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Built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use. Helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear path to your best work. Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 Co-Pilot. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. We are coming to the end of the year and it has been a really big season for our podcast. So before we graduate, before we move on to our next season, we want to take a little look back. And we're going to do that in today's episode High School Yearbook Style. So people from across our podcast team are going to pick an episode and give it a superlative. You remember those, right? Things like most like it is succeed or biggest class clown. If I was going to get a superlative for this episode, it would probably be most likely to have a seasonal head cold and sound like his nose is stuffed up because it is. Okay, so this episode, this is that. This is the superlative episode. And these superlatives are going to be bestowed by folks who work on this show, who produce it, who fact check it and keep it going. We've even got a previous podcast guest, poet Naysha Randhar, who's going to share her own superlative pick. I am going to get out of the way. So you're going to hear the voices of members of our team. And then after they tell you which episode they picked for a superlative, you'll hear an excerpt from that episode. I want to also note that some superlatives were so popular that multiple people wanted to share their episode pick for that same superlative. So you will have to listen to the whole episode to find out which superlative wins most popular superlative, which is itself, of course, a superlative. Okay, that is more than enough for me. Let's get started with Laney Lot, our audience marketing associate. And Laney has an episode on which she would like to bestow this superlative, most likely to make you rethink your place in the world. Here's Laney. The episode with Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolzwepper made me rethink my place in the world by rooting the concept of belief and spirituality back into just believing in other people and believing in the good and other people. It's not that often that I see spirituality represented in a light-hearted or like more logical way. So this conversation was refreshing to help me feel more hopeful about what it can mean to build a spiritual community and be a spiritual person. And that it's really just about treating other people with sincere kindness. And it's humbling and just brings me a lot of peace to think about my purpose as being to just be kind to others and help others. And it's really just that simple. And also their conversation is also very interesting because Nadia has had a fascinating life and has a lot of cool mini lessons that can help you just have a little more faith. A lot of people think they don't have faith because they don't think, oh, I don't think Jesus was really alive after he was dead, right? Therefore I don't have faith. And I'm like, oh my god, you definitely have faith in a million ways. And it doesn't have to do with, do you think that this story is medically factual? Is there a resurrection in your life? Have you have stories of feeling like something was dead and now it's alive? That's a form of faith. And so to say to people, well, the only way to have faith is to say that medically, Jesus was dead and then three days later he was alive. You know, it's like way to drain all of the meaning and mystery and power out of what faith really is is to say that's what it is. My name is Michelle Quint and I am a story editor on how to be a better human. And my pick for most inspiring story is Edith Zimmerman. I found Edith's story really quietly, surprisingly inspiring. I think she'd probably be the first to tell you that her story is nothing super unique. Many people get sober, but the way she approached it, which was so open and honest and vulnerable, it felt really brave and unique. And the root of what I found so inspiring was not the sobriety per se, but rather the idea that you can always make big personal changes if you are willing to look at yourself and your life clearly and honestly. I feel like maybe I come across as really honest, but I think there's been times in my life where there's just entire situations that I can't even look at. And only later can I be like, okay, eventually I was able to be honest about them, but in the moment they're just way too big. And I don't even know, maybe I'm going through one of them now and I can't not to be mysterious, but sometimes I can't even look at it. But anyway, so I was like a very, I don't know, medium problematic drinker for a long time. For probably seven years I knew I was like, this is not good, but I can't really handle this right now, because I'm just not equipped and then one day I was and then I stopped drinking. Hi, my name is Nisha Rambar. I am the Dallas Youth poet laureate and my nomination for the category, most likely to help you rethink your place in the world, is Clint Smith. Clint in this episode discusses the intersectionality of identities and the inheritance of often brutal pasts interlaced with tragedy and the guilt and complicity that comes with that and the consequence of being American and having this contradictory identity because while there is this past that is so heavy and awful, there is also so much progress and resilience to celebrate as people. He argues that there are both, which I think lots of people are scared to accept because they want to see this golden standard of what it means to be American, which isn't always true. And he talks about the extraordinary importance of dealing with the past truthfully and recognizing both the shame and the pride of what it means to be American and in any history. I think part of my project is to ask us to hold all of the both and in this of what it means to be human in the context of our personal lives in the context of our identities and the context of our history because I think that is the most perhaps central element of being human is accepting that we are a bundle of contradictions. Like there are values that I have. There are things that I believe I hold firmly and I am cognizant of the way that I fall short of those values every single day. I don't think that makes me a bad person. I think that makes me a person who's reflecting on the fact that, okay, well, I say I care about this or I say this matters to me or I say I'm not the kind of person who does this. And today I feel short of those things. My hope is that every day we wake up and try to get a little bit closer to the version of ourselves that we want to be relative to the version of ourselves that we are. That's like an ongoing practice. It's not necessarily trying to cross a finish line but a recognition that this is an ongoing part of like what it means to be alive. We're going to have a lot more sufferlatives and we are going to have a lot more clips picked by members of our podcast team. But first, we got to pay those team member salaries. So we're going to take a quick ad break and then we will be right back. With over 50 years experience at Fidelity, we believe there's a difference between investing and being invested. Make the most of your annual allowances before the 5th of April with our expert insights, excellent service and wealth of investment options so you can feel confident about your future. For ISIS, pensions or advice, be invested with Fidelity. Go to Fidelity.co.uk. Your capital is at risk terms apply. Tired of the, I know it's here somewhere moment. The new ScanSnap IX 2400 scanner means you'll never search for a receipt again. Our simplest ScanSnap experience yet. Just press the blue button and instantly convert documents into digital files you can find in seconds. Perfect for busy professionals who need organization without complexity. With instant one touch scanning, 45 pages per minute speed, an automatic data extraction, the IX 2400 saves your files exactly where you need them. No more mystic spence claims or lost warranties. Just peace of mind knowing everything important is safe and instantly accessible. Ready to stop wasting time hunting for paperwork? Visit scansnapit.com slash podcast and discover how simple document management can be. ScanSnap. The smarter way to work. Maltese's bunnies, they're back. But like a hot person on an escalator going the other way, they're not here for long. They're a temporary thrill. Like those two days you were a morning person or a bank holiday or that TV show that criminally only got one season. Or even that 24 hour post where your bum looked out ragiously good. Some treats you just have to enjoy while they last. Maltese's bunnies here but only for Easter. Maltese's look on the light side. On today's episode we're hearing from members of the HaddaBea better human team about the episodes that they loved and what yearbook's superlative they would give them. So up next we have Mateus Salas and Mateus is going to be presenting the category of most inspiring story. Hello I'm Mateus Salas, fat chapter for the bread and home and podcast and I think the story that really stayed with me this year was Sean Sherman's episode. There's just something so powerful about the way he's reclaiming food traditions. Not just his recipes or ingredients but as a very way of healing, rebuilding community and I think restoring pride. And perhaps what struck me most is how his work turns food into something much deeper. While listening to him I kept thinking this is not just about cooking. It's like about remembering who you are, where you come from and finally hoping that connection. So listening to this was fantastic for me. I just feel like food is something really powerful and food sovereignty is what we really push towards because if we can get tribes to really consider that there is a path to control their own food, to be able to grow their own food, to harvest their own food, to preserve their own food, to make more than enough food for their entire community with the spaces that they have and even in all the different environments all over the United States. There's plenty of ways to work towards that and I think that if we can control our food we can really control the power that we have for our future. And so I just really hope people can see that we can learn so much from our ancestors because we're not trying to create food that's a museum piece and trying to go backwards to 1491 of what we're eating long before European settlers showed up. We're looking at the future of like how can we adopt a lot of the knowledge base from our ancestors? Apply that to what we know today and how do we think about the future because we have every every single day we're alive we can think about changing the future. Hi I'm Daniela Valareso I'm an executive producer at TED and I'm nominating Heney F. Durakib and Sarah Kay for most likely to make you feel your feels and yes as an executive producer I did come up with that superlative category and I do feel tumulennial about it. I'm so sorry to everybody but I'm nominating Heney F. Durakib because we had them on the show together for a very special video series on YouTube and I knew that I would get a little teary-eyed but I was really surprised us to how deeply I felt their words in my heart. The way that I've grown up I've moved around a lot and so I feel like I belong to a lot of places. I was born in La Paz in Mexico but I was raised in El Paso, Texas and I've been living in Brooklyn, New York for almost nine years so I have always struggled to define what home is and so I mean even Sarah really helped me see and celebrate what belonging and community could look and feel like just learning how to forge community and thinking deeply about the people that you claim and that claim you feels so important right now. I think this is the time where we need solidarity, we need neighborliness, we need to feel belonging. So that's why I felt my feels with them as millennial as it sounds and I will never say that phrase again I think. Nothing brings me more joy than sitting in the passenger seat while Heney f drives around the city of Columbus picking up his dry cleaning, going to the bakery, dropping off some package to a friend that got delivered to his house because the friend was out of town and while we're driving, Heney f is pointing out personal landmarks around the city like there's the basketball court I used to play on when I was a kid and then over there is the smaller basketball court where the younger siblings were relegated when the older kids wanted to play on the big court and over there is where I had a really bad date one time and then over there is where like the best milkshake is and I have this great awe and this great respect for the way Heney f loves his hometown and how it's not abstract to him. He loves people there. He loves the elders that live on his block. He loves the high school students that he mentors and who mentor him back. He loves the guys who work at the record store and remember what he bought last time so that when he comes in next time they have something to recommend him and the way that he moves through that place looks like what I imagine you are looking for. When you are looking for an example of how to be in community. Hi my name is Tanseka Sangmani Wong and I am the podcast publishing and programming specialist at head. My pick for the best motivator to get you to do xy and z is Bonnie Soy. How to use your muscles or wrist losing them. I remember when she said in your 30s you start losing bone and muscle mass so you need to ask yourself who do you want to be and what do you want to be capable of doing in your 40s 50s 60s 70s and beyond. It was scary to hear him but it resonated. As an Asian American I am at a higher risk to get osteoporosis so Bonnie's episode motivated me to join a gym, live weights, build strength and regain some functional mobility. I couldn't help but over the course of writing this book start to think of muscle as a philosophy where there are all these characteristics of muscle that are the tangible stuff. Strength and form and action that it is the stuff that actually moves us and flexibility and endurance and these are not just qualities of muscle but they are qualities that we strive for in personhood and I think that's very moving that's very profound and so to kind of like think about the body as not just this vehicle we occupy for a certain period of time on earth but it is something that if we think about in a certain way it elevates like who we want it to be in the world. So muscle is something that you can only get stronger you can only strengthen a muscle by stressing it by pushing it by challenging it and that's something that I think we all understand. We can look at life as something that always is stressing us as always throwing these challenges at us and it's just a really good life lesson. We're going to take another quick ad break and then we will be right back with many more life lessons. Tired of the I know it's here somewhere moment the new scan snap ix 2400 scanner means you'll never search for a receipt again. Our simplest scan snap experience yet just press the blue button and instantly convert documents into digital files you can find in seconds perfect for busy professionals who need organization without complexity with instant one touch scanning 45 pages per minute speed and automatic data extraction the ix 2400 saves your files exactly where you need them. No more mystic spence claims or lost warranties just peace of mind knowing everything important is safe and instantly accessible ready to stop wasting time hunting for paperwork visit scan snapit.com slash podcast and discover how simple document management can be scan snap the smarter way to work. Maltese's bunnies they're back but like a hot person on an escalator going the other way they're not here for long they're a temporary thrill like those two days you were a morning person or a bank holiday or that TV show that criminally only got one season or even that 24 hour post where your bum looked outrageously good some treats you just have to enjoy while they last Maltese's bunnies here but only for Easter Maltese's look on the light side we get it making tax digital can sometimes feel daunting but with zero's hmrc recognize software you quickly get to feeling confident if you're a sold trader or landlord whose income tax is going digital not only is zero mtd ready it also gives you better control of your finances like having the clear financial visibility you need every quarter to avoid end-of-year tax surprises change the way you see mtd search mtd ready with zero today we are rewarding some of our guests of this past year with the very prestigious awards we all know and love your books superlatives lazy lot and mtd salis are two members of the better human team who you heard from earlier but they're also both overachievers so they nominated multiple episodes they are going head-to-head in this next superlative because they both made a pick for the category of most likely to improve your life tomorrow so let's hear from them both and then you can decide which episode you think should take the crown who deserves the superlative here's Laney so when i listened to that episode with Dave natelberg and Neil cathar how to reclaim your cring i really felt a lot better about the many cringy cringy cringy cringy cringy cringy cringy stories helped me kind of spin the narrative on my own cringy moments and look at them with kinder eyes and see them to be a little funnier and more endearing plus this episode really made me want to journal more just to try and make myself laugh so it was a quick perspective shift to keep me from laying awake thinking about something i did 10 years ago that wasn't embarrassing i think one of the things that is really fun and mortified is that the things that a kid wants isn't necessarily any different than what an adult wants the big difference is that the kid has less information and so we are often i often call teenage hood the sort of the first day on the job of being an adult and the training's been really bad there's been really poor training and so a lot of the things that we that we that we laugh at and enjoy but also relate to so much is just someone operating without a manual and in a weird way that's why they're keeping their journal and it's also why we root for them hello i'm a toil salis fact checker for the better heroine forecast and my pick for this one the easiest thing to improve your life tomorrow is a new self's episode mostly because of something he said that i just can forget like catching yourself in the act of subjective existence that idea really hit me and since listening to it i've actually tried like just stopping for a second in the middle of the day perhaps while making coffee or walking outside and noticing the feeling of the air or a tiny emotion that's in by and in that moment you realize that all of this everything you see and feel it's like your brain making sense of the world it's such a small shift but it makes they feel completely different things become a little more vivid you become a little more present you're in your own life and it's beautiful and honestly it's changed how i moved through my days the brain makes this best guess about what's happening in the world by continually making predictions about the sensory signals that it's getting and then instead of just reading out the sensory signals to sort of form this inner picture of the world the brain is continually updating the predictions so they explain away the sensory signals that are coming in and the key idea here is that what we experience in this story is the contents of these inside out predictions we don't read out the world from the outside in we always actively construct it actively generate it from the inside out now it turns out if you do all the maths and all this stuff that if you have a brain which is continually updating its top down inside out predictions to minimize the sensory signals that are coming in to try and explain them predict them before they happen that mathematically is a very very good way for the brain to approximate exactly what caused the sensory signals out there in the world it's a very good way to make a best guess and that's the claim that's what we experience and that's why I call it a controlled hallucination which is a term i you know like called good analogies i like the idea because it emphasizes that our experiences come largely from within so that's the hallucination part hi this is tansuka sangmani wong podcast publishing and programming specialist at third my pick for the biggest perspective shifter is debi milman and her take on personal branding it seems like every time i open up a social media app there are tons of influencers and content creators and people monetizing their hobbies everywhere everyone wants to be a brand yet debi argues that maybe we shouldn't because brands are manufactured and once we see ourselves as brands we become a commodity and lose the essence that makes us human i loved hearing debi starts and how it's a reminder that not everything has to be a brand when people ask me about personal branding because i do so much work in branding that's inevitably a question and i've thought about it long and hard and brands are manufactured it's meaning manufactured humans are living breathing and today's where it species and we're messy and we change and evolve or at least one would hope that we do we grow and brands are not self directed they're only directed by humans some are some humans are better than others in that direction and in their intention but what i suggest that humans work on is building their character and building their reputation and building their body of work and doing those three things will help create or communicate really your persona and your intentions and who you are but the minute we begin to see ourselves as brands we become a commodity and i find that really unfortunate and a little bit sad hi my name is nisha i am the Dallas youth poet laureate and my nomination for the category biggest perspective shifter is catherin may and her episode on wintering i love this episode so much because what she's saying seems to be so obvious yet i don't think most of the people that i know and especially not me fully comprehended this concept which is to say no one actually rests enough and takes the time that they need to recover and gives themselves grace like for example she says there's a really profound belief that we fail if we winter whereas actually if you think about it for just a few moments it's entirely obvious that it's normal and she's right it's so obvious that this need for rest is interultiping human and the wintering or the hibernation the peace that's key to recovering and healing and the coming better my favorite part is when she talks about how resistance the pain causes us the most suffering and if we were to just take the time to winter we would actually be able to be alive to the pain but also heal from that and be more alive to other things like beauty and happiness and good things with our lives that was a really profound episode for me and completely blew my mind there's a really profound belief that we fail if we winter whereas actually if you think about it for just a few moments it's entirely obvious that it's normal you know we can't live a whole life without having someone dear to us die we can't live a whole life without getting sick we rarely get to live a whole life without losing a job for example i mean there are so many different things that can happen and yet quite often when we see them happen to other people we do this little trick of the mind that says okay so why is that there fault like what would I have done differently and i still catch myself doing it and that you know it's protective isn't it like we just don't want to think that that kind of horror is possible but then of course when it visits us we are left with no toolkit to process what's happening and of course guilt is inevitably the thing that comes up first of all because we do seem to be like a very guilt-laden species in first place and we we don't allow ourselves any other exit route really and finally to close out this episode Michelle Quint is back and she's sharing her winter for the superlative most shared tidbit and i have to agree this is a tidbit that i have shared a lot as well here is Michelle my pick for the most shared tidbit i learned from the show this year goes to ingridly because i've been telling absolutely anyone who will listen how the minimalism movement has made us all feel sad and how our brains respond really positively to bright colors repeating patterns and just how generally we should be trying to bring more color into our lives and after listening to this episode i went out and bought a very bright multi-color chair and have been trying to wear more colors and patterns in my day to day life and have been trying to spread the gospel far and wide so thanks ingrid what i was trying to understand was what makes these things specifically joyful and it's understanding that there are sensorial qualities to those joyful things that are repeatable that we can find throughout cultures all over the planet so things like bright color round shapes a sense of abundance and multiplicity as a feeling of lightness or elevation repeating patterns and it's that level of abstraction of being able to understand what is the essence that's actually making this joyful from a neuroscient different perspective that allows us to then say okay well what's really doing the work of creating the joy is the repetition not necessarily the polka dots it's the repetition of the circular shape and those two things together are what's creating that feeling of joy and so we can apply that idea somewhere else and it doesn't necessarily have to feel so so literal that is it for this episode of how to be a better human thank you so much to all of the guests we had on this season i am your host chris duffy and you can find out more for me including information about my book humor me which comes out on january 6th and is all about how to laugh more you could pre-order that now and find info at chrisduffycomedy.com how to be a better human is put together by a team who are all superlatively superlative to work with on the ten side we've got the extremely likely to succeed danielabalorezo bandman chang michelle quint clowie shashar brooks valentina bohanini lani lat tansega soon mani vong and tonia lay and joseph de brine this episode was fact checked by the most likely to correct an error duo of julie edicerson and miteus salis on the prx side we've got audio prom kings and audio prom queens morgan flanery norgill patrick grant and jostlen gansales thanks again to you for listening the best listener superlative goes to you please share this episode with a person who you would want to have signed your yearbook and that is it for this season of how to be a better human i would say have a great summer but it is the middle of winter so instead i will say stay warm and we'll catch you next year thanks for listening i'm gonna go blow my nose tired of the i know it's here somewhere moment the new scan snap ix 2400 scanner means you'll never search for a receipt again our simplest scan snap experience yet just press the blue button and instantly convert documents into digital files you can find in seconds perfect for busy professionals who need organization without complexity with instant one touch scanning 45 pages per minute speed and automatic data extraction the ix 2400 saves your files exactly where you need them no more mystic spence claims or lost warranties just peace of mind knowing everything important is safe and instantly accessible ready to stop wasting time hunting for paperwork visit scan snap it dot com slash podcast and discover how simple document management can be scan snap the smarter way to work right flights booked hotel sorted are we driving to the airport no thanks i'm going with stan uh who stan stan sterdex press silly tickets are from just nine pounds ninety one way if we book in advance and it only takes 48 minutes from london awesome oh that may worry then yeah i use them when i went to see petro oh yeah wait what stan sterdex press it's faster by train average journey time of 48 minutes between london Liverpool street and stan said airport season sees apply what if you could feel more confident finally go after that promotion and feel great about inspiring other women it all starts by recognising your worth and talking about your wins with confidence that's why galaxy chocolate has created the unhumble project in partnership with the charity young women's trust to bring you free confidence training get the pleasure you deserve from the incredible things you do take the training today search galaxy chocolate the unhumble project i'm pretty sure this isn't how you make eminent cookie dough trust me yellow just one spoonful of mixture it's into the oven you go the oven red baking your friends isn't the best recipe oh try these new m&m's cookie dough instead new m&m's cookie dough flavor no baking needed m&m's it's more fun together
