Today, Explained - A nation of jerks

Episode Date: September 21, 2025

Americans seem to be getting ruder. Are our attempts at making ourselves better actually making us worse? This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch and Isabelle Lichtenstein, engineered by Matthew Billy and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Image: Francesco Carta Fotografo/Getty Images.  If you have a question, give us a call on 1-800-618-8545 or send us a note here. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You treat people like they treat you. Kindness and politeness are important. Get away from me is the energy right now. I'm not even getting pleasantries no more, and it hurts. It's explained to me from Vox. I'm John Blenhill. And it feels like people are way less polite than they. used to be. A quick look online proves that a lot of you feel this way. If I'm holding the door

open for you, you need to say thank you. You know, if you don't want to say hello to me, just don't look at me. That's fine. You don't have to say hello to me, but I think it's a polite thing to do when you're walking past people to say hello to them. Today, you guys, I witnessed a woman listening to a podcast on full blast strolling the aisles of Target. Are we kidding? Does that bother anyone else or just me? To find out where exactly our manners have gone, I talked to Ali Volpey, who who writes about relationships and social health and friendship at Vox. Yeah, it seems like we are in a weird time for how we're treating each other. Everywhere you go, it seems like there are people who are acting in ways that are pretty bizarre

and are signifying that they do not care about other people's comfort. Google searches for, quote, is it rude, have steadily climbed over the last 20 years. And even Lizzie Post, who's the great, great granddaughter of, like, the famous etiquette Maven Emily Post gets this question all of the time. And her predecessors have gotten it, too, of like, are we rudeer now than we were in the past? And so it's almost a comfort to know that each generation seems to be facing the same issue of thinking the one that is following it is more rude. Okay. Have you noticed any of this rudeness yourself? Like, are there examples you have in your day-to-day life where you're like, oh, that was crazy? Oh, definitely. People openly scrolling on their phones in movie theaters, like not even trying to be.

trying to hide it anymore. I've seen someone, like, smoking a cigarette on the subway. Like, that to me seems like really bizarre behavior. Yeah. Yeah, I think the thing that I see the most is people playing music on their phone out loud. And it's not like a crowd is around them and they're trying to, like, you know, ooh, listen to this, but it's just them and their music out loud. I know. I know. And, like, I take the bus a lot. I love the bus. And, like, it is every single time I'm on the bus. Someone's like playing a TikTok full blast, having a FaceTime conversation full out in the open without headphones. And I'm like, this is bizarre, but like everyone's in your business now. Like, do you want everyone to know what's going on? I know. As a nosy person, it's good in that way,

but don't do that. Okay. So we have this anecdotal evidence, but are people actually rude or now? Right. It's like kind of hard to measure rudeness because everyone has like a slightly different definition. of it. One of the experts I spoke to defined rudeness as a behavior and action or a comment that is meant to be disrespectful or violates a social norm. So everyone has like a little bit of a different idea of like what they consider disrespectful, you know, but there's some like evidence that people are feeling that we are being a little bit rude. There was a recent Pew Research Center survey that found that nearly half of the country believes that people's behavior is more rude than it was before the pandemic. And a UNC business professor conducted a

worldwide survey in 2022. So sort of like in the midst of pandemic changes. And she found that 73% of respondents said it wasn't unusual for customers to be rude compared to 61% who said the same in 2012. So like that's a pretty significant jump over a decade. Why are we more rude now? Right. Like in that study in particular, the 2022 survey, she found the number one reason for people being rude was feeling stressed or overwhelmed. And I think that is, you know, in part because of the pandemic. The pandemic was a really stressful, crazy time. And it was an inflection point because because rude can be defined as like a behavior that like violates a social norm. And when we think about the pandemic, social norms were being created in real time. because we had this, like, virus that nobody knew what to do about. So there's a lot of new social norms cropping up and a lot of ways to defy those. We had a lot of people, you know, not wanting to mask, not wanting to stay home. Also, like, we live in a world that's incredibly polarized and it's only gotten worse since the pandemic.

Like, inflation, tariffs, stressful news. Like, it makes sense that people are more stressed and have shorter fuses than ever before. Do you think any of this is from a sense of entitlement? You know, we're told to put ourselves first a lot, which is good for a long time. People haven't been thinking of themselves. But is that almost making us a little less empathetic? Yeah. Yeah, like this pendulum has really swung from like work hard, sacrifice to now prioritize

your own comfort at all costs. And I understand it. Like the world is crazy and it's stressful right now and everything feels really hard. And so one way of controlling that is to make your world a little safer, a little less chaotic, and to self-soothe. And to do that, people are sort of pushing out other people that they see as problematic. And, you know, I think we've taken it a little too far. It can sometimes be hard to confront people on their rudeness, but it's not always clear whether what they're doing is actually rude. How do you know if something is rude or? not. Yeah, it is so hard because there's a lot of ambiguity recently. Like I was finishing up a run. I was like chatting with a neighbor and she was like, oh, I said hi to you like a couple blocks back, but like you didn't say hi back to me. I'm like, oh my God, because I had headphones on. I had my

music. Like when I run, I'm like very in the zone. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I just totally did not see you. I'm so sorry. But like she kind of called me out on it. But like she could have easily been like, oh, Ali was being rude. Like, she totally ignored me. Like, she saw me. She just wasn't saying hi. Because, like, there are a lot of times when, like, people are just, like, not paying attention. Like, you don't know what their intentions are. And so I think it's, like, a very, very fine line to walk of, like, telling someone to, like, stop it. Okay. That's if you encounter something that is rude. How do you keep from being the rude one? Yeah. My mom will probably be really happy that I'm quoting her here. But she always says, like, the only,

thing you can control is yourself and your own behavior. Like, that was something she always tried to instill in us. And that, I think, is the easiest thing we can do when it comes to rudeness. Like, if we just perpetuate polite, nice behavior, like, that is number one modeling it for the people in our life, especially kids. Like, we can remind ourselves that not everybody is being rude. You're like, oh, yeah, that guy held the door open for me the other day. Like, that was really nice. And, like, it just helps you remember, like, this world is not. all bad. And like I can do those little things like that too to sort of, you know, bring some positivity to the world. All right. Thanks, Allie. That was a really polite conversation.

Thank you. So we can control our own behavior. But what about the self-help industry making billions of dollars off of our self-control? That's up next. Support for the show comes from Framer. On the one hand, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. On the other hand, we all know what it's like to stumble on a janky website and assume that the operation behind it is janky as well. Bottom line, if you run a business, you need a website. And if you need a website, you need Framer.

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brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026 X-19 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience Event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. We're back. It's explained it to me. And we wanted to ask the question, are we doing so much self-help that we've ended up actually self-helping ourselves into being antisocial?

Jessica Lam Shapiro is the author of a book called Promise Land, My Journey Through America's self-help culture. She grew up around self-help, and it left her kind of skeptical of it all. My dad was a child psychologist, and he wrote parenting books, and I later found out that he used me as an example in his parenting books. So I'm not going to say I was being experimented on, but I was a little bit being experimented on because he had theories about child psychology and how to raise kids, and then he implemented those theories as a parent, but also as a self-help writer. And so in that way, you know, I grew up around self-help, but like we all did, you know, because that kind of stuff percolates, even if you're not reading self-help book, you know, we all see affirmations everywhere. And like if you ever shop at Lulu Lemon, there's like a bunch of affirmations on their bag and there's posters. And like we're just, it's so kind of woven into the fabric of our experience that I kind of think everyone grew up with self-help even if they didn't grow up reading self-help books or having a self-help book writer for a dad. How long have these books been around?

So the first incarnation of self-help, where they actually used the word self-help, was in the mid-1800s. There was a writer named Samuel Smiles. He wrote for the Leeds Times. And there was a society called the Mutual Improvement Society, and they invited him to give a lecture. And he told these stories, these anecdotes about working men, you know, rising from poverty, into positions of power. And it was hugely successful. People love the stories. So he started doing more and more lectures and then eventually made it into a book and the book was called Self-Help. It came out in 1859. It was immediately a bestseller. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth

in the individual and exhibited in the lives of many. It constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. So it was like popular way before I thought. And then you can also find predecessors in like the Greek Stoics, which is like, you know, 160, 180 AD. There was a Roman emperor named Marcus Aurelius who wrote a book called Meditation. and that book is actually sold as a self-help book today.

Like if you go to your bookstore and you look in the self-help section, you can find Marcus Aurelius' self-help. Oh, my God, every man I know reads about stoicism. So yes, I do know the name quite well. It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth. For then you won't tire and give up

if you aren't busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed. Like when I was writing the book, I was like, oh, you know, this is don't sweat the small stuff. Do you remember that book? It was like a bestselling book. I don't know, when I was growing up, so 80s, 90s. And it basically is the same thing with a different, you know,

more dire message. Like, we're all going to die one day, so who cares? That's the stoic version of don't sweat the small stuff. But, you know, repackaged for like today's Happy America. It's basically the same message. So like any self-help book you find to do, day, there's always a predecessor of like a hundred years or earlier that like somebody basically wrote the same thing.

How big is the self-help industry? I actually had to look this up. The global self-help industry is worth between $45 and $59 billion. It's also called personal growth or self-improvement, not always self-help. And this isn't just books, but it's also like courses and TikToks and Affirmation a Day calendars. So you did all of this work, and part of it was to find out if self-help books are a scam. Are they a scam? This is a very difficult question. I wouldn't say that they're a scam. And then again, there are so many self-help books. There's good ones. There's bad ones.

There's bad ones that have some good qualities. So like if you kind of don't take everything as gospel, you can kind of pick and choose, like, what's helpful and what's not helpful. We, it seems like we love self-help if billions of dollars are being spent on it. I'm looking at my bookshelf as we speak, and I can see a copy of Radical Cander by Kim Scott. Like, I, and that's just one of the many self-help books I have. Why are we so drawn to these? I mean, I think it's a really appealing idea that whatever your life is, it could be better.

You know, you could be richer, you could be hotter, you could be smarter, you could be more popular, you could be faster, like, you know, it's just an idea that's very appealing to us as human beings that we could just be more awesome than we are right now or have more awesome stuff than we have right now. That's like the whole manifesting thing, right? At its base, it's actually a very appealing idea. And it appeals to me. I mean, I don't, I'm always trying to do things better. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to be smarter. I'm trying to be more. social, leave my house more, you know, be a better dog owner. I have read, I have read books about dog training. It's interesting because you started out pretty skeptical of self-help, you know, going into writing this book. Do you still feel that way? Or have you found redeeming things in it? I've definitely found redeeming things in it. You know, I absolutely think you should always retain a bit of skepticism and a little bit of cynicism when you're encountering. self-help just to, you know, stave off the weirdest ideas because there are some really weird ideas out there. But also, you know, I was in my 30s when I wrote the book. I'm in my 40s now.

And a lot has happened politically, socially. The pandemic happened. And those were like some tough times for me and for everybody. So I feel like I have a lot more sympathy for like the urge to self-help and just sort of the idea of it, even if it doesn't get realized in the books. What's changed about self-help in recent years? Anything at all? One thing I've noticed is that they've kind of become better and more mainstreamed. I'm thinking of someone like Brene Brown, who is an academic researcher and actually has, you know, studies to back up the think she's saying, but also is sometimes seen as a self-help writer, and certainly her books have helped people. Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage, to be vulnerable,

to let ourselves be seen, to be honest. If we're going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path. So there's kind of an elevating of the discussion where it's like a little bit more intellectual, and I think that appears. appeals to more people. And so they've brought in like a whole new audience to self-help. And I think in a way, the books have become better as a result. And they're certainly better and more interesting reads. Do you think we're overdoing it on self-help? Like, are we trying too hard to fully optimize ourselves to be our best selves? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think we're like obsessed with betterment, obsessed with productivity. You know, I don't think that's health.

necessarily. You know, self-help books are appealing because, like, you're thinking, like, oh, well, I'm going to go to therapy for years and I'm going to spend thousands of dollars. I could just buy this book for 20 bucks and feel better immediately and maybe get something out of it. But I think we're really losing the sort of community aspect when you're talking about self-help and everything is done by yourself. I think when you do that, you lose the opportunity to have a community and to strengthen your relationships with other people because I know that's what it's done for me. When I try to help myself on my own,

I'm still by myself. Whereas if I ask for help, I'm strengthening my relationships and I'm getting a lot more out of it than just the help that I was looking for. And I think that that sense of community is really important. And so many people are feeling lonely and alienated and behind their computer that to get out,

from that and actually make contact with another person or an organization, I think, is really beneficial, you know, not just to society, because it's definitely beneficial to society to have people invested in the community, but also to the individuals to kind of feel like they have community support and they're not just completely isolated and alone. Coming up, how to get that community back. When your investors, customers, and workers demand more from your business, make it happen with SAP. The AI-powered capabilities of SAP can help you streamline costs, connect with new suppliers, and manage payroll, even when your business is being pulled in different directions. To deliver a quality product at a fair price, while paying your people what they're worth too, so your business can stay unfazed.

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and get enough points for a free donut, drink, or timbits. With 800 points after registration, activation, and first purchase of a dollar or more, see the Tim's app for details at participating in restaurants in Canada for a limited time. we're back it's explain it to me so we're more lonely than ever these days and that's partly because of the ways we are and aren't interacting with each other in other words our boundaries i spoke to nedra glover to wab about this she's a licensed therapist and author of several books including

set boundaries find peace but before we got into that we needed to establish some boundaries of our own Like, what boundaries are in the first place? Needs and expectations in our relationships that make us feel safe and comfortable. The boundary can be verbal. It can be a behavior that you start to exhibit. But it is a way for you to show up in your relationships, hopefully. Save them, keep them well, be better in them. So you write a lot about boundaries.

What got you interested in boundaries? Well, when I first became a therapist, so many of my clients were talking about work-life balance, challenges with family, challenges with their partners. And one of the very hard things to do in relationships is to be assertive. And we started to talk about boundaries, not with using the B word of boundaries, but about self-advocacy. What would you want them to know? How do we manage this situation? which for me translates to boundary issues. How often does this come up in your clinical practice?

I would say all the time, but I don't use the word boundaries. We talk about their situations, and I like to think of it as coming up with solutions. I don't think using terminology is always the best way for us to work through our issues to say, okay, so you're a people pleaser. Let's do this thing. We can just talk about whatever issue you. you're talking about, you allow someone to use your time in a way that you are

uncomfortable with. How do we prevent that in the future? We don't have to use the word, you're a people please. I don't have to give you a label. We're really talking about what's presently in front of us. Is it possible we're overdoing this therapy speak, especially I think among middle class young people these days? Are we sort of twisting these concepts at all? We are twisting them. I liken it to us using medical terminology in our everyday conversations with people, which you don't typically see people doing. Like, I'm not naming bones when you told me you hurt your knee, right? Like, I don't know all of the parts of the knee, but I find that with therapy, people are saying, like, bipolar, this person has

a boundary issue. They have an attachment, this. It's this thing. without the clinical skills to actually diagnose and help people troubleshoot in a way that is actually helpful and not just labeling them. So I think that the terminology in a way, it boxes it in, it leaves us without nuance. And we're not giving people enough flexibility in who they are in saying that you're a people pleaser. Are we meant to apply these things, you know, sort of blanket across the board with everyone we interact with? Or is this more about these really personal closer relationships? Well, I think boundaries can be universal, but they should also be flexible. There are levels to boundaries. You see a lot of people pleasing, you know, when people

don't have boundaries and I would label those as porous boundaries. Then we have rigid boundaries, which we're starting to see a lot of, and that's what you're speaking to. Rigid boundaries is where we have these walls, we have these hard rules, and we keep everyone out. Everybody gets the same rule. Well, I'll tell you, because I have so many variety of relationships, everybody doesn't even need the same rule. What's some advice you give your clients about how to set better boundaries? And I mean that both when the boundaries are too porous and when they're too rigid. Like, how do people do better? Yeah, well, with two rigid boundaries, I often find that they have a lot of discomfort around holding the boundary. And so we explore, is this a boundary you even want to have or is this a boundary that you feel like you should have? Is this some sort of punishment you're trying to issue? Is this guilt that you're feeling? So very often with folks who come to therapy, they've been tolerating things for a very long time. And so that's why we've seen a lot of overactive boundaries, right? Because people have

been tolerating their uncle, their cousin, their friend, their job for so long that when the boundary comes out, it's a yell, it's a scream, it's aggressive, it's firm, because we're tired. And so we have to think about what are the boundaries that I can implement here that I can actually live with? What are the boundaries here that would make me feel comfortable in this relationship? If all of your boundaries end in a cutoff, because I see that sometime, the boundary is a cutoff. There is no in between. It's either we're in relationship or we are not. Have there been any things in between that help you all stay in a relationship in jobs? We call that a performance review plan, right? So you give somebody some things that they need to do or you take on some

things that you need to do so the relationship can be better. But we are going right from problem and firing. How do you encourage your clients to connect with people if they want to and they're struggling to? We do a lot of scripting. It's September right now and I'll tell you this is the time of year, particularly October where a lot of my clients start talking about their family stuff. And so during this time, because a lot of my clients, I've seen them for years. So guess what? we can start right now in September and we start talking about okay so when you go home for Thanksgiving and you got to sleep on the couch and your sister gets to be a room what are we doing different this year what are we these are these are boundary things right so the different thing that

they might do is they stay in a hotel they decide to have the conversation before the holiday that perhaps this would be a rotating thing right sometimes they get the couch sometimes I get So it's really about being proactive when you know situations will occur. We've spent this episode. We've talked about, I don't know, just how so much of life is individualistic now. We've talked about self-help and all these different things. But it does seem like at the end of the day, the only thing you can control is yourself. So maybe it's just thinking, okay, what are the ways that I control? myself in these situations. You know, one of the things that I think about often when I hear people lamenting about relationships is we actually need more community than we have.

And that's why we put so much pressure on the one friend or on our parents or the one sibling or the, we just need more people. Many of us are hyper-focused on very few relationships. so now it's leading to depression and loneliness because we don't have enough people to be kicking people out of our lives. That's therapist and author, Nedra Glover-Tawab.

We're doing an episode on how fatherhood and our idea of a good dad is changing. So, if you're a dad, give us your thoughts. Why did you decide to become a dad? And how has fatherhood changed your friendships? We'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 1-800-618-8-55 or send us a voice memo to AskVox at Vox.com. This episode was produced by Avishai Artsy.

It was edited by Miranda Kennedy with help from Megan Canaan, fact-checking by Melissa Hirsch and Isabel Liechtenstein. And our engineer this week was Matthew Billy. Special thanks to Noelle King, the co-host of Today Explain, who's very well read. If you want to check out more podcasts from Vox Media, head over to podcast. podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Thanks for listening. Bye.