Host Leslie is joined by multidisciplinary artist and author Scott Nathan who shares some incredible and wild stories from his life. He discusses his unexpected journey to TikTok fame and the success of his book, "The Big Book of Bad Decisions." Scott also recounts the fascinating story of how a medium helped him find his birth family, providing concrete and actionable information that led him to connect with his half-sisters.
Host Leslie is joined by multidisciplinary artist and author Scott Nathan who shares some incredible and wild stories from his life. He discusses his unexpected journey to TikTok fame and the success of his book, "The Big Book of Bad Decisions." Scott also recounts the fascinating story of how a medium helped him find his birth family, providing concrete and actionable information that led him to connect with his half-sisters.
The conversation dives into the complexities of mental health, family dynamics, and the impact of past traumas while also exploring how Scott's own experiences and upbringing shaped his perspective on life and relationships. Scott's reflections on meeting his biological mother shed light on the complex interplay between genetics and environment in shaping our lives, highlighting the importance of understanding the factors that influence our mental health and well-being. Scott and Leslie also discuss the importance of understanding and accepting one's past while embracing the journey of self-discovery and growth.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Show Credits:
0:00:12 - Leslie
Welcome to the Nature of Nurture with Dr. Leslie Carr, a podcast for your mental health. I'm your host, Leslie. If you're watching this podcast right now, you can find the audio version in any podcast app and if you're listening, you can also watch this episode on YouTube at the Nature of Nurture. You can find that link in the show notes. Today I'm here with Scott Michael Nathan.
Scott is an internationally renowned, award-winning photographer, director, writer and rock hunter. His commercial work as a photographer, often shooting A-list celebrities, has graced the covers of countless magazines and billboards globally. More recently, he's the author of the Big Book of Bad Decisions, which instantly became a number one bestseller on Amazon, due in no small part to his fervid following on social media, where he tells outrageous stories about his life to hundreds of thousands of strangers who eat them up like candy. These stories are wild, sometimes pretty raunchy and always hilarious. But because he's my friend, he's here to tell a story he tells less often - the story of how a medium helped him find his birth family. It's my great pleasure to introduce you to my friend, Scott Nathan. Welcome, Scott.
0:01:27 - Scott
Thank you. How are you doing today? Wait, do you want me to call you Leslie or Dr. Carr? Oh, you can call me Leslie please. All right, All right.
0:01:31 - Leslie
I actually where I was planning on starting is just with the idea that I feel quite proud that I can say that I knew you when, because here you are blowing up with the success of your book and on TikTok and that kind of stuff. But I used to just get these stories as dinner party conversations.
0:01:48 - Scott
Yeah, just around the table.
0:01:50 - Leslie
Yep, so kind of thinking about what has happened since then. Should we maybe start with what happened when you first started telling these stories on TikTok, because it feels like that was a big moment in your life.
0:02:06 - Scott
Huge and this was never anything I planned on. I mean, I have spent my life as a photographer and director hiding behind cameras and I felt nobody wants to see this face in front of a camera, even at parties. I would step out of frame, like I'm not a picture collector. And it all started from my friend's children little kids like 13, 14, 15 year olds, and they're like you're a good storyteller, you should tell them on TikTok. And I said I'm not 13 years old, I don't lip sync, I don't do choreographed dance, there's no place for me on TikTok. And they're like no, there's older people on there that do all kinds of things. So I'm thinking to myself well, everybody I know is on Instagram. I don't know anyone on TikTok. So I'm just going to strip away the self-consciousness because I don't know anyone there.
0:02:50 - Leslie
Yeah.
0:02:50 - Scott
And I'm just going to let a story rip and I'm going to. All the advice I got was, like you know, keep them under 40 seconds or keep them under two minutes or have like popular music playing in the background. I said I don't care about any of these roles, I'm going to do what I do and it'll either live or die. So I told one story, didn't check it for three or four days, opened the app up and saw it had 100,000 views.
0:03:13 - Leslie
Holy cow and.
0:03:14 - Scott
I said this is how they hook you. This is a scam. I was like this is not real or sustainable. So I told another one 200,000 views, told another one 500,000 views, told another one a million views, not exactly sequentially but in very short order it exploded and then someone called me and they said oh, did you see? You're going to be featured on Juicy Scoop tomorrow. And Juicy Scoop is this massive but the number two comedy interview podcast in America and I'd never heard of it. So I go and I watch the segment and they weren't very nice to me. You know, one lady was on there going look at this guy's face and I'm like do you think I ordered this face? I ordered the Brad Pitt. It was sold out and they're like this guy's full of it with these stories and I was just like God, these girls are mean, super mean and I didn't put pants on for two days.
I was so upset with them making fun of me. And then a few days later I get an email from their producer going we'd love to have you on the show. And I was like, you're out of your mind, I'm not walking into an ambush. And I was like tell Heather to call me. And they're like she doesn't really do that. And I'm like okay, then no. So she called me and she's like what is the problem here? And I was like you guys made fun of my face and you called me a liar.
Why would I come on your show? And I watched a couple of episodes and I don't know anything about the things you talk about. I've literally never seen a Bravo show, I've never seen a Real Housewives, I've never seen a Kardashian. What are we going to talk about? She's like Scott, we're just teasing, can I? Will you just come on and we'll pull your string and you can just riff stories for an hour? I go that I can do. And then I looked up her stats and I was like yeah, I should do this. So I did that and that just led to all these other appearances and now I just did the Today Show version of you know in Australia so insane.
And uh, who knew?
0:05:03 - Leslie
Well, so, as we have already established, a lot of your stories are probably too raunchy for my audience, but it feels like it could be useful to give people a sense of the kinds of stories that you tell. So, as you're now embarking in a more like daytime television version of your career, will you tell us a story that maybe will not blow people out of the water with its raunchiness?
Right, well, they're not all that bad. A lot of them are, I was laughing on my way over here flipping through the book trying to find a non-raunchy story, sorry. But, and like one that I think is a really good one is. I know that you have several about Joan Rivers, but one of them is a really I don't want to sort of give the story away, but she had basically like business advice for you.
0:05:49 - Scott
Life advice.
0:05:52 - Leslie
Can we maybe tell that one?
0:05:53 - Scott
Yeah, let's talk about that. So I got a call from the manager of another celebrity.
0:05:59 - Leslie
And actually I'm going to interrupt you really quickly just to tell everybody something that feels important for like setting the stage for your stories, which is that you are so all of these stories are true for your life you have. You have collected an unbelievable number of stories that are just crazy autobiographical stories. A lot of them happen to involve celebrities, which has kind of an uncanny quality to it. I'm sure a lot of that just has to do with your work, but so I just wanted to kind of like set the stage for what you were about to say.
0:06:28 - Scott
Yeah, and my rule on naming names, I just want to lay that out, is you'll notice in the book that I often change names and places. And my rule on naming names is I don't use a name unless one, it doesn't hurt anyone, and two, the story can't live without it. Yeah. So, like I'm very ethical about this stuff and you know, sometimes it's it's a tease, but I never hurt people and, believe me, I could if I wanted to I'm sure so, uh, where were we, Joan?
Yeah. So, uh, another celebrity's manager called me and says, hey, would you, would you be interested in working with Joan Rivers? And I was like you have no idea how much I love Joan Rivers. I wish she were my mom, you know Aw.
And she was actually the first celebrity I ever met when I was a child. I was like 12 or 13 years old and my best friend, Eli, called me and he says Joan Rivers is going to be at this movie theater. I'm like in our little crappy town, why? And they're like, oh, she directed a movie and she's going to be signing autographs. I was like, well, let's go. So we got on our Schwinn bicycles and we rode to this movie theater and locked up our bikes and she signed our tickets and it was really, and I told Joan this story and she loved it. It was a movie she directed called Rabbit Test, way back when in the 70s.
So, uh, so I show up. I'm I'm fanatically early to my own shoots because I'm easily distracted and once the whole crew shows up, there's 20 people asking me questions and I can't focus. So I like to get to the stare at the blank stage and go how am I going to cut light here? What's shot one? What's shot two? What's shot three? Walk myself through the day. So I just sit there in a director's chair and stare at the stage and gather my thoughts and figure out what I'm going to do. So I'm just sitting on this big cavernous soundstage and the next person to walk in, long before any crew, is Joan Rivers. And she goes hey, what time's Scott, get here? I go, I'm Scott. She goes you're always early, I'm always early. You want to have breakfast together? I said, yeah, catering just dropped the food off, so we sit down and we start shooting the breeze and I just instantly connect with her, like I feel you know, celebrities are celebrities.
I'm generally pretty measured in how I speak to them, especially ones I'm working with, and we were just letting it fly right out of the gate. And then she said to me she says how much are you getting paid for this shoot? And I said zero. She goes what's the most you ever got for a shoot? And I said $85,000. She goes who is that for? I said Google. She goes why are you doing this for free? And I go because I effing love you. And she goes oh, that's so sweet. She goes do you ever turn down work? I go, I do sometimes. She goes don't ever do that.
I said Joan, there's some times where they ask for something and their ask exceeds their available budget. So what am I? I'm going to lose $1,000?. She goes no, you're not going to lose any money. You're going to take their note and what they want and you're going to creatively figure out a way to make it work, even if you don't give them every single thing you want. But your enemy, your only enemy in this world, is the white calendar square. You say yes to everything because you never know who you're going to meet. And look, here we are, you and I having breakfast. And I go all right, that's a good note. She goes. How many people you know have been in show business for more than 50 years? I said just you. She said everything, listened to me and I have.
0:09:47 - Leslie
Yeah, she really was the sort of consummate hustler like queen hustler.
0:09:55 - Scott
Yeah, and she told me. She said listen, I don't know if it was three years or five years, but she goes. Three years ago I was playing bars in casinos where everyone was talking, no one was paying any attention to me. And now I play the biggest rooms in Vegas. And she goes, and you know what, Scott? Three years from now, I could be back to playing bars. You don't stop. You don't take days off.
0:10:12 - Leslie
Yeah, so much humility. Yeah, absolutely.
0:10:16 - Scott
She's had, like me and most of us, she's had the crap kicked out of her.
0:10:20 - Leslie
Yeah.
0:10:21 - Scott
Just like everyone's, like, oh, you're so nice and you're so humble. And I'm like thank God, because had I gotten famous at 17, I might have been a pretty bratty, awful, spoiled person.
0:10:34 - Leslie
Absolutely. I think it's. You know, they often say when people become celebrities at an early age that your development kind of gets stunted. At whatever age you become a celebrity, and I think that for anyone who achieves more success later in life, it's actually kind of a blessing.
0:10:48 - Scott
Yeah, imagine being a teenager and never being told no. Yeah, and I've worked. You know I worked with Lindsay Lohan in her, you know, prime bananas-ness and yeah, it's very easy to get spoiled. It's very, you know, it's very easy to think that you don't have to pay for your own meals, ot that I'm naming any names there, but or can show up five hours late to something.
0:11:22 - Leslie
Absolutely.
0:11:26 - Scott
So the stories far predate TikTok. So they began as a series of social media posts where I would write them in various states of consciousness, you know. You know, like the virginity story, I wrote on Ambien and did not remember writing it.
And it was loose and there were some punctuation errors, but I woke up one morning and it's like you have 357 likes and 74 comments and I'm like what did you do Scott? What did you do Scott?
0:11:53 - Leslie
Was it Facebook? Back in the beginning, it was Facebook. Yeah, that's so funny.
0:11:56 - Scott
And I was like, oh my God, I cannot believe I told this story about losing my virginity. But I was like it resonated with people and it was sloppy and it was messy, but it was loose and honest and people liked it. So I kept writing these, not on sleeping pills, but I kept writing these little vignettes, these little anecdotes. And then my girlfriend at the time, Amanda, says babe, why don't you put some of these into a blog? So I said all right. So I copied and pasted a dozen of them and put them into a blog. And then we were in Joshua Tree for the weekend a few months later and she goes you ever check your blog analytics? I said blogs have analytics? And she said, yeah, you effing idiot, go look at them.
So I went and looked at it and she goes how's it doing? I said I have 1.7 million reads. Is that good?
0:12:39 - Leslie
And.
0:12:39 - Scott
Yeah, that's good.
She goes, why don't you put these into a book? So I was like, all right, so I'll get started. So I started compiling them and then I wasn't sure I was going to ever follow through. But then the TikTok thing I think it was Gary Oldman said the sound of applause should not be ignored. So I was just like the people want it, I'll do it.
0:13:00 - Leslie
The people do indeed want it.
0:13:01 - Scott
Yeah.
0:13:02 - Leslie
So I don't want to waste too much time before we get to the story that you're here to tell today, cause I just want to leave lots of room for that. But I know that, uh, it's it's been a while, which I actually think is a good thing, cause you're going to have to kind of remind me of the story as you tell it. But it was probably a year or two ago that you and I were at a dinner party and you told a pretty wild story about an experience that you had with a medium, and I wonder if you want to take it from the top for us.
0:13:34 - Scott
Yeah, so from the top little background I'm adopted, as you know. And circuitously, I ended up finding my biological mother through the adoption agency. This was back around 1993, just before moving to LA, late 93. And I found and I met my biological mother but I felt like there was a huge missing piece. I met her. I didn't really connect with her. She like felt like an incubator. Like you think you're going to meet flesh and blood for the first time and there's going to be this cataclysmic magic that happens and it wasn't. She was just a tall lady with red hair who I didn't really seem to have much in common with, and I said this can't be all I am.
This can't be all I am.
0:14:28 - Leslie
And quick question. Maybe refresh my memory, but did she know who your father was? Yes, okay.
0:14:37 - Scott
Yes, and she gave me his name and she told me where he was from. But with all the data that she gave me, five detectives in 10 years couldn't find him.
0:14:46 - Leslie
Okay, wow.
0:14:47 - Scott
Every time I'd have a little extra money I'd be like all right, let's throw another $1,200 or $1,500 away and hire another detective. And no one found him. And then one morning my friend Becca calls me from Malibu and she said did you see Page Six of the New York Post today? I think it was Page Six or one of those gossip columns. And I said no, you know, I don't care about celebrity trash. And she goes you should read it today. And I said oh really, why is that? She said you're in it. I said, why am I in it? And she goes are you in a lawsuit with Lindsay Lohan? I said yes. She goes why didn't you tell me? I said because it's embarrassing, I didn't get paid on a job and needed to collect my money and I did. And in the next column over it says you know, billionaire X sued by a CEO Y for sexual harassment. And I go no way, I know both of them.
So minutes later I get a friend request from the woman on Facebook and I hit accept and I type saw you on age six this morning. And she says saw you on page six this morning. And I said how did your case resolve? And she said all I'm legally allowed to say is it was resolved amicably and I'm pleased with the decision. I said no way, that's all I'm legally allowed to say. So this woman's a geneticist, phd, I think from Brown University. And I said what are you doing now? Where are you working? And she goes oh, I don't do that anymore. I'm like what do you mean? You don't do that anymore. You're a doctor. And she says no, I'm a mirror medium now and I'm like like a psychic.
And she goes yeah, and I'm like, I believe in psychics and I've had many psychic experiences but that's a big leap from an Ivy League doctorate to being a fortune teller, which I know is pejorative, but you know what I mean just my cynical brain.
So she says I have an idea. And my cynical brain said she's going to ask me for money. I can feel it. And she says I'm not asking you for money. And I was like alright, coincidence. So she said I want to make you a deal. Let me do a reading for you, and if you love it and I mean really love it take my picture sometime. You owe me a portrait session. And if you think it was BS and you didn't get anything out of it, you don't owe me a thing. I said I'll take that deal.
0:17:05 - Leslie
I love this and I just want to pause on the synchronicity of what brought you two together, which is this very weird story about the tabloid story.
0:17:15 - Scott
Yeah, so, um. So she says let's do it on Thursday. I said why Thursday? Why not right now? What are you gonna do? Google me, LexisNexis me? And she says listen, mother effer, I promise you I will tell you things that can be found neither on Google or LexisNexis . So we do the, we do the phone call on the Thursday and it was like a three-hour reading and the first words out of her mouth were you're trying to find your father, aren't you? And I didn't know her that well. She didn't know I was adopted. She was someone I knew from being out and about and I had never talked about any of this on social media. There was incontrovertible evidence. So I said, yeah, I am. And she goes, you know, I was channeling your energy. And he came to me you know he has a New York accent and I go yeah, he's from Brooklyn. And uh, and she says, uh, she says he has a very dirty mouth. And I said, well, that tracks.
And she goes, he has some things he wants to say to you. Um, but it's real potty mouth. Do you want me to paraphrase what he's saying, or do you want me to tell you exactly what he's saying? And I said paraphrase nothing. I want to hear exactly what he says. And he says kid, I'm sorry, I wasn't there for you, I couldn't keep my D in my pants. I effed everything that moved. I want you to go meet your sisters. What? I have sisters? Ask him how I find my sisters. I want you to call my fourth wife, gives me her name, tells me the city and the street she lives on oh my god and here we go.
So I finished that call. I call back the last private investigator I'd hired days earlier. I said listen, you're doing one more search for me. I'm not giving you any more money.
Here's the information I have. Call this woman on this street in this city. He goes, age? I said probably mid-70s. He calls me back, he goes, this is unbelievable. I found her, but his name was different and he gives me sort of like just a different version of this.
0:19:22 - Leslie
His meaning your birth father's name was different than the one that I had.
0:19:26 - Scott
Yeah, and I said oh, I said that makes sense. He said how does that make sense? Because it was an anglicized version of a more ethnic name.
0:19:33 - Leslie
Okay.
0:19:34 - Scott
So I go you're not Jewish, are you? And he says no. I said didn't you know Jewish people like anglicized their names in the you know sixties and seventies? And he said why? And I said why? Cause everyone hates Jews. They didn't. They did it so they could get jobs. So that was the mix up there. So, anyway, I get this woman on the phone and she answers and I don't even have a game plan making the phone call, I'm just impulsively, I'm like if I don't keep calling people I'm going to chicken out. So I call her and she sounds grumpy and she's like hello. And I said hi, my name's Scott Nathan. I'm looking for, and I say his name and she says what, are you a bill collector? I said no, I am not a bill collector.
She goes, you better tell me who this is, or I'm hanging up. And I said I don't even know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it I'm his son. And she says, oh, Jesus Christ, another one. And I said what do you mean? Another one? She goes. You know the girls met for the first time at his funeral. You know that, right? I said no, I do not, I know nothing, I didn't even know. Tell me everything. She goes, yeah, yeah. Your father was a charming guy, Couldn't keep his rocket in his pocket.
And I'm like, oh, now I'm seeing pieces coming together here, and I said you know, I would love to connect with them. Could you give them? y information and she goes. No. I said no, why? No, she goes, they've been through enough, they don't need to meet you. So I said, yeah, but this is my life. And she said I don't give a shit.
0:21:03 - Leslie
Wow.
0:21:04 - Scott
So I go harsh. But if I know one thing about old Jewish ladies is they do like to dish, but sometimes they just need a little foreplay. So I said don't tell me anything. She's like, don't try to trick me. I said I'm not going to, Just tell me what you're comfortable with. I'm going to tell you a little bit about me first. I'm six feet tall, I have long, curly red hair, I have pale skin, and I have green eyes. Do any of them look like me? No. I said well, I'm a creative, I'm an artist. Are any of them like me? She's like, I don't know. And I said well, tell me what you're comfortable telling me about them.
And then she just starts spilling. And she says well, um, one is a realtor and she lives in Los Angeles and she grew up at La Brea and Melrose. Do you know where that is? And I said yes, I do. And she goes the other one is a realtor and she's got no, she's not a realtor, she's a realtor now. She goes, she owns salons and spas in New York City and in Long Island. So I said, wow, and she's spilling their names as she's telling the stories. So I'm like quietly typing.
0:22:14 - Leslie
Quietly Googling.
0:22:15 - Scott
So I find one on Facebook two seconds flat. I find the other one's like website in two seconds flat and I call and I'm like I better call the New York. I'm on a roll, so I'm like I better call the New York one first, because it's getting late. It was like 5:30 here. So I get the New York sister on the phone and she goes oh my god, we knew about you. He told us about you as he was dying and we just had no way to find out who you were. This is a freaking miracle. So she says you know, I'm gonna be in LA on Thursday and there's something about Thursdays in this whole thing,
everything happens on a Thursday, and she goes do you want to have dinner? I said I would love to have dinner. So I said where are you staying? And she said Santa Monica. I said, oh cool, what hotel? I'll pick you up. She goes I'm not staying at a hotel, I'm staying at my childhood best friend's house. I said, cool, give me the address and I'll pick you up. And she gives me the address and I go hang on a second, I know that address. Who's your childhood best friend? And she said you wouldn't know her. She's much older than you. I said is her name Joyce? She goes oh my God, yes, how do you know Joyce? I said she's my ex-girlfriend's stepmother. She goes that's impossible. She only has one stepdaughter and she'd be like half your age.
0:23:22 - Leslie
And I'm like the apple has not fallen far, yeah.
0:23:31 - Scott
I said it might be. So my next call is to my ex-girlfriend and I go babe, do you know? Did you know this woman, Joyce? She goes. Yeah, of course I know her, she was literally. She was there when I'm in the room when I was born. She's my mother's best friend. I said buckle up, sis. She is my flesh and blood half-sister. And my ex goes, you know, I kind of see that in the eyes. And I'm like did you hear what I just said to you? And she goes, I guess that is crazy. So I get together with her, we have a great dinner and I learn a lot, and then the following night, Friday night, we go to meet the other sister, who's an extremely conservative, orthodox Jewish lady with zero sense of humor.
0:24:15 - Leslie
Uh-oh.
0:24:16 - Scott
And she's like I'm warning you about this one. She's like not like us. So I'm like whatever, I can get through dinner with anybody. So it was a Shabbat dinner. I'd never been to an orthodox I mean, I was bar mitzvahed but like we were the kind of Jews that eat bacon and, you know, go to temple twice a year.
0:24:32 - Leslie
Orthodox is a totally different story.
0:24:33 - Scott
Different kettle of fish entirely. So I get to her house and over by Fox Studios and I walk in the house and she's giving me crap like right out of the gate. She goes, Scott, where's all your professional photography equipment? And I'm a wise ass so I go,
And she goes, oOne would think you're meeting your sisters. You'd want pictures and I pull out my iPhone and I go and she goes,Well, that's good enough for you and I'm like totally good enough for me. So she's making me uncomfortable and I'm not a drinker but I'm like maybe I better have a little bit of this crappy kosher. You know, Manischewitz.
0:25:07 - Leslie
A little bit of the Manischewitz Concord grape wine.
0:25:09 - Scott
So I have a couple of glasses of that and I have to use the bathroom. So I go restroom? And she goes, yeah, down there at the end of the hall. So I go into the restroom and there's just a votive candle. Not a votive, a tea light candle. So, I'm like, I can't see so I turn the light on. So I'm peeing, standing there and I hear screaming coming from the other room and I'm standing there peeing, going, thinking oh, they're turning the lights on.
0:25:32 - Leslie
It was a problem, huh, and I'm thinking how rude.
0:25:34 - Scott
I can't believe she's yelling at her husband or her kids when there's company over. How rude. So I wash my hands and dry them and I turn the light off and I walk back in and she is just giving me the death stare. She's red-faced and huffing and puffing. And I go, problem? She goes, why'd you turn the effing light on? And I said, oh right, Shabbat, sorry about that. And she goes, I just don't understand how you could be so effing stupid.
0:26:01 - Leslie
Wow.
0:26:03 - Scott
And I said listen, I'm a guest in your house, you can't talk to me like that. I'll leave right now. And she goes yeah, but I don't get it, you're like Jewish. And I go ish, Jew-ish. And she's like you're Jewish. I said I hunt wild boars and eat them. Does that count as Jewish? And now I know it's already over, so I'm just pushing it off the cliff and I could tell she does not like me. But we get through it and it's fine. And her husband's looking at me and he's just giving me this kind of sorry. He's just like I'm sorry.
0:26:35 - Leslie
So I take it amidst all of this not to interrupt the story, but you really didn't get any warmth from her or any sense of like,
0:26:45 - Scott
From one but the other. No, it's yeah, so uh, we got through it, it was fine, we took our pictures, we got it over with. And then, about 10 days later, the orthodox one messages me on Facebook and she says I find your sense of humor deeply, deeply offensive. Would you mind if I unfriended you? And I'm like, not at all. Oh my god, but I'm. But I have a niece that looks a lot like me from the New York side and I see them whenever I'm in New York and I'm in touch with them.
0:27:13 - Leslie
Incredible, yeah. So my first follow up question is what has it been like for you? I mean, this is such a wild story on so many levels. I can't help, one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on to have this conversation with you is because, like I know you, I believe you. I don't question this story at all. But do you ever encounter skepticism around it?
0:27:36 - Scott
I know you don't All the time, yeah, all the time. I mean, the first time I went on Heather's show she was like that. She's like I gotta be honest with you, that con woman story sounds like bullshit. And I said, fact check me, I've got a person for every story. There she goes. I mean, do you embellish? I said there isn't a single syllable.
0:27:53 - Leslie
And just to be clear, the con woman story you're saying is something totally different. It's chapter one of my book.
0:27:58 - Scott
It's about dating a con woman who turned out to be one of the most notorious con women in American history who went to prison.
0:28:04 - Leslie
Which is so Scott Nathan, I just want everybody to know, the idea that it is because have you been conned also more than once? I wasn't conned, I wasn't conned. Well, you, yeah, she did not succeed in conning you, but it's a I just we won't.
0:28:24 - Scott
You know, while we were doing this first Juicy Scoop, I could see the look on Heather's face. She didn't believe me and I said I won't only not be insulted, I will be like annoyed if you don't fact check me.
So she went home and started Googling and she sent me this LA Times article and she's like is this the woman? I go nice work, good job, that is the woman. And I'm not going to out the woman because she didn't drag me into her trial, even though I didn't do anything wrong, but in a way, even though she was a criminal who went to prison deservedly, 'm glad that I didn't have to go through a round of interviews with the FBI. Like she took it on the chin herself and I didn't know. But I was quite nervous because you know, I was there in that hotel room with her hours before she got arrested by the FBI.
0:29:11 - Leslie
So wild. So since not everyone knows that story, just to stick with the story you've been telling today yeah, yeah, Did, Heather, because I know that on the Juicy Scoop that's one of the only times you've ever told this story about finding your birth family publicly right? The only time, yeah. Did she believe you? I actually haven't listened to that episode.
0:29:33 - Scott
I think so. Yeah, I mean, I've been on that show three times, so I think we get each other. We know each other now, Okay, but I encourage anybody to fact check any of it.
0:29:38 - Leslie
Yeah, I think one of the things that I find fascinating about this story and things like it is that there's this kind of how could she possibly know quality to the information that she gave you? Um, you know this. Uh, so the name of the medium is Carissa Schumacher. Uh, there's a New York Times article that I actually reread this morning in, in preparation for this interview, and I'll I'll link it in the show notes, it's kind of interesting stuff. But I just think that the idea that from the moment you basically got on the phone, she's like so you're looking for your dad? Here he is giving you information about his last wife, you know, like she gave you actionable concrete information.
0:30:22 - Scott
Incontrovertible, immutable, inviolable
0:30:25 - Leslie
Yeah.
0:30:37 - Scott
I mean, I had an incredible psychic in Chicago when I was in my early 20s so I was already team other side, like I got that, but she was a different breed. I mean, he was more of a traditional psychic, whereas Carissa, I think, is only a mirror medium. I think she only communicates through spirit. Okay, her spirit communicates through her.
0:30:58 - Leslie
Right.
0:30:58 - Scott
Like she is as insane as it sounds. Her book, the Freedom Transmission, through Harper Collins, is a book written by Christ through her. Which I'm like, aren't you afraid to even broach this subject? And she wasn't. And apparently Christ likes to be referred to by his Hebrew name, Yeshua.
And I read the book and it was astonishing and I had to pay her back for our. I had to keep good on my deal. So I shot her author flap photo and we're out by these petroglyphs in the mountains above San Diego, or above La Jolla, I think it was, and she starts giggling during a shot. And I go, what's so funny? She goes yeah, Christ is here with us right now. And I go really Christ is here with us right now. And I go really Christ is here with us at this photo shoot.
0:31:48 - Leslie
She goes, yeah, and it's funny that you call him Christ, as a jewish person, by the way just because it's so ominous, it's so big, yeah.
0:31:59 - Scott
And she goes, he thinks you're really funny. I said, oh cool, would you ask him if he'll give me a plug for the book? It's worth an ask.
0:32:05 - Leslie
It's worth an ask.
0:32:06 - Scott
Hugely funny guy, Christ.
0:32:09 - Leslie
Yeah, yeah, it's really funny, I um.
So in season two of my podcast, I spoke with a friend of mine named Rhadika Dirks, who's a physicist. And one of the things that was really cool about that conversation was we were trying to have a sort of meeting of the minds between a psychologist and a physicist about kind of what we know about the nature of reality. And one of the things that was very cool about that conversation is that we kind of determined, almost sort of via having the conversation with each other, is that actually really no one is ultimately the expert on this stuff, and so not only am I open-minded, I mean, I've had my own experiences.
More of my experiences have had to do with something known as the Akashic records, which is not the same thing as mediumship, if you can use that word, but it's a similar form of just kind of getting information from the other side of the veil.
And I've had very eerie experiences in my life, nothing that is quite as sort of on the nose in the way that she gave you this actionable information. I think that's one of the reasons why I love your story is like you would not have been able to find your half sisters if it weren't for her. Like you said before, you had private detectives on the case for 10 years you couldn't find this part of your family. So I think it's relatively rare that we come across stories that are that detailed. But I know from personal experience that I've had incredibly uncanny experiences with this stuff and I think something that feels important to me is just to acknowledge that we really no one here knows. I don't think anyone on the face of the planet is ultimately the expert or an authority on really the nature of reality.
0:33:53 - Scott
A hundred percent. And, I don't even think, I mean you're, you're the psychologist, not me, but I've been thinking about sort of the history of the study of the human brain. And there was a time where the lobotomy was a thing and was used and overused and, as you know, Kennedy, you know people blame Reagan for the shutting down of the, of the you know insane asylums, as they called them. But it was, but it was really Kennedy and it was because of what they did to. Was it his what? Is it his niece?
0:34:24 - Leslie
I don't know this story.
0:34:26 - Scott
This is not history, so you know a lot of people think Reagan was responsible for shutting down.
0:34:30 - Leslie
That's the impression I've always been under.
0:34:32 - Scott
Yeah, well it turns out that it began with Kennedy but it wasn't executed until Reagan.
0:34:36 - Leslie
Got it.
0:34:36 - Scott
So Kennedy's niece or sister, I think, was lobotomized. And Kennedy had very strong negative feelings about that and thought that they were hurting and abusing people, which they were. And then, you know, then everybody thought Prozac was the turnkey answer to everything and it wasn't for a lot of people, and SSRIs and tricyclics and all these things. And I don't think, I don't even think we have begun to scratch the surface of how to treat mental illness.
0:35:12 - Leslie
Yeah, I have. I have a couple of thoughts about that, but first things first. Denisha, do you mind going to a wide angle for a moment, because we actually have a phrenology head. If can you see that in the frame? Just the phrenology head that's on the middle shelf right there. I just want to point that out to people because for a long time you know that was our understanding of mental health and the human condition. I am totally with you that in a lot of ways I think we are still in our infancy. I think that there actually is a lot that we know, that and the reason why I have this podcast is to try to get this information out that I think that it's the most like Americans, for example, have been fed false notions of how our minds work by pharmaceutical companies that are outrageously like the lobbies, are extremely powerful. So there's sort of like the information that the public gets about how the mind works, and then there's information that psychologists have about how the mind works. And, you know, treating mental health conditions is hard because it's labor intensive and it takes time. It's not actually impossible.
And experimentation, and there's a lot of experimentation and some of that experimentation historically has been awful and has led to terrible results for people they had, like ECT treatments, electroconvulsive lobotomies, that kind of thing. But I also just think that part of what I think about when I think about this stuff is the nature of true mental illness and like what we would call insanity. So I have worked in my life in locked units of inpatient hospitals. I've done a lot of crisis de-escalation work. I know what true mental illness looks like. If a person is, let's say, hearing voices and they are experiencing mental and emotional disorganization. Something like schizophrenia, for example, is like you know it when you see it, because a person is suffering.
Incredibly, that type of mental illness is completely different than someone getting information, like, what I'm trying to distinguish is the idea that this would be like crazy. You know, like in the Akashic Records, for example and this is gonna be a separate interview but my friend, Helen Vonderheide, who reads the Akashic Records, when she opens the records and is getting information from the other side of the veil, she literally hears voices. Thank you, she literally hears voices. That's not the same thing as hearing command hallucinations when somebody is experiencing a psychotic episode. So part of what feels important to me is to make the distinction between a story like this that is, to your point, inviolable in its accuracy, in the fact that it led you to real information you could not have otherwise found, versus what people are experiencing when they're experiencing mental illness.
0:38:02 - Scott
Right? Does that make sense, Right? I guess I was referring to things like you know, when I met my biological mother, she had had a very hard life and a lot of depression and a lot of mental illness.
0:38:15 - Leslie
Yeah.
0:38:16 - Scott
But I was like this isn't all I am, this is not all I am. And, it was meeting her, told me not to have children because I don't want to pass this trait down. I don't know if that's a thing, if depression and issues like that are genetic. I felt like they were because a lot of her I felt in me. But it also made me say, you know, go, I'm not going to fall prey and become her, I'm going to push back against it. Yeah, and I see some people just I think a lot of it's nurture. I didn't have the most supportive, you know, family structure. I was basically given a credit card and ignored. Yeah, and I read I'm a massive devourer of biographies and autobiographies and it seems like the most successful people had the most supportive home lives often.
0:39:12 - Leslie
Yeah for sure. You know, I think genes and biology counts for something, but I think that nurture and the way that we're raised counts for a lot yeah.
And part of how I think about it is through the lens of epigenetics, because part of what we know about genes is that they can be turned on and off by lived experience, the quality of our relationships, how much stress we're under, how much trauma we experience, and so it's complex. But I think just to bring things back to you and even your mother for a moment, because I read about your experience of meeting her in your book, is that it's interesting to think that it sounds like you're, you're very, very different than she is or was. I don't know if she's still alive now, I don't know either.
But it feels to me like part of why you didn't connect with her was because
0:40:08 - Scott
I also felt some guilt. You know, her life was in a way, I mean, I don't know what she was like before, but my life in a way was ruined. Her life was ruined because of me.
0:40:17 - Leslie
How so?
0:40:18 - Scott
Well, she got pregnant from a guy that she didn't know was married, didn't know that she was married with a pregnant, to a pregnant person, and found out she was pregnant as a very young girl told her father. Her German father went over and knocked on this guy's door and says you got my daughter pregnant, we need to talk. And on the other side of that door was his pregnant wife, who left him, moved to England where she was from, and had the daughter in Century City. So she'd never dated anyone after that. That broke her. Until that night I took her to dinner, she hadn't been to a restaurant since 1965. So she never recovered from that trauma. Or maybe she was like that before, I don't know.
0:41:05 - Leslie
Well, so this is not a therapy session, but I'll ask you a question. Yeah. If you were to get someone pregnant and if that woman gave birth to the baby and then later on had any kind of bad experience as a result, would you blame it on the baby?
0:41:23 - Scott
No, never.
0:41:24 - Leslie
There you go.
0:41:25 - Scott
No, I don't blame myself.
0:41:27 - Leslie
But you said you felt guilty.
0:41:31 - Scott
Maybe it wasn't the best adjective. I didn't feel guilty. I felt I don't know, I felt sad for her.
0:41:37 - Leslie
Yeah, I just wanted to make it clear that nothing that ever happened to your mother was your fault.
0:41:43 - Scott
No, that I know. That I'm well aware of. Okay good In fact, I'm the other way around. I'm just like if you have no money and no way to take care of a kid, why would you carry it to term? Yeah, I mean it's a good question and I guess we don't really know, like pragmatically, that's probably not something I would have encouraged yeah. I would have been like this isn't our time, yeah.
0:42:10 - Leslie
Yeah very loaded issue too because we don't know ultimately what her motivations were I suppose.
- Scott
Yeah, or what her, but I think she was disowned-ish for it or shunned.
0:42:20 - Leslie
Yeah, yeah. It's an experience that a lot of women have when they get pregnant, and even young girls.
0:42:25 - Scott
Especially back then it was a different thing.
0:42:30 - Leslie
For sure. Well, I just want to thank you for coming here and having this conversation with me today. Thank you for having me. Is there anything else that you want people to know, other than where they can find your fabulous book?
0:42:43 - Scott
Well, uh well, let's plug the book while we're here. So yeah, The Big Book of Bad Decisions is available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. And the Audible will drop by the time this show comes out. It comes out actually tomorrow, December 2nd. Fantastic and that's it, we keep going. Excellent, so thank you, thank you, thank you.
0:43:06 - Leslie
And thank you for being with me.
0:43:08 - Scott
I appreciate you.
0:43:09 - Leslie
You've been watching or listening to the Nature of Nurture with me, Dr. Leslie Carr, and I want to thank you for joining us. You can find Scott on TikTok or Instagram @scottnathanphoto and you can find The Big Book of Bad Decisions on amazon.com. Find me personally on Instagram, I'm @DrLeslieCarr. Many thanks to Scott for having this conversation with me and to all the people who worked behind the scenes to make it happen. Full credits can be found in the show notes. If you found this conversation valuable, please let me know by leaving a review or rating or by sharing the episode with at least one person who you think might enjoy it too. You can also like or subscribe on YouTube or in any podcast app that you can get your hands on. Thank you again for tuning in. I'll see you next time.