What Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” Can Teach You About Owning Your Story | #3

Summary

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Decoding Taylor Swift: A Storytelling Revolution

Episode #3: What Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” Can Teach You About Owning Your Story

Hosts: Joe Romm and Toni Romm
Date: July 15, 2025

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Episode Theme & Purpose

This episode explores how Taylor Swift’s hit song “Anti-Hero” illustrates the powerful storytelling archetype known as the Hero’s Journey and its modern update, the rise of the antihero. Joe and Toni discuss why understanding, embracing, and telling your own “Hero’s Journey” is the most essential storytelling skill for leadership, connection, and social change. Drawing from literature, pop culture, and personal experience, they dissect both classic and subversive hero narratives, showing how Swift’s lyrics invite listeners to own their flaws and craft relatable stories that attract and inspire a “tribe.” Listeners are encouraged to use these tools to transform their communication and self-concept.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why the Hero’s Journey Matters

[01:11–06:15]

• The episode opens with a focus on “Anti-Hero” as an explicit, self-referential example of the Hero’s Journey.
• Joe: "You need to know how to build your story as a hero ... people latch onto those stories. We’re seeped in stories from day one." [01:54]
• The Hero’s Journey, as analyzed by Joseph Campbell in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” underpins classic storytelling in cultures worldwide.
• George Lucas used Campbell’s framework for Star Wars, making the structure a Hollywood staple.
• Mastery of this narrative is crucial for persuasion (from job interviews to social change).

2. The Antihero Archetype & Its Appeal

[06:22–09:11]

• The antihero—less “noble” but more relatable—has risen as a response to traditional hero narratives.
• Toni: “People love a good antihero.” [03:59]
• Antiheroes range from Robin Hood and Wolverine (still doing good, if unconventionally) to morally ambiguous protagonists like Tony Soprano or Walter White.
• Joe and Toni debate if all antiheroes are truly “heroes,” or if some are simply protagonists with few redeeming qualities.

3. Everyone Sees Themselves as the Hero

[09:11–12:23]

• Referencing Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, the hosts illustrate how even criminals justify their actions as “heroic.”
• Toni (channeling Al Capone): “I’ve spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse—the existence of a hunted man.” [09:44]
• This universal self-justification underlines the importance of consciously shaping your personal narrative.

4. Classic Hero’s Journey & Pop Culture Examples

[12:23–18:32]

• The structure: Ordinary world → Call to adventure → Trials and transformation → Return home with wisdom (“the elixir”).
• Examples include Spider-Man (“With great power comes great responsibility”) and The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy returns with the message: “There’s no place like home.” [17:03])
• The importance of foreshadowing via character names (e.g., Dorothy Gale, Luke Skywalker, Voldemort).

5. Personal Hero’s Journey: Joe’s Story

[17:37–20:56]

• Joe shares how Hurricane Katrina disrupted his brother’s life and led him to pivot into climate communication—a classic hero’s journey driven by adversity and growth.
• Joe: “That was the question that changed my life ... He was basically asking me, are these storms going to keep coming? Are they going to keep getting worse and worse and worse?” [18:56]

6. Storytelling Essentials: Ethos, Pathos, Group Connection

[20:55–22:07]

• The need to establish shared identity and emotional connection before delivering information.
• Toni: “You have to establish your ethos ... and use pathos to make yourself compelling.” [21:07]
• Emotional storytelling always trumps facts alone.

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7. Types of Antiheroes and Protagonists

[22:07–26:43]

• Antiheroes can be complex, sometimes verging on anti-villains (e.g., Thanos as a so-called “anti-villain”).
• Modern culture features “villainous” characters as reality TV archetypes (e.g., Simon Cowell, Omarosa).
• Toni’s definition: “A hero and an anti-hero … are both still heroes … Deadpool is the ultimate antihero.” [23:13]

8. Ethics of Heroes & Antiheroes (Sherlock, Loki, Thanos)

[26:43–28:56]

• Examination of how moral ambiguity and choices define character trajectories (e.g., Sherlock Holmes executing Magnusson for the greater good).
• Memorable moment: Toni’s Benedict Cumberbatch/Sherlock impression ([28:06–28:16])

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9. Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero”: Breaking Down the Song

[28:59–39:01]

• “Anti-Hero” as confession—owning flaws, questioning if growth is possible.
• Toni: “She's had this obsession since she was a kid … Am I a good person? Am I doing the right thing?” [29:37]
• Discusses gendered expectations for goodness, with women especially pressured to be “caretaker,” “moral.”
• Taylor’s lyric: “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser.” [12:43] signals self-awareness about not growing past flaws.

10. Celebrity, Fame, and the “Monster on the Hill” Metaphor

[36:41–39:01]

• Taylor’s struggle with fame as dehumanizing—she’s “too big to hang out,” feels alienated from “normal people.”
• Toni: “The person on stage is not Taylor … it gets so disconnected from your inner persona that you start to see only through the perspective of how everybody else sees you.” [37:24]
• Parallels to Lady Gaga’s “The Fame Monster.”

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11. Interpretation of Key Lyrics & Music Video

[39:01–43:43]

• Identifies the “tale as old as time” interlude as a Beauty and the Beast allusion, with Taylor both Beauty and Beast.
• Analyzes the surreal bridge: Taylor dreams her daughter-in-law kills her for money; she’s left “laughing up at us from hell.”
  Toni: “I wouldn’t give any money to my in-laws to be fair.” [41:44]
• Cats inherit the beach house—Swiftian in-joke (“Cats don’t even like the beach!” [42:20])
• Discussion of whether heroism requires sacrifice (the hero’s “death” may be literal or metaphorical).

12. Heaven, Hell, and Poetic Justice in Storytelling

[44:00–47:09]

• Heaven and hell as metaphors for the ethical consequences of character actions.
• Toni: “That’s what I think makes religion so powerful … it gives you an ethical framework … the ultimate good versus ultimate evil.” [45:12]
• Taylor’s invocation of hell (“she’s laughing up at us from hell”) as poetic justice for her own “antiheroic” flaws.

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13. The Antihero vs. Hero Distinction: Empathy & Sacrifice

[48:29–49:48]

• True heroes and heroic antiheroes grow and act on behalf of others; villains or anti-villains remain selfish.
• Joe: “The hero both learns and grows, and the hero also has empathy and the ability to act on behalf of others.” [49:06]
• Taylor’s songwriting shows deep empathy even for non-heroic experiences, as in “Marjorie” or “This Is Me Trying.”

14. Storytelling Assignment & Practical Application

[50:54–55:18]

• Toni: Outlines homework: “Try and think of a few times in your life that you think could be defining moments in your hero’s journey … The ultimate hero’s journey for everybody, I think, is self-actualization.” [51:02]
• Joe recommends Steve Jobs’s 2005 Stanford commencement address as a model Hero’s Journey story.
  Joe: “Maybe some of the lowest points in our life are the turning points we need to become the person we’re supposed to be.” [55:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Steve Jobs on Storytelling

"The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come." — Toni quoting Jobs [02:16]

On Self-Perception

"Everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story." — Joe [09:27]

On Emotional Storytelling

“Facts are not what rule people’s decision making, but in fact, emotional appeals, repetition, storytelling, all of that stuff.” — Joe [21:22]

On Swift’s Honesty

“We all hate things about ourselves … and it’s all of those aspects of the things we dislike and like about ourselves that we have to come to terms with if we’re going to be this person. So I like ‘Anti-Hero’ because I think it’s really honest.” — Toni [31:18]

On “Monster on the Hill”

“She thinks one of her flaws is mainly that she is too big … she can’t feel like a normal person.” — Toni [36:46]

Analyzing the Song’s Bridge

“She’s laughing up at us from hell.” — Taylor Swift lyric, discussed at [41:40]

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Detailed Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–01:03 — Episode introduction and purpose.
• 01:11–06:15 — Explanation of Hero’s Journey and its storytelling power.
• 06:22–09:11 — Defining the antihero, examples from pop culture.
• 09:11–12:23 — How everyone rationalizes themselves as the hero.
• 12:23–14:30 — Classic narrative structure: Wizard of Oz, Spider-Man.
• 17:37–20:56 — Joe’s personal Hero’s Journey (Hurricane Katrina).
• 22:07–26:43 — Differentiating antiheroes and protagonist types.
• 28:59–39:01 — Deep dive on “Anti-Hero” lyrics, Taylor Swift’s public/private struggles.
• 41:11–43:43 — Bonkers video bridge: inheritance, cats, and ethical ambiguity.
• 44:00–47:09 — Heaven, hell, and poetic justice as storytelling devices.
• 48:29–49:48 — The importance of empathy and sacrifice.
• 50:54–55:18 — Final assignment: draft your own Hero's Journey story.
• 55:18–55:24 — Closing remarks.

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Tone & Style

The conversation is lively, playful, and rich with pop culture references, literary allusions, and family banter. Toni often interjects with wit and performance (including impressions), while Joe delivers detailed analysis and personal anecdotes. The episode balances humor and depth, making complex ideas accessible and actionable.

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Listener Takeaways

• Everyone is naturally inclined to see themselves as the hero—craft this consciously in your own narrative.
• “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift is a modern masterclass in self-aware, relatable storytelling.
• The power of a story lies in its emotional resonance, not merely in its facts.
• Embrace your flaws and complexities—the “antihero” approach can make your story more relatable.
• Reflect on and write your own Hero’s Journey to become a more compelling communicator and leader.

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Next episode tease:
A deeper dive into the song “Mastermind” and its Machiavellian storytelling techniques.

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Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Joe Rome and I'm his daughter Toni.

[B]

Welcome to Decoding Taylor Swift, where you'll learn the storytelling tools Swift uses that make her a modern day Shakespeare, but.

[A]

Can make you a better communicator so you can drive your mission and build your tribe.

[B]

Rolling Stone magazine put both me and Swift on its list of 100 people changing America. So I know that the most successful social change makers are the best storytellers.

[A]

This podcast will transform how you think about Swift's songs and give you the life changing tools to lead, connect and change the world.

[B]

Hello, we're back.

[A]

Welcome, welcome.

[B]

This is technically episode three, although we've been told that you're gonna watch these out of order, so.

[A]

Yeah, well, please prove our producer wrong just to spite him. Say hashtag, listen to them in order.

[B]

Yes, we think of them in order, but of course we design each one as its own individual gem.

[A]

Sure. For you, the listener.

[B]

So today we're going to talk about Anti Hero.

[A]

Anti hero. And in this episode you're going to learn how to build your own hero's journey. You can learn how to, to understand yourself as a hero in your own story. I mean, because it's been well established everybody sees themself as the hero in their own story. But this time you can take advantage of that. You can, you can learn through Taylor Swift's song Antihero, which is pretty much one of the most explicit, you know, examples of a hero's journey, kind of a self referential one in Antihero's journey that there is.

[B]

And the reason you need to know how to deliver the Hero's journey story is because this is how you build your tribe.

[A]

Right?

[B]

This is how you build your tribe fundamentally.

[A]

I mean, this is like if you want to learn how to communicate how to get a job, how, how to sell yourself, this is the one thing you need to know. You need to know how to, how to build your story as a hero. Yeah, because people, people latch onto those stories. We're taught we are seeped in stories from day one.

[B]

Well, and I will quote Steve Jobs himself, 1994, the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come. And if you want to change the world which is built around stories, you're going to have to come up with your own story of change and how you became a leader of that change and you want people to join your tribe of change. And focusing on any hero is how we are going to take a journey through what the Hero's Journey story is. And it's a really good timing for that because in the news, we just learned that Taylor Swift has now hit three albums. The first recording artist in history to hit three albums with over 10 billion Spotify streams each.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And the most recent being Midnights.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And Midnights, of course, is.

[A]

It's because he was streaming Antihero over the weekend.

[B]

I did it single handedly. It's me listening to. I did. I did have to listen to Anti Hero a lot of times.

[A]

He always does this.

[B]

Be sure to hear all the parts that, you know, all those little lines that don't necessarily make a lot of sense. And we will get to those. The other big news earlier. Earlier was that Midnights set a different record, which was the first album in history to have all ten slots on the top ten Billboard hits.

[A]

Yeah. Heavy hitting album.

[B]

Of which number one, Antihero. Anti Hero.

[A]

Anti Hero. People love a good antihero.

[B]

They do.

[A]

That's a segue. Segue.

[B]

Segue.

[A]

Why do people. Why should we care about learning about antiheroes? Dad. Why should we care about learning about the antihero's journey?

[B]

What an unexpected question.

[A]

Unexpected question. But we're just throwing stuff out there.

[B]

Just off the cuff.

[A]

Yeah. I just like thinking about it.

[B]

So here's the thing. Heroes are the cornerstone of storytelling. They go back to the original Hero's journey that, it turns out, are the essence of all the great mythical stories by every culture in the world.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that was something that Joseph Campbell figured out.

[A]

Joseph Campbell.

[B]

He put in a book called the Hero with a Thousand Faces and a obscure guy, obscure writer, producer named George Lucas.

[A]

Yeah, just some dude. I don't know how you even remember.

[B]

His name, really loved that stuff. And he made it the basis of episode four, five, the original Star Wars.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it became very popular all throughout Hollywood. And there were even books written about how screenwriters can use the Hero's journey to write great stories.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so they are the basis of all the great books, movies, everything that you read. So that's sort of partly, but Partly.

[A]

Yeah, that's the history. That's why it has progressed itself and inserted itself into popular culture. But why it's so important for you, our most valued listeners, is that seeing yourself in the light, that you probably see yourself as the hero of your.

[B]

Own story, it's a story you're going to need to tell about yourself, this Hero's Journey story, because the way that Campbell described it it had 16 parts. But there's a core element of this story, which I'll go through in just a minute, that is a story we're kind of all expected to tell. It is the story of how we went from being a normal person like everyone else to figuring out our superpower.

[A]

And our wisdom, how we can add value to our society, to. I don't know. The job that you're interviewing for, the college that you're interviewing for. A personal statement is basically a hero's journey.

[B]

Right. And the specific beats in that story are one that you're gonna have to learn.

[A]

And.

[B]

And relatedly, of course, has been, let's say, the backlash to the hero's journey, which is the rise of the antihero and the popularity of antiheroes. And antiheroes is not a fully well defined term. It means different things to different people. For some people, the antihero could be Robin Hood.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

The anti hero could be Wolverine.

[A]

Right. Meaning at the end of the day, they're still a hero, even if their traits and the means that they use to achieve their ends are a little bit iffy.

[B]

Right. Versus the other type of antihero, which really took off in peak TV because of Tony Soprano in the Sopranos and Walter White in Breaking Bad.

[A]

Boo.

[B]

Fake anti hero, which is the person who is the main character.

[A]

Yeah, but they suck.

[B]

They're the protagonist.

[A]

They're just a bad person, but they're a bad person.

[B]

They could be a monstrous person like Joe Goldberg. Yeah, Joe Goldberg. And you.

[A]

Yes. Sucks, man.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He's a bad dude.

[B]

But the point is that there is an archetype. There's a bird at the window.

[A]

This is the second time he's come here. I've named him. What did I name him? Named him Alfred.

[B]

But he probably.

[A]

Or Albert.

[B]

He or she. Or it has its own name. And you're just trying to give it a name. I just think that's wrong.

[A]

Well, judging by the sounds he makes, his name seems to be.

[B]

Just because you can't understand what it's saying doesn't mean that it isn't trying to say something.

[A]

Albert can be a gender neutral name.

[B]

Well, all I'm saying. Not really, but all I'm saying. All I'm saying is that Robert has its own hero's journey, and we should not try to overwrite its journey.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So.

[B]

So the other thing that we see is that not just are we seeing sort of the rise of the antiheroes, but the critical relook at the heroes. And so we see lots of story versions where Sherlock Holmes might kill someone.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

He's killing a bad person. So we see a lot of good people realizing they can't operate within the realms of justice because the justice system is corrupt. And so they become vigilantes.

[A]

Yes, Right.

[B]

So then you have your Batman.

[A]

Yeah. And the rise of the antihero and the vigilante was a marker of the zeitgeist in the 70s, which you were talking to me about earlier, too, about how New York City, a lot of cities were kind of in ruins. And honestly, I'd say it even started with Al Capone and probably the Prohibition era because of, you know, infrastructure was failing.

[B]

What a segue there.

[A]

Really.

[B]

Yes. Al Capone.

[A]

Segue, segue.

[B]

Al Capone. And this is something. And this is one of the great books of all time, how to Win Friends and Influence People. This is sometimes. Over 16 million copies sold. This is Dale Carnegie, sometimes considered the original.

[A]

No relation to Carnegie. The Carnegie. Carnegie?

[B]

I don't believe so. But there is a Dale Carnegie School, and you can learn his techniques. And one of the things that he says, basically, is that everyone thinks they're the hero of their own story, right? And as evidence, he quotes all these criminals explaining how they viewed their lives. And so he quotes Al Capone. I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse the existence of a hunted man.

[A]

Did he have one of those accents? Because I think you should do that again in the accent.

[B]

I'm not going to do an accent. Because.

[A]

Fine, I'll do the accent. Give me the book. Give me the book.

[B]

You can do it if you like. You're the professional actress here.

[A]

All right. I would not say that. So pretend that I'm Joe so you know how to win friends and influence people. One of the most famous books written by Dale Carnegie. Of course, there's a Carnegie School. And you can learn a lot about all his techniques.

[B]

Deep voice.

[A]

I'm trying to do it. Anyway, so he quotes Al Capone. Tony quotes all these criminals just to prove that they're criminals. They see themselves as heroes, too. I've spent the best years of my life giving people. No, that's not what it would be.

[B]

I think it's Italian. If you really feel obliged to do an accident.

[A]

I'm Italian. I'm Italian. I'm Italian. I have a. No, that's. That's too Italian. I spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them Have a good time. And all I get is abuse. The existence of a hunted man.

[B]

There you go. Could be Tony Soprano. Could be Vito Corleone.

[A]

They call me Tony. They call me Tony. I actually have an. I have a cousin Tony and a cousin Vinnie. That's how Italian I am.

[B]

Well, your mother is Italian American. And indeed, your mother can.

[A]

An event for every single Italian.

[B]

Your grandfather taught Italian literature at the University of Connecticut, was an expert on Dante's Inferno, which is a callback. Previous episode.

[A]

Did it? Was it? Oh, man. Must have blacked out during that one.

[B]

Kaboom.

[A]

Oh, I think, yeah, we did.

[B]

So the point is that when you are interacting with people, Dale Carnegie's point is you may think, what a terrible person this is, or they really screwed up, or X, Y, and Z.

[A]

Right. But clearly they found a way to justify their actions. I mean, clearly they see themselves, right? I mean, this is like, you learn by the time you're in middle school, you're like, well, obviously if they're the bad guy, they probably see themselves as the good guy. But no, it's true. It's 100% true.

[B]

And I'm not saying that you shouldn't think, oh, this is a bad person. Carnegie's point is just don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Don't be so rash to judge regular people, not criminals. You can judge criminals. But his point is that if criminals think of themselves in this positive light, imagine what regular people do.

[A]

I know, right? Like forgetting to return a library book for a few weeks. You're not a bad person.

[B]

So let's talk a little bit about the hero's journey, because I think in order to understand what Taylor is saying in anti. And I'll just throw out. Little tease, little foreshadow. Is the first line in Antihero, which is, I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser.

[A]

Never wiser. Snap.

[B]

Right? So she is saying that the antihero doesn't grow over time, which tells us she understands the hero's journey very well. Because the essence of the hero's journey is the hero's journey grows. The hero learns something. And indeed, in Joseph Campbell's version, the hero doesn't just learn something. The hero returns home to bring back that lesson to people.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And in the original version of the hero's journey, as Campbell constructed it, he called it Return of the Elixir.

[A]

Yes, he did.

[B]

The hero would. The classic heroic story, the Holy Grail, right? The Knights of the Round Table go out in search of the Holy Grail, because King Arthur is sick, they're gonna bring back the chalice, and the chalice is gonna cure. That's the elixir that will cure King Arthur. Right. And basically what Campbell says that in the larger metaphorical sense, what you're bringing back to cure people is wisdom or knowledge that you have gained along the way.

[A]

Right. Like, for example, in the wizard of Oz.

[B]

Well, we'll get to the wizard of Oz.

[A]

Really? We're not there yet.

[B]

We are about to get there. I was just gonna say a classic example would be Spider Man.

[A]

Sure, sure.

[B]

With great power comes great responsibility. Right. He doesn't stop the killer of his gentle Uncle Ben and lives to regret it. He learns a lesson. So let's talk about the wizard of Oz, because in the original version, as Judge Campbell constructed it, the hero starts out as a normal person in the normal world. In the normal world, yeah. And at the beginning of the wizard of Oz, it actually takes place in the black and white filming of Kansas.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So literally the normal world.

[B]

Right. And there is some sort of. Something happens, some conflict or some call to action or some tornado, who, in this case, the threat to her dog, Toto, which causes her to run away from home.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And because she runs away from home, she ends up getting swept up in this tornado, which is carrying her to the special world where she'll go through various adventures and learn things. We're gonna pause for two seconds and say, this is all foreshadowed, because hero's journey's gonna have foreshadow. And what is the foreshadow?

[A]

The.

[B]

That Dorothy is gonna be swept up in this terrible storm. What is Dorothy's last name?

[A]

Well, what a great question that you've asked and haven't told me that you were gonna ask. Her last name is actually Gale. As in Gale wins.

[B]

She is Dorothy Gale. Yes. Pretty blatant foreshadow. Just like, I don't know. Luke Skywalker.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Is that a foreshadow?

[A]

Darth Vader? Come on. That means father. Literally every German saw that coming.

[B]

So we see in names a lot in Harry Potter. Like, names are like all these.

[A]

Oh, my God, don't even get me started on the names in Harry Potter.

[B]

So, yes, there. I mean, you know the Voldemort, Right. These names are. You know, Voldemort has Mort in it. Death. Right.

[A]

Naming the one East Asian person, like Cho Chang. That was.

[B]

Yeah. So it's. We see names or a lot of foreshadowing. So back to the wizard of Oz. Well, obviously, if your name is the Wicked Witch of the West. Right. That's kind of like could, you know.

[A]

That'S like, oh my God, I know you're wicked. That's crazy.

[B]

Whose parents named them Wicked Witch of the West?

[A]

I know, like that's like. Is that Dutch? What is that?

[B]

So she gets sweat, she leaves the normal world, which is in black and white. She goes into the world of Technicolor, the Wizard of Oz and his best, the Land of Oz. And she meets all these friends, strange, you know, in the hero's journey, usually you have these strange like animal like friends. It could be a Chewbacca, it could be Scarecrow and Lion and Tin Man.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You go through adventures, you fight bad guys and you defeat evil. And you learn something along the way.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You gain some wisdom. What is the wisdom that she ironically gains after she runs away from home?

[A]

There is no place like home.

[B]

There's no place like home. And so she returns back home to bring this message. And by the way, it's the same people.

[A]

It is, yeah.

[B]

It's the same actors in Kansas as it was in Oz.

[A]

Yeah. Uncle what's his face and Aunt what's her name.

[B]

But the point is that's the full circular journey. Start out in the normal world as a normal person. Go through trials and tribulations, gain some knowledge, come back to the normal world and bring back the wisdom, the elixir, the thing that will help people learn from what you have yourself gone through a process and learned.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you know, there's a story I would tell.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

As I was getting into the shifting, I used to be, I spent a lot of years working on clean energy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Worked at the U.S. department of Energy, became acting Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable energy. Did consulting for clean energy, worked with IBM and Johnson Johnson and Nike on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And then my life was changed on August 29, 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall. And my brother who lived in past Christian, Mississippi, his home was destroyed by the biggest storm surge ever recorded in US history, which was in past Christian, Mississippi. 20 foot storm surge. And obviously that was very devastating to him and family.

[A]

And yeah, I didn't know it was that high.

[B]

It was. So I looked it up. It's like, oh my God, this is the worst storm surge in U.S. history. And I had a Ph.D. in physics from it and brag alert. Well, that's why I was doing what I was doing.

[A]

And I. Ladies, get in line.

[B]

You've said that you're going to have to come up with new material.

[A]

No, I'll keep saying it. I'll keep saying, saying it. It's funny.

[B]

All righty. So he asked me a few weeks later a question that. That was the question changed my life. He said, should I rebuild my home? And I thought, well, I didn't have the answer. But he was basically asking me, are these storms going to keep coming? Are they going to keep getting worse and worse and worse? And so I started talking to the climate scientists and reading the literature and going to seminars. And I realized two things. One was the situation was more dire than I realized, and number two, climate scientists weren't doing a good job of messaging. And I happen to have been raised by professional writers. And so I decided to stop doing clean energy consulting and do communications full time. And that led me to start a blog that became very popular. That's the blog that got me in the same issue of. Of the Rolling Stone magazine that Taylor Swift was in.

[A]

Yeah. Madams, get in Q. Is that better?

[B]

And I was telling that story before I realized it was a hero's journey story. That I had started out one way and then something terrible had happened. And that set me on a quest to acquire knowledge. And I acquired that knowledge and felt I wanted to go around and share it with people. And I studied communications. And this also connects to the blah, blah, blah story of episode one, where I wanted to communicate with my daughter also and learn storytelling. And that took a long time because I had to unlearn everything I Learned getting a PhD in physics, which is don't tell stories and don't repeat yourself and all that nonsense stuff that you get taught in college for your $60,000 a year.

[A]

Oh, thanks. That's a very nice thing to hear. Just as I'm about to go to.

[B]

A college, you're going to save us so much money.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

So anyway, the point is that's a story. One of those two stories I tell at the beginning of any remarks, no matter how short they are.

[A]

Right. And if you didn't zone out during that, then that means that it clearly has done its job. Right.

[B]

And the point. Why do you have to tell that story first? Because your first job when you go speaking in public is to establish that you're in the same group as the audience.

[A]

Yeah. Otherwise also, too, is to take a word from the Greeks that we were, you know, jammed into us during English last year is ethos. You have to establish your ethos.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But you also have to use pathos to make yourself compelling.

[B]

Well, the point is that we're not robots. Real people have real emotions, and they are motivated by emotions more than they are logic and facts. And that is a painful lesson for someone with a PhD to learn. But it's the reality. Facts are not what rule people's decision making, but in fact, emotional appeals, repetition, storytelling, all of that stuff. So this brings us back to, again, one of the main reasons that we decided to do this podcast in the first place. Well, you know, and I think that.

[A]

Oh, my God, Albert has a friend. Albert has a female friend.

[B]

We'll see. Maybe.

[A]

Or male friend.

[B]

All right, well, whatever, whatever. Hero's Journey. Walter, who I thought originally was James, was on.

[A]

He can be Walter. James, Albert.

[B]

Alrighty, so let's go over to antihero. Let's dive back into antihero, right? And like we said, the term itself is kind of ambiguous because there are different types of antiheroes, right? Antiheroes who we would say are fundamentally heroes and antiheroes that we would say are fundamentally villains, which I, by the.

[A]

Way, don't agree with that definition. I think that the anti hero. I think that the prefix anti, when it is applied to the hero, villain archetypes, ultimately denotes, like, the second thing, the thing that succeeds it. Right? But I think a hero and an anti hero ultimately are both still heroes, right? I think they have to be heroes. I think Deadpool is the ultimate antihero because at the end of the day, even though he's murderous, a little bit crazy, very violent, snarky, and clearly emotionally unavailable, at the end of the day, he is a hero. He does the right thing. He protects the people that he loves, and he saves cities. He does stuff like that.

[B]

Well, look, I'm with you. I'm just saying.

[A]

No, you're not, because you sent me a bunch of research papers that said that that was not the way that you.

[B]

Well, that's because the term evolved.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Because of the Tony Sopranos of the world and the Walter Whites and the. And a popularity and then we have behind those, Right?

[A]

Like, I think that we can just say that, like, some protagonists aren't heroes. Antiheroes, sometimes they just are. Like, they suck. Like, I don't know. They're just like. I mean, we can create a word for it if it makes people really happy, but honestly, I don't think that they are the antihero definition that is the most useful to define. Right? Like, I don't think there can be three. Right. Like.

[B]

Well, let me. Let me. Let me put it this way.

[A]

All right. Clearly, you put it this way. No, I'm just kidding. You can go. You put it this way. No, please stop staring at me like that. Put it this way. No, please. You can put it.

[B]

I will put it a certain way.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

There is a popular character in modern tv. It's the popular character, both in fiction, but also in reality shows, Right. You know, in the Apprentice, for instance, first season, your mother and I watched it, you had Omarosa.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Who became the archetypal villainous character in a reality show. We see this over and over again. We see this with Real Housewives, people overturning tables.

[A]

Yeah, or Abby Miller from Dance Moms. Or Simon Cowell.

[B]

Yeah, Simon Cowell, exactly. We see that character. Very popular. Because there are these other archetypes of the Loki, Right? The trickster.

[A]

That's what. See Loki for me, too. Loki and Deadpool are two really good examples of what I consider to be an antihero, Right? Like, because Loki was a villain, obviously, in the first Avengers. Villain, sure, whatever.

[B]

Kills people.

[A]

Played by Tom Hiddleston, hottest guy on Earth, anyway, and dated Taylor Swift. I know. Which is crazy. Crazy coincidence. And, yeah, segue, but not yet. But just as an assignment, because Loki at his own series, in his own series, he becomes a hero, right? He tries to, you know, get back the multiverse. He tries to. Whatever kind of convoluted plot Marvel has decided to make because, you know. But they finished with Avengers Endgame.

[B]

But this gets to the whole Thanos character, right? Thanos kills half the people in the universe.

[A]

And that's who I would call an anti villain, right? Because he has the noble intentions. He just wants to make the population more manageable so that resources won't be used like, you know, in surplus, right? He's saying that he wants more people to be safe, right? But ultimately he ends up being kind of an asshole about it, and that's what makes him a villain.

[B]

Right. Well. And, you know, I'll just finish before.

[A]

We jump right in back to Taylor, folks.

[B]

Jump back into Taylor. Well, it's this notion of, at the end, did you do the right thing or did you do the wrong thing? And there's a middle case where the right thing is evil, but it's in the name of a better right.

[A]

And, you know, not to be that guy, but I am studying ethics in college, or I hopefully will be. But it's always harder to know what the right thing is, especially in plots like, you know, as complicated as Breaking Bad. What is the right thing? Right? For some heroes, that means you kill the bad guys, you save the day. But for people like Superman, who doesn't kill bad guys, to him, he would say that killing bad guys is equally as wrong as the bad guys who kill the other bad guys. Right, well.

[B]

And since you brought it up, I would urge everyone, I'm a big fan of Benedict Cumberbatch.

[A]

Ugh, I know, so am. I love that.

[B]

And I'm a big fan of Sherlock Holmes.

[A]

You know, Benedict Cumberbatch is my, like, little profile on Microsoft Teams for my school.

[B]

I did not know that.

[A]

Yeah, now you do. Now everybody does.

[B]

But in the BBC series where he is battling against this guy Magnussen, who is this horrible blackmailer ruining people's lives, who is threatening to ruin John Watson's life by basically revealing a secret about his wife, Watson's wife, that would probably result in her death. And Watson is totally at a loss.

[A]

Spoilers for this episode of, you know.

[B]

Sorry, Right, spoilers. Yes. In this final epic scene, Sherlock Holmes has been trying to figure out where is the blackmail information residing. And he figures out it's residing because Magnuson confesses, says it blurts it out, it's just in Magnuson's head. So when John Watson says, sherlock, what do we do? And then Magnuson says, there's nothing to be done. Oh, I'm not a villain. I have no evil plan. I'm a businessman acquiring assets. You happen to be one of them. Sorry, no chance for you to be a hero this time, Mr. Holmes.

[A]

Can I do the accent? And then Sherlock says, oh, do your research. I'm not a hero. I'm a high functioning sociopath. Merry Christmas. And then he shoots him, right?

[B]

He reaches into John's. Watson's pocket. You had the. Of course, in the first act, the gun that John Watson had, it gets used in the final scene, and he just blows the brains out of Magnussen, saying to him, merry Christmas. While there's a helicopter with Sherlock Holmes brother Mycroft observing this.

[A]

And the police are there too.

[B]

And the police are there. So Holmes murders this guy in cold blood, drops the gun, puts his hands up, and that's. So, yes. Holmes says, I'm operating outside the law. Right. To do what he considers to be a larger good.

[A]

Right, okay, so now let's go now back to Antihero.

[B]

Let's go back to Taylor, who. What is Taylor saying in Antihero? Let's take a look at that. So what do you think? What happens in Antihero? It's a pretty outrageous song, right?

[A]

Well, it's about. It's kind of the lack of an actual plot, but just a commentary on the type of person that she is. Right. She's saying that it's her kind of admitting that she herself is deeply flawed. Yeah.

[B]

And she says so. She, in fact, gave extended remarks in which she said she's one of her favorite songs. Cause she's being really honest.

[A]

Yeah, well, because she also says that she's had this obsession since she was a kid, which I think a lot of women have, is, am I a good person? Right. Am I doing the right thing? Will people see me as a good person? And the reasons why women have these, obviously, is because in society, a lot of times they're painted to be the caretaker, the person who chooses the high road. The person who has to rely on. On morality and their wits and stuff because they can't rely on violence and anger. So.

[B]

Right. They can't. They're not supposed to choose that path. They don't have the option of doing what some of the male violent people can do.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They can't do what Sherlock Holmes did, pull out someone else's gun and blow the bad guy's brain away. I mean, they can in modern iterations.

[A]

Well, sure. She says herself that she wants. She's always wanted to be this good person that people see as a good person.

[B]

She says that in the beginning of the movie, the biopic that she does.

[A]

Miss Americana Biopic.

[B]

We're not going to get into that.

[A]

Oh, my God. Anyway, so. So she's saying that. Well, actually, here's a quote. We all hate things about ourselves. And it's all of those aspects of the things we dislike and like about ourselves that we have to come to terms with if we're going to be this person. So I like antihero because I think it's really honest. And I agree with that. I think we all have to admit that to be the heroes in our story. You know, sometimes we get. We can tend to look past our flaws, or the exact opposite happens, where we lean into our flaws too much, where we see ourselves in just a bad light. We don't see ourselves in any good light. We start to hate ourselves. And I think the truth is a medium. Right. It's in between. Everybody has flaws. That's why antihero is so important. That's why seeing yourself not as a regular hero but as an antihero can be helpful because that kind of leads to you really accepting yourself.

[B]

Well, she's trying to see. Yes, right. There's no Perfectly good person. Right. We all know that we all have flaws. We all make mistakes. Hopefully we get wiser over time.

[A]

Well, she apparently doesn't.

[B]

The person in the song does not.

[A]

The person in the song does not.

[B]

Right. And this is sort of one of the paradoxes in the song, because the writer of the song did get wiser. Cause she figured out that she seems to have this pattern of making the same mistakes over and over again.

[A]

Right. But by writing this song, she's also admitting she's probably gonna make him again because she's the problem. It's her. And realizing that doesn't really mean that she's gonna change. But it is a step in the right direction. Right. It is. Acknowledging it is being wiser.

[B]

Well, I think that's gonna get to a question of whether she is gonna change or she's simply gonna use this as a rationalization that this is simply an unchangeable character flaw of mine and everyone has to live with it. Right. This is a very important question that we all have to decide in relationships. As someone who's been around a bit, you come to a point in a relationship, you have to decide, is the other person's problems a character flaw that I can't live with, or is it a few behaviors that maybe they can tweak and I can live with?

[A]

Or even in yourself. Right. If you start to recognize patterns, I mean, the ultimate question is, can people change? And I think they can, because I think you change. And I think the more information you have on the way the world works changes you. Right. Because it leads you to make different decisions. Now, whether you already had that potential inside of you and whether you can change that potential. I don't know. That's a little bit too philosophical for me right now.

[B]

Well, let's. Let's, you know, let's look at this.

[A]

Or at least for this podcast, because I would talk about it.

[B]

This is a very unusual song. In part, as you say, it's got some very odd narratives. There's a lot of dream. There's two different dream sequences in it, including. And then the video just goes way bonkers.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

I mean, the video is just bonkers. What else can you say? So what are some of the things that she is unhappy with herself about? You know, when my depression works the graveyard shift, all of the people I've ghosted stand there in the room. Right. So she's treated some people poorly.

[A]

Right. She's ghosted them.

[B]

Right. And by the way, I think ghost is really a metaphor for just People she's treated poorly. Cause I don't know that she ghosts a lot of people so much as she writes, she goes out with guys that are she knows are bad repeatedly. The relationship crashes and burns. And then she writes a song about how terrible the guy is. And maybe after a while, my interpretation part of the song is she's like, well, okay, these guys are bad, but do I have any fault that I keep going out with these guys who I know are bad? You know, I mean, you know, she's.

[A]

Saying, yeah, like, it's probably me too.

[B]

Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago.

[A]

I know, right? I was in your sights. You got me alone. No, it's true.

[B]

Right? And the part where she says, what, you didn't. You don't seem to care. What is the line?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I guess you didn't care. And I guess I liked that.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So, okay, she's saying that she likes.

[B]

Like, you know, the guy who didn't care about her. So what do you think the outcome of this relationship's gonna be?

[A]

Right? It's not the guy's fault that she is attracted to dudes who, like, don't care. Or at least was.

[B]

We saw the same thing in Travis seems to care. Let's hope so.

[A]

Let's hope so.

[B]

We'll have.

[A]

She had a whole song about how he cares, probably.

[B]

But also, you know, in getaway car.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Getaway car.

[A]

Another, you know, she's another Tom Hiddleston mention.

[B]

You know, she. This guy, she wants to leave one guy, so she finds another guy who will drive her away in a getaway car. And then in the end, she abandons that guy in her own getaway car.

[A]

Yeah. Hashtag feminism.

[B]

So has she learned? Right? Or is she just saying, I'm never gonna learn? Or is she Taylor Swift the singer different from Taylor Swift the person in the song?

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

This is a very big question that I think everyone has to grapple when they're trying to understand her songs and themselves, right?

[A]

Are they. Are you different than the actions that you do? Can you change your actions? Right.

[B]

We could have a view of our internal self.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So the chorus of this is, you know, it's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me at tea time, everyone agrees, right? So everybody says, I'm the problem. Right. There's no question that a lot of people are saying, you keep going out with the same guys, you know? And then she says, I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror. It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti hero. So a couple of things. So there's this key verse. Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby and I'm a monster on the hill Too big to hang out Slowly lurching toward your favorite city Pierced through the heart but never killed.

[A]

Yeah. And it makes.

[B]

What does that mean?

[A]

Well, it makes more sense when you see the music video, but what it means in general for the hero's journey in that context is it means that she thinks that one of her flaws is mainly that she is too big. Right.

[B]

She's gotten very big.

[A]

She says she can't feel like a normal person. That's what fame does to a person. This is kind of her describing her hero's journey too. Yes.

[B]

She said in that video, she says that I struggle with a lot, with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized and not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.

[A]

Right. Well. Cause she, as we know, is a performer. Right. She says I can do it with a broken heart. Right. The person on stage is not Taylor. The person that we can know, she calls us up, which she absolutely can do, but we can't know her. And I'm sure it's hard, right? Every single night or every other night going out, being somebody else. And that seems to me, as a non famous lay person, that probably one of the hardest parts of being a famous person is that you have two versions of yourself. Your public Persona, which is kind of an extension of your outward Persona. And it gets so disconnected from your inner Persona that you start to see only through the perspective of your actions, only through the perspective of how everybody else sees you. You become the person that that is. That is melded pretty much entirely by fame, by how the outside world views you. You start to lose your individuality. Right.

[B]

Lady Gaga wrote, you know, the fame monster.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

So there's no question.

[A]

Love Lady Gaga.

[B]

That. And we all love Lady Gaga.

[A]

I know. Second concert I ever saw. Hashtag slay. I just fist bumped him because he took me to that. Thanks, dad.

[B]

You're welcome.

[A]

We went and I was like 10. But.

[B]

But I think that the point is the Taylor is in some respects this gigantic machine, right? This. This gigantic monster lurching from.

[A]

Well, literally a money machine. Right?

[B]

Yeah. And. And I think it was someone in Slate said that this, you know, monster lurching from city to city is a sort of good. A good metaphor for what it's like to be a touring rock star, a superstar you know, at the same time.

[A]

I think, I mean, she literally shook Seattle. Like, it felt like there was like an earthquake. Right?

[B]

Yes. She is able to, you know, get so many people doing the same thing all at the same time. But this loops into another key line in the play. It's not in the play. This loops into another key line in the song where the chorus says.

[A]

Well, she keeps saying tale as old as time.

[B]

Right? Tale as old as time is the chorus. Basically, there's this singing behind, you know, the verse when she says, right, the.

[A]

Little ad lib things.

[B]

The tale as old as time, Right.

[A]

Famously.

[B]

What is the tale as old as time?

[A]

Thank you for asking me that question that I totally didn't know you were gonna ask me. It's actually Beauty and the Beast for people who didn't know. Tale as old as time. Yeah, there you go. Snaps.

[B]

Right? So she knows when she says tale as old as time that people understand she's referring to the Disney Beauty and the Beast, Right? Right. Now, she's already identified herself as the Beast here, but we also know she's a beauty. She was a beauty. She made was.

[A]

Excuse you.

[B]

Well, the point is when she says this line about everybody's a sexy baby, but I'm a monster on the hill, there's some implication that somehow she's transformed maybe from being like everybody else to being this monster. But my point is, I think that the metaphor is that she's both the Beauty and the Beast, right? And she has that internal conflict in her, right? And always trying to figure out how to deal with it. And then we come to the really bonkers part of the song, right? And this question of can you understand a pop song separate from the music video of the pop song, right?

[A]

So this is the bridge, the crazy bridge.

[B]

So the bridge is often where Taylor ramps things up to an 11 and she sings, I have this dream where my daughter in law kills me for the money. She thinks I left them in the will. The family gathers round and reads it. And then someone screams out, she's laughing up at us from hell. So woof. And in the music video, she's actually in a coffin.

[A]

I wouldn't give any money to my in laws, to be fair.

[B]

And we see the daughter in law, we see the son, in fact, we see the two sons. Sons, they're both, let's say, just not prime examples of human beings, right? And it all just, you know, melts down. She leaves them 13 cents in the will.

[A]

Help.

[B]

They leave. She. She leaves.

[A]

Yeah, well, 13, famously, her favorite number.

[B]

Favorite number. She leaves. Oh, the beach house. To the cats.

[A]

Right, of course I would do.

[B]

And the daughter. And the daughter in law says cats don't even like the beach.

[A]

But which by the way, can I just say, on the. On the defense of cats, that is a misconception. It's not that cats don't like water. They don't like not having control over when they go in the water.

[B]

Well said. Hashtag understand cats.

[A]

Hashtag speak the truth. Hashtag cats. Not rats. Hashtag water. Hashtag cats. I'm trying to think of a hashtag. Hold on. But you can cut those bad ones out. Only give the. Only give the good ones.

[B]

It's worth pointing out, I think that a key element of the hero's journey is that the hero dies in the end. Dies at some point either.

[A]

Oh wait, I have a good one. I'm so sorry. Hashtag wet ass pussy. Get it? Hashtag whop. Cause it's a cat and it's wet. You talked about teenage sex for the whole time.

[B]

Last episode, the episode was about a song that Taylor wrote about 20 year old sex.

[A]

Bring back Megan thee stallion. We should have a podcast about her.

[B]

Alrighty. Maybe we will do an episode about some other songwriters.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

So in this episode, in this song, Taylor has a dream of being murdered.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And in this dream, everyone thinks she's, or you know, she's laughing up from hell. So she, in this version, she isn't quite the heroic version of the antihero. She's an antihero who ends up in hell.

[A]

Right. So which, to be fair, I think most antiheroes. I think that's also a difference between the hero and the antihero is that, I mean, Deadpool's not gonna like. I don't think he's gonna have to be.

[B]

That Wolverine is going to hell after all the times he saved the world.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, he's kind of murdered countless people and been kind of a dick to everybody in his personal life.

[B]

Well, you know, since you're studying ethics, this question of are you only allowed to save the world by not killing a single person, including the bad guy? I mean, Harry Potter, I think what makes him.

[A]

I mean, I think, I think his last act in the, in the canon, not the multiverse canon of Wolverine probably landed him in heaven. If there is a heaven. Right. Well, I'm just saying I'm not sure there is, but it could be purgatory.

[B]

If you are gonna believe the whole.

[A]

I like, I like how the Good place does it, frankly, I think there should be, like, a thing where you go back and relive parts of your life and try to make different choices, so.

[B]

Well, look, I think that, you know, whether or not the listener believes in heaven and hell, it is clear that Taylor refers to it a lot.

[A]

Right?

[B]

We saw that.

[A]

And religion seeing things, that's what I think makes religion so powerful, is that it gives you an ethical framework with which to, like, through which to see the universe. Right. That's why it's those easily grasped concepts like heaven and hell. Right. The ultimate good versus the ultimate evil that. That you can judge something against, which is. I think it's. I think it's valuable to talk about. That's why it makes it such a powerful literary device or a literary illusion. Heaven and Hell is because you're. You're saying you're speaking about ethics using, you know, fancy illusion, which is a good literary device that we can, I'm sure, talk about in another episode. But, yeah, I mean, I think regardless of whether you believe in heaven and hell, I think in songs, in the world of literature, in the world of fantasy, I think every time Heaven and Hell is alluded to, it exists in the sense that you're speaking about the ultimate good versus ultimate evil. And you're painting a picture of the character saying that in this case, she's laughing up at us from hell. I mean, in this case, hell is real because she's saying that ultimately, like, she's done bad shit that landed her in hell.

[B]

Well, she's also saying. I mean, the other point of Heaven and Hell, to be clear, is poetic justice, Right, exactly. That people might. Bad people might succeed in this world, but they're gonna be punished in the afterworld, right?

[A]

Maybe I got mine, but you'll all get yours.

[B]

Right? This is something she deeply believes. This is karma, right? This is the whole what goes around comes around. This is, again, the essence of the hero's journey, right? The essence of the hero's journey to circle back to the beginning is that good triumphs over evil, right? Otherwise, there's no hero's journey. If the hero ends up getting killed by the villain, there's no learning. There's no bringing back anything to the normal world that you are either protecting them, but you can. A hero can.

[A]

Unless you're disenchantment, in which case you can go to heaven and then just come back.

[B]

Well, I would say this unless you're dying to save the world, right? And many heroes.

[A]

I mean, disenchantment the show, right?

[B]

I was just saying many heroes do, in fact, give their lives for. And that's a classic trope of the hero's journey. And in fact, that's what real world heroes. You're typically telling their story. Their hero's journey story is essentially their.

[A]

Eulogy after they're dead. Right?

[B]

Right. They live on forever because they were willing to make a sacrifice, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, or for the tribe. And this is also the ultimate reason why the hero's journey story became the central story as we were evolving language. Because the single most important thing for any tribe to do is to persuade its members that there was something larger than themselves, that they could die for the tribe as a whole.

[A]

Right. Me versus us, and then us versus them.

[B]

Right. And it's that social cohesion that is the point of all of these songs and heroic tales we are going to treat. The highest form of praise is for the person who is willing to sacrifice themselves for the larger good. Right. And this is the fundamental difference.

[A]

Collectivist propaganda.

[B]

Right. And this gets to the point that there are antiheroes who are. This is not Tony Soprano. This is not Walter White. These are not.

[A]

They're not true anti heroes. Right. They're not willing to actually make the sacrifices that in the end, put them in the canon as a hero.

[B]

Right. They are. And this is the other quality. So the hero both learns and grows, and the hero also has empathy and the ability to act on behalf of others.

[A]

Right. And even if the antihero never grows, they have the empathy. They'll still make the choices that they need to in the end.

[B]

And in fact, her defining characteristic is her empathy, her ability to write about people that are completely different from her, not just translate what happens to her in a universal way. But she can write songs like Marjorie.

[A]

Which is about her grandmother who passed away. Right. And convey that. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a niche song. It's on Evermore, but it's really, really good. It's short.

[B]

Well, what's the song? Where. Where, you know, I was so far ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere.

[A]

Oh, yeah. She's talking about this is me trying.

[B]

This is me trying. You know, this is a song that's not about her. It's about people who don't live up to expectations.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But she's able to empathize with them completely. And the antihero, the villain and the anti villain, the versions of the antihero that you don't like to call anti heroes are ones who are selfish and would never act on behalf of other people. They just happen to be the protagonist hero who has acquired power generally through Machiavellian means, which is to say whatever deceit, whatever trick that they can use. Now, I only mention that, of course, as a little foreshadow.

[A]

Yeah, foreshadow slash allusion to Mastermind, where she mentions Machiavelli.

[B]

Right. She says, I'm only cryptic in Machiavellian because I care. And that's also on Midnight's same album. And I think we'll probably talk about it next time because I think it's another very important song for understanding what she's doing and how she wants to be thought of. So I think we're basically reaching the end of this episode.

[A]

Indeed we are. And because we always give homework, because we're a little masterclass for hashtag free on Spotify. The homework that I would like to give you is to try and think of a few times in your life that you think could be defining moments in your hero's journey. Try to come up with that. If you're applying to colleges like I was this year. Oh my gosh. So terrible. Please try to think of your personal statement as a little Hero's Journey. Tell a little snippet. What I did in mine was just talk about things that made me weird and kind of ended it by saying that I'm still in my hero's journey. I didn't use those words, but I said I'm still learning who I am, still developing. But those are some of the things that have made me understand myself. Right. Because the ultimate hero's journey for everybody, I think, is self actualization. Realizing who you are and using examples that make you realize who you are, whether you're going into a job interview or even just to help you understand yourself. Little exercises like this can really make things a lot clearer. So do that. Yay.

[B]

Well, it's an important exercise. It's an important exercise because many people figure out what their path is. And that's what we all hope. We all, everyone wants to figure out. Why am I here? Right. The reason we're attracted to the Hero's Journey story is we want to see how other people went through the process of starting out as a regular person and became a person who found a mission and a knowledge and skills. Yes. And I hope, by the way, we've talked about this, perhaps in episodes to come, we may invite from listeners them to submit.

[A]

Yeah, that'd be a cute idea. Yeah.

[B]

Their own Hero's Journey. And maybe we could.

[A]

Yeah. Because we are not, we are by far not the most interesting people that are going to be, you know, connected to this podcast, whether listeners or doers. So please. Yeah, we might start that up in a few, you know, a few episodes.

[B]

We will figure that one out and maybe invite them in and maybe we'll even call up someone and kind of work through that.

[A]

Yeah, we have like a little phone bar because I'm.

[B]

In fact, that's something. I'm going to be doing that exact same thing. I'm doing. I am doing a workshop thing. I'm doing a workshop in Chicago, strangely enough, that you will be present.

[A]

I will be.

[B]

It's the Aspen ideas climate in Chicago at the end of July. And we proposed to them, I proposed to them with a few other people, a workshop where on storytelling. And we'll have a breakout group where people in fact can work through their hero's journey story and how they would tell it. Because I think again to loop back why this is important. I think everybody needs multiple versions of this story. I think you need a 30 second version you're gonna use anywhere. I'll talk to people and they'll say, I only have five minutes to speak. I better just focus on my. And I said, you can't start in a vacuum unless you can run people through the story of showing how you got to the place you are.

[A]

Right. And a hero's journey for separate occasions. Right. You're not going to tell the same hero's journey on like, you know, when you're giving a talk on astrophysics, like why are you interested in astrophysics? What led you to that? That would be your hero's journey and then your general hero's journey that you might be tell on like a TED Talk. Maybe it would be a little different.

[B]

Well, absolutely. And so that is definitely somewhere. And the one piece of assignment that I will give people. If you want to see one of the best true Hero's journey stories that was ever filmed, you can Google the Stanford graduation speech of Steve Jobs. Yeah, it's a very famous speech in which maybe people who are younger don't realize, but when he was around 30, he was fired from Apple by the board, by his friends and colleagues whom he had built this business with. And it was one of the most devastating moments of his life. And he talks about how he sunk very low and how he pulled himself out of this and of course how it was the best thing that ever happened to him. It ultimately led to him purchasing Pixar, the digital arm of Industrial Light and magic and turning it into Pixar and creating some of the greatest movies and stories of all time and him becoming a great storyteller. So the point is, and that's the other reason we like to hear this story, is we want to know that maybe some of the lowest points in our life are the turning points. We need to become the person we're supposed to be.

[A]

Snaps. Oh, my God. Snaps. But that's true. So true. And we'll leave it at that.

[B]

See you next time.