Is Swearing Good For Your Health?

 

Swearing can make people uncomfortable. However, using epithets and curses do have their place, as a means of emotional release, and swearing, according to science, has several positive effects. In this episode, Whitney Lauritsen and Jason Wrobel explore the place of swearing in our culture and language. They also discuss authenticity, the intersection of etiquette, ethics, and language. Listen in and learn more about why people have foul mouths in this thought-provoking episode.

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Is Swearing Good For Your Health?

What Profanity Says About Your IQ

I was checking up on our YouTube channel where we post most episodes of the show plus our second show, This Hits The Spot, so that you can watch us if you’re not watching us now. Some people enjoy seeing expressions especially when we have guests on the show because you get to see them. There’s a deeper connection you can make with people. To be honest, there’s also a marketing benefit to it where people sometimes discover us through YouTube and that’s happened with a few of our episodes.

One of them drew in this one viewer or listener, and they said something to the effect of, “This was great information aside from all the profanity. What a shame.” It was worded slightly differently than that but they were shaming us for using profanity, and then I realized that I don’t know if I’ve marked or if I even could mark the show as explicit as we do on the actual show. Maybe YouTube doesn’t quite offer the same types of warnings.

To be fair, some people do not want to speak or hear profanity and that’s the reason why there is something like an explicit rating to give people a heads up. It’s an interesting thing because I feel some mixed emotions around this. I don’t know why Jason is laughing so hard. I can’t wait to hear his reaction. Maybe we’ll show this in the YouTube version so you can see Jason cracking up over whatever he’s finding very funny about this subject. He’s delighted by it, perhaps because it irritates him. I’m not sure. We’re about to find out.

I will wrap up my thoughts by saying I’m not someone who swears that much but I like the freedom to swear. I like the freedom to express myself however I would choose. I tend to be a bit politically correct because despite the title of the show, I don’t enjoy making people uncomfortable. In fact, I strive to make others uncomfortable, even at the expense of my comfort.

That’s probably why I don’t lean towards swearing that much. Occasionally, I do and people are generally surprised like, “Whitney, I have never heard you say that word before.” It’s a common reaction that I get. I do swear from time to time, but not quite as much as Jason. When we got this comment on YouTube, Jason said, “I am willing to bet that I was the one who used the profanity that offended this person.” With that said, Jason, what is making me laugh so hard about this subject matter?

First of all, for you to say it’s a shame that there’s so much profanity, do your research. Here’s what I mean by that and here’s why I’m laughing. I was watching this YouTube video of a guy. I liked his energy. He’s a billionaire investor that I first became familiar with through the documentary we saw. We watched many documentaries on social media. The name of it is escaping me because I feel like I’ve lost in a sea of documentaries. We did a whole episode around it here and my brain is blanking because we did a few of them. It wasn’t Childhood 2.0. It wasn’t Fake Famous. What was the big one around social media that came out in 2020?

The Social Dilemma.

Thank you. He was in The Social Dilemma. They had a clip of him because he’s a former employee in the early days of Facebook. He’s a billionaire investor. He’s the founder and CEO of a company called Social Capital. His name is Chamath Palihapitiya. He had this great interview on YouTube where he talked about this. People were taking umbrage with how much he swears on stage. He’s an incredibly intelligent, deeply insightful, evocative person who talks about the implications of our mental health, our societal health, social media, and how social media has been intentionally engineered to capture our attention and increase divisiveness in humans.

All of that said, Chamath was referencing research in his interview in this YouTube clip of people taking him to task for using profanity. He’s like, “I use profanity because I’m fucking smart.” People are like, “What do you mean?” There are three different articles. One on NPR, which is an audio article. One on ScienceAlert.com, and the one that I’m about to reference is on DiscoverMagazine.com. The title of the article, which came out in 2020, Worried About Swearing Too Much? Science Says You Shouldn’t Be: People who swear like a sailor are more honest and more intelligent people, studies show. Are you threatened by my honesty? Are you threatened by my intelligence?

Curiously, we go into this, “Scientifically speaking, a penchant for profanity does not seem to be a bad thing. Studies have shown that swearing relieves stress, dulls the sensation of pain, fosters camaraderie among your peers, and is linked to traits like verbal fluency, openness and emotional honesty. The effects of cursing and using profanity are physical as well as mental. A 2018 study in Psychology of Sport and Exercise found that letting out a few choice profane words during a workout can help make you stronger. In the study, participants who cursed aloud verbally while gripping a heavyweight or a hand vise were able to squeeze and lift harder and longer.” That’s fascinating.

 

There’s a professor emeritus of Psychology. His name is Timothy Jay. He’s at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He says that humans partly developed taboo language and profanity specifically as an emotional release valve. He says that there’s a point where it’s more efficient to say, “Fuck you,” than it is to hit somebody. Jay, a world-renowned expert in profanity, says, “Humans are evolved in this very efficient way to vent our emotions and convey them to others through language.”

Here’s another one real quick because I want to back this up with all the research for the people who might still be doubting me. In 2009 at Keele University in the UK, their School of Psychology set up a study on whether swearing alters someone’s perception of pain. Based on previous assumptions that swearing was a “maladaptive” response to pain, the scientists guessed that swearing would make the pain feel worse. Surprisingly, the scientists found that swearing increases a person’s pain tolerance. The team tasked 67 volunteers to plunge their hands in ice-cold water for as long as they could handle it while repeating a swear word of their choice.

Scientifically speaking, a penchant for profanity does not seem to be a bad thing. Share on X

They did the experiment again but this time, the students said a neutral non-profane word. The research team found that the volunteers were able to keep their hands submerged in ice-cold water longer while repeating the swear word. Whitney, this is cool. This might be one of the coolest episodes we’ve done. This is a great article. There are more research studies on this than I even thought possible. You swear less than I do, that’s established. I use profanity a lot more frequently than you do, is that something you feel is a result of the household or the family you grew up in, or it’s something you are mindful to not do at the risk of making someone uncomfortable? I’m curious, why do you think you swear less than I do?

I’m glad that you brought up this idea of comfort because something else I was reminded of as we were talking about this is a video I sent to you by Gary Vaynerchuk. He was talking about why he continues to curse even when some people ask him to stop. Some people believe that it’s getting in the way of his message. I was inspired to see that video because even though I don’t agree with everything that Gary Vee recommends, does and says, I do respect him. He’s known for being ahead of the curve in terms of social media and marketing. He’s very wise.

I look to him often for what’s next. He’s the reason, for example, that I got on TikTok and a lot of people got on TikTok. He does great TikTok videos and he often summarizes his responses to people, especially in public speaking settings. It’s a 56 seconds video. He explains that the reason he continues to curse is that’s where he feels comfortable. That’s how he authentically expresses himself. He’s holding true to that. He makes this point that if he didn’t curse and censored himself, it wouldn’t be authentic. That is such a brilliant response to this because censorship, in general, keeps us from the full expression of ourselves.

Perhaps there are different reasons and you could train yourself. Maybe not every characteristic of your personality is beneficial to others. Maybe you could argue that it gets in the way. The fact that we have an explicit rating on the show prevents some people from listening and finding it. Maybe it changes the algorithm. There are likely things that work against us but I would rather that we reach the right people that are okay with the full expression of who we are than try to please people. I have tried for many years as a people-pleaser to please people and yet, I still end up in the same place where I’m not content with who I’m reaching if it’s not true to who I am.

Going back to your question about why I don’t swear, it’s partially because of how I was raised. My mom tends to be a bit on the traditional side of things. She’s a very liberal and political person but yet, conservative in a lot of her values. Religion certainly played a role even though my mother does not consider herself religious as I’ve spoken about on episodes. Religion certainly has woven itself into her life and thus my life. She was not okay with profanity. It was mostly out of a sign of respect and also being proper. My mother wanted my sister and me to be proper women.

My mother love people like Princess Diana, Jackie Kennedy, and all these posh women who were beautiful and elegant. I don’t think my mom had either of us go to whatever that training is. Often at hotels, they’ll bring in girls to show them how to hold their forks, eat properly, and all that stuff like manners training or whatever it’s called. I didn’t do that and I don’t think my sister did, but my mom would have loved it if we had. She always wanted to dress us in high-quality clothes and stuff. It was an important value to her.

 

Teaching us and encouraging us not to swear, curse and use profanity was part of my upbringing. Even though I’m a lot more liberal-minded than my mother and don’t feel like I need to abide by what she believes in, especially now as an adult, when you’re raised that way, you become used to not swearing. My parents now swear a little bit more openly but growing up, they rarely swore. I remember hearing my dad yelled “fuck you” to strangers. My sister and I were like, “I can’t believe our dad said that.”

We’ve seen a few times our dad gets so mad that he has said that in the parking lot or something. He’ll give someone the middle finger and my sister and me are like, “Did you see what dad did?” We’ll talk about it for years. That’s how big of a deal it is. My mom says that too when she gets heated. To your point, Jason, it’s more common as adults. As a kid, I don’t have much of a recollection. Maybe they did it and I didn’t notice. Maybe they tried not to do it around us to set an example. I’m not sure. Certainly, they do that and they’ve probably evolved since I was little too. It stands out, is my point.

When my parents swear, as an adult, I’m still a little taken aback by it because it’s not part of the way that they express themselves. Similarly, people are taken aback when I swear because that’s not typically how I express myself. It’s uncomfortable because it feels different, unlike Gary Vee where he’s comfortable in cursing. That’s where I’m at with it. It’s weird. I feel like out of practice. Just like my parents, when you hear me swear, it’s coming out of a place of release, deep frustration or anger. When I feel wronged, I’ll say little phrases or something.

I also don’t mean them deep down a lot of the time. That’s another element of this that I want to explore. There’s energy often behind cursing. It makes me uncomfortable because I associate that with anger or hatred or things that we say to people that maybe we don’t mean. I’m trying to be conscious of what words I use in general. It feels cruel that that’s my association, especially when it comes to intense energy. It’s scary to me. I learned over time to rein that in because I don’t want to scare other people or offend them.

Even that YouTube comment that I started this episode with, there’s part of me that was like, “Darn. We lost this person because we swore. I wish we could have kept them around.” At the same time, I was like, “If they don’t accept us for the fullness of who we are, then they’re not in alignment with us truly,” versus us trying to be like, “We offended someone. Let’s never swear again on the show. Let’s bleep things out on YouTube. Let’s protect ourselves and try to please others and make sure that we can attract more listeners in.” Are they going to be sustainable listeners? Are they people that appreciate us on that deeper level that we want? Probably not and that’s why it’s not worth it.

There's a point where it's just more efficient to say, fuck you, than it is to hit someone. Share on X

The energy and the intent behind the words that we use mean more to me than the word itself. I can think about a litany of “profane” or potentially offensive words. I think about the context in which they’re used. Context, intention, and energy are the three I want to talk about when it comes to language. There’s a phenomenal video that I thought of. There’s a spiritual teacher and author that’s controversial for a litany of reasons. He was featured in a Netflix documentary series called Wild Wild Country. His name is Osho. He has a great YouTube video about the complexity, diversity and usage of the word fuck. It’s a phenomenal video.

It was hilarious because he went through all of these usages of the word. If we use the word fuck as an example, I’m going to go there, it can be used to express ecstasy. If you’re making love or having sex, that’s a different intention and usage of that word, as opposed to sometimes maybe you are exalted over a certain success in your life. You’re like, “This is fucking amazing.” That’s a different usage and intention than lovemaking. If I stubbed my toe, walking into the kitchen on my coffee table, I’m like, “Fuck, that hurts,” that’s different usage and intention.

Your dad, which I probably road rage way more frequently than your father does. If someone cuts me off in traffic, I’m like, “Fuck that guy.” This word, as an example, is neutral. The energy of it is neutral. The context, usage and energy in which we are implementing and using that to communicate vary greatly. I’m not saying every single word is like that but a lot of words, in fact, maybe most of the words in language arguably have an inherently somewhat neutral meaning. Not all because I know some people might challenge me on this.

If you go down to it, we can use a lot of words in our language with different contexts, energy and intention behind them. It is dependent. When people are like, “Don’t use profanity,” I’m like, “What are the context, energy and intention which you’re asking me not to use it? Do you not want me to use it when I’m angry? Do you not want me to use it when I’m exalted and celebrating? Do you not want me to use it when I’m making love?” My thing is when people are the language police, I get triggered because oftentimes, they’re making a blanket statement of, “Don’t use that word ever in any context.” I’m like, “Fuck you. I’m going to use it however I please.”

You can take a word and depending on the inflection, energy, how you’re using it, and how you’re directing it at someone can be extremely painful and damaging to a person versus using it in a context that might be more playful. There are probably other words that people might challenge me and say, “No matter the context, they’re bad.”

You mentioned your childhood upbringing. I remember being little and using profanity because I heard the adults in my family using it. I enjoyed using it because I saw the charge that it got out of the adults around me. If I use whatever word it was and I saw their reaction to it, it made me more intrigued to use that language because their reaction to it was like, “Jason, don’t say that word.” In my little brain, I’m like, “Where do you think I got the word from?”

That made me want to use it even more, being the rebellious person that I am. We hear the adults using it but then they’re like, “You can’t use it,” which made me want to use it more because I rebelled against them saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” With that approach in my life, I want to get one thing clear if people are wondering how I’m wired and where a lot of my rebelliousness comes from. It comes from that approach of people in my life saying not to do something and turning around and doing the exact thing they said for me not to do. My whole attitude around that is like, “I’m going to do it even more.”

 

That probably feeds my early usage as a young child of hearing those words and wanting to use them because they felt taboo and naughty. Adults would have this visceral reaction when I use them. That made me want to do it. Going back to my origin story of profanity, it was used liberally in my family and that’s probably where I picked it up.

There’s another 2012 study from a journal called Communication Studies. This is interesting. It says, “Beyond swearing’s impacts on the body and mind, research has shown that swearing has an influence on our social dynamics. They found that swearing can enhance the effectiveness and persuasiveness of an argument. In addition, cursing can also convey an emotional reaction to something without us resorting to physical violence. After scientists in the study surveyed how often participants use profanity, they conducted a series of tests to determine how truthful an individual was. The research team found a positive link between profanity and honesty.”

Censorship, in general, keeps us from the full expression of ourselves. Share on X

“Cursing was associated with less deception on an interpersonal level and higher levels of integrity in an individual overall. For many, the use of obscene language isn’t just a sign of boorish behavior, a common assumption that people who swear lack vocabulary, intelligence or education. In other words, when language fails, we curse.” This researcher, Jay, who I mentioned before said, “It’s a form of linguistic snobbery referring to the presumed link between swearing and lack of intelligence. It’s a cultural stereotype, but the more I became sophisticated in language studies, the more I realized that every language scholar knows that that is not true.”

To deconstruct this myth, in 2015, he and his research team explored another possibility that fluency is fluency regardless of linguistic content. The psychologists and the research study found that an individual’s fluency in language was linked to fluency in swearing. In other words, swearing may be a sign of greater intellect and vocabulary and a more robust vocabulary in general.” It’s fascinating to think about this. That is an interesting link that he describes in this. There is a cultural assumption that people who use profanity are less intelligent and less worthy of our praise.

We think of people who swear a lot as lower-class citizens. That’s a reasonable assumption we can make how people perceive people who swear. He’s saying that according to the research, that is also not true. It is interesting. He says, “People who are good at producing language are good at producing swear words. It’s not because they don’t have language. It’s because they have a wide and diverse toolbox full of words.” Props to Jay and his research team for that. I’m going to walk away from this conversation feeling even better about myself, to be honest. If anybody calls me out for swearing, I’m going to send them the links to the studies.

Send them the link to this episode and say, “Here’s it all broken down.”

Tell them to GTFO, “Get the fuck out of here.”

I certainly figured the rebelliousness is part of it for you. It’s an interesting thing to look at the reasons why people do and say things. That is something I wish more people would take into consideration because we tend to have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to things that offend us. I’ve trained myself for the most part but not always, to step back as soon as possible when I feel offended and ask myself why.

A minor example that’s not that connected to this but gave me a good opportunity was when I sent out a proposal for a new client. I spend all this time crafting it and figuring out how much I wanted to charge. I sent it off and the client came back saying, “Great. Everything looks good. If you can do it for this rate, you have a deal.” It was a lower rate than I had pitched and enough where I thought, “It’s a little strange to me that they’re trying to cut back on my rate.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to feel offended and disrespected, to feel like they didn’t value me, and they didn’t take me seriously. I got into my ego and my head about all this. I thought, “This is not urgent. I’m going to give myself time to reflect on how I’m feeling.” At least half a day went by before I responded because I took the time and I didn’t obsess over it. I didn’t spend all day thinking about it. In the past, I would. I would call up friends and ask them, “What would you do? How do I handle this?” I thought, “Let me practice stepping back and noticing how I feel offended, why I’m feeling offended, and what are the roots.”

I’m also asking myself, “Is what I’m feeling true? Is that what this person was intending?” To me, that is so key because most of the time, we make assumptions and judgments. We get offended based on our experiences, lens and viewpoint when that might not be the motivation behind why somebody says or does something. It’s not personal in most cases. It’s not directed at us. The reason somebody swears is personal to them. It’s built on all of these other reasons, the way that they were raised, how they’re feeling, and their IQ, what do they know, the research, what they’ve trained themselves to do or not do.

We have this wonderful guest coming up named Eva. In that episode, she talks about this lens through which we tend to react and make judgments. She recommends that instead of getting all worked up about something, what if we just asked more questions of someone? Think about that YouTube comment. What if instead, that person chose to email us or message us or even write in a comment like, “I enjoyed this episode. I noticed that you use a lot of profanity though, which I’m personally not comfortable with. May I ask why you speak that way or why you don’t edit it out?”

 

Maybe you and I would get a little defensive at first but ultimately, that would have been an interesting thing to explore. It certainly could have ended up in this episode anyways but in a different context. We felt like that person was leaning in and trying to better understand us and better understand others. That’s generally why somebody’s reaction to you tells you more about them than it says about you.

To me, that person wasn’t trying to understand us. They were trying to force us to fit their model of life, squeeze us into their viewpoints and their safe bubble, and force us into something that made them feel comfortable and safe. There’s a reason this show is called This Might Get Uncomfortable. We’re not aiming to make our followers feel comfortable all the time if I were challenging them. We invite you to challenge us too.

Certainly, people will make us feel uncomfortable through some of their comments and reactions. When I step away from it, I’m generally thankful for it. Ultimately, I’m thankful that that person left the comment because that inspired this episode and it gave us a chance to talk about this, dig deeper into the research, and explore why we say these things. We’re not taking a defensive standpoint. We’re exploring it.

That’s one of the biggest lessons here. Can we explore and become more curious about people who are different from us, who act differently, speak differently, and express themselves differently? That to me would bring us more together and help us grow versus rejecting or trying to change somebody to be more the way that we want them to be.

The context, the usage and the energy in which we are implementing and using swear words to communicate varies greatly. Share on X

Trying to change people and get them to be the way that we want them to be is a path to insanity and madness. If someone is trying to do that as a strategy for life, that’s a path to misery. Think about trying to have everyone in your life conformed to the way you think life ought to be. That sounds like a miserable experience. The other point I want to make too, Whitney, is when you were talking about these classes that you think your mom would have liked to have sent you and your sister to. I don’t know if the word is etiquette training or etiquette classes.

One thing that’s always rankled me and ruffled my feathers over the course of my life is my perception of how I feel certain human beings use manners and etiquette almost as they would leverage a framework of ethics. If you do something that is out of their framework of etiquette or manners, it’s almost like an unethical offense to their being. I’ve gone to dinners and I’ve hung around people. There’s a fine line because I always want to be gracious and respectful of whatever host or whatever person is inviting me to an event or dinner or whatnot.

Over the years at friend’s houses or different events and things like that, I observed how enraged people would get at times if the silverware was not arranged at the dinner table in a specific configuration. When I had my catering business or I was in chef school, I would notice these proclivities of manners and etiquette that people would get offended by if these things were overlooked, not understood or not obeyed. In the context of etiquette and manners, it’s almost like people want you to obey. “Put the silverware this way. Don’t put your elbows on the table. Don’t chew with your mouth open. Don’t blow your nose at the table. Fold your napkin a certain way. Be lady-like. Be gentlemanly.”

That’s fine but it’s not an ethical affront to your existence if people ignore these things. That’s the thing that etiquette and manners always got to me. I’m fine to respect them to a degree but if you make them so serious, dramatic, and dire that if someone doesn’t do them, your world is shattered, that’s when I’m like, “I’m sorry. This is where it ends for me.” I’m going to put my fork wherever I want to on the fucking table. The fork will go where I am pleased it to go. If I rest my elbows on the table while I’m eating, that doesn’t make me an awful human being. News flash, I’m not some pariah. That’s the stuff that got to me.

Even as a kid, it was like, “What do my elbows on the dinner table have anything to do with me being a good human being? Absolutely nothing. Where does the fork placement on the table have anything to do with me being a good human being? Absolutely nothing.” With all due respect to people who are hardcore into manners and etiquette, that’s fine but it doesn’t define the character of the person, whether they’re doing it or not doing it.

That’s probably why I never did well at cotillions. I remember going to prom in high school and all these things of what you do at prom and how you behave at prom. It goes back to me to this rebelliousness that is at the core of my being that if I feel like I have to be bound to a certain behavior or a certain way of being or because I’m dressed a certain way, I ought to act a certain way. Every fiber of my being says, “Hell no.”

You’re going to see deliberate behavior for me going against the grain because I know it’s going to make people uncomfortable. Part of the reason we started this show and part of my mission here is to make people uncomfortable. I will talk to you about your dietary choices, ethics and behavior, but if I get any semblance of people wanting me to conform or like, “You have to do it this way to be a good person, Jason,” I’m like, “There’s the pier and it’s very short and you can walk off of it.”

I find that element fascinating because it seems like the opposite of me. As a hopefully recovering people-pleaser, I tend to try to do things that make people feel good or comfortable or please them. You’ll do that. It’s not like you’re trying to make people unhappy but you get triggered in the opposite way that I do. I tend to try to, in those scenarios, modify myself in a pleasing way. Whereas you are modifying yourself like, “You’ve triggered me and I’m going to do everything I can to show you who’s boss or dominate or assert myself.” It’s hard to verbalize but I do see it as an opposite type of reaction, which is fascinating. It’s almost like a tit for tat thing. It’s like, “You made me angry so now I’m going to do something that makes you angry. You made me uncomfortable so I’m going to make you uncomfortable.” Is it in that realm?

I don’t think it’s a tit for tat. I don’t think it’s like, “You made me angry so I need to make you angry.” I don’t think that I’m that petty of a person. When I say that petty, I have my pettiness but I don’t think I’m that petty. It’s more like when I observe someone is in a mode of, “You ought to be this way. You ought to act this way. You ought to show up in life because that is moral, ethical and good,” I’m like, “I don’t give a fuck about your definition. I have my definition of what I think is moral, ethical and good. How I wear my cummerbund, put my fork on the table, and where my elbows are doesn’t mean shit to me.”

It’s one of those things where I’m not intentionally trying to push people’s buttons, bring them misery or bring them pain. It’s not about that at all. I see people’s rigidness and I see their fixation on, “You ought to act this way and that’s good, moral and proper.” I go, “You’re full of shit. I don’t think that is how good, moral or proper people ought to act, so I’m going to challenge your belief system by acting in a way that is contrary to what you believe because I disagree with it. That has nothing to do with morality or goodness, nothing at all.”

Swearing may actually be a sign of greater intellect and vocabulary and a more robust vocabulary in general. Share on X

It’s the subjugation and it’s the way people want to put other people in cages and say, “You should be this way,” and I say, “No. Bullshit.” That’s where it comes from. I’m not trying to make people angry. I’m not trying to intentionally disrespect people. When they’re trying to manipulate people and try to force them to be a certain way so they can be more comfortable, that’s when I find the soft spot and I stick my finger right in it. That drives me crazy.

Could that be a power grab? Maybe. I don’t think it’s about that. It’s more like, “You have rigid ideas about right and wrongness. Let me hammer on those ideas a little bit and show you your beliefs are flimsy and not all that solid.” That’s what it is. I see a belief system and I go, “No, let me hammer on that until it shatters a little bit.” Whether it does or doesn’t, I’m unattached to. I automatically rebel against it. I can’t even help it. It’s an automated response where I’m like, “I got to shatter your cage.”

For better or worse, it’s part of my make-up as a human being and I like that part of myself. I don’t want people to walk around in their matrix of illusion about rightness and wrongness, and proper ethics and improper ethics. There’s enough subjugation in the world between human beings and I would prefer less. That’s my way of saying, “You’re not going to subjugate me and you’re not going to subjugate anyone else. No, thank you. We’re going to be how we are.”

I remember one thing and it’s so funny. I remember years ago someone I was dating. We were having dinner and there was sauce at the bottom of the bowl. I was scooping up the sauce in the bottom of the bowl with my spoon and enjoying it because it was a good sauce. It was curry or something. There was a point where there was some at the bottom of the bowl and I took my hand and it was a clean hand. My friends joke that it’s the Jason swoop. I took my fingers and I swooped the sauce on the bottom of the bowl and I licked my fingers. I got so much shit about being so awful from this person. It’s like I had shot the pope.

 

She’s like, “Jason, that’s disrespectful. That’s rude.” I’m like, “Your opinion does not mean it’s true.” It was a whole hullabaloo like I had murdered a public official. That made me want to do it more and I didn’t stop. I’m like, “This clearly triggers you and you think I’m somehow have offended the United Nations by my curry sauce swooping?” Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one. It doesn’t mean you’re on some moral high ground because you don’t swoop the curry at the bottom of your bowl. It’s just one example. I want people to do that thing. I stick my finger even deeper into the bowl. It’s what I do. Maybe that’s a sign of antagonism. That will be our next episode, is antagonism a sign of intelligence. I will admit I am a bit antagonistic in that regard.

If you are also a user of profanity and you want some research ammunition to tell the people in your life to shut up when you swear like I’ll be doing. With that said, whether you approve of profanity or you don’t, either way, you can email us at [email protected]. You can shoot us a direct message on Instagram, Facebook, or any of the social media platforms and weigh in on your opinion about profanity and intelligence and whether you dig it. If you dig it, great. If you don’t, that’s great too because we’re going to keep being ourselves. That is our commitment.

No matter what, we’re going to be as honest, real and authentic as possible with the awareness and the permission within ourselves to be ourselves that we have cultivated. That is something we can guarantee on this show. We will be ourselves as much as we are aware of who the hell we are. That’s about it for now. As a reminder, we’ve gone down to two episodes a week. Mondays are our solo episodes with Whitney and myself, Jason Wrobel. Fridays are our special guests.

We’d love to know if you want us to bring back the midweek Wednesday episode. If you don’t give a shit, that’s great too. Either way, let us know. We always want your opinion on things whether or not we agree with them. That being said, it’s dinner time. I’m looking forward to a nice pasta. Whitney, as we’re wrapping, what’s your dinner plan?

We're not aiming to make our listeners and our viewers feel comfortable all the time. In fact, we're challenging them. Share on X

I am having Impossible meatballs with Rao’s pasta sauce and perhaps a low-carb pasta, although I’m not sure I’m in the mood. My favorite low-carb pasta is Palmini who makes Hearts of Palm pasta alternatives. It’s quite lovely and nice in a good sauce. If you’re interested in more of our product recommendations, we talked about that on This Hits The Spot. That’s a little sneak peek. We’ve got a lot of cool things coming up. If you’re ever curious about what we eat, what supplements we take, what products we use in all facets of our lives, services and all that, we talk about it there.

We’re very honest. It’s a lot of fun. I felt like this episode was fun. If you enjoyed the episode, we swear on This Hits The Spot as well. We laugh and we’re goofy and slaphappy often. We’re generally raving about things but every once in a while, I will mention things that I’m like, “I liked it. It didn’t fully hit the spot but I’m going to mention it.” Maybe that’ll be a theme.

We’d love your feedback. Do you want to hear us talk about things we don’t like? I could tell you about all of the low-carb pasta I’ve tried in my explorations of vegan keto eating. There are a lot of low-carb pasta that I can’t stand. Let me know if you want to hear them. We’ll put it in This Hits The Spot. We’ll dedicate an episode for you, especially if you’re a Patreon supporter. We’d like to give you little special perks and thank you’s for your suggestions and everything that you do to support our shows. Thanks for all the fun, Jason. We’ll be back with another episode.

 

Important links

*We use affiliate links in our show notes. This means we receive a small sales commission if you purchase an item based on our recommendation.

• YouTube – This Might Get Uncomfortable
• This Hits The Spot – Private podcast
• The Social Dilemma
• Social Capital
• Chamath Palihapitiya – YouTube video
• Colorful Language May Have Benefits, Be Sign of Intelligence
• Swearing is a Sign of More Intelligence, Not Less, Say Scientists
• Worried About Swearing Too Much? Science Says You Shouldn’t Be.
• Effect of Swearing on Strength and Power Performance
• Timothy Jay
• Gary Vaynerchuk – YouTube video
• TikTok – @GaryVee
• Osho – YouTube video
• Swearing By Peers in the Work Setting – Communication Studies
• [email protected]
• Instagram – @Wellevatr
• Facebook – @Wellevatr
• Impossible Foods
• Palmini Pasta
• Patreon – Wellevatr

 

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