Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Lisa Damour (on the emotion of teenagers)

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Lisa Damour (The Emotional Lives of Teenagers) is a clinical psychologist and author. Lisa joins the Armchair Expert to discuss how well fear immersion actually works, the three categories of temperament, and how the treatment of trauma has changed. Lisa and Dax talk about abnormal psychology, what caused the adolescent mental health crisis, and why the pandemic was so detrimental for teenagers. Lisa explains how social media has influenced self-diagnosis of disorders, why showing emotion is so difficult for boys, and how distraction has a place in our lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert, I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Good afternoon, morning. Teenage. Midnight if you're listening at midnight. Ew.

Bleh. Oh, teenage, gross, teenagers. Yeah, I was trying to be one for a second but I forgot how. Oh, that's your new character? Yeah. We have Dr. Lisa DeMoron and of course Lisa DeMor is a clinical psychologist and bestselling author.

Her books include Under Pressure, Untangled, but the reason Monica was gonna do her teenage character is that her new book is called The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. We're super blessed in that we get really great submissions and we're always trying to decide what is the thing that's interesting to people. And I do think of any stage of development

for children, I think the one that raises the most anxiety with parents is teenage years, right? Yeah, there's a lot of hype around it. There's a lot of hype, which is interesting because I loved my teenage years, they were so fun. So did I, but I was pretty mean to my parents. You were. They deserved it.

I guess you get one or the other, like I got into trouble but I was really nice to my parents. And you got in no trouble, but you were mean to your parents. What would you pick if you had a kid? I would definitely pick. Mean? Mean to me, yeah. Oh, interesting, yeah.

And I would pick nice to me and get in some trouble. I think in this episode you say differently. I do. Okay, we'll see. Well listen, in addition to the emotional lives of teenagers, Lisa also has a podcast out now called Ask Lisa, the psychology of parenting. So also an incredibly useful resource if you're a parent.

So check that out as well. Please enjoy Dr. Lisa DeMore. Order up for Damien. Hey, how did your doctor's appointment go, by the way? Did you ask about rubellsus? Actually, I'm seeing my doctor later today. Did you say Rebelsis? My dad's been talking about Rebelsis. Rebelsis? Really?

Yeah, he says it's a pill that... That's right! Did you know it's also covered by most private insurance plans? Well, I'll definitely be asking my doctor if Rebelsis is right for me. Rebelsis. Ask your doctor or visit Rebelsis.ca. Order up for Rebelsis. This NBA season, make every three-pointer alley-oop and buzzer-beater even more exciting with Fan Duel. Download the app today to see why we're North America's number one sportsbook. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gamling Palm, call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca You're gonna have to scoot over a little bit. Get in that corner. And then you know how to use headphones. You have a water. No you don't. Let me get you a water. Okay, great, thank you. Unless you want to use Maisie Williams' water. Yes, if you want to have a sip of Arya Stark's water, then feel free.

Thank you so much. Did you watch Game of Thrones? This could be a great icebreaker because we think scientists and we think stuffy, but maybe if we found out you were. Uh oh. Uh oh. I'm a compulsively honest person,

so you're gonna get the truth. So we were watching and one of the things that happened not rarely in that show was rape. Oh yes. Oh uh huh, yep. I am a psychologist. I have cared for people who have been raped. And it's hard for me to watch the depiction of rape

in the context of entertainment and also without any explication of the aftermath. And so we were watching it and watching it and watching it and enjoying it. And then after I was like, I can't do it anymore. That's a good reason. So I liked it. If you found it unpleasant to watch,

then why would you watch it? You know what happened to us is we were midway through, that was eight years long I think, and we had children in the middle of that. And previously, this is like Bader Meinhof, Frequency Illusion, our favorite saying on here. I didn't realize how many kids they killed on that show, but soon as I had kids I was like,

my God they go through a lot of kids on this show. Those got hard to watch. No, I remember a moment when my older daughter was a baby and we were watching a movie, I can't remember the title, it had Nicole Kidman in it, it was about somebody returning home from the Civil War. Oh yeah, Cold Mountain. Yes, and there was a scene

where there was a baby lying on the ground crying. And I ran to the second floor of our house and yelled down to my husband, I'm like, tell me when it's over, tell me when it's over. All the way upstairs. I couldn't, before having a kid, would have been a scene.

So those things change. There's also fun, and of course you have all the data, so this is a very lopsided dance, as Adam Grant would say, but what are your thoughts on playing out fears in art? I also think there's something compelling and valid about that as well. Why do people like horror? Why do women like rape pornography?

BDSM. Yeah, why do we explore these things we're terrified of and it's a safe place to exercise those? So like I see some validity to it too. What do you think about that? So I'll tell you a story that I think will answer your question. So when I was a graduate student

at the University of Michigan, ding, ding, ding. I'm so excited. I had a little boy I cared for and his number one fear was of tornadoes. This was in the mid-90s, compulsively watch the Weather Channel. No, you're right, you're right. But in his day to day,

he would compulsively watch the Weather Channel for any evidence that there was a tornado anywhere near where we were. His favorite movie was Twister and he watched it over and over and over again. And I think for him, it was a, he could start it, he could stop it, he could control it. He had total say.

He survived the ending. Exactly. So totally phobic of tornadoes and obsessed with the movie Twister. I have a very similar story. A patient of mine during COVID watched Contagion 20 times? I watched it so many times. I was obsessed with it.

If we gave it out of 10, how scared you were of the pandemic, it was above five. For sure. Because this was early days too. We were wiping the groceries with Clorox wipes. It was that time where I found it very comforting. And I had just had a seizure and she had a seizure in it.

That was part of it too. Like I just- There was a double whammy for you. It really was. Hitting two birds. Yeah, that was like part of the pandemic because they were all having seizures. Right.

And then I was seeing it. Yeah, that was one of the symptoms of the contagion. Yeah. Okay, so you're originally from Denver and what did mom and dad do? My mom has actually always worked in politics. Oh really? She's always worked for politicians.

So when I was growing up, she ran the governor's mansion in Colorado. And would you get to go there as a little kid? I hung out there a lot. My parents divorced when I was three. And so there was a juncture, especially from three to six before my mom remarried, where my mom was a single mom

and she was working to support us as a family, just the two of us. And so she would pick me up from school, take me back to work. We interviewed so many smart people, so many experts. They dedicate their life to studying something. They're all brilliant. I think for me, I'm almost more interested

in why the thing they studied is somehow soothing the thing they were. So you're on the right track. Okay, great. I want to be transparent. No, I appreciate it. My mom remarried to my stepfather who's served as my father my whole life. He's American, but he was living in London.

And so we moved to London. I was six and we left when I was seven. And I know it sounds glamorous and it's not unglamorous. And I've grown up with a lot of privilege. There's no getting around that. It wasn't as fun as it sounds. No, it doesn't sound fun to be six and move to a different country.

It was a lot of disruption. And then we moved back to the US and my dad was working for an American bank that was based in Chicago, so that's why we went to Chicago. But to your question, actually that was the moment when I decided to become a psychologist. When you were seven? When I was six and seven, yeah.

So wild coincidence. The same week that we moved from Denver to London, a friend of a friend made the same move to start studying with Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter. Wow. No way. Welcome to 1976. Bingo.

Anna Freud worked out child and adolescent psychology. So my parents were newly married, sorting out this new marriage. You got a strange dude in your life all of a sudden. Brand new stepfather, wonderful human being. Yeah, even if they're great though. Yeah, but brand new. You and mom were making all the decisions

and now there's a third party on the scene that has a lot of say, clearly you're living somewhere else. Yep, and it's just a lot of disruption in a short period of time. So my parents would travel a fair bit and they would have me stay with Carla, the graduate student, and she was 26. She was totally cool.

And I became obsessed with what she was learning. And so we would sit in her tiny little flat in Hampstead, England, right? By Anna Freud's clinic. And I would be like, why do the kids come to you? And what do they say? And how does what you say make it better? And she was so good to me, took my questions, answered them thoroughly but appropriately. I came home back to our flat and I was like, I'm going to do Carla's job. And Carla and I are still close. She's in her seventies.

And when I look back, I'm like, you know, it's probably not an accident that given all of the disruption that had happened in my life up to that point, I was like the inner worlds of children. I am interested, and there are people who are interested in this all the time. So that's how I understand it at this point in my life. Also, just talk about the high level of coincidence in someone's life.

You stay with her while your parents travel and she is into architecture we don't know. Right, but all of my books start with a quote from Anna Freud. Oh, they do? Yeah. So despite Sigmund obviously having quite a black mark on his name currently,

her work that's still standing up to some degree? It does, and of course it's all historically bound. They were working the time they were working. They were thinking the way people then were thinking. We don't think that way now, but in 100 years, people are gonna turn around and have a very hard time with how we're thinking about things. No one seems to have that humility.

Well, and I'm very clear on that. I feel very clear to be. Everything we say, under the lens. Like, holy moly, how could you even think that? Yes. What is so beautiful about Anna Freud's work and what I've really worked a hold on to and hopefully try to bring across in the way I do my work,

especially around teenagers, is that she talks about the stage and the stresses that are inherent in it. Well, it's a metamorphosis, right? So anything in life that's going through an enormous change has embedded in it some discomfort. Change equal stress. Yeah.

It's a done deal. Was there any element of these transplants? Now you go then to Chicago. Then we go to Chicago for three years and then we go back to Denver. Also, you're lovely. You're a great conversationalist. Thank you.

But I could imagine you as a kid being a little more on the shy side. I would imagine those big parachute into an existing culture where everyone knows each other wasn't the most comfortable. Is that a fair guess or not a fair guess? I guess what I would say. Is you're a bad psychologist.

You shouldn't lead the witness. You shouldn't say you have patience when you don't have a I've had the good fortune of being a school person when I think about kids and the kids in my care some kids You know just by endowment school is a place It's very happy and comfortable for them in that you excelled and the teachers liked you. Yeah. A little bit frictionless. Yeah, school was designed for my particular neurology.

It's not designed for every kid. It rewards a very narrow range of talents. My talents happen to fall in that range. You put me in a school, I could find my way. And what's interesting, I'm actually still close with my third grade teacher from Chicago. Oh my goodness. Really? So that's the grade you started when you moved?

Yeah, so I was second grade in London and then we moved to Chicago and I stay with her when I am in Chicago. Oh, that's so lovely. Like I would just make my home at school. You know, I had good friends. And you were highly validated there. Yeah, but talk about like a nature nurture moment.

How lucky for me in the context of all this disruption that the place I had to spend eight hours a day was a place That was really well designed for me. I care for kids where school is miserable for them and they feel lousy all day I actually think of how many teachers I owe apologies to recognize how difficult I probably was a few of them broke through and I do have relationships with some of them But I guess what I think sometimes is that were any of them to ever hear this show, I think they'd be like, how did that happen? Because I didn't think that's where he was heading.

I feel like I just owe them all a big apology. Yeah, but you're sort of this incredible example of extraordinary intelligence that is not rewarded by conventional school. It's very convenient because so much of the work you do is kind of embracing the many varieties. Shyness is one of them. My wife loved that aspect of your book,

which is parents have this inclination to knock their kids out of shyness. For obvious reasons, there's so many incentives. We're so social. It is a way you excel. I get the fear, but at the same time, it's like, who cares if someone's shy? I mean, what was the thing?

I think there was a bit of an inconvenience. Like I was a very shy kid and my mom was just like, you're just always by me. Go do something else. Go make some friends. Yeah, like I need to take a nap. I think it was more that. Okay, on her end.

For her end. Here in LA, I think people are like, oh fuck, how are they gonna ever build a social network that will result in a job? They're not gonna pledge a sorority with this personality. for her. I hear in LA, I think people are like, oh fuck, how are they gonna ever build a social network that will result in a job? They're not gonna pledge a sorority with this personality. Can we talk about shyness for a second? Of course.

What are the virtues and why should parents not be as stressed about this particular disposition? Okay, so going back to where we were, we really do ascribe a lot of shyness to temperament and temperament's what we call inborn personality. When we think about temperament, we actually have three categories that we sort kids into. One label we probably would not use the same term again,

which is difficult temperament. Today we would come up with a better. We call it DACS, just going forward. The product of DACS. Then there's easy temperament, and then there's slow to warm up. So difficult are kids who are reactive, maybe not that routinized in their habits.

Maybe they have very high activity levels in a way that is challenging. Easy kids are easier going. The bad kids will be disruptive, I imagine, in a classroom. They can be. Classrooms do reward. Kids who are able to sit, follow routines easily, transition effectively, right?

There's a reason we call it easy kids easy. And then slow to warm up are kids who are able to sit, follow routines easily, transition effectively, right? There's a reason we call it Easy Kids Easy. And then slow to warm up are kids who are shy. Now, Monica, thinking about what you said about your mom, what's really cool in this research is that no one temperament predicts to outcomes. What predicts is actually goodness of fit with the parent. So the parent who has a very high tolerance for a kid being slow to warm up, who's like, you can stay by my leg until you feel ready, goes great. The parent is like, get in there, get in there,

get in there. That's where you see challenging outcomes. And even sometimes with so-called difficulty, it's unfortunate, but again, things are bound by the historical moment in which they're created. They can absolutely strive. With a parent who's like, okay, you need a lot of warning

if we're gonna make a transition and you have a strong reaction to things. Really quick, that's worth exploring because I think the parents knee-jerk fear is by accommodating this behavior, the world's not gonna accommodate this behavior, so I'll be the best version of this they're ever gonna get. I gotta bring them up to speed.

Would you guess that's like the altruistic fantasy? There's a very, very limited set of behaviors in parents that I think are not well-meaning. Like I think it's very rare. I mean, it happens, right? There are terrible people who do terrible things. No question. One of the incredible gifts of getting to be a psychologist

who cares for people and cares for families over time is that you see people doing the absolute best with what they've got. No one is coming in this trying to mess things up. And things that don't always go well, a good example of a kid with a difficult temperament, and I'm using finger quotes now just because I don't love using that word,

they can feel sometimes the tag on their shirt and it's making them bananas. What we know to be a goodness of fit is to say like, well, let's just get you shirts without tags. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also, you could see it, Perrin, it's like you're gonna have to get used to discomfort in the world.

Yeah, you think that's the most uncomfortable thing you're gonna experience. Yeah, you gotta be able to handle this. So it's hard. It is, and I deeply relate to the fear. I'll give you an anecdote, but it's like your deepest fear is that they would enter the world and be unsafe and not be able to protect themselves and or be self-sufficient.

This terrible fear of by me being soft or coddling or accommodating that ultimately I'm going to do so much more damage to them. It's kind of a leap of faith. I'm glad there's studies that you can say, no, no, this isn't going to perpetuate some kind of frailty. You can be accommodating in some ways. The thing I was really wrestling with was our oldest daughter. She and I are very similar.

I have these fears that would pop up. Now mind you, she rides a dirt bike. She does a lot of things. She'll climb anything. She's not afraid of heights, but she would have these fears pop up. And I found myself in a pattern of trying to tell her how to get over them or push through them again, because that's what liberated me. And I had a weird breakthrough. I was hiking and I just thought, you know, this is weirdly the best compliment I could

get is that this household is safe to be afraid in. She doesn't have to rise up to this threat. But man, I was finding it for so long and then once it occurred to me like, no, no, this is really beautiful. This is a place where it's scary. And I was scared and it's a bummer. I had to get over it so quick, but I had to step over a lot of bad approaches before I realized, no, this is a good signal. You know, it's funny what you're making me think about.

There's so much we try to tell parents and so much we want parents to know. But if you had to sum up all of our research, everything we know, if you put it like in a giant machine that could drop out, what really matters? What we find over and over again is warmth and structure, the two together. I think the biggest challenge in parenting is

you can't get an A plus on both simultaneously. Warmth is, oh my God, this movie is so great, like let's stay up late and watch it. Yes. And structure is, it's your bedtime, we're turning it off. And so the challenge, and I think this is what you're talking through, is you want to have expectations

and hold kids to them and they need to feel not just loved but really liked and supported. And so my thinking in my own parenting, I'm like, I'm going for a B minus average on both. Over the course of a week, that's what I'm going for. Well, this paradigm, by the way, is the one that keeps striking us over the head nonstop, which is we are constantly servicing, often conflicting and contradictory objectives.

The country is liberty and equality. These are diametrically opposed at times. So all of us who want a hundred percent on everything or want it black and white, you can only have that if you have a singular goal in life. But if you're trying to service multiple things, the best you're gonna be able to do is a B minus and a B minus and that's an A. Yeah, that's what's hard.

Sitting in tension is very hard. We want it this way or that way. Yeah, you go to Yale. Where I would not get in today. I know who I was in high school. I know what kids are doing now. So let me just be clear. I have a similar disclaimer.

I got into UCLA through community college. I could have never gotten in there out of high school and I certainly could never get in there now. That's a whole other side of the bar. What's happening in high schools? What's the reward? Yeah, given that I care for teenagers, I always love to throw that disclaimer on it

because it's just a very different scene. Yes, but when you went there, you're on the path that you've been pursuing since six. Is it rewarding? Do you ever think about deviating or you're just go, go, go or getting closer? It was pretty straight line. I signed up for developmental psychology first semester.

I knew what I was gonna do. There was about five minutes where I was like, maybe I'll be a pediatrician. And so I was taking bio with all the pre-med kids. I was like, ah, I don't wanna do this. So I went back to psychology. And then this is just, again, great good fortune and not appreciating it at the time.

Yale has the Yale Child Study Center, which is one of the most phenomenal resources in the country and doing incredible work at a very high level. And so I started working for them when I was a college sophomore. This would have been like 88ish. 89, 90.

What was the flavor of the day in 89? Theoretically. Yeah, because I wanna go through the different cycles and fads of psychology, and especially popular psychology. And I'm curious, another way would be like, what was the moral panic of the day maybe? What was being studied that had to be figured out at that time?

Because now neurodivergence is such a big field and feels like we need to understand this now, but obviously that wasn't a thing in 89. Actually, one of the benefits probably of the Yale Child Study Center is that it worked across the tri-state area in this very concentrated population. And so we actually did take care of a lot of highly specialized concerns. So at that time, my work was not in this area But my work sometimes touched on it if you had a question about an autism diagnosis or a kid on the spectrum The best place you could go was the L child study center incredible specialists who were seeing 20 kids a week

Making those sort of evaluations. So the level was very high. I'll ask you quickly. When was that put on the DSM? How old is that diagnosis? Oh, it's been around for a while. The names have changed and we've shifted, we had autism and then Asperger's and then we have autistic spectrum disorders, but it's long been recognized. It's especially in its more severe forms, very identifiable. So in the moment where I happened to be,

I got to see incredible depth around actually what are comparatively rare concerns. If you were suffering from depression or anxiety, you didn't need to come to the Yale Child Study Center. Lots of people can care for that. Right. It was highly specialized. Yeah. And so I got, I didn't appreciate at the time, but this amazing exposure. And then I kept working for them through college. And then my first job after college was a full-time job there. I had written my senior essay down there,

and then my boss hired me, and so I stayed, and I ran a bunch of research studies. But the kinds of things that were made available to me, and again, you know, I was just like, this is what I'm just doing, it's a Wednesday. You leave and you're like, oh my gosh, like I got so lucky. So the director at the time was a guy named Donald Cullen,

and he was just this old psychiatrist. You know, he'd been around forever, gifted clinician. And one of his seminars that he taught to all the medical students and all the psychiatry residents and the psychology fellows was that he interviewed children of ascending ages in front of an audience. And he was so skilled. And my boss was so good to me.

He's like, why did you go to those meetings? I mean, I was just a research grunt. I didn't have any right to be in the room. And so he was such a skilled interviewer. And it was all good to me. He's like, why don't you go to those meetings, right? I mean, I was just a research grunt like I didn't have any right to be in the room And so he was such a skilled interviewer and it was all done with consent and these weren't patients it was a teaching moment all above board that he could sit with a kid and Ask them questions and the kid would forget that there were 30 of us watching and I got to watch Dr. Cohen ask them about their lives get them to tell us about Seventh grade and I still clinically use things I learned the technique Dr. Cohen, ask them about their lives, get them to tell us about seventh grade.

And I still clinically use things, I learned. The techniques. Yeah, I remember he would say, when a kid would say something, he would never say, well why, he'd say, how come? Right, and the kid's like, I'll tell you how come. And so I was 21 years old, right, at this time, and I just get to be in this room.

I got really lucky. How has your optimism changed from that 21-year-old till now and how effective the techniques can be? I guess I would say my belief has gone down two paths simultaneously. So there are some things where it just is so frustrating that we can't do more. I have a work wife, a colleague who I share

my private practice suite with, so we share the waiting room and then we each have our own offices within it. And she had just done an evaluation on a kid who's very severely ADHD. And we were talking about it and we were just like, you got to wake up every morning and just say, how lucky if you get dealt a particular neurological hand, like it's just luck. I think that part I can feel very aware, like I wish we could do more. The other part, and this is the really fun thing about being 53 and mid-career, is I've gotten to watch the field

make phenomenal advancements. So I got my PhD in 96, and since then, we have come into a completely new world about how we care for eating disorders. We're able to get results we were never able to get before. That's encouraging. Yeah. The treatments have improved dramatically. On what order of magnitude?

What was it and where are we? It used to be that eating disorders were the most have improved dramatically. On what order of magnitude? What was it and where are we? It used to be that eating disorders were the most lethal psychiatric disorder. Unfortunately, the opioid crisis has overtaken that. Right. I mean, and these are sort of rough and dirty numbers, but it used to be if you suffered from an eating disorder, the outcomes were a third, a third, a third.

A third of people recover, a third of people never recover, either live severely eating disorder for the rest of their life or die from the eating disorder, and a third of people kind of recover. They're not really ever out of the woods, but they're not gonna die from the eating disorder that day. So those are terrible numbers. They're not great.

Only surpassed by alcoholism, but continue. Yeah, I mean, like not good. And then treatment advanced. Family-based treatment is really now the gold standard. I don't wanna quote numbers that aren't accurate, but what I will say is- Right, it's very ball what I will say is dramatically improved. Full recovery, dramatically improved great long-term outcomes. So that's exciting. Same with trauma. When I was leaving graduate school we sort of had a fingernail grip on treating trauma. The treatments on that has

advanced so far in terms of psychotherapeutic interventions that really work. So I think I feel both at once. I wish there were more we could do, and it's so exciting to see the field make headway. How much of the latter was driven by new techniques that were then systematically evaluated, and how much has been us having FMRI and all these different biological components that we understand about neurotransmitters and all these other things?

What's driving it, or to what degree? I think it's probably both, right? The psychotherapeutic techniques have changed and advanced. We're trying things we didn't use to try. We keep doing the ones that are working. And then on the medical intervention side, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but what I will tell you is the drugs have proliferated massively

in the time since I finished my training. And this complicated question of what's okay and what's not okay, but for people who are helped by medication, the fact that there are many, many choices, and if this one isn't the right one for you, we can give you a try on this one, and watch it save people's lives. Well, there's that, and then there's also just observing the brain in different states of being and learning. Even if it weren't pharmacological, we would go, okay, we understand the amygdala now, we understand the cortex, we know how to breathe

in a way that can get you back, we know how to do some talk therapy that can reroute some stuff. There's also non-pharmacological techniques that we did learn from being able to actually see what happens in the brain now. It is true, what I'm smiling about. So I used to teach abnormal psychology, the course. I know you wrote in the textbook.

I wrote a textbook in it, I wrote a textbook on it. What if I took it? That's always what I took. I always wanted to see the freakiest thing, what's the craziest thing, or criminality. That was that class. I would get to the connection between mind and body, and this was in the late 90s, I'd say,

okay, all the stuff that we used to think was woo woo California stuff, we have now documented it in the FMRI. And so I think that it's almost like the field finally acknowledged or once it could put some science behind things that were actually established elsewhere, bringing it under the tent. So some of it we invented within the shop,

some of it was brought into the shop. Okay, so you get out, when do you start writing? Because you've been a prolific writer, so first you get out of graduate school and you do have a practice, you still have a practice. Did that start right away? It did, so I got my PhD in 96, stayed in Michigan, did two year post-doc, taking care of people,

set up a practice there. So I started writing actually right after I finished my dissertation. One of my closest friends is an English professor. She's actually a linguist. We are so horny for linguists. Oh, well. We just had one on.

There's no one more fun to talk to than a linguist. Okay, well, she has a book coming out in March called Says Who, which is a fabulous book. Her name is Anne Curzan, absolutely fabulous. Perfect. So Anne and I, dear friends, since back then, we were at a dinner party with someone who's like, if you two were to write a book, what would you write? And we were like, we would

write the book that we wish had been handed to us when we started teaching college students. And so the friends said, you should do it. It was like half a dare. So Anne and I co-authored this book that is in its third edition. I mean, this is like ancient history though. This came out in 1999. Quarter century. Yeah, exactly. It was really like a long time ago. It's called First Day to Final Grade, A Graduate Student's Guide to Teaching. It is just this wonky little book. And then because I had written that book, I then went on the Michigan faculty. I was teaching abnormal psychology. An older colleague of mine, a dear mentor of mine said, I'm thinking about

writing a textbook in abnormal psychology. Do you want to co-author it? And I was like, sure. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. So Jim Hansel and I co-authored a textbook in abnormal psychology and we did it twice, did a second edition. So without meaning to be a person who was writing books, I was writing books. What year was that? I'm wondering if that's the one I read.

Me too, I feel like it probably was. Wouldn't that be fun? Yes. I think it came out in like 2000. I was just leaving college and I probably missed what you probably read. That's like my era. That would have meant a great deal to me.

Wow, that would be so cool. Sidebar, I love a textbook. It just hit me the other day, it's like, I left college and then that was the end of textbooks, but they're so condensed and perfect. Western Civ, sit down and learn all of Western Civ and 350 pages with pictures. Why aren't I doing that with more topics?

It's not that fun to write a textbook, I will tell you. Oh, I can't imagine. It's unbelievably tedious, and my half of the manuscript was 800 pages long. Whoa! Yeah, I mean, it's just an ungodly amount of writing. It's not all together bad to have written one, because even though I work in one area in my field,

I love the whole field. There's nothing in my field that doesn't interest me, and so, you know, I got my training, and then you turn around and write a textbook, you get another training. So then we moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, where I live now, I'm practicing. I'm taking care of a lot of teenagers and their families.

That just happens that way. So here's what happened. First of all, I like teenagers and love caring for them. Why do you like them? They have, I think, a clarity. You say they have great bullshit detectors. That's my name for it. Total clarity of perception. They can sniff out a lie, you say.

Exactly, and there's something, I just am sort of compulsively honest myself, and I love being around what's true, and teenagers, man, if you ask them, they will lay it out for you, right? And I love that about them. We're not afraid to get canceled, either. No, they're just like, here's where it's at. Except for when they're very afraid.

I think sometimes they are. Yeah, exactly. And the word I'll use is plastic. They're so dynamic, like they can change so quickly, right? It's so fun to care for teenagers because you can have a kid who's not going to school smoking tons of weed and then they get excited about something and then bam, they're going to class.

So you look like a great clinician because this kid does a huge 180 in six months that you never see in adults. My friend's son just did this. He's like, I don't know if he's ever gonna not play video games 15 hours a day. He got a job at Dairy Queen, changed his life. All of a sudden he's on fire to be an adult.

It's so rewarding. But the other thing that happened, so by the time I set up my practice in Shaker Heights, I was about 30 years old. When I looked back still on that clinical work, I'm like, ugh, I was really green. But I had been working for a while, I had been practicing for a while. I started to get calls from parents saying,

we hear that you're a solid clinician and we hear that you look young. Ah. So we think our teenager will talk to you. That makes sense. Yeah, I was in this funny little sweet spot and one thing that's very funny, and I think I did look young,

I started my career wearing really dowdy clothes because I was trying to actually. To look teeny? No, to look professional. For the parents. Yeah. I don't know what dowdy, we just found out I don't know what dowdy means.

It's like grandmotherly, but not a hip grandma, just sort of shapeless. I'm in the amygdala now. It's okay. Don't worry about it. You learned something. Yeah, learning is good. And so actually it's been fun as my career has progressed,

like I can wear. Yeah, you look great, good outfit. Less dowdy clothes, as I did. So I ended up with this bumper crop of teenagers, both because I love them and also because the word got out that I was working with teenagers and teenagers would talk to me. So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, someone should write a book about the patterns of adolescent development because these poor parents are coming in thinking

this is just happening in their house, it's happening everywhere. And since I'd written on the academic side, I was like, I'll just write that book. So I started drafting Untangled, Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood. Eighty percent applies to kids of all genders, no question, but it's just sort of here are the stages of adolescence, here's what kids gotta do. I was just doing it on my own time because I'd written other books. I was like, yeah, I know how to structure a book, like I can just get going. One day I was looking at, there was an old blog in the New York Times called Motherload.

That sounds familiar. A long time ago, it was when the Times like had tons and tons of blogs and hadn't quite consolidated all the digital into the paper as it is now. And I saw an article that was titled The Best Advice I Got as a Parent. And I was like, oh, I have thoughts on that. So I wrote a little essay and I sent it in cold

to the editor at Motherload, and then I forgot about it. And then about six weeks later, she was like, is this still available? And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, you can have it. I only sent it to you, so it's still available. Exactly, I forgot about it, you can have it. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, you can have it. I only sent it to you, so it's still available. I forgot about it, you can have it. And I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna be in the Times. Like, oh my God, oh my God.

That's so exciting. Okay, but nothing really happened. My folks read it, they were like, good job. They didn't go make it in, it got published. Yeah, it got published. I went back to working on Untangled and taking care of my patients and doing my work. And then I had another idea for a piece,

and so I sent it in, and she's like, oh, this is gonna blow up and it did then editors and agents started calling me. What was that? It was about the childhood roots of adult well-being. Everybody wants their kids to grow up to be happy. What we actually know when we look at the research is that it's not professional achievement, it's not economic success, it's three things. Having good relationships, doing work you find meaningful, and feeling competent at that work.

That's where adult wellbeing hangs. And if you backwards engineer it, the childhood trait is conscientiousness. Like being upright, being a good person. So it's just about that. So these editors and agents were calling, saying, you wanna do a book on this? I was like, no, no.

I already did it. I said what I had to say. Had a column's worth to say about it. Yeah, exactly.. I said I do have this other manuscript I'm sitting on. So I got swept into commercial publishing. And it was a bestseller. It did very well. Actually it still continues to sell hundreds of copies a week. Then the rest just kind of unfolded from there. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. Soon for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner,

he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan, and they both spent the week in the water. You were made to follow your whims. We were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool and a waterfall and a soaking tub, and of course, a great shower. Expedia, made to travel.

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The sooner you get started, the more time your down payment has to grow. Open an account today at QuestTrade.com. Okay, so back to teenagers for one second. The other sweet spot about them is they're old enough to be cognizant of a lot of the things you're trying to say and to your point, high plasticity still. So it's almost like this glorious zone where they could enact some strategies. They're not eight and confused by what you're saying. They can comprehend it, and yet they're still malleable. They're new to autonomy. They have more say. They have options.

There have been times when I've been caring for younger kids who are maybe eight, nine, 10, who are in really, really difficult family situations, and you're just supporting them. You're just trying to get them through. And it's so different when you're caring for a 15, 16 year old coming in and being like, my family's back.

And you're like, okay, well, what are you gonna do to set yourself up with as many options as possible? And it's fun, because teenagers are like, yeah. They don't feel overwhelmed by it. It's just exciting. Well, yeah, it's like more agency. They're gonna have more agency over their life. It's what they're craving at that moment.

And here's a tool set to get you that agency. Yeah, and we can make it happen here. Would I be right to guess that's probably also the highest volume of patients that parents bring in. I would imagine kids become teenagers and the parents are like, I don't recognize this person, I'm scared. That 100%. That's what a lot of my work has been around is nobody's broken, nobody's doing this wrong.

Right? This is the natural course of adolescence and all of these things your kid is doing that feel very uncomfortable or very strange, have a purpose, serve a function, they're not nearly as personal as a piece. And in fact, the absence of which might be proof of something to be concerned about.

Exactly. We expect friction, we wanna see friction. There's all this value in it. In terms of volume, one of the things that I think has gone unaddressed, right, so we've talked about the adolescent mental health crisis a lot, which is real.

It's a two-part crisis. One was where you're seeing rising rates of depression and anxiety in teenagers prior to the pandemic, then along comes the pandemic, worst thing for teenagers. How significant is the change? Is that data even in the mouth? Yeah, we're probably still bringing the data in, but it was bad for everybody.

Teenagers have two jobs, right? To become increasingly independent and to be with their friends as much as possible. And the pandemic just totally kneecapped their capacity to do those things. So it was really bad for them. So this huge surge in emotional pain in teenagers. But the other thing we don't talk about enough is we don't have the workforce to care for them. Caring for teenagers is highly specialized.

Not a lot of us do it. And so it wasn't just that we had so many more kids who needed care. It's that we don't have the care force to do the work. And scaling it up is not something that can be done quickly. The training takes a really long time. Very few people want to see teenagers. So it's that question of volume, though you do see heightened distress in teenagers in terms of like the lifespan.

We don't have the clinicians. Right. This was gonna be a question towards the end, but this now feels like the right time to ask you. There was this incredible work that came out of Johns Hopkins two years ago, three years ago, you would definitely know about it. It was a program where initially,

they decided to give therapy to the parent and the child to see if that would increase the outcomes. And it did, mildly. And then someone thought, what if we only gave therapy to the parents and they had the biggest increases? So when I read these terrifying numbers that are everywhere you look, it's telling us this.

And then we're looking at them as, what's new about this generation? And to me, given that John Hopkins thing, I think, isn't that really just a reflection of us? Aren't we looking in the wrong direction? What do you think about that? How much of this is them and how much of it is us? I'm so glad that you're asking this question.

I mean, all I've done is care for teenagers. The last few years have just been, but the thing that just grounds me and makes me feel like we can do this is that we have established so clearly in the literature that the single most powerful force for adolescent mental health is strong relationships with caring adults. It's about the adults around the teenager. And so when I think about my work, I don't share public content for teenagers. My work is entirely around supporting the

adults around the teenager so that they understand what's happening, do not take it as personally as it feels, feel like they've got some ways to respond that will deepen the connection, keep the relationship going. For me, it's all about the adults around the kid. Yeah, and then in that way, yes, we don't have a ton of specialized teenage therapists, but we have a ton of adult therapists.

Absolutely. And so I do feel like we're a ton of adult therapists. Absolutely. And so I do feel like we're a little bit looking at the wrong variable. I don't know that the crisis is the teenage crisis as much as it's the adult crisis raising the teenagers, which we do seem to have the capacity for. Or adults need more support around this. And I think a lot of that support is actually

just understanding what's happening and why. And I think one of the things that hasn't helped adults in general, but especially people who are raising teenagers, is that there's been a bit of a move in the culture to this idea that you're supposed to feel good a lot of the time, and also in the vast universe of parent guidance, some expert, some self-declared expert, right, I mean, there's a lot out there.

I think there's sort of this suggestion that like, if you just do this ninja move and that ninja move and this ninja move, parenting will be pleasant and easy. Right, right, right, yeah, yeah. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. There is no ninja move that makes this straightforward. Development is really challenging. The more we can understand it, the better this all goes.

Yeah, I think a lot of parents would naturally wanna know where the line between just adolescent angst and a serious mental health concern, what is that line? It's actually pretty straightforward, which I'm glad to say that we can actually label that pretty quickly. So let's start with what mental health is and get really clear on that point

because there's a lot of murkiness around this right now. There is a lot of messaging, traditional media, social media, all around us, suggesting wrongly that mental health is about feeling good, or relaxed, or calm, or happy, right? You feel that way, your kid feels that way, that's how you know you have mental health. It's great to feel good, I have no problem with that.

That is not what mental health is. Yeah, and probably suffering from using the same terminology to say physical health. So for physical health, we would say not having aches, right? Exactly. So it's not specific enough would say not having aches. Exactly. So it's not specific enough wordage. No, it's not. But if we actually pursue that as a model,

physically healthy people get sick, but they recover. And that's how we know they're a healthy person. It's not that they never get a cold. Brilliant. Well, not my thinking. I mean, this has been around before. But so the same analogy, mental health, the way I define it, it's about having feelings

that fit the situation and then managing those feelings well. Right? So your best friend moves, you're going to be really upset. This is a giant emotional cold. Where the rubber hits the road is do you manage it by having a good cry, going for a run, putting on your sad playlist? A teenager said to me the other day, force cuddling my cat.

It's like, yeah, force cuddling, that's exactly it. Or do you say, oh my gosh, I'm so upset, I'm gonna smoke a ton of weed, I'm gonna be a total beast to be around, I'm gonna turn this against myself and hate myself for making this choice. So it's not the presence or absence of distress that psychologists are assessing,

it's how it gets managed. If a teenager is having a big bad day and they get very upset and they manage it in ways that bring relief, do no harm, that's the picture of health in my book. Two things that made me think of, one is we do a show with Wendy Mogul. Do you know Dr. Wendy Mogul?

She actually wrote one of the kindest blurbs ever for my first book. Oh, wonderful. We love her so much. She has given us a bazillion little nuggets that are genius, but one of the things I loved hearing her say is a parent will come in, the kid's doing this, this and this, and her first question is what do they do at school?

Yeah, what do the teachers think? What she'll find almost all the time is that they're fine at school, so they're not broken. They can do it when they need to. And then when they get home, it's pent up. You're gonna get all that. You wanna hear my corny phrase for that? Yeah.

School gets the best of them, we get the rest of them. Yeah, that's great. And wouldn't we want it that way? Yes, forget me. I'd want the most loving patient person in their life to deal with the worst version of them and not the most stressed and overwhelmed person. So that's just reality.

Okay, so health. Oh, can I add the second thought? Yes, absolutely. It's an anthro thing. One of the fun things I learned about is many regions of the world, but specifically I remember Sub-Saharan Africa. Even the way we talk about mental health issues

and labels we have, the language is phrased, you're schizophrenic, you're bipolar, that's a permanent, a cold is temporary. And then in Sub-Saharan Africa, all these mental issues are colds. There's no implication that they're permanent. And that's just a fascinating thing culturally

that I think is somehow in the mix of what we're talking about right now. It is. Let's rest on it for a minute and then I do want to define how we know when to worry about a teenager. Okay, great. In the time I've been practicing,

I have seen more of a shift to talking about certain things as though they are factory settings. Like I have anxiety, I have OCD. Sometimes I won't disagree with this. If a person has clinical depression, that's like having diabetes. You don't ever wipe it out, right? But you manage it well, ideally, and you live a rich, full life. Things like anxiety disorders, we're really good at treating.

Phobias, OCD, I mean, even sometimes very severe, we can make it go away when it gets to the disorder level. Everybody feels anxiety. Anxiety is a normal, healthy function that helps us stay safe in the world. But one of the things I'm finding myself, especially with teenagers who will sometimes trade in this language of like, oh, I have this, I can't do anything about it. You know, and you're like, no, no, no, we can trade it. So sometimes it's true.

Sometimes it's not. But in the last, I'd say, 15 years, the general population is moving more things into the factory setting category than psychologists know to be true. Have you noticed a recent uptick in the diagnosis of ADHD among adult women or adults in general? I feel like I'm hearing it so often. I was just diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I don't like it.

Okay, you've got your questions. You're like, I don't think you have ADHD. Well, and maybe, but you've lived a whole life not thinking that unless there's something debilitating happening. And you're like going in and you're like, I can't handle this. And then they tell you, oh, it's probably

because you have ADHD. You should do this, this, or this. But for a few of these cases, that's not it. They just are talking to their doctor, and they're like, you hit the markers for ADHD. I don't like that. No, you're asking an incredibly important and wildly complex question.

Let me just start by saying, I think there are people who, we miss the diagnosis. It flies under the radar for years. And then finally, when they're an adult, somebody gets it right and changes their life. Like, I don't have any question that that happened. There's also a question of, when we look at the symptoms of ADHD, and then finally when they're an adult somebody gets it right and changes their life. Like I don't have any question that that happens. There's also a question of when we look at the symptoms of ADHD,

there's a lot of roads that can lead you to that path. If you're not sleeping, you're gonna look like you've got a lot of those symptoms. Like you can't focus, you're highly distractible. Delineating who has a genetic propensity versus who has environmental. Environmental factors that maybe work. And then medication gets stalled out. It does and it is quick, it is inexpensive, it's easier to find than a therapist.

So a lot comes into this that makes it kind of murky. Okay, for Arian pet peeves, here's my kind of overall discomfort with the DSM, is A, it's kind of the tail wagging the dog in that I know to have these things covered through insurance, we I know to have these things covered through insurance We're required to have this clear diagnoses I get it

But I think it weirdly worked backwards and now we actually think in terms of how the insurance company wants us to think One thing that I'm suspicious is bullshit Is that a lot of these categories are insanely arbitrary and yet we take them on in popular vernacular as really known conditions like diabetes. If you're looking at someone with ADHD and OCD, you're looking at a spectrum of a human being and you're parsing out or betting most on one thing, but really it's not uniquely that thing. It's some weird combination of things and we just have to arbitrarily put them in these

categories, but the categories are pretty arbitrary. 100%. I'm racking my brain. I'm not going to remember who said this but there's a wonderful quote which is, diagnosis does not cleave nature at its joints. Right? Diagnosis is a very double-edged sword. My training is you do a really good job of evaluation.

You look very deep and wide to try to figure out what's going on. What's bringing this person in? What accounts for the concern? Get a clear sense of what's happening so that you can make the best possible treatment choices. That is absolutely essential to the field. There's also tremendous downside to diagnosis. First of all, people do not fit cleanly into these boxes. When I was teaching abnormal psychology, I used to make this elaborate drawing on the

board of dots on a graph, and you get a cluster of dots. And so then I'd circle, I was like, so we call this depression on a graph and you get a cluster of dots. And so then I'd circle, I was like, so we call this depression. Right. And you get a cluster over here. So we'll call this something else. And there's all these other random dots. And the cluster may be 51% of the dots.

Yeah, and then there's all these dots all over the board, right, that don't fit cleanly. So that is tricky in that we don't capture people well all the time. And then the other thing is, and especially caring for teenagers, questions of identity can get wrapped up in that we don't capture people well all the time. And then the other thing is, and especially caring for teenagers, questions of identity can get wrapped up in that, right? And so one of the things that we're seeing with teenagers,

and I have a podcast where we answer questions from parents. What's the name of it? Shout out. It's called Ask Lisa, the psychology of parenting. Wonderful, Ask Lisa. And we recently took a question from a parent, but I'm hearing this a lot, about kids diagnosing themselves on TikTok.

Oh my God. This is very big. And this is very worrisome for me. And for me, the worrisome piece is I've cared for kids who are like, I have depression, and then they organize an identity around something that is treatable and manageable. And at other points in life,

it may not change the course of things so much. In a teenager, it can. So we wanna be careful. And it's like self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways, you're looking for it. And I'm gonna add, I'm part of the problem. So what's also interesting is we've had this wonderful evolution, I think,

where people like me will come on and publicly say I'm an addict, I think that's helpful. I'll say I was molested, I'll say my A score was that. There's a lot of famous young actresses who are very open about their mental health. This wonderful thing's happening where the shame has been reduced and people are speaking about it in media, which is great. But the downside is these are also people's idols.

So you can understand how someone who wants to be identical to Taylor Swift, we have to acknowledge there's a cultural force also at play. It can absolutely come into that. And I think there may be kids who are doing a good job of diagnosing themselves. I'm not gonna take that off the table, but then let's get you the care you deserve so that you can live as richly and fully as possible.

So there's no version of this where it's always wrong or it's always right. But as someone who's cared for teenagers over the long haul, the problem with what happens on TikTok or these sort of public places is that all symptoms occur on a continuum. Of course, we're going to identify with pieces and parts of actually any variety of disorders. It's almost like a horoscope. Sometimes it's going to hit, sometimes it's not.

Exactly. I would be so tempted if I were you and I was treating a kid, I would want to say, is this a diagnosis you want to hold on to? That's probably a bad question, but I guess I would need to know that. The same way someone who wants to get sober, my first question would be, do you want to get sober? Are you here for your wife? Because it generally doesn't work when you're here for your wife.

Or do you really want help? Yeah, do you want to? So it'd be hard for me to treat a kid who had self-diagnosed a certain condition, and maybe they're right, temporarily. And if you want to hold on to that as an identity, that's very hard for me to work with. Well, guess the way I would go at it so if a teenager says I have depression but I'd say like tell me about it and then really find out

what they're describing as they run it down for me I may be like indeed you do right like you're hitting the diagnostic criteria we recognize this you have gotten yourself to the right place they may also be very very sad. Yes and you get a community out of this. Well, there can be this sort of additional support that comes alongside of it. And again, none of this is definitely good or definitely bad, right? It's also complicated.

It's a terrible gray area that our real life is. Yeah, terrible gray areas that are real people and real kids. But what's so cool about teenagers is they actually are really interested in mental health. And so my experience is if you take them seriously and ask real questions and try to get to the bottom of how they came to this conclusion,

even if the conversation goes in a place where I get to say, I have good news. I actually don't think you're suffering from depression, but you are describing sadness. And here's how we as clinicians make the distinction. And if I treat them as the intelligent, thoughtful, caring people they are, then we're having a great experience together.

And within there also there's this incredibly sympathetic thing which is I think a lot of kids don't feel worthy of help unless it were something permanent and clinical. And that's very heartbreaking. For me who has a hard time asking for help, it makes it easier. If I'm dyslexic, I need more time. I might have need more time, period. Also, sadness sucks. It can feel debilitating.

It can feel permanent when you're in it. So of course, what I'm feeling can't just be sadness. That feels very like, who cares? What I'm feeling is depression, because it is heavy, but it's not. It's not, but we can take your sadness very seriously. I'll tell you one of the things that happens with teenagers sometimes is they'll say like I could kill myself I don't sort of throw that out there

And so when that comes up in my work, I'll say is that something you're really thinking about or is that you telling me? How upset you are right now and? Usually they will say no. No, I'm not thinking about it I'm just really upset and then the key thing in that moment is not to be like, okay We're good. The key thing is to say, what's got you so upset? Let's go all in on that. So I think you're right. Sometimes kids can feel like no one's gonna really hear me

unless I bring it with this formal terminology. Or that I would be a baby if I needed help getting over sadness. It'd be fine to get over sadness with your assistance. Yeah, so I think if we can just honor that sometimes kids do have diagnoses and sometimes they just need a lot of love and support and they deserve whatever they need.

By the way, it's kind of the same thing regardless, right? They need a lot of love and support. And care. So let's get to this question of when is it time to worry? Right, because if we're saying typical adolescents will have a lot of negative moods and they may do quirky things to help themselves feel better which are totally fine if no one's getting hurt.

There's two things I want adults to watch for. So one thing is we worry not if a teenager's mood is all over the place. Teenagers moods are up and down all day long. That's just natural. We worry if their mood goes to a worrisome place and stays there. If their mood goes to a dark place or an incredibly cranky, unpleasant place or very, very blank, despondent, right? And they're there for 36 hours

is a long time in the life of a teenager. If you know your kid well, you might be like 24 hours is like not my kid. If you have that like this isn't my kid, their mood does not rest in this kind of space for this long, that's a flak. And 36 hours. I mean, it's kind of arbitrary.

Well, that's the kind of thing though that we really need to know. Because even as you're ramping up to make this point, I'm trying to guess what you're gonna say. Is it two weeks of feeling that way? Is it 12 hours? But it's kid to kid. Kid to kid and knowing your kid.

But again, I might guess two. So even if it's minimally a ballpark of 36 hours, that's very helpful to be practical about all the time. Let's just sort of start with there, which is just to say, time is different for teenagers. I've always said like, teenagers are like dog years. One year to them is seven years to us. Like, a lot happens.

So in adults, if you're actually being very technical about it, you have to feel really lousy for two weeks for us to consider a depression diagnosis. But I'm like, if you know your kid, and you're like, this is not my kid, and it's been a day or a day and a half, and I am worried, worried, then take that very seriously. The other thing we look for

is what I'll call costly coping. So they're managing the feelings, but they're managing in a way that is destructive or will be problematic. So they're managing but they're abusing substances or they're managing and they are self-harming or they're managing and they're being awful to people or changing their body as a response. So those are the big things to worry about. But what I wish we on the clinical side were doing a better job of is helping adults understand the teenager's moods go up and down.

They're very intense. Distress is not on its own grounds for concern. It's really about how it gets managed and that it comes and goes. Yeah, so let's go through some myths of adolescent emotions. One being the misconception that negative emotions are harmful to teens.

People worry that painful emotions are gonna hurt their kid. And this is also something I will say though, as a parent, I get it. Teenagers' feelings are so powerful and so intense, and they ramp up very quickly. So between ages like six to 10 or 11, kids are often pretty easygoing, and then adolescence begins actually around 11,

which is much earlier than people think, and it's because it's driven by puberty and most kids are in puberty by about that time. And suddenly your easygoing kid is like in a fetal position on the kitchen floor over something that happened at school. And as a parent you're like, this can't be good. This might be harming my child. And it is scary. What is typical though is that then a really fun text comes through and the kid pops up

doesn't remember what was wrong. Like that's adolescence. They recover quickly. That's what we wanna see. So I think we don't want to work with the assumption that if my kid is in pain, it's gonna hurt them. Because then what happens, the upshot of that is you are playing like linebacker

between your kid and the world. Yeah, now you start buffering them from reality. What about the misconception that emotions cloud judgment? So they can, but by and large, they should inform our thinking. And I talk in my book about a colleague of mine, Terry, who has this fabulous analogy she shared with me, which is that we should think of our emotions

as one member of our personal board of directors. So we all have a personal board of directors that helps with decision-making, and maybe on that board are like financial concerns, logistical concerns, ethics, interests, obligations, and also our feelings. And the way my colleague tells it, she says, "'They don't share the board,

"'and they almost never have the deciding vote.' "'So feelings shouldn't be calling the shots. "'It should be very rare that that happens, "'but they can help inform. "'Should I do this? "'Do I want to do this? "'What's my next move?' "'So they have a place, but they can help inform. Should I do this? Do I wanna do this? What's my next move? So they have a place, but we want them in their place.

Yeah, they should be taken seriously and also not be given the steering wheel. Nope, I mean, if you are paralyzed by anxiety, anxiety is winning. That's not the way to live. Right, now of course social media is, I don't know, I have thoughts. I do feel like there's some very serious

and real problems with it. I also think it's our moral panic. I think it is the thing that's new. I'm always trying to push against, knowing I'm as susceptible to moral panic and I will live through a generation that'll have its own, and that's that. So I'm always trying to just check it against that.

But what is harmful, what should we watch for? I'm with you. I try to take a more, let's look at the whole picture here. There are things I definitely worry about for kids on social media. They are exposed to all sorts of toxic content that is not good for kids, right? It can be either hate content or body image content or any variety of things. The body image stuff is really crazy when you learn the algorithm at YouTube was taking you further and further down that. This is the worry. So all kids are seeing it, and a lot of kids,

to their credit, and I ask kids about this all the time, they work hard to ignore it, to withstand it. Think about the energy in that, right? You're a kid who's like, I'm not looking at that. But then of course, if it's in front of you, some kids are like, wait, what is this? The first search is something you wouldn't be concerned about most of the time.

It's like, I don't know, bathing suit, whatever. It's kind of innocuous. Yeah, exactly. And then the algorithm's like, okay. And so then the problem, and this is the thing I worry about with teenagers especially, teenagers are vulnerable to norms, that their behavior is changed by what they think to be the norm around them. So right now, my Instagram feed, I don't know why, but I'm loving it, is hacks for folding

clothing. I just love watching them. It has not changed how I fold clothes at all. Right. I just like looking at it. Yeah, yeah, it's soothing for some reason. For some reason I like it. Whereas teenagers, if you see body after body

after body after body that is ultra thin or ultra fit, what we'll see is suddenly the ship will start to turn and that kid will be like, this is what bodies look like, this is what my body should look like, and then behavior will change. Same with hate content. So that piece is very worrisome. It's not just the seeing at once,

it's the algorithm that then gives this way lopsided version of the world that you're looking at over and over again. So that worries me. There's also this weird phenomena, I remember learning it in an anthro paper about suicides in Tahiti. Do you remember any of this now?

There was like a suicide epidemic in the, I'm guessing, it was like 80s and quickly they found a very obvious correlation that when it was on the news, pretty immediately thereafter, you'd see a swell of it. And then their ultimate solution was just to not report it because it was sticky, It was transferable. Norms matter for teenagers. And actually some of the better substance abuse

interventions actually just tell kids the level setting. Because you know the kids we're using in schools tend to have like a very high social profile. Everybody knows what they're up to. But when we actually look at the percentage of kids who are using, it's comparatively small. And so there's very smart substance abuse interventions that are like, hey, only 14% of kids are smoking weed.

Those numbers help kids be like, oh, okay, so they may get the headlines in the high school. I'm not the only person not smoking weed. In fact, I'm in the majority. Right. So norms really matter. And the algorithms make me enormously anxious because they can shift to kids' norms. So I worry about that.

I would say the other thing, and this gets to the what should we be really anxious about question is sleep matters. So the data on the causal connection between social media and mental health concerns is messy. And we can't slam dunk say. Parse out what is what. Yeah, exactly. The data on poor sleep and mental health concerns

is not messy. It's one to one and we can do studies where we manipulate variables and can see what's driving what. It's one-to-one and we can do studies where we manipulate variables and can see what's driving what. So I think for a lot of kids, it's not necessarily social media per se, it's that they have their phone in their room at night and then this is very engaging or very upsetting

or very exciting or something. Stimulating. And then they're not sleeping. For adults too. Exactly. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're gonna worry about things, sleep is the thing to worry about.

Right. And if digital technology is undermining a kid about things, sleep is the thing to worry about. And if digital technology's undermining a kid's sleep, that is a problem and should be treated in that way. So on the social media stuff, I mean, the reality is it's also a lot of fun for kids. And also it's where they get their mindless entertainment. And I watched so much Gilligan's Island as a kid. And these kids are working so much harder

than we ever worked. They should have mindless entertainment too. So if their algorithm is cat videos or sports clips, fine. So what do you do? You grab your kid's phone at some point and see what trajectory their algorithm is on? I think you do wanna have a sense. And can you reset the algorithm?

Yeah, I think there are ways to do that. What you need to do is find a 14 year old who can explain how to do this, which they will. Sneak in their phone and click on cat videos for two hours. Exactly. And then put it away and erase the history. This is, I think, really tricky, but none of us really should have tech in our rooms overnight.

We know that from the research. It's easier to set this up. I know, I know, I know. No one likes to hear that. You too. No one likes to hear it, but when we look at the data. I can't make fun of myself. What about the alarm?

Ah, ah, ah, ah. I mean, I know you think that it- You would hear your alarm from the kitchen. All right, if I'm late fun of myself. What about the alarm? Ah, ah, ah, ah. Ah, ah, ah, ah. I mean, I know you think that it. You'd hear your alarm from the kitchen. All right, if I'm late for work. You can't get mad at me. I'll have bigger concerns. What I would say is, if sleep's not an issue, it doesn't matter where your phone is.

Yeah, but it is. Right, if it's an issue, that's a place to consider starting. And what I will say is for parents, when they hand over tech to kids, the beautiful thing about the kid who's asking for tech is that they will agree to anything. It's the ultimate leverage.

So when, depending on your community, nine, 10, 11, 12, a kid is like, hey, can I have a phone? If you're agreeable, I would say first of all, they do not need a browser or social media apps. They need as much tech as is required to be in touch with their friends. Often that is texting.

So you can say it'll be texting, and this device does not go in your room and the kid will be like, what am I getting it? And so it's not the hardest thing at all to set up. It is harder to walk back. Yo, yeah. I had engraved on my daughter's iPod, no games. Oh yeah.

Cause that was the agreement I said. And she was like fine. Yeah. How does gender shape the way teens express their feelings and experience their feelings? Our research makes it pretty clear that this is socialized. Right, so back to the nature nurture debate,

this is almost all nurture, that we have different rules instead of going with the gender binary because that's where the research sits right now. Girls as a group are given a lot more latitude in our culture to express emotion, a wide range of emotions. Boys as a group, well, I'll tell you what the research says and then I'll tell you what I've come to believe.

So what the research says, and this is not entirely untrue, is that in terms of culturally sanctioned emotions for boys, there's two, anger and pleasure at someone else's expense. Whereas girls enjoy a very wide emotional highway with many lanes. So here's something I've been thinking about a lot. Like, except for the domains where boys get to express tons of feelings. And there's many, I'll choose sports as an example.

Boys will cry. They'll hug each other. They'll smack each other on the ass. They'll get so excited. They'll be so happy. If you want to see like the full blooming color of emotional experience, we have pockets in our world where boys and men are given full attitude. And so I've gotten a little frustrated with the narrative

of like, oh, guys are so two dimensional about their emotions and women have this fabulous 3D experience. I'm like, no, they're only allowed by the culture in certain areas. And I think more the question we should be asking is, it's not that they don't or can't have these feelings, it's that something gets in the way of feeling

that they can have them everywhere else. Yeah, I have this realization not long ago where I would of course explain my profound interest in girls being my hormones and my attraction, but I really was thinking the other day, I was like, you know what it was? It was the most enormous deep breath

that this was a human I could act any way I wanted in front of and I wouldn't be called weak. That maybe was my primary attraction to women is that you're permitted to have a much wider range of emotions. I thought it was just like a call to mate, but I actually think it was like the reprieve from the fucking straight jacket of masculinity.

Here's something I've observed clinically just to sort of play this out a little bit. So I've cared for teenagers who are in very intense heterosexual relationships. In teenage romances, they're like 30-year marriages, right? I know, I would love to go back. Nothing is as heightened. Nothing is as heightened, and then of course today's teenagers, they're in touch 24 hours a day. I mean, like it's really, really powerful. Often it would be like kids are going off to college or something, so they break up. And for the boy, very deep.

So the girl can turn to her girlfriends and get tons of support around the pain of this relationship. The boy is high and dry. The friends go, yeah, she was a bitch, next thing. Exactly. Like that's a cure-all. Now you're free. Yeah, but he is suffering so much.

This is a Wendy thing too. Boys get broken up with way more than boys break up with. I bet that's right. But then what happens clinically is he'll keep reaching out to the girlfriend for support because she's the one. It's the only outlet. She's the one.

Yes, who else are you gonna share these feelings with? I've seen those patterns so many times. I'm like, oh, these guys, I wish they could take care of their own. Whereas the girl's got more support than she knows what to do with. So I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Oh, what a good point that their only outlet is now. That original. The person that they shouldn't be communicating with. It's so messy because she's trying to move on and he's trying to stay afloat. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. Oh boy. Okay. What did I earmarked? Oh! I earmarked, as someone who's been doing it now for quite a while, seeing different movements in... I don't know what you want

to label it. I'm asking you for the label, but there's the layman's psychology. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't remember in the 80s this enormous interest in psychology. I don't remember as many psychologists being on TV all the time. We talked to a ton of them,

we're fascinated with it, and I just wonder what your thoughts are and there being a fad element to it and do you feel like that bastardized, like what are your feelings? Again, we had a happiness movement that became then toxic happiness. Now we have a new model of success.

It's just constantly every six months, two years, whatever it is, it feels like there's a new paradigm we click into and everyone pursues it like crazy and I just wonder what your thoughts on it being such a popular thing. I think it's mixed. I feel that way about the adolescent mental health crisis. Like on the one hand,

I'm so glad we're talking about teen mental health, but on the other hand, I think, gosh, if you're a parent of a teenager and you're seeing headline after headline after headline about the adolescent mental health crisis, that's really frightening, especially if your kid's having a fetal position meltdown in your kitchen, right,

which I have known to be natural to 13-year- olds forever. So I think it can really be double-sided I'm really grateful for people who do a very good job of translating the science effectively Of bringing it across because the problem is a lot of times scientists just talk to other scientists We have all of these really interesting things and we just share them with each other and leave everybody out. At a Ramada Inn conference center somewhere and Boise. With our posters and our presentations. So I'm always grateful for people who are good on the translational side. I do worry sometimes that there can be

the next thing that we're chasing. It's starting to mirror diet crazes. Again, longevity, it's like we have to be perfect. Optimization, I'm really frustrated with it. I'm really frustrated. I hate it. I love it. Do you?

Yeah, just physically. I think there's ways we can take really good care of our bodies. I do worry that adults and then also kids are getting the sense of like, you have this exact number of minutes in a day, are you using them all as well as possible? This gets normed on social media

and then kids feel like they're so not keeping up. They're lazy. Yeah. Well, there was a great BBC series called The New Gurus. It profiled different gurus and I wouldn't have even thought of that, but once it came up, I was like, oh yeah, time management gurus is a whole sector of the economy.

I've never been pulled to it, so I've never watched someone tell me how to get the most out of my day, but yes, that's an enormous field. Yeah, I don't know, I just don't wanna, I shouldn't play on people's sense of inadequacy. Like whatever you're doing, people wanna feel better, they should get to feel better.

But do we help them feel better by saying, like here's all the things you could be doing that you're not? Or do we help them feel better by saying, here's how to understand why sometimes you run into trouble and here's some options that you can try when you do. There's different ways to go about it. There's just a lot of over-promising. Again, none of these things, back to the A plus or the B, it's like if it were frame more like you might be able to raise the standard of

your existence by 15% with these tools, that to me feels responsible. I agree. There's been other work about evaluating just the overall macro success of self-help books in that there's quite a bit of evidence that sets an objective that's unobtainable for people. And the, almost choked to death. And they come out of it feeling even worse than they did when they bought the book

because they weren't able to enact the policy that would have led to their happiness. I believe that. The thought I'm having is, there's also some real downsides of focusing on the self. Okay, great. You're circling what I actually wrote down and that is what I really meant is like,

are we a little too obsessed with our psychology? Oh, probably. And there's value in an outward focus. There is value in caring for others. I think about that boy you talk about who had the job at Dairy Queen that changed his life. I have never seen anything do more for teenagers than a job job.

Old fashioned job job. A job job. Not like the cushy internship. A job job where you are taking care of customers. Eating shit. Exactly, dealing with challenges, doing work that is sometimes pretty tedious, right? The amount of growth it fosters,

the sense of capacity, the skill sets that are developed. It's interesting, the longer I've practiced, my idea of what constitutes a therapeutic option for a kid, for some kids I'm like, that kid needs therapy. For some kids I'm like, that kid needs a job job, or that kid needs to join the school play, or get him in a sport. I do worry that the more we worry about ourselves,

the more we worry about ourselves. And that we can work outward sometimes. So much of this focus is thinking and more time in your head and more introspection and more evaluation. In fact, perhaps the best medicine is go do something physical for a while and get distracted from your own navel gazing and lo and behold, you'll be happier somehow. I mentioned this in the emotionalized of teenagers.

I had a teenager describe this perfectly. She came one afternoon, she's like, okay, I had the weirdest day. She said, so I got a bad test back this morning, I was so upset about it at the start of school, and it was first period and it bothered me all day, and then I went to practice, and I couldn't think about it for two hours,

and then when I remembered it, I was like, why was I so upset about that? And I'm like, distraction has a place in our lives. Yeah, you don't have to frame it as like running or ignoring or all these things, it's like, no, no. Well, as you know, my wife just thinks you're the second coming. Yeah, you don't have to frame it as like running or ignoring or all these things. It's like, no, no. Have it back. Well, as you know, my wife just thinks

you're the second coming. I don't think she's ever liked reading a book as much as, I guess it was the last one, Under Pressure. So the second book was Under Pressure. So Untangled, Under Pressure, and then The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. Emotional Lives of Teenagers was the last book. Is my most recent.

Is the one that's out right now. Yeah. I wanna say that she read Under Pressure. And she liked that. It was bananas for it. And then she reached Is the one that's out right now. Yeah. I wanna say that she read Under Pressure. And she liked that. It was bananas for it. And then she reached out to you personally, right? Yeah. I love all this.

I think it's one of the scarier moments for parents. It might be the most high stakes, at least in their head, five or six years that they'll have with their kids. It's kind of heartbreaking too that it comes right at the end of your ride with them. But it doesn't. I can say as a mom of a college age kid,

you get to keep being their parent for a long, long time. Yeah, I guess just the under your roof situation's so lovely. It is so lovely. Oh, someone just sent me this article. It was like a fellow parent. They're like, look at this statistic. 30% of kids under 28 are living at home. And I'm like, God willing.

Well, Lisa, this has been wonderful. I hope everyone checks out the emotional lives of teenagers. By God, if you have a teenager or you're about to have one, we're about to have one. And I think the more we can right size our fears and actually be able to identify what is problematic. Well it's helpful to know what's coming. And not just feel like it's happening out of nowhere.

Yeah, so if you're expecting some craziness and it arrives, you're like, all right. This is how it's supposed to unfold. Yes. Absolutely. All right, well good luck with everything. This has been a pleasure and I hope you'll come back when you write your next book. I would love to.

Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong. Hi. How you doing? Pretty good. Pretty good, How was your weekend? My weekend was great. I went to a really great play. Oh, was it a musical? It was a musical. Oh my God, I did too.

You did? Was your play great? Mine was excellent. It was so good, I went twice. Wow. Uh-huh. Yes, your children were in a play. Yeah, they were in newsies.

1 p.m. showing on Saturday, 5 p. Wow. Uh-huh. Yes, your children were in a play. Yeah, they were in newsies. 1 p.m. showing on Saturday, 5 p.m. showing. I went to the 1 p.m. Yes, it got tighter. It got tighter. The 5 p.m. got tighter. Okay.

Less mistakes. Oh, I'm glad I saw that. But the audience wasn't as good. Oh, interesting. Yeah, there was an enthusiasm to that first showing that was really fun. Well, okay, do you think most of it was just the same parents,

and so they had already seen it? Quite possibly, yeah. They were a little less. Similar turnout, I thought, oh, well, the five will be packed. Same turnout. Yeah. Yeah, mostly parents. Of course, just parents.

Who's gonna go see that play? Although Leslie went and she didn't have a child in it. I thought her kid did go to that school. She does, but she wasn't performing in the play. Oh, I see. They just wanted to support. That's sweet. Yeah, so maybe other parents in the school

maybe checked it out. Yeah. Oh my God, was it great. I mean. It was so cute. I don't know why I didn't predict how adorable six to 10 year olds in 1890s newsy clothes would be. Even the way the play opens, of course I've never seen that musical prior to that,

but it opens with like six kids on stage and they're all selling newspapers and they're like, you know. Doing a voice. Yeah, and they're like, you know. Doing a voice. Yeah, and they're like, they're giving you news like, the wing ducks win the Stanley Cup, read all about it. And then the next person's like, war is imminent.

Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. They're shouting headlines and they're just children. It's so funny. It was really, really adorable. And there were of course mix ups as there's bound to be. They've only, in fact, what we saw is the very first time that had ever been run all at once oh no I was wondering that I was like how many full dress rehearsals did they

do I don't know that they ever did a dress rehearsal I know they had a blocking rehearsal but it was very butchered up you know it's not like it was I think that was their first beginning to end Wow and there's a lot of cues people got got to enter, and it was so funny, because most regularly, someone would not be there. Like, there's supposed to be a fourth or fifth person in the scene, and everyone's just standing there,

and people are going like, Baa, Michael. What did you do? What did we do? Just say it. No, you say it. And there are mics so you can hear them. Well, we talked about this during Matilda,

because this is, okay, this is now the second show I've been to. Yeah, this was much better than. It was. It was, they had fixed a lot of the issues. One being, they figured out the lighting this time. Yup, lighting was great. Lighting was great, big step up.

The mics are the mics. There's like 30 kids with mics, and there's only two poor guys running the whole show. So it's like, it's only gonna be so good. It's just tricky because you can hear them all backstage. They're breathing. And like chit chatting and it is so funny. But man, was it cute.

You gotta look at the wins. Like luckily Jack's mic always worked. Jack's carrying the whole play. Mind you, Jack is a woman is being played by. So it's not the performer Jack's carrying the whole play. Mind you, Jack is a woman, is being played by. So it's not the performer Jack, but the character Jack. Who's got the most amount of lines. Their mic was always hot. Spot on.

Yeah, that's true. It was great. Oh man, it was very, very, very cute. And then Lincoln had a solo. She did, she did such a good job. It was very sweet. And Delta was in the chorus. Delta made herself the star of the. And Delta was in the chorus. Delta made herself the star of the show.

She was in the chorus. She definitely waved to us. Sure, she did whatever she wanted. Sometimes she would sing the songs, they weren't her songs, but she would sing along. You could tell when she totally zoned out, didn't care, didn't care to be there anymore. But then she decided to come back in.

Like a light switch, and then she'd be there anymore. But then she would turn it. But then decided to come back in. It's like a light switch. And then she'd be the most dynamic person. So funny. I was thinking watching her like, wow, she ever decides. Like, cause she's not, she doesn't really give a shit. No. She just, like, she didn't wanna do it. And somehow she ended up doing it.

And she's only got one line and then, but she's in the chorus and then she's gotta take a picture and then, but Lincoln had to come tell her like, it's like, you gotta take the picture. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Both, both times. Cause she got so carried away picture and then, but Lincoln had to come tell her like, it's like, you gotta take the picture. Oh yeah, yeah. Both times, because she got so carried away dancing and having fun. Yeah, it is funny, I agree.

Like she has so much charisma, you know, she's so magnetic. And I don't think she's drawn to it. Like after the first show she came, she was like, oh, she ran immediately off and ran over and was like, I don't wanna do a second show. Yeah, and she was like, oh, she ran immediately off and ran over and was like, I don't wanna do a second show. Yeah, and she was actually saying it

in a manner of like, can I not? Like she was looking for permission to just pull a no show for the same, we're like, absolutely not, you gotta be. Yeah, you gotta show up. Who's gonna say, you can count on me? That's her big line. You can count on me, and then she makes her fist.

Yeah. Who's gonna take that picture? Oh, so cute. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. And then Lincoln, yeah, she had a couple moments where her voice just had this truly beautiful tone. Where I was like, oh man, she got it. Like she got it. It was so cute.

And I was sitting next to Kristen's dad. All I could think many times, well, for one, it was very sweet. He FaceTimed Kelly, his wife. So she was watching it, which I thought was so cute and so sweet. But I kept thinking, and Kristen's mom was at Matilda, and I thought the same thing.

It must be such a mindf fuck for them to be sitting there watching these little girls. Part two. And it must feel like 10 minutes ago that they were just watching Kristin do that. Yeah. And they look like her, but they're their grandkids. I mean, it's like such a time warp for them. It is, but I imagine it has to feel so sweet.

Of course. Like the experience for me is just out of this world. To see them try to put themselves, I'm just particularly Lincoln, let's be honest, really go for it, have a solo, work really hard. I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude that they're like, they're go-getters. And you know, and then I guess the next stage is you have,

it's like they have kids you wish the best for their kids. So yeah, so if you're Tom, my father-in-law, and you're like, your little girl's two seats down and she made it. Yeah, and she's super successful at this thing. Yeah, and then here's her little girl, and she's on fire for, I don't know, yeah, I gotta imagine that's a pretty unique

and fun experience to be the grandpa there. I mean, I think being a grandparent, you get those moments a lot probably, but this arena is so specific, because seeing Kristen at that age doing that, and then becoming what she's become based off of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like they have spent so much time in those seats

watching their kid do that. And now for it to be like, yeah, round two, so bonkers. It is. And probably, well, I wonder, I wonder if they had anxiety like, oh God, she's gonna try to do this, it's impossible to do this. Right.

But then probably that whole element's relieved by the time you're a grandparent because A, it's not his problem. Yes. And then B, this has proven to be something that can be done weirdly. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, it was all very interesting.

Yeah, I just think it's cool. You know, it was like pandemonium in the house, getting them ready for the thing, drop off at 10, this and that. Went to the performance, Liz had a birthday party, shoot over there for 20 minutes, then straight back to the theater.

So now, selfishly, it's like, ooh, that was the all of Saturday. That just blew by. Yeah. I need some rest. Because last week was a big week for us. Big week, yeah. Yeah.

I needed a little rest. And I was like, okay, great. Sunday, I'm gonna We had like, yeah. I needed a little rest. And I was like, okay, great. Sunday I'm gonna blah, blah, blah. And then right before I went to bed, I was like, oh my God, I have to go play paintball tomorrow for Ace's birthday party with Lincoln. I'm like, Lincoln, we gotta go. And she's like, oh, okay.

Like she's excited to do that, but also she's of course completely spent from doing the two shows. So then Sunday was all, was paintball. How was paintball? Fucking awesome. Great. Again, I was like bratty going like, oh my God, now Sunday's gonna be,

I'm gonna go straight into money and be working. Tough shit, that's a parent's life. But it was a very kid weekend. But anyways, it was an hour drive out there and I just had the most lovely ride with Lincoln. We held hands the whole time and listened to yacht rock. And she was singing, and she knows the words to every yacht rock song.

And so I was just really euphoric with that. And then she was nervous, of course. It was all boys. She was the only girl invited to, and there was 18 boys. Yeah, it was like most of his class and a couple of friends from baseball. And so she got there, and there's like dudes. Whoa. Yeah, it was like most of his class and a couple friends from baseball. And so she got there and there's like dudes

walking around in military gear. There's fully like 10 different fields going and there's like guys with, that's their life. Oh, like grown-ass. Grown-ass men with beards and they're the mildly militia looking dudes. So she's, and she says, you know, like, I'm pretty nervous and I'm like,

I totally understand, how could you not be? It's like all these men, and there's guns, and you don't like guns, and then it's all boys, and the boys are already like, they're in a war movie, the little boys. They're like, they're bumping each other's chest, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do, you know, they're boys. They're like getting revved up for this.

And I said to her, you know, of course you are, look at this, this is a sausage party, and it's crazy. I said, but you're gonna be of course you are. Look at this, this is a sausage party and it's crazy. I said, but you're gonna be fucking better than all of them at this. Like I'm just saying, if you can get out there one time and I'll be out there too. And so Erica and Charlie also played and I played. The second it starts, it is so much fun.

It's incredible. And so Lincoln and I were a little two man team and there's all these things to hide behind and you're going and so the first one was really fun. At some point I realized if I run as fast as I can around the outside, I can get behind everyone as they advance. No, you're never looking behind you.

You're like looking forward and you're behind all these things. And Lincoln and I got behind everyone and we just had an unstoppable moment. Lincoln killed Charlie. She snuck up behind him, he had his back to her, and she ran and what's really cute is they told us the rules were if you come around the corner

and you have someone like, you're right on them, close range, you can yell surrender and if they lift their gun up, then they've surrendered but if they point their gun at you, then you're free to shoot them. So Lincoln was running at Charlie, firing and screaming surrender. Ha ha ha ha.

Oh, that's funny. And she blasted him. Can I show you, can I send you a picture? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, she was so proud of herself, as she should be for taking out the biggest boy there. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, no one's getting Charlie.

Yeah, you know, we have all these pod babies and they're all growing up together and it's really sweet and they were planning this paintball party for Ace and it was like, I think it's just gonna be like school friends and it's gonna be boys only and then Ace said, but I think Lincoln should come because I think she'll be better than everyone. Yeah, and that flattered her enough to get her there.

Yeah. It's like, oh my God. He wanted to, he wanted to show her off. Like I have this friend who's a girl, but she plays like the boy. She rides dirt bikes. Yeah. And I think that's, it's so sweet for all these kids. It's so familial, but that's why I, oh, wow. She got them, huh? Is that a bruiser or is that paint? No, no, that's through familial. But that's why I, oh wow.

She got them, huh? Is that a bruise or is that paint? No, no, that's through a shirt. Yeah, that's like a welt. Oh my God. Yeah. Ow. Yeah, she lit them up.

That's pretty violent. I don't. Yeah, I was bleeding. Oh, I still have the mark. I was bleeding on my hand and on my wrist. I thought it was like, I was bleeding. Oh, I still have the mark. I was bleeding on my hand and on my wrist. I thought it was like, didn't hurt. No, no, it leaves well. But it doesn't hurt that bad.

It's a perfect amount of hurt. You don't wanna get hit. You're motivated to not get hit. Oh, okay. You know what's great though? So we played four different rounds of it. I got killed twice. Lincoln only got killed one time.

Wow. Yeah. Pretty fun. But yeah, I like that these kids have, it's a little family. Yeah, I do too. It's very sweet. I do too. And then we'll take Ace to Disneyland.

Oh fun. On her birthday. Her birthday's coming up. Mm-hmm. And she'll be 11. Yes. Crazy. Isn't that, does it feel crazy?

It does and it doesn't. She still feels like a kid, be 11. Yes, crazy. Isn't that, does it feel crazy? It does and it doesn't. She still feels like a kid, but in five seconds she's gonna feel like someone about to leave the house. Ding ding ding. What? This is for Lisa D'Amour. Oh.

On Teenagers, basically. Oh yes, what timing. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, it feels like I've been with her for 11 years. Yeah. And at the same time, there's never enough time. Like it's way more than halfway over until she's an adult.

Until she's an adult, but adult doesn't mean over. That's very true. But you do get, there's a reality to life, which is her life will get bigger and bigger, my involvement in it will get smaller. And that's a very heartbreaking. It is. I know.

It mirrors life in general, right? Like life's a tragedy. It is, it's just like one heartbreak after another. Yeah, but you just gotta have comedy along the way or it'd be insufferable. It does feel like life is, for the first part, it's a series of getting, and then the second part is a series of losses. It's tough to start realizing that.

Yeah, it's not set up in the beautiful three act structure of a movie where the end is you reap all the rewards. But again, Tom was at that thing this weekend, and I'm sure very much for him watching these two generations that he created. He was at what? The play we were just talking about. Sorry, I thought you meant Tom Hansen.

Oh, no, no, no, yeah, yeah, my father-in-law. You know, he's very much, he invented Kristen. There was no such thing as a Kristen. Exactly, yeah. He made her. I know, I know. And then she made Lincoln. I know. And so he made both those people. To see it all. I know, I know. And then she made Lincoln. I know.

And so he made both those people. To see it all. I think there are rewards. Yeah, yeah. Or also like we will all have a million moments when we're all old farts and we're together playing cards in someone's backyard and we'll go like, oh yeah, we didn't do this alone.

Well, this is lovely. We all shared this whole thing together. I think there's like beauty and there's poignancy that comes with age, obviously, but actively things are slipping through. Yeah, you end your career, you end your this, you downsize, you sell things. Your family grows up. People start dying.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's things. Your family grows up. People start dying. Yeah. Yeah, it's fucking. It's pretty brutal. You just gotta ignore it as long as you can. I know, I know. Until you wake up dead. It's best to be in denial. It is.

That's all coming whether you focus on it or not. Yeah, I think that's right. Well, it is right. Well, in fact, it is correct. I just checked that fact. What did you do yesterday? How long did you stay at Liz's party? I don't know, an hour, an hour and a half or so.

And then I went to Callie's birthday party. Oh, no kidding. Where was hers? It's a big time for birthdays. She had a dinner at a cute restaurant. That's also an interesting thing. Callie and I have been celebrating birthdays together since we were 14. Yeah. And she just turned 37. And it's so- You've have been celebrating birthdays together since we were 14. Yeah.

And she just turned 37 and it's so. You've celebrated way more birthdays together than apart. Yeah. Odd. Yeah, yeah. Just like so strange and so special. Like it's that dualistic, it feels sad a little bit and it feels really lucky.

Bittersweet? Yeah, I don't wanna use it because it's just so cliche. It is. Should I stop using that word? Life is a cliche though. Yeah, should I stop using bittersweet? What are we kidding?

No, no, go ahead and use it. Is that like been there done that? No, I love been there done that. Oh, you do? But you say B-T-D-T. Oh yeah, I said B-D-D-T. Oh, B-T-D-T. B-T-D-T.

There should be a boy band called B-T-D-T. Well, there is one called. No, it is B-D-T. Oh, B-T-D-T. B-T-D-T. There should be a boy band called B-T-D-T. Well, there is one called. No, it is B-D-T. Ben, no, it's not. No, B-T-D-T. And they're done now. It's definitely not, you're right. So that was very fun.

And then I went home, I ate life cereal. Oh, fun. That's a good cereal. Cinnamon or regs? No, I'm regs. Okay, all right. I'm always regs. And. Do you put sugar on top? No, it'm regs. Okay, all right. I'm always regs. Do you put sugar on top?

No, it's pretty. It's sugary. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I eat it as a dessert and it's satisfying as a dessert. But when you're a kid, when I used to eat life as a kid, I would pour sugar all over it. Oh yeah, I would put sugar all over Cheerios and stuff.

Wow. Yeah. I didn't know about life until my later years. I didn't really know about it until college. I knew about it, but I would never have picked it. It looked boring. Little did I know, it's the best cereal. It also had a really curious ad campaign, which was Mikey Likes It.

They would trick this kid into eating it, because no one wanted to eat it, all the older kids. And they would make Mikey the little kid eat it, and then they'd go, oh, Mikey likes it. Oh hey, Mikey likes, that's from life? That's from life. I know that line. Yeah, everyone knows Mikey likes it.

That's from life, but the subtext is like, this is a very unappealing cereal, we're gonna acknowledge it. Right. No one would wanna eat it, a child has to be bullied into eating it, but if they do, they're actually gonna like it. They like it.

Not even love it. He likes it. All right. Oh man. But then they feel jealous of Mikey. Then they eat it all. I just remember him being like shithead teenagers. Poor Mikey.

Was that related to Life with Mikey, the Michael J. Fox movie? That's a great, oh. Seems like a child star. Yeah, it might have even been, the premise might have been that he was Mikey in the commercial. But I don't know, but you should look that up. I bet that is.

Was it Michael J. Fox in the commercial? No. But someone who looked like him? Surely, yeah, he was a cute little brown hair boy. Wow. Little boy. Little baby. Little white boy. 70s sitcom star, now grown up,

that runs a talent agency for child stars. Okay. Wait, what? That's the premise of the movie. Oh, now grown up, that runs a talent agency for child stars. Okay. Wait, what? That's the premise of the movie. Oh, of the movie, okay. Also there's Just Like Mike, that's a Michael Jordan thing. With little bowels, right?

Like Mike, Just Like Mike. Oh yeah. Just like Mike Jordan likes it. Pfft. Pfft. Ooh. Anywho. Okay, so yesterday.

Oh yeah, okay, so I also was, I was sleepy. I had been, I was supposed to get wine on Friday and I canceled. Oh my God. That's how tired I was. Whoa. I know. Whoa.

I know. And then Sunday, I went to Houston for lunch. Did you get your grilled cheese and tomato soup? I did. Oh, and there was a very sweet arm cherry cheese and tomato soup? I did. Oh, and there was a very sweet arm cherry there. There was? Shout out. Shout out.

She was so nice. Who were you there with? Anna and Julia. Oh, fun. Yeah, we had a nice long lunch. Ooh. Martini. Oh my gosh, decadent.

And then Jess got home. Jess has been out of town for 17 days. Where? Florida. What the fuck is he doing in Florida? He's working. Oh. And so he's been OOT.

Okay, OOT, out of town, right? Good job. And, okay, pin. Okay, he's been out of town. So we got home and we decided to all hang out. We were gonna go to the Valley. So we all drove to the Valley. After Husties.

Yes, then we remembered St. Patrick's Day, yikes. And the Valley is wild on St. Patty. Sure. And we normally in the Valley go to Foreman's, which is an Irish bar. So I walked through and right on out and I texted them, I said, nope, we need a new plan. Yeah.

And then- We gotta go to an Italian place. While we were waiting, exactly. While we were waiting, I stopped at Trader Joe's and I got some flowers. And then I got a milkshake. Oh. From Big Boys. Oh, you did?

Yeah. And then we went to mess hall. Oh. And there were some redheads there cause that was the day that the redheads came out. Cause Irish. St. Patty's day. Normally they live in caves. Oh, okay.

And then they have one day a year where they come out. That's why they're so pale. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. You didn't mess hall Sunday? Yeah. Were you there? What time? At like 5.30 for dinner.

We just missed you. We just missed you. Were you inside or outside? We were gonna be inside, but we had friends outside also there, so we went outside. Wow, I must've literally just missed you. You got there at what, 6.30?

No, we were before. You were before, okay. Dang. You got a lot done. You were at Houston's and you went to the Valley and you went to Big Boys and you got flowers and went shopping and you were at Mass Hall before four. I know.

My God. We do what we call stovetop. It means stovetop stuffing. Right, which is a Mandela. Which is a Mandela effect, but also Jess invented the phrase stovetop after stovetop stuffing because of the commercial on the commercial,

ding ding ding commercial, Mikey likes it. A kid maneuvers his way into having two servings of stovetops. Yep, at his buddy's house and then his mom's house. Exactly, it's dinner with his mom, stovetop stuffing. And then he goes to his buddy's house and gets a second round of stovetop stuffing. She did the system. So when we do multiple places, we call it stovetop stuffing. And then he goes to his buddy's house and gets a second round of stovetop stuffing. He cheated the system. So when we do multiple places, we call it stovetop.

Right. And so it was, it was a stovetop. It was really fun. Um, we'd all been apart, so it was a really nice reunion. And, um, did you sleep like a brick? I had a headache because I haven't drank that much this week. Uh-huh. And so it was-

You were out of practice. I was a little out of practice. Out of shape. Mm-hmm. And I had a headache. Uh-oh. But eventually I slept. Mm.

I think. TBD. Yeah, so it was a nice weekend. Was there anything else? What did you pin? Oh yeah. Oh, well we were gonna do connections. Oh, right.

And do you wanna do it live? Let's see, yeah, let's see if I can find it and everything. So I have a New York Times. App? Yeah, I wonder if I kept the game, let me search NYT. Cause I just realized that I've only done half. Well I took it off and I'm putting it back on.

Okay, put it back on. 5G, should I switch back over now? Here it comes, here it comes, open. It's down a little bit. Okay, I see spelling bee. Yep, connections. Wordle, connections. Are you gonna have to help me how this works?

Okay. So play, March 18th, play. Play. How to play, I'm gonna X that out because I have an expert here. That's right. Okay, so there's a bunch of words, I see them. You have 16 words and you're trying to group them

into groups of four, four groups of four. Four groups of four. And so you'll click on four that you think is a category. But remember, be careful because. Yeah, not too fast, I try to trick you. They do, they try to trick. And I've done two out of the four so far, I need to. Yeah, like we've got cyclocyclone, cyclops, cygnus.

Right, so like. So you're tempted to think those four together, right? You are tempted. And there's unicycle also. Okay, wait, we have, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna do four right now, submit. Oh, that was fast. Did you get it?

What's it say, one away. Okay, so what'd you click? Orion, galaxy, Gemini, Pegasus. Okay, you're one away. One of those is wrong. So then how do I? So deselect. Or what do you think it could be instead of one of them?

And it means three of those are correct in that case. I mean, I really know that I feel like Orion and galaxy are definitely the real deal together. Yes, you don't. So these are constellations. Okay, so I'm gonna get rid of galaxy because that's not a constellation. Exactly.

And then the, maybe Syngus. I'm gonna go with Syngus. I'm gonna submit constellations. You got it. I got one. Okay, so I have one error. You have one error, but okay, you have one done. Now what?

Oh, so then, yeah, so I'm gonna go solitaire, unicycle, cyclops, monologue. I'm gonna submit associated with one. You got it. I got it. Okay, now we're caught up. Those are the two also that I did. Okay.

So those were for dum-dums. No. I mean, they were the most obvious. Not necessarily. Purple sometimes is not. Is that hot as fuck in here or is it me? I'm not hot. I'm not hot either.

That's not a great sign. Okay, now let's do the next ones together. I like this. I like doing it as a team. Well, cycle and phase. I like being on your team. Me too, I like, hi team mate. Hi.

So cycle and phase. Mm-hmm. Stage. Yep, I had that and then it was like, what's the fourth? Cycle, phase, stage, round? Yeah. I guess I can't say too much because I've tried a couple things.

Okay. But not round, so round's probably not right. Snail. I think I did, but I don't remember. I wish it would tell me what I did. It'll tell you if you guessed it already. I know, but I don't remember. I wish it would tell me what I did. It'll tell you if you guessed it already. I know, but it won't like have it listed. Well, I can do shuffle.

I'm gonna shuffle. Sometimes it's nice to shuffle. They do like to do like blank word a lot. Exactly. Or word blank. So like gel, oh. What? Yeah, like the word would be gel

and another word would be. Oh, something tricky. Yeah, and then it's all like words that have oh at the end. Or like compound words that all share the second word. Yeah, they definitely have throw offs. Okay, so galaxy is the one that's sticking out is like it wouldn't fit with any of these. So something galaxy.

Well, I said, okay, I thought maybe, maybe things that were circular, which I was like snail, round, sunflower, cyclone. You already tried that? But I'm pretty sure I tried it and it didn't work. Yeah, I would be nervous about that. Sunflower's so weird. Like it can't mean sunflower

with all these other words here. Well. Sunflower oil? Could they be types of oils? Snail oil? Cyclone oil? Galaxy oil? No.

Or snails. Sunflower seed? Snail seed, cyclones, round seed, galaxy seed. Round features? I don't see any other features on here. Cycle seed. I mean, stage, phase. Cycle, I know, it's so annoying because.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do stage, phase, cycle and round. Okay, let's see if I've done that before. Go ahead. Okay, submit. Segment of progress. It worked? Yep, I got it.

Oh, I thought I tried it. This is a problem. Okay, now we know the others. So snail, cyclone, galaxy, and sunflower. Before I hit submit, I wanna figure out why they're together. Exactly. Okay. Could it be like clone, nail, flower, or gala

that they all have? It was a fun game. Isn't it fun? Yeah, I don't know how fun it would be to listen to us do it but it's a very fun game. Yeah, I'll probably cut it. Especially for a week old version of it. But it had to be a week because I didn't want it to be.

Piss people off. Mm-hmm. Cyclone is, I mean it could. I thought for a second I had didn't want it to be. Piss people off. Mm-hmm. Cyclone is, I mean it could. I thought for a second I had it, but it's not. I thought a Ford, there's a Galaxy Ford. There might've been a Cyclone Ford. Not a Sun. Snail?

Is it like male? You're right, snail. But no. I'm submitting. Oh no, I'm submitting. Oh wow, you gave in. Yeah. Does it seem like you could get the explanation? Should I quit?

Is it too hard or is it doable? I mean. It's not doable. It's not that satisfying. Okay, I'm gonna submit. I mean, okay. You're kinda there. Yeah.

Spirals in nature. Spiral circles, that's what I said. Next puzzle. But galaxies. Share my results. I didn't love this one, Wina. Her name's Wina, I think. Let me see if I.

Yeah, Winaloo. What are you doing? Trying to remember if I have Kallie's number. Oh, you wanna get added to the group? Yeah, I do, I do. I do. With my friend Ravi and Max. So is one mistake good?

Yeah, it's pretty good. You're looking for zero. Yeah, we're hoping for zero. How often is it zero? I bet pretty high, but not today. Okay. I made a lot of mistakes today. How many mistakes did you make?

Let's see. Did I beat you on my first time? I don't wanna point that out, but I'm curious. It was a little confusing because we did it together. Purple is the trickiest one. Yeah, normally, right? I did that one on my own. I just pulled ahead.

I don't think you should be in our group. Okay. I'm not liking the way this is heading. This is like spades. That's how Natalie is. She finds it really easy and then it gets frustrating. Upsetting. I'm like liking the way this is heading. This is like spades. This is how Natalie is. She finds it really easy and then it gets frustrating. Upsetting. Yeah.

I'm like, oh, okay. What I actually really like about the sharing with the group is seeing the order that we all do it. Cause it's always different. And so it's fun to me to see what's quick for people and what takes. Oh, cause it tells you what order I got you. Yeah.

Like we got those two in the same order. I wanna play all these now. I know. This is exciting, Wirtle, do you do Wirtle? I did Wirtle today. Oh my God, you do it all. Spelling Bee you do? I don't do Spelling Bee.

Make as many words as you can with seven letters, that's fun. What, I'm like a grandpa or something. Yeah, we just decide. You guys are having a real. It's not great for an audio medium. But you guys are having a real chuckle over that. Well, only because I thought maybe we'd have

another 10 minutes doing spelling bee. Oh, okay, okay. All right, all right, all right. Okay, so let's go to our expert. Okay, so Lisa. Yeah, Lisa. Anyway, I hope everyone plays Connections. Bill taught us that, Kali taught us that.

Yeah. Now we're playing. Now we're in. Now it's late again. I'm always last to these games. I don't know what it is. Yeah. I was last to spades. Well that one, you really were hung up.

You didn't wanna do it. I know, I know. And what is it? Is it cause you're worried? Like be vulnerable. Is it cause you're worried you'll be bad? It's groups. Like when a group of people do something,

my knee-jerk reaction is like, that's not for me. Probably because I don't, from childhood or something, like I'm not gonna be included, so I'm just gonna exclude myself. Right, but even though it's weird because you are being included, it's like, why don't you play, why don't you play? It doesn't make any sense.

I'm like, I'm not defending it. And I see it in other people. I see other people have that disposition too. Like I don't play games, like as a declaration. There's a lot of those people. Yeah, but to me it means like, cause you're afraid you're gonna, not you necessarily, but that mentality feels like,

well, you're afraid you're gonna be bad at it and you're not comfortable being bad at things or you're afraid you're gonna lose. Well, I think there's a lot of things going on actually. I think there's like, I have a hard time being a follower. So if everyone's done it before me, I have a hard time being a follower. Two, I do get anxiety about learning something new.

I still do. Like if I don't already know how to do something, I get this tinge of like anxiety that, just about learning it. That I won't be able to comprehend it. Which is preposterous, but just like I'm afraid of men, but I'm big now. It doesn't make sense.

It's also, I think more than it's preposterous that you wouldn't understand it, it's more preposterous that you would take that as a marker of your value or intelligence. There are things I don't understand. I'm not going downriver to be embarrassed about it. I'm going straight to that I'm gonna be really frustrated and everyone else is gonna be getting it

and I'm gonna be really frustrated. It's like it's back in elementary school. It's like watching people get something and I'm not getting it is so frustrating. Forget the embarrassment of it, which I'm sure is in the mix. But not embarrassment for other people, but it's like a personal, it's like, I can't do this,

thing that other people can do. I link it to frustration. Like I'm gonna be frustrated as this is getting explained to me that I don't understand it. Like I wanna know, I wanna learn bridge really bad, but I don't know why I don't already know how to play it. It makes no sense. I've wanted to learn how to play it. It makes no sense. I've wanted to learn how to play it

for five, six years, and yet I have not instigated learning to do it, because I do also have some fear that I'm not gonna understand how to do it. Right. I have that, I have a lot of, if I'm not, like even with connections today, when I got those two and then I tried one and it didn't work, I had like, you know,

I made a mistake and I was like, ugh, I hope, I don't wanna make any more mistakes. Like I felt very scared of making any more. And then I put it down and then I forgot. I forgot about it until just, you know, when we were recording earlier. But I have that, but then I can get myself fairly quickly to like, who cares?

And then you die. Who cares? You've proven yourself to be smart in this world. It's fine. Yeah. And it's good for me sometimes to just be like, I don't get it. Listen, I'm embarrassingly vain.

I see it all the time. Like, here's an example. Peter Tia makes these videos. I love them. I watch every video he makes. He'll be talking for 20 minutes about what protein powder supplements he likes. And he always starts with like, I'm not an investor in any of these companies,

I'm not being bad. I'm just gonna tell you what I mean. And like, I'll watch it and I find it so interesting. My first thought is, I should review shit. This is so fun. Because I like reviewed the airplane food once. But the truth is, what keeps me from doing that is I think I look so bad when I'm filming myself.

Like I'm like, it would take me so long to set the camera up in a way that I wouldn't be insecure making this video, which is again, so silly. I was an actor for 20 years. I should be fine with this, but like I'm really vain. And by the way, he doesn't look bad. What is clear is he doesn't even think about it, which is very attractive.

So I'm also smart enough to know, as long as you're, you know, whatever. And then you had to be bad at something that's scary to me and look bad. It's shameful, but here we are. It's not shameful, I think it's human. Well, I think there's varying levels. Some people seem to be not very vain and it's attractive.

Like Delta's not vain. She's just like, she doesn't, she's the least self-conscious person. Yeah, she's not. I'm very self-conscious. Me too, but I don't, aren't you at sort of like, fuck it? Yeah. In so much of, I do overcome it on so many levels.

Like I still post the pictures of us doing the interview because I got you. And I just live with it. But then it's like taking on more. I generally am not like trying to take on more of those moments where I'm gonna feel like I look old and whatever. Yeah, that's fine.

You also don't have to. Yeah, but it is fun. I enjoy his and I think like, well, that's the kind of content I actually enjoy. Oh, but it is fun. I enjoy his and I think like, well that's the kind of content I actually enjoy. Oh, another thing happens, I've never noticed that I lost followers. So, and I noticed today, I noticed that I had gone from 4 million to 3.9 million.

And then I was like, well my first insecurity was like, I did something wrong. People have like, I've offended people. Pissed people off. Yes, I've pissed people off. But then I was like,. People have like, I've offended people. Yes, I pissed people off. But then I was like, actually probably more accurately, all I do is post photos from our episodes. That's a pretty boring follow. If you're not like in Armcherry,

which clearly a lot of the people that followed me, a lot of them followed me before we ever had this podcast. So I'm like, yeah, I would probably unfollow me too if it was only about this podcast and I don't listen to the podcast. And So I'm like, yeah, I would probably unfollow me too if it was only about this podcast and I don't listen to the podcast. And then I was like, God, I just, I don't ever take enough pictures. And I'm like, I should have different things on there

than just that. Like, look, on one level you can go, who gives a fuck? On another level you can go, if you're gonna do something, you should try to do it well. I have this account. But well is very subjective. Well, what do I enjoy of other people? So right, if Peter posts a still of him

in an interview he did, I'm not that interested in that. But when he tells me about protein powder, I love it. Or when Charlie reviews protein bars in the car with Wilder, like I love it. It's fun content. And so if I'm gonna do it, I should attempt to to make it entertaining. I am an entertainer.

I can't pretend I make my living welding. So there's a lot to evaluate. Yeah. I can't act over it and use it. I can't act like I'm too. No, you can use it in the way that you wanna use it. You don't have to use it in the way that's. But it feels a little takey.

It's like, I'm only just promoting this thing. So what? To me, that's the most earnest way. I'm not saying I do that, I don't. But I actually, I think it's great. People who are just using it for exposure for their thing. And most people aren't doing that, I'm not doing that. But I wish I was.

There's a part of me that is like. Let me be clear though, I don't have a desire to start posting some really attractive manicured life. I don't have that impulse. But yeah, if you're following me, I should put some fun stuff up every now and then. Yeah, if you want. Okay, so this is for Lisa and there's a few facts.

The percentage of women who like rape porn, I thought this was interesting because we just did an armchair anonymous, there was like a porn thing that came up, this is an Easter egg. Yeah. And I thought it was interesting because the armchair story is about a young person

who finds porn. Yeah, who seeks out porn. Yeah, and I just looked at this this morning and I was like, oh, weird. So there was a questionnaire completed by 187 female undergraduate psychology students for a study designed to test the idea that women's attitudes and fantasies about rape

are partially a function of their socialization to accept sexual aggression as normative. Self-reported early exposure to pornography was associated with women's latter attitudes and fantasies about rape as hypothesized. Of 187 women, 86, 46% reported direct exposure to pornography as a child. This exposure was significantly related

to subsequent adult rape fantasies and rape supportive beliefs. Which kind of, I get, like the earlier on you're exposed to aggression, the more you're gonna think that's hot. Like these early days, these early fantasies, stick with, I mean, they stick with you. Right. I mean, I stick with you. Right.

I mean, I've always in my mind explained it by like, why do boys like watching war movies? Well, because- Well, yeah, that was this episode. Oh, I probably already said all this. Yeah. Yeah, like conscription has been a reality of most boys' life forever.

So like they have a legitimate fear of having to go to war at some point. So they kind of wanna see this fear play out. Yeah, that was what we were talking about on the show, so that's what made me look into it, and then I thought this was actually very interesting, that it might be more chicken or the egg, that start out seeing those things,

and then you develop a proclivity towards it. Yeah, I would love to see pre-internet data. Everyone my age who has those fantasies, who wasn't, obviously you couldn't see porn online. Also the study about giving therapy to parents instead of their children, you credit to Johns Hopkins, it's actually Yale. Oh, okay.

You know, I wasn't certain, but you know, when you're in a pinch, I think the highest probability is to say Johns Hopkins. What do you think? You just like saying it. Well no, I actually hate saying it, as we've discussed. I can't stand that it's plural Johns.

I know, but it's like immersion therapy for you. You just wanna say it so many times. I'm trying to act out my fear of saying it. Yeah, exactly. But if you have to take the highest percentage shot of where you heard that the study came from, what's your go-to? Do you have a go-to?

I think a lot of people say Harvard. I would say Harvard or Yale. You wouldn't say Johns Hopkins. If it's a tech study, I'd say MIT. Oh. I would not say Johns Hopkins. I should. Ever. I should add that into the mix, but it's not.

I do feel like that I hear an inordinate amount of things coming out of there. Well, this was Yale. I tip my hat to you, Yale. Yeah. Oh, the ghost. The ghost toilet. The ghost just went potty again.

So I was looking up the suicide epidemic and you said Tahiti. Yeah, I think Tahiti. I couldn't find that. No. But it's fine. I then, you know, pivoted and went into like the contagion of suicidal behavior.

Okay, do you find some stuff? There's a lot on it. There's a lot on it. There's definitely support that- It's contagious. That suicidal behavior is contagious and like the impact of media reporting on suicide can increase suicidal behavior, which-

I've been disappointed ever since I left college. On most of these anthropological papers I read, they weren't headlines. Right. You know? Yeah, well also, okay, Werther syndrome. Ooh, it's Werther syndrome. Werther syndrome, not the candy.

Don't do that. Because the candy will be upset. I love the candy. They're very good candy, slow candy. It's slow, it's the opposite of chewy. That's why I love it. Yeah, it's a good one. The Werther syndrome, also known as the copycat syndrome

or copycat effect, is a phenomenon in which a person commits suicide after being exposed to media coverage about another person's suicide. I wonder if they understand. Suicide clusters. Yeah, what's happening, what the thought process is. Suicide clusters, especially mass clusters,

might occur through a process of contagion. Suicide contagion occurs when the exposure to suicide or suicidal behavior of one or more people influences others to attempt suicide. By the way, it's the premise of Heathers. I wonder if they had read about one of those things. Maybe, I haven't seen it. You haven't seen the original, have you?

I haven't, but I don't think I want to knowing that. Oh, it's a very good movie. It's very funny. I know, but you know, I guess it's relevant. That's where my anxiety first developed. Right. Was around a suicidal event. I knew someone who attempted suicide,

and I became obsessed with feeling like it was gonna happen to me. It was that phrasing. All of a sudden I was gonna have like look down and I will have done it. Right, you personally. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because it was so unpredictable in the person

that you experienced it with, yeah. I get this. It really, like then when Robin Williams died, I had another major spike, a full panic, like for months. Yeah, it really just exemplifies how different people are. Cause like my mom tried twice. And I don't have like kind of anything associated with it. It's so bizarre how like bizarre how different everyone's reactions

to the same thing can be. Like I get, you know, I should be in fear that she'll try it a third time and I'm not. I'll tell you, you'll handle it for me. Yeah, I am. If I know that about anyone's past, I think about, I've thought about it with your mom. Like, I think about it.

Oh God. Okay, but I just heard a very interesting phrasing of PTSD that I forgot. I didn't write it down. So this might be an Easter egg. Did this come out of Johns Hopkins? It came out of Arizona University, Arizona USA. Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona USA. Yeah.

It basically, they're learning a lot about PTSD. What it does is basically pull past memories and make them present. Your brain doesn't classify the past as the past. It's like putting it in the present. Right, didn't get filed in the cabinet correctly. Yeah. Scary stuff.

Hey, what else does she say? Oh, percentage of kids living at home, 45% of people aged 18 to 29 are living at home. What was the percent? 45%. Wow, almost half. That has to be an increase, no? Well, it says roughly the same level as it was in the 40s,

but the factors are different now than they were nearly a century ago. I wonder what the lowest point was and what the highest point was. Yeah. Maybe the depression was. High. I bet like Gen X and Millennial.

Is it gonna be high? I think this is gonna be low. I think we were meant to get out quickly. Oh, yeah, yeah. The Gen Z is very high. It is. We know this or you're guessing? Well, 45% of 18 to 29, that's Gen Z.

That's them. Yeah. Yeah, that feels really high. I wonder what the rate is in Germany. Wow, just curious. Well, cause that was the place I was at when I learned people stay at home much later and it's not like a sign of failure.

It's just they don't until they. Yeah, it's part of the culture. They'll get married and buy a place. Yeah, I could have never lived at home, man. I was running with the wolves. I couldn't have had that much oversight on what I was doing. Yeah, that's the part that feels unnatural, but I guess you're just used, it's just like.

Whatever you did. You're used to it. Yeah, so like Neil's very average, this is very. He flew the coop. Totally, yes he did, but I'm saying even while he was living at home, this is like dead average. Exactly, exactly. I know that I have such anecdotal data, I only know the people that I grew up with, and none of them live at home with their own one.

That's what I mean, our age groups, especially yours, that wasn't as much of a thing. It would be shame inducing too for my generation. It had a stigma, like it meant you were a. Failure. Or like a, what's it called? Deadbeat or something. Yeah, couch potato.

Couch potato, deadbeat loser. Deadbeat dad. I hate the word loser. Tell me. Well, I potato. Couch potato, deadbeat loser. Deadbeat dad. I hate the word loser. Tell me. Well, I hate it for a specific reason. There is a person I know who uses that word a lot. Okay. And it's so hypocritical and embarrassing.

There's so many words that are bad, but that word is just dripping with judgment. Like there's nothing good about it. It's only a negative thing. There's really no silver lining. Exactly. It's always like, who are you to call, it's like based on no metric.

My mom has hated that word for a long time. More recently, I heard somebody else say it and I was like, yeah, that word's so bad. Right. So bad, why? Like, yeah, that word's so bad. Right. So bad, why? There's no such thing as losers and winners, except when you win championships. And connections, I guess.

Yeah, winning is personal. It is. Whatever you set your sights on and if you accomplish that, I think you should feel like a winner. I think everyone should figure out where they're a winner in their life and not focus on where they're losing. This person who I know calls other people losers,

but in many regards, the quote losers are so far better off than this person. Yeah, I think we could probably safely say someone who's constantly calling out losers is probably feeling pretty shitty about themselves. Exactly, they're not happy. And they're trying to down compare. So they're trying to find people that are,

the bolster. Yeah, they're not happy and in that way, they're losing. Yeah. I don't think I say that often. It's a great word when, as you say, it's pretty definitive. There's not much to wiggle around. I'll generally, if someone's got just abhorrent behavior,

I might say what a fucking loser. Yeah, so, anywho, all right, well, I think that was it for Lisa. Wonderful, wonderful guest. Wonderful guest. Very informative. Teenagers, people have a lot of questions about them, so I hope this was helpful. It is funny what a big word that is, teenagers,

like what a powerful word that is. When you're really looking at that it spans like six years. It's such a small time. It's such a blip. But it's a huge developmental time. It is, but we think of teenagers as like maybe a quartile of the population. It's like, we've got old people, we've got young people, we've got middle-aged people, and then we have teenagers.

Like there's some huge group. Someone brought it up the other day that it has been exactly four years, like last week or two weeks ago or something, four years since the lockdown. Oh, March, yeah, March 2020. Four years, a full high school or full college. And what do you think about that?

Does that feel like it was shorter ago? It's just time. Time is fucked. It's so fucked. Four years used to mean so much. It was so huge. It was. It also lasted for a couple years, you know?

It lasted for 16 years, you mean? Well, the lockdown. The lockdown. It was like a straight year, and then there was this weird middle ground year, and it's like, I didn't feel like we came out of it. Like, I remember at the end of 2020, New Year's Eve, everyone was like, fuck 2020,

as if we were gonna wake up on 2021 and like go outside and like. I know. It was kind of two real years of it. And then even some slow fallout after that. Depending on where you live too. Totally, but also it's just, it went really fucking fast. I mean, went behind a blip.

Yeah, yeah. Nuts, what a time. Whoa. What a time to. Live in America. Be time. What a time to be time. Live in America. All right, I love you. Okay, love you. Okay, love you.

Bye.