What's it like to live in the US

We’re asking a question no one would: “Why do I want to do everything at once?” especially when we’re living in the US. It used to be that we just shrug off a tendency to want to do everything. And we say we just lack focus. Uncommitted. Multi-tasking. Busy. Or worse, that we have Attention Deficit Disorder. Or other identity disorder, like Marvel’s Moon Knight hero, who has Dissociative Identity Disorder.The great tragedy when we don’t ask this question, is that we go about living in the US, wanting to do everything at once, and then ending up doing nothing at the same time. The US might be the land of opportunity. But when opportunities are limitless, does it become prohibitive? And if so, what can a self-motivated hard worker do about all this? What if you come from a background with mixed heritage? What if you’re someone who might be under pressure to fulfill their family’s dream of a better life? Or someone with multiple different interests in life? Like psychiatrist Paul Puri, MD, who consulted for the hit Marvel’s series “Moon Knight.” Turns out, psychology and medicine has a lot to say about us that we didn’t already know.Listen to this episode if you are living or are thinking about living in the US, and you a little voice in the back of your head keeps asking: “Why do I want to do everything at once?”—In case you’re out and about without WiFi later, download this episode now.TRANSCRIPT for “Why we want to do everything at once [An Internal Logic]”: Episode 1Thalia Toha: I wanted to start with one of your fun projects. Of course, Marvel's Moon Knight. I wanted to ask you because you're in this really cool space where you talk people. And understand people's identity, people's disorder, problems, and things that people don't normally talk about. I've never heard of DID, dissociative identity disorder, before Moon Knight. And when I saw Moon Knight, I thought, “How interesting. Why is something like this  … Why is it that we've never heard of it before?” Is this kind of like a new diagnosis in the medical community? Or in something that's been around for a long time? And we just don't know much about it?Paul Puri: It's hard to give a firm answer on that. Because even the diagnosis itself is a little controversial. You know, there's kind of the very popularized index cases, which they made a movie of. They're making a new movie with Sally Fields back in the 70s. You know, there are sort of these index cases that really popularize it. But from my understanding of the literature, and I consider myself a relative expert in disassociation—and DID is one of the dissociative disorders—things do suggest that it existed long before the 70s, but in other forms.Like what people would have otherwise considered like “spirit possession.” Things like that. And what they attributed to outside spirits taking over their body later. It became named as sort of different personalities. Or what are called “Alters.” Or aspects of themselves that sort of split off. Paul: So it's probably been around a long time. It's very disputable in terms of how prevalent it is. Probably 1% or less of the population, probably less, has this.My belief is that it's probably rare in its real form. But that dissociation exists in a spectrum form. Kind of across a population. Many of us can dissociate in lesser forms. But that doesn't equate with DID. Thalia: And what exactly is dissociation then? What is  … How is that different from, just having a different interest?The impulse to do something else, having different interests, and Dissociative Identity Disorder in the USPaul: It's a complex subject. And I'm going to do my best to try to boil it down. There's sort of different aspects of our brain functioning or cognitive functioning that exist at a baseline. And they sort of weave together and integrate to create our normal experience. And that's sort of our sense of memory. Our sense of identity. Our sense of time. There's our sense of our emotions. And there's kind of a baseline phenomena of this. And it all sort of weaves together in how we experience life. If one of those were to kind of split off or separate, or exist in the background, our experience in the moment would be different. What's remarkable about the brain is that it can sort of split off functioning in a way where these things can exist outside of our consciousness, our awake consciousness. And it exists and kind of perpetuates in the background. So it may be not a perfect example. But, you know, if you've ever gone to sleep with a problem, and then you wake up with the solution. Or, you have put a problem away. And then the solution pops up for you in the middle of the day. And, and who's been thinking of that? And where did that come from? There’s sort of capabilities inside of us that we sometimes can directly access. And sometimes feels more elusive when we can find the right word for something or can't find the right word. There's sort of a different side to us that is functioning behind the scenes all the time, and that we can't always directly access, even though we want to. So there's this sort of myth that we have a singular identity that I can do what I am in control of me. And that if I want to make changes in myself, it can happen. But across the breadth of human experience, most people have a lot of difficulty in making changes in themselves. And that's because a part of them that's functioning, that's driving a lot of these behaviors, is sort of behind the scenes. So that's like a loose definition of dissociation. And we can have things where we split off our awareness, or our memory of something that might have existed. Because it's not convenient for us. Or, you know, when we start getting more pathological, someone might experience, let's say, a trauma or a terrible experience. And then, because they can't, because it's overwhelming, they just sort of compartmentalize that experience. They lock it away. So they lock it away so that they basically don't have to feel all the feelings that are associated with that. So those are different aspects. Really, association falls into kind of two camps. Which is compartmentalization. How do you lock something away. Or sort of a disconnection from something: how do you disconnect from part of yourself.Paul: And so there's all these different sorts of phenomenon that come up with that, like associated amnesia, associated huge, associative identity disorder, things like that. Disassociation is probably a phenomenon that exists in the way our consciousness exists. Because we are constantly bombarded with stimuli. The nature of how consciousness exists is like our conscious awareness. It came into formation as a form of a traffic cop. It's like,  … “How do we discriminate what comes into our awareness and what we filter out?” And that is how consciousness exists. And so in order to do that, we have to split off stuff that we decide, behind the scenes, … We decide it is not relevant or not necessary. But that doesn't mean it's not coming in. Thalia: And so how is that related to alter ego? The conscious use of alter egos to allow us to do something we’ve always wantedPaul: Alter ego is a little bit more like a conscious choice in terms of, I'm going to have a different sort of role that I switch into. So it’s sort of like: I'm going to go dress up and play whatever kind of—not that I do cosplay, but like, where I'm going to go, like—you know, put on my party clothes.And I'm going to go to a club tonight, and I'm going to put on, like, that's a different version of who I am in my professional life, or whatever the thing is.DID is really about people who might naturally dissociate a little bit as children. And then they have a very clear kind of index trauma. And most of the time, according to literature, it's like sexual abuse. But it could be physical abuse. And what happens is that, because it's happening at a young age, before their real sense of self is sort of solidified, their way of dissociating is like a much more dramatic split. And it results in these sort of compensatory different parts of themselves. And we all have parts to us, you know, part of me that wants that chocolate bar. Part of me that doesn't. Part of me wants to go to the gym. Part of me wants to sit on the couch. Like we all have that. And that's another discussion that we can get into. But in this, it's not a conscious process. The choice is not really there on how or when to switch. It happens, for the most part, kind of adaptively to the situation for the purposes of survival. Thalia Toha: Is there a way for them to control it when they are diagnosed in adulthood? To then go back and, “OK, well, this is something that, this is the identity that I want to take on  …” —Is that possible?Paul: Yeah. I mean, that happens mostly through treatment. Through stages. You know, you work on sort of building up the ego, or the strengthening, or like the emotional regulation skills.Because the jumping between them very much happens in crisis. Or when they're overwhelmed. So if you build up some more skills, maybe that doesn't have to happen as often. You want them to be able to deal with the distress that comes up from things. Then once that's built up a while, you go and basically work through the original traumas. So, because those are the things that cause the split in the 1st place. And then, after all that’s worked through, then you can work on, hopefully, integration of the different sorts of alters. Or at least helping them work together better. As opposed to being at odd ends. Unlocking the power of having multiple interests and identities in Marvel’s Moon Knight seriesWhat was nice about Moon Knight, is it could sort of embody that a lot of times, these splits that happen are sort of polarities. They're two parts that are sort of fighting for control. And again, that happens in a lot of us, to a lesser extent. That chocolate bar example is like, I'm goi

Is it really possible to make it in Hollywood when you’re a mixed person or foreigner living in the US?Theory of American optimism compels us to say, “Yes.”But why is it harder than it looks? Is it really possible to walk the paths less traveled in the US—and still get fulfillment?When we can live and do as everyone does, and yet we love food no one does, we are motivated by internal beliefs that few understand, and we have aspirations and connections thousands of miles away, then … How exactly can anyone, even a foreigner or mixed person living in the US, make it in one of the most coveted, vast, and widespread industries in the world: Hollywood?UCLA’s clinical Assistant Professor and TV writer, Paul Puri, MD—who has been involved in the writing of 20+ hit shows like Marvel’s Moon Knight, Netflix’s Iron Heart, NBC’s Chicago Med, and Peacock’s Bel Air—weighs in on the hidden fluency behind making it in Hollywood. Even if you come from a mixed heritage or if you’re a foreigner living in the US. Listen to this episode if you want to find better and more fulfilling ways to make it in the US, including in Hollywood.—In case you’re out and about without WiFi later, download this episode now.* Scroll back up to top of this page find the Audio Bar (with the Play button).* On its Right corner, find the drop down menu (with three bars). * Click on it. Choose download. Open it on your preferred Podcast Listening App.Previously: Why we want to do everything at once [An Internal Logic]In this episode:The Start-to-Finish roadmap for turning script into screen in Hollywood The 8-step ladder of writer producers in Hollywood, so you know who to talk to.An Insider’s Encyclopedia of who’s the staff writer, story editor, executive story editor, coproducer, producer, supervising producer, co-supervising producer, and executive producer.Real differences between TV vs Netflix (and why it’s not about the device or whether it streams).The light and dark side of Youtube that few understandsBeing a high-functioning individual with opposite life interests: A How-ToAccording to 3,041 Americans, this is what we regret mostThalia Toha: You kind of touched on a little bit of the assembly line a little bit. As far as, starting with, maybe the idea, and then the script or whatever it is. Is it usually the script? And then investors?Paul Puri: It really depends on the project. So some of the bigger sort of breakdowns are: Is it from a pre-existing IP or intellectual property? Or is it an original—what we call a spec script. Which is basically a script written without pay. If I write an idea that nobody's paying me for, what I might do is write a script version of it. And then go out and try and sell it. And in the process of that, as I'm trying to sell it, I'm trying to get a producer involved, get a director involved, get a with a producer, a whole production company.And then try to then sell it to a studio. And then the studio would take it and try and sell it to essentially the network who distributed it as its TV show.The start to finish roadmap for turning script into screen in Hollywood Paul: Features, I have very little experience in. They basically—there's the financing. So that's like an original piece. If there's like a spec piece, if there's an original or something based, excuse me, on prior IP. So, like, you know, Marvel as an example, but anything that's based on a pre-existing character. There's usually a studio or somebody that wants to do this project. Or sometimes in a company, they're going to say, “We're going to invite in a group of writers to come in and pitch what they think this project should be. A take on it.” And then we're gonna hire one of them. And they're gonna kind of lead the team of assembling the project. Sometimes it's a little more direct. Like an executive see somebody who is an up and coming, or hot creator, writer, producer, director. And they'll invite them onto the project more quickly. So that can take months. And the writers are often who are coming in to pitch on something, or often mapping out an entire take on a character, a season—they're usually doing that for free. For no money. And, only one of them is going to get the job. So there's a lot of pre-work involved. And that can take months. You know, often you can spend weeks. Pitching on a project. Or if you get hired, you might then—if it's like a more broadcast related TV—you might have meetings with the producers. Very often, selling a project will involve attaching a production company or something ahead of time. But you meet with your team. And then you try to sell it to the studio still. You try to sell it to the network. Try to find if it's going to have distribution, if it doesn't already. And then once it's green lit, you'll go down the road of hiring your staff. So then you are getting— I'm not a show runner, but if you're a show runner (that's the highest showrunner), for the most part, and there are some other exceptions to this—the highest level writer and executive producer. The 8-step ladder of writer-producers in HollywoodPaul: So writer-producers in Hollywood, in TV, have an 8-step ladder. You have staff writer, story editor, executive story editor, coproducer, producer, supervising producer, co-supervising producer, and then executive producer. And so writers in TV are generally writer-producers. The highest level one is the show runner. They are a writer and executive producer. And they hire basically all of the other writers on the show. And then they'll often coordinate with the producer and others in terms of other hires. So you put together your writers room. You start writing scripts while your director and producers are trying to hire a lot of the other below-the-line talent. Which is like your assistant director, everybody that's like doing the production work and putting that together, finding sound stages, finding location scouting, all of that stuff—while you're figuring out what the story is and writing the scripts. And there's a little bit of a lead time on that. But eventually you have to star meeting deadlines. Because you might have premiere dates. And you've got to start getting scripts into the hands of people to start shooting them. And you have your casting. And all of the stuff's happening simultaneously. So TV—the joke of it is it takes 7 years to get a feature made. But TV, you know, you can get greenlit and be on the air in less than a year for a full, sometimes 20 episodes of, TV. So it happened very fast sometimes. But Marvel’s been the exception. Real differences between TV vs. Netflix (and why it’s not about the device or whether it streams)Thalia:  But I don't even know if we should consider—and I don't know if people in the industry consider the streaming still TV? I guess so. Because there is the TV component, still. But I almost don't look at it from a consumer standpoint. I don't even look at it as TV anymore. It's almost kind of like a—Paul: I mean, the distinction we make is basically around the length of the story. So it's one uninterrupted piece. Then that is, I think, the minimum length of 70 minutes to qualify as a feature. And not a short. But I might be making that number up.And then if you have multiple sections of it, then it would qualify as more of a serialized component. And so you have, generally, a comedy is 20 minutes based on broadcast network standards. And that's been, of course, broken by streaming. And then 45 minutes, or 22 and 45 minutes for dramas. 22 minute dramas coming out. And dramas and every genre is mashed up. So the rules are definitely broken more. But people still—we still call it TV for the most part. Even if you're streaming Netflix. Thalia: I see. So it's more like a categorization at that point. It's not really quite the medium per se. Paul: Yeah. I mean, we don't, a lot of people bristle, a lot of people in the industry bristle, calling it all “content.” Because they feel like it waters down their identity in some way. And equates and creates a false equivalency between Youtube creators and people who've been doing television for 30 years. Thalia: There's some generational differences too, right? Is there the sort of low-brow element of it then? Paul: I mean, I think that originally features were the prestige movies in the theater. And then TV kind of took a turn around the Golden era. Starting with Sopranos and things. Where we feel like, “Oh, TV is so cool! We can do so much with it. Now we're doing like a franchise within features.” And like that, “We can carry out and keep an audience for a long time, and make billion dollars a movie. And isn’t that tremendous?” And all of those things. The production value just obviously went way up. And then at the same time, there was sort of this, I don’t want to call it a “democratization.” In that the barrier to entry was much lower in terms of Youtube. What's different is that, if you are going through that, you can't use production values to grab attention. You have to do something else. And so it's not usually—from what I've seen, based around this—it's a different skill set. I think most TV writers would argue that what they really love is things like story. They love being able to figure out how to craft stories. And that's very different than the question of, “How do you build an audience necessarily?” I think that some people hope that if you're telling a good story, your audience will find it, and it will come. But I

Thalia Toha: I wanted to start with one of your fun projects. Of course, Marvel's Moon Knight. I wanted to ask you because you're in this really cool space where you talk people. And understand people's identity, people's disorder, problems, and things that people don't normally talk about. I've never heard of DID, dissociative identity disorder, before Moon Knight. And when I saw Moon Knight, I thought, “How interesting. Why is something like this  … Why is it that we've never heard of it before?” Is this kind of like a new diagnosis in the medical community? Or in something that's been around for a long time? And we just don't know much about it?Paul Puri: It's hard to give a firm answer on that. Because even the diagnosis itself is a little controversial. You know, there's kind of the very popularized index cases, which they made a movie of. They're making a new movie with Sally Fields back in the 70s. You know, there are sort of these index cases that really popularize it. But from my understanding of the literature, and I consider myself a relative expert in disassociation—and DID is one of the dissociative disorders—things do suggest that it existed long before the 70s, but in other forms.Like what people would have otherwise considered like “spirit possession.” Things like that. And what they attributed to outside spirits taking over their body later. It became named as sort of different personalities. Or what are called “Alters.” Or aspects of themselves that sort of split off. So it's probably been around a long time. It's very disputable in terms of how prevalent it is. Probably 1% or less of the population, probably less, has this.My belief is that it's probably rare in its real form. But that dissociation exists in a spectrum form. Kind of across a population. Many of us can dissociate in lesser forms. But that doesn't equate with DID. Thalia: And what exactly is dissociation then? What is  … How is that different from, just having a different interest?The impulse to do something else, having different interests, and Dissociative Identity Disorder in the USPaul: It's a complex subject. And I'm going to do my best to try to boil it down. There's sort of different aspects of our brain functioning or cognitive functioning that exist at a baseline. And they sort of weave together and integrate to create our normal experience. And that's sort of our sense of memory. Our sense of identity. Our sense of time. There's our sense of our emotions. And there's kind of a baseline phenomena of this. And it all sort of weaves together in how we experience life. If one of those were to kind of split off or separate, or exist in the background, our experience in the moment would be different. What's remarkable about the brain is that it can sort of split off functioning in a way where these things can exist outside of our consciousness, our awake consciousness. And it exists and kind of perpetuates in the background. So it may be not a perfect example. But, you know, if you've ever gone to sleep with a problem, and then you wake up with the solution. Or, you have put a problem away. And then the solution pops up for you in the middle of the day. And, and who's been thinking of that? And where did that come from? There’s sort of capabilities inside of us that we sometimes can directly access. And sometimes feels more elusive when we can find the right word for something or can't find the right word. There's sort of a different side to us that is functioning behind the scenes all the time, and that we can't always directly access, even though we want to. So there's this sort of myth that we have a singular identity that I can do what I am in control of me. And that if I want to make changes in myself, it can happen. But across the breadth of human experience, most people have a lot of difficulty in making changes in themselves. And that's because a part of them that's functioning, that's driving a lot of these behaviors, is sort of behind the scenes. So that's like a loose definition of dissociation. And we can have things where we split off our awareness, or our memory of something that might have existed. Because it's not convenient for us. Or, you know, when we start getting more pathological, someone might experience, let's say, a trauma or a terrible experience. And then, because they can't, because it's overwhelming, they just sort of compartmentalize that experience. They lock it away. So they lock it away so that they basically don't have to feel all the feelings that are associated with that. So those are different aspects. Really, association falls into kind of two camps. Which is compartmentalization. How do you lock something away. Or sort of a disconnection from something: how do you disconnect from part of yourself.And so there's all these different sorts of phenomenon that come up with that, like associated amnesia, associated huge, associative identity disorder, things like that. Disassociation is probably a phenomenon that exists in the way our consciousness exists. Because we are constantly bombarded with stimuli. The nature of how consciousness exists is like our conscious awareness. It came into formation as a form of a traffic cop. It's like,  … “How do we discriminate what comes into our awareness and what we filter out?” And that is how consciousness exists. And so in order to do that, we have to split off stuff that we decide, behind the scenes, … We decide it is not relevant or not necessary. But that doesn't mean it's not coming in. Thalia: And so how is that related to alter ego? The conscious use of alter egos to allow us to do something we’ve always wantedPaul: Alter ego is a little bit more like a conscious choice in terms of, I'm going to have a different sort of role that I switch into. So it’s sort of like: I'm going to go dress up and play whatever kind of—not that I do cosplay, but like, where I'm going to go, like—you know, put on my party clothes.And I'm going to go to a club tonight, and I'm going to put on, like, that's a different version of who I am in my professional life, or whatever the thing is.DID is really about people who might naturally dissociate a little bit as children. And then they have a very clear kind of index trauma. And most of the time, according to literature, it's like sexual abuse. But it could be physical abuse. And what happens is that, because it's happening at a young age, before their real sense of self is sort of solidified, their way of dissociating is like a much more dramatic split. And it results in these sort of compensatory different parts of themselves. And we all have parts to us, you know, part of me that wants that chocolate bar. Part of me that doesn't. Part of me wants to go to the gym. Part of me wants to sit on the couch. Like we all have that. And that's another discussion that we can get into. But in this, it's not a conscious process. The choice is not really there on how or when to switch. It happens, for the most part, kind of adaptively to the situation for the purposes of survival. Thalia Toha: Is there a way for them to control it when they are diagnosed in adulthood? To then go back and, “OK, well, this is something that, this is the identity that I want to take on  …” —Is that possible?Paul: Yeah. I mean, that happens mostly through treatment. Through stages. You know, you work on sort of building up the ego, or the strengthening, or like the emotional regulation skills.Because the jumping between them very much happens in crisis. Or when they're overwhelmed. So if you build up some more skills, maybe that doesn't have to happen as often. You want them to be able to deal with the distress that comes up from things. Then once that's built up a while, you go and basically work through the original traumas. So, because those are the things that cause the split in the 1st place. And then, after all that’s worked through, then you can work on, hopefully, integration of the different sorts of alters. Or at least helping them work together better. As opposed to being at odd ends. Unlocking the power of having multiple interests and identities in Marvel’s Moon Knight seriesWhat was nice about Moon Knight, is it could sort of embody that a lot of times, these splits that happen are sort of polarities. They're two parts that are sort of fighting for control. And again, that happens in a lot of us, to a lesser extent. That chocolate bar example is like, I'm going to take the chocolate bar. And I'm going to eat it. And then I'm going to feel hugely guilty. And then I'm going to swear off chocolate for the next six months. When it really only lasts three days. And then I'll, you know, ping pong back and forth. We all have polarities. And in DID it's much more dramatic. And it's not something that goes through our common waking pathways. It's a complete jump in consciousness. Thalia: You mentioned you consulted for Moon Knight. And so it is fairly accurate that depiction that they had when the main hero—really, the archetype—and it's kind of interesting to see a hero struggling with this when he basically almost does not have any memory at all of what happened when he took on this other personality. Paul: Yeah, yeah. I mean, Oscar did a fantastic job, doing his own research on it. And Jeremy, the head writer did. Everybody did their own deep work in trying to represent this as accurately as possible. There are different ways that this can manifest. There's what's called sort of one-way versus two-way amnesia.One-way amnesia is one alter is essentially blind or amnestic to what the other alter is doing. But the second alter might know what the first alter has done. And generally, that happens through, basically, the newer alters having the memories of the older ones. But the older ones don't have access to the new one’s. Thalia: Well, because it's more recent of a memory?The new one is trying to adapt to, trying to help protect the first o