Episode 348: Three Friends Who Like To Talk About Cults with Jane Borden
Doree and Elise speak with culture journalist, editor, and author of Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America Jane Borden about how America’s earliest days make us uniquely susceptible to cult like thinking, the traits of individuals who join but are able to leave a cult later, and how social media has created a perfect environment for falling prey to the allure of charismatic leaders. Plus, Jane shares a surprising tidbit of her book that got left on the cutting room floor.
Photo credit: Justin Chung
Mentioned in this Episode
Jaws
Death Wish
Jack Reacher series
Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America by Jane Borden
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode Ai generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:18):
And I'm Elise Hu. And we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums and sometimes about cults.
Doree Shafrir (00:24):
Yes. Great intro,
Elise Hu (00:27):
Elise. They don't come up often, but there is kind of a cult-like atmosphere around certain charismatic leaders
Doree Shafrir (00:37):
That is not true.
Elise Hu (00:41):
Yeah, right.
Doree Shafrir (00:43):
Yeah, that's real.
Elise Hu (00:46):
No, I made that seg because of our guest today, who is Jane Borden, a friend of Doree's, and we can get into it a little bit more later. But yes, as we are contemplating this moment in which Donald Trump is the center of our lives and our attention every single day, because every day he demands our attention, it has raised a lot of questions about how we got here, and I thought talking to Jane whose expertise is fanaticism and cults was actually really illuminating for the moment
Doree Shafrir (01:22):
That we're in.
Elise Hu (01:24):
Yep.
Doree Shafrir (01:24):
Yes, I agree.
Elise Hu (01:28):
But we can get into it later. How are you doing?
Doree Shafrir (01:30):
Yes, yes, yes. Let's catch up. Let's catch up. Let's catch up. I'm good. I mean, good
Elise Hu (01:42):
Plug for Doree's Substack, her new Substack court date because her most recent one or the one last week now since this is airing on Monday, which was a thesis statement for why the new newsletter exists, and I thought it was really well written and lovely. Oh, thank you. And vulnerable and yes, so
Doree Shafrir (02:04):
Thank you.
Elise Hu (02:04):
I guess the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I was asking you how you're doing and I feel like you captured that really, really
Doree Shafrir (02:11):
Well. Yeah, it's funny. So I wrote about feeling like my whole sort of industry and career path has just kind of disappeared, and this was captured by an article in the time in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about Generation X and specifically about Generation X people who had gone into media advertising, graphic design, all those sorts of industries. And it was an article that was shared very extensively amongst my peer group because a lot of us are in our forties and worked in media and almost none of us are still working in media.
Elise Hu (02:56):
Rob texted it to me, he was like, did you see that thing? And I was like, oh, okay. I haven't read it yet, but Rob saw it and was like, oh, this is relevant.
Doree Shafrir (03:04):
Yeah, Rob is squarely in the demographic.
(03:08)
They actually interviewed one of my former coworkers, Steve Kde, who has pivoted to becoming a therapist, our dream, which is very cool. But anyway, I just wrote about how in the past year the whole job market and my financial situation, it's all just been one sort of depressing, humiliating thing after another, and thank God for tennis, truly thank God for tennis. And it's funny because as I was writing this, I was like, does anyone care? Is this obvious? You know what I mean? Those little voices of doubt we're sort of like, but it's really nice to hear you say that. And I also, I've heard from a lot of people who were like, great newsletter, thank you for saying this. I feel the same way. This is what's been going on with me. And so it does feel like it has sort of struck a chord. It's also been interesting to see how many people have taken up tennis, actually taken up tennis for similar reasons in the past few years. I thought of this of my substack as being interesting to people who play tennis, but then also hopefully interesting to people who don't play tennis. But I've been surprised by how many people have been like, I play tennis now,
(04:38)
So I don't dunno.
Elise Hu (04:40):
It's interesting. Tennis is such a great sport to play for the rest of your life, for the rest of your living days. I recently made a podcast about former treasury secretary Lloyd Benson. He died in 2006, but continued to play tennis until his final days, or at least until he was quite sick. And it engages your mind as much as it engages your physical body, which I think is so vital, but also it's social. And so
(05:13)
What made me think of this is that when he was treasury secretary and Alan Greenspan was the Fed Federal Reserve chair, the two of them met for tennis every week, and they did some tennis diplomacy because obviously he was the treasury secretary and then previously the Senate finance chair, and then Greenspan was fed chairman under Clinton, and they are the ones who worked out major deficit reduction bills that then led to the 10 years of prosperity under Clinton, like the Clinton economy and how they talked about, it's the economy stupid and 10 years of growth for the US economy. Some of that was worked out on the tennis court. So it's a tennis story too. That is wild. Yeah. Yeah. So there's so many benefits of it. I'm not saying everybody has to play tennis or anything like that, but it's just a reminder of the multidimensional benefits of the sport, of that sport in
Doree Shafrir (06:15):
Particular. Amen. Yeah. I started working out with a new coach who, I don't know how old he is, but he seems like he might be. He's definitely in his sixties, at least in his sixties. He could be in his seventies. I don't know. He seems older and he is just hitting those tennis balls like nobody's business really. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Elise Hu (06:49):
Yeah. My dad is, is now 80 and we went out and hit balls last year when he was in town and he's like two titanium hips. Maybe he shouldn't be hitting tennis balls with me. Yeah, we don't want him to have a titanium knee too.
Doree Shafrir (07:08):
Yes. Seriously. Well, let's introduce our guest.
Elise Hu (07:14):
Yes.
Doree Shafrir (07:15):
Who I've already
Elise Hu (07:15):
Alluded to because who you have already alluded to such a relevant conversation. Oh my gosh. I didn't think about things like our current political situation, our geopolitical situation, and then how America wound up being so taken by a leader like
Doree Shafrir (07:31):
Donald Trump.
Elise Hu (07:33):
I didn't think of it in this way until our conversation with Jane Borden.
Doree Shafrir (07:36):
Totally, totally. You know what, before we introduce Jane, let me just remind everyone that our website is forever 35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We're also on Instagram at Forever 35 podcast. Our Patreon is at patreon com slash forever 35. Our favorite products are at shop my US slash forever three five. We also have Rachel Goodwin's, Rex on Shop, my and she has some amazing racks on there. If you want to call or text us, you can do that at 7 8 1 5 9 1 0 3 9 0. Email us at Forever 35 podcast@gmail.com. And also we're doing a listener survey right now, and it would really help us out if you could respond. So that link is in our show notes. It's in our Lincoln bio on Instagram. It's on our website. Yeah, that would be super helpful. Elise, do you want to introduce Jane?
Elise Hu (08:33):
Sure. Jane Borden is an author, culture journalist and editor. She contributes regularly to Vanity Fair, has written for the New York Times magazine and the Washington Post among other outlets and her new book, cults Like Us. Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America has just been published by One Signal publishers and her first, I totally meant to do that, was published by Crown. Before all of that, she was a culture editor at Timeout New York. She's also a professional editor, book coach and ghost writer, Jane Liz here in Los Angeles. All right. Here's Jane.
Doree Shafrir (09:15):
Jane, welcome to Forever 35. We are so happy to have you here on the show.
Jane Borden (09:21):
Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Doree Shafrir (09:23):
Let's start by asking the question that we ask all of our guests, which is is there a self-care practice that you have that you want to mention on the show?
Jane Borden (09:35):
Yeah, I ordered some ceremonial grade cacao and I make myself a little high class hot cocoa, and then I sit on my porch and do a little gratitude practice.
Doree Shafrir (09:51):
Oh my gosh. Wait, what is ceremonial cacao?
Jane Borden (09:56):
Well, so chocolate, the industry, the chocolate, big chocolate. Big chocolate is degrading the product same way that you would want fair trade coffee to not have pesticides, that sort of thing. Kind of similar, but you can source and they call it ceremonial grade because people use cacao in ceremonial ways. And so that's a shortcut, I guess, to make sure you're getting high quality product.
Elise Hu (10:26):
Got it. Okay. And are you doing this every day? How often do you have this?
Jane Borden (10:31):
I mean, probably not every day, but I do it a few times a week. I try to do it if I'm going to sit down and if I have a lot of writing to do, I'll try to get centered first by doing that. But anytime that I want to have a little peace or center myself or remind myself the things I'm grateful for, it's nice. Lovely,
Doree Shafrir (10:48):
Lovely. I
Jane Borden (10:49):
Love that. Yeah, high class cocoa.
Doree Shafrir (10:52):
So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Elise Hu (11:03):
Well, the book is Cults Like Us. So just to get started, how do you define a cult and then what inspired you to deep dive into them for the book?
Jane Borden (11:17):
Thank you. Yeah, so the word cult has, the definition has changed quite a bit over the years. Today when people use the word cult, it's a pejorative, and you probably have an image in your head of what one is. The agreed upon definition, at least among the anti cult movement is one that there's a charismatic leader who's worshiped by members of the group that there is undue influence or mind control techniques at play, and that actual harm is being done whether to people within the group or outside of the group.
Doree Shafrir (12:00):
You can think about a lot of organizations that maybe two out of the three are
Elise Hu (12:06):
Accurate that might seem culty or get accused of being culty. People talk about CrossFit being a cult or a lot of modern day gatherings and organizations, but they might be missing, say, a charismatic leader or no outright harm.
Jane Borden (12:23):
Right.
Elise Hu (12:24):
Okay. So what are examples of cults then?
Jane Borden (12:27):
I mean, nex, IM would be one that's considered a cult these days. You usually have to put the word alleged in front if you're ever going to toss around the C word. But the big ones in American history of course include Jonestown, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, heaven's Gate, groups like that. But cults come in all shapes and sizes. I believe a cult leader exists on the spectrum between a domestic abuser and a dictator, and so there's a lot of room within there to experiment. Cults really have looked a million different ways, and sometimes when I was interviewing some religious studies scholars in my research, and they mostly study religion and cults today are mostly secular. And I remember this one guy was saying, where did all the cults go? I'm like, what are you talking about boat? They're here. They're still here. They just, yeah, they're just not religious anymore. Right. They shape shifted. Yes. Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (13:33):
So Jane, as someone who has known you for what, over a decade now, I know you have been interested in cults and religion in particular for a while, but what led you to want to devote a book length project to cults?
Jane Borden (13:51):
Well, I had been reporting on cults for Vanity Fair that started, I guess around 2017. And I was a religious studies major in college, so I've long been interested in the subject of belief and identity as it relates to belief. And it was the 2016 election where, and a lot of other people, I guess who'd been living in a similar bubble realized exactly how divided our nation was. And that made me think of cults because cults feed off of division, and I just started noticing the cult ideas I'd been studying and researching, popping up in American culture, in secular culture. They did seem to be more prevalent in America. And so I started digging around more and it just sort of dawned on me one day like, oh, the puritans and the pilgrims were,
Elise Hu (14:48):
We
Jane Borden (14:49):
Would call them a cult today, or at least a wacky doomsday group.
Elise Hu (14:54):
And is that what makes America and American society today now more than 200 years on still so kind of rife for cult-like behavior or thinking? I mean, why is our country in particular susceptible?
Jane Borden (15:10):
I think it's in our origins and the ideas, the foundational ideas of their doomsday thought didn't go away. They just became American culture. They became the lenses through which we see ourselves and understand our national identity. I mean, the whole idea of being a chosen people, America has long seen itself as the chosen nation, the light bearer, the one to bring justice or democracy or Jesus to the world, exceptionalism exceptional idea.
Elise Hu (15:44):
Right,
Jane Borden (15:45):
Exactly. A hundred percent. That's very cult-like. Everyone knows that America has this problem with exceptionalism, but we aren't pulling the thread further to connect it to the ideas of our cult-like founders. Another idea about America that people are pretty familiar with is the fact that we worship the wealthy in this nation, and that comes from the Puritans. They believed that the best way to glorify God, which is what he wanted us to do in their opinion, was through a calling having a work. It didn't matter what it was, just that you had one and you worked and you worked hard and you worked all the time. And that's how you showed God you loved him. To be clear, pilgrims and puritans were a generous society, and there was a lot of talk on the way over here about how you're going to, when we get there, you're going to give your money to your neighbor even if you know it's not going to be paid back. But these ideas got twisted over time because if you believe that hard work is a way to love God, then if you're making money, that's a way to prove you're working hard. And if you're making money, that's a way to prove that God is rewarding you in turn. And slowly over time, these ideas got twisted and it didn't take long. I mean, one of the early Puritan ministers was quoted saying that religion begot prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.
(17:12)
And so we see this obviously everywhere today, and this is not the first time the Gilded age post during the industrial revolution with the robber barons was a time of great wealth. And Rockefeller was known for saying that he got his money from God. So what's dangerous about that idea is not just that it's problematic to worship rich people, but the inverse of that suggests that poor people are sinners, that God assessed them and deemed them unworthy. And so why help them? Because sin should be punished.
Doree Shafrir (17:47):
Wow. Yeah. So your book is kind of structured around these seven puritan credos that you argue are at the heart of American culture, and I wanted to highlight two of them. One is our innate desire for a strong man to fix our problems and punish those who grieve us. And another is knee jerk. And I think it's pretty obvious that both of these speak to our current moment
Jane Borden (18:21):
Apocalyptic, which is just end time thinking. It's just a fancy word for believing that the end is near. Apocalyptic is almost a salve. So when people are persecuted, they turn to these ideas because they think, boy, life is shitty, but guess what? We're going to be on top in the end. God loves us, not people who have your feet on our necks. You're going to burn in hell one day. And so inherent in that is this idea of rescue. We're looking for a savior, we're looking for salvation. And the Book of Revelation in particular, which is the last book in the Bible, although it was never supposed to be in the Bible, that's a whole other long story because it's wackadoodle. And even at the time when the Bible was canonized, scholars were like, this is wackadoodle. At any rate, it's that fire and brimstone story of I say that Jesus comes down and swipes everyone left or right.
(19:27)
And even before that, even before the great judgment, just mass death and destruction all over the globe, the Puritans were obsessed with this story. They loved it. And so this story is that narrative of salvation. It's that idea of we can't save ourselves. We are under threat, we're downtrodden. What if this loner comes out of nowhere and is our savior? And we see that story in Western, in the western genre. We see it in superhero stories, we see it, it's even its jaws, it's death Wish, the Jack Preacher series. I mean, there's three movies coming out this month that follow this trope, and it's been called the American Monomyth by a couple of really cool scholars I like. But at any rate, and so this is the story of the autocrat. Basically, we're looking for someone to come in and the way that the community is saved is always through violence and it's precise violence. Only the bad guys get killed. Everyone who's good is saved and therefore it's righteous violence and therefore it's cleansing violence. We have autocratic fantasies in this nation. And when stuff gets scary and dark here in moments of crisis, that's when we turn toward that kind of autocratic fantasy and it's happening now.
Elise Hu (20:53):
So if we are so susceptible to this sort of narrative, this sort of autocratic fantasy as you describe, does history point to any way out?
Jane Borden (21:04):
In my opinion, the way out is to mitigate the crisis. So people are not going to grasp at false promises from demagogues and self-styled autocrats as they are currently, as we are currently if they're not in crisis. And in my opinion, the biggest crisis of the day, well obviously climate change, but specifically affecting this social crisis arena is income inequality. People in America are chronically, and this has been building since Reagan really. And because we worship the wealthy, we're letting them take all the money. We've let them, we have let them take all the money, they control the government. Now, this is a plutocracy, and I think there's a lot of things that need to be done, obviously, but none of it's going to stick if we don't resource people and deal with the wealth gap.
Elise Hu (22:04):
If you are kind of caught up in this kind of situation, whether it's a religion or a more name brand cult in the past, what have you learned about individuals and the individuals sort of resilience or ability to break free?
Jane Borden (22:25):
People who leave cults or who break free of Q anon, they talk about this slow returning of critical thinking skills that had been quieted by the undue influence. And it's a very slow process and people really have to wake up on their own. And so you hear people say, don't argue with someone in a cult. Don't argue with someone who believes.
Elise Hu (22:56):
Is that right? Is that what we should do? Say you meet, I don't know, somebody of a particular religion that might seem cult-like, are you just supposed to say, okay, those are your beliefs?
Jane Borden (23:05):
Yeah, yeah. The advice is to ask questions and to share stories and try to keep them talking because it's not about the ideas. And the more you can get someone talking, the more they'll start their critical thinking skills will start to return. But you also, people have to be unplugged from the charismatic leader as well. The MINDBODY connection is strong and people have physical responses.
Doree Shafrir (23:36):
Jane, you mentioned the charismatic leader. I'm wondering which of the cults or cult leaders that you wrote about, did you find the most fascinating
Jane Borden (23:48):
And aren't they fascinating? We're so interested in these stories. I think they're titillating because to some degree we want to join them. And I also think we watch them. We want to figure out how to make sure we don't join them.
(24:05)
But I really like the story of the oneidas bunch of kids in the, well, not kids, but in the mid to late 19th century living together in a big mansion, just having sex with each other. They thought that was going to bring 'em closer to Jesus. They thought they were literally bringing down new Jerusalem themselves. So at the end of the revelation story, that's the deliverance is that new Jerusalem descends from the sky and the people who are still alive get to live in it forever with God. And so by the mid to late 19th century, they were like, well, it's probably not going to be a literal city made of white gold and jasper, or whatever it is. The gates are pearls. Everyone's familiar with that one. But they were like, but it still exists, and in fact, we don't have to wait for God to bring it to us. We can create it ourselves. And so they thought that's what they were doing. The leader John Humphrey Noyes thought he had literally brought heaven to earth in his community. And data he cited was that no one in the community had died yet. Of course, it had only been a few years. But yeah, they were an interesting one that I would've at least liked to visit.
Elise Hu (25:28):
Okay. Let's take a break and we will be right back. Based on all of your research and your expertise about cults and cult-like organizations now, is there anything you're sort of watching for that could end up being a cult?
Jane Borden (25:50):
Any zeitgeisty community or movement gets labeled as culty today, which fair? Right,
Elise Hu (26:00):
Like multilevel marketing schemes, they often get,
Jane Borden (26:06):
I would say remove the why from the word culty. I mean, they're just straight up cults in my opinion. But although I guess it depends on how much the leader is worshiped, that would be the signifier there. But to that point, when these groups do tip over into dangerous territory is when there's some kind of power grab by a charismatic person. There's nothing inherent about a group of like-minded fanatics that's going to lead them towards sexual or financial abuse. It's the usually narcissist at the top who becomes corrupted by power. Power is insatiable. You can never have enough. You just want more and more and more. And that's how things escalate in cults and always end in violence if power is allowed to continue consuming everything in its path.
Doree Shafrir (27:06):
Wow. Jane, can you talk about how loneliness and social isolation can lead to the proliferation of cults and cult-like
Jane Borden (27:17):
Behavior? Social media has isolated us from one another and from our communities, of course, in some ways it connects us. It's not totally black and white, but the algorithms as we know are less interested in developing actual connection and more interested in keeping us engaged, which they do by feeding us extreme content so people can become isolated without actually moving into the woods. In a commune, a cult can be comprised of members all over the nation or globe who happen to connect on whatever the one extreme idea is. And in general, it's this kind of division and isolation that fuels cults. Isolation as a force affects the trajectory of a group. And so it's not just that groups tend toward violence after they become isolated. It's that the isolation itself is often what leads to the violence because we just start yessing each other. We lose our filters when we're not engaging in the outside world, there's more ingroup, outgroup thinking.
(28:42)
And we evolved as a species to be very sensitive to ingroup outgroup thinking because for most of the species, the history of our species and our closest relatives before us, basically if an outsider showed up, they were looking to kill you almost always. And you were also going out and looking for other groups to attack and kill. We weren't just hanging out in our separate tribes live and let live. It was very much about conquering one another. And that's because they've studied this behavior in chimpanzees, and that's for a very simple reason. You want more land, you get more resources. And we evolved to band together and cooperate with anyone who's in our in-group. And studies have shown that the more extreme the ideas are within a group, the more brand loyalty because it makes your group that much more distinct from others and therefore identifiable as a
Elise Hu (29:43):
Group. That would explain kind of the polarization too, or the allure of more extremist politics.
Jane Borden (29:50):
When people are divided, they're easier to conquer. I think that also goes within the self when we are divided within ourselves, and this is the separation between the mind and the body. Or often cult leaders encourage their followers to silence their intuitions or their guts, that that's some kind of wrong thinking. And this is an effort, in my opinion, to conquer it's division. As I say again and again, fuels, cults and a variety of definitions of that word division.
Elise Hu (30:25):
So for those of us who are kind of watching what's happening and despairing about it and kind of standing outside cults or what seems like a modern day political cult, how should we respond? What if you are a loved one? What if we're sort of looking at this on the outside looking in and aghast?
Jane Borden (30:45):
Yeah, cutting people out of your life is not the answer, even though it's tempting. Keeping open channels of communication when we're specifically talking about loved ones or friends. So that person knows that you're there and they can talk to you if they ever do start questioning and they won't feel judged by you.
(31:13)
And then also, as I said earlier, just to get people talking to asking questions about their ideas. Well, tell me about that. Why do you believe that? Sometimes they will start to hear themselves, the more they try to explain things, but explaining things to them, no, does not work, never, ever. As I mentioned, I think we all need to work toward a more financially equitable country. And obviously that's a big lift right now because there's not a lot of political will. But in the meantime, I mean this may sound hackneyed, but mutual aid acts of kindness within your community because our government's not looking out for us anymore. It's really on us, and it's a way for us to turn toward one another. Tangibly.
Doree Shafrir (32:06):
Jane, I asked you this question last night and your response was so fascinating that I want to ask you again, but what did you leave on the cutting room floor for this book?
Jane Borden (32:16):
Oh yeah. What
Doree Shafrir (32:18):
Didn't you get to put in
Jane Borden (32:20):
A lot of fun little silly things that I found when I was going down research rabbit holes. There was one big story that I had to cut altogether, which I'm still sad about. The Cult Awareness Network, which was a big and somewhat splashy organization. This was in the eighties and nineties, 1980s and nineties are now known as the Cult Wars. And this was when groups like the Moonies and Scientology suddenly had incredible power and money and parents who were losing their children to these groups were freaking out and they were looking for information. And so this organization, a Can Cult Awareness network became like a help desk, like a hotline you could call 'em. And people in the anti cult movement who were studying these organizations could share advice and information about specific groups or just about cult-like thinking in general, kind of as we've done today. And also at the time, deprogramming was somewhat popular as a last resort for desperate parents. And another word for deprogramming is kidnapping. I mean, people would trick with the parents.
(33:45)
The parents were part of the scheme, and they would convince their child, oh, come home and do laundry, or Can you come have lunch? Grandpa's coming over some way to get the kid into a space. And then the kid arrives, and guess what? The windows are barred and they're tied to a chair while an exit counselor tries to talk them out of the cult. This one guy, alright, I'm getting ahead of myself. So the fatal flaw of the Cult Awareness Network is that they brokered one of these deals and when it went awry, this guy, Jason Scott, was kidnapped in a van, roughed up, it was not pretty, and they took him into this safe house, locked him inside, and after a while, he tricked them into believing that he was being deprogramming deprogrammed, that it was successful. And then he fled and went to the police. Everybody got arrested, there was a big trial and they lost. And the Cult Awareness Network ended up having to file for bankruptcy and in the sale of their assets, the name and all their assets and everything was purchased by Scientology. And so then if you were a desperate parent calling for advice about Scientology, the people who answered the phone
Elise Hu (35:12):
We're Scientologists.
Jane Borden (35:15):
Yeah.
Elise Hu (35:16):
Whoa.
Jane Borden (35:18):
That's pretty sneaky,
Elise Hu (35:21):
Man. Isn't that nuts? That's wild. That is wild. Well, thank you so much for sharing the extra stories with us and just taking the sort of big picture view on what's happening in this moment. It's helped make sense of things for us as we've been trying to navigate our way through.
Jane Borden (35:44):
And that's all I can hope for. Obviously, I hope your listeners will want to buy the book, like to continue having a career, but mostly I'm trying to reveal how the magic trick works. You know what I mean? I want the more people who can understand this and then start to see it where it's hiding in plain sight and then start to acknowledge it and call it out, the less likely we're all going to be successfully exploited by bad actors who use our latent indoctrination to activate us to serve their own ends.
Doree Shafrir (36:21):
Alright,
Jane Borden (36:23):
Well, Jane, done?
Doree Shafrir (36:25):
Yeah. Where can our listeners find you?
Jane Borden (36:28):
Janeborden.com and I'm on Instagram at Jane Borden. The books available everywhere.
Elise Hu (36:35):
Fantastic.
Jane Borden (36:36):
Thanks.
Elise Hu (36:39):
Well,
Doree Shafrir (36:40):
Jane was delightful.
Elise Hu (36:43):
Yeah. I'm glad that you got to talk to her twice too. You got to do her book event.
Doree Shafrir (36:46):
Yes. Super fun. That was fun
Elise Hu (36:48):
Conversation and it helped inform our conversation with her.
Doree Shafrir (36:51):
Yes, yes. Okay. Last week I was talking about spring cleaning slash vacation. No progress on the vacation front, but I have made some progress on spring cleaning. I got rid of, Henry had two strollers, one enormous tanklike, one, and then a travel stroller. And they'd just been living in our vestibule forever. And I gave them away on buy nothing end of an era. It was very, very satisfying. So yeah, so I want to just continue that momentum. Yeah. Alright. And then this week I have my DC trip, so yeah, I'm just going to try and have fun and enjoy time with family.
Elise Hu (37:47):
Yeah, that was my intention last week. My intention was lots of family time before I headed out of town for the TED Conference. And I did have a weekend full of family because my parents are staying with us and the girls had lots of activities. Luna had her eighth birthday, and so we did lots of eighth birthday festivities, hosted her first sleepover. That was so much fun. And the girls came up with their own Luna and her friends, not my children, but Luna and her friends came up with their own scavenger hunts in the front house and the back house and in the yard. And they wrote clues. And so it was lots of just free play and creativity.
Doree Shafrir (38:30):
Yeah, that's
Elise Hu (38:31):
Awesome. On display, which was awesome. And then Ava had her first middle school dance, which went very well. I will have to share on a casual chat all my observations about that next time. Oh yeah, I should have asked you about
Doree Shafrir (38:44):
That on the last casual chat.
Elise Hu (38:46):
We didn't even get to talk about it because so much has happened at Tech. I know, I
Doree Shafrir (38:49):
Know, I know. Oh my
Elise Hu (38:51):
Gosh. But we'll have to catch up about that next time. Yes, yes. And so family time, yes. Achievement unlocked that happened. And so my intention this week is going to be just really, I guess I'll set the intention as attention. So just really being present and giving who I'm with, the attention that they deserve. Because especially at these really scattered huge events with lots and lots of people, it's very easy to get distracted and just be like a whirling dervish and fl about. And I think attention is the way to actually is a really great antidote for that. So attention will be my intention.
Doree Shafrir (39:41):
I love that. Alright, well Elise, great to see you as always. Thanks everyone for listening. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everyone.
Elise Hu (40:00):
Talk to you next time.
Doree Shafrir (40:01):
Bye.