I’m a pediatrician and child developmentalist. I practiced pediatrics in Los Angeles for many, many years and then started writing books to help guide parents. My joke is that my job is half pediatrician and half grandmother because so often parents need something other than medical information to help guide them.

In many ways, today’s parents are the most educated parents who ever lived. But they’re also the least experienced when it comes to taking care of babies. Many parents have never even held a baby before they have their own. 

Young people are excited by the idea of moving to a city. You want novelty, you want difference, you want change, and then you get stuck in the city. Your family is back where you came from. You’re not living next door to them, and for much of your life, you really don’t want to live next door to them. Then suddenly you have a baby and go, “Oh my god, that’s why people live next door to each other.”

[[1]]

It’s a serious issue because it leads to the big lie, which is that the normal family is two parents and a child. When you consider human evolution, that is completely abnormal. The extended family is normal. The nuclear family is, in many ways, a wrong turn.

Think about it this way: if it’s two parents and a child in a house, how many relationships can that child have? The child has a relationship with the mother, with the father, with both parents together, and with themselves. Maybe they have a goldfish or a dog and that increases the number. But it used to be that you had three siblings, grandparents nearby, and the kids next door—that’s 12 people, and the number of permutations there is over a hundred. We don’t appreciate the impact of this on our kids. We saw this in spades during the pandemic. What drives parents crazy is that they not only have to cook and clean and do their work and be in a relationship, but they have to be a 24-hour caregiver and playmate to their little kids. 

That is not easy. It really takes all day long to be a playmate. When you don’t have those other people around, the kids struggle and the parents struggle. It’s missing the key ingredient; it’s missing the garlic from the tomato sauce. People who put their kids in daycare are not doing a bad thing and abdicating their responsibilities, they’re doing a good thing and giving their kids a socially enriched environment. 

It’s very hard on parents, especially if you make the wrong assumption. I was just talking to someone at the University of Texas who did a study asking women the type of help they expect to have after their baby is born. It turns out that the biggest predictor of depression isn't the lack of help you have after the baby’s born, but the expectation that you’ll have help or you won’t need help—and then suddenly needing it. It’s a misalignment of expectation and reality. 

![Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-2948](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/1fotlmS0WkvLdCnKbCnUoF/cae882f0bcd47abf7b30fa5bd46e791f/Dr_Karp_-_Gossamer__TN_0-2948.jpg)

I grew up in Bayside, Queens. It was a little neighborhood, so we could roam around and ride our bikes and play with our friends and go up to the park. It was really a good childhood. It was New York, but it was far enough away that it felt like the suburbs and close enough to be able to get into the city. 

I graduated from SUNY Buffalo in 1972. We called ourselves the “Berkeley of the East.” Of course, Berkeley probably laughed at that. I was a strike leader. We got targeted with buckshot by the local sheriffs and we threw back tear gas canisters and went down to Washington to protest the Vietnam War. It was a very, very politically active group. Vietnam was hanging over my head big time. I had a fairly low draft number, but I got  a deferment for going to medical school. And by then, the war was coming to an end.

I thought being a doctor was perfect because you could make your own hours. My father was an engineer and he worked for himself. I wanted to do the same thing, but in science. I had no idea the amount of commitment that’s required. So, yes, you can work for yourself as a doctor, but you’re still on call. 

Pediatrics, especially, you’re on call all the time, 24 hours a day. It was very intensive, but very wonderful because when you’re available around the clock, you really get to know families and children and build relationships. It is the great joy and reward of being a practicing pediatrician. 

[[2]]
> My patients from Venice were the people behind the camera—directors, writers, producers ... The actors lived in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.

While studying in New York, I worked in the South Bronx where a lot of my patients were Spanish-speaking, so I learned Spanish. This allowed me to be able to practice and take care of my community in Los Angeles, which was a real mix of backgrounds and privilege.

My practice in Los Angeles was in a converted little house. People waited in the living room and then came upstairs where we had turned a couple of bedrooms into examination rooms. I’d ride my bicycle or walk to work, because I lived just 10 blocks away. I’d also ride to home births and do house calls. It’s what you might think of being in a rural area, but this was Santa Monica in the early 1980s. It was really wonderful to get to know the families in my neighborhood. People would bring their friends to my practice and I would know them and their neighbors. It’s not an impersonal thing. To this day, I’m still in touch with some of those kids who grew up to be dieticians, cardiac surgeons, professors, actors, and all that. It’s really cool to see everyone growing up and doing well in the world.

Santa Monica is right on the Venice border, and much more expensive than Venice. My patients from Venice were the people behind the camera—directors, writers, producers, et cetera. The actors lived in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills and whatnot. I mean, I had a fair number of them, like Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Pfeiffer, Larry David, Madonna. People found their way to me. But mostly I saw the creative people behind the camera, which was a really great group of folks.

[[3]]

I was always interested in questions that hadn’t been answered—medical mysteries. One of the mysteries in young babies is this thing called colic, which is really babies who cry and cry. Pretty much any book you read will say that we don’t know what causes it, but it goes away. “It might be gas, it might be an upset stomach, but don’t worry about it—they’ll outgrow it.” It always seemed to me that if we could put a man on the moon, we could figure out why babies were crying.

The more I studied it, the more I realized there are a lot of very common ways to calm babies that people actually already know. Driving them in the car all night, for example. We know that those rhythms are helpful. But how and why are they helpful? And why are they not helpful for some people? Those were the questions that I asked myself. And the more I practiced these things, the more I could see that basically there wasn’t a baby I couldn’t calm. I figured if I could do that, then I could teach other people to do it. That led to writing my book.

> I could see that basically there wasn’t a baby I couldn’t calm. I figured if I could do that, then I could teach other people to do it.

I did my research in my office. There was one family where both parents were marketers and I said to them, “I’m writing this book about solving colic and doing all the things that you know, the shushing and swaddling”—the things I taught everybody. I told them I wanted their opinion on the title, which was going to be *The Karp Colic Cure*. I thought that would be the best title because it’s alliterative.

They basically puked and said, “That is the worst title we have ever heard. We would never buy that book. You don’t expect to have a colicky baby, so you’re not going to buy it before the baby is born. And if my baby has colic, I’m never going to get to a bookstore. And besides, it’s for people who don’t have colicky babies, too.” That’s when I came up with the much more inclusive title, *[The Happiest Baby on the Block](https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/the-happiest-baby-book-paperback)*.

[[4]]

It came out exactly 20 years ago and became a phenomenon. I mean, to this day, a generation later, people are still recommending it to their friends because it’s extremely practical and it helps people figure out what’s going on in those little heads. Ashton Kutcher, we were talking once and he said, “I love it when no one knows how to do the five S’s because I’m the magician. I can take these babies one, two, three and everyone applauds.” It’s really been wonderful to train parents and give people those skills. We’ve also trained thousands of educators in 20 nations to teach this. Right now, all you’re taught is breastfeeding or bottle feeding. Yet you have to know how to calm crying and get sleep as well, so we’ve trained people to teach those things. 

But while people can do that during the day, what do you do all night long? People were stressed out of their minds. I gave a lecture in San Francisco many years ago and said if another country were killing 3500 of our babies every year, we would declare war. Thirty-five hundred babies die every year in their sleep. That’s 10 a day. Why aren’t we doing more? That was really when I started thinking, *What would I do if I were there to calm the baby? How can we put that into a device? How can we prevent infant sleep deaths?* So we came up with the idea of the [SNOO](https://www.happiestbaby.com/). That was 10 years ago. It took five years to make and then we launched it five and a half years ago.

First we proved it out. We bootstrapped it in the beginning with just the money that we had from friends and family to be able to test hundreds of babies. By the time we went to raise funds, people were going, “It’s genius and why didn’t someone think of this before?” It was that kind of a thing. It’s so obvious when you see it. And it turns out that part of the reason no one did it before is because it was very hard to do. 

[[5]]

Most people consider the SNOO a baby bed, which is kind of a misunderstanding of what it is. It’s really a robotic assistant. In the hospital, it’s an assistant nurse. The important thing here is that it’s supporting mothers. When you have it in the room with the mom, it can be a little baby nurse there for her to take care of the baby while she gets some rest. 

It’s really fundamental: mothers need to rest after they have a baby. In every other culture, they have five people taking care of them and the baby. This is the only situation in a hospital where you make one patient take care of another patient. The SNOO helps the nurses soothe the babies more efficiently. We’ve shown that each bed reduces nurse labor four to five hours a day. We’re in 140 hospitals already. We’re working in residential centers for homeless moms, and there are prisons that teach the five S’s to their inmates. We would love to be able to do more work to help support incarcerated women with new babies.

Babies who are withdrawing from drugs need it even more. They need more rocking and more shushing and more holding. Sometimes even bounciness because they are so distraught that you have to override it with a little bit of vigor.

[[6]]

Babies born dependent on opioids used to be given morphine or methadone, and we would gradually reduce the dose and then send them home when they were able to be clean and off of the medicine. That would take, on average, four, sometimes six weeks in the hospital. Then, about a decade ago, a group at Yale said, “I don’t think we need to do all that.” They started a program called [Eat, Sleep, Console](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29263121/), which means feed them more, hold them more. See if you can soothe them enough with non-pharmacologic steps to be able to send them home without medication.

Lo and behold, they did great. They were able to reduce the length of time the baby was in the hospital down to something like 10 or 11 days. It was a massive improvement, getting these babies out of the hospital and back to their parents much sooner. But there’s one problem: These babies are still very, very difficult and now you’re giving them back to a stressed out family that doesn’t necessarily know how to deal with them or may already be dealing with their own drug habits or anything else they’re doing just to survive.

> It’s important for parents to child-proof in general, but especially if you have anything that looks like candy.

So now we are starting studies where we use the SNOO to support these families for those first months when the baby is challenging but at home. Whether it’s the parents or the grandparents or foster care, people need extra help to deal with them.

Our goal has never been to sell a chichi baby bed, but for everyone to get a free SNOO. That’s what we’re working toward—the way you get a free breast pump through insurance or the government. Thousands of people already get free SNOOs, through companies that provide it as a benefit.

Okay, one last thing, because this is Gossamer: gummies and consumables. It’s crucial that people realize that once kids start toddling around and getting to nine months and above, those things look really attractive to them. It’s important for parents to child-proof in general, but especially if you have anything that looks like candy, including pills.

[[7]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Dr. Harvey Karp](https://www.instagram.com/happiest_baby/?hl=en) photographed by [Tracy Nguyen](https://www.instagram.com/tracythnguyen/?hl=en) in Los Angeles. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

SNOO founder Harvey Karp on supporting mothers, parenting in prisons, and rethinking how to wean babies off of opioids.

Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-2942

> The big lie ... is that the normal family is two parents and a child.

![Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-2980](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6LIH2BCJb2bY3vyUWlbR4X/c19d19c983f12009e40ef1871dd83590/Dr_Karp_-_Gossamer__TN_0-2980.jpg)

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Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-2961

> It always seemed to me that if we could put a man on the moon, we could figure out why babies were crying.

![Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-3044](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4suflqGDPMPWXMzPzV8aSK/0b1a8e1e2faa93a8743edab0571dac87/Dr_Karp_-_Gossamer__TN_0-3044.jpg)

Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-3020

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> It’s really fundamental: mothers need to rest after they have a baby. 

![Dr Karp - Gossamer TN 0-3014](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/xLrwOwCkvshG4a6VIRlcO/504df8f1d24380d678f0fc0b0869489c/Dr_Karp_-_Gossamer__TN_0-3014.jpg)

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The pediatrician and SNOO founder on supporting mothers, parenting in prisons, and rethinking how to wean babies off of opioids.

Dr. Harvey Karp

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The Best Potato Chip. Plus Bruce Banner, books, and bonsai.

HighPraise

High Praise

I grew up in New York. My dad is German, so I spoke German at home and when we would visit my family there. I grew up with loving parents who divorced when I was young, but they did a great job splitting their time. 

My dad moved when I was five, but my parents lived in the same building—my dad on the 5th floor and my mom on the 15th. We’d switch every day. And then when I was 14, my mom moved like 20 minutes downtown, so I switched every week.

[[1]]

> My dad moved when I was five, but my parents lived in the same building.

I’ve been creative my whole life. I’ve always acted, and I loved to paint, sing, and make clothes. I was just a creative soul in general, and still am. I’m a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none.

My relationship with acting changed when I started working for real. It’s a transition to monetize your hobby. I felt pressure in a way that I didn’t when I was doing theater for community and creativity and my own internal exploration. To suddenly come onto a set and feel like you're costing someone millions of dollars, that you could be messing with somebody’s 10-year journey of trudging through the mud to get to this point, that hopefully you don’t ruin it, and that it’s on you to make their money back—I felt a lot of pressure about that.

I actually had a very painful relationship with being on set for a while. But in the last year or two, I’ve really started to enjoy my time there. I think that it just comes a little bit with age and a little bit with exposure. I’ve gotten older, my confidence has grown, and as my body of work grows, I’m able to fall back on the work that I’m proud of. It’s finally fun for me. I started loving acting. Now it's okay for me to take risks and it’s okay for me to not be the best. It’s okay for me to perform in my own way. I’ve come prepared. 

[[2]]

I find it surprising that more theater programs don’t have classes that really focus on what it’s like to be on a set, because I think most actors, whether or not they have plans to do camera acting, will most likely end up in front of one at some point. And I do think it is quite different. Some actors don’t feel that way, but I believe that the energy output, the basic movement and tenets of performing, the way one shifts for camera versus on stage feel very different.

I didn’t major in theater, but I was lucky that my college had a class called “Acting for the Camera.” I took that class two semesters in a row because I felt like I had no idea how to do it and that it was a skill I should learn. I’ve been doing so much camera work now that I feel a little bit lost when I’m presented with theater auditions. I feel like I have unlearned those skills. It used to be my comfort, and now I am just more used to being on a set.

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> I once had a really terrible experience with an edible. It knocked me flat.

Theater gives you a very direct relationship with the audience. You have two hours to go through the whole arc of a story. You’re in, you’re out. A director has guided you to this point, but once you’re on stage, the story is yours. It belongs to you and the audience, and nobody else.

In theater, you have weeks and months to create community and safety. The energy in front of a camera is just so much more internal. You give everything, you take risks, you try stuff, but then ultimately the final performance is completely out of your hands. So if you don’t trust your director, you may not give certain things because you don't want them to make you look like an idiot. It’s just a totally different game of trust.

[[3]]

This might be a little controversial, but I’m actually pretty straight-edge. That’s largely because I once had a really terrible experience with an edible. It knocked me flat. Since then, I’ve been horrified at the prospect of anything like that ever happening to me again. So I’ve sworn off everything. 

I don’t think I respond very well to weed, generally. But I think everyone’s brain and body chemistry are quite different. It’s fascinating to me when people feel really great on weed, because I’m like, *Wow, I just chemically don’t understand it.* For example, my partner loves smoking weed to be creative, and it doesn’t do that at all for me. But if I drink a little bit, I feel so open to the universe, and I feel love and gentleness toward those around me. Some people feel that way if they’re smoking. For other people, it’s shrooms. But I’m somebody who likes to be in control of my mind. Even drinking, if I’m tipsy for more than 20 minutes, I’m over it.

I haven’t tried shrooms yet, but I would love to. My partner keeps telling me he thinks I would love them. But again, now I’m terrified of anything ever going wrong. It took me a year to be able to talk about my bad experience without starting to cry.

[[4]]
> I have so many friends who microdose or take full trips, and it really, really helps them see their depression or anxiety in a different way.

I think most people have had some sort of negative experience with a substance. But I don’t really want to be ruled by fear, so I do have an interest in trying weed again or trying other things like shrooms. I have so many friends who microdose or take full trips, and it really, really helps them see their depression or anxiety in a different way. 

I take antidepressants. I think Xanax is a wonderful thing for people to have as a tool in order to not feel despair. I think it’s amazing to have different tools that you can use with intention and in moderation to allow you to be your full true self. And to me, if that’s weed, if that’s sometimes moderate or intentional drinking, or shrooms, or whatever it is, then that’s great. 

DMT is also interesting. Of course, there’s ayahuasca, the classic. I think all of these things—again, with intentionality—are quite powerful. And it’s anything, right? I think about it with sugar, too. I love sugar and I think, *How do I use this with intention in my life?* I love to bake and share that with people. It’s the way I express my love and the way I express love to myself.

[[5]]

I clearly have a lot of fear tied up in these things and I don’t like that. I do want to try dipping my toe in, even with something like ecstasy. I just think each individual is just quite different. Each individual needs different things, different chemicals. It’s like how one prescription of antidepressant doesn’t work for everybody. Some people can tolerate Lexapro, some can tolerate Zoloft, some can tolerate Wellbutrin, and so on. But you have to try them to figure it out. It’s all about what perfect potion will make you an open, vulnerable, expressive person who can feel *all* the things, and not just one thing.

Soothing rituals can take different forms. I think there’s the treats version of that where I’m like, *I just want cookies and to do nothing*. That’s usually if I’ve had a really tough and stressful work week. Then I’ll lean into that. And then there’s YouTube, which I really love. I love watching historical costuming and sewing. I love watching painting. I love watching cooking. I find cooking sounds really soothing, like ASMR. That is usually what I do to relax myself. And I love watching birth videos.

Since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a mother, and hopefully I have the opportunity to do that in my life. I’ve just always felt in my bones that it was something I was meant to be. I was always sort of baby crazy and loved children, and it turned into this obsession with birth, and the transition of identity for a mother, or a person giving birth. 

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I think in some ways it’s one of the last truly mystical things that we have in this world, where people are like, “Wow, maybe there is a God,” right? It’s something that we have so little control over, a process that touches life and death, where we tap into our most primal, and deepest selves, and where you see the true power of the body, particularly women’s bodies. And newborn babies feel like this gift from the universe. They feel like these completely untouched little creatures who we, as adults, still don't fully understand. 

Over the years, my interest in wanting to be a good parent, and wanting to be a good mother, transitioned into me really obsessing over the birth process, and how cool I think it is. And also how sexy I think it is. It’s such an interesting thing. Life comes from sex and life comes from, I don’t know, just such a bodily experience. But as somebody who hasn't done this before, I’m also sure I romanticize a lot of it in ways. 

> I’ve thought that if acting doesn’t work out, midwifery would be my plan B.

I read books about it. I watch a lot of documentaries and videos about it. I love watching birth videos. I watch midwife videos. I watch lactation videos. I find it fascinating. And not just the birth, but also the processes before and after pregnancy. I’ve actually been wanting to take a doula program. I would love to learn midwifery. It’s weird to say this, but I’ve thought that if acting doesn’t work out, midwifery would be my plan B. Life is long, who knows what’ll happen? Midwifery is a little bit unfeasible for me right now because I would have to fully pause my acting career to go to medical school, but I feel like I could at least be a doula. 

I’ve always been interested in women’s rights and health, and women needing support. I have a friend who is an abortion doula. She helps people process that decision, stays with them during it, and helps them process afterward. This interests me profoundly as well. I think everybody is gifted with some random passion, and mine happens to be this one. And it gets stronger with each passing day.

[[6]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Zazie Beetz](https://www.instagram.com/zaziebeetz/?hl=en) photographed by [Meghan Marin](https://www.instagram.com/meghanmarin/?hl=en) in New York City. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

The actress on midwifery, mushrooms, and the edible experience that made her cry.

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> It’s all about what perfect potion will make you an open, vulnerable, expressive person who can feel *all* the things, and not just one thing.

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Zazie Beetz

I grew up in the Bay Area, but I was born in Beijing. My parents left me with my grandparents at the age of one to come to America to make a living. They came with $10 in their pocket and no English. My mom lived above the restaurant where she was a waitress. Every night after it closed, her power would go out. As a mother myself, it’s so hard to imagine having to leave children behind and the sacrifices that they made for my future, and my children’s future. 

My maternal grandfather raised me. I have such warm feelings for the time that we spent together. I learned a bunch of old man stuff, like fishing. We played a lot of chess, both Western and Chinese. My grandfather was a senior citizen pool champion, so every morning we’d wake up at six and go to the senior citizen billiards club. I wasn’t allowed to play because I was too young. I would just rack for him and his friends. But he’d break down the strategy. We’d spend six hours at this club and he’d be like, “Okay, so why did he go for that one? Why did he go for *that* ball in *that* pocket?” I feel really grateful for that time.

> My mom lived above the restaurant where she was a waitress. Every night after it closed, her power would go out.

I joined my parents in America when I was five, but they wanted me to stay connected to my family and my cultural heritage, so every summer I would go back to China. At the age of seven, I started flying internationally by myself. One year, when I was eight, I arrived at the Beijing airport at nine o’clock at night. Whoever was supposed to pick me up wasn’t at the right place. As it got closer to midnight, I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to do this.” So I dragged my giant suitcase, found a legitimate cab—because back in the day, there were all kinds of shady ones—and was like, “I don’t have any money, but take me to this address and someone will pay you.” I showed up in the middle of the night and my family was like, “What happened?” And I was like, “I don’t know, but someone needs to go pay the cab downstairs.”

My career path has been very varied, but I’m grateful for that because everything that I do now comes from a previous experience. I started out in tech, doing business development and market research. I started investing in real estate developments because my parents, being immigrant parents, were like, “You can’t just let your money sit there,” and encouraged me to find smart opportunities for investment. I also worked as a freelance photographer. I soon realized that my business experience could be helpful for some of the businesses I was shooting for, so I started offering go-to-market strategy work in addition to creative.

[[1]]

I now work as the creative director of [Four One Nine](https://www.fouronenine.com/), a creative agency and event space focused on cultivating culture and community in San Francisco. Earlier this year, we held a Cannabis Eve Party on 4/19—Four One Nine. I’m allergic to alcohol, so weed has always been this very natural, simpatico relationship for me. What I love about cannabis is the way it meets me where I’m at in any given moment. It can meet me at a very social event and just add an additional layer to the vibe. Or it can be a nightcap after a long stressful day. One of my favorite things to do is put some vinyl on my turntable, whatever music I’m feeling at that moment, and then roll and smoke a joint. Sometimes I read, but most of the time I just vibe out to music, look at art, watch the smoke from the joint, and try to be in the moment, feeling my body, feeling my senses, not worrying about the future, not bogged down by the past—just truly being in that moment.

It’s a very analog experience. I collect vintage lighters, so smoking for me isn’t just like, “Okay, let’s just get lit and go.” It takes refilling the butane lighter. I use a vintage ashtray. I love extracting shots from my hand-lever Italian espresso machine. I can feel the history and the tactile experience behind all these objects. I just drop into my body and that grounds me. I could be stressed out anywhere in the world and just think about the last time I smoked weed, and then I’m okay. 

I first smoked weed in college, but I don’t think any of those college experiences complement your relationship to yourself. When you don’t know yourself, when you’re not connected to yourself, you don’t know how these things best fit into your life. I mean, it’s like dating, friendships, or anything else, right? So when I first started smoking in college, it was just stoner vibes, if you will. 

[[2]]

It wasn’t until recently, when I developed a stronger and deeper connection to myself, that I understood how I wanted cannabis to show up in a positive, additive, and non-numbing way for me. Time becomes more finite, you know? You really have to start figuring out how you want to spend the hours in your day. I had been smoking weed on and off, but not in an intentional way. I let cannabis drive the experience for me rather than me setting my intention for what I wanted out of it. I see that in all kinds of things—a vice or food or anything. Even media consumption. Are you going to let your phone dictate your day, or are you going to be like, *How am I approaching this device, this activity?* It’s the difference between mindlessness and mindfulness.

Having this much choice around something like cannabis is such a privilege. Sometimes I get swept away by all the amazing, beautifully designed paraphernalia and products that are out there. But at the end of the day, as an analog lover, I just love smelling flower. Look, I know myself. I’ve tried all these things, but what is really authentic to my experience is smoking combustible flower. I have to remind myself of that sometimes when [Elevate Jane](https://www.elevatejane.com/), for example, comes out with some gorgeous new product. I’ll be like, *Ooh*. But then I’m like, *Sonya, are you really going to use that?*

> When I developed a stronger and deeper connection to myself ... I understood how I wanted cannabis to show up in a positive, additive, and non-numbing way for me.

I tend not to smoke directly around my kids. I’m not typically any level of inebriated around them. But I welcome the conversation. They definitely see some of my stuff laying around or sometimes I’ll be smoking a joint with a friend and my daughter will come down and she clearly knows something is up.

My kids are seven and four, so even the idea of drinking, I think, or being drunk, is an abstract concept. When it’s age-appropriate, I would love to engage in a conversation around responsible use and sourcing. Trusting your own intuition when you’re in spaces, whether you’re drunk or on some other kind of substance, you have to make sure that you’ve set yourself up for success and safety as much as possible, and that, for me, is what the conversation is rooted in. It’s not necessarily about a particular substance, because that can happen with alcohol, too.

[[3]]

I split time between San Francisco and L.A. When I’m in Northern California, I smoke exclusively [Swami Select](https://swamiselect.com/). When I’m in Southern California, I smoke exclusively [710 Labs](https://710labs.com/). It’s so good. It just taps into that old-school vibe that I always love. Those are my two go-tos. It’s important to think about what your experience is and what kind of processes your body wants and enjoys and stay true to that. The more that you stick to what's authentic to you, the easier it becomes to just lean into your intuition when you need to make a decision. 

I really want to challenge the monoculture that dominates the Bay Area and break the stereotypes that have really set in here. I’m dedicated to cultivating a local creative community and igniting positive social change, which is the foundation of my work across all of my projects. With Four One Nine, it’s not just about a single event or activation. We don’t see ourselves as a plug-and-play organization. We want to help the ecosystem of San Francisco grow and elevate. I’m raising my kids here. This is where I want them to be inspired and live. I don’t want to keep running to New York or L.A. or London for interesting events. We’re very stringent about who we work with at Four One Nine. One of the things that we often ask our collaborators is, “How do you see your career and where do you want to take it?” Because not only will we invest the resources to help them grow, period, we also want them to feel seen and heard. 

[[4]]

So many people are only interested in press or accolades. But it’s not about that. Are you dedicated? Are you hardworking? Do you have that ethic? Do you have that idea? Because I was overlooked time and time again as an immigrant woman of color, and so I have that empathy. Like, if someone had given me a little bit more resources, what might I have done with that?

I’m also an executive leadership coach. A good friend used to work at Human Rights Watch. At the time, she was going into San Quentin prison on the regular and she thought that I might be very interested in criminal justice reform work. So I started going into San Quentin, mentoring the men in blue there around entrepreneurship, emotional intelligence, and financial literacy. I found the work so engaging and so fulfilling. I just felt my whole brain light up.

San Quentin is physically a very beautiful place, but there are so many rules and regulations. You have to dress a certain way, conduct yourself in a certain way, and go through all the security checks and protocols to then be amongst other humans. It just made me reflect on what it means to be human, what privilege is, what a practice of empathy is, and how powerful our words are. One of the things I hold very true is not over-promising or speaking in exaggerated terms. Because I get to leave at the end of the day, but the men there are staying. So my words, and how I show up, really affect them and their daily lives. It deepened my practice of empathy and understanding of human psychology.

[[5]]

I think our egos and insecurities often get in the way of being able to relate to someone. But when you’re sitting in a maximum security prison and having a conversation with someone who might, on the surface, have had a very different experience from you, and you’re both still trying actively to relate with each other in a non-selfish way, that’s what builds connection.

I eventually completed a coaching training program and started coaching leaders and creatives. I’ve realized that my niche in coaching really is the ability to practice active listening, process what I’m hearing, and reflect it back, but from a place of self-empowerment. Our words are incredibly revealing. How we choose to say what is on our minds and the words that we put forth reveal what our internal perspective is. 

One of the things I hear a lot in people’s vernacular is that we often use nouns rather than adjectives and verbs to describe ourselves. So when that happens, we attach it to our identity. So for example, someone could say, “I’m a good host. I’m a great host. I host parties all the time. I love it.” And so, when something at your party then goes wrong or somebody is having a sad moment, that becomes an attack on your identity. Because if I said I’m a good host, and someone’s crying at my party, clearly I’m not a good host. Instead of acting to address the moment, you’re coming from a defensive place because your identity is being attacked. Now, if I were to say, for example, “I love hosting,” that is a verb. So when someone’s crying at your party, that’s not an attack on your identity. That’s like, “Oh, well, shit, I love hosting. Let me go talk to that person.” My ego isn’t getting attacked by this person’s experience. 

[[6]]

I used to cut myself off of a lot of different things. I used to say that I was not creative. I used to say that I was not entrepreneurial. I think that came from a lack of knowing myself, a rejection of myself, and not listening or being disconnected from my own intuitive voice. When I really started trying things and enjoying them, I surprised myself more and more. So now I don’t like to say that “I can’t do this” or “I’m not like that” unless I’ve really given it a go.

For instance, I’m about to launch a streetwear magazine called [*MYLES*](https://www.mylesmag.com/) with my friends [Jeff Staple](https://www.instagram.com/jeffstaple/?hl=en) and [Zachary Glassman](https://www.instagram.com/zachspassport/?hl=en). I’m the co-founder and managing editor. It sits at the intersection of culture, art, and travel, understanding that these things are where we find our inspiration—whether it’s what we put on our bodies, how we style our homes, or how we sticker up our notebooks. Every issue is going to be focused on a different city. The first city is Los Angeles. 

I think that as the world swings more digital, there’s always going to be this pull for something that is real, something that is tangible. Tech has introduced a lot of convenience to our lives and removed a lot of barriers, but it can never replicate soulfulness. Tech numbs our senses. There’s never going to be something that replaces  the experience of sitting down and feeling something, whether that’s a magazine or a vinyl record.  We are living, breathing beings. We’re not just a set of eyes. We’re more than that.

[[7]]

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Sonya Yu](https://www.instagram.com/sonyayu/) photographed by [Cayce Clifford](https://www.instagram.com/cayceclifford/) in San Francisco. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

The founder of Four One Nine and MYLES on setting a smoking intention, working in San Quentin, and growing up between Beijing and the Bay Area.

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> What I love about cannabis is the way it meets me where I’m at in any given moment.

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> How we choose to say what is on our minds and the words that we put forth reveal what our internal perspective is.

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The founder of [Four One Nine](https://www.fouronenine.com/) and *[MYLES](https://www.mylesmag.com/)* on setting a smoking intention, working in San Quentin, and growing up between Beijing and the Bay Area.

Sonya Yu

*This article first appeared in [Volume Two](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-two-paradise) of our print magazine.*

The short answer: you can’t. You don’t have her gumption, her wisdom, her bravery, her smarts, her wits, her intestinal fortitude. You really, really can’t. Thank you, *Gossamer*, send the check. For the casual thrill of suspending our mutual disbelief, here’s how you *might* go about matching the detective skills of a retired English teacher who single handedly solved a couple dozen gruesome murders *every year* for more than a decade in a slew of quaint, bustling, or picturesque locales. 

__Must be willing to travel.__

The real key to solving murders is going where the bodies are. *Murder, She Wrote’s* grand dame achieved overnight success, morphing from mild-mannered childless widow to a J.K. Rowling-level-famous mystery writer after her bumbling nephew sent her manuscript to a publisher without her consent. The all-expenses-paid junkets, conferences, research trips, and keynotes that ensued—coupled with her unspeakably vast network of nieces, nephews, and long-lost friends—took Jessica to places where her sleuthing skills were needed. There are only so many drifters and con men that can die in your hometown of 3,560. You really gotta leave the nest. 

__Don’t be afraid to meddle.__

Do not for one second think anyone in your vicinity has the right to private conversation. Their personal business is your business. Pry into the lives of others. Open closed doors. Snoop around someone’s hotel room. Pick up the phone and listen in on others’ conversations. Pepper the prodigal son with queries on why he returned home. People have secrets, and without uncovering those skeletons, you’ll never solve shit.  

__Never learn to drive a car.__

You know when you get the best information out of people? When they’re trapped. No License Jessica needed rides to and from all kinds of places. This is your perfect opportunity to be a busy-body. At least one-quarter of her investigative victories stem from fortuitous car rides in which some seemingly unimportant clue unravels a mystery.

__Pay attention to accessories.__

They say the devil’s in the details, but Jessica’s success was often in the jewelry. Is someone missing a formal cufflink? Where is that woman’s other earring? Weren’t you wearing a bracelet at the party earlier? Suspects leave all kinds of accouterments behind at the scene, and because Jessica never met a crime scene she didn’t fuck with, feel free to pick up these items and stuff ‘em in your pocket to confront the perp with later. 

__Mess with (male) authority. __

Shitty, powerful men are everywhere. Detectives. Mayors. Husbands. Sons. Fuck these guys! If a cop tells you to stay away from the investigation, ignore that noise altogether. If a patriarch tells you to butt out of a family squabble, tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine. Fletcher Feminism means taking no guff from men who underestimate you.

__Set up rogue (and potentially lethal) sting operations.__ 

Since you’ve already tainted much of the official evi-dence, you’re going to have to get the killer to confess, which means putting into motion a devious plan that ensures they come back to the crime scene. The one minor downside? You *will* have a firearm pulled on you when you confront the killer. But Jessica has stared down the barrel of a gun dozens of times, and so can you. Just make sure the detective you’ve ignored and bullied waits patiently for the exact right moment to barge in and yell, “Drop it!” 

__Always have murder on the brain.__

Get used to multitasking like the great J.B. Fletcher, because the only way to solve all these murders is to eat, sleep, and breathe them by writing 40-plus mystery bestsellers at the same time.

How To Solve A Murder Like Jessica Fletcher

Murder She Wrote Jessica Fletcher

Gossamer looks at the world—travel, design, art, culture, and food—through a green lens.

*This article is featured in [Gossamer Volume Seven: Touch](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-seven-touch). Subscribe [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/annual-magazine-subscription).*

It’s a little known fact that a male octopus’s eighth leg is actually its penis. The very name—derived from the Greek word *októpus*, meaning “eight foot”—has led us down the garden path. I’ve lived my whole life believing an octagon has eight sides, my 83-year-old nanna is an octogenarian, and *an octopus has eight goddamn legs*—it’s basic linguistics.

But now, at the auspicious age of 33, I have to accept that I’ve been suckered. There’s nothing “octo” about the male octopus. They have seven tentacles and a specialized limb for transferring sperm. In other words, the eighth leg is a penis.

To put that in context, the name “octopus” is the species equivalent of referring to a human male as a triped. I simply refuse.

This deceptive appendage, called a hectocotylus, was first recorded by Aristotle around the year 347 BC in one of the earliest surviving scientific studies. The ancient Greek philosopher left Plato’s Academy following his mentor’s death, swapping the city of Athens for the island of Lesbos where he spent two years observing the marine life of a lagoon at the island’s center.

It was here that Aristotle, father of Western logic and apparent octopus voyeur, first surmised the use of the octopus’s eighth leg in the mysterious act of cephalopod sex. He was, of course, widely disbelieved. It wasn’t until 1827, some 2000-odd years later, that Aristotle was proven correct.

It’s not hard to see why it took so long for biologists to catch up. The hectocotylus looks and acts like a leg on a regular day. It can bend, it can stretch, it can exert suction. But at the sight of a slinky lady octopus, the hectocotylus can, in some species, stretch to twice its
regular size. If we’re talking ratio to body length, it’s a crime against octopus everywhere that we hold the donkey as the gold standard of gonopodia.

But alas, we must collect our minds from the gutter. As one of the most antisocial creatures on earth, size for the octopus is about survival. While sex for humans certainly has its own set of challenges, sex for the octopus comes with a very real threat of cannibalization.

The fear of being consumed—literally, not metaphorically—by the object of its affection is so great that some species of cephalopod have evolved a mating ritual so stealthy that they can avoid touching their partner at all.

The male argonaut octopus, for example, is so averse to physical intimacy that he instead tears off his penis-leg, sperm clenched tightly in his tentacled fist, and gives it to the object of his affection like some kind of macabre Valentine’s gift. In other words, an argonaut octopus would rather wrench off its own penis than touch another living creature. Is that not the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?

The more I think about it, the more I wonder—are these octopuses desperately lonely? Studies have long proven they have extraordinary minds, but it appears that evolution has dealt them a cruel hand: intelligence and vulnerability in equal measure.

Have their exposed, fleshy bodies made them so terrified of the world around them that they can’t, even for a fleeting second, indulge in the tender touch of their own kind? Do their suckered limbs and bulbous bodies long to be wrapped in the tentacles of another?

Unfortunately, we may never know the answer. More than two millennia after Aristotle’s observations in the lagoons of Lesbos, we still have so much to learn about this wildly intelligent, yet fiercely private creature.

For now, I choose an alternative narrative. One where octopuses are the ultimate romantics, sacrificing life, limb, and loneliness in the quest for love and lineage. In my 33 years of dating, I’ve yet to receive a Valentine’s gift as memorable.

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V7 High Minded: Tentacles 2

High Minded: Tentacles

*This article originally appeared in [Volume Four: the Inside issue](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-four-inside). Subscribe [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/annual-magazine-subscription).*

Symmetrical stacks of shimmering, rectangular boxes. Holographic labels promising total, complete, maximum, sparkling, advanced, and optic whitening and cavity protection. This is the toothpaste aisle at the supermarket, a candy store of personal hygiene.

Scanning the rows upon rows of boxes puts me into a trance. It’s as satisfying as biting into a frosty ice cream bar. Maybe I’m just a sucker for good marketing. I think my favorite is Crest Complete Whitening Plus Scope, a double helix of mint mouthwash splitting the blue and green box down the middle.

When I was a kid, my mom bought Aquafresh, red and blue stripes of gel sandwiching one of white paste emblazoned across the front like a patriotic banner. That’s the box that probably began my obsession: the supernova graphic behind the friendly Aquafresh label promised to make the monotony of tooth brushing “EXTREME,” while clouds of soft, foaming bubbles scrubbing away at my teeth would burst into “ACTION.” Toothpaste is among life’s most banal necessities, and yet the packaging is pure magic: stare at the boxes for long enough and the goopy paste inside the soft, fat tube becomes a faded memory. Now it’s glamorous, now it’s bursting with freshness.

The packaging didn’t always look this way. In the early 1900s, it was called “dental powder” and came in squat metal tins decorated with ornate labels that pledged to “cleanse” your teeth, to make them “beautiful.” But even then, the labels conveyed a sense of urgency, reminding us to be hypervigilant over the health of the bones protruding from our faces, like tiny tombstones. In the 1950s, “dental powder” turned to “dental cream,” accompanied by “Colgate” printed in *TRON*-like letters on a solid red background. But the product itself remained in flat, one-dimensional boxes well into the eighties: Crest packages were dull, metallic grey, and the futuristic Colgate font of the fifties had been replaced by a more rounded, friendly mark—hardly the slanted, aggressive lettering we see now.

Today, the graphics glitter, and though the same primary colors are deployed across almost every brand (red, blue, white, and sometimes green), they are now more vivid, more blindingly cheerful, like a grin pulled too tight across an anxious mouth. Toothpaste advertising is both scary and reassuring, leaping off the shelf to scream—CLEANS! GUARDS!—at you while declaring that under its care you will be disease-free, you will achieve purity. Every brand—the Sensodynes, Aims, and Arm & Hammers, too—evoke feelings of cleanliness, vowing to repair (rejuvenate, strengthen, restore) what we didn’t even realize had been damaged. Almost every box across every brand features the word “fresh” or a graphic that resembles an exploding firework.

Sometimes there’s an extra flourish to make the toothpaste look professional. Take the Colgate Total box, another favorite: a white pinstripe background breaks up the red block reserved for the logo, and to the right, a shimmery multicolored oval surrounds “Total,” a little gold clock floating behind it. This one protects not just your teeth, but your cheeks and gums too, a police officer for your whole mouth.

Assurances of a clean mouth are one thing, but there’s more at work here: toothpaste packaging creates a deeply satisfying pattern of order. It’s symmetry. It’s organization. There is a simple geometry to the boxes—sharp rectangles, fluid ovals, and neat text bordered by a string of bubbles or a gold stripe. Maybe I have no control over the trajectory of my life. It’s possible that only fate or angels can decide what path I take. But toothpaste offers the illusion of agency. Here is my stubborn message to the universe: I will bring structure and order into my home with this juicy tube of toothpaste. I will scrub my teeth until they sparkle.

This is the strange spell cast by the toothpaste box. Toothpaste packaging isn’t selling toothpaste. It’s selling one of the most appealing and delusional ideas in the world: that what we buy can bring our troubled human brains any kind of peace. That perhaps we are all just one toothpaste tube away from joy.

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gossamer philotheus nisch inside toothpaste 2019 copy

High Minded: White Lies

*This article is featured in Gossamer Volume Seven—the Touch issue— subscribe [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/annual-magazine-subscription).*

“Wink” belongs to that particular category of words destined to lose their meaning once repeated. Say it twice and it’s no longer a verb but an absurd salad of hard consonants—the sort of syntax drummed up for the sake of a children’s book. It reads like a sound: onomatopoeia for the gesture itself. The actual practice is no less bizarre. Consider your use cases: it’s a mode of ocular flirting; a non-verbal alternative to “I’m kidding” or “I’m lying;” a disconcertingly tender, silent greeting. It can be romantic, sinister, snide, or playful—and a worthy accompaniment to “U up?”

The beloved half-blink is also an undeniable cousin to the twitch. When executed poorly, it appears less like a mode of silent communication and more like a brain malfunction. But miraculously enough, the wink maintains its cultural allure.

Speaking frankly, I am a subpar winker. Shutting one eye seems to require nearly all of my facial muscles—a spasm that appears more cartoonish than sly. Moreover, it would seem that I am left-eyed, in as much as my right winks translate more accurately as sour flinches of pain.

The type of winker I am most pointedly taken with, though, is the wily, subtle kind. The sort of person who folds a wink softly into grooves of dialogue, who makes you wonder if it actually happened in the first place. There’s a certain romance to subtext of all forms: bits of informational embroidery, scrap phrasing. And in New York, where exhibitionism reigns supreme and confrontation masquerades as commonplace rapport, that sort of small, conversational footnote—the wink—often feels all the more precious.

While there’s no definitive biological consensus on the fundamental appeal of the wink, there are some relevant findings. In the 1960s, a biopsychologist named Eckhard Hess discovered that our pupils dilate when we zero in on something to which we feel sexually attracted. Several years later, nonverbal studies researcher Dr. David Givens determined that rapid blinking (or Hugh Grant’s signature eye flutter) operates as a sign of arousal. More recently, in 2015, Match.com polled over 5,600 single people across the United States about their texting habits and a whopping 53 percent said they used the “winky face” reliably when flirting. This is, of course, not the same as the *actual* practice of winking, but illustrated or otherwise, the gesture has its salacious undertones.

The wink isn’t merely amorous in nature. It can be conspiratorial, too. According to body language expert Patti Woods, a wink often indicates shared knowledge. “It says, ‘You and I have a secret we both understand; others do not,’” she explains. And by that token, the gesture is an admission of a mutual, private history.

It’s that thing that happens at parties, in rooms humming with other people, all of them bobbing and weaving and telling secrets. That thing where you meet someone’s gaze—maybe your person, maybe not—from across a chasm of other upright bodies. There’s no particular sentiment being communicated here, no transmission of information. It’s just a quiet acknowledgment that someone else is keeping tabs. You’re seen, therefore you are.

On the subject of across-the-room eye contact, the titular character in Noah Baumbach’s *Frances Ha* puts it best: “It’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them.” That’s what’s in a wink.

Broadly speaking, as a writer by trade, nonverbal cues aren’t exactly my forte. But this past year, I meandered my way into a form of writer’s block so persistent it felt structurally sound—like I could live inside of it, shades down. I had everything and nothing to say, and for the first time, words seemed dull and flimsy held up against the harder-earned edge of real life. And therein lies the magic of the wink: language can be a game of diminishing returns. We need not have words for everything.

The wink has a special economy. It’s the giddy affirmation of communion, but without the untidy business of language mixed in. It’s romance devoid of clichés; friendship sans qualifiers; a joke that’s all punchline. Or perhaps it’s just a muscular tick.

*Reading this feature would be even better with the actual magazine. Order your copy [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-seven-touch).*

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Features

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High Minded: Tentacles

High Minded: White Lies

High Minded: Winking

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For people who also smoke weed.