The Archaeologist of My Souls : 1 in 8.3 Billion

I should not exist. Not as motivation. Not as inspiration. Literally, statistically, by every calculation that matters — the person speaking these words has no business being alive. This episode is the math. The number in the title. The one I've been building toward since the first episode. 1 in 8.3 billion. The current population of Earth is 8.1 billion. I'm going to walk you through th...

"DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY ASSHOLES I HAD TO GO THROUGH TO BE HERE?!" That's not a metaphor. That's my soul — erupting from somewhere atomic — announcing itself for the first time. Its directive was immediate: Tell the story. This episode is the origin. The nuclear material. The moment Archaeological DNA™ stopped being "a neat idea" and became real. It involves a cassette...

You ever get the sense that life's trying to kill you—gently? Not with a bang. Not a car crash. Not a scandal. But something quieter. Something slower. A kind of spiritual carbon monoxide leak: office lights that flatten your soul into spreadsheets, silent resentment fermenting in conference rooms, casual racism delivered with NPR diction, and brunches with people you secretly hope cancel las...

  THE ARCHAEOLOGIST OF MY SOULS: 1 in 8.3 BillionCHAPTER 17: FUCK ME, I'M FAMOUS (AT VERSAILLES) There are moments in life when you know—you just know—that something profound has shifted inside you. Not because everything outside looks perfect, not because the bills are paid or the relationship is fixed or the career finally makes sense. But because the way you carry yourself changes. Because...

I had just come back from a healing trip to Cairo—and yes, I mean that kind of trip. Goddesses. Essential oils. Incense thick enough to make a stoner jealous. They purified me with smoke and ancient oils, rubbing this shit into my skin while chanting in languages I couldn't identify but felt in my bones. The ancient goddess of healing, Sekhmet, apparently cracked open my chest with one massiv...

 Kit Kats and Holy Breath: Getting Tattooed inthe Cambodian JungleIn Cambodia I found myself sitting cross-legged in front of a monk, spilling my entire life like it was a confessional booth and I was trying to break some kind of Catholic record—every heartbreak, every blackout, every bad decision wrapped in a bow of desperation and handed over to this serene man who probably heard worse things be...

Something was calling me to India. I had to see the lowest, those who had nothing but the clothing on their backs and flip-flops held together with prayers. But here's the thing that fucked with my head—I've been embraced by people who literally owned nothing besides what they were wearing, and I've never felt more seen in my life. Toto, we ain't in NYC anymore. Where I come fr...

Puerto Vallarta. A gay pool party. Eleven speedos tried on in the span of an afternoon. And somewhere between speedo #7 and #11, something shifted. For the first time in my life, I said the words out loud: "I am happy." It felt like a confession. Like admitting to a crime I didn't know I was allowed to commit. This episode is about the moment survival stopped being enough. The momen...

This is Tommy's story. I catfished him on Scruff while he was ass up at a gang bang. He came home. I confronted him. And I still said "I love you." Because I did. And because love, sometimes, looks nothing like the movies tell you it should. This episode is about the relationship that should have destroyed me. About loving someone so broken that their chaos becomes your religion. Ab...

Sometimes the path to healing looks nothing like you expect. Mine looked like a series of spectacularly dysfunctional relationships that got so bad, I finally had to ask the question every addict eventually asks: Why do I keep choosing this? This episode is about how rock bottom can be a gift. How fucking up repeatedly is sometimes the only way to finally wake up. How sometimes you have to break e...

Yes, this actually happened. Yes, it's as chaotic as it sounds. No, I will not apologize. (I already did. To Sister Boom Boom. Who laughed.) San Francisco, 1990s. Drag royalty. A misunderstanding involving territorial instincts, too much meth, and my complete inability to read a room. This episode is about the absurdity that happens when trauma meets drag culture meets a 20-something who thou...

Another near-death moment. By this point in my life, survival was less a triumph and more a pattern I couldn't explain. Why did I keep making it through when the math said I shouldn't? This episode is about the moments death showed up, looked me in the eye, and walked away. I didn't understand it then. But now I do. Content warnings: This podcast contains discussions of childhood se...

The DJ dropped "Finally" and every gay man in that San Francisco warehouse lost their fucking minds. CeCe Peniston singing about the moment we'd all been waiting for. The moment when someone looks at you like you're the answer to a question they've been asking their whole lives. Gary turned around. Red curly hair. Dark eyes. That look. I flew back to Boston, quit my life,...

Strangled to unconsciousness. Twice. By the same person. The statistics say 68% survive the first time. If it happens again, your odds drop to 46%. I beat both. This episode is about the violence that should have ended me—hands around my throat, the world going black, waking up on the floor wondering if this time was the practice run or the real thing. And somehow, somehow, I still have jokes abou...

I've faced rapists, addiction, strangulation, betrayal.  None of them broke me. A Swedish woman humming while doing dishes? Absolutely destroyed me. Her name was Vera. She gave me a felt troll. I kept it for 40 years — not because it was special, but because it was proof.  Proof that love without violence exists. This is how one quiet woman in a kitchen showed a damaged child the capacity for...

A gloved finger pointed at me across the street like a summoning. Like an idiot, I went. Bruce was 30. Former Calvin Klein model. Cocaine dealer. And somehow carrying the entire history of European luxury in his head — Louis XIII cognac at $4,000 a bottle, which Dom Pérignon vintage paired with which caviar, cloistered nuns spinning silk from New Guinea silkworms. This was 1982. No internet. No Wi...

1962. Before my mother could enter America, she had to prove she wasn't a lesbian. This is how the American Dream started. Episode 1 live now. My mother survived being born a scandal, immigration to America, and married a black man in 1962. She didn't stay dead. This is Sylvia. The Blonde Warrior. The woman who taught me that survival isn't about being unbreakable—it's about br...

My father called my mother "good white pussy." He tried to burn our house down with my pregnant mother inside. This was Tuesday afternoon in my family. When violence is your inheritance and chaos is your curriculum, you learn that normal is a lie people tell themselves. You learn to read a room in seconds. You learn which kind of silence means someone's about to die. This episode is...

I was 5 years old, holding a kitchen knife, doing math. If I kill him first, does the pain stop? My mother was in the hospital—skull cracked open, recovering. Bill Miller was wanted for arson, attempted murder and sexual assault. He was living with us.  So I calculated. Cold. Precise. The way a kindergartener shouldn't be capable of calculating. I didn't do it. But the fact that I could...

I asked an AI to calculate my statistical probability of surviving my life. It said: 1 in 8.3 billion. Essentially impossible. Childhood sexual abuse. At 5, I attempted to murder my mother's rapist. AIDS epidemic San Francisco. Severe alcoholism. Alcohol. Meth. Coke. Sex. Brother murdered. Strangled twice. 28 deaths witnessed by age 30.  I shouldn't be here. But I am. And I've seen...