Lisa Damour (on the emotion of teenagers)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert experts on expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Good afternoon morning. - Teenager. - Midnight if you're listening to midnight. - Buh. - Teenager. - Gross teenagers. - Yeah. - I was trying to be one for a second, but I forgot how. - That's your new character. - Yeah. - We have Dr. Lisa DeMauron, and of course, Lisa DeMaur is a clinical psychologist and best-selling author. Her books include Under Pressure, Untangled, but the reason Monica was going to do her teenage character is that her new book is called The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. We're super blessed and then we get really great submissions and we're always trying to decide what is the thing that's interesting to people. And I do think of any stage of development for children. I think the one that raises the most anxiety with parents is teenage years, right? - Yeah. There's a lot of hype around it. - There's a lot of hype, which is interesting because I loved my teenage years. - Is there so fun? - So did I, but I was pretty mean to my parents. - You were. - What? - They deserved it. - I guess you get one or the other. I got into trouble, but I was really nice to my parents. And you got in no trouble, but you were mean to your parents. - Yeah. - What would you pick if you had a kid? - I would definitely pick. - Mean? - Mean to me. - Yeah. - I'm not interested in you. - And I would pick nice to me. - Really big. I think in this episode, you say differently. - I do. - But yeah. - Okay. - Well, listen, in addition to The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Lisa also has a podcast out now called Ask Lisa, the Psychology of Parenting. So also an incredibly useful resource if you're a parent. So check that out as well. Please enjoy Dr. Lisa DeMore. - You're gonna have to scoot over a little bit. - Get in that corner. - You're gonna get in it? - And then you know how to use headphones. - And you have a water. And then you don't. I'm gonna get you water. - Okay, great. Thank you. - Unless you want to use Maisie Williams' swan. - Yes. If you want to have a sip of Arya Stark's water, then feel free. - Thank you so much. - Did you watch Game of Thrones? This could be a great icebreaker. - Absolutely. - Because we think scientists and we think stuffy, but maybe if we found out you were a. - Uh-oh. - I'm a compulsively honest person, so you're gonna get the truth. So we were watching. And one of the things that happened not rarely in that show was rape. - Oh, aha. - Yep. - I am a psychologist. I have cared for people who have been raped. And it's hard for me to watch the depiction of rape in the context of entertainment and also without any explication of the aftermath. - Aha. - And so we were watching it and watching it and enjoying it. And then after I was like, I can't do it anymore. - That's a good reason. - So I liked it. - And we found it unpleasant to watch. - Yeah. - Then why would you watch it? You know what happened to us? As we were midway through, that was eight years long, I think. And we had children in the middle of that. And previously, this is like, beta-mind-hoff frequency illusion. Our favorite saying on here. I didn't realize how many kids they killed on that show. But soon as I had kids, I was like, "My god, they go to my kids on the show." - Yes. - They got hard to watch. - No, I remember a moment when my older daughter was a baby. And we were watching a movie. I can't remember the title. It had Nicole Kidman in it. It was about somebody returning home from the Civil War. - Oh, yeah, Cole Mountain. - Yes. And there was a scene where there was a baby lying on the ground crying out. And I ran to the second floor of our house and yelled, "Dandama has one." I'm like, "Tell me when it's over. Tell me when it's over." - All the way up there. - I couldn't. - I was having a kid. What have been a scene? So those things change. - There's also fun. And of course, you have all the data. So this is a very lopsided dance as Adam Grant would say. But what are your thoughts on playing out fears in art? I also think there's something compelling and valid about that as well. Why do people like horror? Why do women like rape pornography? - BDSM. - Yeah. Why do we explore these things we're terrified of? And it's a safe place to exercise those. So I see some validity to it, too. What do you think about that? - I'll tell you a story that I think will answer your question. So when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, - Ding, ding, ding. - I'm so excited. - I had a little boy I cared for. And his number one fear was of tornadoes. He would, this was in the mid-90s, compulsively watch the weather channel. No, you're right. You're right. But in his day-to-day, he would compulsively watch the weather channel for any evidence that there was a tornado anywhere near where we were. His favorite movie was Twister. And he watched it over and over and over again. And I think for him, it was that he could start it, he could stop it, he could control it, he had total say. - He survived the end. - Exactly. So totally phobic of tornadoes and obsessed with the movie Twister. I have a very similar story, a patient of mine during COVID, watch Contagion. - I watched it so many times. - Yes, yes. - Was obsessed with it. - Yes. If we gave it out of 10, how scared you were of the pandemic, it was above five. - Yeah. - For sure. - Because this was early days too. We were wiping the groceries. - I remember it was-- - It was that time where I found it very comforting. And I just had a seizure and she had a seizure in it. That was part of it too. - There was a double whammy for you. - It really was. - It's hitting two birds. - Yeah. That was part of the pandemic because they were all having seizures. - Right. - And then I was seeing it. - Yeah, that was one of the symptoms of the Contagion. - Yeah. - Okay, so you're originally from Denver. And what did mom and dad do? - Mom has actually always worked in politics. - Oh, really? - She's always worked for politicians. So when I was growing up, she ran the governor's mansion. - Wow. - In Colorado. - And would you get to go there as a little kid? - I hung out there a lot. My parents divorced when I was three. And so there was a juncture, especially from three to six, before my mom remarried, where my mom was a single mom. And she was working to support us as a family, just the two of us. And so she would pick me up from school, take me back to work. - We interviewed so many smart people, so many experts. They dedicate their life to studying something. They're all brilliant. I think for me, I'm almost more interested in why the thing they studied is somehow soothing the thing they were. - So you're on the right track. - Okay, great. - I want to be transparent. - No, I appreciate it. - My mom remarried to my stepfather, who served as my father my whole life. He's American, but he was living in London. And so we moved to London. I was six. And we left when I was seven. And I know it sounds glamorous, and it's not unglamorous. I've grown up with a lot of privilege. There's no getting around that. It wasn't as fun as it sounds. - No, it doesn't sound fun to be six and move to a different context. - It was a lot of disruption. And then we moved back to the US. And my dad was working for an American bank that was based in Chicago. So that's why we went to Chicago. But two year question. Actually, that was the moment when I decided to become a psychologist. - When you were seven. - When I was six and seven. Yeah, so wild coincidence. The same week that we moved from Denver to London. And my friend of a friend made the same move to start studying with Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter. - Wow. - No way. - Welcome to 1976. - Bingo. Anna Freud worked out child and adolescent psychology. So my parents were newly married, sorting out this new marriage. - You got a strange dude in your life all of a sudden. - Brand new stepfather, wonderful human being. - Yeah, even after great thought. - Yeah, but brand new. - You and mom were making all the decisions. And then there's a third party on the scene that has a lot of say. Clearly, you're living somewhere else. - Yup. And there's just a lot of disruption in a short period of time. - So my parents would travel a fair bit. And they would have me stay with Carla, the graduate student. And she was 26. She was totally cool. And I became obsessed with what she was learning. And so we would sit in her tiny little flat in Hampstead, England, right? by Anna Freud's clinic. And I'd be like, why do the kids come to you? And what do they say? And how does what you say make it better? And she was so good to me. And I was like, I'm going to do Carla's job. And Carla and I are still close. She's in her seventies. And when I look back, I'm like, you know, it's probably not an accident that given all of the disruption that had happened in my life up to that point. I was like, the inner worlds of children. - I am interested. - And they're people who are interested in this all the time. So that's how I understand it at this point in my life. - Also, just talk about the high level of coincidence in someone's life. You stay with her while your parents travel. And she is into architecture. We don't know. - Right. But all of my books start with a quote from Anna Freud. - Oh, they do. - Yeah. So despite Sigmund obviously having quite a black mark on his name currently, her work that's still standing up to some degree. - It does. And of course, it's all historically bound. They were working the time they were working. They were thinking the way people then were thinking. We don't think that way now. But in a hundred years, people are going to turn around and have a very good time. - No one seems to have that humility. - Well, no, I'm very clear on that. - I feel like I was very clear about that. - Everything we say. - No, I'm very clear on that. - Everything we say. - Yeah. - I'm totally mullied. How could you even think that? - Yes. - What is so beautiful about Anna Freud's work? And what I've really worked a hold on to and hopefully try to bring across in the way I do my work, especially around teenagers, is that she talks about the stage and the stresses that are inherent in it. - Right? So anything in life that's going through an enormous change has embedded in it some discomfort. - Change equals stress. - Yeah. - It's a done deal. - Was there any element of these transplants? Now you go then to Chicago. - Then we go to Chicago for three years and then we go back to Denver. - Also, you're lovely. You're a great conversationalist. - Thank you. - But I could imagine you as a kid being a little more on the shy side. I would imagine those big parachute into an existing culture everyone knows each other. Wasn't the most comfortable? Was that a fair guess or not a fair guess? - I guess what I would say. - Is your bad psychologist? You shouldn't lead the witness. - You shouldn't say you have patience when you don't have a practice. - That was awesome. - I have a patient, I'm not putting it in a patient. - I've had the good fortune of being a school person. When I think about kids and the kids in my care, some kids just buy endowment. School is a place that's very happy and comfortable for them. - In that you excelled in the teachers like you. - Yeah, yeah. - And a bit frictionless. - Yeah, school was designed for my particular neurology. It's not designed for every kid. It rewards a very narrow range of talents. My talents happened to fall in that range. You put me in school, I could find my way. And it was interesting. I'm actually still close with my third grade teacher from Chicago. - Oh my God. - Really? So that's the grade you started when you moved? - Yeah, so I was second grade in London and then we moved to Chicago. And I stay with her when I am in Chicago. - Oh, that's so long-wind. - Like I would just make my home at school. You know, I had good friends. - And you were highly validated there. - Yeah, but talk about like a nature nurture moment. How lucky for me in the context of all this disruption that the place I had to spend eight hours a day was a place that was really well designed for me. I care for kids where school is miserable for them and they feel lousy all day. - I actually think of how many teachers I owe apologies to, recognize how difficult I probably was. A few of them broke through and I do have relationships with some of them. But I guess what I think sometimes is that were any of them to ever hear this show? I think they'd be like, how did that happen? (laughing) I think that's where he was heading. I feel like I just owe them all a big apology. - Yeah, but you're sort of this incredible example of extraordinary intelligence that is not rewarded by conventional school. - It's very convenient 'cause so much of the work you do is kind of embracing the many varieties. Shindness is one of them. My wife loved that aspect of your book, which is parents have this inclination to like knock their kids out of shyness. For obvious reasons, there's so many incentives that were so social, it is a way you excel. And I get the fear, but at the same time is like, who cares if so much? (laughing) What was the thing? - I think there was in a bit of an inconvenience. Like I was a very shy kid and my mom was just like, you're just always like me. Go do something else. - I was gonna make some friends. - Yeah, like I need to take an app. I think it is more that. - Okay, on her end. - For her. - On her end, L.A., I think people are like, oh fuck, how are they gonna ever build a social network that will result in a job? They're not gonna pledge a sorority with this personality. Can we talk about shyness for a second? - Of course. - What are the virtues and why should parents not be as stressed about this particular disposition? - Okay, so going back to where we were, we really do ascribe a lot of shyness to temperament. And temperaments what we call inborn personality. When we think about temperament, we actually have three categories that we sort kids into. One label we probably would not use the same term again, which is difficult. - Okay. - Temperaments, sure. - Today we would come up with a better-- - We call DAX, it's going forward. (laughing) Then there's easy temperament. And then there's slow to warm up. So difficult are kids who are reactive, maybe not that, routinized in their habits. Maybe they have very high activity levels in a way that is challenging. Easy kids are at easy you're going. - The bad kids will be disruptive, I imagine, in a classroom. - They can be classroom stew reward. Kids who are able to sit, follow routines easily, transition, effectively, right, there's a reason we call it easy kids easy. And then slow to warm up are kids who are-- - Shut up. - Now Monica, thinking about what you said about your mom, what's really cool in this research is that no one temperament predicts the outcomes. What predicts is actually goodness of fit with the parent. So the parent who has a very high tolerance for a kid being slow to warm up, who's like, you can stay by my leg until you feel ready, goes great. The parent is like, get in there, get in there, get in there. That's where you see challenging outcomes. And even sometimes with so-called difficulty, it's unfortunate, but again, things are bound by the historical moment in which they're created. They can absolutely thrive with a parent who's like, OK, you need a lot of warning if we're going to make a transition. And you have a strong reaction to things. - Really quick, that's worth exploring, because I think the parent's knee jerk fear is by accommodating this behavior. The world's not going to accommodate this behavior. So I'll be the best version of this they're ever going to get. I got to bring them up to speed. Would you guess that's like the altruistic fantasy? There's a very, very limited set of behaviors in parents that I think are not well-meaning. I think it's very rare. I mean, it happens. There are terrible people who do terrible things. No question. One of the incredible gifts of getting to be a psychologist who cares for people and cares for families over time is that you see people doing the absolute best with what they've got. No one is coming in this trying to mess things up. And things don't always go well. Good example of a kid with a difficult temperament. And I'm using finger quotes now, just because I don't have using that word, they can feel sometimes the tag on their shirt. And it's making them bananas. What we know to be a goodness of it is to say, well, let's just get your shirts without tags. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also you could see it, parent, who's like, you're going to have to get used to discomfort in the world. Yeah, that's the most uncomfortable thing you're going to experience. Yeah, you've got to be a land of this. So it's hard. It is. And I deeply relate to the fear. I'll give you an anecdote. But it's like your deepest fear is that they would enter the world and be unsafe and not able to protect themselves and or be self-sufficient. This terrible fear of by me being soft or coddling or accommodating that ultimately I'm going to do so much more damage to them. It's kind of a leap of faith. I'm glad there's studies that we can say, no, no, this isn't going to perpetuate some kind of frailty. You can be accommodating in some way. The thing I was really wrestling with was our oldest daughter. She and I are very similar. Have these fears that would pop up. Now mind you, she rides a dirt bike. She does a lot of things. She'll climb anything. She's not afraid of heights. But she would have these fears pop up. And I found myself in a pattern of trying to tell her how to get over them or push through them. Again, because that's what liberated me. And I had a weird breakthrough. I was hiking and I just thought, you know, this is weirdly the best compliment I could get is that this household is safe to be afraid in. She doesn't have to rise up to this threat. But man, I was finding it for so long. And then it once it occurred to me like, no, no, this is really beautiful. This is a place where it's scary. And I was scared. And it's a bummer I had to get over it so quick. But I had to step over a lot of bad approaches before I realized, no, this is a good signal. You know, it's funny. Well, you're making me think about, there's so much we try to tell parents and so much we want parents to know. But if you had to sum up all of our research, everything we know, if you put it like in a giant machine that could drop out, what really matters? What we find over and over again is warmth and structure. The two together. I think the biggest challenge in parenting is you can't get an A plus on both simultaneously. Warmth is, oh my god, this movie's so great. Like let's stay up late and watch it. Yes. And structure is, it's your bedtime. We're turning it off. And so the challenge, and I think this is what you're talking through, is you want to have expectations and hold kids to them. And they need to feel not just loved, but really liked and supported. And so my thinking in my own parenting, I'm like, I'm going for a B minus average on both. Over the course of a week, that's what I'm going for. Well, this paradigm, by the way, is the one that keeps striking us over the head nonstop, which is we are constantly servicing often conflicting and contradictory objectives. The country is liberty and equality. These are diametrically opposed at times. So all of us who want 100% and everything or want it black and white, you can only have that if you have a singular goal in life. But if you're trying to service multiple things, the best you're going to be able to do is a B minus and a B minus and that's an A. Yeah, that's what's hard. Sitting in tension is very hard. We wanted this way or that one. Yeah, you go to Yale where I would not get in today. I know who I was in high school. I know what kids are doing now. So let me just be clear. I have a similar disclaimer. I got into UCLA through community college. I could have never gotten in there at a high school. And I certainly could never get in there now. That's a whole other side part. What's happening? What's the rule? Yeah. Given that I care for teenagers, I always love to throw that disclaimer on it, because it's just a very different scene. Yes. But when you went there, you're on the path that you've been pursuing since six. Is it rewarding? Do you ever think about deviating? Or you're just go, go, go, we're getting closer? It was pretty straight line. I signed up for developmental psychology for semester. I knew what I was going to do. There was about five minutes where I was like, maybe I'll be a pediatrician. And so I was taking bio with all the pre-megas. I was like, ah, I don't want to do this. It's a perfecto psychology. And then this is just again great good fortune and not appreciating it at the time. Yale has the Yale Child Study Center, which is one of the most phenomenal resources in the country and doing incredible work at a very high level. And so I started working for them when I was a college sophomore. This would have been like 88-ish? 89-90. What was the flavor of the day in 89? Theoretically? Yeah, because I want to go through the different cycles and fabs of psychology, and especially popular psychology. And I'm curious, another way would be like, what was the moral panic of the day, maybe? What was being studied that had to be figured out at that time? Because now neurodivergence is such a big field and feels like we need to understand this now. But obviously that wasn't a thing in 89. Actually, one of the benefits probably of the Yale Child Study Center is that it worked across the tri-state area in this very concentrated population. And so we actually did take care of a lot of highly specialized concerns. So at that time, my work was not in this area, but my work sometimes touched on it. If you had a question about an autism diagnosis or a kid on the spectrum, the best place you could go was the Yale Child Study Center. Incredible specialists who were seeing 20 kids a week, making those sort of evaluations. So the level was very high. I'll ask you quickly, when was that put on the DSM? How old is that diagnosis? Oh, it's been around for a while. The names have changed. And we've shifted, you know, we had all. autism and then as-burgers and then we have autistic spectrum disorders, but it's long been recognized. It's okay. It's especially in its more severe forms, very identifiable. So in the moment where it happened to be, I got to see incredible depths around actually what are comparatively rare concerns. If you were suffering from depression or anxiety, you didn't need to come to the L-child study center. Lots of people can care for that. Right. It was highly specialized. Yeah. And so I got, I didn't appreciate it at the time, but this amazing exposure. And then I kept working for them through college and then my first job after college was a full-time job there. I had written my senior essay down there and then my boss hired me and so I stayed and I ran a bunch of research studies. But the kinds of things that were made available to me, and again, you know, it's just like, "This is what I'm just doing. It's a Wednesday." You leave and you're like, "Oh my gosh." Right. Like I got so lucky. So the director at the time was a guy named Donald Cohen and he was just this old psychiatrist, you know, he'd been around forever, gifted clinician. And one of his seminars that he taught to all the medical students and all the psychiatry residents and the psychology fellows was that he interviewed children of ascending ages in front of an audience and he was so skilled. And my boss was so good to me. He's like, "Why don't you go to those meetings?" Right. I mean, I was just a research grant. Like I didn't have any right to be in the room. And so he was such a skilled interviewer and he was all done with consent. These weren't patients. Teaching moment all above board that he could sit with a kid and ask them questions and the kid would forget that there were 30 of us watching. And I got to watch Dr. Cohen, ask them about their lives, get them to tell us about seventh grade. And I still clinically use things. I learned. The techniques. Yeah. Like he, I remember he would say, when a kid would say something, he would never say, "Well, why?" He'd say, "How come?" Right. And he's like, "I'll tell you how come." And so I was 21 years old, right at this time and I just get to be in this room. I got really lucky. How has your optimism changed from that 21-year-old till now and how effective the techniques can be? I guess I would say my belief has gone down to paths simultaneously. So there are some things where it just is so frustrating that we can't do more. I have a work wife, a colleague who I share my private practice with. So we share the waiting room and then we each have our own offices within it. And she had just done an evaluation on a kid who's very severely ADHD. And we were talking about it and we were like, "You got to wake up every morning and just say, 'Hellucky!'" If you get dealt with a particular neurological hand, like it's just luck. I think that part I can feel very aware, like I wish we could do more. The other part, and this is the really fun thing about being 53 and mid-career is, "I've gotten to watch the field make phenomenal advancements." So I got my PhD in '96. And since then, we have come into it completely new world about how we care for eating disorders or able to get results we were never able to get before. That's encouraging. Yeah, the treatments have improved dramatically. On what order of magnitude? What was it and where are we? It used to be that eating disorders were the most lethal psychiatric disorder. Unfortunately, the opioid crisis has overtaken that. Right. I mean, then these are sort of rough and dirty numbers. But it used to be, if you suffered from the eating disorder, the outcomes were a third or third or third. A third of people recover. A third of people never recover. They're living severely eating disorder for the rest of their life or die from the eating disorder. And a third of people kind of recover. They're not really ever out of the woods, but they're not going to die from eating disorder that day. So these are terrible numbers. They're not great. Only surpassed by alcoholism, but continue. Yeah. I mean, like not good. And then treatment advanced. Family-based treatment is really now the gold standard. I don't want to quote numbers that aren't accurate, but what I will say is dramatically improved. We'll recover each dramatically improved great long-term outcomes. So that's exciting. Same with trauma. When I was leaving graduate school, we sort of had a fingernail grip on treating trauma. The treatment's on that as advanced so far in terms of psychotherapeutic interventions that really work. So I think I feel both at once. I wish there were more we could do. And it's so exciting to see the field make headway. How much of the ladder was driven by new techniques that were then systematically evaluated? And how much has been us having FMRI and all these different biological components that we understand about neurotransmitters and all these other things? Driving it to what degree? I think it's probably both. The psychotherapeutic techniques have changed and advanced. We're trying things we didn't use to try. We keep doing the ones that are working. Yeah. And then on the medical intervention side, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but what I will tell you is the drugs have proliferated massively in the time since I finished my training. And there's complicated question of what's okay and what's not okay. And for people who are helped by medication, the fact that there are many, many choices. And if this one isn't the right one for you, we can give you a try on this one. I watch it save people's lives. Well, there's that. And then there's also just observing the brain in different states of being and learning, even if it weren't pharmacological, we would go, okay, we understand the amygdala now we understand the cortex. We know how to breathe in a way that can get you back. We know how to do some talk therapy that can reroute some stuff. There's also non-pharmacological techniques that we did learn from being able to actually see what happens in the brain now. It is true. What I'm smiling about. So I used to teach abnormal psychology the course. I know you wrote in the textbook. I wrote a textbook in it. I wrote a textbook on it. I know if I took it. That's always what I took. I always wanted to see the freakyest thing. What's the craziest thing or criminality? No, that's not class. I would get to the connection between mind and body. And this was in the late '90s. I'd say, okay, all the stuff that we used to think was woo-woo California stuff. We have now documented it in the FMRI. Right. And so I think that it's almost like the field finally acknowledged or once it could put some science behind things that were actually established elsewhere, bringing it under the tent. So some of it we invented within the shop. Some of it was brought into the shop. Okay, so you get out. When do you start writing? Because you've been a prolific writer. So first you get out of graduate school and you do have a practice. You still have a practice. Did that start right away? I did. So I got my PhD in '96 state in Michigan, did two-year postdoc, taking care of people, set up a practice there. So I started writing actually right after I finished my dissertation. One of my closest friends is an English professor. She's actually a linguist. We are so horny for linguists. Oh, well. We just had one on it. There's no one more fun to talk to. Okay, well, she has a book coming out in March called Says Who, which is a fabulous book. Her name is Anne Curzanne. Absolutely fabulous. Perfect. So Anne and I, dear friends, since back then, we were at a dinner party with someone who's like, "If you two were to write a book, what would you write?" And we were like, "Oh, we would write the book that we wish had been handed to us when we started teaching college students." And so the friends said, "You should do it." It was like half a dare. So Anne and I co-authored this book that is in its third edition. I mean, this is like ancient history. Wow. This came out in 1999. Quarter century. Yeah, exactly. You just really, like a long time ago. It's called First Data Final Grade, a graduate student's guide to teaching. It is just this wonky little book. And then because I had written that book, I then went on the Michigan faculty I was teaching at Normal Psychology. An older colleague of mine, a dear mentor of mine, said, "I'm thinking about writing a textbook in abnormal psychology. Do you want to co-author it?" And I was like, "Sure. I didn't know what I was getting myself into." So Jim, Hansel, and I co-authored a textbook in abnormal psychology and we did it twice, did a second edition. So without meaning to be a person who was writing books, I was writing books. What was that? I'm wondering if that's the one I read. Me too. I feel like it probably wasn't that pretty fun. Yeah. No, I think it came out in like 2000. I was just leaving college. I probably-- That's like my era. That would have meant a great deal to me. Wow, that would be so cool. Sidebar. I love a textbook. It just hit me the other day. It's like, "I left college and then that was the end of textbooks." But they're so condensed and perfect. Western Civ sit down and learn all of Western Civ and 350 pages with pictures. Why are not I doing that with more topics? It's not that fun to write a textbook. I will tell you. Oh, I can't imagine. It's unbelievably tedious. And my half of the manuscript was 800 pages. Whoa. It's just a godly amount of writing. It's not all together bad to have written one. Because even though I work in one area in my field, I love the whole field. There's nothing in my field that doesn't interest me. And so, you know, I got my training and then you turn around and write a textbook. You get another training. So then we moved to Shake or Heights, Ohio, where I live now. I'm practicing. I'm taking care of a lot of teenagers and their families. It just happens that way. So here's what happened. First of all, I like teenagers and love caring for them. Why do you like them? They have, I think, a clarity. You say they have great bullshit detectors. That's total clarity of perception. Total clarity of perception. They can sniff out a lie, you say. Exactly. And there's something I just am sort of compulsively honest myself and I love being around what's true. And teenagers, man, if you ask them, they will lay it out for you, right? And I love that about that. We're not afraid to get canceled. No. They're just like, here's where it's at. Except for when they're very afraid. Yeah, exactly. And the word I'll use is plastic. They're so dynamic. Like they can change so quickly, right? It's so fun to care for teenagers because you can have a kid who's not going to school smoking tons of weed and then they get excited about something and then like, bam, they're going to class. So you look like a great clinician because this kid does a huge 180 in six months that you never seen a dog. My first son just did this. He's like, I don't know if he's ever going to not play video games 15 hours a day. He got a job at Derrick Queen changes his life. Also, he's like, on fire to be an adult. It's so rewarding. But the other thing that happened, so by the time I set up my practice in Shake or Heights, I was about 30 years old. When I looked back still on that clinical work, I'm like, I was really green. But I had been working for a while. I had been practicing for a while. I started to get calls from parents saying, we hear that you're a solid clinician and we hear that you look young. So we think our teenager will talk to you. That makes sense. Yeah. I was in this funny little sweet spot and one thing that's very funny. And I think I did look young. I started my career wearing really doubty clothes because I was trying to actually-- Still a teeny. No, to look professional. To look professional. For the parents. So in the parents, we just thought that I don't know what doubty means. It's like grandmotherly, like, but not a hip grandma. Just sort of shapeless. - Yeah. - It's okay. - I learned something. - Yeah, learning is good. - Yeah. - And so actually it's been fun as my career has progressed like I can wear. - Yeah, you look great. Good outfit. - Less doubty clothes, is that anything? - Yes. - So I ended up with this bumper crop of teenagers, both 'cause I love them and also because the word got out that I was working with teenagers and teenagers would talk to me. So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking so much to write a book about the patterns of adolescent development, 'cause these poor parents are coming and thinking this is just happening in their house, it's happening everywhere. And since I'd written on the academics, I was like, I'll just write that book. So I started drafting on Tangled, getting teenage girls through the seven transitions into adulthood, 80% applies to kids of all genders, no question, but it's just sort of here are the stages of adolescent, here's what kids got to do. I was just doing it on my own time 'cause I'd written other books. I was like, yeah, I know how to structure a book, like I can just get going. One day I was looking at, there was an old blog in the New York Times called Motherload. - That sounds familiar. - A long time ago was when the Times like had tons and tons of blogs and hadn't quite consolidated all the digital into the paper as it is now. And I saw an article that was titled like the best advice I got as a parent. And I was like, oh, I have thoughts on that. So I wrote a little essay and I sent it in cold to the editor at Motherload, and then I forgot about it. And then about six weeks later, she was like, is this still available? And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, you can have it. - I only sent it to you, so it's like, - You're just like, I forgot about it, you can have it. And I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna be in the Times. Oh my God, yeah. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's so exciting. - But nothing really happened. My folks read it, they're really good jobs. - They don't make it in, it got published. - Yeah, it got published. I went back to working on Untangle and take care of my patients and doing my work. And then I had another idea for a piece. And so I sent it in and she's like, oh, this is gonna blow up. And it did. Then editors and agents started calling me. What was that? It was about the childhood roots of adult wellbeing. Everybody wants their kids to grow up to be happy. What we actually know when we look at the research is that it's not professional achievement, it's not economic success. It's three things, having good relationships, doing work you find meaningful and feeling confident at that work. That's where adult wellbeing hangs. And if you backwards engineer it, the childhood trait is conscientiousness. Like being upright, being a good person. So it was just about that. So these editors and agents were calling saying, "You wanna do a book on this?" I was like, no, no, no. - I already did it. - I said everything I wanted to say. - At a column's worth the say about it. - Yeah, exactly. I said, I do have this other manuscript I'm sitting on. So I got swept into commercial publishing. - And it was about Seller. - It's a very well, actually, it still continues to sell hundreds of copies a week. Then the rest just kind of unfolded from there. - Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. (upbeat music) - Okay, so back to teenagers for one second. The other sweet spot about them is they're old enough to be cognizant of a lot of the things you're trying to say. And to your point, high plasticity still. So it's almost like this glorious zone where they could and act some strategies. They're not eight and confused by what you're saying. They can comprehend it. And yet they're still malleable. - They're new to autonomy. They have more say. They have options. There have been times when I've been caring for younger kids who are maybe eight, nine, 10, who are in really, really difficult family situations. And you're just supporting them. You're just trying to get them through. And it's so different when you're caring for 15, 16 year old, coming in and being like my family's bad. And you're like, okay, well, what are you gonna do? - Right. - To set yourself up with as many options as possible. And it's fun because teenagers are like, yeah. - They don't feel overwhelmed by it. It's just exciting. - Well, yeah, it's like more agency. They're gonna have more agency over their life. It's what they're craving at that moment. And here's a tool set to get you that agency. - Yeah, and we can make it happen here. - Would I be right to guess that's probably also the highest volume of patients that parents bring in? I would imagine kids become teenagers and the parents are like, I don't recognize this person. I'm scared. - That 100%. That's what a lot of my work has been about is, nobody's broken, nobody's doing this wrong. Right, this is the natural course of adolescence. And all of these things your kid is doing that feel very uncomfortable or very strange. Have a purpose, serve a function. They're not nearly as personal as kids. - And in fact, the absence of which might be proof of something to be concerned about. - Exactly. We expect friction, we wanna see friction. There's all this value in it. In terms of volume, one of the things that I think has gone unaddressed. So we've talked about the adolescent mental health crisis a lot, which is real. It's a two part crisis. One was, were you seeing rising rates of depression and anxiety in teenagers prior to the pandemic, then along comes the pandemic, worst thing for teenagers. - How significant is the change? Is that data in the end of the-- - We are probably still bringing in the data. And but it was bad for everybody. Teenagers have two jobs, right? To become increasingly independent and to be with their friends as much as possible. And the pandemic just totally knee-capped. Their capacity to do those things. So it was really bad for them. So this huge surge in emotional pain in teenagers. But the other thing we don't talk about enough is we don't have the workforce to care for them. Caring for teenagers is highly specialized. Not a lot of us do it. And so it wasn't just that we had so many more kids who needed care. It's that we don't have the care force to do the work and scaling it up is not something that can be done quickly. The training takes a really long time. Very few people wanna see teenagers. So it's that question of volume, though you do see heightened distress in teenagers in terms of like the lifespan. We don't have the clinicians. - Right. This was gonna be a question towards the end, but this now feels like the right time to ask you. There was this incredible work that came out of Johns Hopkins two years ago, three years ago, you would definitely know about it. It was a program where initially they decided to give therapy to the parent and the child to see if that would increase the outcomes. And it did, mildly. And then someone thought, what if we only gave therapy to the parents and they had the biggest increases? - Yep. - So when I read these terrifying numbers that are everywhere you look, it's showing us this. And then we're looking at them as well. What's new about this generation? And to me, given that Johns Hopkins thing, I think isn't that really just a reflection of us? Aren't we looking in the wrong direction? How much of this is them and how much of it is us? - I'm so glad that you're asking this question. I mean, all I've done is care for teenagers the last few years have just been, but the thing that just grounds me and makes me feel like we can do this is that we have established so clearly in the literature that the single most powerful force for adolescent mental health is strong relationships with caring adults. It's about the adults around the teenager. And so when I think about my work, I don't share public content for teenagers. My work is entirely around supporting the adults around the teenager so that they understand what's happening, do not take it as personally as it feels, feel like they've got some ways to respond that will deepen the connection, keep the relationship going. For me, it's all about the adults around the kid. - Yeah, and then in that way, yes, we don't have a ton of specialized teenage therapists, but we have a ton of adult therapists. - Absolutely. - And so I do feel like we're a little bit looking at the wrong variable. I don't know that the crisis is the teenage crisis as much as it's the adult crisis raising the teenagers, which we do seem to have the capacity for. - Or adult's need more support around this. - Yeah. - And I think a lot of that support is actually just understanding what's happening and why. And I think one of the things that has and helped adults in general, but especially people who are raising teenagers, is that there's been a bit of a move in the culture to this idea that you're supposed to feel good a lot of the time. And also in the vast universe of parent guidance, some experts, some self-declared expert, right? I mean, there's a lot out there. I think there's sort of this suggestion that like, if you just do this ninja move and that ninja move and this ninja move, parenting will be pleasant and easy. - Right, right, yeah, yeah. - Like, no, no, no, no, no. There is no ninja move that makes this straightforward. Development is really challenging. The more we can understand it, the better the soul goes. - Yeah. I think a lot of parents would naturally want to know where the line between just adolescent angst and a serious mental health concern. What is that line? - It's actually a pretty straightforward, which I'm glad to say that like we can actually label that pretty quickly. So let's start with what mental health is and get really clear on that point because there's a lot of merkeeness around this right now. There is a lot of messaging, traditional media, social media, all around us, suggesting wrongly that mental health is about feeling good or relaxed or calm or happy, right? You feel that way, your kid feels that way. That's how you know you have mental health. It's great to feel good. I have no problem with that. That is not what mental health is. - Yeah, and probably suffering from using the same terminology to say physical health. So for physical health, we would say not having aches. - Exactly. That's not specific enough wordage. - No, it's not, but if we actually pursue that as a model, physically healthy people get sick, but they recover. And that's how we know they're a healthy person. It's not that they never get a cold. - Brilliant. - Well, that's my thinking. I mean, this has been around before. - But so the same analogy, mental health, the way I define it, it's about having feelings to fit the situation and then managing those feelings well. Right, so your best friend moves, you're gonna be really upset. This is a giant emotional cold where the rubber hits the road is, do you manage it by having a good cry, going for a run, putting on your said playlist, a teenager said to me the other day, "Force cuddling my cat." (laughing) - Yeah, of course cuddling that's exactly it. - Or do you say, oh my gosh, I'm so upset, I'm gonna smoke a ton of weed, I'm gonna be a total beast to be around, I'm gonna turn this against myself and hate myself for making this choice. So it's not the presence or absence of distress that psychologists are assessing. It's how it gets managed. If a teenager is having a big bad day and they get very upset and they manage it in ways that bring relief, do no harm, that's the picture of health. - Yeah. - In my book. - Two things that made me think of. One is we do a show with Wendy Mogel, do you know Dr. Wendy Mogel? - She actually wrote one of the kindest blurbs ever for my first call. - Oh, wonderful. - Yeah. - We love her so much. She has given us a bazillion little nuggets that are genius, but one of the things I loved hearing her say is a parent will come in, the kids doing this, this and this. And her first question is, what do they do at school? What do the teachers think? What she'll find almost all the time is that they're fine at school. So they're not broken. They can do it when they need to and when they get home, it's pent up. You're going to get all that. You want to hear my corny phrase for that? School gets the best of them. We get the rest of them. Yeah, that's great. And wouldn't we want it that way? Yes, forget me. I'd want the most loving patient person in their life to deal with the worst version of them. And not the most stressed and overwhelmed person. So that's just the reality. Okay. Oh, can I have the second thought? Yes, absolutely. It's an anthro thing. One of the fun things I learned about is many regions of the world. But specifically, I remember Sub-Saharan Africa. Even the way we talk about mental health issues and labels we have, the language is phrase, your schizophrenic. Your bipolar. That's a permanent, a cold is temporary. And that in Sub-Saharan Africa, all these mental issues are colds. There's no implication that they're permanent. And that's just a fascinating thing culturally that I think is somehow in the mix of what we're talking about right now. It is. Let's rest on it for a minute. And then I do want to define how we know and to worry about a teenager. Okay, great. In the time I've been practicing, I have seen more of a shift to talking about certain things as though they are factory settings. Like I have anxiety. I have a CD. Sometimes I won't disagree with this. If a person has clinical depression, that's like having diabetes. You don't ever wipe it out, right? But you manage it well, ideally, and you live a rich full life. It's like anxiety disorders. We're really good at treating. Fobias. Oh, CD. I mean, even sometimes very severe. We can make it go away when it gets to the disorder level. Everybody feels anxiety. Anxiety is a normal healthy function that helps us stay safe in the world. But one of the things I'm finding myself especially with teenagers who will sometimes trade in this language of like, oh, I have this. I can't do anything about it. You know, and you're like, no, no, no, we can trade it. So sometimes it's true. Sometimes it's not. But in the last, I'd say, 15 years, the general population is moving more things into the factory setting. Category, then psychologist node to be true. Have you noticed a recent uptick in the diagnosis of ADHD among adult women or adults in general? I feel like I'm hearing it so often. I was just diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I don't like it. Okay. You've got your questions. You have the HIV. Well, and maybe, but you've lived a whole life not thinking that unless there's something to be a dating happening, you know, like going in and you're like, I can't handle this. And then they tell you, oh, it's probably because you have ADHD. You should do this or this. But for a few of these cases, that's not it. They just are talking to their doctor and they're like, you hit the markers for ADHD. I don't like it. No, you're asking a incredibly important and wildly complex question. Let me just start by saying, I think there are people who we miss the diagnosis. It flies under the radar for years. And then finally, when an adult, somebody gets a right and changes their life. Like I don't have any question that that happens. There's also a question of when we look at the symptoms of ADHD, there's a lot of roads that can lead you to that path. If you're not sleeping, you're going to look like you've got a lot of those symptoms like you can't focus. You're highly distractable. The lineating who has a genetic propensity versus who has an environmental. Environmental factors that maybe you work in. Well, it should get stalled out. It does. And it is quick. It is inexpensive. It's easier to find than a therapist. So a lot comes into this that makes it kind of murky. Okay. For Aaron Peppeebs, here's my kind of overall discomfort with the DSM is A. It's kind of the tail wagging the dog in that I know to have these things covered through insurance were required to have this clear diagnoses. I get it. But I think it weirdly worked backwards. And now we actually think in terms of how the insurance company wants us to think. One thing that I'm suspicious is bullshit is that a lot of these categories are insanely arbitrary. And yet we take them on in popular vernacular as really known conditions like diabetes. If you're looking at someone with ADHD and OCD, you're looking at a spectrum of a human being and you're parsing out or betting most on one thing. But really, it's not uniquely that thing. It's some weird combination of things and we just have to arbitrarily put them in these categories. But the categories are pretty arbitrary. I'm 100%. I'm racking my brain. I'm not going to remember who said this. But there's a wonderful quote, which is diagnosis does not cleave nature at its joints. Right? Diagnosis is a very double-edged sword. My training is you do a really good job of evaluation. You look very deep and wide to try to figure out what's going on. What's bringing this person and what accounts for the concern. Get a clear sense of what's happening so that you can make the best possible treatment choices. That is absolutely essential to the field. There's also tremendous downside to diagnosis. Most of all, people do not fit cleanly into these boxes. When I was teaching abnormal psychology, I used to make this elaborate drawing on the board of dots on a graph. You get a cluster of dots. Then I'd circle, I was like, "So we call this depression." Right. You get a cluster over here. We'll call this something else. There's all these other random dots. The cluster may be 51% of the dots. There's all these dots all over the board. They don't fit cleanly. That is tricky in that we don't capture people well all the time. Then the other thing is, especially caring for teenagers, questions of identity can get wrapped up in that. And so one of the things that we're seeing with teenagers, and I have a podcast where we answer questions from parents. What's the name of it? It's a shout out. It's called Ask Lisa, the psychology of parenting. Wonderful. And we recently took a question from a parent, but I'm hearing this a lot, about kids diagnosing themselves on TikTok. Oh my God. This is very big. This is very worrisome for me. And for me, the worrisome piece is I've cared for kids who are like, "I have depression." And they organize an identity around something that is treatable and manageable. And at other points in life, it may not change the course of things so much. In a teenager, it can. So we want to be careful. Self-fulfilling prophecy in some ways, you're looking for it. And I'm going to add, I'm part of the problem. So what's also interesting is we've had this wonderful evolution, I think, where people like me will come on and publicly say I'm an addict. I think that's helpful. I'll say I was molested. I'll say my A score was that. There's a lot of famous young actresses who are very open about their mental health. This wonderful thing's happening where the shame has been reduced and people are speaking about it in media, which is great. But the downside is these are also people's idols. So you can understand how someone who wants to be identical to Taylor Swift. We have to acknowledge there's a cultural force also at play. It can absolutely come into that. And I think there may be kids who are doing a good job of diagnosing themselves. I'm not going to take that off the table. But then let's get you the care you deserve. So that you can live as richly and fully as possible. So there's no version of this where it's always wrong or it's always right. Yes. But as someone who's cared for teenagers over the long haul, the problem with what happens on TikTok or these sort of public places is that all symptoms occur on a continuum. Of course, we're going to identify with pieces and parts of actually any variety. It's almost like horoscope. Sometimes it's going to hit. Sometimes it's not. Exactly. I would be so tempted if I were you and I was treating the kid. I would want to say, is this a diagnosis you want to hold on to? That's probably a bad question. But I guess I would need to know that the same way someone who wants to get sober, my first question would be, do you want to get sober? Are you here for your wife? Because it generally doesn't work when you're here for your wife. Or do you really want to? Yeah, do you want to? So it'd be hard for me to treat a kid who had self-diagnosis or certain condition. And maybe they're right, temporarily. And if you want to hold on to that as an identity, that's very hard for me to work with. Well, I guess the way I've gone. So if a teenager says, I have depression. But I'd say, tell me about it. And then really find out what they're describing as they run it down for me. I may be like, indeed you do. Right? You're hitting the diagnostic criteria. We recognize this. You have gotten yourself to the right place. They may also be very, very sad. Yeah. And you get a community out of this. Well, there can be this sort of additional support that comes alongside of it. And again, none of this is definitely good or definitely bad. It is also complicated. Terrible gray areas are real likely. Terrible gray areas. There are real people and real kids. But what's so cool about teenagers is they actually are really interested in mental health. And so my experience is if you take them seriously and ask real questions and try to get to the bottom of how they came to this conclusion. Even if the conversation goes into place where I get to say, I have good news. I actually don't think you're suffering from depression, but you are describing sadness. And here's how we as clinicians make the distinction. And if I treat them as the intelligent, thoughtful, caring people they are, then we are having a great experience together. And within there also, there's this incredibly sympathetic thing, which is I think a lot of kids don't feel worthy of help unless it were something permanent and clinical. And that's very heartbreaking. For me who has a hard time asking for help, it makes it easier if I'm dyslexic, I need more time. Yeah. I might need more time, period. Also sadness sucks. It can feel debilitating. It can feel permanent when you're in it. So of course, when I'm feeling can't just be sadness, that feels very like who cares, when I'm feeling as depression, because it is heavy, but it's not. It's not, but we can take your sadness very seriously. I'll tell you one of the things that happens with teenagers sometimes is they'll say, like, I could kill myself. They'll sort of throw that out there. And so when that comes up in my work, I'll say, is that something you're really thinking about or is that you telling me how upset you are right now? And usually they will say, no, no, no, I'm not thinking about it. I'm just really upset. And then the key thing in that moment is not to be like, okay, we're good. The key thing is to say, what's got you so upset? Let's go all in on that. So I think you're right. Sometimes kids can feel like no one's going to really hear me unless I bring it with this formal terminology. Or that I would be a baby if I needed help getting over sadness. It'd be fine to get over sadness with your assistance. Yeah. So I think if we can just honor that sometimes kids do have diagnoses and sometimes they just need a lot of love and support. and they deserve whatever. - By the way, it's kind of the same thing regardless, right? They need a lot of love and support. - And care. So let's get to this question of when is it time to worry? Right, 'cause if we're saying, typical adolescents will have a lot of negative moods and they may do quirky things to help themselves feel better, which are totally fine if no one's getting hurt. There's two things I want adults to watch for. So one thing is we worry not if a teenager's mood is all over the place. Teenagers moods are up and down all day long. That's just natural. We worry if their mood goes to a worry some place and stays there. If their mood goes to a dark place or an incredibly cranky unpleasant place or very, very blank, despondent, right? And they're there for 36 hours. It's a long time in the life of a teenager. If you know your kid, well, you might be like 24 hours is like not my kid. If you have that like, this isn't my kid. Their mood does not rest in this kind of space for this long. That's a flag. - In 36 hours. - I mean, it's kind of arbitrary. - Well, that's the kind of thing though that we really needed. No. Even as you're ramping up to make this point, I'm trying to guess what you're gonna say is it two weeks of feeling that way? Is it 12 hours up? - It's kind of to kid. - Kid to kid and no one your kid. - But again, I might guess two. So even if it's minimally a ballpark of 36 hours, that's very helpful to be practical about all of our life. - Let's just start with that. Which is just to say, time is different for teenagers. I've always said like, teenagers are like dog years. One year to them is seven years' tops. Like a lot happens. So in adults, if you're actually being very technical about it, you have to feel really lousy for two weeks for us to consider our depression diagnosis. But I'm like, if you know your kid and you're like, this is not my kid and it's been a day or a day and a half and I am worried, worried, then take that very seriously. The other thing we look for is what I'll call costly coping. So they're managing the feelings, but they're managing in a way that is destructive or it will be problematic. So they're managing, but they're abusing substances or they're managing and they are self-harming. They're managing and they're being awful to people or changing their body as a response. So those are the big things to worry about. But what I wish we on the clinical side, we're doing a better job of is helping adults understand the teenager's moods go up and down. Their very intense distress is not on its own, grounds for concern. It's really about how it gets managed and that it comes and goes. - Yeah, so let's go through some myths of adolescent emotions. One being the misconception that negative emotions are harmful to teens. - People worry that painful emotions are gonna hurt their kid. And this is also something I will say though, as a parent, I get it. Teenagers feelings are so powerful and so intense and they ramp up very quickly. So between ages like six to 10 or 11, kids go off and pretty easy going and then adolescents begins actually around 11, which is much earlier than people think and it's because it's driven by puberty and most kids are in puberty by about that time. And suddenly your easy-going kid is like in a fetal position on the kitchen floor over something that happened at school. And as a parent, you're like, this can't be good. This might be harming my child and it is scary. What is typical though is that then a really fun text comes through and the kid pops up, doesn't remember what was wrong. Like that's adolescents. They recover quickly. That's what we want to see. So I think we don't want to work with the assumption that if my kid isn't paying, it's gonna hurt them. Because then what happens, the upshot of that is you are playing like linebacker between your kid and the world. - Yeah, now you start buffering them from reality. - Yeah. - What about the misconception that emotions cloud judgment? - So they can, but by and large, they shouldn't form our thinking. And I talk in my book about a colleague of mine, Terry, who has this fabulous analogy she shared with me, which is that we should think of our emotions as one member of our personal board of directors. So we all have a personal board of directors that helps with decision making and maybe on that board are like financial concerns, logistical concerns, ethics, interests, obligations, and also our feelings. And the way my colleague tells it, she says, they don't share the board and they almost never have the deciding vote. So feeling shouldn't be calling the shots to be very rare that that happens, but they can help inform, should I do this, do I wanna do this, what's my next move? So they have a place, but we want them in their place. - Yeah, they should be taken seriously and also not be given the steering wheel. - Nope, I mean, if you are paralyzed by anxiety, anxiety is winning, that's not the way to live. - Right. Now, of course social media is, I don't know, I have thoughts. I do feel like there's some very serious and real problems with it. I also think it's our moral panic. I think it is the thing that's new. I'm always trying to push against knowing I'm susceptible to moral panic and I will live through a generation that'll have its own. And that's that. So I'm always trying to just check it against that, but what is harmful, what should we watch for? - I'm with you. I try to take a more, let's look at the whole picture here. There are things I definitely worry about for kids on social media. They are exposed to all sorts of toxic content that is not good for kids, right? It can be either hate content or body image content or any variety of things. - The body image stuff is really crazy when you learn the algorithm at YouTube was taking you further and further down that. - This is the worry. So all kids are seeing it and a lot of kids, to their credit, and I ask kids about this all the time, they work hard to ignore it to withstand it. Think about the energy in that, right? Your kid is like, I'm not looking at that, but then of course, if it's in front of you, some kids are like, wait, what is this? - The first search is something you wouldn't be concerned about most of the time. It's like, I don't know, there's bathing suit. - Yeah, it's kind of a knock-u-s. - And then the algorithm's like, okay. And so then the problem, and this is the thing I worry about with teenagers, especially, teenagers are vulnerable to norms. That their behavior has changed by what they think to be the norm around them. So right now, my Instagram feed, I don't know why, but I'm loving it, is hacks for folding clothing. (laughing) I just love watching them. It has not changed how I fold clothes at all. - Right, I just like looking at it. - Yeah, yeah, soothing for some reason. - It's some reason I like it. Whereas teenagers, if you see body after body, after body, after body, that is ultra-fen or ultra-fit, what we'll see is suddenly the ship will start to turn. And that could be like, this is what bodies look like, this is what my body should look like, and then behavior will change. Same with hate content. So that piece is very worrisome. It's not just the seeing it once, it's the algorithm that then gives this way lopsided version of the world that you're looking at over and over again. So that worries me. - There's also this weird phenomenon. I remember learning it in an anthrop paper about suicides and Tahiti. Do you remember any of this? There was like a suicide epidemic in the, I'm guessing it was like 80s. And quickly they found a very obvious correlation that when it was on the news, pretty immediately thereafter, you'd see a swell of it. And then their ultimate solution was just to not report it because it was sticky. It was transferable. - Norm's matter for teenagers. And actually some of the better substance abuse interventions actually just tell kids the level setting. 'Cause you know the kids who are using in schools tend to have like a very high social profile. Everybody knows what they're up to. But when we actually look at the percentage of kids who are using, it's comparatively small. And so there's very smart substance abuse interventions that are like, hey, only 14% of kids are smoke and weed. Those numbers help kids be like, oh, okay. So they may get the headlines in the high school. - I'm not the only person not smoking weed. In fact, I'm in the majority. - Right, so norms really matter. And the algorithms make me enormously anxious because they can shift to kids norms. So I worry about that. I would say the other thing, and this gets to the, what should we be really anxious about? Question is, sleep matters. So the data on the causal connection between social media and mental health concerns is messy. And we can't slam, don't say. - Cause out what you want. - Exactly. The data on who are asleep and mental health concerns is not messy. It's one to one and we can do studies where we manipulate variables and can see what's driving what. So I think for a lot of kids, it's not necessarily social media per se. It's that they have their phone in their room at night and then this is very engaging or very upsetting or very exciting or something. - Stangulating. - And then they're not sleeping. - For adults too. - Exactly. - So if you're gonna worry about things, sleep is the thing to worry about. And if digital technologies undermining a kid's sleep, that is a problem and should be treated in that way. So on the social media stuff, I mean, the reality is it's also a lot of fun for kids and also it's where they get their mindless entertainment. And I watched so much Gilligan's Island as a kid. - Yeah, of course. These kids are working so much harder than we ever worked. They should have mindless entertainment too. So if their algorithm is cat videos or sports clips, fine. - So what do you do? You grab your kid's phone at some point and see what trajectory their algorithm is on. - I think you do wanna have a sense. - And can you reset the algorithm? - Yeah, I think there are ways to do that. What you need to do is find a 14 year old who can explain how to do that. - That's right. - Which they will. - Sneaking their phone and click on cat videos for two hours and then-- - Exactly. - And then you can see the way they're going to do the history. - This is I think really tricky, but none of us really should have taken our rooms overnight. We know that from the research. It's easier to set this up. - I know, I know. - I know, I know no one likes to hear that. - Me too. - No one likes to hear it, but when we look at the data-- - I can't make fun of myself. - What about the alarm? (laughing) - You can hear your alarm from the kitchen. - All right, if I'm late for work. (laughing) - You can't get mad at me. - I'll have bigger concerns. - What I would say is, if sleep's not an issue, it doesn't matter where your phone is. - Yeah, but it is. - If it's an issue, that's a place to consider starting. And what I will say is for parents when they hand over tech to kids, the beautiful thing about the kid who's asking for tech is that they will agree to anything. It's the ultimate leverage. So when, depending on your community, 9, 10, 11, 12, a kid is like, "Hey, can I have a phone?" If you're agreeable, I would say, first of all, they do not need a browser or social media apps. They need as much tech as is required to be in touch with their friends. Often that is texting. So you can say it'll be texting, and this device does not go in your room. And it could be like, "What am I getting it?" - Yeah. - And set those rules up. - So it's not the hardest thing at all to set up. It is harder to walk back. - Yo, yeah. I had engraved of my daughter's iPod, no games. - Oh, yeah. - 'Cause that was your agreement, I said. - And she was like, "Fine." - Yeah. How does gender shape the way teens express their feelings and experience their feelings? Our research makes it pretty clear that this is socialized. Right, so back to the nature nurture debate. This is almost all nurture that we have different rules instead of going with the gender binary because that's where the research sits right now. Girls as a group are given a lot more latitude in our culture to express emotion, a wide range of emotions, boys as a group. Well, I'll tell you what the research says and then I'll tell you what I've come to believe. So what the research says, and this is not entirely untrue, is that in terms of culturally sanctioned emotions for boys, there's two. Anger and pleasure at someone else's expense. Whereas girls enjoy a very wide emotional highway with many lanes. So here's something I've been thinking about a lot. I'm like, except for the domains where boys get to express tons of feelings. And there's many, I'll choose sports as an example. Boys will cry. They'll hug each other. They'll hug each other on the ass. They'll get so excited. They'll be so happy. If you want to see the full blooming color of emotional experience, we have pockets in our world where boys and men are given full attitude. And so I've gotten a little frustrated with the narrative of like, "Oh, guys are so too dimensional about their emotions and women have this fabulous 3D experience." I'm like, no, they're only allowed by the culture in certain areas. Yeah. And I think more the question we should be asking is, it's not that they don't or can't have these feelings. It's that something gets in the way of feeling that they can have them everywhere else. Yeah, I have this realization not long ago where I would have of course explained my profound interest in girls being my hormones in my attraction. But I really was thinking the other day. I was like, you know what it was? It was the most enormous deep breath that this was a human I could act any way I wanted in front of. And I wouldn't be called weak. That maybe was my primary attraction to women. Is that you're permitted to have a much wider range of emotions? I thought it was just like a call to mate. But I actually think it was like the breathe from the fucking straight jacket of masculinity. Here's something I've observed clinically just to sort of play this out a little bit. So I've cared for teenagers who are in very intense heterosexual relationships. And teenage romances, they're like 30-year marriages. I know, I would love to go back. Nothing is as heightened. And then of course today's teenagers, they're in touch 24 hours a day. I mean, like it's really, really powerful. Often it would be like kids are going off to college or something so they break up. And for the boy, very deep. So the girl can turn to her girlfriends and get tons of support around the pain of this relationship. The boy is high and dry. The friends go, yeah, she was a bitch. Next thing. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm cural. Now you're free. Yeah, but he is suffering so much. Oh, yeah. This is a windy thing too. Boys get broken up with way more than boys break up with. I bet that's right. But then what happens clinically is he'll keep reaching out to the girlfriend for support. Because she's the one. She's the one. Who's he going to share these feelings with? I've seen this pattern so many times. I'm like, all these guys. I wish they could take care of their own. Whereas the girl's got more support than she knows what to do with. So I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Oh, what a good point that they're only outlet is now. That's a real reason. The person that they can send a pic of. Yeah, it's okay. It's so messy because she's trying to move on. And he's trying to stay afloat. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. Oh boy. Okay. What did my ear mark? Oh, I ear marked as someone who's been doing it now for quite a while. Seeing different movements in. I don't know what you want to label it. I'm asking you for the label, but there's the layman's psychology. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't remember in the 80s this enormous interest in psychology. I don't remember as many psychologists being on TV all the time. We talked to a ton of them. We're fascinated with it. And I just wonder what your thoughts are. And they're being a fat element to it. And do you feel like that bastard? I was like, what are your feelings? Again, we had a happiness movement that became then toxic happiness. Now we have a new model of success. It's just constantly every six months, two years, whatever it is. It feels like there's a new paradigm we click into. Everyone pursues it like crazy. And I just wonder what your thoughts on it being such a popular thing. I think it's mixed. I feel that way about the adolescent mental health crisis. Like on the one hand, I'm so glad we're talking about teen mental health. But on the other hand, I think, gosh, if you're a parent of a teenager and you're seeing headline after headline after headline about the adolescent mental health crisis, that's really frightening. Especially if you're kids having a fetal position melt-on in your kitchen, right, which I have known to be natural to 13-year-olds forever. So I think it can really be double-sided. I'm really grateful for people who do a very good job of translating the science effectively. Of bringing it across because the problem is a lot of times scientists just talk to other scientists. We have all of these really interesting things. And we just share them with each other and leave everybody out. At a Ramata Inn conference center somewhere and boysy with our posters and our presentations. So I'm always grateful for people who are good on the translational side. I do worry sometimes that there can be the next thing that we're chasing. It's starting to mirror diet. The optimization, again, longevity, optimism. It's like we have to be perfect. Optimization, I'm really frustrated with it. I'm really frustrated. I hate it. I love it. Do you? Yeah. Just physically. I think there's ways we can take really good care of our bodies. Yeah. I do worry that adults and then also kids are getting the sense of like, you have this exact number of minutes in a day. Are you using them all as well as possible? Yeah. This gets normed on social media and then kids feel like they're so not keeping up with this. They're lazy. Yeah. Well, there was a Greta BBC series called The New Gurus. It profiled different gurus and I wouldn't have even thought of that. But once it came up, I was like, oh yeah, time management gurus is a whole sector of the economy. I've never been pulled to it. So I've never watched someone tell me how to get the most out of my day. But yes, that's an enormous field. Yeah. I don't know. I just don't want to. I shouldn't play on people's sense of inadequacy. Like whatever you're doing, people want to feel better. They should get to feel better. But do we help them feel better by saying like, here's all the things you could be doing that you're not? Or do we help them feel better by saying, here's how to understand why sometimes you run into trouble and here's some options that you can try when you do. There's different ways to go about it. There's just a lot of over-promising. Again, none of these things back to the A+ or the B. It's like, if it were frame more like you might be able to raise the standard of your existence by 15% with these tools, that to me feels responsible. I agree. There's been other work about evaluating just the overall macro success of self-help books and that there's quite a bit of evidence that sets an objective that's unobtainable for people. I know, almost choked your death. And they come out of it feeling even worse than they do when they bought the book because they weren't able to enact the policy that would allud to their happiness. I believe that. The thought I'm having is there's also some real downsides of focusing on the self. Okay, great. You're circling one actually, wrote down. Okay. There's one I really meant is like, are we a little too obsessed with our psychology? Oh, probably. And there's value in an outward focus. There is value in caring for others. I think about that way you talk about who have the job at Derrick Wayne that changed his life. I have never seen anything do more for teenagers than a job job. Old-fashioned job job job. That's like the cushy internship. A job job where you are taking care of customers. Eat and share. Exactly. Dealing with challenges, doing work that is sometimes pretty dating is right. The amount of growth at fosters, the sense of capacity, the skill sets that are developed, it's interesting. The longer I've practiced, my idea of what constitutes a therapeutic option for a kid. For some kids, I'm like, that kids need therapy. For some kids, I'm like, that kid needs a job job or that kid needs to join the school play. Or get them in a sport. I do worry that the more we worry about ourselves, the more we worry about ourselves. Yeah. And that we can work outward sometimes. So much of this focus is thinking and more time in your head and more introspection and more evaluation. In fact, perhaps the best medicine is go do something physical for a while and get distracted from your own naval gazing and lo and behold, you'll be happier somehow. I mentioned this in the emotionalized of teenagers. I had a teenager describe this perfectly. She came one afternoon and she's like, "Okay, I had the weirdest day." She said, "So I got a bad test back this morning. I was so upset about it at the start of school. I was first period and it bothered me all day." And then I went to practice and I couldn't think about it for two hours. And then when I remembered it, I was like, "Why was I so upset about that?" Oh, yes. And I'm like, distraction has a place in our lives. Yeah, you don't have to frame it as like running or ignoring or all these things. It's like, no, no. I'll be back. Well, as you know, my wife just thinks you're the second coming. I don't think she's ever liked reading a book as much as, I guess it was the last one under pressure. So the second book was under pressure. So untangled under pressure and then the emotionalized of teenagers. The emotionalized of teenagers was the last. It's the one that's out right now. Yeah. I want to say that she read under pressure. And she liked that. It was bananas for it. And then she reached out to you personally, right? Yeah. I love all this. I think it's one of the scarier moments for parents. It might be the most high stakes at least in their head. Five or six years that they'll have with their kids. It's kind of heartbreaking too that it comes right at the end of your ride with them. But it doesn't. I can say as a mom of a college age kid, you get to keep being their parent for a long long time. Yeah. I guess it's just the under your roof situation. So lovely. It is so lovely. So when you sent me this article, it was like a fellow parent. They're like, look at the statistic. 30% of kids under 28 are living at home. And I'm like, God willing. Well, Lisa, this has been wonderful. I hope everyone checks out the emotional lives of teenagers. By God, if you have a teenager or you're about to have one, we're about to have one. And I think the more we can write size our fears and actually be able to identify what is problematic. Monotopple to know what's coming. And I just feel like it's happening out of nowhere. Yeah. So if you're expecting it's some craziness and it arrives, you're like, all right. This is how it's supposed to unfold. - Yes. - Absolutely. All right, well good luck with everything. This has been a pleasure, and I hope you'll come back when you write your next book. - I would love to. (upbeat music) - Stay tuned for the FACTSCHACS. So you can hear all the facts that were wrong. (upbeat music) - Hi. - How you doing? - Pretty good. - Pretty good. How was your weekend? - My weekend was great. I went to a really great play. - Oh, was it a musical? - It was a musical. - I'm going and I did too. - You did? - It was your play great. - Mine was excellent. I was so good, I went twice. - Wow. - Oh, huh. (laughing) - Yes, your children were in a play. - Yeah, they were in New Zealand. One PM showing on Saturday, five PM showing. - I went to the one PM. - Yes, it got tighter. - It got tighter. - The five PM got tighter. - Okay. - Less mistakes. - Oh, well I'm glad I saw that. - But the audience wasn't as good. - Oh, interesting. - There was an enthusiasm to that first showing that was really fun. - Well, okay, do you think most of it was just the same parents? And so they haven't seen it? - Quite possibly, yeah. - Yeah, a little less. - Similar turnout, I thought, oh, well the five will be packed. Same turnout. - Yeah. - Yeah, mostly parents. Of course, just parents. Who's going to go see that play? Although Leslie win. - Oh. - And she didn't have a child in it. - I thought her kid did go to that school. - She does, but she wasn't performing in the class. - Oh, I see. They just wanted to support that. - Yeah, so maybe other parents in the school maybe checked it out. - Yeah. - Oh my God, was it great. I mean, I don't know why I didn't predict how adorable six to 10 year olds in 1890s, Newsy Close would be. (laughing) Even the way the play opens, of course, I've never seen that musical prior to that. But it opens with like six kids on stage and they're all selling newspapers and they're like, you know. - Doing a voice. - Yeah, and they're like, they're giving you news. Like the wing ducks win the stand like, "Oh, breathe all about it." And then the next person's like, "War is Aminette, blah blah blah." - Yeah, I think that's how they even had lines. Oh, they're just children. It's so funny. - It was really, really adorable. - And there were of course mix ups as there's bound to be. They've only, in fact, what we saw was the very first time that it had ever been run all at once. - Oh no, I was wondering that. How many full dress rehearsals did they do? - I don't know that they ever did a dress rehearsal. I know they had a blocking rehearsal, but it was very butchered up. You know, it's not like it was, I think that was their first beginning to end. - Wow. - And there's a lot of cues. People got to enter. It was so funny because most regularly, someone would not be there. - Yeah. - Like there's supposed to be a fourth or fifth person in the scene and everyone's just standing there. People are going like, "Oh, my God. What did we do?" - That was just a. - I don't know. - No, you said it. - They're mics, so you can hear them. - Yeah. - Well, we talked about this during Matilda, because this is, okay, this is now the second show I've been to. - Yeah. This was much better than. - It was. - Yeah. - It was. - It was. - They had fixed a lot of the issues. One being, they figured out the lighting this time. - Yeah, the lighting was great. - The lighting was great. - Yeah. - Thanks, step up. - The mics are the mics. There's like 30 kids with mics, and there's only two poor guys running the whole show. - The mics is. - So it's like, it's only gonna be so good. - It's just tricky because you can hear them all backstage. - Yeah, breathing. - And like, chitchatting. And it is so funny, but man, was it cute. - You gotta look at the wins. Like, luckily, Jack's mic always worked. Jack's carrying the whole play. Mind you, Jack is a woman is being played by. - Yeah. - So it's not the performer Jack, but the character Jack. - Right. - Who's got the most amount of lines, their mic was always hot. - Spot on. - Yeah, that's true. - Yeah, that's great. - Oh man, it was very, very, very smooth. - And then Lincoln had a solo. - She did. - And she did such a good job. - Oh. - It was very sweet. And Delta was in the chorus. - Delta made herself the star of the show. - She was in the chorus. She definitely waved to us. - Sure, she did whatever she wanted. - Yeah. - Sometimes she would sing the songs. Well, they weren't her songs, but she would sing along. - Yeah. You could tell when she totally zoned out. - Yeah. - Her hair didn't care to be there anymore. - And then she would turn it. - And then she would come back in. - Like a light switch. And then she'd be the most dynamic person. - So funny. - And then she was thinking watching her like, wow, she ever decides. Like, she doesn't really give a shit. - No. - She didn't want to do it. And somehow she ended up doing it. And she's only got one line. And then, but she's in the chorus. And then she's got to take a picture. And then, but Lincoln had to come tell her like, "Let's go take the picture." - Oh yeah, yeah. - Both times. 'Cause she got so carried away dancing and having fun. (laughing) - Yeah, it is funny. I agree. Like, she is so much charisma. You know, she's so magnetic. And I don't think. She's drawn to it. Like after the first show she came, she was like, like, she ran immediately off and ran over. And was like, I don't want to do a second show. - Yeah, and she was actually saying it in a manner of like, can I not? Like, she was looking for permission to just pull a no show for the same. We're like, absolutely not. You gotta be. - Yeah, I got a show. - Who's gonna say, you can count on me. That's her big line. You can count on me. And then she makes her fist. - Yeah. - Who's gonna take that picture? (laughing) - Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. And then Lincoln, yeah, she had a couple moments where her voice just had this truly beautiful tone. - Yeah. - Or I was like, oh man, she got it. Like she got it. - It was so cute. And I was sitting next to Chrison's dad. All I could think many times, well for one, it was very sweet. He facetimeed Kelly his wife. - He liked it. - So she was watching it, which I thought was so cute. - Yeah. - But I kept thinking, and Chrison's mom was at Matilda, and I thought the same thing. It must be such a mind-fuck for them to be sitting there watching these little girls, and it must feel like 10 minutes ago that they were just watching Kristen do that. - Yeah. - And they look like her, but they're their grand, I mean, it's like such a time warp for them. - It isn't, but I imagine it has to feel so sweet. - A warp. - Like the experience for me is just out of this world. To see them try. - Yeah. - To put themself, I'm particularly, like let's be honest, really go for it. - Yeah. - Have a solo, work really hard. I'm just overwhelmed with gratitude. - Yeah, I'm proud. - That they're like, they're go getters. - Yes. - And, you know, and then I guess the next stage is you have, it's like they have kids you wish the best for their kids. So yeah, so if you're Tom, my father-in-law, and you're like, your little girl's two seats down, and she made it. - Yeah, and she's super successful at this thing. - Yeah, and then here's her little girl, and she's on fire for, I don't know, is, yeah, I gotta imagine that's a pretty unique and fun experience. - Yeah. - Leave the grandpa there. - I mean, I think being a grandparent, you get those moments a lot, probably, but this arena is so specific, 'cause seeing Kristen at that age, doing that, and then becoming what she's become based off of it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And like, they have spent so much time in those seats, watching their kid do that. - Yep. - And now, to be like, yeah, round two, so bonkers. - It is, and probably, why wonder? I wonder if they had anxiety, like, oh God, she's gonna try to do this, it's impossible to do this. - Right. - But then probably that whole elements relieved, by the time you're a grandparent, 'cause, hey, it's not his problem. - Yes. - And then be, this is proven to be something that can be done weirdly. - Yeah. - Yeah, I don't know, it's all very interesting. - Yeah. - I just think it's cool. - You know, it was like, pandemonium and the house getting them ready for the thing, drop off at 10, this and that, went to the performance, Liz had a birthday party, shoot over there for 20 minutes, then straight back to the theater, so now selfishly, say, ooh, that was the all of Saturday. That just blew by. - Yeah. - I need some rest, 'cause last week was a big week for us. - Big week, yeah. I needed a little rest, and I was like, okay, great. Sunday, I'm gonna blah, blah, blah. And then right before I went to bed, I was like, oh my God, I have to go play paintball tomorrow for Ace's birthday party with Lincoln. I'm like, Lincoln, we gotta go, she's like, oh, okay. She's excited to do that, but also she's, of course, completely spent for you and the two shows. - Yeah. - So then Sunday was all, was paintball. - How was paintball? - Fucking awesome. - Great. - Again, I was like, bratty going like, oh my God, now Sunday's gonna be, I gotta go straight into money and be working. Tough shit that's a parents life, but it was a very kid weekend. But anyways, it was an hour drive out there, and I just had the most lovely ride with Lincoln. We held hands the whole time and listened to Yacht Rock, and she was singing, and she knows the words to every Yacht Rock song. And so I was just, you know, really euphoric with that. And then she was nervous, of course. It was all boys, she was the only girl invited to, and there was 18 boys. - Whoa. - Yeah, it was like most of his class and a couple of friends from baseball. And so she got there and there's like dudes walking around in military gear. There's fully like 10 different fields going, and there's like guys with, that's their life. - Oh like grown up. - Grown-ass men with beards, and they're the mildly militia looking dudes. So she's, and she says, you know, like, I'm pretty nervous and I'm like, I totally understand, how could you not be? It's like all these men and there's guns, you know, like guns, and then it's all boys. And the boys are already like, they're in a war movie, the little boys. They're like, they're bumping each other's chas, and all gonna, all gonna, you know, they're boys. They're like getting revved up for this. And I said to her, you know, of course you are. Look at this. This is a sausage party. And it's crazy. I said, "But you're gonna be fucking better than all of them at this." Like, I'm just saying, if you can get out there one time and I'll be out there too. Yeah. And so, Erica and Charlie also played and I played. How fun. The second it starts, it is so much fun. It's incredible. And so, Lincoln and I were a little too man team. And there's all these things to hide behind and you're going. And so, the first one was really fun. At some point, I realized, if I run as fast as I can around the outside, I can get behind everyone as they advance. No, you're never looking behind you. You're like looking forward behind all these things. And Lincoln, I got behind everyone and we just had an unstoppable moment. Lincoln killed Charlie. Wow. She snuck up behind him. He had his back to her and she ran. And what's really cute is they told us the rules were, if you come around the corner and you have someone like, you're right on them, close range, you can yell, "Sorenda," and if they lift their gun up, then they've surrendered. But if they point, they're going to, you're free to shoot them. Uh-huh. So Lincoln was running at Charlie, firing and screaming surrender. [laughter] Oh, that's fun. And she blasted him. Can I say anything? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, she was so proud of herself as she should be for taking out the biggest boy there. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, no one's getting Charlie. Yeah, you know, we have all these these pod babies. Yeah. And they're all growing up together and it's really sweet. And they were planning this paintball party for A's. And it was like, I think it's just going to be like, school friends and it's going to be boys only. And then A said, "But I think Lincoln should come because I think she'll be better than everyone." Yeah. And that's why you're learning how to get her there. It's like, oh my god. He wanted to, he wanted to show her off. Like, I have this friend who's a girl, but she plays like the boy. She rides dirt bikes. Yeah. And I think that's, it's so sweet for all these kids. It's so familial. But that's why I, oh wow. She got him, huh? Is that a bruiser or is that paint? No, no, that's through a shirt. Yeah, that's like a welt. Oh my god. Yeah. Ow. Yeah, she lit them up. That's pretty violent. Uh-huh. I don't know. Yeah, I was bleeding. Oh, I still have the mark. I was bleeding on my hand and in my, on my wrist. I thought it was like, didn't hurt. No, no, it leaves welt. But it doesn't hurt that bad. It's a perfect amount of hurt. You don't want to get hit. You're motivated to not get hit. Oh, okay. You know what's great, though? So we played four different rounds of it. I got killed twice. Lincoln only got killed one time. Yeah. Pretty fun. But yeah, I like, I like that these kids have. That's a little family. Yeah, I do too. I do too. And then we'll take, um, we'll take Astonia Land. Oh, fun. Herborthay. Herborthay is coming up. Mm-hmm. And she'll be 11. Yes. Quasie. Isn't that, does it feel crazy? It doesn't. It doesn't. She still feels like a kid, but in five seconds, she's going to feel like someone about to leave the house. So, Ding ding ding. What? This is Felisa De Mor. Oh. Teenagers. Oh, yes. What timing. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, it feels like I've been with her for 11 years. Yeah. And at the same time, there's never enough time. Yeah. It plays from way more than halfway over. Well, 'cause she's an adult. But it's not until she's an adult, but the adult doesn't mean over. That's very, very true. But you do get, you know, there's a reality to life, which is her life will get bigger and bigger. My involvement in it will get smaller. Yeah. And that's a very heartbreaking. That's sad. It is. I know. It mirrors life in general, right? Like, life's a tragedy. It is. It's just like one heartbreak after another. Yeah, but you can just get a comedy along the way or it'd be insufferable. It does feel like life is for the first part, it's a series of getting. And then the second part is a series of losses. It's tough to start realizing that. It's not set up in the beautiful, three-act structure of a movie where the end is, you reap all the rewards. But. I mean, in some ways. Tom was at that thing this weekend, and I'm sure very much for him watching these two generations that he created. He was at what? The play we were just talking about. Oh, sorry. If I am at Tom Hanson. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah. My father-in-law. You know, he's very much. He invented Kristen. There was no such thing as a Kristen. Exactly. He made her. I know. I know. And then she made Lincoln. I know. And so he made both those people. To see it all. I think there are rewards. Yeah, yeah. Or also, like, we will all have a million moments when we're all old parts. And we're together playing cards in someone's backyard. And we'll go like, "Oh, yeah. We didn't do this alone." This is lovely. We all shared this whole thing together. There's, I think, there's, like, beauty and there's poignancy that comes with age, obviously. But actively. You go from a choir. and you're slipping through. Yeah, you end your career. You end your. This. You downsize. You sell things. Your family grows out. People start dying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's fucking. That's pretty brutal. You just got to ignore it as long as you can. I know. Until you wake up dead. It's best to be in denial. It is. That's all coming, whether you focus on it or not. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. Well, it is right. Well, in fact, it is correct. I just checked that fact. What did you do yesterday? How long did you stay at Liz's party? I don't know. An hour. An hour and a half or so. And then I went to Calle's birthday party. Oh, no kidding. Where was hers? It is a. It's a big time for birthdays. She had a dinner at a cute restaurant. That's also an interesting thing. Calle and I have been celebrating birthdays together since we were 14. Yeah. And she just turned 37. And it's so. You celebrated way more birthdays together than apart. Yeah. Odd. Yeah. Just like so strange and so special. Like, it's that dualistic. It feels sad a little bit. And it feels really lucky. Bittersweet? Yeah, I don't want to use it because it's just so cliche. It is. Should I stop using that word? Life is a cliche though. Yeah, should I stop using Bittersweet? No, go ahead and use it. Because I like Ben there, don't they? No, I love Ben there, don't they? Oh, you do. But you say BTTT. Oh, yeah. I said BTTT. I'll be TTTT. BTTT. There should be a boy band called BTTT. Well, there is one called. No, it is BTTT. Ben. No, it's not. No, BTTT. And then that's. Definitely not. You're right. So that was very fun. And then I went to. I went home, my eight life cereal. Oh, fun. That's a good. Cinnamon or. No, I'm regs. Okay. Or regs. Or always regs. And. Do you put sugar on top? No, it's pretty. It's sugar. Yeah, yeah. I eat it as a dessert. And it's satisfying as a dessert. But when you're a kid, when you eat life as a kid, I would pour sugar all over it. Oh, yeah, I'd put sugar all over Cheerios and stuff. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know about life until my later years. I didn't really know about it until. Like I knew about it, but I would never have picked it. It looked boring. Yeah. Little did I know. It's the best cereal. It also had a really curious ad campaign, which was Mikey likes it. They would trick this kid into eating it, because everyone's. No one wanted to eat it all the older kids. And they would make Mikey the little kid eat it. And then they go, "Mikey likes it." Mikey likes it. That's from life. That's from life. I know that line. Everyone knows Mikey likes it. That's from life. But the subtext is like, this is a very unappealing cereal. We're going to acknowledge it. Right. No one would want to eat it. A child doesn't be bullied into eating it. But if they do, they're actually going to like it. Not even love it. He likes it. All right. Oh, man. But then they feel jealous of Mikey. Then they eat it all. I just remember him being like, "Shit had teenagers." Yeah. Poor Mikey. Was that related to life with Mikey? The Michael J. Fox movie? That's a great. Oh. He was like a child. Yeah, it might have even been. The premise might have been that he was Mikey in the commercial. But I don't know. But you should look that out. What? That is. Do you know what Michael J. Fox in the commercial? No. But someone who looked like him? Surely. Yeah. He was a cute little brown hair boy. Wow. Oh boy. A little white boy. 70s sitcom star. Now we're on out. That runs a talent agency for child stars. Okay. Wait, what? That's the premise of the movie. Oh, of the movie. Okay. Also, there's just like Mike. That's a Michael Jordan thing. Oh. With little Bala, right? Like Mike. Just like Mike. Oh, yeah. Just like Mike Jordan likes it. Anywho. Okay, so yesterday. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I also was. I was sleepy. I have been. I was supposed to get wine on Friday and I canceled. Oh, my God. That's how to hire that one. Oh. I know. Whoa. I know. And then Sunday, I went to Houston. Oh. For the lunch. Did you get your girl cheese in tomato soup? I did. Oh, and there was a very sweet arm cherry there. There was? Shout out. Shout out. She was so nice. Who are you there with? Uh-oh, in Julia. Oh, fun. Yeah, we had a nice long lunch. Ooh. Our teeny. Oh, my gosh. Deck it out. And then, just got home. Jess has been out of town for 17 days. Where? Florida. What the fuck is he doing in Florida? He's working. Ah. And he. So he's been OOT. Okay. OOT out of town. Good job. Um. Okay. Pin. Okay. He's been out of town. So he got home. and we decided to all hang out. We were gonna go to the valleys. We all drove to the valley. - After Houston. - Yes. Then we remembered St. Patrick's Day, yikes. And the valley is wild on St. Patrick. - Sure. - And we normally in the valley go to Foreman, such as in Irish bar. So we walked through and right on out, and I texted them, I said, nope. We need a new plan. - Yeah. - And we got to go in an Italian place. - While we were waiting, exactly. While we were waiting, I stopped at Trader Joe's and I got some flowers. And then I got a milkshake. - Oh, oh. - Oh, you did. - And then we went to Messhall. - Oh. - And there were some redheads there, 'cause that was the day that the redheads came out. - 'Cause Irish. - In my day. - Normally they live in caves. - Oh, okay. - And then they have one day a year where they come out. That's why they're so pale. - Oh, that makes a lot of-- - You didn't mess out Sunday? - Yeah. - You were there? - What time? - At like 5'30, for dinner. - We just missed you. We just missed you. - We kind of-- - We didn't see it on-- - We didn't see it on-- - We were gonna be inside, but we had friends outside also there, so we went outside. - Wow, we had a mess of literally just missed you. - You got there at what, 6'30? - No, we were before. - You were before, okay. - Okay. - You got a lot done. You're a Houston's annual into the Valley, annual into big boys, and you got flowers in when shopping, and you were at Messhall before four? - I know. - My god. - We do what we call stope top. It means stope top stuffing. - Right, which is a Mandela. - Which is a Mandela effect, but also Jess invented the phrase stope top after stope top stuffing because of the commercial on the commercial, thinking and commercial, like he likes it, a kid maneuvers his way into having two servings of stope top. - Yeah, that is Buddy's house. - And then his mom's house. - Exactly, it's dinner with his mom, stope top stuffing, and then he goes with Buddy's house and gets a second round of stope top stuffing. She did this system. So when we do multiple places, we call it stope top. - Right. - And so it was a stope top. - Oh, fun. - It was really fun. We had all been apart, so it was a really nice reunion. And. - Did you sleep like a brick? - I had a headache. - Ooh. - Because I haven't drank that much this week. - Uh-huh. - And so it was. - You're on a practice. - I was a little out of practice. - Out of shape. - Mm-hmm. - And I had a headache. - Uh-oh. - But eventually I slept. - Mm. (laughing) - I think. - TBD. - Yeah, so it was a nice weekend. - Was there anything else? - What did you pin? - Oh yeah. Oh, well, we were gonna do connections. - Oh, right. - And do you wanna do it live? - Let's see. Yeah, let's see if I can find it and everything. So I have a New York Times app. - Yeah, I wonder if I kept the game. - Let me search NYT. - 'Cause I just realized that I've only done a-- - I took it off and I need, I'm putting it back on. - Okay, put it back on. - 5G, should I switch back over now? Here it comes, here it comes, open. - It's down a little bit. - Okay, I see spelling B. - Yep, connect. - Wordal connections. - Yeah. - Are you gonna have to help me how this works? - Okay. - So play, let's say you can play. - Play? - How to play, I'm gonna X that up 'cause you have an expert here. - That's right. - Okay, so there's a bunch of words I see them. - You have 16 words and you're trying to group them into groups of four, four groups of four. - Four groups of four. - And so you'll click on four that you think is a category. - Yeah. - But remember, be careful because-- - Yeah, not too fast, I try to trick you. - They do, they try to trick. And I've done two out of the four so far, I need to-- - Yeah, we've got cycle, cyclone, cyclops, sickness. - Right, so like-- - So you're tempted to think those four together, right? - You are tempted. - And there's you in a cycle also. - Okay, wait, we have, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna do four right now, submit. - Oh, that was fast. Do you get it? - Well, it's a one away. - Okay, so what'd you click? - Orion, galaxy, Gemini, Pegasus. - Okay, you're one away, one of those is wrong. So then how do I-- - So deselect, what do you think it could be instead of one of them? And it means three of those are correct. - I mean, I really know that, I feel like Orion and galaxy are definitely the real deal together. Yes, you don't. So these are constellations. - Uh-huh. - Okay, so I'm gonna get rid of galaxies, that's not a constellation. - Exactly. - And then the, maybe syngas, I'm gonna go with syngas. I'm gonna submit constellations. - You got it. - I got one. Okay, so I have one error. - You have one error, okay, you have one done. Now what? - Oh, so then, yes, so I'm gonna go solitaire, unicycle, cyclops, monologue. I'm gonna submit associated with one, okay. - You got it. - I got it, okay. - Okay, now work cut up. Those are the two also that I did. - Okay, so that was where for dumb dumbs. - No. - I mean, they were the most obvious. - Not necessarily, purple sometimes is not. - Is that how it's fucking here, is it me? - I'm not hot. - I'm not hot. - It's not a great sign. - Okay, now let's do the next ones together. I like this. I like doing it as a team. - Well, cycle and phase. - I like being on your team. - Me too, I like, hi team mate. - Hi. - Cycle and phase. - I. - Stage. - Yep, I had that and then it was like, what's the fourth? - Cycle phase, stage round. - Yeah. I guess I can't say too much because I've tried a couple things. - Okay. - Um. - Hmm. - But not right one. - Runs probably don't work. - Snail. - I think I did, but I don't remember. - Yeah. - Tell me what I did. - It'll tell you if you guessed it already. - I know, but it won't like have it listed. - Well, I can do shuffle. I'm gonna shuffle. - Uh huh, sometimes it's nice to shuffle. - They do like to do like blank word a lot. - Exactly. - Or word blank. So like gel, oh. - What? - Yeah, like the word would be gel. And another word would be, um. - Oh, something tricky. - Yeah, and then it's all like, - All of them have this. - Or does that have oh at the end. - Or like compound words that all share the second word. - Yeah, they definitely have throw offs. - Okay, so galaxy is the one that's sticking out is like it wouldn't fit with any of these. So something. - Well, I said, okay, I thought maybe, maybe things that were circular. - Uh huh. - Which I was like snail, round, - Hmm. - Sunflower, cyclone. - Mm hmm. - You already tried that. - I'm pretty sure I tried it and it didn't work. - Yeah, I would be nervous about that. Sunflower's so weird. Like it can't mean sunflower with all these other words here. - Well. - Sunflower oil. - Could they be types of oil. - Snail oil, cyclone oil, galaxy oil. - No, no. - Or snails. - Sunflower seed. - Snail seed cyclones, round seed, galaxy seed. - Round features. - I don't see any other features on here. - Cycle seed. - I mean, stage phase. - Cycle, I know. It's so annoying because-- - I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do stage phase, cycle and round. - Okay, let's see if I've done that before. Go ahead. - Okay, submit, segment of progress. - It works? - Yep, I got it. - Oh, I thought I'd tried it. - So now-- - Okay, now we know the others. - So snail, cyclone, galaxy, and sunflower. Before I hit submit, I wanna figure out why they're-- - Exactly. - Yeah, they're-- - Okay. It could be like clone, nail, flower, or gala, that they all have-- - Is it fun game? - Isn't it fun? - Yeah, I don't know if fun will be the list of newest to it, but it's a very fun game. - Yeah, I probably cut it. - It's a spell for a week old. - But I had to be a week, because I didn't want to-- - It pissed people off. - Cyclone is, I mean, it could-- - It's a thought for a second I had it, but it's not. I thought a Ford, there's a galaxy Ford. There might have been a cyclone Ford, not a sunflower. - Snail. - Is it like male lights? - Right. - But no. I'm submitting. - Oh wow, you gave him. - Yeah. - Does it seem like you could get the explanation? Should I quit? Is it too hard? Or is it doable? - I mean-- - It's not doable. It's not that satisfying. - Okay, I mean-- - I mean, okay. - You were kind of there. - Yeah. - Spirals in nature. - Spiral circles, that's what I said. - Next puzzle. - But galaxy. - Share my results. - I didn't love this one, Wina. Wina, her name's Wina, I think. - I see if-- - Yeah, Wina Lou. - What do you do? - Try and remember, if I have Callies. - You want to get added to the crew? - Yeah, I do. (laughing) - With my friend Robbie and Max. - So is one mistake good? - Yeah, it's pretty good. - You're looking for zero. - Yeah, we're having-- - How often is it zero? - I bet pretty high, but not today. - Okay. - I made a lot of mistakes today. - How many mistakes did you make? - Let's see. Did I beat you on my first time? - No. - And I want to point that out, but I'm curious. - Okay, well, it was a little confusing because we did it together. - Purple is the trickiest one. - Yeah, I'm really proud. - I did that one on my own. I just bolded it out. - Maybe I don't think you should be in our group. - Okay, that probably seems-- - I'm not like you the way this is said. - This is like Spade. - Now Leo, she finds it really easy and then it gets frustrating. - Of setting? - Yeah. - Okay. - Well, I actually really like about the sharing with the group is seeing the order that we all do it. 'Cause it's always different and so it's fun to me to see what's quick for people and what takes. - It tells you what order I got you. - Yeah. - Oh yeah. - Like we got those two in the same order. - I want to play all these now. - I know. - This is exciting, word old. Do you do word old? - I did word old today. - Oh my god, you do it all. Spelling being you do? - I don't do spelling being. - Make as many words as you can with seven letters. That's fun. - What? - I'm like a grandboy or something. - Yeah, we just decided to type - You guys are having a real-- - Yeah, but you guys are having a real chuckle over that. - Well, only 'cause I thought maybe we'd have another 10 minutes doing spelling being. - Oh, okay, all right, all right, all right. Okay, so let's go to our expert. - Okay, so Lisa. - Yeah. - Anyway, I hope everyone plays connections. Bill taught us that, Callie taught us that. - Yeah. - Now we're playing. - Now we're in. Now I was late again. I'm always last to these games. I don't know what it is. - Yeah. - I was last to spades. - Well, that one you really were hung up. You didn't want to do it. - I know. - I know. - And what is it? - 'Cause you're worried, be vulnerable. Is it 'cause you're worried you'll be bad? - It's like when a group of people do something, my knee jerk reaction is like, that's not for me. Probably 'cause I don't, from childhood or something, I'm not gonna be included, so I'm just gonna exclude myself. - Right, but even though it's weird because you are being included, it's like, why don't you play? Why don't you play? - I know, it doesn't make any sense. I'm like, I'm not defending it. And I see it in other people. I see other people have that disposition too. I don't play games as a declaration. - Right. - There's a lot of those people. - Yeah, to me it means 'cause you're afraid you're gonna, not you necessarily, but that mentality feels like, well, you're afraid you're gonna be bad at it and you're not comfortable being bad at things or you're afraid you're gonna lose. - Well, I think there's a lot of things going on actually. I think there's like, I have a hard time being a follower. So if everyone's done it before me, I have a hard time being a follower. - Two, I do get anxiety about learning something new. I still do. Like if I already know how to do something, I get this tinge of anxiety that just about learning it. - Yeah. - That I won't be able to comprehend it. - Yeah. - Which is preposterous, but just like I'm afraid of men, but I'm big now. You know, it doesn't make sense. - It doesn't, I think more than it's preposterous that you wouldn't understand it, it's more preposterous that you would take that as a marker of your value or intelligence. - No, there are things I don't understand. - I'm not going down river to be embarrassed about it. I'm going straight to that. I'm gonna be really frustrated and everyone else is gonna be getting it and I'm gonna be really frustrated. It's like, it's back in elementary school. It's like watching people get something and I'm not getting it is so frustrating. Forget the embarrassment of it, which I'm sure is in the midst of the-- - But not embarrassment for other people, but it's like a personal, it's like, I can't do this. I just really get people can do it. - I link it to frustration. Like I'm gonna be frustrated as this is getting explained to me that I don't understand it. Like I want to learn bridge, really bad, but I don't know why I don't already know how to play it. It makes no sense. I've wanted to learn how to play it for five, six years and yet I have not instigated learning to do it 'cause I do also have some fear that I'm not gonna understand how to do it. - Right. I have that. I have a lot of, if I'm not, even with connections today, when I got those two and then I tried one and it didn't work, I had made a mistake and I was like, I hope I don't want to make any more mistakes. Like I felt very scared of making any more and then I put it down and then I forgot. I forgot about it until just, you know, when we were recording earlier. But I have that, but then I can get myself fairly quickly to like-- - And then you die. - Who cares? You've proven yourself to be smart in this world. It's fine. - Yeah. - And it's good for me sometimes to just be like, I don't get it. - Listen, I'm embarrassingly vain. I see it all the time. Like here's an example. Peter T.M. makes these videos. I love them. I watch every video he makes. He'll be talking for 20 minutes about what protein powder supplements he likes. And he's only starts with like, I'm not an investor in any of these companies. I'm not being bad. I'm just gonna tell you what I mean. - Yeah. - And like, I'll watch it and I find it so interesting. My first thought is I should review shit. This is so fun. 'Cause I like review the airplane food once. But the truth is what keeps me from doing that is I think I look so bad when I'm filming myself. - Oh. - Like I'm like, it would take me so long to set the camera up in a way that I wouldn't be insecure making this video, which is again, so silly I was an actor for 20 years. - Yeah. - Like I should be fine with this. But like, I'm really vain. - Hint. - Yeah. - And by the way, he doesn't look bad. What is clear is he doesn't even think about it, which is very attractive. - Right. - It's almost so smart enough to know like, as long as you're, you know, whatever. And then, you had to be bad at something that's scary to me and look bad. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. It's shameful, but here we are. - It's not shameful, I think it's human. - Well, I think there's varying levels. Like some people seem to be not very vain. - Yeah. - It's attractive. Like Delta's not vain. She's just like, she doesn't, she's the least self-conscious person. - Yeah, she's not. - I'm very self-conscious. - Me too, but aren't you at sort of like, fuck it? - Yeah, in so much of, I do overcome it on so many levels. Like I still put, I still post the pictures of us doing the interview 'cause I got here. - Yeah, exactly. - And I just live with it, but then it's like taking on more. I generally am not like trying to take on more of those moments where I'm gonna feel like I look old and whatever. - Yeah, that's fine, you also don't have to. - Yeah, but it is fun. - I enjoy his and I think like, well that's the kind of content I actually enjoy. Oh, another thing happens, I've never noticed that I lost followers. (laughs) And I noticed today, I noticed that I had gone from 4 million to 3.9 million. And then I was like, well, my first insecurity was like, I did something wrong. People have like, I've offended people. - Hits me, for. - Yes, it pissed people off. But then I was like, actually, probably more accurately, all I do is post photos from our, episodes. That's a pretty boring follow. If you're not like in arm cherry, which clearly a lot of the people that follow me, a lot of them follow me before, we ever had this podcast. So I'm like, yeah, I would probably unfollow me too, if it was only about this podcast and I don't listen to the podcast. And then I was like, God, I just, I don't ever take enough pictures. And I'm like, I should have different things on there than just that. Like, look, on one level, you could go, who gives a fuck? On another level, you can go, if you're gonna do something, you should try to do it well. I have this account. - But well is very subjective. - Well, what do I enjoy of other people? So right, if Peter posts a still of him in an interview he did, I'm not that interested in that. But when he tells me about protein powder, I love it. Or when Charlie reviews protein bars in the car with Wilder, I like, I love it. It's fun content. And so if I'm gonna do it, I should attempt to like make it entertaining. That's, I am an entertainer. I can't pretend I make my living welding. So there's a lot to evaluate. - Yeah. - I can't act over it and use it. You know, I can't act like I'm too-- - No, you can use it in the way that you wanna use it. Like you don't have to use it in the way that it's-- - But it feels a little takey. You know, it's like, I'm only just promoting this thing. - So what? That's, to me that's the most earnest way. I'm not saying I do that, I don't. But I actually, I think it's great, people who are just using it for exposure for their thing. And most people aren't doing that. I'm not doing that. But I wish I was. There's a part of me that is like-- - Well, let me be clear though. I don't have a desire to like start posting some really attractive manicured life. I don't have that impulse. But yeah, if you're following me, I should put some fun stuff up every now and then. - Yeah, if you want. - Okay, so this is for Lisa. And there's a few facts. The percentage of women who like rape porn. I thought this was interesting because we just did an armchair anonymous. There was like a porn thing that came up. This is an Easter egg. And I thought it was interesting because the armchair story is about a young person who finds porn. - Yeah, who seeks out porn. - Yeah, and I just looked at this this morning and I was like, oh, weird. So there's-- there was a questionnaire completed by 187 female undergraduate psychology students for a study designed to test the idea that women's attitudes and fantasies about rape are partially a function of their socialization to accept sexual aggression as normative. Self-reported early exposure to pornography was associated with women's latter attitudes and fantasies about rape as hypothesized. Of 187 women, 86, 46%, reported direct exposure to pornography as a child. This exposure was significantly related to subsequent adult rape fantasies and rape supportive beliefs. Which kind of-- I get. Like the earlier on you're exposed to aggression, the more you're going to think that's hot. Like these early days, these early fantasies stick with you. - Right. I mean, I've always-- - I always, in my mind, explained it by like, why do boys like watching war movies? Well, because. - Well, yeah, that was this episode. - Oh, I'd probably already said all this. - Yeah, you know. - Yeah, like, inscription has been a reality of most boys' life forever. So like, they have a legitimate fear of having to go to awards some point. So they kind of want to see this fear play out. - Yeah, that was what we were talking about on this show. So that's what made me look into it. And then I thought this was actually very interesting that it might be more chicken or the egg that start out seeing those things and then you develop a. - Yeah. - For Clivity towards it. - Yeah, I would love to see pre-internet data. Everyone my age, who has those fantasies, who wasn't obviously, you couldn't see porn online. - Yeah. Also the study about giving therapy to parents instead of their children. You credit to John Hopkins, it's actually Yale. - Oh. (laughs) You know, I wasn't certain, but you know, when you're in a pinch, I think the highest probability is to say John Hopkins. - You just like saying it. - Well, no, I actually hate saying it as we've discussed. I can't stand that it's plural, John. - I know, but it's like a merge in therapy for you. You just want to say it so many times. - I'm trying to act out my fear of saying it. - Yeah, exactly. - But if you have to take the highest percentage shot of where you heard the study came from, what's your go to? Do you have a go to? - Oh. - I think a lot of people say Harvard. - I would say Harvard or Yale. - Uh-huh. You wouldn't say John Hopkins. - If it's a tech study, I'd say MIT. - Oh. - I would not say Johns Hopkins. I should add that into the mix, but it's not. - I do feel like I'm hearing an ordin' amount of things coming out of there. - Well, this was Yale. - I tip my hat to you, Yale. - Yeah. Oh, the ghost. - The ghost? The ghost just went potty again. - So I was looking up the suicide epidemic in Yusat-Tahiti. - Yeah, I think Tahiti. - I couldn't find that. - No. - But it's fine. I then pivoted and went into the contagion of suicidal behavior. - Okay, do you find something? - There's a lot on it. There's a lot on it. There's definitely support that-- - It's contagious. - That suicidal behavior is contagious and the impact of media reporting on suicide can increase. - Suicidal behavior, which-- - I've been disappointed ever since I left college. Almost of these anthropological papers I read, they weren't headlines. - That's right. - Yeah. - Well, also, okay, we're their syndrome. - Ooh, it's we're their syndrome. - We're their syndrome. Not the candy. - Okay. - Don't do that. - Okay. - Because the candy will be upset. I love the candy. - The very good candy. Slow candy. - It's slow. It's the opposite of chewy. - Uh-huh. - That's why I love it. - Yeah, that's a good one. - The we're their syndrome, also known as the copycat syndrome or copycat effect, is a phenomenon in which a person commits suicide after being exposed to media coverage about another person's suicide. - I wonder if they understand. - Suicide clusters. - Yeah, what's happening? What the thought process? - Suicide clusters, especially mass clusters, might occur through a process of contagion. Suicide contagion occurs when the exposure to suicide or suicidal behavior of one or more people influences others to attempt suicide. - By the way, it's the premise of Heather's. I wonder if they had read about one of those things. - Maybe. I haven't seen it. - You haven't seen the original Heather's. - I haven't, but I don't think I want to knowing that. - Oh, it's a very good movie. - It's very funny. - I guess it's relevant. That's where my anxiety first developed. - Right. - It was around a suicidal event. I knew someone who attempted suicide and I became obsessed with feeling like it was gonna happen to me. It was that phrasing. All of a sudden I was gonna look down and I will have done it. - Right, you personally. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it was so unpredictable and the person that you experienced it with, yeah. - I get this. It really infot like, and then when Robin Williams died, I had another major spike. A full panic, like for months. - Yeah. It really just exemplifies how different people are. 'Cause like my mom tried twice. And I don't have like kind of anything associated with it. It's so bizarre. How different everyone's reactions to the same thing can be. Like I get, you know, I should be in fear that she'll try it a third time and I'm not. I'll tell you, you'll handle it for me. - Yeah. If I know that about anyone's past, I think about it. I've thought about it with your mom. Like I think about it. Oh God. Okay, but I just heard a very interesting phrasing of PTSD that I forgot. - Okay. - I didn't write it down. So this might be an Easter egg. - Does this come out of John's Hopkins? - It came out of Arizona University, Arizona, US. - Colorado New Mexico, Arizona, US, right? - Yeah. It basically, they're learning a lot about PTSD. What it does is basically pull past memories and make them present. - Mm-hmm. - Your brain doesn't classify the past as the past. It's like putting it in the present. - Right. Didn't get filed in the cabinet correctly. - Yeah. Scary stuff. - Who else does she say? - Uh-huh. - That's what I mean. - Oh, percentage of kids living at home, 45% of people aged 18 to 29 are living at home. - What was it for? - 45%. - Wow. Almost half. That's not still being increased, no? - Well, it says roughly the same level as it was in the 40s. But the factors are different now than they were nearly a century ago. - I wonder what the lowest point was and what the highest point was. - Yeah. - Maybe the depression was? - Hi. I bet like Gen X and Millennial. - Is it gonna be high? - I think this gonna be low. I think we were meant to get out quickly. - Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. - But Gen Z is very high. - It is. We know this or you're guessing. - Well, 45% of 18 to 29 are Gen Z. - Oh, that's them. - Yeah. - Yeah. That feels really high. I wonder what the rate is in Germany. - Wow. Just curious. - Well, 'cause that was the place I was at when I learned people stay at home much later. And it's not like a sign of failure. It's just they don't until they-- - Yeah, it's part of the culture. - They'll get married, but by a place was, yeah. I could have never lived at home, man. I was running with the wolves. I couldn't have had that much oversight on what I was doing. - Yeah, that's the part that feels unnatural. But I guess you're just used, it's just like-- - Whatever you did. - You used to it. - Yes, so like Neal's very average. This is very-- - He flew the coop. - Totally, yes, he did, but I'm saying even while he was living at home, this is like that average. - Exactly, exactly. - I know that I have such anecdotal data. I only know the people that I grew up with and none of them live at home with their own one, one, but that's what I mean. Our age groups, especially yours, that wasn't as much as I thought. - It would be shame inducing too for my generation. - Yeah, how to stigma, like it meant you were a-- - Failure. - Or like a, what's it called, deadbeat or something? - Yeah, couch potato. - Dead loser. - Deadbeat, deadbeat, dead. - I hate the word loser. - Tell me. - Well, I hate it for a specific reason. There is a person I know who uses that word a lot. - Okay. - And it's so hypocritical and embarrassing. There's so many words that are bad, but that word is just dripping with judgment. Like there's nothing good about it. It's only a negative thing. - There's really no silver line. - Exactly. - It's always like, who are you to call-- It's like based on no metric. My mom has hated that word for a long time. More recently, I heard somebody else say it and I was like, "Yeah, that word's so bad." - Right. - It's so bad, why? - Yeah. - There's no such thing as losers and winners, except when you win championships. And connections, I guess. - Yeah, winning is personal. - It is. - Whatever you say your sights on and if you accomplish that, I think you should feel like a winner. - I think everyone should figure out where they're winner in their life and not focus on where they're losing. This person who I know calls other people losers, but in many regards, the quote, "losers" are so far better off than this person. - Yeah. I think we could probably safely say someone who's constantly calling out losers is probably feeling pretty shitty about them. - Yeah, but they're not happy. - And they're trying to down compare. So they're trying to find people that are the both of them. - Yeah, they're not happy. And in that way, they're losing. - Yeah. I don't think I say that often. It's a great word when, as you say, it's pretty definitive. - Uh-huh. - So. - There's not much wiggle room. - I'll generally like if someone's got just abhorrent behavior, I might say what a fucking loser. - Yeah. So anyway, all right. - I think that was it for Lisa. - Wonderful, wonderful guests. - Wonderful guests. - Very informative. - Teenagers, people have a lot of questions about them. So I hope this was helpful. - It is funny what a big word, that is teenagers. Like what a powerful word that is. When you're really looking at that, it spans like six years. - It's such a small time. - It's such a blip. But it's a huge developmental time. - It is, but we think of teenagers as like maybe a quartile of the population. You know what I'm saying? We've got old people, we've got young people, we've got middle aged people, then we have teenagers. Like there's some huge group. - Someone brought it up the other day that it has been exactly four years, like last week or two weeks ago or something, four years since the lockdown. - Oh March, yeah March 2020. - Four years. a full high school or a full college. - And what do you think about that? Does that feel like it was shorter ago? - It's just time. - Time is fucked. - It's so fucked. Four years you've seen me in so much. It was so huge. - It was. It also lasted for a couple years, you know? - It lasted for 16 years, you mean? - Well, four years. - Like four years, you walked out. - The lockdown. It was like a straight year and then there was this weird middle-round year. And it's like, I didn't feel like we came out of it. Like I remember at the end of 2020, New Year's Eve, everyone was like, fuck. 2020. As if we were gonna wake up in 2021 and go outside and like. - I know. - It was kinda two, two real years of it. And then even some slow fallout after that. - Depending on where you live, too. - Totally. But also it's just, it went really fucking fast. I mean, went by in a blip. - Yeah. - Nuts. What a time. (snorts) - What a time to live in America. - Be time. (laughs) - All right, I love you. - I love you. (upbeat music)