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Hi.

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Hi.

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Welcome to Mindful Poly.

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Yeah.

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This is the primer episode.

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Our very first one.

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Woo.

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Well, it doesn't have to be the first one, but it's the explainer episode.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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That's more accurate.

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So, this podcast, we're kind of picturing as a fun conversational exploration of poly

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and relationships and philosophy and all that stuff.

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We're kind of picturing as a fun conversational exploration of poly and relationships and philosophy

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and all sorts of fun things because that's our jam.

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Yeah.

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We love talking about this stuff.

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Right.

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Absolutely.

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And have had so much fun over the years that we've been together talking about these things

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that it inspired us to start putting it to a microphone, putting it to recording.

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Yeah.

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So, maybe you're into this too.

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Maybe there are other people out there that are just geeked out about this stuff as we

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are and it'd be really fun to find them.

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I sure hope so.

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But that's future episode stuff.

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For right now, we just want to talk to you about what this is going to be like.

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Yeah.

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A little background about us and what we're trying to do here and what we're hoping to

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achieve.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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So.

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So, I am Fox.

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I have been poly for about seven years.

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I'm an artist, a musician.

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I am active in my local community.

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I do moderating of some forums and mentorship if it's requested.

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And I'm just into this stuff.

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I'm into talking about relationships.

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Yeah.

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We love talking about this.

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Both of us.

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How do people work?

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What makes them think and feel the way they do?

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Yeah.

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And also, I'm a really big deconstructionist of current monogamous cultural societal teachings

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like all of our-

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Are norms or taboos?

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Yeah.

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Where these rules, these patterns come from.

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It's just so fascinating.

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Yeah.

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And I really get into it and I want to share it.

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Cool.

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Well, I'm Nova.

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I've been poly for, I'm going to, I just keep throwing out about 10 years, we'll say, because

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I've definitely been non-monogamous for longer, maybe closer to 15, but somewhere in there,

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embracing the actual poly term.

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And so I've been around for what feels like an evolution of poly over time.

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It's changed and evolved.

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Oh yeah.

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Yeah.

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There's a lot more resources and a lot different ways of thinking about and understanding feelings.

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So I sometimes am part of a panel at a local university.

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They do on different alternative sexualities.

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So I'm on their polyamory panel.

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That's been really fun for college students.

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Wonderful.

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In a sexuality class.

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That is one of the coolest things I think you do actually.

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Yeah, that's really fun.

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And then the other thing I've done, I did a presentation, which is part of where the

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mindful poly name came from.

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I did a presentation at a polyamory conference about mindfulness and meditation and how those

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can intersect with poly and kind of help you with the big feels that come along with being

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poly.

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Yeah.

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I got so much out of your mindful poly talk.

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So yeah, and I will definitely be exploring that on one of our episodes.

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We'll dive into some mindfulness and meditation and the intersection there with how it can

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help with poly.

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Another future episode teaser.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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We have a lot of ideas.

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We've got sort of some big topic areas that we know we want to explore.

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Like big feels.

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There's going to be a lot in there.

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Relationship dynamics.

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We'll be talking about doing episodes on all kinds of different structures, the forms different

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these relationships can take.

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We'll be doing some community focused episodes like support structures, future planning,

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you know, like there's so many cool episode ideas that we have coming up.

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Yeah.

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We just keep coming up with more.

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We have a huge list.

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And we'd love to hear more too.

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Even though we have a big list and we're excited about them all, we'd love to hear feedback

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about what listeners would like to hear us talk about and what they're excited about

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and what they're thinking about.

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Yeah.

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Or even just challenges on things we talked about in the episode if you feel like maybe

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we didn't tackle a topic in the best way or we hadn't considered a different perspective

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or

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Please.

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Yeah.

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I think that would be wonderful.

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Yeah.

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I would even love it if that was a regular segment on our episodes.

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Yeah, totally.

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Be like not a mea culpa, but more like a, you know, like, so here's what we got wrong last

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time.

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Yeah, totally.

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Or not even wrong, but maybe like hadn't didn't fully cover or didn't consider in the way

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that we covered.

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Clarifications, yeah.

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Or leave room for.

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Sure.

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So speaking of, our website is mindfulpoly.com.

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Yes.

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So we're going to have our email addresses listed there and we would love to hear feedback.

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Yep.

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Please do.

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We'll probably remind you occasionally in the episodes as well.

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Or invite you or ask you to share your side of a particular topic.

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Exactly.

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Respond in the comments below.

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Yeah, right.

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How do you feel about this?

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The other thing that we'll have on the website is going to be a list of resources.

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So we considered using this primer episode as an opportunity to provide some definitions

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for terms that are used a lot in poly.

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Just in case we have listeners that are just, you know, have never heard metamor or compersion

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or, you know, those kinds of things.

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Kitchen table.

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Yeah.

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Kitchen table.

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Oh yeah.

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That's where I eat, right?

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You put KTP on the outline and I was like, what is that?

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But instead of going through and trying to define all those, we kind of figured it'd

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be a little more efficient to just encourage you if you're new to that and you want to

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explore those, just go check out our website.

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We'll have links to other resources.

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There's a lot of good ones out there.

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I think even what we're going to get into is that some of those terms are not set in

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stone, you know.

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They're evolving and changing and, you know, some people might think of kitchen table poly

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one way and we might think of it another.

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So that's even another layer to all of this is like we could offer a definition but it's

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not like there's one definition.

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It's not definitive.

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Yeah.

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So.

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We're not authorities.

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All right.

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So another thing that you should know about our show is we use nicknames for the various

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people in our life.

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This was chosen to protect the privacy because we may be talking about a topic.

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I mean, our primary focus will be on discussing a topic, but we may be able to illuminate

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on our thinking by sharing personal stories that is like this is where I'm coming from

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when I think about this.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I think personal stories add like a little spice to the story.

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You know, like if we were just like talking about everything from a flat like perspective

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of like this is the textbook definition, then you're kind of missing out on something.

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And we've part of why we're sharing our experiences because we have had lots of experiences and

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we've talked to lots of people who have lots of experiences and we're hoping to bring some

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of that to the podcast.

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And so yeah, so the nicknames are not just to protect privacy.

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They're also like if that person's not here and not present and not able to share their

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part of what's happening, we don't want them to necessarily be named or called out.

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Without a chance to express what their experience of that same thing was like.

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So we're going to be sharing everything from our perspective and our perspective is going

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to be based in nicknames.

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If we ever bring people on the show who we've talked about, they will have the opportunity

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to decide if they want to offer their real names or offer a different nickname or whatever

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they want to do.

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In a lot of cases, these nicknames were chosen by the people themselves.

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Yes.

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So my favorite story about the nicknames is that we've chosen to use nicknames that are

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all based in music, so musicians or it's largely musicians.

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And when we first started doing it, we were coming up with names and then we asked, we

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just started sharing back and forth what they would be.

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And then we reached out to the people in our lives and said, what do you think about this

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nickname?

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And they all got so excited about picking their own names.

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But my favorite part was not just even that, because that was glorious.

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But that was my favorite part is that none of them were like, well, what you're going

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to talk about me in a podcast?

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I don't know.

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Like, what are you going to say about me?

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Or I don't know how to feel.

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All of them were just like, oh, oh, I want to be so and so.

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Well, yeah, you can be that.

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Yeah.

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And I felt so trusted.

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Yeah.

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Trusted and supported for sure.

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People are excited that we're doing this.

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Yeah, that felt good.

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Yeah, that felt really good.

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Oh, yeah.

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So I mean, Nova's going to do all our editing.

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That's one of the reasons why I was excited to start this.

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I just want an editor.

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You know, I don't want a podcast where we talk for a half hour and 10 percent of it

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is usable.

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Yeah.

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Our goal is to keep these short, sweet, but fun and playful.

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So that's our show.

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Yeah, or at least our primer.

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Yep.

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We hope you have now a better idea of what you're getting into with our show.

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Thanks for coming.

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I hope you had fun.

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Yeah, we did.

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I did.

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I definitely did.

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Oh, well, I guess the only other thing to bring up is sometimes our episodes might bring

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up some heavy topics, some big feels, some considerations.

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And so I don't know, I think a sign off that we'd like to bring up is to share a little

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story.

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Let's tell the story that leads to that.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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So we were having drinks and it was a little busy.

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You could tell our server was a bit stressed.

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Yeah, which is always rough.

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And then she brought our drinks finally and then just accidentally, oops, dropped one,

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spilled everywhere.

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Huge mess.

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It happens.

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It does.

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Yeah, and so we were just totally chill about it.

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I think she was concerned.

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We were fine.

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It's like, it's okay.

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It's just a drink and you just bring it on.

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Yeah, and then she kind of was too.

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She had this moment of like, I felt like she kind of paused and gave herself some compassion

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and the line she delivered has stuck with us ever since, which is I'm just a spirit

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having a human experience and we're like, damn.

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Deep.

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Oh yeah.

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Nice.

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Yeah, so are we.

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So are we.

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Love it.

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Love that kind of self-compassion.

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Yeah, so we use that on ourselves often.

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If you're at the end of any of our episodes, if you're caught in some feels or kind of

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like applying some of the things we're talking about to your own life and sorting it all

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out and just remember that you're having a human experience.

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We're just human.

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Yeah, we're all just human.

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So having a human experience.

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Yeah.

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We're only human.

262
00:10:59,480 --> 00:11:00,480
Yeah.

263
00:11:00,480 --> 00:11:01,480
It's okay.

264
00:11:01,480 --> 00:11:02,480
Yeah.

265
00:11:02,480 --> 00:11:04,440
You don't have to be perfect.

266
00:11:04,440 --> 00:11:05,440
You can feel the difficult things.

267
00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:06,880
Perfect would actually be a bit boring.

268
00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:09,880
I hope that you aren't perfect.

269
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:11,360
Honest.

270
00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:12,880
Honest.

271
00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:13,880
I hope you're a mess.

272
00:11:13,880 --> 00:11:14,880
No, okay.

273
00:11:14,880 --> 00:11:15,880
Okay, okay, okay.

274
00:11:15,880 --> 00:11:16,880
That's right.

275
00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:23,480
I mean, obviously it's a good thing to try to train ourselves out of the black or white

276
00:11:23,480 --> 00:11:26,280
thinking like, well, if you're not perfect, then you must be horrible.

277
00:11:26,280 --> 00:11:27,280
Yeah.

278
00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:28,280
Like, anyway.

279
00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:29,280
I'm only human.

280
00:11:29,280 --> 00:11:30,280
Yeah.

281
00:11:30,280 --> 00:11:31,280
That's fine.

282
00:11:31,280 --> 00:11:41,840
Yeah.

283
00:11:41,840 --> 00:11:43,200
I'm so happy to be here.

284
00:11:43,200 --> 00:11:44,200
You are.

285
00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:45,200
Yeah.

286
00:11:45,200 --> 00:11:46,720
You're so cute to be here.

287
00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:47,720
It's nice to see you.

288
00:11:47,720 --> 00:11:48,920
It's nice to see you too.

289
00:11:48,920 --> 00:11:49,920
And you listener.

290
00:11:49,920 --> 00:11:50,920
Welcome back.

291
00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:53,920
They're always the best looking ones in the room.

292
00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:55,920
I mean, we have the best audience.

293
00:11:55,920 --> 00:11:56,920
I know.

294
00:11:56,920 --> 00:11:57,920
Dapper AF.

295
00:11:57,920 --> 00:12:00,400
Oh, I get so shy around them.

296
00:12:00,400 --> 00:12:01,840
I admire them so much.

297
00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:03,680
Such cuties.

298
00:12:03,680 --> 00:12:04,680
Yes.

299
00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:08,120
I'm all nervous.

300
00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:30,960
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