Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest today is an.
Speaker 3: Author who've laid This book is the Book of Iron.
Speaker 2: Please welcome Lexi Freeman.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Thank you, welcome, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Lexi. Yes, I love this book.
Speaker 3: This book is so funny and seering.
Speaker 2: Do you like Syring?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love Syrious. You love Syring? Yeah? You want a
Speaker 2: seering novel. It gets into the ship.
Speaker 3: It makes fun of a little bit of everything and
Speaker 3: reveals something about yourself. I mean, it reveals nothing about me.
Speaker 3: I don't see myself at any kind of literature. But
Speaker 3: I love this book.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: This book starts it follows somebody who gets canceled. Yes,
Speaker 3: and then one of her first moves is she finds
Speaker 3: the writings of Ain Rand.
Speaker 1: Yes, and you.
Speaker 3: Describe her initial her initial thoughts about Iinrand as the
Speaker 3: character says, and the main character says, I had always
Speaker 3: considered her the gateway drug for bad husbands to quit
Speaker 3: their jobs and start online stock trading.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 3: What is a compelling about Iinrand for you and starting
Speaker 3: a novel like this?
Speaker 5: I mean, to me, she was, you know, basically the
Speaker 5: worst person I could write a book about, which really
Speaker 5: appealed to me. She's so contentious within the culture. But
Speaker 5: I had recently watched a documentary about her when I
Speaker 5: started thinking about this, and to be honest, I mean,
Speaker 5: her ideas are provocative and difficult, but she also just
Speaker 5: had like a crazy sex life, which I found. You know,
Speaker 5: she was essentially in an open relationship at the end
Speaker 5: of her you know, in her sixties, she was having
Speaker 5: an affair with like a man twenty five years younger
Speaker 5: than her. So, like iron Rand was basically a polyamorous,
Speaker 5: Like she had a polycule, which I think people sort
Speaker 5: of like don't know about her, and it kind of
Speaker 5: destroyed her in the end. She ended up sort of
Speaker 5: like having a nervous breakdown when he was cheating on her.
Speaker 5: It kind of undermined her whole philosophy of selfishness in
Speaker 5: a way, and I found that incredibly interesting and funny.
Speaker 2: She's just funny, funny.
Speaker 3: If there's one thing that's gonna take Iran down, who
Speaker 3: thought it was going to be polyamorous.
Speaker 2: It was polyamory.
Speaker 5: It was polyamoring that did it in the end, which
Speaker 5: I just find delicious.
Speaker 3: I think it's fun I think your book sort of
Speaker 3: looks at what it means to be selfish. It sort
Speaker 3: of examines narcissism, Like what to you is interesting about
Speaker 3: the idea of narcissis and if you can make it
Speaker 3: about me, well.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, I'm not the first person to
Speaker 5: say this, but the culture is pretty narcissistic, and so
Speaker 5: you know, wanting to write a satire about the culture,
Speaker 5: you know, you want to write something that's going to
Speaker 5: speak to all sides. And I kind of felt like,
Speaker 5: you know, narcissism is also something that speaks to the
Speaker 5: nature of the artist, which this book is about someone
Speaker 5: who's grappling with this idea of selfishness and wanting to
Speaker 5: be the best and wanting to be interesting and special
Speaker 5: and have you know, contrarian opinions. But then there's also
Speaker 5: this desire to be empathetic and to do good in
Speaker 5: the world. And it's the kind of the conflict between
Speaker 5: selfishness and altruism that is ain Rand's whole philosophy that
Speaker 5: I feel is kind of distilled in the artistic temperament,
Speaker 5: in the artist's personality. That feels like this really interesting
Speaker 5: kind of paradox to me, and narcissism plays into that
Speaker 5: really beautifully is and is also funny.
Speaker 3: It starts, it starts to unpack, start to unpack this
Speaker 3: idea of cancel culture, Like, how do you see that?
Speaker 2: Is there an upside to cancel the culture?
Speaker 5: I mean, yes, sure, there's you know things, things it
Speaker 5: moves the needle, There's there's cultural change in a way
Speaker 5: that can be good. And then there's also just you know,
Speaker 5: I had a conversation about this with a canceled person,
Speaker 5: and the conversation when in the sort of direction of
Speaker 5: you know, what being canceled kind of affords you the
Speaker 5: opportunity to do is to kind of kill your ego
Speaker 5: and not give a shit anymore about like what people think,
Speaker 5: and because the ego is all about reputation and trying
Speaker 5: to succeed, and and when that's not a possibility for
Speaker 5: you anymore, then you get to pursue enlightenment, which I
Speaker 5: think is the other thing we could all be doing
Speaker 5: with our lives if we want.
Speaker 3: You're saying, in order for me to get enlightened, I
Speaker 3: have to first get canceled.
Speaker 2: Is that what I need to do tonight? Tonight? Maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hold off. I want to. I want to
Speaker 2: hold out too, that ego just a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think enlightenment is good for you know, as you
Speaker 5: get older, and you know, we are all supposed to
Speaker 5: be sort of shedding our egos and not caring about
Speaker 5: these things that preoccupy us in our youth. So I
Speaker 5: feel like getting enlightened is something you could put off
Speaker 5: for time, you know, retirement slash enlightenment and that that seems.
Speaker 2: Like a good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, working at Walmart Mark, go go, go work at enlightenment, right,
Speaker 3: that's the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now this is a sattire. I think it's.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's it's fascinating how you're so specific
Speaker 3: in this book and you're able to satirize the left
Speaker 3: and the right as you move this character through these spaces.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm curious. I always view satire and the
Speaker 3: Daily Show. We dabble in it here and there, but
Speaker 3: more other than me, it seems like satire is a broadsword.
Speaker 3: It's rarely uh, it's it's a scalpel.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It seems as if you find complexity in it. How
Speaker 3: do you find complexity and satire?
Speaker 5: I think you just have to be really specific. You
Speaker 5: have to be really generous. Like the reader is smart.
Speaker 5: You can't try to trick them with easy kind of
Speaker 5: ideas and jokes.
Speaker 2: I you can. I mean sometimes it can be very rewarding, yes,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people will fall for it.
Speaker 5: But if you want to kind of if you want
Speaker 5: the reader to really come on side with you, and
Speaker 5: especially with your most transgressive material, then you've got to
Speaker 5: really not take them for granted, and you've really I
Speaker 5: edit the crap out of my books. I go in there,
Speaker 5: I try to see it from all different sides, and
Speaker 5: I really try to get as specific as possible, you know,
Speaker 5: so that the reader feels like I respect their intelligence
Speaker 5: and I you know, I'm thinking of the thing they
Speaker 5: might argue back with me about, and I get specific.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a scene in the book, a sex
Speaker 5: scene where the character is pretending to do the locker
Speaker 5: room scene from Jerry Maguire.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that fit?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So you know, I watched that scene a lot,
Speaker 5: and I really got very specific about how you might
Speaker 5: perform certain sexual acts while doing the Jerry Maguire locker scene.
Speaker 5: So you know, you just you do it, You just
Speaker 5: you you commit and you and you really go all
Speaker 5: the way with it.
Speaker 3: If obsessing it and thinking about sex scenes from movies
Speaker 3: could make you a great author, I think I would
Speaker 3: be a great author.
Speaker 2: I'm curious. I'm curious what you say about the editor.
Speaker 2: That's all it is, right, I'm.
Speaker 3: Curious when you talk about editing too, like are you
Speaker 3: are you having a conversation with yourself as you're writing
Speaker 3: that with like more extreme points of view than you
Speaker 3: don't know if you fully believe and you're writing that
Speaker 3: thing out, and then your editing process is a chance
Speaker 3: to essentially see if it if it holds water exactly.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 5: I'm always, in a sense trying to cancel myself as
Speaker 5: I'm writing. I'm thinking of like what would someone who
Speaker 5: thinks the opposite of this say? And then what would
Speaker 5: the counter argument be? And like how would I destroy
Speaker 5: myself if I wanted to? That's how I write. I'm
Speaker 5: just constantly thinking of these other arguments, and in a sense,
Speaker 5: it just makes your writing better and better, and in
Speaker 5: a weird, corny way, it makes you better because the
Speaker 5: more you think about what the other side might think
Speaker 5: and try to make your argument better. You know, the
Speaker 5: smarter and the more kind of compassionate you become. And
Speaker 5: I think that's why I get away with saying some
Speaker 5: of the things I say in the book, because it's
Speaker 5: done with you know, I'm not I think I'm respecting
Speaker 5: these characters and their complexity and their wholeness and understanding
Speaker 5: why they think what they think and looking for the funny,
Speaker 5: funny parts really and the absurd parts, which you know,
Speaker 5: who do.
Speaker 2: You imagine your audiences when you're writing?
Speaker 1: Oh God?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's just like this mean voice
Speaker 5: in my own.
Speaker 2: Head you're trying to quiet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's literally just me being as mean as I
Speaker 5: can to myself. I don't know's there's probably a few.
Speaker 5: I think there's a couple of critics I think about
Speaker 5: a little bit. Ones I respect and ones I don't.
Speaker 5: They're in my head, some of my friends who are
Speaker 5: writers that are kind of in my head. But yeah,
Speaker 5: and yes, definitely like these people I imagine holding really
Speaker 5: different opinions to me. I feel like there's like an
Speaker 5: avatar of that person that's sort of they're saying, but
Speaker 5: what about you know this? And why aren't you thinking
Speaker 5: about this? And I'm like, okay, okay, and then you know,
Speaker 5: you go back in. So I don't know. It's a
Speaker 5: whole there's a whole parliament of people in there telling
Speaker 5: me that I'm getting it wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say, I think you got it right.
Speaker 3: I find this book hilarious, fantastic. Congratulations. I hope at
Speaker 3: least one of those voices in your head is happy
Speaker 3: with the product. The Book of ID is available now.
Speaker 3: Lexi Freeman, We're going to take a quick Greg.
Speaker 2: Right back after this. Welcome back to the Daily Show.
Speaker 3: I guess tonight is a social psychologist who teaches ethical
Speaker 3: leadership at New York University. He's here to talk about
Speaker 3: his latest best selling book, The Anxious Generation. Please welcome
Speaker 3: Jonathan Heit. Jonathan, I see people walking all over Brooklyn
Speaker 3: holding this book. It's talking about.
Speaker 2: The Great Rewiring. Talk to me, what is the great Rewiring?
Speaker 1: So something happened to young people born after nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden in the early twenty tens, their
Speaker 1: mental health collapsed. Rates of anxiety and depressions skyrocket it
Speaker 1: self harm is up like one hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 1: for younger teen girls. Suicide is up fifty percent. Something
Speaker 1: happened in the early twenty tens. And my argument in
Speaker 1: the book is a tragedy in two acts. The first
Speaker 1: act is the loss of the play based childhood. It's
Speaker 1: what anybody over forty in this audience had. You were
Speaker 1: out with your friends after school, there was nobody supervising.
Speaker 1: You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how
Speaker 1: to face adversity. So that's what kids have had for
Speaker 1: tens hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being
Speaker 1: a mammal.
Speaker 2: You play, you.
Speaker 1: Develop skills. We began to crack down on that to
Speaker 1: lock kids up in the nineties, to not let them out.
Speaker 1: So we're restricting what they most need, which is play,
Speaker 1: from the nineties through the two thousands. But mental health
Speaker 1: doesn't collapse, then it's actually pretty stable. Then we get
Speaker 1: act too, which is the arrival of the phone based childhood.
Speaker 1: And what that is is in twenty ten, everybody had
Speaker 1: a flip phone. The iPhone had come out, but most
Speaker 1: teens had a flip phone, no front facing camera, no
Speaker 1: social media on the phone, no high speed data. And
Speaker 1: by twenty twenty fifteen everyone's got all those other things.
Speaker 1: Now suddenly everyone has a smartphone, front facing camera, high
Speaker 1: speed internet, social media, especially Instagram on the phone, and
Speaker 1: almost like someone turned a switch in twenty thirteen, girls
Speaker 1: in America and many of the countries suddenly become very anxious, depressed,
Speaker 1: and self harming. And so that's what the book is about.
Speaker 1: Something changed between twenty ten and twenty fifteen, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to explain what it is.
Speaker 3: You say, in an act to they introduced Chekov cell phone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and we know what ends up happening after that. You
Speaker 3: look at sort of the adolescent brain. How dumb and
Speaker 3: stupid is a thirteen year old brain?
Speaker 1: I would say, not dumb and stupid at all. I
Speaker 1: would say it's in the process of remodeling. And it's right,
Speaker 1: it's still in the early phases. So we have you know,
Speaker 1: children have a brain which is actually almost full size.
Speaker 1: By age six, the brain is almost full.
Speaker 2: Oh, fact check that. I don't think that's I don't
Speaker 2: think that's right. Okay, can you must be right?
Speaker 1: Yes, the rest of childhood is not about growth. It's
Speaker 1: about picking which neurons surviving, which ones get eliminated. It's
Speaker 1: all about wiring up, and that happens slowly in childhood,
Speaker 1: but then around age eleven twelve, for girls. Puberty starts
Speaker 1: a couple years later for boys, and you get this massive,
Speaker 1: quick rewiring of the brain to sort of locked down
Speaker 1: into an adult configuration. It starts more in the back
Speaker 1: of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is the last part
Speaker 1: to develop, and so around the age of thirteen, kids
Speaker 1: emotional areas are rewiring. They have the beginnings of sexual
Speaker 1: urges and lust. They're very emotional passionate, but they don't
Speaker 1: have the self control to say, like, no, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to spend a fifth hour on TikTok. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to keep going because I can't stop myself.
Speaker 2: And when does that stop?
Speaker 3: Because I'm looking for that and like eight, like when
Speaker 3: does that part of my brain close off and I
Speaker 3: can put the phone down?
Speaker 1: Well, in your case, I really can't say. But for
Speaker 1: most people buying.
Speaker 2: A sequel again Smart Smart.
Speaker 1: Twenty five is when when the front of cortex is
Speaker 1: done rewired.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you when that happened.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting how you're talking a lot about not
Speaker 3: only these phones come in and they change the way
Speaker 3: kids think in the way society thinks, but you talk
Speaker 3: about raising a child an anti fragile child, and you
Speaker 3: make some bold claims in this book, one of which
Speaker 3: is right here. You claim that this Merry go round
Speaker 3: playground spinner is the greatest piece of playground equipment ever invented.
Speaker 2: Defend yourself? How is it? How person all?
Speaker 1: Okay? What is better?
Speaker 2: I mean it? Teeter totter. It's just a metaphor.
Speaker 3: You're down, you know, It's just it's what life is
Speaker 3: all about, you know, work with somebody else.
Speaker 2: One's up, ones down. There's no way to stay in
Speaker 2: the middle.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 2: The key.
Speaker 1: Okay, While I have no citations to prove my claim,
Speaker 1: the psychological thing I'm trying to get at there is thrills.
Speaker 1: This is something I talk a lot about in chapter
Speaker 1: three that kids need to play, but they especially need
Speaker 1: risky play. Kids literally need to face risk. If you
Speaker 1: don't give them risk, they'll find a way to get it.
Speaker 1: They'll climb up on walls, they'll climb trees, if they skateboard,
Speaker 1: they'll skateboard downstairs. Kids need to sort of need to
Speaker 1: have some actual risk. And so, yes, you're right, A
Speaker 1: swing a teiner drip. It's really big and you could
Speaker 1: come crashing down. There is risk and to hurt these
Speaker 1: kids well, because you have to put kids in a
Speaker 1: situation where they can get hurt, because only then do
Speaker 1: they learn every day how to not get hurt. And
Speaker 1: what we've done since the nineties is we've put them
Speaker 1: in places they are so safe there's no chance to
Speaker 1: get hurt, which means they don't learn how to not
Speaker 1: get hurt. The human program of evolution is kids face
Speaker 1: risk that they're a little scared, they have to be
Speaker 1: a little scared, they overcome it, and then they're more
Speaker 1: confident the next time around, and that's the path to adulthood.
Speaker 1: But we stopped that in the nineties. We said no
Speaker 1: more of that. We're going to keep you overprotected forever,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to send you to universities like
Speaker 1: mine where you're coming in still not ready for independent living.
Speaker 3: Now you take that, and then you also then fast
Speaker 3: forward to this modern era where kids are obsessed with phones,
Speaker 3: they're on the internet, they're on social media sites. Is
Speaker 3: there an argument, though, that the anti fragile way in
Speaker 3: which kids need to it's not to pull this thing
Speaker 3: away that they need to be exposed to the risk
Speaker 3: that the internet has. I mean, this is the world
Speaker 3: that they're going to be born into anyway. Shouldn't they
Speaker 3: be learning and how to navigate that at an early age?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in theory, yes, but let's look at say sexuality.
Speaker 1: We want them to learn how to have sex. Does
Speaker 1: that mean we should give them running start at age eight?
Speaker 1: There are certain things that are not appropriate at that time.
Speaker 2: I didn't. Just to be clear, I did not say
Speaker 2: that this was not.
Speaker 1: This is that that's not Thenically yeah, that was yeah, yes, yes, boy, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've heard this before in theory, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: are you why are you? You know you're you're saying
Speaker 1: we're where we need to protect them less in the
Speaker 1: real world, but you're saying we need to protect them
Speaker 1: more in the virtual world. Isn't that contradictory? Not at all,
Speaker 1: Not at all. Kids where mammals. Kids need to be
Speaker 1: out playing, rough housing, putting their arms around each other, touching,
Speaker 1: out in nature. This is the way a lot of
Speaker 1: us grew up. You play outside, and when you put
Speaker 1: kids in an environment where everything goes through the phone,
Speaker 1: as soon as you give your child the phone that
Speaker 1: they're going to use that. Now, the latest stats are
Speaker 1: around nine hours a day they're on their phone, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them, it's almost all the time because
Speaker 1: they're always checking. That blocks out time and nature time
Speaker 1: with friends. Time with friends is down sixty five percent
Speaker 1: since twenty ten. Kids need time with friends. Texting and
Speaker 1: sending emojis doesn't compensate. It's done instead of time with friends,
Speaker 1: and that I think is why as soon as they
Speaker 1: moved on to social media and the boys onto multiplayer
Speaker 1: video games, they got so lonely. Loneliness surged along with
Speaker 1: depression and anxiety.
Speaker 3: It's interesting you talk a little bit about in childhood
Speaker 3: discover mode versus like defensive mode, and even in a
Speaker 3: world of the arts, I did improv comedy forever, and
Speaker 3: I think the mindset of that is a discovery mindset, right,
Speaker 3: and so you're constantly looking for something. It was interesting
Speaker 3: in reading this in terms of how to raise a
Speaker 3: child and to put them in that open mindset.
Speaker 2: But it seems.
Speaker 3: Remarkably reflective of just how society feels right now. And
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's because partially because of our
Speaker 3: connection to social media and the anxiety that is there,
Speaker 3: but do you see parallels there as well that we
Speaker 3: are inadvertently too in defensive mode because of these devices
Speaker 3: that we have in our pockets in our hands.
Speaker 1: Well, right now it does seem like everything is going
Speaker 1: to hell, because it actually is.
Speaker 2: Oh that's o kind. Yeah, it's not just my phone
Speaker 2: telling me that.
Speaker 1: That fut I'm great. But it wasn't that well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that way in twenty twelve. So the fact that
Speaker 1: this happened in so many countries at the same time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say, oh, well, you know
Speaker 1: the global financial crisis, that must be what it was
Speaker 1: like there were real economic difficulties. Yeah, that was two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. Why do the numbers not begin going
Speaker 1: up until twelve twenty thirteen, when the economy is getting
Speaker 1: better and better. So you can't make the claim that
Speaker 1: things were so terrible in Obama's second term compared to
Speaker 1: his first, that all of a sudden, teens, especially teen girls,
Speaker 1: suddenly fell off a cliff. That just doesn't work. So,
Speaker 1: you know, if this had all started in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: we could say, well, yeah, you know, COVID and all
Speaker 1: the craziness that's going on, But this started in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: There's no other explanation that anyone's proposed for why it
Speaker 1: happened so many countries and hit girls the hardest.
Speaker 2: It was interesting.
Speaker 3: You have a chapter in here that looks at also
Speaker 3: faith and I'm an atheist. I know you mentioned that
Speaker 3: you are an atheist as well, but you speak to
Speaker 3: or of this this God shaped hole. I think it's
Speaker 3: a Blaze Pascal quote. God shape hold everybody's every human
Speaker 3: heart right, and that this lack of religion is something
Speaker 3: that is affecting childhood in a way that I get
Speaker 3: as an atheist. I always had my dukes up when
Speaker 3: that comes about. You said you were one, so you
Speaker 3: you earned yourself a pass. Okay, But this lack of
Speaker 3: sort of religious institutions in this modern media landscape, how
Speaker 3: do you see that as something that's affecting like a childhood.
Speaker 1: So the way to think about this as as an
Speaker 1: atheist without getting defensive.
Speaker 2: Is good luck.
Speaker 1: No, I've been I've been working on this professional for
Speaker 1: many years. I finally got it down. Let's se it, okay,
Speaker 1: just just looking at it descriptively. Psychologically, religious people are
Speaker 1: a little happier than non religious people. That's been true
Speaker 1: for a long time, just as married people are happier
Speaker 1: than non married people.
Speaker 2: On average.
Speaker 1: Your milage may.
Speaker 2: Vary, but.
Speaker 1: People need to be tied in, locked in in a community.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Emil dirkhim the Sociologist is
Speaker 1: my favorite thinker of all time. When we're not tied
Speaker 1: and locked in, we're free. But that doesn't make us happy.
Speaker 1: We don't have we have nothing to push against, we
Speaker 1: have no sense of meaning. It's like if you try
Speaker 1: to raise a plant not in the ground, but just
Speaker 1: like up in the air, and it just can't be done.
Speaker 1: And so religious kids are rooted in traditions, faith, rituals, community,
Speaker 1: They go to church every Sunday. The Jewish kids have Shabbat.
Speaker 1: They literally can't use electronics for a day. So they
Speaker 1: were always happier than the secular kids. But what happens
Speaker 1: after twenty twelve, It's quite remarkable. In all the graphs,
Speaker 1: the religious kids get a little more anxious and depressed.
Speaker 1: The secular kids get much more anxious and depressed. So
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is, especially if you're an atheist, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to work much harder. You're gonna be much
Speaker 1: more intentional about rooting your kid in stable social relationships.
Speaker 1: If you give him an iPad and then he graduates
Speaker 1: to a phone, and it's all this network, that network
Speaker 1: interacting with strangers and weirdos and bots and ais. That's
Speaker 1: not a community that's crazy making.
Speaker 2: It might just be easier to get him to believe
Speaker 2: in angels.
Speaker 1: Well, then take away the iPad.
Speaker 2: I've had it there. I do want to You've written
Speaker 2: a lot of very interesting books.
Speaker 3: The book you wrote before this, The Coddling of the
Speaker 3: American Mind, you co wrote, sort of looked at safetyism.
Speaker 3: It looked at the college, the college landscape. And now
Speaker 3: what we see on college campuses, these protests are breaking out.
Speaker 3: I wonder, as somebody who looked closely at that and
Speaker 3: the ways in which students kind of moved through it,
Speaker 3: what you see now in these campuses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, I don't want to comment on
Speaker 1: the substance of the protest. This is a complicated issue.
Speaker 1: I respect people on all sides. We all agree on campus,
Speaker 1: we all agree students have a right to protest constitutionally
Speaker 1: protected it. But two things I see going on is
Speaker 1: one is the protest and this is boo. Greg lukian Off,
Speaker 1: my co author, first notice in twenty fourteen that the
Speaker 1: shouting down of speakers, the activism on campus that was
Speaker 1: really illiberal, and it was intimidating, and it was stopping
Speaker 1: people from speaking. It was based on arguments about fragility,
Speaker 1: about my mental health or her mental health, like we
Speaker 1: can't let this person on campus because it'll be dangerous,
Speaker 1: it'll be harmful. Speech is violence. So that's a new
Speaker 1: idea that comes in with gen Z because they haven't
Speaker 1: been given an anti fragile childhood. They've been given way
Speaker 1: too much therapy. They think everything is trauma. So we
Speaker 1: see that by beginning in twenty fourteen twenty It wasn't
Speaker 1: there in twenty twelve. It was a very new in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and so the protesters. Now I
Speaker 1: don't know the details, but like, you know, just one
Speaker 1: thing I read this morning. Someone sent me a quote
Speaker 1: from a student at Harvard where she was in the encampments,
Speaker 1: and she said, if Harvard cares so goddamn much about
Speaker 1: my mental health, why don't they just divest and you know,
Speaker 1: do all the things that we're demanding, Like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you should do you know, Harvard, you do these because
Speaker 1: our mental health is at stake. That's something new, and
Speaker 1: it's just not going to get them very far. In
Speaker 1: political life going forward once they leave campus, Like, it's.
Speaker 2: Here, I read this book.
Speaker 3: I want to do this right. How do I helicopter
Speaker 3: parent my child correctly? Like, what are some tactical things
Speaker 3: I can take away from this?
Speaker 1: Well, you just push them out of the helicopter.
Speaker 2: Sorry, learn how to fly right. That's not anti fradul
Speaker 2: for birds.
Speaker 1: It works, I guess, not for us. So the key thing, okay,
Speaker 1: So the key thing to the solution. So even though
Speaker 1: you know a lot of my books, a lot of
Speaker 1: my writing is very dark about things are actually going
Speaker 1: to hell in a lot of ways. But this one,
Speaker 1: we can solve it in a year or two. Because
Speaker 1: the reason it got so bad so quickly is that
Speaker 1: we're trapped in a it's called a It's a social trap.
Speaker 1: It's a collective action trap. The reason why we all
Speaker 1: feel we have to give our kid a smartphone by
Speaker 1: the time they're ten is because everyone else did. And
Speaker 1: your kid says, you know, dad, I'm the only one.
Speaker 1: I'm being left out. So we're all we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're all doing that. And the reason my students are
Speaker 1: spending so much time on TikTok, they say, is because
Speaker 1: everyone else is and I have to keep up. I
Speaker 1: have to know what's happening. So we're all trapped in this.
Speaker 1: What that means is that if we decide to escape,
Speaker 1: we can escape together. So I proposed them in the book.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of suggestions, but four norms that will
Speaker 1: break these collective action traps. First, no smartphone before high school.
Speaker 1: Just clear this out of the lives of elementary and
Speaker 1: middle school kids. Send them out. Give them a flip phone,
Speaker 1: a dumb phone, a phone watch so you can text them,
Speaker 1: but don't give them the entire internet, including strangers all
Speaker 1: over the world who are trying to get at them sexually.
Speaker 1: Like this is just craziness. So no smartphone till high school.
Speaker 1: The second is no social media till sixteen. You know,
Speaker 1: the things that are sent around on social media, the
Speaker 1: things they're exposed to, Like I just recently learned about
Speaker 1: the video A Cat and a Blender, which was popular
Speaker 1: while ago. I know it is exactly it is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, so you know, and this is
Speaker 1: just this is just part of childhood. Is hardcore porn,
Speaker 1: animal cruelty, beheading videos. So you know, let's just at
Speaker 1: least wait till they're sixteen before they see that stuff.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, that's the appropriate age to watch
Speaker 3: a canital lenders.
Speaker 2: At sixteen, it's like, ah, you get to drive a
Speaker 2: car and then what you shit? Worst thing out? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah. What I'm after here is not the optimum age.
Speaker 1: It's what's in a minimum age that we could actually
Speaker 1: all do together, because that's the key. If most of
Speaker 1: us do this, we solve the problem. The third norm
Speaker 1: is phone free schools. This is the most powerful one
Speaker 1: that we can do instantly. So if you're watching this
Speaker 1: and you have kids that go to a school that
Speaker 1: lets the kids keep the phone in the pocket, send well,
Speaker 1: buy a copy of my book for the principal note
Speaker 1: to you. I have you know, I have videos. Send
Speaker 1: them a video of my talks on phone free schools.
Speaker 1: Every school needs to go phone free by September. The
Speaker 1: phones are They don't just make the kids anxious and lonely,
Speaker 1: they make them less intelligent. Test scores have been dropping
Speaker 1: around the world since twenty twelve. Once the kids bring
Speaker 1: a phone in school, they're doing this they're not listening
Speaker 1: to the teacher. So get rid of phones in schools.
Speaker 1: And then the fourth norm is far more independence, free play,
Speaker 1: and responsibility in the real world. We have to. So
Speaker 1: it's this is not just about let's take away, take away,
Speaker 1: it's let's give them a real childhood, the kind of
Speaker 1: childhood that us older people, the kind that we look
Speaker 1: back on. So so if we love our children, the
Speaker 1: best thing we can give them is a real human childhood.
Speaker 1: And if we do it together, we can get this
Speaker 1: done in the next year or two.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: Just give your kids some space, a beer and a
Speaker 3: bag of glass.
Speaker 2: And this should be.
Speaker 3: It's a fascinating reading and an important one. The Anxious
Speaker 3: Generation is available now.
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Speaker 2: your podcasts.
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