The One You Feed - Ruth Whippman on the Complexity of Happiness

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

Ruth Whippman is a regular contributor to radio shows, television, and podcasts, having made appearances on shows including NPR’s Brian Lehrer Show, To the Point, CBS news and Morning Edition amongst many others. She is also a regular speaker and has given talks at Google, Princeton University and UC Berkeley as well as many other venues. Her book is, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks and it is this – along with the flaws of the self help that she and Eric talk about in this episode.Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Ruth Whippman and I Discuss...Her book, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous WrecksHow many people in the self-help industry are trying to sell easy answers and life is incredibly complexSitting with a certain amount of complexity in lifeThe flaws with studiesThe one thing consistent across all research and people’s experience about happinessThe American tradition of self-relianceThe victim blaming myth that we’re completely responsible for how we feelThat circumstances absolutely play a role in our degree of happinessWhat’s behind the positive psychology movementHow we need to think of well being as a shared responsibilityThat it’s easy to lose compassion when you go too far down the road of “your happiness is completely within your control and completely your responsibility”The flaws in The Law of Attraction theoryHow to cope with the anxiety-producing stuff going on in the newsThe importance of social support, community, and connectionThe challenges of social mediaRuth Whippman Links:ruthwhippman.comtwitterfacebookinstagramThe Great Courses Plus – learn more about virtually any topic – beyond the basics and even master a subject if you want to. Get a free trial with access to their entire library at www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/wolfNetsuite by Oracle – the business software that handles every aspect of your business in an easy to use cloud platform. Get Netsuite’s free guide, 7 Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits, by going to www.netsuite.com/wolfIf you liked this episode, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Jonathan RauchPaul DolanMichelle GielanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As you say, balance is important, but I think we've gone too far to that side of things in this country, and I think we need to kind of pull back and look at more collective solutions. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure?

And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ruth Whitman. Ruth is a regular contributor to radio shows, television, and podcasts, having made appearances on shows including NPR's Brian Lehrer Show, To The Point, CBS News, and Morning Edition, amongst many others. Her book is America the Anxious,

How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks. Hi Ruth, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, great to be here. Yeah, I'm so excited to have you on. We're going to discuss your book, America the Anxious, why our search for happiness is driving us crazy, and how to find it for real. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with a parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So it's really interesting.

Ever since you first got in touch a couple months ago and said, was I interested in being on the show um and you told me about this parable I'd never heard it before and it's been kind of playing in my mind for the last couple months you know I've been thinking about it and trying to sort of apply it to different situations and there's something about it that's always made me feel a little uneasy and I was trying to work out what it was and I think what I got to is that this parable makes me feel insecure that I'm not always clear which wolf is which. And I think that this is the problem with the modern world. I think all of our most interesting dilemmas in life, all of our

most complex philosophical questions or ethical questions, spiritual questions, personal questions are not generally questions of good versus evil. I mean, I think we know what evil is, and most of us don't believe we're evil and are not trying to be. I think that accounts for the vast majority of the population. I think our most interesting and most complex questions are between good versus good, you know, competing goods. And so this is, you know, and I'm not always sure which wolf I'm looking at you know in any given situation I will think that a certain thing is the right way to go obviously clearly this and then you know a day later I'll change my mind I think I may be too neurotic for these wolves you know I

think all my wolves are kind of mashed up into some more terrible like uber wolf that it's like a horrible hybrid mutant wolf inside me that is a bit of both. And I guess, I mean, maybe that's what has struck me. I've spent, you know, in writing my book, America the Anxious, I spent a lot of time looking at the happiness industry. You know, the ways that, you know, commercial entities try to sell us happiness. And I think, you know, as the self help industry, perhaps, and I think this is something that's quite specific to the self help industry that everybody is trying to sell easy answers, everybody is trying to sell their

thing, their idea as the key to happiness, the key to righteousness, the key to good. And I think what I realized is that what we need to do when we look at all these things is sort of maintain a quite a questioning attitude and really to be quite I mean cynical is probably the wrong word but skeptical to employ a bit of skepticism and not jump in and think right this is the good wolf here we go you know you know I think we're all quite prone in the modern era you know to to jump on the next good wolf each time right right, right. And we do, we all want easy answers because life is incredibly complex and it's very difficult and it is hard to know and figure out.

And so we want easy answers. And I'm struck by how convincing the easy answer is. Even, and I found this in your book too with you, you would say, I don't believe this, A, B, and C. And then you would find yourself going, but boy, the allure of it is really strong. And so I'm being pulled towards it. And so I am deeply mistrustful of easy answers. And yet when I find myself in a certain amount of struggle, I start looking at things that I previously went, that's too pat of an answer and going, did I overlook that? And usually the answer is no, I didn't, right?

Life is complex. But we do have this desire for things to be simple and easy, you know, to use, you know, an example from your book, right? We all want to be as simple as I will be happy if I just write down three things I'm grateful for every day, and that's it. I'm done. I mean, that was a classic example, the gratitude journal. I mean, we've all heard about this gratitude journal that we're all supposed to be keeping. At the end of the day, write down three things you're grateful for or write yourself a gratitude letter.

There's different versions of it, and then you'll be happy I mean if that were the case then we could set save absolutely billions worldwide in antidepressant use in medical bills in human heartache I mean we know that it's not that simple and yet people make a lot of money from selling us these easy answers and it is an impulse and I think the more vulnerable we feel and the self-help industry does tend to prey on people who are quite vulnerable often, not always, but often, you know, the more unhappy and uncertain we feel, the clearer we want our answers to be. And I think being able to sit with a certain amount of complexity and be able to sit with the idea that, you know, actually things aren't simple and that's okay, is really helpful. Yeah, it's one of the things that most deeply drew me to

Buddhist teaching early on was this idea where the Buddha said, like, don't just take what I'm saying on my authority, try these things in your own life and see what happens. And I find that to be such a deeply profound teaching, because we are all so different, our life circumstances are so different, our genetics are so different, how we were raised,. Our life circumstances are so different. Our genetics are so different. How we were raised. I mean, there are so many factors that what we think, you know, even when we read a study, and we can talk about how flawed so many of them are, but even when we read a study that says this is a good thing, I think it's like, well, try and see what works. That's interesting. Absolutely right.

And I think the thing about studies is interesting in and of itself. I mean, we rely very, very heavily on studies. And I'm certainly somebody who believes in science and in research and all the rest of it and evidence-based things. But at the same time, what is a study? It's 200 college students who've been told to do A or B and what happens to them. I mean, this is a very specific population that take part in these studies. And usually it's, you know, a difference of two or three people, you know, if you get 100 students, you can get statistical significance with just a handful of them doing

something slightly differently on one side or the other. And then we take this thing that, you know, a couple hundred college students did a few years back in a room on a certain day, and we use this as some kind of sense of destiny for our own life, you know, I think we need to have a little bit of skepticism about what all these things are for. I agree. I mean, doing this show has been a journey for me, right? And I have been on it. And I think earlier in the process, I really was like, oh, all these scientific studies and, and, you know, it must be true. And, again, I think some of them point in interesting and useful directions, but to your point, they are usually

very small, they are done on a very specific population, and people in those fields that are honest will also talk about what they call the reproducibility crisis, which is, none of these, this same thing doesn't seem to work when we run the study again. And so, so again, I think, and I think with this, something as complex as people's psychology, a study is only going to be so useful anyway, because what works for me could be wildly different from you, even if you control for a few things, because you can't control for the huge complexity of people's psychological and spiritual lives. Absolutely. And the other thing about studies, there have been published probably over 64,000

research studies into what makes human beings happy. And I started, you know, when I was researching my book, I started reading all this stuff which you know is fundamentally quite a joyless thing to do you know reading academic happiness studies is it's not a fun way to spend your weekend but what I found pretty quickly was these studies are incredibly contradictory I mean you can find a study to say pretty much anything and also the exact opposite of that thing so you can find a study that says that money makes no difference to happiness, but you can also find a study saying that it makes a huge difference to happiness. You know, you can find a study that says that feminism has made women unhappy, but

also that feminism is women's saving grace, you know, that mindfulness is great and mindfulness does nothing, etc, etc, etc. so often the studies end up revealing more about the agendas of the people funding the studies than they do very much about actual human beings and how they live so caution with studies that was what I learned having said all that I'm going to be very hypocritical here for a moment which is that you know as I was writing my book at one point which I got into quite a dark place in the middle of writing it, because I found so much inconsistency in the studies and so many hucksters and so many people selling false messages and all the rest of it. That I started to get to the point where I thought, oh, God, you know, this book is going to the conclusion of this book is going to be nobody can be happy. Don't even bother trying there's

nothing you can do it's all a disaster and I was like no one's gonna buy this book you know apart from anything else and you know and it was kind of slightly it was a slightly depressing message but then I started to realize that there was one thing that was very consistent across all the research um and across people's experiences that I spoke to. And it was this sort of one factor that really seemed to be pretty rock solid, no matter who was conducting the studies, who was funding them, almost to the point where it was so solid that if researchers were studying anything else, they had to control this one thing out of the studies. And that is the importance of human relationships, social relationships and connection

really is a huge, huge factor in our happiness. And, you know, when I started to identify that, I saw it was such a pattern that social support and community really is so key to our well-being. So I guess if there is a good wolf to feed, that's the one, community and relationships. Listeners have heard me say this before, but when I started this show, I really thought what I was going to hear and learn was more of just go within, happiness is inside, you do that, right? And I am a believer that there is a role for that and of course there is a lot on this show that we talk about that but the part that's been surprising to me and to your

point just comes up over and over like a hammer to my head is the role of our connection to other people how critical that is and and i actually would say even more than just connection to other people, connection to all sorts of different things. But other people is one that is so clearly, like you said, in all the science over and over. And I think in our own experience, and we look at who people are happy, right? All of it sort of confirms that good relationships help. And it's interesting because you talk about how our pursuit of happiness in the US is so individualistic. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, the US and the UK to a certain extent, but the West, but, you know, the US particularly is a very, very individualistic society. And we

believe in, you know, pursuing our own goals and doing our own thing. And I think the self-help industry really pushes this message, which is happiness is a personal journey, you know, find yourself, be yourself, self-help, self-care, self-knowledge, focus on the self, you know, self, self, self, self, self. And actually, when you look at what the research actually says about what happiness is, it really is completely back to front. I mean, it's really the self-help industry is really pushing us in this very individualistic direction when actually happiness does absolutely come from social connection. You know, it's quite misleading that the agenda that they're pushing in a way. Well, I think it's interesting too, because I might be wrong about this, but I think that one of the earlier uses of the self-help movement actually was Alcoholics Anonymous. That was one of the

early uses of, oh, it's a self-help because it's not professionals, but AA is so fundamentally social and so fundamentally about other people. So I think even the term over time has gotten a little bit perverted. Just to add to your point, I mean, the AA thing is a great example. I think one of the reasons why historically self-help has been so incredibly popular in the US is because there's much less of a social safety net. You know, there's less help from anywhere else. So, you know, you kind of got to help yourself because there's no one helping you in a way you know you get very little support in terms of support with maternity leave or child care or you know welfare or subsidized services or you know these sorts of

things which you know smooth the passage of life for people in Europe, Scandinavia, wherever that I think you know that there's a real American tradition of self-reliance, which is great in many ways. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

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podcasts. So the other point that you bring up in your book, which isn't a very interesting one that I think is worth talking about, because I, I feel very similar is the whole idea in the self-help space that we are kind of completely responsible for how we feel. We are completely responsible. And while I find parts of that message to be incredibly valuable and incredibly important, and a lot of my background comes from people, comes from the recovery movement where personal accountability and responsibility is so crucial. Like actually going like, I'm the problem here. Yeah, this is me. Yeah, it's on me.

Yet, I also agree with you that I find so much of what is really appalling to me in parts of the self-help or the law of attraction world or all of that to be this fundamental sort of victim blaming. Yes, I think it absolutely is because, you know, I think you've probably seen the memes which say, you know, happiness is a choice, which kind of implies that if you're not making that choice, then, you know, it's just a simple method of, you know, you're not choosing, you're not working hard at it, you know, that and you see it in the positive thinking movement, you know, it's just because you're being negative or even in the mindfulness movement, you know, that and you see it in the positive thinking movement, you know, it's just because you're being negative, or even in the mindfulness movement, you know, the problem is you because you're not being mindful enough, or positive enough, or grateful enough, or you're not doing enough, you know, meditation or self help workshops or all the rest of it. And it does

become a kind of victim blaming. And it's sort of this inability to acknowledge that there are systemic reasons why people are unhappy, you know, which are everything from your genes, to your circumstances, to your environments. I mean, one of the strong messages in positive psychology, I don't know if you've seen this very famous pie chart. Oh, I have. I've referenced it before, too. So please, this is good, because it is something that has come up on the show before. And so I would love to have you discuss it. So there is a academic positive psychologist, a professor called Sonia Lubomirsky, and she has done this kind of graphic, which is a pie chart, which sort of attempts to break up,

you know, what the different components of our happiness are. And so in the pie chart, she attributes about 50% to your genes and your genetics, and then about 10%. So this tiny little sliver to your circumstances, and that includes everything from, you know, your demographic information, your race, your gender, your social class, your income, to everything that happens in your life that's beyond your control. So you know, whether you lose your job, or you have a miscarriage or you break up with your partner or those sorts of things. So that's your circumstances, 10% only. And then 40%, she attributes to your personal effort. You know, the 40% is under your control. So in her theory, it's four times as important to make a big effort than it is, you

know, what actually happens to you in your life. So, you know, this narrative, so I went back and had a look at where this data actually came from. And I found this thing was just absolutely riddled with errors and nonsense. And, you know, it's just basically not true in any meaningful sense at all, for a start. But also, it's really quite a damaging narrative. You know, if you say that just, you know, just this tiny part of your experience and how happy you are is, you know, is your circumstances and everything else is your own fault, basically. You know, you're choosing how happy to be. It's a kind of mass gaslighting, really, of people's actual circumstances. And

it really kind of encourages this lack of compassion for people, I think. Yeah, I found the pie chart idea to be helpful for me. And I'm glad to hear you go back and sort of unpack the data that says, you know, based on what the original studies were, you could have really drawn that pie chart lots of different ways. I initially found, when I first saw 50% of it was kind of what is called the happiness set point, right? I originally was both depressed by that and relieved by that. Right. I was depressed because I come from a history of depressive people. Right. And so I was like, Oh, well, that explains. And so, so in that way, but on the other hand, I was like, oh, well, maybe I can stop feeling like this is my fault that I'm this way. And so then, so 50% of it is that, right?

Which again, you can take that message as depressed or positive. You can say, oh, well, I can control 50% of it. And I'll use the word control there in quotes, right? And then the rest of it breaks down into this narrative of only a little bit of it is your circumstances, and the rest of it is the effort you put in to volitional activities. Now, the way I have heard that talked about before, though, is that things, volitional activities would be things like spending more time with other people, which we know to be a predictor of happiness. And so I think all those percentages can be debated. And I'm a big fan of another Buddhist teaching that listeners are surely here,

tired of hearing me bring up, which is the middle way, which says that any extreme, I am wary of. So people who say like, your happiness has nothing to do with your circumstances, right? You can be happy in any circumstance. Well, that's nonsense, right? And people who say it's only about your circumstance, because that's where a lot of us focus all our effort. If I just change this circumstance and that circumstance. Yeah. And if you're just, you're a prisoner of what happens to you. Yeah. And then, and then, you know, yeah, if you get the right job, the right person, all that, you'll be happy too, which I also recognize to be a mistruth, of course, our circumstances matter. And of course, you know, people who have really difficult life circumstances suffer more than

other people, whether those circumstances are social or economic or the way you were raised or the trauma you suffered. I mean, of course, those things matter. And of course, the efforts, the things that we do to try and live a good life also matter. Yes, absolutely. And I think you're right. And I think part of what kind of riled me up about this particular pie chart was what was in that 40% that they were advocating. So, you know, what was in the part that you can do for yourself, because I think it was all these things like, you know, write your gratitude journal, your three good things that happened today and, like, you know, write your gratitude journal, your three good things that happened today, and, you know, do some optimism exercises and do your mindfulness practice. And, you know, and I thought,

really, are you really saying that it's four times more important to, you know, write down three good things that happened that day, then that, you know, your marriage broke up, that you're living in poverty, that you, you know, these huge things. And I think part of the problem is, it's this quite right wing narrative, essentially, you know, it's this very, I think there's always been this tension in politics between, you know, whether people are constrained by their circumstances, or whether this kind of meritocratic idea, which is, you know, anybody can make anything of themselves, the American dream, just work harder, and you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, which doesn't acknowledge that we're not all starting from the same place. And I think this is this kind of narrative, you know, that bootstraps idea applied to the emotions, which I

think is often not that helpful. But yes, as you say, of course, there is something very liberating about the idea that we can rise above our circumstances and still be happy in adversity, for sure. Yeah, well, I found it fascinating. This I did not know, right, about the positive psychology movement, is that how much of it has been funded by the Templeton Foundation, which I also knew almost nothing about, except that they seem to fund what, to me, were interesting things about happiness. And so, that was my extent of it. But tell us about the Templeton Foundation because I think that will tie together your statement just a second ago about some of these ideas

can be very right-wing. I think we need to make that connection. So, I mean, Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote a book called Smile or Die, started looking at this a while back. And then, you know, I also looked at it in my book, America the Anxious, which is that the vast majority of the academic positive psychology movement in the United States is

funded by one organization called the Templeton Foundation. Now, the Templeton Foundation was set up by a man named John Templeton Jr. And he was a very right wing man and a massive donor to the Republican Party, to anti gay marriage causes to the Christian right to all I mean, he was a huge donor to right wing political causes. And he also had the Templeton Foundation, which is on the face of it an apolitical group. It's not a you know, it's not party political in on the face of it an apolitical group it's not a you know it's not party political in on the face of it but everything that they have chosen to fund you know they are looking at the causes of happiness and everything they have chosen to fund us is studies about how we can just try harder at being happy so there are a lot of studies which are all about you know getting

people who are poor or in bad circumstances and just making them try a little bit harder at being happy to change their attitudes rather than their circumstances. And there are no studies funded by the Templeton organisation about whether social justice would make a difference, whether about materially improving the lives of these people, about listening to people's concerns and acting on them. You know, these studies do not exist, or they're not being funded by this

movement. And I think it set the terms of the debate before we've even got out of the gate. It set up a whole academic discipline, and it's framed the terms of how we look at this question, you know, from a very right-wing perspective before even starting. Yeah, it's so interesting. I never really connected those dots in my mind. And as a show, we generally stay away from getting too political. But I think it's a very interesting connection that all those studies are funded by an ideological perspective that says, yes, your happiness is your own responsibility. Your life is your own responsibility. We can all just pull ourselves up and points away from something that you say very, very well at one point in the book. And you say, we need to think of well-being

as a shared responsibility rather than an individual quest. And to develop a discourse of happiness that engages with people's problems rather than dismisses them. And I think that is such a, I think it's a great summary for the entire book and so well said. And that's a way to frame up what we were just talking about with the Templeton Foundation.

Right. I think so. Because yeah, this isn't a party political issue. There are people, you know, of all political persuasions who are generous and compassionate and all the rest of it. But I think this is just a way of framing the question, which, you know, it's really important to realize where these ideas come from, you know, and I think when we, you know, I think if you go too far down there, it's your fault. It's your responsibility. It's your fault narrative, then it's very easy to lose compassion. You know, a big theme in the self-help movement is the law of attraction. Yes. Oh, God.

It's one of those things, like, again, if I take the middle of the road, you know, the middle road approach, I go, there's a lot of ideas there that are true. Like, I don't know, I don't necessarily think there's a mystical component happening, but if we focus on what's important to us, and we put our time and energy towards it, and we keep it in the front of our mind, we're going to get more of that thing. Like, I think there's some truth in there. But the implications of you take that theory very far are horrific. That the children being abused right now, they've somehow attracted that to themselves. I think it's a profoundly horrible idea.

Right. And so that book, The Secret, where the law of attraction came from, I went back and looked because she was promoted. What's her name? Rhonda Byrne, I think. She was promoted very heavily by Oprah at the time. And I went back and searched on YouTube and found the old episodes of Oprah where they were talking about that book and some of the stuff that they were coming out with I was thinking oh she really wouldn't be able to get away with that now I mean you know there was stuff where you know people you know there was this one woman she'd been fired from her job and um you know she had her boss had been really unfair and I can't remember the exact circumstances of it and she had a young child she was a single mom and you know Oprah's advice on the the sort of you know

as part of this whole secret thing was for her to go and write a gratitude letter to her boss for firing her you know not any sense that there should be kind of an you know any kind of employment protection for her job or that you know perhaps she'd been unfairly treated or anything you know was that she should go and be grateful to her boss for firing her without looking at any of the circumstances of the case and I was thinking you know this really is or another woman who um her husband had left her you know had been gambling I think or had got into all this debt and had left her you know with all this debt for the wife was not her fault at all and they were kind of pretty much blaming this woman for this whole situation and telling her that she ought to write

a gratitude letter to her husband for all of this happening and I was thinking you know this is just absolutely nuts this is some kind of emotional abuse you know and I think that our ideas on it have moved on over time but yeah it's look as you say balance is important. But I think we've gone too far to that side of things in this country. And I think we need to kind of pull back and look at more collective solutions. That is an unequivocal statement that I can agree with it. We do need to look at things more collectively. And it needs to be more of, of a we thing. I mean, I, you know, my sort of quote, unquote, self help journey, you know, started with my recovery from heroin addiction, which was profoundly shaped by the people that were around me, and by the support that was available to me.

And, you know, all that stuff was made possible by a social support system, as well as then all the people that I found that were there. And I do think that that's such an important piece. The thing about that idea of like, write a gratitude list to the person who fired you sounds completely nuts, right? It makes me think back to an idea, though, that I used to hear in in 12 step recovery, which was's ultimately probably suffering from that. And learning to let go of that somehow is probably a good idea. But I think going as far as I'm going to write gratitude to somebody who has fired me in a cruel and unfair way stretches that concept a little bit beyond its usefulness. Right, absolutely. And I think you also have to look at the power structures operating behind all that, because I think it's one thing, you know, if you're in a pretty equal relationship with somebody

and, you know, there's a breakdown of trust or you resent them for something, that's one thing. And to let go of that resentment, I think, is healthy. And it's going to do you a big favor if you do that. And forgiveness is just such an important piece of social connection. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I often think about this idea of responsibility and blame. Yes. Right.

In our own lives. Like where am I taking responsibility in a useful way? And where am I taking blame for something? So I just think it's an interesting idea. I'd be curious your thoughts. Yeah, it's a really good distinction, I think. And I think absolutely, I mean, personal responsibility in our relationships is so key to having healthy relationships, you know, to admit when you've been wrong, to accept your own part in things, to not blame the other person or the rest of it. So I think that is a great way to be in a relationship, as long as that relationship is basically one of equals.

I think when you are looking at something where there is this complicated dynamic of power and somebody having a hold on you, then I think that becomes quite a different equation. Yeah, and it's interesting. I have these conversations with my son a little bit who is in college and very studying sociology, the sociology of race, a lot of environmental stuff. And we talk a little bit about how he's sort of staring down these really big problems all the time.

Yes, right. I think that change? And what is the relationship then with my own mental health around those things? And it gets back to this idea a little bit of responsibility and, you know, recognizing how much responsibility we have, what we can actually change, what we actually can't change is such a, such a big thing. It makes me think of what you said very early when we talked about the two wolves. And you said, well, I think part of the problem is I can't, the wolves look pretty close, right? Like I can sort out the wolf that tells me to go stab my downstairs neighbor because they're making too much noise. I can clearly dismiss that wolf. I think it's sort of like the serenity prayer,

which I think is one of the wisest things ever, right? Right, yeah. And yet, it is the reason why it's like we're praying for the wisdom, because my God, it's hard to find. It's so hard to know where should I push, where should I change, where should I accept, and it's so gray. Yes, it's so gray. And I find that especially, you know, I'm a where should I accept, and it's so gray. Yes, it's so gray. And I find that especially, you know, I'm a parent of three children, and mine are younger,

but I find that all the time with parenting. I find that's like the absolute source of all of my biggest philosophical, moral, emotional conundrums. You know, I don't know which one's the good wolf. I can read something which says, you know, be stricter, and I think, okay, that's the way to go. And then I'll read something which says, you know, be less be kinder be you know more understanding and I think okay well that's the way to go you know and all of these can make a very very good case for being the right way to go and all of them come from a good place I mean we all

want to raise healthy happy kids but it's just you know how do you do that that's that that's the question you know it's not as you say no one's you know no how do you do that? That's the question. You know, it's not, as you say, no one's, you know, no one's really advocating that you beat your kids or you starve them, whatever. It's just, you know, between these good wolves, you know, people presenting themselves as the good wolves, which one is the way to go? And as you said about, you know, this question with your son about how do we deal with these terrible things that happen in the world and these huge um issues to deal with and especially now i think we're at the kind of peak anxiety at the moment um politically and socially um how do we deal with that and still preserving our own

mental health and i think that is a huge question and i think our the the younger generation the generation of college students now i really admire because I think they are willing to tackle the big questions in a way that my generation was too busy getting drunk and ignoring it, you know, and letting the world kind of burn. And, you know, so I think it's a tricky one, because I think the easy thing would be to say, we'll just switch off from it. But, you know, to preserve your own mental health, but that's not going to help. You know, we have to be informed citizens, you know, and we have to find a way to stay engaged and to, you know, to make changes and to fight for what's right. And at the same time, take care of ourselves. Yeah. And I think not only are college students wrestling with this. I mean, I hear this from listeners all of the time, like,

I'm watching this political train wreck, and I can't turn away from it. And yet this staring at it all day long is just making me sicker and sicker and sicker. And yes, you know, where what is the what is the right amount of engagement with that, that is actually useful. And, you know, I think we're all trying to figure this out in my own life. I've hit a point where I'm like, if what I learn is going to cause me to do something, then I think it's worth continuing to engage and learn and, and, and listen. And if on the other hand, it's just going to reinforce the same things that I already know, that I already feel, then it may not be a useful thing for me. The constant outrage about something that I'm not planning to do anything about feels to me like… Very corrosive.

Very corrosive. For no good, right? It just corrodes me and the people around me. Yeah. It just corrodes me and the people around me. Whereas, you know, I think if it's something I'm going to, that I'm going to engage in and do something about, then, you know, I think it's really important. And so that's kind of where I have been sitting with it lately. Yeah, that's an interesting way, because I think there's two trends which are going on.

One is that there objectively is just a lot of very anxiety producing stuff that's going on in the news right now. I think that's just kind of a given. And the other thing is that we just have access to far more information than we ever have. You know, we have just, you know, with our phones and just devices and, you know, social media and just constant drip, drip, drip, drip, drip access to the news. I think we're absorbing information in a very different way than we already have. So these two trends together together I think is just completely and utterly overwhelming I mean I think what you said is really interesting for me I think I probably set the bar slightly differently because I think I accept that there will be many things that I will want to know about

and be informed about that I probably won't be taking any very direct action on. I think I just because of where I am in my life, I think, you know, I've got three very young children, I have a job. And I've once I think, you know, I can't quite set the bar at that the point that you've set it, which is, you know, if I'm not going to take action on something, I'm not going to know about it, because there are only so many things I can take action on. I'm not going to know about it because there are only so many things I can take action on. You know, I do call my senator. I do, you know, sign my petitions and I do make political donations and I do do things, but you know, there are limits on it. And so I do think being informed in and of itself is doing something. You know, I don't think it's doing nothing, but I, you know, I, like everybody else really struggles to find the right balance. And,

you know, I do find myself getting overwhelmed and feeling very anxious and toxic. And, and I have tried to sort of compartmentalize by time and say, okay, I'm not going to look at my phone or look at the news until such and such a time. And, you know, I've tried different ways. I don't think I've hit on the right thing for sure. Yeah. I don't think there is any, any right answer. And I'm, I'm not quite as uninformed as that just sounded. Sorry, I probably made it sound worse than it. Yeah, no, but no, I think it is that balance of like, how much time do I need to hear sort of the same? The other thing that I think is happening, which I think is a really interesting phenomenon, is that on one hand, we are very anxious and

things look really grim. And, you know, climate change is really bad. And on the other hand, by all sorts of different measures, the world is becoming a much better place. That is true. Yeah, absolutely. In some sort of, in some semi-staggering ways. And so I think that is another narrative that we mostly miss. We might get fed schmaltzy feel-good stories that sometimes are helpful, but I don't know that we hear enough about how much better life is for the average human than it was 100 years ago. Yes, I think that's such an important point. And it's such an important thing to remember. And, you know, just as you're talking, I'm just kind of wondering,

you know, something like climate change, this is one that I go back and forth on myself, because on the one hand, you know, if you hear if you read one thing about climate change, you know, you know, it's coming, then you're an informed citizen and you know do you need to read it 50 times a day in 50 different ways and I don't know is there something about the drip drip drip drip drip that actually is the only thing that will get us to actually do anything about it or is it is it the kind of thing you can know once and then forget about I don't know I think part of the anxiety does help me do lots of little things to kind of, you know, in my daily life, it does sort of serve as a reminder that yes, it is definitely in competition with my mental health. Yeah, yeah. Back to what we talked about

earlier, everybody is different, right? Like, you know, because the far extreme for a lot of people of too much of this is then becomes complete disengagement. Right? Like, now I'm done. I'm done. I'm burnt out. I can't fix anything. And I just fall into a state of depression and apathy. And so everybody's going to engage with these things differently.

And sort of back to an earlier thing that we talked about also, you know, with studies and like what works for me, you know, what, what is it for me that is the balance that seems to work that allows me to move forward? Your book is wonderful. It is hilarious. I highly recommend it. And I can't cover even 1% of how much good stuff and how much I laughed during the book. But you talk all about the challenges of social media, and there's all sorts of studies that show that. So I'll get listeners who say, like, should I give up social media altogether? Is social media bad? And I'll go, well, I don't know. Is it for you? Like, what's your relationship to it?

Like, what's it doing in your life? Because I don't know that there's an answer for everyone. Yes. And also, you know, there's different answers at different times. You know, at some points in my life, social media has been really helpful. And other points, it's just been a complete shit show. Sorry, can I say that? Yeah, you can you know so i think it's sort of it really depends where you are in your life and you know

what's going on for you as to how you respond to all that stuff yep well ruth this has been a wonderful conversation i feel like i could do it for a whole lot longer but we are at the end of our time here so i want to thank you so much for coming on the show and talking with me. Oh, it's been such a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. You're welcome. Bye. Bye-bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.

The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

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