NUSKA
“Darkness will always give you an opportunity to create your own light.”– Iain Thomas
Formerly Practical Growth with E.B. Johnson...NUSKA is a light in the darkness. A place where we can all come together to remember the human thread that unites us. Art. History. Mythology. Oddities. If it's interesting, if it's human, you'll find it here.
Welcome to NUSKA. Positive dissociation.
NUSKA
On the Art of Designing Happiness
What does it really mean to be happy...and how do we design a life that leads us there?
In this lively first episode of NUSKA, I sit down with my friend Connie Facer to wander through the strange, beautiful, and complicated landscape of human happiness.
From the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers, to eccentric figures in history who found joy in the oddest ways, to the role of art, culture, and creativity in shaping our inner lives, this conversation is part philosophy, part storytelling, part human curiosity.
It’s fun, it’s thoughtful, it’s a little weird—and it just might leave you rethinking what happiness can look like.
Love the podcast? Leave a 5* review on Apple Podcasts. Or, join us on Patreon for early access to new episodes, bonus content, and more.
Hello, hello, hello. It is me, the voice you probably did not expect to hear again after a year's hiatus. Um, it is me, E. B., I'm back. You probably knew me from the Practical Growth Podcast, which is sadly no more. This is now Nooska, which is uh what I consider to be the kind of evolutionary next step in practical growth. Uh, with practical growth, we focus all on our trauma, on everything that was broken, on everything that was wrong and how to fix it. And this is what comes after. This is trying to find some joy, trying to find some happiness, trying to reconnect with that, what I believe is the kind of underlying theme of humanity. That is what newsca is. Um, and I'm very, very excited because I'm not just doing this alone. I also have a wonderful co-host with me this time, Miss Connie Facer.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, everyone. I am joining from the literal opposite side of the world to EB. So this has been this is literal night and day experience for both of us. It is evening, she's in the morning.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, literally the other side of the earth. I don't know how this happens. All of my friends are on opposite sides of the earth. It feels like it's been done on purpose, quite honestly.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh yeah. If we were all in the same place, can you imagine absolute destruction?
unknown:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They're worried about which covens on Etsy. They have no freaking idea. Um, so that I there was really no one better, I think, to kind of do this with. Um, and we're really just gonna be to to put it in delicately, kind of chatting shit about all things that interest us.
SPEAKER_00:Professional shit talkers from professional shit talkers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and I, you know, I think that that's all a part of what I want this kind of new Ska podcast and the spaces that we're building around it to be. It's like just a positive like respite. That doesn't mean everything we talk about is going to be positive, but it's just somewhere where we can just like come and be human and laugh or be interested or be curious and all the things that seem to not exist in the mainstream kind of world anymore. I don't know if you see it differently.
SPEAKER_00:Learning something new and while you're doing mundane tasks around the house, like it's a good time to like broaden your the way your brain like thinks about things and and how you explore new concepts or new things that are happening around the world or things that have happened in the past that could bring like a whole new perspective to you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely, exactly. Um, so just going from there, the current state of the world, I thought the best way to kind of start this and set the tone for what the podcast is kind of gonna be is to talk about happiness, talk about art and happiness and the concept of human happiness and what that looks like, because I think uh our ideas of happiness are kind of becoming homogenized, right? Especially like for me coming from America, I see so many Americans where it's like this homogeneous idea of happiness. It's you get married, you have kids, you buy a house, and then you that that's kind of it, right? It's like the picket fence idea, at least within the time that I was growing up. It was like get a good job, get the picket fence, definitely, have the family.
SPEAKER_00:But any sort of um colonized area of the world. This is what you should do, and this should make you happy. And if it doesn't, you're wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you are you're wrong, you are weird, you are outside of that. And there is literally thousands of years of human history to prove that uh human happiness is anything but like one size fits all, and and we create our own happiness as well, which is something we're especially gonna have to do in the current climate, in the current time period, but we've been doing that forever. Humans have been literally designing their own happiness forever in so many different ways, consciously, intentionally, unintentionally. So I think that's a great place to start. I think that that's a the great thing to kind of focus on.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely. It's um it's definitely hard to conceptualize what happiness could be for any one person. So to be able to offer up something that helps people go, oh, that actually would work for me. Like I think that's really a positive way to start.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, the thing that kind of gave me the idea is when I was like digging up um what we what we're gonna talk about, right? Because it's like happiness, Jesus. Like, where do we even kind of pinpoint that? But what triggered it was this they just had the Helsinki design week. Um, and there is a curator and artist, Anina Koivu. I'm probably gonna get that completely wrong because I don't finish.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't even try to learn to pronounce it, to be fair. I looked at her and I was like, no, my mouth will not make that sound.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's Anina Koivu's, it'll be it, you know, I'll I'm sure I'll get crucified by the Swifties who hate listening to this. Um, but she just curated an exhibit called Designing Happiness. And it's the coolest thing that like I was looking through the pictures of it, um, which we'll share on Patreon, but um, it's like this mix of nostalgia and color and textures, and every room also explored different themes. So it wasn't just like, oh, what makes you materially happy? This bright pink chair. There was a room on health, human health, and there was medications in there and talks about like, well, what about health and where it meets the crossroads of community? And I just thought, I think people forget that, right? Like, we're in this world that kind of bombards you with so much information, with so many ideologies and these like emotional kind of clickbait reactionary arguments all the time. And I think people forget to kind of look at their happiness on different levels and consider the fact that like the way they intertwine with each other, like it's not just are you and your family healthy, is your neighbor healthy as well? Because if they're unhealthy, then that spirals into maybe they lose their job, they don't have money, their kids maybe have to resort to desperate behaviors, or you know, it it spins out and it's all connected.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, one thing I noticed about when I was sort of looking into it was the idea about how we can create material objects or like things within our spaces that can uh sort of help us bring joy in general to help lift spirit as well, so that we we can at least find that segue into existing more in a joyful space, which I thought was quite interesting. There was the whole um whole section of I think it was like the Nirvana smiley face that was used. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, yeah, really I thought that was really cool to see like how much that specific smiley face has been used across so many different like formats. I didn't even know. And people have something to register that joy as well, like how much impact like that whole um that whole band and that smiley face had within like the entirety of whoever really heard.
SPEAKER_01:I think it was interesting as well to see the exhibit. Um, of course it's in Finland, right? Which is like for the last eight years been ranked like the number one place on earth for happy people. And I I I mean I think there's there's some misogyny issues and some sexism issues that they still kind of experience there. But I mean, they have some of the highest literacy in the world, they have some of the best health care in the world, um, everyone gets to go to school for free. The government is a lot more equitable. So it it to me, this was almost like now an equal gold government. Damn. Yeah. Like, look at these, they get to like sit and consider like what is happiness? What does true happiness look like? And meanwhile, Americans are like, should I get a passport and run for my life? Like, what do I do right now? You know, yeah, very stark contrast, but that's what I think is so necessary about it because it does there, there was a lot of talk about the intention of happiness in here, which is I I think kind of the point and kind of like what we're both kind of hitting on essentially for this episode is that you have to kind of figure out what what shape your happiness takes, and then make accommodations essentially for your own happiness, like forcefully and intentionally.
SPEAKER_00:No one's happiness is going to look the same. And um, when you do find something that truly sparks that joy and actually, you know, pushing past that moment of like, do I do this or do I not? Do I lean into it? Is this something that I want to push for? And like just taking that moment to go, yes, like I'm gonna put the time and effort into my happiness so that I can obviously be able to offer it up for other people as well.
SPEAKER_01:I loved this quote from um uh Anina. I don't I don't uh I'm gonna get it wrong. Happiness is both deeply personal and undeniably collective, it cannot exist or be truly experienced without its opposite sorrow, pain, or discomfort. Which is pretty poignant.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, that makes sense, right? Like there are days where like I'll be stressed with my kids and I'll feel like the world is like falling apart around me, and then my kid will do something adorable, and immediately my brain is like, oh, this is why I do it.
SPEAKER_01:Like this is why the craziest happening. It makes it more worthwhile, it makes it like yeah, it makes it more special, makes it more big.
SPEAKER_00:Polarizing feeling, there's no you wouldn't feel the joy, you wouldn't feel that big lift into the joy if you didn't have that polarization, I don't think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I have a theory, and I could be totally wrong. Um, but I think that some of these um people who are currently in positions of power who've come from like long lines of established wealth. I think part of the reason we see such psychopathic behavior, quite frankly, you can't really label it as anything else, um, is because they kind of have a lack of suffering. Like I'm sure they, you know, there's misery and being raised by nannies or whatever, right? I'm sure. But I think not having that general struggle to kind of have that comparison is what makes them psychopaths.
SPEAKER_00:There's a consensus, I think, in a lot of like especially here in Alterua, like you can tell who was raised without like any sort of like issues, and they are never wanted for nothing. Almost yeah, like they've never wanted for nothing, so they don't really see how like struggle can produce growth. You know, just like when you put a seed in the ground and it goes into darkness and you you feed it cold water and it finally like sprouts out and feels the warmth of the sun. Without that darkness, there can't, you know, it's not gonna sprout. And I think as much as we don't want any kind of poverty or any kind of stress or struggle for anyone in the world, without certain aspects of that struggle, we wouldn't be able to fully experience the true joy and like the growth that needs to happen for human brains in general.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, that's why, like you say, you would see like lots of these like rich people that have never struggled in their lives essentially turn around and like not realize how much struggle they create for other people. Yeah, just detaching or understanding of like how their inability to feel that has like detached them from being able to experience actual joy. And so when they seek out joy, it's essentially this vapid experience that they would probably, from like an ADHD perspective, be dopamine seeking so much that they would end up like completely narcissistic sociopath.
SPEAKER_01:That makes sense. When you see, I can't remember what the kid's name was, but there was some like rich kid in Texas a few years ago, or maybe might even be like a decade ago. But that's what he had he basically had multiple drunk driving and had wrecked and killed a bunch of people, and he just didn't care. He had no remorse about it because he had no concept of it, and he was it was a part of this escalating behavior of him seeking out some of some kind of spark or some kind of feeling of something that he was just completely numb.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god, you know what just came to my mind? That one scene in Flight Club where like he has to tell everyone the name of the person on the table or whatever. Yeah, and they all start chanting the guy's name. And it's like because they have no concept that he's a human that's died. Yes, it's very that it's very that.
SPEAKER_01:It's yeah, it's very, very, very, very that. Um which is just a great segue into the ancient Greeks, which I am obsessed with. I'm obsessed with. And when we were when we were I was thinking up this episode and like, how do I want to talk about happiness? Um, I went straight to the ancient Greeks. It was literally like the second thing uh that I was started Googling. Um, because I'm currently on this big Alexander the Great and Athenians and all this other kind of stuff, but of course, as usual, the Greeks, thousands and thousands of years before we even like crawled out of the bogs and started wiping our butts, um, the Greeks were philosophizing what actually made happiness. And they had five different kinds of concepts of it, which I thought was really, really cool. Um, there was ironically Socrates who thought you can only be happy if you had nothing. So you had to be like destitute poor, absolutely nothing. So you had nothing to lose, essentially.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but that's where you get those clean girls who like have nothing in their house and it's all like beige.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that freaks me out. Kim Kardashian's house creeps me out.
SPEAKER_00:God, hell no, no, there's not enough things. Like, it's creepier than a museum at night.
SPEAKER_01:It who has nothing in their house and no color. Like she was she was gifted uh like a Van Gogh painting by by one of the criminals that she's friends with. So where is it? You know, it was like a monet or a van Gogh or a Manet. It was like a like a million-pound painting, like a million-dollar painting that she was gifted. Where is it? Where's the painting? I don't know. Oh my goodness. Um, so Socrates thought you could you just had to have nothing. You had to be dirt poor, destitute. Like um, was it Demogenes who lived in a wine hairy? Huh? Was he actually happy though? Well, no, because Socrates was rich. Socrates was wealthy. He was like in he was he was in the I mean, I think he ended up being executed at the end, or he had to kill himself. One of something dramatic at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00:So he was the nipo baby that's like, I will tell you the perfect way to live. Yeah, because his like he's not have to worry about those things. Yeah, he was rich.
SPEAKER_01:He was like hanging out with all the rich people in in nice robes, like just standing all day arguing with people in the forum. And then his his I think it was Aristotle.
SPEAKER_00:Where his next meal was coming from, but tells everyone you should stay worried about your next meal. 100%. 100%.
SPEAKER_01:So I I kind of discard that one.
SPEAKER_00:Like I appreciate the idea and I totally understand because I also was really I understand the whole like be happy with what you have so that you can appreciate what you have. Yeah, but that doesn't mean you should have nothing.
SPEAKER_01:No, but he was also writing in a time when a guy would just stroll into the city, burn it down, destroy everything, and kill everybody. So maybe that was kind of shaping his idea.
unknown:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But I kind of discount that because, like I said, he wasn't even living that way. Diogenes, who's not listed in this, um he Diogenes was the first kind of cynic. He developed cynicism, and he literally just lived in a loincloth in a giant wine barrel on the edge of town and refused to take part in society. Um, and he was like, I it is better to live as a dog than to live the way you guys live with all your fake bullshit. Um and Alexander the Great actually went and found him. And Alexander the Great said, If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes because he respected him.
SPEAKER_00:Like all I can think about was how big was the wine barrel, though. Like, was it like could he have his own wine?
SPEAKER_01:But he that's what they said he was living in a wine barrel. Dude, like, is it a big, big, huge one of those like massive ones that you see, like with the you know, like I wonder if it was like a giant emphora, maybe like a because they used a lot of like giant clay pots, so maybe it was like an upturned kind of clay pot that he just took shelter in or something. But yeah, it was a wine barrel, is what the translation has has been passed down through the ages. But yeah, he just lived feral and refused to take part in society, and people would just come and be like he would have hated Taylor Swift. Diogenes would have hated Taylor Swift, and I love that for people that don't hate Taylor Swift, I couldn't believe it. Red flag, a media red flag. Um, Aristotle, I think he was a bit he was a bit more um honest about it. And I think Aristotle was one of Alexander the Great's tutors, I believe. If it wasn't him, it was like one of it was it was I believe it was Aristotle, but anyway, his idea was that you had to be rich to be happy. But he said that being rich wasn't just money, it meant that you had to have good people around you and you had to do good stuff and have good experiences throughout the world.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So his yeah, so his like idea was that like richness doesn't come just from money, it comes from like how you like are perceived as a person and how you perceive other people and how you interact and what you bring to like what you bring to the table. Fuck I hate that saying, I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_01:I've never I mean he he created by one by by root or by crook or whatever the saying is, he created Alexander the Great, so it's 50-50 for me on Aristotle and anything he says. I'm gonna just gonna I'm a Diogenes girl, I'm gonna die on the Diogenes hill. I always get this name wrong because I there used to be a website, Epicurius, which did food, but Epicarus? Epicoris is how I think you pronounce this. But his kind of like Icarus. Yeah, yeah. Um, his idea was a little bit closer to probably what I kind of subscribe to. And his idea was that to be happy you have to remove all like annoyances from your life. So you get rid of bad people, you don't do things that you don't want to do, you don't like irritate yourself, you remove yourself from as much suffering.
SPEAKER_00:So he was like the Greek version of an autistic that would accommodate themselves.
unknown:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Pleasure is in the absence of suffering, is what he was accredited as saying. So if you want to be happy, get rid of as much suffering in your life, including people, things, places, experiences, whatever it is, which that's kind of how I live my life now.
SPEAKER_00:When I was researching like different people in history for this, I read about this one dude who I'm probably gonna get it wrong. I'm pretty sure it was a Japanese fella, like way, way back, Rich, basically literally walled himself off in his study, only leaving like a small gap in it so that his servants could feed, like put plates through of food for him. And for like two solid years, this dude was just held up in there in the pursuit of knowledge, and like that was how he was happy, and he was just chilling in there, like learning all the time. Like that was what he did.
SPEAKER_01:I know, right?
SPEAKER_00:Please no, it sounded and it was it was because like I was trying to find people that were like in different aspects of these like Greek like ideals, right? And like, yeah, his was in the same pursuit of that guy where it was like removing every external thing that would like sort of distract you from what would make you happy and like pursue that happiness that way. And yeah, dude wooled himself up in his study for like two years.
SPEAKER_01:I used to dream, man, like as a kid, and well, I say as a kid, it was like as a teenager in college, like I wanted to go and would live in a monastery for a short period of time. I didn't want to full-time become a nun, but that idea of just being able to be like just like peel off your old life and just go and live cloistered.
SPEAKER_00:I used to love watching like the Buddhists. Um like when I lived down the south, they used to always walk around the streets and stuff, singing their little songs and stuff. And I always thought, man, it'd be cool to not have to think about what I have to wear each day. What do you think? Nothing. Yeah, just like just sing some songs, learn about things, like clean, yeah. So good, not have to think. So terrible. I just brain brain work too much. Too much. That's too much brain work. Too much brain.
SPEAKER_01:Border collie need go sleep. That's that's it. Border collie need go lay down for a year or two or three. 100%. There was a there was a um guy on 90 Day Fiance who went through it's actually really endearing um and cute, but he went through and got his um he like his his wife was from Thailand, I think is where she was from, or maybe it's Indonesia. It was Indonesia or Thailand, but she there was like a she was from a little teeny tiny village and there was a temple there, and he went and became a monk to basically like bring honor to her family who had had all this bad luck in past years and stuff, and he had to go and live away from her for three days and do the whole thing, wear the robes and follow people follow the monks around in the street and get food and all that kind of stuff. It was adorable. It was adorable, and it looked nice. It looked real nice.
SPEAKER_00:Like, so for for us, that would be a joyful thing, not having to over-exert ourselves.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, anyways, happiness. Um, the stoics, also Zeno of Sitium, who was the kind of the leader of the Stoics, um, basically said that happiness is to accept suffering. All life is suffering, you're never gonna get away from it. So if you want to be happy, just basically put your head down and take it and learn to be at peace with the bad things that happen in your life.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it depends on what situation you're already in. If you're already in like an abusive situation, this is not the advice you need. But like I I have a high support needs child, and there are times where I'm like, I just have to accept that this is my reality right now. I'm struggling, and that is okay, and this is this will pass, you know. And I think it's probably not more the whole like accept the suffering, it's accept that the suffering will pass would probably be the better way to put it, you know, because like at the end of the day, it's that whole like like the from the uh the art exhibition, right? Like it's that whole like that polarizing whether it's it like you know, the contrast is what makes the happiness better. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I get that. I also I think it's just because I've been reading too much Alexander the Great. So I'm like, oh, he was probably writing this with an army, you know, knocking at the door of the city that he knew was about to burn everything down and sell them into slavery. So, you know, he better just accept it because it's happening.
SPEAKER_00:There's nothing to do about it. Speaking of armies, though, there was this one dude. Uh he claimed to become the emperor of the United States. Um, he was actually originally from South Africa. And after about nine years in America, um, after being like really prolific and like doing really well through the gold rush and like really good with rice, like trade and stuff like that. Um, he had one bad deal, a bunch of lawsuits, plummeted into it, complete and utter debt, like basically on the street. Um, decided that he would write a decree that he was the emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico. And this was in San Francisco, California.
SPEAKER_01:So, like it's the most American thing ever.
SPEAKER_00:Literally, everyone was like, Cool, like badass, that's great, cool. And accepted him completely, including the fact that he like wrote his own monetary notes and and like people would sell those as souvenirs to make back the money, basically. So they still accepted it as his own form of wow, he created his own economy. It got even more so that like a new police officer joined the force, seen him, went to it, like arrested him and put him in an insane asylum. And the police chief was like, No, no, no, you've messed up, dude. Like, we have to go get him out, and made a formal apology to him. This guy like continually made decrees to the like newspapers and stuff like that. Um, and they would they would boldface just put them in the newspaper like they were legit, like that was the new decree. But like some of the things that he like was asking for were like actually good things. Yeah, there's like a bridge that like connects San Francisco to I might get this wrong because I'm not from America, but like Oakland or something.
SPEAKER_01:There's like a I've never been to San Francisco.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but essentially like that bridge and and like the thing that connects those two areas.
SPEAKER_01:It's not the Golden Gate Bridge.
SPEAKER_00:Uh I don't know, honestly. Is it the Golden Gate Bridge? Uh I don't think it is. Surely he didn't decrease the Golden Gate Bridge. Uh no, well he decreed that's like a bridge to be built to connect those two areas, and people thought he was fucking insane. But to this day, that bridge is actually a thing now, and like it's the one of the most important like routes for the people to like use and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01:So I bet it's the Golden Gate Bridge.
SPEAKER_00:Um, yeah, just look how crazy that the the Emperor of the United States, uh San Francisco, and it should it should pop up with him.
SPEAKER_01:Holy shit, it's the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. Norton famously issued decrees, including the proposal for a bridge across the San Francisco Bay, which predated both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge that now collects connects Oakland to San Francisco. His vision for a bridge was considered a joke at the time, but became a reality with the construction of the Oakland Bay Bridge decades later. Yes, the Oakland Bay Bridge and then the Golden Gate. That's crazy. The life and legend of Emperor Norton.
SPEAKER_00:No, but for real, even the US Army gave him like a full-blown, like gilded. Wow, he's got like a government website. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:To honor the life and advance the legacy of Joshua Abraham Norton. I have the first this is this is this is American. This is what America is. I'm Emperor now, so I win.
SPEAKER_00:This is mine.
SPEAKER_01:All of this is mine. Wow, Emperor Norton. If anybody wants to go look that up, I'd never heard of him. No one ever, I think there's probably a reason a lot of Americans don't hear about him, because especially in today's current militia climate.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god. It was in the pursuit of like this weird and wonderful happiness. Like it created so much community. Like everyone in San Francisco knew who he was, smiled at him on the street. They all like it was not so much like a running joke, but it was almost like this like idea that everyone was like, Oh yeah, that's that's that dude. We we do this because he's like this. And you know, it's like when you have like a local, like eccentric in your town that everyone just knows what they're like. You know, Prince Mongo what they're yeah, yeah. Yeah, Prince Mongo. What's that?
SPEAKER_01:Um Prince Mongo was this uh he's a Memphis local that lived in this big weird spooky castle house, and he was uh he so he said that he was abducted by aliens and he was an alien that was sent here to help us get up to the mothership that was coming in like 2012, or he always had like a different date that he would talk about. He dressed in this weird, like kind of steampunk kind of alien. He wore like big alien goggles, but total weirdo, and you knew where he was, and everybody loved him, called him, allowed him to call himself Prince Mongo, and he said he was like alien royalty, and everybody's like, Yep, definitely, for sure. For sure.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, at least he didn't create a cult and go heaven's gate. You know, no, he didn't want to do any of that.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't want to do any of that.
SPEAKER_00:He just wanted amazing.
SPEAKER_01:He just wanted you all to wake up. It's like his whole thing. He didn't want to he didn't want to do anything but make his work and hoard and like do his weird crazy art in Florida because he he also had a house in Florida that was he got in trouble.
SPEAKER_00:Why did I I'm like, where's this guy? I was thinking, where's this guy from? Of course it's Florida. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He also had a house in Florida.
SPEAKER_01:So Memphis and Florida. So if you ever understood why I'm a weirdo, it's because I'm also a combination of Memphis and Florida, unfortunately, which is a very unique combination that makes you mentally unstable. Yeah, Emperor Norton, that's crazy. They're gonna name a tunnel after him, apparently. Oh, cool. So his memory lives on. Yerba Buena Tunnel of San Francisco, Oakland Bay Bridge for the Emperor who knew how to connect. Right. So the last kind of the last kind of idea uh for the Greeks about happiness is actually one of my favorites, and I've liked this since I found out about it in high school, and I think it's pretty relevant. I'm a big fan. I probably would have ended up being in the cult of Dionysus if this was ancient Greece. But the the kind of fifth and final concept is hedonism. That hedonism, the idea that if you want to be rich, I love I love hedonism. I love the idea of because it I I know that there's a certain image with hedonism and that hedonism, which is the idea that if you want to have a happy life, you should pursue a pleasurable life. You should only do things that bring you pleasure, or you should, you know, prioritize things that bring you pleasure, you should do what makes you feel good. Um, and a lot of people, when you say hedonism, they think just it's just like a big orgy with grapes and like like Xerxes slaves fanning. Naked women with feathers, like giant feathers and stuff, but it's really not. It's just the idea that like whatever individually brings you pleasure is what you should do if you want to be happy in life. Whether that's just sitting in a room and studying books and being bricked up behind a wall forever, that could be considered hedonism if that's what brings you ultimate pleasure, or if it's traveling around the world or like whatever it is. And I love that concept. I think that's probably the most valid one that we have.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So essentially everyone's idea of hedonism is the Christian idea of Satanism.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yes. Yes, the horned God.
SPEAKER_00:Because essentially hedonism is actually just the pursuit of genuine happiness within like what gives you pleasure. It's not like it, it's not gratification or like sexual pleasure specifically. It's literal just like, oh, you like painting? Go paint for four hours. Exactly. Or you like uh sewing or crocheting or whatever gardening, like go do that for a day then. Yeah, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Which I think that's the key. And I even when I was coaching, I would get people that would just kind of just look at me and be like, Well, I'm not happy. I've done the therapy and I'm on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, everything else, and I'm still not happy. I'm like, Well, what are you what do you like to do? And they would just look at you blank. I'm like, Well, what what do you enjoy? Like when you were a kid, when you were like, Yes, you were like so excited, what was that over? Like, what things get you super stoked? Like it's Christmas morning and you're eight years old.
SPEAKER_00:At the clients, I'm honestly laughing at myself because like I've gone through that same phase of going. What do I want to do with my time? Like, what actually brings me joy? Like, I've never been in the position to be able to do that. Yeah, and now I love gardening, and it's so weird. I feel like such an old person. I love gardening. I I've started like bead uh making beaded spiders, like embroidery and stuff like that. Like I buy practical household things and I get an extreme amount of joy. I got myself a wet dryback. I am obsessed.
SPEAKER_01:I love those. I love those. Oh, I've been I've got one on my TikTok shopless. So worth it. So worth it.
SPEAKER_00:So I haven't used the wet side of it yet, but my one can like has a blower function and uh it can like suck up like the bar chip size level things as well. So like, yeah, and like I can get right into the crevices of my car and things like that. So like I use it to mainly do like my car and like blow off my driveway.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god, Dan would love that. Yeah, he would love that for his car.
SPEAKER_00:100% and not and not recommend enough. But like that's what brings me like genuine joy is finding like practical things that help my everyday life just be a bit more whimsical in my way. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think that that's got to be the focus for more people. Um, because there's also there's so much comparison with the clients, which is getting in the way of that, like uh identifying their individual happiness as well. They were like, oh, well, my best friend I've been friends with for 30 years, so and so, she's done this and this and this and this, and I've kind of done those same things, but like she's loving life and I hate life. Like, well, that's because she's a completely different person who doesn't live inside of your body. So that would be why maybe you're not happy doing the things that she does. You know, you gotta do other stuff, and you gotta just genuinely kind of no holes unless unless you've got like some Albert Fish curiosities or some Jeffrey Dahmer curiosities, those curiosities we don't pursue. Those curiosities and interests we bury deep, deep, deep, deep, deep inside. And we never, ever, ever do anything with them. But like an other normal curiosities and interests. I think help for those ones. You go to the intentional perspective. And if you're not gonna do that, then just again bury them so deep that you forget they're there and they don't exist anymore.
SPEAKER_00:And you just never do therapy, but that stuff, you bury it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Go talk about your bombing issues, but the maybe if you want to wear somebody as a skin suit, maybe just bury that away forever. Forever. No, go get help, obviously. I don't think I don't think anybody that wants to wear someone as a skin suit would be listening to me unless it's one of the Taylor Swift fans, again, who hate listens to all my podcast episodes.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god, can you imagine another version of Eve Gain getting a hold of Taylor Swift?
SPEAKER_01:I'm just gonna be like trying to get that, you know, Doctor Who? Have you ever watched Doctor Who, the lady that gets stretched as the skin between the panels? She's just like the face, it's not the face of Burr Boo or whatever the other guy, but you know, you know who I'm talking about. Lady Cassandra. Lady Cassandra, I think is her name. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, maybe that's what maybe that's what Taylor Swift's Cassandra song was about. Maybe she was that it was about a facelift.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't even know that there was a name of one of her songs.
SPEAKER_01:I only know because her followers say it in my comments over and over and over again. For some for some reason. That's the literally, I couldn't tell you what it sounds like, but she's got one called that because it would probably sound like every other song she makes, right?
SPEAKER_00:She makes the same album every year. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Literally 47 different versions of the same album every year, and 13 TB sweaters to go with it. Hey, you know what? Maybe that's her pleasure. You know what I mean? Maybe I shouldn't be smiting her for her hedonistic earth destroying, right-leaning calamity. Maybe that's it. Maybe, maybe her pleasure is in hanging out with men who love concentration camps, you know? And who am I to shit on that? Honestly.
SPEAKER_00:She can she can go shit on herself because we've got maybe the people to talk about. I found this one guy. His name, he was like the original cat lady, but he was a guy. Um uh probably gonna pronounce his last name wrong, but it's Horace Walpoli. Wolpoli's um, sounds good to me. Um he was a son of like a British prime minister. Yeah, he had a cat named Selima, and when she drowned in a goldfish bowl, which I think is so iconic for a cat, like that's crazy. What a way to say happened. I don't fucking know. Like, how deep is that fish bowl? I don't know. Oh my god. Um, he didn't just have a funeral, he commissioned a friend, um, a famous poet named Thomas Gray to write an epic mock tragic ode in her honour. Um the it's uh it's called Ode on a Death of a Favorite Cat Umed in a Tub of Goldfish. Um it's a full-blown like written poem like uh about the cat's vanity and the tragic end. Oh my god. Yeah, oi, for real. And like the whole idea around that was like his happiness was like finding this like slightly silly like tragedy and turning it into like a joke among all of his like intellectual friends and like Right, okay. That's I I would probably do something like that for his cat with an absurd way of like memorializing the cat, which I thought was really interesting. I would probably do that, yeah. But like here's me over here. Like if my my um old orchard cat that I have, if she passes away, the the speed at which I will find like a um what is it called, a taxidermist, like immediately. I thought about that too.
SPEAKER_01:I thought about that. Immediately thought about that. I think I'm gonna have mine made into a diamond to wear as a necklace.
SPEAKER_00:Nice, that would be so cool. I've never even heard of that.
SPEAKER_01:And they do it to people, but I don't know if they do it to pets, but I'm gonna find out.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I've seen ashes be used in like ornaments and things like that as well. Yeah, like I thought that was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01:I want it on my body. I've even thought about getting it tattooed because you can get ashes put in the tattooing.
SPEAKER_00:You can do that. That's a whole thing now. I thought that was really interesting.
SPEAKER_01:I've thought about that. I thought about getting a paw print like with that when that time comes. Uh, thankfully, I'm not there. But if that time were to come, that's I've thought about like a tattoo with ashes in it and a diamond necklace.
SPEAKER_00:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Very happy topic, huh? Very happy, happy, happy, dead pets, happy, happy. No, but that's that's cool though. That is a that is a good way to deal with grief the way that he that he did, like having the poem written. I like that. I would do that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, okay, so I've got this other guy, right? He's called the amphibious man of Hyde Park. He was like the water king. His name is um John Cossa. He's 1860s, right? Um, he's this Victorian dude who ended up like believing that human beings were meant to be amphibious, right? So like that whole like shape of water style.
SPEAKER_01:He's not totally wrong, completely.
SPEAKER_00:To prove his point, he claimed it like it improved his health, and he would spend hours and hours a day submerged um in I'm gonna pronounce this wrong, um, serpentine or serpentine lake. Yeah, um in London's Hyde Park. Probably Serpentine. Um, and he wasn't swimming, he would just legit stand there like neck deep in the water, like reading a newspaper, like above the water without getting it water.
SPEAKER_02:I've been to Hyde Park. I would knock it in the I would knock it in that water.
SPEAKER_01:I would not just it's got so much swan shit and duck shit in it. It smells so bad. It won't have been better back then.
SPEAKER_00:Duck shit is so freaking lethal though. Like there's like a whole a whole like sickness you can get from duck shit. Is it really? Yeah, no, for real. Like there's a whole thing, there's an area um in like a lake where I used to swim when I was a kid, like, or like a river. Um, and you if you saw ducks swimming in the water, you had to get out because essentially, if like they they shat in the water, you could get sick from that. Yeah, it's real gross.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it smells bad. The the the ponds, the lakes in Hyde Park smell bad. Yeah, I've been there a couple times.
SPEAKER_00:But like sticking with the water, right? Um, there's this poet, right? And he had a pet lobster. His name's Gerard de Nouval. He was like 180, early 1800s as well.
SPEAKER_01:So he's weird in the 1800s. I love that.
SPEAKER_00:Wait, they do, and it's the best kind of weird because this guy had a pet freaking lobster, and he was like, no, no shit. It was his best friend. Um he kept it as a pet, right? And like he um he didn't keep it in a tank, he would take it for walks in the gardens in Paris and like on this beautiful like blue ribbon, right? Which I think is so cute because like it's little like red lobster with a blue ribbon around it. I kind of want to paint that now, yeah. And like anytime he was like asked about it, he was, you know, like, why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog or a cat or a gazelle or a lion or any other animal that chooses to like that he could choose to take for a walk, right? He's like he likes he liked lobsters because they're peaceful creatures and very serious. Um, they know the secrets of the sea and they don't bark and they don't gnaw upon one's what is it? Um, monadic privacy like dogs do, which I mean, like you would know your dog literally up your ass sometimes.
SPEAKER_01:My dog literally starts screaming if he's more than a foot away from me. So that's fun. That's very fun. No, I I kind of get the appeal of that. I get the lobster appeal. Yeah. No, you privacy like check. Love it.
SPEAKER_00:Check just a chill-ass amino.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, human happiness is weird. Human happiness is weird. We need more weirdos. We need everyone to just go weird.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's this one lady in my town. She like lives in steampunk clothing 24-7. Like, I'm talking like the whole like like floor-length skirts that have like the really pretty lace on it. She does have she has a lot of like brown outfits too, which I think is so interesting. Um, and she does sort of dress like the good tourist. And like like sleeve gloves, like you know, fingerless gloves and things like that. There's layers upon layers upon layers. And she like this is like the mid of summer in this.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say, doesn't it get really hot and humid there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. No, where technically where I live is supposed to be a riverbed. So like it's true. Humid is a heat sometimes. Okay, it's that's what I thought gross. And I'm like, how are you surviving? She's happy.
SPEAKER_01:I was gonna say the the English jeans seem to survive in the heat in layers of wool for some reason. I don't know why, but that's what they've just done for forever.
SPEAKER_00:You'd be surprised how cooling wool can be in heat. I know that's something, yeah. So there's like a like a lot of farmers use that too, like um here and essentially like wearing like wool with a kid because of the way that your sweat like catches the breeze through.
SPEAKER_01:It's sheep's fur, isn't it? And the fur would have to do that on cheap. It would have to be able to like not overheat them but keep them warm and like breathe and stuff. So that would make sense. And natural fibers, I guess, are more breathable, which would make sense. It just seems like wool just seems like the last thing I want to wear in heat.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, 100%. No, yeah, like I this is why I like winter. I'm like, why my my pursuit of happiness is to have to warm myself up, not cool myself up. You can only even take so many fucking layers off before you're naked, you know? Like 100%. At least at least in the cold, I can huddle under a blanket.
SPEAKER_01:You can tell my you can tell my existence of Scotland. Everybody's like bummed because it's now starting to get cold. And I've had several people say to me in the last 72 hours, I've had several different conversations with strangers and acquaintances. We're like, oh no, summer's gone. I'm like, Yes, thank God. It was too hot. It was way too much. Yeah, I'm so jealous.
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, can I come over there, please?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, one of them looks at me like I was crazy because he was like, Oh, didn't you come from you came from like a hot part of America? And I went, Yeah, it sucked. That's part of the reason why I moved here. It's the heat sucks, humidity sucks, it's awful. It's a losing game. You can always put more layers on, you can't take more layers off when it's too hot.
SPEAKER_00:This is why I've never visited Australia because like I would literally have to live in like five or six layers during the summer here just to go over there in their winter to be able to handle it.
SPEAKER_01:Nah, nah, nah.
SPEAKER_00:No thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Also, everything in that country wants to kill you. All the bugs and animals are poisonous. Too many bugs.
SPEAKER_00:Too many. I mean, like, I'd go for the frogs, but that's it.
SPEAKER_01:Like it the the oceans will kill you, the beaches will kill you, the forests will kill you, your things will come out of your toilet and kill you in Australia. It's crazy. It's crazy. Everything wants to kill you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, no, 100%.
SPEAKER_01:I do love Australians, though. I do love Australians.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, like, I have quite a few friends that are like living over there.
SPEAKER_01:There's like uh the good ones are great.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Good ones are solid.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Good ones are all right.
SPEAKER_01:It's kind of a little bit America-like, though, is what I found from my my Australian friends.
SPEAKER_00:Any any white, predominantly white country that has been colonized or under British monarchy is just a a batshit carbon copy of America because essentially we all came out of the British monarchy at some point, right? Very true, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we all came out of the same place.
SPEAKER_00:Um a lot of like inland towns here in New Zealand are very much um like they're full of hills. Like it's always hills, like there's like a the place I come from, they call it the fruit bowl of the south because you're like literally bottom of a hill. Yeah, the giant fruit. Yeah, the giant fruit. Yeah, but like if there's giant stuff, I send you the link. It's like in the pursuit of happiness for every town. There's giant shit out the front of most of the towns.
SPEAKER_01:That has to make you happy when you see it. Just giant giant fruit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like people literally visit the country so they can do the trip to see all of the giant things.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's so cool. That that is what we need. Humans are weird.
SPEAKER_00:We are weird monkeys to create spaces that create joy to create happiness. Because that's like that goes back to that lady who did that exhibition, right? Like creating things that can help spark that joy that creates more joy around. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's like the most important. It's not the most important thing that's happening in the world right now, right? But I think it's absolutely critical because it's gonna be a long, unpleasant road that we are now on, unfortunately. Um, and there has to be pockets of happiness. There's got to be pockets of of joy, of you know, fulfillment and all of that stuff if we're gonna basically have a lot of people. Yeah, 100% individually and on community levels as well. Just just like things need to exist just for the the the purpose of providing happiness, joy, pleasure, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_00:I deliver sourdough bread to like most of my neighbors and eating. I love that just to make people happy because I think it's nice. That's so interesting.
SPEAKER_01:That's so sweet. That's so nice.
SPEAKER_00:Oh I love that. I think that's great. Favorite one that I found was the king of tramps, and his name is James Hearst. Um essentially, yeah, I know. Um he's uh was a Yorkshire farmer who became like super eccentric in his later years. I'm gonna say he probably got to the I don't give a fuck about people's thoughts stage of his life. Um, and he taught his pet pig how to do tricks and built a carriage pulled by like a bull from his farm and declared himself the king of tramps. Um and he would invite local vagrants to his farm for like huge feasts for um presiding over them as their benevolent monarch. So he once even wrote a letter to King George III offering him advice on how to run the country. That's crazy. But I think like he's like the like the real life version of like a mad hatter, right? Like essentially anyone who is weird and wonderful was allowed to like come and have these big like extravagant feasts on his farm where everyone would dress up and have a good time. And it didn't matter if you were rich or poor or like not doing great and and whatever, like, or eccentric as well, like you were invited to come have a meal with him and his pig and his and you know, like it's just so much fun. So cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he did create his own royal court. I that that as well is like the weirdos need to stick together. We need to be flocking as weirdos together in our own.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think it's that whole like that price of of pushing past that whole like um that that moment of like oh like panic where like you have to like socialize with people and be in those situations that are new and different because essentially like once you push past that moment, you've now connected in a way that is completely different and could be really, really good for your internal joy. Yeah, you're creating systems of community with people that like could be really beneficial, not just to you, but you could be beneficial to them. And like that's a good symbiotic thing that needs to happen because we need those pockets, like you say, of joy. Otherwise, no one's gonna make it through.
SPEAKER_02:We're not gonna make it through if we don't have that. No, we're not gonna make it through, not at all.
SPEAKER_01:No, not at all. It also like kind of reminds me of I think that there's a real power in it, not just like in surviving. But I've said this for years. I think we should have started this years ago, but a way to essentially breed out the the Nazis um is to make them not cool, like just make that that is loser behavior. Don't try to argue with it, don't try to like prove it wrong or any of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00:But like because that education aspect wasn't widely given, like, say how Finland is like, oh, let's give everyone free education. Because education has been siloed out, that's why there's still these like pockets of those absolutely fashion Nazis that are like in these areas that they shouldn't be in, because essentially they haven't had that education throughout their family history because of the way that things get siloed out, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. There needs to we need to bring back social ostracizing. There needs to be social shame, social ostracizing. And you know what's all what always happens as well is that um the the weirdos, right? The weirdos find each other and they make little weirdo groups, and they're all the people who have been like outcast and pressured and you know, shit on and all that other kind of stuff. But then when they get in their little weirdo groups, those little weirdo groups then become the cool kids that like all the mainstream people want to be. And I think people need to you want to be the cool kid, then be weird. Be fucking weird, like be different, be happy, like you know, like be happy.
SPEAKER_00:That's eccentric. Yeah, the weird and eccentric thing that you want to do is essentially going to start a new trend that will help other people be like oh, I can be joyful, I can do that weird, awkward thing that I've been wanting to do for ages, but like haven't had the confidence to clear. Um people see you experiencing a new thing and doing that joy and go, oh, I can do the joy too. Yeah, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:That's I think that's probably that's that's probably the point we should probably wrap on is that part.
SPEAKER_00:Is that enjoy when you see the joy? You can you can imbue that same joy and and that weird thing that you wanted to do last week that you didn't do. If it doesn't hurt anybody, go and do it. I love that.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. Oh yay. It did it much more poignantly than I would have just screaming into the void.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we're always screaming into the void. Always, but like always, always.
SPEAKER_01:That's it. Um you know, happiness is what we make it. You know, at the end of the day, we design it for ourselves, but you really gotta know yourself, you gotta have self-awareness, and you gotta, you know, step outside of the pressures and the expectations and the conditioning and the all the other crap in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and if we don't make those steps, then no one else is gonna make them. So, like you've just gotta push past today.
SPEAKER_01:Gotta be proactive. Well, thank you, Connie. Thank you so much for doing this. Um, thank you. I think that's that's a wrap for our first episode. Yeah. Think that was good. Think that was solid. Um, we'll be back next week. We're gonna talk Bonnie Blue next week.
SPEAKER_03:If uh here we go.
SPEAKER_01:We're gonna talk Bonnie Blue next week. So um, everybody be buckled up and buckled in. Yeah, it's gonna be I'm I'm gonna try to make it as funny as possible. We're we're gonna have a serious talk because she's super crazy dangerous.
SPEAKER_02:Um yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I just wrote an essay about it, which is up now on the Patreon. You can go there if you want like early sneak peeks behind the scenes of the podcast episodes. You want to get them a few days early. Um, and but I also remember writing essays over there on all this stuff that we talk about and sharing more pictures and images and all this stuff. But I've just written an essay on Bonnie Blue, and it's it's pretty horrifying because it really is like damage damage.
SPEAKER_00:You gotta make sure you get a picture of the king of San Francisco for real. Oh, yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:If you go and join us on the Patreon as well, we'll have all the stuff up from that we talked about today. So they'll I'll have some pictures up of the Emperor of San Francisco, Norton, and and all this good stuff, and the the Greeks and good, good, good. There's already some of the stuff up there. So if you head over to patreon.com slash newska, you can support us, help us grow this podcast, um, so you can get more of these episodes. It's gonna be just like this. It's gonna be us just chatting shit, having a good time, trying to enlighten ourselves, maybe a little bit, enlighten others, and have a good time. Positive dissociation, humanity, humanity, humanity. So thank you so much, Connie. I'm very grateful. And we'll be back next week with a new episode. Go to patreon.com slash news gu. We'll see you guys later. Bye.
