You’re Not Being Buried, You’re Being Planted with Dr. Pardis Mahdavi

One of the greatest things about being a medical anthropologist is that we get to study the patterns and we get to study the formation of new cultures. So one of the things people ask me all the time is—

Hey everyone, my name is Pete Ferrari. Welcome to the Super Self Podcast Series. Today we have Dr. Pardis Mahdavi with us. She is a medical anthropologist. She's a coach. She's an author. The list goes on. She describes herself as a recovering academic and a mystic cowgirl, which we've got to dive into at some point. She's got a master's and a doctorate from Columbia. They wouldn't even let me cut the fucking grass at Columbia with my UConn state school education. So, super impressive. She's been on boards of directors. She's on boards of directors. The list is as long as my arm. She's written books. The list is long as my arm. She's been a provost and a dean at colleges and universities. The list is long as my arm. She's got a couple of TEDx's out there, one of which in particular I think should be mandatory watch for every college student in America. It is incredibly poignant. I learned a ton, and it was so refreshing. And today we're also going to learn a ton. There's no— there's just no doubt about it. We've got— we've got a long way to go in this life, and she's going to help us navigate. So— Thank you. Pardis, thank you so much for being here.

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for such a warm welcome, for such a terrific introduction, Pete. It's an absolute honor to be here on your show today. Thank you.

Oh, this is gonna— this is gonna be super fun. I'll tell you, when I was researching— research is like one of my favorite parts of these podcasts because I get to learn about people and their lineage, and it's often about their childhoods as well, which is fantastic. My research with you is gonna go one of two ways. I was either gonna get super depressed and dive into the fetal position, or I was gonna get wicked inspired and wanna slay dragons. You'll be happy to know I went out looking for dragons.

Yay! We love hearing that.

Hell yeah. It made me feel so powerful, all the shit you've done, and really your tenure and the way you've been able to navigate. I mean, you've been through some stuff as it relates to your home country and otherwise, and the way you've been able to navigate and the way you've been able to persevere and succeed I mean, it's, it's just a testament to nothing short of inner strength, but obviously combined with that intellect.

Thank you so much. I mean, I have to tell you, I'm like, you're making me blush. I just, I feel so fortunate to be able to have this conversation with you. I mean, it's, it's, it's so hard to, you know, think, oh gosh, you know, we have to go through so many things in order to learn all these lessons, and yet these lessons are So valuable, especially at a time when the world is changing the way it is.

It's— you're so right. I wouldn't trade the journey for anything, even the ups and the downs, right? I'm more of a big fan of the Stoics, right? Ups and the downs. It's just— it's the journey. And even building companies, for me, it was never the liquidity event when I made a bunch of cash. It was always the turbulence and the ebbs and the flows and the successes and the failures that happened in between. that turned me on. And I think everybody's inherently like that on some level, don't you think?

I absolutely agree. I think we often learn far more from kind of the— that, to your point, the ebbs and the flows. The way I describe it to, you know, to friends, colleagues, mentees, students, I say, look, you can only harvest in the valley, right? So we all love peaking. We all love going to the top of the mountain. We all love succeeding, succeeding, crushing it. But you really, if you think about even nature, when you're going all the way up to the top of a mountain, when you're peaking, yeah, it's awesome, and yeah, you get up there, and yeah, the view is great, but it's only actually, it's only learning how to come down, first of all, learning how to do the descent, and also, it's only when you come down into the valley that you can actually harvest in the valley. That's where you get all of the gems.

Yeah, and those are the character-defining moments, which I love and embrace. We had a saying, a series of mantras in our house when I was raising my kids, raising my daughter. One of them was, you really only learn when you lose. And so embrace the loss, love the loss, because that's gonna give you the thicker skin, the resiliency, the resourcefulness. It's gonna make you the eventual powerhouse. I love to lose. I'm 60 years old. I make fucking mistakes every day. And I don't— I mean, I apologize, but I don't apologize for it because I'm still— I like to think I'm still growing.

That's right. And if we're not growing, Pete, what are we— you know, like, that's, that's the whole thing. And, and the, you know, one of the other, like, sort of adjacent— like, I love that, you know, you only, you only learn when you lose. Oftentimes people think, you know, hey, I'm being buried under this, I'm being buried, I can't take it. But I always tell people, you're not being buried, you're being planted. And you're being planted, these seeds are being planted that are going to grow into something. You can't— I mean, when we're in that, that, like, Leah, people say embrace the suck, right? Like, When you're in that moment where it's sucking, when you're in that moment where every— sort of, you're at this real low point, you're like, God, this is awful. I can't find my way out. I'm buried. I can't see the way out. I can't see the way up. But if you remember that you're not being buried, you're being planted, that gives you a whole new lens. And how fortunate are we that we do, you know, as, like, we do get to grow, to your point. How fortunate are we that we get to grow through these experiences?

That is so incredibly poignant. And, you know, it ties into what I want to talk about with regard to the cultural implications. But what you're talking about specifically is being planted versus, you know, that paralysis when we feel overwhelmed. That's really just the channeling of the thoughts that we can kind of condition ourselves into. And I know you're going to be able to help us understand that. I've said on other podcasts that I'm a huge fan of Dr. Viktor Frankl and logotherapy. Yes. I read Man's Search for Meaning when I was alone in California building a company when I was So, this was 30 years ago, and I still live my life in accordance with that book. It was life-changing. And a big part of the book was simply channeling your thoughts differently to offer yourself a different outcome. If you can channel your thoughts differently, your perspective could be 180 degrees different almost immediately, and that determines outcome after outcome after outcome going forward. And that's something where— that's where something where your expertise comes in so particularly, and where you focus, which I really want to talk about because now with the advent of social media and the onslaught of AI, it's incredibly relevant. Your doctorate is in medical anthropology, and you talk about the connection between the mind, body, and soul, which we love on this program. We always talk about it. But you talk— you take it one step further and you talk about the cultural implications on this critical interrelationship. So, I'd love for you to share with us, really educate us about what the social implications are doing to this mind-body-soul connection. And what are we getting wrong? Because we're all getting it wrong, including me.

That's right. Well, and, and I should say, like, I don't have the answers, right? One of the greatest things about being a medical anthropologist is that we get to study the patterns and we get to study the formation of new cultures. So one of the things people ask me all the time is, okay, well, what is the culture of spiritual, you know, we have a thinning of the veil between science and spirituality right now. As evidenced by the increasing popularity of the psychedelic movement, the increasing popularity of what I call the underground, right? And people say, well, what is the culture? 'Cause I say, well, listen, these things, plant medicines, they have long traditions in other countries. So as a medical anthropologist, I've been able to study the culture around these sorts of approaches to mind, body, and soul. Medical anthropology is really the study of how culture both impacts and is impacted by your view of mind, body, and soul connected, right? And it's, it's really the study of health as we know it. Health meaning not just physical health, spiritual health, mental health. It's the study of all of that. And here in the United States, we're at a critical junction where we're really rethinking what does it mean to be in full health spiritually, mentally, physically, and how do all of those interconnect? We're seeing that through what I call the migration of trust. So what we're seeing here right now is institutions are failing. So we have institutional failure, institutions like education, health, government, media. I mean, institutions are failing. We have to name that. When institutions fail, and I know this having been a president of a university, I mean, we could talk a lot about that, and also having been failed by the health system. When institutions fail, trust doesn't die, trust migrates. Now, where it migrates is what's most interesting to a medical anthropologist, because trust migrates to the machines right now, and it migrates to the underground. The underground is defined by communities, or what anthropologists call communitas, And rituals. And what are these rituals and these communities that are giving us trust? And how can we harvest from that to rebuild our culture and rebuild our society today?

I'm so turned on right now. That was, that was poetry. That was, that was really cool. I mean, I, I never thought about it in those terms. And I also, you know, I'm old, so generally we get more cynical as we get older, but I never thought about it on that level that literally all of our institutions are failing. And more and more, we've got to rely on ourselves, our close community, and more than anything else, and you've heard me say on the podcast, our instincts. That's right. Our instincts are going to help us immeasurably, but we've lost touch with them because it's so easy to listen to this influencer idiot, or this rock star, or this jerk-off actor, or this pundit, and say, oh, yep, that's me. Oh, yep, I need to do this. Oh, if I don't do this, I'm in trouble. This— it's— it is an absolute shame because people will do the general Google search to give themselves an opinion instead of dramatically looking at something and trying to understand something. And that's really how it was with the plant-based medical industry for a long, long time. One guy came out and said bad, bad, bad. But to your point, it's been being used forever. And I mean, whether it's psilocybin or ibogaine, This has been used forever and it is incredibly effective. Exactly. And now you and I both know that Big Pharma's got a lot to do with that, right?

Of course. Yeah. I mean, and now we've got, you know, Eli Lilly coming in. I mean, yes, of course. So that's where kind of politics and culture start to be like, oh wait, we were just starting to build the culture around, you know, how do we have reverence for these ancient traditions? I mean, it's, you know, to your point, ibogaine, it's, yes, it's new-ish to this country in this context, But I remember even 20 years ago when I was working on human trafficking and we were bringing survivors back from the Middle East to Africa, before the women who had been, you know, raped and abused— they were trafficking survivors— before they sent them back into their communities or villages, they would have them go sit with iboga and kind of process out the trauma, right? That, that's been happening forever, and it's new here in the United States. Yeah. States. However, we were kind of starting to figure out what is the way in which we kind of have reverence for that, that wisdom, that ancient wisdom, and that, that, that different, you know, these cultural contexts and build a culture around that here in this country. I think we are still in that moment. The question now is what's the role of like big pharma?

Yeah. And, and they don't show any signs of slowing down. I mean, it's just such an effective lobby and it's such a gigantic— everybody's making money and everybody's getting power. It's going to be super hard to come back. But once again, if we rely on ourselves, and we rely on our community, we rely on our instincts, we're going to get through it. I didn't realize what you just shared with me about ibogaine, or how far back it could go to help trauma. I really came into contact with it as it relates to my work with Navy SEALs, because it's been absolutely monumental. I mean, it is miraculous. It's miraculous. Yeah. And you look at things even at a more fundamental level, like acupuncture. It's been around for 10,000 years. I'll be honest with you, my shoulders don't work because from years of use. I tried cortisone shots. I had one shoulder reconstructed. I used BPC-157, shooting it twice a day, TB-500. I had this thing with a camera that they shot into my shoulder and pumped me full of steroids and anti-inflammatories. What fixed my shoulder? Acupuncture.

I believe it.

Acupuncture. No pain, full mobility. Full mobility, acupuncture, 10,000 years, no medicine, nothing invoking itself upon me and being driven into my shoulder, completely healthy. If that doesn't prove as a metaphor what we have access to if we just open our minds and look internationally, look throughout the world and throughout the world's history, then nothing will.

That's absolutely right. I mean, for me, I meditate every morning. I have a great, fantastic group of folks I meditate with. We all meditate together at 6:00 AM. Everyone's invited, on Zoom at 6:00 AM. And we have been doing this every single day without stopping for 2 years. And, you know, I sort of started meditating earlier, but meditation for me, which to your point, no medicine, you know, none of that, has been the single most important wellness practice that I have for, like, it's the single most important component of keeping myself healthy is meditating every single day. Just bar none.

I love it. Because where the mind goes, the body will follow.

That's right.

And when you have the ability to calm yourself and visualize and manifest, I talk about it all the time, manifestation is not making a vision board. Ideation without action is nothing. But when you start to meditate and you start to understand yourself and there's a self-awareness component and then you're visualizing and This is when things really can change in your life. And everybody has that control. We have the control and we can do it every morning at 6:00 AM. So that's, it's a beautiful thing. I'm a big fan of meditation. I've tried, I've tried a million. I may, so can I dial in at 6:00 AM?

Dial in. I'm gonna send you the link. Come join us. You'll love it. We have a phenomenal group. It's a great group of individuals from all over the country. Our meditation group, people from around the world join us no matter what time it is, no matter what time zone you're in, you should absolutely join us. We have people on that call. We have people who are in, you know, YPO, Young Presidents Organization. We have Navy SEALs. We have artists. We have people who are in every kind of industry. And what's great is the power of the collective when we get together. And so, you know, there's been times when I can't get on at 6:00 AM because I'm in Dubai or I'm in India or whatever. But I will still meditate myself alone. And then I miss my community. You know, there is an amplification that happens when you're with a group. You know, to use kind of your frameworks of your intuition, one of the things that, you know, I've learned in, in, in the course of medical anthropology is that one of the best ways to get to know yourself, your own intuition, is through what we would call relational awakening. And so even just me having this conversation with you, Pete, is sharpening my thinking, right? Iron sharpens iron. So, I think relationality is such an important part of learning to trust your own gut. Yeah.

And, I'm finding it too as well. Just, I'm being enlightened as the minutes go on here. And, it's interesting because this goes back to the meditation component, something else I wanted to talk about with you. You talk about there basically only being 2 inner states. It's either suffering or it's beautiful. And I'm guessing that the manifestation component will help you pull the right one through. How do we identify which one we're at? Because we can be fooled. We can really— we can think we're suffering, but really we should be in a beautiful state. How do we identify and make sure that we're in the right spot or else pull ourselves out and into the right spot?

That's right, absolutely. And, you know, this is something teachers from around the world— my teachers happen to be in India, they talk a lot about this, but, you know, Joe Dispenza talks about this. You know, Wayne Dyer talked about, you know, there's really only 2 inner states. You're either in a suffering state or you're in a beautiful state, is the way my teachers describe it. And the way to know is, as you tune into yourself, you ask yourself, first of all, where is my thought? Am I fixated on the past, or am I projecting into an uncomfortable future, right? If you're not in the present, you're worried about the past, or you're you're anxious about the future, you're not in the present. So already you're kind of out of alignment. But suffering states are those states like fear, anger, hate, you know, those are all suffering states. And then, you know, I always tell people, think about all some, like, some of the decisions that you've made recently or throughout your life. Every time you've made a decision from a suffering state, look at the outcome. I know myself, Whenever I've made a decision from fear, it has not turned out great. You know, like I end up in the wrong relationship, I end up in the wrong job. Whereas when you get yourself into a beautiful state, that's a state of joy, love, presence, curiosity. These are all those beautiful states where you actually literally feel yourself more expansive, right? This is where curiosity replaces critique. This is where community, creativity, and collaboration replace all of that kind of those D words: disorientation, you know, detachment, distraction, destruction. You want to kind of be over here, you know, in these more beautiful states if you want to create the life that you want or anything that you want to create. If you want to create a relation, you know, I'm a single mom. I have three kids. I have absolute intentionality. now with regards to the relationships I want to create with my kids, especially raising Gen Alpha kids in this very uncertain world? What relationship do I want to create with them? And when I respond to my kids, do I want to respond from a suffering state or a beautiful state? Now, this doesn't mean that we're not going to ever be in suffering. Of course we are. Of course I have a 16-year-old. Of course she makes me angry. The distinction is like, how can you catch yourself and say, okay, wait a second, I'm in a suffering state. Let me go over here, get myself into a different state, ask myself some questions, and then come back and interact with her. So, that's kind of the, the, the, the sort of mental fortitude that you get by tuning into your state, asking yourself, you know, sometimes the mirror is pressed up so close to your face that you can't even, you don't, you can't even tell. You're sort of white-knuckling it and you're like, oh, I'm gonna get through this, you know. And when you have that awareness, meditation brings that. All these practices just give you that awareness to be like, wait a second, what state am I in? Do I want to make a decision from this state or from a beautiful state?

That's— it's amazing because— and it goes back, there's 2 major concepts across this entire series. One of them is get back in touch with your instincts and the other one is self-awareness. These 2 things are the absolute keys to the kingdom. They will protect you, they will serve you, they will keep you growing, they will keep you happy. talking about self-awareness here. Are you suffering? Are you beautiful? Where are you making your decisions from? For you, it was decisions based on fear, but I'm a Sicilian prick, so it was always, for me, anger. Whenever— my fuse is about that long. So, whenever I make these decisions in anger and I fire off an email or I scream at my 23-year-old daughter, you just wait, then all of a sudden— Oh, no. So, it's— I'll tell you what's funny, though, is I learned about what you're describing by accident and the hard way. When I had a super young family, my daughter was 7, 8, 9, 10, even before she was really old enough to be a young person, a young individual, I would find myself in situations with my then-wife, I'm divorced, and my young daughter, where all of a sudden, they would start to be really pissy and really bitchy and in a really bad mood. Mm-hmm. And I'm trying to, as the dad, I'm trying to figure out, okay, what the hell's going on here? Why is— did she not sleep good? Did she not eat right? Did she not change her diaper? But what I did was, which was by accident, don't give me any credit, but what I decided to do was turn the mirror on myself and say, what if they're taking your fucking lead? And I started to think about how I was treating them inadvertently. I wasn't knowingly shitting on my family, but I was stressed out. Right. Or I was tired, or I was hungry, or I was— injured, it was me. They were taking my lead. The way I was treating them was the way they were treating me right back. And that self-awareness changed the entire dynamic of my family. And I obviously, at the time, I didn't tell them that, hey, here's what we're going to do, I'm going to take the lead. All I did was I started to make sure that I was being completely self-aware, and I was always hyper-analyzing myself. And what I would find was I'd catch myself. So, if they started to be a little off, I'd be like, uh-oh, Ferrari, what'd you do? And I'd be like, okay, knock it off. And it's funny because if I didn't catch myself for a couple of days, then it would take longer for them to wear off and get back into their homeostasis, the good moods. Right. If I caught myself after half a day, then their moods would wear off way, way quicker, and they would get back to their normalcy quicker. So, there's no disputing it was a direct correlation because the length of time determined the length of time The mood determined the mood, but it all started with self-awareness. And again, completely by accident and without meditation, I stumbled onto it. I wish I learned the proper way through you 40 years ago, but I guess not.

Well, I mean, what you're saying, you know, we always say like parenting is caught, not taught, right? They catch it, you know, that's what it is. And it's the same for me, you know, and I know that, like, during the divorce— I'm also divorced, and it's like, I wasn't my best self. Nobody was their best selves. And so, the kids were kind of spinning out, you know? And, and, and as much as we tried, and we were like, well, no, they don't know, they don't know what's going on, they could feel it. They could pick up on it. That's that parenting being caught. And, you know, I think I love exactly what you're saying, because so often— I mean, we, we, in our family, we call it splatter. So often we are like introjecting our issues or our stress on each other. And, and, and, you know, now my kids are to the point where we can kind of laugh and joke about where we're like, are you splattering on me? You know? So like, like for instance, if, if my daughter had, you know, or my, or my, I have a 13-year-old son and, you know, if he had a hard day, you know, at school, maybe his math teacher was picking on him or whatever, and he'd come home and he'd splatter it onto his siblings, you know, that kind of thing. But to your point about like self-awareness, it's so important. I think even what you're saying, what you did, you actually showing and going through that self-awareness also made your kids more self-aware. That's the greatest gift you can give your kids as a parent. It's the absolute greatest gift you can give them.

And again, I wish it was because I have some superior intellect or I've, you know, I'm really just a knucklehead. I'm just lucky. Honestly, I'm lucky. I've been really fortunate stumbling onto stuff. And your point about— this is something I've never said on a podcast. For some reason, you're bringing this stuff out in me, but this is important to understand about kids catching everything. When I was coming up, my dad was killed in a drug-related incident when I was 10. I say that all the time unapologetically. I'm so sorry. Well, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but my mother fell into a tailspin that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. But here's where I'm going with this. I was 10 and 11— well, he actually took off on us when I was 7, then he died when I was 10. So I was experiencing things at 7, 8, 9, and 10 years old. I had no idea what it was that I was seeing, whether it was drugs or sex or other shit. I'm 7, 8, 9. I had no idea what it was. I fucking knew it was wrong. I was destroyed. Listen, I caught it. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't have a term for it, and I didn't even— nobody ever told me it was bad. I just felt the vibe. The energy was bad. It was wrong. It traumatized the shit out of me. I carry it to this day. Kids catch everything. That's why these people talk about the fact that, well, I don't do it in front of my kids. I don't do it in front of my kids. It doesn't fucking matter if you don't do it in front of your kids. Your kids still know. And I don't care if they're— They know. They know. And it's the look in your eyes. It's the feeling in your touch. It's their demeanor. It's the demeanor with which you address them and approach them and deal with them. Your kids know. I don't give a shit if they're 2, 3, 10, 20. And people need to understand this. I've lived it. I'm still— I'm 60 and I still dream about it. It— this shit is real. I got no reason to lie to anybody because I really don't care what anybody thinks of me. It's real.

It's real. It's 100% real. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like, and I know, and yet I'm with you. Like, I've experienced it too, you know, and that trauma gets coded on. And then the worst thing is you don't have a name for it and you don't understand it, and it codes onto you, and it's part of that suffering. I mean, I feel so fortunate to— I mean, I say I'm the accidental anthropologist. Like, I feel so fortunate to have fallen into this field where I get to do all this self-excavation again by accident. Like I was off on a track to be a diplomat and I thought I was gonna save the world. And I was like, you know, riding horses through Afghanistan and Iran and all the things. And it was really anthropology that brought me home, that brought me center because it allowed me to do that deeper inner work to say, oh, wait a second, like this happened. And that was actually really, really hard for me. You know, I mean, I don't think that I ever understood how difficult it was for me growing up as an Iranian American in this country, you know, not to like kind of get, you know, go down the sort of woke path, but more so like, it was more so about like all the code switching I learned to do, you know, between my family and then, you know, my friends and society and all the different ways in which I learned to navigate and code switch. And, you know, so much of the, I think, the shame that was carried, you know, I think that was coded by the way in which Iran was talked about in this country and the way America was talked about in Iran. This like constant, these like shame spirals that were just like constantly, you know, working inside me. I feel so fortunate that I was able to excavate that because of, not only because of what I studied, but because that took me down rabbit holes where I got to meet shamans where it tumbled me into the underground. And the underground is that ultimate space of self-exploration because, like, to your point, the underground is where you say, wait a second, that like talking head on TV, that pundit, that would like shut up. Like, let's get into this community space and figure out like, what do I really think and feel and what feels good and what doesn't feel good? So that, you know, and coming back to the parenting thing, you know, I think so often, you know, people, you know, the family is that institution, right? The family is that core institution and that core unit. And to your point, I mean, as a dean, when I was, you know, when I was dean, I worked most closely with students, certainly provost and president. Yeah. But when I was dean, and especially when I was living on campus, you know, at the Claremont Colleges, I lived in the dorms. I was I was with these kids day in, day out, and the number of them who spoke to me about the tensions in their households that they couldn't put a name to, that, that it was just like, it was just there. And they, and they were really searching for a place to come and safely unpack all of that and be like, I don't really know what my mom was doing. I don't really know what my dad— like, I can't really figure it out. I just know something was off. And so they come to college to figure that out. And our job at these institutions is to hold that place and give them a container and give them a framework and give them the language to kind of start to do that excavation to figure out their path, passion, and purpose. But unfortunately, like many other institutions, college is also falling down on the job. So good job.

And that's, you know, your perfect segue. You're like leading the witness and that's, It's unfortunate, right? When I went to college in the '80s, we didn't have this shit. I mean, top 10 business school, and it was about business. And the thing about it is, and this is here, you talk about how you were able to excavate the navigation of being an Iranian American and what's going on really for the last 50 years. And this is what you talk about, which is identifying with people beneath and beyond their identity labels. And you even found yourself on the air with a rabbi. I think while your home country was being eviscerated. That's right. And I'd love to— so you're a bigger person than I am, because I just think it's just a testament to your strength and your fortitude. I'd love to hear a little bit about that, because that really is where the— everybody can talk shit about looking past labels, but the rubber meets the road with what you did here. It's phenomenal, and I think everybody needs to know.

Well, thank you for saying that. I really appreciate you saying that. You know, for me, I mean, we always say, like, seeing past the labels or whatever. It actually goes to the conversation we were just having about parenting, because we talked about that kind of— it can sound a little woo-woo, but that kind of energetic sort of frequency. And, I don't love it when people overly use that word frequency, but there is an energetic sort of conscious element to it. Okay? And, I think that, you know, just as we say, like, we know When something is off in the household, parenting is caught, not taught. I think you can catch where somebody's coming from without necessarily getting tripped up by the labels, and that's that's the sort of see past. So when we say see past labels, it's not like oh we're all the same and we're all love. No, no. But that that particular rabbi is somebody I know. He happens to be the rabbi of. one of the people that, you know, I meditate with and, you know, a very important part of our community. And actually, that rabbi hosted our meditation teachers who came from India to the US. And we all went, like, we all, in the midst of all the chaos, you know, the bombings, and we all, I, we all went to the synagogue and we all meditated together. And that was one of the, I think, most profound— like, when we all came together to meditate inside the synagogue with our Hindu, you know, our Hindu teachers from India, you had the Sufis, you had the— like, you had everybody. And we all came into the synagogue and we were like, we are going to hold an intention for peace. That to me was the single most, like, impactful thing I did during that period because— And I knew, I could feel that everyone in that room genuinely wanted peace. So, it wasn't about like, I'm here, I'm performing this. Everybody came with authenticity and everybody came with this holding a hope in their hearts for peace and for a better, more peaceful world. And so, for me, it's like, I don't care what your label is. I care what the intention is that you hold in your heart. And if you hold an intention of, you know, of being in a beautiful state, And wanting to elevate everyone around you into a beautiful state, then we're gonna get along.

That's— and that's the beauty of, again, what you're talking about is looking past any would-be facades or looking past any labels. If we get back in touch with our intuition, our instincts, you know where somebody's— what somebody's all about within about 30 seconds.

Totally.

2 sentences. 2 sentences. Even the look on their face, the look in their eyes, and the first couple things they say. If you listen to your— most people look past it. You look past the red flags. I'm guilty of this in relationships, unfortunately. I love being married so much, and I wanted to be in a relationship so bad, I look past these friggin' red flags, and I'm like, oh, I hate that, but whatever. And, oh, this doesn't work for me, but whatever. And I just keep moseying down the road. Inevitably, it always explodes. Yeah. And it's unfortunate, but if I listen to my instincts, it would save me a lot of heartache and pain, for sure. But again, it's what you talk about with regard to looking past the labels and the would-be facades.

That's right. And I think actually, Pete, I think many of us are in— I'm in the same boat when it comes to relationships. I do the same thing, but I think it's because we're like really loving people. Yes. And we're like, well, wait, if— and this is where I think that like the signal gets a little confused because when you're like, but I feel love for this person and I feel love from this person, that's where the, the signal gets a little confused because one of the things I had to realize was that like I can feel love from many different people and different kinds of people. Yeah. And if you think about like one of the things that I wish was taught in school that I like as an educator is like how to be a good friend and like how to love and be intimate. And I'm not talking about physical intimacy. I'm saying how to love and be intimate with your friends so that you understand, okay, like, you can have love and intimacy with different kinds of people. And just because you feel it towards one person who maybe there's a whole bunch of red flags over here doesn't mean you have to be with that person. I am the same way. I love you. I'm divorced twice. Like, I, you know, I had to learn this the hard way. But I actually think that everything starts obviously with, with you and your guts and your intuition, but Everything also starts with the dyad. It's you in relationship with somebody. And so I think those of us who are attuned to and who experiment with our ideas of self and community and communitas in and through relationship, it's— we're all like highly sensitive people. Um, and, and I think we're also not wrong to do that. So my, my first book on Iran was about Iran's sexual revolution, and, and really the premise there was In the absence of the opportunity to negotiate their citizenship or their self with the government, they turned to the realm of the intimate. They turned to the realm of the bedroom to negotiate who they were. That was what they called the sexual revolution. Now, we've had that in this country. We had a sexual revolution in this country in the '60s. We had one in this country in the '20s. Yeah. Weimar Germany had one. The Czech Republic had one. There have been sexual revolutions throughout history. throughout the world where people turn to the realm of the intimate to negotiate who they are. It's called intimate citizenship. That's how they figure out who they are, because all of their systems, their governments, their structures have failed them. And so, they put trust, the only place where trust can really be safely planted, you know, planted, potted, and the seeds can grow, which is in relationship. And we, the, well, where we get confused, because again, we never learned how to be in friendship or community. Now we're learning it. Where we get confused is we meet somebody and we're like, oh my God, here we go. I'm being planted. I'm trust. I'm feeling good. I want to grow. And yes, you can, but you know, there are different, like, people who are there to be the tillers of the soil and to water it and whatever. But we can get confused very easily because we never really learned how to be in communitas.

Boy, it's It's like you've known me for years. I mean, damn, like you've been sitting on my shoulder through all these relationships with my family and my ex-girlfriends. Yikes.

Trust me, I've been right there with you, my friend.

I mean, I think to your point though, I think it's because, at least in my case, I love loving and I love being loved and I love taking care of people that I love. That's like my biggest, like the way I measure myself as a man. How can I take care of this person that I love every single day in new and creative and cool ways? And so I want to do that so bad. There's a gigantic hole there. Yeah, it's a gigantic hole there. I'm like wasting all this romance, wasting all this creativity.

But you get to shine it on yourself now. I mean, one of the things I realized is that I was the same. I am the same way. Like, I love love. I love love. I cheer for love. And it's also like coded on me, right? Being Persian and like, you know, I'm from the land of Rumi and Hafiz. Fez, and like, we love love, you know, we love love. And, uh, and, and I— and the same, it's the same thing. But, but one of the things I've learned, and it, and it took, to your point about like ebbs and flows and bumps, it, it— for me, it really took kind of some of these deeper, darker nights of the soul to decide to like, well, wait a second, I love love, maybe I can learn to love myself. And I, you know, like love myself in the way that I love other people. You know, one of, one of my teachers, you know, one of the things she pointed out to me is she's like, how can you truly have compassion for others when you don't have it for yourself? You push yourself, you push yourself, you like, you hurt yourself, you know, you grind and you drive and you drive. You— how can you truly love others if you can't learn to love and have grace and compassion for yourself? And so, you know, for me, coming back to that meditation or You know, I have a whole morning ritual. I wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning, I write for an hour, I meditate for 30 minutes, and then I write for another 30 minutes. And that's a 2-hour chunk of my day that I am genuinely dedicating and devoting to myself and to, kind of, my practices, my spirituality. And people may say, that's very indulgent, you should get up, you should go, you know, do things, you should be making lunches for your kids, you should be cleaning the house, you should be, should, should, should, the tyranny of the should. And it's like, This is a gift that I give myself every single day, that I start my day exactly the way that I want to, that my soul wants me to, that I get in alignment with myself. That's me being in relationship with myself and not being willing to sacrifice that for anyone or anything.

And here's what nobody gets. You doing that, that dictates the mood that you're in and how you treat everybody in your atmosphere. If you didn't do that, then there would be a problem within you, and it would be projected onto everybody around you. I talk about this on the podcast. I've been going to the gym for 45 years. I started lifting weights to protect myself from the daily beatings I was getting for being poor and weak. And it's been protecting me ever since. It's the mind-body-soul connection component. And I run 5 miles a day. That's my hour and a half for me. That's my self-love. Yeah. No partners. No running partner, no gym partner. Well, when my daughter's born and the tyranny— what did you call that? The tyranny of—

Tyranny of the should. The tyranny of—

Oh my, I'm gonna get that tattooed on my forehead. That's freaking awesome. So when my baby was being born, I'm still going to the gym and everybody's like, oh, you should be home with your baby. Why aren't you up with your baby? That's what— and I'm saying, and I'm like, listen, here's what you don't fucking understand. If I stop doing that, I'm going to be less of a father. I'm going to be in a worse mood. I'm going to treat everybody poorly because I have nothing. I've abandoned something that's been saving my life since I was 15 years old. It makes me a better father when I can go to the gym every day. Yeah. It makes me a better father after I run 5 miles and I've processed all my thoughts and the endorphins have kicked in. And it showed itself. I've told this story. I'm going to tell it briefly because I tell it too much. But it showed itself when I was going to tennis tournaments with my daughter. Because in the beginning, before she was making it like 8 and 9 days in a tournament, we were on the road. When it was just 1 and 2 days and then she'd lose, I wouldn't go to the gym on those days, 'cause it was easy to be all about her. Right. But as she started winning, becoming top 15 in the country, we're at these damn tournaments for 11, 12, 13 days, and I was not going to the gym. And I was being— I didn't know it, but I was starting to be a dick. I was taking it out on her. And she called me out on it. She's like, Dad, You need to go to the gym. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, Dad, you need to do the treadmill. You need to go to the gym. And she would map it out. She'd be like, okay, I got a match at 10. I got a match at 2. I'm gonna eat in between with the No-X. You have time to go back to the hotel and go to the gym and get on the treadmill. And so, her self-awareness, her awareness of me combined with her own self-awareness about how I was treating her, it got me out of that dungeon that I was in, that I was in. just by accident. But the self-love component, people don't get it. It starts with you. It fucking starts with you. It impacts everything you do. And you're not selfish, you're just, you're just pragmatic.

That's right, that's right. And you're being prag— you're being pragmatic. You taking care of yourself is taking care of your daughter. Like, that is taking care of you. Because to your point, I mean, I find the same, you know, when I don't write, like on those days where I— and I now, I don't ever miss a day, but the days that I was before, you know, when the kids were little, to your point, it was like, well, I know, you know, I got to get up, somebody's, you know, and the days where I wasn't writing, I was not my best. Like, I would interrupt people. I would just like walk by. Like, I was just getting, I was like getting in trouble, you know? I was just like making mischief, you know? I remember I was, you know, at a certain point we were living in, you know, a part of Denver, Colorado, which was very walkable. And, you know, Colorado's very like, kind of, it got that Midwestern nice, you know? I don't know. I've lived in New York and California most of my life. So like, I'm very coastal, but like, then I lived in Montana. Montana and Colorado, and I was like, oh, you should be nicer. And but like the days where I wasn't writing, I would walk by people who were like having a conversation and I would just like interrupt. I'd be like, you're just wrong about that. And I'm like, what is wrong with you? What? This is none of your business. Go back to your writing. You know, I'm like, the world is a happier place if I'm just writing and I'm, I'm channeling my energy into my creativity. You know?

That is brilliant. You make me cry. That is funny. First of all, You're my spirit animal because you have the same damn outlook that I do. Likewise. It's amazing. And I'm glad that we're getting to talk about this stuff because it's visceral and it's unspoken and it's critical. We're losing these fundamentals with the advent of AI and the onslaught of technology and the ability to stream something somewhere on 15 different apparatuses around us, 25, 25 hours a day. Right. It's so important to get back in touch with these guttural notions that got us here. I mean, and it's funny because in researching for this podcast and knowing I wanted to go deep with you, I was like, okay, we're gonna go deep. We're gonna go deep. We're gonna get a little dark. Pete, you're gonna have to pull it out of the darkness at some point. So, let's shift to the book writing. Let's shift to one of your books and talk about horses. You've been riding horses for 25 years, cowgirl. And I think what I liked, and I scanned riding, not going to lie, I scanned it, but I loved it because it's a lot about failing and falling and then finding joy. And what was readily apparent was, now there's equine therapy, but what was readily apparent was the therapeutic components that you got from riding versus therapy itself. And I'd love to hear a little bit about that because there are For me, running is therapy. For you, horses are therapy. Riding horses is therapy. Therapy doesn't just mean talking to a shrink and getting a prescription. And so I think you're gonna be able to give us a glimpse into this that everybody needs to know. And that's why I'm happy to kind of bring you back here and talk about one of your amazing books, by the way.

Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I mean, look, the premise of riding is sort of what we started this conversation with, you and I, which was you learn more from from failing than you do from succeeding. And for me as a rider, I learned more each— from each of my falls. Like, when I fell, I learned, oh my gosh, like, and I learned about myself. I learned when I was out of sync with myself. You know, there's, there's a, there's a scene in Riding where I talk about, like, I was in a terrible mood and it was my birthday and I was just angry and there was a storm coming and I probably shouldn't have gotten on this Yes. Just one horse. But, my brother had booked me, like, a beach, you know, horse ride, and I, you know, I'd come back from Iran, and the horses had been taken from me, and I was like, I'm damned! You know? I was in a suffering state, but, like, I couldn't see it. I couldn't— the mirror was pressed up too close to my face. And, it took, literally, riding a horse into a storm, and it bucking me so hard that I fell into the beach, you know? Just fell, like, completely. You know, bucked me off and woke me up. Like, hey, Pardis, you got to get a hold of yourself here. Like, you are making decisions from a suffering state, and you are introjecting, right? You're splattering, you're introjecting your anger and suffering onto this poor magical animal. Like, this, this, this— horses are, they are a marvel, you know? I mean, they, they can feel your heartbeat, they can sense your heartbeat. And so— You know, one of the things that, like, I often talk about, or many of us, you know, who kind of ride at this one ranch together, people are like, oh, you guys train horses? And we're like, no, we train people, um, because the horses already know what to do. It's, it's the people. And you can always feel it when someone walks onto the ranch, when someone walks onto, you know, and they're carrying that. Some, maybe they had a fight with someone in the car, maybe, you know, they just lost a bunch of money or whatever. And you see the horses start running back and forth, and they're, like, you feel the energy shift. And so, it's, you know, oftentimes, what I learned with horses is they are the most polished and reflective mirror of my own state. And so, to your point about your kids, like, I used to go to the barn to ride, and I'd be like, ugh, you know, I had a horse named Caspian. And actually, this is a Caspian horse that I have around my neck here. And, you know, they're the oldest breed of horses from Iran, you know? I remember there were days where I would go to, you know, you go catch your horse to like put, you know, the bridle on him and whatnot. And, you know, he'd run away from me and I was like, oh God, it's one of those days and he's running away and oh my God. And then it wasn't until like, you know, I took enough of these falls that I was like, it's really not about the horses. It's really me. And the horse is the most accurate reflection of me and my own inner state and where I am. And so in that sense, they are the most effective teachers because to your point about therapy, like I had, you know, I'm no longer, but I had been after Iran, all the things that happened, I had been in therapy for a decade and all I ever did was just talk myself in circles, right? I would just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, you know, like I could convince myself of anything. I, you know, I'm like, I'm an Iranian academic. I can convince myself of anything. But it wasn't until really all of the opportunities to look in the mirror. And when you can't outrun your mirrors anymore— horses are great mirrors, so is meditation, so is, you know, a lot of these kind of deeper dive journeys into the inner world— at a certain point, the mirrors are everywhere and you can't outrun them. And that is more valuable, I think, than anything else. You know, to, to come back to your point about ibogaine, like The reason I think ibogaine is so successful is because it takes you in and it takes you into your own life and it shows you all the things in a very neutral way. Like you're able to really see the mirrors. And I think for me, horses did that, right? It was like, okay, I see where I'm at and I see that I have choices to kind of interact differently. And so horses have been for me, the most incredibly expansive, wonderful mirror, even if I don't always like what I see in the reflection.

That's— it's really astonishing to me. And candidly, this is going to sound so childish, but I didn't know any of what you just said until TikTok. I started seeing the horse videos on TikTok. Horses are just— they're like big dogs, but they're more intuitive. They can feel a fly on their back. Right. And they weigh thousands of pounds. I, I really— I hate to say this, but I got my education about horses on TikTok. So that's why I wanted to talk about them today, because they are— they're amazing creatures. I see these horses laying down with these, with these girls, putting their heads on their laps, and I see them reacting to being neglected. I, I get a lot of the TikToks where, um, they're, they're rescuing the horses from the slaughterhouses. Or the neglected horses that were put out, you know, they're, they're going to be going to the glue factory. I like those and the people that are rehabilitating them. Yeah. And I see these, I see these poor horses and I love it because I see the miraculous turnarounds and it's, it's just awesome. It makes me feel good. But that's really where I got my education and it makes sense. Everything you're saying makes complete sense to me. I mean, I, I think I would find peace on a horse as well. And they used to scare the shit out of me because they're so huge. And they're so— they can be so invoking. I mean, they're big, and they are— it could kill— you could fall off of it and it could kill you. If it kicks you, it could kill you. But if, if you approach it properly like you said and your feelings are true, you're not gonna have any problems. It's just a big dog.

Right, right. And think about through history, like, horses have helped build empires, like, horses have carried people Across countries, across continents. Like, horses have been that trusty companion that have literally physically— like, you think about, like, wounded soldiers. Like, horses have carried the wounded, and they have carried our wounds. I know so many of my horses have carried my inner wounds for me and with me, and that has been the greatest gift. You know, I have a dog. I've always had dogs, and dogs absolutely do too. The physicality of a horse though, and, and kind of that long history of the, the connection between horses and humans, and, and kind of, you know, if you think about back in the day, like, people relied on their horse. Like, you wouldn't survive a border crossing, you wouldn't survive, you know, like, crossing to the other side of the United States, you wouldn't survive without your horse. You know, you're fully dependent on your horse. And that trust, that bond of trust. You know, I— we, we started out this conversation where I talked to you about, you know, institutions are failing. We're seeing a migration of trust. Trust doesn't die, it migrates. Another place that it migrates, I think, is, is into these, these relationships with animals. Because when you learn to trust your horse, and it's really you learning to trust yourself.

Yeah, yeah, that's— it makes perfect sense. It's perfectly in focus now that I've got a bit of an education and I love that. I think if, if we would— if we could turn to that, if more people knew about it and they could turn to it, it's— what a beautiful kind of therapy. It's like you said, for the therapy thing, I mean, I've tried it too, but I just end up convincing myself of whatever I want. It's not my fault, not my fault, I didn't do it, it's all, you know, and here's why, here's, here's my current state. But it just seems like it's just this—

Same with me. I was like a tangled mess of linguine, like it was just like Exactly. I wasn't getting myself anywhere, you know? And, and not, not— I mean, it definitely has a place. I think it definitely has a place. It— there can be a container, etc. But, but I'm, I'm like you. Like, it, it took a level of self-excavation. It took a level of meeting myself beyond words.

Yep.

Because I found that I could talk myself into or out of anything. And you have to enter a space where, like, words no longer exist.

Yep.

And it's really— it's meeting from the heart as opposed to the mind.

You're talking to the master of justification. I could justify— if I decided I wanted to rob a bank, I would figure out a way where logically it's the only thing that makes sense. I have to rob a bank. So, I mean, so— and I think, again, you're an intellect and an academic. That's why it is for you. I'm just a stubborn Italian prick. That's why it happens for me. So, I mean, you know, it's kind of— You know, six of one, half dozen of the other. Not really. It's me. It's just me being a stunad, as my grandmother would tell me.

I love it. I love— well, there's a lot Italians and Persians have a lot in common. So, you know, I, I, I, I could— I feel like we have that same, like, hot-blooded, you know, 100% ignites us, uh, internally.

It is that same thread of passion. And that's why the world's— I'm so— as a quick aside, I'm so excited I'm going to Saudi Arabia for 2 weeks at the end of the month.

Fantastic. You'll love it. Is it your first time?

Oh, it's my first time. I can't wait. The culture, the people. I'm just— I want— I'm gonna want to just sit in the middle of somewhere and just soak it all. I'm going for business. I've got a lot of meetings out there. That's why I'm going. But I'm— I could have narrowed the trip. I'm staying extra because I can't wait. I mean, is everybody as beautiful and cool as you?

Thank you for saying that. I'm so excited you're going to the Middle East. I wish I could go with you because I would say, oh, well, let's go over to Oman or let's go over to Kuwait and Qatar and see all my friends. So maybe what we need to do is, you know, next summer there's a big, you know, again, not to get woo, but there's a big sort of eclipse happening and a whole bunch of us are going to Egypt for the eclipse next summer. So maybe what we need to just do is add a week before we go to Egypt and we'll go to the Middle East together. How does that sound?

I love everything you just said. That would be amazing. In fact, it's funny because I'm so infatuated with the cultures over there in the whole MENA region that we're— for the company that I'm building right now, we're thinking about global expansion. And the MENA region is my first region on my map. I want to expand this company In that part of the world. And I say that, it's number one, it makes good business sense, which I'm not going to bore you with, but number two, it gives me an excuse to maybe move there for a couple of years. That's really where— it's kind of a means to an end, because in order to effectuate this global expansion properly, I'm going to need to be in the footprint. I can't go over there every other month and do it right. That's just half-assed. So, this is the means to an end. I can see myself literally moving there for a year or two. I can't wait to go over there.

Oh my gosh, well, let me know how I can help. I lived there for many, many years, as you know. I mean, I'm from Iran, but I also, I lived in Dubai for a long time. I taught at American University of Cairo briefly. I taught at American University of Beirut. Like, I've, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the MENA region. My first assignment for the UN was in Morocco back in the '90s, and then I've done a lot of fieldwork in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and then And of course, Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, and of course, Iran. So, as you're doing this, as you're expanding, you know, call on your friendly anthropologist. I can help. There's nothing I would love to do more than help, you know, kind of bring the cultural context. Because in so much of even the business expansion in the MENA region, knowing the intricacies of the culture will just amplify and really kind of— move you forward. So, however I can help, please, please, please count me as part of your team.

I'm so grateful to you. That's just the coolest thing for you to offer that up. I didn't realize how expansively you had lived over there. What an amazing and colorful life. That's got to give you such an incredible perspective. I mean, I just— I can't even— I went from Connecticut to Georgia to California to Florida. Talk about boring. I mean, that's amazing. That is. And thank you for allowing me to call on you because you may get— do you have WhatsApp? You may get a WhatsApp like, yo, what did I just eat?

Any time of day. Totally. You're like, yo, I'm in Riyadh. I can't— this doesn't make sense. I'll be like, here's where you got to go. Here's who I'm going to call for you.

I'm actually staying in Riyadh, in like North Riyadh, where they're like the business district type of thing.

Yeah, you'll love it. It'll be great.

I'm so excited. And again, the mission is that I have to go back repeatedly until I move there. So we'll see. It's gonna be cool. I didn't mean to digress because there's— I, I, and I don't want to keep you too long, but there's one more book I want to talk about because again, I think your messaging is so critical and important for us. It's The Book of Queens where you talk about your grandmother and the fact that on some level either trauma and/or strength is actually passed down. I think there's a lesson in there for people that We might not otherwise know. And so I'd love to hear a little bit about that. Again, another amazing book. You're just unbelievable, such an overachiever.

I appreciate that. I appreciate you saying that. I mean, Book of Queens was in many ways my most personal book, right? Because I was writing, you know, in many ways the family history. And I think one of the things it was so important for me, because that— I know I wrote that book, you know, just as I was getting divorced, like in the— and in the middle of a lot of upheaval in my own life, you know. And I was like, you know, the narrative that you hear a lot in the United States is intergenerational trauma, intergenerational trauma, like intergenerational poverty. And I was like, yeah, yeah. But I kept going back to like the stories of my ancestors. And I'm like, but I'm also descended from warrior women, right? Like, if you think about like the Persian women and like how these women built empires too. And like, I'm like, Wait a second, you know, and I talk about the Book of Kings. Shahnameh is the— is, I think, the first written, ever-written poem, you know, in the history of humanity. It's called the Book of Kings. And one of the parts of that, you know, I— they would read that to us, you know, when I was a kid, my parents would read it. But I always loved the women. I was like, why is it called Book of Kings? These women are badasses. Like, they're besting the men. They're stopping the men from conquering. They're like, you know, standing at the walls. And I was like, what about the queens? man. And then I realized, I started learning more and more about like my family's history. And I was like, wait a second, I'm descended from like warrior women. So yes, intergenerational trauma. Yes, the revolution was hard. It coded onto my parents, it coded onto me. But let's go back a little bit further and remember that like I also am descended from warrior women who always found a way. So when things didn't make sense, when people were, you know, surviving domestic violence, they found a way. smuggled them across the border, and then they built like an all-female army. And, and, and, and so it really kind of goes back to the premise of really the through line for my own work, which is when things fall apart, which they inevitably do, you know, institutions, governments, what have you, marriage, whatever, where does trust go? And trust goes to the underground. And it goes to the place where one person literally holds another person. It goes to that place of, of love and family. And I realized that I could really draw on my own story to help people find a way forward for their own lives. So I wrote Book of Queens partly, you know, as a, as a kind of way to coach myself through a really hard time and remind myself, yes, intergenerational trauma, but also intergenerational strength. And for me, that's just been such a significant part of every single day, remembering that kind of, I'm not buried, I'm planted, I'm I'm growing. I'm resilient. I'm strong.

It's really— it kind of boils down to the simple reminder. Remind yourself you come from warriors. Remind yourself you're being planted. Remind yourself that it's just a function of conditioning your thoughts on some level, or sometimes just getting some sleep or keeping the mirror on yourself. It's back to self-awareness. I mean, it's just the key to the kingdom. And you've got the beauty of being able to show us how it also impacts generationally. And, that's why I like the book is especially important in that regard because whether we like it or not, we are descended from generation upon generation and there are patterns there. And so, it's necessary to understand them and account for them and embrace them or put them in a box. And, it just depends.

Yeah.

But, we get to make the choice every day. That self-awareness is what allows us to make the choice every day. And, if we choose from that beautiful state and we choose from that space of aligned intuition, then we're going to thrive. And, I choose to believe that.

Thriving is everything. It's just like you said, free will is everything. We have the ability to thrive because we simply just need to choose to. We choose to thrive. We meditate as it relates. We understand our situational dynamics as it relates. We keep the mirror on ourself. We remain self-aware. These are all mechanisms and apparatuses that are completely within our control, and they're around us at all times. You just have to decide to do it.

That's right.

And that's the beauty of it.

That's right. Absolutely.

Amazing. I can't— I don't want to keep you too long because this has just been amazing. You've got to tell everybody how to get a hold of you. We'll put it up on the screen. Tell everybody, give us as much as you want. It's going to come up on the screen. My ugly face is going to go away.

I love it. No, no, no, I'm so happy. I'm so happy to know you. I'm so happy to get to know all your listeners. This has been an incredible experience. Pete, you are honestly like the best interviewer. This conversation has just been so uplifting. It's been so energizing. I'm so happy and honored to know you. It's the first of many conversations. I can't wait to have more. And for the listeners, I'm very, very easy to find. You can find all my books on Amazon, of course, Barnes& Noble, Amazon, but you can also find them on my website, www.pardismahdavi.com. You can also find me at LinkedIn. It's just linkedin/pardismahdavi. Instagram. And then, of course, you can find my consulting work either at myuni.org or thresholdadvisory.org. These are all my different strategic consulting companies. But mostly, just drop me a line. I'd love to hear how it resonates and would just love to get to know you.

Amazing. You— I think you've made a lot of friends today, lady. I'm not gonna lie. You definitely made a bestie over here. I mean—

Yeah, I think we've definitely— you and I are definitely like fellow travelers. So I'm so happy to know you. I definitely, definitely besties for life. That's for sure.

It's, it's amazing how, you know, things like that happen. It's just, it's instinctive. There's a click. And I, I'm so grateful. I'm gonna have to call Michael after this and thank him emphatically. You're like my baby.

I'm gonna send him a text right after we get off and be like, Michael, you're the Best. Maybe one of these days the 3 of us can have a conversation. That would be like mind-blowing. It'd be so fun.

That'd be awesome because he has got another huge depth of perspective and experience. He's a stud. I love speaking with him. That would be super fun. Or maybe we all meet in Dubai. That'd be cool.

Do it. Let's do it. I used to have an apartment there, but we'll come. I have tons of friends there, so we'll do it. We'll go there and we'll go out with my friends. We'll have the best time.

Amazing. Well, I want to have you back for sure. I know you're writing a book right now, aren't you?

Yes, I am. Yep.

We're going to get you back on.

Yes. But yes, I'll come back on when the book is out. Super excited. It's really about institutional failure and the migration of trust. So I can't wait to come back on. It's called Trustfall.

I hope you have an awesome day and thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Great to be here. Thanks.

Okay, my friends, that brings to a close another episode of the Super Self podcast series brought to you by Jocko Rare Sugar. Here, we're going to be discussing and addressing all things that are health and well-being. The mission, as you probably identified, is simple: cut through the bullshit, see through the inertia, understand the propaganda, identify the false prophets that sit on every corner of the internet trying to sell us something on the other end of their shtick. We're going to be providing you with concrete analysis, data, information, industry experts, so that we can begin to understand and we can learn together. Rely on ourselves and rely on each other to find a better quality of life. And that's really what this is all about. Granted, this podcast is brought to you by Jocko Rare Sugar, but I don't care if you buy it. That's fine. I care about being the conscience for the health and wellbeing and the food and beverage marketplaces. We have got to turn the grocery aisle from a minefield into a map. We've got to understand and make the internet a true and valuable resource for us instead of victimizing us. And that's how we're going to do it, with instincts and with self-awareness. We're going to make sure that we're back in touch with ourselves, listening to our guts, understanding what we're being presented, and being able to dissect it and see through it in order to make decisions that are best for us and for our families. I'd love it if you'd subscribe. That'd be great. No pressure. We're going to be here. We're not going anywhere. And I hope to see you week after week. Have a great day.