Jessica Lahey

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert experts on expert.

[1] I'm joined by my favorite expert, Monica monsoon.

[2] Monica monsoon, we decided something gross about Monica monsoon.

[3] Oh, you know, what was it?

[4] That she specializes on diarrhea.

[5] Oh, intestinal monsoons.

[6] Oh, boy.

[7] We have a great expert on today.

[8] Jessica Leahy, she is a teacher, a writer, and a mom.

[9] She writes about education, parenting, and child well -futable.

[10] for the Atlantic Vermont Public Radio in the New York Times, and she most importantly is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Gift of Failure, How the Best Parents Learned to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.

[11] This is one of our favorite themes.

[12] Wendy Mogul has a very similar position.

[13] When I was editing back, I was really noting how many nuggets of wisdom she has.

[14] And they're profound.

[15] Poignant.

[16] Poignant.

[17] Also, we've never had a guest on that real -time cited as well as she does.

[18] Every single thing she knows, she remembers where she learned it and what volume.

[19] And it was amazing.

[20] So without further ado, please enjoy Jessica Leahy.

[21] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[22] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[23] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[24] He's an armchair expert.

[25] Where are you from, Jessica?

[26] I am from Massachusetts, but I now live in Vermont, right near Burlington, kind of.

[27] A lot of stereotypes come to mind.

[28] Obviously, home of Ben and Jerry's, yeah?

[29] Yeah, home of Ben and Jerry's.

[30] You can actually go to the factory, well, not now, obviously, but you can go to the factory in Waterbury.

[31] It's really quite lovely.

[32] In Killington, as a kid, I went on a couple trips to Killington to go skiing.

[33] Killington's pretty great.

[34] I, myself, am a fan of Loon.

[35] because that's where I used to teach skiing a long time ago.

[36] We actually, I'm looking at my window right now at about five inches of snow.

[37] You taught skiing.

[38] I got to teach disabled skiing at Loon Mountain.

[39] They have an adaptive ski program there.

[40] So I got to teach, you know, like kids with Down syndrome and the fun thing about them is they don't have any fear, really.

[41] So when you're on the ski slope with them, you have to ski in front of them but backwards so that they don't like shoot off in the woods and stuff.

[42] I used to work with blind skiers and stuff like that.

[43] it was really fun.

[44] Oh my goodness.

[45] Yeah, it was great.

[46] I have anxiety about passing on knowledge to my daughter who appears to be able in most ways.

[47] I can't imagine compounding it with other challenges.

[48] You're a unique person.

[49] I just like teaching.

[50] That's sort of where I've ended up with what I'm doing now.

[51] Is I just really like teaching?

[52] Actually, I thought I really like skiing, but it turns out I just really like teaching skiing.

[53] And that's sort of been the thread through the whole thing.

[54] Yeah, so you didn't even aim to be a teacher.

[55] Is that, That accurate?

[56] You were in law school at Duke?

[57] Yeah.

[58] No, I was at UNC.

[59] Do you?

[60] Oh, no. Max, that was bad.

[61] Well, but our first place she taught was Duke.

[62] So that's confusing.

[63] So cut me some slack.

[64] No, that's true.

[65] No, it's true.

[66] I was positive.

[67] I was going to do juvenile law.

[68] Like, I had it all figured out.

[69] And someone asked me to teach at this program at Duke called the Talent Identification Program.

[70] And so I taught gifted, like, middle school, high school kids about law in a democratic society.

[71] And I just, fell in love.

[72] The joke I make a lot is that, you know, I came home that first day after teaching and my husband took one look at me and he said, are you even going to finish law school?

[73] Because it was so obvious that I was completely sunk and I was going to be a teacher.

[74] So I did, but I went straight into teaching and never looked back.

[75] It's been great.

[76] Oh, a little over 20 years now.

[77] And when you had your fantasy of practicing juvenile law, what was it specifically you imagined you'd be doing?

[78] I had worked in the Duke University.

[79] It was a program for kids who had possibly been.

[80] sexually and physically abused.

[81] It's called the Duke Child Protection Team.

[82] And through my work there, I met this district attorney, Marsha Mori.

[83] She's amazing.

[84] She's a judge now.

[85] And she became my mentor.

[86] And she was the assistant district attorney just in charge of juvenile court.

[87] And I got to shadow her and hang out with her sort of at first just to find out what happened with the cases that we were working on for the child abuse.

[88] And through that, just sort of got to hang out in juvenile court a lot.

[89] So the way Durham County's district juvenile court work for kids is that there wasn't really a foreign against.

[90] It was sort of in the best in service to the kids and in service to the community.

[91] And so that's what I envisioned is that I was going to get to be a part of holding kids to the repercussions of what they'd done, but at the same time also be in the best interest of the kids and the best interest of society.

[92] And I got to run a program there called Teen Court, where it was really fun.

[93] We would divert kids out of juvenile court.

[94] And then we would put them in front of a jury of other kids.

[95] Sometimes I got to pretend to be the judge and stuff.

[96] And the kids would decide what the punishment was.

[97] And they were so creative.

[98] It was things like, you know, if you vandalized a used car parking lot, you were going to have to work for that guy that owned that lot.

[99] And you were going to have to work back the money that you caused him to have to spend to fix things.

[100] And, of course, it led to all kinds of great things because they ended up building a relationship and blah, blah, blah.

[101] But the kids came up with the best, the best ramifications.

[102] for the kids' actions.

[103] It was fantastic.

[104] Yeah.

[105] Well, what's interesting about those solutions is they are actually amending the damage cause as opposed to our system, which is a little abstract.

[106] It's a little like you did this.

[107] Yeah.

[108] The restitution.

[109] Yeah.

[110] Well, and that's something that's increasing more in schools these days, too, is instead of saying, okay, well, we're going to take you out of class and put you in this rubber room over here so that you can't disrupt my learning.

[111] We're doing a little bit of sort of more, you know, trauma -informed teaching, like why our are you freaking out in my class?

[112] And is it because something's happening with you at home?

[113] But at the same time, helping them understand that when they act out in class or they do something to hurt someone else, that there's going to be not just punishment, but consequences that make sense.

[114] So I'm seeing more and more of that in education.

[115] It's been great to see, too.

[116] Yeah, even in the preschool, my girls, if they hurt somebody, the first response is supposed to be, what do you need?

[117] And then they have to go get the ice or the band -aids or whatever it is.

[118] like they have to be active in solving this problem they created.

[119] That's great.

[120] Yeah.

[121] So was it hard for you to go, I'm not going to practice law or was it easy?

[122] Oh, that was easy.

[123] It was.

[124] I mean, the problem was, I was pregnant at the time with my kid who's now 21.

[125] And I was having nightmares about my, you know, amorphous imagined kid being in these horrible situations.

[126] Like in juvenile court, we would have a situation where, you know, we couldn't send this kid back home because his house was under surveillance as a crack house.

[127] And so then we'd have to haul the parents in and the parents would, you know, it was just I was envisioning my kid in all those situations.

[128] And I had a pretty good sense that I was going to burn out pretty quickly.

[129] Also, you know, kids would show up in court and the judge would look around and say, anyone here to represent this kid.

[130] And at the last second, someone would raise their hand, they're like, oh, I guess I'll do it.

[131] You know, it just didn't work at that time.

[132] I knew I was going to be coming up against, you know, that's.

[133] sort of constant beating my head against a wall feeling, whereas with teaching, I felt a little more in control of the situation.

[134] Yeah.

[135] You know, it was my classroom and I could focus on the learning instead of on some of the other crap that we have to deal with.

[136] Did you finish law school?

[137] I did.

[138] Okay.

[139] I absolutely did.

[140] Yeah.

[141] But you could have explored teaching at the university level, I assume, if you had a desire to teach.

[142] Do you go to junior high first?

[143] No, I taught high school first.

[144] and I said I would never, ever teach those middle school kids.

[145] Those kids are bonkers.

[146] It would never happen.

[147] Why would anyone want to teach middle school?

[148] And then I got an offer and they said, well, before you say no, because I think they sort of knew I might, come meet the kids.

[149] And see, that's the problem.

[150] You go and you meet them and they're wonderful.

[151] And then I found out that middle school kids are my jam.

[152] I mean, they are, as far as I'm concerned, middle school is where it's at.

[153] It's where we have this incredible potential to reach kids that haven't completely shut themselves off from adults yet.

[154] They still trust us a little.

[155] Also, you know, this magical time when you can go to a kid and you can say, sweetie, it's not your fault that you're forgetting stuff.

[156] You don't have the equipment yet in your head to be able to do all of these things.

[157] So let me help you come up with strategies.

[158] And it's a pretty cool time.

[159] It's a really cool time for kids.

[160] Yeah, did you feel like high school was like you're having access to them just way too far downstream, like the ship is pretty much sailed?

[161] Well, from the perspective of what I do, which is helping parents understand that they need to let their kids make mistakes and learn from them, as opposed to, oh, my kid can never make a mistake because the stakes are just too high.

[162] I think in high school right now, it feels like this place where kids are simply not allowed to ever make a mistake ever.

[163] And at least in middle school, there's that little cushion where you feel like, okay, well, you're not to high school yet.

[164] so at least there's a little bit of room for kids to learn from their mistakes as opposed to pretend they never happened or clearing the way for them.

[165] So yeah, there's that.

[166] And I don't know, middle school kids still hug too.

[167] That's pretty great.

[168] Yeah, when I talk to people, they generally, if I had to say of what section of their education they hated the most, it tends to be middle school.

[169] But for me, it is by far my favorite period.

[170] Seventh grade for me, it will never get better in my whole life if I could repeat one year of my life over and over again, it'd be seventh grade.

[171] And so for me...

[172] Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[173] Why?

[174] Why?

[175] So I was dyslexic, or I am dyslexic.

[176] And so first through fourth grade or just a disaster.

[177] I couldn't read.

[178] I thought I was stupid.

[179] I had to go to the special ed class for an hour a day.

[180] And then I had a single teacher, Mr. Wood, who pulled me aside and he said, you're great at math.

[181] You're really, really good at math.

[182] And I want you to start teaching geometry to the other kids in class, which blew my mind.

[183] I didn't think I would ever have the capacity to help other kids learn because I was struggling so much.

[184] And then that launched me into junior high where in sixth grade I was on the math team.

[185] And then in seventh grade, I had this great teacher, Larry Leclair, who discovered I was good at writing.

[186] And then I was really interested in writing.

[187] And I got something published in the little junior high yearly literature magazine.

[188] And so for me, it was like, oh, I'm not dumb.

[189] I can do that.

[190] this stuff and then mixed with the increasing independence of being in junior high where I was sleeping over at friends house every weekend I had a moped and I was mobile like I was starting to get this huge sense of autonomy that I just loved and I'd never got better well you you are lucky yeah I had a great experience too and that's because it was the first time I made friendships that felt like intimate friendships and like real community was built elementary school you're just like learning how to be around people, I think.

[191] But in middle school, you start to, like, really develop those communal friendships that are lasting.

[192] For me, anyway, I also had a great experience.

[193] Same.

[194] I got my best friend in junior high.

[195] Yeah.

[196] That's actually really common.

[197] The nature of friendship changes from elementary school to middle school, mainly because in elementary school, you know, it's a proximity thing like, oh, mom and dad are friends with so -and -so and their kids are in the same, you know, that kind of thing.

[198] Whereas starting in middle school, it starts to be about trying out different identities and, you know, okay, well, she has, ooh, she has two ear piercings in one ear.

[199] And I don't know if I could ever do that, but she's kind of cool.

[200] And you try on elements of that person's identity and see what fits and what doesn't.

[201] And that's why middle school friendships often come and go, which can feel really traumatic.

[202] But what it is is its kids reaching out and saying, ooh, that's interesting.

[203] Do I want to be like that or do I not?

[204] It's a really great thing, actually, when they go through lots of different changes in friendships.

[205] Yeah.

[206] So your work is in line with some other folks we've talked to like Wendy Mogul, but yours is on specifically the education side.

[207] And you kind of break your work into some key components, one of them being motivation, right?

[208] This is very crucial for whether kids are going to learn or not learn or be creative.

[209] And also confidence versus competence.

[210] And could you just tell us what what is like if you had to simmer it down to a single ingredient that you think makes a student want to learn or become interested in something what is that single ingredient or is it a few well so what you're talking about is this intrinsic motivation like when you're on a motorbike especially if you're on terrain that's slightly difficult and you find you are so absorbed in the riding because you have to be because you have to be so focused it's just the right level of difficulty.

[211] You know how that you get that feeling where like three hours could go by and you hardly notice the passage of time because you're so in sync with the thing.

[212] That's called flow.

[213] Mehi Chicks at Mihai's flow.

[214] So that intrinsic motivation happens when we have three things going on with kids.

[215] Number one, they have some autonomy, which means, and you are mentioning this about middle school, right?

[216] The one of the reasons middle school can be so great is that sometimes, which is why I said you are so lucky, sometimes kids get to start.

[217] exercising that autonomy and feeling like, oh, I get to make actual decisions about my life.

[218] And the problem, of course, on the flip side is that lots of kids are not being given any autonomy.

[219] And so that's going wrong for them.

[220] But autonomy and then competence, which as you mentioned is not the same thing as confidence.

[221] Competence is like confidence based on actual experience, like trying stuff out, seeing if it works, keeping the things that worked and getting rid of the stuff that doesn't and learning how to do better next time, and then feeling like, oh, wait, I handled that thing.

[222] I can handle this new even harder thing.

[223] And number three is connection.

[224] And that's for teachers.

[225] It's like, do you have good relationships with your students?

[226] Are you making, you know, the material feel relevant to them?

[227] But as parents, I usually boil it down to two things, which is we have to love the kids we have, not the kids we wish we had.

[228] And we can't just love them based on their performance.

[229] So when we have those three things, the autonomy, the competence, and that connection on like who the kids actually are and really seeing them, that's how you get that intrinsic motivation going.

[230] And that's how you get kids who are like, oh, I actually am engaged with my learning.

[231] I have some choice and I like to learn and I'm having some control.

[232] Or if we give them too much extrinsic motivations, which is like carrots and sticks, grades, paying them for grades, doing too much surveillance over our kids, trying to control our kids too much.

[233] Those are all extrinsic motivations.

[234] And when we do that, essentially what we do is, undermine their motivation.

[235] Like the fastest way to make a kid not want to learn math is to pay them for their math grades or give them math anxiety.

[236] But the fastest way, like the surefire way to make them not want to learn math over the long term is unfortunately grading or paying them for their grades or making it be all about that other thing as opposed to the math itself.

[237] I watched your South by Southwest talk.

[238] Yeah.

[239] So South by Southwest EDU runs the week, well, except for this year, sadly.

[240] South by Southwest EDU runs the week before South by Southwest proper.

[241] So it's like 10 ,000 teachers suddenly descend on Austin.

[242] It's pretty cool.

[243] Yeah.

[244] And so when I was listening to that talk, I was just kind of charting my experience with education.

[245] And for me, it all mapped almost perfectly.

[246] So elementary was terrible.

[247] And then junior high was amazing.

[248] And then the thrill of being good at it kind of wore off by high school.

[249] And then in high school, it felt all extrinsic and results oriented.

[250] And at a certain point, I had read on the road by Kerouac and I was like, well, I'm not going to college.

[251] So all the extrinsic carrots have no bearing on my motivation because I don't desire to go there.

[252] Well, then lo and behold, I end up going to college.

[253] But I go there without any desire to get a certain degree because I'm pursuing comedy and acting.

[254] And I'm just going to college so my mom will pay my rent.

[255] And in that environment where I literally was just picking classes I was interested in, I had no goal of having any certain GPA or achieving any certain degree.

[256] If you chart my grades, I was a good junior high student, an average high school student, and then a great college student.

[257] And I think it was so much about me doing it for the right motivation.

[258] I see that a lot.

[259] And when you give kids at a younger age a little more choice, a little more autonomy, you can make that happen sooner, too.

[260] When you let kids have a little more choice about not just what they're learning, you know, there's only so much you can do to give kids choice about what they're learning in high school and middle school.

[261] But the more autonomy, the more choice you give them about the how, the when, the why, all that sort of stuff, the more buy -in you can get kids.

[262] But there are lots of kids that just are not going to bloom until they get to high school.

[263] I happen to have one of them.

[264] I think when he gets to college and he truly gets to choose what it is he wants to learn that, by the way, doesn't happen to be in these boxes of what they want him to learn in high school, you know, the English, the math, the science, that all these things sort of siloed.

[265] I think he's more interested in integrating all that stuff.

[266] And so when he gets to choose in college, that's when I think that kid's going to really shine.

[267] Yeah.

[268] And I want you to describe first the raising of the hands.

[269] And then I want you to tell us about the parents because, man, could I relate?

[270] Particularly now where I'm doing my kid's schoolwork with them, it is almost an irresistible pull to solve something for them when they're struggling.

[271] And this is with the awareness of Wendy Mogul and people like you and my wife's very dialed into you.

[272] Even with all that knowledge, it is physically painful to not help.

[273] Well, it's physically painful to see our kids frustrated, right?

[274] So at the very beginning of my book, of the gift of failure, I talk about the fact that I was super pissed off at the parents of my students, really just livid.

[275] And full disclosure, like super high horse.

[276] I was all like, ooh, I am the teacher and you people are getting in the way of the learning and how dare you.

[277] But at the moment I was most pissed off, I found out that my own kid couldn't tie his own shoes.

[278] He was nine.

[279] And he could not tie his own shoes.

[280] And that was simply because it was so upsetting to see him frustrated and saying things like, I feel so strong.

[281] stupid.

[282] I'm never going to do it.

[283] And so I would do it for him because who wants to see their kid frustrated?

[284] And it's faster, frankly, if we do it ourselves, right?

[285] Yeah, that's one of the big motivators.

[286] Even like making them clean up.

[287] It's not that I don't have the willingness to be a jerk and make them clean up.

[288] It's just I don't have an hour to dedicate to getting them to clean up.

[289] You know, I just need the house clean in 15 minutes.

[290] Well, I have some advice for you in a minute on that.

[291] Okay.

[292] The thing you were asking about the questions I ask kids.

[293] So I'm so lucky.

[294] My job is so much fun.

[295] I get to go travel around and speak at a lot of schools where I talk to the kids during the day.

[296] And then I talk to the teachers and do professional development in the afternoon.

[297] And then I talk to the parents in the evening.

[298] So when I talk to the kids, I get to do a couple of really cool things.

[299] First of all, I give them all my email, my personal email, and I say, look, I got three hours before I talk to your parents.

[300] So email me what you want me to tell them.

[301] And the emails I get are bonkers and amazing.

[302] I love them.

[303] But the thing you're talking about is one of the things I do when I'm talking to a bunch of students is I have them all close their eyes.

[304] Well, I have all the adults in the room first close their eyes.

[305] And I ask the kids to raise their hand, number one, if they're getting paid for grades.

[306] And that tends to be somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

[307] Although, you know, there are a couple of schools here and there where it's like 70 percent.

[308] Like in the affluent communities?

[309] Yeah, there are a couple of schools in your neighborhood as a matter of fact.

[310] How dare you?

[311] And, and, uh, Yeah, in really affluent communities, it sometimes is up to 70%.

[312] And then number two, who gets stuff for their grades, like a new phone or a new computer or whatever.

[313] You know, you get a car if you stay on, you know, the honor roll the whole time you're in high school.

[314] And that's somewhere between 20 and 25 % is the average there.

[315] And then I ask the kids to close their eyes too because I don't want anyone to be embarrassed by having to answer this question in the affirmative.

[316] And I ask them, think really, really hard about this before you raise your hand.

[317] but if you need raise your hand, feel free.

[318] Raise your hand if you really truly believe that your parents love you more when you get high grades and less when you get low grades.

[319] And the average, I've done this with tens of thousands of students, the average in middle school is around 80%.

[320] And the average in high school is somewhere between 85 and 90%.

[321] Which is not surprising because there's research out of Harvard's making caring common project that would back up similar results.

[322] And the other thing that's really interesting is when I asked them that question, you know, here's my email address, you know, email me what you want me to tell your parents.

[323] The thing they want me to tell their parents by far the most in various iterations is, please tell my parents, I am not my sister, I am not my brother, I am not you when you were my age, I am not this hypothetical perfect kid you think you're raising, I am me and I don't feel seen or known or heard or loved for myself.

[324] So it's not really surprising when I get those kinds of numbers.

[325] And, you know, the kids reiterate that to me when they hang out and talk to me afterwards as well.

[326] So that comes back to that love the kid you have, not the kid you wish you had, because it makes an incredible difference because kids know when you see and hear and know about the things that are important to them as opposed to what we think they should be thinking is important.

[327] Now, I want to ask something kind of provocative, which is what you're suggesting, and I think what I would love to see happen, is it potentially paradigm shattering?

[328] Because the notion that if you tell your kids to stay on the honor roll for the whole year and they'll get a car, in a lot of ways, makes a ton of sense logically, because that's ultimately what you will do in life.

[329] You will go to some job that you probably don't want to execute, and you'll do that so you can own a home.

[330] And it feels like it's perfectly conditioning them to suck it up and get the job done so that they can have this life.

[331] But I do think more and more as people are questioning what defines success and what defines fulfillment that maybe as an entire society, we're evolving away from that notion and we're starting to value the emotional component of life and the fulfillment component.

[332] And is it a comprehensive thing we need to look at lifelong?

[333] You know, it's funny you say.

[334] You know, this is how it works.

[335] You know, I write this book so in the end, someone will pay me some money.

[336] Or I, you know, do this thing so that someone will give me a paycheck.

[337] And that's how life works, right?

[338] Well, the interesting thing, though, is we have 40 years, almost 50 years, of really solid research.

[339] And the research we have is also this stuff called metadata, which is when we actually take the research and say, wait a second, is this quality research?

[340] Oh, yes, it is.

[341] Look, it's quality research.

[342] 50 years of really good research showing unequivocally that extrinsic motivators, whether they're positive or negative, and the positive are things like grades, points, scores, money for grades, things like that, or love in exchange for performance, which is what I was talking about before, or the negative stuff like, you know, sweetie, if you don't keep a B minus or better, you're going to be grounded, or I'm just going to surveil you on your phone and make sure you get to where you're supposed to be at the right time.

[343] or I'm going to, and you'll find out about this soon enough, Dax, which is portals.

[344] If your kids are in many school systems, I right now could get on my computer, log on and find out every grade my kid has gotten for the entire school year, and I can do that 24 -7 if I want.

[345] I could hit refresh on that program and get up to date, up to the minute, you know, where my kid is from a grade perspective.

[346] All of those things are called extrinsic motivators.

[347] That last thing I talked about is surveillance.

[348] And all of those things, positive or negative, undermine our motivation, not just kids' motivation, but everyone's motivation.

[349] And the problem is, as Dan Pink has pointed out, as Edward D .C. in his book, Why We Do What We Do, The Science of Self -Motivation, as people have pointed out that, yes, this is how our economy runs.

[350] But when you look at people that really do their jobs well and are really in their jobs, like super invested.

[351] Like the reason my husband is in the basement right now and about to head off to the hospital and put on, you know, head to toe personal protective equipment is not because he's going to be getting a paycheck.

[352] It's because he loves what he does and he's intrinsically motivated to do it.

[353] So I would be a writer whether I was getting paid or not.

[354] My husband, I hope, would continue to do what he's doing, whether he gets paid or not.

[355] And once we understand that some of the things we do to motivate kids like the grades, the points of scores, or paying them for their grades, points, scores is actually undermining their motivation.

[356] It might change the way we think about carrots and sticks.

[357] And I don't think we're ever going to get rid of it.

[358] I mean, this is where we are right now, grades and, you know, short -term bonuses and things like that.

[359] But it undermines their motivation.

[360] So once we understand that, we can at least at home, change things up a little bit, like, you know, when it comes to paying kids for grades or paying kids for household duties.

[361] All of that stuff, we can maybe feed into their intrinsic motivation a little bit better.

[362] Well, you pointed out in your talk that for anyone who's at home going, like, well, it does work.

[363] You'd concede that it does work in the short term.

[364] There are times when it works beautifully, actually.

[365] So, for example, sticker charts.

[366] And all of these programs we use in schools to try to manipulate kids' behavior, to increase the likelihood kids will do what we want them to do.

[367] So we give them little stickers or we give them points or we give them coupons or whatever.

[368] Those things seem to work because they do work in the short term.

[369] They work great to boost motivation in the short term.

[370] But over the long term, they stop working.

[371] So the problem is they're tricky.

[372] They look like they work.

[373] They look like they work great.

[374] And what's interesting about sticker charts is that there's an exception to the general rule that sticker charts don't work.

[375] of the times they do work is for potty training because potty training and not having to wear a diaper is actually part of the motivation.

[376] So it's like a little reward in and of itself.

[377] So if you can help kids find the personal reward separate from the sticker, because if you think about what a sticker chart does, like if you give kids stickers for good behavior, it teaches kids to only do the right thing when we're watching, right?

[378] Like why would you ever do the right thing when no one's watching?

[379] You don't get a sticker for that.

[380] So there's a bunch of different reasons that they're tricky and they fool us.

[381] Well, I'll just be adversarial for the sake of it.

[382] Don't you think someone could argue that behavior becomes habitual and that if they're doing it in your presence, that actually, I just know like in AA we have a thing, which is like you just do this action repeatedly and it ends up changing your mindset.

[383] You can't think your way into acting different, but you can act your way into thinking different.

[384] So if you're setting up maybe these habitual patterns, then you hope that in your absence, they just continue out of habit.

[385] Yeah.

[386] First off, sad, we're not in the same room, so I can't fist bump you.

[387] I've seven years coming up really soon.

[388] Oh, yay.

[389] I was curious why you work with kids in a treatment center.

[390] That was going to come up later.

[391] Yeah.

[392] So for the past five years, I was teaching kids in an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab setting, teaching teenagers.

[393] Because my home group, my home 12 -step group, does service out at this particular rehab.

[394] And they have a women's wing, a men's wing, and they had an adolescent wing.

[395] And so I went to speak one night and I looked around one day and I said, hold on.

[396] If these kids are here 24 -7, someone's got to be teaching them something.

[397] So it turns out they did.

[398] The Department of Education in Vermont sort of oversaw the program.

[399] So I very quickly talked to my way into a teaching job there and taught there for five years.

[400] And sadly, as tends to be the case, they were not making any money off of those adolescents.

[401] So they've converted the adolescent wing where I used to teach into another adult wing.

[402] So now if you live in the state of Vermont and your adolescent needs inpatient treatment, there's nowhere.

[403] There's one place that does dual diagnosis, but there's no longer a place for kids to go for inpatient treatment.

[404] They have a trip to Minnesota in their future, probably.

[405] Yeah, and, you know, frankly, if they end up there with Dr. Lee, I'd be just totally thrilled, but yeah, it's tough right now for kids.

[406] Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

[407] If you dare.

[408] What's up, guys, it's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[409] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[424] But you're absolutely right.

[425] It turns out that with kids, the duration question you bring up is really good because there's a fantastic book called How?

[426] how to be a happier parent with KJ.

[427] Del Antonia.

[428] And she did this research into how do we get kids to do this stuff we want them to do, like, for example, household duties.

[429] And it turns out that getting kids to do something for about a season or three months seems to be the secret sauce.

[430] So, you know, instead of having those rotating chore charts where you're like, okay, tonight you have cleaned the dishes and then tomorrow you have unload the dishwasher.

[431] If you give kids the same task for three months, it does exactly what you're talking about, which is help develop a habit.

[432] And whether you're talking to Charles Duhigg and his book about habits, or you're talking to lots of other people who are sort of into the whole habit forming thing, they'll say the same thing.

[433] It takes about a season to create a habit.

[434] And you're totally right.

[435] The fake it till you make it, you know, that can work.

[436] And I'm not saying we can't use extrinsic motivators.

[437] I think it's a combination of the two that are going to be our sweet spot, which is if you can start a kid doing something the right way because you give them a sticker or a lollipop or whatever and then you model it for them and they see you doing it and they see the people around them doing it then they will start doing it for the right reasons as opposed to you for the sticker so it's a combination of those things like i said i'm definitely not in the business of telling people that you can never use extrinsic motivators that's bonkers i would never say that would you say that i don't think this is a good motivator but it's definitely a motivator and what category would you put it in approval from others i assume that's an extrinsizing a motivator.

[438] But it seems to work.

[439] It seems to have worked for me my whole life.

[440] And I see it working in other people too.

[441] Like once you get a taste of what it feels like from authority or someone above you to give you approval that can last a long time.

[442] Absolutely.

[443] And I want to piggyback on that question.

[444] When I heard the concept of Rye parenting, I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense to me. I want my kids to be motivated to make themselves happy and proud of themselves.

[445] And I was in and in, but then the anthropologist of me was like, well, hold on a second.

[446] We are social animals.

[447] We are supposed to be learning from our group.

[448] We are supposed to be shamed by our group.

[449] But this is how we are good members of a group is that we do take on outside approval and disapproval.

[450] And we amend our behavior to be in concert with those people.

[451] So I'm like conflicted.

[452] I mean, I'm thinking conceptually it's good, but then I think it kind of denies who we are.

[453] Here we go, though.

[454] You don't need to be conflicted.

[455] What if, for example, with your kids, you were to set really clear big expectations about behavior about, you know, what they're expected to do around the house, but then you let them have some control over the details of how to get there.

[456] One of the things, whenever I get interviewed about, you know, parenting stuff, I get this question of like, how are you parented?

[457] Because that will be some secret insight.

[458] What I can tell you about the way I was parented is that my parents, you know, I know they had expectations for me, but more than anything else, I knew they trusted me to make good decisions.

[459] And I wanted to live up to that.

[460] And the problem is I've also been a total approval or my whole lot.

[461] In fact, I tell this story to kids a lot when I was in law school in my very first semester in law school and it came exam time and there were these, they give practice exams because law school exams are so different from any other exam you've ever taken.

[462] So they give you practice exams, but I didn't take them because I didn't want anyone to think that I couldn't do it.

[463] I don't know.

[464] It seemed to me like remedial help or extra help, and I'd never had to go to extra help, so I probably don't have to go to extra help for this.

[465] So I got my first law school exam back for civil procedure, and I had gotten a grade so low, I didn't know if it was a D or enough because I'd never gotten a 68 before.

[466] And my first instinct, my first instinct was to quit law school.

[467] Not go talk to the professor.

[468] Like, if I quit now, I can tell people this just wasn't for me and no one will know.

[469] Yeah.

[470] Save your ego.

[471] Exactly.

[472] And, you know, this is also ties into Carol Dweck and her work on mindset and like my belief about my own abilities.

[473] I was like, well, hell, this clearly isn't for me. I suck at this.

[474] But luckily, I had a friend who stopped me and she said, sure, sure, you could quit.

[475] You could quit.

[476] I'll even walk with you to do it.

[477] But how.

[478] How?

[479] about we talk to your professor first and see what went wrong.

[480] And so she went with me to his office.

[481] We talked about it.

[482] I made like four really obvious glaring mistakes.

[483] And he's like, so yeah, don't do that next time and you'll be totally cool.

[484] And I learned from that experience.

[485] But the problem is more and more what I'm seeing from my own students, especially, is this just isn't for me. The classic is, I'm just not a math person, right?

[486] All of a sudden you get to a certain place.

[487] It starts to get harder because, p .S. math gets hard for everyone eventually.

[488] Every single person.

[489] I'm reading the Oppenheimer book and Oppenheimer was humiliated by his lack of mathematical brilliance and this guy is one of the smartest people to ever live.

[490] Steve Strogatz, who's a math professor at Cornell and wrote two brilliant books that I just adore.

[491] One of them is called The Joy of X and another one is called Infinite Powers about calculus.

[492] Like the fact that I, the total math idiot, the person who was quote not good at math, read a book about calculus, you know, says a lot about what I learned from mindset.

[493] In fact, when I was in my 40s, I'm just about to turn 50.

[494] When I was in my early 40s, I actually read Carol Dweck's mindset, and I got so pissed off at that math teacher in seventh grade who told me that I was not talented at math, that I went back with my older kid and my students.

[495] And during my one prep period, I took algebra one again.

[496] And I am good at math.

[497] I really am.

[498] And it was fun and it was interesting.

[499] It just got hard for me when I was 12 or 13 or whatever that was.

[500] And I didn't understand that this didn't make me stupid.

[501] This made me a normal human being because some stuff is going to be harder than others.

[502] And the more we communicate that to kids, which is why the word yet is so incredibly powerful, when a kid says to you, I can't do this.

[503] I can't do it.

[504] If we say to them, well, of course you can't do this yet, you just learn this today at school.

[505] Yet is this like magic growth mindset, Carol Dweck word.

[506] for, yeah, stuff gets hard for people, and that's how we learn.

[507] Perfect time for you to talk about desirable difficulties, because what it sounds like to me is that you hadn't been embracing difficulties.

[508] And I similarly, by the way, I told you I was on the math team in junior high, and then I got into 10th grade, and there's a, if you're on course to do AP Calc, you have to take two math classes in one year.

[509] And I got to that point, and I was like, similar to you, I was like, I'm not going to do good in this.

[510] And my identity is that I'm great at math.

[511] And I just can't take that hit to my identity that I'm not great at math.

[512] So I'm going to claim to no longer be interested in math.

[513] That is absolutely classic.

[514] I see that over and over and over again.

[515] Desirable difficulties have been around for a while.

[516] It's a concept that's been around for a while.

[517] But there was a great book that came out about six years ago called Make It Stick.

[518] Out of Harvard University Press, it has three authors.

[519] In that book, they talk about desirable difficulties, which are one of the most powerful teaching tools I have.

[520] And backing up for just a second, there's this researcher named Wendy Grolnick who looked at different types of parenting and how it affects kids' thinking and motivation to continue to do things that are difficult for them.

[521] And she did this cool experiment where she had parents and kids go in a room together and she had created a task for the kids that was challenging.

[522] It was supposed to be a little bit hard for them.

[523] And the instructions to the parents were, be there with your child, will you complete this task?

[524] And then she watched the parents to see how they handled their kids dealing with this frustrating task.

[525] And some of the parents sort of sat back and were reassuring and helped redirect to the kids.

[526] And those were termed autonomy supportive parents.

[527] And some of the parents were like, you know, the minute their kid got frustrated, either took over or told the kid exactly what to do in what order, which is termed directive parenting or controlling, but, you know, directive.

[528] Yeah, euphemize it.

[529] Yeah, let's use a nicer word.

[530] And so then she took the parents out of the room because she wanted to see how the kids would handle it by themselves.

[531] And the kids of the autonomy supportive parents, almost all of them, completed this difficult task, whereas almost none of the kids of the really directive or controlling parents were able to complete the task on their own because they got frustrated and gave up.

[532] Now, if desirable difficulties are this really magic teaching tool, which they are, where I give kids something that is a little bit more challenging for them to parse, just a little more difficult for them to understand either going in or during the process.

[533] Like, for example, if I say, you know, here's the quadratic formula.

[534] And for one group of kids, I give them all the instructions, like first do this, then do this, next do this.

[535] No, no, no, don't ask any questions.

[536] just do it the way I say and, you know, just accept it.

[537] Whereas for another group of kids, I give them all the parts and kind of let them go at it and figure it out and sort of take the thing apart and understand from the inside how it works.

[538] The kids who have to work a little harder to get that information into their head, they're going to understand it more durably over the long term and more deeply in the short term.

[539] It's because desirable difficulties cause your brain to do this thing called encoding, a little faster or a little more efficiently and more quickly, where instead of putting stuff into short -term memory, like, you know, the place where we store like the pizza guy's phone number, we only need to remember it for a few seconds before we can let it go.

[540] It encodes that stuff into long -term memory.

[541] So when something is a little more difficult for you to figure out, when you have to work a little harder to figure it out, that's kind of good because you're getting it into your long -term memory instead of just stuffing it and sort of the holding place in your brain.

[542] So if you look back at some of your experiences, learning things, like the stuff that you had to sort of work pretty hard to take apart and figure out on your own is inevitably going to be the stuff you remember for the longest and in the most detail.

[543] While you were saying that, I just thought of the most trivial and anecdotal example of that, which is we have a couple different times had group parties at these escape rooms.

[544] And I have spent, you know, two hour chunks with this same group of people 10 ,000 times, but those experiences in these escape rooms, I remember almost every single puzzle we had to solve to get closer to the exit, which to me would prove that.

[545] It's like when we really had to apply ourselves, those are really, yeah, cemented in there.

[546] Well, if someone had given you the way to get out of the escape room and given you a list of the things you had to do to get out of the escape room, you also would not have a great memory for how to get out of that escape room.

[547] It just would not have stuck in the same way because you wouldn't have encoded the information in your brain.

[548] So that's the cool thing.

[549] If you think about it, though, is that, like, in order for me to take advantage of that, kids have to be able to sit with frustration.

[550] So that's the way in is how do we help kids stick with things long enough to benefit from the magic of learning it that way.

[551] And could you quantify that at all for us?

[552] Like, what is the ideal amount of frustration?

[553] You don't want your kid in their room for two and a half hours trying to figure something out, do you?

[554] Or as long as they're engaged, let them at it?

[555] Or what's a ballpark?

[556] At what point do you step in?

[557] Clearly, you must at some time.

[558] It's called desirable difficulties and productive struggle.

[559] So I like to think of it as our job with little kids is to redirect their attention.

[560] So for example, if your daughter is working on schoolwork at home with you, your job is to not answer the question for them.

[561] Of course, the worst case scenario is you're like, oh, let me reteach all of math to you now and give you the answer, or even worse, let me do it for you.

[562] There's a colleague of mine that used to teach middle school math.

[563] In fact, the teacher I went back and took algebra from, she said, you know, it's so curious.

[564] I get this homework back from my student that has a math professor father, and it's solved with trigonometry, which is, oh, we've never learned trigonometry.

[565] So taking over doing that kind of stuff, obviously not the right move.

[566] But if you can do stuff for your kids, like I always try to bring it back to focus on the process and less on the product.

[567] In fact, it's perfectly okay if your kid can't answer that problem in the end because your job is to help them get to a place where either you're at a place where they realize, no, they really don't have the knowledge or the skills to figure this out.

[568] And then a great idea is to use the space on the paper where they didn't finish that to write a note to their teacher to explain what they didn't understand.

[569] But what you can do is you can say, okay, well, maybe read the instructions again.

[570] Sweetie, why don't you tell me what you think you're supposed to answer here?

[571] Or look at number four.

[572] Look what you did over here on number four.

[573] What did you do differently in number two that you didn't do in number four?

[574] All of those things will not only increase their ability to sit with their frustration, as opposed to you running in and rescuing them right away, in which case they don't have to develop that at all.

[575] And it also helps them do a little bit more of learning from those desire.

[576] terrible difficulties because you're helping them parse through the stuff that's more difficult for them.

[577] And that's how you as a parent can sort of, instead of jumping in and giving the answer, so to focus on that process a little bit more.

[578] Yeah, help them put their aim on a certain aspect, maybe.

[579] Exactly.

[580] The cool thing about focusing on process and less on end product is that, A, it helps them believe us when we say what we really care about is the learning, because right now they really don't.

[581] They know that the Harvard Making Care and Common Project survey that they did a couple years ago, they asked students, what do you care about more, your academic performance or being a good kind, caring person?

[582] And overwhelmingly, the students said, my academic performance.

[583] And then they said to the kids, well, what do your parents care about more, that you're a good kind, caring person, or that you do well in school, you know, your academic performance?

[584] And they said overwhelmingly their parents cared more that they did well in school.

[585] So when we say what we care about is the learning, but then we show them that what we really care about is that end result, like, ooh, you brought me an A, I'm so happy, you know, that kind of stuff, then they don't really believe us.

[586] But if we're focusing more on the process and a little bit less on that end product, then they really will believe us.

[587] The other cool thing about it is that for kids who are really struggling with anxiety and perfection issues, pulling away a little bit from the end product and focusing more on the process can diffuse some of that anxiety and help them understand that not all stress is bad.

[588] Some of it is really productive.

[589] Like the stress I have of the edits being due for my next book by the end of this week is really productive stress for me. That's not bad.

[590] That actually pushes me forward.

[591] And plus, Monica, I want my editor to think good things about me. I want the agent to like me. And if I get those in in time, they'll like me more.

[592] be productive too.

[593] We have this debate, Dax and I often about do you need some level of anxiety to be productive?

[594] And I often think yes.

[595] And I don't think it's a bad thing to have some amount of anxiety.

[596] And he thinks maybe not.

[597] I think the aspiration, the utopia would be that you do all things because you love doing them.

[598] And the challenge could be fun.

[599] And that it's just how you frame it.

[600] Is the challenge homework or is the challenge an opportunity for you to demonstrate the thing you're great at.

[601] It's very tiny semantic stuff, but I think it carries an emotional weight.

[602] Well, and I think that whole process over product thing can pay off dividends in so many ways, and especially when you're modeling for them the very behavior you want to see in them.

[603] So, Dax, like if you're trying something new that you've never tried before, especially, for example, the cool thing about you is that you grew up with dyslexia and you are an incredible reader.

[604] And that, just letting your kids see you read, especially when you're talking about the fact that you had issues reading when you were a kid, is one of the most powerful things you can do to help your kids say, oh, you know, maybe I should try something that's tough for me. One of the things that we do around here is every once in a while, like every season or so, we set three goals for ourselves.

[605] All my kids, myself, my husband, we write down like three goals.

[606] And one of them has to be scary, like a little bit hard, something we've not been able to do before.

[607] For me, this year, it's been learning Spanish.

[608] And I hate feeling stupid.

[609] I hate feeling like I can't articulate something smoothly.

[610] So this is really challenging for me. And so I talk about that with my kids.

[611] I'm like, look, I'm a writer.

[612] I communicate in English and that's my strength.

[613] And so to suddenly make language be my weakness is really scary for me. And so as I achieve this, these things that they know are frightening.

[614] For me, it teaches them.

[615] I am modeling for them that I want to see the same thing in them and that they're in a safe place to do that.

[616] Well, I'm glad you bring up modeling because the two other things I love that I want to shine a light on is one was a student's parent asking you how to get them interested in reading.

[617] Oh, it's so sad, Dax.

[618] It's so read for pleasure anymore.

[619] And by the way, her kids were just at the end of middle school, beginning of high school.

[620] And that's actually a very common time for kids to drift away from reading.

[621] Yes, we want to protect that, but it happens.

[622] So she said, okay, so my kids don't read for pleasure anymore.

[623] And can you make me a list of really challenging books, but that they'll be really excited to read.

[624] And now, I will tell you, my superpower is matching kids with books.

[625] So I'm happy to help with that.

[626] In fact, I have some books sitting right here.

[627] I have one for you, Dax, that I think is going to be a perfect fit.

[628] I'll pick a car for you.

[629] That's my superpower.

[630] But I said to that mom, I said, well, you know, that's kind of a magic list, but we'll talk about them in it.

[631] But do they see you read for pleasure?

[632] And she admitted, no. She said, well, you know, I work really long hours and I don't really have time.

[633] And I said, well, there's nothing I can say.

[634] There's no magic wand I can wave to make your kids value reading if they don't see you.

[635] reading, right?

[636] That's sort of a starting place.

[637] And P .S., that means that, like, if you're reading on a tablet or something, you need to make it really clear that that's what you're doing, because kids, it's easier for them to understand that you're reading if they see you reading an actual physical book.

[638] To her other point, I said, so let's talk about this list.

[639] When your kids do read for pleasure, what do they like?

[640] And this is so horrifying.

[641] She said, well, they really like those Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, but those books are stupid so I threw them away.

[642] I know.

[643] I know.

[644] So when I tell teachers that story, there's like, they go, like shock, totally, because the thing that we know is obviously like, oh my gosh, graphic novels, you know, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are those Jeff Kinney's wonderful books.

[645] Yeah.

[646] Have cartoon, you know.

[647] And if a kid is seeing himself or herself or whoever in that character, and frankly, the character in Dyer of O 'Wimpe Kid is a great kid to identify with because he's constantly working through these insecurities and this perceived hurdles and all this other stuff.

[648] And so anyway, I made her go, I happened to know she could afford it.

[649] So I made her go get those books and apologize to her children.

[650] Well, I always say that Bukowski deserves way more praise in the literary community because he turns on so many young adult males, myself included.

[651] I wanted to read about shitting fucking and getting drunk.

[652] And what a great gateway to discover the pleasure of immersing my brain into someone else's world.

[653] And then it led to all these other, you know, hoity tooty things, but it started theirs.

[654] Well, also, Bikowsky's all about joy of language.

[655] I mean, you know, Stephen King talks about this a lot, that it isn't until you read something where you go, oh my gosh, that move me in some way.

[656] Or you read something that's really bad and you say, oh, my gosh, I can do better.

[657] Yeah, sure.

[658] that you get that amazing moment where you think, oh my gosh, language is for me too.

[659] It's not like this thing that gets assigned to me and I have to somehow, you know, make my way through.

[660] But it's this thing that is joyful and wonderful.

[661] And if Bukowski gave you that, thank God he's not my bag.

[662] Yeah.

[663] He was very misogynistic.

[664] For me, it was something else.

[665] But thank goodness I found it.

[666] I'm so grateful.

[667] That's why for me, especially teaching in the rehab where I often had kids.

[668] who were, you know, 16, 17, 18, who still read at like a fifth grade level or would come to me and say, I don't read.

[669] Like, that's just not my thing.

[670] Yeah.

[671] And, you know, it was this wonderful challenge where often nonfiction can be the way in.

[672] If you talk to them about the things they're really interested in, I had this one kid who said, I'm not interested in like anything.

[673] And so we've got to talk and got to talking.

[674] It turns out what he loved more than anything was his dog, which was a pit bull that he had recently adopted and was training.

[675] And there's a, wonderful book and her the author's name this will be for fact check i guess uh slips my mind at the moment but there's a wonderful book called pit bull and it's about the pit bull breed and this kid was enchanted with this book and so finding a way in to help kids love reading means we have to know the kid yeah can't just say here take this book but i do wonder because you said you know he's not your bag and then dax said well of course not he's misogynistic so if you're If you know that your kid is identifying or loving a book that is maybe teaching them or having them idolize something that we know is maybe toxic, what do you do about that?

[676] Oh my gosh.

[677] You have, you know.

[678] We burn the books, Monica.

[679] We outlaw them and burn them.

[680] This is really personal for me right now because I happen to be going through this.

[681] I have a kid who believes some stuff that I don't necessarily believe and is love, love, number one, to press my buttons about it.

[682] But number two, loves to learn about it.

[683] And so for me, the absolute worst thing I could do is say, no, you cannot read those books.

[684] And my next book is about preventing substance abuse and kids.

[685] It's specifically from the perspective of, you know, my kids are genetically loaded up to, you know, encounter that.

[686] And so how do I, as a parent and as a teacher to kids who are struggling with substance abuse, how do I know what I can control and what I can't control and all that sort of stuff.

[687] So anyway, one of my kids is completely off his rocker fascinated by hallucinogens.

[688] Everything from, you know, he loves to watch Rogan talk.

[689] He read Michael Pollan's book, How to Change Your Mind?

[690] All that stuff.

[691] And he's into, he's like, let me explain how DMT works.

[692] And I'm like, oh, my God.

[693] But at the same time, the fastest way for me to, and number one is to alienate myself and to exclude myself from that conversation is to say, we will not talk about that or you will not read about that or no you cannot watch you know Hamilton's Pharmacopia oh it's great you know that kind of stuff so the way in is to say teach me teach me about that thing that you find so interesting you know for a while there one of my kids was into some stuff that I really couldn't have cared less about and P .S. thought was really really stupid but the fastest way for me to tell him that I think he is stupid is to say you know this thing that you love is stupid right so instead the thing that you can do is you can say to your kids, you know, teach me about this thing.

[694] So one of the things actually here in the office with me is my first library card.

[695] And I started reading really young and I got my first library card.

[696] It's like a treasure to me. And the librarians started restricting my ability to go into the adult section.

[697] They wanted me to stay in the kids section.

[698] And my mom said my daughter is allowed to read any book in this library.

[699] You will not keep her from reading stuff.

[700] And, you know, is like, our bodies ourselves and I wanted to see the pictures of, you know, the reproductive organs in the book and the, you know, and that was the greatest gift I was ever given.

[701] I will never, ever tell my child they can't read a book, but what I will do is have a conversation about it afterwards.

[702] And, you know, that's why I'm so grateful for, you know, Peggy Ornstein's books about boys and sex and how you open that conversation and girls in sex and how you open those conversations because shutting down those conversations is the fastest way to shut down the communication with our kids about the things that they may find important.

[703] I totally agree because on the surface, yes, Bukowski was a misogynist and he even hit his girlfriend in the documentary.

[704] I mean, it's deplorable, but you would miss the thing boys identify with.

[705] If you just looked at those headlines, you'd actually miss that boys feel excluded from society as Bukowski was the ultimate misfit and an excommunicated member of our society.

[706] and he said fuck you to all the norms and he took back power he was ugly and felt ugly and brutish and what we are identifying with wasn't I want to use women for sex it was oh this guy found a way to empower himself and reject all these things that were hurting him so it's like you would miss the real conversation of why so many young boys like Bukowski and you'd get hung up on these like particulars that aren't really the emotional truth that we're connecting truth Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[707] One more thing I'm modeling, I just want to, I want you to talk about because I thought it was brilliant is, you know, kids, you have to ease them into constructive criticism or something you call formative assessment.

[708] The one thing that I really loved in your talking about that was as a parent, letting them give you some criticism and letting, and model.

[709] Modeling that, modeling that you could do better, modeling that you're not nailing it, modeling that you're open to suggestion and open to change.

[710] I think a lot of us parents have this knee -jerk thought that we have to present a perfect human so that the things we're telling them to do will result in this thing, us, that's perfect.

[711] And look at this example, and that's why I'm telling you to do this.

[712] But then in doing that, you're making them impervious to constructive criticism.

[713] First of all, they know we're not perfect.

[714] This is not going to come as like any surprise.

[715] we're not like opening the Pandora's box by letting them know that we're not perfect.

[716] And again, it comes back to modeling the very thing.

[717] You know, if we want our kids to learn how to take information about their failures and use that information to do better next time, they have to see us doing it.

[718] So like by far, one of the biggest questions I get when I do talks with parents is, okay, well, I've been screwing this up and I've been doing too much for my kids and I've been rendering my kids incompetent.

[719] And so how do I fix that?

[720] And whether your kids are older or younger, you can go to them and you could say, you know what, I've been doing my best here, but I learned some really cool stuff.

[721] And I think I've been underestimating you.

[722] I think you're capable of doing more than I gave you credit for.

[723] And I learned this stuff and I want to do better.

[724] And so for older kids, it can work great because you're modeling for them, this ability to say, you know, I thought I was doing great, but I messed this up.

[725] Or I had imperfect information and I really want to do better.

[726] and I'm going to give you more control, and that can lead to a greater conversation.

[727] But with little kids, they find it just delightful when you admit to them that you get stuff wrong.

[728] And I do it in my classroom all the time.

[729] I will often come into the classroom and say, you know what, I told you this thing the other day.

[730] And it just wasn't sitting right for me. So I went home and I did some more research.

[731] And I realized I totally messed that up.

[732] And I gave you the wrong information.

[733] So let me explain how I, you know, or if a student comes to me and says, you know what, I'm dropping your class because I just don't feel like I'm learning.

[734] a ton in here, that half an hour that I sit down with that student and they explain to me what it is they want for me as a teacher is some of the most valuable information I can get.

[735] Plus, it teaches the student that can be her response as well when someone gives them feedback.

[736] You mentioned something called formative assessment, which for anyone who's not heard of it.

[737] It's also in the book, Make It Stick.

[738] This is another big thing they talk about in that book, which is instead of giving kids like big tests at the end of a unit, if we give them lots of lower stakes, quizzes along the way and help them help us know where they are on a day -to -day basis with their knowledge.

[739] It won't ever come as a surprise when we give them a big test.

[740] We'll know exactly where they are all the time.

[741] And that requires kids to be able to hear feedback about how they're doing what their writing or how they're doing with their math.

[742] And kids who don't tend to hear a lot of constructive feedback aren't very good at that.

[743] I was talking outside of New York a little while ago and I was talking to sixth graders and this kid raised his hand at the end of my talk.

[744] I called on him and he said, Yeah, so my parents say I'm perfect at everything, and I just don't think that can be true.

[745] And he was not, this was not him trying to be funny.

[746] This was not him being sarcastic.

[747] This is truly this kid's parents have told him he's perfect at everything.

[748] And he suddenly had this glimmer of like, oh, wait a second.

[749] I don't, I don't think I can be good at everything.

[750] Yeah.

[751] And that formative assessment helps us as teachers understand what our kids need from us or as parents and helps the kids understand where they are with their own learning because as humans we're really bad at this thing called metacognition, which is knowing what we do and don't know.

[752] And so anytime we can help kids sort of have to exercise that muscle, it's always a good thing.

[753] You know, you know when we used to go into like the French test and we're like, I'm going to nail this.

[754] I know all the French.

[755] And then you get your test back and it's like a 68.

[756] You're like, oh my gosh, I thought I knew everything.

[757] That's a failure of metacognition.

[758] Right.

[759] Is there anything in the gift of failure, how the best parents learn to let go so their children can succeed.

[760] Is there anything?

[761] I know my wife when she's trying to tell people to read your book, she always brings up the example of don't bring your fucking kids homework in sixth grade.

[762] Like at what point do you got to cut the bullshit and let them fail and own their stuff?

[763] Is that around the age?

[764] Well, so from a very early age, you help them build strategies.

[765] Even like kindergartners, you help them like, you know, if you're having trouble getting out of the house in the morning, because mornings frankly suck.

[766] Helping your kids come up with strategies for how they remember their stuff.

[767] For kids your age, it could be like a little chart they draw with pictures of like their backpack and a picture of their book and a picture, you know, that kind of thing.

[768] So we're constantly trying to help them create strategies.

[769] And I'm not saying you can never deliver your kids homework to school.

[770] But from my perspective, if I'm trying to help a kid come up with strategies as their teacher for how to do better next time, how am I going to not forget the homework next time?

[771] You know, the story Kristen's referring to is my kid had been really he just he was the most disorganized human being I've ever seen in my life and he was just learning how to remember stuff to take to school and he forgot his math homework and he was doing terribly in math and things were falling apart and so my temptation was to take it to him but in that moment you have to realize that you're either going to deliver the homework and save him in that moment or have the opportunity to help him become the kind of kid who's going to remember it next time.

[772] Luckily, I didn't take it and his teacher, this wonderful man named Mr. Dano, Mr. Dano kept him in from recess, which, by the way, is something we have to stop doing because it's the kids who get kept in from recess that need recess the most.

[773] So you've got to stop doing that.

[774] But it was an incredible opportunity because Mr. Dano said, you know, this has been going on long enough.

[775] And you get to stay in until you come up with a strategy that will allow you to help remember your homework next time.

[776] And the strategy my kid came up that day in fourth grade is the strategy he uses to this day to remember his stuff every day, which is a checklist.

[777] Had I been recommending checklist to him?

[778] Like ad nauseum every single day?

[779] Yeah, I had.

[780] But it wasn't until he thought it was his idea.

[781] Sure.

[782] And he came up with it as a strategy that worked for him that he used it every single day.

[783] In fact, every year he makes a new one.

[784] And I've saved them all.

[785] I steal them off the refrigerator when he's done with them.

[786] And I have all these checklists he's made for himself every year since then.

[787] He's now in high school and he still uses them.

[788] So it's not that we can't take the homework ever.

[789] It's just that we have to think, do I want to make myself feel good right now in this moment?

[790] Or do I want to have a kid maybe six months from now who feels good about himself because he's remembering the homework on his own?

[791] The thing I find myself saying out loud a lot is like, all right, well, am I going to follow them to their workplace when they're older and do this for them?

[792] Like at what point, you know, at some point.

[793] point, you're going to have to bail out, you know, unless you're going to join them their whole life.

[794] I get to do these talks at colleges during parents' weekend, often for like parents of freshmen who are freaking out about the number of things that all of a sudden they can't do for their kids anymore long distance.

[795] And I try to give them ways to sort of manage their anxiety about that.

[796] But you can either start earlier or you can have this cliff eventually where all of a sudden you realize, wait a second, when your kid goes to college, by the way, if they don't check off this very particular box on one of the forms they fill out.

[797] You have no legal right to ever look at their grades.

[798] So you could fall off that precipitous cliff, whether that's in, you know, middle school or first year of high school or college, or you could start when the kids are really, really little to teach them to self -advocate, to teach them to tell people what they need and when to ask for help.

[799] Because, you know, Dax, as a 12 -step person, you know that one of the hardest things we do is ask people for help.

[800] And it's one of the most important things that we do.

[801] I'd rather die.

[802] Teaching things back.

[803] Yeah.

[804] Calling people using those numbers is super hard.

[805] Yeah.

[806] You have a similar thought on intervening in your kid's social interactions too, right?

[807] Like if they're in a fight or something, instead of like running up and trying to solve the problem, you allow them to kind of try to at least figure it out on their own.

[808] Yeah, I mean, you know, it depends on how old the kid is and what you're doing and the context.

[809] But in the book I talk a little bit about, you know, those first moments where one kid throws sand at another kid in the sandbox.

[810] If we pull those two kids away from each other, we have a moment where neither kid gets to look into the eyes of the other kid and see how that kid feels.

[811] And we have an incredible moment where we could either start to teach kids about normal social cues and empathy and the kid who threw the sand gets to see the tears of the kid who had the sand thrown at her.

[812] And the kid who had the sand gets to say to the kid who throws the sand, don't treat me like that.

[813] that moment is taken away when we pull the situation apart.

[814] And I talk to high school kids all the time whose parents intervene on behalf of their kids in friendships.

[815] And there is almost no worse thing that we could do than attempt to engineer our kids' social lives because it has all kinds of horrible, emotional and social pitfalls because your kid will get even more alienated if you try to step in for them.

[816] But I think at the very seed of this whole, like how we stop bullying from happening, It's allowing that sandbox interaction to happen because if you don't, that kid who threw the sand is going to end up in my classroom someday, not understanding why he does not understand social cues.

[817] It's painful for a kid to feel like they don't understand social cues.

[818] And if we make it so they don't get a chance to learn them, that's our fault.

[819] Now, I remember watching this great Michael Moore documentary, who to invade next.

[820] I don't know if you've seen that, but they, he goes, I want to say it was Sweden.

[821] And it was one of these great Scandinavian countries.

[822] But they're regularly in the top three globally of all testing, right?

[823] And they have no homework.

[824] Yes.

[825] Okay.

[826] So generally speaking, when we are talking about Scandinavian countries and school, we're talking about Finland.

[827] Oh, okay.

[828] Yes, it's great.

[829] There's so many things that Finland do really, really well.

[830] You know, there's a lot more play, especially in the early years.

[831] Behind me, there's all these books.

[832] And there's a whole section over there that's all about free play and the importance of free play and why it's essential to learning and why it's essential to everything, not just learning, but like, you know, there's a book over there by someone who realized that she was getting more and more kids referred out for occupational therapy because all they ever did was run around on perfectly flat surfaces with no obstacles, and they didn't have a good proprioception and good core strength to be able to, like, you know, balance on stuff.

[833] So that stuff they do really well.

[834] But the other thing is, at a certain level, we're comparing apples and oranges.

[835] So taking Finland as an example and saying we should all do exactly what Finland is doing is just not going to work.

[836] I mean, Finland has a homogenous society.

[837] Finland has way more investment in teacher preparation and support.

[838] Teachers are paid well.

[839] Teachers are trained better.

[840] All kinds of infrastructure.

[841] They're not worried about they're paying for their health care.

[842] There's all kinds of stuff that's behind that.

[843] But is Finland doing a lot of really smart things in terms of less cumulative or summative standardized testing, which has nothing to do with learning by the way, summative or cumulative assessments are really great snapshots of learning.

[844] But when it comes to what works for learning, it's a formative assessment is what works for learning.

[845] Summative and cumulative assessment help teachers sort of know where kids are at one moment.

[846] And that's even if those tests work well, which often they don't.

[847] So yeah, there's all kinds of problems with that.

[848] And there's lots that we could do to emulate Finland.

[849] And I would be thrilled to death if we were to do that.

[850] But it's folly to say we need to be like Finland and adopt everything about their system because we just, we have a much more diverse population with lots of different needs and it's just a little different.

[851] But I'm a huge fan of Finland's educational system.

[852] Okay.

[853] So the other thing is, and we've just had the tiniest sliver of this being talked about on here, obviously the impact of technology is such that there's a lot of things that we used to do that are clearly outmoded now, right?

[854] So memorization of historical facts and this, it really has no place unless we want to ignore the fact that we have the answer to everything in the world in our hand.

[855] How is education evolving, is evolving to be more conceptual, which to me feels good, like less about the memorizing and more about understanding complicated concepts.

[856] And I believe now math, the way they're teaching math is evolved too.

[857] Could you just tell us a little bit about what's changing?

[858] So again, I'm going to urge balance.

[859] So there are a lot of things that are happening that are really great.

[860] So as parents have been realizing the past couple of years, the way we teach math has changed, and that's fantastic, because we're looking more at number sense and less about carrying the one and procedure.

[861] There's a really great website called ucubed .org, y -o -u -b -ed -org by Joe Bowler, B -O -A -L -L -E -R.

[862] She runs a math education program out of Stanford and she has fantastic research on her site about why this math that seems to make no sense to us actually does promote number sense and that the way we teach math has been problematic for a long time.

[863] What is number sense?

[864] Number sense is more like, so your kids, as they're getting into like addition, you're going to start seeing them doing things like instead of adding 67 and 33, you'll see them add 60 and 30 and then, you know, deal with the single, right, exactly.

[865] So that's more about being able to, like, clump numbers, to be able to understand numbers on a more conceptual level and be able to apply our number sense in lots of different contexts.

[866] As opposed to me, like, if I need to add those numbers, like, I just had a panic attack coming up with that example because I'm like, oh, my God, right?

[867] So, in fact, I can't do math unless I have a pen and pencil so I can carry the one and do all that stuff.

[868] Whereas the way my kids have learned how to do math.

[869] is much more, oh, well, I would just take the 60 and the 30, and then, of course, I just go, and that's easy.

[870] And it works much better.

[871] That's how I'm doing all my fast math, just so you know.

[872] And I think it was a workaround for dyslexia.

[873] Well, interesting, you just said the word fast math.

[874] And I just want to point out one really important concept.

[875] Joe Bowler onucube .org has research around the fact that we should never be timing kids on their math facts.

[876] Timing kids on their math facts is one of the fastest ways to create math anxiety, and speed and mastery are not the same thing.

[877] In fact, when you look at kids and their reaction to competition, I could be perfectly proficient with certain math concepts.

[878] And then you say, and now I'm going to time you, I'm going to fall apart.

[879] It's all going to fall apart for me. And that's not the case for all kids.

[880] Some kids love it.

[881] I have one kid that is like, Oh, yeah, time me and everything.

[882] I'll show you how great I am.

[883] And he's great under pressure.

[884] And it's just a different way of expressing what you know.

[885] There's an amazing revisionist history episode, Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, about that, the LSAT and what are you really measuring and the time component and what on earth does it accomplish?

[886] And then all this data saying, right, that there is zero correlation between LSAT scores and achievement within law.

[887] Yeah, exactly.

[888] It's pretty funny.

[889] I do want to talk really quickly about you mentioned history and dates and things like that.

[890] I think the problem with saying, oh, but I can just Google it, which is absolutely true, the problem is that then you don't create a larger framework.

[891] One of the things we know about learning is that the more context I have, if you come to me and you say, so -and -so said this in this particular year, and I have a big framework for how that falls in relationship to maybe the French Revolution and the American Revolution, I can say, Oh, that's interesting.

[892] All those, these three things were happening around the same time so I can see how they may have influenced each other.

[893] One thing we know also is that the bigger your web sort of in your brain, I'm bad metaphor, but on a picture like a spider web, the more places our knowledge cross, the more places we have to hang new knowledge.

[894] So for someone who's first learning American history, for example, learning dates can be really challenging because you don't have a context to put them in.

[895] but once you know a few dates here and there, and you can say, oh, that happened kind of within a couple years of when Brown versus Board of Education happened.

[896] So I can imagine that that had something to do with that situation.

[897] And then there's this thing called cultural literacy.

[898] And now we're getting into something that E .D. Hirsch, a core knowledge proponent, a guy who came up with this concept called core knowledge, one of the things we know is that the classic example is this.

[899] How to understand how baseball is scored.

[900] And you have never seen baseball.

[901] You are going to have a much more difficult time reading and understanding those instructions about how baseball is scored than a person who's watched a baseball game before.

[902] So that's called cultural literacy.

[903] And it's not just about understanding that the line first to kill all the lawyers comes from Shakespeare.

[904] It has to do with the fact that if I have a baseline understanding of mythology, maybe even the Bible, not as a religious thing, but as something that influences literature, I can understand a new concept within the context of that, and it actually helps me become a better reader.

[905] Kids who have some cultural literacy around the context of the thing it is their reading will understand that reading more deeply, which is another problem with testing.

[906] Because if we give a kid who has never ever seen, I don't know, let's pick something super hoity tooty, like a polo game, and you give him a reading about polo and he's never seen, he doesn't even know that polo's played with horses, then how on earth is he going to.

[907] test well on a passage around polo.

[908] The kid who has played polo or has been to a polo match or at least understands that it's played with horses is going to do much better on a test when it comes to that passage around polo.

[909] So that stuff is called cultural literacy and that's really important.

[910] So I don't think we're in a place where we can say, oh, we don't need to learn facts and figures because we can just Google them because we have to have a framework on which to place new knowledge.

[911] The more you know, the more you're capable of learning is sort of the way that teachers talk about it.

[912] I was a Latin teacher for six years.

[913] I was going to bring that up.

[914] So for me, learning Latin was really more about understanding where English and other languages come from.

[915] So, for example, the word calculus that we used for a kind of math actually means a little pebble, a little stone, which if I have to just memorize that, I may or may not remember it.

[916] But if I know that in the Roman markets, they use these little pebbles to do addition and subtraction to calculate how much people owed for something, then it makes perfect sense for me. I can understand that, oh, calculate, calculus.

[917] Calculus is a stone because I use it to calculate, and that's where the word calculus and calculate come from.

[918] Yeah, and this is probably a dyslexic complaint, but that's part of my frustration is when these words were coined in Greece and in Rome, they were quite literal and easy to understand.

[919] But because we're using this bygone nomenclature, even, you know, anthropology, Anthropology, anthropology study.

[920] Literally, if I were speaking Greek, it would just be study of man. I majored in study of man. That's so easy, but we've complicated all this stuff with all this vestigial verbiage.

[921] And I find that actually counterproductive to learning concepts and timelines and synthesizing info.

[922] But if you take kids, for example, one of the activities I had that worked every, freaking time with my rehab kids.

[923] In talking about risk for substance abuse, one of the bigies in childhood are academic failure, social ostracism, aggression towards other kids.

[924] And of course, all those things tend to compound each other.

[925] So many of my students who have ended up as people who abuse substances started because they had academic failure, social ostracism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[926] So a lot of the students in my class had learning issues.

[927] And a lot of them, for example, many of them.

[928] I usually had at least one dyslexic and definitely a couple of kids with ADHD in my classroom.

[929] The thing that they loved was this game I made called etymology jeopardy.

[930] It was a game where I would give them the roots for the words and help them realize how that word led to a word that we use in English.

[931] So like what household word in Italy means sky, silo?

[932] And then they would be like, oh, household word, sialo.

[933] Oh, ceiling.

[934] That's where we get the word.

[935] ceiling because Cielo means sky in Italian, which is derived from other places.

[936] So, and in a way, that then helps them with their spelling.

[937] It helps them with their understanding of language.

[938] And it helps them own language a little bit more because for kids, the best way to get them learning is to help them feel like they own it.

[939] It's mine now.

[940] So I totally get that it would be nice if we had words that meant exactly what they are and it was super simplified, but that's not what we have.

[941] So understanding where words come from helps us own our language a little bit more, I think.

[942] Yeah, I would love to play Trivial Pursuit with you, just side -known.

[943] I love Trivial Pursuit, except I will never get a sports question, so we have to have my older son play.

[944] It has to be like we have to be a team.

[945] Well, listen, Jessica, we love talking to you, And I love what your book is about, and I think it's so important that we continue to question how we're doing this and we continue to try to better it.

[946] I'm just ultimately grateful that you're still trying your hardest to make this go as good as it can.

[947] Thank you.

[948] And I owe you guys a huge, I know Kristen in particular, a huge debt of gratitude because one morning this summer when I was trying, I had my internet off because I was trying to finish my manuscript for the new book.

[949] And finally my landline rang and like no one has my landline number.

[950] don't use it and it was my sister and she's like turn your fucking phone on and because she said that was the day that Kristen had Instagramed herself and my book and um that was a really fun day for me so i'm very very grateful for all of your support of the book once again i reap the rewards of my wife's hard work uh so jessica thank you so much i hope we get to talk to you again soon you're so welcome all right bye bye bye and now my favorite part of the show the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[951] And everyone just turned it off.

[952] What if we keep doing this show until we're in our hundreds?

[953] And literally, like, What did I get?

[954] What did I get wrong?

[955] What was it?

[956] Oh, so you're at Bernie when you're a hundred?

[957] Oh, I said.

[958] Oh, not quite Bernie.

[959] Bernie's still got a lot more fight than that.

[960] Do you think that?

[961] Bernie's penis is enormous?

[962] Yes.

[963] I know you think that.

[964] Well, I think of that photo.

[965] If that photo is not doctored, I'm so blown away.

[966] Holy log.

[967] Oh, my God.

[968] I couldn't find it the other day.

[969] I wanted to show someone else and I couldn't locate it.

[970] You sent it from your eyepacks.

[971] Oh, so maybe it's somewhere on my iPax.

[972] Yeah.

[973] Okay.

[974] I don't want to lose it.

[975] No, it's important.

[976] Yeah.

[977] But do you think the voice that happens with older people, does it happen gradually or all of a sudden their voice box kind of like just a teat, like, you know?

[978] I think gradually, right?

[979] It just gets rusty in there.

[980] Oh, this whole new thing, man. We've got to get someone on.

[981] We should try to track down an expert that can talk about this.

[982] The ones that are erasing the epigenome with all the errors in reading your DNA and they're reversing.

[983] Aging.

[984] For me, it has the same excitement level as CRISPR did when we learned about CRISPR.

[985] Does it have, do you like the idea of self -driving cars or do you hate it?

[986] No, I don't like it.

[987] Yeah.

[988] Yeah.

[989] And do you not like it just because you like driving?

[990] Well, on a personal fear level, my fear is that.

[991] if it gets widely prevalent, at some point they'll make it illegal to drive cars.

[992] Because if it's, you know, they'll have data.

[993] I'm sure computers are so much better than humans driving cars.

[994] And if they're like, no, it's just too fucking dangerous.

[995] The notion that I wouldn't be able to drive someday is, is really a nightmare scenario for me. I guess I'm just going to have to like buy 10 ,000 acres in the middle of New Mexico or something so that I can have an area where I can still operate machinery, even if it's not permitted on the public roads.

[996] That's a good solution.

[997] Self -driving cars are soon -ish.

[998] But I bet removing the right to drive is a long way.

[999] Well, there'll be like a good decade of it where it'll be classist.

[1000] The poor people won't be able to afford the self -driving cars.

[1001] Like, they'll have whatever car they've owned.

[1002] A decade.

[1003] Probably more than that.

[1004] I hope so.

[1005] Yeah.

[1006] I want to be driving well into my hundreds quickly, too.

[1007] I feel so sad for Lincoln and Delta who are, they're going to be the ones to take away your keys.

[1008] And you're probably going to punch them in the first.

[1009] face.

[1010] I'm going to start swinging, but it won't hurt anyone.

[1011] It won't because you're just mush at that point.

[1012] And it'll swing and oh my hand will shatter as soon as it makes contact.

[1013] Oh, your littlest daughter, my soulmate was doing a workout with me the other day.

[1014] She was so strong.

[1015] Oh my goodness.

[1016] She was so good at the workout.

[1017] That's top three cutest things I've ever witnessed in my life.

[1018] It was so cute when she was doing the planks with you.

[1019] Oh, I know.

[1020] It was too much.

[1021] And she was.

[1022] She did a good job.

[1023] like she had her form was really good yeah and she's strong she got that like eight pack on top of a beer belly it's so awesome you were talking about her yesterday with the friend via zoom about how she's one of those people that when she gives you attention shines a light on you it feels really intense and special yeah and then when she when she doesn't it really hurts yeah yeah yeah it's high highs and low lows people have that ability.

[1024] Yeah, she has it.

[1025] You know my boyfriend Ben Affleck.

[1026] Jennifer Garner did an interview post divorce and she, actually, let me just look it up real quick because the way she said it was so heartbreaking and powerful.

[1027] Correct.

[1028] She said, he's the love of my life.

[1029] What am I going to do about that?

[1030] He's the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous.

[1031] He's just a complicated guy.

[1032] I always say, when his sun shines on you, you feel it.

[1033] But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it's cold.

[1034] He can cast quite a shadow.

[1035] That's pretty well stated.

[1036] It is.

[1037] That's generous of her to just say, still, smartest, charismatic.

[1038] Yeah.

[1039] It's very honest.

[1040] It's just like, sad.

[1041] Sad.

[1042] Life is sad.

[1043] It has a lot of sadness.

[1044] Sadness.

[1045] And happiness, too.

[1046] But Delta's like that.

[1047] Oh, well, hold on.

[1048] She's not bad.

[1049] in any of the workers or...

[1050] No, but I'm saying, we don't know what she's...

[1051] Well, you're right.

[1052] We don't know.

[1053] We don't know.

[1054] We don't know the depths.

[1055] But she, you know, she's my soulmate, and she's also really close to our new assistant, and I get jealous of that.

[1056] And it reminds me of Ben Affleck in the shadow.

[1057] Sure, sure.

[1058] How could it not?

[1059] But some people have that power.

[1060] Not everyone has it.

[1061] Right.

[1062] Yeah, it's Dicey getting involved with someone who has that, because anyone who has that's aware that they have that on some level.

[1063] And they obviously enjoy giving that attention to people and the result of it.

[1064] And they, I think, have a hard time not doing that.

[1065] Yeah.

[1066] Yeah.

[1067] Yeah.

[1068] I know exactly where your head goes when you read that.

[1069] What?

[1070] Your head goes like, fuck, even when I get them.

[1071] It's going to be hard.

[1072] It's going to be hard to keep them.

[1073] And that's hard.

[1074] Is that way it goes on?

[1075] I can still get him, but I just don't know if I could keep him.

[1076] No, I don't think that.

[1077] You love him so much.

[1078] So do you feel bad for him somehow in that whole scenario?

[1079] Well, well, look, everyone's complicated.

[1080] Yes, some more than others.

[1081] Some more than others.

[1082] Yeah, but I like complicated people.

[1083] Yeah.

[1084] So it doesn't scare me that he's complicated.

[1085] You're up for the challenge.

[1086] Yeah, I'm up for it.

[1087] It just makes me sad for her.

[1088] That's really all it does when I read that.

[1089] It doesn't make me feel horny for him.

[1090] It does make me think about people in general who are like that.

[1091] And I mean, my general gripe with everyone, which is how sincere are they?

[1092] How real is it?

[1093] And I can imagine if I were her and he was shining lights on other people, she would feel like, oh, whatever he did with me, he just needed a high.

[1094] He needed approval or validation, and I was the person on the receiving end for that time doesn't mean I was special in any way.

[1095] Right.

[1096] I just have this back and forth struggle with, I think we should feel special and I think we shouldn't feel special.

[1097] Uh -huh.

[1098] It is funny because there's these guys, right, these legendary guys, I guess like A -Rod or, you know, there's some infamous bachelors.

[1099] Uh -huh.

[1100] Who have been like with every single person.

[1101] Yeah.

[1102] And you have to imagine that these women are meeting this person going, I'm not falling for this.

[1103] I know.

[1104] I already know the track record.

[1105] I know.

[1106] It's a new megastar every seven months.

[1107] But then the power of it has to be so intense that even knowing all that, you either go, oh, I'll be the one that breaks this cycle.

[1108] Or you just don't give a flying fuck because it feels great.

[1109] And you're like, all right, well, I'm going to enjoy it while the sun's out.

[1110] And when it's gone and it's gone.

[1111] But it is just interesting that these guys can kind of operate, like one after another very high profile.

[1112] I just would imagine if I was a woman, I met someone like A -Rod or someone at a party.

[1113] I'd be like, oh, here it comes.

[1114] Which, by the way, I think is kind of one of his magic moves is he doesn't hit on anyone.

[1115] So they're like expecting this sexual predator and they meet a sexual Bambi.

[1116] Oh, wow.

[1117] Mixed messaging.

[1118] Some people have moves.

[1119] Moves.

[1120] People have moves.

[1121] So Jessica didn't have many facts She didn't have any moves She had tons of moves Well she had facts but she cited them all So what are you going to read her sighting?

[1122] Exactly There's no need to check The only thing that I did need to check Was who wrote the book Pitbull Bronwyn Dickie Bronwyn Dickie Brondwin Dickie wrote Great name That book It's called Pitbull The Battle over an American an icon by Bronwyn Dickie.

[1123] Pit bulls are a very polarizing topic.

[1124] They are.

[1125] That's really true.

[1126] Yeah, the people that love them feel very defensive of them.

[1127] People tweet me all the time.

[1128] Like, even if I just say the word pit bull and I don't mention that they're great family dogs, you're perpetuating this thing.

[1129] I'm afraid of pit bulls.

[1130] I don't know what to tell people.

[1131] I'll be hiking and someone's got an off leash, 100 pound pit bull with balls, and I'm fucking scared.

[1132] So all I can tell you is that.

[1133] I know.

[1134] I know people feel very protective over pit bulls.

[1135] And I think it's because a lot of them have been put down because people are scared.

[1136] Well, they breed them for fighting and then these rings get broken up and then they flood the, you know, pound and people think they're, you know.

[1137] Yeah, we have to cut all this.

[1138] Cut it all.

[1139] Because we're afraid of the lobby, the pit bull lobby.

[1140] It makes me mad that those lobbies are effective.

[1141] Like, I don't want to talk about vaccinations, which is insane because 99 % of people vaccinate and believe.

[1142] even though.

[1143] And I'm terrified of the fucking, I just don't want to deal with it.

[1144] It's inescapable in this current world of social media that there's always going to be a lobby, at least a one person lobby about anything.

[1145] 10 person lobby posing as a thousand.

[1146] I think that's pretty common too.

[1147] Each one has like 100 accounts.

[1148] It's okay to have your own personal opinion that you aren't a fan of diabetes.

[1149] That I hate diabetics.

[1150] That you...

[1151] It is my right as an American to hate diabetics.

[1152] That you wouldn't have a pit bull.

[1153] Right.

[1154] You wouldn't feel comfortable having one.

[1155] Nope.

[1156] And that's okay.

[1157] No. But the lobby, the pit bull lobby, equates it almost to like racism.

[1158] Yep, yep, yep.

[1159] So you almost feel like a racist when you say you're afraid of pipples.

[1160] You're a breedist.

[1161] Yeah.

[1162] I know.

[1163] I said I hate pimples, not pipples.

[1164] You're not allowed to hate pimples either because...

[1165] The pimples are racist.

[1166] Because they try to expel the whiteness from your body.

[1167] They concentrate little droplets of whiteness and expel it from your body, right?

[1168] Yeah, exactly.

[1169] Because you're brown, but your pimples are still white, right?

[1170] Unfortunately, yes.

[1171] Yeah, yeah.

[1172] Same white blood cells.

[1173] Yeah.

[1174] I'm reading a great book on Immunology.

[1175] I'm excited for you to download me on that book.

[1176] I don't want to sit through the whole thing, but I want you to condense it in eight greatest points and relay them to me. I will.

[1177] I am very much enjoying it.

[1178] It is breaking it all down into a very digestible way of understanding the immune system.

[1179] It's called an elegant defense, the extraordinary new science of the immune system, a tale in four lives by Matt Richtel.

[1180] And he, Matt Richtel, is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

[1181] Oh, I love Pulitzer Prize winners.

[1182] It's kind of like a unifile situation.

[1183] Pit Pulitzer Prize winners.

[1184] Anyway, it's fantastic.

[1185] Do you follow the lives of these four players?

[1186] people and their specific immune story.

[1187] And it's really, really good.

[1188] I'd recommend.

[1189] Okay, we got off topic.

[1190] Okay.

[1191] She said currently in Vermont, there's not a treatment center for kids.

[1192] Oh, okay.

[1193] And I'm going to trust her on that because I don't think she'd say it unless she knew for sure.

[1194] But I did go to the health vermont .gov site.

[1195] And there is a bunch of stuff about substance abuse treatment options.

[1196] But not impatient.

[1197] Maybe.

[1198] Maybe.

[1199] And I don't see anything specifically for children.

[1200] I liked, well, A, I'm always grateful when someone feels comfortable enough to share that they're a recovering addict.

[1201] Yeah.

[1202] But additionally, I like when someone like her does because I think there still is this pervasive archetype for an addict, which is someone with no willpower or that's lazy and all this stuff.

[1203] And she clearly is a very type A fucking overachiever, responsible.

[1204] tons of willpower, and addiction don't give a fuck.

[1205] It does not.

[1206] They're like, where did you graduate from?

[1207] Oh, cool.

[1208] Suck this dick.

[1209] Does not discriminate.

[1210] No, no. Okay.

[1211] That's all for Jessica.

[1212] She knows.

[1213] She checked her own facts.

[1214] She came correct.

[1215] She really did.

[1216] I liked her.

[1217] Me too.

[1218] I bet I think a lot of people, I hope, will enjoy that episode who have children because I don't know.

[1219] I feel for you guys.

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] Well, it's not unlike diet and there's a lot of conflicting beliefs.

[1222] And you can't really study people.

[1223] I'm sorry.

[1224] I say this a lot on here.

[1225] Humans are impossible to study.

[1226] Even though you majored in anthropology, which is a study of people.

[1227] Which, if anything, prove to me that they can't be studied.

[1228] But, you know, what are you going to do, monitor these kids, and these kids did Rye, and these kids did this?

[1229] And then we're going to check in with them in 20 years and see how they turned out bullshit.

[1230] There's also going to be 10 trillion other things that happen besides the parenting.

[1231] So we're almost impossible to conclude anything about.

[1232] I know.

[1233] That's what's frustrating about us.

[1234] That's why we need to have humans that live in a lab.

[1235] Okay.

[1236] I'm sorry.

[1237] We need a class of citizens who are born in labs, live their whole lives in labs, and we study them and we figure out.

[1238] We just have to do it for like two generations.

[1239] We'll answer all the questions.

[1240] And then we'll burn those labs to the ground and we'll have all the answers.

[1241] I'm sure a lobby will contact us about that.

[1242] Probably the burn building to the ground lobby.

[1243] All right.

[1244] All right.

[1245] Love you.

[1246] Love you.

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