Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / Ophira Eisenberg’s Late-Night Panic Google

Transcript

Ophira Eisenberg’s Late-Night Panic Google · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: This is parent Data. I'm Emily ost.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Hey, Emily, it's me o Fira Eisenberg. Okay, I know
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: most people ask you about babies, but I have an
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: eight year old and I really could use your help
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: and insight with something.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: So could you call me back that would be amazing.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Hi, ho Fira. How are you good, Emily?
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: How are you doing.
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: I'm super excited to see you. I would love you
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: to tell people who you are.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Before we start talking about our children. Sure. I do
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: stand up.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I do storytelling, often with something called the Moth if
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: you're familiar with that. And I'm a podcaster. I host
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: a podcast called Parenting is a Joke because I'm a
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: parent and a stand up and I talk to primarily
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: other funny people about what it is like to mix
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: these things that do not mix.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: Well, funniness and parenting.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: A job or paring and having a dream. Oh okay, okay, yeah,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: all right, not giving up your dreams.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: It's hard, oh dear, it is hard. What is your
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: child situation?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: How many children do you have?
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: I have?
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have one kid that is he's eight years old,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: and I live in Brooklyn and we live in a
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: little tiny apartment where we get really close with each other.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Small spaces, you get closer.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: Your is your eight year old boy very messy?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: He's very messy. I mean we try, We try because
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I'm very clean. My husband is not like I. I have
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: looked at a folded towels or a linen closet and
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: thought that is so attractive, Like that's it makes me
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: feel whole when I see things.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: My husband's like that.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: It's like we have a conflict about the dishwasher where
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: I'm just sort of like, you just throw it in,
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: you know, like why we buy this expensive dishwasher if
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: we were gonna like stack it so carefully. But he
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: like washes all the dishes with soap and then stacks
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: them in lovingly.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: What's that? Yeah? You might like him?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, I like that, but I believe the dishwasher is
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: a machine that you just put the stuff in and
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: then press the button.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: It works for me, you know, yeah, exactly working for me.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: I don't want to work for the dishwasher.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous. It's totally insane.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Okay, my my nine year old I asked about the
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: messiness because my nine year old boys room is like
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: a real situation it's like marker on everything, stickers off
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: the walls, stickers on everythingers on everything.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got stickers on everything.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: I had to make and also I had to make
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: a rule about what you can put slime on. You know,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: they get these little tins of all kinds of gaslines.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I do know about the tins and you Yeah, there's
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: a Google I've done a few times.
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: You know, here's something, an interesting fact that you might
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: want to know if you put slime in an American
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: girl dolls hair. First of all, when you take it out,
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: the hair stays in the slime. But then it does
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: make a very interesting crackling noise that's different from normal slime.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: That's something you can't learn about on Google.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: That's I mean, I would sell the two together if
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I was any kind of marketing genius. They like here,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: you want to up your experience on both sides. But
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: you could just sell the.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: Head if you're like a tin of slime and just
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: an American girls all head, you know, for for use
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: with the slime.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Emily, there's nothing creepier than a doll's head, I've learned,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: But that's not.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: True with slime. It adds it adds on. Okay, so
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: tell me what is your late night panic Google?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, other than does anything matter at all?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: You know, that's where I start. But then I get
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: more specific.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, So elementary school kid, My kid goes to public school.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: He's in the middle of public school, elementary school. Sometimes
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: he's a smart kid. I wonder sometimes if what options
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I have out there for him? And then even if
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I start thinking about that, oh, can we go to
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: a better school here?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Should we move there and go to better school? Is
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: it a private school?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Then I just come back to does it mess up
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: my child who has already been disrupted in his young
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: little life because of the pandemic to switch schools during
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: elementary school?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: M Okay, I have two answers for you. Great.
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: So, first of all, a lot of the stuff about
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: school quality is and you're still like, this is a
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: better school than this school is all about test scores, right,
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: So you're like, at this school, school that is better
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: test wak. So it turns out that actually the way
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: that you can predict school test scores how rich the
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: people are whose kids go to the school.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: That's basically it, I.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: Mean, very unfortunate comment about America but like that's it.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: So the value added the thing you'd care about, which
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: is like if I put my kid in this school,
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: with this school be better for them then some other school,
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: you're basically learning nothing because your kid is exactly who
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: your kid is at all the different schools.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: So it's just like which how rich do I want
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to pick? And you know, a lot of reasons why
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: you might want to.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Pick more different, Like there's a lot of things that
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: would push against that. But I think this matters like
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: way less than people, way less than people think on average. Now,
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: of course, like it could be like your kid is
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: you know, some school is a good fit for your
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: kid because it like has more art or like I
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: don't know, more dirt or fold whatever is like your
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: kid is into. But that would be very much about
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: like matching your kid to some aspect of the school,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: as opposed to saying like there's some better some better
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: school or worse school.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is it's so interesting to hear this
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: from you, because this is so against the kind of
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: conversations that are around me, especially in this neighborhood and
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: with the parents around everyone's always feeling like if only
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: we had a more you know, fill in the blank environment,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: our kids would drive.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: And I guess be more successful, which.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: As I'm saying it is when you say it and
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: you're like, is that what we're trying to? I mean,
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: this all gets to like, is that what you're like,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: is that your goal in life is just to make
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: the kid with the like are you trying to produce
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: Jeff Bezos? No, like you want like a guy who's
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: just like investing in rockets? Is that?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Where is that where you want to go?
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, uh, I can't speak for Jeff's parents, so
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I don't want to.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want to make them feel. No, that's totally
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that's true.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: But I think we do get into this kind of
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: like we're like, there's a thing that we're trying to produce,
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: and that is do you success or academic success.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Or something that's very specific.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: But when you step and then when you say that,
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: that's actually not what you really want for your kid, right.
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: You want your kid to be like happy and productive
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: and have a good adulthood, which is actually very in
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: some ways quite different from just being the person with
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: the best math test scores.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, so then what if it came down to a
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: different problem that happens within public schools. And I'm not
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: saying that I can solve this problem with moving my child.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: We've just decided that moving it doesn't really create any value.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Add potentially that kid is that kid wherever. But what
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: about class size?
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: So class size is one of the things that does
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: core does show up as causally related to two test scores.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: Part of the reason that income matters is because class
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: size matters. Right, So if you sort of ask like, like,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: what are you buying with a small or more expensive
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: school or a more expensive school district, it's often things
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: about class size. I mean, those effects are not enormously large,
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: but it's one of the few things that kind of
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: does does show up there.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: But again, it's kind of predicted by income.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, so all of it's economics.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: It's all economics. That's what that's the most of how
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that's how it works.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, But then your second question is would it disrupt
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: your kid to move them, like if you had to
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: if you like had to move for some other reason.
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: Your kids are pretty resilient, like our general I think
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: that we they're just they're quite they're quite resilient.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Your kid's not resilient. What do you mean your kids
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: not resilient?
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: No, I can't speak for my kid, but I constantly
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: think about how we say this little kids are so resilient,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: And then I think about the fact that I spend
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of time in therapy talking about my childhood.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So how does that all add up?
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: So so there are things that kids really benefit, like
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: the kids really need, which are like like a stable
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: set of people who love them in their lives, who
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: are gonna like scaffold them and enough to eat and
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: a roof over their head, and those things often that
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: first piece of kind of stable adults that the failure
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: of that can often be problematic. Right, But like I
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: moved to a different place with the same stable set
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: of adults. You haven't taken away the You haven't taken
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: away the most important thing.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: So so then you can move move where every want.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: And what about what about all these stories of kids
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: that are like well and the way I am because
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: we moved to blah blah blah school at say things.
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: I mean like people always want to. I mean I
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: don't want to be like dismissive. I think there are
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: people who are like for whom those experiences were tough,
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: but people could also you're you're the other side is like,
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: I can't. My family did move me. I had to
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: be in seventh grade and with the same people. You know,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: I went to the same school my whole life. And
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: I can tell you a story like I.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Wish I had moved, should have right those people?
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: I feel I was so jealous of the girl who moved,
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: like middle school is a disaster and I.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Should have moved, you know, Yes, So.
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: I mean we're just we get sort of caught up
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: in kind of anecdote and anecdata.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: ANEC data data.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: That's I don't know if you coin that, but that's a.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: It's a good word though, right, I could take I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: made that up.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Actually scratch that tomorrow, edit that out. I made it up,
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: don't put in and I didn't make it up.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: So what you're saying is like this, you know in
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: editing they call someone that. They call it like you know,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: someone who's messing with frames and and I'm if I
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: would say that like me messing with the frames.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, like you're messing with frames. Maybe just think
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: about it less like you're doing this like you're doing
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: a great job.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: Think about it less, okay, And then you know, often
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: people with older kids, teenagers, kids about to launch into college,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: will say to me kind of similar to you, but
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: they take it a step but further. They go, oh yeah,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: the schooling. Oh god, you know you're trying to do this.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: You're trying to figure out this. You're trying to figure
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: out that you at the end of the day, Ohfira,
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: as a parent, you factor in so little to this
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: child's development.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: You factor in you're a smidgeon of what it is.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think that the data supports that either.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: I mean, we know that stable parenting, that parents can
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: be like a very important component of resilience to things
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: that happen in the outside world. What I think is
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: true is that you have very little ability to shape
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: what your kid does.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So if your goal is to like make a.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Kid who is like going to the Olympics in base
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: I guess in hunt baseball and I'm not a great
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: at sports. If your getting the goal is to make
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: a kid who's going to the Olympics in rowing, like
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: you probably can't do that no matter how much you try,
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Because there's a lot of other things that go on there,
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: and maybe they won't like growing.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And whatever it is.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: But if your goal is to create a person with like,
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of a good foundation of like resilience
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: and mental health, who can go out and figure out
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: the things that they like, that's something you can do.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: I think we are very focused on the idea that
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: we can we can determine the activity that our kid
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: is doing, and that's somehow a kind of influence as
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: opposed to like determining the sort of kind of person
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: or the way that they interact with the world, which
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: I think we can okay for.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: So, okay, the data is always in my favor, it's
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: always favor.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: It's just do less, exactly. Data is in your favor.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Data is in your favor. An data do less, We like,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: there's so many good lessons exactly, don't get it. Folded
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: towel closet of podcasts. I agree. I would listen to that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: We'd just be like an ASMR podcast where you just like,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: somebody just folded towels in.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: A way laundry. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Oh what's that.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: That's the sound of the dishwasher, Oh that's the slime
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: with the American girl, they'll hair in it.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's new all right.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you. It was a delight to see you. I'd
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: like to see you too, Thanks Emily