In the final episode of "Philosophical Currents" together, Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein and Ashley Thornberg sit down for a heartfelt conversation reflecting on the origins of the segment, their journey together, and the valuable lessons they've learned from exploring philosophy in everyday life. Join them as they share memorable moments, insights, and their thoughts on the impact of their work on both themselves and their audience.
Transcript of the discussion:
Ashley Thornberg
This is Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Ashley Thornberg. And today, what does it mean to think philosophically and how is it different from other kinds of thinking?
We are joined today by Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein. He is our resident philosopher and a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Dakota. And he joins us periodically for a segment we call Philosophical Currents.
And this is when we take a major news story and dissect it from a philosophical perspective. And today we are going to pull the curtain back on that just a little bit more and really understand the workings of the segment and why we wanted to have this available for you, our dear listener. Jack, thanks so much for joining us today.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Oh, I'm so happy to be here, Ashley. Do you know that this is our 39th episode? We've been doing this for over three years.
Ashley Thornberg
I did not know that, but I'm very glad that you do these things called metrics and data and keeping track of things, because if you'd have asked me, I'd have said seven? Yeah, you can't really trust memory, can you?
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
No, you can't. And also, I use it as a gauge. I don't know.
The term that I'm going to use is success, but that's not right. I've been doing Y radio now for 16 seasons, and I think about the fact that MASH was only on for like seven or eight seasons and Cheers was on for less than that. And so in an industry where things disappear into the ether, to have something that's held on for three plus years is pretty satisfying, even if in the end nothing is permanent.
Ashley Thornberg
Well, that's an interesting definition of success too, because I think most people sort of think success just automatically means more money or more fame.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Not in public radio. But also, Prairie Public specifically reaches every household in the state. It reaches a whole bunch of people in the bordering region.
So while we want to always get new listeners, I think the question is, how well are we serving our natural audience? And how much are we bringing new and interesting things to that audience that they may not necessarily know in advance that they will enjoy or that they'll want? Philosophy is the stereotypical example of that.
I always like to say that everyone's doing philosophy all the time. They just don't know it. They don't know the name for what they're doing at any given moment.
And my job is to show people that they are already doing philosophy, much like I think over the last three years, I have shown you that you are much better at asking the philosophical questions and directing the discussion than I think you are, because I couldn't do this. It's not a monologue. It's not a soliloquy.
I want a partner, and you've been an outstanding partner.
Ashley Thornberg
Well, thank you for that. And it does kind of remind me, in another life outside of this radio work, I am a yoga instructor, and I am constantly telling people that they are yogis, sometimes without a pose practice, like somebody who is making art or learning to do the guitar or engaging in philosophical debate or going for hikes or baking bread and kneading the dough thoughtfully. If they are aware of what they are doing and being present in that situation and doing it for the little bit more good out into the world, they're doing yoga.
Whether or not they can touch their toes doesn't matter. That's one avenue to explore. You know, an oversimplification is to sort of say, it's not about touching your toes.
It's about what you learn on the way down to doing that. But nobody ever believes me that they're a yogi, and I still don't believe you that I am engaging in philosophical debate.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Well, so let me ask you that with that in mind. What do you think has been the biggest surprise in you doing this segment with me? You had interviewed me in other contexts.
You had engineered our big anniversary show. You've been around me for a while. But what do you think surprised you the most in doing the philosophical current segment with me?
Ashley Thornberg
Oh, that I enjoy it. It might come out a little wrong here, but just to give you a little history. You know, I never went so far as to like call in sick in the early days of interviewing you when I was first in this hosting chair at Main Street, back when Doug Hamilton was doing the lion's share of the interviewing.
But I definitely like went out of my way to try to book myself a different interview when you were available. You know, just like really, really wanted to avoid talking with you. And it wasn't you.
It was me like to give you the good the standard breakup line here. I just was like, I can't keep up with him philosophically, intellectually, and always sort of approaching it as a debate and that I needed to be able to make a counterpoint and an argument to anything you were saying, rather than just sort of hearing it and then allowing for that to pop up another question. So maybe I guess my problem is that I just only thought of philosophical in terms of debate rather than learning how to think differently.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
This is a perspective that dominates our culture, right? We are in a capitalist society. Everything is competition.
Everything is showing the world that you are better than X or Y.
Ashley Thornberg
We even fight cancer. We don't heal cancer.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Exactly right. Exactly right. We are in a war against drugs.
We're not in a yogi attempt to help people find meaning in their life so they can avoid drugs, which is not a very pithy title, but you know what I mean, right? We're always in competition and philosophy exploits that model. Philosophy gives off the impression that there's a winner and that there's a loser and that there's a, you know, it's better to have the right answer than the wrong answer.
And one of the, I always do two things with my students. First, my students often come up to me on the first day of class and say, I'm worried. I've never taken a philosophy class before.
I don't know that I'm going to do well.
Ashley Thornberg
It's not going to be a standardized test, but I want there to be only one answer and that it's just demonstrably true or false.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
That's right. And the first thing I say to them is, if you knew how to do this, you wouldn't have to take the class, right?
Ashley Thornberg
The purpose of taking the class.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Right. It's to learn how to do it. It's to have, if the difference in September, if there's no difference in September and in December, then you didn't get your money's worth.
That's the first thing. But the second thing is that every philosopher we discuss is wrong. Every philosopher I read is wrong.
Every philosopher I teach is wrong. The question is, how wrong are they? Are they profoundly wrong?
Plato was profoundly wrong. Plato got it so wrong that he taught us more than he would have if he had gotten it right. That we learn infinitely more about our life, our world, our universe, our beliefs, our God, whatever, by pulling the incorrect threads so that we can see where we and our ideas fall short.
And so if the goal is to get it wrong in a profound way, you don't want to compete with your interlocutor. You don't want to try to beat the person you're talking to. You want to try to engage with them.
And that's always been my hope for this segment, whether I succeeded or not, the audience gets to decide. But that's always been my hope for the segment that you and I are equal participants in a conversation and can direct each other to a genuine set of questions that we are advocating for the audience, that we are asking because they're not in the room to ask. So I guess the follow-up question is, do you see yourself as a different kind of questioner, thinker, journalist, what have you, than you were three years ago?
Ashley Thornberg
Yes.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
How?
Ashley Thornberg
I think what I have learned to do is get out of my own way and really fight kind of that nature to be right, quote unquote, and to be prepared to, you know, sort of need to call out the person if they're saying something wrong. And I've kind of learned that that just, that isn't me. There's a time and a place for people like that and for that sort of debate, but that's not really my skill set.
And so learning to settle into the identity and sort of point of a host, which I think is a little different from being a journalist. A journalist, I think, needs to be better at holding the feet to the fire and calling out someone if they're spreading sort of vicious lies or mis- and disinformation in an effort to sort of manipulate people's behavior and emotions. My job as a host is more about holding space and listening and realizing that, you know, I've always said that listening is the deepest act of love.
And so to be able to hold that space and then ask a question that was based on the fact that I was listening rather than needing to be right or needing to prove that I had done the research on this person.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
That feels to me also like yoga practice because so many times we have the conversation where we're just waiting for the other person to stop talking so we can say what we want. And when they're talking, we're thinking and rehearsing the things that we want to say. But in good philosophy, just like in good yoga, that patience, that openness, you're receiving all of the information and processing it because you're meeting someone where they are as well as where you are.
So I guess the next question that I have is, why do you think Prairie Public decided to put this segment in Main Street? This was actually your guy's idea. You approached me, which I was thrilled about.
What is it that something like Philosophical Currents offers a magazine like Main Street?
Ashley Thornberg
The opportunity for our listeners to learn right along with the hosts and with the interview guests to be exploring an idea and to learn to kind of pick apart an idea and to think about something in a totally different way. One of my favorite interviews was completely unexpected and it was talking to a now retired English professor from Minot State University, Dr. Seanann Tangney, because she had this habit of writing a haiku every day and it happened to be International Haiku Day. And I thought, well, I know a haiku weirdo.
I'm going to talk to her. And it was just supposed to be a funny conversation about poetry to me. But she talked about having, you know, only five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables, and that's a rough translation from how they do it in the native form, which doesn't exactly translate to 5-7-5, but in English, that's the easiest way to do it.
And as actually opening up more places for her to explore creativity, having constraints made it feel more expansive because she had to be more thoughtful about the words. And so she had to try to think things through in a more perfect way. And I think that that is the point to me of this segment is encouraging our listeners to think about what's happening in the news in a more perfect way to borrow a phrase from that podcast.
Um, because as you and I go through it every month, like it's kind of one of those things where you don't necessarily know. This will be a weird comparison, but every time Wilco releases a new album, I know that I'm going to love it because I have 20 plus years of experience knowing that they have thought through this song from their perspective, from the listener's perspective. I know that myself as a listener has been taken care of.
And so I can go into a Wilco album with that sort of trust and respect. And I feel like the listeners, even if they don't know this is what's happening, can pick up on the sense that you and I have gone through a news story and picked it apart in a different level than if we just said, oh, this thing happened and I want to react to it. We are being more responsive rather than reactive.
Um, and I think that opens up a lot of doors for the listeners. And ultimately the listeners are at the heart of everything that we do here. Um, you know, educate, engage, and inform the people of the Prairie region.
And we have to start by doing that ourselves.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
I think that's right. And I think that's one of the freedoms that we have in this medium that, that other people don't have, especially on television, things like that, which is we can take the time, have that space, and we can really pull the threads that we think aren't getting the attention. Bouncing off of your haiku example.
One of the things that students struggle with is they don't like very precise, um, assignments for papers. They don't like very precise paper prompts, but again, I always tell them it is easier to write a lot about a very small thing than it is about a big thing. So if I gave someone an assignment, write a paper on the meaning of life, they get about a paragraph in and they've run out of things to say, but if I say, yeah, if I say contemplate the age of the universe, I just Exactly right.
But if I say, write a paper on what your dog means to you, they'll write 10 pages, right?
Ashley Thornberg
I immediately started thinking of my cat, like I'm almost crying.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
That's right. That's right. The more precise we are, the more perfect we are in that haiku sense, the more we, we focus in on the detail, the more we have access to, the more we, we expand to fill the room to mix all of the metaphors.
And, and that's, what's so nice about this segment and about doing philosophy with you is that you're able to target a particular area and say, okay, we're going to focus on this now, Jack, tell me this, or I know you think you want to talk about that, but that isn't really very interesting here. Let's talk about this other thing. And I'm like, okay, I'll do what Ashley says.
Ashley Thornberg
Right.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
And then we have a great conversation for the record listeners.
Ashley Thornberg
I never say that's not very interesting. Jack, we're going to ignore you.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Well, you, you don't say that on the air. Nevertheless, the point is we live in a world where our news doesn't really tell us what we're supposed to know. It tells us how we're supposed to feel and especially the main, the, the biggest news vehicles on cable and on network.
It's all about manipulating us and not necessarily in a bad way, but manipulating us to react, to have passion about a story. And there isn't a lot of opportunity to take the time and think something through. And that's what I hope philosophical currents did for other folks.
And that's what I hope it contributes to main street is that it is the opportunity to think something through and not necessarily be told how to feel about something, not being necessarily how to be told how to what the good side and the bad side is. What happens when you decide you are going to give your full attention to this or that, or the other thing, how much do you discover about the world that contains it?
Ashley Thornberg
And how much discover about yourself, going back to your definition of success in terms of this segment, how do you feel about it? Again, specific to a format like main street and public radio.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
I really like the interaction between equals. I really like the idea that any person in the conversation can take it in any specific way. We are losing our attention spans.
It's much harder to read long form pieces than it used to be. It's much harder to watch movies or long television shows than it used to be. We are focused on the next tweet or getting likes or one eye is always on the telephone.
And radio in particular helps quiet that because it's not a visual medium. And philosophical currents helps calm us down, I think, and slows the shift from one segment to the other. There's a lot of pressure to spend two minutes on this, two minutes on that, one minute on that.
Our long story is going to be three and a half minutes, move on. By the end of the show, sometimes we've forgotten what the first item was. Philosophy, again, like yoga, allows us to slow and be there, be present.
And what I personally have always tried to offer for Republic and the region, and what you have been instrumental in helping me do, is to say, okay, here is a topic that you might find a little uncomfortable, or here is a topic that you don't know how to start. Let me do that for you. Let me prime the conversation for you so that first, you're not threatened by it, and second, you have a better sense of which direction to take it.
Okay, now I'm going to step back and let you, Ashley, or the audience decide what comes next. I think that's really important, and I think a lot of us, even if we couldn't put it in these terms, are losing our sense of agency in the media. We don't know where we fit other than as passive receivers.
And I don't like that. I don't like it for myself and I don't like it for my community.
Ashley Thornberg
We're visiting today with a philosopher, Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein. He is the host of Why? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life.
He is also a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Dakota and our go-to philosopher on major news events for a segment we call Philosophical Currents. And this month, we are not so much doing a major news event, but we do have a little bit of an announcement, and we will be coming back with that right after this news. And we're back on Main Street.
I'm Ashley Thornberg. My guest today, Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein, a Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Dakota and the philosopher that we go to for a segment called Philosophical Currents, when we take a deeper dive into a news story and give it a philosophical pulling apart, if you will. And this month, we are focusing more on pulling apart the segment itself, learning the inner workings of philosophical thinking and why we want to be applying that to the news.
And in this case, not a news story, but a bit of news involving me, and that is that I am going to be moving on and pursuing a different opportunity. I will be stepping down as a host of Main Street and looking forward to joining Humanities North Dakota. And we'll be working with them with their podcast and with some of the live events that they host, doing actually a lot of this kind of work, Jack, that a segment like this has prepared me to do a little bit better, which is to be listening and engaging in really thoughtful discourse.
But instead of on the radio, it will be more podcast form and then also the opportunity to be live and interactive with people.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
So before I ask you some questions about humanities and why that's so important to you, I think I want to acknowledge, I want to ask you, that was really hard for you to do. You were reluctant to say it. I will reveal the secret that there were a couple takes.
Why? Why is it so hard for you to talk about leaving Prairie Public, Main Street? You didn't even mention philosophical currents, which you're also going to be leaving.
What's going on? Why is that so hard?
Ashley Thornberg
Um, it's a lot of things. For starters, you know, change is just difficult. I've gotten very used to routine and structure.
But also I do really love what I do. I love hearing people's habits and interests and the way that people think and how they have turned that into something wild. It might be a career.
It might be a hobby. It might just be a weird thing that happened to them. And I'm definitely afraid that it won't be as easy for me to do that in the new role.
I think eventually that that it will be. And part of why I'm leaving is because I think I'm actually going to be able to engage with people on actually a really deeper level because we don't have the same kinds of time constraints and have to work around on the news clock or a news cycle or anything like that. But change is hard.
And I also like really deeply identify with what I do. You know, it's, I mean, this might be a very American thing. There's a great Trevor Noah stand up special where he says, you know, if you ask French people what they do, they say like, oh, well, I like to ride a bicycle and eat croissants and then, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But they don't like say what they do for a living, for a work. But when you ask Americans, like, what do they do? It's, you know, I'm a banker or, you know, I'm a daycare provider.
And we don't really talk about the books that we're reading or the hobbies that we have as part of what we do. We very much are a culture kind of work. And I certainly have settled into to some of that too.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
I'm going to push you a little bit here because one of the realities of the world is that human beings impose meaning on things. This is not just a rock. It's my sacred place.
This is not just a song. This is our alma mater. The perhaps the most human thing of all is to infuse meaning and to identify so closely with that meaning that it becomes part of our personality of our identity.
So I guess I want to ask you specifically, what is philosophical currents mean to you? What has has this interaction over the last three years? How does it inform your identity and what are you worried about walking away from?
Ashley Thornberg
Hmm. It's come to mean to me. A thoughtful, interesting conversation that can go in lots of different directions.
And frankly, if I'm being perfectly honest, not a lot of prep work for me. Part of the issue that I am facing right now is just given the world that we live in and the combination of the news cycle and all of the information that's out there. You know, I sometimes am doing four, five, six interviews a day and my brain is just getting a little bit fatigued.
I'm 41. I can't keep up with having to know about this person's hobby and this person's career and this person's criminal activity and trying to keep all of those things straight. It's relieving to me to know, going back to like that Wilco album is I know that you are going to be fine with whatever I throw at you.
So if nothing else, it's become a segment that is very easy for me to have. And that is a little bit of a reprieve. I guess that also is one of the things that I'm a little bit worried about is I am so used to going and doing one thing, one thing, one thing, one thing, one thing, you know, 27 things in a day.
And I'm constantly moving and pivoting and shifting gears and thoughts that I am actually a little bit nervous because humanity is operating on a very different timescale, they're going to give months at a time to one idea. And I know some of my personal habits is if I only am doing one thing at a time, I usually get a little bit bored. And that can easily give way into sort of a depressive state for me.
And so I think it is a good opportunity, like I mentioned in the first half of the show, talking about haikus and how constraints actually can be expansion. I think that this is an opportunity for that. I think I am also always going to be a little bit afraid of failing.
Part of why I'm leaving is because of how tremendously thoughtful the people who work there are. And I'm kind of, I guess going back to the beginning of philosophical currents, I'm afraid I'm not going to be pulling my own weight there. And that I will disappoint them.
I am afraid of that. That fear is really human. And the unknown is a very powerful thing.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
And even when we are successful professionally, we often doubt our own capacities and our own abilities, even when the people around us don't doubt. I can't imagine you not being successful in that point. But let me ask a version of the question in a different and more manipulative way.
One of the things that was hardest for me when I started doing WHYY Radio was to understand that the listeners were developing a relationship with me. I, as a philosopher, thought, oh, people are going to be interested in this topic or that topic. But really what happens is people don't even call it Y.
They call it Jack's Show. And they say, who's Jack talking to this month? And I've seen on the Prairie Public calendar when I walk in the offices, Jack is written on the calendar.
And someone said, oh, yeah, we're just going to have Jack do Jack's thing. I think when people listen to the segment, I know because they've said it to me, they say Jack and Ashley. They say Jack and Ashley are going to talk about this.
And once you were gone and my best friend texted me and she said, where's Ashley? Is what happened to Ashley? So I'm curious what the, I'm trying to figure out how to ask this while still manipulating you in the way that I want to manipulate you, what does it mean for you to have a partner on the air?
How has that been different in this segment as opposed to the interviews which are limited relationships and very clear to the point? How do you feel about having a partner, an equal partner in the discussion?
Ashley Thornberg
Oh, you know, it's funny.
My husband recently asked me who my work spouse is because I joked that there was this engineer at work for a while and like every time I needed something like fixed or opened or like whatever, I would go to him and he doesn't work here anymore. And so I was like, who is your work spouse? And I was like, oh, I suppose it's Jack.
You poor thing. You poor, poor thing. No, but in a very different way.
It's not like a, hey, will you open this jar that I can't get open and have my lunch with? But it's, you know, and this is kind of corresponding to my husband and I entering a much deeper, more vulnerable state of our marriage now after being together for so long and it has evolved into something far more beautiful than I would have ever pictured 20 years ago. But I guess I'm vulnerable and scared and excited and shy on the air with you as a partner in a way that I don't ever have to be with just another guest because it's a totally different role.
My job is to sort of be the structure and then, you know, keeping the clock and then just asking them good questions and they have to be vulnerable. In particular, this segment like today, but more so broadly speaking, Philosophical Currents is there is a vulnerability there that I get to engage in. And frankly, I think it has made me a better host because I'm reminded now on a monthly basis of what I've been asking our guests to do over and over and over again.
And I think, you know, again, that's part of what I will be able to build on now with Humanities ND is, again, given the state of the world and how much has to be the immediate and the news and the what's happening, and those aren't wrong. And NPR has been more so going towards harder news more often and I am really drawn to still sort of the philosophical, the humanitarian, the humanity reasons behind what's happening. And so that is why I'm really drawn to continuing this kind of work in an area that has really stayed focused on engaging in deeper conversations in a way that helps promote thoughtfulness and well-being.
And frankly, I think there's a huge overlap between both organizations and the mission. And, you know, I'll be doing some work growing the podcast into a potential broadcast so that we can be hitting even more of an audience and joining forces in order to continue to serve the people of this area with just more tools and a more potent understanding of why paying attention to things matters and listening to the people out there who have different ways of engaging with a problem rather than just sort of covering something as a problem. They are really focused on sort of problem solvers and really deep listening. And in the meantime, the listeners at Prairie Public and to Main Street get to be better served when they have somebody who really is better at sort of the news responsiveness kinds of interviews that are so important, particularly in things like election years.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
I wanna ask you a really hard question because you were circling around some things there. What humanism brings, what the humanities brings is a sense of the human perspective. And you can always tell, to use your word, when a painter is not being vulnerable, when an author isn't fully committed, when an artist, a musician or what have you hasn't given themselves to the music.
And so I want to ask you, what do you think vulnerability means in this context? When you say you are more vulnerable with me in the philosophical currents, what does it mean? Because it doesn't mean I'm worried they're gonna fire me or it doesn't mean someone's gonna throw a tomato because of something I said.
Ashley Thornberg
What does it mean in a humanist context and in a philosophical context to be vulnerable? That I don't necessarily know an answer but that I'm willing to do the work of trying to seek it out.
And you're willing to do that work in front of people.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
It's not something that you're gonna edit away. Early on, when I start directing the Institute, I always used to say that our slogan is, let them see you think. The problem, one of the great problems that we face in the media in our country, and especially with politicians, and this really echoed with the debate between Biden and Trump is, we expect everyone to have a pat clear answer immediately.
We think that someone stopping and saying, hold on, let me think about this is a sign of weakness. That when someone visibly reflects on their answer, we don't like that. And we don't have any models in the media of people who are showing us the thinking process.
This is one of the reasons why very often when you and I talk or when I'm on WHY, I say very intentionally, I'm not sure how to ask this question, but, or let me tell you what I'm, let me tell you the question, but then let me tell you what I'm really asking. Because it's incredibly important for me to model that kind of humanist thinking in front of an audience. But that means I may go to some strange place, or that means I might talk about something a little too personal, or that means I may discover something about myself in the process.
There have been one or two times on Y, one was in the philosophy of poetry episode, where I cried on the air, where I teared up and that's vulnerability. And so I wanna ask the next question, which is what do you think you are bringing into the next stage of your life because you allowed yourself to be vulnerable with me and on this segment? How are you, what are you learning and what are you taking from that experience of vulnerability?
Ashely Thornberg
A very different kind of strength. I think I'm gaining access to a strength I didn't know I had. And I say this because I'm not entirely sure.
I've always been what they kind of call a backwards engineer. I go and do something and then five, 10, maybe 20 years later, I'm like, oh, that's why I did that. And it turned out to be the biggest examples in my life.
I've been marrying my specific husband and taking the yoga training and then taking on roles like this and with the humanities and D. To oversimplify, it's fish grow to the size of the pond that they're in. And I think that what I can take with me is everything that I have learned and nurtured in this format.
And then bring it into a very different kind of format. There is going to be this sort of intimacy that is in the ears of the listener. Again, of the podcast format, the 100 watt podcast of me and maybe one guest and we're having this conversation and it's very easy to forget that someone else is listening.
But then there's a very different kind of intimacy that comes with our events and we do things like think and drink and these brave conversations where, again, it's all about the guest but somebody to be the bridge and the translator between the scholar and the guest and help facilitate interaction between those two. We're learning in educational models that that sort of sage on the stage event just doesn't work for most learners that just sit there and being lectured at doesn't work. But engaging with people really does but we're also human and particularly Midwestern and we don't want to be the first person asking a question.
And so for me to kind of be modeling that behavior and then also bringing in that engagement helps to involve more people in the process of thinking in ways that are just in line with the humanities. I also think it's a really good opportunity for me to dive deep into what are the humanities because I'm sort of fairly literal and it's sort of like, well, you're a human so everything you do has some sort of humanity but that's not what it is. And so I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to take the skillset that I have and engage people in just a very different level.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Again, a follow-up question to that, you talked about vulnerability leading to strength but right now in America specifically, the masculine model is that vulnerability is bad and it only leads to weakness. Why do you think that vulnerability led to your strength? What is it that vulnerability- Because you can only be strong if you're operating from a place of authenticity and you can't be authentic if you haven't been vulnerable.
I think that's right. I think that's a really useful reminder of what it means to give to the process. And so we're running out of time, Ashley.
So let me just say personally that I'm brokenhearted that you're leaving. I've loved working with you. I love you as a friend and apparently as a work spouse.
And I want nothing but the best for you and hope that you get everything you were looking for and that your audience grows exponentially and that I get to watch and enjoy all of it. So thank you for all of the time that you've had, that you've given me, not just on the segment but since you came along.
Ashley Thornberg
Well, thank you, Jack.
And I don't think that I would be in a position of being vulnerable enough to grow into a newer version of myself if we hadn't been engaging in a segment like this. I think that there's no separation between you and teacher. You have made me believe that I can do things like this and it makes it a lot more possible to jump and not be afraid to fall but realize that it's actually flying.
Dr. Jack Russell Weinstein
Well, again, all of us here and in the audience are wishing you the best. And I know you're gonna succeed and be amazing. So on behalf of our listeners and on behalf of me, thank you so much.
Ashley Thornberg
Thank you, Jack.
NOTE: Main Street uses Turboscribe.AI to transcribe some of its segments. The audio of the show is the official record.