Episode 10 Brothers and Sisters Recorded May 3, 2026

Deconstructing leaving Mormonism, freedom and bondage still to old messaging. All topics fair game for discussion.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let me take a drink of water.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

So you're in Vietnam?

SPEAKER_01 0:05

We're in Vietnam. We're in Denang. We took a train from Ho Chi Minh City, slept miserably. Here's why we slept miserably. The train is really easy to sleep on, but our door to our berth wouldn't open. And so it felt like you were kind of in a like a death trap. And so it was a little uh uncomfortable to sleep. And it was only like a six-hour or seven-hour train ride. So it wasn't like there was ever any real deep sleep. And then we got here at about six o'clock in the morning and made our way to the new hotel. But luckily, they gave us a code to get in. And this is only like a 10-room hotel. It's tiny across the street from the beach. And um, so we put all of our stuff in and waited for about an hour for the girl to show up. And luckily, the people who were staying here left, and so we were able to get in in about a half hour, which was really nice. Yeah, not bad at all. So um, this town is absolutely amazing. So last time we were here, we didn't stay in Denang. Um, we stayed out in a resort that was completely isolated. It was a beautiful resort, but there was nothing around it, and I think it was because it was in a tsunami area. Uh yeah, that there was not much left around it, and but here um we're right in the middle of all the action and beautiful views. I just absolutely love it here. So you see what I'm wearing? It's one of my new hairs. Uh it's kind of embroidered, it's cotton poly blend, so it will wash and everything really well. But they I got to pick out the fabric and they made it for me, and I they fitted it to me the next day. They made it for me in a day, and it was less than ten dollars.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I know. So you can like you can buy Larry got new shirts, I got new outfits, I got pants and um top shirts because uh sets because we're going to Japan, and they're just not shlubby in Japan, you know, like our tourist clothes are like Filipino, like go to the beach kind of tourist clothes, and I wanted to just kind of class it up a little bit for Japan. I felt, yeah, I felt like it was time to do a whole refresh of my wardrobe. So I threw some stuff away. Well, we never throw anything away because here everyone has a need, right? So we gave it to um the maids that cleaned our room, and um, then I got a new wardrobe. I probably got I don't know, six or seven new things. Great, like for under a hundred dollars, and they're all fit to me, you know. It's and I got to choose the fabric and flattering and beautiful, yeah. Yeah, it was really fun. So this is the funniest thing that happened uh in at our last city. Um that was the place that 18 months ago I went and had some plastic surgery, not plastic surgery, dermatology stuff done. And um, Larry came with me because he had, I don't know what you call it, but you know, that band of like uh uh moles and skin tags that are around your neck, especially like if you have diabetes or something. He doesn't have diabetes, but he had that whole band. He was just really a moley guy. So they told us they would burn the moles off of him. They worked on him for three hours last time, burned up I don't know how many moles. I mean, he's completely moleless now. But um, and he said that when he got back to the United States, he went and saw his doctor, his dermatologist, and he took his shirt off and he goes, Do you notice anything different? And the doctor said, What happened to all your moles? Where did they go? And he's like, I happily left them behind in Vietnam. Um, then he told him how much we paid. We paid $60 to have all that work done. And his dermatologist in the United States said, Uh, I wouldn't have touched that for under $10,000. That's the difference. It's amazing the difference in how much things cost. But it was funny because when we walked back in, I you can see I'm still kind of scarred. I had some stuff burned off my face. And I'm just trusty. Yeah, I'm I'm a little puppy. I'm a little, I look a little punched, maybe. Um, I I want to stay on top of it. I told Larry, I don't mind aging, but I'm gonna fight it going down. You know, I'm not probably gonna get a whole facelift or anything dramatic, but I'm gonna I'm gonna do what I can do. And so we walk into it.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

If you're gonna do it, Vietnam is not, it is the right country, is the right country.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Okay. So um we walked in. Well, I had to find the dermatology clinic, first of all, and I was looking, looking, looking, and then I I I saw one that it looked like it, and I looked at the reviews, and my review was the first review. So I said, Oh, well, this has to be the place, right? So I made the appointment, we walk in, and everyone in the clinic is like, we know who you are, we know who you are. I'm like, how do you know who I am? And I uh the doctor when we left last time took a picture with me, and I'm like the center of all of his advertising. So in the lobby, there's this huge poster of me and the doctor, and um, that's what he's using all over town. There's a bunch of people, but like I'm the one in the middle, and it was very flattering. And they all said, You look so much younger, you look so much younger than you did a year and a half ago. And I said, It's because I'm happy, and that's really the only thing I can I can put it on because I I weigh the same, my hair is the same, you know, like there's nothing demonstrably that I've done to myself except that I'm happy. And it was you resigned from the church that made me happy, it made me really happy, yeah. And and that's all you know gone through now. So awesome.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Great.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

When mom has a tithing settlement, she's gonna she'll get over it.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

She's she's a tough old bird.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Well, and she knows I told her personally, so you know that was what was important to me. Yeah, I was trying to not tell her, but I think telling her is a kindness because really we've been able to talk about some really serious topics that never would have come up otherwise. It really opened some communication between us, and I am really grateful to this day for my friend who I met um when we did that around the world trip. Um, his name is Rick and Rich. And Rich, I said, I just can't tell my mom. And he's like, You'd think you can't tell your mom, but in reality, you got a fruit fly. In reality, um, if you do tell your mom, it might make you closer. And just think of it that way. And so when she asked me point blank, I I'm not gonna lie to her, you know, I I don't believe anymore, and I'm not attending the temple, and I bought all new underwear in Ho Chi Minh City. Now that was an adventure, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

So, Paul, when you say denang, I think you're trying to sound like a Mormon avoiding saying the word dammit.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Denang, the dam it, and I don't know if it's denang or denang. Today we went on a beautiful tour. We went and saw the lady Buddha who is up on the hill here. I'll send you the pictures. Oh, it was such a beautiful park.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

And when we got there, I might have a feminine Buddha. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah, yeah, for sure. When we got there to the temple, the the monks were all sitting down to eat. And so the monks were all in their orange robes and they were all on this long table, and they were they were praying. So when you walked into this, it walked into the temple area, you could hear them praying. And our guide was like, Come here, come here, quick, quick, because it doesn't happen, you know, but a couple of times a day. And he's like, You get to see this, you get to see this. And so we went and saw, and it felt spiritual to me, and it felt really good to feel those spiritual feelings again, you know, to feel a connection to something that was bigger than myself. Don't know what it is, but it just felt nice. Um, and so we we got to we got to see that. We got to see monkeys, I got to see a monkey swim. Did you know that monkeys swim?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

You sent me that video.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Oh, I did, yeah, the swimming monkey. I um I had to go through what I know they're so they're obnoxious, and you have to watch your camera and don't eat around them, but they're also really fun to watch, they're so playful and cute. It's just been on guard, yeah. But you have to be on guard, and then I completely uh ruined our driver's life for the rest of his life because we went to Highland Coffee and I bought him a frozen uh Prapuccino coffee, and all day long as he was drinking it, he's like, This is so good, because he'd never had one before. I'm like, oh great, I just gave him an expensive habit. Poor guy. But it's it's funny I and I say this not with any angst at all. I have to drink my coffee like a Mormon with lots of sugar and lots of milk because it's basically hot chocolate with some coffee flavoring in it. But I'm getting braver, and the coffee here is strong enough that you can, you know, get a little bit braver and and develop your taste. But that's a really hard part, I think, about leaving the churches. You have to relearn things or learn things for the first time that you never knew. Like, are you going to drink? If you drink, how do you drink? How do you drink responsibly? Do you want to try marijuana? Do you want to do a mushroom? Do you want to, you know, there's things that you just don't know how to do. And guess what? Neither do most of your friends. So there's a lot of experimentation at an adult age that it's just weird to live through. It's like another childhood almost.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah. But your your anecdotes right now remind me of We're Thankful for the Moisture. It's a book by Eli McCann. He's a um, he's a lawyer that I who's a humorist and a columnist for the Salt Lake, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Oh, is he the one that I see on TikTok? I love that guy. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

And let me just highly recommend his book. We did Katie and I just both finished the audio book. We're thankful for the moisture. That was a live take from Fast and Twitter.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Oh, I have heard it from. I know what it is.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

After rain, after a dry spell, we're thankful for the moisture. It's like saying please bless these brownies, cookies, and Kool-Aid to bless and nourish our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Our bodies so that we can serve you better.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Oh, you get some healthy food.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Cookies and punch. They do a funny thing here. I I think it's because weddings are expensive. They have halls that are set like a wedding, and you go in and take your bridal pictures with your groom inside the hall that already has some decorations in it. So you don't have to pay for the decorations over again. You don't have to pay for a big banquet, but you still get the pictures. I think it's smart. I think it's uh because I think spending thousands and thousands of dollars on anyone's wedding, unless you're Taylor Swift and have it, you know, it it just really doesn't like if half of the the marriages in the world end in divorce, why are you investing that way? You would never invest in on Wall Street that way. No, you have a 50% chance of losing everything. So I I there's just so much about this place that I like. And Denang is um a lot less crowded than Ho Chi Minh City and and uh Ne Tron where we just were. Neitron is just full of motorcycles and they drive the wrong way, they drive on the sidewalk, they drive, you know, they don't pay attention to red lights. You have to really kind of get mean when you cross the road, and you can't halfway cross the road and then chicken out. You have to find a little tiny break, and you have to just march out there and and let them know that you're serious about crossing the road, otherwise, they don't stop, you know. So I've gotten kind of like I need a traffic whistle, I think. I need a crossing guard.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

They don't do this the Midwest polite standoff thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Oh no, no, it's every man for himself. It's every it's every man, woman, and children. The other day, I am not kidding. We saw this guy, he had a tube that was about this big around, and it was on his motorcycle. He was looking through the tube, it was 10 feet long, it extended way past his motorcycle. That was his building, it was because it was the only way that it would fit on his motorcycle. I was like, this, you know, I've seen people haul refrigerators. Uh we've seen families of five on a on a little tiny motor scooter, you know. The the family station wagon is a motor scooter, is a scooter, and and somehow they I I would be interested to see what the statistics are as far as you know vehicular deaths, because oh they're second or third worst in the world. Yeah, because of it, yeah. You you have to watch it, yeah. And I always try and cross on a crosswalk. Larry makes fun of me, but I'm like, at least if at least then I've done everything I can do, you know, to to get across because there aren't very many lights, and people, even when there are, they don't really pay attention. I guess being a traffic cop here, you know, it's probably the only job that pays well. It's the one time that we've been bribed is with the traffic cop here. Oh, you've been asked for a bribe. Actually, it happened in Colombia, yeah. Driven to the forest and asked for a bribe. It was kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Driven to the forest.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Well, we were we followed the policeman outside of his, yeah, yeah. It was a little sketchy, but thank goodness Larry speaks Spanish and he understood what the deal was, you know. They weren't looking to off us, they just wanted instead of impounding our car, they wanted, I don't know, $60 or something, which was a lot less than the $500 it would have been had they impounded it. So it it's an economy that people, you know, they get by on, and they some of it is corrupt, but it's at least more outwardly corrupt, in my opinion, than what happens in America. In America, you're getting corporate corrupt. Yeah, you're getting ripped up and you have there's no recourse, and you can't really tell that you're being ripped off, you know?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

So I I think there's some honesty to it, which that I appreciate in a weird way.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

So, what do you like the best about that book?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Um well, I felt like Katie will hear these anecdotes and she's gonna understand me and you better and mom better, and because he captures the flavor of the feel of what it's like to grow up Mormon and then uh faith crisis. And um I also realized too that I have privilege he doesn't have. The church didn't reject me because of my fundamental character or or nature. That's true. He got rejected by the church because of how yeah, absolutely in your face, total, complete, absolute rejection because of his fundamental nature. His tact is just to live the best life he can and be the nicest guy, the guy you want to hang out with, go to dinner. You know, that's that's he's living his best life, that's his revenge. I can I can be a little bitter and snarky, you know. I feel like I have that privilege as a straight white guy that he doesn't really have.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Because they would point to his gayness as his snarkiness when it has nothing, it's how they treated his gayness right that makes him snarky. When uh gay marriage but he's not snarky, no at all. And and that's probably smart of him, right? Because if he was, then it'd be easy to other him.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah. When he talks about his mom, you're gonna think about our family, our mom, our mom, our dad, a lot. Talk about food storage and uh popcorn and apricot trees.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

And so I have one Mormon story I want to share.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Your apricot miracle?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Summer had uh the what?

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Your apricot miracle.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

No, no. Um, summer had a friend who came to stay with us. She was also a botanist, and they would go out on jobs, and they were between jobs for a month in the summer. So Grace is her name. Grace came and stayed with us at the lake house. And we were out on the front porch one night enjoying the sunset, and we were talking about food storage and how every family had to have, you know, all this wheat stored. I said, Yeah, we had these big galvanized old ammunition tins that the army used, and we had 200 pounds of wheat, you know, like every family had to have 200 pounds of wheat, and her eyes were in just one container, and we had like 10 or we had 10 containers, and her eyes get all big, and she's like, You have to have 200 pounds of weed to be a Mormon. I want to join the Mormon church.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

She thought I was saying weed harder T at the end, not the softer D.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Wheat. 200 pounds of wheat that we never ever did anything with. You know that? Like it all we threw it all away.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Now I he talked about that.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Now I wish that I had a little food storage because I think food's gonna be a problem because of the fertilizer issue and you know, all of the things that are going on in the world.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

You make you you make ammonia from natural gas, and that's where fertilizer comes from.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Yeah. And that's what blew up the Murray building, right? It was a fertilizer.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but fertilizer is absolutely necessary for modern crop production. To feed the world, we have yeah, to feed the world, we have to have fertilizer.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Is that because we've depleted the soil?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Um, yeah, we don't crop rotate, we don't, we hit there's a lot of monoculture.

unknown 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

So I had this thought just yesterday. If something dramatic and spectacularly terrible happens, and and plus we're driving the acres harder than they would normally produce by adding fertilizer.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

It's like pressing on the gas.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, too much. The people here are going to be much better off. You know, they know how to sane, they know how to fish, they know how to garden, they know how to go in the jungle and get bananas and you know, all of the all of the stinky uh durian. Have you ever heard of durian?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah. In every hotel where it fermented fruit, it ferments in its shell, kind of, and it's loved or hated.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, people either love it or hate it, but every hotel we stayed at, there's always a big sign in the lobby, no durian allowed. Because I guess the smell just lingers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

And it's like a soft custard.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

I'm gonna try it. I haven't tried it yet. I just haven't been in a situation where I'm, you know, was ready to try it and it was there, but I will try it before I leave because I produces a lot of durian. I'm of the Anthony Bourdain school of if you're in the country, you try what you're there for, you know. You may not like it, so what? But you may love it.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Maybe like I've been bawling like a big yeah, I've been bawling like a baby lately.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Why?

SPEAKER_00 20:23

We found this series called Um Um In Pursuit of Jade.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

It's uh made in China in the Chinese language. I read the subtitles, but I'm just in love with the protagonist. It's this very smart, very strong, a little bit mischievous uh woman who's way underestimated. As a lot of women are yeah, and just it's so compelling. You know, and we when you see her do really tough things and you see what a badass she is, it's just it's I don't know, it just really touched me. And Katie's gone, are you laughing or crying? It's like I was so surprised I was crying. I was cracking up, but I was really crying. And and then I also realized I've been off my cymbalta for two days. I wonder if that has anything to do with it, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Is that because of you? Okay, can we talk about what happened with you medically? Didn't you just have a stomach?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Well, I I I was off the cymbalta for two days because I refilled the morning of my procedure, I refilled all my pill boxes, and I the the that ball had fallen out of the bag that I refilled from.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Oh, and so you didn't get it.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Well, I'm on the search for estrogen, so if you have any um ideas for me, yeah. They don't prescribe it.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

No.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

You can't get it here without a prescription.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

So I have to go to the doctor, it ain't that expensive.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

I will. I'll go see and I'll get some blood work done because I haven't done that in a year and a half.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

You owe it to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, yeah, and I'll get some um estrogen. I will not do without it. I think that and you can back me up on this or not, the science that says it's bad for you as a female is crap science. I think it ruins a lot of marriages.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I do. I think it I I think it drives women out sexually, and I I mean that literally and metaphorically.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah, epidemiological studies uh can you you think you see something, and then as the years go by, you realize, well, you know what, that this is the real explanation.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah, and some people think science maybe sometimes they equate it to magic, and that's maybe why they don't believe it. But what I like about science compared to like faith is when you find new evidence, you change your opinion, you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

That's the base theory theorem.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, you you get to have a mind still, you don't have to just accept things and get gaslit 24-7.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yep, you update your beliefs, your assumptions based on information, the best information you have.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

So why is it that we don't like changing our minds?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Um there's there's some survival advantage to having a routine.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

So you think it might come back?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, routines shouldn't be changed lightly, but there's a time and a place to change routines.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Right. And it's like me in Mormonism, that did not happen lightly. I mean, I was 59 and a half years old, and I was literally uh felt like drugged behind a car before I was brave enough to look. You know, and but then once you do look, some people still don't change their mind. They find excuses, they find they apologize for the behavior or the history or the not knowing the history. And but once I saw it, I it was very easy for me to to understand that I had been living something that I was not was not what I thought it was.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah, I I had understood that it didn't work for me already, it wasn't effective, I didn't enjoy it, but I thought I need to change myself because this is the correct way that God told us.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

So it was your fault, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

And then when I looked in into all the history and stuff, and it was like the scales fell from my eyes, and I quit blaming myself. It's like they're just making this stuff up anyway. Why am I torturing myself to make to make these men happy? You know, what are they doing for me anyway? And it's all a big scam.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

So where did you find out about the history?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

The the the first place I went to that that was sort of like, oh my goodness, um was um Mormon. Not Mormon truths, um Mormon stories, not Mormon stories. Um that's awesome. That's that's gonna blow up on him.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Well, because of Discovery, I you know, Discovery's gonna be a bitch for the church.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, I I I'll donate to his legal fund too.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Um, me too. I donate to him anyway. I feel like he really helped me. Um I was I I had lost my faith when I started listening, but what it gave me was the vocabulary to explain what had happened to me. You know, before then I didn't have the vocabulary, didn't understand how to say how I felt. So the first place was a was a podcast or no, there's a website.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

It's a Mormon history website, and they were trying to be objective and balanced, but if you just stay just staying the facts was enough.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, just look just look at it on paper.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Oh, yeah. I think I first heard about that website from Reddit, and then I found and then and then I found maybe I did or maybe I didn't. I'm not sure where I first saw that website, but then I found Rx Mormon, and it was like, and and people were were were talking like I was thinking.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I haven't looked at either of those. I know Reddit um is there, and occasionally like I'll come across something, and because I'm not on Reddit a lot, you know. Um, Kim has found some friends on there that we know. Yeah, on Reddit.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Yeah, yeah. The the RX Mormon is great emotional support, and it's it's people from the highest level saying, no, you know, and and and you get some deep inside information about the shenanigans the church pulls behind the scenes, and a lot of people that used to work for the church come on and expose things.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

And yeah, I wonder about that and Larry.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

I doubt I doubt he would ever that's not Larry's character, he it's not that's not his nature, it isn't at all. Um he did sound systems, and he saw some stuff because of his proximity, but he worked on sound systems.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, he wasn't in the financial department or the doctrine department, well that one of the problems, one of the problems with that, one of the guys that Larry had hired when he found out about the $250 million the church owed because they lied, right? And their SEC filing, he was like, I have worked in a position where I've been in the purchasing cycle and they are so precise and so legal and so careful. There's no way that they set up these shell corporations because that's somebody wanting to hide something, and how can that be a church that is doing that, you know, with with these uh funds that are for God, and that really hurt his faith. So yeah, but I I I doubt we'll ever it'd be interesting, but most of Larry's stories are faith-promoting stories anyway.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Yeah, it's at Mormonthink.com.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Mormonthink.com. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Mine can it's that think that screws him.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

He's the gray matter.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

That no, they do not want you to do that. You don't need to do that, you know. Don't trust us, trust us, trust us. We have it on really good authority, trust us. We have really good authority. We would not mislead you.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Once you understand what a stop, what a thought stopping sentence is, yeah, what those synamicates are, and and then you hear people repeat them, then it's uh you cannot not see it.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, well, it used to really work on me. Yeah, me too. It worked really well on me. I trusted them. I I really trusted them.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

They said I trusted them with my virginity and my motherhood. Yeah, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Well, yeah. When when um Hunter and Haight came to the Netherlands, I was gonna ask them because of all the hard work I did every day. Are you really an apostle? You better tell me the truth, you know. But I didn't ask them. I was gonna ask them then because it's uh because with all I'm doing, this better the fuck be true, you know. And guess what? The reason I was having that doubt is because there was a doubt. Yeah, and the reason there was a doubt is because the math doesn't math.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

They shame you for having the doubt. If you ask that, it's like they they call you piggy in a in a news conference, you know. They they make fun of you in front of the other missionaries. I've seen it happen, and so people don't say the thing out loud because they don't want to be made fun of.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

But once you're drugged behind the car and you're ready to look, there's good places. Mine was the CES letter. Yeah, it was all in one place. You told me some things, and I had excused them in my own head, you know, because I was trying so desperately to make it work.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Well, it it's a a lot easier if it did work. Simpler, maybe not easier, it's simpler.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

And there's answers.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Answers, and it right, you know, and and this was set up to reassure you. And if that reassurance is true, that's kind of cool, you know. Yeah, but when it doesn't work and you have a real problem and they can't help you, they won't help you, and they blame you, and and then it really doesn't work, but it's your fault, yeah. It would I got to that position. That's what if I hadn't been for Jennifer, I'd still be a Mormon.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Really?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah, you'd probably be a general. Yeah, yeah. Up up the ranks.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah, and you know, or higher. But yeah, because I was a true believer. I was church broke. Um, I was so church broke it broke me. Um but but but Jennifer was the crisis I needed.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Thank God she's gone. Is that terrible to say?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

She was violent, and as long as she was alive, I was a little bit in fear for my life.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yeah, for sure. Because she actually was violent toward other people in a handgun in the head, bullet in the head kind of way.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Absolutely. And and when I would was married to her and I told her, I'm scared, you know, her temper is is not right. Um, I'm I and I and it's like she's gonna kill me if I don't leave. Um, people didn't believe me. And then when she did shoot her neighbor, and it's like, you see, I told you, you know, there's a temper problem. Nobody believed me. And now now you believe me. Now you believe me.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

She was a federal judge's daughter, she had money, she had privilege, she had access to power, she had protection by power, by legal power, yeah, proximity to her dad, for sure, and her sister now, who's still a federal judge.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

And her dad did not want her to have that. But when when it came down to it, you know, he hired her a really good lawyer, and people knew who she was, and he he didn't even have to say anything for her to get different treatment.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yeah. So for shooting the neighbor in the head with a nine millimeter handgun, what was her punishment?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

What was her punishment? Well, no, they just dropped the hammer. She had to do community service. I think it was upwards of 40 hours.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

And it was probably some cushy, probably wasn't even hot and sweaty, like picking up garbage along the side of the road. It was probably something really posh.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

That's just I I had to do community service for my addiction, just for seeking treatment for my addiction. I got sentenced to community service. I did mine at the Fairbanks, which is a recovery center at their outpatient center coffee shop.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

So you know, I I need to do some service. It's in my heart, it's in my blood, it's in the way we were raised, it's in everything about me.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

And if I can't that that was a good part of what we grew up with. You care about your community, you care about the well-being of others around you, it matters. And that was as much dad from his soul as it was from the Mormons. But the I think I really kind of want to study why are the Mormon people so good and good-hearted, you know, and the church so cynical, you know. The the the you know, the quorum, the first presidency.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

I don't think all are good.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

I don't think no, no, no, no, they're not all good, but there is a strong representation of that.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Yes, and and maybe that's marketing, maybe it's PR, maybe it's you know, because uh is my lived experience.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

We were around really kind people, yeah. Well, think of the bellmaster, not everybody, not everybody, and you know, there were some nasty snakes in there, um, and and and some just downright messes, you know, they were the Sherry Carlsons of the world, but she's the first and only female or male I have ever had a physical confrontation with, and I'm not sure if I really touched her or not, but Chris, um, her son uh was your best friend, and he was suffering from kidney failure, both of his kidneys, and he was living with us, and she came over with her little dog.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

What was that dog's name?

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Canceled his health insurance because she was angry with him.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

I know, and he died dialysis, he died from it, Zane. He died from it.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

No, no, no, he was 30 when he died.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

He died from not having insurance. I'm saying he didn't have any way of getting his dialysis.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

No, no, Medicare covers it.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Does it okay? So I've got that wrong. So she showed up at the house, Frida, with her dog Frida. Frida jumps out of the car, she is accusing Chris of stealing her enzyme magazine and is just on fire, mad, because he's got her religious Mormon magazine. And I remember she was pulling out chunks of his hair, she had him by the hair, and I was in the house, and I have never been a physically confrontational person ever in my life. But you were like, Oh, hell no, not on my watch. No, no, not the sweet Chris either, you know, like fucked off. And I ran out of the house, and I guess I was scary, and she got in the car but left Frida behind. And so a few minutes later, she screeches back around the corner, and I hear Frida, Frida! Poor Frida gets in the car and goes home with the wicked witch. That was not that was not a good situation. Poor Chris.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

And I like the I like the the the theme of wicked where we misunderstood the wicked witch.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Yeah, but I don't think we misunderstood.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

We did not misunderstand Sherry Carlson. She was mean Jennifer.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

No, I think people misunderstood Jennifer. I think they thought she was a southern bell and that she was sweet and charming, and yes, because she could charm.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

But it was charming for a purpose, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:50

And it was not your purpose, yeah. It was for her own benefit, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so are we gonna read today?

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Okay, oh, I we've got to talk about my health thing. You were we were starting to ask, I had a I had a liver biopsy this week. It took two. What is that in town?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Is that are you awake when they do that?

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Yeah, well, they put an IV in me and they said they were gonna give me sedation, but they gave me one milligram of Earthhead and 50 micrograms of fentanyl. And it's like, uh, okay. I don't know how much I'm a 240-pound guy, and maybe, maybe it helped.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Maybe it was like a baby aspirin. Here you go. Put this under your tongue.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Good luck. The the real pain relief was was the local anesthetic where they numb up your skin and then they numb up the capsule of the liver, and they do it under ultrasound, and they take an 18-gauge biopsy needle, and it took two passes because the first punch, uh, the tissue was kind of broke up in sections, and so they did a second punch. And then I felt like I'd been punched in the guts for about three days afterwards, you know, like somebody kicked me. I um pain in like the neck or the shoulder, all these other surgeries hardly felt anything.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

They were kind of it's like have an amazingly low pain tolerance or high pain tolerance, even tolerant.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Well, but I wasn't even having pain, so it's like I'm not my body doesn't give this scream this alarm of pain. It it takes insult and goes, Yeah, so what? Yeah, but you start messing with the lining of my gut, you know. The you know, that that serosa. That the peritoneum, and I really I remember like after my appendix, how bad that hurt. I think that's where our God put all my pain receptors in the lining of my guts, and like none in my neck or shoulder or well.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

I want you to think about this for one second. All your sisters, what do we all have in common? And your mother, um a bad gut. We all suffer from stomach issues, all of us, yeah, all of us, and and I I don't know why, but as a family, that's kind of the place where we hold all of our stress.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Yeah. Generally, I just don't need anything for pain after a procedure. But if it's along the GI tract, then it's a different story.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

I'm sorry. So what what was the I took title?

SPEAKER_00 38:16

The title on ibuprofen was fine afterwards. I don't like to have to take ibuprofen, but I don't take it very much anymore. Um when I was an ER doctor, um, several times a week, if not a couple times a shift, I would see an emergency related to ibuprofen.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

From bleeding?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

From a bleeding bleeding ulcers, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Wow. Yeah. Oh, okay. So what was the result? Have you gotten your results yet?

SPEAKER_00 38:46

No, no.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

So what are you thinking it is? Maybe just a are you having stomach?

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Then the other thing is to stage it, you know. Is it at the reversible stage or irreversible stage?

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Can you reverse fatty liver?

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Yeah, if it hasn't gotten to cirrhosis, if there's not scarring. Once you get scarring, the scars don't go away. And what's losing weight, and that's the main treatment.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

That terzepatite, you know, the Eli Lily zip bound, you know, it's really helped me lose weight. Well, you look great.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Are you still going to the gym?

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Uh yeah, this week was kind of a mess with the biopsy and that. So I've only been one time this week. Um, but I'm gonna get back going again.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

So I saw something that said if you don't start traveling by the time you're 65, most people can't walk 10,000 steps by the time they're 65.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

That worries me.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

I'm telling you, this travel is keeping us young. Okay, two things for the dermatologist: I'm happy and I'm traveling. So those two things are keeping me young.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Good. It's so important to be active. Social connection is important. Um, and and being active is important. If it's good for the heart, it's good for the brain. Saves off dementia. Um, and I think social connection is very important. Avoiding loneliness to saving off dementia.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

I I think some of the stuff that I've been looking at, and I I don't I don't know enough about it to really, I'm no expert, but you know, it used to be that we thought everything came from our brain, but I think our gut bacteria, I think. I think our heart has some memory in it.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

I think that's why your heart hurts when you're yeah, the majority of the serotonin, the majority of the serotonin made in the body is made in the GI tract.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

So if you have a messed up GI tract, you're you're gonna be affect your mind, it'll affect your mind, yeah. And your happiness. Yeah, because that's the happy drug, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:49

Yeah, and in Asia, the big thing is you know, when they want to know how are you doing, they'll say, Have you eaten yet? And and literally until you're like, Have you eaten rice yet? That's how they've been eaten rice. Yeah, that's the literal translation, but it means have you eaten yet? Which and and the translation on top of that is I'm checking on your wellness, how you doing?

SPEAKER_01 41:09

You know, so when the monks are gonna feed you because when the monks were praying, it was over a bowl of rice, yeah, and they said a prayer, and there were tables of women on the other side. I called them the Relief Society because the women were sitting by themselves, but the one monk came out of the temple and offered, you know, a bowl of rice as part of it. It is really truly revered here because it has it saves them, it feeds them, and it's a cheap way of feeding them.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Yeah. I I was talking with somebody from Vietnam and she was saying that the rice with the rain patterns, the rice harvest was so bad in some areas that people have had to eat corn.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

That's corn's not good for you, especially well, you have to do the nixal.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

You have to do the nix metal procedure on it. You have to uh soak it in alkali for a while to get the B vitamins out of it. But they see corn simply as chicken feed, it's feed for livestock.

SPEAKER_01 42:06

Yeah, and when you American food, for instance, if you eat French fries, they're fried in corn oil. And if you eat a hamburger, it's a burger that was fed corn. And if you then you know the bun has got corn syrup in it, and your drink from whichever bottle of you're drinking from has corn syrup in it. We're just corned out in America, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

So it's and the majority of our corn production does not go directly to human consumption, it's animal feed.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Yeah. Yeah. I I think here it's a theory. I don't have any real proof of it, but I see, you know, and the especially in these little roadside places, they save the food in big barrels, and I think they feed it to the lives to their pigs or whoever, the chickens, all the scraps. They're very smart, every little bit of nutrition. No, they don't waste it. And I think we could we could re-um populate our soil to be you know healthier for us if if we would do some of that, some composting, basically.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

You know, I'm I'm for progress, you know, and I think ammonia fertilizer is great, but we shouldn't over-rely on that, and we should remember the old ways, you know. Yeah, you know, we can improve things, but there's some wisdom in the old ways that that we ought to always keep going back and studying, which there's something useful here that I'm missing, and now that we're not doing it this way, what's what is really happening?

SPEAKER_01 43:38

You guys compost?

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Oh, yeah. Yeah, our house, um Katie's um niece is our housekeeper and she thinks it's so gross, but but the dogs love it. Well, we're trying to keep it away from them, but I think they do.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

No, I know. But good luck with that all the time, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Yeah, at least.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

gives them a gold.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

So well let me know what happens with your with your results, okay? Oh yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

And I'll let you know if I ever find any estrogen here and if I could that if I can't find it here, um I'll our next stop is Japan. So in two weeks we leave here and go to Japan.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

And well now yeah you'll you'll you'll find it in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

I I'd go see a doctor I'm sure I can because that's how I got it last time.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

I would totally do that while I was there. Yeah. It supports their economy it supports their knowledge economy um and and it's affordable.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Well today we when um part of the thing that we went to were these granite mountains and they have monasteries um temples on top of these mountains but it's a 30 minute climb to get to the top and it's you know freakingly hot and humid and it's in the middle of the day. And I said to Larry look I'll come back and do this 7 30 in the morning 7 o'clock 6 30 in the morning but I'm not doing it midday I'll kill myself you know my muscle disorder is this would just kill me. So um but the lady that was kind of helping us there she had a one a little souvenir shop. And so I bought a little um blue elephant for Kim and I didn't even argue with her for the price because I figure you know me I could get a dollar off what diff what difference does that dollar make for me but for her that buys her you know dinner. Yeah so what's your muscle disorder it's whatever's happening with me cramping wise is getting worse and worse and I cannot solve it with calcium and I've tried magnesium I I'm on calcium every day magnesium every day I take it separately I have I'm doing B vitamins I have V vitamin shots I'm doing potassium and I still uh um it's terrible yeah I I do NAD plus uh it might okay um and it keeps you and it keeps you looking young and it decreases recurrence of basal cell cancer that's that's all proven okay um so I'll I'll get on some of that and then the next time I go to the dermatologist and nang they'll go wow you look even younger yeah and um oh oh you think about getting a methylated B vitamin methylated B vitamin I don't methylate my my B vitamins naturally very well my I have the bad genes for that so a methylated B vitamin is that I take a shot L L methylfolate and they mix it with B12 and I drop it under the tongue.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

Okay methylfolate okay and that'll help your energy too um do you do fish oil?

SPEAKER_01 47:06

I use fish oil every day so do you get cramping in the back of the legs after walking a certain distance no and it never happens while I'm active so while I'm out and walking and and stuff like that I'm perfectly fine. It's when I come home and I if I go to the movie theater and I sit in one of those chairs that leans back you know I get every single time I it starts in one foot and then it goes to the other foot and then it goes to my hands it gets both my hands now it's moving up my body slowly which is scary. It's not claudication have you been to a neurologist about this no and I I don't want to because I don't have health insurance you know I I turned a neurologist in Vietnam okay neurologist yeah you you get health insurance in September next september not this September so I have a year and a half and I just figured I would stay active eat as healthy as I can okay I'll go see one this week yeah that's the other thing that's different here you can actually call and go in and see a doctor like in this within a a day or two you're not put on a month long list to try and see somebody no calcium in a lot of ways it's better than ours yeah and for the the small stuff like when I I sent Larry for some different calcium today he was in there and he said uh a bike a grab rider came in and he told the pharmacist what he needed and she went back and got him four little pills gave him a little glass of water he took the four pills paid her 50 cents or whatever and off went on his grab bike like you can go to the pharmacy and actually get help get what you need it's oh and they'll do a lot of diagnosis for you too they're yeah they're not afraid of telling you what they think yeah no it's it's a good system yeah all right so neurologist yeah no it this is on the neurologic yeah well it's not normal thing and it's not but for the last two weeks I haven't had an issue with it and so I was telling Larry like I I feel like I've turned a corner or something like because I'm not getting it even on the train I didn't get it and that was after we you know had to wrestle all of our bags onto the train and you know like all of that mess um but then today it it came back kind of with the with the revenge with vengeance okay yeah see I I'd say neurologist um okay and then think about food allergies but I just sounds more neurologic.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Yeah I don't think it's food but it might be sugar if it's anything no okay I don't know I I'm I just don't know but yeah yeah it's like the time I asked you about a rash and you said I don't see very many rashes in the emergency room Paula no and the rashes I know you don't want to have no no no no yeah those big blistering boils you don't want those don't want those plus pockets in your armpit you don't want those oh yeah the the broken blood vessels and 104 fever and a spinal cap you don't want what's the grossest thing you ever saw not the saddest it wasn't gross i'm sorry i i i know it's not gross but it was this this girl that drowned on easter day who looked just like Mariella she was a little Hispanic girl and yeah she she and her cousin were swimming in the in the river the San Antonio River celebrating Easter day and they got swept by the current and the uncle jumped in grabbed both her hands but he could only pull one of them out and she was the one that she couldn't pull out and we couldn't get her back. And they started blaming the uncle and cussing at him because he didn't bring her up you know and he tried his best and and and it was if it had looked like someone else's kid it would have been easier to handle. It makes it so much harder when it's like that's my kid laying there. That's that could be my child that I can't get back. It hits in a whole different way it just hits it just hits so personal.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

You don't want it to be personal because you have to do this as a job well you have to use your mind too and you can't let it go you have to be sharp. Yeah yeah and it was it was hard to shake the last time we were in Hawaii um a six year old drowned in the pool. His mother was Chinese in the pool his mother they were a Chinese family so there wasn't it much English and the grandmother was watching the children and there was a baby and then the six year old six year old drowned so they pulled the six year old out and there were two paramedics luckily that were there and they were working on them and I've resuscitated someone before so I was like hey I can do this if you need help. I didn't know who they were right I didn't know just like I'm here if you need the help. So I started um they were having some kind of religious convention at this hotel and there were all these people standing around and and these guys are calling things back and forth to each other you know they're working the emergency and there's people jumping up and down calling on Jesus and I just I was trying to take a step back to see what I could do to help and I was like I got to get these people away from the help because this kid what he needs right now is physical help. He doesn't need spiritual help he needs these paramedics to be able to work on him. So I just said okay I just went up to these ladies and I go you need to back up and keep praying all you want but back up and give these guys some space and be quiet so that they can hear each other. And then I look over and the poor mother had run up to get the father out of from the resort and she put her six month old baby in the jacuzzi because you know there's that and the baby was bobbing in the water I look over and I see her other child is drowning. And so I went and rescued the baby out of the jacuzzi it it's I don't think I would ever be a bystander you know one of those people who sees somebody get stabbed and never steps up and you know offers a a helping hand in a big situation like that.

SPEAKER_00 53:36

I've always been a reactor I've always like tried to um make the situation better you saved a lot of lives with with with with quick medical bystander interventions.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

And well sometimes that's the only thing that can save you right like Ashley had actually ashley had a save out of work when she was working in a clothing store before nursing school. I love that story and uh I love it the most because she literally saved this woman's life did CPR on her the one was flatlined when the the ambulance got there um they a few weeks later the family came in to thank Ashley and her work um she was a brand new employee her work gave her a 20% off your next purchase coupon. And the security guard came in to chew her out for not calling the security guard came in and yelled at her and what was a blessing for Ashley is when the family came back they said had she been shocked she had the kind of heart attack that it would have killed her for her to get shocked it would have like taken her out of whatever rhythm or put her in another kind of rhythm anyway they were able to because Ashley was like I didn't shock her and the security guard made her feel really terrible about that and and the family said no no no the doctor said had she been shocked she never would have come back so I yeah I I I told Ashley the people that are Monday morning quarterbacking and are critical need to be told to go fuck off and go all the way to hell.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

Because you don't they weren't in there getting their hands dirty they weren't in the arena they weren't sweating they had clean hands and a and a distant seat and they're second guessing and just go away just go away. Yeah and we're human we're fallible right as humans it's yeah and a lot of times a lot of times this is a little superstitious on your instinct in the moment being there is much better than anything you read or you know there's no replacement for being there. And doing what you can yeah the highest rank in medicine is attending. Think of that's a high rank that's as an attending that's a high rank but he's there observing he's attending well well he's physically present. Yeah that's that's the meaning of uh being in attendance you're physically present you have attendance you know and it's interesting that that's what they chose you know after after medical school pre-med medical school internship residency uh fellowship at the end of all that you know the is the attender attending that's interesting all right I'm ready to read no we're out of time oh are we out of time how did that happen well yeah we had too many fun things to talk about yeah we'll we'll do miracle forgiveness next week and I'll I'll have to buy myself an ice cream cone or something to what I frozen coffee thing a frozen coffee just ask my driver but I like drinking a hot coffee with Katie in the morning can I uh I love your hot coffee um everything here is T H A N everything here is everywhere I look I think of you just wanted to know that yeah yeah yeah I love you love you too Paula all right all right have a good week bye bye bye