You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 77- Peter Boghossian
00:00 SPEAKER_00 What do people mean when they say diversity? What do people mean when they say equity? What do people mean when they say inclusion? Oh, I see this in my kids' school material all the time. Like, oh. But do you really know what they mean? Do you know how they use the words? Once you figure out what the words mean, because often you hear things from the school, you traffic in one sense of the word, but they're trafficking in a totally different sense. They mean something totally different than what you think they mean. And I know that some people are going to be listening to this and roll their eyes. I'm telling you, this is your first order of business before you do anything else. What do people mean when they say X?

00:34 SPEAKER_01 You must be some kind of therapist. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing the esteemed Peter Boghossian. He has… Many hats, many titles. You might know him through one of many avenues. The way I know of Peter's work is originally through his book, How to Have Impossible Conversations. Peter is a founding faculty member of the University of Austin and the executive director of the National Progress Alliance. One of Peter's many projects is something he calls street epistemology. And I'd like to start there. So for people who aren't familiar, what is street epistemology?

01:14 SPEAKER_00 Street epistemology, I coined that in my 2013 book. Street epistemology is a way to have civil conversations. I actually had an app that I did years ago as well with the emphasis being on civil conversations to help people calibrate the strength of their beliefs to the evidence and the reasons they hold. It's also a way to help people speak across divides. So I've been using that more in that capacity recently to help facilitate conversations among people who disagree, particularly if the gulf is strong, the gulf is very wide. The Socratic method is the skeleton. It's been added to, fleshed out, if you will, with the best available evidence from multiple arenas, multiple domains of thought, like hostess negotiations, cult exiting, et cetera. And it teaches people It teaches facilitators, anybody can do it. And the techniques are widely available and the curricular is free. So it's free for anyone.

02:16 SPEAKER_01 What were some of the experiences you had earlier in your career that highlighted to you the need for these types of tools and discourses?

02:22 SPEAKER_00 Oh, I taught in the prisons. I did my dissertation in the prisons, and my dissertation focused on increasing the moral reasoning and the cognitive wherewithal, if you will, in the broadest sense to help people, prison inmates, make better decisions morally and then desist from crime. And I learned some incredible lessons. But formative is just basically reading applied epistemology. Epistemology is what you know, how you think you know. philosophy, and in general, but the Socratic method, and I'm a big fan of Plato, and then how that's manifested through the history of Western intellectual thought. So, I think the prison was the formative, and then the religion came after that, and then the general how to have impossible conversations, which was just taking those ideas and broadening them, and now the work has moved into another arena.

03:17 SPEAKER_01 When you talk about the Socratic method, my personal introduction to that was in grad school. I had a teacher that taught that way, where he would present us with a case and get us thinking about what might have been going on there. It was a really helpful way to get my own gears turning. But for those who have never heard of the Socratic method, how would you describe that?

03:35 SPEAKER_00 It's a method that, so Plato was the author, so we read Plato's text, and Socrates was a character in those texts, and there's some dispute, contention, whether or not Socrates was an actual historical figure, but for the purpose of this conversation, that's irrelevant, just an interesting side note. So, it has five This guy Dye, D-Y-E, came up with this and I really like this. It has five stages. The first stage is wonder. Someone wonders about something. You know, what is it to be just? What is justice? What is a man? Can people knowingly do bad things? Whatever it is. Do we have a soul? So you're wondering, you're just kind of thinking. And then someone, the next stage is, stage two is hypothesis. You hypothesize, you know, justice is this. Should we obey the laws? Well, you know, we should not obey the laws because boom. And then the third stage is the key, the core of the Socratic method. People have written entire dissertations and books about it. Nicholas Smith, from here in Oregon, was the former head of the APA, has some wonderful work on this. I say this as a point of contact in case anybody wants to look into it. And another guy, Gregory Vlastos, has some incredible stuff on this, the Olyncus. So the Olyncus is basically a way of asking questions to see if the hypothesis can withstand those questions. Think about it like this, do you remember that old show Law and Order? Have you ever watched that? Do you remember when- When I was little. Yeah, okay. So I'm a little older than you, I watched that, and maybe a lot older than you, so I used to watch that. I think everybody at the time watched that. It's just a really interesting show. Basically, something would happen, like a murder would happen. It would, they'd jump from the police to the detectives and the detectives would like, Oh, what happened? They try to piece together what happened. And they like, aha, it's this guy. We know, you know, it's like the game clue, this guy with the candlestick and this one. Okay. So we know that this is what happened. And this is a way to think about the link is. So then they bring it to the Lieutenant. Right. And I can't remember the name of the actor, but he's a great guy. I just saw him in, um, counterpart, which is excellent. If you like science fiction, it's one of the most underrated science fiction shows ever. Anyway, so they bring it to this lieutenant, and the lieutenant just tries to shoot it down. He's like, well, what about this? Well, what about this? Well, you didn't find this. You didn't find this. And if they have good enough answers, then it goes to the district attorneys. But often, they're like, oh, wow, you know, those answers aren't good enough, or maybe we need to find more evidence, or We didn't think about that or holy moly. So, OK, so wonder, hypothesis, you know, wonder who killed this guy? You know, here's Mr. Jones in Central Park shot. Who did this in a city with, you know, what, 10 million people or whatever it is? Nine million now, I think they left after COVID. So, OK, so we hear of the body. These are the facts. whatever evidence they look at his bank account, he owed somebody money, whatever it is, he owed somebody. We think it's Mrs. Doyle. So we investigate Mrs. Doyle. Where was she? She was here. Okay, so now we're piecing together this whole thing. We're seeing if the hypothesis can be substantiated by the evidence. Over time, you do that, you investigate, you investigate, you investigate. There are two ways to think about this. The first is, can a reasonable person conclude that Mrs. Doyle killed whatever the guy's name I said was? The other one is, would every reasonable person conclude that Mrs. Doyle was the murderer? That's this guy, Walter Kaufman, has this idea as like, would every reasonable person come to this conclusion? Okay. So then you have two options for the fourth stage. you can either accept or reject the hypothesis. So, going back to lieutenant, the detectives come in. If he accepts the hypothesis, then it goes to the jury or it goes to the district attorney. If he rejects it, he says, no, no, no, this is just, this is not, this is, this, this is not the case. Find more evidence or get, get, the jury's going to say this and the case is going to be thrown out and the murderer won't answer. Okay, so those are the four stages, but there's an additional stage that people don't talk about that I think it's really important that, and Di writes about this, and I think it's a, other people have written about this too, I think it's really important to put into these conversations, and that is, act accordingly. So, if you, if it turns out that the hypothesis is correct, that, oh, it was Mrs. Doyle who killed, you know, Fred or whatever I said, then you act accordingly, like, oh, well, then he goes to prison or he gets a trial or whatever it is, or like in your belief. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is I've been wondering about to what degree are we responsible for our own safety? I personally have been thinking about that question on a scale from zero to 100. And if I say that, you know, we're responsible, and I interrogate those on my own thoughts about that, then certain things are entailed by that. Certain actions are entailed as a consequence of me accepting or rejecting that hypothesis, particularly if I accept that hypothesis. And so, you can do this with literally anything, but that's the basis of the Socratic method. So, in summary, wonder. hypothesis, a linkus, reject or accept the hypothesis, and the fifth law, which I'm going to add anyway, it's not really part of the Socratic method, but it's kind of implied, is act accordingly.

09:21 SPEAKER_01 My mom was really going to appreciate the law and order reference when I said I watched it when I was little. It was all because of her. And, and I meant to tell you before we started recording, but I'll go ahead and say it in the middle that my mom's a big fan of your work. She discovered it through your recent interview with me. So she wanted to give a shout out. Okay. So the, so the acting and accordingly part. Yeah. So I mean, and this is this is where it becomes really practical and necessary in this day and age, because what you're doing with the incorporation of the Socratic method and other tools into street epistemology is going out and having conversations about subjects that are really emotionally laden for people, subjects where it might become difficult to think clearly and make rational, evidence based decisions because of the significance that things hold for people. And oftentimes Of course, I'm viewing through a psychological lens. People are not always conscious of how their thoughts, feelings and actions are all blending together in an irrational way, right? There's just this gut feeling that might have to do with that kind of survival level fear of losing your belonging to the tribe, for instance. So, as you put yourself out there, this is where I think your work gets really exciting and interesting, is that you actually put yourself in public places and practice street epistemology with people about dearly held beliefs. Can you tell us some of those recent stories of what you've been up to with this?

10:43 SPEAKER_00 Yeah. Just a quick caveat. They don't have to be closely held beliefs. They can be as bizarre as this is going to say. I'm always mystified that the most popular thing people want to talk about is aliens. No matter where we go, I go to this read everywhere in the world, that issue seems to always come up no matter where we are, Australia, Puerto Rico, London, Florida, I mean all around the world. So basically we have a little Sometimes it's a piece of paper, sometimes it's like a tiny whiteboard, and we write some questions on the board, or some claims, excuse me. We say, you can talk about these claims, or you can talk about anything else. And I'll say, okay, let's talk about, you can pick the topic, what would you like to talk about, with an eye toward what do you have either a strong opinion about, you feel society's wrong about, you feel uncomfortable talking about, what would you like to talk about as an opportunity? And it could be literally anything. And so, more often than not, those are like racial issues, gender issues, trans issues are really big. They're huge, actually. And people are very animated when they talk about trans issues, but they could be anything. I mean, we talk about aliens. We've talked about healthcare. When I was in Romania and Hungary, we talked about war in Ukraine. I mean, you could talk about any… The United States is a force for good. I'd rather be ruled by the US than Russia, which is interesting to see that people would actually want to be ruled by Russia. Oh, you know, some of them are sexual, some of them are psychological. So you could basically talk about anything. And then we put people on lines, strongly disagree, disagree, slightly disagree, neutral. And then I'll say the rules of the game are very simple. And again, if you're a teacher and you're listening to this, I would urge you to do this. This is free. Literally anybody can do this. It costs nothing. You don't even need to buy tape. You can use chalk. You can use a lesson plan for the day. And then I'll read the claim and they'll walk to a line that aligns with their beliefs. And the only rule of the game is, some people like to call it a game, you can call it exercise, that's fine too. The only rule is you can move any time you want or not at all, but you have to commit to a single line. So you can't say, well, I've changed my mind a little bit. You have to move to a full line. There's one more rule of the game, and that is when everybody starts on the neutral and then walks to a line, they can only, and this is actually a really important rule of the game, I usually say the claim twice and let people think about it or just give them a couple of seconds or tell them beforehand, try to think beforehand what line you want to walk to. And I always count, and I've seen people do this, they count down from three, and this is going to seem so trivial, but you should give people's countdown from five. Those two extra seconds, sometimes people will make up their mind in those two seconds. Everybody has to move together because you don't want the person in front influencing the people in the back. So five, four, three, two, one, move, and then they move. And then if they all move together, you're fine, but you don't want, you don't want, you want people to make up their own minds as opposed to being externally influenced. And it sounds silly, but it's actually a thing.

13:50 SPEAKER_01 So you start off by having these strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree. I think that's called the Likert scale. And then you have this exercise where you give people time, then all at once they position themselves. And then you go through this series of asking questions. So that would be the sort of the third stage with Socrates, right?

14:11 SPEAKER_00 Testing the hypothesis. Correct. Absolutely.

14:15 SPEAKER_01 And you talk about sort of asking calibrated questions. Can you explain that concept?

14:20 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, calibrated crescents comes from hostage negotiations. So there are certain types of questions that you want to ask people. There are multiple types of questions that you need to ask depending on the context. But again, you don't need to know any of this to do the exercise. You can either ask questions like, you know, did you something? Did you will lead to a yes or a no? How did you feel about that? That doesn't lead to a yes or a no. So, a calibrated question is hostage negotiators use these kind of, you know, what did you think about the lunch we just gave you if you're in hostage? Chris Voss writes about this in his excellent book. And so, sometimes I'll ask yes-no questions, sometimes I'll ask open questions, but it also depends on what my purpose is. And again, increasingly it's moved, it's still kind of, I'm still trying to figure out if the reasons people give justify their confidence in a belief. But when more people are on the line, I'm increasingly trying to facilitate a mutual understanding. The philosopher Jürgen Haramas talks about the importance of what he calls his seminal work, Communicative Action. He has this wonderful, huge tome, it took me forever to read when I was in grad school, The Theory of Communicative Action. you want to help people, you want to not move people, they're moving themselves, but you want to facilitate a kind of dialogue in which people understand why the other person believes something and not necessarily agrees with it.

15:52 SPEAKER_01 Well, what do you think about preference falsification? Do you encounter that a lot? Because some of the beliefs that people claim to have the most strongly, they claim them for political or social reasons,

16:03 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, preference falsification is a big thing, and preference falsification is basically the idea that people will say something because they think, I want to hear something, although that's much less the case than they want other people on the line to think, or they're on film, and they want their friends who are going to see this if they think someone sees this. They want, I want to be the person who believes this, so I'm not going to say what I actually believe. I'm going to say what I think people want me to believe. Yeah, preference falsification is a thing. Usually, that can be unraveled fairly quickly. you know, one of the tools that you can use is, we don't do this often, but we do this, is say you have two people in a line, for example, and say one is on the slightly disagree and one is on the, I don't know, strongly disagree here. I'm going to flip around just so that I won't forget. One is on the slightly disagree, and one is on the slightly agree. You ask them to walk to the other side, so they basically flip. So, the slightly disagree goes to the strongly agree, and then you have them defend those positions. And so, sometimes that can expose preference falsification, but preference falsification isn't really an issue because you're still seeing if the reasons one gives for their beliefs aligns with those beliefs. The only thing that would be an issue is if someone didn't play the game.

17:21 SPEAKER_01 Given that you wade into such emotional territory, I mean, work in prisons, I'm imagining people in prisons are very reactive, and then some of the work you've done with people's cherished beliefs, their luxury beliefs, you could say, or the sort of preference falsified beliefs, the political beliefs, things where there's something really tied to their sense of self, their sense of belonging, or their gut feelings. What kind of stumbling blocks do you run into in this process when people get triggered in those ways?

17:53 SPEAKER_00 It depends. It depends on the issue. Anything with an identity-level salience is always an issue. In other words, if people have some identity belief and they feel that questioning the identity belief is a kind of metaphysical hook that goes from the belief to their—just thinking like a hooking a worm—to their sense of self, that's a problem. if it attacks their community or their sense of belonging, or they perceive it does, or if they can't separate an idea from a person, that's another way to say it. If they can't form hypotheticals, many people who are less intelligent can't form hypotheticals, so that you can't say, well, hypothetically, or you wouldn't use the word hypothetically, but if you give them a hypothetically, they can't process that, so you need a different tool in that case. I mean, there are just so many stumbling blocks. One stumbling block that almost nobody talks about is you will only get a certain kind of person who goes to the line. So Reid and I have been told repeatedly, oh God, I'd love to do this, but if anybody knew my beliefs, I can't. And more often than not, those are non-woke people. Like, like, I mean, I'm thinking like we were in Florida, and we did an event at UCF, and people would come up and say, I would love to do this. Can I do it not on film? Because if anybody knew what I believed, I'd be ostracized. Actually, one of the things we were going to do was about should physicians conceal their patients who are minors, their gender identity from parents. And we were working with some people and they're like, I have really strong beliefs. So then everybody who wants to be seen as a kind of person to virtue signal who holds this belief because they're good people, those people will play the game and then they'll go to the strongly disagree, you know. Physicians are strongly agree physicians should conceal. So, it's a kind of selective sampling of the people who participate. It's not a true sampling. You can get around that by, to a certain extent, you can get around that by, you know, promising people that you'll blur their faces or what have you. But even then, that's not a prophylactic.

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21:07 SPEAKER_00 A few questions, they're general. One is, what would somebody who's really intelligent, who has the opposite point of view, say? That will not work on people who are unintelligent. It will also not work on people who are the most entrenched ideologues. And then, of course, there's those defeasibility questions, which I always ask. Under what conditions would you be willing to change your mind? Under what conditions would you be willing to change your beliefs? I ask those questions. Sometimes I'll ask—Reed doesn't like this question, but I like it—what would he have to tell you to change your mind? That's a version of that. But again, it all depends on the—I don't think that there's any kind of magic question. It depends on what the topic is, You know, sometimes if I feel that the people are ensconced in some morality or specific version of morality, I'll ask them, could someone be a good person and believe the opposite of that? So, like, say someone thinks there should be a massive border wall. the person in there strongly agree, and I'd say, is it possible if someone's on the strongly disagree line that there should be a border wall between United States and Mexico? Can they still be a good person? So those kinds of questions, anything that separates the tether from of the person from the moral belief and gets helps them facilitate looking at the question a different way. But again, there's no magic bullet to any of this. You just have to you have to figure out what you're genuinely interested in. Like if you if you approach this from the stance of like, well, I'm really curious why someone would believe this. If you and and I actually am really curious why people believe stuff. I find belief to be absolutely fascinating and almost nobody talks talks about it in any sustained rigorous way. And if you just, all I do is like in my interviews or what have you, the street epistemology, what have you, I just always ask questions about which things I want to know the answer to. Like, oh, I'm really curious. Why do you believe this? Well, I believe X because of reason Y. Well, let's talk about reason Y. Is that sufficient evidence? And what does that mean? And what should the role of evidence be? And what would it take to change your mind? And how confident are you in that? So the scale is like a built-in confidence.

23:22 SPEAKER_01 And this the perspective taking right inviting someone giving them permission really to take the opposite perspective. What would a really intelligent person with the opposite view say a very similar question to can someone with the opposite belief be a good person because you're talking about the heart piece and the mind piece is could someone with the opposite belief be a good person, and could they be an intelligent person? And then asking that person to practice perspective taking, which I can imagine sort of appeals to people's desire to think of themselves as good at perspective taking, right? Because especially if you're walking amongst liberals in a university environment, like Compassion is one of those values that is ostensibly held very dearly by by people with liberal beliefs. Compassion is used as a justification for a lot of beliefs. So then it's sort of asking them to manifest that value in terms of intellectual perspective taking or moral perspective taking and then giving them permission, which is a debate skill that used to be taught. I've heard increasingly that debate classes are not encouraging children to develop the art of debate as as we knew it in the past. But you bring up hostage negotiation. Sorry, go ahead.

24:34 SPEAKER_00 Well, that being an example right there, so you just said to me, yeah, go ahead. And if you want to develop a technique that's just facilitated, so you say to me, yeah, go ahead. And I say, no, no, you go. I didn't do that there because I wanted to pause and give you the example of a technique, but that's a little bit of a technique to let people know that they're being listened to, right? So, when you do the street epistemology, you put people on the, or ask people to go to the lines, you can do something, like if you speak like that at the same time, you could say, no, no, you go, and the important thing when people do this is that it's really important that they know that they're being listened to. And one of the ways to, there's no guarantee for any of this stuff, but to increase their feelings or the likelihood that they're going to feel that is you just say, oh, let me make sure I understand it. So you put the burden on yourself and you say, Did I get this right? Again, the burdens on yourself, and then you repeat it back to them. It's called Rappaport's first rule. It's, I love it. I use it all the time. So it's like, I'm trying to understand this. Is this right? And so again, the idea that you're really listening to someone and you can repeat their position back to them, ideally better than they articulated it themselves. And then what you could do is you can walk to the other, if you're fortunate enough to get someone who stands on the other line, you can walk to the other line and say, okay, Did you just do you feel or you know, do you think depending on that use a word different time you understood that yes Okay, repeat back to him. So so they're doing that after you just asked them to repeat back to them So then they doubly so they're not going to be embarrassed by if they don't know it

26:18 SPEAKER_01 So with regard to hostage negotiation, you mentioned Chris Voss. I recommend his book as well, Never Split the Difference. It's in my bookshop. And I've been thinking about how those hostage negotiation strategies could be helpful for people who are working with people who are ideologically entrenched. Sort of like you said, that your work is a blend of hostage negotiation with techniques that are used. to help people get out of cults. And so I've actually recommended Never Split the Difference to parents of trans-identified youth, and they have found that some of Chris Boss' communication techniques have been helpful with their kids. So I've been wondering what an application of those techniques might look like. Have you found an application of hostage negotiation techniques with regard to, or let me put it this way, have you ever worked with families that are divided on this issue or close friends?

27:07 SPEAKER_00 I have, I have. The key to this in the back of my mind is people have to be, and this is, I wouldn't say it's the Achilles heel of it, but it's the problem that if someone doesn't want to have a conversation with you, there's nothing you can do. I mean, I've lost so many friends, I can't, I just lost another one recently. At this point, my, what are people talking about, body counts. Now my, the number of people I have, of people I was close to, people who are actually my friends, who had a profound falling out over ideological difference, which is an insane reason to lose a friendship. If those people don't want to have a conversation, there's nothing you can do to help to facilitate that. I mean, if someone just doesn't want to talk. So, back to the Chris Voss thing or the hostage negotiation. So, in my opinion, that's one sliver of it. That will only take you so far. But most people, they just can't do the tremendous amount of hours. They just can't put it in. They're not academicians. They don't have an interest in doing it. They don't have the time, but you need applied epistemologies. There are a whole vein of literature on applied epistemology, drug and alcohol, motivational interviewing informs almost all of my work. I'm sure you're familiar with that. The Socratic method is at its core. I mean, there were just so many arenas from psychology, cult exiting, But to just have one, there's nothing where, I mean, look, having access to one thing is better than having access to nothing. That's why I try to, and how to have impossible conversations, that's why I try to synthesize all of those fruitful veins of literature into simple techniques. But I think it's a, again, it's better to have one, you know, better to know motivational interviewing than not. But I said, no, but there's another thing. And I'll, yes, and myself. And knowing more of those will increase the likelihood of success.

29:03 SPEAKER_01 On the one hand, you are literally the man who wrote the book on how to have impossible conversations. Well, one of them. And on the other hand, there are some conversations that are even more impossible than that. people who are too ideologically entrenched to have these conversations. You say you've lost friends. It seems, Peter, like this is your life's work. How to have impossible conversations could, you know, very well also be the title of your memoir. Does it, does it sadden you? To be putting, to be like, to have dedicated yourself to this mission of trying to help people gain the tools to have productive, eye-opening conversations about difficult, complex, sometimes emotionally-laden topics, presumably for the betterment of us all, and yet, despite your best efforts, things feel so contentious. How are you dealing with that, and how are you making sense of that?

30:06 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, it's one of my life's missions, to be sure. You know, I've often found if I've been thinking about this recently. I've often found if, let's say that you take a stance on something and somebody's upset with the stance that you took on something. It doesn't matter what the stance is. So you, to use a vegan, you're a vegan or you're not a vegan or whatever it is. And instead of the person telling you that they have a problem that you're not a vegan, what they'll do is they'll snipe at you on social media or they'll, you know, put rude comments on maybe your YouTube video, what have you. That doesn't have to do with you. That's on them. Right? So if you say, let's have a conversation about this, and they ignore you, and they continue to snipe on social media, eventually just block them, someone who is your friend, that has virtually nothing, if not nothing, to do with you. What has to do with you is the way that you approach them when this is happening to you, right? And so you say, hey, if I've done something to offend you or if I'm wrong about something, tell me. I want to know. Like, if I've made a genuine mistake, if my reason… This is something I'll say to people often. If my reasoning is an error, let me know, because I don't want to be wrong. I want to be correct. So if I've made a mistake about something, and if the response to that is, fuck you, well, then you know that that has nothing to do with you. That's on them. Or if the response is they go on whatever social media platform and they start launching attacks, that's not on you. That's on them. Does it hurt? Does it hurt anyone? No, but I mean, I don't know what the other response would be to that.

31:54 SPEAKER_01 If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. It contains moringa, ashwagandha, chlorella, spirulina, matcha, wheatgrass, beets, turmeric, mint, lemon, and coconut water. 100% organic with no added sugar. It's the best tasting superfood supplement I've ever tried. It's super easy to make, and it makes me feel good. Organifi also makes several other delicious and nutritious superfood blends, such as red juice, immune support, protein powders, a golden milk mix, and even superfood hot cocoa. Check out the collection at organifi.com sometherapist, that's o-r-g-a-n-i-s-i dot com slash sometherapist, and use code sometherapist to take 20% off your order. It seems like a psychological boundary to make this type of work more sustainable, to be clear about that. And I've had things like that. happen. You know, I had a old friend from a different chapter of life who was actually a somatic therapist of all, you know, of all professions. I would think that a somatic therapist who's very in touch with the mind body connection would be just as concerned as I am with how, you know, this the state of sort of gender affirming care in the United States in 2023. But this old friend, I guess, found me on social media and left a really nasty comment on Instagram saying, I can't believe that you've gone in such a despicable direction.

33:29 SPEAKER_00 As opposed to saying, oh, hey, I don't know if they call you doctor or Stephanie, as opposed to saying, hey, Stephanie, you said this, and I think you're just completely off base. I'd really like to have a conversation with you about that, or if you have time, talk to me. I think the stance you've taken is morally abhorrent. I'd like to talk to you about that. But somebody said to me, I can't remember who it was, but it's something that I've thought about recently. Kind of vaguely reminds me of things I used to hear about the Iraq war. But if, I can't remember who said this to me recently, but it would be like somebody, a maniac taking a gun and holding it to someone's head and they say, if If you don't do X, I'm going to shoot you. But it's your fault if you don't do X. It's not my fault. You can do X. but I'm going to shoot you. No, no, no, no. It's your fault. I mean, if you have to attribute blame, which I'm not a big fan of, but in this example, you have to attribute blame, like you're the person who has the gun to my head. So it's a kind of forced compliance in things. So use that example, it's because it's an ersatz responsibility. It's like, well, you didn't do X or you did X. Why did X? Because I had a gun to my head. So, there is a kind of … If you move at this space at any significant level, you have to figure out … Helen Pluckrose is, in one sense, she's extraordinary about this. You have to maintain a consistent, principled stance on things. If your consistent principled stance is, I'm willing to have a conversation with someone I've considered, or I still consider a friend, and if we have a genuine difference of opinion, we can talk that out. I'm willing to have that conversation. And if either I or they decide that that's just a red line, I can't have a friendship with somebody who holds that stance, okay, well then you did everything that you could in that situation. to be open and honest and to facilitate some kind of productive dialogue. And again, you just use the same tools. Listen, what's the concern? And then you figure out, oh, is the concern justified or what's going on? But there's only so much you can do And if somebody is not participating in the framework of … There's a whole body of literature, I think much of it's bullshit, but some of it's really good, called care ethics and philosophy. If somebody is not participating in the framework of an ethics of care, They're just toxic, just write them out of your life. But a very good friend of mine, I wrote the foreword to his book, The Gift of Violence, taught me many invaluable lessons in my life. But one of the things that he taught was he's incredibly good at just exculpating or not, I mean, not exculpating, he's incredibly good at just wiping people out of his life entirely and never looking back. I've become extraordinarily good at this." I mean, it's an indispensable skill if you want to participate in public life and any kind of a controversy. I want to have a conversation with you. They don't have a conversation with you. You reach out again. I want to have a conversation with you. They don't. And then they snipe at you on social media. That's it. You're done. Gone. Blocked. Out of my life. Move on. There's no patience for toxicity. If you want to make a reasoned argument, if you want to present a principled stance, if you want to tell me why my reasoning is in error, I'm more than willing to have that conversation. If you don't, you're relegated to the kiddie table. Go back to junior high school. I'm done.

37:21 SPEAKER_01 I can see how that attitude spares you a lot of grief.

37:24 SPEAKER_00 I wonder what keeps you motivated. Well, the truth keeps you motivated, right? The truth. What's true? Because I want to know true things, and if someone thinks that I believe false things, then if they actually believe that I believe false things, then it should be no problem to tell me why I believe false things, what it is that you believe that are false. What is wrong with my reasoning that leads me to believe a false thing? And if they can't do that, again, the emerging theme in the conversation here is that's not on me, that's on them. I've had genuine differences of opinion with people and people who I've been friends with, or in many cases still are, and I'll tell them directly, hey man, you did this, this was just not cool. Like I'd tell them to their face, I wouldn't go and start posting on Twitter, you dick. You know, I mean, there's just a way to behave that's adult and mature, and there's a way to behave that is not. And if somebody is not behaving in a way that is adult and mature, why would you want to have a relationship with them? Like life is too short and at 57 I don't, far more of my days are behind me than in front of me. I just have no, I just don't want to deal with juveniles and toxicity. I'd much rather watch TV or basically do anything really.

38:47 SPEAKER_01 Okay. So you talked about a situation in which someone has a gun to their head and so they're acting under pressure. And we've talked about hostage negotiation. And I want to specify one of the biggest places where this is coming up is it's not it's not a gun to someone else's head. It's a gun to your own head. Right. And this is the thing that I encounter day in and day out in my work because I talk almost every day to ROGD parents, parents who feel like they're losing their kids.

39:16 SPEAKER_00 Oh, they are.

39:17 SPEAKER_01 And then there's complex grieving process. They feel like they have guns to their heads because their children are threatening or engaging in self-harm. Right. They're saying You need to you need to grieve your daughter. You don't have a daughter anymore. You have a son. And these parents are the ones thinking about the long term impact of where all this is going, the health problems and the worsened mental health that will result in all likelihood from these rash decisions that are that their kids are making. So I just want to acknowledge that I think when we talk about hostage situations, it is just as powerful to put a gun to your own head as it is to put a gun to someone else's. And when it comes to the parental instinct, in fact, it's worse, right? Most parents would die to save their own child. And so it's just about the worst thing that you can do to someone in that position. So I do want to bring it back to that because I just know that we have so many of those parents in this audience. And I'm curious if you have any practical tools because you are out there having these difficult conversations in some cases with trans identified people on college campuses, in some cases with people who consider themselves allies. And have you have you had any breakthrough moments? I mean, I know that there is wisdom in saying that there are people that it's just not worth trying to talk to because they're they're not invested in resolving things with you.

40:41 SPEAKER_00 What have you gained? Yeah, your children do not fall in that category. Yeah. No, it's a great question. I'm sorry to cut you off. I just wanted to make it clear that children are not in that category. The problem that people listening to this and parents face is that you are up against a massive industry that has been ideologically captured. So, my interview with Helen Joyce, we talked about this. Is this falsifiable? Okay, well, if it's not falsifiable, then is it science? What is it? Is it religion? Is there a way to test this? Is there a brain test that we can look in to see if someone's trans? Is it possible that someone could be wrong? So, I mean, these are pretty rudimentary questions. I mean, these are like 101 questions. Like really, you would ask these questions about literally anything. Oh, you know, is the claim, you know, I'm going to like homeopathy or what have you. The problem is that they're getting this from multiple sources. You know, you're trapped in the wrong body, they may get attention. One of my daughter's friends told me that people at school pretend to be trans to fit in. Go figure. So the problem is you're getting this from, the kids are getting this from multiple sources. People care about them, people they like, they're getting affirmation, they're getting approbation. And so you are one person fighting, especially if it's a daughter and it is gendered, you're one person fighting a massive ideologically captured machine. This is not an easy situation to be in. So, because even if you were to have that conversation with somebody at the school, for example, someone, those people are completely indoctrinated. I mean, they've called out any voice. You know, I just was reading something today and tweeting about diversity statements at universities from someone who wrote a great piece about unheard. They won't even hire people at universities. I can't I can't remember the exact statistic, but think that it's like University of California, Berkeley. Anyway, it's on my Twitter feed at Peter Boghossian. Diversity statements, they just weed people out based on their diversity statements. And so you're already. deciding which ideology to forward, and then they teach that to kids, excuse me, they teach that, yeah, well, kids, 18 to 21, I guess, they teach it to graduate students near my age, everybody's a kid. They teach it to teachers in pre-service teacher education and teacher training certification. And so then the ideology sinks in. I mean, you've trained an entire generation of people within the ideology, so the parents are, they're not just fighting a teacher, they are fighting a system. They are fighting a system that has literally weeded out any kind of disagreement by design. There are institutional mechanisms to keep the ideology in place. And the parents have little choice. I mean, I couldn't have homeschooled my kids, but my buddy I mentioned, Matt, he homes, his wife homeschools his kids. I never in my life thought I would be advocating that, but to keep kids away from this utter madness. I mean, there are some counties you know, and I've been reading about this recently, up to 20% of kids identify as trans, and that's totally insane. California, I can't remember the county. We know when you look at the breakdowns, this Andrew Doyle has written about this, and then the Travestock Clinic has come out, and there's been some really interesting material about that as well. Again, I recommend Andrew Doyle's book, The New Puritans. Miriam, I was going to interview her,

44:09 SPEAKER_01 Mariam Grossman, Lost in Translation. Yes, yes, yes. I'm reading it right now.

44:15 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, yeah, it's excellent. It's excellent. Very, very clear, very practical. But but so so so long answer to say that if you're a parent, you're listening to this, it's not just like, oh, there's one teacher, they may be one teacher pushing it or forwarding it. But it's a system, you're up against a system. And making it even more complicated, which Miriam talks about, Dr. Miriam, you're also up against, she's a psychiatrist, You're also up against peer review, which has been ideologically captured. I happen to know something about that. You're up against medical industries. You're up against the AMA. You're up against nature, which has been ideal. Everything's ideologically captured. This is as close to an intractable problem as one can get. Because it's not like, oh, we have some neutral, independent agency that confers legitimacy because they've peer-reviewed studies and you should … My piece on ideal laundering in the Wall Street Journal was good. Oh, if you want to look at scales, my piece in the New York Times was good about that. It's a video. That's something that anybody can employ in their conversation. But even if you have a conversation with somebody, with a school administrator who believes this stuff, I mean, what do you think you're going to do? Are you going to change their mind? I'm not going to change their mind. Even if you were successful in helping them see that the belief is not sufficient, the strength of the belief is not sufficient to warrant the confidence in the belief, or the strength of the evidence, excuse me, is not sufficient to warrant the confidence in the belief, what are you going to do? I mean, there's like, you know, 50 people in the school system. What are you going to do, do a whole AMA, the whole American Medical Association? What are you going to do? I mean, you know, it's just, it's, I mean, the scale and the scope of the problem is utterly mind-blowing. It's mind-blowing and it's mind-boggling. And it's all a delusion. That's the other thing. It's a complete delusion. There is simply no evidence for this whatsoever. None. Zero. It's not even a falsifiable claim. It doesn't even fall in the realm of science. It's pure ideology. I mean, it's amazing. The whole society has been hoodwinked. It's amazing. So many people in the society, venerable institutions, have been absolutely hoodwinked by this. But now, in Scandinavia in particular, because of Tavistock, people fighting against, we know that evidence-based practices the best available evidence, I mean actual evidence, not ideologues discharging their moral impulses in journals. We know that the best available evidence does not point to the solutions, and I don't even like the term gender affirming care, that advocates have institutionalized. So I know if you're a parent, I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. I'm not going to say, oh, no, I'm a big fan like yourself. I'm a big fan of the truth. This is a huge problem. And the best way to deal with this problem is to extricate yourself. And it's not like, oh, well, we'll just go to the private school. I hear from people all the time, teachers, like look at Paul Rossi. Like private schools are just as vulnerable to this madness.

47:31 SPEAKER_01 So that's not exactly the most encouraging thing I've heard all week. You're talking about one piece of the puzzle, which is this illusion of consensus and this sort of behemoth that's that's developed where it feels like the whole world is against you. And that's part of what makes this situation so unprecedented for these parents. Because I and I have the same conversation probably a few times a week, where part of My attempt to empathize with the parents that I talked to is that when you signed up to be parents, you probably anticipated that there were going to be rough moments in raising an adolescent. So you imagine you were going to have to deal with talks about sex and drugs and maybe hanging with the wrong crowd, maybe even gangs or crime. The one thing that you thought you could take for granted is that if you talk to the other adults in the room or your kids' teachers or counselors or their friends' parents, that they would be on your side when it comes to getting your kid off of drugs, out of gangs, or out of an abusive relationship, for example. This is the thing that's so unprecedented and unusual. It isn't that kids have crazy ideas, it's that the adults are enabling them, the institutions are enabling them. And so it really does create this illusion of consensus for the youth that it's just their parents that are backwards and out of touch. I mean, that being said, I want to I want to give our listeners some value in terms of how how these skills can be applicable in their lives, because they have to. Like you say that for you, the truth is a core value. It's it's highly motivating and it keeps you going, even when there are so many reasons to feel depressed about the state of discourse.

49:12 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, it's the, it's the core value. And the other thing that I, I, you know, you said this, the word you use with this, this behemoth, and it's depressing. Listen, let's be crystal clear about something. The only way to solve any problem is to be honest about it. And I'm not going to sit here and tell people, Oh, you know, I don't worry about anything. It's difficult. Like, you have to be honest about the nature of the problem. If you're not honest about the nature of the problem, you simply cannot solve it. Now, Just because. This is. This, just because, you know, in this case it really is systemic, just because that there is a system, it doesn't mean that it's impossible, right? It just means that it puts the difficulty in hard mode, right? Because you're already in hard mode. You're fighting moral trends, you're fighting experts who clearly are not experts in anything, which has also caused the distrust of expertise in the society, which is another conversation entirely. So, the question remains, you know, how do you, what do you do as you move forward? You know, as Abigail Schreier says, you're not talking about, you're talking about irreversible damage. As my son said, if someone thinks they might be gay and they're wrong, well, so what? It doesn't make any difference. But if someone thinks that they're trans and they start getting, and we know from accounts in and Andrew Doyle's documented this, and again, in The New Puritans, which is a wonderful book. We know from a college, there's immediate affirmation. You know, there's no, oh, let's talk about this, or why do you fail? No, there's just an immediate, the whole culture has gone toward affirmation. So the most important thing, so let's talk about some tools. And then I have to go. Love your children no matter what. The moment that you create an adversarial relationship, they'll run the other direction. So, your job is just to listen and be patient, et cetera. And whatever you do… Oh, and one more thing that I didn't talk about. In California now, I don't know if you're familiar with the new laws that they want to put in about parents making it illegal to not affirm their child's gender, then, okay, then it's just literally nothing you could do at that point, because then it's institutionalized in law, right? And there can be, depending on what, I mean, because once you start talking about, you know, a legal thing, then, I mean, that's the only thing you could do is actually move to not subject yourself to the law, but that's another level. I mean, that's, You know, what do they call it in games when death is permanent? Was it insane mode or something like that's not any hard mode. That's the mode above whatever that is, where death would be permanent if you're playing a video game. But so love your child, listen to your child. Whatever you do. The red line would be if the child starts taking drugs, puberty blockers, starts entertaining surgery. This falls far more in your domain of expertise than mine, but I think you need to think about it in terms of irreversible damage. And so, one of the things you can do is if you, this is what I would do if I were a parent facing this. I would attempt to build a rapport that was so strong with my child, and that my child, I was their person, and they knew I loved them so much, my hope would be that the bond of that relationship would be sufficient to override multiple sources from other people in which they're being told something that's truly insane. And so, there are conversational and dialectical techniques that you can use to build those relationships. That's the approach that I would take. Now, I'm not saying that everybody should take that approach. I'm not saying that that's a guarantee to work But the other approach, I mean, there are other approaches to take. Look, you can try to fight the system. There's nothing wrong with that. Anything you do, any other approach that you would take, you would risk the child developing an adversary relationship toward you because the narrative in the institutions is skewed that that you're transphobic or you hate trans people or something. The narrative, it's just a story that people tell themselves to prevent the ideology from being dislodged. And the story is a moral story with good people and villains and characters, et cetera. It's a timeless story since before Aristotle. So that's the approach that I would take if this were happening to my children.

54:17 SPEAKER_01 You can now watch No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care. This medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation, is the definitive film on detransition. Stream the film now or purchase a DVD. Visit nowaybackfilm.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on Twitter at 2022affirmation or on Instagram at affirmationgeneration. I do think that some of your tools will be really valuable to parents who want to go further and read your books, watch your videos, or listen to your podcast because when you talk about loving your kids, listening to them no matter what, listening to them and building that rapport no matter what, I think part of what you offer in your style of listening is that you can ask people questions and draw out their perspective without agreeing with them. And I feel like that's a lost art in our society where it feels like people are only willing to talk to people they agree with. And I talk to parents about this all the time, right? That you don't want to get into this head-butting dogfight with your kids where they're coming at you with their propaganda and you're hitting them over the head with information to counteract that. Because whatever information they give you or I'm sorry, whatever information a parent tries to give a kid, unfortunately, the kid is going to find a way to discredit it. And it's going to be based in some logical fallacy, like they're going to say, oh, well, that's a right wing media source or that's a transphobic person or, you know, they're going to find a way to poke holes and insist that their sources and their studies are superior. So you don't want to get into that kind of power struggle with them. But what I think a lot of parents where they miss opportunities because they're so emotional, they're so afraid of losing their kid that it makes them Not always able to act in a strategic manner, which I think you do really well, but this, you know, getting them to talk, getting them to elucidate their perspective, and then, like in your work, you talk about what I'm going to reframe as steel manning their position, right? So reframing it almost better than they do. And you stay calm, which is really hard to do when you're a parent worried about your kid, but you stay calm while you're doing that. So you're saying, oh, so from your perspective, it's like this. Is that right? Did I get that right? And through that process, I think there is more likelihood in some situations that kids will feel heard, that it'll just kind of take the tenor of things down. And ideally, as well, through this process, for the kids to be able to get in touch with their own doubt, I think is really key, because what happens in these situations is that kids split off. They split off their own doubt, which it's natural to have doubt about a major life decision or who you are as a young person. They split off their doubt and project it onto their parents or whoever they label bigots so that they don't have to feel their own doubt. Right. And so when you're headbutting with them, you're just enabling that projection. But when you bring out their perspective and you remain rooted in that sort of identity as their loving parent, it takes things down a notch. And then through getting them to draw out their perspectives, my hope would be that the kids would get in touch with those parts of them that maybe aren't as sure. So sort of that Likert scale, maybe moving from the strongly agree to the agree position as they're articulating.

57:36 SPEAKER_00 Right. And there's a chapter in the book about how to deal with anger or emotions. I do want to say one more thing to parents who are listening to this, because I think it's so important. So look, this is going to take you time. But this is time you have to invest if your kid is thinking about having his genitals removed. I mean, this is not… this isn't playtime is over right so so you now have a new life focus so whatever you're doing to relax or television like you know like that this is a very serious threat that your child will make a decision they regret for the rest of their lives and become a lifelong medical patient so this is not a joke So, among the first order of business that you have to do, and this is going to sound pedantic, but it's not, is you have to figure out what people mean when they use words. This is the most important, even beyond anything I've written in the book or anything I've said. You have to learn what people mean when they say simple words. Start with the simple ones. You don't even have to go to gender-affirming care. I have a series on my video. Words like girl or boy. Yeah, these are 60-second videos I put out. 60 seconds, minimal amount of work, and they're free. and I do this as part of my non-profit National Progress Alliance. To start some, what does people, what do people mean when they say diversity? What do people mean when they say equity? What do people mean when they say inclusion? Oh, I see this in my kids' school material all the time, like, oh. But do you really know what they mean? Do you know how they use the words? So figure out what people mean. And so there are a lot of resources to this new discourses has a lot of reason if you want a deeper dive. But if you just want like a 60 second, what are people? OK, so once you figure out what that with the words mean, because often people you hear things from the school and you're like you just you traffic in one sense of the meat, one sense of the word, but they're trafficking totally different. They mean something totally different than what you think they mean. And I know that some people are going to be listening to this and roll their eyes, but I'm telling you this, I cannot overestimate. I cannot. This is the most important. This is your first order of business before you do anything else. What do people mean when they say X? What do people who participate in the ideology, what are they, what is gender affirming? What does that mean? Okay. Okay. So once you have that down, then you just have to start reading. You have to start learning and you don't even have to read. If you don't want to read, you can, you know, when you're in the shower, I listen to audio books. When I drive, I'm going to have a long drive ahead of me today. That's why I have to go, you know, you know, I put on audio books I put on, but there were so many good podcasts where people do deep dives into these things, figure out who, what are the best arguments? What are the positions? Listen to, you know, I do, you don't have to listen to my podcast. I have conversations with other people, but You cannot just assume that everything is going to work out. You have to take steps, and given the severity, given what's at stake, and we know that this is happening to minors. We know it's happening to minors. So, you know, it moves from this is not happening to minors to this is happening to minors and it's a good thing. You have to put in the time to learn about the issues, to educate and inform yourself. And fortunately for you, for the people watching this, there are so many podcasts, so many videos, so many people who move in this space. It's effortless to find them.

01:01:17 SPEAKER_01 So I will. I both agree and disagree. So I agree that this is a very serious issue and this is your new life now and you need to educate yourself. I do think it's also really important for parents to take breaks to take care of themselves and still do whatever keeps them sane and stable because if you're just miserable and depressed and emotionally reactive then you're not going to be able to ground yourself as well to have those necessary conversations. Now you talk about what people mean when they say words. And so I think some starting points for parents of trans identified youth would be like when they say girl and boy, for example. So a lot of girls say, well, I don't feel like a girl and I feel like a boy. And a lot of parents just kind of freak out at that or they add their own interpretation to what that means. But through, I think, you know, the Socratic method, street epistemology type communication techniques that you can draw out more of what your child is trying to say by that. And oftentimes when a girl says she doesn't feel like a girl, what does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean that she wants a penis, for example, I've talked to parents who have ask their kids that, and that's, you know, I mean, although so-called gender affirming care does lead in that direction, for some kids, it's a lot more complicated than that. These kids aren't thinking clearly and rationally about male and female body parts. Oftentimes, what it really is, is this irrational, emotional fear of what it is to be a girl, and this sort of grass is greener mentality. The sense that what it means to be a boy, if you really dig into it, is to be free of objectification, harassment, beauty standards, fear of sexual assault, you know, these things. I mean, girls have been exposed to pornography at an early age and seen some really horrific things that It's like, well, if that's what it is to be a girl, then count me out of it. So it's so important, I think, that parents are able to kind of regulate themselves to be able to have those conversations to find out what your kids are really trying to say. Because when you understand that, then there's at least the possibility of talking about the real issue, which is that she does not feel safe being a female in this world.

01:03:19 SPEAKER_00 These are all true, just to get back about the point of contention. If I found out, which I did, maybe I'll overshare, but I think that this is a relevant point. So, you know, I have Crohn's disease, and one of the consequences of that is that I'm, even though I'm 163 pounds and very, very fit for my age, I'm a point away from prediabetes. You know, I don't want to be shooting, putting insulin in my body. I don't want to be. This is a top concern right now. So like I intermittent fast, it's 247. Now I haven't eaten last night. I stopped eating at seven, which is the other reason I got to end in a minute now. Cause I like to put a couple eggs in my mouth before I take a long drive, but Look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't watch TV. If anything, you should exercise. But you have to reason honestly about the consequences of the problem. And I've been … Well, I was supposed to talk to a detransitioner the other day. And I don't say this to be alarmist, I don't say this, I say this because it's just true. You have to figure out, you have to learn about it, you have to educate yourself, you have to love your kid. This is now your thing, right? I mean, the number one goal of a parent is to protect their child. And that's now your North, that was always and it should have been your North Star. But now it is a moment in your life to re-remember that newest star, and that will entail making some sacrifices.

01:04:56 SPEAKER_01 Absolutely. I just think you're preaching to the choir because they're already listening to my podcast, which means they're in the obsessive research rabbit hole phase, being an ROTC parent.

01:05:05 SPEAKER_00 Let's talk about that.

01:05:06 SPEAKER_01 We don't disagree on that.

01:05:08 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, so let's talk about that. So let's look at some people. Helen Joyce, I did a wonderful interview with her. Peterson did an interview with Helen Joyce. So there's two things going on. There's the broad rubric of what was considered woke ideology or critical social justice or the successor ideology from Wesley Yang or regressive leftism from Maggie Joyce. There are those things. That's what I deal with. And then there are pieces and parts of that. The trans thing is one part of that umbrella ideology. So, if you want to understand the whole ideology, Cynical Theories, which was published, I think, 2017, 18, Helen Pluckrose is the lead author. That's the first book you should read, and that's on audiobook too. Kathleen Stark has her thing. I mean, different people take different pieces of the puzzle. And again, if you don't like to read, or maybe you don't, you can do it on audiobook. If you don't like audiobook, you can just listen to podcast. So, you have a lot of different choices of how to absorb that information. I would start with the words. I would start informing yourself with podcast. YouTube videos are great. I'd find the people who are relevant, who move in the spaces. You're a relevant person, you move in the space. Really make it your, this is now your thing. Okay, let's not mince words. Let's just be honest. This is your thing. Your job as a parent is to protect your child. There's an exogenous threat of extreme consequence, and your job is to love your child, inform yourself, and protect your child. That's your job. That's your life priority.

01:06:46 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, totally. And on that note, I do have a recommended reading list for parents in my bookshop at some therapists dot com slash bookshop. It's the second section down. There's the first section is authors who have been featured on the show. So I'll make sure your books are in that section. And then after that is the RGD parent reading list. OK, so I want to respect your time. I know you have to go. So where are all the places people can find you?

01:07:07 SPEAKER_00 I'm on Twitter at Peter Boghossian. And I have a YouTube, Peter Boghossian, B-O-G-H-O-S-S-I-A-N. Oh, someone else I didn't mention who's absolutely excellent is Colin Wright. I mean, Colin's a friend of mine. He's an evolutionary biologist. He's absolutely fantastic.

01:07:24 SPEAKER_01 I interviewed him in my first five episodes.

01:07:26 SPEAKER_00 Okay, yeah, so you know him, Mr. Gray. He's evidence-based, which is what everybody should be. In the world, period, you should formulate your beliefs on the basis of evidence, the best available evidence. All right, Stephanie, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. And to all those parents out there, it is a journey. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, but you can do it. It's doable.

01:07:46 SPEAKER_01 I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.