Exploring Shadows and Vulnerability

Summary

Feminist Survival Project – Episode Summary

Podcast: Feminist Survival Project
Hosts: Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski
Episode: Exploring Shadows and Vulnerability
Date: October 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this rich, reflective episode, Emily and Amelia Nagoski explore the concepts of vulnerability, “shadows,” and the transformative power of storytelling. Using personal narrative, playful Dungeons & Dragons metaphors, and honest confession, they unpack what it means to be seen, excluded, and to find magic—literal and metaphorical—in everyday life. The episode addresses professional anxieties, the challenges of communicating science, and the pivotal role of stories in healing, connection, and activism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Encountering the "Shadow" and Vulnerability

• Opening Confessions (00:12–02:00):
  • Emily admits that, despite her confidence and connection to her body, she does have a vulnerable “shadow”—but it isn’t about her body; it’s about intellectual and emotional stakes, especially when speaking to an audience of admired peers.
  • “My whole body is like, don't talk about that.” – Emily (01:04)
  • The “shadow” emerges particularly when she contemplates presenting new, personal ideas (about magic and storytelling) to sex science peers she deeply respects.

2. Communicating Science: The Inadequacy of Academic Rigor Alone

• Navigating Audiences (02:00–06:53):
  • Emily reflects on how federal interference and cyclical backlashes have undermined public health efforts for decades (03:00–04:20).
  • She wants to inspire sex scientists to become better communicators by using rhetoric, metaphor, and storytelling—tools not traditionally valued or taught in academia.
  • “Turns out regular people are not persuaded by effect sizes… they're interested in metaphors and storytelling.” – Emily (05:17)
  • The sisters discuss their own “too accessible” writing styles and the necessity (and difficulty) of unlearning academic writing to reach broader audiences (04:33–05:14).

3. Storytelling as Spellcasting: Magic as a Metaphor

• Dungeons & Dragons & the Power of Narrative (06:54–12:30):
  • Emily likens storytelling to spellcasting—a kind of magic that changes reality by changing hearts, minds, and even physiology (07:06–07:10).
  • “Storytelling is spellcasting. It's a form of magic.” – Emily (06:54)
  • Drawing from extensive D&D watching, she unspools why immersing in tales of struggle, courage, and heroism is healing and empowering.
  • Less news, more D&D: the sisters argue that being continuously informed does not make us more effective—action, not information, is power (07:36–09:13).

4. Magic, Creativity, and Small Gestures

• “You Are the Magic” and Everyday Spellcasting (12:30–17:27):
  • Emily shares moving examples from D&D (Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar)—all about how stories help us to process overwhelming reality, connect with others, and heal (12:30–17:27).
  • “Every word you choose to speak is the verbal component of a spell… The life we live is the spell we cast.” – Emily (15:57)
  • Magic is reframed not as supernatural power, but as creativity, everyday caring, and the small gestures we make for each other.

5. The Song: Stories Are Full of Magic

• Original Song and Trauma Metaphors (18:51–25:45):
  • Amelia shares a song she wrote—full of cultural references (Harry Potter, Moana, Matilda)—about why stories need magic and how recovery from trauma requires the extraordinary.
  • “Stories can show you for the hero you are.” – Amelia (recurring lyric, around 24:30)
  • Emily relates this to her writing; describing that the lived experience of trauma recovery doesn’t resemble anything commonplace, so only the language of fantasy and magic can do it justice.

6. Healing, Trauma, and the Need for Metaphor

• Why We Need Fantasy to Describe Our Pain (26:28–34:32):
  • Emily elaborates on how metaphors and stories—like Lord of the Rings or Moana—provide a necessary map for the inner journey of healing, when literal language fails.
  • The importance of escapism and seeking metaphoric resonance in stories is emphasized as a valid part of the healing process.

7. Disney World, Nostalgia, and Magic as Connection

• Pop Culture, Archetypes, and Collective Experience (34:32–39:19):
  • The hosts spin a metaphor about visiting Disney World: the immersion in stories, archetypes, and communal ritual is real magic—not the fireworks or the spectacle, but the sense of being “the magic” yourselves.
  • “You are the magic. Your presence here, your connection to each other. You are the magic.” – Amelia (34:44)

8. Storytelling & Belonging: Wounds, Exclusion, and Childhood Memories

• Rejection, Bullying, and the Longing for Acceptance (39:32–49:18):
  • Emily recounts professional rejection (Scientific American article backlash) and relates it to childhood experiences of being ostracized.
  • Both sisters discuss how being emotionally (and physically) bullied shaped their sense of self, drive for belonging, and the search for stories in which they fit.
  • Reading fiction became Emily’s way of belonging, while Amelia describes the pain of wanting to fit in but never being allowed.

9. Magic, Storytelling, and Changing the World

• Urgency of Narrative in Social Change (49:18–58:45):
  • Emily’s vision: Empower scientists to embrace metaphor and storytelling, even at the expense of scientific precision, in order to fundamentally shift public attitudes and policymaker support for sex research.
  • “You want to bypass the gut panic at ‘vagina’? Use a metaphor—tell them a story.” – Emily (51:45)
  • They cite childhood storytelling studies (Vivian Paley) and assert that the root story of all stories is, “When you are lonely, someone will come and say, ‘I’ll play with you.’” (54:15)
  • They grapple with whether to present the “magic” talk as straight science or embody narrative, ultimately deciding the latter is the more powerful path.

10. The Necessity (and Limitation) of Metaphor

• The Map Is Not the World (58:45–60:12):
  • Drawing from Neil Gaiman, they discuss how “the story is the map”—an imperfect, but necessary guide, since the world (or healing, or sexuality) is too complex to directly represent.
  • Storytelling is a compromise, but an accurate enough one to help others navigate uncertainty and change.
  • “When you look around, you do not see what you were told you were going to see. It is the map that’s wrong, not you.” – Emily (59:27)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Emily (on communication and science):
  • “Turns out regular people are not persuaded by effect sizes…they’re interested in metaphors and storytelling.” (05:17)
• Amelia (on stories and healing):
  • “Stories can show you for the hero you are.” (24:30)
• Emily (on creativity as magic):
  • “Every word you choose to speak is the verbal component of a spell…The life we live is the spell we cast.” (15:57)
• Amelia (on Disney magic):
  • “You are the magic. Your presence here, your connection to each other. You are the magic.” (34:44)
• Emily (on professional and personal wounds):
  • “The advice people give is people aren’t paying that much attention to you…God, I wish that were true. They absolutely were.” (42:11)
• Emily (on the map as metaphor):
  • “The story is the map. The map can be wrong. So the map is a metaphor for your sexuality.” (59:27)
• Amelia (on compromise in metaphor):
  • “The story is the map…It’s a compromise, but it represents the real thing.” (59:06)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:12–02:00: Introduction to the “shadow” and pre-talk vulnerability
• 03:00–05:17: Academic communication vs. public storytelling
• 06:54–09:13: Storytelling as magic, relief from news overwhelm
• 12:30–17:27: The healing magic of collaborative storytelling (D&D, metaphor)
• 18:51–25:45: Amelia’s song—trauma metaphors and why stories need magic
• 26:28–34:32: Trauma, fantasy, and the necessity of metaphor in healing
• 34:32–39:19: Disney World and collective ritual as modern magic
• 39:32–49:18: Bullying, exclusion, and the longing for a story to belong to
• 49:18–54:15: Changing the world through metaphor, spellcasting, and personal example
• 58:45–60:12: The value and limitation of metaphor: “the story is the map”

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Closing Message

The episode is an emotionally vivid meditation on vulnerability, narrative, and the courage it takes to live as “spellcasters” in a world that prizes rationality but so desperately needs stories, art, and magic. Emily and Amelia challenge listeners (and themselves) to see the ordinary acts of kindness, creativity, and communication as the true magic that transforms lives and communities.

“Here in the real world, where magic is mostly metaphor and where we ourselves, working together, are the miracle we're trying to summon, each of us ultimately casts just one spell, but we cast it over and over in every moment of every day.” – Emily Nagoski (60:52)

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Final thought:
You are the magic.

Transcript

[Emily Nagoski]

Are you ready? You're ready?

[Amelia Nagoski]

I'm ready. Take my picture.

[Emily Nagoski]

You look super cool, too. Okay. So it turns out I. I do have a shadow. We did a shadow episode, and we talked about how it felt to me, like, I didn't so much have a shadow because my body communicates so clearly with me that. That there. Right. Right there. Like, wasn't anything the world could tell me was shameful about myself that my body wasn't able to counteract with. Well, it's true, right?

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. And I remember being skeptical.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. So it turns out, no shit. I just had to find a thing that had nothing to do with my body.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, yeah. That makes sense.

[Emily Nagoski]

And it's an intellectual thing, so also.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Not a surprise, given you're.

[Emily Nagoski]

You. Wow. This early, like, my whole body is like, don't talk about that, Al.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Don't talk about that.

[Emily Nagoski]

Don't talk about that. And the thing is, like, I have started writing a talk for an audience of scientists where I'm like, I think I might talk about this. And, like, I don't. I don't get nervous about public speaking anymore. That's. That's not. Like, I've just done it too much to. And. Right.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Very often I'm saying something I have said before, very often, word for word. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hundreds of times. Yeah. Yeah. There are some things I've been saying for 30 years, literally.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. Um, this is not that I don't get nervous about those things. I get. I.

[Amelia Nagoski]

How come you're doing a different talk for this audience?

[Emily Nagoski]

Because it's an audience that really matters to me.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, shit.

[Emily Nagoski]

It's a group of sex scientists who are like, oh, my idols.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, so you can't give the talk you've given 800 times. What you have to say won't be news to them.

[Emily Nagoski]

And you want to give. They don't already know that people with vaginas are unlikely to have orgasms from penile vaginal intercourse. I cannot help them with that.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Or that pleasure is the measure.

[Emily Nagoski]

I mean, they actually might not know that pleasure is the measure. That could come in handy for them. Like, I could give my talk. That's just like, I want to help you have better sex. Here's what I say to people. And you're too busy doing your part of the research to maybe, like, take the. The. The. The bird's eye view. And I could do Emily's greatest hits. I could. But the reality is, in the year of Our Lord Beyonce 2025, they are. Federal funding is just going to be.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

And the political climate is a nightmare. And I remember literally 20 years ago when I was a grad student, my department was super excited because we had a scientist fresh from the C. He left because the George W. Bush administration was interfering with the CDC's ability to do its work without political interference. He was unwilling to tolerate that. And so he joined my department. And everybody was like, oh, we got him. And so I know that what they're experiencing is not new. And I know that one of the things that the world needs in order to. And the thing is, it's not. So it happened. It's happening now. It happened 20 years ago. It happened 20 years before that in the early mid-80s when the Reagan. Reagan administration told the CDC to take their world's first HIV AIDS prevention policy and shove it. Look pretty and do as little as you can. So it's not new. We seem to be trapped in a cycle of about 20 years, every 20 years for the last hundred years or so. And, like, I want to equip them with tools so that people who are kids now and are going to grow up to be sex scientists don't have to do this again. That's what I want.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

And I know that learning to communicate with people who are not also sex researchers is part of that.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. But this is a talk for them.

[Emily Nagoski]

Which means they need to unlearn. Like, you and I have talked about how, like, we had to unlearn academic writing in order to write well for people who were not scientists.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That said, both of us had to rewrite part of our qualifying exams, comprehensive, or whatever they call them at your school. We had to rewrite part of our, like, final exams for our doctoral degrees.

[Emily Nagoski]

Because our writing was too accessible. Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Right. Because our writing was too accessible. Because we wrote more too conversationally.

[Emily Nagoski]

Right, exactly.

[Amelia Nagoski]

So, like, we were both inclined towards this. We were. And had to be trained specifically. So, like, we had some theory instilled in us.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yes.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. About, like, don't you dare write like that.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yes. So I would like to teach them some of the. And yet I did not know how to write a book until I wrote a book. Yeah. I had to. I read books about how to write a book, which is how I learned how to write for people. Turns out regular people are not persuaded by effect sizes, like, number of participants in a study. They're not interested in R squareds. Right. They. Right, here's what people like. Metaphors and storytelling stories.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

They like it when stuff rhymes. It's not just that they Remember it better. It's that they believe you more when what you say rhymes. And I'm trying to. And I might. I don't know how I'm gonna say it, but I feel like in order to motivate these researchers to incorporate these things that are absolutely contrary to everything they've been trained to do so that they can do something necessary to change the world for the better, to create space for the thing they've been trained to do. Does that make sense? Yeah. Trying to motivate them to be like communicators. I know this is outside your skill set, but if you add this to your skill set, you're gonna change the very ground on which you are doing. You're using your real central skill set. Does that make sense? I know it's outside your wheelhouse. Do it anyway.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

And so, like, I am writing about it the way I've been thinking about it and have not talked about it out loud, which is that storytelling is spellcasting. It's a form of magic.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Careful.

[Amelia Nagoski]

This tale you tell. That is the spell.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, yeah, that, that. So I'll just. So I've been watching a lot of Dungeons and Dragons in the year 2025. I mean, like, a lot.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. There is a lot of D and D content.

[Emily Nagoski]

One of the great things about a single battle can take five hours, which is so much time that I am not watching the news.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Which is better for me. Like, the less news I can say there is. I talked with my therapist about it and we could not think of one instance where having more exposure to the news makes me more empowered to do the things I know need to be done, that are within my capacity to do. And. And very often, watching the news reduces my capacity to do the things that I know need to be done that are in my power to do. Because it just. I feel overwhelmed, exhausted, stressed out. I must not know what's happening so that I can do something about what's happening.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. I haven't watched the news in weeks.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Malin keeps me informed of, like, big stuff.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

And sometimes like John Oliver. Right.

[Emily Nagoski]

Okay.

[Amelia Nagoski]

So it's great. It's awesome. I highly recommend people.

[Emily Nagoski]

It's so much better.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Don't disconnect from the day to day news.

[Emily Nagoski]

Go ahead. Unless. Unless you can think of a situation where knowing actually makes it easier for you to do your part. And just knowing what's happening is not you doing your part. Yeah. Knowing what's happening, only doing something is doing your part.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

And I know they're gonna people who are gonna be like, oh, but. And I'm telling you, knowing is not doing something. You have to talk to other people about what you know, you have to do something about it. If you have money to donate, you have to donate money. But like, if you have the money, you were gonna donate it to those things anyway.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Right, Right, right.

[Emily Nagoski]

So. So I've been watching a lot of Dungeons and Dragons and that has been shaping my thinking. Careful.

[Amelia Nagoski]

The tale you tell.

[Emily Nagoski]

Right? It's a hobby. I took some quizzes online and I found out that like, in real life, I'm probably a half orc wizard. Though I wish I could be like a druid sorcerer. That's sort of my like idealized self.

[Amelia Nagoski]

But my idealized self is definitely a bard Paladin.

[Emily Nagoski]

Bard Paladin. That's two different. That's. Neither of those is a race.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I know, that's. I'm multi class. Right. So I don't need paladin race. I am.

[Emily Nagoski]

That makes, that makes a difference though. It's human. Okay.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Human bard paladin.

[Emily Nagoski]

Multi class. Multi class human bard paladin. Yeah, that makes sense. That tracks for realsy. But I think I could play a wild dwarf monk really well, even though it's not who I would be in real life. In real life, I'm a half orc wizard. That's.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That's just.

[Emily Nagoski]

That's just reality. So given. Given that, like, I want to, I don't know if it's necessary to like, couch in a larger metaphor. My motivation for persuading these scientists. So my thesis statement is basically what if magic? But great, you've.

[Amelia Nagoski]

You've procrastinated 10 full minutes before telling us what your actual thesis is. So good job.

[Emily Nagoski]

Thanks. But also, I say if. If you don't want the thesis statement to be what if magic, you can pretend that I said rhetoric, metaphor and storytelling literally change the world. So if you want to expand your impact, add at least a little of each of those to your skill set, which is to say magic is real and we are all spellcasters. So I give a Dungeons and Dragons example somewhere early on about storytelling in particular, which in my opinion is the most complex of the three skills that I'm trying to teach to them in one hour. So there is a short game that Brennan Lee Mulligan leads that concludes in poetic tragedy. Every character, every player character but one dies, and that last character succeeds on a DC30 skill check. The last roll of a 20 hour game. It's nerdy and at the end of this game, one character manages to escape immediate danger. So with five player characters dead, victims of their own hubris at the end of the game, in this very somber move, Brennan Lee Mulligan has said it's never fun to narrate the death of a character to the death of a player character. At the end of it, he's like, he's trying to wrap up this, like, they all died. One of them managed to fly out a window, and I don't know if he made it home. He says, why do we tell stories?

[Amelia Nagoski]

Brennan Lee Mulligan, Bring it on the sob face.

[Emily Nagoski]

To try to make sense of a world that can be terrifying and enormous. I'm watching these things instead of watching the news. Not because they are without examples of the world being terrifying and humor, humorous and enormous, not because they do not involve the world being terrifying and enormous, but because they involve investing deeply in a story. And anyone who has read Burnout knows that when you invest emotionally, physically in a story, your body doesn't much know the difference between that really happening and you just using your imagination extremely vividly. So what Dungeons and Dragons actually is is collaborative improvisational storytelling where your body doesn't know the difference between telling this story and feeling what it's like to be a hero. And that is what I call spell casting. You want to teach your body what it feels like to be a hero without actually going and fighting a dragon. Tell a story with your friends. Read a story. Watch a story being told by strangers where you care. At the end of another game, this one is. The game master is Aabria Iyengar. Oh, my gosh. So this game started as a parody of a magical world that must not be named. And at the end of it, Aabria says everyone is capable of magic whether or not they choose to engage with it. But it is available, and the entry is not an owl with a list of demands and needs and a place to go and a way to be. But you are brought in by someone familiar, someone kind and loving. That is how you are brought into a world where magic is creativity and everyday care and kindness and the little things that actually shape and change the world. That's magic. Now, the rules have been given to you. So when I say spellcasting, what I mean is creativity and everyday caring, kindness. And not grand gestures or performance, but the gentle, doable small moments over and over every day. Every word you choose to speak is the verbal component of a spell. Every shift in your physiology is the physical component of a spell. Each shift in the physiology you activate, in the people around you, is the effect of a spell you cast. Each decision you make to counter hate and violence with instead, a shelter for love and joy and rest and ease is a spell you are casting. If I've learned anything from literally hundreds of hours of watching people pretend to be wizards, it's this. Here in the real world, where magic is mostly metaphor and where we ourselves, working together, are the miracle we're trying to summon, each of us ultimately casts just one spell, but we cast it over and over in every moment of every day. The life we live is the spell we cast. Our impact, our power, our magic is measured in the quality of the change we make in the lives of the people around us today and again tomorrow and again the day after that. That game where Brennan Lee Mulligan killed five of his six player characters, I'll paraphrase to you to that audience of scientists, to the audience of this podcast, what he said to them at that end of the game. I don't know that our stories will be long known. I don't know who will remain to tell it. But our stories are happening now, and they do matter. And though calamity is here because of us, because of the daily work of so many, calamity will not be here forever. That's all I've got so far on the subject of what if we're all.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Casting spells and this is a shadow situation. Is it?

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, this is a shadow situation because I have, like, barely brushed at the surface of the idea of what if magic, and it already feels way too vulnerable. When I read a chunk of this to my writing group, they were, like, super into it, and I was like, that's because you're already writers. You get the idea that it's like a metaphor, but, like, it's moving. And if it is moving, my spell has been cast on you. Right. Like, you get that. But these are scientists, and I need them to understand that I don't literally believe that I'm a wizard, but I am metaphorically hard identifying with the idea of being a half orc wizard, because what wizards have to do is they don't know if they don't have, like, innate magic. They study, they learn. Right.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

And a half orc often has a story of being outcast because they're half human, half orc. They don't fit. They don't really feel comfortable belonging in either society. And so they have to sort of, like, fake it no matter where they are. Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

You know that as a genre When I read I love a wizard Detective.

[Emily Nagoski]

You love a wizard detective?

[Amelia Nagoski]

I love a wizard detective. And by that I mean a character who is a mysterious, often visitor leader who is able to bring like, supernatural skills to everyday mysteries and struggles not only with the mystery, but also with the handling of magic, with the ethics of having power that other people don't have. So Doctor who is a wizard detective. You know, that kind of thing. So I have long thought about the significance, metaphorically, of, you know, what it is to be a wizard, why these stories compel me and draw me in over and over. Why. What do I love about a wizard detective? And I wrote a song about this, about why stories are full of magic.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yes.

[Amelia Nagoski]

We could do the song. If you can pull the file up and read your part of the song. Because it's a two part. It's a two parter. You have a spoken part in the song that you have to.

[Emily Nagoski]

I'm sure we have a recording of you just doing it.

[Amelia Nagoski]

We do not have a recording of this.

[Emily Nagoski]

Well, that's. That seems like we should make one.

[Amelia Nagoski]

We should. We should probably do that now. This is why the stories are full of magic. Nothing in nature sufficiently dramatic, sufficiently tragic.

[Emily Nagoski]

I actually wrote about. So I like, edged into this idea in Come Together. There are two sections where I talk about. This one is literally the whole last chapter. I change tone completely because I'm talking about the magic trick and how you access ecstasy through practical magic through, like, rhythmic movement of your body in time with another person for a shared purpose. And I don't cite any research. And I say the reason I'm not going to cite any research is not that there isn't any research on this, but that because understanding the science is not what gets you there. Doing it is what gets you there. So I'm just going to tell you how to do it, and I'm going to tell you what people have told me it feels like when they get there to help you on the way. But also because inevitably one day, one day, maybe I can write a sex book where I don't have to have a section on trauma. That day has not yet come. But part of my. Because I write about it in every book. I'm like, I have already written a lot. There are books specifically for survivors. And what I want to say here is that there's a reason our stories are full of magic. It's based in your song. And I'm like, it's because there's nothing that happens in our real lives that looks or feels like what trauma recovery feels like. Because something beyond ordinary has happened that does not fit in our everyday lives. And so your recovery from it, even though it's gonna involve doing things that look quite mundane, the internal experience of recovery is not that. I can probably find it. Hang on one second.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I just also realized that that version of the song was one I made specifically for music.

[Emily Nagoski]

Okay.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I think so. I think I should actually record the song for this. And then I can post the video online with the. With the expurgated version.

[Emily Nagoski]

Okay. Okay.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Wonder Twin powers activate. That's my first quote from a magical thing.

[Emily Nagoski]

How.

[Amelia Nagoski]

How does it feel when you crawl out of trauma? What is it like? Is it captivating drama? One does not simply walk into Mordor. No, it's mostly waking up every day and imitating what you think normal people do. Going to therapy, taking your meds, and faking sanity. I volunteer as tribute. This is why the stories are full of magic. Nothing in nature is sufficiently tragic. Stories can show you for the hero you are. Stories can show you for the hero you are. Bah humbug. People think a hero is someone who helps strangers they can't see. Survivor's work won't make them entertainers. Winter is coming. No. The goal is just normality. And that doesn't look impressive from the outside. But your experience of the struggle is so much better, bigger on the inside. Luke, it is your destiny. This is why the stories are full of magic. Nothing in nature is sufficiently tragic. Stories can show you for the hero you are. Stories can show you for the hero you are. You're a wizard, Harry. Suffering and pain can leave your soul in tatters. It can be hard to believe that you matter. Let it go. Let it go. Yes. It's easy to infer that it's not enough to help just yourself, but it's actually incredibly valuable and important that you're taming that lion in your wardrobe. I am Moana. Yes. Yes, we can see. You are full of magic. You have defeated the evil and tragic. Now you'll remember what a hero you are. Now you'll remember what a hero you are. Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty.

[Emily Nagoski]

There you go.

[Amelia Nagoski]

And it ends with, sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty. From Matilda. That's the little tag at the end. But you're a wizard. Harry is one of the ones I.

[Emily Nagoski]

Feel like we can quote.

[Amelia Nagoski]

You're a wizard, Harry. And people can know that, like, because it is important to understand that even though Joanne Rowling's middle initial is kkk, the story she told captivated a generation and why this is why the stories are full of magic. Nothing in nature is sufficiently tragic.

[Emily Nagoski]

So the way I frame it in Come Together There are whole books about sex and survivorship, especially if your trauma, neglect and abuse is affecting your sexuality. I hope you'll explore some of them and maybe pursue therapy. But here I want to offer specific tips for survivors that which is a specific step, which is that sometimes our escapist behaviors are actually part of our healing. Be curious about the metaphors and stories that soothe you. Nothing in our real lives can explain or describe what happens inside us as we heal from trauma. We may need the metaphors of a fantasy world to describe our experience. And let me just say that I'm not going to read this whole thing, but when I did, my audio producer had to turn off his mic because he was sobbing so hard.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Aw.

[Emily Nagoski]

Take Lord of the Rings. A thousand pages of high fantasy plus two volumes of mythopoeic stories. People don't read all that because it's fun to spend so much time with a bunch of white men of different statures. People reread it and memorize ancestries and learn to speak fictional languages because they need somewhere to be that feels the way they on the inside and nowhere feels like what trauma feels like on the inside. Frodo from the Hobbit says I will take the Ring to Mordor, though I do not know the way that can be what it feels like to choose to heal from trauma. Every morning when we wake up, we decide to carry this burden another step closer to wherever it can be destroyed, even though we don't know where that is and we don't know where we're going or how or if we will get there. Why do people live Samwise Gamgee? Because though he can't carry the WR thing, he can carry Frodo. He is an ideal co survivor. He stays no matter how scary it gets. He suffers alongside Frodo, but he never equates his struggle with his friends. You want to know how to help a friend with their trauma? Or feel what it would be like to help a friend or to have an ideal supporter. Check out Sam, who wants to go home to his Rosie, but he would never abandon Frodo. The best metaphor for mine is Moana and I do the whole metaphor Moana that you and I have done multiple times. There's a recording of us doing it. People can find that if they want to. We can put a link to our XOXO talk where we do a version of it.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Okay, I'm trying to. So I don't have. So I have Wonder Twin powers. I have.

[Emily Nagoski]

I have.

[Amelia Nagoski]

One does not simply walk into Mordor. So I already have.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, don't worry about it.

[Amelia Nagoski]

The Lord of the Rings. But I'm trying to find something to replace your Wizard Harry. Hmm. Uh, it's a project for another time, but, you know, I forgot I wrote that song.

[Emily Nagoski]

So. Moana metaphor. I stare at the screen watching Moana, eyes wide, tears dripping down my face into my snack. Why? When I am a 40 something woman watching a Disney cartoon, Because I write and come together. This metaphor explains, more accurately than any literal description can, what healing feels like for me. Like Moana, I see beneath the surface of my own pain. I turn toward it without fear, with calm, warm, goddamn curiosity. The pain. And I breathe the same air like Moana and Tika, and the pain transforms into power. Compare that to a literal description of what healing feels like. Traumatic experiences taught my brain that other people and my own internal experiences are not safe. But many people and all my internal experiences are safe. I teach my brain this by paying attention gently to uncomfortable emotions as they happen. And I notice that I am not unsafe while these emotions happen. Such literal descriptions beg the question, how do you pay gentle attention? How do you notice you're safe during unsafe feeling emotions? What does it feel like? I can't describe it without using metaphor. It feels like I am on fire, but also I am in the ocean. And also I am love. There is no literal description clearer than that. Nothing in our mundane lives can capture the internal experience of healing from trauma, neglect, and abuse. So that's why I transition into this, like, magic language. Not because I actually literally believe in magic, but because magic is what captures the experience. So I can communicate it about effectively. And if I want someone else to understand, then I have to use language that would get me expelled from a graduate program. Unless that program is in creative writing or something similar. Yep. Comparative literature, you know.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

So this is my shadow trying.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think potentially I have another suggestion about a manifestation of your shadow, which is your draw to Disney World. When you go to Magic Kingdom for a day and you experience all the things, you go on the rides and you taste the foods that just.

[Emily Nagoski]

No, I don't have shame about that. You're the one who brought shame to that experience.

[Amelia Nagoski]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not done. The Magic Kingdom immerses you in stories, mostly from your childhood. Princesses and castles and Haunted mansions and pirates like the playful childish stories that speak to archetypes. And you do this all day. And you eat sugary, fried, delicious, for the most part, food. Your body is immersed in the ventrals.

[Emily Nagoski]

Right.

[Amelia Nagoski]

The feel goods, the autumnal pumpkin spice, lattes of mind. And then at the end of the day, you're standing exhausted for about an hour, doing nothing but staring at a blank castle, waiting while you wait.

[Emily Nagoski]

You for. You wait for an hour because you wanted a good spot.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Because you wanted a good spot. So you can see the projections on the castle and you have to watch with the projections on the castle or you miss 40% of the fireworks show. It's not just the fireworks. There's a movie projected onto the castle where characters from cartoons you already know.

[Emily Nagoski]

And love know very well, for the.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Most part.

[Emily Nagoski]

Relive the.

[Amelia Nagoski]

The moments of greatest triumph and tragedy. And a hundred percent of people cry when they watch Happily ever After. That's just statistically true. That's just information for you.

[Emily Nagoski]

I'm not.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I mean, maybe I'm exaggerating, but like anybody with a stool cries at Happily ever After. Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Because they're very good at what they do.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Climbs off an actual literal human being dressed as Tinkerbell.

[Emily Nagoski]

Climbs off in a glowing Tinkerbell costume and wig. Yes.

[Amelia Nagoski]

And hits the pose and soars on a wire across the park.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

It is breathtaking.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yep.

[Amelia Nagoski]

And at the end, Mickey Mouse, your host of this party, says, you are the magic.

[Emily Nagoski]

You.

[Amelia Nagoski]

You are the magic. You've been living in this magic all day. And then Mickey Mouse explains it to you at 11:15pm you are the magic. You, your presence here, your connection to each other. You are the magic. That's. I mean, it's a metaphor. It is, but it's also, like, true. And when I brought this up the.

[Emily Nagoski]

Other day, if, as Aabria Iyengar says, magic is creativity, everyday caring, kindness, and not grand gestures, but the doable small things. Every sketch, every poem, every gesture, every word is a spel. Mm.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Then it is.

[Emily Nagoski]

If that's what magic is, then it's literally.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Literally true.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

And when I brought this up to you, you were like, it sucks how much you have to pay to. To get that message. And we're like, well, let's give it to people for free. So that's what we're doing right here, right now. You are the magic. I have a tattoo. The very first tattoo I ever got is a rune. It's an Anglo Saxon rune. It's descended from a Nordic rune.

[Emily Nagoski]

Way to be A white girl in the 90s not getting a Chinese symbol.

[Amelia Nagoski]

It was in the 90s. It was the early 2000s.

[Emily Nagoski]

The early 2000s.

[Amelia Nagoski]

But, yes, I did not get a Chinese symbol.

[Emily Nagoski]

I got girls who. In the early 2000s.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah, I know.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Well, this rune in the. For as much as we know from that tradition, they used to throw runes on little tiles and, like, try to pretend the future or stuff like that.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

So runes represented symbols. They were phonetic symbols, but they were also, like, symbols of metaphorical meanings. And so the rune that I have is representative of creativity, wisdom, inspiration, and communication, which sounds like a whole lot of things, but it's actually the thing that it represents is the original gift from the gods to humanity, the thing that makes human beings different from the rest of the animal kingdom. Creativity, wisdom, inspiration, communication. Communication. Obviously not accurate. Even trees communicate, but, like, you know, this is what they were thinking of when they. When they had this.

[Emily Nagoski]

So even trees don't tell stories, though. They don't.

[Amelia Nagoski]

So maybe it's wisdom, inspiration, creativity, and storytelling. Anyway, it's.

[Emily Nagoski]

PS Stories are also metaphors. I'm asking my scientists to use rhetorical skills, metaphor and story. And I am pointing out that every story is a metaphor, which is. Yeah. Why people really like, Moana is an allegory for drama, survival, and healing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Just like up is a. Is a. It's an allegory.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Embracing your shadow. Yeah. So I got this tattoo in the very early 2000s when I was teaching for the first time, and I was being burned out. I was being driven, what felt like mad by having to have relationships with so many students and particularly their parents. And I was getting really frustrated and, like, incapable of remembering their humanity. Like, And I needed a reminder.

[Emily Nagoski]

Well, they probably weren't paying attention to your humanity, so.

[Amelia Nagoski]

No, for sure. For sure. But it was literally my job as a music teacher.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

To pay attention to their humanity. And I was having a very difficult time doing that. So I got a tattoo on my fucking forearm that I could see all the time. That reminded me that we all have this gift that we all are given something from somewhere. Consciousness, awareness, poetry that, like, we all have it. And, like, this tattoo that reminded me that they are human. They are.

[Emily Nagoski]

We are all the magic.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I needed a reminding because it was my job, and I was not being nourished in a way that made it easy to remember.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. And that was 20 years pre autism diagnosis.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That was more than 20 years pre autism diagnosis. Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I didn't know then that my feeling of difference was clinical.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. Yeah. So I know that my feeling of difference is clinical. And I also, like, there is a part of me. Okay, so we're gonna tell this story now. I might have told this story on the podcast before, but if we haven't, here we go. It's late March of 2015. Come as yous Are was published just a few weeks ago. I am on book tour. I took unpaid leave from my job so that I could travel around the country to go to college campuses and feminist sex toy stores and bookstores and talk about the science of women's sexual. In this book that had consumed years of my life. And I did one of my very first interviews, and I remember what the venue is, like, Scientific American or something like that.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, yeah. So fucking Scientific American.

[Emily Nagoski]

I got an email from a sex researcher who told me that there was a sex researcher listserv that had posted the article, and they had read the article, and they believed based on this article of an interview with me about my book that my book was reinforcing cultural stereotypes. And we. We were. I was doing harm, and they decided that they didn't like me or what I was doing, and I wasn't allowed to be friends with them, basically. Which is.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Didn't read the book.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. It has. Have not. Is a scientist.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Has not read the book.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. Does not understand basic media literacy.

[Emily Nagoski]

Has not read the. You have to read. This is as a side note, if you're gonna have an opinion about something, read the thing's work.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Read the book. You have to consume the person's work, not just an interview about the work. If you want to have an opinion and you're like, it's not worth the effort of actually consuming the work, drop the opinion.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Primary sources, babes. Yeah, Primary sources.

[Emily Nagoski]

So that's one thing. And from a scientist in particular, the. But. But because you and I were the kinds of kids who, in middle school, the popular girl came up to me and said, we know that you and Amelia want to be friends with us, but we talked about it, and we decided you're not allowed to be our friend.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

And we just wanted to make sure you knew that.

[Amelia Nagoski]

So just when, like, we could, like, kind of assure ourselves that the world's not about us and they're not talking about us and we're not part of their lives, they actually were. They actually. They actually were.

[Emily Nagoski]

All the, like, advice that people give of, like, people are not paying that much attention to you. People don't care about you as much as people like, don't. Aren't forming opinions about you based on details like you think they are. God, I was so fucking were. And I like you and I truly did not want. Why would we want to be friends with people who are so mean, so deliberately and gratuitously mean? We didn't.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I mean, except that, yes, we deeply and desperately want us to belong. That was the primary motivator of being in middle school.

[Emily Nagoski]

I did not truly, deep down, I.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Didn'T want to belong to them necessarily, but I felt shitty about not belonging anywhere.

[Emily Nagoski]

I genuinely didn't.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I was physically beaten though, and you weren't.

[Emily Nagoski]

I was not physically beaten up. I was only emotionally bullied.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah, emotionally ostracized and bullied.

[Emily Nagoski]

There's like a difference in.

[Amelia Nagoski]

We had a slightly different experience. Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, I got humiliated, but I didn't get physically harmed. Yeah, humiliation's real bad. It's real bad, but it's real different from being humiliated. And also, you and I are fundamentally different in some, like, very like from the moment of our birth ways. And honestly, the way I felt excluded the most was in that I couldn't find stories about people who genuinely did not care about not having a place. Yeah, I'm so introverted and so autistic that I had no expectation of finding a place where I belonged. Once it became clear to me in the fourth grade that I didn't belong, I stopped. Not just trying, but wanting it. I just read books and I belonged in those fictional spaces instead.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That sounds so much easier than what I did.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. I didn't wear makeup or dresses in high school.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I really tried.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, you really tried. And I just read actual hundreds of books, which I continue to do. I read or listen to 150 books a year. Audiobooks have really increased my ability to read because I can do them at the same. Listen to them at the same time as I like, do dishes and fold laundry, clean the bathtub and cook and do a puzzle. It's a whole separate part of my brain from the parts I need to do those tasks. It's amazing and I love it. Sometimes I do those things in silence. But a lot of the times I listen to a story, especially these days, and that's magical.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Do you have any memory of an all grade camping trip at some middle school?

[Emily Nagoski]

This event happened on an all grade camping trip.

[Amelia Nagoski]

This did it.

[Emily Nagoski]

We wanted you to know. Camp Arrowhead.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, it might be my fault then because I had my period on that camping trip and I like there were blood on things and I got Like, I was in a cabin with some of those. We decided we can't be friends with you girls.

[Emily Nagoski]

Were you? Yeah. I remember being in a cabin with the sort of, like, you know, C tier kids. Allison.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Who was. Who went.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Who lived? There were definitely some, like, some queen bees in my.

[Emily Nagoski]

Maybe we're in different cabins. God, that would suck.

[Amelia Nagoski]

We were definitely in different cabins. Yeah, we were definitely different cabins. And I had my period. And there were blood.

[Emily Nagoski]

I was accused of having my period by a boy.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. It might be that he'd heard that I had my period.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

It was bad. Also, I had a bag with me for carrying things around. And, like, the coolest bag I had was a plastic shopping bag from the Gap, which is blue. Do you remember the blue? Of course I do. Shopping bags. Yeah. And the ink, the color, the. From the thing rubbed up off on my leg and got on my clothes, so I was bleeding and stained and.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

7Th, 8th grade nightmare. So, yeah. It was probably my fault that those girls had that conversation because I was actively, like, in their cabin, being. Being gross and awkward.

[Emily Nagoski]

Either way.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

I'm just saying that that doesn't change the story for me.

[Amelia Nagoski]

It doesn't.

[Emily Nagoski]

But gratuitous cruelty.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yes, it was absolutely gratuitous cruelty.

[Emily Nagoski]

That.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, my God, it was so bad.

[Emily Nagoski]

Except, I mean, you know, and I have. I have said before that reading the research on relational aggression, when I got my job at Smith and I was told, like, develop a curriculum around bullying. So I read these books about relational aggression, which is the queen bee situation. And it was like, anthropology for me, of going back and being like, oh, that's what they were doing. So from our point of view, it's gratuitous cruelty. But from their point of view, they have to engage in that behavior in order to reinforce hierarchy.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Right, Right.

[Emily Nagoski]

And it's like the Mafia. They're not doing it because they're not killing us because it's about us. They're doing it because they need to communicate to the other people in the group that they are the absolute queen bee. Yeah. And they wield power to hurt. So don't fuck with them. Yeah. So it's not gratuitous from their point of view. It is absolutely necessary cruelty in a world where these hierarchies matter, which is not a world I lived in. And they did not believe me when I said, but I don't. Like, I have not been thinking about you. I've been reading books while you've been talking about me. They truly did not believe that I did not want to be their friend.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

Cause everybody, of course, even you kinda sorta not friends with them.

[Amelia Nagoski]

No, I didn't wanna be their friend. I did, I did want friends. Ah, friend.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I did. So part of my feelings about talking about magic are because once upon a time, 10 years ago, when my book was brand new and none of these people had read it and it had not been on a New York Times bestselling list, it had not grown like, I sell more copies of Come as yous Are every year, which is the opposite of how book sales work, Right?

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yes. That's not normal.

[Emily Nagoski]

Usually you have like a explosion right at the beginning and then it disappears. Not more copies every year for 10 years. Right. That's nuts. So like my social position relative to sex researchers is different now.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yes, but now you're literally the most influential writer about human sexuality. I mean, according to the New York Times.

[Emily Nagoski]

No comment. Because feelings. I'm just telling you a thing that.

[Amelia Nagoski]

The New York Times published.

[Emily Nagoski]

But like this one time, this girl said this thing to me and I'm in my hotel room on the West Coast, 3,000 miles from everything I care about in life apart from communicating the science of women's sexuality, sobbing in my hotel room. Yeah. Like a fucking 13 year old who's just been told, you are not allowed to be friends. Only these people. I did want to be my friend. And they hadn't even read the book.

[Amelia Nagoski]

P S the, that interview, that article was so egregiously unscientific and outrageously misleading that Scientific American withdrew it. They. They unpublished it. It was on their website and they took it the fuck down.

[Emily Nagoski]

I didn't. Yeah. How did I not know? You told me that.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh, you forgot the end of the story. No, I don't.

[Emily Nagoski]

I think it's that something different. That's.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That was definitely the Scientific American.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, that was the Scientific American blogger. Which is not the same as like a journalist for the magazine. It might have been National Geographic, I don't know. It was a Scientific American.

[Amelia Nagoski]

It was Scientific American. I remember.

[Emily Nagoski]

That's. That was a different thing where somebody wrote a blog post about my blog. But no, that was so egregiously unscientific that they took it down.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Okay, maybe, maybe I'm misremembering, but yeah.

[Emily Nagoski]

That'S a different thing, I don't think. Because this was in the print publication.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Oh God. Print publication.

[Emily Nagoski]

So, So I don't think that's how the story ended, but that's Part of why I have.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That's why another story ended, though.

[Emily Nagoski]

So that's how another story ended. Yeah. And that was another sex researcher who hated me.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah. Who, by the way, is now. Nobody will remember that. Nobody. You're now the most, according to the New York Times, the most influential writer about sexuality.

[Emily Nagoski]

So this influential writer about the science of women's sexual well being in particular wants to go to a conference of sex scientists whose work she cites on a regular basis and reads with admiration and say to them, let's imagine that magic is real and that you can cast spells. And the reason I want you to start casting spells is to change fundamentally the very world in which we live so that the next generation of scientists doesn't have to go through what you are going through now, what a lot of us went through 20 years ago, what some of us even went through 20 years before that, and what the foundational researchers in this Nation went through 30 years before that. Over and over. We are stuck in this cycle. How do we break the cycle? Magic is the short answer. And I don't literally mean magic. I mean we change how people think about why sex research is necessary in the world. And that is going to require that we bypass all of their gut panic at just the idea of talking about sex. And the way you bypass that at the word vagina is to use a metaphor, is to tell them a story about a time when somebody was struggling and they learned something from the science and it changed their lives. That's how you change the world is spellcasting metaphor stories over and over and over again. Vivian Paley is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient who studied childhood storytelling play. 25 years ago, there was an episode of this American Life called Dolls where she talks about the stories children tell each other that make up their story play. And she says, you know, at this kindergarten, first grade age, the story they tell over and over. There once was a lonely wolf and a deer came and said, I'll play with you. There once was a lonely helicopter and the mommy came and said, I'll play with you. There once was a lonely girl and a boy came along and said, I'll play with you. They will never get sick of it. They'll never be be like, ah, this story again over and over. Tell me that when I am alone someone will come and say, I'll play with you. It's the story you and I have been telling in this episode. It's the story of every romance novel. It is the story of every story, the foundation of human Storytelling is when you are lonely, someone will come and say, I'll play with you. Every email I get from spouse who's desperate for their partner to have sex with them, what they're saying is, tell me how to get to the end of the story. I'm alone. How do I get my partner to say, yes, I'll come play with you. Tell stories about the time when sex research changed your life or a client's life or a friend's life. Not people. People don't give a shit about statistics. Tell them a story about a time when somebody was lonely and they found their way to someone who would come play with them because they learned something about the science.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Sounds like it's going to be a good talk.

[Emily Nagoski]

But am I just making a fool of myself to go and be like, spell casting? You have to think of, like, no, it's not science. You have to go into a different state of mind.

[Amelia Nagoski]

You're. You're doing the thing that you're telling them to do.

[Emily Nagoski]

I know that, and I have thought about, should I write the talk like it's a science talk, or should I write the talk by doing the thing?

[Amelia Nagoski]

Do the thing and tell them you.

[Emily Nagoski]

Did the thing at the end and be like, what you'll notice is I followed the story structure I told you to follow. What you'll notice is I used a fucking central metaphor of magic. What you'll notice is I made it rhyme when I could.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah, I sang you a fucking song.

[Emily Nagoski]

I sang you a fucking song. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now I'm found Was blind but now I see it is the ultimate story and the thing that happens dead in the center of the story. I once was lost but now I'm found. What happened in the middle of that story? There was a lonely person, and then Amazing grace came along and said, I'll play with you. I once was lost but now am found. That's it. It's the most popular hymn in the world for a reason. That's all most people want. It's the reason Trump won.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yeah, because shit doesn't have to make sense for people to believe it. And even when stuff shit does make sense, they still don't necessarily believe it when there's an alternative that is rhetorically more compelling.

[Emily Nagoski]

And every story and metaphor requires compromise in its translation from the science. And researchers need to be willing to tolerate that compromise in order to have the rhetorical power necessary to change the world. Their reluctance to Compromise. Total precision is a barrier to making the world so that the next generation of scientists doesn't have to do this again.

[Amelia Nagoski]

There's a metaphor that Neil Gaiman uses and it is that the story is. The story is the map. The most accurate map is the world. But the world is too big to see. That's why we make maps. The story's the map.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amelia Nagoski]

It's a compromise, but it. But it represents the real thing.

[Emily Nagoski]

Yeah. And that's a metaphor about stories. And all stories themselves are metaphors. And a map is a metaphor for the world. Yeah. A map is a metaphor.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Yes.

[Emily Nagoski]

Oh, that's really. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. I do use. So as I come to the end, it's 1103.

[Amelia Nagoski]

I know you have to get to.

[Emily Nagoski]

I know I have to go. But I do use this map metaphor at the end of Come as you are where I say, like, you, early in your life, were given a map of how your sexuality is supposed to work. And you have arrived in a place where the map told you you're supposed to be. But when you look around you, you do not see what you were told you were going to see. And what I want you to know is when that happens, it is the map that's wrong, not you. The map can be wrong. So the map is a metaphor for your sexuality. And what you need is a map that is an accurate representation. An accurate enough representation to get people where they want to go.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Accurate enough.

[Emily Nagoski]

Accurate enough.

[Amelia Nagoski]

That is the phrase.

[Emily Nagoski]

I'm going to write that phrase down in. All that don't have every blade of grass. It has to be accurate enough. And now I am going to go get my flu shot at. I already had mine at a Halloween themed community event where costumes are encouraged. So I had Rich draw vampire fangs and a drop of blood on my KN95.

[Amelia Nagoski]

Nice.

[Emily Nagoski]

And that is. That is my costume. Okay, thank you for listening to this episode where I work through my childhood. Shit.

[Amelia Nagoski]

You are the magic.

[Emily Nagoski]

You are the magic. Here in the real world, where magic is mostly metaphorically and where we ourselves, working together, are the miracle we're trying to summon. Each of us ultimately casts just one spell, but we cast it over and over in every moment of every day.