Death, Sex & Money x Search Engine

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1:03Hello, Search Engine listeners. Before we begin today, I just want to apologize for the quality of my voice. I've gotten myself a bit sick. But I'm going to play you a conversation from the before times, when I still had a functioning voice. Okay, how's this working? Hi. Oh, it sounds so much better. Oh, good. Okay, let me also move this out of the way so it's not so in your view. A few weeks ago, I hopped on the line with someone I've known for a long time, someone I really admire. Hi, Anna. Hi, PJ. How are you doing? I'm good. Anna Sale. She makes a podcast I love called Death, Sex, and Money.

1:39It is absolutely the best titled podcast that exists. It does not hurt that the podcast itself is also very good. She interviews all sorts of people with unusual life experiences and asks them the kind of questions you typically reserve for the people you're closest to. That's how I think of the show anyway. How do you explain your show to people? Like when you meet strangers places. Well, this is where taglines are helpful. We say it's a show about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. And it's an interview show where I talk to people who are well-known and people who aren't public figures about the stuff that all of us go through and are figuring out in some way.

2:18And then when you say that to people, do they start saying to you the things that they want addressed on a show like that? Like when you say like, oh, we talk about the things that people think about a lot but should talk about more. Or are people like, oh, that reminds me, I'm afraid to die? It's not usually quite like that. But my favorite is when it's maybe an older woman who I feel a little bit sheepish about saying the name of the show to. And then they go, oh, interesting. And then I know we're off to the races. It's not that they give me story ideas. It's that we just dig in with each other.

2:53Like the name of the show has unlocked a sort of permission barrier or something. Well, the way I experience it is, you know, I was raised in West Virginia. I am a polite person. I am eager to please socially. And so it feels like this moment where I kind of like flip around my cards and say like, I've got a little punk rock edge to me. And so then that can be fun in social situations, especially where it's a little bit more buttoned up or stuffy. When Anna and I first met, we were working at the same radio station. I was a lowly temp worker. She was a star there. A political reporter everyone seemed to be in awe of.

3:32Young, talented, and accomplished, except, and this is pretty rare in media, all of those things and liked by everyone. It sort of felt like she could do whatever she wanted to. And then one day she announced she was not going to cover politics anymore. She was going to make this new show, Death, Sex, and Money, where she asked people these private questions about their lives. She's been running the show steadily for a decade. They had a brief brush with podcasting mortality late last year, but I was very happy to see them cheat death. I've been on this funny trip lately where I've been trying to figure out what podcasting is for, why I am doing it.

4:09I'm still figuring it out. But Anna is one of the people I've bounced these questions off of a little bit. I feel like one of the ways we are sort of like artistic comrades is that we're curious about other people's lives, But also sometimes I can hear in your show a person who is figuring out their own life as well. And like you have been asking questions about these three topics that are the kinds of things that people think about deeply and often and sometimes in anguish. How has what you've cared about changed since you started broadcasting the show a decade ago? I mean, a lot has changed.

4:46I would say that the origin story for me of wanting to make a show about the most important building blocks of our lives or the ones that we can't avoid is that I was desperately looking for guides at the point where I started the show. You know, I was 33, 34. I was divorced. I was living in New York. We were working in the same building together. You know, it was a time where I was like, I don't really know what I'm doing here. And I just want to have conversations with people where I don't feel so alone in not knowing what I'm doing here and to feel reassurance that it's something you figure out along the way.

5:27and then over the course of the last 10 years I got married I became a parent I've got two kids I crossed the country I live in a house I have two dogs my life is characterized by stability right now like I'm living out the consequences of some really big choices I made in my you know early adulthood and so now I think this is also a response to the political climate and what's shifted over the last 10 years. I'm really interested in ambiguity and uncertainty and having conversations that add complexity rather than certainty. It serves each of us, and it also is going to serve how we have to make decisions together.

6:11I have this hope that someday soon, talking about uncertainty and ambiguity as values will start to feel like buzzwords. Like, there will be enough of us aiming at that point on the horizon that when I hear someone saying they care about that stuff, I'll feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we all do. But I don't feel that way. Not yet. Right now, those still feel like watchwords. And I really do get those feelings from Anna's show of someone thinking and wrestling and trying to not too quickly make up their own mind. And that's part of why I wanted to share an episode of it with you this week. At Search Engine, we're trying to make the show we'd want to hear, and we get a fair amount of emails from people who like what we do and ask, what else feels like this?

6:53And Death, Sex, and Money, for me, feels like this. So Anna and I are crossing over this month, sharing stories with each other's audiences. We got to pick a Death, Sex, and Money episode to play for you. The one I chose is about this man named Jim Harris who lives in Colorado. Jim fell into a deep depression a couple years ago after a spinal cord injury left him partially paralyzed. Jim, trying to navigate the grief of that situation, ends up seeking out music and psychedelics, psilocybin, and then has a very crazy experience on mushrooms, not the kind you've had in college. Jim's at a concert when some of the feeling in his body actually returns.

7:31That story and that conversation begins now. This is Death, Sex, and Money. The show from Slate about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. I'm Anna Sale.

7:59In 2014, Jim Harris was 32 years old and kite skiing on a South American ice cap. The wind would catch the kite and pull him forward, but then the wind changed and dropped him hard. And then as I went to get up and prop myself on my elbows, I realized that I couldn't feel or move anything from sternum down. Jim injured his spine. And then about eight months into his rehabilitation, he found himself having another profound physical experience, again set against a beautiful outdoor backdrop, this time soundtracked by a live jam band. A friend had invited Jim to an outdoor music festival, and by then he'd recovered the ability to walk with a walker.

8:47But standing and moving around a lot was still exhausting and physically awkward. But he didn't want to miss out. And then when he got there, someone offered him a chocolate bar, a psilocybin mushroom chocolate bar, and Jim didn't want to miss out on that either. I remember the sunset that night being just phenomenal. It would have been a stunning sunset if I'd been totally sober. But in this altered state, I remember the grass looking really, really vivid and kind of having this interesting pattern. I remember the sky looking phenomenally colorful and like it had these sort of subtle patterns and clouds that seemed to have repeating shapes.

9:28And what did you notice about how it felt in your body? Like inside my body, I remember the feeling of like having an increased awareness of my internal organs, like kind of like feeling my guts in a way that I didn't usually notice them. Then kind of in this altered state was like shifting my feet around and flexing, unflexing muscles. In that state, all of a sudden I realized there were muscles that had not worked since the time of my accident that all of a sudden I could voluntarily control. Jim grew up in Ohio and often felt like an outsider. He wasn't a sports guy. He didn't like the competitive dynamic.

10:10So he mostly adventured outside on his own or with just his family. When he went to college in Montana, Jim finally found a community where it felt like he fit. Doing things outdoors with other people felt like an opportunity to have camaraderie that could feel hard for me to find elsewhere in life. There's an element of taking in some enjoyment and watching other people's capability, like watching somebody else who's good at the activity that you're doing. But also not really in a competitive setting, like most team-based sports matches or something. More like, hey, let's try and hike to the top of this mountain together.

10:48There's still a requirement for some self-sufficiency. But also there's this camaraderie of this shared experience that feels really potent. And he made outdoor adventuring into his work, too. In his early 20s, Jim taught mountaineering courses and then was hired by places like National Geographic and Powder Magazine to document his wilderness travels all over the world, doing things like hiking remote mountains, backcountry river rafting, and snow kiting. It's a really exhilarating sensation to be pulled by this invisible force of this atmosphere moving around you. Like if you've ever flown a kite, and it's maybe like a little mini version of that, and you feel that tug of the kite string.

11:30But this is a big enough tug that it can, on a slippery surface, like on snow with skis, it'll pull you across the snow. And so there's this moment of acceleration when the wind first catches the kite. and then there's an awful lot of interactivity where there's a handlebar that's used almost like you know marionette strings where the kite's very maneuverable where you can steer it side to side and so the skill set or part of the skill set is around this attention to where the wind is in relation to your body and in relation to the kite so on the one hand i'm imagining it feels like you're sort of, I don't know, like tapping into this force that's bigger than you.

12:14Yeah, it absolutely is that. But also that you're not in control, right? Necessarily? Like it's surrender too. There is a, there's an element of surrender to it. Like I do a lot of river paddling and river activities have a lot of that where you're like moving with the current and you can learn to, you can learn to read it and use it and navigate through it. But ultimately, it's kind of this collaboration between the person who's paddling, the person in the water, and then the river itself. And the river itself is this enormously powerful kinetic force that is fun to interact with. And it's also really humbling in a way that there often feels like a spiritual element of like being interacting with a force that's a large and powerful thing that maybe I don't have awareness of in my normal day-to-day.

13:13I've never considered a river current and the wind being cousins of forces that you can kind of appreciate and tap into. I like that.

13:30How old were you when you were injured? I was 32 years old. It was my last week of being 32. Uh-huh. The day that I had, my spine was fused, was my 33rd birthday. So it was wintertime in the northern hemisphere, summer in the southern hemisphere? Yeah, exactly. It was like late springtime in the southern hemisphere. Jim was with a small group of friends near the Chile-Argentina border. they planned to ski the Patagonian ice cap with the help of snow kites. The kites that we had were quite small, just so we didn't have to carry as much weight when we weren't using them, and because we weren't trying to do tricks or go 50 miles an hour.

14:15But the allure of being able to use the wind to go 8 miles an hour without having to shuffle my feet versus 1 mile an hour while hauling a sled full of gear was really tempting. I see. So it wasn't like you're going out. It was to cover ground. It was like a rope tow. Yeah, exactly. So that's what we were using. That's what we intended to use them for. Yeah. And what happened on the run when you got injured? So we were out in a large open pasture and a big wind gust came up. The wind accelerated. It was enough that it lifted me off the ground a few feet. And I wasn't particularly panicked. There's like a big red cord that you can pull that will release some of the lines to the kite.

15:07And it becomes almost just like a sheet in the wind instead of being something that's generating force and generating lift. It just becomes a big flapping flag attached to strings. But I didn't pull that cord. I wasn't panicked. I thought it was going to be okay. And then I don't know what happened next. The friend that was with me didn't witness what happened. I woke up, like, regained consciousness lying on the ground. I realized right away that I was concussed, that I felt dazed and realized I had just lost consciousness and was regaining it. And was lucid enough to realize immediately that I was paralyzed.

15:46When you woke up, you were face up? I was, yeah. I was on my back.

15:55And after you regained consciousness, how long were you alone?

16:03Like the time scale is a little fuzzy, but not long. I think my friend came running. Yeah. Maybe he was right by my side when I came back, and then he left to go get help. And I was there by myself for a bit, and maybe that's what I'm remembering. I feel like the recall is a little blurry. Yeah, yeah. My whole neurology got quite a shakeup in that. When you realized you couldn't feel anything from below your sternum, was it scary? What do you remember feeling? Was it like mystifying, like confused? I felt fairly calm and resolute in that moment. One thing I've learned about myself is that I tend to have a fair amount of composure in really stressful moments.

16:58And then in the aftermath, once the acute crisis has moved on, then all the flood of emotions come in. But I remember being backboarded and carried for a distance. I remember cracking jokes while being backboarded. Oh, really? What were you joking about? One of the things I remember being a little like joking cynically about was the people, friends would encourage me to make more art beforehand. And I felt like I never made time or space for it in life and didn't prioritize it. And, but it was something like for years, people would gently and kindly give me this encouragement. It's like, you should do more of that.

17:42And I was like resistant to it and preoccupied elsewhere. And so on this backboard, I remember being like, well, I guess I've got more time for art now. Whoa. That was like, that makes me emotional. Like, you're immediately thinking, like, how will I spend my time? Like, you're casting forward on this backboard. Like, that's interesting. I mean, there's probably some, like, psychological coping there. Yeah. But yeah, I think that it seems like that gallows humor comes up a lot for people in really sad and gory and traumatic times. It took a few hours, but eventually Jim was transported to a hospital in a small Chilean city.

18:33I don't think there was much night staff on duty. I think I got left on the rigid backboard overnight and not moved to a hospital bed till the morning. So you were in a foreign country in the Southern Hemisphere in a hospital. Were you comfortable with Spanish? The medical situation was so far above my level of Spanish competency. I leaned really heavily on Google Translate.

19:08Jim had the use of his arms, but was paralyzed below his ribcage. He had full lung function, but his abdominal muscles didn't work. He stayed in Chile for another week and then was transported back to the U.S. for surgery. Coming up, Jim begins the slow and hard process of rehabilitation. I think I really, out of naivete, made up my mind that I was going to have a recovery and use all the resources and all the willpower that I had at my disposal to shift the course of the outcome. And I wonder if I would have had that same sort of drive and optimism if I had known right away or had knew what I know now about spinal cord injuries.

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22:26This is Death, Sex, and Money from Slate. I'm Anna Sale. After Jim was transported to the U.S., he was confronted with the extent of his injuries. He'd fractured nine vertebrae, and he had surgery to relieve the pressure on his spine and fuse five vertebrae. That went well, restoring some nerve function and proper blood flow that had been cut off. And a few days after the surgery, he was able to move his right big toe. A few weeks later, he could lift his right leg a bit. But Jim did not know how hopeful he ought to be. My neurosurgeon was very circumspect in not giving me any definitive prognosis.

23:06He was like, well, we'll just have to wait and see. Like, this doesn't look great. Like, these circumstances here are really not ideal. But I was never, I wasn't told that I wasn't going to walk again. Jim transferred to a different hospital, Craig Hospital in Colorado, which specializes in treating brain and spinal cord injuries. He spent five months there doing intense physical therapy. Eventually, he made enough progress that he was able to become an outpatient. It was a slow shift from wheelchair to walker. and by about seven or eight months post-injury, I really could only walk a few steps with a walker at a time.

23:48I was living in an old folks' home where my parents had been able to rent themselves an apartment and I was staying with them. You were in a literal old folks' home? Yeah, I was the youngest person there by decades. Would you compare walkers with your neighbors? I like this idea of you're surrounded by people who are also using walkers. Oh, that was absolutely surreal and a little bit comedic. People who have moved to this assisted living facility are all in this sort of a degenerative phase of life where they've moved to this facility to help soften that landing as they lose different degrees of independence bit by bit.

24:27So I was like a minor celebrity there. The first time I came down through the lobby, which was a real congregating area, came down to the lobby with a walker instead of a wheelchair, I got a standing ovation. Oh. So people there were so sweet to me. Were you in a relationship at the time of your injury? I was in a seven-year relationship that ended about two weeks prior to my injury. Okay. That's a lot. It was. It was a long and committed relationship that was really wonderful. And eventually we got engaged. And that engagement brought up all these questions of what married life would look like for each of us.

25:08And through that, we realized that we had some very diverging aspirations. At the time, I was traveling a ton and was on this very adventure-y track of traveling the world. My girlfriend at the time really wanted me around home more. and was really kind of shifting more into wanting more domesticity and safety and security that were really normal and sane things to want in her early 30s. And I was not there yet. And I didn't want to give up this life of travel and adventure and of being footloose. We went to some couples counseling, and the nail in the coffin after a number of sessions was this therapist saying something like, You two are both pretty articulate.