So, picture this: I’m having lunch with my dad, we’re mid-bite, chatting about David Carradine, and out of nowhere he says, “You don’t usually die that way.”

My dad’s a psychiatrist, by the way — which somehow makes that line both better and worse.

That comment sent me down a totally unexpected rabbit hole into his past life as a medical researcher… and, apparently, a minor expert on autoerotic asphyxiation. Yeah. My childhood suddenly made a lot more sense.

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Timestamped summary (use the chapters if you're on Apple Podcasts)

00:00 "Different, Not Broken Podcast"

05:00 "70s Study on Fatal Act"

07:34 Psychiatrists and Strange Stories

12:28 Navigating Awkward Social Transitions

13:15 Interjecting in Conversations Respectfully

16:50 "Celebrating Progress and Growth"

Mentioned in this episode:

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He died from autoerotic asphyxiation. And for my dad to say, huh,

you don't usually die that way. And I was like, at what

time you were considered

an academic expert on

autoerotic asphyxiation?

To which he said, I mean, it would have been all

sexual perversions. Now, that's what they called them at the time. We do not

call them that now. So anyway, that's how I learned that

my dad. Dad was a secondhand

expert on autoerotic asphyxiation and other

things that I need to never imagine my dad doing. All

right, here we go. I'm going to pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right.

Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,

everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. I go by L2. Yes,

you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's a long story. It's actually not that

long a story, but we'll save it for another time. Welcome to Different

Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.

That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken, and

the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.

No, well, actually, I was gonna say nobody was harmed in the making of the

story, but that's not actually true. I don't remember how

we got on the subject. I know we were sitting at lunch one day at

our office. I feel like

somebody maybe said, ladies can do stuff

now, which is obviously a

line that Danny Trejo. Obviously, everybody knows this, right? A line

that Danny Trejo says in Anchorman, which is one of my

favorite movies in the whole world. Funny enough, my dad,

who I usually had the same sense of humor as, hated Anchorman.

He hated it. He was like, it's the stupidest movie I've ever seen. And I

was like, yes, that's the point. I

think somebody said, ladies can do stuff now. To which I

said I was trying to remember who the actor was.

And I said, I always get Danny Trejo

confused with David Carradine. Why?

I don't know. There is almost nothing similar about those two

individuals, but this was not that long after

David Carradine had died. And

also, I could never remember the name David Carradine.

So I just called him Kung Fu Fighting, because

as far as I was concerned, that was his name. So

I said, man, I always get him confused with Kung Fu Fighting.

And my brother said, oh, David Carradine. And then

he made, like, the face, like, yeesh, because he had

recently passed away of an

autoerotic asphyxiation mishap. Was my

understanding. Now, these are not things that we ever would have had a

problem talking about in front of my dad. We talked about everything in front of

him. He was a psychiatrist. Nothing phased him. It was fine. There were no rules.

He basically asked, like, why didn't you guys both make that face at the mention

of David Carradine? And we said, well, he died recently. And he goes, oh, that's

it? And I was like, well, he died.

It is suspected that he died during autoerotic asphyxiation.

Which, when you say to your dad, you

maybe think that they're going to be like, oh. Or

blush or be like, let's not talk about that. Not that

I would have expected that from my dad, but I just. I expected the

reaction to be like, let's retreat from this conversation because we're eating lunch.

What I didn't expect to get from that

conversation was for me to say, well, he died from autoerotic asphyxiation.

And for my dad to say, huh, you don't usually die that way.

That pause that is nowhere near the length of the

pause. All head snapped toward him

and went, sorry, I'm gonna need

more context. Excuse me.

To which he explains that your body

has a mechanism basically so that you don't

choke and die when you are voluntarily choking

yourself, and that it is very rare to

die during that act, even during sex.

Oh, okay. And I was really scared to ask this next

question because this could go so many ways. He was

42 when he got married for the first time. There was plenty of time for

weird shit. Not that that's weird, if that's what makes you happy.

But it's weird when it's your dad. Even when your dad is my dad. I

think he, like, read the room and was like, I should probably explain more about

what's happening. He's like, no, I actually. I think he went

to say, like, I actually have experience in this. And then he, like, spout himself

and was like, wait. Wait.

And he goes, published a paper on this. In the

70s, there was a gentleman who filmed

himself at the time in the middle of that act,

who died while doing it. That he was studied

because, one, it wasn't supposed to happen, and two, it meant that there was a.

Like a brain mechanism that wasn't working correctly. And. And so I had a friend

who was a pathologist and I was the psychiatrist, and we did a joint

paper together on it and presented it at conferences,

to which I said, please, there's a guy

who made amateur pornography you

somehow found the video, watched it,

and took it to academic conferences. To which

he said, straight faced, I not only

watched it, I edited it. Now, mind you, this was in

the 70s, when editing video meant

physically looking at strips of film

that he had to physically chomp

and then reconnect so that he could

present this along with his paper. I

was just. I was mind blown. I could not. I was, I. I was.

I'm very rarely speechless, even today. I mean, this was like 15 years ago. I'm

still kind of speechless. I'm like, you did. You did what with who? You

did what with your best friend. That's strange.

So this leads me to say, how many conferences did you

take this to? And he goes, it was late 70s. It maybe. It probably was

a lot. He was like, we traveled the conference circuit for it with it for

like a year. And so it was a lot. And I was like,

at what time you were considered an

academic expert on

autoerotic asphyxiation? To which he

said, well, I mean, it would have been all sexual

perversions. Now that's what they called them at the time. We do not call

them that now. So I was like, so again,

I want to clarify. You at one point

were considered like the nation's

expert on, quote, unquote, sexual

perversions, to which he was just like, yeah, and

went back to eating a salad. And I just. To this day, it's one

of my favorite stories to tell because I still think it's hilarious and I can't

tell it without absolutely losing it. I also need to be

clear. Every psychiatrist is like that. There is not a

psychiatrist out there who is not a little bit batshit. And they

have stories that the rest of us are like, what?

And it's just normal to them because they deal with this all the time.

So anyway, that's how I learned that

my dad was a secondhand

expert on autoerotic asphyxiation

and other things that I need to never imagine my dad

doing. And the exhale of

relief that came out of my mouth when I

found out it was only because of his job

and that I wasn't about to get a story that I was gonna have to

bleach out of my mind's eye. I think I

started first thinking, like, what if we make a

tarot deck of. I don't, I don't remember. It was something,

like, very timely. And then the more of them that popped into my head, the

more that I was like, okay, what if this is the. Like, no one could

have predicted this deck? Well, the first one that I asked

for was a card for Sofa Lothario,

which is just J.D. vance. And that

one took a little bit of time to get to, but I was like, oh,

this is amazing. I tried to make one for Little Lord

Fuckalon, which, this is new because I've used it

twice before. Wants to make a picture of

Trump as Angela Bassett walking away from the burning car.

Except the burning car was a cyber truck and it let

me do that. And then another time to make

a picture of Donald Trump as Fanny brice

saying, Dear Mr. Arnstein, for the day of his

parade that was about to get rained out because don't rain on my parade,

obviously. So those are the only two times I'd ever used this before. Uh, so

it kept saying I wasn't allowed to make basically mean stuff

about real people. So I had to trick it into doing it, which I did

a couple times. But it would not make little Lloyd fuck along. It would not.

So I ended up with Dime Store Tony Stark, because it

would not let me make Temu Tony Stark, which I

tried. And it's a guy, I think he's in

a suit. Cause it wouldn't let me put him in a stupid hoodie, but he's

in a suit with a bunch of characterized Shiba Inu's behind him.

And the tarot decorations are all hidden rocket ships.

It's the things we never could have predicted deck. Supposedly, to make

a full tarot deck, you need like 76 cards or something. I don't actually

know anything about tarot. I just was like, this would be hilarious if it was

a tarot deck. And I think I have like 30 so far.

And they're very funny. Like, even I laugh. Like, I forget because you have

to make so many bad ones before it finally spits out one that's usable. So

then when I see the ones ones that I picked that were like, okay, this

is usable, they're hilarious because I'm like, oh, I forgot about this. And

like, I just do it. Like I'll be in a meeting and I'll just like

tell it. Like, make me a card that says. And like, nobody

knows that I'm making counterculture tarot cards while

we're making important decisions. So that's the thing. I'm not doing it right now,

but I could be. Then I was scrolling Instagram and I saw

somebody that explained how to make like a drop ship T shirt site on

Etsy. And it occurred to me that like, if I only make A

dollar per shirt, but I don't have to do anything for it.

That's fine. I set up a West Wing themed T shirt

shop on Etsy and made a bunch of shirt designs.

And I've always wanted to do this, but I've never been able to design

them. And now I have a way to design them. And I guess you have

like a 15 day window where you can't advertise yet on Etsy, so I have

to wait. But in the time that it's been up, which is only like two

days, I've already gotten like 12 site views and a bunch of favorites on

my shirts. So I feel very accomplished.

They're all like deep, deep West Wing jokes

that like, if you don't know the like actual show

inside and out, you will not get them at all. And

actually some of them aren't even really like jokes about the show. They're jokes about

jokes about the show. Like things that people say about the show that you have

to be a giant nerd to know. And I am in

fact a giant nerd.

And now we'll go to Alison, who has this week's

small talk. Okay, so our question today

is. I've always wondered when the right time

to enter a conversation is. It's something I've

struggled with my whole life. Any ideas are

appreciated. That's a really good question. And also something

that I'm not sure that I've mastered. But I only say that because I don't

know that anybody has. Depends on the type of conversation. It depends

on if people know that you're hanging out. It depends on how personal

it is. Part of what sounds right to me

is accepting that this is going to be an awkward

transition. I'm the type of awkward person that if I know something's going to be

awkward, I just draw attention to how awkward it is, which usually deflates the

situation and like, makes people feel more okay with it,

like better with the transition. So like, if there was a conversation that

I wanted to pipe in on and

people were standing near me talking and I jumped in, which I don't usually

do because you people. But I would probably be like, okay,

so this is super awkward, but. And then just jump in there and

add what I'm thinking. And that actually is probably a really

strong transition. Now if you're talking about a professional conversation

and people know that you're there, they're just not

really including you. Like they're, they're going back and forth. You could say something

like, can I just pipe in here because I think there's something you're not

considering. But if there's a right time, that's

hard to say without knowing what the other individuals are talking

about. And the reason I say that is if they're having, like, a private, personal

conversation, there probably isn't a right time. Unless you're going

to draw attention to the fact that you are maybe overstepping a

boundary there. Like, if somebody's having a private personal conversation, you happen

to overhear it and you realize that they're making a giant mistake, or this

is something you have deep experience with and you really want to help,

you can make the choice that you are going to interject

and then just say, so sorry, I don't know that this is any of my

business, but this is my background and I would love. If you're okay with it,

I would love to share these things. And then they may just invite you in.

But there's also a world where they're having a private personal conversation

and you're not supposed to jump in, and that's okay, too, because that's their conversation.

I think if you're in, like, a room full of people

and there are two people who are dominating the conversation and you have something to

add and you're expected to participate, then you can jump in at almost any time.

And there are ways that, you know, don't interrupt anybody,

don't talk over anybody unless they're being rude to you, in which

case, go for it. But wait for a brief

pause. If you're like me, you have to, like, repeat the thing that you want

to say over and over because it will fly away as soon as you stop.

So that's a thing. But just wait for a brief pause and then say,

just so I can pipe in here. Or also, I wanted to add, all of

that is fine. I think maybe the point is

trying to not make it awkward when it has the potential to be awkward

anyway, just prolongs the awkwardness and probably makes you

more anxious. Like, if you just address that up front, like, I'm piping in here

and you maybe didn't ask my opinion, it's probably way simpler than it feels.

Just like, imagine like, you're driving along and everything's fine, and then you

almost miss your turn and you have to veer off really quickly. But then you

stabilize once you're on the turn and now you're moving in the right direction.

That's kind of what you're doing. And, like, there are times when that is

disastrous. But nine times out of 10, it's fine. It's just a little

uncomfortable while you're making the turn. And so that's kind of what you're doing.

Can I guarantee that everybody is going to have, you know, a

great response and welcome you in? Not really, because who knows

what they're thinking. But if it's something that you are comfortable interjecting

in, if it's a conversation that you are welcomed into, if it's a conversation that

you think you can find a place in, if it's a conversation that

affects you or that you have some interest in

and you want to make sure that you're heard in

that it is perfectly acceptable to jump in. And

my trick, whether this is right or wrong, my trick is if it's gonna be

awkward, like, immediately make it awkward. Let them know that this is awkward. You're

recognizing that. Soften the blow and then jump in with what you need, and

then you can bounce out whenever that's appropriate. Thanks for being here, guys.

Have a good day. Love you, Mina.

Okay, so this is interesting. You're actually on the main health

chart, right?

I was only checking the mental health charts.

I'm on the health and seven on the health and wellness

charts. On the very front chart.

Holy. Now that is something to celebrate because that basically means

you've gone through the mental health bit and you've

qualified for. Actually, this is such a big show in that chart.

It's gonna surface to the main chart. Now, those that. Wait,

where you just said in hell. If I search healthcare. So if you go into

the health. So if you go into the homepage of Apple Podcasts.

Yeah. Go to charts and then you select health.

Top shows health and fitness. That's where we are. Oh, top

charts. There we go. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So the health

and fitness main chart. Top shows health and fitness. Got it.

Holy. It's 167. Yeah.

That is pretty huge. That For a

long time with anybody, to be honest. That's holy.