes and what stays the same, right? And so core personality, his core personality, which was like a black and white thinker, always claimed certainty about what he believed. Like, that didn't shift. Like that, you know, that that's the same.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

He went from like uh I went from black to white, basically, yeah, or vice versa. Yeah, like there's no like shift into a great well, I guess maybe internally there was a gradual move. As you said, he tried being gay and Christian, then he just went and they finally he got to the other extreme.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

But but you know, yeah, and so it but and and this is really interesting to me. Like what the the I have a chapter on sort of personality, right? And like there are these tools that we can use to sort of tweak our personalities. Um, and there are people who write books saying, Yeah, you can change your personality. Um I I'm I'm skeptical of that. I I think that people can shift their um, it's it all depends on how we define personality, but I think people can shift their um their motivations, the things that motivate them, the things that they want, that they desire. Um, and we can, there is evidence that people can make if they really work at it, or if they don't. I mean, uh much personality change is sort of like unintentional, like illness or trauma or we're aging, and that change shifts our personality in some ways. But so uh, you know, but but I explored this question of like what changes and what stays the same with so many people. Like I wrote about a uh like this, he was grew up, he's like the the worst kind of bully. Uh and he was like, I mean, he was such a bully to to his not to his friends, but like, and then he he through a really interesting series of events became like this Buddhist now, and right, and so I like I talked to him about like what is you know what changed for you, and and he really he was like, Well, you know, I don't know if my thoughts have changed that much. And I was like, Well, I hope you're not like secretly wanting to like bully everyone, and he's like, Well, no, but you know, he's like, I I have many of the same thoughts, and I'm the same person. For him, it was like I've changed what I do, I've changed my actions. Um so it just kept coming up this idea of what um of what changes and what stays the same when we when we go through transformations. And I think my book is slightly unusual in that I'm like looking at like this broad over, like I'm going into these different like politics and mystical spiritual beliefs and and uh sexual and gender identity, uh and and all of the a name change and sort of like it's so it's a it's a kind of a uh it follows like my curiosities, and I I hope that other people will be as curious.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Well, absolutely. I mean, I can't think really of a more topical relevant subject because you know, I mean, even on like on a super broad level, I mean, you look at people like Mel Robbins and like people have this whole like the whole, you know, it's funny. A few years ago, as I mentioned earlier, I won't go into the details, but I mean I'd be happy to, but yeah, I'm not gonna do this in a therapy session. But like three years ago, I went through say you some like new agey super cliche terminology, but like a few years ago, I went through like you know, the whole what they now call ego death, and not that I went through ego death, that's been like all those sorts of Saturn returns, all these like things where I was living through a really tough period of my life where you know I just on every level I did like a serious self-evaluation, and you know, and but it was funny because I really didn't realize until I started following all these Instagram accounts and reading all these subjects, like whoa, like I'm like I thought I was I was I thought you know when I was talking to people about these subjects that I was saying something super profound or something, like and then I realized that about uh 200 or way more, two billion other people on this planet are going through the same sorts of things. It's not like I'm unique in like myself reflection and actualization and all that, like but uh but anyway to my to my to your to your point about how something that even you were on the cutting edge of talking about these sorts of subjects, and then uh with the obviously with this book, you're taking it to a whole other level. But why do you think it is that right now, of uh in particular, this whole uh subject of of self self-actualization, self-manifestation change on an internal level, why do you think now that that's become such a massive topic?

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, I mean I mean it it's been a massive topic. I I agree that it is um a big topic now. I I think I think partially when we think about change, like the world right now for many people feels um completely kind of surreal and insane and and and sad and and angering and all of these things. I mean, I talk to my students, you know, uh like there is and and the numbers sort of back this up, right? Like we're lonelier, we have fewer friends, we're more depressed, we're more anxious, all of these things. And so I think when we when we feel a kind of like inability to sort of impact the world or change the world, or when we're going through a like a moment like we are that is really challenging for many people, I think there's a way, and this is only partially answering your question, but there's a way in which we we um try to control the things that we can. Um, and so you know, in the in the 70s, there was this kind of reaction to like disillusionment, uh political disillusionment, social change, right? And people like had two reactions, right? It was like we're gonna go in the streets and protest, or we're gonna like turn inward and meditate and go to ashrams and go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and meditate, and then we're gonna come out of that and our our energy, uh, if enough people do this, is gonna emanate outward and transform the world. Um, and so I was talking to my students the other uh like actually last semester about sort of like what would it have where do they see themselves like trying to sort of be the change today? Um, and they got quite angry with me in the sense that they're like, we don't even know where to start, like this feels impossible. Like, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yeah, it's just it's so true because the world is so, for lack of a better word, so fucked.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah. You need to look at it. And they and they they were like, they looked at me like, what do you expect me to do?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

You know, no, I know.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, no, I mean, seriously. And it was, it was, it was really, you know, it's a class that I teach sort of on change and identity change. And I love the class, I love my students, but like they were they were like really like I never seen them so animated. So I, you know, but the the last chapter of my book like explores this question of like how do we be the change uh today? What does that mean? How do we, how do we like, how do we stay sane? Um, you know, and and like everyone thinks not everyone, many people think Gandhi said uh be the change you want to see happen, and it wasn't him, it's this woman in Arizona who's 80 something, and I hung out with her. Um, and she's quite interesting and and fun and kooky, and um uh, you know, and and so like I went to her, I'm like, well, what do we do? You know, and and she's like, Well, you know, we're on the precipice of you know, something it could be really bad, you know, something's about to transform. No, she's like, she's like, Yeah, we're on the precipice, and it's really exciting, and like we're either gonna like destroy ourselves or or some new thing is gonna happen and we're gonna like, you know, but we've been saying this since the 70s. So, like, um, you know, this is like not new.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

What what I think is interesting about all of the like let me just say, by the way, for those yeah, for people that are gonna buy the book, uh I I hope you I hope you this is I hope this is intentional. You're actually very funny and very uh and very like obviously very dry, and it's not like over the top, but you know, you have a lot of amusing observations about uh about people and about uh I laughed out loud reading uh parts of the book because I'm very happy you you picked up on the humor.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Like I, you know, I mean we're funny people, like we're funny creatures. Our our change attempts are can be funny, my change attempts are funny.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

I you know, there's a lot to sort of I know it's not your that you or I or anyone are like yeah, sort of making fun of people or whatever. It's more just that it's it's it's it's interesting to get an insight into the way people think, and right, you know, and and again makes you reflect about yourself, and so it's uh you have to see you have to see, you have to, you know, find the complicated world.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, and I think so, like you were talking about sort of all the like like we live in an era of like optimization and like life coaches and AI is only gonna like transform that. I mean it's really interesting, like you know, we have all these ways to like to change ourselves, and we have to like want to change ourselves and optimize and be the best versions of ourselves. And like all of that is great, but we also change we change like mysteriously. We change like you know, uh there's there's this uh idea called the paradoxical theory of change, which basically says the more that we try to change, the less effective it is. And I you know, and it's not this idea that we should like just give up and and you know, say like to hell with it, you know, whatever. Uh like we have to have intention to change, but I think there's a way we can become so obsessed um with it uh as if we're like there's a there's a lack of humility around so many of our change attempts that like we think we're like it's just us and we have to do it. And like we change uh be we we change in relationship with people, we change in ways that we don't uh control and know. And so I became very interested in experiences that sort of change people in ways that surprise them. So like mystical, uh, you know, psychedelics, all of these experiences can be deeply disorienting. Um, but I found in my own experience that there that I had to like both have intentions, things that I wanted to do, but I also had to have like humility that like I don't control the world. And and I, you know, one of the things that's sort of a running joke in the book is like, you know, I've just become my father, uh, you know, and in bizarre ways, like I I it was never my intention to become my father. I mean, I love my father, but like I didn't want to be him, like and you know, and and I've you know, we're both writers, we've both written about change with like different aspects, but you know, we both like have married someone from the Czech Republic. Like it's insane. Like my husband is from the Czech Republic, my stepmom is from the Czech Republic, but these are totally unrelated things, seemingly. Like I didn't choose, you know, and so I I you know there's this great quote from a writer, and I'm I'm not gonna say it exactly right, but he says, uh Jira Asim, and he goes, You we have these 15 years of hub hubris-driven confusion where we're like trying to change ourselves before we sort of just morph into our parents. Um you know, and and uh and and and so that that's overstating it, right? Not everyone just becomes their parents, but there is there is this like obsession with controlling the change process.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Right, right. And and sometimes that just doesn't, you can't control it.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

I mean, you can try, but you can try, but yeah, the people that I was really drawn to, like in this space of like how to help people change, were people who are like, it's mysterious, you have some say in this, but like focus on conditions in your life, like adding conditions to your life, whether it's with other people or you know, uh whatever it is that that like will make change more likely to happen, as opposed to like the way that so many people do change now, which is like with metrics and like you know, trusting a metric over like how you feel yourself, and so um, you know, the the this whole world of like yeah, these change agents um who are promising easy fixes, and many of them are are some of these people are are are not transformed themselves. Um, and so uh, but there's always been that. There's always been many, many um sort of charlatans in the in the self-help. Uh yeah, but and that's always been the case, and it will continue to be the case, and maybe more so now with social media where sort of everyone can become an influencer and and claim. Um so I try in my book really hard to be like, I am not your life coach, uh, you know, and I'm not gonna like tell you what to do. I I do try to offer things that I think could be helpful to people, but I I do not want to become, and if I do, please like email me and yell at me, like call me and yell me, like like you know, a kind of sort of like guru on this stuff. Because it's it's all very uh it's yeah, it's it's very mysterious. And and like, you know, like my husband has changed me. Uh, you know, like we we often say, oh, we don't change for other people, but like actually a majority of changes for other people. Like we we wanna show up better in our relationships, we don't want to die alone, we we you know, we have to change for um, you know, uh so yeah, and so like thinking of uh all of these different ways, the these things that impact who we become, and it's not just this thing that we deeply want in ourselves, like self-transformation is a kind of team sport. Um and uh the people that we surround ourselves with are really, really important. And I think unfortunately a lot of people now are surrounding themselves with fewer and fewer people, and they're more and more isolated and just experiencing the world through through their devices. Um and so and you know, I don't I don't know. I I I don't I think that's mostly gonna change us for the worse. Um if it if it changes us. So yeah, it's all um it's all complicated and mysterious and and um and I just I you know like I feel in a way like less certain about like why people change because it's so you know um uh it can be so surprising and and unexpected. And then the ways that we like explain it, right? Like political identity changers, they claim that they haven't changed, right? It's the only kind of identity change where most of them say, you know, I didn't change. Like my party went crazy, everyone else went crazy, um, but I didn't change. And so um we see in different ways that like change is seen as both this like good thing in some contexts and this bad thing, this suspicious thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Betrayal or or or betrayal or cynical uh you know posturing or right, right.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah, yeah. And you know, I like for for me, I I think I changed because I I changed most when I stopped trying so hard. And I I I tr I stopped trying so hard to use like like concrete methods. Um and I found a therapist who is like really like let's explore this together and let's let's let you be you and bring all parts of yourselves to this thing. Um uh but again, it's hard to know, right? Because I did so for this book, like and also for me, like I did so many change workshops, I I did psychedelics, I did all of these things, and it's then we create this narrative about like, oh, what worked? This did this to me, and this did this to me. And it's um, you know, it's kind of unclear.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

You know, you spot you talked about there's a phrase that you've used, which I love, which is so true, about how even you talked about changing for other people, then there are the people, it's like uh it's a phrase you've used is how we're on the parole, you know, parole board when people board, right? Yeah, when people change. And uh and you know, and whether we intend to or not, I've experienced this in my own life where you know usually it's a mix, you know. There it and this happens most to most people at different stages in their life when they go and they have a change, whether it's getting sober or uh break, you know, I don't know, starting a new relationship or a new job or whatever it may be. But you whether people are conscious of it or not, and I'm sure I've done this to other people, so it's not like I'm innocent, but like you know, there are the people who are maybe whether it's like malicious or not, you know, they're people who you know, not that they're necessarily trying to undermine your chain, your change, but they're you know, they're so intentionally or not, they're sowing doubt by, you know, by or or questioning your the changes you made. And then there are the people who genuinely are like want your how you're looking um out for your best interests, you know, and genuinely want to motivate you, but they unknowingly, you know, by constantly maybe it sounds like I'm speaking from personal uh experience here, but it's but it's true, you know. I sometimes you go, oh, you know, you can see someone really is means well, but when you but you know, it it does it can get kind of overwhelming when you've got a lot of people around you, you know, or vice versa. I'm sure I've to go to other people. When but there's always that whether it's your friends, your family, your work colleagues, social friends, there's always gonna be people that are like, is this for real? Or you know, or or have their own metrics about whether this is real change or not. You're like, wait a second, I've made all these changes, but they're like, not good enough. You know, not not you get what I'm getting at. You get what I'm getting at.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Yeah, I mean, change is like, I mean, you know, there's that level, right? Just with our friends and stuff. And that's always been the case. Like, right, when we change, we have to like convince our families or the people in our community, right? And I mean, when I talk about like the digital parole board, like now change has to be narrated and broadcast and explained to the world, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yeah, yeah. That's it. This is a weird reference, but I mean, I don't know her and I don't want to do her dirty, so to speak. Uh, but like, you know, I I find I've on an objective level, I find the whole Jojo Siwa. Have you heard about that? Yeah, she's no, okay, she's like a I I don't even know her music, but she's like a big uh um I guess big musician, and she's been on reality TV. But like a year or two ago, she announced that she was now straight or a bi anyway, and was now dating a man, and the internet went ballistic on her, like you know, saying, you know, how dare, you know, there were I'm sure there were lesbians saying, How dare you, you know, you know, you've true traitor, you know, and then there are the people who were, I don't know, there were probably people out there who're going, good for you. Like it was just it was just an interesting to another yet another example of like all these people weighing in on but with very strong sort of in you know opinions about someone's sexuality, which is just you know, I mean, I'm I used to be, I still am, as you know, for like Republican closet cases, I still feel pretty strongly that you know we should if it just purely because of the hypocrisy that we should point out. But when it comes to like some singer's sexuality, it's like okay, you know, I might have my own personal views on the whole concept of changing your sexuality, right? But but that's not for me, in my opinion, to like have to tell someone else.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

So anyway, it comes back to the new, but we do, yeah, all the time. I mean, it's we're we're constantly judging, and you know, there's there's that, right? There's because all of this is sort of like booby-trapped with culture where politics. So, like these internal changes that we do are not just internal changes, they like people uh react to those based on what it says about the validity of a particular identity or not. Um, and so the politics of this I find fascinating, and it's sort of all um over the book, which is sort of like these, you know, and I I do it like I have a whole chapter on actual at real parole boards, like you know, what we like murderers who had to convince parole boards that they were transformed, and like what's the narrative? How do we do that? How do we convince other people that we've been transformed? Uh, and because that's we have to do a lot of that. And you know, when people are sort of have done something really bad and then they're coming back or they're they're you know insisting that they've changed, you know, we sit back and we say, well, you know, this is too soon, I don't believe it. So we we we're always judging um and doubting change and and we're also doubting it in ourselves. Um and uh you know, I I became like really interested in sort of these like these experiences that we have, like you know, whether they're epiphanies and like what do we do with those? Do we doubt them? So I tell the story in the book about like how I realized I was gay. I like, you know, didn't I I grew up in San Francisco and I, you know, like right five minutes from the Castro district, I grew up in San Francisco, and um, but I I and I was like clearly doing gay stuff like as a teenager in terms of like pornography and like who I was attracted to, but I never experienced I wasn't like most gay young gay people who like realized that are like, oh, I'm gay, like what do I do about this? Or I I I don't want to be gay, and what do I do? You know, so I didn't have all of those like doubts. I just literally never it never consciously came into my mind that I was gay, like I never struggled with it. And then one day I'm walking uh down the street in San Francisco, summer in I was in college, I was back in San Francisco, and like I'm walking down the street listening to REM, and this voice was like, You're gay, what are you doing? Uh and it was like this incredibly powerful moment where like my identity shifted in literally five seconds, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Oh, well, I see what you're saying. Like, like not just your attraction to men, but all the like I were about to interrupt, but I remember I think I'm not gonna get it right, but there was a quote that stuck with me in from dreams for my father, Barack Obama's book, where he said, I I I wish I had it off the top of my head, but something to the effect of I had to learn, oh, I remember it. I had to learn what it meant to be a black man in America, and you know, because he didn't grow up in a you know with African American parents. And right and I and so not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds to me what you're saying is not just the attraction, which had been evident to you, self-evident to be.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Well, no, but had that. So that's the thing. I know it's hard to believe, the attraction had never like I had never well, so yes, like I guess on some level I like recognized I was attracted, but I it never like the idea that I was gay had never crossed my mind.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

But the the attraction to men or the concept of being gay and all the sort of social, political, cultural implications and identity implications that came along with that.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

I think I was so compartmentalized and and shut down as a teenager that like I didn't even consciously say, Oh, I'm attracted to men, what do I do about that?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Like, and people have a hard time like understanding not to get too intimate, but yeah, not how what to do about that in terms of like hooking up, like that kind of thing, or having remote question or watching.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

I know as a teenager, like I I think you know, when I would do gay or when I would like lust after River Phoenix or like all of these things, like and like watch porn, like it didn't, it was always so like disconnected. It's impossible to explain. Like, I but I never I never wrestled with it. I'm like, oh, what do I make of the fact that I'm watching gay porn? I like that makes sense. And then so the so the like realization, this like acceptance that, oh my god, I'm gay, and it happened, you know, immediately, um, was a was a kind of really uh like life-changing that the that day I I went to the I was like, oh, I live five minutes from the Castro, maybe I can go there. Walked over to the Castro and was like, where where would I go and meet so have sex? And I like opened one of those like things, and I'm like, all right, like I'm gonna go to a gay club. And I went to Club Universe, which was existed at the time, and and found someone visiting from Seattle, went back to his hotel. Anyway, so you know, and had this experience, and and so it this is like very powerful, like one day I'm living one life, and the next day my identity has completely um shifted and it complicated it complicated things, obviously. Uh I was in a fraternity, and so I had to sort of figure out what I was gonna do about that, and you know, um, but it was this interesting, like, you know, we like people can have like these powerful epiphanies, you know, whether they're walking in the forest or through psychedelics, and they often they can often be very confusing, right? Like we get a message, like what are we supposed to do about that? Do we trust that? And so I became really interested in like these powerful moments or experiences or epiphanies that people have, and they can be psychedelic or religious or not, um, and sort of what we what we make of that, these transformative moments that like that for many people will say they transform for the better. Like we're much more we b we we really believe like that your life can be transformed for the worse in like a minute with trauma and and assorted things, but we've been less interested in like maybe there's a kind of mental breakdown in reverse. Maybe there is a kind of thing, these moments that do transform us uh in really meaningful ways. And and um what's interesting is a lot of people who have those experiences are very confused by them, doubt them, don't want to tell other people because they might you know be judged for it.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Yep. No, I think I I I relate to that personally. Um, I think most of us do, you know, one way or another. Um, so I I think it's a great place to uh a high note on which we can uh we can wrap up the conversation. But believe me, I could sit here with you. Uh I would love to sit here with you and talk to you for a lot of a lot more questions that I had uh written down. But I'm uh no, we covered a lot. I'm just saying, like, you know, there's so much we could discuss, but uh but I also love because that was what actually that was one of the other questions was what gives you hope about what you've learned when it comes to change for a human's capacity to to be better, to do better, but also what are the negatives? But I think it's good that we focused on the positives, at least at the end.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Right, right. I mean, I can give you some more hope if you have 30 seconds. I mean, it's true. Of course, I mean, you know, I mean, I think like I I you know, positive change is possible. I've seen it in my own life. I've I've learned to I've shifted the ways that I think of myself and I I treat myself better, and I am a much better friend. Like part of changing for me was like learning how to be a friend, right? Like her learning how to be vulnerable in my relationships. And so all of those like has really changed transformed my life, like in my understanding of myself and how I treat other people and how I treat my friends. And that, you know, how did that happen? A whole strained combination of therapy and uh maybe some psychedelics and maybe change things and and mysterious things that I don't understand, maybe just aging and like having different priorities. So um, I you know, I change is possible. Um, and it is I it's all over the book, right? People changing in ways that um, you know, improved their life and and improved the way that they sort of uh understood themselves and sort of moved around. In the world. And so I do, in the end, I think the ideal thing is that we both work on ourselves and that we also remember what Victor Frankel said, which is that like sometimes we self-actualize by looking outside of ourselves and trying to help other people instead of being so sort of like what are my self-focused and sort of also like devoting ourselves to causes and to other people. And I think we need both of those things, and we often frame it as one or the other.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

So true. Like, okay, now I'm gonna I'm gonna use a really non-I mean, I love the guy, he's he seems like a good guy, but I'm gonna use a very non-intellectual reference here. But like I was just what this is you laugh. I was just watching an interview with Pete Davidson and Theo Vaughn. And uh and it was interesting because Pete just got sober like a year ago. And he said, like, he said something like, you know, part of the gifts of being sober is you're not so self-obsessed anymore. And like he said, like, you know, he goes, like, he goes, it's it's fucking exhausting, like being constantly sucked into your own bullshit and your own problems. It's like it's kind of nice to like think about things outside of yourself for once.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Yeah, and uh yeah, when when we learn to like that like 50 or more percent of the things, thoughts that cross our head are like bullshit, like are not true and not helpful, and just projections and stuff, you know, like what's figuring out what's cruel, what's not what I'm what bullshit am I feeding myself?

SPEAKER_01 45:31

What's you know, what or or what's sincere? In a way, it's like the best change can be just not thinking about yourself every single second, you know? Uh yeah, yeah. So, so I think uh, but I think you know, have it, as you said, having that balance, it's about doing the work, but it's also about uh, you know, trying. I think we all have we all hopefully are you know gonna help each other, you know, and help make the world a better place, or try even in our own small ways, uh, which is why I'm so happy you're here because I think this has been a really insightful and and great conversation. I'm really grateful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I I I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

For all those watching, please order Benoit's book, You've Changed, which comes out April 28th. Um, it's available on all the major uh websites, Amazon, etc. Um, and please like, share, subscribe. Feel free to comment. If you have a question, send us an email at questions at dupesdownload.com. So thank you, Benoit. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. See you next week. Thank you for joining me today on Duke's Download. This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by me, Duke Mason, and produced and edited by Josh Rosen's Wike. Original music composed by Nell Balaban. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review. It really helps others to discover the show. I'd love to stay connected with you, so join the conversation by following me at James Duke Mason on Instagram and X, or by emailing me at questions at Dukesdownload.com.