Radiolab - You and Me and Mr. Self-Esteem

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Most of us spend some part of our lives feeling bad about ourselves and wanting to feel better. But this preoccupation is a surprisingly new one in the history of the world, and can largely be traced back to one man: a rumpled, convertible-driving California state representative named John Vasconcellos who helped spark a movement that took over schools, board rooms, and social-service offices across America in the 1990s. This week, we look at the rise and fall of the self-esteem movement and ask: is it possible to raise your self-esteem? And is trying to do so even a good idea?Special thanks to big thank you to the University of California, Santa Barbara Library for use of audio material from their Humanistic Psychology Archives and to their staff for helping located so many audio recordings. EPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Heather Radke and Matt Kielty Produced by - Matt KietlyOriginal music and sound design by - Jeremy S. Bloom and Matt KieltyFlute performance and compositions by -  Ben BatchelderVoiceover work by - Dann Fink and David GebelMixing help by - Jeremy S. BloomFact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini and Angely Mercadoand Edited by  - Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Articles - UCSB Humanistic Psychology Archive (https://zpr.io/HfVjUmvcVevE)Books - Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us (https://zpr.io/eGRyqz9zNQHu) by Will Storr. Counterpoint, 2018.A Liberating Vision (https://zpr.io/tJn7BR5m84fv) by Vasconcellos, John. Impact Publishers, Inc., 1979The Therapeutic State (https://zpr.io/tJn7BR5m84fv) by Nolan, James, Jr. NYU Press, 1998Sing up for our newsletter. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From.

W. N. Y. C. See? Yeah. Hello? Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. We hear you. We're just ignoring you. Okay. That's fine. You were not. I was waiting until it was recording.

Hey, I'm lots of Nassar. This is Radio Lab. And today... Do you know what this is about? at all, not different? Only vaguely. Only two words. A story from a pair of friends. Producer Matt Kilty and contributing editor, Heather Radke.

You want to say them? Self-esteem? Yeah. Or maybe this is actually really, in fact, a story about Heather's need for constant validation and praise. Dang, man. It's coming in hot. What is the most sort of, like, honest explanation of how this came about?

You were feeling bad. I think, okay, the most honest answer is, sometimes probably like more than I like to an embarrassing degree, I feel bad about myself. And I am a creative person in a profession where there's lots of ways that you can, if you're so inclined, you can find to feel bad about yourselves. There's always a list you're not on, always a sales number you didn't reach, always a pitch that didn't get accepted. Right. And Matt is you're acting like you're an alien from another, planet or something. Yeah, totally, I know.

A few days ago, Heather asked me if I was proud that she jumped in Lake Michigan when it was cold. And he was like, nope, not proud, not interested. It was jumping into a lake. Wait, Matt, but you don't, do you feel immune to all of these problems? I maybe like to kind of sit in my self-loathing a little bit more. I've been a party to that in the past one time or another. Yeah, I've witnessed that. I think it's like the seeking out of a sort of affirmation and compliment feels

like a means to maybe feeling good, and I don't necessarily believe in the kind of project of the sort of goal of trying to feel good. But I mean, I don't think it's like that weird that I want to feel better about myself. No. Like, I think the question of like, how might I feel better about myself is pretty normal, like kind of about as normal as it could be. It's like their whole industry is based on this question. Yeah, it's like everywhere. Like you see it everywhere. Like, It's on reality TV. It's on Instagram. You know, it's like everything about Instagram is like how Instagram is giving us low self-esteem.

But like what are, why are, what is this just Matt Heather therapy hour? What's there a story here? It's a little bit of that throughout. No, no, no, no. We do. Okay. No, we have a story that Heather and I spent a long time working on years, years working on. Wow.

But it's about, it's about the fact that this idea, this thing that Heather's talking about, this pursuit of feeling good. about yourself how sort of weirdly it's not that old of an idea. Yeah, it's not that old. It's kind of all based on a lie. Hmm. Okay. And how so much of this you can kind of really trace back to this one guy. How do you say his last name? I think, I think it's Vasconcello's.

That's how I've always said it. Vasconcellos. I mean, I think. John Vasconcellos or maybe Vasconcellos. You call him Vasco in the book, right? Yeah. Everyone calls them Vasco. I just feel like I...

Interesting. This is just a weird thing. Robert Pattinson, the Hollywood actor, bought the film rights. Did I tell you about this? No. I don't tell people this. Yeah, he bought the film rights

because he wanted to make the film of Vasco. And I spent, I had a three-hour meeting with him about it. And he was like, who do you think you should play Vasco? And I said, I think it should be the guy, Magnum PI.

And it was like... Tom Selling? What? Tom Selling? Yeah. It was like I said the wrong thing. I thought they'd be good. I can see it.

I can actually... It's the mustache. It's the mustache. And the big, like, bear-like thing. Okay. So, John actually died back in 2014. And so we ended up talking to the author Will's store. So Will wrote a book about the self, like how we think of ourselves, called Selfie.

Selfie. All right. Like it. Which has a whole chapter on John. And then we also spoke to... Yeah, well, I've got all kinds of curiosities and questions. Mitch Saunders. One of John's closest friends.

But I think those will emerge as we get going, yeah. And before we get started. I guess I just want to say, in reporting the story, I've always kind of thought of John as like an Icarus figure. He's a kind of modern-day Icarus where he wanted so much to feel good. He wanted everyone in the whole world to feel good. But he did fly maybe a little too close to the sun. So what drew you to John initially? What I thought was so interesting about John in his early life was that he was born into a very strict Catholic family.

Oh, yeah. A big, big influence was the Catholicism that he grew up in. So, if we back up a little bit, John was born in 1932. In San Jose, the oldest of three kids. His father was superintendent of schools in the East Bay. His mom mostly stayed at home. She could be pretty stern. She'd give my wife a hard time about the meal we had prepared, you know. And John, as a kid, he was clearly very bright, never really got in trouble.

And was also a very strict Catholic. A good Catholic boy. And the kind of good Catholic. That kind of fetishized self-loathing. Because this was a sort of Catholicism that was heavy on. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man. Original sin. And death through sin.

The idea that were all born sinners. And in this way, death came to all people because all sin. He was raised. Behold. Never to think well of himself. I was brought forth in iniquity. To never think about me, the eye. And in sin did my mother conceive me.

To not show pride, did not show anger. That you are a horrid. person if you touch yourself, if you engage with anybody else in any kind of sex whatsoever outside of marriage. It was this upbringing of being told so many times in so many ways that you're less than, not good enough, fundamentally flawed. He used to tell a story who knows whether it's true because it's such a great story where he ran for class president in the eighth grade and he lost by one vote. And do you know whose vote it was? His own vote. At one vote was his. He voted for the other person.

He was so self-hating that he could bring himself to a, to vote for himself. God, the poor guy. But he believed in himself enough to run, but not enough to. What a puzzle there. Yeah, he's a tangled web. When I was looking through his personal archives, I found a letter from an early girlfriend that actually said to him, the thing I love most about you, John, is your absolute humility. But, you know, this is one of the things that animated him was his own lack of confidence in himself.

He would later become class president. to this fancy private school in the Bay. He was valedictorian. He got into Yale and Harvard. But he chose to stay in California. Santa Clara University, went on to Santa Clara Law, was valedictorian everywhere he went. Graduates top of his law class becomes this quite successful young man working this law firm in the bay. Tall, broad-shouldered, clean cut.

Black suit, black tie, neat hair. And in 1962, he needs no introduction to any California. He decides to join the re-election campaign of... Governor, Democratic Governor. Pat Brown. And he would say this later in an interview. review that it was like this moment on this campaign where politics became, quote, etched in his heart. And so in 1966, at the age of 34, he runs for his seat in the California State House.

On November 8th, 1966, he wins. And then... Well, he has this spectacular nervous breakdown. He completely collapses. The way he describes it is as I found myself and my identity in my life coming utterly apart. Was there something that precipitated? did this or what, like, what, why? Well, at the time, no one knew what precipitated it. Like, he never talked publicly about the details of what happened. Well, but the way that Mitch would describe it to us was, it was kind of as if John had felt like he'd been handed a script his whole life, like a script from his family, from his church,

from society of like, this is how you're supposed to dress, this is how you're supposed to behave. And he was suddenly kind of coming up against the idea that maybe he didn't want to live by that script. And it left him feeling like he had no place to go. And after that, John realizes he says in his book that he has to find some help. And so he finds this Catholic priest who's also a therapist who starts to ask him questions like... Tell me how you see the world, John. You know, what matters to you?

When that happened, how did you experience that? What's the feeling for you? I'll bet you that was the first time he'd ever had that kind of encounter. The first time someone's relating to him. with genuine inquiry about who he really is. It was these therapy sessions with this Catholic priest that would kind of crack John open and send him down a new path

that would eventually lead him to this place called Esselin. The Isselin Institute. I feel like this is a famous... It is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you're a fan of Mad Men, that's where Donald Draper ends up at the end of Mad Men. Oh, that's where he is.

Aha. That's where the future was born, really, Esselin. So the Esselin Institute is this place in Big Sur in California. With unbelievable natural beauty. Mitch, like John, spent a lot of time there. And if you can just imagine, like, this big mid-century house on a cliff overlooking the ocean, that's Hesselin. And there are these amazing hot mineral baths right on the edge of these cliffs.

There were these baths so you had to get in naked. John said the first time he discovered that we're supposed to go into the tubs with no clothes on. He actually turned around and left. He just has so much sort of shame around his body, discomfort around it. But Mitch says like this was the point of this place, of Esseland. It was a place where you could go to climb out of what I think John and certainly I believe was a dark pit of misguided beliefs.

You know, there's something you're fundamentally flawed at birth. There's something wrong. with you. The promise of Esselen is that it was a place to help you finally kind of realize your true self. And that in doing so, you could find liberation, freedom, maybe even deep happiness. What a promise. Yeah. When you say it like that, I don't know if I want to meet my true self. Whenever people say that, the find my true self thing, there's a way that it's just sort of confounding because it's like, well, what are you talking about? Like my... How am I not myself?

What is this self that's not? When I was taking out the garbage, was I not my true self? Yeah. Well, don't worry. We got to the bottom of it. Indeed, we did. So, yeah. So we ended up talking to this guy, Michael.

Michael Pettit, professor at York University in Toronto. Where he studies the history of psychology. And Michael told us that what was going on at Eslin in the 60s is that it was sort of representative of this huge shift that was happening in psychology. Because up until this point, a lot of work. what psychology was, came from... Sigmund Freud. Freud.

And Freud, similar to the Catholics, really. Females had a very pessimistic view of human nature. Which is the... Subterranean horrors of the subconscious. We are primal, inherited, ugly... Full of horrible dark secrets. Testoring impulses and compulsions. That we are covering out from ourselves.

And that even if you go and seek treatment, you seek help through therapy... You will still be left with everyday unhappiness. What he called ordinary unhappiness. Oh, I like that. I like Freud. Yeah, of course you do. Oh, shut up, Heather. But, okay, so basically, Freud is like, yeah, we're all suffering here.

This is what we're doing together. Yeah, and the best we could hope for is contentment, maybe. But a little bit after Freud and a little bit before Esselin. This is around like the 40s and the 50s. There come these new psychologists who think we can be happy. Who think we can be free from our suffering. And one of those psychologists was this guy, basically the anti-freude. Now, Dr. Rogers, something of yourself.

Carl Rogers. I'm Carl Rogers. He's the second most influential psychotherapist ever after Sigmund Freud. And Rogers believe that, sure. Of course, all of us a little bit crazy, including me. People are messy, they're impulsive, but fundamentally... People are good, and the reason that people suffer, the reason that they feel pain and anxiety...

I found the same yearning theme emerging time after time after time... ...is because... A person would be saying, I'm not really... really me. People aren't being themselves. Your true, authentic self. Instead, people were suffering because they were trying to be... Here's a rather typical statement. Who they thought they were supposed to be. From a young woman. She says, I think that I began to lose me when I was in high school. There's the young woman who's always trying to please everybody. Trying to make people feel at ease around me or to make things go along smoothly. Or the young man... Why am I afraid of her?

who tries to never disappoint his mom. This is silly. I know it, but I can't seem to fight it. Or the guy... I think that I've always loved people. Who always buries his emotions. But I've never dared put it into words. Rogers said, when he got down to it,

patient after patient would tell him... I feel like I've been just playing a sort of false role. And that is what causes our suffering. This picture you present to the outside world. Our pain. You can see how this was John. Yeah. Suit and tie, Normie haircut, kind of play.

playing the role of the good Catholic boy. And so for people like John, Rogers had developed this way out. To leave behind this false rule. This type of therapy. And get closer to being one's real self. That would become this huge part of Esselen. And that was the encounter group. So could you just walk me through, like, what was an encounter group at Esselen?

Yeah, so encounter groups, it would be kind of this break from the everyday. You would go to Esselen. You would be with a group of strangers. Maybe five people. maybe 15 people. Who don't know you. Who have no expectations of you so that you can maybe be...

As vulnerable as one can be. The primary ideas in an encounter group are the things I mentioned this morning. So John went to a bunch of these. I think he went to eight encounter groups at Essendon. And how it worked was... The open and honest and to talk about your feelings. This group of strangers would come together.

For hours and hours, sometimes days and days and days on end, there would be a group leader. therapist or kind of a charismatic leader to guide everybody. And what you're hearing now is a documentary that was filmed in 1972. It was a week-long encounter group at Esselin. And how it starts is the group leader

lays out these kind of ground rules. It's usually just a way of not taking responsibility. I try to say I won't do it rather than I can. Also, don't ask questions. Instead, be direct, be honest. And one other thing is that the most important thing you can do here, I think, is the thing you're most afraid of. That's the thing.

that will help you to grow most. And so these 10 strangers are sitting in a room at Esselin in a circle on this carpeted floor and they just sit there in silence, glancing at each other. If we're not supposed to ask questions, I'm not sure what to say. And then things shift.

I get this as hard as it can and keep going and scream at each other as you do it. And it is wild. Like the group leader will get some of these. people to punch pillows. To let out these primal screams. Or do you see conflict, they'll be like, hey, how about the two of you wrestle each other? They'll also do these exercises to try to get these people. I think you're afraid to be real of feeling.

To tell each other. You're so cool. I get bored and talk to me. How they really feel about each other. Yeah, there's just no question. I'm fucked up. How they feel about themselves. I'm jealous of that.

As well, puts it, the whole point of all. of this was to create an atmosphere of radical authenticity. And actually what we need to do is sort of dig down deep into the core of who we are. And this is the whole idea behind Roger's philosophy. I hope you can appreciate the fact that if you can feel accepted. That I feel an acceptance of you as you are. For who you really are. Flaws and all. We're born absolutely right, perfect divine. Then you can find a way. And I pound on a pillow and I get it straightened up a little bit. And I found out that what I always thought was true is true.

I am good. To begin to love yourself. I'm not really sure that I want to be married to the man I'm married to. For example, in the dock, there's this woman probably in her late 20s, long, dark hair. I allow myself to bleed everything he tells me about me. He says you're too, you're too heavy. You need to lose weight. And I buy that as being so.

Who tells the group how she often feels fat, unattractive? I'm pretty. That's very hard for me to say. And the group leader... The risk of this reputation, would you take your clothes off? Yeah. Asked if she would stand in front of the group naked, and so she does. Do you look at your body and feel it for a moment?

Totally naked in front of these ten strangers. And tell us how you feel about it? Feels very soft. I like the curves in my body. I don't feel embarrassed about standing here, and I like that. And they have her look at herself in this mirror. Take a loaf. What do you see there?

What about the wrong you see there? And I like you. I love you. And what all was John learning about himself back then? Well, one of the things that first happened for him was he realized that there was all this deep-seated rage that he didn't like the way he was raised, that he felt it was, you know, that did him in, that he was dealt a bad deck of cards, and he was raging about it. And Mitch said that John told him one of the first times he went to an encounter group. The leader just sat there cross-legged for the longest. time didn't say anything, and apparently John's way of dealing with detention was to go over

and sort of attack him. Attack him? Whoa. They ended up in a wrestling match or whatever, and, you know, John felt fulfilled at the end of whatever that experience was. He began to realize that he was angry and that it was okay to feel angry. Mitch says that a lot of what John was going through just kind of came down to... Just being seen, being heard, being held as a... he was as he is.

And what happened is, John went from buttoned up, black suit, black tie, neat hair kind of guy, to someone entirely different. Or, as Carl Rogers would probably say, he recovered someone who he already was. Wild and free, like he grew his hair.

He had had his shirt, half unbuttoned with all his hair coming out of it. He was always rumpled. People used to say he looked like an unmade bed. He drove around in this like mustard colored convertible. With the top down, even when it was writing it had the top down. He could be brash, blustery, angry, but also very sweet. People in his office had these stacks of what we called vasco grams.

These little handwritten notes from John on like a newspaper article you read. I'm just thinking about you. Here's something you might find interesting. Literally hundreds of people would get these vasco grams. My God, I got mountains and mountains of him. He was big, he was expressive. Everything in his being was suddenly liberated. He felt free for the first time in his life.

And there are some crazy people who, when they discover something that has a lot of power and meaning and makes a real difference in one's life, their first and almost natural instinct is to find some way to share it. But before we get to that, we'll actually have to leave it here because Heather... I have to go to therapy. It's off the therapy where maybe she'll punch some pillows or... Have some kind of breakthrough, you know? Yeah, maybe I'll have some breakthrough. Yeah. I'm sure it's going to be life-changing. I've only been telling you to go for the last five years.

Okay, well, when we come back, I will still have not gone, and we'll pick back up with the story. Okay. Great. But then there are mysteries that are not to do with murder. Okay, I'm done. I'm done with this. Okay. But you're the one who was eating a cliff bar the whole time. We just had to talk about something. No, you don't. I can take bites in between this. I did it yesterday. Okay, both of you watched. Okay, Luthithith, Radio Lab, back with Heather and Matt.

Matt's in a spicy mood. Yeah. Where were we? We were. Blow my lid today. Whoa. Embracing my true self. You know what I actually hear you saying? Love me.

Love me. Okay. So we left off. John goes through this complete transformation through therapy, through Eslin, through reading books about psychology. And is he still an elected official? He is. He used to say I was the most therapist politician to ever live. He's probably right.

You know, he probably was the most therapist politician ever. And Mitch said, it was actually back in 1978 when he first encountered John. At a conference in Santa Barbara. He was the keynote speaker. This disheveled keynote speaker who got up to speak.

John Vaskinshellas. He was wearing a sport coat, shirt and tie, but obviously underneath the white shirt was some really funky T-shirt that had some strange design on it. Is this broadcasting? Okay.

You'll hear me? Okay, thank you. This, obviously. is John. First, I want to welcome you. I'm the legislator for this district and the California. I want to say welcome to California.

And second, I want to acknowledge the significance of our being here. And stuff that was coming out of his mouth. Hopefully, our being here is meant to be and we carry away with it some sense of meaning that serves to eliminate our lives and that of those around us. Really surprised me.

The most we can ever do really is tell each other who we are and let me tell you who I am. In his speeches, John He would talk about growing up Catholic. He was very steeped in the traditional, I'm a sinner Catholic tradition, and was raised or lowered, really more, lower than raised. He would talk about therapy. He would be the Esselen for encounter groups to forget my feelings as a man. About Esselin, about Carl Rogers.

Odyssey for my own self-discovery as a person. I'd never heard a politician talk that way. And eventually Mitch actually got to meet John. And his funky little condo in Santa Clara. And I don't remember exactly what we talked about. But towards the end of that conversation, I asked him, I said, would you be willing to be my mentor? I've just not had exposure to anybody as wonderfully strange as you.

He agreed, and that became the beginning of quite a partnership over, you know, that must have been 82, I guess, and, you know, from then to the time he died in 2014. And I guess what exactly was it about what he was saying that made you kind of like want him to be a mentor? It was his way of articulating the throughline from psychology and how we are formed as human beings, you know, through family, religious, and, you know, all the various influences that come into influence who we are and how that plays out in the world. And then the thing that really intrigued me was how he was applying that or extending his philosophy to the world of politics. because for him, everything began. All policy, if you really unpack it, is based on some really fundamental assumptions.

The politics we do is who we are, that my values and my vision, my sense of myself, informs what I do socially and relationally, institutionally and publicly. And that really is at the heart of the struggle in the nation and the state now, not just about money or privilege or power. It's about those, but it's about visions of human nature.

And John's message was this, the title of his talk at that time, was a liberating vision. Our visions of human nature inform our parenting, our politics, our pedagogy, our intimacy, our dying, and all the rest of it. If we think about human nature differently,

if we dare to imagine that old, cynical, traditional people are basically evil and ugly and dangerous. We people creatures aren't ruined by original sin. And need to be contained and repressed and ashamed and guilt written and locked away. Then we would approach policy, you know, really important social institutions

and how they're run very different. That's one view of human nature. For John, if we are to have a people-first culture, and if we are to ask people to grow, we need to orient all our policies, all our efforts. It must have at their very heart as its very foundation with the beginning view that humans are at the root, that positive, good. Hopeful, healthful, growthful, visit of human nature and potential.

Assume that within us is that spark of life and hope and health and wholeness that ought to be nurtured. not to be nurtured. He really embraced Carl Rogers' view of humans being like plants, that given the right conditions, they'll almost always orient to the sun, that humans will, you know, if they're not screwed up, will orient to what's positive for them and those around them. But the problem here is... He's espousing this liberating vision for everybody. Like, what does any of this actually mean in terms of public policy?

It's like Harry Ferry, pie in the sky kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. What is this used to anybody? He doesn't have anything that he can actually put all of the... that in that might actually affect policy until something shows up, can you guess what that might be,

Latif? Two little words. With a little hyphen. Self-esteem. There it is. Because it was in the 1980s when self-esteem emerges. This phrase, this idea,

self-esteem. A person's perception of their own worth. Starts becoming a part of the public consciousness. Absolutely. And I think I want to just kind of talk a little bit about where that phrase comes from. Yeah. Because it becomes so important.

Yeah, I do. I do question where that came from. Where did that phrase come from? So Michael Pettit, our history professor, explained that in psychology, self-esteem goes back to 1890 with a book called The Principles of Psychology. Which basically says that self-esteem is this thing, this self-worth that you have based on the things that you do. the things that you care about doing.

For example, a famous psychologist back then wrote, I don't think I'm the best boxer in the world. So if someone's a better boxer than me, eh, no biggie. But instead of boxing, let's say this other person... Is a better, more famous, higher-achieving psychologist, that does hurt my self-worth. That does hurt my self-image. And the way that Michael explained it was,

this was at a time in psychology where the self was not a unified thing, was just kind of like parts. You had different parts, different aspects, of a self, and then you had these different things where you might find worth or value in. It's like you almost stake your territory where your identity and value lie. And it's like, and other places, it's like you've ceded that territory. Like, it's okay, it's fine. But then in the 30s and the 40s, the very idea of the self changes.

Exactly. Psychologists come with this idea of a personality, which is your unified whole self. And so self-esteem becomes a more global. basic attribute of the person. It's no longer like how you feel about these individual things you're good at. Now it's just about how you feel about you. That one either had high self-esteem or low self-esteem. So for psychologists, it starts to become this really important measure of a person's

entire well-being, like their whole mental health. And one of the things that we found fascinating was that in the pivotal 1954 Brown v. Board segregation case, one of the crucial arguments made by the opponents of segregation, was... The dolls. It is a super famous study, yeah. On how black children prefer a white doll over a black doll. And this shows how they've internalized society's negative attitudes towards themselves.

The theory being that they'd sort of been given low self-esteem by society. So I think... And Michael says it's also right around here that you get Maslow. And his famous hierarchy... Hierarchy of needs. You got it. Although whether it's actually a hierarchy or not as a bit. of a controversy. I always see it as a pyramid. It's a pyramid. But Maslow himself never drew it as a pyramid.

That comes from a management textbook a couple of decades later that tried to popularize them. But anyway. So Maslow's whole thing is that you have all these different needs and they all need to be fulfilled in order to become the best version of yourself. Needs like food, water, sleep. Security, stability. Friendship, intimacy. And a positive self-esteem. A feeling of self-worth. So through the 70s, that positive, hopeful, healthful, growthful visit of human nature and potential. While John is giving these speeches, self-esteem is becoming a bigger part of psychology. And it was in the early 80s that these two things, self-esteem and John Vaskinsellos,

start to circle each other and become this much bigger thing. Because what was going on in the 80s was... Good evening. We're coming off the bloodiest year in the history of New York. This panic. The statistics this year are really grim. About rising... Violence and crime. Dramatic evidence tonight that crack use is spreading wider.

There was the crack epidemic. Look at a very serious matter. The incidents of teenage pregnancy. Teen pregnancy. The prisons are bulging. 90,000 Californians are in prison and a crime mate's still going up. And for John in California... We keep escalating the drug war.

The drug use goes up. These became the issues of the day. And what happened was... In the course of about a five-week period, some kind of things came together. John said one day he was reading an article. An article, it said, education. kids who drop out of school or don't make it of a lack of self-esteem.

That self-esteem was connected to how well kids do in school. Then I read folks who get addicted to drugs probably are lacking enough sense of self and reach for something to get high on or get the pain dulled on or get down on. Self-esteem might be a way to prevent drug abuse. That maybe self-esteem was a key component in why people were using drugs. Then a guy came to San Jose did a speech on teen pregnancy. He was his popular psychologist, sex educator. And I heard him to say, teen pregnancy is probably a lack result of one.

lack of self-esteem. That kids were maybe having sex at an early age so they could feel better about themselves. So those three education, drugs, the pregnancy, the pattern just kind of loomed up. And he latches onto self-esteem as a focal point. I thought, we had to look at this. Because what all of this was telling John, what self-esteem was telling John. Was that at the root of most of our social ills were people who didn't believe in their fundamental value.

So by 1984, he was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. John controlled the budget of California. The fifth or sixth biggest economy in the world. And he goes to the governor of California and he says, look, I need to spend money on a task force. A task force to promote self-esteem. Yeah. So what was the initial reaction to this idea? The initial reaction was massive skepticism to this idea.

So writer Will Storr explained that the governor at the time. He was a no-nonsense Republican. He had a reputation of being very hard. God-nosed. Why spend taxpayers money? I said, well, go, look at this way. If we can save three folks from going to prison for life, or 10 folks who are dropping out of school,

or seven drug addicts that cost the treatment, we'll save taxpayers billions of dollars. Like, possibly, this is a really cheap way to make society better in all kinds of ways. Certainly a cheaper way than, like, raising the minimum wage or something, you know? Right, right, right, right. But the other thing he tells the governor is that this will also promote personal and social responsibility.

Ah, so this is the like kind of 80s part that's coming in here. The way he thinks about it, he talks about this a lot in speeches, is like, if you pay a lot of money for something, you value something, you tend to take care of it, you know? And so he's just applying this basic logic

of like, if you value yourself, you'll take care of yourself and that it actually might lead to all these societal changes because of it. That makes sense. That makes sense. And so in 1987, The governor says okay. And John creates...

The self-esteem task force. The task force to promote self-esteem. You knew John before you were invited in? No, I hadn't known him. This is Emmett Miller, former member of the task force. I'm not sure how he discovered me, except I was widely known locally for having invented the concept of mind-body medicine and holistic treatment of my patients. And there were people like Emmett. The godmother of family therapy?

Chicken noodle soup for the soul guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Some other people from Eselin, but also... Others, black, brown, white, straight, gay, Asian, cops, therapists, business persons, teachers. This not a small thing. This is not a small thing at all. So, 1987, this big group of people would get together. Big roundtable kind of sitting.

Or like a library or something. And the group would find... Therapists, psychologists. They'd read anything they had published, interview them about their therapy practices. To put together the principles of what we might call healthy self-esteem. The interview is being recorded at Brooklyn. They even hired researchers at Berkeley.

To devise studies. Looking at self-esteem. Six major areas of social concerns. Crime and violence. Alcohol and drug abuse. Teenage pregnancy. Child abuse. Welfare dependency.

To try to answer this question, does having high self-esteem actually lead people to Being a better citizen, being more successful. Now, while that's going on, do you know about Dunesbury-Lotif? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. It's hard to understand today how influential this comic strip was. It is huge. The power that these Dunesbury strips can have. It was in almost every newspaper, everybody read it.

Is that Gary Trudeau? It's Gary Trudeau. Well, Gary Trudeau with his very clever Dunesbury cartoon. In 1987, he found out about the task force. And decided to make jokes about it. He created a new character, Barbara Boopsy and Bupstein, who was an LA actress in a spiritual medium, who had been invited onto the task force on the basis of her,

20 years of feeling good about myself and out-of-body experiences. And it's just like joke after joke about this task force and it's woo-woo nonsense. And this goes on a two-week run. Day after day. Just making fun of the Self-esteem Task Force. Two weeks of satire with me, you know, this California goofy legislator with this California goofy idea, spending goofy money. And the whole nation. Absolute ridicule is what happens.

Laughed. So there's a quote from the Pittsburgh Post-Dispatch who said California is the state that produced Jerry Brown, the People's Temple, Sister Boom Boom, whatever that is. Drive-in churches, Charles Manson, the Esselin Institute, and now a governmental task force to promote self-esteem. Now there's one more California joke to tell at cocktail parties around the nation. And John... roundly scorned by the press, editorial writers always need someone to pick upon to make themselves feel esteemed. He was hurt, he was angry. But the thing is, that Dunesbury Strip about the task force...

When he did that, everybody else paid attention. It's how everyone found out about it. That is what made it famous. We spent three years at it. And at the end of the three years... 1990. The results were that when we compared people who live their lives with real self-esteem, did so much better.

People with high self-esteem did better in school. They were less welfare-dependent. They were less prone to crime and violence, substance abuse. So they put together this report. Really fat report. That, yes, self-esteem does indeed cause all these amazing effects. They publish it. And there's a complete 180.

Max, our call-in guest, is John Baskin-Sulles. All of a sudden. John Baskin-Sellis. Nobody's laughing. People want self-esteem. Time magazine, Newsweek, BBC, London Economist, Talk show in Australia, National CBS Morning out of New York one day.

John's given speeches. Nicknamed the Johnny Appleseed of self-esteem. The Johnny Appleseed of self-esteem. All across the country. Please welcome to distinguish Mr. John Vasquezcellus. California Assembly John Vascoxelis. He's on Oprah. Has turned self-esteem into a virtual crusade.

Telling the nation Self-esteem is a social vaccine. That we have a cure for all that's wrong in society. Yes, Assemblyman. I really feel that you are on to something here. Beautiful. And it's wonderful. And I want to see this about John Vasconcell.

It's a wonderful thing that you're doing. And it's real that we've got a man like that. The Philadelphia Inquirer said it looks like John Fasconcellus may have had the last laugh. Time magazine. The sneers are turning to cheers. Really like what you're doing. I think you're right on faith. I'm so excited.

And this pretty long, very dry, task force report. This report has sold 50,000 copies. Everyone is all over the state. It's all over the nation, all over the world. Siked about self-esteem. Did anything change in the interim? like in those three years that would make them more receptive to the idea? I mean, I guess...

I feel that it was just one of those ideas that the culture was ready for. I think there's a couple ways to understand it. For me, the economy actually plays a big part in all this. Will says that in the 80s, across the West, you see anti-union politics, increasing privatization, the end of social safety nets, and, like, calls for personal responsibility. And that had a sort of a huge impact on who we were and how we understood the world as a people. I mean, the best way to sum it up is, if you think about who we were in 1965 versus 1985, we went from hippies, collectivist, sort of screw the man, anti-materialistic people,

to greed is good and material girl and Whitney Houston singing. The greatest love of all is yourself. And also, right around the same time, you have the self-help movement. See you at the top is the program that gives a check-up from the neck-up. Which was becoming... To eliminate stink and thinkin'nicking and avoid hardening of the attitudes. This huge industry. So what do you really want?

Better relationships, financial independence. So these ideas were already kind of out there in the culture. And I think if you'd have tried to launch the self-esteem movement in 1975, it wouldn't have got anywhere. But by the mid-80s, this idea of, I'm amazing is the answer to all my problems. I just feel like the culture was ready for it. And also, I think it's worth realizing... How many of us have been in counseling and therapy? I've got somewhere 60 million Americans have been in therapy.

The therapy was also becoming this huge thing. And there's this book from the 80s that basically says that now the modern equivalent to salvation, to heaven, was mental health. We've all been in counseling and knowing more about our own identity and sense of self and desire to be authentic and open and whole. At that kind of convergent point in time, our task force came on the scene. It's like all of these things came together in this exact right moment for John to step onto the scene and just be like, hey, I have some. something powerful, this social vaccine self-esteem that could help all of us. But what does that look like when you translate that into real work in the world? Because he wasn't how, he was never content with just shooting the shit, as he used to say,

just talking. It had to result in something that made a difference. The challenge that you truly carry yourselves back into your schools. So if you have low self-image, you can do something to change him. There's a beacon of self-esteem. She has my self-esteem. Why what? The beacon of faith. Self-esteem.

It's the way we feel about ourselves. This is a very special day here, Ray. When a person feels good about themselves, their self-esteem is right. We're having a self-esteem day. It's a big of love. We're a kid. Everybody in your life. Thank you very much.

What's good. That's coming up right after this short break. Okay. Lathif, Radio Lab, back with Heather and Matt and self-esteem. Okay, so John's got a social vaccine. Right. Question of course is like, well, how do you inoculate society? Like, what do you, how do you actually even, how do you do this?

Like, how do you teach people to feel good about themselves? And for John. For my Latin prep school days, education, come to the Latin word educari. The answer was, It doesn't mean to stuff in or sit still and shut up. The schools. Education, educary means to draw out, to draw forth, to evoke, to call forth. You start with kids.

And so, in the late 80s, early 90s, there was this huge push to get self-esteem into the classroom. And suddenly there were all these like workbooks, textbooks. So like here's one called esteem builders, a K through 8 self-esteem curriculum. Okay. Or the best self-esteem activities for the elementary grades. Building self-esteem in the secondary school, teachers, manual, and instructional materials. And how this worked was, let's say you got a class of kids. Everybody, good morning, good morning, good morning.

Hello, back there. Everybody, yeah, bring it down. Could be whatever grade. And the teacher would have one of these workbooks, which in it would contain these worksheets. Today we are going to do, today we're going to talk about yourself. And how a lot of these begin is... Imagine that you're looking in the mirror. But trying to get the kids to answer this really basic question.

What do you see? Who am I? I look like brown hair, brown eyes. A whole not for you. I have long hair. Long hair. Dark hair. I think I look beautiful, kind of.

Long brown hair. Or there's prompts like... Three things I want to say about myself. What makes you different from other people? My first thing I would tell a new friend. What makes you... I love listening to music. I like chemistry.

Basically, who is this person that is the self? Okay. Good. Can't have self-esteem without a self. Now, think of some of the things that you like about yourself, and that you wouldn't want to change. And then, of course, there's just a ton of stuff about... What are those things? Liking yourself.

Being confident in who I am, how my style is. That my hair is the right thing. Or something like... Now let's imagine that every person at the school gets a gold medal for something that they are really great at. Everybody gets a trophy! What would your gold medal be for? Reading.

Baseball. Screaming the loudest. Or... Everybody, get together. There were things called sharing circles. Kind of like encounter groups, but for kids. Oh, that's... Sweet, so they can all yell at each other.

No, it'd be like, What makes you really happy? Tell us about when you felt good. What's one of the best things that's ever happened to you? Okay, now, everybody knows what a sparkle statement is, right? Um, what are sparkle statements? So, this comes from the book,

esteem builders, and they are a long list of statements you can make to a classmate. Yeah. So you're cool. I like knowing you. Let's play together. Hope today is super for you. You're my friend. You're a good buddy.

Matt, I'm going to print this out and put it. stick it next to your desk. Yeah, I know. Somebody could use a few more sparkle statements in his life. Yeah, maybe we should be a little bit less sparkly. And would this have been like,

like what class does this slot into? They work this sort of stuff into like kind of your regular class. Like homeroom kind of thing. Yeah, and it runs through. I mean, this is like programming that is available K through 12. Yeah, and I will say I had it every year

I can remember. What do you remember? I remember, I remember Do So the Dolphin. Never heard. which is this dolphin puppet who taught us to feel good about ourselves using song. Nay, okay, I'm trying my... But I also did this call out on Instagram to see if anyone else remembered similar things. Yeah, well, so I guess...

And my friend, Leslie Jameson, who grew up in L.A. in the early 90s. We always called them put-ups and put-downs. That was like the name for, you know, saying something nice to somebody or saying something mean. And she said that her teacher, this was like maybe third grade, had this policy. that if someone received a put-down, the thing was that you had to, like, go to this little patio, this back patio, and the person who gave you the put-down

had to give you five put-ups. Oh, wow. And to, like, counter the put-down. It's like doing push-ups or pull-off. Yeah, punishment to praise. Hey. Oh, hey, how are you? Good. How are you?

I'm good. I also heard from this woman Peg. Peg Heiner from Chicago who had this wild story. It was like 1995 is when I was in eighth grade. about how there was this teacher who every morning, after the Pledge of Allegiance and the announcements, she had a handwritten sheet of paper that had two stanzas of I Have Confidence from the Sound of Music,

and she had the bold gusto. I have confidence in sunshine. To make a whole eighth grade class sing these two stanzas. And sometimes twice, you know, she's like, It wasn't loud enough. One more time. It really, it's like the anthem, the self-esteem anthem. We had this thing called Star Attraction.

Another friend of mine, Jane Marchant. She was a 90s kid in Northern California. And I still have this poster, which is insanely large. It's this big poster with Jane's second grade picture right in the center. I have these, like, horrible bangs. And all around the picture are these stars where her classmates had written something. Jane is nice and fair. Jane is loving.

That's funny. Here, Jane is nice, funny, smart, and good. Mm. There you go. Trifecta. We got take home slips of paper to write home and post. There was Amy Cougler in Wichita, Kansas. Other affirmations?

Other affirmations. To just post around your bedroom? Yep. Just post around my bedroom. I am a smart and kind student. I respect all. There's my friend, Gina Pensiero. I grew up in Verona, New Jersey.

Who remembered learning about... I-A-L-A-C. I am lovable and capable. I mean. I mean, even our writer will store. I remember being at school, we had to go around in a circle, and everybody had to say something good about themselves. He got this stuff over in the UK.

There's like an Education Week article from 1991 that lays out that at this point already, thousands of schools are starting to participate in this self-esteem curriculum. There are over 100 workbooks to promote self-esteem in the classroom. So it just became embraced by the educational system in a major way. Throughout the 90s, self-esteem became the dominant language that people in the West were using to talk about themselves.

They used self-esteem to talk about their childhoods, their successes, their failures, their ambitions, just how they thought about who they were. And for John... This is more than just a personal venture and odyssey. This is like kind of everything he dreamed of. It's more than just something for the classroom. It seems to me that self-esteem is the vision, the heart of a new culture. A new way of being, a new way of living, a new way of educating and politicking and living and

and all the rest. And may you have in your own lives ever more freedom to be esteeming, to be public, to be political, and to have good times for yourselves. Thank you.

But should I talk about the lie a bit? So this is the part in the story which we told you at the beginning. Yeah, you promised this was all a fraud. I'm waiting for the fraud. Yeah, the lie.

Yeah, this is like Will's whole thing is that one of the things he discovered when he was reporting his book is that... In the archives, I managed to find an audio cassette recording of the actual meeting, where the Cal Berkeley researcher hired by the task force, presented his findings.

And he told the task force back in 1989 that, yes, they had found some compelling correlations between self-esteem and education. But in other areas, the correlations don't seem to be so great, and we're not quite sure why. And we're not sure when we have correlations what the causes might be. Let's take, for example, one of the areas where the findings are a little bit loose,

which has to do with self-esteem and alcoholic abuse. By and large, there are positive correlations here, but what does that mean in terms of cause? Do these people go to drinking because of an earlier history of self-doubt, self-degradation, worthlessness and so on, or is it the other way around? Does the involvement in alcohol for years or decades constitute the causal basis

for the feelings of worthlessness that we discovered in people who have been involved in that? So he was basically saying to them, we have some okay correlational links and of course as we all know correlation isn't causation and he was saying

but other links are not at all correlational and we do have correlational leaks you've got to ask that basic question what is causing what and he warns them later in the recording he says you've got to be careful

about correlation and causation and he said you've got to avoid the sin of overselling he said nobody can want to do that You don't want to do that, and certainly we don't want to do that. And yet, that's exactly what they did. Literally what happened.

Oh, yeah. We had many conversations. And we talked to Mitch, John's friend about all this. Arguments, if you will, like, what's the actual nature of the research that's going to happen here? They'd argue about the research, how John interpreted it. And constantly challenged whatever he was looking at, you know. And how did he respond to that? He'd take it in.

Would he get defensive or would just kind of like nod along? He would just kind of nod along, just do his, he'd listen, take it in, but then go ahead and do whatever he wanted to do. Mitch said that with John... There were many things that you can't shake loose. And, you know, that was part of John's genius and shadow. And so through the 90s, when John was going around saying that self-esteem was this social vaccine, he was doing it seemingly knowingly on the basis of nothing. And so what would happen was that in the early 2000s, the very shaky foundation of the self-esteem movement started to collapse.

You know, I was more or less oblivious to the self-esteem movement. You're like you weren't watching TV. So one person that we talked to was this researcher named Jennifer Crocker. But I knew that people worried about it. People would say, well, yeah, low self-esteem really is a problem because you can't do anything about your situation until your self-esteem is high. And I'm like, I don't think the data are consistent with that idea. So Jennifer basically spent her entire academic career. My first publication on self-esteem.

Studying self-esteem. Probably 1983 around there. And Jennifer told us about how in 2003, there were these psychologists and a bunch of other researchers who pulled together a very long and I think really excellent overview of what is the value, what is the benefit of self-esteem? They went through decades of whatever research was published, hundreds of studies. To look at what are the differences between high and low self-esteem people. And what you see is that, you know, self-esteem is correlated with grades in school.

It's correlated with how attractive people find you. But these are tiny associations. So basically it turned out a lot of what had been claimed in that task force report was just really not true. Like, all the claims that they were making about self-esteem being a social vaccine, that it was a cure for drug use, alcohol use, crime, violence, teen pregnancy,

poor academic performance. This research showed that whether you're at high or low self-esteem, it wasn't causing these problems. Right, right. Huh. And so, like... It's weird, because, like, even though you're telling me

the science of this, and that it's, like, this huge study, like, as I'm hearing this, I'm like, like, the story logic of it holds so hard. It makes such intuitive sense. It makes such intuitive sense that it's like, it's, like, why wouldn't a kid be better if they, why wouldn't my relationships be better? Like, I, I, it's so hard to, like, dislodge it, even when you're literally telling me it's wrong. Okay, well, I can tell you one thing that the research showed about a meaningful difference

between people with high self-esteem and people with low self-esteem. Which is that high self-esteem people think they're smarter, more successful, more attractive, better-liked, more popular than low self-esteem people think they are. In spite of the fact that they're not really any different from low self-esteem people in these objective ways. So basically, for people with high self-esteem. Life feels good to them. They're generally happier. That seems good.

That's like the biggest tuna of all. of them. That's like the most important thing of everything. Well, okay, what Jennifer would say is... Right. I think there's nothing wrong with being happy. Yeah, like, of course, sure. Being happy, that's meaningful. Right, our emotions are central to how we experience our lives. But that's not all there is to the story. Because there is a downside to high self-esteem.

Which is what? Well, the research shows that people with really high self-esteem tend to defend their positive views of themselves. And so you see high self-esteem associated with things like defensiveness, aggression. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, totally. They found that in education, sometimes self-esteem programs produce actually like complacency, reduced effort, resistance to any sort of critical negative feedback.

And then there's Jennifer's work for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years. I was really interested in what people base their self-esteem on. And we found that pretty much everybody based their self-esteem on. something. So Jennifer did this study at the University of Michigan with students who were intending to apply to graduate school. And what they found was that for the students who tied their self-worth to high academic achievement, when they got rejected from a grad school, their self-esteem obviously went down. And it would, for some of the students, it would actually stay down for several days until something happened to kind of shake them out of that funk.

And for many of these students, they were showing more signs of depression. Whereas the kids who weren't tying their self-esteem to that academic achievement, then when they didn't get into the programs, they, like, could weather the storm. And then the other thing that was really interesting to me is that the students whose self-esteem was really based on their academic success, when we asked them, well, what would it mean for you or about you to get into graduate school? They would write things like, oh, it would prove once in first. for all, that I am brilliant, I am great, that I am successful. It would prove something about me.

And to Jennifer, this kind of like shows you the fatal flaw of self-esteem. Yeah, it's just that if I have earned high self-esteem today by having some success in my life, then have I earned low self-esteem tomorrow if I have a failure? Like if I don't succeed at something, does that actually mean that I am worthless, that I don't have value? Yeah. And she told us there was this prominent psychologist in the 90s and 2000s who went so far as to say, Self-esteem is the worst sickness known to humankind. Because when you succeed, you're great, but when you fail, you're shit.

And so in 2004, there's this big New York Times Sunday magazine piece called The Trouble. trouble with self-esteem, kind of tearing down John in the task force and the promise and dream of self-esteem. In 2005, there's an op-ed piece in the LA Times basically doing the same thing. There's also this big scientific American article called Exploding the Self-Eesteem Myth. Yeah, this is like when self-esteem becomes a joke. Yeah, like the sort of every kid gets a trophy, participation medals. Right. This is when all of that starts to become like very prevalent in how we think about self-esteem.

And there's actually online, there's all these published emails that John and some of his friends in the movement were sending to one another in the wake of all of this. It's kind of heartbreaking. Yeah, it's like John is sending these emails. They're written in all caps. And he's saying like there needs to be like a point-by-point rebuttal of the Times piece and that they needed to fight back and quote, take on this enormous historic life-saving task. But that just makes John seem like. he's really fighting alone on an island. Like, he's like the Japanese soldier fighting on the island,

like after the war is over kind of thing. I think that's fair. I mean, he never really... Never stopped fighting. Yeah, he never really stops fighting. I mean, there's a 2009 interview with San Jose Inside, which is, you know, his birthplace, San Jose. Right.

And in it, he's quoted as saying, so now all over the world, the role of self-esteem is widely recognized and valued. I think it's really proven to be all we thought it was. and more, which feels so, like, it feels delusional to read that. Yeah, that does sound delusional. And I think Heather and I reporting this story and, like, learning more and more about John is the sort of, like, it almost, it feels sort of desperate in a way.

And I think it's because for John, who grew up in this very strict Catholic family, whose Catholicism felt like this enormous sort of weight, this kind of. this constraint, this thing that made him feel fundamentally flawed and broken and bad, like to shed all of that through these ideas of self-esteem was like so vital and important to his sense of self, to his sort of well-being. I mean, do you feel like you were his good friend? Do you feel like he, like, I don't know,

like he was a person very committed to personal growth? do you feel like he ended up being the man he wanted to be? I'd say yes and no. I think there was a lot that he was proud of and rightly so, and yet there was a lot they would have said is undone. And I'm pretty sure he was disappointed that he never realized some of the levels that I think he thought he was capable. I mean, he got to hang out with Bobby Kennedy, you know.

I think he thought his life should be something like that, you know, that level of influence. Do you think he had high self-esteem? I think his own self-esteem and the fragility of it was, you know, one of his struggles for his entire life. He's got all this power, all this influence, all this accomplishment under, you know, twice valedictorian, just constantly amassing successes, and yet there are always being more to do. Then every time he'd see his mom, she'd treat him the same way,

I bet she did when he was five. And he'd come crumbling down? No, but he'd just be annoyed and, you know, frustrated. His most common trigger would be to get angry, each of us get triggered in different ways. And his would, boy, he could erupt in no time. How do you think he felt about how he was treating the people around him when he was angry like that? Oh, big blind spots.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. He'd feel bad about it, especially if somebody would say something. He was very good at cleaning up his messes. But he could be very embarrassing and go out to dinner and, kind of, post-heart attack. He was very concerned about what he was eating. and if somebody brought a dish that was full of cream or something like that, he'd rage at the waiter or waitress.

You're trying to kill me or something? Just, you know, he'd lose it at times. And again, I think a lot of that was due to him being on this journey of trying to be his real self, but also being in the public eye all the time. And Mitch told us about how another thing that John really struggled with throughout his life was just with relationships.

He never really, I didn't even need to add the word really. He never developed an intimate one-to-one relationship that was just his. And every so once in a while,

I'd get a call from him that he was just almost suicidal just because he longed for intimacy, closeness, and the best he could get where these one-night stands. That's so sad. And Mitch

and Mitch said there was this point in their friendship where Mitch told him, like, look. How about you become a member of our family? And that was our contract. What did that look like? Oh, you know, my kids grew up with Uncle John around all the time. We did a lot of things together, vacationed. He would be at our house.

God, two if not three weekends a month, especially when the session was out. But even when session was in, he'd prioritize spending time with our family. his experience of being loved and being close to people came from these extended family relations. There were three families that he would sort of cycle through, but he never had his own intimate one-on-one relationship. There were very few opportunities for him just to be seen

and appreciated for just being alive, not being an instrument. When he got sick, he'd come stay with us towards the end of his life. he actually stayed in our spare bedroom for several weeks before I could, you know, before I found an appropriate place for him when he was really, really on the way out. Mitch says this was 2014, and it was when John was diagnosed with a really aggressive form of cancer. And he wanted to be back home, so we got him back home, got him on hospice.

And would you go over to his house to see him, like, often? Oh, yeah, every day. I was with him every day, basically. And what was that like just to be there every day? with him. Well, I don't know if you've ever been with a person who's dying, but it's... I haven't, not that intimately. Yeah.

You know, he spent most of the time just being there, or sleeping, you know? Not a lot of energy. The last few days of his life, the thing that we worked on together was he let me know that he was afraid. He'd given a lot of thought to the actual dying experience, and he was deathly afraid of dying by exfixiation. when people take their last breath, especially if they're conscious, it can be very hard to actually let go and not take another breath. He was terrified. So we would practice.

We'd take like five or ten minutes of just him practicing how to let there be longer and longer periods before he would take an inhale. And to have the sort of, to be, in his words, to stay in charge of his own reactions, so fear didn't take over. And Mitch says it was in late May of 2014. There were a group of his closest friends who were present around. We all knew it was getting close to the time. And John...

He insisted that he be naked. This is the guy who in his 30s, when he went to Esselin, was terrified of being naked. When everyone was going into those pools, turned around and laughed, because he just felt so ashamed and humiliated about his body. He wanted to go out finally everybody seeing and holding and blessing him naked. And so the morning he died, I was right there holding his hands, holding one hand, his doctor, also a friend of mine, holding the other hand. And as he took his last breath, I reached down into his ear and said, you can do it.

He took that last breath and that was it. That was May 24th, 2014. And I have found myself thinking, just sort of thinking about what John did and what parts of it are still with us now. I do think the self-esteem movement has had a cultural effect, right? Again, Professor Michael Pettit. I definitely think a kind of psychologized self-talk

is much more prevalent and available now than before. My employer sends emails all the time about my mental well-being and offering, you know, here's a meditation class on campus, this type thing. So the language of mental health and mental wellness is even more

prominent than ever before. Yeah, and I think the deeper idea is that everything your feeling is valid. Author Will Storr. I always sort of think about this stuff, Carl Rogers and Vasco, when I'm watching, because one of my guilty pleasure is reality television. And when you're watching reality TV, like

when you're like a below deck or big brother. And somebody behaves terribly. Their excuse very often is, well, I'm just being myself. I'm just saying what I think. I'm just, you know. Living my truth. Yeah, leaving my truth. And that's still very powerful idea in our culture in the West.

But I think maybe the biggest, maybe even the most important legacy of John's work, is actually in the schools. So last year, Heather and I went to school in Queens, PS-229. I feel like I should also say hello to see how psychology gets used in classrooms today. And today, if self-esteem is taught in classrooms at all,

it's pretty tiny. And instead... You ready to do some SEL? Yes. What's in the classrooms across the country is this thing called SEL, social-emotional learning. All right, boys and girls.

Today we're going to be doing a lesson called Let's Make It Fair. Does anyone know what the word fair means. We were in a class of first graders. Do you be nice? Say it again. Do you be nice? You want to be nice to people? Okay, good. What else?

To share. You want to share with people? Absolutely, yes. And so when we were there with these first graders. So we're going to be looking at all different situations on fair and what it means to be fair. They were being asked to answer questions like, It's not fair because the other kid is not sharing with the swings. When do you feel like something isn't fair? I was like, can I have some tips?

And then she was like, no. How does it feel? Being fair to other people. When someone's being fair. Is what? Tell me about it. It's kind. How's it feel when someone's not being fair?

How should we talk about these feelings? Or like... One time when I was at the mall. We also visited a classroom of fifth graders. I saw people like kicking a boy. Who were doing a lesson on bullying. How do you recognize bullying? How do you call out bullying?

What do you do when you see bullying? There's this thing that how they call like... An upstander is someone who at... actually helps the situation. Upstander. Upstand. Oh my gosh. That's like they talk about that.

I know. They totally invented that since we were kids. Right. But I think what this is is a continuation of what John was trying to do by polling psychology into education. It does feel like a continuation. Yeah. But whereas John was focused on the self, like self-value, self-worth, self-esteem. What's happening now is focused on the other.

And now this is fair because everyone will be getting what they need. Me. It's about understanding other people's needs. The things you need. The things you need. Communicating your own needs. What else could he say? Stop being mean to him.

It's about identifying emotions, communicating emotions. Or just walk away. It's group morning meetings. It's conflict resolution. It's learning how to make eye statements. Like, I feel blank. It's also like, don't bully. What is fairness?

Like, there's a kind of like, we're in a community of people element of it. I like that. I like that. But so. Thank you. One of the kind of. amazing things about this is how weirdly Jennifer... Well, we should be careful about the kind of praise that we give.

The researcher who spent her entire career looking at self-esteem kind of wound up in the same place for herself as like the schools have. What do you mean? So then what is... I mean, well, so I asked Jennifer, I was like... I feel like there's sort of... You know, being a kid in the 90s, I still have this question of like, but how do you feel good?

It is good to feel good about yourself. How does one find self-worth in a way that's healthy? I think by not worrying about it. What does that look like? So am I a person of worth and value? It's just, it's not a helpful question. It just doesn't do anything for you to ask that question or for other people. And a much better or more helpful question is, how do I want to be right now?

How might I support other people, for example? But really, what contribution, what thing that's larger than me is important to me. So she told us about one of the studies she did. It was looking at roommates. College roommates. Two roommates who didn't know each other. Before the start of their first year in college. and we asked each roommate a whole bunch of questions

about their relationship over time and their self-esteem. And what we found was that when roommates were responsive to the, so I'm going to call them roommate A and roommate B because they're same-sex, it gets confusing. So when roommate A is responsive to roommate B's needs, roommate B notices and is responsible, responsive in return. And then roommate A is responsive again to roommate B, and then roommate B is responsive again to roommate A. So you can get this virtuous cycle going on in relationships where when people are focused not on their own needs, but on being responsive to other people's needs.

Other people notice it. They appreciate it. Their esteem for the other person goes up. And that ends up having, it's not a huge impact. but nonetheless having a significant impact on the self-esteem of the person who was responsive in the first place. So the way to boost your self-esteem in a way that, in my view, is sustainable over time and good for the world is to focus on the well-being of other people or to organizations or institutions or things you really care about. It's so funny because I think that's basically what John.

was after. I know. Like, if you could get people to understand they had self-worth, self-value, raise their self-esteem, they would do all these things for each other. Yeah, it's just that self-esteem is the wrong place to focus. Because you don't have to have high self-esteem to make a difference. And with that, I feel that I have clearly been vindicated and validated. No, you haven't, Matt.

Yeah, the whole point is not to try and feel good about yourself. That is not what she's saying. Yeah, she's talking about needs. scene needs. Yeah, other people's needs. Well, needing to be told that you did a great job jumping in a cold lake. Wow, we're still here. So you both now have interpreted this Roershock thing that she said as meaning that you're

right and you've been right all along. And what was the point of any of this? I mean, Jen's convinced me. I just feel like you're being incredibly, you're being very resistant to just sort of a basic level of human kindness. Okay. Fine. Then I will suggest that we end this episode on a positive note. And what's the positive note?

Great job, everybody. This episode was reported by Heather Radke and Matt Kilty. It was produced by Matt Kilty with additional sound design by Jeremy Bloom and edited by Pat Walters. Original music by Ben Batchelder, voice acting by David Gable and Dan Fink, and fact-checking by Angeli Mercado and Anna Pujol Mazini. It was mixed by Jimenez. Jeremy Bloom. Special thanks to Charlotte Ngrave, as well as the teachers and students at PS-229 in Queens and our self-esteem of the 90s kids. My name is Fiverl. I'm from Los Angeles, California. I'm Teddy, and I'm 10 years old.

Gus, I am 8 years old. My name is Arlo, and I'm 6 years old. My name is Eleanor, and I'm 6 years old. My name's Phil and I'm 5. Five years old. My name is hot. My age is five. Okay. My name is William, and I am eight years old. Is there anything else you'd get a gold medal for, bud?

Among your friends, among your classmates and stuff? What else? Hiding. Hiding? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like a really good hider and hiding other things. That's it from us.

And listening and responding to listeners' needs, We are going to post another episode in this feed next week. Catch you then. Bye, bye, bye, bye. Hi, I'm Melissa Mahoney from Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Here are the staff credits. Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor.

Sarah Sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editors Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindu Nanosambandan, Matt Kielty, Mona Makkker, Annie McEwan, Alex Nissen, Sara Kari, Rebecca Rand, Anisa Vita, Ariane Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young.

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angeline Mercado, and Sophie Sammii. Leadership support for Radio Labs' science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.