Through to Thriving: Journeying to Joy with Dr. Desmond Upton Patton

For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions designed to help envision possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the present moment. Audio of this conversation is available via your favorite podcast service.

Welcome back to this special series of podcast episodes called Through to Thriving. In this series, we are talking about what we can do and put our focus and energy into right now that can get us through this moment and into a place of a thriving, better future.

For the second episode in the series, I spoke with my longtime colleague and friend, Dr. Desmond Upton Patton. Desmond is the Brian and Randi Schwartz University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with appointments in the schools of social policy, communications, and psychiatry. He is also on the board of Tech Policy Press. For more than a decade, he has studied the role and impact of social media on gun gang violence, along with grief and loss.

Recently, though, Desmond has been focused on something different: journeying to joy. In our conversation, we discussed what got him started on this new path, how tech policy folks can plan for joy in our daily lives and professions, the reality of losing NSF grants, and how joy can be used for building safe and ethical AI.

We also reminisced about the old days of Black Twitter and Desmond’s decision to leave the platform. He said:

It meant something different for me. It wasn't just this tech thing. I received so much joy and connection and care and fun from that experience that it's not quite like a family member, but it's something close to that. For me, I had that level of connection to it, and so I couldn't just be like, ‘bye!’ Even though the world was crumbling around it and it was imploding into itself. Because those connections were meaningful. And I experienced so much joy from the memes, from the jokes, from the dance videos, from all the things that were shared, especially when life was hard.

I asked Desmond to define joy. He said that joy is personal. But he also shared what it means to him:

I think of joy now as like this enduring state, this framework, that oftentimes grows from pain, from grief. And it can become this window for which you make decisions, how you live your life, how you build relationships. And I think the thing that's really shifted for me is that it's not always Instagramable. It can be your soul, and it can help you to see the world in a different way.

Desmond continued, explaining:

[Joy] it's not about this chasing of events. It's not about doing joyful events all the time. It's about being in a state of joy. And that, for me is very philosophical. It's care work, it's hard work…So many people try to define joy and you can read in a textbook and you'll get a million different definitions of joy. But I do think that joy is personal and I think that it has to be real. It has to be vulnerable, it has to be connected to who you are as a person, and it requires intention and practice. And so my definition is big and all over the place because it's human and I think joy is humanity.

I asked Desmond how his teaching and speaking about joy has changed his identity within the tech policy community. He said:

People now associate me with joy, and they're not talking to me about my research on gun violence and AI. They're talking to me about joy, and I love it. It makes me feel wonderful because I have shifted my identity. And it's positive, and people want to process joy with me. They want to share joy with me. People are emailing me articles that they read in the New York Times about joy. They're looking for joy in unexpected places, and they want to process it with me. Everything has now been focused on joy. I have shifted my life just by being intentional, being reflexive, and also being vulnerable. And I was like, damn, if we could all do this, like this is cool. And so that's been the beauty of this.

Desmond and I also discussed his “Journey to Joy” class that he has been teaching at UPenn over the past two years. For those of us who can’t take the class, he shared these tips for beginning our journeys with a three-part joy plan.

One is to have a joy plan that is intentional and honest. Joy doesn't just happen to you. I think you have to be intentional, and I think you have to practice it, and it can be a ritual in your life…But most importantly, you have to be honest with yourself, what actually brings you joy? Number two is it’s something that you can do in community. And I think that joy planning is most powerful when it's shared and co-created with other folks. Then lastly, you gotta protect that thing, y'all. You have to protect it with your life. And what I've learned is that joy can be the boundaries that you set for yourself, and it's really helping me to shape the decisions that I make.

Desmond shared his takeaways from his journey to joy. He said:

My biggest lesson is that joy is not a luxury. That, I deserve joy, that my life can be joyful, and that we all deserve joy, and that I have agency over how I experience joy in my life. And it's up to me.”

Check out the entire conversation with Desmond (linked and transcribed below), and listen to other episodes in the series as they are published here.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Thank you so much for having me, Anika. Good to be here.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It's so good to have you with us. Would you mind introducing yourself for any of our listeners who may not know about your amazing work?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I'm Desmond Patton. I am the Brian and Randi Schwartz University professor at the University of Pennsylvania. I have appointments in social policy, communications and psychiatry. I'm also a board member of Tech Policy Press, and so I'm super excited to be doing this. For over a decade, I've studied the role and impact of social media on gun and gang violence and grief and loss, and most recently I've been focused on joy. This has been kind of a really cool and amazing shift in my work, both professionally and personally. I am teaching about it, I'm researching about it, and writing about it, so I'm super excited to talk with you about it today.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I'm really excited to talk with you about this. I have been watching your journey from afar, which has, in fact, I'm sure not just me, but inspired a joy journey for so many of us along this path. I appreciate that. But let's talk a little bit about, you said you've been researching and teaching about joy. How did you start on this journey? How did you get to this place?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

This really happened accidentally. I think a couple of things started to happen. One, I think the important thing to know is that my career has been spent looking at the deepest, darkest, hardest part-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right, exactly. This is a shift.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

And it is important work, and it's been path-breaking work for me, it is the work that got me tenure, and I think in the midst of doing that work, joy was always there, but I couldn't see it. When you're trained in social science and injury science, you're trained to look at problems oftentimes from a difference of perspective, and sometimes it's really hard to see anything else. But one of the things that was happening in my research that I was getting to a place of being able to see differently was that young people were using joy as a way of de-escalating violence. They would use humor, funny memes, anything to get their friend to calm down or to de-escalate. And we've seen this happen outside of a gun violence context, folks will observe a pattern happening and they'll interject. And so that was happening in my research. And then my friend André Brock-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes, shout out to André.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

André, who has long studied Black Twitter, has always noticed the ways in which Black folks use joy on social media. And so his research and his writing has always been in the back of my mind, but I think I saw a post from him about Black Twitter and Black joy that really shook me because it coalesced with this finding that I was seeing in my research. I feel like it was divine intervention because it was like, ding, ding, ding, you need to be paying attention to this. And so I owe so much to him for being someone that can see us and understand us and see our potential and capacity in things that we're already doing and our future as well. So that was happening.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You said there was a post that shook you. Do you remember what the post was?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I don't remember exactly what it said, but I remember there being a Twitter post and him talking about, I think, and it probably coalesced around some big traumatic event that was happening in the world. Instead of talking about the pain and trauma of that event, he was underscoring for us that we have joy, we know joy, we see joy, we are joy. And he didn't say it like that, but that's what I took from it. And so that was a pivotal moment in me to think about my work. And so those two things happened and I was like, "Okay, I got to do something differently." And so the first thing that happened was this idea of teaching this course. I was like, "Okay, this isn't a topic that I study, but I can study it alongside."

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You're a researcher and you're a teacher. You know how to do this.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah, right. So we did it together. So I started to teach this course at Penn called “Journey to Joy, “and I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that I wanted to teach this class. And so like most of my work, I just started. And from the work, I also began to think, okay, maybe I should think about this finding that I had around joy and figure out how to amplify that. And so the course then led to a research project that was funded by Microsoft to build a platform that helps young folks of color find joy on social media. We can talk more about that later, but…

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh yes.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

... Both those things came together. And also in a time in my life where I was realizing that I just needed more joy and that I had been experiencing life through happiness, like these fleeting moments, always chasing happiness, and it never felt sustaining. So getting tenure, becoming a full professor, all of these success events didn't feel like anything. It got exhausting because I'm like, what am I doing? You get the next thing, it doesn't matter. You get the next thing, it doesn't matter. So I wanted to change that. So that's the short story.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Well, okay, we're going to dig into so much of that, but I want to go back to old Twitter, Black Twitter and what that used to be like because I think it is so hard for us, I think, to reimagine what used to be. And I will say when I used to work at Twitter, one of my favorite timelines that I ever had in life was on my work device, I had a separate device for work, from my personal device as everybody working in the industry should make sure that they definitely do. And on that device that was logged into my admin account, the only thing that I followed was Black Twitter and jokes. It was my favorite timeline of all time. It was just literally just shits and giggles really. And that is something that I will say I miss, I really miss.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I'm with you. And I think it took me ... I'm no longer on Twitter as many people, but it took me a really long time to get off Twitter. And I think people were like, "Why are you still on Twitter?" And I'm like, "Yes, everything has hit the fan," but it meant something different for me. It wasn't just this tech thing. I received so much joy and connection and care and fun from that experience that it's like ... Not quite like a family member, but it's something close to that for me. I had that built-up connection to it. And so I couldn't just be like bye, even though the world was crumbling around it and it was imploding into itself, because those connections were meaningful. And I experienced so much joy from the memes, from the jokes, from the dance videos, from all the things that were shared, especially when life was hard-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

... Were happening, and Black folks would just flip the script.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Jokes.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

A whole other life. Yeah.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

We're going to get these jokes off. And there was something that was so incredibly joyful about that. I know we've been saying the word joy, we've been talking a lot about the word joy. You talked a little bit about how you're researching happiness and how happiness is different than joy. I know you've said joy is personal. You get to define it for yourself. So, how do you define joy?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I think of joy now as this enduring state, this framework that oftentimes grows from pain, from grief, it grows alongside of it, and it can become this window for which you make decisions, how you live your life, how you build relationships. And I think the thing that's really shifted for me is that it's not always Instagrammable. It is your soul. It can be your soul and it can help you to see the world in a different way. And it's not about this chasing of events. It's not about doing joyful events all the time. It's about being in a state of joy. And that for me is very philosophical. It's care work, it's hard work.

And so I think this is why it's complicated and this is why it can be hard because so many people try to define joy and you can read in a textbook and you'll get a million different definitions of joy. But I do think that joy is personal and I think that it has to be real, it has to be vulnerable, it has to be connected to who you are as a person, and it requires intention and practice. And so my definition is big and all over the place because it's human and I think joy is humanity.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Wow. Joy is humanity. I'm going to take that with me. You describe joy as this state of being, this sort of philosophical thing and this intention. And to say, again, I've been following you from afar along this journey, and there was a day that I was playing with one of my niblings and was having one of them days and they said to me, "Can you blow these bubbles for me?" And I was like, really not going to hurt me a lot to sit here and blow these bubbles. So let me go ahead and do this. And I remember just seeing this elation, the shriek of joy that came out of their voice and their face at the site of just bubbles flying through the air. And I was like, "Oh, that's what Desmond's talking about, it's that thing."

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yes.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

And it caused me, I was like, you know what? I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing right now and we're going to blow these. I was over there blowing bubbles till I was about to pass out. I was so dizzy. But it was really in that moment of saying, this is a thing that really matters. And really it is the connection of the humanity that so much we get so far away from as adults and so far away from, especially as tech policy practitioners, that I think is so important to be able to tap into joy in this moment right now. Thinking about it, feeling it, it feels really radical.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yes.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

It feels really revolutionary. What has the reaction been to this sort of journey that you've been on from the tech policy community and just generally?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Oh, so good. Oh my God.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah. It's so wonderful. It wasn't what I was expecting, and it wasn't my goal. I didn't start posting because I was hoping that people would see me as this joyful person. I was really posting for myself. I was posting because I'm reading, I'm doing these reflections, and I'm having a really hard time, and I knew that I needed to shift, I needed to change. And then I started reading The Let Them book. And that really helped me to be like, I'm going to post anyway. I don't care what people think.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

What book is this?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins' book. And it gave me the courage to post without worrying about how people are going to respond because I normally don't post like that. What's been so interesting, and it's funny because I was saying this in my commencement speech yesterday at Columbia School of Social Work, that people now associate me with joy. They're not talking to me about my research on gun violence and AI. They're talking to me about joy, and I love it. They want-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I was going to say, how does that make you feel?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

It makes me feel wonderful because I have shifted my identity. I've shifted, and it's positive, and people want to process joy with me, they want to share joy with me. People are emailing me articles that they read in the New York Times about joy. They're looking for joy in unexpected places, and they want to process it with me. Everything has now been focused on joy. I have shifted my life just by being intentional, being reflexive, and also being vulnerable. And I was like, damn, if we could all do this, this is cool. And so that's been the beauty of this. And now I haven't abandoned my work on gun violence because-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You're writing a book.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

... A book about it. It's a public health crisis. But I think that the reality of this human experience is that there's multiple truths and that the reason why we have cognition is that we can hold multiple truths, we can hold multiple complexities. And this is, I think, where joy and pain is situated.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

The shifting of identities is something that is amazing to think about and to hear about. And you mentioned this a little bit, I think so much of tech policy work, and so much of the work that we end up doing, and the work that you were doing is looking at the worst things that are happening on this planet, that are happening on the internet. And it can be, as you've studied, what it actually does to the brain and to the body and to the folks that are actually doing this work. And I will also say, you see some of the worst things on the internet, but you also see some of the most hilarious things that happen on the internet. So when I was working inside of tech companies, one of my favorite icebreakers that I used to always ask folks working in trust and safety was, "What is the most hilarious escalation that you've ever worked on?"

The answers, the answers that would come back would literally have folks sitting there in stitches because the things that folks would be seeing every day on the internet were literally, and again, so traumatic, but there was always that piece of joy. And you say people associate you with joy. Interestingly enough, whenever I would ask that icebreaker, I would always be able to, no matter what anybody said, I was always going to be able to top it with my own personal story that I never ever told with a straight face about the day that Chrissy Teigen insulted the President on the platform. And I had to spend my day trying to figure out how many insults were in the phrase, "Pussy ass bitch." And now one of the most pieces of poetic justice of all of the times that I've talked to Congress, of all serious moments and all of the things that I have done, that clip, that moment was the thing that so many people come up to me and want to talk about. And that was the only time in my entire life I have ever told that story with it-

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

... Example, and it reminds me of the Montgomery Brawl.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes-

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

And the folks there, and when I advise tech companies, we've had conversations around, well, what do we do with those videos? There's harm involved and there's violence involved, and you have to make the critical decision around what you do with that and take it down and how fast and all those things.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

And I had to remind them, I said, "For a large swath of Black folk, that was a liberating, joyful moment." And we had to go through the history of violence in the South and racism, but then also just joyous liberation, and this freedom that came out of feeling justified to defend yourself, and how so many Black folks connected to that. And it wasn't the scary thing or this harmful thing. There was harm that was happening, but it also brought a lot of joy and the ability to just finally stand up for yourself, and just see people come together and to do that. And so for some people, that's a hard thing to understand and to manage that, yes, there's violence and harm happening, and there's this justification around it that's connected to histories of injury and racism towards Black folk. And I was like, "These are things that you have to contend with as a company. It can't be black or white. It is deeply nuanced."

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Oh yeah.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

And I think joy allows for a level of nuance that I think is missing in our ability to figure out what's harmful or not.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, that's sort of the nuances of content moderation. The reality is that so many times we're walking around with a hammer when we really need to be able to have a scalpel to come in and be able to do so much of this work.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

This also reminds me, I think that was this past week when the plantation caught on fire. Another one of the moments, there's so many of these moments where I'm like, oh, I wish I still had that timeline. That would be the place that I would really love to be able to be in those moments, to be able to experience that little bit of joy. But all right, tell me a little bit about your Journey to Joy class, how long you've been teaching? You said you started teaching it this semester?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah, I started to teach it two years ago.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Okay.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

So it's been a graduate-level class for folks in communications and social policy. And then we've had people from nursing and computer science to come in. And then this coming year, I'm opening it up to undergraduate students. It would be the first time that it's taught to undergraduate students. Both classes are full, and I just have fun. It is by far my favorite class. And the difference is I have designed this class to be joyful, and I want you to experience joy. I don't want you to experience anxiety. I don't want you to experience stress. And so I'm not at all interested in you writing a 20-page paper. I'm not at all interested in you worrying about APA citations. I want you to wrestle with definitions of joy. I want you to understand joy as an individual, as an intersectional person. I want you to think about how joy impacts communities, who deserves joy, and who doesn't. I want you to think about how you can build joy with communities.

And so the class consists of readings that are not traditional academic readings. There are some, we do talk about the science of joy, and we lean into positive psychology and that space. But we listen to podcasts, we watch documentaries, we're reading all types of materials that wouldn't be deemed academic, and then they have to keep a joy journal, if you will.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Tell me about that.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

So I give people a set of prompts, and so one prompt is go to an art space.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Wow.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Go for a walk, experience music, go to a community event that you've never been to, go to a comedy show. This is your homework. Your homework is to get the hell out of your house and go do things. And the homework also includes life without your technology tools. So have a day with no cell phone, no social media, and just do things that you think bring you joy. And so what is it like to be without tech and what is it like to use tech? Identify your favorite influencer or what platform do you like to go to when you're having a bad day and you want to experience fun? So that's a critical part of the class.

And then it culminates with them having a joyful community event. And so they identify a community that they feel connected to or a part of and they host a joyful event. Some of the students would host a dinner party, some of the students would create a joyful card game, some of them had a book event in their neighborhood. They were so creative and they would have to design it. But the critical thing that brings it all together was them designing a joyful life. And so we use UX principles for one day and they just get big white card, paper markers and pens, and on the front side of it, they design a life that is personal and it can be as ambitious as you want it to be or not, and you just draw, stick figures, whatever you need, post-its, whatever you want to do. And that's the front end of it.

And the back end of it is your professional joy, how you want to enjoy either in your academics or in your work or in your schooling or whatever it might be. And then you do some thematic analysis, like what's showing up on both sides? Are there connections between both sides? And this becomes your joy plan. This becomes entry point for thinking about how you're going to be intentional about planning both personally and professionally based on the things that you already have in your head.

But one of the things that I try to push the students to think about, which can be hard is that oftentimes they start big and it's too complicated. "I want to have a six-figure job in two years." So that's very western, that's very Ivy League. It's all the things that we're told that are supposedly joyful, and I want them to peel that back and think about, no, just think about if you had nothing. You had nothing, you had no resources, what would make you feel joyful? And so then they're asked to go smaller, but smaller doesn't mean less than, it doesn't have to be grand. So yeah, that's essentially the class. We have a dance Zoom guy come in and do some dancing, they do some ethnography, and so I have them sit at different parts of campus that bring them joy and take notes about what they're seeing and what's evidence of joy amongst Penn students. They go for walks in the park. So this is an experiential class. Most people get an A unless you just don't show up because-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I can't imagine failing a joy class.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah. You would really have to try to fail the joy class. That's a lot of effort. So yeah, that's the class.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

What has your students' reactions been and what is their sort of feedback that you've heard?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I think they're loving it. I hear that oftentimes it's their best class, their most fun class.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I can imagine.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I just got an email the other day from a student who graduated, and she was saying how it was helping her to really locate joy in her life, because I think this is really a self-selecting group, and a lot of folks are looking for joy. They want joy but don't really know what it is and how to find it or they're struggling to find it. And I think they are beginning to build their own definitions and they're having agency over their life. I think that's probably the biggest thing, is that joy is now accessible and it's for them to define. Yeah.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Okay. So your class sounds amazing. So for those of us who cannot take your class, can you talk us through a little bit? You mentioned a joy plan. What is a joy plan? How do we make one? What are the steps? How can we get involved and get along on this journey to joy?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

So a joy plan is simple, first and foremost, and it's about you. And I normally talk about at least three things, but I think a joy plan can be whatever you want it to be. But I think these are the three components that I have for my joy plan. One is to have a joy plan that is intentional and honest. Joy doesn't just happen to you. I think you have to be intentional, and I think you have to practice it, and it can be a ritual in your life. But most importantly, you have to be honest with yourself, what actually brings you joy. And when you go there, you actually go there, shit changes. Then you realize you think you're doing things that bring you joy. But if you're honest with yourself, you ask yourself, does that really bring me joy? Does going to that lecture bring me joy? Does publishing 100 papers bring me joy? That is productive, that is deemed success in some people's eyes, but it doesn't always bring you joy. So that's number one.

And number two is that it's something that you can do in community. And I think that joy planning is most powerful when it's shared and co-created with other folks. And I think you have to be thoughtful about that because not everyone is ready to talk about joy, not everyone is ... To talk about joy. So you again, have to be really intentional about how you create that space and who is willing to have that exchange with you. And so I do that with my squad from Columbia. We are all on this journey together, and I feel like I have a group of ladies who I can be deeply honest with, and they all know that the end goal is joy. The end goal isn't more money or success. And so I can say, "Y'all, I got this opportunity. What do you think?" And the advice that I get is about, does this bring me joy? Not, "Oh, that's really prestigious." It's game-changing.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Right. Yeah.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Because yeah, we could all pursue this world and this life of chasing the best, most exciting, beautiful things, but if it doesn't land in your heart and your soul, it does not matter. And you feel that. And so that has been really important.

Then lastly, you got to protect that thing y'all. You have to protect it with your life. And what I've learned is that joy can be the boundaries that you set for yourself, and it's really helping me to shape the decisions that I make. I decided to spend time with you today because I knew talking to you would bring me joy. That was a conscious decision.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Desmond. Same.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I know that it would feel effortlessly, and that's the kind of life I want to live. I don't want to live a life with someone asking me wild questions that are trying to trip me up, and it's not free ... You know how that goes.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I didn't want that. And I knew that wouldn't be the case with you. So I intentionally was like, yes, I will do this. So joy is guiding who I talk to, how I interact, what engagements I do, whether I go on this trip or that trip, and that is freeing. Now, be clear. You also need to wrap all of that in grace because you'll make mistakes. You will. Sometimes it's hard. I've made mistakes this month. I'm busier than I would like to be this ... So I need to go back to my joy plan and make some decisions and make sure to not repeat that in the next few months. So yeah, that for me is a joy plan.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Okay. Thank you for explaining that to us. I also realize I should say here, for full disclosure, you and I have known each other now for about a decade. I was thinking about it.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yes.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I think it's been about 10 years since you walked into the offices of Data & Society, and you have not been able to get rid of me since.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

And vice versa.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Since that moment. And again, I appreciate you being willing to come on and have this conversation, especially about joy because you are one of the folks who throughout this journey and this tech policy journey that I have been on for the last decade have brought joy to so many spaces and so many of the places that we have been in. So you were talking about the components of a joy plan, being intentional, being honest, life happens. And so while you were in the middle of doing this joy plan, you lost an NSF grant, correct?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah, I lost two.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

What was that experience like? And how did this joy plan help you move through that?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yeah, it sucked. It sucked. And being centered and anchored in joy helps me to understand that this is not the end and that no matter who was in office, this work will continue. I will continue to work with folks who share my values, and we will push through no matter what. So joy can be that thing that brings you back to center. Because yeah, for 24 hours I was like, ooh, that hurt. You feel it in part because you have no control over it. These grants weren't taken because we were failing. These grants weren't taken because we did something wrong. They were taken because we care about Black folks. They were taken because we care about queer folk. It was taken because we're studying deeply complex emotions that have a connection to inclusion. So that's hard because that's who I am, that's what I've built my career doing. And so a part of it is ripping away pieces of me, but joy helped me to recenter. And so a part of what I had to do is this other concept that we talk about called joy stacking.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Tell me about that.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

It's been really useful. So joy stacking is really just ... It's really you being in touch with you and knowing when you're going to have a rough day. Sometimes we can look at our calendar-

Anika Collier Navaroli:

And tell.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

It's going to be a little ... This week…

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Going to be one of those days.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

One of those days, exactly, that's precisely when you need to joy stack. And what that means is that you book in joyful events, experiences, moments that you filter and structure throughout your day to help you manage and navigate those hard moments. So, for example, on the day that I lost those NSF grants, in the morning, I had a really good conversation with a friend that had nothing to do with work, had nothing to do with research, it was just friendship.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Then at the end of the day, I had dinner with one of my MSW classmates that I have not seen in years, graduated from our MSW program 20 years ago, and I probably haven't seen her in 5, 6, 7 years. Those bookends really helped me to get through that really hard day. It didn't erase what happened, but it allowed me to get through it. And I think especially as we sit and talk in Mental Health Awareness Month, being able to navigate and take care of our mental health, I think is really important. I think joy can be one of those things that helps you navigate tough days where your mental health is challenged.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Thank you for explaining what joy stacking is. I've been over here taking screenshots of everything that you had posted, and I'm like, okay, joy stacking, the joy journal. You know what I mean? We're going to get this down. And I think one of the things I just want to call out that you've said a couple of different times is how important friendship and community is. And I think that's something that we don't talk enough about in the tech policy space.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yes, yes, yes, 100%. And I love that you brought up our Data & Society days, and I don't know if you knew this or understand this, but I came to Data & Society as a new assistant professor at Columbia. I had just moved to New York. And so there was a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety being in the biggest city in the United States, being at an Ivy League institution, being Black in these multiple spaces. And I come into Data & Society, and I believe you were probably one of the few Black folks who were there.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

You were a beacon of light. I gravitated towards you, ran to you because I felt like there's some semblance of home here where someone was brilliant, but also just regular and nice and kind, and wanted to work with me, talk with me, connect with me, grow with me in my career in tech that is rare.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yes.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Is not normative. It is very rare. I maintain those relationships over the years because they have mattered so much to my career. You have opened doors for me, you have created opportunities for me. And that in part because there was this joyful light in you that you allowed me to see, that you allow others to see. And I don't know if you do that intentionally, but it was there and I appreciate it. I've appreciated that. So I just wanted give you your kudos for what you do for tech policy, what you do for Black folks in tech policy and how you share that light because it's really important.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Thank you, Desmond. And we were talking about joy, and you're going to make me cry.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

I don't want to make you cry.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I genuinely appreciate that. I really, really do. And I think what I hear you saying is joy is important, and especially in this space for those of us who are dealing and doing tech policy every day.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Yes, it is critical. And it's interesting because I am working on this paper with my lab and some colleagues from Columbia on how we integrate joy into AI modeling. And it's all about these relationships and what we learn, and this reflexivity that happens in these spaces, and wanting us to reimagine how we build that into how we think about the creation of AI models. And so the paper was accepted into this AI digital Ethics conference in Paris at the Sorbonne, and we're going in a couple of weeks to present it, but it really has come from not just the research has been one part of it. But it's also been about the kind of relationships that can happen in tech policy in which you grow and you learn and you develop with one another, that I think can lend itself to the kind of questions that we ask when we're building AI models, how we evaluate whether an AI model is appropriate for a particular research question, all of that. So I think these relationships are central to even safe and ethical AI tools as well.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

Yeah, that is my question, my next question for you was literally going to be how does joy, focusing on joy allow us to build a better technological future? And you are doing that right now actively.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Because of the joy work, we have been building a joy platform, it's called JoyNet. And we got this gift from Microsoft a couple of years ago to work with youth in New York City and Philadelphia, a youth advisory council, to first define what joy means for them and to think about what experiences do they want to have on social media platforms in which they can experience more joy. And what we heard from them is that oftentimes it's hard because the algorithm thinks it knows you and is sending you, making recommendations based on things that you may not even have connections to anymore or want to see anymore.

And so we want them to give more agency to young folks, especially young Black and Brown folks who are going through stuff who may be impacted by grief or trauma in some way. And so JoyNet is a machine learning powered platform that takes the recommendations of young folks and spits back out to them joyful content, but also we've created these features that allow them to connect on their platform. So hopefully they're finding other people like you who want to experience joy, then you can talk about joy, and hopefully it's not just an online conversation, that maybe you can connect in Philly or New York and D.C., and find offline moments for joy as well.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

I love that you are taking those experiences of joy that so many of us have had, and the things that we were saying at the beginning of our conversation are diminishing, and doing it intentionally for our next generation. I think that is so important in thinking about what our future could look like. Let me ask you this question. What has been your biggest lesson on your journey to joy?

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

My biggest lesson is that joy is not a luxury, that I deserve joy, that my life can be joyful, and that we all deserve joy, and that I have agency over how I experience joy in my life, and it's up to me.

Anika Collier Navaroli:

You know what, Desmond? I think we should end it there. I think that is the perfect place for us to end this conversation. I want to thank you so much for joining us and having this conversation specifically about journeying to joy and encouraging us to make our lives a little bit more intentional about the ways that we are thinking about and bringing joy into our space. Again, thank you for this. You've already made my life more joyful throughout the years, just by posting about this, and I hope that all of our listeners are also able to pick up on some of the many things that you have said and incorporate them into our lives.

Dr. Desmond Upton Patton:

Thank you so much.