Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Diagnoses: More Harm Than Good? With Dr. Stu Law pt. 2
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
- 0:15Speaker 1: to Why We Do What We Do. I am your
- 0:18Speaker 1: diagnostic and statistical host, Abraham.
- 0:21Speaker 2: I'm your just-read-four-books-in-the-last-seven-days host, Shane.
- 0:25Speaker 3: That's probably true. We are a psychology podcast.
- 0:28Speaker 1: We talk about the things that humans and non-human animals do,
- 0:32Speaker 1: and this is a sequel of sorts, part two. We
- 0:35Speaker 1: are following up last week's discussion about the caveats to
- 0:40Speaker 1: a diagnostic system of psychological and mental and behavioral health.
- 0:45Speaker 1: We'll get into a recap here in a moment. But
- 0:47Speaker 1: if you're joining us for the first time, then welcome.
- 0:48Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy what you hear in this discussion.
- 0:51Speaker 1: We did, as I mentioned, record a part one. We'll
- 0:53Speaker 1: do our best to recap that so you feel prepared
- 0:56Speaker 1: for part two, whether or not you were here. But
- 0:58Speaker 1: I do recommend checking that one out so you have
- 1:00Speaker 1: some of the foundations to help you be able to
- 1:02Speaker 1: access everything we're going to discuss in this part two.
- 1:06Speaker 1: But I can't tell you what to do. You're going
- 1:07Speaker 1: to do what you're going to do, and that's fine.
- 1:09Speaker 1: If you weren't here for the last time and it's
- 1:10Speaker 1: your first time ever joining us, then hopefully you still
- 1:13Speaker 1: feel like you get something out of this. And if
- 1:14Speaker 1: you're a returning person, then welcome back. Thanks for following
- 1:17Speaker 1: all my instructions like a good little student. Either way,
- 1:20Speaker 1: you are here. It is September 2nd. So happen Bison
- 1:24Speaker 1: 10 Yell Day. And that is one of those like
- 1:28Speaker 1: mad gab type things.
- 1:30Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:30Speaker 3: Bison, B-I-S-O-N hyphen 10 space yell, Y-E-L-L day.
- 1:37Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
- 1:38Speaker 3: Did it.
- 1:38Speaker 2: I'm not going to celebrate that. It's calendar adjustment day.
- 1:42Speaker 4: Okay.
- 1:43Speaker 3: It is global talent acquisition day.
- 1:46Speaker 2: God, you know, that just reminds me that like, I
- 1:49Speaker 2: can't stand HR language, like the, like corporate language. Like,
- 1:53Speaker 2: like when people talk about synergy, I'm just like, ugh, gross.
- 1:56Speaker 2: I don't like it. It's national blueberry popsicle day.
- 2:00Speaker 3: Some synergy there. I like it.
- 2:02Speaker 4: Yeah. Ugh.
- 2:03Speaker 1: National No Patrick Day. So if you're a Patrick or
- 2:06Speaker 1: you have a Patrick in your life, get out. Mm-hmm.
- 2:09Speaker 2: Go on, get. I read that that was also specific
- 2:12Speaker 2: to SpongeBob.
- 2:12Speaker 3: Oh, that makes more sense.
- 2:14Speaker 2: It's Pierce Your Ears Day.
- 2:16Speaker 3: Okay, check. It is Spalding Baseball Day. Oh, cool. Good.
- 2:21Speaker 3: Brands getting their own day. That's what we need more of.
- 2:24Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sponsored holidays, of course. It's VJ Day.
- 2:27Speaker 3: Let your mind go where it will. It is World
- 2:29Speaker 3: Coconut Day.
- 2:30Speaker 4: Yes, it is.
- 2:31Speaker 2: Yes, it is.
- 2:32Speaker 4: All right.
- 2:33Speaker 1: Those are the days, because it's holidays, and that's fine.
- 2:35Speaker 1: That's the thing that we do, and it's not that important,
- 2:37Speaker 1: but we do it anyway. And welcome, and you're welcome,
- 2:39Speaker 1: and thank you, and all of that. So as I said,
- 2:41Speaker 1: we're talking about, well, we're talking about diagnoses. More broadly,
- 2:45Speaker 1: just diagnoses with respect to psychological and mental health. So
- 2:49Speaker 1: we have a guest on with us. His name is Dr.
- 2:51Speaker 1: Stu Law, and I'm going to give him a chance
- 2:53Speaker 1: to speak in just a moment. But I'll start with
- 2:55Speaker 1: a quick recap of what we talked about last time.
- 2:57Speaker 1: And Stu, you can also jump in with this as
- 2:59Speaker 1: we go. So that probably means I should introduce you now. So, hey, everyone,
- 3:02Speaker 1: this is Dr.
- 3:02Speaker 4: Stula.
- 3:03Speaker 3: I'm back.
- 3:04Speaker 4: I'm here to work. I looked at my calendar and
- 3:06Speaker 4: moved things around.
- 3:07Speaker 3: Here I am.
- 3:11Speaker 4: Perfect.
- 3:11Speaker 3: Thank you.
- 3:12Speaker 1: We appreciate you being here for round two. Stu is
- 3:16Speaker 1: a behavior analyst. He has developed his own assessment tool.
- 3:20Speaker 1: He has worked in this field for a very long time.
- 3:22Speaker 1: He has worked with a lot of people of various
- 3:24Speaker 1: spectrums with diagnoses themselves and in various capacities and supporting
- 3:29Speaker 1: roles to help them. And largely also, he's done a
- 3:31Speaker 1: lot of administrative roles as well and sort of been
- 3:35Speaker 1: sort of a rulemaking type of guy. in various capacities.
- 3:38Speaker 1: And he's also our most frequently occurring guest. I'm pretty
- 3:41Speaker 1: sure that we've ever had. He's like a adjunct faculty
- 3:44Speaker 1: part of our team here. Yeah. I think, I think
- 3:48Speaker 1: I've earned that.
- 3:49Speaker 4: I'm in one out of every, what, like 140 episodes
- 3:51Speaker 4: or something like that.
- 3:53Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 3:53Speaker 4: Yeah. And that humor, humor is a banger. It was
- 3:58Speaker 4: so funny. Yeah.
- 3:58Speaker 1: I remember the, How does the Sean Connery shave is control.
- 4:06Speaker 1: It's a thinker, you know, you have to anyway. So
- 4:18Speaker 1: going back to a quick recap of what we discussed
- 4:20Speaker 1: last time, just beginning with the fact that like solving problems,
- 4:23Speaker 1: identifying and solving problems is a huge thing that a
- 4:25Speaker 1: lot of professions do in psychology, in the psychology space, clinical, behavioral,
- 4:30Speaker 1: what have you. There is also a diagnostic system very
- 4:34Speaker 1: commonly used in the United States called the DSM or
- 4:37Speaker 1: the Diagnostic Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. And then there's
- 4:40Speaker 1: an international one called the International Classification of Diseases, or
- 4:43Speaker 1: the ICD, and various tools other than that that exist.
- 4:47Speaker 1: And essentially what they do is they take clusters of
- 4:50Speaker 1: behaviors that people do, and then they give them a label.
- 4:53Speaker 1: And then that label is then sometimes used to inform, well,
- 4:57Speaker 1: it's not really used to inform treatment, but people might
- 4:59Speaker 1: think that it is. It gives people an identity sometimes.
- 5:02Speaker 1: It maybe has the helpful benefit that some people feel
- 5:05Speaker 1: like at least now they know.
- 5:07Speaker 3: There's a name for their thing. It is a known thing.
- 5:11Speaker 1: They are not an outlier that exists outside of the
- 5:14Speaker 1: normal human experience. We've identified that their problem is a
- 5:17Speaker 1: problem other people have had, therefore unity and all is
- 5:20Speaker 1: well in the world. But there's also problems with this
- 5:24Speaker 1: diagnostic system that we've identified, one being that it has
- 5:28Speaker 1: a huge issue with being specific enough that we feel
- 5:35Speaker 1: like we can reliably identify a particular diagnosis because there
- 5:41Speaker 1: are so many variations and overlapping symptoms that you might
- 5:45Speaker 1: have many, many thousands of people at the same diagnosis
- 5:48Speaker 1: with zero overlapping symptoms.
- 5:51Speaker 4: Yeah. The goal ideally is to do like an, if then,
- 5:54Speaker 4: if this, then that, but it's hard to do that
- 5:57Speaker 4: inside of psychological wellness, unfortunately.
- 6:00Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 6:01Speaker 2: If then, then ego.
- 6:02Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 6:04Speaker 3: Then id.
- 6:05Speaker 1: Second major problem that we identified was this idea of comorbidity,
- 6:10Speaker 1: which is just the extent to which if you have
- 6:12Speaker 1: a diagnosis, it might overlap with another diagnosis.
- 6:16Speaker 3: And there are these rates of, like, some are as
- 6:19Speaker 3: low as.
- 6:20Speaker 1: A small percentage, 15% of the time or something, if
- 6:23Speaker 1: you have this diagnosis, you might also have this diagnosis.
- 6:26Speaker 1: But some of them are as high as 80% or 81%.
- 6:29Speaker 1: If you have this diagnosis, there's a very high likelihood
- 6:31Speaker 1: you'll also meet the criteria for this other diagnosis.
- 6:34Speaker 3: And that paints this picture that we.
- 6:38Speaker 1: Maybe don't have a very good handle on, are these
- 6:41Speaker 1: things different enough from one another to call them different entities?
- 6:46Speaker 1: And also goes back to the lack of specificity as
- 6:48Speaker 1: an issue to bring in here.
- 6:51Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's not just as simple as, like, if
- 6:53Speaker 4: you have a depressive episode, then you have a major
- 6:55Speaker 4: depressive episode, or you might have bipolar disorder. It's also
- 6:58Speaker 4: detecting things like psychosis or schizophrenia or things that may
- 7:02Speaker 4: seem unrelated at first blush. And that is problematic. And I.
- 7:08Speaker 1: Don't want to throw anyone specific under the bus, but
- 7:10Speaker 1: people who have said like they heard some initials for
- 7:14Speaker 1: a diagnosis without knowing what it is and said, yes,
- 7:17Speaker 1: that sounds like me. Where it was like there's ADHD
- 7:21Speaker 1: and then like maybe OCD and they're like, oh, that one.
- 7:24Speaker 3: I think I have that one. I'm like, what is that?
- 7:25Speaker 3: And they're like, I don't know. I don't know.
- 7:29Speaker 1: We know what that is here, but the name sounds
- 7:33Speaker 1: good enough to be appealing to feel like I would
- 7:37Speaker 1: like to align my identity with these letters because it
- 7:41Speaker 1: makes me feel good. The third problem we identified here– well,
- 7:43Speaker 1: there's obviously other issues to unpack with why someone would
- 7:46Speaker 1: want to do that. But the third problem we identified
- 7:49Speaker 1: here is the fact that there's a very broad– application
- 7:55Speaker 1: of treatments that seem to work for very, very different
- 7:57Speaker 1: sets of symptoms. And it's sort of the, if I
- 8:00Speaker 1: get someone high, they'll feel better. And therefore that is
- 8:03Speaker 1: a relevant treatment for all disorders type of thing. I
- 8:05Speaker 1: think maybe at some point in the past, I think
- 8:08Speaker 1: we impact like weighted vests as a thing. And I'm like,
- 8:11Speaker 1: it will make someone move less because it's heavy and
- 8:16Speaker 1: covers their body and restricts their movement. But that doesn't
- 8:20Speaker 1: mean that it's in any way addressing the conditions that
- 8:23Speaker 1: led to whatever behaviors you felt like you needed to address.
- 8:26Speaker 1: And people put those like thunder vests on dogs. And
- 8:29Speaker 1: I'm like, it is uncomfortable. It forces them to... It
- 8:31Speaker 1: restricts their movements. So they might look calmer, but whatever
- 8:36Speaker 1: it's doing to them is probably not the thing you think.
- 8:39Speaker 1: It's not a magical vest that just cures anxiety or
- 8:42Speaker 1: something like that.
- 8:43Speaker 3: It's just.
- 8:44Speaker 1: When you wrap someone's body in something, they move less
- 8:48Speaker 1: and then they don't move as much. And then that's
- 8:50Speaker 1: what happens. And it has nothing to do with the
- 8:52Speaker 1: fact that you've like actually treated anything. And that's sort
- 8:55Speaker 1: of what happens, I think, with many of the drugs
- 8:57Speaker 1: that are prescribed for conditions here is the like you
- 9:00Speaker 1: give some a drug that makes them feel better. maybe
- 9:03Speaker 1: more placated or just generally calmer or whatever, and feel
- 9:08Speaker 1: like you have addressed a symptom, but all you've really
- 9:10Speaker 1: done is just reduce the frequency and intensity of some
- 9:14Speaker 1: of their behaviors. And then without, it goes a little
- 9:17Speaker 1: bit into a rabbit hole about psychedelic assisted treatment, which
- 9:19Speaker 1: seems like it's trying to go essentially the same direction
- 9:22Speaker 1: that other medicines have gone. That is the like, eat
- 9:25Speaker 1: these or, you know, drink this ayahuasca and then like,
- 9:28Speaker 1: you'll be cured tomorrow of whatever ails you sort of thing.
- 9:31Speaker 1: And again, So that's, I think, what we covered in
- 9:34Speaker 1: the last entire discussion. Is there anything that I missed
- 9:37Speaker 1: you feel like we need to make sure people are
- 9:38Speaker 1: up to speed with?
- 9:40Speaker 2: No, I think that feels pretty good. That feels right.
- 9:43Speaker 3: Anything for you, Stu?
- 9:44Speaker 4: No. Sounds right. Okay.
- 9:46Speaker 1: Is there anything I missed in my preamble we need
- 9:48Speaker 1: to address?
- 9:49Speaker 3: I don't think I mentioned, did I mention Patreon?
- 9:51Speaker 1: You can support us on Patreon, leave us a rating review, like, subscribe,
- 9:53Speaker 1: tell a friend, any of that sort of thing.
- 9:56Speaker 4: Didn't do that. Now you did.
- 9:58Speaker 3: Okay. Well, those are things that can happen.
- 10:00Speaker 1: I'll talk more about those at the end of this
- 10:02Speaker 1: discussion anyway. So stick around until then to hear the
- 10:04Speaker 1: fun part where I try and sell you something. Actually,
- 10:06Speaker 1: I will preface this now. The very fun part is
- 10:08Speaker 1: at the end, we're going to recommend some things. It
- 10:11Speaker 1: might be related to our topic, but it might not be.
- 10:13Speaker 1: And that'll be fun either way. So you can check
- 10:15Speaker 1: that out. But let's go ahead and get into our
- 10:17Speaker 1: discussion today. We're picking up where we left off. There's
- 10:19Speaker 1: a few more things we'd like to outline as some
- 10:22Speaker 1: of the issues we see plaguing the diagnostic system for
- 10:27Speaker 1: mental health things, for psychology.
- 10:29Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that generally the idea of this system,
- 10:36Speaker 4: and this is a little shady, right? It's a little gray.
- 10:40Speaker 4: is this notion that we have a list of disorders
- 10:43Speaker 4: in the DSM, and when things get really specific, when
- 10:47Speaker 4: the mechanisms get very clear, and the treatments get very if-then-y,
- 10:52Speaker 4: when we reach that point, we tend to elevate disorders
- 10:55Speaker 4: into diseases, right? So... The purpose of the DSM to
- 11:00Speaker 4: some extent was for these disorders to become orderly enough.
- 11:04Speaker 4: We are playing this game of like laws versus thesis or,
- 11:07Speaker 4: you know, like theses can be really powerful. They can
- 11:10Speaker 4: do so like disorders. It's not to some things can
- 11:13Speaker 4: stay disorders and that's fine. But generally speaking, the purpose
- 11:17Speaker 4: of these things was to elevate them to a disease.
- 11:19Speaker 4: And the first thing that comes to mind is like,
- 11:21Speaker 4: are we comfortable calling them diseases? Right. Part of the
- 11:24Speaker 4: reason I'm providing all this like autoclidic, upfrontness is it
- 11:30Speaker 4: feels gross to call a lot of these things diseases
- 11:33Speaker 4: right mitch hedberg has a joke and it's like you
- 11:37Speaker 4: have alcoholism and that's a disease and he's like yeah
- 11:40Speaker 4: but it's the only disease you can get yelled at
- 11:42Speaker 4: for having and i think that speaks to kind of
- 11:47Speaker 4: the nature of the disconnect in calling things diseases and
- 11:52Speaker 4: i'll be okay with that disorder feels like a safe
- 11:54Speaker 4: space but There is an extent to which we would
- 11:58Speaker 4: like for these things to be orderly enough and hang
- 12:01Speaker 4: together enough and have signs and symptoms and effective treatment
- 12:05Speaker 4: packages enough that we say, if this, then that. And
- 12:08Speaker 4: we know the mechanisms of change well enough that we
- 12:11Speaker 4: elevate that thing to the level of a disease. And
- 12:15Speaker 4: that has never happened for a single thing inside of
- 12:17Speaker 4: the DSM. That is not a thing that has happened.
- 12:21Speaker 4: Because we don't understand the mechanisms well enough, and these
- 12:25Speaker 4: systems have the problems that we've discussed previously. Fair.
- 12:29Speaker 2: Yeah, or it's better explained through medical means, right? So
- 12:33Speaker 2: something that might show up, like when DSM has anything
- 12:37Speaker 2: that has to do with a neurological disorder... Like, ultimately,
- 12:40Speaker 2: that could be tied to some, like, medical event or
- 12:44Speaker 2: something that's a little bit more concrete than, like, let's
- 12:46Speaker 2: say major depressive disorder, which is a little bit more
- 12:48Speaker 2: nebulous and a little bit more complex, or PTSD, like
- 12:50Speaker 2: we mentioned in the last episode. Like, you know, if
- 12:52Speaker 2: somebody who has Parkinson's, like, there are neurological, there's a
- 12:56Speaker 2: neurodegenerative component to it. Like, at the very least, there's
- 13:00Speaker 2: something there that's a little bit different than what we
- 13:03Speaker 2: see in other parts of the DSM.
- 13:04Speaker 4: And I would, you know, Alzheimer's disease, right? Like it
- 13:08Speaker 4: has that manifestation and we slap that label to it.
- 13:11Speaker 4: Whereas many of these other things are either syndromes or
- 13:13Speaker 4: disorders and those don't have the same level of specificity
- 13:17Speaker 4: and precision. Right. As one of their features.
- 13:21Speaker 3: Ads in a podcast are a disease.
- 13:23Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 13:31Speaker 3: Okay, we're back.
- 13:31Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to ask you then, so what
- 13:33Speaker 1: we've been discussing just before the ad break was this
- 13:35Speaker 1: idea that like in diagnostic models, if it gets specific enough,
- 13:39Speaker 1: it's elevated to this place of disease. And in your mind,
- 13:44Speaker 1: do you think that would be like a reasonable objective?
- 13:47Speaker 1: Like it would be good if we did, in fact,
- 13:51Speaker 1: create a diagnostic system that could elevate psychological phenomenon that
- 13:55Speaker 1: were pathological and assuming that was a thing to like
- 13:59Speaker 1: disease status.
- 14:00Speaker 4: I mean, if something had that level of precision, then yeah,
- 14:04Speaker 4: it would be cool. But the reality of the situation
- 14:06Speaker 4: is that nothing yet has that level of precision. We
- 14:10Speaker 4: don't have that if then kind of relationship between the
- 14:14Speaker 4: signs and symptoms and the treatment path. And so if
- 14:18Speaker 4: something were that simple, I think so Alzheimer's might be
- 14:20Speaker 4: a good example. Like it is elevated to a disease
- 14:24Speaker 4: and it's because the mechanisms of change and things that
- 14:28Speaker 4: you can adjust and the things you can do about
- 14:30Speaker 4: it are very well known. If that were the case
- 14:33Speaker 4: inside of psychological research for other things like depression or
- 14:38Speaker 4: obsessive compulsive disorder, then we, I'd be cool, you know,
- 14:44Speaker 4: but it has to demonstrate that it is, it's doing
- 14:47Speaker 4: the thing that diseases do. And that it's well known
- 14:50Speaker 4: enough that we can officially call it that. And so
- 14:52Speaker 4: it's not my favorite thing to call these things diseases.
- 14:54Speaker 4: But if it makes sense, I mean, I'm not trying
- 14:57Speaker 4: to do a behavioral treatment for Alzheimer's, except that those
- 14:59Speaker 4: kind of work for the most part. Like environmental manipulation
- 15:03Speaker 4: is one of the more effective things you can do
- 15:05Speaker 4: inside of that system until we can kind of. manipulate
- 15:09Speaker 4: the mechanisms inside the brain and the myelin or whatever's
- 15:13Speaker 4: going on there. That's not my area. But one of
- 15:16Speaker 4: the things you can do in behavior analysis is manipulate
- 15:19Speaker 4: environmental factors to make the probability of psychological distress lower
- 15:24Speaker 4: and do things like when they eat, leave the plate
- 15:29Speaker 4: out with empty food and forks. So when they say,
- 15:31Speaker 4: I haven't eaten yet, there's something in the environment that
- 15:33Speaker 4: tells them that they have. You know, little things like
- 15:36Speaker 4: that are really effective interventions and they operate at the
- 15:39Speaker 4: level that we as behavior analysts are kind of used to.
- 15:43Speaker 4: But generally speaking, I don't have much to say about like,
- 15:46Speaker 4: you know, is there a drug that can, you know,
- 15:49Speaker 4: do what X, Y, Z that helps the brain stay
- 15:52Speaker 4: healthier longer, helps people remember things. But if that ends
- 15:56Speaker 4: up being the case, I'm happy to ride that train.
- 15:59Speaker 3: Do you think we'll get there?
- 16:00Speaker 4: I do not think we will get there with anything. No.
- 16:06Speaker 4: I think it's possible that we have new definitions and
- 16:09Speaker 4: we have a new way of going about things and
- 16:11Speaker 4: we have diagnostic labels that look very unfamiliar to us
- 16:17Speaker 4: as they are now. And there's a different process of
- 16:20Speaker 4: arriving at the conclusion that this is potentially a disease
- 16:24Speaker 4: or something like that. But the way of going about
- 16:26Speaker 4: that would have to change in my mind fundamentally.
- 16:29Speaker 1: Yeah, I also feel like I could see the fact
- 16:34Speaker 1: that we might not need to get there. If there
- 16:38Speaker 1: are approaches that we can take that don't require any
- 16:42Speaker 1: kind of label because they are maybe focused on the
- 16:47Speaker 1: variables and processes relevant to each individual person, then that
- 16:51Speaker 1: process of providing support as needed with respect to the
- 16:55Speaker 1: kinds of things that are needed for that person in
- 16:58Speaker 1: their situation then why would we continue to pursue the
- 17:03Speaker 1: classification portion of this if we already have something that works?
- 17:08Speaker 1: I could see it being the case that we never
- 17:12Speaker 1: even try and get to that level of precision in
- 17:14Speaker 1: diagnoses because we wouldn't need to. But that's sort of
- 17:19Speaker 1: tangentially related to something that I also see as a
- 17:22Speaker 1: fundamental foundational issue with the diagnostic system, which is that
- 17:28Speaker 1: it essentially says there is a scope of human behavior
- 17:33Speaker 1: that is normal. And outside of those things, it is
- 17:37Speaker 1: not normal. And therefore, it is pathological. And therefore... it
- 17:41Speaker 1: requires or could benefit from a diagnostic label. And I
- 17:46Speaker 1: would argue that there just is no such thing as normal,
- 17:49Speaker 1: such that we can compare one person against an archetype
- 17:52Speaker 1: of normal and then say they deviate from this, therefore
- 17:56Speaker 1: that's bad.
- 17:57Speaker 4: Yeah, I would tend to agree with that notion. And
- 18:00Speaker 4: I would say that demonstrating that is probably what I've
- 18:05Speaker 4: spent my career to date doing, looking at individual level
- 18:09Speaker 4: processes and trying to identify ways to take what we
- 18:13Speaker 4: see at the individual level and then bring it to
- 18:16Speaker 4: the level of the population. So I would tend to
- 18:20Speaker 4: agree with the notion that normal is a weird idea.
- 18:24Speaker 4: It's kind of a weird construct. And it doesn't often
- 18:29Speaker 4: fit as cleanly as we've given it credit to do.
- 18:35Speaker 4: So a lot of the ways in which you've been
- 18:37Speaker 4: measured psychologically in your life through education and psychology is
- 18:41Speaker 4: comparisons to normal. Some examples would be in education systems,
- 18:46Speaker 4: we often have percentiles. So you're in the X percentile
- 18:50Speaker 4: of XYZ math skills or whatever. And these things are
- 18:55Speaker 4: supposed to kind of spin us into action, right? I
- 18:58Speaker 4: don't know about y'all, but one of the, you know,
- 19:00Speaker 4: my friends and family don't tend to rely on my
- 19:03Speaker 4: expertise to for a lot of things, but when they have,
- 19:06Speaker 4: it's been, my kid is not meeting some developmental milestone
- 19:11Speaker 4: that they were supposed to hit. I'm a little worried.
- 19:13Speaker 4: I want you to like run a quick assessment or
- 19:15Speaker 4: refer me to somebody or do something that kind of
- 19:18Speaker 4: like is in your area of expertise. The thing that
- 19:21Speaker 4: flags for them is some kind of like developmental milestone
- 19:25Speaker 4: that's not being met, not enough words, not crawling in time,
- 19:29Speaker 4: not using the, you know, whatever those things are that
- 19:32Speaker 4: has tended towards, People calling me up and sort of
- 19:38Speaker 4: asking for my expertise. And in every one of those cases,
- 19:42Speaker 4: it has ended up being a nothing bird. Sort of
- 19:44Speaker 4: somewhat luckily, right? But person not crawling in time, not
- 19:48Speaker 4: a big deal. And so. that, again, is the kinds
- 19:53Speaker 4: of experiences I've had that lead me towards this way
- 19:56Speaker 4: of seeing things that these things are developmental processes that
- 20:00Speaker 4: occur at the level of the individual and they don't
- 20:02Speaker 4: occur at the level of the population as we've kind
- 20:06Speaker 4: of studied them to date for the most part. Yeah.
- 20:09Speaker 1: And I do think I pointed out in the last discussion,
- 20:12Speaker 1: I guess it's to be my own devil's advocate here,
- 20:14Speaker 1: pointing out that like, there are obviously psychological experiences that
- 20:20Speaker 1: people have that they identify as distressing. Like I'm having
- 20:26Speaker 1: a problem. I would like to, I would like to
- 20:28Speaker 1: not be having this problem anymore. And I think we
- 20:30Speaker 1: can readily identify some things that are like, wow, this
- 20:33Speaker 1: person's like actively harming themselves. actively harming other people, that
- 20:37Speaker 1: definitely seems like this is worth addressing in some capacity.
- 20:40Speaker 1: And so it's not to say that there is no
- 20:44Speaker 1: benefit to identifying where things are not working in someone's
- 20:48Speaker 1: best interest, or if they've self-identified that, or we see
- 20:52Speaker 1: that there is active harm coming to others and be like,
- 20:55Speaker 1: all right, there are behaviors that are happening here. We
- 20:57Speaker 1: really need to consider how we might intervene so that
- 21:00Speaker 1: we can reduce the amount of harm that's happening to
- 21:02Speaker 1: these other people. And That there's utility probably in identifying
- 21:07Speaker 1: those things when they happen. Whether or not that's best
- 21:10Speaker 1: done by giving it a pathological label, I think, is
- 21:14Speaker 1: up for debate. But identifying that there are situations that
- 21:18Speaker 1: we are going to experience distress. We might experience distress
- 21:22Speaker 1: so much so that we stop eating, stop sleeping, stop
- 21:26Speaker 1: taking care of ourselves. And that understanding that that level
- 21:29Speaker 1: of distress is something that we would like to address
- 21:33Speaker 1: for ourselves and have a more productive experience with it
- 21:37Speaker 1: is a valid position for people to take, that they
- 21:40Speaker 1: would like to have that relief. And again, whether or
- 21:43Speaker 1: not the system accomplishes it, I would argue, is hit
- 21:46Speaker 1: or miss. But the fact that there's sort of an okay,
- 21:53Speaker 1: in the middle of the bell curve, okay way to be,
- 21:56Speaker 1: and when you go out away from that, you're starting
- 21:58Speaker 1: to merge into like, this is now something that we
- 22:01Speaker 1: need to change about who you are because you're not
- 22:04Speaker 1: in the middle of that bell curve anymore. You're a
- 22:06Speaker 1: little too autistic for us, so let's go ahead and
- 22:09Speaker 1: get after that and make sure we get you to normal.
- 22:12Speaker 1: Or you're a little too whatever the problem might be.
- 22:15Speaker 1: We're going to pathologize the sort of normal range of
- 22:18Speaker 1: human experience. And I think going back to the milestones
- 22:21Speaker 1: is a really good one. It's like, oh, you didn't
- 22:23Speaker 1: pick up reading by first grade. You probably have dyslexia. No.
- 22:28Speaker 1: It might be that you have contacted insufficient reading instruction
- 22:31Speaker 1: up until this point, and that maybe all we need
- 22:33Speaker 1: to do is provide better reading instruction and then you'll
- 22:35Speaker 1: be fine. It also could be that you have like
- 22:38Speaker 1: a visual issue. So let's make sure we look and
- 22:40Speaker 1: see if your eyes are doing the things that we
- 22:42Speaker 1: would expect eyes to do. Other than that, like the
- 22:45Speaker 1: pathologizing of normal human experience, I think definitely gets under
- 22:49Speaker 1: my skin when I see people who are treating it
- 22:52Speaker 1: as if like Yeah, I've heard someone say they're like,
- 22:54Speaker 1: this person, I was questioning someone's self-diagnoses.
- 22:57Speaker 3: They applied to themselves.
- 22:59Speaker 1: And someone was pushing back at me saying like, well,
- 23:01Speaker 1: I think they would know if they think differently from
- 23:02Speaker 1: other people.
- 23:03Speaker 3: And I was like, they know how other people think?
- 23:05Speaker 1: Oh my God, we need to make them emperor of
- 23:07Speaker 1: the planet because nobody has ever done that before. So
- 23:11Speaker 1: you have to know how other people think to know
- 23:13Speaker 1: that you think differently from them. And if you know
- 23:14Speaker 1: how other people think, then you are millions of light
- 23:17Speaker 1: years ahead of where the rest of us are, us
- 23:19Speaker 1: mere mortals on this planet. So like, that's just not
- 23:22Speaker 1: a thing you can do because nobody thinks in a
- 23:24Speaker 1: particular way. Everyone's got their own sort of experience here.
- 23:28Speaker 1: There's no normal by which you could say that I
- 23:30Speaker 1: know that I'm different from everybody else. I'm like, no,
- 23:32Speaker 1: you don't, because everybody else is different from you and
- 23:35Speaker 1: from each other.
- 23:35Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it bears kind of tracing the history
- 23:39Speaker 4: of this a little bit. Way back in like the 1600s,
- 23:43Speaker 4: they were using one of the first applications of average
- 23:47Speaker 4: was somebody who was trying to position the stars. They
- 23:52Speaker 4: were doing like celestial measurements and they found that it
- 23:55Speaker 4: was actually really helpful to get multiple observers and then
- 23:59Speaker 4: average the results from multiple observers. It was a way
- 24:02Speaker 4: to like. lower in individual variation, right? It was actually
- 24:07Speaker 4: a pretty effective way of looking at stars. Not too
- 24:10Speaker 4: far after that, there was a guy named Sir Francis
- 24:13Speaker 4: Galton who took the idea of averaging people and he
- 24:17Speaker 4: applied it to human beings for the first time that
- 24:20Speaker 4: I'm aware of. And to some consequence, I would argue,
- 24:25Speaker 4: what he did is he would take soldiers and he
- 24:28Speaker 4: would measure the circumference of their chest, for example, or
- 24:32Speaker 4: their shoulder width. And then he would get an average
- 24:35Speaker 4: for those for like the average soldier. And then he
- 24:40Speaker 4: took this extra step. And this extra step is very important.
- 24:43Speaker 4: And this is embedded in a lot of the ways
- 24:45Speaker 4: that we see psychology today. He took the extra step
- 24:48Speaker 4: to say, average is the best, right? If you're in
- 24:51Speaker 4: the middle of the bell curve, you are the, you're the,
- 24:55Speaker 4: you're the best soldier we got.
- 24:57Speaker 2: And I can't believe you use bad words.
- 24:59Speaker 3: And consequently, we believe them.
- 25:02Speaker 4: And also, if you are too far from the average,
- 25:05Speaker 4: you are deviant. And this way of measuring people, one,
- 25:10Speaker 4: it's not concerned with the level of the individual. It's
- 25:12Speaker 4: concerned with the level of the population. And that has
- 25:16Speaker 4: huge implications for how we measure things psychologically. So one
- 25:20Speaker 4: of those is that when we concern ourselves with the
- 25:22Speaker 4: level of the population, it's really hard to get away
- 25:26Speaker 4: from the notion that we are trying to manipulate the
- 25:31Speaker 4: population level, right? So... If we were to take Galton's
- 25:37Speaker 4: logic to its conclusion, we would say all these people
- 25:40Speaker 4: who are deviants need to get out. They need to
- 25:43Speaker 4: be out of my and probably need to be subjected
- 25:45Speaker 4: to some kind of like terrible lifestyle or maybe even
- 25:49Speaker 4: like punishment. Right. Or or as has been logically the case,
- 25:54Speaker 4: not to be traumatic about this thing, but need to
- 25:56Speaker 4: be selected out of the population.
- 25:58Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 25:59Speaker 3: Or forced to listen to ads. All right, we're back.
- 26:08Speaker 1: Sorry, I very callously interrupted an actual wonderful point that
- 26:13Speaker 1: you were making.
- 26:13Speaker 3: I was on a roll, yeah. You were so on
- 26:16Speaker 3: a roll, and I interrupted it. I am the roll destroyer.
- 26:19Speaker 1: The conversation being that the idea that if there's an average,
- 26:22Speaker 1: that the average is the best and that deviating from
- 26:25Speaker 1: the average is not only mean that like the further
- 26:28Speaker 1: away from the average, you get the worse you are,
- 26:30Speaker 1: but that like eugenics comes into play.
- 26:32Speaker 3: Maybe we shouldn't have those people at all.
- 26:35Speaker 4: Right.
- 26:35Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 26:35Speaker 4: I think that is something that kind of logically follows.
- 26:39Speaker 4: And that is a very pervasive idea in a lot
- 26:44Speaker 4: of psychology. It's hidden. And it's sort of tucked away.
- 26:48Speaker 4: So one example that I would point to is early statisticians.
- 26:51Speaker 4: So like the guy who invented T-tests and ANOVAs and
- 26:56Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff. A lot of the major
- 26:59Speaker 4: statistical models that we use today in psychological research. Do
- 27:03Speaker 4: you know what they were professors of?
- 27:04Speaker 3: Math, I would guess.
- 27:07Speaker 4: Eugenics. They were professors of eugenics. They were in the
- 27:12Speaker 4: eugenics department.
- 27:13Speaker 1: Hmm.
- 27:14Speaker 4: Their job was to select humans out and select and
- 27:20Speaker 4: find ways to make humans better fits for the kinds
- 27:24Speaker 4: of society that we want to build. And you could
- 27:27Speaker 4: make the argument that a lot of American psychological and
- 27:30Speaker 4: statistical models from the early days were cited by the
- 27:33Speaker 4: Nazis as like, look, there's scientific evidence that we need
- 27:38Speaker 4: to push away from these people and we need to
- 27:41Speaker 4: select a better population. And I tend to think that
- 27:46Speaker 4: although that logic is obviously not as consequential, I think
- 27:51Speaker 4: it's clear that schools, they're not trying to make your
- 27:54Speaker 4: kid the best kid that your kid can be. It's
- 27:57Speaker 4: really easy to fall into a pattern of your kid
- 28:01Speaker 4: is not average, is not normal, and is going to
- 28:04Speaker 4: be selected out in some ways of our society in
- 28:08Speaker 4: the way that we know it. It's not our job
- 28:10Speaker 4: to make them something new or something different. It's our
- 28:13Speaker 4: job to identify what they are and make a decision
- 28:17Speaker 4: about where they belong. I think a lot of our
- 28:20Speaker 4: efforts inside of those domains do that. I think that's
- 28:24Speaker 4: true of psychological research as well. I think this notion
- 28:29Speaker 4: that there are people who are normal and there are
- 28:31Speaker 4: people who aren't is something that I reject. I don't
- 28:36Speaker 4: know that I'm it feels so ubiquitous as to be
- 28:41Speaker 4: anti-science to say that, right? It feels like average is
- 28:44Speaker 4: so much everywhere. And I would point to, yeah, it
- 28:49Speaker 4: wasn't before like 1800s when some guy said average is ideal.
- 28:56Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 28:56Speaker 4: You know, and that, that kind of logic is everywhere.
- 28:59Speaker 4: Like the average face is the most beautiful face, right?
- 29:02Speaker 4: We've all heard that.
- 29:03Speaker 3: Um, Yeah.
- 29:05Speaker 4: And most of the kinds of assessments that we use,
- 29:08Speaker 4: both in psychology and education, the whole purpose is to
- 29:11Speaker 4: see how you stack up to other people. Yeah. In
- 29:14Speaker 4: some way. And that is the thing that I question.
- 29:19Speaker 4: And I think, as we'll talk about, we maybe are
- 29:22Speaker 4: in a position to question more than we ever have.
- 29:26Speaker 1: It's wild, too, to me to think about this whole...
- 29:29Speaker 1: The whole idea of the average, because when they even
- 29:31Speaker 1: if you were to take and I know exactly the
- 29:33Speaker 1: thing you're referencing and when they did the thing where
- 29:35Speaker 1: they built the pilot cockpits to fit the average pilot.
- 29:40Speaker 1: and there is like, they took like 10 measurements of
- 29:43Speaker 1: them and took the averages to build it. And they're like,
- 29:45Speaker 1: all right, how many pilots do we have meet all
- 29:48Speaker 1: 10 of these average measurements that we've got for what
- 29:51Speaker 1: the average pilot is? And in all of the US
- 29:55Speaker 1: Air Force, the number of pilots that met all 10
- 29:58Speaker 1: averages was was zero. Matter of fact, the number of
- 30:02Speaker 1: pilots you could admit get to make even three of
- 30:04Speaker 1: those averages was like vanishingly small. It was like 10
- 30:08Speaker 1: or something. And so it's like the average doesn't exist.
- 30:11Speaker 1: It just, it just doesn't. And that's, that's assuming that we,
- 30:15Speaker 1: that there's any utility whatsoever. And even averaging those particular dimensions,
- 30:19Speaker 1: like maybe there are others that are, that you could
- 30:21Speaker 1: average as well. And like the more you choose to
- 30:22Speaker 1: include anyway, point being that like, there's just no such
- 30:25Speaker 1: thing as like, a way to be human that is
- 30:29Speaker 1: like the right way that we can identify as sort
- 30:32Speaker 1: of the archetype. And we measure everything against that archetype
- 30:35Speaker 1: as appealing as that might be to some people, which
- 30:38Speaker 1: is essentially the crux of the eugenics argument is the like,
- 30:41Speaker 1: there is an archetype. There's like a sort of perfect
- 30:43Speaker 1: ideal to get to. And the correct argument against that
- 30:47Speaker 1: is nope.
- 30:49Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there is no ideal pilot, right? And
- 30:52Speaker 4: when you design the cockpit around the average pilot, you've
- 30:55Speaker 4: been ensured that it fits nobody. And that's the reason
- 30:59Speaker 4: that our cars, even something as simple as our cars,
- 31:03Speaker 4: that don't have such high demands on our ability to
- 31:07Speaker 4: maintain a position and... hold ourselves grounded, right? And operate
- 31:12Speaker 4: and reach all the things that we need to reach.
- 31:14Speaker 4: We have all these levers and pushes and pulleys that
- 31:17Speaker 4: allow us to move the seat forward, to lean forward,
- 31:19Speaker 4: to move the steering wheel up. We have all these
- 31:22Speaker 4: ways to adjust. And that's something that we didn't know
- 31:25Speaker 4: at first. We were designing cockpits and planes around the
- 31:29Speaker 4: average pilot and finding that that led to disastrous results.
- 31:33Speaker 4: And now when you fly a jet, it takes like
- 31:36Speaker 4: three days to get your helmet fitted. right. Or like
- 31:39Speaker 4: two weeks, it's like some absurd amount, like just to
- 31:42Speaker 4: have a helmet that like won't move at all on
- 31:45Speaker 4: your head, that process takes like weeks.
- 31:48Speaker 1: Right.
- 31:48Speaker 4: So just something as simple as like, you know, how
- 31:52Speaker 4: do we get this helmet in a way that you
- 31:53Speaker 4: can see all the things that you need to interact with?
- 31:56Speaker 4: You can interact with all the systems and it won't
- 31:58Speaker 4: jostle when you're going Mach six, like that in and
- 32:03Speaker 4: of itself is a measurement process that takes a very
- 32:05Speaker 4: long time.
- 32:06Speaker 1: Can you imagine if like, let's say, I'm looking at
- 32:10Speaker 1: myself here and like looking at my glasses. I'm like,
- 32:12Speaker 1: can you imagine if like an ophthalmologist took all of
- 32:15Speaker 1: the prescriptions of everyone in the world and created average glasses?
- 32:18Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 32:19Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, if you're having trouble seeing,
- 32:21Speaker 1: just get our average glasses.
- 32:23Speaker 3: That will probably, that'll work for you. I'm like, first
- 32:25Speaker 3: of all. No one is going to be able to
- 32:27Speaker 3: use these.
- 32:28Speaker 4: Right.
- 32:28Speaker 1: And second of all, what an insane approach to a
- 32:31Speaker 1: take to like vision of like, oh, we're just going
- 32:35Speaker 1: to take this prescription that definitely doesn't fit you and
- 32:38Speaker 1: just recommend that across the board. Yeah.
- 32:40Speaker 4: And I think one thing that would be really fun
- 32:42Speaker 4: and interesting. It's like imagine, this is difficult to imagine,
- 32:46Speaker 4: but let's think of songs as processes for a second.
- 32:50Speaker 4: Now imagine just the average song from beginning to end.
- 32:53Speaker 4: It would probably just be one note. I don't really
- 32:55Speaker 4: know how this would work, but it would just be
- 32:57Speaker 4: some middle note.
- 32:59Speaker 2: Yeah and it would probably be like an e which
- 33:02Speaker 2: is like just like a nice nice clean you know
- 33:05Speaker 2: like it'd be terrible.
- 33:07Speaker 4: And so imagine like playing that for somebody and looking
- 33:09Speaker 4: at them expectantly like isn't this we average the top
- 33:14Speaker 4: 300 songs of all time and what we got is
- 33:17Speaker 4: just an e going on for three isn't it great
- 33:22Speaker 4: isn't this a great song.
- 33:23Speaker 3: Feels like we're headed that direction sometimes.
- 33:25Speaker 4: It does. That's how it feels to me often when
- 33:28Speaker 4: we're talking about population level problems as though they are
- 33:32Speaker 4: at the level of the individual. And this is not
- 33:36Speaker 4: just like us being implicit about these things or like
- 33:40Speaker 4: having a sense of them. It's not entirely anecdotal. There's
- 33:44Speaker 4: this thing, I don't know if you've gotten to this
- 33:45Speaker 4: point in this whole thing, but there's this thing called
- 33:48Speaker 4: the ergodic theorem. Not yet. And the ergodic theorem is,
- 33:51Speaker 4: was formulated in the 1930s by a bunch of physicists.
- 33:54Speaker 4: And basically what they were looking at was like, if
- 33:57Speaker 4: we release a gas into a known space and we
- 34:01Speaker 4: calculate some statistical model for when it will occupy that
- 34:04Speaker 4: space and how many molecules will be in a given section, blah, blah, blah,
- 34:08Speaker 4: Can we then do some subdivisions? So like what if
- 34:11Speaker 4: we do just the first quarter or we just look
- 34:14Speaker 4: at this cluster of molecules? And they ask the question, like,
- 34:17Speaker 4: does our broad statistical model predict these subsets? Right. I'm
- 34:23Speaker 4: probably bastardizing that a little bit. I'm not an expert
- 34:25Speaker 4: in statistics, but this is kind of a rough idea
- 34:27Speaker 4: as I understand it. And they found, no, you cannot.
- 34:31Speaker 4: And it's because, unless two things are met. One, each
- 34:36Speaker 4: of those molecules is identical. So to give you some
- 34:39Speaker 4: sense of how identical, say for a couple of the
- 34:43Speaker 4: noble gases, most molecules are not similar enough that they
- 34:46Speaker 4: are considered ergodic in the world of physics. And the
- 34:50Speaker 4: other is that they are unchanging. They are forever the
- 34:53Speaker 4: same entity. And so we can apply averages to individuals
- 34:58Speaker 4: when they are ergodic, right? When they are exactly the same.
- 35:03Speaker 4: And again, say for a couple of noble gases, not
- 35:06Speaker 4: many things are ergodic and then they are unchanging. And
- 35:10Speaker 4: then you can apply the logic, does what's true for
- 35:12Speaker 4: the population apply to the level of the individual? So
- 35:15Speaker 4: how many people do you know are unchanging and are
- 35:18Speaker 4: identical to their neighbors in their population. And not just
- 35:21Speaker 4: like I have a twin that wouldn't, there's no way
- 35:24Speaker 4: that's going to cut it.
- 35:25Speaker 3: Right.
- 35:26Speaker 4: People are not identical in any way, shape or form.
- 35:30Speaker 4: And they are also not frozen. We are dynamic processes. Right.
- 35:35Speaker 4: And so I tend to think as human behavior as
- 35:37Speaker 4: a dynamic process. And I, So when we say we
- 35:43Speaker 4: saw if we collected a bunch of people, we got
- 35:46Speaker 4: 500 people, and we tried to see is acceptance and
- 35:49Speaker 4: commitment therapy a good therapy for depression? We got 250
- 35:56Speaker 4: people over here. We gave them ACT. We got 250
- 35:59Speaker 4: people over here, and we gave them treatment as usual
- 36:02Speaker 4: or some kind of placebo therapy. We find that ACT
- 36:06Speaker 4: is statistically significantly better than treatment as usual. And so
- 36:11Speaker 4: we're confident saying that one of the best evidence-based treatments
- 36:14Speaker 4: for depression is ACT. You cannot then say, my aunt
- 36:19Speaker 4: has depression, therefore ACT would be an effective intervention for her.
- 36:22Speaker 4: That violates math. Your grandma is non-orgotic. And just the
- 36:30Speaker 4: way that you can't predict certain levels of individual process
- 36:34Speaker 4: when it comes to molecules, you cannot predict that your
- 36:37Speaker 4: grandma or your aunt will be responsive to ACT. That
- 36:39Speaker 4: is not how this works. And so it's pretty rare
- 36:44Speaker 4: that you have an argument inside of your science that
- 36:46Speaker 4: is just like pointing to math and saying like, no,
- 36:50Speaker 4: but this is that kind of thing. If you want
- 36:53Speaker 4: to select at the level of the population, cool. If
- 36:56Speaker 4: that's your area of interest, cool. I don't think that
- 36:59Speaker 4: that's what psychology is. I think psychology is operating at
- 37:03Speaker 4: the level of the individual to make changes within the
- 37:05Speaker 4: individual lifespan. And that's a different game. And if you
- 37:09Speaker 4: want to play that game, you got to play by
- 37:10Speaker 4: the rules. And the rules are humans are not.
- 37:13Speaker 1: I was gonna make a joke about like the people
- 37:16Speaker 1: in the white house being ergodic.
- 37:21Speaker 4: Similar processes. Okay.
- 37:24Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 37:26Speaker 4: Similar reinforcers. Yeah. They've also selected kind of a unique population, right? Like,
- 37:33Speaker 4: I mean, populations being treated as the same. It's just,
- 37:36Speaker 4: crazy on its face in my opinion yeah when we
- 37:40Speaker 4: do these studies and we say this population no matter
- 37:42Speaker 4: what kinds of controls we put in place people opt
- 37:44Speaker 4: out of your study people elect into your study for
- 37:48Speaker 4: certain features that they have and so like no that's
- 37:52Speaker 4: not your there's no way to just be like this
- 37:54Speaker 4: is a population and therefore we can treat every member
- 37:57Speaker 4: of that population that's the same that's not how it
- 37:59Speaker 4: works unfortunately.
- 38:01Speaker 3: Very good points i will say that ads are ergodic
- 38:12Speaker 3: All right, we're back.
- 38:13Speaker 1: I want to continue moving us forward because there's a
- 38:14Speaker 1: lot we still need to unpack here. And I think
- 38:16Speaker 1: one of the things I'd like to really get into
- 38:18Speaker 1: is because I think we've identified problems with the system
- 38:21Speaker 1: as a whole and like sort of at the foundational level.
- 38:24Speaker 1: But there's also like specific problems that the system of
- 38:28Speaker 1: diagnoses have introduced that It's worth getting into a little
- 38:33Speaker 1: bit as far as why the sort of central thesis
- 38:37Speaker 1: we're making here. And I've been careful to not billboard
- 38:41Speaker 1: this so heavily because I'm not even sure what I'm
- 38:43Speaker 1: going to call these two episodes yet that are coming out.
- 38:47Speaker 1: The thesis here, the debate set up is diagnoses do
- 38:51Speaker 1: more harm than good. And we're sort of taking the
- 38:53Speaker 1: like arguing for the notion, if you will. And there
- 38:56Speaker 1: are definitely people who would argue against. But given that,
- 38:59Speaker 1: what are the harms that we've seen come out of
- 39:01Speaker 1: the system? Just like the system itself riddled with all
- 39:04Speaker 1: kinds of problems at a foundational level, but also what
- 39:07Speaker 1: problems that we've seen emerge out of the process of
- 39:10Speaker 1: using this diagnostic model for psychological and mental health.
- 39:14Speaker 4: A tendency towards eugenic level selection, I say, is probably one.
- 39:18Speaker 4: Even inside of behavior analysis has generally done a good
- 39:22Speaker 4: job of shirking these tendencies. Behavior analysts tend to favor
- 39:28Speaker 4: single-subject designs. Our challenge is actually kind of unique in
- 39:31Speaker 4: that we've had trouble trickling up what we find at
- 39:34Speaker 4: the level of the individual to the level of the population. right?
- 39:38Speaker 4: Like we, I have a lot of posters and I
- 39:41Speaker 4: studies like this one time I worked with this one
- 39:42Speaker 4: guy and it was really hard and we had to
- 39:44Speaker 4: figure a bunch of shit out. You know, that's maybe,
- 39:47Speaker 4: maybe what my poster should be called is like the
- 39:49Speaker 4: one time I worked with this one guy and it
- 39:50Speaker 4: was really hard and we had to figure a bunch
- 39:51Speaker 4: of shit out.
- 39:52Speaker 3: That's a good title.
- 39:54Speaker 2: It's every study.
- 39:57Speaker 4: But like nobody gleans anything from this because the things
- 40:00Speaker 4: that they have to figure out are not the same
- 40:02Speaker 4: that other people have to figure out. And, you know,
- 40:05Speaker 4: as an example, one of my colleagues did a study
- 40:09Speaker 4: on precision teaching that applied to dancing. And boy, howdy,
- 40:12Speaker 4: is she asked a lot like, how do I teach
- 40:15Speaker 4: people how to dance? And her answer inevitably is like,
- 40:17Speaker 4: I don't know. Like, I don't know anything about teaching
- 40:21Speaker 4: people how to dance. I know how to teach the
- 40:22Speaker 4: people that I taught to dance, to dance. Right. And
- 40:25Speaker 4: that is a very different question. So I have a
- 40:27Speaker 4: process that keeps you earnest and keeps you in touch
- 40:29Speaker 4: with the data and keeps you responsive to the things
- 40:32Speaker 4: that are occurring at the level of the individual. But
- 40:34Speaker 4: I don't have like a step one, show them how,
- 40:37Speaker 4: how to put tamp dance and shoes on or like,
- 40:40Speaker 4: you know, like that's not how this works. And it's
- 40:42Speaker 4: kind of an interesting exercise. And that kind of question is,
- 40:46Speaker 4: we are not immune to inside of behavior science, especially
- 40:49Speaker 4: as we kind of fold into the medical model, right?
- 40:53Speaker 4: You see a lot of questions like, I have a
- 40:54Speaker 4: guy with Down syndrome that I need to teach how
- 40:56Speaker 4: to read. How do I do it? And you're like,
- 40:59Speaker 4: I don't know. Like, I don't have any clue. I
- 41:02Speaker 4: don't know this guy. What is he like? What is
- 41:04Speaker 4: he not like? What are the things that are showing
- 41:06Speaker 4: up in terms of his repertoire? How does, how are
- 41:08Speaker 4: his relational operant skills? Like there's about a million questions
- 41:12Speaker 4: that I need to get to before I can make
- 41:14Speaker 4: a recommendation for you. But I think, this general notion
- 41:17Speaker 4: of like, if I have some sort of diagnosis, some
- 41:19Speaker 4: sort of label, some sort of thing, there should be
- 41:21Speaker 4: a Y to that X. And I think that just
- 41:25Speaker 4: generally getting in the water that this is not how
- 41:28Speaker 4: that works might be a good first step.
- 41:31Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
- 41:32Speaker 1: And yeah, I think as you said, and we're getting to, again,
- 41:35Speaker 1: sort of the potential future direction that would be helpful
- 41:39Speaker 1: is looking at it as not the what is the
- 41:42Speaker 1: protocol that works for all people, but what is the
- 41:44Speaker 1: process by which you identify what somebody needs? And then therefore,
- 41:48Speaker 1: how do you sort of triage next steps to provide
- 41:51Speaker 1: support as needed? But continuing on with the problems that
- 41:55Speaker 1: we see here, talk to me about biological determinism here. Yeah.
- 41:59Speaker 4: So I tend to think that the DSM and this
- 42:03Speaker 4: way of looking at things lends itself really well to
- 42:06Speaker 4: biological determinism as evidenced by like, we generally kind of
- 42:11Speaker 4: like the idea that there's a medication that'll fix the syndrome, right? Like,
- 42:16Speaker 4: although I think if you walk that through to like,
- 42:19Speaker 4: what if I'm experiencing psychological distress because the environment super sucks,
- 42:24Speaker 4: that feels kind of dystopian for me, right? Being happy
- 42:27Speaker 4: in a, in a gnarly environment is not an ideal scenario, right?
- 42:34Speaker 4: Like I think maybe there are ways to find wellness
- 42:37Speaker 4: or to, We know one case example that I have
- 42:41Speaker 4: is I have a colleague who was approached by Amazon
- 42:46Speaker 4: to provide values orientation training to Amazon drivers. And so
- 42:52Speaker 4: could they provide mindfulness training to Amazon drivers to allow
- 42:58Speaker 4: them to better experience discomfort and ride out that discomfort
- 43:02Speaker 4: and be better, more effective delivery drivers? Potentially. Do we
- 43:08Speaker 4: want to do that? Maybe not, right? Do I want
- 43:13Speaker 4: to make sure that people are cool experiencing high levels
- 43:17Speaker 4: of distress for not a lot of pay? That doesn't
- 43:19Speaker 4: sound like the business I want to be in. And
- 43:22Speaker 4: so I think really quickly... When we take this like
- 43:26Speaker 4: biologically deterministic approach, we pigeonhole ourselves in a way that
- 43:32Speaker 4: we're not, we tend not to be aware of like
- 43:34Speaker 4: the context in which things are occurring. And so I've
- 43:37Speaker 4: been calling behavior analysis as interactively deterministic. So like I
- 43:41Speaker 4: don't escape determinism. I think everything we do and say
- 43:45Speaker 4: is determined to some extent. And the notion of free
- 43:48Speaker 4: will is kind of a goofy idea. It's not that
- 43:50Speaker 4: it exists or doesn't exist. It's just kind of a
- 43:52Speaker 4: weird construct. But I do so at the level of
- 43:57Speaker 4: interacting with the environment. It's not my biology determines my actions.
- 44:00Speaker 4: It's my biology meeting the current environment given this history
- 44:04Speaker 4: of reinforcement is what determines what I do, which is
- 44:07Speaker 4: a complex system of interaction. But I arrive at the
- 44:10Speaker 4: same conclusion. People deserve compassion. People deserve love and they
- 44:14Speaker 4: deserve effective treatments. And I just so happen to reach
- 44:18Speaker 4: the conclusion that you're doing what you're doing for a
- 44:22Speaker 4: good reason. with different units of analysis, but it's hard
- 44:26Speaker 4: to get there.
- 44:29Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For sure. That makes a lot of sense.
- 44:31Speaker 1: And then, you know, I think briefly the fact that like,
- 44:35Speaker 1: there's all kinds of side effects that come when, sorry,
- 44:37Speaker 1: when you get into things like when we're using drugs
- 44:40Speaker 1: as the approach, the side effects, the tolerance that builds,
- 44:43Speaker 1: the like lack of predictability that we get from some
- 44:46Speaker 1: of the effects of some of these drugs. The fact
- 44:48Speaker 1: that sometimes what happens is because of the effect, the
- 44:51Speaker 1: side effects of a drug, you then need more drugs
- 44:53Speaker 1: to deal with those side effects and then more drugs
- 44:55Speaker 1: to deal with the side effects of those drugs. And
- 44:57Speaker 1: so you end up just taking a glass full of
- 45:00Speaker 1: pills every day, where 80% of them are counteracting the
- 45:04Speaker 1: effects of the others. And so the dependence, the pharmaceutical
- 45:08Speaker 1: model here, the money that's spent on these things, and
- 45:11Speaker 1: the fact that we do all of that, and then
- 45:15Speaker 1: are we actually solving the issue? Or have we just
- 45:19Speaker 1: created some different issues?
- 45:21Speaker 4: Yeah, and I would tend to say, and some of
- 45:23Speaker 4: the books that I recommended last week will provide more
- 45:26Speaker 4: specificity as to this question, but I think the answer
- 45:29Speaker 4: is no. I'm not overwhelmingly impressed with those approaches to
- 45:33Speaker 4: psychological distress. One of the other issues that occurs with
- 45:37Speaker 4: this kind of medical model and if biological disorder than
- 45:41Speaker 4: biological solution is we tend to develop really quick tolerances
- 45:46Speaker 4: to psychotropics. So if you've ever worked with somebody who's
- 45:50Speaker 4: older and has been on psychotropic since they were younger,
- 45:53Speaker 4: they tend to be on some amount of lithium or
- 45:56Speaker 4: some psychotropic drug that would like kill an elephant. And
- 46:00Speaker 4: it's because very, very quickly we develop drug tolerances. I
- 46:04Speaker 4: think in that last episode you talked about what if
- 46:06Speaker 4: we just pump you full of serotonin? Well, if you
- 46:08Speaker 4: do that to people for long enough, their body stops
- 46:12Speaker 4: producing serotonin. Your body says like, oh, we got enough
- 46:15Speaker 4: of that. We don't need to make it anymore. And
- 46:17Speaker 4: then you kind of arrive at this problem of, well,
- 46:20Speaker 4: if you stop now, your body has forgotten how to
- 46:23Speaker 4: produce it, to put it really loosely. And that creates
- 46:26Speaker 4: a bunch of problems, but also if it experiences really
- 46:28Speaker 4: high levels of it for long enough, then your body's
- 46:31Speaker 4: going to respond to it differently and reach a new equilibrium.
- 46:35Speaker 4: And that presents a lot of nasty challenges for people
- 46:37Speaker 4: who are trying to solve psychological problems with biological solutions.
- 46:42Speaker 4: It's really hard. And you know, you know, Some of
- 46:45Speaker 4: the emperor's new drugs would talk about that as the
- 46:48Speaker 4: revolving door of psychological emergencies, right? So even when we
- 46:52Speaker 4: have things that are well managed in the short term,
- 46:54Speaker 4: eventually you hit a point where like that drug's not effective.
- 46:57Speaker 4: It's not doing what it should. We got to figure
- 46:59Speaker 4: out the new doses. We got to figure out. what's
- 47:02Speaker 4: going on. And also like your lifespan is shortened by
- 47:05Speaker 4: these substances as well. And having worked with a lot
- 47:08Speaker 4: of older adults who have been on a lifetime of
- 47:10Speaker 4: these drugs, I can tell you, and it's just kind
- 47:14Speaker 4: of known that one of the, one of the challenges
- 47:16Speaker 4: in getting people to take these drugs is that the
- 47:18Speaker 4: side effects are horrendous and they are not short term.
- 47:23Speaker 4: I mean, I have seen somebody eventually pass away due
- 47:27Speaker 4: to tardive dyskinesia. So they choked to death on their
- 47:30Speaker 4: own tongue. I have worked with a guy who the
- 47:34Speaker 4: byproduct of his psychotropic drug was eternal thirst, which is
- 47:40Speaker 4: like a Greek torture. I mean, this guy had to
- 47:45Speaker 4: be one-to-one supervision for no other reason than if he
- 47:48Speaker 4: was left alone with liquids, he would drink himself to
- 47:50Speaker 4: death and had to be line of sight as a
- 47:53Speaker 4: function of that. If you left him alone with a
- 47:55Speaker 4: toilet full of urine, he would drink it until he was...
- 47:59Speaker 4: that thirst was linked.
- 48:00Speaker 2: Until his stomach exploded.
- 48:01Speaker 4: Yeah. And that to me, you know, those are personal
- 48:05Speaker 4: experiences I've had. I'm not speaking to data and things
- 48:08Speaker 4: like that. But just in my experience, it's really challenging
- 48:13Speaker 4: to solve contextual problems and things that I look at
- 48:17Speaker 4: as the individual meeting their current environment by just focusing
- 48:21Speaker 4: on biological solutions. And I tend to think that the
- 48:24Speaker 4: DSM system and the way that we've housed psychological wellness
- 48:29Speaker 4: as protocols for syndromes has led us to this conclusion
- 48:32Speaker 4: that if this syndrome, then this protocol, often this substance,
- 48:37Speaker 4: and that will solve our problems. And I don't think
- 48:39Speaker 4: that it's been a very fruitful way forward, to say
- 48:43Speaker 4: the least.
- 48:44Speaker 1: That's a really good way to tie it all back
- 48:45Speaker 1: together is just coming back to the fact that it's like,
- 48:48Speaker 1: Someone might say, well, the drugs aren't the diagnostic system's fault.
- 48:51Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, but it kind of is because
- 48:54Speaker 1: that's how we got to the point where we decided
- 48:56Speaker 1: to use those drugs is because we had a diagnosis
- 48:58Speaker 1: and decided that there are these drugs that are used
- 49:00Speaker 1: for this diagnosis because we're treating this as if this
- 49:02Speaker 1: is the medical thing.
- 49:05Speaker 3: Like there's a thing to deviate.
- 49:07Speaker 1: And then, of course, there's always the issue that I
- 49:09Speaker 1: raised before of just like. are we just sedating people
- 49:12Speaker 1: or are we actually treating something that's actually helpful for them?
- 49:16Speaker 1: And I tend to think that a lot of the time,
- 49:20Speaker 1: and I don't know what percentage, but enough of the
- 49:22Speaker 1: time to raise concern, we're just sedating people. And then
- 49:25Speaker 1: that has us feel good about the outcome because they're
- 49:28Speaker 1: at least very chill and not.
- 49:30Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, there's enough studies on ADHD medications to
- 49:35Speaker 4: tell us that The kids don't learn more. They just
- 49:39Speaker 4: don't piss off their teacher as much. Right. The medication
- 49:42Speaker 4: is not for them. It's for their teacher and it's
- 49:44Speaker 4: for the system that supports them. And yeah, I think, yeah,
- 49:48Speaker 4: that I've, I've definitely seen a lot of like, this
- 49:52Speaker 4: person is good when sedated and it's easy to fall
- 49:54Speaker 4: into that pattern.
- 49:55Speaker 3: Um, when you're part of that system, here's an ad
- 49:59Speaker 3: for methylphenidate.
- 50:07Speaker 1: Okay, so we didn't realize as we were recording this
- 50:10Speaker 1: how long this conversation was going to go. So we're
- 50:14Speaker 1: interrupting here future Shane and Abraham, Shane-braham, if you will.
- 50:19Speaker 2: Shane-braham.
- 50:20Speaker 1: To segue this so that what we can do is
- 50:21Speaker 1: we can actually split this second discussion into two different
- 50:25Speaker 1: episodes because otherwise it's just very, very long. And so
- 50:28Speaker 1: what we're going to do is we're going to cut
- 50:30Speaker 1: this one off here and the next week we'll come
- 50:31Speaker 1: back for a part three to finish up our discussion
- 50:35Speaker 1: with Dr. Stula about diagnoses and considerations around diagnoses, caveats
- 50:41Speaker 1: therein and that sort of thing. As I said, we
- 50:44Speaker 1: didn't know when we were recording that, that at this
- 50:46Speaker 1: point in the discussion that we were going to go
- 50:49Speaker 1: another like full length discussion. We're going to do our
- 50:52Speaker 1: normal wrap up here.
- 50:53Speaker 2: Dr.
- 50:53Speaker 1: Stu Law did not know this when we were doing this,
- 50:55Speaker 1: although we did at the very end talk about that
- 50:57Speaker 1: being a possibility. And then what we're going to have
- 51:00Speaker 1: to do is then do a new introduction for the
- 51:02Speaker 1: second half where we're just going to have to cut
- 51:04Speaker 1: into where we interrupted this one. And just we want
- 51:06Speaker 1: to keep these manageable sort of in their length and whatnot.
- 51:09Speaker 1: We always try and keep everything around an hour or
- 51:11Speaker 1: a little less than an hour long. rather than go
- 51:13Speaker 1: very long. We've gone very long before in the past,
- 51:15Speaker 1: but I think the preference is that we keep these
- 51:17Speaker 1: around sort of an hour or less in their time.
- 51:21Speaker 1: And we went way past that. So this one should
- 51:24Speaker 1: be right around 50-ish minutes, I think. With that being said,
- 51:27Speaker 1: we'll go ahead and wrap this one up now. But
- 51:29Speaker 1: I want to do our sort of final ending things
- 51:31Speaker 1: we always do at the end of a discussion, including
- 51:34Speaker 1: some new recommendations, because we're here and it'd be sad
- 51:36Speaker 1: to just miss an opportunity to do that sort of thing. So,
- 51:40Speaker 1: if you'd like to support us, you can join us
- 51:41Speaker 1: on Patreon. Leave us a rating and a review. Like, subscribe,
- 51:44Speaker 1: and tell a friend. I mean, those are always things
- 51:46Speaker 1: that you can do. You know, as many stars as
- 51:48Speaker 1: you can leave. If you're feeling generous, leave a review.
- 51:50Speaker 1: All of that's very helpful. I would also like to
- 51:53Speaker 1: shout out our Patreon supporters. So, if you go over
- 51:55Speaker 1: to Patreon, which is a subscription membership service where you
- 51:58Speaker 1: get some extra stuff that's, like, just for people who
- 52:01Speaker 1: support us.
- 52:02Speaker 3: We get early episodes, ad-free episodes.
- 52:04Speaker 1: And at the end of our full-length discussions, I'm going
- 52:07Speaker 1: to read your name to say thank you to all
- 52:09Speaker 1: of those people. So a giant shout-out and thank you
- 52:11Speaker 1: to Mike M., Megan, Mike T., Justin, Kim, Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Kiara, Charlie,
- 52:16Speaker 1: and Michael for being wonderful Patreon supporters. If you, listener,
- 52:21Speaker 1: I did not say your name and you'd like to
- 52:23Speaker 1: be on that list, head over there. You can support
- 52:25Speaker 1: us and then you can be on that list. And
- 52:26Speaker 1: that's a way to do that sort of thing.
- 52:28Speaker 2: Yes, please do. We love the support.
- 52:31Speaker 3: We do love the support.
- 52:32Speaker 1: Thank you so much to my team of people running
- 52:34Speaker 1: and fact-checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for joining
- 52:36Speaker 1: me today, Shane.
- 52:37Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.
- 52:38Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and the person
- 52:41Speaker 1: who has stuck with the job of having to chop
- 52:43Speaker 1: these things up into multiple episodes and slice not one,
- 52:46Speaker 1: not two, but three people's vocals, messy vocals, all together
- 52:50Speaker 1: and try and make them sound like a podcast, and
- 52:52Speaker 1: he does so with aplomb, is Justin.
- 52:55Speaker 3: Thank you, Justin, for your wonderful work.
- 52:56Speaker 4: You're beautiful. Indeed.
- 52:59Speaker 1: If you'd like to tell us your thoughts on anything
- 53:00Speaker 1: we have said so far, you can reach us directly
- 53:02Speaker 1: by emailing us at info at www.podcast.com or reach us
- 53:08Speaker 1: on the social media platforms. Is there anything that you'd
- 53:11Speaker 1: like to add or that I forgot before we do
- 53:12Speaker 1: our recommendations?
- 53:14Speaker 4: No.
- 53:15Speaker 3: All right. Let's recommend some things.
- 53:17Speaker 4: All right.
- 53:27Speaker 2: So I am recommending an album from a group. I
- 53:30Speaker 2: say group. This is a solo artist. The album is
- 53:34Speaker 2: called High Remembrance, and it is from a band called
- 53:38Speaker 2: Unwed Sailor. Which, by the way, what a great name
- 53:41Speaker 2: for a band.
- 53:41Speaker 3: Yeah, solid.
- 53:43Speaker 2: So this band has been around for quite some time,
- 53:46Speaker 2: since 1998. Really, it's just kind of like... Good post-rock
- 53:51Speaker 2: instrumental types of stuff. It sounds like it's primarily written
- 53:56Speaker 2: with like bass forward types of riffs and stuff in mind,
- 54:00Speaker 2: but super interesting. And every album that he's put out
- 54:02Speaker 2: has been pretty unique, pretty different. And it's all him. Now,
- 54:05Speaker 2: he always brings in some musicians to come in and
- 54:07Speaker 2: help with, you know, some of the writing and some
- 54:09Speaker 2: of this stuff. But he's always been kind of the concept,
- 54:11Speaker 2: this guy named Jonathan Ford, you know, so he's been
- 54:14Speaker 2: in some other bands as well. But it's like if
- 54:16Speaker 2: you like shoegazy stuff, if you like quiet instrumental stuff,
- 54:18Speaker 2: good background stuff, some of it's louder, some of it's quieter.
- 54:22Speaker 2: High Remembrance is a little bit quieter. Little Wars, which
- 54:24Speaker 2: I think is a really great album from them, is
- 54:26Speaker 2: a little bit louder. Faithful Anchor is another one that's
- 54:29Speaker 2: really good, and that one is quieter, more in line
- 54:32Speaker 2: with this. But I don't know. Super interesting stuff. I
- 54:35Speaker 2: think if you like that type of thing, you'll enjoy it.
- 54:38Speaker 2: It's worth a listen.
- 54:39Speaker 4: Okay.
- 54:40Speaker 3: Unwed Sailor High Remembrance. Very nice.
- 54:44Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- 54:45Speaker 3: What's his name again?
- 54:46Speaker 2: His name is Jonathan Ford, but he plays most of his, this,
- 54:49Speaker 2: this stuff that he plays under Edward Taylor is like,
- 54:52Speaker 2: when you look up on what Taylor, it's going to
- 54:53Speaker 2: come up.
- 54:54Speaker 4: Okay.
- 54:54Speaker 3: So don't look for Jonathan Fjord.
- 54:56Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 54:56Speaker 2: Don't look for Jonathan Fjord.
- 55:00Speaker 1: All right, I'm recommending a TV show that just wrapped
- 55:04Speaker 1: its ninth season.
- 55:06Speaker 3: So Rick and Morty is a fun one. Again, not
- 55:09Speaker 3: for everybody.
- 55:10Speaker 1: They have gratuitous violence, a lot of existential crises, a
- 55:14Speaker 1: lot of disregard for human and animal life.
- 55:16Speaker 3: It is a cartoon.
- 55:18Speaker 1: And they do not necessarily care about ending episodes in
- 55:22Speaker 1: happy ways. They often will have episodes end in kind
- 55:26Speaker 1: of dour, sad ways. Leave you feeling like, well, that
- 55:30Speaker 1: was a bummer type of stories.
- 55:32Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
- 55:33Speaker 3: And I think they do it really, really well.
- 55:37Speaker 1: So Rick and Morty season nine just wrapped in July
- 55:40Speaker 1: of 2026.
- 55:41Speaker 3: I really enjoyed it.
- 55:43Speaker 1: It really, it continues to stay the Rick and Morty
- 55:46Speaker 1: course in a way that's I think very enjoyable. So
- 55:50Speaker 1: if you're into that sort of thing, go check out
- 55:51Speaker 1: Rick and Morty season nine. if you're already watching, like,
- 55:54Speaker 1: I think you're going to like it. If you're not,
- 55:56Speaker 1: if you haven't watched it before and this is your
- 55:57Speaker 1: first time, you'll be in for a bit of a shock.
- 56:00Speaker 3: I think for what.
- 56:01Speaker 1: This show is doing, they've set up a lot of
- 56:03Speaker 1: things in previous seasons that, um, that like you wouldn't
- 56:07Speaker 1: necessarily know going into it.
- 56:10Speaker 3: That makes sense.
- 56:10Speaker 1: Like for example, Rick has a portal gun that he
- 56:13Speaker 1: can create a portal to any place in any dimension
- 56:16Speaker 1: and any universe anywhere.
- 56:18Speaker 3: And that leads to a lot of hijinks.
- 56:22Speaker 1: And, um, there have been many episodes just about the
- 56:25Speaker 1: portal gun. So yeah, which is actually, there's another one
- 56:28Speaker 1: in this, in this season. So if you don't know
- 56:30Speaker 1: that going in, it might be like, what is even
- 56:32Speaker 1: happening in this? So they have a lot of like
- 56:33Speaker 1: alien species and different dimensions where it's like every possible
- 56:37Speaker 1: version that could possibly exist does exist. So in some dimensions,
- 56:41Speaker 1: Rick and Morty are actually bees and some of them,
- 56:43Speaker 1: they're slugs and some of them, they're cats and some
- 56:45Speaker 1: of them, they're clouds, like whatever, like, They exist in
- 56:49Speaker 1: every conceivable form. They're out there in one way or another.
- 56:53Speaker 1: So there's an infinite number of them. And so that
- 56:56Speaker 1: does have them sometimes treat their lives as being quite expendable.
- 57:00Speaker 4: Right.
- 57:00Speaker 3: So.
- 57:01Speaker 1: Warning going into it, this is kind of adult themed
- 57:03Speaker 1: language and violent depictions and use of drugs and sex.
- 57:07Speaker 3: It's like all there.
- 57:08Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 57:09Speaker 3: But great show nonetheless. Anyway, that's all. I'll leave it
- 57:11Speaker 3: at that. Rick and Morty season nine is really good.
- 57:14Speaker 3: So check that out.
- 57:15Speaker 1: And then also Unwed Sailor is the artist with High
- 57:17Speaker 1: Remembrance being the album.
- 57:20Speaker 3: And those are recommendations. Is there a, we get to
- 57:22Speaker 3: wrap it up there?
- 57:23Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, that feels good.
- 57:24Speaker 4: Perfect. All right.
- 57:25Speaker 3: So we will come back with a part three.
- 57:26Speaker 1: As I said, we're going to jump right in the
- 57:27Speaker 1: middle of that conversation because we did not segue in
- 57:30Speaker 1: any way to us having a transition. So it'll be
- 57:32Speaker 1: a little abrupt. We apologize for that. Um, but I
- 57:35Speaker 1: think it was worth it to have these sort of
- 57:36Speaker 1: stand on their own in that way. So I'll come
- 57:39Speaker 1: back next week for that wrap up.
- 57:41Speaker 3: Yes. This is Abraham. This is Shane. We're out.
- 57:44Speaker 4: Bye y'all. You've been listening to Why We Do What
- 57:47Speaker 4: We Do. You can learn more about this and other
- 57:49Speaker 4: episodes by going to www.wwdpodcast.com.
- 57:54Speaker 3: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.