The White Lotus Official Podcast
Ep. 3: “The Meaning of Dreams” with Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood
Mon, 03 Mar 2025
Join hosts Jia Tolentino and Josh Bearman as they unpack Episode 3 of the series and chat with Walton Goggins about the emotional and social challenges that come with getting into character as Rick. Later, they hear from Aimee Lou Wood who shares her astrological insights on Chelsea and Rick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the introduction to the White Lotus Podcast?
Hello, and welcome to the White Lotus official podcast companion to season three. I'm Gia Tolentino.
And I'm Josh Barrowman.
Chapter 2: What are Jia and Josh's wellness goals at the White Lotus?
And later on, we're going to be talking to our favorite couple, Rick and Chelsea, Walton Goggins and Amy Lee Wood. Today, my question for you is, if you were a guest at the White Lotus, what would your sort of holistic goal be for the week? What kind of treatments would we be having?
Yeah, that's an easy one. My wellness goal would be and is always to... Fight the monkey mind. Like the serenity aspect. Serenity is your goal. Meditation, the stillness. I have a hard time. My mind's always racing. So the monkey mind, although it seems like it would be hard at the White Lotus because the place is full of these malevolent macaques wearing their fangs off camera.
But yeah, that would be my goal.
So you would put your phone in the pouch?
I'd put my phone in the pouch. Yeah. Yes, I would. I'd take a deep breath and throw it right in the pouch. How about you?
I mean, I need to quiet my mind. I would say that that is also a constant need in my own life. No, but I'm like, I'm coming here. I'm being like, my goals are external. I'm trying to do yoga twice a day. I'm trying to be on the beach and get a nice tan. Mostly I would just try to be reading and talking to no one and quieting my monkey mind in that sense.
But I don't think I'd really be able to embrace the spiritual journey. I'd be just like, oh, my child's not here. I'm going to read.
Right, right. That's your own form of therapy is just having time to read a nice book. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How does the tsunami dream set the tone for Episode 3?
OK, so episode three, the title is The Meaning of Dreams, as always, written and directed by Mike White. I love the way this one started with the tsunami dream. Yeah, I thought it was gorgeous.
I felt that, too, where it's an anxiety dream, but there's also something comforting about it. It's like, well, we're doomed, but we're together. Right. That was that was like the atmospherics of the dream. And then when she wakes up, she relates it to the whole family as if she's not disturbed. Right. It's up for the viewer. We know that this is a bad omen.
You know, the tsunami, the coming tsunami, which is coming for them. But she doesn't realize it yet. So for her, it was actually maybe a dream of comfort.
Well, she also I liked how you saw how she's not entirely straightforward with either her family herself. She was like. a really intense dream. And I was like, well, you walked into a tsunami. Like, is that all?
You faced the wave.
She was like, it was dark. Our house was there. And I was like, and? And what else happened? So the tsunami being, at this point, the FBI is fully at Timothy's office.
Right, right. Yeah, he's in trouble. He's in trouble. And then Lachlan has planted this idea with his tsunami videos, which then we'd see him showing ones like, look at this guy just – He doesn't even move. He doesn't even try to run away.
So after this, Timothy has an extreme reaction, which is to, after resisting Pam's entreaties to give me your phones, he's suddenly like, you know what? Phones in the bag. Phones in the bag.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the family dynamics in Episode 3?
It's a rare thing that we're together like this. So let's make the most of it. Let's make this week special, right?
Yeah. Do you think that this is him standing there like – is this him standing there waiting to accept it and not fighting it? Or is it him running away from the tsunami?
I had that same thought, too. I thought, oh, well, maybe he's accepting his fate, basically. I was like, I can't do anything about it. I'm no longer in control. And a lot of the show in general is about what you can control and can't control. And depositing your electronics in the bag is the symbolic release of control. Right.
Because we believe our control is now mediated through our devices and everything. And so, yeah, I kind of felt like he was watching the wave come for him.
Yeah, but also trying to delay it because he doesn't even want to.
It could be simultaneous, like oscillating, instant of like vibrating back and forth in his mind. He has the monkey mind of like, maybe if I pretend it'll go away, it'll go away. And maybe it's just coming for me and there's nothing I can do.
And he's dipping into those benzos. Yeah.
Exactly. He's like, I don't take drugs. By the end, now he winds up as like a drug addict. All of a sudden, he's like fiending.
I mean, frankly, I would be too if I were him. If I was that man and the FBI was at my office, you better believe I would be taking Xanax and hiding my phone. I thought the moment was interesting when Saxon is – the phone moment of putting all the phones in the bag, it comes when someone from the office is calling Saxon. It's leaking. It's about to leak.
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Chapter 5: How do politics and religion intersect in the podcast's discussion?
I hope you have good dreams of me, and I will have good dreams of you.
Is that a Thai expression?
He's revealing his amorous intentions. I know. It is moving forward. And then she also, at the dinner, spots Gary slash Greg. Goes over to the table and says, don't I know you?
Do you think that he recognized her?
When she's walking up to the table, he definitely recognizes her. Yeah. But not before.
Right.
Because you see it on his face. It kind of lingers on him. And then once she says Tanya's name. Then he realizes he's squirming in his chair.
But I have a question for you about Belinda. She's there for three months. I'm like, are you just going to be experiencing the spa for three months?
Right. That's true. That's a long apprenticeship. That's quite an internal training program that the White Lotus management has set up. That you can just go to another installation at the hotel for three months.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of the snake show and Rick's actions?
Right, right.
There's something interesting about while I don't doubt that Jacqueline and Laurie, you know, or whatever, variously sincere, progressive, liberal, however they consider themselves.
But it is something that I feel quite aware of in my everyday life where there are plenty of people in my orbit who think of liberal or progressive politics mostly as kind of a consumer identity who were really offended by Trump mostly as an aesthetic signal about like, like, this is just embarrassing. Like...
There's a way in which Kate having voted for Trump is on an equal plane in terms of moral and aesthetic importance as kind of not having a really good doctor for your Botox, right? Like they have the—they are appalled as if they are talking about a serious political topic, but there's a way in which it's sort of like, ooh, you know, you've made a lifestyle choice. You've made an aesthetic choice.
Interesting. I— obviously the aesthetics of politics are persuasive and powerful. I actually was kind of ruminating on whether there was an intention to sort of state how politics itself has now become a belief system since it's become itself so overpowering, right?
And, you know, because you're in the setting where they're on this, they're spiritual seeking, they're in this kind of place where you have your serenity as a wellness goal, and explicitly there's all this Buddhist statuary around everything. And People are talking about their values, right? They're talking all the time, like, they have good values, whatever.
And now it's like politics has become its own religion, basically, right?
I'm an independent. An independent? Mm-hmm. Since when? You didn't vote for Trump, though, did you?
I took it almost like it's like she's an apostate, like a heretic. Right. Right. Like it's actually superseding whatever spiritualism is going on in this, like in the retreat. And it comes into the conversation through religion. Right. And I'm like, they could argue about religion probably all dinner. And that's fine. But the minute she says Trump, it's like, oh, no, you're a heretic.
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