podcast

Bringing multitudes to life

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 17:52:48 +0000

Bringing multitudes to life Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/28/2024 - 11:52

From Oprah to Wakanda, CU Boulder alum Aba Arthur has charted a career in which the most impressive thing isn’t necessarily the glow of Hollywood, but the joy of finding her voice in a new world that hasn’t been universally welcoming

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From a fairly young age, Aba Arthur watched movies and TV with a critical eye. If something happened in a show that she didn’t agree with, well, she just marched right upstairs and rewrote the scene.

That early confidence in her storytelling, in her writing, in her ability to breathe life into a character who previously only existed on a page in her journal has supported her through a career whose highlights include major Hollywood films, books and one-woman shows.

Arthur, who currently plays the character Samara in the show Bad Monkey on Hulu, also appeared in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and the 2023 film adaptation of The Color Purple musical.

Despite her success—the kind that justifies a certain confidence—she still sometimes finds herself in her car, staring out the window and breathing deep. It’s when she reminds herself “who I am, where I’m going. My words are valuable. I have something to say that matters, and I’m going to kill it.”

Arthur, a 2005 University of Colorado Boulder graduate in theater and dance, recently joined host Erika Randall, associate dean for student success in the College of Arts and Sciences, on The Ampersand, the college podcast. Randall—who also is a dancer, professor, mother, filmmaker and writer—joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

Their discussion roamed from the red carpet to the couch with a bag of Cheeto Puffs, with stops in between for mentorship, nostalgia, the joy of making art and what it was like stepping off the flight from Ghana to Colorado.

Aba Arthur (right) on the set of The Color Purple with Oprah Winfrey (left). (Photo: Aba Arthur)

Arthur: I have such a vivid memory of getting off the plane. I'm coming from Ghana and I'm coming to Colorado Springs, Colorado. So, I had only seen on TV or in pictures these guys, and they wear jeans, and they have these big hats. But I didn't know anything about them, so they felt like fictional characters. And I remember so well getting off the plane at the airport and I saw these guys, which I later learned the term was "cowboy."

Randall: In their Wranglers.

Arthur: Yeah:

Randall: In the hats.

Arthur: And the boots. And I remember getting off the plane and just being like, something just happened. Because these people are not where I just came from, and now there are a lot of them. And I've been watching them. So, this is so cool. I've stepped into something new. I think that is the first big memory that I have, period.

Randall: Changed your life. That's incredible. You arrive in the Springs, all the things happen. Next moment, where's the next postcard to yourself that says, ah, Aba, here we go?

Erika Randall (left) and Aba Arthur (right) discussing Hollywood and mentorship and the joy of making art. (Photo: Timothy Grassley)

Arthur: Oof. Oof. It’s a tough one. My first experience with racism. A young boy in my school told me that my skin was dirty. Yeah. I went back to class, and I was crying. My teacher asked me what happened, and I told her, and then she disciplined me. I had to sit in the corner, and I had to face the wall, because she said I was being a distraction. My crying was distracting the class. Yes, this is a true story.

So, I had to sit in a corner of the room and face the wall. And I remember so vividly at some point they were just continuing with class. And I was like, what? I don’t know how old I am. Let’s pick an age.

Randall: Say, 8 or 9?

Arthur: I don’t know, 8? (Laughs)

Randall: All on the Wikipedia page I’m building for you. Age 8.

Arthur: This is still elementary school, though—too young.

Randall: Too young to hear that, to feel that, to be put in a corner.

Arthur: And I’m listening to the class continue. She’s teaching, and I’m in the corner of the room. And so, at some point I turned around and I’m watching them, and they’re just having class. Everybody’s just continuing on like everything is normal. And that was a strong memory.

Randall: Is that memory as yet in a film? Because I’m watching that movie.

Arthur: It’s just going to take a second. Probably. That’s a tough one for me. It’s going to take me a second to work through that. Because I have to watch that scene, if they’re going to do it.

Randall: And hearing that story, sharing that story, is a critical action of undoing racism. And the work that you choose, you are writing critical stories about undoing racism. You are ANDing with political science the way that you’re in theater and political science. But your body politic is your body showing up as representation. Does that feel true for you?

Arthur: Yes, I love ampersands. And multihyphenate is a term that it took me a while to sink into. So, for me, it was always “&.” This & this & this. And I’m equally all of them.

Randall: And with that is engaging those identities to then bring forth new character into worlds. I’m listening to you and I’m watching your reel, and I don’t think you need confidence. Do you need confidence?

Arthur: No.

Randall: No.

Aba Arthur on the set of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. (Photos: Aba Arthur)

Arthur: I have a lot of it. (laughs)

Randall: Where did this come from, and can we bottle it?

Arthur: I wish. It comes from so many things. It comes from being the fourth-born child of a very high-achieving family. It comes from being the new kid a lot. You have to know who you are when you’re the new kid.

Randall: And in Hollywood, you’re the new kid in every room for a minute.

Arthur: Yes.

Randall: Are you not the new kid yet?

Arthur: I’m always the new kid, yeah. I’m the new kid a lot. And so, I didn’t realize at the time—another one of those life-changing things you don’t understand—as we were moving, I didn’t realize the effect that would have on my life in the future. The positive effect it would have on my life in the future. Because when you’re a kid, it’s hard. That stuff is difficult. And I didn’t want to be the new kid and I didn’t want to have to find that confidence. But I always felt like if I come in the room and I am as wonderful and as great as I am, the people that are supposed to be in my life will come to me.

Randall: You are a galaxy. Yeah.

Arthur: I really appreciate that. And I’m going to walk with that, because I feel like you have to protect your own peace and your own space. And coming into new environments over and over and over again, if you don’t know who you are, then you’ll get lost. And you’ll go with the trends and you’ll do what other people say, because it feels better to be a part than to be an outsider.

Randall: So be the new kid.

Arthur: I excel at being the new kid now. I excel because I’m coming in as who I am. So, rock with me or not.

Randall: That’s right. That’s right. Were you a journaler?

I excel at being the new kid now. I excel because I’m coming in as who I am. So, rock with me or not.”

Arthur: Uh-huh. Oh, my gosh.

Randall: Are you going to burn those or publish them?

Arthur: I have them all, yeah. You know why I have them?

Randall: I want to know.

Arthur: So, I would watch television and the audacity of myself as a child. I think about it now, I’m like, wow!

Randall: I love it.

Arthur: I would watch television, and I would be like, hmm, I don’t like the way that ended. And then I would go upstairs and I would rewrite it.

Randall: You would actually script it?

Arthur: Yes, I would rewrite it. I would write it like, hmm, “So, Chad walked in, and he saw Sarah, and then he walked over and kissed her.” But in the show, maybe he didn’t walk over and kiss her first. Maybe they just talked for a while. So, I just would rewrite it the way I wanted to see it. And I would do that a lot. I would write myself into the shows.

Click the button below to hear the entire episode.

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Top image: Photos courtesy Aba Arthur

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Dragons, the universe and everything: finding self through science and fantasy

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 16:40:27 +0000

Dragons, the universe and everything: finding self through science and fantasy Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/25/2023 - 10:40

CU Boulder PhD student Mikayla Huffman joins ‘The Ampersand’ podcast for a discussion about identity and discovery

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When she’s not mapping tertiary craters on the moon, Mikayla Huffman might be found on the battlefield, clad in armor and swinging a sword as tall as she is.

Her foes? A horde of pink brains skittering on taloned legs through acrid vapors around pools of lava. An ominous tendril emerges from the nearest brain, and Mikayla yells, “Get out of here, I got this!”

But in a flash of light, the battlefield disappears, and now Mikayla is at the end of a hallway of doors, each one labeled with what’s behind it. She stops in front of a particular door labeled simply “The Universe.”

"This is the most important one," she says. "It's where all of our journeys begin and end. It's what holds us together."

Mikayla Huffman is a PhD student in astrophysical and planetary sciences at CU Boulder.

She cracks it open and steps inside.

Mikayla Huffman is a leader and a question-asker. This particular alchemy has led her into fantastical realms as a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master and into the galaxy as a University of Colorado Boulder PhD student in astrophysical and planetary sciences.

She recently joined host Erika Randall, associate dean for student success in the College of Arts and Sciences, on "The Ampersand,” the college podcast. Randall—who also is a dancer, professor, mother, filmmaker and writer—joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

In a free-wheeling discussion, excerpted below, Huffman and Randall talked about overcoming science gatekeeping, making lunar discoveries and finding identity in realms where dragons fly. Click the link above to hear the entire conversation.

Huffman: I had a pretty rough experience the summer after my freshman year of undergrad, where I applied for a physics internship. I had good grades, so I got a phone interview with an unnamed chief engineer at large corporation.

He got on the phone and was asking me all these questions about physics history. And I hadn't taken a physics history class yet. And his tone changed immediately when I said I went to a liberal arts college. He was like, "Have you taken multi-variable calculus yet? Have you taken quantum mechanics?"

Randall: Checklist came out.

Huffman: Yeah, and I'm like, I'm a freshman. And then he started saying, "Are you sure you even wanna be a scientist? Like, do you know that atoms are made of protons and neutrons? Do you know what an electric field is?" Like, totally dismissive. And for a really long time, I was like, oh my God, I'm not good enough to be a scientist, 'cause this guy…

Host Erika Randall (left) and Mikayla Huffman discuss everything from gatekeeping in science to world-building in fantasy.

Randall: You took it as a critique of you?

Huffman: Yeah, yeah. Because I didn't know that that was complete nonsense that he was saying. Oh, and then he was like, "I'm not gonna give you the job, but you can come and meet the person I do give it to.” So, I came and met the guy, and it was a 14-year-old boy.

Randall: Hold the phone.

Huffman: I know.

Randall: I'm not gonna give you the job, but…

Huffman: Yep. I know, I know. Totally nuts. But because I was, you know, a young, impressionable undergrad, I was like, oh man, I am not cut out for this. And it was only when I talked to female mentors in the field—I had a great pre-major advisor, Patricia Valley, and she was like, "Why would he say that to you?" And I was like, "Yeah, why would he say that to me?" That's nonsense.

And that's when I started staying in the community. But I did pivot from pure physics to planetary science, which does have more women in it because of that.

Randall: So now that is a spark lit in you. That is a charge. And I felt even just looking at your materials, the way that you take out a lot of jargon so that folks can be present with the work. It's how I learned about tertiary craters.

Huffman: Yeah.

Randall: And I just, that was such a point of access. And so, for you, was this a turning point in your career, where you said, "Oh, I've gotta do things differently," or had you been working towards that already?

Huffman: Absolutely. So, part of it was, you know, that really sparked in me, I don't want this to happen to other early career women. Because if you lose gender minorities, racial minorities, out of science, you also lose the discoveries they would have made, you know what I mean? I think a big part of science is pulling others up into the field. And to do that, I need to excel. So, I made sure that I was in a place to excel so that I can mentor other gender minorities into the field.

Randall: So now here you are, you're in this field, and you honestly, I really did get lost in your research. What you have accomplished, that you got, well, they're not officially named, but I wanna talk about Wallace and Gromit.

Huffman: Yeah, absolutely.

Randall: Okay, so not just because they're great "Ampersand" characters, and I love them and have seen all of the things, but do you, you were the first. This is a new discovery that you have made, as you were transitioning into coming into your PhD, about a tertiary crater on the moon, that because of the way you math, the way you think and the patience you have, and then, are you gonna get to name it?

Huffman: Yeah, so let's talk about that. First of all, let's define what tertiary craters are.

Randall: Okay, I'm gonna let you do that.

CU Boulder PhD student Mikayla Huffman has mapped more than 6,000 seconary craters on the moon's surface.

Huffman: Oh yeah, for sure. When a big rock comes down from space, or a big chunk of ice, and hits the ground, it makes a hole. That's called a primary crater. That's the thing that you probably think about.

But when that happens, you throw out a lot of ejecta, a lot of ejected material, which can re-impact the surface, creating secondary craters.

Randall: And it gets us confused about time.

Huffman: Yes, so this is useful, but also not useful. It's not useful because the number of primary craters is pretty much constant throughout time. So if you go to a planetary surface and you count the number of primary craters on it, you can figure out how old that surface is without even going to it, which is super nice, 'cause it costs a lot of money to send people to planets.

Randall: Yes.

Huffman: But it's also a problem because if people can't distinguish between secondary craters and primary craters, which can be similar sized, if you have a large primary, you have large secondaries, which can be as large as small primaries, then you can severely overestimate the age of that surface.

But secondary craters are really useful, because they tell us some information about what happened during that cratering impact. So, tertiary creators are secondaries of secondaries. So, you have the primary, throw stuff out, make secondaries, which throw stuff out and create tertiaries.

It's really difficult to distinguish between a tertiary and a secondary crater, so that was a lot of my undergraduate thesis, was figuring out how can we make sure, follow these clues that these aren't just very small secondaries.

Randall: And did this come to you because you were a moon gazer? Because you love story? Because you saw that this was a gap in research? What were, how'd you get there?

Huffman: Yeah, so part of it was because of my amazing mentor at the Southwest Research Institute, Kelsi Singer, who I've been working with since, I think, the summer after my sophomore year of undergrad. And she's now a co-advisor on my PhD.

She had this idea that tertiaries might be a thing, and she said, "Hello, undergrad, who I'm paying. You get to sit down and map all of these craters, looking for tertiaries.

Randall: What a gift. What, I mean, that's a huge gift.

Huffman: Yeah, it was great.

Randall: That she had an idea and she said, "I'm gonna trust you to figure this out." And so then…

Huffman: And so, then I mapped, I think, about 6,000 secondary craters.

Randall: How long did this take?

Huffman: Oh, a while.

Randall: Like, until your senior year?

Huffman: Yeah. But I did do it while I was playing D&D, 'cause it's a pretty mindless thing, once you've got it down. So, I was DMing on one screen and mapping craters on the other one.

Randall: You were not.

Huffman: I was, yeah. And none of my players noticed. So that's good.

Randall: And the moon didn't know.

Huffman: No, no, of course not. But yeah, so I found these tertiaries.

Randall: Was this all online? This was COVID?

Huffman: Yes, this was during COVID. The campaign that I DM has been all online.

Randall: Oh, really?

Huffman: Yeah. There's this unnamed primary, which we call Wallace. We're actually working on naming it after Alan Hart, who's a trans man and pioneer who used X-ray screenings in tuberculosis detection.

Randall: Even cooler.

Huffman: Yeah, super awesome. And then the secondary crater, which we call Gromit—originally I was calling them 1P8, 'cause it was 1.8 kilometers in diameter. And then the secondary, I was calling 1P8A. But, you know…

Randall: Very Star Wars-y, but not as colorful as this world.

Huffman: And so, I found these tertiaries, and we think they're tertiaries, not small secondaries, for a couple of reasons. One, the size is right. The largest secondaries tend to be about 5% the size of their primary. And these are about the right size.

Randall: They're about 1.8.

Huffman: Well, 1.8 kilometers in diameter is the size of the primary. The tertiary craters are pretty small. We're talking, like, the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Randall: Wow.

Huffman: Yeah.

Randall: Wow, and you found that on the moon.

Huffman: Yeah.

Randall: Also, you just were such a good teacher. I don't feel like I am dissuaded from studying craters even though I got the answer wrong. It's so great. Okay, I'm so happy that you gave me the Volkswagen Beetle. That is an image.

Huffman: Yeah, for sure.

Randall: And you could be doing that while being a dungeon master.

Huffman: Yeah, absolutely.

Randall: Okay, you're a dungeon master.

Huffman: Yes.

Randall: And you are also an extrovert.

Huffman: Yes.

Randall: And this extreme geological and planetary astrophysicist. You are already used to doing the interdisciplinary thing, so you thought, why not just throw my campaign in here?

Huffman: Absolutely.

Randall: And create an entire new world while looking at a rock out from our world. How'd that go for you?

Huffman: Well, one thing that was really useful is I took a few remote-sensing classes in undergrad. And that was really neat, because it taught me how to use a software called RGIS. Super useful. You can use it to map craters.

But also, you can put your world maps for your homebrew D&D campaign in it. And this has been great for me because I have a little sub-routine that I run that tells me if they're trying to go from this town to this town along the roads, how many days it will take at various travel paces.

Randall: You are taking this next level.

Huffman: Yeah, well that's the point as a DM.

One of the appeals of Dungeons and Dragons for Mikayla Huffman is the game's inclusivity.

Randall: That's the point. Okay, how did you become a DM, and talk about women in STEM, women as dungeon masters, a thing, not a thing?

Huffman: Yeah, definitely a thing. There's a lot of great female DMs. And part of that is because D&D is such an inclusive sort of hobby, like, there's a lot of queer people, there's a lot of gender people in D&D, because it's such a great exploratory space.

Randall: I see this with my kid in the skins, and he's always playing in femme skins.

Huffman: Yeah.

Randall: And D&D kind of started this, right? Because you get to change, your body is a, it's more of a projection of your internal self than the body we might actually wear in the world.

Huffman: Yeah, so I'm gender fluid, so sometimes I feel like a boy. And so, I kind of explored that through D&D. I've only ever played male D&D characters.

Randall: Did you think of yourself as gender fluid when you started exploring through D&D? What kind of came first? Or did they just guide one another?

Huffman: Yeah, so, you know, I've always had inklings that I might be gender fluid, but really being able to explore using he/him pronouns in a safe space with my friends, super useful.

Randall: Has there been work done on this about D&D? And I know that cosplay, there's worlds where we've talked about this in queer studies, but I haven't heard about this in D&D as a path towards remaking identity and rehearsing and playing-

Huffman: Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm not sure if there have been any scientific studies. I was reading an article about how D&D can actually be used to help with social anxiety and depression, which, you know, that, it makes total sense to me, but I'm not sure if there have been any sociological studies about gender identity or sexual identity through D&D.

Randall: Well, I think that's just, it's, what a gift of this form. I remember, it was generally folks who identified as males playing when I was six, and all the others were like, on the side kind of being like, "What are those magical dice? I wanna play with it." But didn't feel like we had the authority to step in.

Huffman: Yeah, so you guys can't see, but I actually have two of my Dungeons and Dragons miniatures here with me that I 3D printed.

Mikayla Huffman holds figures of two of her Dungeons and Dragons characters that she 3D printed.

Randall: This you tiny-3D printed?

Huffman: Yeah, these are two of my characters.

Randall: Okay, this is amazing.

Huffman: So, the one in your left hand is Milky Way. I know, kind of on the nose. His real name's Delmir of Arakel. And this is the guy that I played for my boyfriend's campaign, which we just finished after 1,557 days of real time. I know, it's crazy. I'm still feeling weird about it. We just ended it last week.

Randall: Oh, do you get lonely for those and for the characters?

Huffman: Yeah, but you can always do one-shots, which are self-contained stories with those characters, so we get to revisit them. But Milky is a dragonborn, not like Skyrim. He's like a humanoid dragon character.

The other guy is Max, which is actually my masculine name… And Max is a tiefling, which is like, sort of a devil person conquest paladin. And tiefling are really interesting in D&D, because they've kind of been discriminated against in the canon.

And so, gender minorities, racial minorities, sexuality minorities, they can all kind of project that sort of conflict onto tieflings in the game.

Randall: So, a tiefling is kind of like a representative body. A representative outcast.

Huffman: Yeah, every queer person that I know loves playing tieflings.

Randall: Okay, when we think about how we move forward, it's all chance in these (Dungeons and Dragons) worlds, but in your world, in science, it's nothing is left to chance.

Huffman: Well, you'd be surprised. Statistics are a huge part of my research. So in D&D, you basically roll the dice, and then you add some modifiers, depending on your character. And then the DM sets what's called a DC. And if you're above that DC then you succeed. If you're below that DC then you fail at what you're trying to do.

In science, failure is a huge part of it. In science, your first hypothesis is never, ever, ever going to be right. And I talk about this a lot with undergrads. Because we're not taught that, you know? We're taught that you need to succeed on the first try, which is impossible.

Randall: Yeah. So, failure is a goal, 'cause it teaches you something.

Huffman: Exactly, and so, you know, when I give this talk to undergrads, I say, "Here's my resume, very impressive," and then they're like, "Oh my God, she's so impressive." And then later on, I put up my resume, and then in the next column, my failure resume. So, I say, yes, I got this, but I had to apply to 30 internships and get ghosted from 29 of them.

Randall: Oh, I love this.

Huffman: You know what I mean?

Randall: Yeah. And do you weave it with D&D when you're talking to folks? Is this something that's been ANDed for you for a while?

Huffman: Yeah, so I do talk about D&D a lot with respect to science as well, 'cause, you know, I oftentimes, for my world maps, will just steal the maps of other planets and then add some water to them. And I'm like yeah, this is my homebrew world. It's definitely not Mars, but you've gotta just add water.

Click the button below to hear the entire episode.

Listen to The Ampersand

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CU Boulder PhD student Mikayla Huffman joins ‘The Ampersand’ podcast for a discussion about identity and discovery.

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Studying the best of humanity, even the darkest parts

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 21:58:36 +0000

Studying the best of humanity, even the darkest parts Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/22/2023 - 15:58

CU Boulder researcher June Gruber kicks off a new season of “The Ampersand” podcast in a conversation about all the feelings, not just the positive ones

When June Gruber was tackled by two grown men on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil, her fear and shock stood in stark relief to her gratitude as strangers stepped forward to offer help and to catch the assailants.

As overwhelming and scary as the experience was, it offered Gruber, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, opportunities to be curious.

Gruber studies and looks for the best in humanity, even in its darkest parts, and brings to light the complexity of the human brain and all the stories it has to offer. Her research has shown that a range of emotion, from bittersweet melancholy to nostalgic joy, is better for the human body than a “toxic positivity” insistence on a singular feeling of happiness.

She recently joined host Erika Randall, associate dean for student success in the CU College of Arts and Sciences, to kick off a new season of "The Ampersand,” the College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall—who also is a dancer, professor, mother, filmmaker and writer—joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

Erika Randall (left) and June Gruber how the human body benefits from a range of emotions while recording "The Ampersand" podcast in Boulder.

In a broad-ranging discussion, excerpted below, Gruber and Randall talked about the full palette of emotions and how there’s connection to be found even in the worst moments. Click the link above to hear the entire conversation.

Gruber: A lot of the way we hear about happiness and positivity, especially in more westernized or individualistic context, is very self-centered. It's, "How can I feel better, and in particular, how can I feel these kind of exuberant emotions–joy, excitement, enthusiasm?"

Although those are certainly important feelings to have in part of the human experience, sometimes we push them too far or experience them in ways that put other feelings to the wayside. And so, when I think about that sweet spot of happiness, I think about a few different pieces. One is balancing the kinds of emotions you have so that you balance both the emotions that bring you pleasure, but also, you're experiencing those kinds of feelings that really orient you outwards towards other people.

So, we think of these as other-oriented feelings. This could be love, this could be compassion. We've even found … that a sense of awe and wonder, the science is telling us that gets us out of ourselves, that gets us into the great beyond and actually makes us really connect with others in the greater world. So, I think it's about also experiencing those emotions that engage us with the world and engage us with other people.

I also have found that happiness isn't about just feeling positive. And in fact, we've done some work looking at the diverse … menu of feelings you can have as a human being. We're built with all kinds of feelings, including sadness and frustration, at times embarrassment.

Randall: Melancholy is my favorite.

Gruber: Melancholy, yeah.

Randall: It's my fave, and my kid at 2 years old: “Mama, my favorite word is melancholy.”

Gruber: Such a good word.

Randall: Yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm done parenting. I've arrived. But yeah, these other feelings that connect us to a sense of ourselves and outward.

Gruber: And the world as it is. So, that means if experiencing what we call emotional diversity. There are times when it's completely appropriate to feel angry at social injustice, at the world, you know, not going the way it could or optimally ought to be. And anger can motivate us to sort of push towards social change or, you know, behavioral change. There's times when embarrassment, we find that it actually can be completely all right. Although it can feel painful. When you feel embarrassed, other people like you more, they trust you more. They laugh.

CU Boulder researcher June Gruber the complexity of human emotions.

Randall: Yeah, they see your humility, humanity.

Gruber: So, happiness is about experiencing all the different … The palette of emotions we find.

Randall: What brought you to this work? I think, for myself, I spend so much time as an artist and as a writer being with, and I wonder what it's like to be with on a neurological level, on a scientific level. What brought you to be with happiness so deeply?

Gruber: Part of it's … I always wanted to be a writer when I was in high school. I loved English literature. I loved reading about human experience. And all of them, you know, whether I was reading, you know, 1984 or Lord of the Flies, or you know, it was just learning about the human mind. And I knew that I wanted to try to study it more deeply in a way that I could also bring in math and I could also bring in running experiments, like to do all the things to be able to understand happiness.

But what got me interested in this in particular, actually, was not a class, but I actually was an undergraduate and I was shadowing a psychiatrist through an inpatient unit in the psychiatry unit. And I was following her around as she went on her rounds from patient to patient. And I remember one patient that we stopped and visited, and it was a woman in sort of the acute throes of mania. And I had never seen anything like that before.

Randall: And it was probably terrifying.

Gruber: It was terrifying, and it was also absorbing because here she was in this very fragile part of her life, and at the same time she was laughing, she was exuberant. And I wanted to understand what that was about, because all I knew at that time from my classes was in the positive psychology movement where we were trying to foster happiness, we were trying to think positive thoughts. And this didn't fit with that, and I wondered what could it tell us?

Randall: You said a sentence earlier on ... about what really is. How do we be with what is and still find pleasure, wonder and not just happiness at that edge?

Gruber: As a mom with two little boys, I think all the time about like, we have this opportunity, we can teach children and teach them these things young so it becomes part of the foundation of who they are and what they think about their own feelings. I think about that, especially as a mom of two young boys, where we need to foster greater awareness of feelings and all of them in a world that hasn't always supported men experiencing all their feelings.

Randall: So, I want to get back to the story about the bystander experience.

June: What's so interesting about it is it's one of these things you learn early on, and that when we're in a group and something happens, especially someone, you know, maybe they're being robbed on the street, that people, if they don't have to be involved, they just turn an eye and walk away. And that's what we're told to understand and believe humans are about. And it always made me sad. It always made me feel sort of cynical about humanity. And I think this experience showed me that that doesn't have to be the case. Like, there's hope for humanity, especially in these times when it can feel so challenging … There’s still like, inherent human goodness.

Randall: Yes, especially when you feel danger in your body. So, you were traveling?

Gruber: I was traveling. I was in Sao Paulo (Brazil) with my friend Sabrina. We were teaching a course to students there on creativity and happiness. So, like where art and psychology meet. It was a dream.

And one night, we were leaving dinner, just she and I, and we were walking up the street. And out of just ... literally, it was the blink of an eye. I couldn't have even described having an opportunity to react right away because it happened so fast. Two men just pushed my friend to the side and pushed me to the ground.

Two men, out of nowhere, you know, middle aged, like solid. Solid people. They had pushed me to the ground. So, I was on the ground and I had been holding my phone. I shouldn't have been holding it out. And as I was just gripped to it. I don't even think in that moment I quite knew it was happening. But yeah, they were sort of both ... One was like pushing, pinning me down to the ground, and the other was just like striking me with his arms. And I was just in the moment, in a blur like, what is happening? How much worse is this going to get? I believed it was going to be a lot worse. And when is this going to end? That's all I could think.

And my friend Sabrina, who is a very kind, very gentle, not physically aggressive person at all. She was standing back and watching these two men over me. I'm on the ground. And just, just in a moment, I don't think she even thought twice. She went and just like whacked him. She kicked him hard. She does play soccer, so we think that helped. But she whacked him with a foot.

Randall: Wow, she put herself in.

Erika Randall hosts "The Ampersand" podcast, now in its second season.

Gruber: She did.

Randall: Into the mix.

Gruber: She put her own safety at risk. And I asked her about this: “Why did you do that? Thank you, but why did you do that?” And she said, “What else could I have done? You were in a dire situation and no one else was reacting. No one else was there in that moment.”

And she said, “I honestly didn't think twice.” And the man she kicked kind of lost his balance and stumbled back. And then they both just took off. I think they didn't want to mess with my friend or us anymore.

Randall: I don't want to mess with her either. I love it.

Gruber: Yeah. We were floored what happened after that because we thought that was sort of the end of the situation … We then, like, were standing there and suddenly a man down the street yelled, "They've got him, they've got him!" And we walked down the street and one of the men was there, and suddenly there was a whole barrage of police there.

Someone else came up to us asking how we were doing. Another guy drives by on a motorcycle, “I'm going to catch the second guy.”

Randall: Whoa, just the world sprang into action.

Gruber: We were sort of in a little bit of shock, but, you know, everyone kept coming up to check with us. Another person called our friend Paolo, who had been our host for this workshop. And he asked if he could come get us. Everyone in that moment checked in on how we were doing.

They ended up catching both of them… and then they tended to us. We went to the police station, and they took care of us. They checked in on us and they took us back to our hotel later that night at 2 in the morning.

Randall: And I bet every single human who was in that situation with you, and for you, didn't leave feeling happy, but they left feeling something.

Gruber: And that's exactly it. No one felt happy in that moment. To feel happy in that moment, I would think would have been toxic positivity, right? Like, it wouldn't have made sense in that moment. It would've meant someone was really out of touch or insensitive, in fact. No one felt happy but I think everyone felt connected and got a sense of what we talk about as purposeful.

Randall: I love that so much. A sense of connected and purposeful.

Listen to The Ampersand here, on Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Episode: Studying the best of humanity, even our darkest parts

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CU Boulder researcher June Gruber kicks off a new season of “The Ampersand” podcast in a conversation about all the feelings, not just the positive ones.

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