Looking Back on Words of Wellness
Episode number
13
How has our exploration of the rhetoric of wellness shaped our own practices? What are some of the highlights of the semester? What have we learned?
Transcript
00;00;10;09 - 00;00;32;22
Dan
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast where we consider the ways people write, speak and think about wellness. I'm Daniel Anderson and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, we will be recording our final podcast of the series and we'll be looking back on the year, seeing what we've covered, what we've enjoyed, what we didn't like so much.
00;00;33;01 - 00;00;37;24
Dan
And I have four guests to talk us through the process. Let me allow them to introduce themselves.
00;00;38;24 - 00;00;44;08
Helena
I am Helena. I am a freshman at UNC, taking the rhetoric of wellness.
00;00;44;24 - 00;00;46;18
Dorian
I'm Dorian.
00;00;46;18 - 00;00;47;15
Vasishta
I'm Vasishta.
00;00;47;29 - 00;00;48;29
Cindy
And I'm Cindy.
00;00;49;20 - 00;01;01;20
Dan
Welcome to all of you. I've so much enjoyed this class and I'm interested in your insights on it. Could we just start if you want to just share a little bit about your experiences, What was your experience like studying the rhetoric of wellness?
00;01;02;19 - 00;01;25;15
Cindy
When I came into the class, I didn't really know what to expect because previously all my experience with analyzing rhetoric was in a more general sense, like an English class. So I wasn't really sure how there could be a whole like subgenre of rhetoric concerning wellness. So it was really cool to just explore that and just learn a little bit more about how rhetoric can be applied to different things.
00;01;26;11 - 00;01;48;05
Vasishta
Yeah, I think in large part, a lot of us, especially in high school and even at the start of college, we spent a lot of time only analyzing stories and, and, like, famous books or something. Whereas in this class we more got a chance to analyze rhetoric of something in a more casual setting, like BuzzFeed articles or informally written self-help books.
00;01;48;16 - 00;02;14;20
Dorian
Yeah. I thought the the rhetoric was definitely noticeably different from high school to this type of work we were studying in this class. It's hard to put a finger on how exactly it was different, but it definitely felt like it was much more casual. But for the the stuff we studied in this class was created for the whole public to be able to easily consume.
00;02;14;25 - 00;02;29;28
Dorian
I feel like instead of for professionals studying wellness or not, not the whole category, I don't want to throw it all out, but it seems like a lot of wellness literature that's available for the public is designed to be easily digestible.
00;02;30;25 - 00;02;55;27
Helena
Yeah. I also second what Cindy said. I didn't really know what to expect coming into this class. In high school. I really loved reading self-help books and wellness books, but I've never really thought about it or analyzed it critically. So like in this class, being able to analyze it, I kind of realized a lot of the rhetoric and mechanisms that went into these books that make it so effective and easily consumable for the readers.
00;02;56;05 - 00;02;59;22
Helena
And we can definitely touch more on the specific things.
00;03;00;09 - 00;03;17;20
Dan
Yeah, that makes sense. So I'm hearing that what you encountered in this literature around wellness was an easy access kind of modality in the rhetoric. It was all pitched in a way that people could digest it simply. Now, do you think that's something that's particularly important with wellness topics?
00;03;18;11 - 00;03;49;24
Dorian
I think that wellness is such an important topic for everyone to improve in their lives. I think we all could benefit from being more spiritually well. So I think that by making the rhetoric accessible to the large amount of people that they're trying to cast their net as wide as possible and get people into wellness and then they can take further steps on their own to more deeply investigate the literature, which is what we did with the book reviews.
00;03;50;06 - 00;04;15;03
Dorian
And then you can, if you want to go really far, do the analysis of the words like we did, which didn't necessarily show us anything that we didn't already know for our group specifically, at least for my book. I can't speak for you guys, but I could definitely see the analysis of rhetoric with software being superimposed into categorizing a book.
00;04;15;08 - 00;04;40;29
Helena
And then going off of that. I think that when thinking about who is consuming wellness content, it's mostly for people that are kind of in a place where they want to pursue wellness. And I think that it's really hard for laymen or people that don't really know about wellness to read a long article about science and neuroscience and really get in depth with the scientific side of wellness.
00;04;40;29 - 00;05;05;10
Helena
So I think lots of the wellness books and the articles we read, a conclusion that I kind of came to was they kind of simplified a lot of these complicated and abstract concepts through the use of metaphors and other things to break down such an abstract concept. So as someone who wants to find a solution, they feel like it's more achievable and easier to consume.
00;05;05;18 - 00;05;31;12
Vasishta
Yeah, I also feel that it's very important to have this kind of concision and like, easily digestible quality in one US literature. If somebody is trying to really learn more about, like, the science behind wellness or maybe like the neurochemistry that goes on in your brain, then they can go and read a research paper. But this kind of more simple way to digest this information is, I think, really important when your only goal is to try and help people better themselves.
00;05;31;28 - 00;05;54;29
Cindy
Yeah, going off of that, I think like everyone can benefit from learning more about wellness and it's something that affects everyone in some way, whereas something like a research paper is something that only people in academia would be interested in, which is why wellness things have such generalized language to appeal to like everyone instead of just one specific audience.
00;05;54;29 - 00;06;17;27
Dan
I appreciate everything you're saying. I think the point about metaphors jumps out to me because it's been a focus of the class for a while, and I feel like there's many ways in which a metaphor is useful for simplifying and taking an abstract concept and making it digestible for people. But when it comes to wellness, there were so many common metaphors that came up over and over and over.
00;06;18;04 - 00;06;29;06
Dan
So I'm wondering if there's something a little bit distinct about metaphors when it comes to this wellness literature, as opposed to someone saying, you know, cooking is like a scientific experiment.
00;06;29;15 - 00;06;50;02
Helena
As someone who read a lot of wellness books before this class, I realized that when I was reading the books, before I analyzed it, I kind of accepted lots of these metaphors and overlooked them. I never really thought twice about it. But I think one thing that really stood out was in the beginning of the class, we kind of broke down a lot of the metaphors into big categories.
00;06;50;02 - 00;07;14;03
Helena
So some of the main metaphors that we saw were ones that were grounded in nature and ones that were grounded in motion, which are all things that are kind of a natural force that we are used to. So I think that one metaphor was like emotions kind of roll like a roller coaster. They go up and down, and I think that emotions itself without the metaphor is a very abstract concept.
00;07;14;03 - 00;07;34;18
Helena
When we're talking about wellness, it's very hard to picture. What does emotions look like because you can't really visualize it. But then thinking about motion is something that we can easily visualize. It breaks down this abstract concept and makes whatever the author is trying to say about emotions a lot easier to consume.
00;07;35;01 - 00;07;55;27
Vasishta
I think at the same time that authors who use metaphors walk kind of like a very fine line. Like Helena said, it's definitely important to use them to try to break down a complex topic or an abstract topic so readers can understand. But at the same time, they have to be very careful to make sure that whatever metaphor they use or whatever point they make with it isn't like oversimplifying or misrepresenting the situation. Like it's very easy for a metaphor to turn into something that doesn't really apply to the concept they’re trying to explain using it.
00;08;03;15 - 00;08;29;20
Dorian
Yeah, definitely. All metaphors are going to break down at some point because it's not the same thing. So there's going to be differences. So it's picking the best metaphors. Which can go the longest without breaking down. And I think that an example with the roller coaster would be, yeah, that would be great if if our two emotions were happy and sad and you just oscillated between the two, but you know, there's probably hundreds of emotions.
00;08;29;20 - 00;08;37;13
Dorian
So that metaphor is a great visual cue, but maybe not so helpful for understanding the science clearly.
00;08;38;12 - 00;08;59;04
Dan
In some ways. I think that's part of the challenge with this topic of wellness self-help. There's formulas, people come up with. So, you know, focus on the present. Don't compare yourself to other people and you can simplify things, but life is never a formula where you just add a to B and suddenly that's going to solve the problem.
00;08;59;04 - 00;09;03;09
Dan
The metaphors are useful, but at some point they they can't do the actual work.
00;09;03;18 - 00;09;22;07
Vasishta
Yeah. And also like kind of talking about this, this kind of simple formula not being a good representation, I felt like this was kind of the biggest issue I had with the five item article that we worked on at the beginning. Like I felt like a lot of what we ended up writing and a lot of what we ended up reading to practice for that, it became sort of like they were trying to just give you a formula to improve your life. Like for my article I wrote about confidence. And when I was reading articles like try to get a feel for what the space was like, it ended up being a lot of articles on on BuzzFeed or just like other tabloid sites where they would just say, if you do one, two, three, four and five, then like, your life will be perfect. You'll be like this confident adonis who will waltz through life. And that's really just like not how it works, right?
00;09;51;17 - 00;10;14;04
Cindy
Yeah, I kind of had the same problem I wrote about identity and how it can affect your confidence. And instead of trying to come up with solutions for the reader, I tried to find articles that explained why identity as opposed to confidence or vice versa, and then write an article based on that to let the reader kind of like think about their own solution and what they want to do to improve.
00;10;14;14 - 00;10;46;23
Dorian
On the topic of confidence, there's no clear cut path to improving your confidence. It's a very personal thing. So if you are looking for BuzzFeed or an article to tell you how to become more confident, you probably will never become more confident because BuzzFeed probably doesn't know your life very well. But I think that identity is a huge part of confidence and it's how you see yourself that really matters.
00;10;46;29 - 00;10;58;15
Dorian
I think that's probably the only thing that determines confidence, honestly, is the stories you tell yourself about who you are and how you fit into your environment.
00;10;58;24 - 00;11;23;23
Helena
Which I think kind of goes into like a general theme that we found in the wellness space is it's obviously not very personal and in a way very much oversimplifies something that should be more personal. So I think that lots of the wellness things that we consume are more of a Segway that allows people to explore the wellness realm and kind of dip their toes into it.
00;11;23;23 - 00;11;31;04
Helena
But it's not a great way for people to actually make concrete changes in their life because it is pretty general.
00;11;31;18 - 00;11;56;29
Dan
I like that. And listeners who go back and experiment with one or two of these podcasts will see that these topics of self-confidence overlap with topics like self compassion and identity. There's a whole lot of some aspects of wellness that if you really needed to drill down into them and you'd have to be deliberate about it, you can't just say, I'm going to study wellness and in this blanket way, get some simple formulas.
00;11;57;08 - 00;12;16;05
Dan
I like the way that you're coming up with an analysis of the online aspects of wellness, because I feel like that is sort of a take away is they simplify things a little bit too much. Let me ask about other aspects of the class. Were there any things that jumped out at you as particularly enjoyable or things that you didn't like so much?
00;12;17;12 - 00;12;43;10
Cindy
I really liked making the wellness videos at the end of class because I feel like previously we had just analyzed or written our own articles with only words. So introducing this kind of new format of videos was interesting in a way, and like pairing my message with videos that could like enhance. It was something that I think will help me in any discipline later in life.
00;12;43;29 - 00;13;05;08
Vasishta
Yeah, I've never really, I mean, personally, I've never really been a huge fan of multimedia projects, but I think that it provided a really valuable introduction to the way people actually make these kinds of videos. You know, you end up seeing a lot of them online when just going through social media or anything. But I guess I never really thought about, like, the process that went into making them and what kinds of messages people had to think about sending and making these videos.
00;13;06;10 - 00;13;30;26
Dorian
Yeah, I also think that the video, the multi-media stuff is a good analogy for wellness as a whole, because it's not just about the text, it's about the music and the the transitions and it's all these small little details that come together to make something that's bigger than the sum of its parts, and it can't really be rationalized.
00;13;30;26 - 00;13;37;12
Dorian
And you just have to put everything together and use your own judgment to curate something.
00;13;38;07 - 00;14;12;12
Helena
Personally, for me, I actually really liked analyzing the books because I think before when I was reading books, I never really thought about the rhetoric and like the language used behind it. So kind of like us analyzing how effective the book was. I kind of went back to the general theme that I drew from it was that the effectiveness and the consume ability of the book also came down to the instant gratification that the book kind of provided, which I also then found was a general theme and a lot of the other wellness texts that we consumed earlier on in the year.
00;14;12;14 - 00;14;30;19
Dan
And looking back on the books, I feel like there were two different types of things that came out of the book. Some of them were delivering scientific concepts. There were some that were more research oriented, and then there were some that were guide books that had exercises parts in the book where you can fill in, do worksheet, these kinds of things.
00;14;30;29 - 00;14;40;15
Dan
Did you notice that there was an overlap? One is information and the other is application. How do those two areas come together in these books?
00;14;41;12 - 00;15;10;22
Helena
So for my book, it kind of talked about meditation and Buddhism. So I think most of the wellness books, I can't say for all, but at least for mine, very well integrated those two aspects. It distilled down many of the main concepts of Buddhism and then talked about the importance of meditation, but throughout the book would kind of provide guided meditations and chants or things you can say to yourself throughout the day.
00;15;10;27 - 00;15;20;28
Helena
So as you're learning about the science and the importance of meditation, it's also guiding you and providing you an instant way that you can practice that yourself, which I thought was very interesting.
00;15;21;12 - 00;15;48;28
Dorian
Yeah, my my book was actually called Integral Meditation, and it was really interesting because it suggested that when you're meditating, you alternate between periods of pure awareness. So 5 minutes of just focusing on your breath and then 5 minutes of deep psychological introspection. So what issues am I struggling with in my life, what could the root causes of those possibly be?
00;15;48;28 - 00;16;12;06
Dorian
And what are some things I can do to address those? And it it described human life as being organized into these developmental stages. So you go from being an infant where you depended on your mother and then you learn to depend on yourself, and then you learn to depend on others, and then you learn to depend on the world as a whole system.
00;16;12;06 - 00;16;51;27
Dorian
And so it's the work of integral meditation. And my book was combining the pure awareness, cultivating that strength to be able to focus on one thing for an extended amount of time, and then pairing that new strength with directed application in your own life to advance through these levels and develop a broader consciousness. So I thought that was a good pairing of the more abstract awareness meditation concepts with the hard, practical get stuff done rational processes.
00;16;52;12 - 00;17;02;13
Dan
I want to go back to the videos for a second, and I think one way to do this I'm going to play a clip from Claire from our class, who was reflecting on the process of creating the videos as well.
00;17;03;11 - 00;17;22;18
Cindy
How we're posting. It's a very broad topic. It's not necessarily like posting about ourselves. It's posting about a topic such as like mental health or like physical health, nutrition, all that stuff. I feel like it's definitely interesting to take a step back when I'm posting these videos. I'm like, okay, like, I'm not like, Oh, do I look good in this like that?
00;17;22;18 - 00;17;34;25
Cindy
Like, it's just, is this the message that I'm trying to get across? Like, it very is a very disconnect from thinking about myself and more thinking about like the message I'm sending through this video because it's not centered around me.
00;17;35;15 - 00;17;52;25
Dan
I found that surprising in that I felt like the videos were reasonably personal. Claire is talking about how the videos actually let you step aside from the personal and the self to do something that's adjacent to it. Ah Brad, did you have that same experience or what can you say to Claire's description?
00;17;53;02 - 00;18;19;16
Vasishta
I mean, I'm not really sure about this dichotomy between talking about myself versus taking a step aside, but I definitely do feel like these wellness videos were kind of very impersonal. It's not really like something that came from the depths of my emotion. It's more just what kinds of wellness, what kinds of messages about what it's going to send across and how can I, like, strategize my video and its content, including like text and video and music to do that. It's not really something that I thought about, like, this should be personal to me.
00;18;23;21 - 00;18;59;29
Helena
I think the wellness space in general, it's almost kind of like a public service platform where a lot of the videos, a lot of the even text, not just videos, is kind of centered to help whoever the consumer is. And I think that's also what makes the space so unique. So going back to the concept that we just talked about with the application of science and application into real life, I think that a difference between some of the wellness things that we read versus like a nonfiction or fiction is when you're reading nonfiction, you might be very focused on the subject.
00;19;00;07 - 00;19;19;05
Helena
When you're reading a fictional book, you might be really interested in the plot, but when you're consuming wellness content, you're moreso reflecting on your own life and your own behaviors. So as you're reading it, you're also thinking about yourself. And I think in that way, when we created those videos, at least for me, I was thinking about the audience.
00;19;19;05 - 00;19;24;28
Helena
What are they thinking as they're watching my video and what reflection would they have while they're watching my video?
00;19;25;23 - 00;19;58;22
Dorian
Yeah, I don't think you can take yourself completely out of these videos because like Helena has said, you are ultimately putting yourself in the shoes of someone watching them and then using what you know about yourself to think, what would they think? But I think that when you are able to separate yourself from the creative process and your ego's not involved in it, you can produce more, maybe not better products because that's subjective, but.
00;19;59;17 - 00;20;01;08
Helena
Like empathetic in a way.
00;20;01;13 - 00;20;16;14
Dorian
Yeah, like it's not it's not all about you anymore. I think the shift in focus from what would I like to what would they like is important, but it's still going to be colored by your own biases because we're stuck in our own heads.
00;20;16;17 - 00;20;36;27
Cindy
Yeah, I think creating the videos was personal in a way that was very different from regular social media because I was thinking about how I want to get my message across to people without putting myself in the content. So like posting on Instagram, I'll always be thinking about like, will people like it, do I look good in it?
00;20;36;27 - 00;20;43;29
Cindy
But with this, with these wellness videos, I was only thinking about the audience and how they would respond to my message.
00;20;44;14 - 00;21;02;05
Vasishta
Yeah, maybe I should rephrase my point a little bit. It wasn't really personal to me as the creator of the video. I wasn't really too concerned with what the audience would think about me and, more like, what message would they take away from it? So when I was creating it, I guess I had more to think of myself as the audience and if I were watching this video, what would I think?
How would I feel more then, how would I feel about the creator, who is me?
00;21;06;26 - 00;21;28;15
Dan
Let me extend this a little bit by asking about posting those on YouTube. And in some ways, everything in this class has a public aspect to it. We have a website that's not locked down. We're going to put these podcasts online. You've got videos online now. Has the public nature of the work that we're doing been a major factor in your thinking?
00;21;28;15 - 00;21;34;23
Dan
Has it influenced you at all? What can we say about the fact that this is not just a locked up classroom in which we're working?
00;21;34;23 - 00;21;52;21
Vasishta
To me, it's honestly, like, not made much of a difference just because, like when I'm posting this video on YouTube, realistically, no one's watching it except me and the people in our class. Or when I'm, like, anything that we post on the Rhetoric of Wellness website, it's not really being viewed by anyone else. Like, if I want to, maybe I'll, if I'm really part of an article I wrote, maybe I'll show it to a friend. But like, no one, just a random person on the internet is going to come across this, I feel like. And maximum maybe one or two people do. It's not really made a lot of difference, at least to me.
00;22;02;19 - 00;22;24;11
Dorian
Just the pure fact that it could though posting on on YouTube you know stuff could for whatever reason get picked up by an algorithm or something. People like it. You do definitely have to think, at least for a little bit about, you know, is this acceptable to post for the world to see if the world were to see it?
00;22;24;11 - 00;22;41;04
Dorian
So I think that that's good practice for when we actually are creating stuff that the world might see if any of us do. It's it's sort of a low stakes immersion in the public domain, which I think is really good right now.
00;22;41;04 - 00;23;04;26
Dan
We're talking into these microphones, recording a podcast. And in addition to the social media we've studied and the books we've studied and the videos that we've created, podcasting has been a major aspect of the course. I spoke with Elise from our course about ten days ago and asked her to help me record some thoughts about the podcasting, and I thought I'd play what she had to offer and see if you have any thoughts on that.
00;23;05;13 - 00;23;26;21
Cindy
As a student, it really helped me grow because I found that I've been in school for 13 years now in the public education system and we learn so much about how to read and how to write, but we don't really learn how to listen or even speak to it to a certain extent. And so doing the podcast was a really novel experience, and even now we have no notes in front of us, right?
00;23;26;21 - 00;23;43;08
Cindy
We're just, you know, going off what we think. And that's that's such an important skill to have just in life in general. And it was very interesting to me because I was afraid going into the podcast that we wouldn't be able to build off a conversation or I wouldn't know what to say. Things like that. And it really flowed so naturally.
00;23;43;08 - 00;23;47;21
Cindy
And that was a shocker for me, honestly, because I had never done it before.
00;23;48;17 - 00;23;52;12
Dan
Does your experience square with Elisa's when it comes to doing the podcasting?
00;23;53;20 - 00;24;31;28
Helena
Absolutely. Honestly, going into this class, I didn't know what to expect with podcasting, but I think it's probably my favorite part of this class because I think I agree with Elise. Like, we kind of grow up in school learning how to read and write and we have classroom discussions, but actually recording a podcast, having to like, file down your thoughts, make it concise, and then also see it in a way that like other people that might listen to this, can understand and then balancing the nature of having a conversation and the flow of the podcast made me learn a lot more about like listening and then how to like, respond to question ends and reflect
00;24;31;28 - 00;24;36;26
Helena
on what I learned or reflect on the questions in a more improvised way.
00;24;37;16 - 00;24;55;06
Vasishta
Yeah, I think another important part of it is that these podcasts are in like such small groups. Like none of the groups in the class have more than four or five people in high school. Like throughout high school, we had these kind of class discussions, but these were sort of like 25, 30 or even 40 people. And you know, and they were led by a teacher, and no one really wanted to talk. No one really wanted to listen. We're all just there to stay for 40 minutes and leave. Whereas in this like smaller group aspect, it's like we're all able to think about the topic a lot more. And you know, with only four people, we all have to talk a lot more as well.
00;25;09;15 - 00;25;18;27
Vasishta
You know, for whatever time we have. And so we're all forced to think, like, I guess more critically about whatever topics at hand instead of just saying our one things get credit for talking.
00;25;19;01 - 00;25;37;14
Cindy
Yeah, having a small group setting makes it feel a lot more natural to discuss things and just talk about things in general, which is something that I really appreciate about this podcast because like having a big class discussion is just not the same because you're always thinking about what other people will think about what you say and second guessing yourself.
00;25;38;10 - 00;26;10;06
Dorian
Yeah, there's nowhere to run in a four person podcast. You got to actually have high quality thoughts and be able to communicate them effectively. Otherwise it's going to be pretty evident. So I think that's a feature of podcasts, not a bug, because that really forces you to clarify, distill down your thoughts. And I like the long form too, because you can get 100 times more information than you ever could and a five item article on BuzzFeed or something like that.
00;26;10;06 - 00;26;13;04
Dorian
So I love I love doing this.
00;26;13;04 - 00;26;22;26
Vasishta
I think also it's a lot less intimidating to do it in this kind of setting. You know, there's five of us here for, say, something that maybe isn't a good point. We can just move past it. I'm not really scared of being judged by anyone.
00;26;23;21 - 00;26;42;04
Helena
And I think the pressure of being in a podcast makes you enhance your thoughts and think more critically about what you're going to say, because in a classroom discussion, you can try it ten times, you can go on a rant, you can kind of hide behind other people. But in the podcast you're exposed. Other people are listening to the podcast, not just people in your classroom.
00;26;42;08 - 00;26;48;08
Helena
So it definitely makes you critically think about what you're going to say and how that ebbs and flows with the other people.
00;26;48;20 - 00;27;29;08
Dorian
I want to say something real quick. This reminds me of the classroom discussion which is making me think of U.S. politics. When you have 330 million people in a classroom and everybody's trying to talk over each other, people just polarize, and then no one hears anything. So I think smaller group discussions with the smartest people who are actually genuinely trying to produce positive results, if people can actually agree on metrics of what those positive results would be, it might be a possible positive political change.
00;27;29;11 - 00;27;39;23
Dorian
But I feel like we're in a classroom discussion in the current state of things. So I think podcasting is really important for a cultural shift.
00;27;40;03 - 00;27;53;23
Dan
That makes sense. And would it be fair to say it's easier to get some depth? MM You have a longer extended discussion, maybe less shouting, smaller crowd. You are able to talk about topics. Yeah.
00;27;54;04 - 00;28;25;13
Helena
Absolutely. I think like in class, even though I think our class itself, when we're in the classroom setting, we also have discussions, but it's very much kind of like popcorn based. Like when we're answering, we're answering in one or two sentences because nobody wants to talk for like 20 minutes and, you know, waste the entire class away. But I think in a way, like being able to be in this small group setting, we can really share the depth of our thoughts, dive deep into the analysis of the different topics We explored, our takeaways, which I think is so interesting.
00;28;25;13 - 00;28;53;16
Dan
One of the things I like about what you're saying and what Elise was pointing to is that you learn things that you're not expecting to learn. So I came into this podcasting experiment thinking it's going to help with speaking, but I've learned to be a much better listener, and I think that's like an unexpected outcome. I've also found listening to the podcast that I have ways of talking that I am totally unconscious about saying and that people are always doing that, that kind of discussion.
00;28;53;16 - 00;29;22;26
Dan
But but it's helped me to change my practice. I think of talking with people, even though that wasn't the outcome. The outcome was to record something about a topic related to wellness. I got these adjacent results of it, which I thought was really valuable in some ways. So that leads me to my final question, which is how has studying the rhetoric of wellness and the ways people think and write and talk about wellness impacted your own understandings or attitudes toward wellness?
00;29;24;05 - 00;29;46;06
Dorian
So I'm trying to implement as many of these practices into my own life as I can that we've been exposed to in this class and something that keeps coming up for me is in the first week or first couple of weeks of class, you talked about all of these metaphors have a common theme of like going up or going down.
00;29;46;27 - 00;30;12;07
Dorian
And I used a spiral staircase as an example because it can really quickly get out of control and I think that by that same token, if you get the key metrics right, you can really quickly spiral upwards as well. So I think it's it really comes down to putting in the hard work to take an honest look at yourself.
00;30;12;07 - 00;30;39;29
Dorian
And I mean, there's all these practices and you can do them, you can meditate for as long as you want, but that awareness doesn't mean anything until you put it into practice. Studying the rhetoric of wellness has taught me that as much as you can study the rhetoric of wellness, the true meaning is where are you headed in life and what are you going to do to make those things happen?
00;30;40;22 - 00;31;13;25
Cindy
I think this class has definitely changed or impacted how I think about my own wellness. Just like subconsciously when I've been working on like the five item articles or the wellness videos or just reading the side readings in class. I was just been picking up little things in ways that people use to describe wellness and applying it to my own life and going off of that and has also impacted how I talk to other people about wellness because it's such a common topic and it's something that impacts everyone.
00;31;13;25 - 00;31;22;24
Cindy
I think I learned how to better communicate about it and just talk about my thoughts to like my friends or family.
00;31;22;24 - 00;31;47;27
Helena
I think going off of that, I was really surprised that after consuming so much wellness literature, I kind of realized how generalized it is and how publicized it is. And in a way it oversimplifies a lot of the concepts. I think I'm more aware now when I'm consuming wellness content to dive deeper into whatever they're offering by doing more research on my own.
00;31;48;06 - 00;32;11;17
Helena
And then when it comes to application, I think the wellness space is so overcrowded with these like instant gratification and instant like solutions that in a way I realize lots of the wellness content I previously consumed. The reason it hasn't really made a big difference in my life is because it's very overwhelming and it's hard to implement, you know, 20 things at the same time.
00;32;11;17 - 00;32;18;16
Helena
So I think I've become more selective when it comes to wellness content and being more critical about what I consume.
00;32;18;25 - 00;32;35;12
Vasishta
For me, it kind of had the opposite effect. Like I think I came into this class on kind of the other end of the spectrum. Like I pretty much thought all wellness, quote unquote, science was just like nonsense science. And, you know, not, not, not really useful to anyone, but I think in part that's still like there's still some merit to that claim.
00;32;35;12 - 00;32;57;03
Vasishta
Like a lot of wellness content is wrought with pseudoscience and like, bad assumptions. But, you know, there are definitely, there is like some truth to what wellness literature is saying. Like it's definitely backed by some kind of science. And even though it's not always clear, like what advice is good and what is bad, like, I think I've learned and taken away that there is some value in wellness literature that can be implemented in my own life and lives of others.
00;32;57;20 - 00;33;42;01
Dorian
And I think the key distinction Vasishta just touched on was that science will never be able to fully encompass the field of wellness because it is there's a spiritual aspect to it that I don't think logical systems or models will ever be able to fully capture. And I think that relying too heavily on peer reviewed scientific literature before we implement certain wellness practices in our lives is hurting ourselves as a collective community of people that we shouldn't over depend on scientific proof.
00;33;43;25 - 00;34;20;24
Dan
I really appreciate the points that you're making, and it's giving me some insights into the entire course that we've been through. There's been a lot of rather than but a lot of and so wellness, it is scientific and it's spiritual. There's always overlap and there's a lot of gray areas that we've been talking about. One of the things that we began the semester with was thinking about gratitude, and there was some scientific aspects to it, but also just some kind of practical common sense aspects of let's take a minute and be thankful for what's going on.
00;34;21;03 - 00;34;43;21
Dan
So I think that's an appropriate way for us to close out the term by. Let me just say thank you to Cindy, a sister, Dorian and Helena today, and also to every member of the course. I've learned so much over the last 15 weeks, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. So for everyone listening, this, I guess, is the conclusion of our first season of our podcast series.
00;34;44;10 - 00;34;57;03
Dan
But I hope to have you back for for many more. Thank you, everyone.
Dan
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Words of Wellness, the podcast where we consider the ways people write, speak and think about wellness. I'm Daniel Anderson and we're coming to you from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, we will be recording our final podcast of the series and we'll be looking back on the year, seeing what we've covered, what we've enjoyed, what we didn't like so much.
00;00;33;01 - 00;00;37;24
Dan
And I have four guests to talk us through the process. Let me allow them to introduce themselves.
00;00;38;24 - 00;00;44;08
Helena
I am Helena. I am a freshman at UNC, taking the rhetoric of wellness.
00;00;44;24 - 00;00;46;18
Dorian
I'm Dorian.
00;00;46;18 - 00;00;47;15
Vasishta
I'm Vasishta.
00;00;47;29 - 00;00;48;29
Cindy
And I'm Cindy.
00;00;49;20 - 00;01;01;20
Dan
Welcome to all of you. I've so much enjoyed this class and I'm interested in your insights on it. Could we just start if you want to just share a little bit about your experiences, What was your experience like studying the rhetoric of wellness?
00;01;02;19 - 00;01;25;15
Cindy
When I came into the class, I didn't really know what to expect because previously all my experience with analyzing rhetoric was in a more general sense, like an English class. So I wasn't really sure how there could be a whole like subgenre of rhetoric concerning wellness. So it was really cool to just explore that and just learn a little bit more about how rhetoric can be applied to different things.
00;01;26;11 - 00;01;48;05
Vasishta
Yeah, I think in large part, a lot of us, especially in high school and even at the start of college, we spent a lot of time only analyzing stories and, and, like, famous books or something. Whereas in this class we more got a chance to analyze rhetoric of something in a more casual setting, like BuzzFeed articles or informally written self-help books.
00;01;48;16 - 00;02;14;20
Dorian
Yeah. I thought the the rhetoric was definitely noticeably different from high school to this type of work we were studying in this class. It's hard to put a finger on how exactly it was different, but it definitely felt like it was much more casual. But for the the stuff we studied in this class was created for the whole public to be able to easily consume.
00;02;14;25 - 00;02;29;28
Dorian
I feel like instead of for professionals studying wellness or not, not the whole category, I don't want to throw it all out, but it seems like a lot of wellness literature that's available for the public is designed to be easily digestible.
00;02;30;25 - 00;02;55;27
Helena
Yeah. I also second what Cindy said. I didn't really know what to expect coming into this class. In high school. I really loved reading self-help books and wellness books, but I've never really thought about it or analyzed it critically. So like in this class, being able to analyze it, I kind of realized a lot of the rhetoric and mechanisms that went into these books that make it so effective and easily consumable for the readers.
00;02;56;05 - 00;02;59;22
Helena
And we can definitely touch more on the specific things.
00;03;00;09 - 00;03;17;20
Dan
Yeah, that makes sense. So I'm hearing that what you encountered in this literature around wellness was an easy access kind of modality in the rhetoric. It was all pitched in a way that people could digest it simply. Now, do you think that's something that's particularly important with wellness topics?
00;03;18;11 - 00;03;49;24
Dorian
I think that wellness is such an important topic for everyone to improve in their lives. I think we all could benefit from being more spiritually well. So I think that by making the rhetoric accessible to the large amount of people that they're trying to cast their net as wide as possible and get people into wellness and then they can take further steps on their own to more deeply investigate the literature, which is what we did with the book reviews.
00;03;50;06 - 00;04;15;03
Dorian
And then you can, if you want to go really far, do the analysis of the words like we did, which didn't necessarily show us anything that we didn't already know for our group specifically, at least for my book. I can't speak for you guys, but I could definitely see the analysis of rhetoric with software being superimposed into categorizing a book.
00;04;15;08 - 00;04;40;29
Helena
And then going off of that. I think that when thinking about who is consuming wellness content, it's mostly for people that are kind of in a place where they want to pursue wellness. And I think that it's really hard for laymen or people that don't really know about wellness to read a long article about science and neuroscience and really get in depth with the scientific side of wellness.
00;04;40;29 - 00;05;05;10
Helena
So I think lots of the wellness books and the articles we read, a conclusion that I kind of came to was they kind of simplified a lot of these complicated and abstract concepts through the use of metaphors and other things to break down such an abstract concept. So as someone who wants to find a solution, they feel like it's more achievable and easier to consume.
00;05;05;18 - 00;05;31;12
Vasishta
Yeah, I also feel that it's very important to have this kind of concision and like, easily digestible quality in one US literature. If somebody is trying to really learn more about, like, the science behind wellness or maybe like the neurochemistry that goes on in your brain, then they can go and read a research paper. But this kind of more simple way to digest this information is, I think, really important when your only goal is to try and help people better themselves.
00;05;31;28 - 00;05;54;29
Cindy
Yeah, going off of that, I think like everyone can benefit from learning more about wellness and it's something that affects everyone in some way, whereas something like a research paper is something that only people in academia would be interested in, which is why wellness things have such generalized language to appeal to like everyone instead of just one specific audience.
00;05;54;29 - 00;06;17;27
Dan
I appreciate everything you're saying. I think the point about metaphors jumps out to me because it's been a focus of the class for a while, and I feel like there's many ways in which a metaphor is useful for simplifying and taking an abstract concept and making it digestible for people. But when it comes to wellness, there were so many common metaphors that came up over and over and over.
00;06;18;04 - 00;06;29;06
Dan
So I'm wondering if there's something a little bit distinct about metaphors when it comes to this wellness literature, as opposed to someone saying, you know, cooking is like a scientific experiment.
00;06;29;15 - 00;06;50;02
Helena
As someone who read a lot of wellness books before this class, I realized that when I was reading the books, before I analyzed it, I kind of accepted lots of these metaphors and overlooked them. I never really thought twice about it. But I think one thing that really stood out was in the beginning of the class, we kind of broke down a lot of the metaphors into big categories.
00;06;50;02 - 00;07;14;03
Helena
So some of the main metaphors that we saw were ones that were grounded in nature and ones that were grounded in motion, which are all things that are kind of a natural force that we are used to. So I think that one metaphor was like emotions kind of roll like a roller coaster. They go up and down, and I think that emotions itself without the metaphor is a very abstract concept.
00;07;14;03 - 00;07;34;18
Helena
When we're talking about wellness, it's very hard to picture. What does emotions look like because you can't really visualize it. But then thinking about motion is something that we can easily visualize. It breaks down this abstract concept and makes whatever the author is trying to say about emotions a lot easier to consume.
00;07;35;01 - 00;07;55;27
Vasishta
I think at the same time that authors who use metaphors walk kind of like a very fine line. Like Helena said, it's definitely important to use them to try to break down a complex topic or an abstract topic so readers can understand. But at the same time, they have to be very careful to make sure that whatever metaphor they use or whatever point they make with it isn't like oversimplifying or misrepresenting the situation. Like it's very easy for a metaphor to turn into something that doesn't really apply to the concept they’re trying to explain using it.
00;08;03;15 - 00;08;29;20
Dorian
Yeah, definitely. All metaphors are going to break down at some point because it's not the same thing. So there's going to be differences. So it's picking the best metaphors. Which can go the longest without breaking down. And I think that an example with the roller coaster would be, yeah, that would be great if if our two emotions were happy and sad and you just oscillated between the two, but you know, there's probably hundreds of emotions.
00;08;29;20 - 00;08;37;13
Dorian
So that metaphor is a great visual cue, but maybe not so helpful for understanding the science clearly.
00;08;38;12 - 00;08;59;04
Dan
In some ways. I think that's part of the challenge with this topic of wellness self-help. There's formulas, people come up with. So, you know, focus on the present. Don't compare yourself to other people and you can simplify things, but life is never a formula where you just add a to B and suddenly that's going to solve the problem.
00;08;59;04 - 00;09;03;09
Dan
The metaphors are useful, but at some point they they can't do the actual work.
00;09;03;18 - 00;09;22;07
Vasishta
Yeah. And also like kind of talking about this, this kind of simple formula not being a good representation, I felt like this was kind of the biggest issue I had with the five item article that we worked on at the beginning. Like I felt like a lot of what we ended up writing and a lot of what we ended up reading to practice for that, it became sort of like they were trying to just give you a formula to improve your life. Like for my article I wrote about confidence. And when I was reading articles like try to get a feel for what the space was like, it ended up being a lot of articles on on BuzzFeed or just like other tabloid sites where they would just say, if you do one, two, three, four and five, then like, your life will be perfect. You'll be like this confident adonis who will waltz through life. And that's really just like not how it works, right?
00;09;51;17 - 00;10;14;04
Cindy
Yeah, I kind of had the same problem I wrote about identity and how it can affect your confidence. And instead of trying to come up with solutions for the reader, I tried to find articles that explained why identity as opposed to confidence or vice versa, and then write an article based on that to let the reader kind of like think about their own solution and what they want to do to improve.
00;10;14;14 - 00;10;46;23
Dorian
On the topic of confidence, there's no clear cut path to improving your confidence. It's a very personal thing. So if you are looking for BuzzFeed or an article to tell you how to become more confident, you probably will never become more confident because BuzzFeed probably doesn't know your life very well. But I think that identity is a huge part of confidence and it's how you see yourself that really matters.
00;10;46;29 - 00;10;58;15
Dorian
I think that's probably the only thing that determines confidence, honestly, is the stories you tell yourself about who you are and how you fit into your environment.
00;10;58;24 - 00;11;23;23
Helena
Which I think kind of goes into like a general theme that we found in the wellness space is it's obviously not very personal and in a way very much oversimplifies something that should be more personal. So I think that lots of the wellness things that we consume are more of a Segway that allows people to explore the wellness realm and kind of dip their toes into it.
00;11;23;23 - 00;11;31;04
Helena
But it's not a great way for people to actually make concrete changes in their life because it is pretty general.
00;11;31;18 - 00;11;56;29
Dan
I like that. And listeners who go back and experiment with one or two of these podcasts will see that these topics of self-confidence overlap with topics like self compassion and identity. There's a whole lot of some aspects of wellness that if you really needed to drill down into them and you'd have to be deliberate about it, you can't just say, I'm going to study wellness and in this blanket way, get some simple formulas.
00;11;57;08 - 00;12;16;05
Dan
I like the way that you're coming up with an analysis of the online aspects of wellness, because I feel like that is sort of a take away is they simplify things a little bit too much. Let me ask about other aspects of the class. Were there any things that jumped out at you as particularly enjoyable or things that you didn't like so much?
00;12;17;12 - 00;12;43;10
Cindy
I really liked making the wellness videos at the end of class because I feel like previously we had just analyzed or written our own articles with only words. So introducing this kind of new format of videos was interesting in a way, and like pairing my message with videos that could like enhance. It was something that I think will help me in any discipline later in life.
00;12;43;29 - 00;13;05;08
Vasishta
Yeah, I've never really, I mean, personally, I've never really been a huge fan of multimedia projects, but I think that it provided a really valuable introduction to the way people actually make these kinds of videos. You know, you end up seeing a lot of them online when just going through social media or anything. But I guess I never really thought about, like, the process that went into making them and what kinds of messages people had to think about sending and making these videos.
00;13;06;10 - 00;13;30;26
Dorian
Yeah, I also think that the video, the multi-media stuff is a good analogy for wellness as a whole, because it's not just about the text, it's about the music and the the transitions and it's all these small little details that come together to make something that's bigger than the sum of its parts, and it can't really be rationalized.
00;13;30;26 - 00;13;37;12
Dorian
And you just have to put everything together and use your own judgment to curate something.
00;13;38;07 - 00;14;12;12
Helena
Personally, for me, I actually really liked analyzing the books because I think before when I was reading books, I never really thought about the rhetoric and like the language used behind it. So kind of like us analyzing how effective the book was. I kind of went back to the general theme that I drew from it was that the effectiveness and the consume ability of the book also came down to the instant gratification that the book kind of provided, which I also then found was a general theme and a lot of the other wellness texts that we consumed earlier on in the year.
00;14;12;14 - 00;14;30;19
Dan
And looking back on the books, I feel like there were two different types of things that came out of the book. Some of them were delivering scientific concepts. There were some that were more research oriented, and then there were some that were guide books that had exercises parts in the book where you can fill in, do worksheet, these kinds of things.
00;14;30;29 - 00;14;40;15
Dan
Did you notice that there was an overlap? One is information and the other is application. How do those two areas come together in these books?
00;14;41;12 - 00;15;10;22
Helena
So for my book, it kind of talked about meditation and Buddhism. So I think most of the wellness books, I can't say for all, but at least for mine, very well integrated those two aspects. It distilled down many of the main concepts of Buddhism and then talked about the importance of meditation, but throughout the book would kind of provide guided meditations and chants or things you can say to yourself throughout the day.
00;15;10;27 - 00;15;20;28
Helena
So as you're learning about the science and the importance of meditation, it's also guiding you and providing you an instant way that you can practice that yourself, which I thought was very interesting.
00;15;21;12 - 00;15;48;28
Dorian
Yeah, my my book was actually called Integral Meditation, and it was really interesting because it suggested that when you're meditating, you alternate between periods of pure awareness. So 5 minutes of just focusing on your breath and then 5 minutes of deep psychological introspection. So what issues am I struggling with in my life, what could the root causes of those possibly be?
00;15;48;28 - 00;16;12;06
Dorian
And what are some things I can do to address those? And it it described human life as being organized into these developmental stages. So you go from being an infant where you depended on your mother and then you learn to depend on yourself, and then you learn to depend on others, and then you learn to depend on the world as a whole system.
00;16;12;06 - 00;16;51;27
Dorian
And so it's the work of integral meditation. And my book was combining the pure awareness, cultivating that strength to be able to focus on one thing for an extended amount of time, and then pairing that new strength with directed application in your own life to advance through these levels and develop a broader consciousness. So I thought that was a good pairing of the more abstract awareness meditation concepts with the hard, practical get stuff done rational processes.
00;16;52;12 - 00;17;02;13
Dan
I want to go back to the videos for a second, and I think one way to do this I'm going to play a clip from Claire from our class, who was reflecting on the process of creating the videos as well.
00;17;03;11 - 00;17;22;18
Cindy
How we're posting. It's a very broad topic. It's not necessarily like posting about ourselves. It's posting about a topic such as like mental health or like physical health, nutrition, all that stuff. I feel like it's definitely interesting to take a step back when I'm posting these videos. I'm like, okay, like, I'm not like, Oh, do I look good in this like that?
00;17;22;18 - 00;17;34;25
Cindy
Like, it's just, is this the message that I'm trying to get across? Like, it very is a very disconnect from thinking about myself and more thinking about like the message I'm sending through this video because it's not centered around me.
00;17;35;15 - 00;17;52;25
Dan
I found that surprising in that I felt like the videos were reasonably personal. Claire is talking about how the videos actually let you step aside from the personal and the self to do something that's adjacent to it. Ah Brad, did you have that same experience or what can you say to Claire's description?
00;17;53;02 - 00;18;19;16
Vasishta
I mean, I'm not really sure about this dichotomy between talking about myself versus taking a step aside, but I definitely do feel like these wellness videos were kind of very impersonal. It's not really like something that came from the depths of my emotion. It's more just what kinds of wellness, what kinds of messages about what it's going to send across and how can I, like, strategize my video and its content, including like text and video and music to do that. It's not really something that I thought about, like, this should be personal to me.
00;18;23;21 - 00;18;59;29
Helena
I think the wellness space in general, it's almost kind of like a public service platform where a lot of the videos, a lot of the even text, not just videos, is kind of centered to help whoever the consumer is. And I think that's also what makes the space so unique. So going back to the concept that we just talked about with the application of science and application into real life, I think that a difference between some of the wellness things that we read versus like a nonfiction or fiction is when you're reading nonfiction, you might be very focused on the subject.
00;19;00;07 - 00;19;19;05
Helena
When you're reading a fictional book, you might be really interested in the plot, but when you're consuming wellness content, you're moreso reflecting on your own life and your own behaviors. So as you're reading it, you're also thinking about yourself. And I think in that way, when we created those videos, at least for me, I was thinking about the audience.
00;19;19;05 - 00;19;24;28
Helena
What are they thinking as they're watching my video and what reflection would they have while they're watching my video?
00;19;25;23 - 00;19;58;22
Dorian
Yeah, I don't think you can take yourself completely out of these videos because like Helena has said, you are ultimately putting yourself in the shoes of someone watching them and then using what you know about yourself to think, what would they think? But I think that when you are able to separate yourself from the creative process and your ego's not involved in it, you can produce more, maybe not better products because that's subjective, but.
00;19;59;17 - 00;20;01;08
Helena
Like empathetic in a way.
00;20;01;13 - 00;20;16;14
Dorian
Yeah, like it's not it's not all about you anymore. I think the shift in focus from what would I like to what would they like is important, but it's still going to be colored by your own biases because we're stuck in our own heads.
00;20;16;17 - 00;20;36;27
Cindy
Yeah, I think creating the videos was personal in a way that was very different from regular social media because I was thinking about how I want to get my message across to people without putting myself in the content. So like posting on Instagram, I'll always be thinking about like, will people like it, do I look good in it?
00;20;36;27 - 00;20;43;29
Cindy
But with this, with these wellness videos, I was only thinking about the audience and how they would respond to my message.
00;20;44;14 - 00;21;02;05
Vasishta
Yeah, maybe I should rephrase my point a little bit. It wasn't really personal to me as the creator of the video. I wasn't really too concerned with what the audience would think about me and, more like, what message would they take away from it? So when I was creating it, I guess I had more to think of myself as the audience and if I were watching this video, what would I think?
How would I feel more then, how would I feel about the creator, who is me?
00;21;06;26 - 00;21;28;15
Dan
Let me extend this a little bit by asking about posting those on YouTube. And in some ways, everything in this class has a public aspect to it. We have a website that's not locked down. We're going to put these podcasts online. You've got videos online now. Has the public nature of the work that we're doing been a major factor in your thinking?
00;21;28;15 - 00;21;34;23
Dan
Has it influenced you at all? What can we say about the fact that this is not just a locked up classroom in which we're working?
00;21;34;23 - 00;21;52;21
Vasishta
To me, it's honestly, like, not made much of a difference just because, like when I'm posting this video on YouTube, realistically, no one's watching it except me and the people in our class. Or when I'm, like, anything that we post on the Rhetoric of Wellness website, it's not really being viewed by anyone else. Like, if I want to, maybe I'll, if I'm really part of an article I wrote, maybe I'll show it to a friend. But like, no one, just a random person on the internet is going to come across this, I feel like. And maximum maybe one or two people do. It's not really made a lot of difference, at least to me.
00;22;02;19 - 00;22;24;11
Dorian
Just the pure fact that it could though posting on on YouTube you know stuff could for whatever reason get picked up by an algorithm or something. People like it. You do definitely have to think, at least for a little bit about, you know, is this acceptable to post for the world to see if the world were to see it?
00;22;24;11 - 00;22;41;04
Dorian
So I think that that's good practice for when we actually are creating stuff that the world might see if any of us do. It's it's sort of a low stakes immersion in the public domain, which I think is really good right now.
00;22;41;04 - 00;23;04;26
Dan
We're talking into these microphones, recording a podcast. And in addition to the social media we've studied and the books we've studied and the videos that we've created, podcasting has been a major aspect of the course. I spoke with Elise from our course about ten days ago and asked her to help me record some thoughts about the podcasting, and I thought I'd play what she had to offer and see if you have any thoughts on that.
00;23;05;13 - 00;23;26;21
Cindy
As a student, it really helped me grow because I found that I've been in school for 13 years now in the public education system and we learn so much about how to read and how to write, but we don't really learn how to listen or even speak to it to a certain extent. And so doing the podcast was a really novel experience, and even now we have no notes in front of us, right?
00;23;26;21 - 00;23;43;08
Cindy
We're just, you know, going off what we think. And that's that's such an important skill to have just in life in general. And it was very interesting to me because I was afraid going into the podcast that we wouldn't be able to build off a conversation or I wouldn't know what to say. Things like that. And it really flowed so naturally.
00;23;43;08 - 00;23;47;21
Cindy
And that was a shocker for me, honestly, because I had never done it before.
00;23;48;17 - 00;23;52;12
Dan
Does your experience square with Elisa's when it comes to doing the podcasting?
00;23;53;20 - 00;24;31;28
Helena
Absolutely. Honestly, going into this class, I didn't know what to expect with podcasting, but I think it's probably my favorite part of this class because I think I agree with Elise. Like, we kind of grow up in school learning how to read and write and we have classroom discussions, but actually recording a podcast, having to like, file down your thoughts, make it concise, and then also see it in a way that like other people that might listen to this, can understand and then balancing the nature of having a conversation and the flow of the podcast made me learn a lot more about like listening and then how to like, respond to question ends and reflect
00;24;31;28 - 00;24;36;26
Helena
on what I learned or reflect on the questions in a more improvised way.
00;24;37;16 - 00;24;55;06
Vasishta
Yeah, I think another important part of it is that these podcasts are in like such small groups. Like none of the groups in the class have more than four or five people in high school. Like throughout high school, we had these kind of class discussions, but these were sort of like 25, 30 or even 40 people. And you know, and they were led by a teacher, and no one really wanted to talk. No one really wanted to listen. We're all just there to stay for 40 minutes and leave. Whereas in this like smaller group aspect, it's like we're all able to think about the topic a lot more. And you know, with only four people, we all have to talk a lot more as well.
00;25;09;15 - 00;25;18;27
Vasishta
You know, for whatever time we have. And so we're all forced to think, like, I guess more critically about whatever topics at hand instead of just saying our one things get credit for talking.
00;25;19;01 - 00;25;37;14
Cindy
Yeah, having a small group setting makes it feel a lot more natural to discuss things and just talk about things in general, which is something that I really appreciate about this podcast because like having a big class discussion is just not the same because you're always thinking about what other people will think about what you say and second guessing yourself.
00;25;38;10 - 00;26;10;06
Dorian
Yeah, there's nowhere to run in a four person podcast. You got to actually have high quality thoughts and be able to communicate them effectively. Otherwise it's going to be pretty evident. So I think that's a feature of podcasts, not a bug, because that really forces you to clarify, distill down your thoughts. And I like the long form too, because you can get 100 times more information than you ever could and a five item article on BuzzFeed or something like that.
00;26;10;06 - 00;26;13;04
Dorian
So I love I love doing this.
00;26;13;04 - 00;26;22;26
Vasishta
I think also it's a lot less intimidating to do it in this kind of setting. You know, there's five of us here for, say, something that maybe isn't a good point. We can just move past it. I'm not really scared of being judged by anyone.
00;26;23;21 - 00;26;42;04
Helena
And I think the pressure of being in a podcast makes you enhance your thoughts and think more critically about what you're going to say, because in a classroom discussion, you can try it ten times, you can go on a rant, you can kind of hide behind other people. But in the podcast you're exposed. Other people are listening to the podcast, not just people in your classroom.
00;26;42;08 - 00;26;48;08
Helena
So it definitely makes you critically think about what you're going to say and how that ebbs and flows with the other people.
00;26;48;20 - 00;27;29;08
Dorian
I want to say something real quick. This reminds me of the classroom discussion which is making me think of U.S. politics. When you have 330 million people in a classroom and everybody's trying to talk over each other, people just polarize, and then no one hears anything. So I think smaller group discussions with the smartest people who are actually genuinely trying to produce positive results, if people can actually agree on metrics of what those positive results would be, it might be a possible positive political change.
00;27;29;11 - 00;27;39;23
Dorian
But I feel like we're in a classroom discussion in the current state of things. So I think podcasting is really important for a cultural shift.
00;27;40;03 - 00;27;53;23
Dan
That makes sense. And would it be fair to say it's easier to get some depth? MM You have a longer extended discussion, maybe less shouting, smaller crowd. You are able to talk about topics. Yeah.
00;27;54;04 - 00;28;25;13
Helena
Absolutely. I think like in class, even though I think our class itself, when we're in the classroom setting, we also have discussions, but it's very much kind of like popcorn based. Like when we're answering, we're answering in one or two sentences because nobody wants to talk for like 20 minutes and, you know, waste the entire class away. But I think in a way, like being able to be in this small group setting, we can really share the depth of our thoughts, dive deep into the analysis of the different topics We explored, our takeaways, which I think is so interesting.
00;28;25;13 - 00;28;53;16
Dan
One of the things I like about what you're saying and what Elise was pointing to is that you learn things that you're not expecting to learn. So I came into this podcasting experiment thinking it's going to help with speaking, but I've learned to be a much better listener, and I think that's like an unexpected outcome. I've also found listening to the podcast that I have ways of talking that I am totally unconscious about saying and that people are always doing that, that kind of discussion.
00;28;53;16 - 00;29;22;26
Dan
But but it's helped me to change my practice. I think of talking with people, even though that wasn't the outcome. The outcome was to record something about a topic related to wellness. I got these adjacent results of it, which I thought was really valuable in some ways. So that leads me to my final question, which is how has studying the rhetoric of wellness and the ways people think and write and talk about wellness impacted your own understandings or attitudes toward wellness?
00;29;24;05 - 00;29;46;06
Dorian
So I'm trying to implement as many of these practices into my own life as I can that we've been exposed to in this class and something that keeps coming up for me is in the first week or first couple of weeks of class, you talked about all of these metaphors have a common theme of like going up or going down.
00;29;46;27 - 00;30;12;07
Dorian
And I used a spiral staircase as an example because it can really quickly get out of control and I think that by that same token, if you get the key metrics right, you can really quickly spiral upwards as well. So I think it's it really comes down to putting in the hard work to take an honest look at yourself.
00;30;12;07 - 00;30;39;29
Dorian
And I mean, there's all these practices and you can do them, you can meditate for as long as you want, but that awareness doesn't mean anything until you put it into practice. Studying the rhetoric of wellness has taught me that as much as you can study the rhetoric of wellness, the true meaning is where are you headed in life and what are you going to do to make those things happen?
00;30;40;22 - 00;31;13;25
Cindy
I think this class has definitely changed or impacted how I think about my own wellness. Just like subconsciously when I've been working on like the five item articles or the wellness videos or just reading the side readings in class. I was just been picking up little things in ways that people use to describe wellness and applying it to my own life and going off of that and has also impacted how I talk to other people about wellness because it's such a common topic and it's something that impacts everyone.
00;31;13;25 - 00;31;22;24
Cindy
I think I learned how to better communicate about it and just talk about my thoughts to like my friends or family.
00;31;22;24 - 00;31;47;27
Helena
I think going off of that, I was really surprised that after consuming so much wellness literature, I kind of realized how generalized it is and how publicized it is. And in a way it oversimplifies a lot of the concepts. I think I'm more aware now when I'm consuming wellness content to dive deeper into whatever they're offering by doing more research on my own.
00;31;48;06 - 00;32;11;17
Helena
And then when it comes to application, I think the wellness space is so overcrowded with these like instant gratification and instant like solutions that in a way I realize lots of the wellness content I previously consumed. The reason it hasn't really made a big difference in my life is because it's very overwhelming and it's hard to implement, you know, 20 things at the same time.
00;32;11;17 - 00;32;18;16
Helena
So I think I've become more selective when it comes to wellness content and being more critical about what I consume.
00;32;18;25 - 00;32;35;12
Vasishta
For me, it kind of had the opposite effect. Like I think I came into this class on kind of the other end of the spectrum. Like I pretty much thought all wellness, quote unquote, science was just like nonsense science. And, you know, not, not, not really useful to anyone, but I think in part that's still like there's still some merit to that claim.
00;32;35;12 - 00;32;57;03
Vasishta
Like a lot of wellness content is wrought with pseudoscience and like, bad assumptions. But, you know, there are definitely, there is like some truth to what wellness literature is saying. Like it's definitely backed by some kind of science. And even though it's not always clear, like what advice is good and what is bad, like, I think I've learned and taken away that there is some value in wellness literature that can be implemented in my own life and lives of others.
00;32;57;20 - 00;33;42;01
Dorian
And I think the key distinction Vasishta just touched on was that science will never be able to fully encompass the field of wellness because it is there's a spiritual aspect to it that I don't think logical systems or models will ever be able to fully capture. And I think that relying too heavily on peer reviewed scientific literature before we implement certain wellness practices in our lives is hurting ourselves as a collective community of people that we shouldn't over depend on scientific proof.
00;33;43;25 - 00;34;20;24
Dan
I really appreciate the points that you're making, and it's giving me some insights into the entire course that we've been through. There's been a lot of rather than but a lot of and so wellness, it is scientific and it's spiritual. There's always overlap and there's a lot of gray areas that we've been talking about. One of the things that we began the semester with was thinking about gratitude, and there was some scientific aspects to it, but also just some kind of practical common sense aspects of let's take a minute and be thankful for what's going on.
00;34;21;03 - 00;34;43;21
Dan
So I think that's an appropriate way for us to close out the term by. Let me just say thank you to Cindy, a sister, Dorian and Helena today, and also to every member of the course. I've learned so much over the last 15 weeks, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. So for everyone listening, this, I guess, is the conclusion of our first season of our podcast series.
00;34;44;10 - 00;34;57;03
Dan
But I hope to have you back for for many more. Thank you, everyone.
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