The Scary, Beautiful Teenage Brain

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Did you ever take any wild risks? Do anything impulsive? So I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. And so I grew up sailing. This is Dina. She says her parents kept her on a fairly short leash as a kid, but when she was a teenager, she and her friends would go out on their own on these sailboats called El Toros. They're about eight feet long with one sail. So what we used to do is we used to leave early in the morning from Corinthian Yacht Club and tack all the way across the bay to go to St. Francis Yacht Club. Because St. Francis Yacht Club on the bar used to have these bowls of pretzels with cheese in the middle? Yum. Yum. So what we used to do is we used to sneak into St. Francis Yacht Club. And we would open some of our shirts and make a pouch and then pour several bowls of the pretzels into our shirt. And then we would get back in the boat and sail back across the bay. So things worth the time and effort? Well now you can just get them in a bag they're called the combos, right? So those were the sort of risks that I took. And I think I became more of a risk junkie when I got older. A Pakistani army officer named Colonel Zishan is giving me a tour of a G-Huddy Reveal Association Center. Jury selection begins today in this country's largest ISIS recruiting trial to date. They're trying to put together what is an extremely long and large crime scene. Yep. The dinner I'm talking to is… Dina Temple Reston NPR News Odin Sedemberg Dina Temple Reston NPR News Islamabad Dina Temple Reston 10-year veteran counterterrorism correspondent for NPR and former teenage combos themed. This is the longest shortest time. I'm Andrea Solenzzi. These days, Dina hosts the Audible original series "What Were You Thinking?" It's a show all about navigating adolescence. An each episode Dina tells the story of a kid who's made a truly terrible life-changing decision. They've gotten arrested for online hacking or taken a gun to school. Even committed suicide. And then she uses current research into developmental neuroscience to try to explain the steps that led to that choice. These stories are extreme, but they actually offer a lot of insight into teenagers in general. And we know that plenty of you are raising teens right now, trying to understand why they behave the way they do. Today, we're going to hear the story of one kid who tried to join ISIS. And how, surprisingly, his risky decision-making might help you understand your own kid's brain a little better. Then after all that, stick around for a segment we call "What's Up With Hillary?" The Norris tradition. That's coming up later in the show. Dina, when did you start to get interested in teenagers? Because I was an NPR counterterrorism correspondent, I was constantly talking to teenagers. They were either brothers and sisters of people who had radicalized, they were the actual people who had radicalized. When there were al Qaeda recruits, they tended to be in their late 20s, early 30s. But what I noticed is when ISIS started recruiting the United States, the kids were 14, 15, 16 years old. So that's no longer an ideological decision. That's an adolescent decision. A lot of Dina's reporting over the years has focused on the Somali American community and Minneapolis. A community which dozens of young people have left to join extremist groups in Somalia and Syria. And often gotten killed there. But many of the parents, Dina, was meeting in Minneapolis whose sons and daughters had left. They weren't hardliners. They'd raise kids who were sweet and caring and smart. For these families, losing their children to al Shabaab and ISIS was horrifying. Because you have to dig in so much when you're doing the terrorism beat in a real visceral way, you end up identifying incredibly with the people around you, not just the moms, but the whole family. And particularly when you're talking about these sorts of things, there's so much stuff they tell you that tells you so much about their family that you almost become like a counselor. They expect because you know something about terrorism that somehow you can diagnose what their kids have done. And the reason why I started this whole podcast was after 10 years of having moms ask me, why did my child radicalize? We're not radical Muslims. I don't understand why he made this decision. And usually he, sometimes it would be a girl. I never had an answer. And it seemed so wrong to just take and not give. I needed to have something more than a shrug. And that is frankly what kicked off this entire idea of understanding how brain science can help us understand adolescent decisions. Because sometimes a bad adolescent decision really has to do with their brains. And if we understand this more, then maybe we can help them make better decisions. So tell me, how did you first meet Abdulahi Yusuf? When did you first come into your life? The way I sort of found Abdulahi Yusuf is that I saw across the wire that there was a kid who had been stopped from boarding a plane by the FBI and that he had been released into a halfway house. And all the headlines that were around that were terrorist released to halfway house. And I looked at it and I went, oh my goodness, I think they're going to try G. Haddie rehab in Minnesota. Tina had heard about programs and places like Denmark that it attempted to rehabilitate would be ISIS recruits. But something like this was utterly new in the United States. Here, Tina had seen kids like this get a decade or longer of prison time for offering material support to a terrorist organization. It was just so clear to me that it was something totally different. So I started calling my sources saying, this is G. Haddie rehab, isn't it? This is them trying to figure out if they can help a kid think things through in a different way instead of a knee-jerk reaction that he must be a terrorist. And so I started chasing him. National security cases like Abdulahi's are always really sensitive in this one because Abdulahi was the first G. Haddie rehabilitation case was especially so. There were lots of requests for interviews from other journalists. None of them made it through. But Tina kept asking. And finally, after three years, she got the go ahead and became the only journalist to interview him. I knew so much about him by that time that it was almost like meeting someone that you had a relationship already with. And so I'm not even strange for him. I don't think it was for one very, very specific reason. And that is that I brought pizza. And that is amazing the doors that pizza opens up. So what I did is I went and got two large pizzas from a piece of place near where I live. I carried them on my lap, flew to Minneapolis, put them in the hotel refrigerator. New York City pizza. New York City pizza, you are correct. Because you never help New York City pizza. New York City pizza. It's a very good way to go. one. Okay. And it's on the upper west side. And I knew that he was Muslim. So I just got cheese pizza. And I I actually had one I had two different kinds of crust because I wasn't sure what kind he liked. I carry these in. And he's there. And he's quite a handsome young man. And he's very polite and he's very shy. And he's incredibly tall. And I'm not super tall. So he stands up full height. And he extends a hand right away, like politely to shake my hand. He says, "It's pleasure to meet you." And I said, "Guess what I have in this bag." And he said, "What?" And I said, "Two New York pizzas. Have you ever had one?" And he goes, "No, I've only ever had pizza and I said, 'Your life is about to change.'" And so some of the best tape that we have in the first episode actually came, well, Abdulahi was eating pizza. And we had to sort of work with the tape because you could hear him chewing. What's funny about him? What was his life like before this all happened? He was the last guy that you'd think would make this kind of decision. And he's clearly a really smart, really intuitive. I downright sweet kid. And if you talk to his parents, they talk about where his grandmother would say, you know, he was the kid who was always polite, always asking if he could help me. So for people who have certain suppositions about who would go and decide to join ISIS, I think the fact that he is so well spoken and so quiet and so thoughtful is the opposite of what you were expected. And so we sat down and I just, I thought the easiest thing for him to do is to recount to me the day he was stopped from getting on a plane to join ISIS by the FBI. The FBI came and said, I'll do what he would need to talk to you. And they're like, you're not flying today. And I said, that's, that's not fair. And they're like, well, we can have this discussion somewhere else, you know, somewhere more private. So we go to a different part of the airport. I was being a pain in that. We talked about this, what to say, if you were stopped, you know, they asked me where I'm going. And I say, it's then both for vacation. They asked me if my parents know I'm here and I asked them if their parents know they're here. They asked me if I would mind if they can win and talk to my parents. And then what did you think? I'm fucked. And what was so amazing about that is how Adela sent you sounded about the whole thing. And when I asked him, do you realize, did you realize the gravity of what you were doing? And he said, I was just going to get on a plane. I didn't think it meant anything. I had no idea that they could say that I was conspiring to kill people overseas. It never occurred to me that this was something called material support to a terrorist organization. He said, I thought, I thought if they caught me before I went, then it wasn't a crime. This happened, you know, in May 2014, before there were the beheadings before, you know, we really knew what ISIS stood for when there were the kidnapping, sex slaves. Yeah. None of that had happened. And if you remember at the time, everybody was against Assad. So if you joined before that, then you could have been naive. And in Abdul-Ahis case, I think you could make a pretty good case. He didn't know what he was getting into. And one of the most telling things he said is, I said, you must understand that the FBI thinks that you would come back and attack here. You must understand that's their greatest fear. And he said to me, no, no, no, we had a solution for that. And I said, really, what was your solution? And he said, we knew that as soon as we landed, if we tore up our passports, they couldn't use our passports for somebody else or to make us come back. Which if you ask me, that's an incredibly 17 year old solution to a very complicated problem. I mean, and I didn't want to say to him, well, you do realize that they could compel you to go to an embassy and get a new passport. So your awesome solution to this is maybe not as foolproof as you thought. But it gets to this whole idea that these are adolescent decisions instead of ideological ones. Right. That's just like, well, if you ask him a cop and he says he isn't, then he's definitely not a cop. You know, it's like that kind of teenage wisdom. Right. Well, of course, he would tell you the truth, right? So yeah. And but that's why we like though, right? Isn't this what we love about teenagers is this sort of naive kernel that they have, that they have the beginning of an understanding of how the world works, but also still has this idealistic naive kernel that that I guess who we as adults assume adolescents understand how they work. And then every once in a while, you get this question out of left field and you go, Oh, I totally get how you got there. When we come back, how objolahi got there turns out this may have been the result of some very normal developmental changes that happened to all teenagers and the result of a social studies project stay with us. This is kind of a bad time clarinized as found a major clue and now it's airborne. Anyway, I want to let you know that the parents behind law and order have something brand new for families, our podcast Patrick Pickle bottom every day mysteries. Patrick, it's headed towards the water tower. Got to go listen on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, please not that music that music is me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter, lighter music here? Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about unsolved mysteries, the show that jump started all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh and I'm Joey Tarranto. And we host I think not a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows all the way to unsolved mysteries. Baby, you will laugh, you will cry. You'll think about true crime in a whole new way. And you'll also ask yourself, who gave these people mics? New episodes of I think not are released every Wednesday with bonus episodes out every Thursday on Patreon. And every Monday, you can listen to our true crime rundown where we go over the top true crime headlines of the week. 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We're back with Dean Atompa Raston, host of the new podcast, what were you thinking? One of the things that's most striking about Abdulahee's story was how he began to learn about ISIS in the first place. The kids in his class were all signed countries to research. Abdulahee by chance got Syria. But of course, it takes a lot more than that to convince the kid to pack his bag and buy a plane ticket to Istanbul. Exactly. Well, I mean, there was a combination of events that I don't they were almost a perfect cocktail. So he's the only he's one of two Somalis on his football team in high school. And he'd never really had the kind of camaraderie that he had with his high school team mostly white. Okay, they actually wore t-shirts that were said band of brothers. And so he had all these people he was hanging out with this sort of whole support system of peers and then boom, football is over. And he was alone. Dean says that around this time, Abdulahee's best friend, Hanod, mysteriously disappeared. As he tried to make new friends, Abdulahee fell in with a group of other Somali Americans. These guys are a bit older, but they look like him came from his community. And they'd actually even known his old pal, Hanod. It turns out when Hanod disappeared, he'd actually joined ISIS. And these guys, they helped recruit him. So it's a combination of amazing events that end up bringing Abdulahee to the precipice of ISIS. And ISIS was offering him the one thing that he no longer had, a group, a support system, peers who believed the same thing he did. And it was just so striking to have him talk about the football team and then have him talk about his friends with whom he had banded together so that they could go and be heroes with ISIS and the vocabulary is identical. To make things worse, as Abdulahee began working on that research project about Syria for school. The new friends were eager to help. They started showing him videos from ISIS. And as he looked at these videos, he thought, "This is outrageous. Women in children, poor women in children, Muslim women in children, Syria are being killed. No one's helping them. The United States isn't helping them." They said they would and they didn't. And ISIS really uses this as a propaganda tool to galvanize young people who do think that they can make a difference. As Dina explains in the episode, there's actually a neurological explanation for why ISIS videos are so effective at radicalizing young people. I have to do with this part of the brain that's hyperactive in the adolescent ears called the insula. Here's a clip from UCLA neuropiologist Daniel Siegel. The insula feeds into an area where self-awareness is generated, which is right next to an area for other awareness. These are the neurobiological paths of empathy. And amazingly, even morality is mediated in an adjacent area as well. So as you gain a sense of what's going on in someone else, what's going on inside yourself, you also have a sense of being a part of a larger whole. Researchers say those butterflies you feel in your stomach when you see someone you love, or that sadness you might feel when you see the suffering of war, may all have a connection to the insula. This is one of the reasons why, as in the adolescent, you are going to save the mountain gorillas, or you become a vegan. And it's why I cried when my dad brought home some living lobsters that he was planning to cook for a special occasion. And I was like, you can't put them in the boiling water. Cryed all night. That's right. And then as soon as you had your 24th birthday, it's, "Mmm, lobster, pass the butter," right? So this is the thing. So it's on hyper alert. The insula is on hyper alert. And then if you bring that together in combination with different parts of the brain that maybe you're not working as efficiently as they should, what you end up having is having, it's part of the reason why kids are so passionate. All this means that it's possible that when Abdallah, he was watching those videos, he's actually more moved and upset by the suffering he saw than many adults might have been. More desperate to actually do something. Which in some ways, that's kind of cool, right? I mean, don't we want kids to care about the world and try to ease other people's suffering? We see this going on right now in a powerful way with the never again movement. As I'm recording this, kids all over the country are walking out of their high schools, calling for better gun policies. And if you think about that, it completely turns on its head this idea of adolescence being something you just have to get through. Adolescence is in fact this amazing process that turns you into a better, maybe more wholesome, more spiritually aware, more giving adult if you manage that adolescence in the right way. Throughout what were you thinking, Dina points out all these qualities of the developing brain that might have first seemed like flaws. And she shows how they are really necessary and incredible adaptations to help kids navigate their world. For instance, dopamine, that reward seeking neurotransmitter you always hear about, that makes teenagers drive way too faster, spend all their daylight hours in a sweaty basement dungeon playing world of warcraft. That's the same thing that helps them jump headfirst into unfamiliar new challenges and drives them to master new skills. Did you tell him about the parts of his brain that led him there? What were those conversations like? Well, so here's one of the many, many things that's great about Abdullah He is by then he had been in a sort of G-Huddy rehab program that was making him read more critically because they've shown that different parts of the brain actually respond to things like critical reading. In fact, so we sit down to have the pizza and you know, we talk about the different cuts of New York pizza and then he goes, have you ever read Foucault? Michelle Foucault's a French philosopher and on best for his theories about prison surveillance and social control. And you're like, and I said, yeah, I have read Foucault. Have you read Foucault? And he goes, yeah, you know, when you do, when you talk about Foucault, when he talks about being in prison and you're in prison, you know, it's just sort of amazing. Like Foucault helped him understand being incarcerated. And he read letters from Birmingham. But, you know, he was reading the Joy Luck Club. He was reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. You know, actually, my book was on his list too, which I thought was hilarious. So I wrote a book called the G-Hud Next Door and it was on his reading list, which I thought was really cool. And his reading list was something that was supposed, he couldn't just read it and regurgitate. He was being forced to read critically. Abdallah's counselors had him write essays, forcing him to reflect on his identity and his community. And he says that research suggests that this sort of critical reading can actually help develop the insla, that self-awareness part of the brain, and teach it to behave in a way that's a little more grown up. I didn't know everything about what I signed up for. There's answers to the questions I had, but I guess it was- Would you tell me what the questions are? Like, is what's going on there wrong or right? Or about me, like, my identity here in America. Do I fit in here? Do I belong here? Or like, what are my prospects here? Like, where do I see myself? You know, do- I don't feel like I'm American, you know? And my muscle, my Somali. Abdallah, he even wrote a poem, which Dina had him read to her. I had to start every sentence with "I am". So it goes "I am an alleged terrorist." I I'm not sure how that makes me feel. I throw a fit. I am currently drinking AC-Aremists. I am in a whole. I am sure it'll take quite a while. I am thankful I am whole. I am bald. I am labeled. I am Somali. I am Jolly. I am my Haudenosaun. I am Muslim. I am Black. I am this. I am that. I am sure of one thing for effect. I am a human. So I don't. I just try to make stuff rhyme. So. Oh, that's Sierra missed part of the poem. It's everything I love about teenagers that juxtaposition there between so serious and so playful, so thirsty. Like, hmm, what rhymes with terrorist? Well, I am drinking a Sierra missed. But how about. How about I am Muslim? I am a Haudmum. That's a. How does that say about the way he feels about himself in society? And separate from the fact that people think he's an alleged terrorist. It was just so poignant because he really didn't know how he was supposed to feel as an alleged terrorist. And he didn't know how this fit in with his muslimness and his blackness. Were you there for the sentencing? Yes, I was. I was in the courtroom. It was amazing. So we were all preparing ourselves for his going to federal prison for a decision that he had essentially made by that time almost three years before. And it was. it was like a cliffhanger, you know, we were all waiting for the judge to sentence him and how long it would be. And then the judge just sort of sighed and he said, "I just don't see how prison will help this boy." And he may have said, "Young man, but what I wrote on my. on my. no pat was boy." And. and then he started talking to various people about rehab and continuing his counseling. And his parents, his father speaks English, okay, his mother speaks. understands it but doesn't really speak it. And you can see them being sort of confused by what this conversation was. And then he essentially said, "Look, you're going to get 20 years supervised release. We're going to put you in a half-way house for a year." And so there were factions in Minneapolis. There were people who were very angry with Abdulahee because he testified against some of the other people in the group. And then there were people who were Abdulahee supporters. And so there was this weird mix of what was going on in the gallery, right? Where there were all these people who were. these women who were in Somali traditional dress with jobs and. and then there were like kids, Somali American adolescents and like Viking sweatshirts and stuff like that. And his parents turned around and I was sitting next to one of his counselors and she said, "No prison, no prison." I mean, they didn't understand, right? Because you get 20 years minimum in prison for material support. And Abdulahee didn't go to prison at all. How unprecedented was this judge's decision? Absolutely, completely unprecedented. Never happened before. Hasn't happened since. With that ruling, Abdulahee Yusuf became the first terrorism defendant in the United States to avoid prison time. Since then, Dina says that she's gone back to Abdulahee's family. Talk to them about the brain science that may have been behind the choices he made. Just like she'd set up to do at the very beginning of this project. But she also says that some of the most meaningful conversations she's had have been with the adolescents themselves, like Chloe Love. A high school student who became suicidal after her best friend and several other students at her high school killed themselves. Dina explained to Chloe that when they're making decisions, teenagers rely on a part of the story. part of the brain, it tends to make everything seem like a worst case scenario. And when I talked to Chloe Love, she looked at me and she said, "So you mean I'm not crazy?" And I said, "No, you're not." And she said, "Wow, you mean everybody is going through this?" And I said, "Yeah, actually pretty much everybody is." And she said, "Oh, what a relief." And that, I mean that actually when she said that, I got chills because that was exactly what I was trying to do with this podcast, just having that kernel of understanding about your brain and the way it's working gives you so much power and gives you so much control. And what we're hoping with what we're you thinking is that we give that power and control, not just parents and not just educators, but to adolescents. They can hear themselves in these kids we're talking about and possibly know that one they're not alone and be what they're feeling is completely normal and this too will pass. It's kind of neat to think about raising a teenager someday and just how much fun it's going to be to watch another person go through this process. And just the idea that you're not done cooking yet, that there's actually this whole other phase where they're where you could really stir them up in interesting ways if you do it right. And that is not a negative thing. I think that adolescents got in a really bad rap and the more we learn about the adolescent brain, I think the more we understand that there is actually a great deal that we can do for adolescents and how it can really be an amazingly positive time instead of this thing that for so long we've dreaded. And as a parent, as an educator, even as an adolescent, if you go into it with that kind of attitude, I think it really changes how you're going to experience those years between 13 and 24. Dina Temple, Raston is the host of the Audible original series, What Were You Thinking? The whole first season is available for a binge listen now at audible.com/adolescentbrain, all one word. And those episodes from the first season will be released once a week on Apple Podcasts starting March 30th. It's a fascinating lesson whether you have a teenager, have been a teenager, or are currently a teenager yourself. In a minute something completely different. Oh my god. Don't go away. Say ad for Tyson. Ad for Tyson. Good job. Bros love reality TV. Have you ever noticed your boyfriend or husband in the background while you're trying to wind down and enjoy the housewives? They linger in the back of the room and ask questions, offer their opinions, but when you ask them to take a seat and watch with you, suddenly they're not interested. Well here are Bros and Shows. We are tired of perpetuating that dudes don't love reality TV because guess what? We do. And it's time we erase the stigma that comes with it. And we cover it all from real housewives to the bachelor, from Vanderpump rules to the traitors, and we're ready to give you our takes. Bros and Shows, a podcast from the Bros for everyone, for whoever wants to listen. We're back. And now it's time for a change of pace. Remember that blizzard that pummeled the East Coast just a few weeks ago? Well right in its path was our Shows creator, Hillary Frank. Q the jingle. What's up with Hillary? Andrea. Oh my god. What's up? And this was an especially challenging time for Hillary because she'd already been home alone with her eight-year-old daughter Sasha for two days. There has been a been out of town and Sasha had been home sick. And then the moment her kid is fever-free, the governor declares a state of emergency for New Jersey and school's canceled. It's just me and her and my book deadline that I'm trying to meet. So we got Hillary on the phone to see how they were doing on day three. The two of them cooped up at home together. She's really into like her little projects. So she asked me for the biggest cardboard box that we had in the basement. And I went and I brought it up stairs. It was so big that it was like hard to round the corners on the stairs to get this box out. And she can fit in it with plenty of space around her. She's decorated the whole thing with a sharpie and pipe cleaners. And it is a car. That is so creative. It has breaks. It has like a break in a gas pedal. It has like a steering wheel. And she went through more than a full roll of scotch tape to put this thing together. No, if only it worked though, really. Yeah, she actually said to me the next step is to figure out how to make it run. Is she kind of saying I kind of need a break from you too right now? Because it's just a lot of time to spend at home with someone else. I think so. I mean, so this morning by our third day together, I think we woke up already on each other's nerves. And then I needed to take a shower because sometimes people need to shower. And I was like, do something with yourself. I'm showering. So I don't know. She was like doing something. And then when I got out, she said, Mommy, do you have a shave of wood? A shave of wood. I don't I think normally I would have been like, tell me honey, what is a shave of wood? But I was like a shave of wood. What's that? I guess, you know, when there's those like kid scratch activities, you know, where like you have the paper that has color underneath it, but it's covered with black. And you take like a sharp little wooden tool and like scratch off the black. Yes. She lost her shave of wood. I just wanted to know if I had one lying around. And I was like, no, I don't have that. I can kind of remember where Sasha's coming from here. She stuck at home again. It's snowing out, been not the fun kind of snow. It's the slushy kind. And there's this feeling like, Mom, I'm bored. As if your mom can solve this crisis for you. You think I just have shapes of wood lying around? Who do you think I am? Later that night, Sasha somehow carried her cardboard car all the way at the stairs to her bedroom. And then she sat there in her car, dreaming of the open road. And that's where Hillary found her when it was time for bed. And I found her sitting in the car and I was like, all right, all right, it's like, let's get the bedtime routine on. Let's let's start reading a book. And she's like, wait a second. I'm listening to Kelly Clarkson. There was nothing playing. She's like, I've got to I've got to press pause. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. And and she's like, for real, I'm not joking. And I looked in her car and she showed me it says like on the radio of her little fake car, it says Kelly Clarkson stronger. And there is a pause button. She's like, see, I was pressing pause. I can't talk to you until I've pressed pause. Kelly Clarkson's hit song, Stronger. It's about making it through a difficult time. But tomorrow school, school, we'll be back. Yes, it better be. It wasn't. Hey, Andrea, Hillary. It's my fourth day in a row alone with this child. And she has just been terrorizing me. She's like, she's a big talker and like, she's non-stop telling me not talk jokes. She's asking me, would you rather, and this stuff like, would you rather be 13, 14, 15, 15, 17, 18? She goes all the way up to 41, which is how old I am. And then I'm supposed to pick an age and then she does it all over again. And then she's like, become obsessed with her Rubik's cube. And she's learned how to do one side and then she learned how to do two sides. And then she asks me, what color do you want me to do? Do you want white, yellow, red? Or do you want to tell her which two colors I want her to do? And then she does them and then she asks me again all over again to name the colors. And sorry, your voice mail recording cut me off. I guess I'm going on and on and on because I haven't talked to another grown up in a while. Anyway, long story short, it is getting all the shining up in here. It's like our power keeps flickering on and off. And there's like a broken random lollipop stick lying here on the table next to the couch. And I have a feeling like I'm going to lock myself in a room and my kid is going to come after me with a shape of wood. I guess I'll try again tomorrow. I'll probably be calling you from my topiary news out in the middle of the snow. Call for help. I don't suppose they told you anything in Denver about the tragedy. We had a pair during the winter in 1970. And she was like, can I just pretend to be a baby and I was like, okay, but no talk. and she goes, "Gah,ah." For some people, solitude, isolation, can't help itself become a problem. What are you doing? Drinking an escape plan. Why are you drawing an escape plan? Because why are you asking me? I don't understand what's happening. You've never done this before. I have to do it. There's no ways to escape the bathroom. You're not going to start a fire, are you? No. In a escape plan, like why? Why did he suddenly need an escape plan? What is happening? I'm sitting here and I'm looking out my window at the snow. And everything's white. And the trees are like being weighed down by the weight of this heavy wet snow. And Sasha was born almost exactly eight years ago. And she was born during the snowiest at that time. It was the snowiest winter on record in Philadelphia history. And so seeing this snow, we haven't had a very snowy winter. Seeing this snow, it seems like making me nostalgic for when she was born. And it's weird because it was probably the hardest time of my life. But I know seeing this snow and being trapped inside is also my life. Also making me remember just being trapped into having to snuggle with her and having to find a way to get to know her despite all of the hard stuff. And there's a piece of that that I miss. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. I'm caught between feeling like, oh my god, when is this going to end? Oh, this has been kind of nice this afternoon. If you want to see a photo of Sasha's cardboard card that only plays one song, it's up on our website longachortisttime.com. And while you're there, got a kid who's driving you crazy. And if you were trying to talk to them about how they make decisions, what are those conversations like? Tell us in the comments for this episode. That's number 156. This show is produced by me, Andrea Selenzy with Kristen Clark. Our show's creator and executive producer is Hillary Frank. Our engineers are Pete Karam and Jared O'Connell. Our technical director is the Reverend John DeLore. Our music is performed by HotMoms.gov and directed by Alison Linton Brown. We get editorial support from Peter Clowney, Antonia Akitunde, Ann Marie Baldenado, Ray Camerthy, and Julia Wang. Make sure you're subscribed to the Longachortist Time in Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, so you won't miss a thing. And don't forget to take our newsletter survey. Remember, that's at longachortistime.com/survey2018. We're going to be back with a whole new season of episodes on April 25th. We've got some incredibly fun things in the works, and a bunch of opportunities for you to get involved. You can help us track down some teenagers for our awesome teenager panel. You can tell us about your kids' imaginary friends. We're also gathering questions from you about the things you wish you'd ask your partner, before having kids. Just go to LongachortistTime.com, hit the Participate tab, and submit your story. [Music] So I was warming them away up a ridge and glass in the middle below. The wolves were fading in on a site, and that's when I saw them. Man, he's crouch low and he's running with the wolves. [Music] And he stayed right at me. Marvel and Stitcher present Wolverine the Long Night. Out now, only on Stitcher Premium, for one month free, go to wolverinepodcast.com and use promo code Marvel. [Music] Welcome to Mikaumplug, the number one podcast for self-improvement and modern leadership. I'm Mikaumplug, your host, and I'm here to challenge your why and fuel your because. This is where leaders, entrepreneurs and go-gitters come to level up. Each week, I bring you unfiltered conversations, game-changing strategies, and the kind of motivation that transforms lives and legacies. I've learned from legends like Les Brown, Damon John, and Robert Irvine. And now, I'm bringing their lessons, along with mine, straight to you, from modern leadership tips to creating unstoppable momentum. It play, subscribe, and join the millions who've made Mikaumplug their go-to source for growth and greatness. This is Mikaumplug, the voice and face of modern leadership, entrepreneur, and self-improvement. Let's get started. Let's clear this up right now. You may think it's all sports all the time, but have you ever noticed your boyfriend or husband in the background while you're trying to wind down and enjoy the housewives? Oh, I know the type. They linger in the back of the room and ask questions, offer their opinions. But when you ask them to take a seat and watch with you, suddenly, they're not interested. Well, here are Bros and Shows. We are tired of perpetuating that dudes don't love reality TV, because guess what? We do. We are in here to step on any toes. We just want to join the conversation. Bros and Shows, a podcast from the Bros for everyone, for whoever wants to listen.