This week’s guest is Benoit Kim. He is a “Veteran, Penn-educated Policymaker turned Psychotherapist, & Podcaster at Discover More.” Benoit is a Christian, creating space for deep and meaningful conversations and stories.  The Discover More podcast is a show for independent thinkers with an emphasis on mental health. Benoit is currently a forensic clinician at Project 180.

Links

Discover More Podcast
https://www.discovermorepodcast.com/

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@DiscoverMorePodcast

LinkTree
https://kite.link/DiscoverMore133

Quotes

“People just want to be heard”

“This force of life…this container of life is larger than our will, larger than what we think our life should be versus what it actually is.” 

“I was 24 at the time, and that was the first time I had to confront my limited mortality: Holy crap. I may die.”

“At the end of the day, humans are meaning-making machines…”

“There is no such thing as ‘useless emotions’…They all serve a purpose.” 

“Self-discovery, curiosity, explorations, personal developments? Those are all products of privileges. If you don’t have privileges, then you’re surviving…”

“Passing a policy is not the same thing as implementing a policy.” 

“The macro is comprised of the micro…Hurt people hurt people. Period.”

“Change takes time.”

“You may get hurt again, but if you don’t try, that’s the biggest regret.”

“I don’t have ‘bad or good’ in my paradigm of vocabulary. Does it serve you or not serve you?”

“Stress is the number one trigger that activates all mental illnesses.” 

“Stories are not just content. Stories are these lived, visceral experiences that become embedded genetically into our minds…”

“…storytelling stays as this timeless avenue to really connect people…”

“There are a lot of contributing factors to why psychotherapy works, but I think the essence of all mental health is this feeling that you are not alone.”

Interact

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https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Deconstruction
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/#deconstruction

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

David Ames  0:11  
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. I want to thank my latest writer and reviewer on the Apple podcast store S S. Thank you so much for leaving your review. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. Thank you to all my supporters. If you too would like to have an ad free experience of the podcast please become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. Are you in the middle of doubts deconstruction, the dark night of the soul. You do not have to do it alone. Please join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion We now have merch if you'd like to have a secular Grace themed graceful atheist podcast theme t shirt mug and various other items. Arline has done the work to bring up a shop for us. The link will be in the show notes. Please check it out and get your merch today. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, my guest today is Benoit Kim. Ben was the host of the Discover more podcast. It focuses on independent thinking and mental health. Benoit himself is a forensic clinician in psychology. And he brings to bear his wide ranging life experience including being French Canadian, having gained citizen in the United States by serving in the army. He was educated in and worked in policymaking for some time, until he decided that that wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to help people. And so he went into psychology. Benoit is a believer, but he has shed the fundamentalism, we get into the how purity culture has affected his life. And finally, we touch on a subject that's important to Benoit and one that I need to be honest, I'm skeptical about and that is the use of psychedelics in a clinical format. I want to be clear here that then law presents the evidence in a compelling way. But the difference between using psychedelics within a clinical environment with a trained psychiatrist is significantly different than doing so on one's own. I'll leave it at that. Here is Ben walk in to tell his story. And walk him Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Benoit Kim  2:59  
David, thank you for having me on on this rainy weather in Los Angeles at least.

David Ames  3:04  
Yeah, yeah. So I'm up in the Pacific Northwest and I have sunshine. So we've we've traded weather. Yes, we did. Benoit, I'm gonna let you talk about your own CV. There's a lot to it. If you could introduce yourself, tell people like what you're doing. I'll say up front that you're a podcast host of the Discover more podcast, we're gonna get into some of the things where we are very similar, I think and maybe some of the differences. But go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners.

Benoit Kim  3:30  
So here's my 40,000 foot overview. So yeah, my name is French. I'm probably one of the few French Korean American you will meet. And for the longest time on Facebook for 10 plus years, I was the only Benoit Kim. So I spent the first half of my life in four different countries in three different continents. I was born in Paris, and then I moved to Korea, which is my ethnicity. And I lived in China for a while before I went to a boarding high school in California. And that was the induction of my faith into this Lutheran High School. Okay, and well, I'm sure we'll get into it where I think that was the first time I became allergic to these Lutheran indoctrinations of what is what what they deem as Greece for the team as faith what they deem as a good Christian air quotes versus the actual execution of that faith and this gracious lifestyle that I very much admire. And so now Currently, I work as a psychotherapist at USC, I accepted my new offer into the reentry populations working with just the populations who have mental illnesses. And I'll be working with them to hopefully to restore their sanity and for them to read, implementing the society because as we both know, recidivism extremely high, at least in Los Angeles is about 70%. And I'm a former policymaker I went to graduate school at University of Pennsylvania, which is a number one school at the program at the time. I went there and not to brag about the procedure of the school per se since I worked a lot to shed that layer of the false self of this prestige. But it's more about the fact that I went there for the sake of making impact because I believe in different vehicles for changes as a therapist, as a lawyer, as a physician, etc. But as a policymaker, you can impact 1000s and 1000s. Because I held this utilitarian philosophy for the longest time. But through a lot of the dirty politics compromising soul for the sake of impact, I took my hopefully my third and last career pivot in the last seven years into the clinical fields two and a half years ago. And my clinical interest in psychotherapy, in addition to psychedelic therapy, which speaks to my own healing journey, because psychedelics allow me to heal through my own sexual trauma, if you have opportunities to go down to because I'm very passionate about especially Men's Health and men's sexual health, which is not very often talked about. Okay.

David Ames  5:41  
Excellent. Wow, there's a lot to unpack. And hopefully we can get to, I'll just say immediately that on the podcast, and a reoccurring theme has been the impact of purity culture, in particular on people as they, as they deconstruct that, that affects them. Even in the context of marriage, right, even after from a Christian perspective, sex is supposed to be a good thing, they can still find problems that follow them into marriage, from that purity culture, so as well as other people who have experienced sexual trauma events as well.

Man, you've hinted at a lot there, I want to focus just a little bit on the journey of faith for you. One of the questions we start with often is, what was your faith tradition growing up,

Benoit Kim  6:35  
I appreciate you picking up what I'm putting down, which is an indication of a seasoned podcaster. But I have a lot to say because I feel like faith first and foremost ebbs and flows. Of course, spirituality ebbs and flows, which is a seasonality of life. However, as you talked about purity culture is like this very big box. And I think It confines a lot of those who really upholds not just faith per practice that religion, or practice organized religion versus just believing this higher entity. I was born into Christian Christianity. My parents are my mom's a Catholic, devoted, I don't like denominations. I don't like the label. Because as the Bible talked about, religion isn't flawed. But men is, therefore religion becomes flawed, just like Jesus spent a lot of his effort trying to dismantle and fight the temple, so to speak. So I was born into that faith. However, I think a lot of people fail air, quote, to convert from their childhood faith to adulthood. Whether that stress has by their life, reality says about life, the grief and the loss, or as tragedies, which is inherited to life by suffering is part of life. Christian faith aside, so I think that was my first taste into the perceived Christian faith versus the execution of Christian faith through the boarding High School just alluded to. It's like, it's a Lutheran High School, okay, I won't name the school, where they're a lot more conservative, a lot more orthodox, so to speak. And one thing that really, I think catalyzed is my whole conversations with myself and others about what it means to be a good Christian. Was I remember, I remember her name, her name was faith, very synchronistically. Yeah. And she was a senior, and she experienced pregnancy. In high school, and one thing that all crazy a lot of Christians, and especially Lutheran orthodox branches, talk about is pro life, pro life, pro life. And so through whatever conversations or faith, she chose to keep the baby, but then I found out a few months later that she was expelled two months before graduation. Wow. Okay. And I think that was the first time I really contemplated about what is this mean? That they're indoctrinating their teaching of all these biblical messages, all these truth, and all these important things by this Messiah who was a perfect human, and the perfect God that walked the earth, yet, in reality, they're expelling this 17 year old who made probably the one of the hardest decisions in our life, to keep that baby or her faith. Yeah, the rewards she gets his getting expelled two months before she bought a graduate, which obviously sparked a lot of other GED other processes, and I was very much disheartened by that. But to answer your question, I think that was the first catalyst about this just faith conversation. And I think for the first time, I realized it's bigger than just what people teach us on the schools.

David Ames  9:34  
I definitely think this is one of the similarities that we have is a focus on Grace. I'm going to be on your podcast, I'll tell my story there. But just for context, you know, I came to Christianity late in my in my teenage years, and I call myself a grace junkie I was having read the New Testament, I thought that hey, this is what and when I got to church for the first time, like for real for the first time, I thought, hey, they seem to have missed this part of the message. They seem to have forgotten that he came from the poor and the sick and not the well, not not the perfect and holy. So I think that's a deep similarity in our journeys here.

Then while then I'd like to hear just a little bit more than as you get out of the boarding school and go on with the rest of your life, I understand you had a plan to do policymaking and a few other things. You've also been in the army. Tell me about some of those experiences.

Benoit Kim  10:33  
Yeah, I tell a lot of people that I'm 30 now, but I feel like I lived 10,000 lifetime, and in the last decade, which is a deep privilege, because I'm alive here to tell the story. So as an Asian American, I think I was part of this statistics where I was raised by a tiger mom, I was raised under this belief, that achievement at all costs, mental health isn't real, doesn't matter. Just work hard, put your head down. And whatever will happen, will will succeed. So I had all these three year five year seven year and meticulous plan, I'm a very cognitive and very heavy, and I like to front load, and I like to organize everything. But ironically, contrary to my high school faith journey, I think through this, a lot of pain teachers, as I call them, I think God taught me to surrender, that this force of life that we call is this container of life is larger than we are, it's larger than our will larger than what we think life should be versus what it actually is. But I joined the Army, because that's how I became a naturalized citizenship. I became a reserve army just after the combat training in the summer, through this specialized language program, because I'm multilingual. So it's like a linguist program based on warfare needs. And then through that, at the time, it was relatively peaceful. When I joined, it was 2015, I believe. So there wasn't a lot of things going on. We're coming from the post Bush era, right things relatively calm during the Obama era as well. And then 2017. I don't know if you remember, but Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un at the time, that had a excuse my French thick measuring contest? Yes, I have a red blood cell. And no, I have a red blood cell. No, mine's bigger, etc. So our unit was one of the 12 units to get someone to get deployed to North and South Korean border. And I was 24 at the time. And that was the first time I had to confirm my limited mortality, that holy crap, I may die, because he was perceived as extremely high tension. And the tension was escalating for like months, so a lot of speculation about is this war through etc. And that's, I think that's when I really questioned my faith as well, because I was like, God, why have though forsaken? That's a very common saying in the Bible, and otherwise, and that's how I really felt. And they also catalyzed my first major depression. Like I said, because of my tiger mom, I didn't believe in mental health. Somehow, whatever I wanted to do a Will my power through and I was able to achieve it. Sure. There's obstacles. There's the micro pains and sufferings and teachers, of course, but I've never experienced this dramatic shift of my internal landscape. Going from this, someone who feel I could do most things to Holy crap, I don't have my life in control, I may die in the next nine months, whatever the timeline is, but then through it, we can talk more about but through different ebbs and flows, I really realized that was God's way of instilling what Surrender means, because as you know, errorCode, high achievers, people who are very heavy, we have way of intellectualizing everything to our own benefits. And somehow, I think God found ways to humble me more because at the time, I was more prone to hubris, I really thought I'd had it all I could do whatever I set my mind to suppose through this faith, I'm God's child, I can do all things through Him. But of course, it's over spiritualization

David Ames  13:54  
and just being a 20 something, man, but yes, I definitely remember thinking, Yeah, I know it all.

So definitely, I think one of the things that makes you interesting as a podcaster is having a couple of fairly dramatic life experiences that made you reevaluate the importance of life, the importance of mental health, the importance of being the self aware of the self achiever in you and recognises you needed a little self grace. Talk to me a bit about how that you get from the hubris and the gold, achievement oriented personality to a bit more humility and a bit more self grace.

Benoit Kim  14:45  
I wish the answer is more it's a rosier don't I'm about to share, but in actuality, just when you're faced by the tidal waves of life, you just humble you learn to be humbled the life humbles you, because I truly believe whether you believe in synchronicity, spirituality, the source, oneness, God, whatever language you want to touch it as that I believe it as God, I think God or life tries to teach the same lesson. Until you learn that lesson. I think he hits you that with a seamless and over and over again. So for about three, four years, I didn't truly become humble. Like the humility wasn't ingrained in my essence. Until the third fourth year, I realize Holy crap, God, I see what you're trying to teach me. And through that shifts inevitably became more receptive to feedback, just to accept this truth that life is just unknowable. And I think CS Lewis, famous Christian philosopher, he's like a mystic and a lot of people's. I mean, the guy's phenomenal. I think he talks about one of the fundamental characteristics of God is the unknowability. The moment you can know and grasp what God is called, loses its essence. And I think you can make that same statement about the universe and the source. And I think it's unknowability that I really had difficulty with. Because why isn't pattern recognitions useful, because it allows you to feel a sense of delusions or illusions control about the future. But the past is not predicted, the past does not predict the future period. So I think that's how I was able to go from this mid 20 kid who I got it all to learning about the heart, the hierarchy of ignorance, the more you know, the more you know, nothing. And so through that, and just a lot of the tidal waves of life. And through a lot of introspection, which is my personality trait shout out to my parents, to how a journal, I'll meditate. And I'll really think about what just happened to me and sort of create a space in my life to review the archives of my behaviors, and actions. And is what I'm doing serving me is that allowing me to show up the way I'm proud of the way God is proud of, to my friends, to my partner, to my work, etc. But it was not this straightforward, linear journey, because I think a lot of people have this illusion that life is linear, as you know, they will life isn't a linear NatHERS feet journey. And I think I just accepted the non linearity, nonlinear idea of life. And I think God played a big role, the way I perceive it, as at the end of the day, humans are meaning making machines. And I think that's the meaning I'm I chose actively to equip my life with and the lane I walk. And that's why I'm very open with different type of conversations, I have a lot of atheist friends, because at the end of the day, you find a meeting that is fitting in your life, the continuum of life you walk in, and that can either serve you or it does not serve you.

David Ames  17:42  
Yeah, it's interesting in in just that answer, you've went over a number of things where we disagree. And the one that we do agree on is, is that people are meaning makers. And we there's some this the other thing I think is interesting about your story, I do think that each of us must come to a point where we recognize that fact, and there's no way to share that with someone else. I recently had Jennifer Michael hex, it's a beautiful writer. She's written a number of books, one called doubt, once called the The Wonder paradox. But we talked about that a lot that almost every generation as a society, and each individual has to go through this process, a bit of self discovery, a bit of the humbling process, a bit of recognizing that we make meaning in this life and embracing that and moving forward. And maybe not everyone makes that pass that recognition and experiences that but it's a very significant human experience.

Benoit Kim  18:37  
You know, if I may, I think a lot of people forget this truth, that self discovery process that you alluded to, requires a pause, and an inflection point, so to speak, like the pandemic, a lot of people call it a great pause. Of course, it's it's a lot of tragedies happen. A lot of people died. So I hate finding silver linings in such a tragedy. At the same time. Our brains are about 3 million years old, give or take. So it's been optimized, evolutionarily speaking. So it's like with emotions, there is no such thing as useless emotions. That's why I talk a lot about my my clients, anger, grief, sadness, they all serve a purpose, just like happiness, excitement and joy. They all serve a purpose. The positive negative dichotomy of emotions is what we actually then as but Delos of purpose. Likewise, our brains allowed us to create this autopilot modes, right? Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winning cognitive psychologist, he talks about system one thinking is an evolutionary optimize. So we can just go go go, he doesn't really require to think, but if you have to think about 12 times 15, you have to wait a minute, you have to pause and really think that and I want to, I'm quite a meta thinker. So I want to tie that into the question or this discussion we have. Were likewise without these Eriko sufferings there's so many humans are allergic to who we want to prevent suffering? Which is pretty laughable because we didn't choose our birthright. We're only here, David, because our parents grandparents made a certain decisions at a certain point in the timeline that allowed us to be born. So if if we didn't even choose to be born, what gives us any rights to have this? hubris, this belief that we can actually influence or exert power over life? And so to that point, I think, yes, self discovery. And yes, I think through this self discovery, many people go from converting charter faith to adults of faith. In my case, there are a lot of ups and downs are in your case, who choose to do convert, whilst upholding this grace or gracefulness essence that I think, is probably the reason why you're so open to talk to a lot of Christians and believers, because some people do have that, but I think requires a pause. And I think that pause often comes with pain.

David Ames  20:53  
It's interesting, you mentioned the pandemic, if you just go back through the back catalogue. A huge number of guests will talk about that that was that was the moment they were out of the context. And they began to question what they had been taught. So again, I'm positive on on pauses.

I want to return back to your personal story a bit because you you I think, got the entire education to do policymaking as an extension of what you were doing in the army, I believe, and then subsequently decided that that wasn't the thing you wanted to do. So let's talk about about that, like what that was like, and then what the, what changed your mind.

Benoit Kim  21:37  
That's another shining example, about the surrender piece I think God had me on for the last quite a few years. So I really believed in the avenue of policymaking, because I recognize the power of the privilege of education, not just in my life, but also my parents is life as well as immigrants, they only got to where they are because of the education they've been given. And self discovery, curiosity, explorations personal developments, those are all byproducts of privileges. If you don't have privileges, then you're surviving. And you don't have the ability to seek out podcast row yourself, this growth junkies as I am. So that's the privileges itself. But so I got into policymaking and you hear hear things, right? You're like, oh, a lot of people stray away from their intended path, they become part of the problem, because that's the only way. But once again, the hubris that means I know I'm different, I will be able to successfully overcome and conquer this monstrosity of policy grille locking system. Unlike the millions came before me who failed even Obama he talks about in his autobiography, The Promised lands. So I thought, no, I could do it. And I got into policymaking. And being a pen was a pretty conducive environment. And that's when I really realized the reason why Eric would prestige is important is not the name volume, but the environment that you're in. For the first time in my life. I was not the first in my class, like high school was pretty effortless for me. Things came pretty easily for me, just cognitively speaking. But then when I was at Penn, I realized I was not the lowest coefficients, but I was either the average or everyone else was above me. But I think that was my growth mindset. I heard work where I wasn't deterred by that. I wasn't envious. I saw that as amazing as holy crap. I could be esoteric. I could have these philosophical or whatever conversations and people get it. It's like us playing podcasting. Right. So you say tennis, you throw a ball, I catch it, and I give it back. It's like a give and take process. So and extend that into policymaking where at least at the NGO, non governmental organization, our work as a policymaker, a lot of people are paying graduates. So there is that this understanding that you'd have this air, quote, cognitive ability, the CV to be here, but I think that's when this policymaking became tricky, because I realized a lot of people who are in that field came from a very privileged background. And they had a theory, like they had a great grasp, in theory, but not in the pragmatic implementations or what that means, right? Because passing a policy is not the same thing as implementation of policy. It's a timeless gap that we still grapple with in 2023. And I saw some of that within the policymakers are quote, circle. But then the real difficulty for me was realized, I am not different from anyone else came before me. I'm just the same. And it's also a systematic issue because to implement any changes, you have to compromise, you have to make trade offs, you have to make deals, and it's not about what I want. It's about what you have to do. Like David, if I asked you if you can make a minor moral compromise minor, but you're not killing anyone. You're not stealing any Think you may lose a few hours of sleep. But in return as a product of that you can impact 4000 marginalize folks. Would you do that? You're probably see yes,

David Ames  25:11  
yeah, no. And I understand that policymaking must be 1000 of those kinds of compromises a day. So yes, I understand.

Benoit Kim  25:18  
Yeah. So that's what I saw. And I realized through iterations of that, if I have to make that compromise today, I'll be fine. But what about next week? What about a month? What about a year, just like cigarettes and addictions, nobody start with a pack of cigarettes. First time you start with the first, nobody started with six bottles of wine, you start with the first glass of wine. And I think I saw this iteration process. And I'm very good at system thinking. So I disability to sort of zoom out from the moments and momentum and this Go Go Go mode. And I really have to think for myself that can I resist this force of policy for the sake of air, quote, utilitarian impacts, and I realized I don't want to sacrifice my soul. I don't want to sacrifice my essence of who I am. The integrity and the moral compass outside of religion, that I uphold the early there to my conditioning, and my upholding is not all conditioning is bad, you can keep some conditioning in the program, some that's not serving you. And that's when I dealt with. And I turned 28, about two and a half years ago to really so with that, and I chose to depart from policy. But I was fortunately able to create a policy and truancy aspect in Philadelphia. And that was really cool working with a black and brown youth. So I still uphold the law of gratitude. And I still smile when I think about some of those experiences. But it is so difficult beyond what people even imagine and the complexity is infinite.

David Ames  26:43  
Yeah, in particular, the just the system's inertia and your you know, one person trying to move a mountain. Yeah, I can really I can really appreciate that.

You went on to want to focus on psychology psychotherapy. Tell me why what was it about that that intrigued you?

Benoit Kim  27:10  
There are a lot of confusing factors. And also to preface I didn't work in I wasn't a congressman's i Sure i spent a few years in policy Bose mainly to city level, I worked with some state folks for grants and funding sake. But I do want to preface by saying that I'm still very limited by the experiences, I'm just speaking about my own experiences. So please don't come find me after the fact. I think there's a lot of contributing factors to policy issues, socio economic, political, whatever language you want to add on to it. But from my experience, at least in Philadelphia, which is the poorest major cities, they contend with Chicago, back and forth, they have one of the highest crime rates, and they have the highest illiteracy rates in all of major cities. So through that container and experiences, I realized a lot of the political issues and the societal issues I was deeply passionate about, were simply the byproduct of lack of mental health intergenic intergenerational trauma, like their trauma genes, epigenetics, like people who go through a lot of hardships, like in the black communities, that trauma gets encoded epigenetically, which is a change of DNA expressions, genetics is that DNA genomes, and I saw that into poverty. But often it's the combinations of many of those factors. And I think mental health and emotional health became the through line, that I saw a lot of the political issues I was working with, at least in city of Philadelphia. So I realized, wow, I think myself included, and many folks forget that the macro is compressing them micro. And so you have to address the individual trauma component because hurt people hurt people, period. So I think I had to decide, do I want to stay in the macro realm? Or do I want to go to micro which is individual work, and there's so many opportunities, and there's so many directions you can take, but through my interest in psychology, emotionality, because I think how we behave, our behaviors are often the manifestations of how we feel internally, views internal reality it's manifests externally, right. So because of that, I did a lot of research and I chose the social work, which is a discipline I choose. But whether it's LMFT, sizes, whatever. Y'all do psychotherapy, you just different approaches and different modalities.

David Ames  29:34  
If you're willing, I said I wasn't gonna push you in this direction. But let's, I'm going to if you're willing, how did therapy or psychotherapy apply to you personally? And was that a part of the decision to go down that road?

Benoit Kim  29:45  
I think it's twofold. So I as I alluded to earlier, my first experience, and my first taste of mental health was through my major depressions catalyzed by my deployments, this looming deployment of potential Life and Death, which is a lot for a 27 year old to bear because there is not a lot of opportunities in life to confront your mortality unless you have like near death experiences, car accidents, etc. So that was a first right so I was recommended the army to see a counselor. But I only saw her once because I was very apprehensive. I didn't I was a skeptic, I didn't believe in mental health, right. But I did experiences otter consuming darkness, a imagery I can think about and I share on my podcast sometimes is like the bottomless pit and Dark Knight Rises three were were Wayne was stuck in this bottomless pit, and no one ever escaped beforehand. But with his big plot armor, he was the first human to escape. And now of course, he became this hero's journey became this Batman triumph, etc, right? I wasn't Batman, I didn't have this, I didn't have his fiscal policies, or his money or the plot armor. So I felt stuck in that bottomless pit. And this feeling of stuckness is where a lot of people attribute depression feeling like if it's major depression, so that was one. But I think the real change with psychotherapy and the potential of it and why I became to believe it. So I went from a Skeptic to Believer even after my major depression, because change takes time period, especially such a dramatic shift of internal psyche, from not believing to believing or believing to not believing in your case requires a lot of processes was my sexual trauma, where I feel comfortable sharing because I was healed through that through the power of psilocybin therapy, which is magic mushrooms, and I'm very well versed in psychedelic research. So I'm both practitioner, and I'm also researcher, and also consumer research, was in college, I had a sexual trauma with this individual. And without the gory details, it really contributed to my insistence that hookup culture became very vindictive, because I didn't always want to save my virginity for my wife, because who knows life is very long, but I wanted to at least save it for this special someone. And this person wasn't the special, someone got it. And yeah, I was roof feed, and I woke up on the other side with their trauma. So because of that I spent majority of my early 20s and mid 20s. Just on it wasn't I didn't want to commit sure the commitment issues collegially I couldn't commit. Because most people with commitment issues, it comes down to this feeling of lack of safety and relationships, why trauma. So that's how I was I was in superficial relationships, couple months at a time, a couple of weeks at a time never wanted to commit because of the fear of being hurt again. And into 2017. When I came across this healer, who facilitated me through this psilocybin therapy, of course, it is still illegal on a federal level. But there's some exciting research and we're making some significant headway. So under this Aerocool psychedelic Renaissance we're in and within a worth eight hours, David. So remember, I spent six years harboring resentments, anger, rage towards this individual. And that extended towards all female and all woman just internally because it's traumatic response into within seven to eight hours. I had this song after the guided psychedelic therapy where I literally thought to myself, I was like, Oh, I wonder how she's doing. Should I reach out and message her saying that I forgive her now forgiving her act of forgiving her by giving myself that permission to move on with my life. I think that's why forgiveness is hard because you feel stuck. I never reached out it was too much work. I forgot her last name. So I never did that. But going from this dramatic shift of unable to AERCO move on with my life relationally to this place of forgiveness and grace, by forgiving her and I forgive myself. And through that I was able to recommit to relationships, we accept the fact that you may get hurt again. But if you don't try that's the biggest regret. Because I tend to live my life minimizing regrets. I don't really believe in optimal decisions because there's constant opportunity costs being here. We're not outside what's raining outside for me, but it's sunny outside Yeah, into recently six months ago. I'm happily engaged to my fiance after three and half years. Congratulations and thank you thank you and that to me is what healing is where it allows me to recommit and have faith and relational container that we call romantic relationship once more into now being happily engaged with my future lifelong partner. So it's been quite a quite a journey with mental health and psychotherapy to say the

David Ames  34:49  
least Yeah, wow.

Yeah, so let's let's chat brief About the psychedelic side of things, and I want to preface it by saying, everything we do at this podcast is about gathering evidence. And I understand there's some fairly compelling evidence that I'll give you in a moment to discuss that psychedelics within a clinical environment is quite effective for in particular things like PTSD and other traumatic events like such as yourself. I think the thing that that I caution is as an A not you, but other people. Other people, I think, are a bit too Cavalier. Because what is kind of wink wink, nudge nudge under the hood is yeah, you can, you can go, you know, take LSD or magic mushrooms on your own and have this experience on your own. So there's a vast gap between doing something on your own versus in a clinical environment with trained people who can walk you through, ultimately, the experiencing of that trauma and the letting go of that trauma. So a couple things I'd like you to address one. Let's talk about the research for a second from your perspective. And then do you share my my hesitancy to blanket recommend psychedelics?

Benoit Kim  36:13  
100%, I think we live in this era of I call it Eriko motivation for analysts, incessant motivations, inspirations, all these advices. That's out of context. I don't give advices anymore, because you have to contextualize everything. And you have to ask what is the context? So yes, and a reference point that just came to my mind as you were sharing is alcohol. So I've been sober from alcohol for about three years, because he became a point of the service in my relationship, actually. So I've been sober from that since. Two, I have nothing against alcohol. It played a role in my life. I don't have bad or good in my paradigm of vocabulary. I just, there's a serve here. There's an officer if you are bringing that up, because alcohol is the only drug because it's a poison, chemically. That in America, if you tell people you don't drink, people ask you, why not? Not even? Why don't you mockery? Why? He told them, You don't smoke weed, or you don't smoke cigarettes? Oh, good for you. Yeah. I want to start with that. But I'm bringing this up. Because, like I said, I have the opportunity to spend mine first half my life in Europe, and Asia, and all causes a lot more nor not just the more normative, but people start drinking at an earlier age. But if you look at the incidence of blackout, drunk driving all of these tragedies associated with drinking is significantly less than America. And I think it comes down to not the substance, but the utilizations in education around it. Like in Europe and Asia, most family and households will introduce you to all kind of more subtle, incremental stage, you have a sip of wine, you have a couple of beer with your family, especially with your dad, which is a lot of containers I'm familiar with. And then over time, based on the education's and this in a controlled setting up in a home, you get to gradually increase your tolerance or your exposure, or your alcohol intake. And you do that across society, right? Whereas in the America, we don't have that. Yeah, people get fake IDs, people binge drink. People go go crazy when they're turned 21, public drunkenness. I was one of those. So I had a public drunkenness on my record for a while until it was explained a long time ago. So that's one thing I wanted to share. But yeah, I do agree that it has to be approached very, very cautiously because there are some red tapes. And now I'm sure we'll segue into the research aspect and the clinical implications and why it's so efficacious as a molecule, as a healing modality is if you have heart disease, if you have mental illness in your family, and mental illness and mental health are different mental health is the overarching umbrella. And that mental illness is within that umbrella, just like physical health is not cancer. But cancer falls into the umbrella of physical health likewise, so if you have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality, disorder, etc, in your family, because of research shows about 20 to 30%, of mental illness is genetics. What that means is 20 and 30% of people with Family Mental Illness history, that genes these Dormans until it gets triggered by stress. Stress is the number one trigger that activates all mental illnesses. And when one's mental illness is activated, it's irreversible. That means you have that for the rest of your life. Right. So if you have any of mental illness history in your family, it has to stay away because psychedelics has been documented to trigger psychosis or a psychotic episode. So that's one and two heart disease. People with heart issues or heart disease in your family, you also have to stay away because it's not conducive to So there are red tapes, and it has to be consulted with medical doctors. I'm not a medical doctor, this is not medical advice. But you have to seek, you have to safeguard against potential implication, because you can have too many ibuprofen, it will have adverse effect, but ibuprofen when taken appropriately, it has almost virtually zero setup. It's extremely safe, right. But if you take in too many, you could cause some serious heart issues and etc, heart failures. Likewise, with psychedelics, it's the same thing. When you approach it safely through education's the research, and I don't mean just Google browsing or asking, telling me everything about I don't mean that but I mean, actual research and actual consultation with professionals, he can have some amazing, amazing efficacy is and I'm sure we can talk more about.

David Ames  40:50  
Again, I don't want to get into my story too much, but just context a lot of drug and alcohol addiction in my family. My rebellion was like, I'm not going to drink. So I'm actually, you know, sober by choice and have been since 16. And I completely relate to you like, when I tell people that, you know, they think, Oh, is it religious? And it's like, no. So it is you are the odd person out, I've had to work out the social graces of you know, occasionally buying around for people just to be, you know, be a part of the group, I enjoy being with friends, you know, even if they are drinking, that's fine. I don't hold it against people. But it was definitely not something for me.

The other aspect of growing up around drug and alcohol is, you know, I've talked to people on psychedelics, I've talked to people on various other drugs. And one of the things I joke about is I've never come away from one of those conversations thinking, wow, that was really deep. And I just want to contrast that with what might happen in a clinical scenario where someone is guiding you through the experience. And so I'm definitely open to the research and the data that suggests that that is, can be a positive experience. And the last thing I'll say is, for myself, I've got also a bunch of mental health issues, including several of the things that you mentioned. So my father, I, I believe had schizophrenia. My mother, I believe she had personality disorder of one kind or another undiagnosed. And so for me personally, that would never be an option. So just to have that out. So again, let's give you an a chance to talk about some of the research here as well.

Benoit Kim  42:42  
Thanks for sharing. I appreciate you sharing. Some of those disorders and personalities that we talked about are some of the most stigmatized in America due to Hollywood portrayal. Big surprise what you're saying Hollywood does not portray these realistically. So I appreciate you sharing that nonetheless. So also, I want to preface by saying that most of our research is from with John Hopkins maps. These are not the research I conducted. But I'm consuming and these are the sources I usually go to. And of course, Rick Doblin the founder and the CO executive director at maps, which is a psychedelic research center under the John Hopkins Hospital is extremely credible resource, and they are the pioneer and a leading effort in the psychedelic Healing Center, or in the psychedelic healing effort around. So they just completed their third clinical trial, sponsored and funded by FDA. So it's extremely credible. Even our old, outdated government agency department, like FDA has recognized because to documented evidence, it's just, it's too compelling, as you said earlier, so they're a third trial finish, so that data is coming out. So I'll be speaking mainly about the second clinical trial that was completed about a year ago, give or take, so the data is out there and also I'm very well versed in most meta analyses. Meta analysis just means it's extremely credible has a lot of authority. And this cross references multiple different sorts of clinical settings and data points. So it's like a consolidations of most researches just for educational sake. So if you I want to start somewhere else with numbers because I think number stick it's very simple number is affects us. So effect size is the if you've taken statistics or whatever effect sizes like a generally speaking how effective the dosage or the study substance is. So more common substances that people are aware of SSRI or SSDI, which is an antidepressant. It's very common, it works for some does not work for many. The effect size of SSRI or antidepressants is about 0.3 which means it's minor reflectiveness because study shows that about 30 minutes to an hour of rigorous running or workout produces the same amount of serotonin. As SSRI serotonin is the happy molecule as we as we collectively say it is right. So as you can tell it works, and definitely now for all, and then about MCT. Magnetic conversion therapy is one of the most effective treatment for depressions, like chambering treatments, resistant depressions, or EMDR is about 0.8, which means it's very, very great moderate to very strong evidence. Psychedelic therapy, David is 1.2 effect size. Wow, yeah, which is four times the effectiveness of SSRIs. And about a third more significant and more efficacious than MCT, or other some of the more very strong evidence base therapy like CBT, and so on. So that's the effect size, I want to start there. And the study I'm about to quote is the second clinical trial with John Hopkins, the FDA approved, they recruited I think, 110 participants after parsing after bedding after eligibility, like the health cautionary that we just talked about. And these are the people with complex PTSD, treatment resistant depression, what that means is these people have been on medications like SSRIs, they have been seeking psychotherapy for a decade, 10 years. So these are not skeptics, these are full believers of mental health. But they continue to battle with ongoing complications and suffering by their symptoms, despite being treated for them. So these are the criteria. So the eligibility the bar is extremely high to enter this realm of control study clinically, and not to turn this into a neurobiology lecture. So I'll share some of the high bullet points where it's a two year longitudinal study. Because I ketamine, which is considered as Special K like the entry drug for psychedelics, it does not give you these crazy illusions. In fact, it's very mild. You just feel this deep relaxations. Now, just for people who are listening to us for the first time, it's the only approved psychedelic substance for clinical usage, but it's over applied. What I mean by that is, it works. But according to meta analysis, and the most cutting edge research, the sustained efficacy for ketamine is about one to two weeks. What that means is it does improve your emotional well being it does decrease your symptoms, etc. But after about one or two weeks, it diminishes and you have to reapply. And at least in LA ketamine is about $280 an hour. So it's extremely expensive. The entry point is very high economically, so it's not sustainable for many people. And so for a psychedelic, I'm alluding to psilocybin, MDMA, which are the main molecules for PTSD are some of the symptoms we talked about, or the diagnosis we talked about. It has at least two years of sustained efficacy. So two years after the completion of this study, 86% of the participants that are alluded to, they no longer exhibited any symptoms that eligible them for have this diagnosis. In other words, 86% of these participants who've been medicated for 10 plus years, who've been seeking therapy for 10 plus years, no longer have any depressive or PTSD symptoms, that when they got retested for diagnosing sake, like diagnostic assessment, they didn't even qualify for PTSD, or depression. And it's I'm not talking about symptom reduction. Here, I'm talking about a complete eradication of the root disease itself. And until now, EMDR is a very, very great trauma modality. But psychedelic therapy is the only known modality that has the ability to have this effect size, with this ability to eradicate some of these symptoms that have plagued so many people.

David Ames  48:48  
Okay. All right. Well, I think you've done an excellent job of presenting presenting the evidence, I will let the audience you know, take that as as it is, and with a grain of salt and do some research on their own as well.

I do want to talk a bit about some of our similarities and differences. One of the things that I think so we already talked about. Grace we've talked about, we don't need your neither of us drink. Anything I thought was just really interesting as we both did, America, I'm curious what I although I'd never was in the military, I'm huge into national service. I think that the civic engagement of Americans is so low. I'm a big believer in America. I'm curious what your experience was, and maybe I'll share briefly what mine was as well.

Benoit Kim  49:39  
That's why it's awesome. I don't think I've ever heard you. I did some research for your upcoming episode next week. But out of the I came across that information. So I was a part of Teach for America, which is part of the sub branches under AmeriCorps. I think there's so many categories within AmeriCorps itself, because it's sure Yeah, so Mine was a state AmeriCorps program under Teach for America. And so that was the entry point for me to go to nonprofit, which I didn't mention earlier. Like I said, I feel like I live so many lifetimes, I forget some of the experiences I've had, especially the under the current Busy, busy chapters in life that I'm currently in. But so that was my entry points to Philadelphia. That's how she got there. And another thing I didn't share, it's not on my CV is I used to be in private sector because I studied Economics and International Relations and undergraduates. And so I got into management consulting, but I left that race very soon. So it's not even on my CV, I often forget, I was in private sector for a very, very brief blip of my life. And so I knew I needed to get into nonprofit because proceeds does not transfer. And what's considered prestigious in one field. The other field has complete disregard, of course, because it's very contextualized. So I did all my research and I realized, what's a consistent threat. I sort of alluded to this earlier to allow me to be where I'm at in life, education. So that's the focus I'll it's the focal point I wanted to approach and tackle. And I did a lot of research and I realized Teach for America is one of the accelerator programs, it pays for a lot of your certificates. And it has a great reputation, like Michelle Obama used to talk a lot about it during her first lady days. So you know, Brenda effect, Oh, Michelle Obama, must be legit. I applied I got into and then I taught in inner city, Philadelphia, I taught middle school, I taught sixth, seventh and eighth graders. And it was a it was called around bay around the Institute of Science and Technology, not the gorilla around Bay, but around Bay in Swahili means brotherhood. So it was a first Afro centric charter school in all of Pennsylvania. What that means is, it's all Africans, and not just African Americans, but there are some Africans, we actually speak Swahili in school, we have all these principles that we practice, like morning circles to afternoon rituals for brotherhood, sisterhood, etc. So that was my experience. And to be honest, as a veteran, as someone who had some profoundly challenging experiences in my life, to say the least, because I've always had like three near death experiences in the last six, seven years. When I look back to my teaching time, teaching these kids who come from the most horrendous family backgrounds, addictions, domestic violence, sexual abuse, death, drive by shootings, the list goes on almost on a, like a daily basis. It's that rough of a neighborhood that come from Yeah. I thought I was going to be the Congress teacher with this accolades. This fancy CB going to teach them about the subjects I was teaching. Very stereotypically, I was teaching math and social studies. So I'm just going to embrace my stereotype. What the little that I know, in actuality, the expectation was me the subject experts teaching these kids who lack the opportunities. In reality, I learned more about life, and grit, humility, Grace from these 128 kids that I taught, I think, sure, I taught them some linear equations graph, a couple of subjects I, that I don't even know what purpose it serves in life anymore. But some of the lessons I learned from them, and just this ability to show up, despite these horrific challenges over and over again, and still show up to school, as good friends as whatever. And I was like, wow, I will never forget some of the moments I shared. And I get emotional thinking about this, because like they represents such this anti fragility, because there's resilience, and there's into fragility, which means the rebounds, you get back to even stronger threshold than where you started. And just this crazy, display day to day for how much hardships they go through. And you can never tell some of this reality they live under until they ask you or until they tell you. And yeah, I realized we don't all we don't always have to wear our pain and trauma on the sleeves. Which is not to go off the rails. But I feel like we're in this interesting culture. We're in oscillated too hard. 10 years ago, nobody ever talks about emotions. Now that's all they ever talk about. And emotions are important. But since that's not all, like you have to confront your trauma, you have to know work. And I think these kids who didn't know mental health from black and brown communities, who have the most significant hardships, they even now when I think about but they're just so gracious, so understanding, so forgiving, so loving. So some of the pillars I've learned I still care today, but I attribute a lot of my gratitude and just this profound, profound just thankfulness towards my americorps teach America experience

David Ames  55:00  
Excellent. Again, I won't go into too much depth, but I was working not in an inner city, but small sized city with the probation department. So kids that had either been in juvenile hall for some time and were on probation, or were in probation schools, basically, after kind of continuation schools, you get to a little more intensity in a probation school, and saw everything from heroin addiction to parents on meth, and kids just trying to make it work. You know, same thing that I think these were just amazing individuals that were surviving incredible odds. And I've related a lot to it, because again, grew up with drug and alcohol, and my family, and it was a definitely a life defining job, if you will, for two years of my life. So I'm a huge proponent of America, regardless of where you serve, Peace Corps, the same thing, you know, just again, back to having a sense of civic obligation, something like you know, like to give back. Right, and I really part of your story that I love is the naturalization through military service, participating in AmeriCorps and you know, clearly you're you're also giving back. And I think that should be tied into university education, right, like baver, pay for some of the or all of the, you know, your university education, and then you serve for a couple of years in in one capacitor and others, I think, just as a no brainer for helping America to heal a bit.

Benoit Kim  56:38  
Could I ask you a question, please? Yes. So when I think back to some of my white peers in the teacher America program, a lot of them had this not barrier, but this limited belief that their skin tone or doing the city will not allow them to build rapport and build relationships with some of these students they serve, at least in Philadelphia, even outside my school is predominantly black and brown. I don't know the predominant population, your work whether you serve, but do you feel like your personal lived experiences transcended your skin tone, your zip code, where you came from, and that allows you to sort of really work and build relationships with some of the youth that you're working with?

David Ames  57:19  
Yes, and I think we could go into really deep waters, regarding race, because I'm mixed as well. So my dad's side is Spanish, Mexican with Native American. And that's and my mom's side is, is just very Caucasian. But I actually remembered a new word recently Mestizos, which is the mixed, you know, from Mexico's embracing of the Spanish heritage people within Mexico. And that's it, right, but that's me. So I am obviously very white passing, and I'm culturally Caucasian, as all get out. And so I've always had this weird experience of observing racism around me and not being the subject of that racism. But to answer your the heart of your question. Absolutely. The you know, in particular, the experience of being a child of an alcoholic and a drug addict, was one to one right, like, that applied directly. And as a general rule that, you know, try to get get through to kids at the same time, like myself, I think they were also very guarded and protective. And that didn't always work. But no, I didn't see that as a particular barrier. The population was white, Hispanic, very small, Asian community as well. So

Benoit Kim  58:37  
yeah, I don't usually do leading questions, but I sort of can gauge what the answer could be. Because I think that's a pretty ubiquitous across these AmeriCorps programs where the lived experiences transcends these other perceived barriers, but it just did tie that into podcasting. I think that's why I love the art of long form podcast name, because stories outlive all of us. I think it's a deep, profound privilege that we have the opportunity to hold space and have these platforms, at least for me started as a passion project. Now it's a business to uphold these stories. And I think people underestimate with this tick tock cultures, everything's 15 seconds or less, highly scripted, highly rehearsed. I think people forget the power of stories, because stories are not just content. Stories are reflections of these lived visceral experiences that become embedded genetically into our minds. And we found them as very viscerally powerful, that we feel called to share these stories to other people. But I think you can go beyond podcasting America or whatever other containers but from my experience, my limited 30 years experiences, I think storytelling studies continuously as this timeless avenue to really connect people away from their skin color, race, zip codes, your socio economic statuses, and that's why I think stories are so powerful because As to my knowledge, almost Sapiens or humans are the only species that have the ability to retell our lived experiences to others.

David Ames  1:00:09  
And I think some of what I think we're both doing, but this podcast in particular is letting people tell their stories. And many of my guests, I didn't have that experience, I had a different experience. And it is the diversity. It's the literal diversity of the stories that someone else is out there going. Wow, you know, Jenny is telling my story, Bob is telling my story. You know, like, I think we sometimes don't know what we don't know. Because we haven't experienced that and letting listening to other people's stories, we get a peek into other people's experience.

Benoit Kim  1:00:42  
Yeah, I tried to create connection with mental health, every opportunity, I get professional hazard. But to tie that into mental health, David, there's a lot of contributing factors to why psychotherapy worse, but I think the essence of all mental health is this feeling that you are not alone, that you already have this profound realization that you are now walking this path of life by yourself. Because this perceived solitude or perceived loneliness, is in a lot of senses, contributes to depression, feeling depressed, and I can't even tell you how many men clients of mine, who told me Oh, you're just gonna talk about feelings, you're not going to change me and you're not going to fix me. You're right. I'm not here to fix you. I'm just the navigation system, an avenue of explorations for thought content, your emotionality, etc. But just by creating space to hold these experiences in a clinical container, or like you on this podcast, because secrecy, there's a lot of stigma around your, your guests and the people you try to create space for, which is the reason why I reached out in September last year, that you're gracious enough to respond recently for connect here, officially. But people underestimate and I cannot emphasize this enough that I want to put this in a messaging board where just feeling hurt, feeling seen. Those two things alone can dramatically improve your emotional well being and mental health. And because none of us live on islands, even if you live in an actual Island, there's villages, there's tribes. And I really, really believe that healing and grounding takes a village. And if more of us can get our stories out there, even in this realm of stories overload content overload, just it's not it's not even about getting your stories heard by others more about knowing that your stories are being seen. And there are other people walking similar path with different contexts. But pain is ubiquitous. Doesn't matter who you are.

David Ames  1:02:50  
Benoit, I want to give you a chance to talk about the Discover more podcast, maybe tell us the story leading up to starting it. What are you trying to accomplish there?

Benoit Kim  1:02:59  
That's a vast question. I'm still figuring that out. In my year 3.5, but the genesis of was very simple, pun intended with the Bible. So in early 2019, I saw the early rise of podcasting through Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, some of the greats are doing amazing podcasting for the right reasons, I believe, I've always been I've always felt this loneliness said going into Elijah's talks about this perceived loneliness. I've ever since I can remember I read the secret when I was 13. I've been reading I've been I've always been a ferocious readers. And I realized I don't just love one thing. I love a lot of different things. I love human psychology. I love politics. I love physics. I love all of these economics. But I always felt this loneliness where I feel like a lot of people couldn't relate to my esoteric or wide ranging interest. So if I tried to have these conversations, I could tell people tune out, or they're not as engaged or they're very straight up this interested at times. So I thought, Oh, am I am I weird? And of course, there's jack of all trades, master of none. I disagree. I think you could be Jack of all trades, and Master of some. I don't think it's mutually exclusive. But yeah, I thought I must be I must be the weird one. I overthink I have all these interests and nobody can relate until podcasting. were heard through podcasting and realize Holy crap, there is this people that have 4000 miles away from me, or riding the facility in my city or America, who have the exact same interest, who are actively holding spaces to have these immersively engaging conversations with other amazing people, like high caliber aside, just people from academic backgrounds, professors, psychologists, business owners, athletes, and I was like, Wow, I'm not alone. And I'm not the weird one. After all, maybe I just represents a smaller subset of populations, cognitively so that's one. But yeah, I started is just to capture some of these public conversations like every single one of us have had those Erico profound conversations to in the morning, maybe over a sip of wine or 20 sips of wine. But how often do we remember those conversation? I didn't. So I had a co founder of who we later departed about a year ago to create a differences. But yeah, he was somewhere just similar. We met in the gym five in the morning, and we could just talk about almost everything under the moon. It was almost like a podcasting sessions. Every time we will talk, we'll have hours on it. And so I thought, why don't we create a public catalogue and capture some of these conversations, it was a very self serving very pure, and simple reason and intentions. But then over time, I realized the once again, full circle, it's the beginning of this conversation, this hierarchy of elements were just 24 at the time, what do we know about this world? But what do we know? So we've shifted the format to more interview based, and we started having the people we deemed as interesting, because even now, like my show has amounted to a certain accolades. I've had a couple amazing milestones, which I'm very grateful for. But I still uphold this Northstar, so to speak, or this compass from my podcasting where I want to do this in perpetuity. I want to do this for at least 10 years, I have seven more six and a half years more to go. So to do that, I have to stay in the game for as long as I can. And to stay the course I have to do what I feel interesting, intrinsically first. Right, right. There's intrinsic motivation goes a far away. I share that because I still want to have the people that I find interesting, not just what the analytics or what the listenership says. And I try to ask a few personal selfish questions to fulfill my own selfish desires. Because I have to be engaged in these conversations. Like, I reached out to you because I was a I never heard about the deconversion process until I came across your podcast. I never heard about the term graceful atheist. It seems like a very oxymoron, right? Like intentional, societal propaganda. If you're an atheist, you can be graceful grace is exclusive rights by the religions, etc, etc. So I genuinely have a lot of questions to ask you, which you will experience next week? Yes. So I saw a poll, that same intention, even now, miles away from where I started, but at the end of day, I want to elevate the stories that I think need to be elevated the most. And I want to have conversations and learn from some of not just the best or smart, but really interesting people. Because I think through these collective Conversations, I'm hopefully imparting this message that we all share more similarities than not, yeah, because I think that is the key ingredient to hopefully one day, moving through and resolving this extremely polarized, these deep cosmic divide between the left and the right, whatever language you want to divide. And I think a lot of that comes down to this lack of conversations. We are no longer having conversations as human beings face to face. It's just not happening. Different political ideologies, your merger, your except for right. We just label them under his whatever boxes arbitrarily. And yeah, those are some of the intentions i saw pulled. But it's honestly like therapeutic for me. I live for these conversations, the SEO, the marketing, the other stuff. I hate those. It's just part of the process. But I love having these conversations. And it's almost like food for thought.

David Ames  1:08:30  
Yeah. Wow. A couple things. I want to respond to that. One, again, to quote Jennifer Michael, heck, she talks about how doubters, and believers have more in common than the vast middle. The vast middle doesn't care. He hasn't thought about it, right, and the doubters, and then the true believers have thought about it a lot. And so I do appreciate this kind of conversation I talked a lot about after I left Bible college, still Christian for many years afterwards, but I missed immediately, the 2am conversations in the dining hall, where whoever random person happened to be in there, you get into these deep, meaningful conversations, and I completely missed that. And so similar to you, like part of this is selfishly for me, so that I get to have these conversations, because that is part of my mental health. That's something that I need is to have meaningful conversations, even with people with whom I disagree. And I think that I couldn't agree more that that is part of what is absolutely missing, that we don't talk to one another anymore and respect the humanity of each other and so on. So, so I appreciate appreciate you being on.

Benoit Kim  1:09:43  
Yeah, you're 27 years of understanding. You've been a Christian for 27 years. deconversion and another set from dining hall 2am conversations. Some of the deepest conversations I've had is an aeroplane. We call that we call that the passenger seat confession right? Because I will never see you again. So I'll just Yes, exactly. You're radically honest with you because I have this perceived safety net of never having crossed paths again. And of course, that's true most, but I still remember some of the most interesting and deep, insightful conversations on the plane. And I think that speaks to once again to tie into full circle where we all have a lot to share. And I think as long as you can identify those people, because I do feel like on a societal level, I'm very deeply concerned about the rise of superficiality rise of superficial conversations. Right, this conversation with Dr. David Rudd, is a former president at University of Memphis, tenured psychologist, top psychologists in the world. And he does talk about that even with his distinguished academic career and as a president of a large university. He does see this correlation with the rise of superficiality along with the rise of mental health issues. And I think we have to actively combat that because it's only going to get worse and short from content, as you saw on YouTube, everything just pushing out with the rise of Tik Tok and I do really feel like deep, meaningful sociality or social relationships is often predicated and dependent on deep, meaningful, intentional conversations.

David Ames  1:11:26  
Then walk him the podcast is discover more? How can everyone find you? How can they find the podcasts? How can they find out more about you?

Benoit Kim  1:11:34  
I don't have any books to promote. So if you found any interest or any value in some of the conversations we have today with David, and yeah, this is just Hi, I'm in real life. And I love these conversations. And truly Nothing excites me more than when a listener reaches out. Or I can connect with you offline to ask more questions. Don't just follow me ask me difficult questions, heavier questions. That's how I keep my brain active because Alzheimer's, my biggest fear, a little quick disclosure, but if you find any interest, I invite you to join me on my discover more journey on the podcast, discover more. It's a play on words. Hopefully, you're discovering more value from the actual container of the episode that you tune in. But it's also more of a call to action that I invite you to and I challenge you to discover more about on your own accord that you found interested in. If your interest was piqued by anything we talked about today. Do more discovering, do more research on your own. That's critical thinking thinking about thinking. So it's two bits to full about my name, and you can find me Apple podcast, Spotify, etc, etc. And if you're more of a visual learner, my in person studio is recently completed with full fully stocked media setup. So I invite you to check us out some of the cinematic effort we tried to put into these videos more and more on YouTube at discover more podcasts. And if you want to connect with me on social media, it's also discovering more podcasts, or drew the line at tick tock so I don't have a presence.

David Ames  1:13:00  
I respect that. I respect that. Mike Kim, thank you so much for being on the wrestling atheist podcast.

Benoit Kim  1:13:06  
Thank you for having me on for your thoughtfulness and the thoughtful questions.

David Ames  1:13:16  
Final thoughts on the episode. As Ben while said, it's as if he has lived 10 different lives. He has so much life experience at such a young age. It is quite impressive. Then whilst podcast discover more is wide ranging on all the various topics that he is interested in, and it has a particular focus on mental health. Because I'm me, and part of what this podcast is about is skepticism. I have to acknowledge here that both Benoit and his podcast veer into the areas that I would consider pseudoscience at times. At the same time, I think Benoit himself is dedicated to learning and discovering the truth. And I wouldn't have him on this podcast if I didn't believe that he has something important to say. Ben was discussion of being in the policymaking field and acknowledging the compromises that one would have to make nearly on a daily basis, I thought was profound. His move towards clinical psychology and the desire to help people as well as what he's doing with the podcast to normalize mental health and focusing on a growth mindset, I think are very, very important. And Benoit is uniquely qualified to speak on those issues. On the topic of psychedelics, if you're a longtime listener to this podcast, you'll know that I am super skeptical, and at best ambivalence, the point that I made in the conversation that I have spent a fair amount of time with people on these very psychedelic drugs as well as a number of other drugs. And the experience for the person subjectively is profound and deep and meaningful, and the experience for the sober person is not. Having said that we also at this podcast, believe in evidence, and there is very compelling evidence that in a clinical environment, with trained clinicians, psychedelics can have a positive impact in certain areas. The reason I haven't talked on this subject until now is that many of the voices out there, including people, like Sam Harris, I think are way too Cavalier. And they're not talking about the potential downsides and risks and limitations. And Benoit was able to articulate those downsides, risks and limitations, while also being a proponent. So I really appreciate the perspective that he brings and the research that he has done. But finally, I will say, be skeptical. Do some of your own research. If this is an area that you feel like would be helpful for you. Seek out professional help, don't do this on your own. Finally, it's obvious that Benoit is a Christian, but I really appreciate that he was willing to come on this podcast. I am actually going to be on the Discover more podcast in a few months. And both of those conversations were really fun and helpful. And it was good communication. And I hope that Benoit and I can be examples of what it is like to speak with people who don't necessarily agree. We were able to find our common ground, what I call secular grace, I think Benoit is describing in a different way, about caring for people. And that's really what matters. That's the core part that makes a difference. You can find the Discover more podcast wherever you find your podcasts, as well as on YouTube. Check out Benoit and the Discover more podcasts. I want to thank Benoit for being on the podcast for sharing his personal story, sharing his life philosophy, sharing his experience and expertise. Thank you so much Benoit for being on the podcast. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is listen to people. My favorite quote from this conversation with Benoit is people just want to be heard. And this is coming from a clinical psychologist, someone who someone who professionally has been in counseling sessions has done work with in sometimes very extreme mental health issues. And this is something that I believe very, very deeply. This is what I think this podcast is about. And Benoit said this as well, that people feel like they are alone, that they're the only one experiencing whatever the thing is. And this is what this podcast has been about to say you are not alone in your deconstruction in your questions in your doubts. So those of us who have gotten through deconstruction, some of us who have gone through deconversion, and we're on the other side, and we want to live a graceful life. We need to be willing to listen to sit down and hear people but more importantly for the person with whom we are speaking for them to feel heard. Not that we are just waiting to respond and correct but that that person feels like we understand them. My deep feeling is that the human experience is the need to be known. And in some ways we are trapped within our own minds subjectively. The more we communicate with other human beings and feel heard feel known, the more whole as a human being we become. Next week, our Arline interviews Stephanie Stalvey. Stephanie is the amazing artist on Instagram @stephanie.stalvey.artist. Her artwork is around family, being married, having children sacks, just the whole experience. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a long running series that tells us a long story. You're definitely not gonna want to miss this next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studio This podcast network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai