Jonathan Goldstein on Wild Card

pushkin hello everyone hello hi hello hi here we all are in the studio yes indeed and today we've got something a little different oh but kaylee i don't like different things well jonathan you might just have to give it a chance because sometimes trying new things can be scary but rewarding yeah yeah okay well here comes the choo-choo train of listening what do we got here um recently you're a guest on a show called wild card do you remember that of course i remember how can i forget i was interviewed by rachel martin how did it feel jonathan to be in the guest seat it felt i didn't like it it was a tremendous loss of control i have to say it was like the spider had become the fly or something but you know here's the incredible this is nuts it doesn't even make sense to me i'm just looking at their their past episodes okay of wild card you know who was on two weeks ago who someone that's so famous they're known by one name share adele it wasn't share or adele someone more actually dare i say maybe someone more famous obama i'm gonna say as famous as obama maybe more famous what all right i'll just tell you oprah last week she interviewed melinda gates she's got more money than you oprah has more money than me let's see who else has more money than me i would say almost every guest is probably richer than you you know honestly so i'm on her website right now on the wild card website and i'm scrolling and i'm like i'm looking like melinda gates oprah winfrey harrison ford i mean crazy and then i saw my name and i got nervous i thought like that's a mistake do you think they had someone fall through that week well it's funny okay so i did ask her that like why am i on the show basically and i thought you know the answer would be something like oh what are you talking about like of course you you know but she was honest she was like well you know how it is like sometimes you do like a biggie and then sometimes you just do a small one or something like that i don't know i think she was more complimentary than that i don't know if she called me a small one it sounds like she just wanted to talk to you which is really nice it is it is who wouldn't it thank you that is very nice um you know me and stevie usually are in on like the you know we're producing the conversations you have this is one that we got to come to just as listeners we just heard the edited version at the end and i really enjoyed it i felt like it covered a lot of territory beyond just the typical like how did you come up with the show like like i felt like you guys kind of went deep in a really interesting way i got an interesting text from my mother-in-law after she had listened to it she said that she had never had anybody express something about life and death that she had always felt whoa yeah that's cool yeah yeah and after i got the text i told my wife i said emily you married your mother congratulations um yeah so we're gonna listen to that episode i think listeners will really enjoy it yeah we did and if you don't we'll we'll we'll send you um a check returning your your your full purchase price if you don't try try the oprah episode you know maybe you'll like that more god um but first a word from our sponsors this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human this is jacob goldstein from business history when the internet arrived most people used it to look things up others saw what it could really do the same is true with chat gpt chat gpt work goes beyond answering questions give it a goal plus things like notes files feedback data or project plans and it can help create a brief analysis deck outline tracker or workflow you stay in control reviewing the results of the work and choosing the final result put chat gpt to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects get started at chat gpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans if you love music and great artist interviews check out before the moment hosted by nile rogers this new series follows nile as he travels across the country talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shape their lives and careers from hit makers like miguel to rising stars like alex warren nile explores the stories behind the careers the songs and the moments that changed everything because every musician remembers the point where everything changed and this podcast tells the stories that came before it listen to before the moment a lincoln original series on the iheart radio app youtube or wherever you get your podcasts let's talk about something everyone has an opinion on health care we all know it should work better than it does optum believes that too and they're trying to improve it they're helping health care teams and pharmacy services work together like bringing primary care and prescription drugs straight to your home so you can stay on top of your health optum's also building technology that connects the whole health care system so it can better take care of the whole person you optum is making health care work as one for everyone see what optum's up to at optum.com just a heads up this episode does have some strong language do you think people can really change oh yes i mean i have to believe that i mean even if i don't believe it i have to believe that and i think like that's the struggle it's like the paradox i mean like we are who we are but i think as long as we're alive we're able to change i'm rachel martin and this is wild card the show where cards control the conversation each week my guest answers questions about their life questions pulled from a deck of cards they're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me my guest this week is jonathan goldstein i was writing and no one was buying what i was selling i just couldn't get anywhere and i just kept doing it because i felt compelled to do it like a spider spinning a web jonathan goldstein believes in closure which is what his massively popular podcast heavyweight is all about helping people move on from some kind of unfinished business in their lives maybe that's helping someone make amends or to say thank you to a stranger or to help a person turn a page on a traumatic experience and yes the word heavy is in the title but it doesn't feel that way in large part because jonathan is very funny and he's also got this lightness about him he's the kind of guide who makes it clear no matter what happens around the next bend he'll be there rooting you on i am so very happy to welcome jonathan goldstein to wildcard hi hi thank you so much it would have taken me about 10 tries to get that and so much editing i don't believe you but it is it's true and yet it's true i'm gonna hold up three cards you pick randomly one two or three okay first three cards first three cards now one is on my left tend to think of one being this on my right oh yeah okay that's my left okay i'm trying to make this as confusing as possible for myself because i'm hoping i guess my my subconscious wish is that you're just going to say you know what forget it we're gonna do a rerun this week um okay sorry it doesn't matter you know what i get the impression as a as a child magician um that you're trying to force the number two card it's it's poked out a little bit more yeah interesting yeah okay now you're forcing the one and the two i just i just want to please you i'll take i'll take the number two i'm not pushing i promise although i do like this question okay look what happened there um okay what's an ordinary place that feels extraordinary to you because of what happened there okay you see it's very difficult for me to talk about places because i i'm not very place aware oh uh i'm i live so much of my life up in my head uh for many years i i thought of it as like internal and then like through therapy i've begun to see it as disassociative possibly i will say broadly movie theaters i are kind of like uh i think pauline kale called them like her church and i think that's a little bit the way that i feel about movie theaters yeah and there's one particular i live in minnesota minneapolis and there's an old mid-century theater that uh used to be walking distance from my house and i would just go see anything that was playing there and always sit way way way back in the back row because i like to take it all in um by yourself by myself yeah it had i'd like going there with people but i you know if i had my druthers it was by myself and that just felt um like my place in the dark looking up at this big screen feeling like a baby being held by somebody you know um maybe that's part of it i don't know um what was the extraordinary part of of that experience i think uh this particular theater because it's mid-century i had the experience last christmas of going to see it's a wonderful life there and i found it to be a very emotional experience uh a man like it it it's just i mean it's just a room but it i don't know all of this stuff sounds very corny i mean my father used to watch these black and white movies and refer to it as like a time machine and it is kind of like that um there is this feeling of um the past kind of erasing and you're kind of existing in all times at once beyond that it's probably just pretty banal um um that it just yeah there's just something extraordinary about in this day and age being able to kind of like turn your phone off and shut out the world for a couple of hours i mean thank god hold on there's one sound on here i need to make sure it goes away is it my voice you figured out the one thing that's dragging down this podcast okay two more cards i'll take one this time were you intimidated or excited about leaving your parents house leaving my parents house i have to say and you know and this is kind of like you just don't know what you don't know back then but i was nothing but excited um i didn't enjoy my childhood very much and the idea of being able to make my own rules uh was very exciting and i remember i was i remember when i now i hearken back to it now that i got a kid i think about how sad my mother was how she was sitting on the edge of my bed and yelling at me for what she called dismantling my room for the stuff that i was taking you know like i and all i was taking was these milk crates i didn't even have like a bookshelf it was just like i kept my books and stuff in milk crates and she was like very upset that i was taking them um and i remember i wore cowboy boots uh which were a very impractical thing to wear in the summer when you're moving boxes but there was something about it that felt very romantic i had these cowboy boots that i only wore like once a year yeah and it felt like that was an occasion yeah for the cowboy boots even though they were slippery where were you going to where were you moving from and to so i was living in montreal that's where i grew up and i was moving to a very cheap part of town called uh poinsettia charles yeah it was probably no more than like a year and a half ago i was living in montreal and i was probably no more than like a half an hour car drive yeah but it can be a whole world away yeah it felt great um there was a a five dollar liter of apple wine that they sold at the corner store and there was all these like dollar 99 breakfast places wow it was like 1934 it was yeah back this is back in the 30s uh yeah i could listen to all the jazz music i wanted um yeah no i don't know it was just yeah it was just the feeling of um of being free uh it really yeah it felt it felt free yeah last one in this round one two or three i guess three oh i feel like i'm putting all these place questions to you what details do you remember about your childhood bedroom the milk crate um the wall-to-wall posters of david bowie nice very big david bowie fan to this day my father will call me up on the phone if david bowie's on tv and he'll say oh your buddy's on tv um he just didn't get it uh no but i love that he that he knows that you like him and he's trying to connect with you yeah um yeah just a lot of like pictures taken out of uh magazines and newspapers and i don't and it must still be the same way for kids but it was like your whole personality was splayed across your bedroom walls like if it wasn't on your bedroom wall then you weren't in the world properly you know you had to lead with all of these things on your wall i had this little card table that with a type with an electric typewriter that i wrote on what were you writing at the time oh such junk i remember when i applied into the creative writing program at the university in montreal concordia it was such high hopes uh because from a very young age i was always writing and making plays and making uh radio plays and you know forcing my friends into performing in them and i applied put together what i thought was my best work and i applied to this creative writing program and the guy the professor running the program rejected me and i couldn't understand why and i made a meeting with him and uh he said that someone that wrote the way that i did needed a therapist more than they needed a creative writing program which was probably true but was still like a very heavy thing to hear at like 18 you know not helpful guidance so but it was all like nuts i mean like young men are or at least me and my friends i mean we were just nuts we were just really um pushing boundaries and you know loved hunter s thompson and jack kerouac i mean that's there's nothing no offense but there's nothing extraordinary about that that's that doesn't signal depression that's just being an angst no i was just depressed on top of that oh yeah that was that was just a whole other side project truly yeah in various dark places you know uh very caught up in like what's it all about um i i had like during my teen years like a foray into uh becoming a religious um and then kind of losing my faith and feeling that that brought on a really heavy depression oh that'll do i wanted to believe and i just couldn't figure my way into it and uh yeah just like very from a very young age just very caught up in the big questions i guess and not that that's necessarily a formula for depression um but for me i don't know there was something very dire and desperate about it i remember asking my father like at a like at a very very young age like where god came from and that feeling like a very basic question because god was a given but like okay so then where does god come from and i remember him telling me that i should look it up and i had these trials uh encyclopedia set and looking up what did you look up and under g yeah like god and like i thought oh well i'm gonna get to the bottom of this in two seconds obviously everybody wonders about this right and it wasn't i remember like looking at the bible and thinking like oh it must be before genesis like before but you know there's like no preface there's no yeah there's nothing there it just starts with the big bang and that's it um but i don't know it was probably also more banal like i probably couldn't meet any girls you know um yeah that's a big existential stew of things yeah yeah very profound very yeah well schopenhauer ask is that a word sure it is now yeah yeah but i think dealing with that the uncertainty of life at that but i couldn't yeah but i know you know it's still something that i struggle with i mean i just want to really let go and and uh give myself over to life but i don't know there's always just been this feeling of like if you're not totally invested in it it'll make death easier you know like if you live your life as though like you're kind of um you know here's life and here's death and they kind of are side by side adjacent to one another on a shelf it'll be more of a lateral move good night folks it's not too it's not too late to like run the rerun um i'm just trying to understand it it means putting as much effort into the thinking about death as the thinking about life and they are equal experiences and so then it's a lateral yeah if you're sort of like braced for death from a young age you know if you don't fully you know throw yourself into the whole life thing um then when the carpet is yanked out from under you you're going to be braced for your fall no i i get it i like do this in my own mind i'm i am the worst case scenario person it is how i live my life is to prepare for the worst things and so i i i practice not being around anymore it's dark but and you don't want to model that for you i have two of them i i don't think that's a great way to live but it actually doesn't bring me down i don't get bummed about it oh that's wonderful just go there for a little bit i try it on and then i come back everyone was okay everyone when i was gone in my imaginary death everyone grieved and then they lived beautiful lives and and then it was fine oh that's wonderful so you're thinking about your own absence from the perspective of those you love. Yeah, I guess. That's the mark of a superior human being. That's not how I was thinking about it. I was thinking more fuck all y'all. No, no, no, I'm just kidding. If you're a music fan, here's a new podcast to check out. It's called Before the Moment, a new series hosted by the legendary Nile Rodgers. You know him as the producer, songwriter, guitarist, and co-founder of Chic. But in this series, he's hitting the road to sit down with some of today's most fascinating artists. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed him. Because every artist can point to that turning point, that moment before the breakthrough, before the success, before everything changed. Through candid conversations and personal stories, you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now, imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal, along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving. And you stay in control. You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro products. So you're considering getting a home security system. But you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it, 24-7. Or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to, with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com. H-B-L-U to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about your show for a few minutes. Because it is a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful thing that you have made. Thank you. Heavyweight. Been nine years? Over nine years? Yeah. Yeah, we're doing our ninth season. Yeah. There was a little break. The show was canceled. There was. Yeah. At the end of 2023. And then it found new life. And as a listener, I think this is a wonderful thing. I'm sure when it was canceled, you were like, maybe I'm going to do something else. Lean into my writing. But you were given this other shot. What do you love about making this show? Well, the simplest is that I like having a job. I found out when the show was canceled that I wasn't very good at not having a job. I had been kind of on various deadlines. Like before this, I had a show in Canada on the CBC for 11 years. It had been just kind of like 20 years of deadlines. This is Wiretap, right? Wiretap, yeah, that's right. And I found not having a job difficult. And being back at it has given me a renewed appreciation. But I love, I think I love, it is a way for me to feel things and like live, interact with people and life in a way that for me is preferred, I guess. There's a certain kind of safety about, being alone in the attic studio a lot of the time and thinking things through in a way that I can't in real time. I don't feel like I'm great in real time. We should just take a second and explain to people who haven't heard the show. I mean, I nodded to it a little bit in the intro, but you really are getting into very intimate parts of people's lives. You're helping them through specific regrets and longing and helping them find closure. Yeah. Like someone who's, you know, did something to someone, wronged them 20, 30 years ago, more. You literally go find that person for them and help them sometimes confront them and have a one-on-one exchange. Sometimes you don't find the person, but somehow through the journey, they've been able to understand their life in a more intimate way. I mean, it's very emotionally intense work. I mean, you say you do this work in part, just to feel things. That's a lot of feelings, Jonathan. Like it's a lot of living that you are, you're navigating through other people's experience. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely like, you say closure. I think like that is, yeah, that is always kind of like the imaginary finish line. I don't think most of the episodes get there, but it is true what you also say about the process. Of getting there. And sometimes it's the thing that people are searching for is somewhat of a MacGuffin. Like there was one episode called Scott where this former heroin addict had sold all of like many prized possessions that belonged to his father, among which was this gun that his grandfather, his father's father had taken off a Nazi in World War II. And he had sold this gun to a pawn shop to buy drugs. And he wanted to get the gun back and he felt like he owed it to his father. And spoiler alert, he gets the gun after, I mean, I didn't think we were ever going to find this gun again. It might've taken a couple of years. We finally got it. He gives it to his dad and his dad's like, no, no, thank you. You know? And it's just sort of like, Jesus Christ, like that's not going to make a very satisfying end. It is the closure that we thought, we wanted. But then it turns out that the conversation he ends up having with his father, the gun is merely a passkey that allows us into this emotional space where his dad is able to talk about his feelings about his dad and that gun, which he never liked. And he had mixed feelings about his own father. And it ends up getting to this point where the dad's able to say to him, I don't really give a shit about the gun. I was afraid of losing you. And I'm so glad to have you back. And I don't care about getting the gun back, but I got you back. And it's sort of like, we spent two years searching for the gun just to get us to this other place. So it's sort of like, sometimes like, if things wrap up too neatly and too quickly, it's not good. There needs to be that struggle in order to really get someplace and to get someplace emotionally. And it's hard to dramatize that. You know, sometimes you just need the gun. You need that MacGuffin. I really love interactions with strangers. They make me very happy. They give me life. They make me feel connected and alive. And I think you might love strangers even more than I do. Because it's your whole thing. It's like a random person will come into your inbox and all of a sudden you, I imagine you fall in love with someone and you fall in love a little bit with them and their plight or their struggle. Yeah, yeah. It's complicated. When you said that about like, loving to talk to strangers, I don't even know if this is really, if this makes sense, but it occurred to me this morning. I was on a run and I saw these two kids. There's something very sweet about the two of them. They were wandering, you know, wandering. They were, we were, I was. kind of like on a running path and they were just taking a leisurely stroll and they were coming towards me and they had such open faces. They looked like they were wearing pajama bottoms. Maybe that's just what kids do, but it had the affect of like feeling like they just rolled out of bed and maybe they were, you know, in love and were just happy to be spending the morning together and, or maybe they were on ecstasy. I don't know, but they just, their faces just seemed so open and I felt like stopping and telling them that that's a wonderful thing to see. And then I also thought about how like if I was their age, that would be like- So creepy. Yeah. And that made me also, it makes me aware of just like how like clenched my face is. Like I'm just waiting to get punched in the face and like, I'm just all like, you know, and it's my natural, like at this age, I mean, this is what my face has become. And I realized that a part of my fear is going through life with my face open like those two kids for fear that a weirdo like me is going to come up to them. And so I kind of keep, I've kind of like after 50 odd years, my face has just become this. Closed in. Don't talk to me. And like, what am I afraid, what would be the worst case scenario if I did walk through the world, um, with an open face and meeting people's gaze and not afraid of, of, of having people approach me, strangers approach me, what would be the worst case scenario? But you've developed a way, you've made a whole job for yourself where you get to meet strangers under your terms. In safety in a way, like in, in, in, in with parameters and a context. Round two, insights. Okay. And I haven't even skipped. No, you haven't skipped or flipped, but you're not judged either way. I don't know what's in there. There might be something that's so embarrassing. So that's why I've been saving them. We've moved from the yellow cards to the blue cards. So I believe, so I, I can only imagine that this is getting more intense. More intense. Okay. One, two, three. One. What's a sound that instantly puts you at ease? That's a person who lives in sounds. I think a laugh maybe. And anyone in particular or all of them, all the laughing. And this is coming from someone who does not, unfortunately for me, like have an easy laugh being in the business that I am in. It would be a nice signal to somebody of like, Hey, I'm enjoying you. But I think, yeah, all kinds of different laughs. It lets me feel like the person isn't taking me too seriously. And I feel dangerous when I'm being taken too seriously. You feel dangerous or the situation feels dangerous? I kind of feel like I shouldn't be taken too seriously. And I feel like my old friends don't take me that seriously. Like my friend Jackie, who I, who opens the show, who I phone, who has a very endearing, distinct, kind of insane laugh. I like hearing it. It makes me feel like, it makes me feel free to say all kinds of really dumb things, you know, because I feel like I'm not hurting anybody when I hear the laugh. It's a signal that I'm not hurting anybody. And I think that's a biggie. I have a friend who told me a while ago, he's like, is this stupid? I go through life just always being afraid that I'm going to get yelled at. And I was like, no, I think I relate to that. You're afraid that you're going to hurt somebody, get yelled at, or, um, yeah you just you just want to be you just want to feel like you're not you're not messing anything up and i don't know laugh yeah laugh is like a really nice thing yeah one two or three uh three how much do you rely on the validation of others i think in some ways not a lot because you know hearkening back to that story about um trying to get into a writer's program when i was 18 for a very long time i mean i was writing and no one was buying what i was selling like and i was getting rejections and i'm not talking like big magazines but like zines and chapbooks and no one was buying what i was selling and i was getting rejections and i'm not talking like big magazines but like zines and chapbooks and no one was buying what i was selling like and i was getting rejections and i'm not talking i couldn't i just couldn't get anywhere and i just kept doing it because i felt compelled to do it like a spider spinning a web like i i and in that sense i think i was kind of like free of needing any validation and maybe that's just the cockiness of youth or not knowing any better but i think i still have that i think i would still be doing what i'm doing regardless of whether anyone liked it that being said uh i do like to know what people are thinking um i think laughter you know getting a laugh or something is a form of validation and i i like that um that sounds like just the right healthy amount of caring not that you need me to validate your sense of whether validation is important i can't believe i'm doing something healthy you if you're a music fan here's a new podcast to check out it's called before the moment a new series hosted by the legendary nile rogers you know him as the producer songwriter guitarist and co-founder of chic but in this series he's hitting the road to sit down with some of today's most fascinating artists from hit makers like miguel to rising stars like alex warren nile explores the stories behind the careers the songs and the moments that changed everything because every artist can point to that turning point that moment before the breakthrough before the success before everything changed through candid conversations and personal stories you'll hear what happened before the moment that made them who they are today listen to before the moment a lincoln original series on the iheart radio app youtube or wherever you get your podcasts this is jacob goldstein from business history imagine henry ford trying to create the assembly line he had factory plans production schedules supply information research and ideas coming from all directions his team spent years studying how to make the process work now imagine having chat gpt work chat gpt work can help with big projects that have lots of steps you give it the goal along with real information like notes files reports feedback and project plans and it can use approved apps connected tools and files to help turn all of that into something useful a plan an analysis a tracker a presentation outline or a workflow you can keep improving and you stay in control you give direction review the work approve actions and choose the final result would henry ford have built the assembly line faster with chat gpt we'll never know ford didn't have chat gpt you do put chat gpt to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects get started at chat gpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans okay let's talk about something everyone has an opinion on health care everyone can agree that something this important should work better than it does turns out patients aren't the only ones who think that optum does too and it's why they're working day in and day out to improve it never heard of optum think of them as the engine of health care they bring together clinicians care teams and the way you get and manage your medications and they use data and technology to help the health systems we all use work better as a whole not as disconnected pieces because they connect all these pieces optum can take a more whole person approach to health care like helping patients connect to mental health support quickly and bringing primary care and prescription deliveries straight to their home so people can stay on top of their health those things make a big difference and they show that optum really is trying to make health care better that their clinicians pharmacists data scientists engineers everyone is putting in the work to improve it every day see what optum's up to at optum.com we're moving to round three beliefs all right oh the red cards red cards one two or three i'll take uh one do you believe in ghosts i don't not believe in them um i don't know that i've ever seen one uh or experienced one but i believe in the idea of them uh we moved in a couple years ago into this uh turn of the century victorian that i catch all kinds of weird smells in that i feel are kind of like ghostly remnants of people that lived here that don't know about them died here probably um and do do sensations like that um are they pleasant to you is that something you enjoy thinking about or is it disconcerting or neutral neutral probably yeah like i'll smell cigarettes all in a sudden i'll be like that's so weird so there must have been a there's something about the weather that's bringing out the smell but it it you know of some long dead smoker who lived here it feels like you're just kind of passing through um that maybe one day you'll just be a faint smell um i think it's probably more towards the positive yeah if i had to if i had to choose a feeling yeah yeah i mean you know if i saw someone crab walking on the ceiling less so but just something subtle you know what i mean like a wisp of something right right right like a kind of spectral sort of um you know zero mostel maybe one of the first long text exchanges i had with my wife was about ghosts she had finished reading with me and i was like oh my god i'm going to be a ghost i'm going to be a ghost i'm going to be a book about ghosts and i thought wow this is a real kooky chick um tell me more i mean not not you tell me more but you were like tell me more i'm into this oh yeah yeah i was like yeah bring it on yeah yeah three more cards one two or three uh two have you made peace with mortality some days i feel like yeah take me i'm this is a good day to die and i and i feel like one of these stoic guys in a spaghetti western and then other days no um i guess it really it's crazy to think that something like that would be so mood dependent is that possible right it's so final um sometimes it just feels okay and sometimes it just doesn't sometimes it just doesn't make sense and then other times it just feels like well we all got to go sometime that's one of the things i liked about drinking was that feeling of like of getting philosophical about that like i was someone i'm not a great flyer and that was when i relied the most on you know i would travel with um the little bottles of booze in my pockets uh so it just feeling them there gave me a sense of security and uh sometimes during turbulence i'd pop one of those or two of those and it just felt kind of like yeah you know we all got to go sometime that's when i relied the most on you know i would travel with the little yeah um i i think that uh planes often summon internal conversations about living and dying i mean for me for sure too as well but and sometimes it's like sorry go ahead no no you say no no i was just going to ask you like it's it's that sometimes not a bad feeling it's sort of like you feel like crying sometimes when you watch sentimental movies on a flight oh yeah and the complaints are my like safe there's like strangers around and i that i find comforting one of them might say something to me and i might be open to that or i might not i don't know but i i like the idea that it could happen um what did they say to you oh just the possibility that they could say are you okay and then that look at it makes me emotional thinking about it that breaks me when when when you're in a vulnerable place and a stranger extends themselves at all it like makes me feel good but now i i pivoted this to myself and i didn't want to no no no no not at all what do you say what do you say if someone asks you are you okay do you say not at all or do you say yes oh i'm thinking of one circumstance in particular um and i said no and i didn't want to talk about i didn't want to say any more but i really appreciated that they asked did you tell them that no but i said no but it's okay and that was it and and i think am i trying too hard to sew this together but i do think there's something about being suspended in air in in a situation where you could die because planes don't make sense and those being more truthful spaces because what the hell do you have to lose so i get i get the plane thing for sure and i also think that yeah yeah you say no no no no no please please no i i was just going to say you you were saying at the beginning that it feels um like dangerous to be so dependent on one's emotional state to determine whether or not one is okay with dying on a particular day but i maybe this is just me i think that's a sign of a healthy person who wakes up and and like observes the question you know like and how is my life and and when you're saying today's a good day to go what you're really saying is i have lived a good life yeah anyway i don't know if this is a quick story but um i feel i felt i feel like i i kind of got felt like i got the license to think about it in that way from a story a heavyweight story it was about this woman who was in her 40s and felt like her life had kind of gone off track because her foster mother didn't allow her to um stay in stay with basketball because her grades weren't good enough and she felt like her life would have been better if she could have pursued basketball she would have gotten a in years who is now this 94 year old woman to ask her why why didn't she allow her to pursue basketball when she saw it was her one passion and this woman was a tough old bird like it would have been so easy to say oh i'm sorry and like she just wouldn't and she had had a hard life herself and i and i felt like it was almost like she was unclear on the concept of regret you know what i mean and i was trying to explain it to her and she was like no no i know what you're saying and i was like i don't know what you're saying and i was like i don't know what you're saying and i don't i honestly don't know if i had a chance to do it over again with her whether i would have done it differently and i think it really depends on my mood what mood i was in wow i was like wow wow that is something that is seldom acknowledged it is you know what i mean it is and but it isn't the whole ball game not to make that bad pun but it is like yeah i i get or more of it than than we acknowledge yeah you know just how drunk a lot of these founding fathers were when they were coming up with their laws and ideas you know what i mean and they they echo through the years that was a journey that question this is the last one jonathan one okay two or three three do you think people can really change oh yes i mean i have to believe that i mean even if i don't believe it i have to believe that and i think like that's the struggle um is to um really try to believe that uh and i i do think people are capable of change within limits um you know it's like the paradox i mean like we are who we are but um i think as long as we're alive we're able to change you know i i'm working on a story that's that should come out this season it's about a woman who is 102 years old who um one day her kids who are you know in their 70s said you know you're getting on in age we should probably clean up the storage room and while they were doing that they found this box uh containing 256 letters that had been sent to her by her fiancee at the time when she was like 20 um who was in the war this was world war ii who died in the war and she had not opened up this box in and looked at these letters in over 80 years and had never really mourned the loss of this man and this relationship she put it aside and she married a man named irving stayed married with him for 60 odd years had three kids and then finds this box and then finds herself at the age of 102 falling in love with this with this long dead young man from her past and in that process like she you know a person who was very used to and maybe that's a little generational too is like you just pack it up and put it in a box and move on but it sticks with you you know what i mean and like you know she she went through a lot of changes even at that age which is kind of like um a beautiful thing to see you know what i mean as long as like we're alive and as you know as long as we keep going there's always going to be change you know maybe not the change that other people want to see but we're there's going to be changes we end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine where you go back and revisit one moment from your past It's not a moment you would change anything about. Just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. I know there are many. You could pick anything. Whatever comes to the fore. I mean, I guess the first thing that comes into my head is my child's birth. Yeah. I guess. My wife says that I, you know, like I was saying, I don't, I'm not an easy laugh. I don't, I wish I smiled more. But she said that like all through labor, I had such a big smile on my face, which kept her going. Just such a wonderful, wonderful day. And just filled with so much hope and wonderful expectation and beginning. And yeah, I think that. And I also really love the hospital cafeteria. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was at NYU. It was really good. Jonathan Goldstein, it's been such a pleasure. You can hear Jonathan on the newest season of his amazing show, Heavyweight. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. If you like this episode, I think you would also dig my interview with Jonathan's former boss and host of This American Life, Ira Glass. Ira was super open and honest and way funnier than I expected. Check it out. This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray and Jimmy Keeley. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangweni. Our theme music is by Romteen Arabloui. You can reach out to us at wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then. Hi, it's Jonathan here again, breaking out of the straitjacket of being a guest. I just had one further announcement. We here at the show have started a free newsletter, and it's a lot of fun. Kalila Holt, wouldn't you say? Yeah. Come on, step it up. Step it up. It's fun. I'm still not convinced. In these dark days, you can open up your inbox and have a little sunshine. That's right. 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