God Awful Movies - 506: The Coddling of the American Mind

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

This week, Cara Santa Maria joins us to review The Coddling of the American Mind, a movie about the dangers of inclusivity that argues for their anti-inclusivity voices to be included. Check out more from Cara on the Talk Nerdy podcast --- If you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawful Check out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus. Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/

Because this is where he's like, and this is where we realized we weren't dealing with millennials anymore. We were dealing with Gen Z. And I'm like, I could have just looked at your calendar and figured that out, man. You couldn't have seen that coming, the new generation, you didn't see it coming. Yeah, these are supposed to be professors, right? Like, new students every year. And they're always 18.

They're always just crazy. How is that worth? How is this math math thing? Don't you have a PhD? You'd figure we'd run out of 18-year-olds eventually. God-awful movies. Movies. Movies.

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Movie! Movie! Movie! Movie! Movie! Movie! Keith Enright. Keith, welcome back. Let's stay un-woke. Very exciting. Oh yeah. And unfortunately, Eli is unable to join us today. He's taken this really hard conclave, in case you care. But in his stead, we're excited to welcome back our favorite guest masochist, who was none too pleased when we started trying out new Caras last week. Kara Santa Maria. Kara, welcome back. Okay, so clearly I was not listening. So who did you try out? Nobody, there was nobody.

It doesn't even matter. I don't know. Spelled with a different first letter. It was K and everything. No! How dare you. So tell us, Heath. They said GIF also.

Yeah, so it was an upgrade in some ways, at least. They probably would have liked this movie. Oh, shit. Shots fired. Kara talking some shit here. All right. So tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today? We watched the coddling of the American mind. It's the story of kids these days and the work mind virus. Yeah. So basically it's the story of me,

a middle-aged, cishet white guy, and my first instinct on every political issue. So I will need to be talked down and told why I'm stupid every so often. Okay, so this movie, I wrote this in my notes somewhere, but this movie is me talking to my brother every time I talk to my brother until I stopped talking to my fucking brother.

Jesus. And Kara, how bad was this movie? OK, well, it's like if Turning Point USA and the Young Americas Foundation fed their playbook into an AI with the prompt. Take our agenda, but make it look like a punk rock zine so it's relatable for the youth. Right? Rawwwwwww TPUSA. Yeah. And make sure that we only feature Gen Zers who didn't actually grow up in America and are seeing the ramifications of 400 years of institutionalized hatred and bigotry through the lens of a Texas school board edited history book.

So, if you regularly use phrases like reverse racism, male loneliness epidemic, and SJW cuck, you will love this movie. Oh, well done. Yes. If you refer to all the women in your life as females, you will love. Jesus, I hate this so fucking much. So is there anything that you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst out?

I'm going to go with best worst, making the counterpoint and then running right past it. I know a lot of the movies we watch do that. They like make our points for us very clearly and then they just like don't see them. But this one does it so many times. Right. Yeah. And at one point, they defeat the entire movie with one. Yeah. They keep bringing up crazy impossible for them to win arguments. And I'm like, okay, go on movie. Yeah.

Good luck. Yeah. Okay. So, so you're pro police violence. Huh? Okay. All right. You're going to argue against Black Lives Mattering, huh? Okay. All right. Good luck. So I was going to go with best worst random horror imagery.

So a lot of this movie, they'll interrupt it with this, like Carol's talking about the sort of the kind of punk rock zine look, this sort of stylized cartoon, but there will constantly be like a monster lurking under the bed, but the monster is wokeness just over and over again. And I think wokeness just over and over again. And I think wokeness is just scribbles in a brain. Yes. Is that how it works?

Yeah, there's a visual aid. Brain scribbles. Yeah, so I was able to understand that. I was going to go with worst worst, calling for nuance and then making this movie to make your point that's calling for nuance. It's insane how little they're capable of. It's baffling. When we reached that point in the movie,

I looked behind me to see if this movie was standing behind me fucking. Right. There's fake nuance standing right behind. Yeah. So seriously, it's based on a New York Times best-selling book and they made a movie into it and in the book they frame identity politics as having two different ways of doing it. There's the common humanity angle and there's the common enemy angle aka the Martin Luther King Jr. angle or the Adolf Hitler angle and they're

like we are MLK in our book. Oh are you that? That type of nuance is what we're dealing with. Jesus fucking Christ. All right well the fate of the nation lies in the balance here so we're not going to keep you waiting for long we're going to keep the break brief when we come back. We'll dive into all the cloud yelling that is the coddling of the American mind. Lu Lu Lu, doing cheese stuff. Cheese stuff is my favorite stuff.

Hey, you eating hand cheese over the sink again and a stick of butter and flour? And flour and drinking milk. Yes. It's a deconstructed mornay. It's actually it's unconstructed. Yeah, potato. I don't have time for all that prep. I just want to eat quick and then get outside and enjoy the beautiful spring time.

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chicken dijon and pecan crusted trout, as well as over a hundred seasonal snacks, sides and treats. Every HelloFresh meal uses high quality ingredients, including seasonal fresh produce and proteins that travel from the farm to your doorstep. Oh yeah, HelloFresh. No, no, no. And gets HelloFresh sometimes. The other night we had spicy Kung Pao style tofu bowls with rice, garlic, broccoli, and peanuts. It was great. And I felt like a healthy person. Well, at least for that moment you weren't eating a meal of hand cheese.

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new subscribers only, varies by plan. All right, thanks Noah. No problem. Hey, can you pass me the bag of flour? Sure. There you go. Thanks So what what if we actually made the more naysauce that could be fun? Make it easier like this No prep Springtime, okay

All right guys Welcome to the first production meeting for the Coddling of the American Mind. As you all know, we're trying to send the message to our viewers that colleges have gotten too woke and that cancel culture is inhibiting free intellectual discourse. Exactly. So, I thought the best way to bring that out would be just to go around and list all our petty grievances and trust that nobody would watch a movie called The Cuddling of the American Mind unless they already agreed with us so much that they would never actually check so we don't have

to prove or even demonstrate any single claim that we make. Nice. Great idea. All right. So who has a petty grievance? Oh, I was made to learn about black culture once. There you go. I had to learn about white privilege. Oh, I do watch to learn about black culture once. There you go. I had to learn about white privilege.

Oh, I do watch a stupid training video. Oh, me too. Can I use that one too? No, I'm sorry. One petty grievance each. Okay, well then I want to switch. You can't have my petty grievance as mine. Well, can my petty grievance be that he won't let me use his?

Yeah, it literally doesn't matter. So of course, the big question we have to answer at the end is, how can this be countered? Hmm. Yeah, it's tough. Hey, what if everybody had to listen to us? Wow, yeah, that sure would help, wouldn't it? Yeah, like, what if we made it so that everybody had to like, I don't know, take a class at the beginning of the semester where they learn to be aware of those aggressions

against us that might not normally be obvious to like, fuck. I invented DI training again, didn't I? Yep. You keep doing that. Sorry. Sorry. So good. That is the perfect.

And we're back for the breakdown and we're going to start off with this ominous title card that reads in 2012. This is red on black, so I have to do the red on black voice, right? In 2012, something disturbing happened to young people. OK, it might as well start with Get Off My Lawn. Right. Like, old man yells at cloud stories. No, the first thing I wrote was, it was, well, now I know how the cloud feels.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'm pretty sure it's going to be like smartphones and social media, and I agree about that, but it's a bad start. Yeah. Also, it is that, but then they're like, mmm, look over here, look over here. Well, right. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's just the thing, is that we all saw 2002 and they're like mmm look over here. Look over here. Well, right? Yeah exactly Is that we also have to does no more like oh, yeah must be a social media thing and they're like no

It's not that it's not I mean it is that but it's also our thing So yeah So then we get a racially diverse group of talking heads telling us about their depression and and how sad it is to be a young person these days And I say something kind of mean? Mm-hmm. Please. Just like right off the bat.

Kind of the job. Gen Z looks so old. Right? I was like, oof, I thought they were my age. I think it's us, Kara. That we look young? Yeah, no, yeah, they're way older than I want them to be now.

Oh, like we ruined, I know, we ruined the environment and the economy. Well, we didn't. Our parents did. So like the boomers ruined the environment and the economy. We were like, oh, what do we do? And then Gen Z was like, I'm poisoned. Not a good look. I think you were just a little older than you're willing to admit, Kara.

I think these guys, these kids have just grown up. Well, but I'm an elder millennial. I'm much older than them. And we look the same age. But I'm an elder millennial. I'm much older than them and we look the same age. Okay, no, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. I think you just look young.

I don't know that it's about all the horrible things in the world. It's about the woke mind virus. Yeah, yeah, getting back to the point. That's most of it, yeah. You're right, you're right. So we meet Kimmy. Now she moved to America from Uganda to go to school.

She wanted her parents to take her seriously. So she went to art school. American dream. And she's like, well, you know, when I went to college, it really disintegrated my self-confidence. And I'm like, yeah, learning how little you know, can do that. Of course. And it's like, you left your home country. You went to a brand new country and had to make all new friends and adapt to a completely

different culture. Of course, that's going to be hard on your self-confidence. Yeah. Right. And you started studying the very marketable skill called arts. There's also this weird moment where she thinks, where she says something about Americans being too nice. Yeah, that's a weird, that's a whole-

It's not an accusation we get much. Yeah. Nope. So, and then we get our fucking Satan commies are coming for your credits, right? Mm-hmm. Where we first start seeing my best words, we get a lot of cartoon monster faces and whatnot in the credits. Yeah.

These are supposed to be, I guess, visual aids for like, what is a mental health crisis? Apparently that's lightning bolt spreads your face out. Yeah. Yeah. And also venom. Venom is involved. I keep replaying like John Oliver and last week tonight being like cool, you know, every time.

It's just all that happens. Yes, it's just aggressively cool. Yeah. Yeah. And then we meet Lucy. Now Lucy had some serious mental health problems as she was growing up. She was in and out of a number of institutions, which she admits probably saved her life. Yeah.

And she's like, I was really anxious. And then she described like kind of what sounds like a thought disorder. Like she had psychotic symptoms. Yeah. To an untrained dear, it sounded like she was explaining schizophrenia or something. She identified it as anxiety. I'm not, I'm not going to re-diagnose her, but it sounded worse than that. Yeah. It sounded like she was having some psychotic features and she was

treated for psychosis when she was that age. So, and like you said, she said that it like basically saved her life. So, good. Right. And she explains at this point, she's like, you know, the doctors told me I had autism and I rejected that at first. And I didn't know what kind of woo we were getting into yet. Right. So like, I was like, let me calibrate how pissed off I am. Are they going to say, you know, where are we going with this? They will admit that autism exists in this movie, at least. They will. And they will admit that she is fully autistic. Yeah. And didn't get it from vaccines.

Well, at least they don't imply that she got it from vaccines. So we're starting this compliment sandwich episode here. Let's wait for the sequel. Let's wait for the sequel. Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. Well, that's why this whole first, basically one fourth tofourth to one-third of the movie is really confusing, because it's a bunch of young people being like, look at all of the ways that the world is really hard. Look at all of the ways that racism and the patriarchy

are like fucking and like climate change are fucking up our lives. And I'm just going, uh-huh, where are they going with this? Yeah, there was a... It's like the movie was trying to feign, right? Like it wanted us to jump left and it was going to go right here. Yeah, they mentioned like all those really big deal things you just said. Like one might call them macroaggressions and then they're like, it's microaggressions is the problem.

That's what they do right now. It's a little cartoon about microaggressions that we got. And then we get Kimmy, right? And again, Kimmy is a Ugandan immigrant. She's like, yeah, it was really weird learning about American bigotry. And I'm like, I bet. Yeah. She's also, she literally said, learning about microaggressions made me see my life through a totally different lens. Like everything was about me being black and a woman. And I was like, uh-huh. Yes.

Sounds reasonable to see life through the lens of, you know, some things you are. Of your intersection. Yeah. Right, right. I got to be careful because I'm going to use all the buzzwords. Well, right. So, but the movie's argument right up front is knowing about racism makes us sad. So let's stop knowing about it.

Yeah, that's what I wrote there. Racism doesn't just exist because you started seeing it. Right. Yes. That's not how that works. But I think that is the entire argument of the movie. If you just ignore it, it goes away. Yes, exactly.

Well, especially with Lucy, right? So we go back to Lucy. Lucy got into Stanford and the doctors at those hospitals told her she would never Stanford again. I don't know what the fuck that was all about. But but she got into Stanford and she was really excited about that. But she's going to teach us about ableism, right? She learned about some woke ism when she was in college too. So she learns about ableism. She explains that to us. And there's this real like weird they do this several times in the movie. This is real weird, like, yes, ableism is real and it's a problem, but it's not though.

And we're going to move on from that. Yeah. It's like, they make their point and walk right past it. They do this over and over. She says something really weird here. So Lucy says that she started to learn all the length, like the lingo, and she started to get really activisty when she was in college after learning all this stuff. And then she was like, you know,

I would use words like hegemonic and intersectional, and everybody would smile at me. And I'm like, Lucy, that has not been my experience. Yeah, really? Yeah. Like, where were you? Everybody loves some intersectional hegemony. You know when you walk into a bar and you're like,

what up marginalized, intersectional hegemonic people? Come on. There's also- Boo! Shot, shot, shot, shot! She also goes, she goes, you know, a lot of the time I was told that I wasn't entitled to an opinion on a subject because I wasn't a part of X or Y marginalized group.

And I'm like, well, what was the subject, Lucy? That matters. Yeah. Right. But she explains that she milked her disability for social clout. Right. I like that for a second she realizes that it's not the best one, though. She's like, yeah, I realized, you know, depression, autism, it's decent.

Yeah. But I was best and I kind But it's not the best. And I kind of wish it was the best. I was like, don't rank it, Lucy. Don't do a ranking. She goes, I realized that if I joined this group, I would be accepted more. So I just started believing what they said. I'm like, guys, Christians made this movie and they didn't hear it.

At one point she goes, I felt like Katniss Everdeen. And then they show us many clips of the Hunger Games as they thought they could get away with. Yep. What? Don't bring Katniss into this. What did that even mean? Then we get this bizarrely hyperbolic title.

So all the title cards in this movie sound like something that somebody would scream through the walls at Arkham Asylum. The next one just says, graciously die. Oh yeah, I was like, where are they going with this? Right, I still don't know where they were going with this one. But this is where we're gonna meet another victim of the woke mind virus, this is Saeed.

Saeed is from Nigeria. And he's overwhelmed by the number of white people in Pennsylvania. There were many Joshes and Jakes apparently. Okay. I've been to Pennsylvania, he is correct. This was very sympathetic. He's at Lafayette College and he's like,

yeah, so I went to Lafayette for my freshman year, a lot of white dudes. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And then they show us what that is. They give us a visual aid for white people. It's hacky sack and yoga. And I was like, yeah, solid, also Frisbee. Oh, there's Frisbee. Yep. You got it

I'm agreeing with most of the movie Yeah, right. I wrote my notes I'm like hey man If you wanted a clip that shows whiteness the only better thing than four shirtless pale Honkeys playing hacky sack would be a fucking clan rally or a walk through the British Museum Well done guys the frisbees a Bitcoin. I don't know through the British Museum. Well done, guys. The frisbee is a Bitcoin. I don't know how you make it.

But yeah, but he says, you know, he showed up in America in 2016 and he was like the political climate was really hard to navigate. And I'm like, yeah, I bet it was. Yeah, seriously, I was confused. Oh, me too, my friend. You too. And so and then he's trying to make this point. It's like, you know, what I thought I remembered seeing Oxford debates when, you know, when I was in high school.

And that's what I thought the debate would be like in college, that we would all be debating all of these big ideas. But they just kept shutting down all the big ideas, right? That's what we're supposed to learn from Said. Yeah. That was such a weird thing. I'm like, Said, how big of a nerd are you? Your idea of American college came from Oxford debates, not from like movies.

Right. Or something American. Yeah. Exactly. Like that's what you expected it to be like. I like that they show him for a second just sitting on a bench in the quad and he's got a random book. It's The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Hite. One of the guys who wrote the book that this movie is based on. So fucking weird. Yeah. I mean, later we learned that every single person featured in this movie is just somebody who's read their books obsessively.

Yeah. As a super fan. And volunteered, yeah, to talk on film. Right. This is like if we did a documentary about how right we were and we interviewed April Poff. Yeah. That's exactly. Yeah. Right. But we see Saeed ignoring that book and just looking at a pug meme on his phone and product placement, man. But then Kimmy chimes in here and she's talking about when she was like, you know, all the way swallowed by the mind virus and she says, you know, at that point I would be on Twitter and I would notice that somebody was following Ben Shapiro and

That would be enough for me to dismiss that person. And I'm like, yes. Yep. Correct. We're all like still nodding. Great way of doing it. Where are we going with this? Well, then we see we see a fucking clip of Ben Shapiro.

And once again, I have to remind myself that that's just how he sounds and he's not doing a mean impersonation of himself. Right? No, that's real. And they cut straight from that, from Ben Shapiro to Said being like, social media was all left leaning dogma. And I was like, really? You just mentioned Ben Shapiro.

It also makes you wonder even how much sense most of these talking heads were making to the filmmakers because the jump cuts in this film are really stressful to me. They're way too many jump cuts. I feel like I'm watching an hour and a half long, like, I don't know, Vine. Yeah, or like a music video from the early 90s

or something. A TikTok, a TikTok. God damn it. I'm not old. You're old. Gen Z just looks old as all. It's a MySpace reel. I had a friend named Tom. You're old. Gen Z just looks old as all. It's a MySpace reel. I had a friend named Tom. Shut your mouth.

She does reference, she references Tumblr a lot and I had to Google whether Tumblr was still around. Is Tumblr still around? I guess it is. Oh cool. I like Tumblr. Alright so. So old.

I liked Alta Vista myself. Yeah. I was an IRC fan. At least I put mine in the fucking past tense. I liked Alta Vista myself. Yeah. I was an IRC fan. At least I put mine in the fucking past tense. But Said, though, he cuts in and he's like, you know, he's upset that the debates weren't rigorous enough. Now what he's actually talking about and frustrated by was the fact that the debates were informed,

right? So he would come in with some stupid idea that he saw on fucking YouTube and everybody would just shut him down and be like, no, that's demonstrably false. Shut up. We're going to talk about a different thing. And that's and he's like, well, I thought we were supposed to be doing Oxford style debates and blah, blah, blah. That's his whole fucking point.

Right. Yeah. People disagreed with me and it made me sad. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. There's also a weird moment here where Lucy comes in and she's like, you know, every time I heard somebody use the term person with autism instead of autistic person, I assume that they wanted to genocide me. And I was like,

that's interesting. That's weird. Yeah, she's got some RFK tendencies. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The claim is that the woke's are saying curing autism is eugenics and eugenics is genocide. That's not what the woke's are saying. That's what the anti woke are saying. Right. This is very confusing. This whole book and movie. It's about the problem on college campuses are lots of biology professors talking about how curing stuff is genocide. I doubt it.

I can't imagine that's true. I also don't think many college any college professor. I shouldn't say any, but many are talking about curing something like autism. Only RFK is talking about that. So yeah, to be clear, yeah, yeah, I want to be super clear because I just did a diatribe about how all this talk about curing autism is inherently eugenic and potentially genocidal. It is, but it's not inherently woke. That's the thing. Right, exactly. That's the thing. Right. So Kimmy, she was fighting back against white supremacy. We're going to learn later that that was a bad thing for her to do. You know, she's talking about like, you know, I kept reporting all this white supremacy and

calls to violence on Twitter as I found them. And this movie is going, yeah, you're not going to find a lot of happiness by doing that. Who is the movie arguing with there? I don't know. I reported calls to violence follow up. Are you going to argue with that? Nope. They're just going to be like, yeah, Ben Shapiro should be allowed to talk everywhere all the time. Right.

Yeah. Well, and so this all leads into like Ben Shapiro was invited to speak at Stanford and there was a big kerfuffle as he was deplatformed or shouted down. I don't remember what the hell exactly happened. But the movie, you know, uses this as sort of a pivot point of like, but this is what happens when you allow this wokeness to go too far. Ben Shapiro isn't allowed to speak. Right.

That's the thing that makes me crazy about this and every other, you know, anti-woke argument or rhetoric. But specifically, they do this so many times in this documentary, where they conflate actual oppression of free speech, like government suppression of free speech with, quote, cancel culture, which is like, sorry, if you're a dick and people go, I'm not going to buy tickets to your thing anymore, that's on you, my friend. That's just capitalism. That's free speech and then free speech. That's all we're my friend. That's just capitalism. That's free speech and then free speech. Exactly.

Even the stuff they show, right? Where the people are in there, he's shouting him down and stuff. This is not like, that's not cancel culture. He wasn't canceled. He went to the fucking, he gave the talk. I know. He's a millionaire pundit. Yeah.

And then people have the right to be like, we disagree with you. And they're like, ooh. Yeah. I don't like that part of it. Yeah. In this case, free speech, not a great idea. Also, like this is so small within the larger scope of the movie, but we have to point it out

where Saeed comes in and he's like, you know, I just politics in America was so divisive. I just wonder why it couldn't be simple like it is in Nigeria. I know that was insinuating. Yeah, I guess we could just bomb each other more. Holy shit, dude. He was like, in Nigeria, everyone's corrupt.

He literally said that. He was like, that's simple for me. I just don't trust anyone. Okay. All right, Zaid. Okay. So then we go back to Kimmy and she starts telling us about this time that she was the only black person in her Bible study. And again, I think what they're trying to say here is that she was

imagining racism. She's trying to say she was imagining racism where there wasn't any, but they don't actually come out and say that. So it's just a story about her being uncomfortable in a group of people that were unlike her. Yeah, in a group of white people that were probably committing a lot of microaggressions. Right, yes, probably. Yeah. So, and this, of course, this is where she learned about BLM, which this movie introduces us to by making us watch the video of Philado Castile getting murdered by the cops. Yeah, like what the actual fuck?

Like while she's talking about how traumatizing the footage is, they make us watch the footage. Yeah, yeah, I guess no trigger warnings in this fucking movie. But yeah. Well, of course not. They argue against trigger warnings. Sure do. But yeah, so she talks about that.

She talks about when Trump got elected, she was traumatized by it. Yeah. And we're all like, same. Yep. Yep. I remember that. Yeah. I mean, that's what I wrote in my notes was, okay, so so far Kimmy and I are on the same

page about a lot of things. What is coming here? Yeah. She's just sad about like bad stuff happening. Like racist cops are killing black people and Donald Trump is running for president. But then she's like, no, but I was pretty sure it's all, you know, Hillary's going to win this for sure.

And I was like, Hey, I could have used a trigger warning for that. I did not like this. Right. And like, spoiler alert, but that's what this whole movie is. This whole movie is her going, all this terrible stuff was happening around me. Once it was brought to my attention that all this terrible stuff was happening and I really opened my eyes to it, it hurt. So then later I realized I could just not look at it and everything got better.

Yeah. Well, she even says at this point, she goes, you know, when Trump got elected, I was convinced I was going to die. And then from off screen, the interviewer who we haven't heard from yet says, huh, how is that supposed to happen? Like laughing at it? Right? And I'm like, I don't know, man, maybe there'd be a deadly fucking pandemic or something. Exactly. Maybe there'd be like a hate crime. Yeah, right. She's

like, you know, CNN was saying all the black people would die if Trump was elected. I'm like, I don't think CNN was saying all the black people would die if Trump was elected. I'm like, I don't think CNN was saying that. I don't remember that. So then, okay, so then we check in on Said and he tells us about all the social justice groups that he joined and he talks about not fitting in there because, well, you know, like because like Kimmy, he didn't grow up in American culture and really didn't understand American racism yet. That's what it sounds like he's saying, that he had still very simplistic solutions to

racism in his mind because he didn't realize how endemic it was. Yeah. And this is like a classic, this is a well-documented sort of construct in psychological science, is like these stages of racial identity development, right? Saeed grew up in a country where everyone around him was a similar color to him. And so then he came to a country that had 400 years of history of, and I'm not saying that Nigeria didn't have issues with colonialism.

What I'm saying is that the American experience, the African American experiences informed by slavery and redlining and all of these terrible things. And so he comes and like you said, he has these simplistic like, well, what if we're all just kind of colorblind? And it's like, yeah, that's like an early stage of racial identity development. And then you realize, oh wait.

Yes, where my mother decided to stop. Yeah, and that's the thing. A lot of people decide to stop there. But that's what college is for. Right. Exactly correct. Like, it's like, yeah, like looking in a mirror and reading. Other idea.

Oh my god, so painful. Yeah. That's right. And this movie's trying to say like, that's not happening. But then they show us an example of that happening. Right. Yeah, they're doing the thing they always do where they go, that's not happening. And then they go, example of that happening. Right. Yeah they're doing the thing they always do where they go that's not happening and then they go but it is happening but it's bad. Right. Yeah.

He starts by saying so yeah you know I was trying to be as virtuous as I could especially with all this terrible stuff happening and I was like wow movie you keep digging these holes you're gonna argue against trying to be virtuous. And then they do. They do. He he's like, yeah, the woke mind virus made me fight against Trump. And I was like, that's a really good virus. Objectively good thing. That's an awesome side effect

or main effect of that virus. He goes, there was no room for conversation or debate on campus. And I'm like, I feel like some people were having conversations. Saeed, he says, at one point there's, because like what he's trying to say here, I guess, is that he felt censored because he didn't speak his mind because he knew that

people would be upset if he said the things he was thinking, right? Yeah. If he said a bunch of racist shit, people would get upset with him. And that's why they cast a black guy to, in this role. Right. Because in their mind, the producers of this movie are so simplistic that they're like, well, he's black. He can't be racist. Right. Yeah.

Right. Exactly. He can't be bigoted. Well, and they also think that we can't disagree with him because he's black and we're woke and we're like, oh, well, we have to listen to what the black guy says. Yeah. Right. Right.

And nobody's going to realize like, oh, a black person from Nigeria is in some ways like a white person from America. Like, put these things together. Again, a black person from Nigeria, a black person from Uganda, only black people they interview in this fucking movie. Yeah, no African Americans in this movie at all. Yes, exactly. And that's an important point for sure. Right. But Said tells us that he wasn't having a good time. In fact, he longed for death every time he went to the Wawa.

Right. So this is, this is where, because I was confused at this point. I even wrote down like we're about a fourth of the way into this movie and that whole opening talking about the suicide epidemic of 2012. Like, are we going to get back to that? That was like a bold opening statement. So I think this is their attempt to get back to that. Like this one guy. Oh my God, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's what this is. So I think this is their attempt to get back to that. Like this one guy. Oh my God, you're right. Yeah, yeah. That's what this is. So I think what happened is he gave a speech at school and he was like, black people can be white, white people can be black, purple people can be green, color is a construct. And then everybody was like, no, like, I'm pretty sure that my

experience as an African American is based on my skin color and it really sucks and it's really hard for me and you clearly don't get it. And then he was like, don't be mean to me. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to walk into traffic. And that was really infuriating. Yeah.

And it was confusing for me because of the insane segue. He's like, yeah, I couldn't live in this culture of hate. So anyway, there's a wah-wah across the street from me. And I was like, what the fuck is happening right now? Yeah. But yeah, no, but he was longing for death. And honestly, at this point in the watch through, so was I. So we're going to take a break while I work through that.

But we'll back in a minute with even more of the coddling of the American mind. Oh, hey Noah. Hey Heath. Good to see you in our shared laundry area here in the podcast averse. You have any related thoughts? Okay, so you know when a new shirt just becomes your go-to? Totally. Yeah, like the first thing you reach for in your closet.

Exactly. Lightweight, comfortable, and always on point. Always on point. So, what do you think? You want to say it at the same time? Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay.

Okay. One, two, three. Plain gray t-shirt. Oh, me too. Me too. Love that. T-shirt buddies. Timeless.

Classic. But here's the thing. We might be like basic dudes who grew up in the 80s too much. You know what I mean? Sure. But what can we do about it? All right. Well, have you heard of Quince?

No. What's Quince? Quince has all the things you actually want to wear if you're willing to branch out from great t-shirts. Stuff like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. And the best part? Everything with Quince is 50 to 80% less than what you find at similar brands.

By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Well, but have you actually tried it? I sure have. I got a flow knit breeze performance long sleeve polo,

perfect for those in between spring days in Michigan, you know them. And I got a performance Jersey golf polo, really stepped up my style on the course. It has a collar and three Buttons, I'm like Jude Law out there. You are like Jude Law. Okay. Sounds great. Where do I sign up? Elevate your closet with quince go to quince.com slash awful for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns that's

for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash awful. Get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash awful. Thanks Heath. I guess I could use a few options beyond Gandalf the Grey here. Nice, that's an awesome one. Mine is Grey Leota.

RIP. RIP indeed. RIP indeed. Candle in the wind. I had a gray Comfort, but I had to kill it. You had to kill it. Me too. T-shirt buddies. And after I saw that Trump had won the election, I was really worried.

In fact, I was even afraid I might die because of it. And how was that supposed to happen? I don't know. I was afraid that maybe, you know, there would be a worldwide pandemic and he would actively undermine his own chief medical advisor throughout it. Oh. Yeah. And maybe he would even promote unproven treatments, discourage mask usage and empower conspiracy theorists. Okay. I kind of thought you'd have a less compelling answer. Or perhaps his violent and bigoted rhetoric might lead to a rise in hate crimes.

Sure. Like the 170% rise that we saw the day after his election. Okay, yeah. Well, let's just move on. No, no. Here is the most insidious fear. Okay, maybe he would challenge the very concept of truth to such a degree that even once we moved on from him and started down a path to recovery,

a wide swath of the electorate would be unable to realize that a man who just stood there and kind of swayed stupidly for an hour at a campaign rally wasn't mentally fit to run the country. I'd really like to move on. Or maybe he would just shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. Yeah, he does love to threaten that, sure. People would still vote for him, huh? Yeah. Are we losing the movie to ourselves? Again, again.

And we're back for more of the shit. We're going to rejoin the action with a less grandiose, but no less hyperbolic title card that says, nothing like this has ever happened before. Okay, relax. And this is a dark fucking opening, right? Because we're gonna, this guy is telling us about his fucking Rube Goldberg suicide intentions.

And for some fucking reason, they've decided to cartoonify this? Yeah, we didn't need a cartoon visual aid for any of this. Yeah, so this is Greg Lukinoff. He's the coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, the book that this is based on. And we're introducing him through a time where like his depression got so bad that he was contemplating suicide and eventually his sister talked him into checking into a psychiatric hospital.

And this is going to be another where the fuck are we going kind of a moment. But before we get there, we have to meet professor Jonathan hate I love that the guy's name is hate that that's selling this I guess it's not pronounced like that, but it looks like hate Hmm. How do you pronounce? I think he says height height. Yeah, I think it's pretty it's he probably changed Yeah, it's like John Boehner trying to convince people his name is Boehner, right? Yeah trying to convince people his name is Boehner, right? Fuck you. But we introduced him with him going like, I'm really interested in ancient wisdom.

I'm like, oh, fuck you, Whitey. Just. Like really bad start for introducing, you know, your PhD social psychologist with like, so I've always been partial to folk wisdom from the ancients. And I was like, okay. But do you know why, Heath? It's because, and I quote,

ideas from previous generations get filtered through the generations. Oh, I get it. Because you used the same word. So I was able to follow up. Yes, right. No, exactly. Let me give a cover from your profundity. I have another quote from him. I read the wisdom literature from the entire

world. What? Are you sure about that? I'm impressed. If Jonathan Haidt is grok AI, I would be zero percent surprised. So yeah, so, but he, after making that grandiose claim, he says that he tells us about cognitive behavioral therapy. And there was a moment here where I'm like, guys, did I wander into a different and unrelated movie? Yes, you did. Yeah. Well, yeah, right. Right. For a minute.

But he explains the basics of CBT. And then he tells us that ancient Romans knew about it. Which I don't think that they did. I will say that a lot of concepts in modern clinical psychology are just like repackaged. Like it's like, here's the thing. Trademark. Absolutely. Like the insight at the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy,

yes, was known in ancient Rome. The idea of bad thoughts is probably kind of old. Yes. Great. CBT a bit newer. Exactly. And they're claiming that CBT is basically just recognizing cognitive distortions, which it's not.

There's a lot more components to CBT. But they harp a lot on this idea that we all kind of can't really trust. We have to have neuropsychological humility. I mean, they don't put it this eloquently, but like, we have to have neuropsychological humility because we all fall victim to, you know, cognitive fallacies and cognitive distortions. But what they're really like twisting is that, okay, we've got cognitive distortions, if we recognize them and we grapple with them, we

will have a better handle on reality. This is a core feature of CBT. But then they try to twist it to say like that patriarchy and white supremacy are just cognitive distortions. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, wait, what? Right, well, yeah, eventually they're going to get to that fucking point. That's the reason we're spending so much time on CBT

because they're trying to tell us that being woke is just like being depressed and you need CBT to get out of the wokeness. Yeah, he's literally like, if we just gaslight ourselves into thinking everything in the world is fair and equitable, we won't have to have the sads anymore. Yeah, the problem is cognitive distortions. Here's the rest of our movie about binary thinking. Enjoy. Yeah.

Nuance. about binary thinking. Enjoy. Yeah. NUANCE. So then, so Greg tells us about his company, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. This is basically why is there no white history month, the company. They defend free speech, you know, by white folks who are getting shouted at, apparently. Yeah, that's a euphemism for I will defend your right to say really fucked up shit, but not anything too woke, y'all. Yeah, right. And he's like, yeah, I do a lot of work on campuses. And then he says, it's kind of like the administrators are telling students

to do cognitive distortions. And I was like, it's kinda like that. That was nothing. But also like, my college administrators didn't tell me to do anything. Yeah. Except stop selling drugs. But that was like completely unrelated. That's not right.

Yeah, he does. He talks about the administrators a lot, like their mustache twisting like a mustache twisting cabal like ooh the administrators want to indoctrinate their students into being depressed and Catastrophizing like they keep talking about how kids today these Gen Zers are always Catastrophizing and I'm like aren't like genocides and climate change and human rights violations real catastrophes Yeah, and you fucking idiots are acting like being made to watch a diversity equity inclusion training video is like being stabbed in the chest with a knife. You fucking... other people are catastrophizing.

Yeah, and you're not being... That's not hyperbolic. Hyperbolic, yeah, exactly. They use the knife analogy a lot. They literally say that. I'm surprised they didn't show a clip from Clockwork Orange. Whenever they're watching the DEI video. Yes, right.

Right. So the, but yeah, but while he's talking about the administrators, you know, these shady smoke filled back room administrators, he goes, well, you know, they've cracked down on speech crimes. And I'm like, do you mean slurs? He says, moving on. So, and then he says, well, you know, they're telling kids that they can be permanently harmed by words. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're telling kids that can be permanently harmed by bigotry, right?

Which is encapsulated within words, which is again, demonstrably the case. Yeah, of course. which is again demonstrably the case. Yeah, of course. They also claimed that administrations have cracked down on inappropriately directed laughter. And I was like, have they? I mean, okay, but like that's hard to police, right? Like in terms of directionality,

if they made the rule about that. These administrators are powerful. I'd be having fun with that direction thing. Okay, but here's what the thing that he's actually distorting, right? When I was in college in the mid 90s, I remember like going around the class talking about our personal stories or whatever. A girl in my class talked about being sexually harassed by her boss at her previous job and a couple of guys in the class laughed.

Oh, okay, good. Yeah, that's horrible. Then they should crack down on that. That's what they're talking about, right? That's what they talk about, inappropriate laughter. They're talking about people laughing in a class when somebody tries to share the story of the time that they experienced ableism or whatever, right?

That's the laughing that they're talking about at this point. And it's absolutely fucking justified. And so they're saying that if those asshole kids in class don't laugh at the woman describing her sexual assault, they are now coddling her? Yes. Right. Not only are they coddling her, but they're also impinging on the free speech of the asshole

kids that laughed, right? Yeah. Got it. But they're also impinging on the free speech of the asshole kids that left right? Yeah got it Yeah, that's what James Madison was talking about the right Things like that yeah, they also make a big deal about the Disinviting of hundreds of speakers right and that's a big point of this is that you know college campuses sometimes They're like no when we're actually we don't want to invite somebody terrible. And they do a graphic showing all these names of people who got disinvited. And it's like Ben Shapiro and Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger,

Ann Coulter, Mike Pence, Peter Thiel. And I was like, all right, solid disinvites. I'm glad you made them fly out. And then I hope you canceled last minute after they got there. That's awesome. But also on that graphic, Hillary Clinton, Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Chelsea Manning and Desmond Tutu. Yeah, they really like, especially the psychologist in this.

I think he thinks it gets him off the hook because he's always like, well, both sides, am I right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that he can later say, well, both sides, am I right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that he can later say, no, no, no, it's our movie wasn't partisan. Right. It was all about how Ben Shapiro should be able to talk at colleges, but in a nonpartisan way.

Yeah. Yeah. Because also Michael Moore. Right. But really, let's not let him talk at our college. It's very strange. OK. Just one other example, though, and I'm curious about this.

Stanley Tucci got disinvited from something. What for? I don't know, but the woke mind virus has gone too far. So, okay. So then we get this montage of disruptive protests and screaming. So another way of saying this is we get a montage of free speech, right?

A bunch of people freely speaking. Yeah. They're trying to make it be the craziest visual example of lefty protests. Yes. But they show a fun one for me anyway. It was like just somebody shrieking every time some asshole old white guy said something shitty. They're just right next to me and like, and I was like, that's effective.

Right. Right. Like it's like crying back at a baby. They're just right next to me and like, ah! And I was like, that's effective. I love this. Right? It's like crying back at a baby. Yeah. It works, man. It does. That's you. You sound like that, idiot baby.

So yeah, but this is when I guess, you know, it's around 2012, 2013. This is when Greg and John started to get the first inkling of their stupid book. Now, I have to point this out. If this was a real phenomenon, if this woke mind virus destroying America, whatever, was a real thing, and you were trying to do a 90 minute documentary about it, there would not be time for granular explanations about how you came up with the idea for the article

that eventually became your fucking book. You'd spend the whole movie talking about the phenomenon. Mm-hmm. Oh, but they only do that in the last, like, eight minutes. Right! Yes, exactly. And oh, oh, I love this because now we have the montage of them promoting the book

and all of the different, like, news outlets being like, the woke mind virus, the woke, the woke mind virus, the woke mind, ooh, the coddling of America, the coddling of America, the cod... And then they show Barack Obama being like, children woke mind virus, the woke mind virus. Ooh, the coddling of America, the coddling of America. And then they show Barack Obama being like, children should not be, like college students should not be coddled. They should be exposed to dissenting views.

This is how we develop critical thinking. And I'm like, you can't do that. Obama didn't read your stupid book. Come on. This was the first of several times where they're like, you know who agreed with us? Martin Luther King. Right. Right.

No, he just said the word coddled one time, not in the context of what you're saying. Yeah. Oh yeah, they're not good at context. No, in their nuance book. Right. Well, and also, you know, they're trying to make this big deal of like, well, obviously this is a real big phenomenon,

a really important phenomenon because the book was a bestseller. People wanted to talk about it all over. We were on all these different TV shows. I'm like, you're selling a fucking book to old people called kids these days. Of course, you're going to sell. Of course, that's going to be a bestseller. Of course. Does it mean that it has any fucking value?

So, okay. And then, of course, this was all of those interviews. Those were just about the article that they wrote on the Atlantic, right? And the reason I point that out is because now we have to spend 10 fucking minutes of the movie talking about how then they decided to turn that article into a whole book. Oh, God. Jonathan Haidt at this point says he realized that this was, quote, the problem of our age, end quote.

Not climate change, not fascism, not racism, not disinformation, fucking wokeness. That was the problem of our age. Yeah, yeah, racism isn't the problem. It's the reaction to racism that we need to worry about. God, like I get the focusing on like their little critique, mostly of the left, but I need more reminders for themselves of like,

okay, but the other version of this is so much worse and there's so many other huge problems. Very little of that. Yeah. So, okay, I just I love this moment. Because this is where he's like, and this is where we realized we weren't dealing with Millennials anymore. We were dealing with Gen Z.

And I'm like, I could have just looked at your calendar and figured that out, man. You needed research for this? You couldn't have seen that coming? The new generation, you didn't see it coming? I didn't know they were going to have another one. Yeah, these are supposed to be professors, right? Like, it's new students every year. And they're always 18.

They're always 18. How is that? How is this math, math? Don't you have a PhD? You figure we'd run out of 18-year-olds eventually. They just keep making new ones. Jesus Christ. He says, this generation is much more fragile.

I'm like, what a stupid fucking thing to say. That's a dumbass thing that everyone has said about every next generation. Yeah, and this is where he really tries to argue that words don't actually affect people psychologically. And I'm like, have you lived a life before? Right? No, I heard, I have it at Good and 30,

that while sticks and stones may break my bones. Right. Yeah, and he starts talking about this graph, right? I heard I have a good authority that while sticks and stones may break my bones. Yeah. And he starts talking about this graph, right? He's like, you know, you don't normally see generational graphs that have elbows on them that have like hockey sticks on them. But look at this graph that does not have an elbow or a hockey stick. It does not know. But he's trying to make the point that there's a sharp change in the trend line for depression rates right at the beginning of this

unforeseen new generation So the point is like maybe people are treating mental health more they actually say that they admit for a second They're like it could be that there's more treating and therefore more Diagnosis to that or we wrote a book about no, it's our thing. It's other stuff. So, so he actually does a good job of I think of deflating that because he says like, you know, yes, some of it or actually doesn't admit that some of it comes from that. He says, but it can't be that because the rates of suicide have gone up at the same rate. It's not the same rate. So like there is actually some amount of that. But yes, like there is

a legitimate rise in depression and suicide that starts around 2012 Yeah, okay, I and I agreed with that part actually. Yes. Yeah, and later They'll say and this is why and we'll all go uh-huh And then they'll be like but ignore but ignore that and watch the rest of the movie instead Yes, look over here woke mind virus, right? So react is he's like so me and Greg we set out to crack this mystery of rising depression rates conclusion in hand, you know, and then we get our another, another one of these ridiculous title cards that says, are they going to attack me now?

Like hoomps, like who and who are you talking about? Everyone with strong political opinions is going to attack everyone who disagrees that like what? That's nothing. Yep. So okay. So we check in with Said, he goes home to Nigeria. Holy shit was that gorgeous that shot in Nigeria that they showed.

And he sure did love all that political freedom he had in Nigeria as opposed to the United States. Yeah, he definitely was like, I went home, I reconnected with my family, all my friends, my roots, my culture, my food, and then I realized America kind of sucks. I think I want to stay here. And I was like you and me both were friends, but for a different reason. I think we might have a different reason. Okay, the only thing I enjoyed about this moment is that Said is wearing the wool-dash or mizzles, which may be very happy.

Nice. What? It's a, you know what? It is such a deep fucking rabbit hole. It's a shoe made by all birds, but also a fae demon who does a lot of pranks on me in the podcast verse. Yeah.

Oh, interesting. Aren't you glad you asked? Do you feel really connected to Said right now? Do you agree with him about everything else that he says? I was getting red-pilled already. But yeah, but Said tells us he'd given up on American schools. He hasn't, by the way, he's going to come back for his sophomore year and we're just going to ignore the fact that that happened altogether, that he said any of that.

We're going to ignore that later. Yeah, he clearly, he lives in America now and has a good job, but don't go to college. Spoiler. Okay. So then we get to the the protests after George Floyd's murder in 2020. Right. So we check in with Lucy, she was the the girl with autism from before. And she's like, so I'm reading this email and it's like violence, police brutality here

for you, blah, blah, blah. She's like, it was really hard to read about violent, you know, murders of black Americans by the police. All of this stuff, I was just grappling with all these social justice issues. And it was really painful for me. And I was really anxious all the time. And I'm like, uh-huh, that's normal. Right. That is a normal reaction to what's going on in the world. She says she couldn't stop thinking about the whole white privilege thing.

And I'm like, yeah, another way of saying that is for the first time you were aware that the only reason that you're not at risk of being indiscriminately murdered by the state is your skin color. That's the kind of thing that sticks with you. Yeah. And should. And then she skips right, she just skips through the point and it's like, so now I have to apologize for being white? What the fuck you guys?

Right, yes, exactly. She's like, well, you know, I thought that the only way that I could not be racist is to make sure that I had an equal number of friends from each ethnicity. Oh my god. I'm like, that's, you're not making it better. No, she's still doing it wrong. She actually says what I did wrong was being white. And I was like, no, what she did wrong was being in this movie. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. It was being all the things that got you into this movie. She's, well, yeah, but to be clear, she's like, you know, I didn't want to atone for my whiteness. I'm like, nobody's asking you to atone for your whiteness. That's not what you did wrong. What you should atone for is having white privilege

and not using it to lift up people who don't. Right? That's the only thing that anyone is ever asking white people to do in this space. Yes, but that's not her definition of anti-racism. Right, exactly. Her definition of anti-racism is counting all her problems. Yes, and dividing them by the number of ethnicities. All right, so Syed gets back for his sophomore year and that's when he discovers Jonathan Hite. Right? And he loves his stuff. He watched quote, hundreds of hours and quote of Hite's

bullshit on YouTube. Yeah. So, he's weirdly obsessed with the author of the book. That's why they cast him. Yeah. Don't tell us that movie. Right. Exactly. They keep telling on themselves over and over you're not supposed to tell us that he's just repeating back what you told Just by watching this movie my algorithms all fucked up now Yeah, well you guys that happens to me every day when I come on this show

Yeah But but that is the thing that's so frustrating about this movie is is that it's literally saying, here's a bunch of young people who have never really grappled with these difficult social issues, and they're just these massive sponges. And they quote them as saying things like, my professors were like my parents. Or my professors had made this argument, and it's the only thing I could see.

And then they make a left turn and they go, so then they read our book, but now they know the truth. Yes, right. Exactly. Right. God. So here's, I looked up Jonathan Haidt just because I was like, all right, let me check out some of the stuff in this. And then like immediately Facebook was like, you want some tactical sunglasses, huh? How about some bars of gold? Right away. You thought about bars of gold? Right away.

You thought about bars of gold? Do you want some seeds? So reverse mortgage right behind you. But then Lucy explains that being woke didn't allow her to be kind and she likes being kind. So she decided she didn't want to be woke anymore. Right? Yeah. I don't understand how those things are mutually exclusive, but okay.

Well, so I, but I think what she's ultimately saying is that it didn't allow her to be kind in the face of bias. Right? Like, like if you're, if you're woke, then yeah, you do have to call it out when you're, when your friend makes an anti-Semitic remark. Right. And, and Oh, I see.

So like when her friend says something super bigoted, she couldn't be like, you're a good guy. Yes, exactly. Well, that's all I could get out of it, right? I guess. Because ultimately what she's saying is learning about racism and white privilege and systemic bias, that may be unhappy. So I stopped acknowledging that that should exist. Totally. She starts talking about like, well, then I started like, I decided like what my opinion

was and then I just decided to go find people who were saying that. And that was way better. Oh yeah. That's what this whole movie is. That's what the entire book is. Yep. It's we came up with the conclusion first and then we went back and sharpshooter fallacy our way into a bunch of examples to support it.

Yes. Yeah. And it's such shenanigans. She's like, yeah, I wanted to hear more black voices for the kindness I was doing. So I checked out John McQuarter. I listened to a bunch of his podcasts and then I was thinking for myself again. And I was like, really? Based on John's podcast?

You were thinking for yourself? Yeah. That's the last two things you said. Yeah. I mean, like, fine. You can listen or read John McQuarter, like maybe check out some other views, too. That'd be great. Also, McCord obviously doesn't speak for the entire black community. That's actually one of his main points that was completely missed by this person.

Yep. So, OK, so then we check back in on Kimmy and she came. Kimmy's going to tell us how she sort of woke up out of the woke mind virus, too. Right. So she she was going around reviewing skate parks. I hate this so much. Me too. She would go around, she was doing this YouTube channel where she would tell people how comfortable various skate parks might be if you're part of a marginalized group, right? So are they, is this skate park filled with a bunch of racists? And she's like, you know, and I was like, honestly,

I was really worried that like somebody was going to attack me. And I'm like, yeah, whoever heard of a person being attacked just for being black, we say minutes after talking about George Floyd. Yep. Right. So like, obviously, again, demonstrably a rational thing to be afraid of. It is. But I will say, I feel like she picked the wrong platform. Like she's like, I get it, she's skater. But she's like, I'm going to go around reviewing skate parks in Southern California where there are a bunch of angry white youths, like, chomping at the bit to microaggress black folks. And I'm like, maybe go to the golf course then. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying that there aren't racist people in skate parks, but I don't know. Maybe things have changed since I was a youth. Like I'm not saying that there aren't racist people in skate parks, but I don't know, maybe things have changed since I was a youth. I feel like more of the sort of liberal people were hanging out at the skate park. Sure. Is that not true? Well, and also it's Southern California.

Right. Right. You know, not exactly known as one of the... I mean, I know there are very conservative places in Southern California, but go to a fucking skate park in Alabama. Exactly. Because the point is, I went to a really... I went to a skate park in a really conservative

place and nobody racismed at me even once the whole time I was there. And I'm like, well, that's one fucking place. I know. And therefore no racism. I made it all up. I made it all up. And she even says she had a friend with her who was also part of a non-specified marginalized group who did feel like there was bigotry at the park.

Yeah. But then she minimized it by being like she just thought some people were looking at her weird. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, that's a thing that happens. Right. She had a different experience than me.

Therefore, she was wrong. And again, like, you know, I don't want to discount Kimmy's experience, but Kimmy is a woman from Uganda who has been experiencing American racism for like a year and a half at this point. Her friend, I'm assuming is somebody from America, right? Who has like a more nuanced like, because they talk about later on, like about people over smiling, right? That like racist like, hey, look how big I'm smiling. I don't have a problem with black people at all kind of thing. That's something that's very nuanced that you probably don't pick up on in your first year in America. But if you grew up around here, I'm sure you see that all the fucking time and

recognize it. Totally. Like if you go to the South and somebody goes, bless your heart, you may think they're being nice to you. It needs context. Yeah. And then, okay. And then our next title card says, can you help me find my trigger? Oh, I hate this so much. Me too. It's just each scene makes me more and more angry. What my least favorite of the talking heads is this guy, Arian, because Arian really reminds me of my brother. He spends the whole time wearing.

There's this there's this type of frustration that I think only exists when privileged people are made to confront their privilege. Oh yeah, this Arian has like mad incel vibes. Oh God, and I hate it. Yeah, it was just nails on a chalkboard, everything about him. So he went to school and he got a job on camp or he got four different jobs on campus, right? Just sell drugs at some point. Yeah, right? Just sell drugs at someone. Yeah, right. But two of them required that he do DEI training. And he did not like the DEI training.

Four hours of his life gone. Just it'll never get back. So he starts off and he's telling us, and this is obviously like a story that he's only ever told to people who agree with him, right? Because he's giving it to us in that, like, can you imagine kind of tone of voice and we're just like, yeah, no, that sounds very reasonable. Yeah. Everything about that that you just said, because he's like, he's like, there was this stupid quiz where they would give us a statement and we would have to tell him, was it ageist or racist or homophobic or sexist? And I'm like.

What what is wrong with that? Yeah. And the phrase was you look good for your age. Yeah. Right. Agist. That is agist, first of all. It's also pretty sexist. Well, yeah. I mean, depending on who you're saying. Yeah. But it could have sub, you know, aggressions in it. And so that's the thing.

Like, he thinks that that's a compliment. Like, we're starting from that place. Yes. He's like, I don't understand why that's not a compliment. And we're like, yes, you are what is wrong. Yes, you failed the class. That's the reason we have. And then he goes, he goes, you know, these statements had no context. And I'm like, yeah, but you look good. I mean, the context is you're at work. You look good for your age is ageist in any context at work. Yeah. He's like, he's like Michael Scott going into the Chris Rock bit here.

Oh no. The DEI training guy has to be like, listen, I'm literally only here to make you personally sign this thing. I realized at this point, because I was like, why are we just now meeting this guy? But we're only just now meeting him because he never even had an awakening. He was already anti-woke. Oh, you're right. Yes. Yeah.

He was just fully a bigot from the beginning. So they couldn't show the whole first act with Ariane. Yeah. No, you're right. And Ariane, he gives a context to the title card, right? Can you find my trigger thing? So at some point in the DEI training, they were being told about triggers. Right. And someone turned to the professor afterwards and said, can you help me find my trigger?

And he was very offended by that because I think he misunderstood her question. Right. Because I think what she was saying, like, again, I'm just guessing because I'm just hearing his story, but my assumption would be, if I heard that question, that this is a person who occasionally feels triggered and does not know why. Right. And wants to understand, okay, what is actually happening that I have that reaction to so that I can be more aware and have more introspection and... Exactly.

Right. But the movie's trying to say like, people who want trigger warnings or people who are all about social justice, they're searching for triggers when they're not there. Yes. But it's so that you could address the triggers and the bad stuff.

Like oncologists are searching for tumors, but they're not pro cancer. That's insane. They're not like, yay, I hope there's a tumor. Oh my God. Well whether he likes it or not, Ariane is helping me find my trigger, so I need another break but first let me give Act 3 the hard sell. Will kids these days ever understand what real music sounds like? Can they even write in cursive? What's with all

this damn avocado everything? Find out more questions just like those and no answers when we return for the cloud yelling conclusion of The Coddling of the American Mind. Lots of fiber, the good fats. Why do people... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The avocado's amazing. Hey, Noah, do you have a significant amount of money that I can borrow every month? Borrow? Have.

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That's rocketmoney.com slash awful movies? Rocketmoney.com slash awful movies. So, hey, why are you trying to build the nothing? I'm pretty sure venturing inside is the only way to get our tax back. Oh, dude What it is? Well, yeah, but now I'm all depressed Yeah me too All right. We really need to hammer home the message of our movie So we need some good examples of sympathetic characters who got victimized by the woke mob some good examples of sympathetic characters who got victimized by the woke mob. Uh, it's a breezy.

Brett Weinstein, Greg and Jonathan actually talk about it in the book. Weinstein got run out of his job at Evergreen College by the Wokes because he didn't want to have a no white stay. Can you believe that? Well, that's not exactly what happened, but regardless, he resigned in a snit and got a big settlement from the school. Yeah. And now he makes way more money doing white guy grievances as a job.

Also, he's a biology professor who's spread a bunch of COVID misinformation. And now he's claiming that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Yeah, okay. Okay, not great. Not great. What? What does he think is the cause of AIDS? Mostly, poppers, I think. The party drug? Yeah, the party drug.

OK, but like, how would that even? It doesn't matter. He was on Rogan. You can just say stuff there. Yeah, something homophobic, probably. Yeah. But it would still be like HIV. Just let it go. Man, it's not worth thinking about. It's fair.

OK, so who else might work? We got a sympathetic character victim of the left. What about Amy Wax, the law professor at UPenn? She's in the book too. Wait, didn't she basically rank the races? Yeah, like pretty close to that several times, but people were super mean about it. Oh, I like it. Free speech leading to mean free speech. That's a violation of free speech. Exactly.

That's like the definition of persecution right there. Yeah. No, it is persecution, but it still feels like a weird pick for the book. I think we could do better. Oh, I've got it. I've got it. What about Ben Shapiro? Great idea.

Such a sympathetic character, right? So sympathetic. Is he? Like, what happened to him? Well, his wife told him a wet vagina is a disease and he totally believed her. And he proudly tweeted about it. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, that's perfect.

His universal likeability is going to be the centerpiece of our movie. Who doesn't love Ben Shapiro not a punchable face at all? And we're back for still more of this shit we're gonna open up act 3 promising the three great untruths untruth number. Untruth number one, you are fragile. Now apparently what they're going to try to tell us here is that the untruths are what children are being told in college, right? The coddling that's happening to the American mind, right? No one is telling children you are fragile.

That is, like we open on this ridiculous fucking strong, you are vulnerable is a very important message to send to kids who think that they are invincible, right? The people around you are vulnerable, that's another important message, but nobody's saying to kids you are fucking fragile. Right, and in case this is confusing, the movie shows us a cartoon wine glass.

And it's like, you know how a wine glass is fragile? I was like, yeah, I was following the word fragile. I got it. Well, but that's so that they can show you a plastic cup in opposition, right? Which we should be more like a plastic cup, which, quote, gets better when you drop it. I don't think that's how it works. Nope. That's not how it works.

But you know what this reminds me of? This is like, I want to take this metaphor and translate it to a real life example. I was on a panel several years ago at a skeptic conference and it was an all women panel about women in skepticism and what our experiences have been like, how we can learn from them, how we can grow as a community. And after we presented everything that we presented on the panel, we opened up to the audience for questions like you do.

And the first question asked, a man took the microphone and said, Shocking. What can we do to help women be more resilient? Yikes. Oh my God. What can we do to help women be more resilient? Yes. Oh my God. And I was like, that's what this movie is doing right now. All right.

How can we make you less uppity? Kara, I think you were inventing a microaggression because you were probably seeing everything through the lens of being a woman. I think I was stabbing myself with a knife in that moment. That guy, I mean, it was an honest question. I should cut him some slack. Right, no, you should just talk to a gay with a debate with him. So yeah, that guy like this movie,

trying to say that humans are anti-fragile or resilient or should be or whatever, but It's such a stupid way they make this point and at that point I was like, all right Are we gonna get a cartoon of like a person falling and not shattering much like a wine glass would shatter Literally they cut to a kid falling and not Right after I wrote that down. Yeah, They said children are anti-fragile. And I was like, not according to pediatricians and child psychologists. Like this is such a, they're literally arguing for the tough love approach.

They're arguing that kids need to be psychologically broken to toughen them up. Yep. They say we need kids to be tougher. And then they show us, I'm pretty sure, a clip from Lord of the Flies. We need kids to be more like on a fucking island abandoned. We need the kids these days to sharpen a stick on both ends. Yeah. They're like, let me teach you how to work with kids.

The first phrase you need to learn, I'll give you something to cry. Yeah, right. And this is a really fucked up moment too, right? Because after the Lord of the Flies clip, they show this like montage of kids doing dangerous things to show like, yeah, kids need this kind of stuff, right? What kind of day was that on set? No, come on, Timmy, get a little further out on the limb. It doesn't see how far out on the rotten limb you can get, right?

Oh, it reminds me of, wasn't there an old like, was it an SNL sketch back in the day? I can't remember what sketch show it was, where it was just a bunch of kids running around with like scissors and plastic bags on their heads. Oh yeah. It's like a really dangerous place. The world's most dangerous toy got upgraded

to gas powered sharp things. Yeah, yeah. Bag of glass. Bag of glass. Yeah, yeah, that was it, yeah. That's how you build a sharp thing. Yeah. Yeah. Bag of glass. Yeah. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. That's how you build a tough kid. Dan Eckerd. Give him scissors. Yeah. And I love this. So Greg says, you know, anti-fragility, that's what they're calling it.

Anti-fragility. They're like, anti-fragility is a thing we all know exists. And I'm like, weird that nobody ever bothered to come up with an actual word for it Then you had to just make some shit up And he says it's like how astronauts muscles get weak when they're out in space and they're weightless and I'm like, oh, right So we need the weight of centuries of systemic oppression to build strong bones. Yes is what you're saying That's that that into like a protein pill That's how we make the women folk more resilient. Yes, make them more resilient.

Against our sexism. So now we're going to cut back to Ariane. So Ariane, the whole time we're talking to him, we're learning about this, like his whole claim to fame, I guess, is that he sent this email that said he wasn't going to go to no damn sensitivity training and it was all a bunch of bullshit and it, you know, he's brown, so it's okay, right? Oh, I know. I have an idea, you guys. So, so there's so much good content in this film that in order to get to an hour and a half, let's have Ariane talk about, will I send

it? Won't I send it? Will I send it? Won't I send it? For like eight minutes. I do it in three different scenes. Yeah. Is it in my draft folder? I have a sub folder for a hold on scene. Work through this. At one point he literally is like,

you know how after you send it, there's a pop-up that says undo. Then I clicked undo. So I hadn't really sent it. Yes. And they like show the footage or like we don't need a visual representation of gmail how that was slow-mo with like

action music yeah so stupid I also love that he went to Alma College in Michigan and he's writing an email in a snit at this moment when we learned that being like, DEI's stupid, gah. He's going to Alma College, made me very happy. That's really fucking funny. So yeah, but yeah, he's complaining about this video that he had to watch.

He's like, the DEI video is really fucking stupid. I'm like, yeah, man, training videos are stupid, right? Are you also rejecting food safety as a thing because the fucking McDonald's training videos are stupid? Right, what does that even fucking mean? He starts talking about, you know, well, you know, they said that it was racist to compliment somebody's English,

but, you know, I don't know, don't find it racist when somebody compliments my English. Therefore racism doesn't exist. Right! Yes! And I like the training video. They showed that they came up with this like mosquito analogy, where they're like, a microaggression is like getting bit by a mosquito. And if it happens like one time, it's annoying, but you get past it.

But when you're like swarmed with mosquitoes and you have all of these different bites, it can make you feel really sick. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, that is how that works. Yeah. What a good analogy. And some people get hit by mosquitoes a lot more than you, Ariane, apparently. Yeah. So, and then we cut back to Lucy and I just, I found this moment just really fucking telling,

as you might notice from the interstitials, where Lucy's like, well, you know, it's really hard when you're autistic not to commit microaggressions because you don't pick up on the subtle clues that people give about how they're feeling. And I'm like, oh my God, are you asking for cultural understanding about your lack of cultural understanding, Lucy? Yeah, this gets very meta. Right. Like that's part of the DEI training. The part of the sensitivity training is learning that about people who have like

people who are autistic, for example, you know, who might not recognize immediately the the clues that you're giving. You know, like that's what we're fucking doing here, Lucy. Right. But instead, she sees it as well. I get to I can't really see a microaggression. So like I get a pass. Right. But instead she sees it as, well, I get to, I can't really see a microaggression. So like I get a pass. Right. Yeah. That's her argument. And then we have this, God, they really want to dwell on this. The interviewer is interviewing Kimmy and he says, did you know that saying America is a land of opportunity is a microaggression. Right now, there are

absolutely moments where saying America is the land of opportunity would be a goddamn microaggression. Of course. That's what's so infuriating. Okay, so because it's your life experience that America was a land of opportunity, we've got to remember this is a college-age girl from Uganda that came to the United States, went to art school, and then got a paying job as a music producer. Like, America was a land of opportunity for her. Yeah, turns out the lottery is a great investment. Yeah.

But saying that to a kid who's stuck in the projects is fucked up. Yes. It's a fucked up thing to say. It's aggressive. Absolutely. Right. Right. And it's a might. And again, it's important to note that they don't actually ever explain what a microaggression is or what that word means or why that's a word. Right. Because the whole fucking point of a microaggression is that any one microaggression seems like nothing. Right. Yeah. It's that's why they added the word micro. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And they're so they're the word micro to it. Right.

Exactly. Exactly. And they're listing singular microaggressions and saying, well, this seems like nothing. Well, a fucking corset does. Yeah. They're like, here's a thing that if you are a privileged person, your privilege prevents you from seeing why it's offensive to a marginalized person. Right.

And I can't see why it's offensive. Yes, I know that's why they're telling you. That's why I'm teaching you about it. And then her big takeaway is literally that if I say something fucked up to you and you get offended, that's your choice to be soft. Yes, right. That is her argument. Right. Well, she's like, well, if America wasn't the land of opportunity, why would I move

here from Uganda? And I'm like, because England took all the wealth from Uganda and gave it to America. Like quite literally. There is that. That is true. But really the unstated conclusion of this whole documentary here is that if we just reinterpret every time someone says something shitty to us. Right? Every time a man writes an email to the SGU saying, tell the girl that her vocal fry gets on my nerves and that she should die in a fire.

Then I should just reinterpret that as a compliment. Don't be so soft. Don't be so fragile. Then I'll just live in blissful denial and my life will be good. They said you're a girl. You're beautiful for your age, right? Exactly. No, and this literally happens to women all the time and we literally grapple with just that, right?

How often does a man say to me, you're beautiful and smart? And I'm like, that is- Why is it a question mark? That is not the compliment you think it is, my friend. Right. We don't have to pick one. Like smart women don't need to ugly themselves up and beautiful women don't need to stop reading books in order to not diminish their beauty. Right.

You are insulting me. And yeah, I'm not diminish their beauty. Right. Like, you are insulting me. And yeah, I'm not going to reinterpret that. I am tall and nothing else though, so it's confusing. Some people are one dimensional. And at this moment, they put up a graph that says 93% of African Americans are not offended by that phrase that America is the land of opportunity, right? I'd like to know what percent was offended by the white guy giving the survey. Right. Like what percent of African Americans don't enjoy Jonathan and Greg?

I feel like it's a pretty big number. Yeah, there you go. And this is, of course, where we get the actual cartoon of Kimmy. She's explaining what it was like to live in a world where she was aware of microaggressions. And the cartoon is of her, like every time she sees a microaggression, it's, we see her stabbing herself in the chest with a knife. Yeah, and bleeding everywhere.

And bleeding. Now, importantly, it's her stabbing herself, not the microaggression, not the person who says the thing's stabbing her. She's doing this to herself. Yeah, she explicitly says throughout this documentary, every time someone was really shitty to me, I realized I'm probably just interpreting it wrong. Mm-hmm. And if I just stop interpreting it that way,

it won't hurt as much. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, so now you just live in abject denial, and you are becoming part of the problem that perpetuates white supremacy and patriarchy. That is your solution. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Toughen up. Yeah. Well, and then John pops up to tell us that the kids need to toughen up these days, which leads to a fucking montage of like, we didn't need none of these fancy black helmets when I was a kid type shots, right? Survivor bias.

Right. Right. Well, and this is where we meet Anthony Rodriguez, who is just titled as like, I shit you not. The Chiron just says friend of Greg Lukianoff. Right. So we needed, I guess we needed to see that some of his best friends are, well, not black, but not not black. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so one of the points they're trying to make here is that kids need more unsupervised

free play, right? And then Greg describes his childhood and he's like, I used to hop on moving trains like a hobo child. What the fuck was that? Why would you say that? Why make that point? There's so many other things you did as a kid that weren't jumping on a fucking train.

Yeah. These are all privileged upper middle class adults talking about how their childhoods were really awesome. And it's just like, yeah, clearly. Yeah. He eventually admits that like, you know, the jumping on the train thing as a kid, I was a little too free range. Right. But then he says like, I wish kids, I wish

they could all, they just need the upside and no downside. That's his fascinating plan. That's literally what he says. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And pretend the bad doesn't exist. Kids need the Trump economy, but none of the Biden economy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, pretend the bad doesn't. Kids need the Trump economy, but none of the Biden economy. Yeah. Right. Problem. But ultimately, look, what he's failing to recognize is, OK, yeah, ideally we get all the upside and none of the downside. That's not possible.

Right. So now we have to have one or the other. Right. The upside with the downside, which, let's remind everybody, is periodically being run over by a goddamn train. Yeah. Right. So what is the upside that you're tougher, that you're more resilient than the train? Yeah, well, that you can handle an email. The upside is that you can handle an email telling you that you're smart and beautiful or whatever. Right.

But the downside is that you sometimes get run over by a fucking train. I feel like we just take them. You know, we just take the loss on this one. Right. Yeah. The risk benefit analysis there is a bit like crooked. Well, the other thing, too, is like, because I'm these fucking assholes age. Right. So they're like, well, back in our day, we could do this and that. And I'm like, yeah, man, I remember my I remember the days when my friend's uncle would send us to the store with a note to buy his cigarettes.

So I learned how to fucking forge his signature and started smoking. That's the fucking world you want to go back to? Yep. Jesus. Survivor bias. Yes. Again, it's great that you rode around on your bike without a helmet. You're forgetting about all your friends who got brain damage from not wearing their helmets.

Right. So like when I was a kid, my brother got hit by a fucking car. He was in the hospital, in and out of the hospital for fucking months. He to this day can't hear on one side, can't taste on one side of his fucking mouth and shit. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, he's not the guy talking on this documentary as it turns out. OK, I rode my bike a lot. I never got hit by a car. Oh, well, in that case, yeah, he should have been paying more attention.

My brother, he's toughened him up. I could I can't see the microaggression of a car. Oh, well, in that case, yeah, he should have been paying more attention, my brother. He toughened him up. I can't see the microaggression of a car hitting me. So OK, so but then so and now here and John makes actually a good point, right? He's like, you know, back in the 90s, parents got disproportionately concerned about their children being abducted by strangers. And yes, we all saw that. Yeah, we all saw that. And we were like, where are you going with this man?

Because we agree with you again. Right. Nowhere. He's going nowhere. He just drops that whole point. Yeah, that panic was stupid. And I think there are some rules in like local places where like you can't have your kid be at a park without supervision for even a minute, even at older ages. It's a little bit crazy since then. And I was like, okay, maybe I agree with some of this.

And then he says, if you leave a baby in a parked car and crack the window, they're safe for 50,000 years on average. And I was like, okay, that's a weird fucking study. First of all, I don't know where you got that. I feel like that's a misinterpretation of the result. I feel like it is also weird detail about the window in that. You got to poke holes in the box, right? Otherwise, Jesus Christ.

So and then we meet Anna, right? So we've got to bring Anna in. Anna has a couple of siblings that are like 10 or 12 years older than her. So I guess she's representing the generational divide, right? So we've got to bring Anna in. Anna has a couple of siblings that are like 10 or 12 years older than her. So I guess she's representing the generational divide, right? So her brother and sister grow up before the coddling of the American mind. She grew up coddled.

This whole thing with Anna makes me really uncomfortable because she clearly is struggling with some pretty severe mental illness. And I just feel like they're taking advantage of her in this documentary. Yes. They sure are. Did you guys feel that same way? Yeah, I felt like she's just here for the acceptance. Yeah. Yeah, it felt gross. Just like she looked like she was about to cry

every time she spoke about any of her experiences. Yeah. And I was like, ugh, this is gross. Well, and the point that they're making is so fucking weird, right? Because John comes up, he's like, well, you know, these kids today, they show up at college without ever having had a job or having gone on a date or having had a drink. And I'm like, are you trying to make decreased teen alcohol use sounds scary, man? Okay, I was back on board the movie for a second here.

I'll need you all to talk me down like I was talking about earlier. Yeah, but no, that's true. Right. I like I actually fell down a rabbit hole. I'm like, do kids these days not date until they're 20? And then like the average like age in which a kid dates is is much, much older now. But a lot of that's because like, you know, there's not so much of a like boyfriend girlfriend concept and you go out with friends and sometimes there's a romantic aspect to some of that. and sometimes, you know, it's just generational difference type shit. Well, and also I think they're broke.

Well, that's right. They can't get a fucking job because we're holding on to all of them. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you see all those headlines that are like, do you know, Gen Zers eat food because grocery sales are down, but so is restaurant usage. And you're like, yeah, they're not able to afford food. It's like, what the fuck?

You're describing a recession. They're killing restaurants. They're killing casual dining. Yeah. And also, what about COVID? Like, they don't even talk about COVID. They show so many clips of kids at school, like, masked up or like, you know, like doing school from home. But they don't talk about how all that social isolation really affected kids going to hell.

They just skip over that. The only time they really talk about COVID is one of these. I think it was Lucy being like, here's the upside of COVID. Stay with me. I got to get away from the Wokes for a little bit and it was pretty great. Yes. I left Stanford and that was good for me. Yeah. But Anna tells us about the time she got an Instagram account and it was all downhill

from there. And then the movie accidentally solves itself. Yes. Right? Because it briefly says, so anyway, we've been talking over and over again about what happened in 2012, 2013 to make the depression rates go up. Coincidentally, that's about the time social media really got going. And that's entirely all of it.

I agree. Yes, absolutely. Well, because they even point out, they're like, well, you know, there's a big gender difference in depression rates and the rise of depression rates is much higher among women and girls than it is amongst guys and You know girls, of course tend to use social media more at a younger age and that accounts for literally everything that they've been talking about So we no longer need like they like the Occam's razor just came out along and shaved off all the woke mind Virus shit that they've been doing to this point

Yeah, he literally the psychologist co-author literally is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the overprotection thing, it's there and it matters. But like, the real issue here is social media. And then he starts talking about basically the deep crushing consequences of the patriarchy for young girls. And then literally the editor is like, oh, God, too close to the point there. Move on to another great untruth. This one isn't working out.

But yeah, apparently boys were mostly playing video games or at least using social media less. And I was like, nice. Our emotional immaturity did protect us. That's pretty sweet. Patriarchy rules. Oh shit. So then we get great on truth number two.

Oh yeah. I'm now reminded that we are making a list. Yeah. They remembered that they were doing a bulleted list. Great on truth number two, always trust your feelings. Right? Which again, no one has ever told anyone that, right? People say, listen to your feelings, listen to your body, trust your feelings,

et cetera, but nobody's ever fucking said, always trust your feelings. Right. It's like we all also promote skepticism and critical thinking. But again, you can only practice these things if you're doing the work to understand your feelings. The answer to this is not I feel something. I will pretend I do not. Right! Yes! Based on that. No, the idea is I feel something. What does that mean?

Why do I feel this thing? Have one more thought. Yeah. Yeah, well Greg comes out and he's like, well, you know, my feelings told me to commit suicide. Should I have listened to those feelings? And I'm like, who are you arguing with? suicide, should I have listened to those feelings? And I'm like, who are you arguing with? That was a cognitive distortion, just like everything that we disagree with. But other things we agree with are definitely not cognitive distortions. Exactly. Exactly. That's how you know which is which. CBT, man. Read about it. And then John appeals to Buddhism, right?

He's like, as Buddhism teaches us, I'm like, oh, I bet you nail this. He goes, it's not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. So again, like you said, Karen, this is just this more like telling bullied and marginalized people to walk it off bullshit. Oh yeah, for sure. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Yep. Right.

They were mad that the University of Michigan's had something like, you can't feel bias without feelings and it's impossible for that to be false. It's a totality. It's like, of course, yes, you get a feeling and then you think about it and then you could, you know, decide things about it. Like for example, sometimes there's a bias in there that you noticed with your feelings. Yeah. For fuck's sake. Yeah. And he calls this, by the way, again, direct quote, the most widespread piece of

wisdom around the world. So I'm like, how would you determine that? Well, sorry. You read all the wisdom books. Yes. Of course. Duh. Yeah, I'm wisdom books. Yes, of course. Duh. Yeah, I'm so sorry. He explained that earlier. So then Professor Anthony comes back.

He's the friend. He's Greg's buddy who's not white. Comes up to tell about his early days in college where kids seemed more grown up. And clearly what's happening here is like, man has gotten older and rather than recognize that he's like, wow, he's the students. They just keep getting younger and younger. No, man. It's just the comparison of your new wisdom.

Right? Yes, exactly. It's just like everybody seems. Yeah, man, to me, like 23 year old seem like babies when I talk to them. Like I'm like, yeah, because we're all right. Exactly. So fucking 50. But when I was 28, they didn't seem that much younger than me. Right. They weren't fucking idiot. Made a whole goddamn movie about that.

But apparently he was like the an advisor for Anna and he gave her some tough love and that's just what she needed Which again, it's not just what she got right? So it's so she's determined to that. It was what she needed Afterwards because it's what she had Wait, which one was Anna? Oh Anna was the one who I didn't I didn't like that They introduced so late because it was like they're taking advantage of her Yes that that one right and and this was the guy that she went to in college and said, hey, you know, I'm on the verge of crying at every moment. And he said, walk it off. And she's like, oh, OK, I guess I'll walk it off.

He actually makes a point that I really dislike here. He said this is his quote. He says, you train the kid for the road, not the road for the kid. And this mentality actually really flies in the face of the argument that Lucy makes earlier in the movie where she's like, I'm autistic. I really struggle to pick up on these kinds of nuances. And it's really hard if everybody expects me to bend to these social norms, like cut me some slack and try and understand where I'm coming from too. Like he's talking about

the ABA approach, right? The Applied Behavioral Analysis approach, which is increasingly like issued by medical and psychological profession, professional organizations. Like we don't like this idea of, okay, here's a kid with autism. Let's just teach them how to dial down the autism a little bit, you know, so that people will like not be as like weirded out by like that is not appropriate. It's a really disaffirming way to work with these different identities. And so this guy who is who is he supposed to be? Is he also a psychologist? He's an associate professor. So he was at Providence College where she went. I don't know. But I think he was just her, like, advisor, like faculty advisor. Oh, so yeah, I think he's like an education guy or something.

Sure. Yeah, he's literally saying, oh, well, you train the kid for the road, not the road for the kid. Like, we got to just, we got to just whip them into shape so they can be little cogs in the machine. Well, yeah, and I think it's worth dwelling on that analogy for just a second, because in this instance, like, you know, because the analogy is like, well, you know, the road is unchanging, right? But the road in this instance is society, right? And what we're trying, like the attempt to change the road is all this shit that you're fighting against this DEI and all of that shit,

like this sensitivity training and whatnot. That is an effort to change like the road is made of other people. So what you're saying is, you know, we don't change this large group of people, we change this small group of people, which is disgusting when you when you kind of drill down to the heart of the analogy. Hey, can we make just like a few better roads? A lot of these are there you go dirt rub some dirt in it from the dirt road. I don't know. No, we're not changing it. Clearly.

Yeah. Oh, and then fucking Ariane is still on about his stupid goddamn email. Oh God. He says, you know, in my email, I explained that diversity training doesn't work and has been shown to just make situations more toxic. Now I didn't look into his evidence or whatever, but like, yes, man, when you tell privileged

assholes about their privilege, they get all toxic. Yeah. Yes. That's true no matter how you tell them about it. He points out that Harvard Business School agrees with him in the email. And I was like, okay, that's not the best, best angle there. You got George W. Bush, fucking Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Skilling of Enron. Maybe you've heard of that amazing businessman. Jeffrey Skilling.

Yeah. So we get more of his, he finally finishes writing his email and then this is where we get his like, but can he send it? Oh God, maybe we won't know until we come back again to him hovering over the send button. I want that song with a question mark. So then, okay. So we checked back in with Saeed so he could tell us about his unwoke buddy, Abdul. Oh, Fortuna.

So, uh, like he, he says, I met this guy Abdul, and he's like, you're a Muslim, huh? So your prophet rapes 10-year-olds? Oh. Wait, I was so confused here. I thought he said your professor. Oh. That makes a difference. It's like, I need context on this raping professor.

No. Okay, I was really confused here, and that clarified a lot. I need context on this raping professor. Okay, I was really confused here and that clarified a lot. Okay, yeah, yeah. Glad I could help with that one. Okay. And then I'm going to need some clarification on the Mills series when we get there too. Yeah, right. So this is like that's how he introduces the race.

So he's like, you know, I met this guy and he says my prophet raped 10 year olds, which is, that's in the book. You know, he did. He's like, but I was like, finally a person I can debate, you know, I can engage in an honest discussion with and talk him out of his racist and bigoted beliefs about my religion. Right. And they're basically like, let's argue about this specific instance that was written in this holy book that in no way affects you or me.

Like we don't have a dog in this fight. We can talk about this completely intellectually because we are not women. We have never experienced these things. Like, ah, this is what makes me crazy. It's like that whole thing where people kind of assume a moral high ground if they're like, I'm not getting worked up.

Why are you getting so worked up when I talk about y'all rapists? And it's like, bro, really? Yeah. You are not just a better skeptic. Kara, you are screaming right now. You are hysterical. I would call it shrill.

I fucking hate you guys. I didn't think in Eli's absence, I could feel such overwhelming hatred, but it's you. You managed to pull it out. But yeah, but nobody springsboard. He's bring words this discussion to the mills series, which is apparently a lecture series for assholes like an anti woke lecture series named for John Stuart Mill that's all about how free speech is great and we need more of it. Now, of course, they never engage with the real issue people take with free speech, right, which is that we don't have that. Right. So like, I feel like most people, like there

might be some people out there that say we shouldn't have free speech, but I think most people who are arguing against free speech are pointing out that we've actually never had free speech and that free speech is an illusion that's created by a privileged class. And since they all have free fucking speech, they seem to look, they look around, they're like, no, no, no, obviously, we're allowed to say whatever the fuck we want.

So everyone must have free speech, right? But they're not gonna acknowledge that. They're going to pretend that people are just against the idea of talking. Yeah, my reality is probably like yours because I have never struggled. So why can't you just get over it? Right. You're clearly able to just do things without struggling. Also if somebody screams debate me at you and you say no, that's also free speech. You're no. Yes, exactly. So then we get to our final great untruth, right?

Great untruth number three, us versus them. Yeah, we all are struggling with this. So the third great untruth is to challenge in-group, out-group dynamics. Yes. Yes, there I swear to you guys and listening at home that their anti DEI rant ends with a call for inclusivity. It's fucking nuts. They're doing well, what they're doing, they're doing the same stupid shit. And Carrie, you already called this out,

but they're doing the same shit that my mom does where they're like, no, I just don't see race. Uh huh. Oh yeah. So that's all you need. And I'm like, yeah, you tell me your fucking understanding of racism peaked in the nineties without telling me that your understanding of racism peaked in the nineties. Got it.

Yeah. Lucy jumps in here to help make that point and says, yeah, so people with less privilege at Stanford University had so much privilege. It was crazy. The underprivileged are so overprivileged, especially in a place like Stanford. Ariane is like all offended that that somebody was very sensitive about asking him about cows in the road in India. Yeah. Like why?

Why? This is such the theme of this film. Why are you offended by somebody trying not to offend you? Right. Are you triggered by trigger warnings, bud? He sure is. He goes, well, but Arianne explains, he's like, well, you know, the thing is,

is that people being so nervous around me made it really hard to have friends of different races. And I'm like, are you sure, are you sure that you're just not an asshole? Yeah, why do you think people are nervous around you, Arianne? Why, you know, because, hey, Lucy assured me that we all have a friend, like an equal number of friends from each race. You could have been somebody's fucking Indian friend.

You're just an asshole that nobody likes. Oh, right. It's because you yourself are racist. Right. Oh, right. There's the problem. Yeah. You're a dick.

That's why no one wants to hang out with you. And then he finally caps off this stupid goddamn fucking email story, right? He finally hit send. My god, nobody cares about your email. Like everybody, we all wrote in our notes, just shut up about your fucking email, man. I found his tone to be shrill. So he says, you know, I sent out my email and well, nobody gave a shit. There was just one response. But then I put it on Twitter and man, them racists on Twitter fucking loved it.

Right? Yeah. He literally, he argues here that the people who supported him only supported him in private and the people who criticized him criticized him publicly. And his takeaway from that is that there are no safe spaces anymore. I don't know. My takeaway from that is that everybody who supported him privately kind of knew that it was fucked up. And they were like, I don't want to put my name in public saying I support this guy. Well, and also like I have a sneaking suspicion that there were also some people that disagreed

with you privately. Probably. Probably. So, but yeah, like and he's like, yeah, there was a people who agreed publicly. I'm sure it was all of them. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But the people who were basically like, yeah, that racism, I feel that my friend, they were

probably more likely to DM that. Yes, absolutely. But it also has a very like, you know, I know you can see a lot of negative responses, but there was a lot of positive stuff. You don't know it. It's from Canada, but it's there was a lot of. Yeah, my, my girlfriend's totally real. Yeah, he definitely is like, there were all these snowflakes that made it way harder for me to be a snowflake. Yes. I just couldn't.

Right. There's literally nothing more fragile than the ego of a bigot. Absolutely. And that is really what he demonstrated here. All this debate and discourse was making it so I couldn't have my debate and his. Yep. Or his fuck. Yeah.

Yep. And then John comes in and he's like, you know, sometimes, like, you know, somebody and his. Yeah. Or his. Fuck. Yeah. Yep. And then John comes in and he's like, you know, sometimes like, you know, somebody will say, like, here's what I believe. And somebody will say, well, that's racist. And then everybody jumps on them for being racist. And I'm like, well, that that only happens if the thing that you believe is racist, though. Yeah.

It's like when dudes are like, I don't even know how to talk to a woman after me too. And I'm like, well, that's problematic. What are you afraid to say? even know how to talk to a woman after me too." And I'm like, well, that's problematic. What are you afraid to say? Dude, your fucking conversational flow chart was really fucked up. Yeah. I mean, this goes back to that whole thing we were talking about earlier, where like, these people do not understand what cancel culture actually is. They're always like, oh, fucking cancel culture. It's coming to get us because of the woke mind virus. And it's like, pushing back is a form of challenging idea.

The whole thesis that you're calling for people to do. Like you're literally claiming that college campuses, there's not enough debate going on. There's not enough people people giving dissenting views. And then the minute somebody has a dissenting view, you're like, it hurts my feelings. Don't cancel me. Right. Right.

Exactly. What you want is infinite debate with no consequence. That's not under the free speech umbrella anywhere. No. If you say fucked up stuff and then people no longer want to hang out with you, that is free speech. Yep. Exactly. And then fucking John says that I just have to point this out because he's like, well, you know, people challenging our beliefs and not believing as we do that

strengthens us and that actually makes our brain better. So, and again, I swear this is a fucking quote, social media and cancel culture is like a way of shooting yourself in the brain. What? Anyway, the other side is catastrophizing. Anyway, here's the rest of my nuanced book. You shot yourself in the brainface, continuing my nuance.

So then we cut back to Aryan. Now he's feeling sorry for himself about sending out the asshole email because clearly what happens is he sent out this email and a bunch of people on campus hated him for the rest of his fucking time there. Right. Yeah. Again. Like you say, consequences. Right. I love what you wrote. Y'all don't know how hard it is to be accused of bigotry. That's literally what he says. But he did the thing. Right. He's like, I was accused of being

you were accused of sending the fucking email that you just spent an hour and a half bragging about. Yeah, he goes, being accused of racism when you know deep down you're not racist is not easy. And it's like, bro, I think you got to do some introspection. If you are so sure deep down that you're not racist, you may not be looking in the mirror. Well, I think that actually accidentally hits on the entire problem with their fucking argument, right? Because there's no goddamn such thing as deep down

not being a racist. Racism is as racism does, right? If you do a racist fucking thing, you're a racist. It doesn't matter how you feel deep in your fucking heart. It matters what you do. I am a sincerely held color blind. Yeah. But I think he literally believes that because he's brown he can't be racist. Exactly. Right. Yeah.

They're trying to do that as the point. Like as an immigrant I was accused of racism. Come on. But like a non-white person can be racist. Non-white people are racist all the time Exactly what your movie is trying to argue in a bunch of this stuff. Yes, right and also hey, you know You you don't have to be racist to be sexist or homophobic or transphobic or ableist or all the other different fucking things that we're talking About here, but that's complicated. It requires words like intersection

Way over my head Line up some rails. So but then Greg cuts in to remind us that MLK is on their side. Like he was telling, this is where they show the Martin Luther King talking about how important free speech is. And they're like, see? Like us. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure that Martin Luther King Jr. would be very happy with his place in your.

Oh, I know. I was like, if man. OK, so do you know when this came out? No, because it feels very pre twenty, twenty four, twenty five. I think it was twenty twenty two. OK, yeah, it definitely contextually ignores what's happening during like this dystopian Trump administration. Sure does. Yeah.

It just fully came out before that. Or it was just like, whoopsie doodles. We can't update it. It's too late. But I would love to see a conversation between this guy and either MLK or John Lewis. Right. I would have loved to see them school him so hard. I wanted the time machine side tackle for sure from John Lewis.

They tried to use John Lewis for a second. I was not happy. Yeah, infuriating. Yeah, but they talk about all of the terrible things that would happen if we didn't have free speech. And then we get our final title card. It says At Peace. And this is the time this

is where they're going to tag in Nelson Mandela. Oh God. Hey guys Nelson Mandela was forgiving and he went through way more shit than your little fucking mosquito microaggressions right nobody did people didn't just tell him that he was beautiful for his age and he forgave him why can't you be more like Nelson Mandela is it because you don't like black people is Is it because you're a bigot? Okay. Nelson Mandela died in the eighties. Debate me, Jonathan Haidt.

Hahaha. Idiot. They have a whole effect for it and everything. Duh. Yeah. So. Read a multiverse. I just hate, I just hate the way they, they try to put a bow on this whole movie.

They're basically like, Mandela is the kind of martyr we should all strive to be. And literally then, what's her name, Kimmy? She's like, why was I so happy when I was 17 or 16? And then I went to college in America and everything got worse. It's because of the woke mind virus. And I'm like, no, honey, it's because that's the age when we start to think about the world. Yes.

That's the age where we start to become politically astute and read global news and think outside of ourselves. It's our frontal lobes are getting to the point where they're developed more and more. And once we realize how fucked up the world actually is, it's fucking depressing. Right. And you can never go back to that, you know, blissful ignorance that you had at 16. Yeah, sorry about that. This movie is like, no, but wait, you can.

Yeah, right, no, if you just ignore it. Yeah. This is the extent, I'm not making this shit up. This is the extent to which she ignores it. She's like, I went back over and started thinking about all of those different things that I interpreted as racist. And I'm like, well, maybe that person wasn't made racist. Maybe it was just that person had indigestion.

She literally said that she I blame. That's a new one for me. I will admit, I've never heard the it's not racism. It's indigestion argument. The guy who kept touching my hair with fascination probably had a tummy ache. And this is what I love because this is when it also becomes a god-awful movie because she talks about how she's really Christian and like her experiences in church have taught her that she is responsible for her own experience of oppression. So like all she has to do is just forgive her oppressors and she'll be free.

Yeah, she says I'm not allowed. Just give grace to the racist. Just like Nelson Mandela would have forgiven Ben Shapiro. Right. Racism is solved. Right. She says, again, I quote, she says, I'm not allowed to be offended as a Christian. Lady, if the Christian was a verb, it would mean to be unreasonably offended. Jesus. So, then we check in on Lucy. Lucy gave up on social justice and she's much happier now. Yeah, she switched from justice to kindness.

She did, yeah. She was like, justice, what really is that? You guys can just keep debating that. I'm a focus on kindness. Sounds like a cognitive distortion. Sounds to me like she was trusting her feelings too. So yeah, I want to do that. Fortune telling.

And it's like, how does this work in practice? So now when she steps over somebody who's unhoused on the street, she gives them a little thumbs up. Is that like what? And a wink. Yeah, like I love how this entire documentary is from the perspective of people on the privileged end of activism. Right. No, because like Lucy's rocking around in a fucking mansion as they're interviewing. Yeah, they're all like when I was an activist, I was sad all the time because I saw all of this like sadness in the world. But now that I'm not an activist, my life is great. And

I'm like, what about the people who are victimized by the system? What about the people your activism is for? She's just a salt of the earth, white kid who went to Stanford. Yeah, that's right. No, but she says, but she explains here, she's like, look, you don't have to be woke to care about the poor, the widow or the orphan. And I'm like, what about the black person and the gay person? She says, the poor, the widow and the orphan. But yeah, she's like, you know, back when I was a social advocate, justice advocate,

I was miserable. Now I'm happy. I'm like, yeah, that was my argument against sobriety too. Lucy worked really well for me. Oh, and then and then Kimmy actually makes literally that argument. She's like, if I was doing, if I was still a social justice activist, I would probably be an alcoholic. A homeless alcoholic.

I'm like, yeah, that happens to a lot of the Wokeys. I'm allowed to be on Woke. That's my health. I also, this is so fucking funny. The interviewer said, because we go back to the knives analogy, her stabbing herself with the little knives as the microaggression. The interviewer said, because we go back to the knives analogy, her stabbing herself with the little knives as the microaggression. The interviewer says, how does it feel to take the knives out? And she gives this like, oh, it feels so good. And I'm like, what a terrible use of the analogy,

right? Because taking knives out, A, doesn't make the wound feel better and B, makes you die faster. Yeah. Just to leave in those knives of wokeness. You want her or you bleed out. Exactly. You're welcome for the knives of wokeness. And she actually does bleed out here and it makes me really angry. Like, and I, okay, I know I'm a psychologist

and I should be better than this, but she starts crying. She starts crying really hard about how hard it was back when she was stabbing herself with all the knives and how she feels so much better now. And I'm like, I don't feel sorry for you. Yeah. I don't like this.

Right. Stop trying to manipulate me into empathizing with you. You're being a cunt. Well, and also consider the fact that we're talking, this is an entire movie about how, oh, you know, it was a really tough time for me because I was worried about problems that didn't really exist. And now I've, I'm scared of the coddling of the American mind. It was really hard for me when I was aware of like disease and pestilence and poverty and systemic oppression.

But now that I pretend that those things don't exist, my life is way easier. Yeah, now that you're coddled. It's such a bizarre fucking universe of a goddamn movie. Also, they have a breakfast club at the close at the end. And I only point that out because Ariane has a fucking podcast. Of course he does. And all these kids, literally all these kids went to college and got great jobs. And then they ask, like, which one was it?

Said, what's your advice to somebody saying that they might want to go to college? And he's like, don't do it. You'll get infected by the woke mind virus. I'm like, that's fucking rich. You'll get infected by the woke mind virus. I'm like, that's fucking rich. Yeah. It worked for you, my friend. Wolf. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And again, like you said, the selection bias here is fucking insane. Mm hmm. So all right. Well, that's the end of the movie. And thank goodness for that. But Kara, thank you so much for hanging out with us again. You are not welcome. And a quick reminder that if you want to hear what Kara sounds like, which she's not being

tortured, be sure to check out Talk Nerdy, which you will find linked in the show notes. And while that's going to do it for our review of the coddling of the American mind, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to fall back into this pit next week. So Heath, tell us what's on deck. We're going to be exploring the idea of vehicular manslaughter absolution with magic of possibly Christ. We'll be watching, acquitted by faith.

Sounds fucking awful. I don't know why I said it with an excited tone. It's going to be terrible. Yeah, that sounds really fucking bad. That just sounds like boring and awful, but that's kind of our bread and butter. So with that to look forward to, we're going to bring up some 506 to a merciful close once again, a huge thanks to Kara for all her help this week and perhaps even huger thanks to all the Patreon donors that helped make this show go.

If you'd like to count yourself among their ranks, hey, it's matron. This is the time to do it. And you can make a per episode donation at Patreon dot com slash got off when thereby earn early access to an extended ad free version of every episode. You know, so help the time by leaving a five star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms. If you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows, the Scathing Atheist, Citation A, D&D, Minus and The Scepticrad

available wherever podcasts live. If you have questions, comments or cinematic suggestions, you can get them on God of the Movies and Gmail. Tim Robertson takes care of our social media. Our theme song is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick, the movie Drafts on Mars. All the other movies was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used for permission.

Thanks again for giving us a check of your life this week. For Heath Enright, Neelay Bosnik, I'm Nollicious Promiser to work harder. Earn another check next week. Until then, we'll leave you with a Breakfast Club close. The right wing of American politics continued protecting free speech on campus. Oh, did they? It's going great. The kids in this documentary all voted for Jill Stein or Donald Trump and their measles are thriving.

Gen Z eventually did rub some dirt in. It feels so coddled, you guys. Okay. Well, we're not coddled. We had to walk uphill both ways to get to school and learn to write cursive. Oh, you're right. I'm not Gen Z. No, exactly. I know how to drive a stick shift.

I don't. Oh, shit. First car. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and the Thunderstorm LLC copyright 2025, all rights reserved.