Megan Markle's Softball Interview, Anna Wintour's Nepo Minion Hire, and A Crash Course On Intuition

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Nerve with Maureen Callahan

Episode Title: Meghan Markle's Softball Interview, Anna Wintour's Nepo Minion Hire, and A Crash Course On Intuition
Date: September 3, 2025
Host: Maureen Callahan
Podcast Description: Maureen Callahan dives deep into pop culture, celebrity intrigue, media criticism, cultural phenomena, and the psychology of intuition with characteristic wit, skepticism, and sharp insight.

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Episode Overview

This packed episode of The Nerve is divided into three key segments:

1. An acerbic, blow-by-blow breakdown of Meghan Markle’s recent “softball” Bloomberg interview and her ongoing cultural standing.
2. A rapid-fire celebrity news roundup, including critiques of Howard Stern, Vogue’s new editor hire, Bravo scandals, and socialite antics.
3. A deeply insightful interview with Elizabeth Greenwood, author of Everyday Intuition, offering a practical and philosophical crash course on trusting your inner voice.

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1. Meghan Markle’s Bloomberg "Softball" Interview

Main Theme

Maureen Callahan meticulously dissects Meghan Markle’s recent media appearances, focusing on her Bloomberg interview as symptomatic of larger issues—soft journalism, celebrity culture, the pursuit of relatability, and the perils of inauthenticity.

Key Points & Insights

• Bloomberg's Sycophancy and Meghan’s Image Crisis (06:00–08:00)

  • Callahan blasts the interview as “one of the most embarrassing sycophantic… interviews I have seen in a long time” (06:30).
  • Criticizes journalist Emily Chang for catering to Meghan, noting excessive friendliness and lack of pressing questions.

• Meghan’s Responses and Body Language (08:11, 14:41)

  • Meghan’s “least royal” moment: “Sitting here eating a Tamash burger with you, being asked these questions.” (08:15)
  • Callahan: “Fuck you, Megan. This is free publicity for your shit show over on Netflix…” (08:22)
  • Meghan’s body language described as defensive and awkward, betraying discomfort.

• Failure of the ‘Second Act’ Premise (10:32–12:54)

  • Chang: “Can Meghan have a second act as an entrepreneur and tastemaker? ...Will a highly skeptical world even let her?” (10:32)
  • Callahan retorts: “Emily, this is Meghan’s, like, 12th act… It is not our responsibility to make Meghan Markle profitable, let alone likable, let alone a success. That is her job.” (10:44)

• Meghan's Lack of Preparedness and Authenticity (12:54–13:07, 45:02)

  • Chang (12:54): “If you could choose one thing for people to know the truth about you, what would that one thing be?”
  • Meghan stalls, unable to answer directly or authentically, even after years in the public eye.

• On Reading, Guilty Pleasures, and Inauthenticity (14:35–17:16)

  • Meghan struggles to name a guilty pleasure, denies time for pleasure reading, and instead claims to study French on Duolingo nightly.
  • Callahan: “Nobody talks like this. …If she wanted to make herself likable, she could admit as much.”

• Bookstores and Finding "Your Story" (17:02–18:45)

  • Meghan: “Bookstores… you can find some version of your story or what feels true to you… It’s such a great space for discovery… makes people feel safe.” (17:02)
  • Callahan: “She’s like a well educated moron. Any real reader… goes into bookstores not looking for a mirror… This fucking limited, malignant narcissist… is in there looking to find herself and her safe space.” (17:16)

• Owning One’s Narrative—Empty Jargon (18:41–19:30)

  • Meghan: “The most important thing in the world [is to own your own story]… When you anchor into your own knowing, then you’re telling your own story.” (18:45)
  • Callahan dismisses this as “gobbledygook,” calling out Meghan’s words as empty.

• The Duchess vs. Relatability; Complaints about ‘Pantyhose’ (21:14–22:08)

  • Meghan claims the only tension in being royal was “I had to wear pantyhose all the time… That was not very myself.”
  • Callahan: “She’s bitching and moaning about having the world handed to her on a silver platter… bitching that she had to wear pantyhose.”

• Direct Shots at Maureen & Megyn Kelly (24:03–26:17)

  • Meghan references a "one pot pasta" criticism: “Oftentimes the negative voices, are they saying negative things and then secretly going home and making single skillet spaghetti? Possibly.”
  • Callahan: “Excuse me. You know, Megyn Kelly does not need to pay her bills on your back, sister.”

• Business Metrics, Media Spin, and Netflix’s Real Message (27:50–30:24)

  • Meghan refuses to share sales figures for her new brand, dodges tough business questions.
  • Chang: “Most of its inventory has sold out…” (27:50)
  • Callahan calls out the lack of substance and accuses legacy media of complicity.
  • Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Bella Bajaria: “The response to their work speaks for itself.” (30:24: CALLAHAN: “That is savage. That is brutal… Netflix hates them.”)

• Contradictions & Delusions About Public Life (33:01–34:54)

  • Meghan claims both total normalcy (can go out in public) and a life of constant scrutiny (can’t do grocery shopping).
  • Callahan exposes the dissonance: “God. Now Emily tries to level herself up by name dropping...”

• On Politics, Mask Slipping, and Defensive Deflections (34:18–38:23)

  • Meghan evades direct comment on current politics, referencing former critiques of Trump but quickly pivots to avoid controversy.
  • Callahan dissects her defensive body language, noting: "Her mask is slipping. It takes a lot of effort to keep the mask on constantly."

• Mindy Kaling Segment—Revelation of Real Meghan (41:52–41:59)

  • Mindy Kaling: “I don’t think anyone in the world knows that Meghan Markle has eaten Jack in the Box and loves it.”
  • Meghan, defensively: “You know, it’s so funny you say that. You know, I’m Sussex now.”
  • Callahan: “Zero sense of humor. Beware someone who can’t laugh at themselves. That’s a dangerous person.”

• Recurring Theme—Meghan as the Architect of Her Own ‘Noise’ (45:02–46:27)

  • Meghan, again stalling on the “one thing people should know about me” question, blames the media and public for negativity.
  • Callahan: “The noise that’s created has been created by one Meghan Markle. The most dangerous place on planet earth these days is between Meghan Markle and a television camera.”

Notable Quotes

• Maureen Callahan (throughout):
  “The only thing authentic about Meghan Markle is her inauthenticity.”
  “She would have us believe that it’s much ado about nothing. How on earth did her surname become a talking point?”
  "If Meghan had anything real about her just to share, trust me, we would have seen it long ago.”

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2. Cultural & Celebrity Roundup

Key Headlines

• Howard Stern's No-Show and SiriusXM Drama (52:20–53:30)

  • Stern made a big deal about an upcoming show, then failed to appear, further evidence, to Callahan, of detachment and irrelevance.

• Vogue’s New Editor-in-Chief: “Nepo Daughter” Hire (53:40–55:30)

  • Chloe Malle, daughter of Candice Bergen and Louis Malle, chosen to “be Anna’s minion.”
  • Callahan: “Magazines are dead. Vogue died the day that Anna Wintour put Kanye and Kim on the cover.”

• Bravo Scandals & Andy Cohen’s Blindness (56:00–58:00)

  • Recent Bravo controversies: Domestic violence minimized, reality show abuse, Callahan’s disbelief at Cohen’s social media tone-deafness.

• Carol Radziwill, Celebrity Weddings, and Poshmark (58:30–1:01:00)

  • Critique of “Widow Kennedy” Carol Radziwill’s Instagram posturing and hypocrisy, selling old items on Poshmark while attending ultra-lux parties.

• Amy Griffin’s Memoir Credibility Challenge (1:03:00)

  • Callahan calls out Amy Griffin’s claims of abuse as specious, noting a lack of corroborating evidence and unwillingness to clarify details.

• New York Times “Troublemaker” Synchronicity (1:05:00)

  • Note on NYT and The Nerve running parallel headlines about Netflix and Lena Dunham.

• Taylor Swift Segment—Travis Kelce Quote:

  • “That football is shaped funny. That thing can bounce your way and it cannot bounce your way. Fun dinner parties. Fun dinner parties.” (1:06:00)

Notable Quotes

• "If you haven't seen it, I don't know the number of the episode, but go back… You can search Amy Griffin, The Nerve…” (1:03:00)
• “When is Bravo gonna wake up? Wake up.” (57:00)

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3. Interview: Elizabeth Greenwood on Everyday Intuition

Segment Start: [75:51]

Main Theme

A rich, practical exploration of intuition—how it works, why we ignore it, and ways to cultivate it—featuring author Elizabeth Greenwood.

Key Insights & Discussion Points

• Intuition as Evolutionary Adaptation (77:00–79:00)

  • Greenwood: “If you didn’t have intuition, you’d be walking into traffic…”

• Society Teaches Us to Distrust Intuition (79:10–79:49)

  • Greenwood: “We’ve been taught since we were small, the only way of knowing is pure rationality… That contradicts intuition, and it can be very jarring. Especially as women… we really gaslight ourselves.”

• Women & Intuition—Lessons from ‘The Gift of Fear’ (80:27–81:39)

  • Greenwood: “If you are having some kind of visceral response to a situation... not to talk yourself out of it.... There’s a lot of wisdom and knowledge our bodies possess.”
  • Maureen Callahan connects this to true crime, Bryan Kohberger case, and social attitudes toward female intuition.

• Intuition as Engine for Creativity & Magic (81:39–83:07)

  • Greenwood distinguishes intuition from simple self-protection: “At its best, it can be this more expansive engine of creativity and magic. It doesn’t just have to keep women safe from psychos.”

• Intuition and Anxiety: The ‘Good Anxiety’ Experience (83:07–84:57)

  • Callahan shares “good anxiety” prior to launching The Nerve as a form of intuition for positive change.

• Modern Life’s Obstruction of Intuition (85:05–87:10)

  • Discussion of how Ozempic and “food noise” medications, social media, and modern stimulants make it harder to listen to the gut’s signals.

• Practical Steps: Slowing Down & Pattern Recognition (88:03–90:57)

  • Greenwood: “Intuition is a hugely embodied experience… you have to sit with yourself, get to know your own patterns.”

• The Power of Sleeping On It (91:32–91:47)

  • Maureen: “Let your subconscious work on it… it puts patterns together you didn’t even realize.”

• Amygdala as ‘Certainty Checker’ and the Root of Anxiety (92:17–94:33)

  • Greenwood: “Our brains love certainty, but our environment is uncertain… that’s the root cause for a lot of anxiety.”

• Intuition in High-Stakes vs. Low-Stakes Situations (96:17–98:50)

  • Greenwood recommends practicing intuition on “low stakes” (what subway train will come next, etc.) before relying on it for major life decisions.

• Premonitions and Psychic Connections (99:33–)

  • Greenwood: “A lot of people do get premonitions in dreams… start jotting these things down. Let your own experience be your teacher.”

Notable Quotes (with timestamps)

• Elizabeth Greenwood:

  • “Your body is constantly giving you a running news ticker of feelings based upon immediate circumstances.” (77:00)
  • “[Intuition is] not this airy fairy thing… it’s sometimes hard, but it will push you in the right direction.” (84:27)
  • “Our amygdala is our certainty checker… the root cause of much of our anxiety is uncertainty.” (92:17)

• Maureen Callahan:

  • “The feeling of right direction.” (82:28)
  • “If you can just let that metabolize a little bit, you’re going to be making much, much better decisions.” (94:45)

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Notable, Memorable Moments

• Callahan’s razor-sharp takedown of the Markle media machine, and her imitation of Meghan’s PR strategy and body language.
• Savage summing up of “what went wrong” for Meghan with both the public and Netflix—juxtaposed with the blunt industry quote:
  • Bella Bajaria (Netflix): “The response to their work speaks for itself.” (30:24)
• Greenwood’s poignant advice to “sleep on it” and recognize the difference between anxiety (uncertainty-seeking) and true intuition.
• The segment revelation that “nobody talks like this” about food, reading, or guilty pleasures except people anxious to impress or over-coached by PR.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:00–35:00] – Meghan Markle Bloomberg interview blow-by-blow, media criticism, Markle’s PR missteps.
• [45:00–48:00] – “One thing people should know about me” segment, critique on authenticity.
• [52:20–65:00] – Celebrity/Culture Roundup: Howard Stern, Vogue, Bravo, “Widow Kennedy.”
• [75:50–99:50] – Interview with Elizabeth Greenwood: Intuition, anxiety, neuroscience, magic, and practical advice.

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Conclusion

This episode is a masterclass in skeptical media dissection and the interplay of pop culture with deeper psychological themes. Callahan maintains a biting, humorous, but incisive tone throughout. For those interested in understanding the mechanics of modern celebrity, journos’ complicity, and why trusting yourself is so hard (but critical), this episode delivers depth, personality, and memorable soundbites.

Final Tip: For a dose of tough love, insight, and genuinely useful advice on intuition—as well as to witness the culture wars in real time—The Nerve is essential listening.

Transcript

[Maureen Callahan]

Firestone Complete Autocare's epic savings event is the sign you need to stop putting off your car's maintenance and you can save up to $100 on tires and services. While you're at it, don't wait. Call Firestone Complete Auto Care for an appointment. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. In 2007, Amanda Knox was halfway around the world studying abroad in Italy. She had no idea her dream would turn into a nightmare inspired by the actual event, her wrongful conviction and 15 year fight for freedom. Watch the Hulu original series the Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Nerve. Fresh off the Labor Day weekend, this is your special Wednesday edition. And wow, do we have a lot to get to. First, as Prince Harry prepares for his make or break reunion with King Charles in London next week, without a liability known, just my opinion, as Meghan Markle, we are going to break apart her very recent video interview with Bloomberg. And let's just say that if Harry is really hoping to work his way back into the royal fold, it seems that Meghan is determined to keep that from happening. Just my opinion. Know thine enemy, Harold. Next we will have a big celeb roundup. We've got breaking news out of Vogue. Bravo. And another repeat offender. We'll refer to hereafter as the Widow Kennedy. I'm guessing you can guess who that is. Plus your emails. That will all be followed by our special guest author, Elizabeth Greenwood, who has a fascinating new book out called Everyday Intuition. What Psychology, Science and Psychics Can Teach Us about finding our Inner Voice. We can't wait to get into it, so let's go. 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Now that the world has been underwhelmed by season one, part B of With Love, Meghan, I will not call it season two. In my opinion, it is not. It is season one, part B in the can at the same time as part A dropped over the spring. So that dropped last Tuesday. It was very much if a tree falls for Netflix, you know, if a tree falls in the forest, nobody hears it. Does it fall? If Meghan Markle drops a crappy show on Netflix, nobody watches it. Does it count? That show did not even dent the top 10. And it ranked the last we checked last week. I'm sure it's plummeted even further down the charts. It ranked 383rd in the watch list. So that means. Meghan. Meghan Markle. Excuse me. Meghan Markle isn't even a hate watch anymore. She's just like, just. She's just not even. She's not even making putting points on the board. Okay? So as promised last week, because we did not have enough time and we really needed to get into the meat and the guts of this thing, we are going to take apart the bonkers interview that Megan did with Bloomberg. This was a video interview, okay? Now, Bloomberg is ostensibly a business publication, not that you would know it from. This is all too often a thing that is happening in the culture. And again, it's got to stop. We, we at the nerve exist to push back and say, hey, you so called journalists out there, knock it off. You're making it look bad for the rest of us. This is one of the most embarrassing sycophantic. Please, please, like me interviews I have seen in a long time. And that is saying something. The quote unquote journalist. Here is one Emily Chang, who took herself to Montecito to speak to our duchess in person, who you're going to see her doing a lot of work, a lot of body language work, a lot of laughter, head throwing back work. We're laughing at things that aren't even funny. We're taking slings and arrows that are personal insults and we're acting like we're bonding over here. It's wild. It's wild. And you know, it's wild also because Meghan Markle's over here still trying to market herself as a down to earth yet royal hostess nonpareil whose job is to teach all of us how to be gracious. And make people feel comfortable and warm and relaxed in our presence. And here she is being queen bitch as usual. Just my opinion. This interview has it all. Megan reintroducing herself like the titular character. This is all I could think of the whole time in Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones. Please allow me to reintroduce myself. I'm the man, the woman without a name. It's the devil. For the eight millionth time, we have a reintroduction to one Meghan Markle. I'm so exhausted. Again, she finds new ways to assault the English language and our own sensibilities through her self help. Bullshit. The jargon. Oh, my God, we've got new stuff. You thought learnings was bad? Learnings is her CEO jargon. While being completely rooted in herself, by the way, she's going to tell us she's completely rooted in herself, yet she's still searching for answers to the most basic questions about who she is and why the world perceives her again as a queen bitch. In other words, this is a banger. It is a banger. Grab your coffee, grab your popcorn, grab your cocktail of choice troublemakers, wherever you are in the world, grab what you love to settle in with and let's do this. Megan, when is it that you feel the least royal? Now, I'm gonna give you a slight spoiler alert, but you guys know this already. When Meghan feels the least royal is not when she's making the remaining days of a dying Prince Philip or dying Queen Elizabeth II in utter misery, nor when she's fleeing Buckingham palace in the metaphorical dead of night with her beta royal husband holding his balls in her designer handbag as they fly on Tyler Perry's private jet to Montecito, where they're going to sit down with Oprah Winfrey and sling some baseless my opinion accusations retracted later by Harry that they said the royal family was racist. It's not that. Okay, take a look.

[Emily Chang]

When do you feel the least? Duchess of Sussex.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, my God.

[Meghan Markle]

Sitting here eating a Tamash burger with you, being asked these questions.

[Maureen Callahan]

So if you're listening again, I'm gonna. I'm gonna just gently nudge you. Watch this on YouTube because it's all in the expressions, the micro expressions, the body language. Okay? Emily says, when do you feel the least royal? And, you know, Megan's taking a bite of her potato chip and she. She's like, I'm stunned and stunned you would ask me this. And then she's like, searching, and she literally sits back in her chair like this Emily's across the table from her. So you're Emily and I'm Megan. And Meghan's like this. Like she's pushing Emily away, metaphorically, like, how dare you ask me that question? And then her answer, which she should have been prepared for a question like this, okay? Her answer is sitting here with you, eating a burger, answering these questions like, fuck you, Megan. This is free publicity for your shit show over on Netflix that even over there they know is a loser. And we're going to get to that quote, and it's a money quote from someone in charge, from a real head bitch in charge. And I use that phrase with the utmost reverence, because we can all respect a real head bitch in charge. Okay? Now, Emily Chang, in all of her servitude, in her preamble, I believe, to this question, or maybe it's baked into the question, forgive me, Emily is going to blame all of us, all of us, the would be viewers, consumers out here for being really thick. It's our fault. Why, Meghan, in the five years since she has relanded herself stateside, why she hasn't been able to get a single project flying off the ground despite hundreds of millions of dollars from the likes of Netflix and Spotify and Lemonada. And now we've got the A list, keeping their collective distance. But let's see if we can crack this case by blaming a discerning public with not that much disposable income to spend. Spend as it is. Let's do it.

[Emily Chang]

The big question is, can Meghan have a second act as an entrepreneur and a tastemaker? Can she succeed on her own terms? And will a highly skeptical world even let her?

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, will a highly skeptical world even let her? You know, to get to just pitch to our block at the end of the show to our last segment on intuition. We don't even need intuition to know this woman's a total fraud. Just my opinion. Can Megan have a second act? Emily. Emily, this is Megan's, like, 12th act, okay? She's been on the scene forever. So we all reject the premise. It is not our responsibility to make Megan Markle profitable, let alone likable, let alone a success. That is her job, okay? And it is painful for us to watch you as our quote, unquote intermediary, doing your best to lob softball after softball at Megan, who has two expressions. No, I'll give you three. First expression, is this beatific? I'm trying to be beatific. I'm trying to be like, you can't Read what I'm thinking. The you caught me off guard, and I'm just gonna try to look cloyingly cute. And the third is like, that's when the mask drops. That's when you get the black eyed laser stare. Anger. Okay? So Megan has done enough of these interviews by now that she should know what's coming. Her team. You know, she cycles through people. We know this. We're not even gonna get into that. But, like, if she had a loyal staff, they would have watched all the game film, what I call the game film, all of her prior interviews, they would have read through all the print ones. They would have pumped them through AI and said, here's the top 10 questions you get asked all the time, lady. Let's get some answers going that you can have at the ready. If I'm a perfectionist like Megan claims to be, that's what I'm doing. I'm coming loaded for bear, unprepared, you know? But could it be. Could it be that our resident perfectionist hasn't done the homework?

[Emily Chang]

If you could choose one thing for people to know the truth about you, what would that one thing be?

[Meghan Markle]

The one thing? Oh, gosh. What's the one thing?

[Maureen Callahan]

I love this. So there are two things I love about this. First, Emily leans in, and she's very serious, and she's very. She's gonna ask the question nobody has. Trust me. It's been asked if there is one thing, one thing you want people to know, the one thing you feel is like a misperception. I'm going to read into that question a little bit. So Megan's been asked this question a million fucking times. And she sits there and she goes, one thing. And she's looking up at the heavens for an answer, for some kind of help. And here's where the editors are really fucking with her. And they're fucking with Emily, too, because in comes the jaunty keyboard music. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And then up comes the show Chiron. Over her face, the circuit, and so many seconds have elapsed that we've got all this time to bring in the music and the title card while Megan continues to search the top of the ceiling in somebody else's living room to try to find the goddamn answer to who she is. It's so great. I mean, don't watch it. It's painful, okay? It's really painful to watch this. Now Megan, that great thinker, is going. She brings Emily to what she says is her favorite bookstore in Montecito or Santa Barbara, whatever. To talk books. So this is a gem.

[Emily Chang]

What's your guilty pleasure? Are you like a thrillers?

[Meghan Markle]

Oh, my gosh.

[Emily Chang]

Trashy romance?

[Meghan Markle]

Well, I spend so much time reading children's books. You have four kids? Yes, I do. I do.

[Maureen Callahan]

Meghan doesn't care.

[Meghan Markle]

Four and six. And so at the end of the night, I do that. And then I haven't really. I haven't really gotten into a book in a long time.

[Emily Chang]

I know it's hard.

[Meghan Markle]

I also read a lot of parenting books.

[Maureen Callahan]

Megan doesn't care.

[Meghan Markle]

I need self help. And then my late night indulgence now is just a lot of duolingo. Do you ever do that?

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Oh, it's great.

[Maureen Callahan]

When I could find the time.

[Emily Chang]

What are you duolingoing?

[Meghan Markle]

I'm duolingoing French. Yeah. I committed to relearning it, and so, yeah, it's really fun.

[Maureen Callahan]

So in the beginning of that clip, Emily's doing a lot of body work as they get into there. She's like, so what do you like to read? What's your guilty pleasure? Is it like, romance? Is it thriller? And Megan's just, like, just going, like, in her egg yolk yellow ensemble, she's like, yeah, you know. Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. This is Megan. Oh, gosh. Oh, golly. Oh, goodness. Oh, gee. Wh. Nobody talks like this. Okay. And then she goes on to say she's got kids, so all she has time to read are bedtime stories to her children. And then she's too exhausted at the end of any given day to read for pleasure, even, like, say, like a trashy tabloid that she's in. And we know, just my opinion, that she's reading every single tabloid she's in, every single Radar Online piece, every TMZ piece, every Daily Mail piece. We know you're in the comments section. Megan. Allegedly. Allegedly. Reportedly my suspicion. So that's bullshit. And if she wanted to make herself likable, she could admit as much. But no, she says, what I do is I'm learning French. I'm relearning French at night. Yeah, it makes sense, right? Because when you're cognitively depleted at the end of a day, having gotten two small children down to bed, finally, what do you want to do other than tackle learning a foreign language? Now a little more for Megan on how she engages with book culture in her fancy celebrity studded seaside town.

[Emily Chang]

So I saw that you were at the opening of this place with Oprah, and you talked about how bookstores felt like a safe space.

[Meghan Markle]

Tell me about that. You know, I think bookstores, you can find your story there. You can find some version of your story or what feels true to you in it within all those pages. It's just such a great space, space for discovery. And I think that makes people feel safe.

[Maureen Callahan]

She's such an idiot. She's like a well educated moron. Any real reader, I speak as a real reader, goes into bookstores. Not looking for a mirror. I'm not looking to see myself. I mean, it's one thing if you're going in and you're looking for, like, if you're in grief and you're looking for books on grief, things like that, but, like, if you're an actual avid reader, you go in and you're in a bookstore because it's like, wow, all of these different lives and eras and epochs and times in history and people who experience things I'll never experience for good or for ill. The pages will transport me and take me elsewhere. And that is the magic of reading. And this fucking limited, malignant narcissist, just my opinion, is in there looking to find herself and her safe space. And she thinks other people go into bookstores to want to feel safe. Now let's get a dose of what story and narrative mean to this brain trust over here. While she employs some, you know, jargon that she's been picking up from the likes of the only people who will hang out with her in Montecito, as far as I can tell, you know, those dim bulbs like Chani Carlina.

[Emily Chang]

How important is it to own your own story?

[Meghan Markle]

Ugh, it's the most important thing in the world.

[Emily Chang]

Do you feel like you own your own story?

[Meghan Markle]

I know I do. And if you know me, you know that I do. I think there are always going to be moments where you feel as though a story is being told about some caricature of you that actually has nothing to do with you. And that can be really hard to reconcile. But I think the more comfortable you get with yourself, certainly age helps. I'll be 44. That's great. It's great. And I just think there really is a lot of value to when you anchor into your own knowing, then you're telling your own story. You're telling your own story. And how you show up in the world, what you do, you actually don't need to say anything. You can show who you are.

[Maureen Callahan]

So we're going through this again. Do you own your own story? It's been five years. She's had no shortage of outlets. Netflix Spotify, Lemonada, et cetera, et cetera. Now this. There's no story to tell, or there is a story to tell, and she'd like to keep it buried. And I think it has to do with her upbringing, just my opinion. And I think it has to do with her machinations and social climbing and her intent that she was going to land big fish. And I think it has to go with her plot from the very beginning to get her husband out of there because she realized she was not going to be the queen. Or as is reported to have come out of Megan's mouth by more than one person. She was one helicopter crash away from the throne, allegedly reportedly anchor into your own. Knowing what that means, I have no idea. It's a lot of gobbledygook. And for her to say that there's nothing more important in the world than owning your own story. People who know who they are think that there are a hell of a lot more important things in this world than that. And Emily should be embarrassed for asking that question and nodding along and squinting like there are profundities coming out of the mouth of this idiot. My opinion now. Emily is still not sure of this premise. So we're gonna ask Megan again, a hoary question. Dug out of. Just dug out of the trash at this point, really. And you know, what it is to be royal, what it is to be Meghan. And if there's a difference, there is.

[Emily Chang]

There an inherent tension in trying to be relatable while also being a Duchess.

[Maureen Callahan]

Meghan's wearing $1,500 shoes.

[Meghan Markle]

I'm just being myself. So I think probably it was different several years ago where I couldn't be as vocal and I had to renewed pantyhose all the time. Let's be honest, that was not very myself. I hadn't seen pantyhose since the age.

[Maureen Callahan]

That was not very me.

[Meghan Markle]

When they came in the little egg, that felt a little bit inauthentic. But that's a silly example. But it is an example of when you're able to dress the way you want to dress and you're able to say the things that are true and you're able to show up in the space really organically and authenticity like the royals are racist. That's being comfortable in your own skin. And that's, of course, had different chapters in my life.

[Maureen Callahan]

Well, I think she's lying. And here's why I think she's lying. More than once she put her hand over her mouth like this. Like this. That is someone who knows that they are saying something that is either untrue, something that they're unsure of saying, or someone who doesn't really know themselves, period. Like, is there tension between being you and being royal? I mean, I thought she shucked off all this royal stuff. That's the whole point of moving to California, is it not? So why are we still cosplaying over at Montecito like we're a duchess? And why are we saying that wearing tights was a true cross to bear and that she couldn't say anything as a royal? Trust me, she said a lot behind those palace walls. Okay? Just my opinion. No one cares, Meghan. No one cares what you think. No one cares. You know, she's bitching and moaning about having the world handed to her on a silver platter. She's bitching and moaning about having the global fame and adulation she had longed for since she exited the womb finally given to her on a silver platter. And what does she do? She's bitching that she had to wear pantyhose. And she really didn't, you know. Okay. Catherine did not always have to wear pantyhose either. Okay, Anyway, this next. This next little segment, this little chunk, this little nugget of gold struck a little close to home. And you know what? I liked it. I like it. I think. Well, we here at Team Nerve think that Megan might be probably none too subtly making reference to a skit that your newly minted actress over here did recently. Let's take a look.

[Emily Chang]

How did that land for you?

[Meghan Markle]

I think I knew who I was trying to meet. And so if you know your audience, you know your demographic. Well, they love the show, and my partners love the show. And that's why we have a season two and why we have more fun coming. So I think oftentimes the negative voices, are they saying negative things and then secretly going home and making single skillet spaghetti? Possibly. And that's all right. They're trying to pay their bills, and that's for them to sort out if they're comfortable doing it at someone else's detriment.

[Maureen Callahan]

Detriment. Detriment. Dare I say. Dare I say that the piece to which I believe Meghan is referring is part of a performance that I did with one Megyn Kelly, your friend and mine, in a spoof called With Love, Megan with a Y. And you can tell that really, really bothered Meghan. That, like, Meghan Markle, like, she can't take a joke. Like, you can tell because she has to say that, like, we're doing it to pay our bills. Excuse me. You know, Megyn Kelly does not need to pay her bills. On your back, sister. Get real. Get real. And if Megan had any guts, she'd, like, she'd want to join in the fun. She'd be like, you guys should do a part two and let me come on, you know. But she has no sense of humor. None. So the single skillet spaghetti or the one pot pasta, whatever you want to call it, which, like, Megyn Kelly found out was, like, actually ripped off, I think from Martha Stewart. Like, again, there's no originality here. Whatever. Anyway, you know, we dressed up in like what one would dress up in when one cooked pasta and made it in a kitchen. We won't say where. Just like Megan's always in a kitchen in someone else's, you know, farmhouse, whatever. So. But take a look at this. Take a look at what we cooked up. I'm not reading. I have this in the head. You don't need to see that. Labels aren't important to me. Maureen. The one pan, that's important. 12 ounce cherry or grape tomatoes. Normally we get these from my garden, but it's not the season for tomatoes. You're going to put that in the pan. You're just going to lay that flat in the pan.

[Meghan Markle]

It looks like little green pearls.

[Maureen Callahan]

Green pearls, green pearls. Green pearls girls. Green pearls girls. I mean, that was fun. That was actually really fun. And we actually did drink our way through it. It was really the only way to get through it. And we did say. I don't know if we said it on camera or not, but like, we did sample the one pot pasta when it was done, and it was actually pretty good. So if, like, Megan could just roll with it and take a joke, she might actually have some fun in this life. Now again, we are sitting with Bloomberg, a business news outlet, and Emily tells us that Megan will not share her sales figures for as ever, the line of what Megan loves to call consumables. How about just the food, the drink, the food and the drink that she's shilling as an extension of with love, Megan. What I would call her slimy jam, her weak tea. I sampled it. I sampled the overpriced, tasteless flower sprinkles. So, Emily, if. If we're doing this as a business endeavor, we're doing it business journalism. And we're interviewing an entrepreneur about her new business and she won't share her metrics and her sales figures. What are we doing here? You know, what we're doing here. We're gonna let Megan tell us what a blazing success she is without any proof whatsoever. And legacy media wonders why it's dying. Here we go.

[Emily Chang]

Meghan wouldn't share sales figures for as ever but so far most of its inventory has quickly sold out. As ever is all. Just had another line. My opinion, yes, the rose sold out also in less than an hour, 44 minutes.

[Meghan Markle]

I was shocked.

[Maureen Callahan]

Get it right, Emily.

[Emily Chang]

Keep up with demand.

[Meghan Markle]

When you sell out that quickly, you actually it's a double edged sword because it's an incredible thing to happen for any small business and any startup. And at the same time you don't get the same metrics and learnings about which skus and products are the most coveted. Because it's all gone immediately.

[Maureen Callahan]

When you look at how satisfied Megan is, it's all gone immediately. Like Megan tell us actually the volume of any given product. Were there like 11 boxes of flower sprinkles available for sale? Like let's get some numbers going. Okay. But we have to live in our fantasy world. Just my opinion that we're just such a blazing success. I'm a blazing success, but I won't tell you how many pieces of whatever piece of garbage I'm slinging out here sold. Listen, if I'm gonna, I. If someone says to me, hey Maureen, you're a best selling author. How many, how many copies of Like American Predator have you sold? I could tell you. How many copies of that's not have. I could tell you. I could break it down by hardcover, by audiobook, by Kindle. We get those figures. It's how. Okay, okay. I. Centering myself. Centering myself. Now, Emily, she's, she's tried to work her way up, you know, from the softballs to like the real deal. Questions to a point. Emily presses Megan very gently on why she chose to just have this deal through Netflix. Rather than raising investment money on her own and thus potentially having even more control over her business, why not raise.

[Emily Chang]

Money on your own, you know, where you might have more control, you might have more financial upside.

[Meghan Markle]

That had been my plan and, and I thought that it would be great just to build out my own team and really do it purely on my terms.

[Maureen Callahan]

Stalling. Stalling.

[Meghan Markle]

But then I also would say Netflix.

[Maureen Callahan]

Made a really rubbing the nose lie.

[Meghan Markle]

We began our relationship with Netflix five years ago purely as a production company with Archewell Productions. And we've managed to have some wonderful shows and docu series that we're really proud of. And then with the Partnership now is them doubling down in their support of as ever.

[Emily Chang]

Just days after this interview, Netflix announced that following its initial five year $100 million deal with Harry and Meghan, they've signed a reportedly far less lucrative first look deal similar to the Obamas. Her ever present critics seem to view this as yet another setback.

[Maureen Callahan]

It is. It is a setback. Her ever present critics. Emily, just be as impartial as you can try to pretend to be. Meghan does not want to be your next best friend, okay? It's not happen. And you know, on the heels of Megan saying that's why Netflix doubled down with as ever and with love, Megan, then come immediately the headlines. Netflix has taken a huge step back. They don't want this anymore. You want to know how we know this? We could ask Netflix. We can specifically go to Netflix's chief of content. Sorry, it's Chief Content Officer Bella Bajaria, whose statement after Netflix announced it was striking a mere first look deal with Meghan and Harry. Not another expansion of this reported $100 million deal. Our opinion and the market's reaction, Lackluster productions. I quote from Bella. The response to their work speaks for itself. That is savage. That is brutal. Usually in Hollywood, they'll try to dress stuff up more because you never know your enemy. Today might be your best friend. Tomorrow you might to be back in business. That is as close to an fu that you will hear in Hollywood. Netflix hates them. Trust me, they are done with them. If they can get a divorce special, if they can get a juicy Diana doc, that's one thing. This Christmas special Megan allegedly has going on over at Netflix, that's good. It's camp, okay? It's going to be camp. My opinion, Netflix hates them. Okay? Now we go out, we go outside the parameters of, you know, Megan's like mansion. And she's asked if she. Emily says, megan, can you go out for a drink in. In. In your town, which is, you know, filled with really wealthy famous people who, excuse me, are not going to blink twice at these two. Okay? They're not. And Megan gives. She's like, well, yeah, you hick. Of course we go out a lot. We go out all the time. And that she doesn't need to try to be incognito. And then she contradicts herself immediately on brand as usual.

[Emily Chang]

If you had total anonymity for a month, what would you do?

[Meghan Markle]

I would go grocery shopping every day.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, my God. So Megan can go out on the town to the bookstore and the food truck and get her Fancy latte and her Smash Burger and trail around with a camera crew. Right? Cause we want our privacy. But we're rolling around Montecito with a camera crew and a journalist, and we're doing, like, Emily's doing costume changes over here. Okay. But Megan can't go grocery shopping. God. Now Emily tries to level herself up by name dropping. And this is never a good idea. And again, she tries, and she is not subtle, she is not artful about it. To get Megan to make some sort of political statement here.

[Emily Chang]

I was talking with Melinda French Gates about how we're living in such a charged time right now, and sometimes it feels like no one is speaking up and that, you know, people aren't using their voices because it's scary to speak up. And she said, I don't think the voices are gone. They're just quietly strategizing.

[Meghan Markle]

The quiet part of the song is still part of the song.

[Emily Chang]

What do you think of the direction our country is going in?

[Meghan Markle]

I think right now it's a really interesting time for the entire world. I just hope that people are able to babble, babble, babble. Values that they feel are important to them and to feel safe and go to a bookstore. Our humanity with each other in all of it. Like, however polarized the world can be or feel. You go back to the fact that we're human beings and try to find the way, no shit. Connect versus feel divided. I think that's the only way through whatever can feel, trying.

[Maureen Callahan]

You know, when Emily first asks that question, when she's in the middle of asking it, you can see Megan's face. Like, it goes full Blake Lively. Like, the eyes go black and she doesn't blink. And she's looking at her, and she's sipping her beer out of a really nice frosted glass, and she's, like, got the beer almost coagulating in between her cheeks, and she's letting her cheeks expand, and it's really like, are you fucking kidding me? You really going to fucking go here?

[Meghan Markle]

I'm.

[Maureen Callahan]

I'm a duchess. I'm supposed to be apolitical. Even though she was reportedly calling every senator on Capitol Hill, like, three or four years ago, trying to get them to vote a certain way on a piece of legislation to the point where these famous senators were saying to each other and their aides reportedly, allegedly. How the fuck did Meghan Markle get my direct personal cell phone number? Emily tries again.

[Emily Chang]

You're in a unique position. I saw you do an interview in 2016, and you had some choice Words for President Trump, I think it was.

[Meghan Markle]

In 2012, like the Republican Party lost the female vote by 12 points. That's a huge number. And with as misogynistic as Trump is and so vocal about it, that's a huge chunk of it. You're not.

[Emily Chang]

Are there things you're dying to say or do right now that you feel like you can't?

[Meghan Markle]

No, I just make a choice of what matters to me and what's important to me. And that was a different time in 2016, certainly. But no, I mean, I. What was that? The Larry Wilmore Show?

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Yes.

[Meghan Markle]

I was so excited to have that. I was so excited to be able to go on that show at the time. Yeah, no, I think.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Hi, how are you?

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, here comes the waitress. Here comes the waitress. So coincidental. Okay, so Megan in a young, still striving middle aged actress, is on Larry Wilmore, Larry Wilmore show, full hair and makeup, talking about percentage points, you know, in an election, which is like a very, just like, it's an easy, like, you know, talking point. She's not a brilliant mind and she's looking to divest from what she politically overtly said in 2016. And she's, she's always buying time, this one. And she's. And you can tell when she's thrown off because she's not a great actress. She never learned bodywork. She never learned gesturing. How is it that I know more in my tiny little burgeoning acting career than Meghan Markle does? She's like, oh, what was that? She's trying to deflect. What was that? Larry Wilmore. Oh, I was so excited to do that show. She's like, shit, I can't believe I fucking did that show. I was two months away from meeting Harry. Oh, my God. Oh, what did I say? I mean, that was a difficult. Oh, and then the waitress comes over. The waitress, okay, that waitress, I guarantee you, was hastily waved over in a blind panic by Meghan Markle's person who was standing there. Get in there and interrupt the flow of this conversation because Meghan isn't artful enough or articulate enough or mature enough in my opinion, to handle this stuff again, even though she has had 10 years to learn from the best of the best in public relations and crisis management. Not for nothing, sister, those people are in Buckingham palace and Kensington palace and you threw it away. But let's let her finish her answer. Let's be polite.

[Emily Chang]

I'll let you finish her answer.

[Meghan Markle]

Of course, it was a different time. I was excited to be on the show. And I think if there's anything that I wanted to say or that felt necessary to say, then I would say it. But that's not where I'm at right now.

[Maureen Callahan]

And she does that face that, like, I'm gonna try to be like, polite and like, pleasant and smile so you can exit this question gracefully. But, like, all you can see is barely concealed fury. And you can see how she spel up the answer. It was a different time. It was 2016. If I felt like I had something to say, I would say it. Because, like, you know what I have to say? Like, I own my own story and I'm authentic, you know, and like, it's the most important thing. Like, oh, my God, like, her mask is slipping. Okay? Her mask is slipping. It takes a lot of effort as we discuss, because we love to discuss narcissists here. And I believe Megan is a malignant narcissist. And it takes a lot of effort to keep the mask on constantly. And it's beginning to slip here. We can see how effortful this interview is for Megan. It must have been all fucking day long. Her inner bitch, the real Megan, just my opinion is coming out to play. The real Megan wants out of the box here. She's coming out because she's insulting Emily's line of questioning. And Emily's line of questioning, if Megan's been paying attention, but she can only half pay attention because she's got this internal monologue going on. Mask affixed, hair perfect, perfect, vague answer. If she were paying attention, she would realize that Emily's line of questioning exists only to make Megan look great. But. And Emily isn't vibing with what's going on here. Okay, so, okay, let's watch as Megan talks about all the confusion. She has no idea why we're all so confused about what her surname is.

[Meghan Markle]

You have lots of burning questions.

[Maureen Callahan]

Lots of burning questions.

[Emily Chang]

What have you learned about yourself since becoming Sussex?

[Meghan Markle]

Well, interesting. What I learned about myself is no matter what my name is or what people call me, I'm still the same person. So that didn't change who I am. And maybe that's probably the biggest distinguishing factor.

[Maureen Callahan]

Why is she still learning about herself? I mean, it's one thing to be like, yeah, I'm always like, interrogating what I'm doing and why, but like, shouldn't you have a pretty, like, formed core sense of who you are at like 45 or however old she is? I mean, she's a middle aged woman. And then so, so she. She begins that by saying to Emily, oh, you've got a lot of burning questions, don't you? That's an insult. That's an insult to a woman who has been lobbing at you, Megan, softball after softball, so you would look good. Because trust me, any journalist really worth their salt could artfully go in there and you wouldn't know what hit you. You wouldn't know what hit you. Okay? You'd be asked pointed questions in such a way that it would throw you off. So we're gonna have Megan. She would have us. She's taking us all for suckers. She's taking us all for idiots. She would have us believe that it's much ado about nothing. How on earth did her surname become a talking point? How? And of course, that her imaginary subjects here in the States who don't understand such subtleties and nuances. Delusional Delulu. Of course we'd have a hard time understanding it. We're just a bunch of numbskulls over here. You know who we should ask? Let's ask Mindy Kaling, who learned the hard way on With Love, Megan, Season 1, Part A Jack in the Box.

[Meghan Markle]

Because my mom loved their tacos.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

I don't think anyone in the world knows that Meghan Markle has eaten Jack in the Box and loves it.

[Meghan Markle]

It's so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle.

[Maureen Callahan]

You know, I'm Sussex now. Oh, that she will never live down. That is the real Megan. That's the real Megan. You know, it's so funny. You know, she had a shiv, Mindy. Because Mindy was like, you were a kid who ate junk food, fast food, like the rest of us, and nobody knew that about you and Megan. She's mortified. She's like, you know, it's so funny. It's so funny you say that. You know, I'm Sussex. Like, she can't help herself. She can't help. She can't. She has zero sense of humor. I've said it before. I can't say it enough. She has zero sense of humor. And beware someone who can't laugh at themselves. That's a dangerous person. Okay, that what we just saw in that exchange with Mindy Kaling, and one of the few times I feel sorry for Mindy Kaling. That's the real Megan. That's the Megan whose mother was mysteriously not in her life for quite some time as a child, allegedly. Reportedly, that part of Megan's childhood is a mystery. Still, I believe the source of the narcissistic wound whose father, in my opinion, attempted to make up for that maternal absence by giving Megan everything she wanted. A child who clearly, I believe, was not the brightest, was not the most creative, was not the most talented, was not the kindest, did not have any real distinguishing factor, but created this monster whose vaulting ambitions finally, finally got her the fame and the fortune she craved so deeply because she thought that would fill the black hole within. But there is no filling that black hole within because as I suspect, she knows, as I suspect, I suspect just my opinion, there is no there there. There is no there there. And because there is no core person there and no core self confidence there. This is someone who is always on the defense, who is always looking out for slings and arrows and slights, and who is always going to strike first where there is no need to strike. And she creates a feedback loop among the rest of us who have to suffer through this utter disdain and despair, this most insufferable, inhospitable creature on the world stage. We gotta suffer through this shit because Bloomberg decides that this is something worth putting up for likes and clicks. And it wasn't you guys, by the way. You know, last week as of it was up for like 24, 36, 48 hours. It only had like 53k views. It was a lot. It's. It doesn't make you guys look good to play this game. Okay, so stop. Just stop. Now this brings us to one of Emily's last questions, which I promise, I mean, I think I prosecuted a pretty good case here. You know, I love to play criminal prosecutor and I think crimes are being committed against the culture, so. But I believe this final will. This. It's either second to last or last, but it's gonna prove my point. Okay, here we go.

[Emily Chang]

If you could choose one thing for people to know the truth about you, what would that one thing be?

[Meghan Markle]

No one's ever.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, my God. Have we not asked this a million times?

[Meghan Markle]

What a great question. The one thing. Oh, gosh. What's the one thing? Oh, gosh. I just.

[Maureen Callahan]

Oh, my God, she's.

[Meghan Markle]

I think when I sit with it for a second here, I just don't.

[Maureen Callahan]

Know that I'm stalling a real person. Yep. We know that you're a biological human alive on planet Earth at this given time.

[Meghan Markle]

When you look at the clickbait culture and how much is written about somebody.

[Maureen Callahan]

You mean all the shit you created your own shitstorm.

[Meghan Markle]

My friends have to read those things. Like I have best friends the same one since I was 17.

[Maureen Callahan]

Let's see them.

[Meghan Markle]

I'm a real mom. I have to go.

[Maureen Callahan]

And you get it.

[Meghan Markle]

I choose to go and do school pickup and drop off. But I do that under a lance. That luxury is created that forgets that I'm a real person. And how would you want someone to treat a real person in your life that you cared about or loved or respected? And so there's something about that, I think that often gets lost. And even though it embarrasses, compartmentalize, like I say, that's a caricature. Yes, but my kids will see those magazines and we all know moms gossip. And so I have to make a choice.

[Maureen Callahan]

The other moms hate her through the.

[Meghan Markle]

World as myself, in spite of all the noise that's created. But maybe there would be less noise if people remembered that I'm a real person.

[Emily Chang]

You're a real person. Yeah, I can say I'm real.

[Maureen Callahan]

Thanks, Emily, for ratifying.

[Meghan Markle]

Pinch me. I'm real. She's real.

[Maureen Callahan]

She's a real lapdog. Now, first of all, the noise that's created has been created by one Meghan Markle. The most dangerous place on planet earth these days is between Meghan Markle and a television camera. Secondly, I hate people who hide behind their kids. My kids have to read that. You know what? Stop giving fucking interviews. Problem solved. She also let slip that the other mothers hate her. Oh, you know, other mothers gossip. They gossip. I'm sure Megan has done nothing to endear herself at the local pta. Now here's what Megan really missed. Emily had teed up a question. If there's one thing you would want people to know about you, one real thing, what would it be? That's where you go. Or the question about, is there a tension? You know, is there a difference between you as a royal. She should have said, I gave that up. You know, this is an honorific. We don't even use it here. We're in. We're in the States. We're raising our children as Americans. She's teeing up. Give us some. Give us something that makes you relatable, you know, and that's where. That's something where you look for something self deprecating to say. That's where Megan should have said, you know what? People might not guess this, but like, I love to watch Real Housewives. That's my guilty pleasure. Or you know what my favorite thing to read is like to settle in with is like a good copy of US Weekly. You know, I like, I do that. Like I do that when I go get my nails done. But she doesn't go get her nails done because she's got someone coming up, you know. Or you know what really sucked? Oprah dropping me. You know, I can't get her on the phone anymore. I wonder how like anything, anything but Megan has to sit there and really think hard and then close her eyes and squeeze and try to manifest something. It's just okay. Anyway, if Megan had anything, anything real about her just to share, trust me, we would have seen it long ago. So this whole thing has been a nice try. But we're not taking the blame for Meghan Markle's failures or her inability to come off as authentic. Because as stated, the only thing authentic about Meghan Markle is her inauthenticity. Inauthenticity. She's tripping me up on my pronunciation. Cannot stand. Anyway, our final salvo to Meghan. Enjoy next week while you sit on pins and needles as your husband goes over to London and tries to worm his way back into the royal fold without you. Because we all know the only way he's getting back in is if you're not in the picture, sister. It's going to be fun over in Montecito. She's going to be clawing out of her skin. It's gonna be great. Okay, net. Allegedly reportedly. Just my opinion. Next up, we have a packed celeb roundup that is going to leave bodies stacked up in the woodshed. We are also oiling up the wood chipper for Emmy's live stream and we've got your emails. Back in a minute. Are you looking to support more made in the USA manufacturing this year? 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While being dedicated to to employing people in the United States. AwareHouse believes that true luxury isn't about fancy labels or big brand names. It's about the dedication, the creativity and the care that goes into every product they sell. Help Awarehouse hit their goal of supporting over 100 small businesses this year. Head to awarehouseshop.com and use code thenerve for 15% off your first order. That's a warehouseshop.com code. The nerve. Welcome back. We have got a lot to get into before diving into your emails and a physical piece of mail that I have to show you guys. You're gonna die. And we are also so happy that you troublemakers had as much fun watching the Taylor Swift mini as we did making it. I wanna give extra, extra credit, extra gold star to Emily, who is emerging as our prop master. She did all the props, she helped with the set design. She is going to be on site on Emmy night. All great stuff. Now on to our breaking celebrity updates. Howard Stern made a big fanfare. Or big made a big show? I can't say a big fanfare. It would be big fanfare. You know what I mean? When all of that news was breaking that Sirius XM was getting ready to show him the door with a super insulting lowball offer. And then he came roaring back saying he was getting on air the day after Labor Day, Tuesday, September 2, and he was going to show everybody what's what and he was going to make a huge announcement about the future of his show and he wasn't going anywhere. And guess who didn't show up for work on Tuesday morning? Howard Stern. Now guess what the initial reports were. He had some undisclosed, vague quote, unquote, family crisis slash tragedy. And paraphrasing that prevented him from coming in. A likely story later in the day. Reports are that Stern sent out a sudden email to his staff. The Daily Mail had this to his staff on Monday night, Labor Day night, last minute. A staff that's on pins and needles. Do they have a job or not? Oh, you know what? I'm not coming in in the morning. Apparently he said in in the emails. Again, don't put this stuff in writing. The word is he's still haggling with them over a contract. He's lucky to have any airtime. And this goes exactly to why Stern should be done and Sirius should show him the door. He made a promise to an audience that is dwindling but is still clearly fiercely loyal that he would be back the same day. Everybody's got to go back to Work and back to school just like everybody else. He was going to be back in his chair and back on air, and he's not. And it all feels very cowardly and miserly and a refusal once again to take the note from commerce and the culture. Sir, we've loved having you, but it is time to go. He is now again, believe it, at your peril, expected to be back on the air on September 8th. So what? The following Tuesday? Because, you know, he works like three days a week. The last I checked, maybe two. Now, why bother? It's such an insult to people who work. Get out. Get out now. Also on Tuesday, the news broke. Surprise, surprise, Chloe Mal. Many of you corrected me. Thank you. Chloe Mal Nepo, daughter of Candice Bergen and the late French film director Louis Mal, has been named the new editor in chief of Vogue. And again, I'm just going to say it. Magazines are dead. You want to think this girl is like, has anybody ever heard, you know, who's a star? Chloe Mel. You know, who's a real talent that people fight over or really hope to sway to? Come over here, over here. Whose brain they want to pick, who's got something original to say, who has a real visual sense, who's going to save magazines? You know, have you heard that Gen Z is really back into print media? It's Chloe, Mel. We went over the interview she did with her own mother that I told you guys if she came into my office and gave me said pitch, hey, I want to interview my mom, who was once a big star, about attending Truman Capote's Black and White Ball because we could peg it to Ryan Murphy's series the Swans about Truman Swans. And I, as your editor, say to you, really? Well, what does she have to say? And you, as Chloe, say to me, she can't remember a goddamn fucking thing as stated in this piece. I would have said, get the fuck out of my office and collect your things and shown her the door. But she gets. She gets exalted to the head of Vogue, you know, so she can be Anna's minion, okay? That's why she's getting installed there. She's Anna's minion. Vogue died. Like, you know. You know, John Lennon very famously said about Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley died the day he went into the Army. Sucked all the rock and roll out of him. Vogue died the day that Anna Wintour put Kanye and Kim on the COVID It's been dead for a long time. Enjoy presiding over that carcass, Chloe. Enjoy it now. One Andrew Cohen, he Is Andrew on this show, not Andy Posted. You know, everybody's doing an end of summer dump. They did it over Labor Day and everybody's supposed to. You'll see the comments, like their celebrity friends going, oh, this is perfect. Oh, summer. Oh, yes. It all goes so fast. Instead of saying the logical thing, which is like, why do you feel the need to shove your wealth and your star fucking in our faces? Like, we all know. Why not just have some decorum? But. So Andrew Cohen decided that the smart thing to do, the tasteful thing to do, not that Andy knows from taste, would be display his summer out in the Hamptons all over his Instagram, all due to a whole carousel. And we're gonna see him with his good friend sjp, his bff, sjp, who in one truly looks like he's got his arm around her and there's a big birthday cake and her body is like, pulling away and her arm is like this, like, almost like cheering. But really, she looks like she wants to punch him in the face. These people are all like, I wouldn't trust one of them as far as I could throw him. So Andy decides this is what he should post. While there is a big, big controversy over his ignoring the domestic violence that is played out on the Valley and him trying to give the domestic abuser known as Jax Taylor Runway to come back. Jax had to be fired because only of a viewer revolt. And now we've got allegations happening in real time on. On Real Housewives of Orange county of alleged drugging, secret drugging of a housewife and attempted date rape on camera. This is being litigated now on the show. They're trying to minimize it, but we're all over it over here. So this is what Andy thinks he should be showing us. Fuck this. When is Bravo gonna wake up? Wake up. Next, Bravo adjacent, the widow Kennedy, who is most recently seen over on CNN weeping about John Jr's broken foot. Some guy she married may have been dying of cancer at the same time, but, oh, my God, shot broke his fucking foot. Anyway, I think she's feeling it. I think she's feeling our hits over here at the Nerve. And you know why? Because on Tuesday, in my algorithm, in comes one Carol Radill, who is at this society wedding that is so vulgar and disgusting. Like, all the worst people are there and we'll get to it. And you know how they're the worst people because they're all playing it all over Instagram. Look at me, I'm invited. It's like it's like Bezos adjacent, except it's a gay wedding and none of us know who these two guys are. Okay, so Carol is all over Instagram, name dropping and in her finery and posing with her new best friend. It used to be Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. She died. So when we're not channeling her via Tyler Henry, the Hollywood medium, then we moved on to Bethenny Frankel, who was our new best friend. And then Bethany dumped us in a very public humiliating fashion. And now our new best friend is Cassandra Gray, who is a lesbian, but she did a Hollywood power marriage to a producer, a super producer named Brad Gray, who died. And, you know, Carol says they've been friends forever. And again, the chronology of, of Cassandra's goings on, I don't. I do not know. But what I'm saying is these are transactional people, right? These are transactional people. So now Carol is, you know, flaunting her inflated lips. Just my opinion, all over Instagram at this wedding. Now she says in her Instagram post, without irony, she goes, per usual, I took almost no photos. You don't say, because they're all over your Instagram carousel. Now she goes on to say she's going to name drop all of the finery that she's wearing. We're talking gowns that go for between like 20 and 150 grand at least. Okay. I wore a stunning Giambattista Valli ball gown on night two, then slipped into my reimagined Carolina Herrera wedding dress designed for me in 1994. And humble brag is still chic and still fits. And finally, despite being up until 3am every night, no drugs involved, just my opinion, I somehow managed a bit of culture, stopping by the Dior exhibit and the Picasso museum there in Paris. Because even in chaos, one must maintain appearances. Sure, Carol, why don't we take a look at your Poshmark page? Which, as I recall, again, I could be wrong. But as I recall, in the aftermath of Carol's firing from Real Housewives of New York City, very few leave of their own volition. Maybe she was allowed to say she was. Maybe she did. I don't know. I believe she was fired. She began selling, if I recall correctly, her used underwear on Poshmark. She's still on Poshmark, selling worn jeans for like 120 bucks. Selling, like, crappy pieces of, like, hair tools that, like, the level of stuff. She's being gifted. She's being gifted like, you know, a hair dryer. She's never unboxed Want to buy it? 100 bucks. She's got a wedding to go to. She's wearing Dior. She's, you know, she's got a. And then we see Carol on her poshmark page. You're posher Carol R. With the chef's kiss description. Not for sale. I beg to differ. I think Carol's for sale is the highest bidder. Okay. Anyway, Amy Griffin, another offender over here at the Nerve. Now, if you recall, and if you haven't seen it, I don't know the number of the episode, but go back, you can search Amy Griffin, the Nerve. You know, she's got this Oprah endorsed New York Times bestselling book out called the Tap Hell, in which she alleges as a child that a teacher who is known to her wealthy community in Texas and she pretends she's like an oaky poor kid. In this book, she was not that. She was violently, brutally raped multiple times in that school, on school premises, in a classroom, in a locker room, in a bathroom by a coach who threatened to knock her teeth out. Now, we here at the Nerve found these claims specious at best. And as I have said, I take claims of sexual assault extremely seriously. Someone very close to me was a victim, and I take it very seriously. And I take it very seriously when I think people aren't telling the whole truth. And I don't think Amy's telling the whole truth. Because we went to Amy here at the Nerve before we aired our piece, and we said, hey, Amy, if there's a violent sexual predator still roaming free in your town, a child rapist who raped you violently enough, per your own telling, that I would assume you've been put in the hospital as a child. Wouldn't you be doing a public service to name this person? Wouldn't there be any teachers or the principal at the school or fellow classmates of yours who would come forward and say, I recall this and it's a travesty. This guy is out. You know what we heard? Crickets. Crickets. So Amy Griffin is over at this wedding and she's on Instagram and she's being disgusting. Quote, it is the greatest gift to be in your life. To the grooms. Thank you for treating my children as if they were your own. Thank you for standing by my side as if you were my brothers. Thank you for reminding us all to be curious and to remember humor is a superpower. And Robert, for helping us choose our seat assignment on the Aerobus 380. So you didn't fly private like you normally do. I know she likes to brag about that shit. Anyway, she's gross and, you know, birds of a feather. Okay, Birds of a feather. Now the New York Times is paying attention to us. Remember when we did Lena Dunham's Netflix show, and then after we took it to the woodshed, the New York Times ran a review, or it was around that same time, but we had been going for a little bit the Nerve. And they had a headline that said, lena Dunham show wasn't, quote, nervy enough. Okay, check this out. August 5th, the New York Times cover of the business section. A troublemaker headline. The headline, quote, troublemaker. Oh, this is the caption. This is the headline. Sorry. The troublemaker behind Netflix's biggest gamble. Are we having, like, hive mind stuff? The New York Times of all publications. Netflix of all streamers. And the Nerve over here. Are we all feeling and seeing and hearing the same things? I think we are. I do. Now, this is what Taylor Swift has to look forward to. This is the elevated conversation when Taylor Swift, who considers herself quite the songwriter. I believe she considers herself quite the literary songwriter in a vein of a Bob Dylan, a Joni Mitchell, a Joan Baez. I really think she does, and I beg to differ. So here's a statement that Travis Kelce gave to GQ in his recent cover story. It's all been timed very nicely. By the way, the GQ cover story, the new Heights pod with Taylor on it, the announcement of her new album, and the engagement. Okay, it's no accident. Here's this. Brain trust, Travis. That football is shaped Funny. That thing can bounce your way and it cannot bounce your way. Fun dinner parties. Fun dinner parties. Okay, now onto your emails. And before that, I gotta. I'm holding one of these in reserve for the Nerve Awards, our first annual. But there's a second one I received from troublemaker Jennifer, who is our resident artist. Okay, Jennifer who We are matting and framing the Kennedy Woodshed. We are having the real, the first Woodshed reframed for Emmy night. She sends these. She sends these pieces of art with notes. And look at this. Okay, you know the drill. It's time to decapitate. The only way I can open this envelope is to decapitate one Sarah Jessica Parker in the hat. And I'm going to do it. It. I'm gonna do it. Jennifer Eugenius. Watch. Here she goes. Off with her head. Is there any. What's more fun than that? Jennifer, you should get a little business going. Okay, now your emails. Hey, Maureen. I had been Hate watching with love Megan and just finished the first season and the second season. Automated how you know these were filmed together and planned is at the end of the first season. It says in loving memory of Guy RIP that poor dog who had to deal with her. And the second season opens with him running around then cooking. Had to email you right away. These people are all bad Liars Club Random with Woody Allen. You suggested no research with regard to the Barbara Eden piece. This is Michael Patrick who emails quite a bit. We love hearing from him. A still from his forthcoming Woody Allen or drop today. I usually prepare nothing for this show. We know Bill. It's obvious. Okay. Hello from a troublemaker regarding Barbara Eden and Bill. Bill did not get dates because he is so unlikable. He is a complete narcissist, a misogynist, and frankly so shallow that no woman would ever want to be with him. I feel he took out his rage. And on Barbara Eden here she is incredibly beautiful, even at 94. Agreed. Talented, successful and so lovely. All he could think about was himself and how a woman like her would never be with him. Agreed. I believe he knew he was degrading her and insulting her and making her feel uncomfortable with his disgusting and totally inappropriate questions. And he did it on purpose. He knew an old pro like her would sit there and take it and not get up, slap him and walk off. He will die alone and he will deserve it. Love you. Troublemakers. To the point in the interview with Barbara where Bill sits forward and says, don't tell me you didn't have a crush on Robert Conrad. He was hot. I'm paraphrasing some substance. Another troublemaker. You were clearly aware of Conrad's proclivities. It was all there in your smile. Troublemaker. I was not. Now, Robert Conrad, who has since died, was married twice, though he was asked, I think, time to time about these rumors. So I'm giving you the truth. Troublemaker. I did not know that. But this troublemaker goes on to say, when I was a theater major at Northwestern in the late 70s, it was well known that Conrad was a fixture in Chicago's gay leather bars. Thanks for tearing into Bill Maher. Absolutely repulsive, offensive humiliation of an interview. I can't tell if in his teens he masturbated more to Jeannie or to Robert Conrad's ass. I love you. Troublemakers. Hello, Maureen. As a university professor, and not the typical sanctimonious kind, of course, because you're writing me, I have an idea for another award. How about honorary doctorates? From troublemaker University. University. I kind of like this. Let's do some of our most loathsome individuals, from Meghan Markle to SJP to Carol Radziwill. I think we should come up with more as well. Send us your suggestions, troublemakers. This troublemaker, Dr. Barbie says, I know you're busy, but I just wanted you to know that I am not a drinker, but I think it would be great to have a beer with you. Join us as on our Emmy night, you know, raise a mocktail all of the sudden at the Smithsonian. Red alert. Troublemakers. Imagine my surprise. This is a troublemaker from show number one, Donna. Imagine my surprise last week when I spotted this irritating little mistake on it's not irritating. It's not little. It's a big deal on one of the plaques at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I even googled it to make sure that I wasn't wrong for saying instead of the since it was in the Smithsonian, all of the sudden. Not all of a sudden. I could kick my ass, my own ass for not taking a picture to send to you, but it was there. Don't blame yourself, troublemaker. We believe you. Trust me. She says, whoever may be listening at the Smithsonian, there is a plaque in your building that says all of the the sudden. You need to correct it immediately asap. This is again a red alert. All hands on deck. We are@Defcon1. It is all of a sudden. Fix it. Fix it. Okay, we'll end there. We'll end there. This is a reminder to keep your emails and your DMs coming. Keep them coming in hot and fast. We love reading them. It was such great reading too, over Labor Day weekend and we're not even halfway through them. But keep them coming. We are on it. You can reach me at maureenvilmaycaremedia.com send me a DM on Instagram, @ Maureen Callahan, writer, or at the Nerve show. And remember, I know you guys don't need reminding, but it's the gentle push to like subscribe and spread the word. We are growing so fast. It's gotten us our Emmys livestream. It's gotten us our merch, which is coming before you know it. Finalized this weekend. It is going to be in your hot little hands before you know it. And you know we've got another big announcement in the next week or so. So hang tight. We will see you in a minute. We've all had days when skin feels dull, hydration just won't stick, and energy is all over the place and no amount of water or skin care or coffee seems to help. That's where Peak's Radiant Skin Duo can come to the rescue. And this product is a game changer. It is a doctor recommended dual process. It is trusted by experts like Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Jason Fung and Dr. Will Cole. It supports whole body wellness from the inside out. And with over 15,000 five star reviews, it is clear that this product delivers results. Here's how it works. 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If you're ready for healthier hydration, go and get 20% off plus a free frother and glass [e-mail] the nerve again, that's peaklife.com thenerve we are back and as stated before, but we can never say it enough. One of the best things about you guys is that you love books and ideas as much as we at the Nerve do. So I'm extremely happy to introduce my guest today, author Elizabeth Greenwood, who has a provocative and necessary new book out called Everyday Intuition. And this book is about learning to trust your gut, which in my experience is constantly an ongoing effort. Elizabeth welcome to the Nerve.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

[Maureen Callahan]

We must be intuitively in sync. I've never met you, but we're both wearing red lips.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

So I'm like, am I looking up in the mirror?

[Maureen Callahan]

Well, I thank you so much for joining us. This is a topic I am endlessly fascinated by. Can you talk to us a little bit about your background in intuitive thinking and decision making? Sure.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

So I'm an author of nonfiction, not fiction. So you know, I'm very much about like the facts and the data and that's the way that I've been trained. I think that's the way most of Us are trained in this society and in this culture. However, I do feel like my whole life I have been a pretty intuitive person. And, you know, I feel like I can read people people pretty quickly. I get a vibe on a situation pretty quickly. But I'm also prone to a lot of second guessing, a lot of anxiety, a lot of thought spirals. So I wanted to learn how to trust my intuition and see if I really am intuitive, which the good news is I am, because we all are, or else you'd be like walking into traffic.

[Maureen Callahan]

Right. It's an evolutionary adaptation. And what I love about your book is you cite so many of the great philosophers and thinkers from modern day to, you know, William James, who's one of my favorites. I wanted to start with a line that you wrote and then read just a little bit of a personal experience you had as sort of a jumping off point, because I think everybody who is watching or listening will relate to this. Now you write, and I think this really would be the premise of your book. Your body is constantly giving you a running news ticker of feelings based on immediate circumstances. I love that running news ticker. You go on to write that you had an interaction or an intuitive alarm went off. It involved someone, you write, who makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Where the fallout from our interactions haunts me for days after. It was a situation where there was no right answer, just degrees of bad. I have no intuition on this, I said in a voice memo to my sister. I just feel physically sick. She responded. It actually sounds like you have a ton of intuition on this. Indeed I did. My throat had constricted, a pit had formed in my stomach. My speaking voice had dropped several octaves to a whisper. I was diminished. But I considered my body's data unreliable. So many of us can relate to this. From the neck down, my body knew exactly what was going on. But from the neck up, I was spinning out to compute a rational decision I could live with. I let my amygdala search for certainty where there is none. The intuitive decision, the intuitive insight is not always effortless, but it is always worth the effort. So talk to us about this, because we all do this, I think, where our gut immediately says no, no to his person, a situation, a job, whatever it is. And then our brains try to rationalize why our gut is giving us this clear signal.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Or why we're wrong. Right or why is wrong. Exactly.

[Maureen Callahan]

No.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

It happens so much. We've been taught since, you know, we were small that there really is one way of knowing, and that is Pure rationality. That's the only rational way to make sense of the world. It's the pro con list. And when something contradicts that, it can be very jarring to us. And I think especially as women or other communities in the world that are marginalized, we're taught also that we are wrong. So if something that we're our bodies know feels wrong or say, well, no, that just must be me overreacting or something, we really gaslight ourselves a little.

[Maureen Callahan]

Bit about women in particular, because when I was reading your book, I was thinking a lot about the Gift of Fear and the Bryan Kohberger case. And for those listening and watching who didn't hear, I did a deep dive over on the Megyn Kelly show about this case and the girls in that house in particular, who were having, in the days of. And weeks leading up to that crime, gut feelings that something was very wrong, that somebody had eyes on that house, that somebody was outside that house, that the house was being watched. And they. It seems as though they overrode them. You know, that as women were maybe taught, you're overreacting, you know.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Absolutely. And you want to be liked. You don't want to be weird or act strange. And that's a lot of what the Gift of Fear is about by Gavin de Becker, really trying to reinforce that if you are having some kind of visceral response to a situation or you do have that sensation of things are off, things are funky, people are watching me to listen to that and to, you know, not talk yourself out of it, because there's a great deal of wisdom and knowledge that our bodies possess, and it's based on past experience. So in that sense, it is rational. It's based on something. This isn't coming out of nowhere. I love the Gift of Fear. What I will say, my little gripe with that book, though, is that for women, when we talk about intuition in women, it's often in this one context of like, don't get dead, ladies. Here's how to protect yourself. You know, don't get on the elevator with the creepy man. Which is true. You know, that is one important iteration of thinking about intuition. But I think the intuition at its best can be this more expansive engine of creativity and magic. It doesn't just have to be for women staying safe and not getting killed by psychos.

[Maureen Callahan]

No, of course not. I mean, I think what was brilliant about Gavin de Becker is he took what has historically been sort of dismissed by society as women in hysterical reactions to situations or things that present Subtly subtle threats to listen to their guts and never sort of minimize that. And your book is very interesting in that way because you talk about using intuition to save yourself from pain, heartache, bad decisions, but also intuition as leading you to, as who said it. It was William James who called it, quote, the feeling of right direction.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

The feeling of right direction. I love that phrase so much. Yes. And, you know, the funny thing about intuition is that it can, you know, save you some heartache in the short term, but it can also give you some hard answers. You know, I think that when we are really clued in with our intuition, we'll sometimes hear things we don't want to hear. You know, this relationship that you've invested so much in is actually not right for you. The career that you've hit your wagon to no longer is in alignment with who you've grown into. So when we're really honoring that deep voice within us, it can give us some hard news sometimes.

[Maureen Callahan]

You know, I so relate to this. I talked about this a bit when I. Right before I launched the nerve, I spoke about how nervous I was. And I. For the first time in my life, Elizabeth, very first time, I understood, like, I began having what I can only describe as panic attacks. And it was two solid weeks of it. Now, this was a very strange experience of intuition for me because I understood that I was having good anxiety. Yeah, it sucked to experience it physically, but I knew in my gut it was good anxiety.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Now, can I ask you, how did you know? How did you know? How did it feel different to you?

[Maureen Callahan]

I think because in my brain and my gut, prior to having those panic attacks, which were, you know, no surprise happening in close proximity to a launch, something I had never done before, but that I had been so, in my brain and in my gut, so settled that, like, this was the next right thing for me to do and something I really wanted to do and was looking forward to doing, and another aspect of creativity and having somebody place that amount of trust in me, all of those things were amazing. They were amazing. And so I kind of felt like it was almost healthy to get all of that out of my system. Like my body was getting rid of it for me before I had to do it.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

That makes so much sense. And I think your story really highlights something about intuition, is that, you know, it's not this airy fairy thing. Like, it's not always going to be pleasant or easy. It will sometimes push you in a direction that's really challenging. And that doesn't mean that it's wrong. So you can have these feelings of anxiety that are not necessarily trying to stop you or prevent you from something, but they're just attendant because it's actually so. Right.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes. And it feels very counterintuitive, but I think that only really comes with knowing yourself, and that's a lot of hard work.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Sure is.

[Maureen Callahan]

To that end, I really wanted to talk to you about what I think is a. What actually is a fairly new phenomenon. We have come to understand that the gut. In medicine, they call the gut the second brain. And there is direct communication constantly between the brain and the gut. Hence the old aphorism, trust your gut. Right?

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Absolutely.

[Maureen Callahan]

What we know about Ozempic and the likes of those medications is that they sever that connection between the brain and the gut. Can you talk about this? Because this is never discussed and I think it's a crime that it's not discussed. The implications for people who are on these GLP1s who have that key communication.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Severed now, I mean, look, I'm not a doctor, so I can't give you like real detailed information, but I think that GLP1s are just one of the many ways in which we are cutting ourselves off from our intuition in the modern world. I think that in order to really get to know your inner voice, what it sounds like, how it is true, and not some other kind of doppelganger emotion like fear or something, that does require a little bit of quiet and a little bit of interstitial time. So I think that our reliance on never being able to be still for a minute on hustle culture, on just picking up the phone, you know, social media, the, the, the pings, the dings, the push notifications, all of that, I think that's really severing ourselves from the connection that we have with our intuition. So it's not just the GLP ones, but. And I don't honestly know that much, I haven't read that much about it because that communication happens through the vagus nerve. So I'd be really interested in how that works. But I don't think we understand much about how these things work. So I just think modern life is kind of is doing everything it can to sever you from its into. From your intuition.

[Maureen Callahan]

Well, you're making great points because, you know, I'll just, I'll close the loop on the GLP1s by. I've heard many, many people on them say, and there are many reports of this, that part of what it does in quieting what they call quote unquote the food noise is absence. Cravings of all kinds of not just for food, but for shopping, for gambling, for alcohol. But cravings, I think, are so key to being alive. I can't imagine not ever wanting something, and I can't imagine what that does to the senses and to one's own sense of knowing oneself. And to your point, modern life is so. We have so many applications for sanding that stuff down, whether it's through medication, whether it's through the phones, which have become adult pacifiers.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Yes.

[Maureen Callahan]

You never have to sit with your own thoughts if you have a phone right in front of you. And you write about having a very similar experience in your book, where you have had a lifelong fear of driving and cars and you really had to sit with yourself and parse out. You use the phrase cleave out, which I love. Were you having a premonition of imminent disaster as you were about to embark on this trip to a foreign country, or was it just this fear that had sort of situated itself inside of you? Was that the thing running the show?

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Right. So what you're referring to is a trip that I did end up taking for my friend's birthday where we were going to drive on highways in Italy. I have a pretty deep and significant phobia of driving on highways due to some past trauma. And for the week before this trip, I was having crazy nightmares of the car, like, careening off the road. And, you know, at the time, I was researching premonitions, so I was like, is this a premonition? What is this? So I had to, yes, Cleave is exactly what had to happen. I had to really sit down and think, okay, I have. Every time I get into a car, I have this fear. So this seems like more of the same kind of protective mechanism of like, stop, don't go. Just don't face your fears. And, you know, looking at this from a lot of different angles, too, I write about, as you quoted earlier, the amygdala. And it's constant seeking for certainty in a very uncertain world that became an incredible, and still to this day is an incredibly useful lens on defining for myself, okay, where am I feeling uncertain? Is this about premonitions or intuitions? Or is this just looking for certainty? I really want certainty. So when it came down to it, that was a combination of past trauma and doing the certainty seeking we all do. So I went on the trip. I'm so glad I did. I had so much fun. But I think that in our lives, there is all manner of category of Thing like this, you know, do I go to the party? I really don't. I'm getting a weird feeling. Maybe I don't want to go, but is that because I'm going by myself and I don't know anyone there? Or is this something really out of the ordinary and strange? So it really comes down to knowing ourselves, knowing our particular patterns, our patterns of mind, our patterns of thought, our patterns of body. That's huge. Intuition is a hugely embodied experience. So that anxiety you were describing before, does that feel similar or different to the, you know, just being pattern anxiety we're all used to, or is this slightly different? These are very subtle distinctions, and they really come from doing the work of just sitting with yourself and getting to know yourself.

[Maureen Callahan]

Or as you again cite, which I loved, the Gestalt psychologist MO of like, sleep on it, sleep on it, live with it. You don't have to make the decision right away. Let your subconscious mind, your unconscious mind work on you a bit. You know, it's there to help. It's there to put patterns together that maybe you can't stop thinking about it actively. I often find stopping actively thinking about a problem or a quandary guides my intuition. Right where it should go. And it just comes to you like that.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Right. We often don't get intuitions when we're hunched over the desk with a pen and a paper. You get it when you're out on a walk, when you're living in the world, when you're in a state of flow. So absolutely. When you don't know what to do, don't do anything. That's good advice.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yes. And before we get to what I think is one of the most provocative and interesting twinings of ideas, premonitions, and intuition and how they inform each other. Could you talk a little bit about. You mentioned the amygdala before and sort of searching for patterns and rationality. Can you talk a little bit about what that part of the brain does and the role it plays and the more that we know about it, how that will help us in our own intuitive thinking and decision making?

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Sure. So I'm sure that you've all heard about the amygdala in terms of this ancient subcortical structure of our brain. So meaning the oldest part of the brain, where that does fight, flight, freeze. So we always hear, like, when we were on the savannah of Africa and a lion would cross your path, this was the part of your brain that told you what to do in that minute. I spoke to some neuroscientists at UNC Chapel Hill, and one of them, Margaret Sheridan, she has theorized that the amygdala does all do those things that are wonderful and keep us alive. But over the hundreds of millions of years of human evolution, it does a little bit more than that. And what she calls the amygdala is our certainty checker. So I think it's kind of our central human predicament, like the existential crisis we all share of being human, that our brains love patterns, we love to know what to expect, we love certainty. And yet our environment is so uncertain. So it's partially our amygdala that's always on the lookout for knowing what to expect. So you know how to get where you're going, but you put it into Google Maps anyway. You text your friend, you're on the way. We're just doing all these little things to mitigate our uncertainty, to make sure that we know what's going on. So that uncertainty, I think, is. And I'm not the first person to say this by any means, but that uncertainty is, for a lot of us, the root cause of our anxiety. We don't like it, we don't. We want things to be solid. The ground falls out from under our feet all the time, unfortunately. So that itchiness is what makes us anxious. So the next time you're faced with a conundrum of wondering, oof, I have this funny feeling, what's this actually about? You can ask yourself, what's the role of uncertainty here? Where am I grasping for certainty? And that can show up in lots of different ways. If there's an issue I'm having at work or with a relationship, my tendency is always to, like, hit send on the email, you know, send the text. I just want it over and done with.

[Maureen Callahan]

It's so hard not to do that. It's so hard. I always. I call it like, you just have to ride out the uncomfortable feelings, let them go through you. Then you can think, Then you can think clearly.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Absolutely. I have never not regretted sending the email, and yet I go through this over and over again. We just don't want to sit in that discomfort. We want to feel like things are tied up and, you know, we know what to expect, we know what's going on. But just like you said, if you can just kind of let that metabolize a little bit, you're going to be making much, much better decisions for yourself and for everyone around you.

[Maureen Callahan]

So we're unfortunately running out of time. But I really wanted to get to this with you because I love what you're writing about in terms of, of premonitions or somehow psychic connections as really manifestations of intuition. And my own recent, fairly recent example of this would be. My brother told me that the night that our father died, he woke up in the middle of the night at the same time that we know he died. And he just knew that that was it, that he had gone and was at peace with it. But I, I was like, that didn't happen to me, like. And I think I'm a pretty intuitive person. And so can you talk a bit about those? Those are fairly common experiences, though. I've read about them a lot. But then when it happens to you, it feels almost mystical. But there's got to be some sort of intuition happening there. Can you explain and enlighten?

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Absolutely. I mean, there's so many different points of view on what that is materialist, someone, completely rational scientists would say, well, that's coincidence. But I think what we find in our own experience and through history is that sometimes these things are a little too specific to be mere coincidence. Right. So I do spend some time with psychics and mediums in this book because what's these people? You know, whether you. That's an incredible, incredibly triggering realm for a lot of people. So whether you believe in psychics or that whole thing, go with God, whatever, but what these people are really good at is reading energy and they are really good at knowing what is my energy and what is your energy and what the boundaries between those things are, are. So I think that there's actually a lot we can learn from people who are using their intuition at that high level. So the connection between premonition and intuition, I think what my stance on it is to just, you know, play with it and see where it happens. I think that we can learn a lot by looking back at our experiences where we say, I knew so and so was going to call, or I knew this, this bad thing was going to happen, but I didn't listen to myself. I went anyway. And the bad thing did happen, end up happening. So when you look back at those experiences, what was that that tipped you off? What was it that made your, you know, hair stand on end? And I think you just, just start playing with it more so. And I think keeping it very low stakes, especially in the beginning, is really important. You know, I think people always like to recruit their intuition when it comes to real estate decisions or relationship decisions or a job. And those are incredibly high stakes places to be relying only on your Gut. So I think in the more day to day decisions be just test it out, you know, what train is going to come next, what do you think? And see, you know, how that's showing up for you. A lot of people do get premonitions in dreams. So when you wake up, just jot down what you dreamt about. If you dreamt of someone, text them, let them know and, you know, maybe something wacky happens to them that day, who knows? But it can just be a fun kind of way to play with and train your intuition and, you know, now.

[Maureen Callahan]

That you say all that, I actually am putting it together, why my brother probably woke up as my father passed and I did not because I remember many conversations back and forth with him that day and my brother trying to prepare me, saying, I can see all of the signs that like he's going to go, he's going to go within 24 hours. And I was saying he's not. He's just not. He's gone through this many times before. And I don't, I truly in my gut did not believe it was going to happen. He was more open and porous to it. And I think that's, that's, you know, like you're saying, you pull out all of these facts, data, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're resistant to and that can really begin to give you something of an answer. So.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

Yeah. And it's a life's work. It doesn't happen overnight. You know, it really could never be. Yeah.

[Maureen Callahan]

Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Elizabeth, for joining us and talking to us about your book, Everyday Intuition. All the best to you. Thank you so much.

[Elizabeth Greenwood]

See you too. Thanks a lot.

[Maureen Callahan]

Bye. And that does it for what would have been your Tuesday edition of the Nerve. But because of the holidays, you guys were so gracious. It is your special Wednesday edition of the Nerve. We will be back to our regular schedule for the rest of this week and the foreseeable future. So that means we get to get together together again on Friday right back here at the Nerve, where you will never guess what we're about to say next.