Elizabeth starts this one in don’t-fucking-embarrass-me mode post-election, with some pointed requests for the Democrats (lower the Medicare age, an indictment or two, basic competence this time) and a truly excellent insult comparing the Secretary of Defense to a composite of every villain from an 80s teen movie.
But she catches herself before the political tangent takes over the whole episode.
The actual topic: she’s been deep in it with Jungian analyst James Hollis’s books, and yes, she knows how that sounds, and no, she doesn’t care.
There’s a properly eerie Day of the Dead detour — she picks up a library book on November 1st, a business card for her late mother’s exact hospital department falls out of it, and Elizabeth takes this as confirmation from beyond that she is, in fact, supposed to be reading this book.
From there she gets into Hollis’s central idea: two gremlins, Fear and Lethargy, sitting at the foot of everyone’s bed every morning, and how sneaky both of them are at disguising themselves as reasonable adult behavior.
Fear can show up as being nice, staying modest, keeping your options open, talking yourself out of things with money excuses, control, among others.
Lethargy can wear the masks of busyness, waiting for the right time, cynicism, deciding you’re just not that kind of person.
She walks through her own 50/50 daily split between wanting to take on the world and wanting to roll up into a blanket and ignore the outside part forever, and lands on Jung’s line about most people walking through life in shoes that are too small — which, once you hear it, you can’t unhear.
Bummer.
She closes with an actual sincere moment (rare, flagged as such) about believing the people listening are bigger than they think, and a reminder that unlike a certain other Elizabeth Holmes, she’s not lying to you.
