AI Therapy, “Mankeeping,” and Screen Addiction

Transcript

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Speaker 23 I think often listening to you guys,

Speaker 23 Scott is having an emotional or social conversation

Speaker 23 and you're trying to have a practical one.

Speaker 24 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher. Welcome back to

Speaker 23 Scott Re-August.

Speaker 24 As Scott continues his August adventures, I'm joined by another incredible co-host, Mel Robbins.

Speaker 24 Mel is an award-winning podcast host, a New York Times best-selling author, and an expert in mindset, behavioral change, and life improvement. Welcome, Mel.

Speaker 23 Well, thank you for having me.

Speaker 24 I am so thrilled to have you. We couldn't be more opposite, which is why I want you here soon.

Speaker 23 What do you mean we couldn't be more more opposite?

Speaker 24 Well, we were just talking about like vibrating all the time. I'm a constant vibrator.

Speaker 23 Well, hold on. Somebody's going to paint this down.
Yes, of course.

Speaker 24 That's my hope. That's my great hope social media wise.

Speaker 24 But talk a little bit about what you're doing. Cause you, earlier today, someone from CNN was here who you work for CNN.

Speaker 23 So before I got into doing what I am doing, I had a really cool opportunity to be one of the legal analysts and commentators for CNN. Right.
And I did that for almost three and a half years. Right.

Speaker 23 And it was an incredible lawyer.

Speaker 23 Yeah. Well, I was a public defender here in Manhattan in the early days of my career and

Speaker 23 had about 19 different job changes. You know, I'm kind of one of these people that I learn everything I talk about the hard way.

Speaker 23 And I ended up at CNN. It was an incredible, incredible job, very intellectually stimulating.

Speaker 23 It was a real honor to have the opportunity to try to take these massive, in particular social justice cases and be able to talk about them in a three to six minute segment and try to distill down some of the biggest themes and the important takeaways.

Speaker 23 And so that's what I did years and years ago. I left CNN in about 2014, I think it was.

Speaker 24 And the rest is history because you've become one of the most successful podcasters around. You are number one, too, often at the very top.
What do you attribute that to?

Speaker 24 Because this is a shit, public defender, CNN legal annos, to this.

Speaker 23 Well, when when I got involved in podcasting, I had been wanting to

Speaker 23 do

Speaker 23 something that was a longer form conversation.

Speaker 23 I had been after, you know, after CNN, what ended up happening is I had created this motivational hack called the five-second rule, not the one where you drop food on the floor. Right.

Speaker 23 Bring it up in five seconds.

Speaker 24 Which I do all the time.

Speaker 23 Yeah, blow the dog hair off. We're good to go.

Speaker 23 This is this concept that there's a big difference between thinking and doing. And there's this five-second window of hesitation that defines your whole life.

Speaker 23 The moment you stop and consider how you feel about doing something, within five seconds, if you don't do it, your kind of automatic thinking loops will take over.

Speaker 23 So for example, when the alarm goes off in the morning,

Speaker 23 you know that you're supposed to get out. You're the one who set the alarm.

Speaker 23 And yet instead of just rolling out of bed, what do we do? We stop and we think, how do I feel about getting out of bed?

Speaker 23 And if you're stressed or anxious or depressed, which I was when I created this little hack,

Speaker 23 If you stop and think, it's cold, it's dark, I don't feel like it, my life's a nightmare, I hate my spouse, like I'm just going to go back to sleep, you will go back to sleep.

Speaker 23 If you move within five seconds, everything changes. See, there's this huge mistake that people make.
I made this forever, thinking that at some point I'll feel like doing what I need to do. Right.

Speaker 23 And the fact is, motivation is complete garbage.

Speaker 23 You will never feel like doing the things that you need to do.

Speaker 23 You need to develop this skill. Everybody does.
Right. To force yourself to take action before you feel ready.

Speaker 24 I see.

Speaker 23 And so the five-second rule is a simple concept. You just count backwards the moment you feel hesitation kick in, five, four, three, two, one, and then you move.

Speaker 23 And you can use this to shortcut this default that a lot of us have, which is a bias toward overthinking the smallest things that we need to do.

Speaker 24 True. I, of course, completely went back to sleep this morning after the alarm went off.
And I'm like, who set that alarm? Who did that last night in my empty hotel room?

Speaker 24 It's such a shift in what you're doing. And we're going going to talk a lot of things today, including OpenAI trying to create what they call healthy use of chat GPT.
I want to.

Speaker 24 Okay, okay, sure.

Speaker 24 And you're going to share some advice on news fatigue.

Speaker 24 But before, let's talk about your latest book, The Let Them Theory, because you are a podcaster. This book is an enormous Let Them is Everywhere.
Yes. You know, and the reason I'm joking with you in a

Speaker 24 in a text, I said I'm a don't let them kind of gal, like, which is kind of interesting.

Speaker 24 But this book book is running up the charts. Oprah called it a game changer and a life changer.
Lovely hugs, by the way, at whatever greenhouse she's doing her podcast in.

Speaker 24 Um, uh, people are getting let them tattoos. I do not, I have, um, I have chaos, chaos, and entropy, and syntropy on my tattoos, which is very different.

Speaker 24 That everything is on its way to destruction or creation. Um, talk about, for anybody who hasn't heard it, tell them what the let them theory is all about.

Speaker 23 Sure.

Speaker 24 And, and, and how you came up with them.

Speaker 23 Sure. So, the let them theory is a very simple concept.
Two simple words. That's how you begin.
Let them

Speaker 23 will help you live your life completely differently. It is a philosophy that's all about control and power.
What is in your control, what is not in your control.

Speaker 23 And the fact is that most of us spend way too much of our time and energy burning through. things that are beyond your control.

Speaker 23 And the number one thing that is outside of your control at all times is other people.

Speaker 23 What they think, what they do, what they say, how they feel, what they believe.

Speaker 23 And I never realized the extent to which I was living my life navigating my day-to-day decisions based on other people's moods, their expectations, trying to get them to think.

Speaker 23 Everybody does.

Speaker 23 Everybody does because we have a fundamental need to feel in control. It's a survival mechanism.
That's not going away. But we make a mistake of thinking.

Speaker 23 that the way to feel safer or more in control in your own life is to micromanage change and control other people.

Speaker 23 So if you were doing something that worried me or frustrated me or made me feel nervous about something or hurt,

Speaker 23 instead of crossing the line and trying to force you to change, which is what I did forever with my kids, with my husband, with the world around me, with my boss, there's a simpler way to live your life.

Speaker 23 Just say, let them.

Speaker 23 Let them think what they're going to think. Let them do what they're going to do.
Let them be who they're going to be.

Speaker 23 Let them feel what they're going to feel because I know that I can't control another human being. And then you go to step two of the theory, which is you say, let me.

Speaker 23 Let me is where you take your power back.

Speaker 23 And instead of giving it to other people and outside forces, which only is going to stress you out, by the way, let me remind myself at any moment, there's only three things I can control.

Speaker 23 I can control what I think. I can control what I do or don't do.

Speaker 23 And I can control how I respond to the feelings that are going to automatically rise up. That's all you've got.
And one of the reasons why this is spread around the world, and it's more than

Speaker 23 six million copies in six and a half months. It's the single most successful nonfiction book launch in history.

Speaker 23 The reason why it is so successful is a couple reasons. Number one, we are living in a moment of unprecedented change.

Speaker 23 The average person, this is research from Dr. Aditi Nurikar from Harvard Medical School.
She is one of the world's leading experts in stress as a medical condition.

Speaker 23 Not stress like I feel stressed, but the actual physiology of being.

Speaker 24 Inflammation, cortisol.

Speaker 23 Oh, the fact that it's actually bigger than that.

Speaker 23 this is again, Dr. Nurikar's research.
What happens when you're quote stressed is that you switch gears in your brain and the amygdala takes over.

Speaker 24 That's right.

Speaker 23 And that means that your prefrontal cortex is not able to function in its full capacity, which means strategic thinking out the window. Emotional regulation out the window.

Speaker 23 And this is kind of the perfect place to start for all the topics you want to talk about today, because I think we tend to laser down onto the things that are frustrating us or scaring us without zooming out and seeing the bigger picture.

Speaker 23 According to her research, in the United States, 80% of human beings walking around are in a chronic state of stress.

Speaker 24 Yes, they are, and which leads to health outcomes.

Speaker 23 Well, not even health. Like it leads to

Speaker 23 the inability to think critically, the inability to regulate your emotions. Right.

Speaker 23 And so you are dealing nine times out of 10, or eight times out of 10 rather, with somebody who is not fully able to function.

Speaker 24 So you're basically what you're saying is the constant id. We've become the id versus superego or ego.

Speaker 23 Well, you know, those are big fancy words. Like, and this is the other reason why the let them theory is spread around the world.
It's super simple. Right.
Everybody can say the words let them.

Speaker 23 And the second you say let them, and this brings me to the third reason why this is so incredibly powerful, is this is not a new idea. Right.

Speaker 23 Like the reason why this is so successful is because I'm reminding you of what you already know to be true. If you're a fan of stoicism, the let them theory is a modern version of that tool.

Speaker 23 If you're a fan of radical acceptance or detachment theory, let them is practicing detachment. When you say let me, you're reclaiming control over.
Because they have to go together.

Speaker 23 Oh, they have to go together. So together.

Speaker 24 So I joke about it. Don't let them is kind of my theory.
My whole career is built on, oh, no, no, no, no. You may not.
Well, that's the let me part.

Speaker 23 Is it? Well, yeah, because

Speaker 23 what's like, because like, let's just take politics, for example. Yeah.
All this stuff that we're upset about is already happening. Right.

Speaker 23 And And so any of the ah that you do that only stresses you out, by the way,

Speaker 23 which only compromises your ability to stay calm, confident, focused, and strategic, because it's not about that out there.

Speaker 23 The power in your life is your response to it. This is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Eaning, another reference to why this is so powerful.

Speaker 23 I am giving you a tool, let them and let me, to apply ancient philosophy, therapeutic modalities, the serenity prayer in a moment. Like, I've read every book on stoicism.

Speaker 23 I never knew how the hell to apply it when I was all stressed out because I was already hijacked by my amygdala. I was already emotionally reactive.
So, when I say let them, I drop down a boundary.

Speaker 23 Like, here's a simple way to use it. Everybody starts using it for day-to-day stress because, let's face it, people are really fucking annoying.
They are.

Speaker 23 Whether it's a slow walker, close talker, like people in traffic, the long-ass. Man, on the train yesterday,

Speaker 23 doing a deal. Yeah.
You know, just like, oh my God. But here's the thing:

Speaker 23 why Why on earth

Speaker 23 would you give your two most

Speaker 23 important resources, which is your time and your energy to all these idiots walking around that are disrespectful, rude, and annoying? Don't do it.

Speaker 23 Don't do it. Your time and energy is so much more valuable.
So when you say let them, what you're doing is you're reminding yourself that whatever is triggering you right now.

Speaker 23 is not deserving of your time and energy. And then when you say let me, you remind yourself that no matter what's going on around you,

Speaker 23 there are still simple things you can do in response to it that help you stay in the world.

Speaker 24 That's not the idea, because some people

Speaker 24 who could be critical is like, you don't want to let, and we're not talking about politics here, but Donald Trump's the perfect.

Speaker 24 You don't want to let the government change, like take away rights from people. You don't want to let them.
Absolutely not. That's not what you're saying here.
Absolutely not.

Speaker 24 Isn't, well, they're going to cut funds for NPR. Let them.

Speaker 23 Well, here's the thing. They just did.
Yes, they did. So like let them is radical acceptance of what's happening instead of gaslighting yourself.
Right.

Speaker 24 Okay. Right.
Let me. But you're not saying let them.
It's a good thing.

Speaker 23 It's no. No.
I'm saying let them forces you to accept the facts that you're dealing with.

Speaker 23 And let me

Speaker 23 is how you cue yourself.

Speaker 24 To take back power.

Speaker 23 Correct. Right.
Okay. And if you allow all of the upset, and there's a lot of upsetting things going on and terrifying things that are going on in the world right now.

Speaker 23 But if you allow what's happening or has already happened to stress you out to a point where you are frozen

Speaker 23 or you are anxious or you are now spiraling in depression,

Speaker 23 now you have no power to respond in a way either with yourself and your own stress and mental health or within your family or within your community or within your state or within the nation at large.

Speaker 23 Sure. You have so much more power than you realize, but you don't understand that because like me, you have been giving it away without knowing it.

Speaker 24 So you're you're talking about in let them, you're giving away power

Speaker 24 versus not being passive, right? It's not a word. Let them is not

Speaker 23 passive.

Speaker 24 Because one of the things

Speaker 24 when you're, when you're doing the idea of let them, I often get in arguments with people when they're talking about Donald Trump and they go into the doom

Speaker 23 article.

Speaker 24 I was like, what are you going to do about it? Like, stop. Like, we know, like, some people are like, can you believe Donald Trump did blank, for example?

Speaker 23 The answer for me is always yes.

Speaker 24 Yes, I do. Yes, I do, because he's a racist.
He's homophobic.

Speaker 23 he's anti-trans.

Speaker 24 Yes, I do believe it. Yes.
And so

Speaker 23 it like for me, I'm just surprised anybody's surprised by it.

Speaker 24 Right, exactly, which they constantly are. That's one of his magic, I have to say.

Speaker 23 Well, this is also classic with narcissism, is that when you're dealing with somebody that has a personality style that is narcissistic, the people around that person constantly give that behavior power by trying to explain it.

Speaker 23 Instead, let them reveal who they are and stop gaslighting yourself into believing this person's ever going to change.

Speaker 24 I actually did use.

Speaker 23 At first, I was like, I'm not going to let them.

Speaker 24 I have a difficult relationship with my mom and I used your let them because she, I always get pulled into like something. And I have to say, it's working.
It's very, and then it's

Speaker 24 finally working.

Speaker 23 I'll tell you why it's working, Kara. And here's the reason why, is because

Speaker 23 my favorite expert on the narcissistic personality style is Dr. Romani Diversala.
Okay.

Speaker 23 And Dr. Romani basically says that one of the most damaging things that we can do when we have a very challenging personality,

Speaker 23 especially with people that are close to us, because it's easy on the internet to, you know, cut them out of your life.

Speaker 23 Most of us have somebody very challenging in our life.

Speaker 23 And we're not just going to cut them out of our life.

Speaker 23 We want to figure out how to deal with them, whether it's an ex or it is a parent or it's a child that's acting out or a boss or whatever, that one of the most dangerous things you can do is hope that the person's going to change.

Speaker 23 Right. If you say let them, let their behavior be the truth of who this person is.
You are forcing yourself to recognize who this person is.

Speaker 23 And now let me decide how much time do they get, how much energy do they get of mine.

Speaker 23 Let me stop wishing they would change and let me just actually learn how to accept who this person is and who they aren't and stop gaslighting myself with some fantasy about who they may become.

Speaker 24 You don't think people should have a role in trying to change people though?

Speaker 23 The idea. I think that you're only

Speaker 23 people you care about.

Speaker 24 I'm not talking about the guy on the train. I I just go around it.

Speaker 23 Well, here's the thing. I'm super pragmatic.

Speaker 23 So I don't want to waste my time because I've wasted 50 years of my life doing dumb shit that didn't work and then causing myself stress and hurt and frustration and causing other people stress and hurt and frustration.

Speaker 23 Our desire to change other people typically comes from a place of love. Like we want the best for our kids.
We want the best for our families. We want to get along with everybody.

Speaker 23 That's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 23 But what I realized in doing the research for this book, because there are 57 world-renowned experts that are cited in this book, 18-page bibliography, and the let let them theory over and over, let them and let me helps you access the advice and the research that everybody says and what works.

Speaker 23 So let's take a look at this dynamic of wanting to change other people. You're always going to want to change other people.
That's a good thing. But let's go about it and be very smart about it.

Speaker 23 Because here's the thing. We all have a fundamental need to be in control of our lives, our decisions, our timelines, what's going to happen at work.

Speaker 23 And when you start to worry about, like, for example, your kid, so I was really worried. I'll use an example from my own life.
I have three kids, 26, 24, and our son is 20.

Speaker 23 And our son, Oakley, is this wonderful, like, just casserole of a kid of things. You know, he had major dyslexia and ADHD and dysgraphia.

Speaker 23 And he bounced from the public school to the school for language-based learning. And he was like hated school and didn't have a lot of friends.
And as a parent, I was so.

Speaker 23 tied in knots and worried about this kid. And so he would, like a lot of kids, especially young men, he, I would would hear him upstairs playing video games, right?

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 23 he's not, he wasn't doing well in school at the time and kind of checked out.

Speaker 23 And I would go marching up the stairs because I'm worried about him and I want him to be motivated and I want him to thrive. He marched just like that.
Oh, yeah, just my arms pumping.

Speaker 23 I'm just stopping, stop, stop, stop, stop. Yeah, that's why they wear headphones because I know you're going to do it.
Swing open the door. Hey, you know, you need to get off the first of all.

Speaker 23 Do I really think

Speaker 23 he's an idiot?

Speaker 23 Of course your kid knows that playing video games is not going to help the problem that he's feeling at school. Do you want to know the hardest working kid in school? It's not the kid getting A's.

Speaker 23 It's the kid that's failing. Right.
Do you know how hard it is to sit in a classroom and not be able to do what's being asked of you?

Speaker 23 And so all he thinks about is that. Right.
And now I go in and march in like Miss Bossy with all the answers, telling him what to do, kind of like we do with our spouses.

Speaker 23 You know, you really should exercise. Oh, thanks a lot.
You don't think I thought about taking a a walk like, you know, fuck you.

Speaker 23 And so what happens is our desire to change people because we want them to thrive and we want the best for them.

Speaker 23 The second I tell you what to do, I bump up against your need to control yourself.

Speaker 23 So instead of motivating you, you know what I just did? I actually created the standoff. You're right.
No, it's, this is my favorite person on this. There's two experts that you should talk to.

Speaker 23 One is, he goes by Dr. K, the healthy gamer.
He Harvard-trained psychiatrist that is a specialist in gaming addiction. And now his entire business is training other therapists.
And basically,

Speaker 23 the entire thing about motivation is we are working against the circuitry.

Speaker 24 Yes, absolutely, especially with some of this addictive stuff.

Speaker 23 Yes, that people only change when they're ready to change for themselves. Sure.
Yeah. I know when we say sure, but then we're like, buddy, you know, how about a trainer? Right.

Speaker 23 Hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't eat that second slice of bread or maybe you shouldn't have the fourth beer. And they're like, fuck you.
I'm going to have that. Right.
Don't tell me what to do.

Speaker 23 Right. And so we create these standoffs instead of using the research to actually sneakily influence them and make them think it's fair to do it.
Yeah. Well, here's what you're going to do.

Speaker 23 So another, a second expert that I love is Dr. Stuart Ablon.
He's at Mass General Brigham, Harvard medical school professor. He also is the founder of Think Kids.

Speaker 23 So he's been a child psychologist for 30 years. His entire body of work says that let's just assume everybody in life wants to thrive.

Speaker 23 Let's assume everybody wants to be happy and healthy. When somebody is challenging or somebody is like not thriving in life, we jump in and think it's a problem of willpower.

Speaker 23 He doesn't believe that.

Speaker 23 He believes it's an issue of skill. And it's an issue of discouragement.
And I believe this too.

Speaker 23 I believe that the single biggest thing that stands in people's way in today's world is discouragement and lack of hope. This belief that, okay, well, that works for Kara, but doesn't work for me.

Speaker 23 Right. You know, that's nice for that person, but that's never going to work for me.
Because you can have all the advice in the world and we're going to get to AI and chat.

Speaker 23 And, you know, like the advice is there. Right.
But if you believe it's not going to work for you, you're never going to actually do it.

Speaker 23 And so the thing that you're battling in a kid that's not motivated or a person in your life that's not losing the weight or not getting the help that they need is that they actually believe deep down somewhere that it's not going to work for them.

Speaker 23 Right.

Speaker 23 And at some point, the only way that they're going to change is they're going to have to get to a point where staying where they are is actually harder than doing the very difficult work that it takes to change.

Speaker 24 I get your point too. Are there any surprising use cases you've heard from others with this?

Speaker 24 You just discussed your son, how you use it in your day-to-day life. Is there a surprising case? And is there one where you should not use let them?

Speaker 23 Well, again,

Speaker 23 you need to, I don't, I don't know of a single case where you shouldn't use let them because there's always the let me part.

Speaker 23 Like, for example, if you're in a situation where you have a friend that's wasted and they're like,

Speaker 23 and they're grabbing their keys, you're not going to just let them walk out the door. Right.
But they're already grabbing their keys.

Speaker 23 You got to go to the let me part.

Speaker 23 Let me step in. Right.
Let me take the keys. Let me do the thing that is going to prevent them from doing something destructive right now.
But here's the problem.

Speaker 23 Most people don't do that in front of you. Right.
Most people that are struggling are really good at hiding it because they already feel a deep sense of shame about it.

Speaker 23 And so the approach that I think is the use case that's incredible comes from Dr. Stuart Ablon.
And it's taking the let them, which is let somebody just be where they are. Right.

Speaker 23 Let them be who they are. Let them struggle and let me take a different approach.
And that approach is with them, not at them. And so the approach is simple.
You literally take the stance.

Speaker 23 I break it down into something I call the ABC loop. And the ABC loop is just a three-part conversation.

Speaker 23 The first thing you're going to do with anybody that's struggling in your life, and this is the most surprising use case, it works like a charm, is you apologize.

Speaker 23 You apologize to the person for assuming you know what's going on and for badgering them and pressuring them. And so with, you know, instance with my son, hey, buddy, I'm really sorry.

Speaker 23 Must be completely annoying to have me constantly nagging you. I'm really sorry about that.

Speaker 23 And first of all, if it's a kid, they're going to be like, ooh, what?

Speaker 23 They're waiting for that. And by the way, the best place to have this conversation is a car because they're trapped.
You don't have to look at each other.

Speaker 23 There's something about the forward ambulation of being in a moving vehicle that sort of opens up. I'm not going to discuss with my kids.
Yes. Yes.
And so you apologize.

Speaker 23 And then what you're going to do is you're going to ask, this is the A open-ended question. I've never even asked you, how do you feel about how school's going?

Speaker 23 How do you feel about how you're doing?

Speaker 23 And even if they're like,

Speaker 23 the experts say, it doesn't matter what they say. Right.
Because the internal friction that you're talking about.

Speaker 24 It's not you telling them what you think about how they're doing.

Speaker 23 They know how they're doing. Right.
Human beings aren't idiots. They know when they're not thriving.

Speaker 23 But we don't stop and ask them how they feel about it. And so even being asked to consider, how do I feel about my health right now? How do I feel about the fact that my mother's dying?

Speaker 23 How do I feel about the fact that I might lose my job to AI?

Speaker 23 It's stirring up the friction that most of us repress.

Speaker 23 And then what do you do? That's all you have to do.

Speaker 24 We have C.

Speaker 23 We just have to. Back off.
Well, B is back off. B is back off.
Yeah. Back off.

Speaker 23 You got to back off and you've got to wait. And then C is the hard part.
You got to model the change.

Speaker 24 So is, but let me is a version of don't let them.

Speaker 24 It's a different version.

Speaker 23 See, I want you to be sneaky. I don't want you to, I don't want you to, I don't want you to try to change people because it's going to backfire.

Speaker 23 I want you to use your influence because I'll give you an example that'll make a lot of sense. Let's say you and I are at work.

Speaker 23 And every single day around lunch, you close your laptop, you get up, you walk outside, you go for a walk. You come back 30 minutes later, you just look happy, refreshed, sit back down like tap tap.

Speaker 23 Now, meanwhile, I'm jamming the tuna sandwich down my throat and I'm working through lunch. You never once asked me to go for a walk.

Speaker 23 About a month after watching you do this, something interesting is going to happen. This is research, by the way, from Dr.
Tali Sharrett. She studies the science of influence.

Speaker 23 About a month after watching you do this,

Speaker 23 all of a sudden one day, I'm going to close my laptop and go for a walk. And you want to know something weird i'm going to think it's my idea right right

Speaker 23 but you and the power of your example and influence

Speaker 23 is the thing that actually influenced me in changing my own behavior because you saw it you saw it the pattern and i saw you enjoying it

Speaker 23 and i sat with the fact that every day at lunch i sit there and make a different decision and i know deep down it's a bad decision correct

Speaker 24 you still can invite someone if correct you can yeah Yeah.

Speaker 23 You can. Yeah.
No pressure. Right.
Hey, you want to go for a walk? And if they don't, they're like, okay, you're missing out. Don't do that.
Right.

Speaker 23 Well, fuck you. I got work to do.
Like, see what I'm saying? Like, and so again, people change when they're ready to change. And people only change for themselves.
And, you know, Dr. Dr.

Speaker 23 K, who I also love, basically said the basic wiring of the human brain is we default and move towards what's easy.

Speaker 23 And we reject what feels difficult.

Speaker 23 And that's why, back to my original point, you have to develop a skill for yourself where you're not sitting around waiting for it to feel easy to do the thing, where you actually understand it's never going to feel easy.

Speaker 23 Right, right. 5-4-3-2-1, I'm going to do the thing.
Right.

Speaker 24 Certain people, it's very easy to let them. Other people, it's not so hard.
That's the difficulty. Like my son, my oldest son, I do a lot of, I do a version of that, I guess.
Like, how do you feel?

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 24 it sounds good. I really trust you.
I often say I really trust your instinct on lots of things.

Speaker 23 You're a great mom.

Speaker 24 Not all the time.

Speaker 23 No, let me tell you why that's.

Speaker 24 It It works in that, but other people, it doesn't. Doesn't work with my mom, I have to say.

Speaker 23 Well, because she's got a narcissistic personality style. Right.
So she's going to do what she's ever going to do. Yeah.
But you've got to let her be who she is.

Speaker 23 Your relationship will change with her profoundly, and I'm glad it's working for you because it's going to help you access detachment theory and radical acceptance.

Speaker 24 Well, that's where I have to go to.

Speaker 23 You do. She is never going to change.
Six years in. She's never.
I have to say that.

Speaker 24 She's going to say, I'm in

Speaker 24 a war with my mother that continues forever, this quiet war that goes on and on.

Speaker 23 Because you wish it was different.

Speaker 24 Yes.

Speaker 23 And that's what Dr. Romani Diversal is saying.

Speaker 23 Wishing somebody else is different is the source of your suffering in a relationship.

Speaker 24 That's sort of Buddhism, right?

Speaker 23 It is. Well, again, the Let Them Theory is also radical.
It's also the serenity prayer. It is Buddhism.
Right.

Speaker 24 And so. You got a lot of stuff in there.
You got stoicism. You've got a lot of.

Speaker 23 Because it all traces back to the fundamental truth that there's only three things you can control in life.

Speaker 23 It's what you think about what's happening. It's what you do or don't do in response.

Speaker 23 And with our parents or the people in our life that are very challenging, what you don't do is almost more important than what you do do. And it's what you do in response to those emotions.

Speaker 23 Like you may always, and lots of us will feel that wave of grief and disappointment because a person can't be who we want them to be and who we maybe deserve to have them be.

Speaker 23 And those feelings are extremely valid. And

Speaker 24 you think you can change it.

Speaker 23 Yes, but what you do with it is what matters more because that's where your power is.

Speaker 23 And ultimately, as you start to use this, and again, you'll start to use it, let them, when you just, the moment you feel frustrated about anything, and you'll notice it's 99% of the time about other people's behavior,

Speaker 23 and you say let them, your shoulders drop because you're putting a boundary up between yourself and the world where normally you'd allow the outside world and other people to impact you.

Speaker 24 Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. I'm still not going to let tech bros do it because they're, you know, you you know the word tech bro? Well,

Speaker 23 technically broken.

Speaker 23 But hold on.

Speaker 23 You don't have a choice.

Speaker 24 That's correct, but you have a choice of what to do about it.

Speaker 23 You're right.

Speaker 24 You're the second part. Oh, you're so tricky.
All right, Mel, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about people turning to AI for mental health advice.

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Speaker 24 Mel, we're back. Illinois just became the first state to regulate the use of AI in mental health care.

Speaker 24 The new law bans AI from acting as a standalone therapist and sets guardrails of how mental health professionals can use AI to support care.

Speaker 24 Meanwhile, OpenAI is updating ChatGPT to better detect emotional distress. The company says its GPT40 model fell short in recognizing signs of delusion and emotional dependency in some cases.

Speaker 24 You think the new behavior to handle what OpenAI calls high-stakes personal decisions is rolling out soon.

Speaker 24 Talk a little bit about this because a lot of people are relying on a ton of people.

Speaker 23 A lot of people?

Speaker 24 Enough.

Speaker 23 Now, hold on a second. There's actually a recent report from Harvard Business

Speaker 23 that says that since 2024 to 2025, this is literally, it just came out a couple months ago, that the single top use case for generative AI in 2025 is therapy and companionship. Right.

Speaker 23 And I just want everybody to sit with that right now.

Speaker 23 Well, there's 700 million people that are using generative AI every week. Yep.
The top use case, Harvard Business School report,

Speaker 23 and this is a major change from 2024 is for which was usually just, I want to get

Speaker 23 generating ideas. So 2024 was generating ideas, specific search.
It was therapy and companionship, but now it's therapy and companionship number one.

Speaker 23 And so it is happening.

Speaker 23 And the first thing I want to say is I really want to applaud what's happening in Illinois, because one of the things that is terrifying about what's happening with AI, and there's lots of wonderful things that are happening, but let's just talk about the terrifying thing that's happening.

Speaker 23 There's zero regulation, zero.

Speaker 23 And if we have a situation where people are turning to AI, in order to get advice, it's already happening. Right.

Speaker 23 And the problem, because there is good stuff here, I brought a bunch of studies to talk about here, and I want to zoom out and talk about, well, why is this happening? Right.

Speaker 23 The reason why people are turning toward AI is because we are, first of all, as we've already discussed, living in an unprecedented moment of change and overwhelm and insecurity. Right.

Speaker 24 Information flood versus information desert, which existed before.

Speaker 23 And what we have is also, combine that with a medical fact, Dr.

Speaker 23 Aditi Nurakar, Harvard Medical School, 80% of people in the United States are living in a state of chronic stress, meaning you're in fight or flight. Right.

Speaker 23 Constantly. Constantly.

Speaker 23 And so if you're finding, as you're listening right now, that you're constantly overthinking, you're procrastinating more, you feel a little bit more anxious, you're having trouble thinking.

Speaker 24 And you have the tools to help you do that doom scrolling or constant news. Yes.

Speaker 23 Well, we'll talk about that in a second. Your body won't reset without you resetting your stress response.

Speaker 23 And so you have this backdrop where you've got people in a state where they need support.

Speaker 23 And in the United States alone, for every 1600 people that have depression or anxiety, there's only one mental health professional. And that's in the United States.

Speaker 23 There are some places in the world where for every 300,000 people that have depression, there's one. And so there is a huge need.
But let's talk about...

Speaker 24 Also, people aren't connecting with their own close people too.

Speaker 23 They have that at work or wherever. Yes.
And so I think it's important to just say that we need to look at at the fact that people are searching for answers.

Speaker 23 And I personally believe that the fact that somebody is searching for answers is a good thing. Now let's talk about where AI can support and where AI is very, very problematic.

Speaker 23 Because I think the single biggest issue that we're facing when it comes to generative AI is there's zero regulation.

Speaker 23 And we're living in a world, especially in the United States, where we now have a government that's more focused on profit than people.

Speaker 23 We have business regulation getting gutted. In fact, you've got the backdrop of Illinois passing this law, which I think it's a fabulous thing, but here's my concern.

Speaker 23 It seems like the law is focused primarily on AI products that are marketed as therapy. My concern is the average person is just going right there and doing a problem.

Speaker 24 And it's also open AI is still the largest.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 24 And now they are trying to do things like sending out reminders for people to take a break when they've been chatting with a bot, but they also benefit from people just as any other, just as Facebook does and others.

Speaker 23 Well, here's my concern.

Speaker 23 Here's my concern. My concern is that against the backdrop of Illinois doing something incredibly positive, because this is what has to happen.

Speaker 23 What has to happen is we've got to wake the hell up and recognize that this thing is so out of control already.

Speaker 23 And we can dig into other areas and examples that I can give you from my own life in terms of where this is spinning out of control. But you've got to understand that

Speaker 23 this is against a backdrop where the Trump administration just revealed an AI plan. outlining a 10-year moratorium on states being able to regulate this.
Yes, they tried.

Speaker 23 And so you have platforms that are unregulated.

Speaker 23 You have businesses just pumping out these new businesses without regulation, and they are preying on people who need actual help.

Speaker 24 So they're meeting a need, which is what they're very good at. They're identifying and meeting a need.

Speaker 24 And one of the things for people, which I talk about all the time, we talk about this on Pivot constantly, the lack of regulation in general in tech and in AI in particular.

Speaker 24 They don't have,

Speaker 24 I always like, when I'm in a group of people, I say, put your hand up how much regulation you think there is in AI.

Speaker 23 And people go, 100, the rule is 100. And I go, there's zero.
There's zero.

Speaker 23 I'm going to give you some examples in a minute, but I want to unpack this a little bit further because one of the reasons why AI is an incomplete solution for a very big problem that we have in society.

Speaker 23 So let's just all agree that we are at a moment in time where people getting support. for mental health issues.
And when I use the word mental health, I'm not just talking about people struggling.

Speaker 23 Mental health includes learning how to be happy, learning how to manage your stress, learning how to be more resilient, learning how to have better relationships. And so it's a positive thing.

Speaker 23 And people are looking for help with it, which is a positive thing.

Speaker 23 Now, here's how I want everybody to think about AI. AI, I think about it like autocorrect.

Speaker 23 You know how you like are typing and then it tries and you're like, well, that's not what I wanted to say.

Speaker 23 AI is filling in the blank guessing based on the information you're feeding it and the information that's out there. Right.

Speaker 23 And the problem when it comes to therapy, and you know, there's some really, really good research on this. There was a study that was done at Stanford that I have in front of me.

Speaker 23 This is the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, where they first looked at, by the way, for people who are in the world. Yeah, where they first looked at

Speaker 23 what does it mean to be a great human therapist? You got to be able to treat patients equally.

Speaker 23 You got to show empathy, not stigmatize mental health concerns, not enable suicidal thoughts or delusions and challenge a patient's thinking.

Speaker 23 Here's the problem with AI: AI tends to feed you validation and it gives you answers, not options.

Speaker 23 And based on the prompts that people give, it's only searching the language, but it's taking no other cues like emotion, tone of voice, stress levels and responses that you can see, past history.

Speaker 23 Unless somebody actually gives you that, it's not taking any of that into consideration.

Speaker 23 And so I want to talk about something that's positive before we kind of jump into the fact that what's needed here is regulation.

Speaker 23 There was a study from my alma mater Dartmouth, okay, that came out literally just a couple months ago.

Speaker 23 It was published in March, and Dartmouth researchers conducted the first ever clinical trial of generative AI powered therapy.

Speaker 23 And they found, and this is important, that people that were diagnosed with depression experienced a 51%

Speaker 23 average reduction in symptoms using generative AI. and a therapeutic model.
All right. Okay.
So leading to clinically significant improvements in mood and overall well-being.

Speaker 23 If you had generalized anxiety, it reported an average reduction in symptoms of 31%.

Speaker 23 However,

Speaker 23 here's the thing that they said. The problem is

Speaker 23 it's okay

Speaker 23 if it is supervised by a human being.

Speaker 24 When it's not.

Speaker 23 When it's not, AI is fundamentally not able to work. autonomously.
And the problem is without regulation.

Speaker 23 And again, let's applaud the state of Illinois for caring more about the people rather than the unmitigated profits that companies that are using AI are allowed to create,

Speaker 23 that without any kind of regulations, companies are not going to do this, period. No, of course not.
Of course not. Yeah.

Speaker 23 Why didn't fix social media?

Speaker 24 They didn't put safety in there.

Speaker 23 No, not only did they not fix it,

Speaker 23 but when they saw that it was damaging kids' mental health, they doubled down on the algorithms.

Speaker 23 So we've seen this with big tobacco we've seen this with social media let's not be idiots okay let's let them give us the platitudes and the the like empty promises cancer where whatever okay you know you're here to make profits because you're a public company and you now don't have to regulate a report to anybody and so let me this is the part where we have to go no no no we've got to pressure the people that are paying attention in states where they are.

Speaker 24 So what guardrails would you like to see in the middle?

Speaker 23 Oh, I want to see, I want to see tremendous regulation.

Speaker 24 You see that as the money they bring to bear.

Speaker 23 There has to be.

Speaker 24 The money they bring to bear is massive. They're standing next to Trump on the podium.

Speaker 23 There has to be.

Speaker 23 Give me the example of a guardrail. Well, a guardrail, a very good one is what happened in Illinois.

Speaker 23 That's a very good one because you're now putting a stake in the ground to saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 23 Like, people matter, and we can't just put something out here that isn't actually helping people

Speaker 23 and that has oversight. Right.
Like, this is why we have consumer safety laws. Correct.
And yet, they don't seem to apply to something that is not being regulated.

Speaker 24 It would apply to a cigarette.

Speaker 23 It would apply to chemicals. It would apply to a certain circumstance.
Why? Because people matter. Right.
People matter more than the profits of a company. Still.
At least they used to.

Speaker 23 And so, so I want to say that there's something very promising.

Speaker 23 But what they concluded in the study at Dartmouth is that while the results are promising, no generative AI agent is ready to operate fully autonomously in mental health because there is such a very wide range of high-risk scenarios that can

Speaker 23 occur. And so here's another example.
I would love to have an x-ray done and have it like scanned by AI, but I want

Speaker 23 a doctor to look at it after the AI gives you its solutions. That's it.

Speaker 23 Because one of the things that also can happen is like AI is fantastic for administrative tasks, for other things, for communicating with people.

Speaker 23 But when you allow it to operate autonomously, now we get into massively dangerous situations.

Speaker 24 And it also tries to be pleasing. It tries to, you don't know what it's going to answer.
It's not because here's the other thing. It's not user generated, but it is at the same time.

Speaker 23 Well, and a lot of times the answers are wrong.

Speaker 23 Like the other day, if you did a search on me, you would see that I drive a Lamborghini and I'm divorced and that I'm also I've converted to Islam. How's that going for you? Well, none of it's true.

Speaker 23 I understand.

Speaker 23 But that's what people also don't understand. No, oh, God, no, pickup truck.

Speaker 23 And so

Speaker 23 I think it's important because we've also gotten to this point where you go to it and you think that it's right. And what's coming, everybody, is advertising.

Speaker 24 Absolutely.

Speaker 23 And when it goes to advertising, it means that the longer it keeps you on the platform,

Speaker 23 then the more money that people always spend. I mean, it's true.
There's not even thinking about it. But people don't think about it.

Speaker 24 Yeah, but Malt Musrug,

Speaker 24 my partner for many years, for 20 years,

Speaker 24 nailed it right from the beginning. He said, he called Mark Zuckerberg a rapacious information thief.

Speaker 24 And let's talk about that.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 24 So we're going to, I want to talk about the influx of the information influx about it

Speaker 24 without overwhelming you.

Speaker 24 First of all, how do you, when you, when you use generative AI or deal with the influx of news that is, that overwhelms you, some of which is

Speaker 24 an influx of news. You don't.
What do you tell you why?

Speaker 23 Because I understand it.

Speaker 24 But if you want to stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 23 So, you know, this is a very simple thing.

Speaker 23 Like, think about input versus output.

Speaker 23 And what are you allowing into your mind?

Speaker 23 It's that simple. Do you trust the voices? You're talking about, it's just, well, I'm talking about information.

Speaker 24 Right, but it's like food, like just twinkling. From Twinkie Twinkie.
Yes.

Speaker 23 So are you allowed, if garbage in, garbage out, which is a computer term. Yes.
And so if you

Speaker 23 are serious about your stress and your peace and your success in life and your health, you will get very serious about about what you allow in to your mind.

Speaker 23 You have control, a lot more control than you believe.

Speaker 24 Some might argue some of it's addictive, but go ahead.

Speaker 23 Go ahead. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 23 It is. Absolutely.
So, you know, cocaine's addictive. I don't sleep next to an ape ball.

Speaker 23 You don't? Not in your Lamborghini? No.

Speaker 23 No. And

Speaker 23 I'm kind of, you know, I'm being like punchy about this, but like, stop blaming the phone

Speaker 23 and actually recognize that the phone is a tool. What's on it is addictive.
But if you know it's addictive,

Speaker 23 then adjust your behavior so that you don't become the tool.

Speaker 24 Right. So, so when you

Speaker 24 would, how do you, how do you stay informed though, and not check out? Because one of the things is just being completely passive,

Speaker 24 especially and the fact that doom scrolling is rather enjoyable in some fashion. Well, that's why we do it.
Yeah.

Speaker 23 You know, what's interesting about doom scrolling is it actually, you know, the research is very interesting around this is that it is a lot like pulling a slot machine.

Speaker 23 There's a very like kind of seductive trance-like thing of just pulling that slot machine. And that's also why we do it.

Speaker 23 Another reason why we do it is because all day long, we feel like our time and energy has been hijacked by work, by other people's drama, by the stress of life, by the headlines.

Speaker 23 That when you get home and you plop on the couch, there's almost like this fuck you. experience that you have.

Speaker 23 And you're like, I'm just going to take back my life by spending three hours doing nothing. We all do it.

Speaker 23 and so understanding that and that you're going to fall into that trap every once in a while which by the way when you're also stressed

Speaker 23 you tend to do oh way more the research is very clear dopamine that when you're very stressed out or even remotely stressed out that you are way more susceptible to these cheap dopamine hits and yes the phone not the phone itself but the stuff on the phone is designed to keep you on it because the longer that you give your attention to it

Speaker 24 the more money people make And the more it gives you things you had. Tristan Harris has talked about this.

Speaker 23 But so the thing I want to just say, though, is you have more power than you think.

Speaker 24 So give people practices because they don't think they do. Because there is the element of addiction, it is massive.
Much more. And one of the things I always say is: one, it's addictive.

Speaker 24 Two, you need it for work.

Speaker 23 Yeah. And stop needing work for the reason why it's addicted.

Speaker 24 I get it, but it's hard not to be digital. It's impossible.

Speaker 23 Well, I'm not saying don't be a monk and live in the mountains. What I'm saying is develop some fucking boundaries.

Speaker 24 So talk about it.

Speaker 23 Okay, here's here's a great way to start the next time you're standing in line don't reach for your phone difficult yeah

Speaker 23 don't reach for your phone three lousy minutes

Speaker 24 don't reach for your phone feel the tension don't reach for your phone did you see that there was an article in land thing what things we did before the internet and someone was i i read it and then a lot of people were commenting they said what what did you do i said every everything

Speaker 24 we we did everything like i don't know but we did Like, it was fine. Yeah.
You know, or but it starts with you.

Speaker 23 Like, literally stand in line

Speaker 23 5432. Don't, don't reach for your phone.
And as people start pissing you off, let them. And let me just stand here and take a deep breath and just be in this moment.
Boredom.

Speaker 23 And that's what you're talking about. Or presence.

Speaker 23 Like, presence. And just create a pocket between you.

Speaker 23 And this lie you're telling yourself that you need to be constantly attached to everything.

Speaker 24 No music? No.

Speaker 23 Why? Like if you're fine if you want to listen to music,

Speaker 23 but I just fine if you're listening to a podcast, but if you're reflexively, mindlessly reaching for your phone, train yourself not to. Here's another one.

Speaker 23 Another one to do is when I am done working, this has changed my life because I used to be guilty of, you know, I'd come to us here. You have four kids.
I have three kids.

Speaker 23 I would literally be on my phone for work or on my, and then I would shut it down. And now I'm ready.
And then everybody else is on their phones.

Speaker 23 Now I'm yelling at everybody else to get off their phones.

Speaker 23 It starts with you. I, this is the dumbest thing.
And again, this is the one criticism, one of the criticisms that I get for my work is, well, it's so simple. I'm like, it's not simple to most of us.

Speaker 23 Okay. Yes.
Right. And so is that how they say it?

Speaker 24 Just like, yeah, it kind of leaves me.

Speaker 23 Yeah. It's so simple.
Oh, Mammell Robin's shit is so simple. I'm like, well,

Speaker 23 only to the intellectuals does it seem simple. To the rest of us, idiots, like this stuff is pretty difficult.
But I

Speaker 23 set up a charging station in the kitchen. This is the dumbest thing.
I started to realize that in moments I want to be in person, I have to have my phone off my person.

Speaker 23 And I started to train myself to put my phone off my body when I was coming downstairs and it's time for dinner or whatever. And I, it has changed my life

Speaker 23 because I reflexively reach for it without realizing it. Sure.
When it's on me. Right.
And when it's off you and you start to train yourself.

Speaker 23 Again, it goes back to that line in the grocery store where you literally just build this little pocket of peace and presence.

Speaker 23 Now you're building, you're taking that pocket and you're putting that pocket of peace and presence into your life in your home. And what's super cool is there's a lot of research about this.

Speaker 23 I think it's the University of California,

Speaker 23 San Francisco, and the University of Vienna did these studies about the parental phone use and its impact on kids.

Speaker 24 Completely. That's the problem.
Yes. Because everyone's got the problem.

Speaker 23 Well, the more you're on your phone,

Speaker 23 the more your kids are.

Speaker 23 And the more you feel that your kids' behavior is out of control, guess what? The more yours is correct.

Speaker 24 I always think the people 30 to 50 are the problem.

Speaker 23 But here's the good news. The good news is it also starts with you because the more you have balance and boundaries and the more present you are,

Speaker 23 the more your kids become. So another great thing that you can do is we have a rule that if we are sitting down for dinner, and I only, it's only dinner, not breakfast.
Don't do this at breakfast.

Speaker 23 It will not work.

Speaker 23 At dinner,

Speaker 23 no phones, not on your body, not on the table. And it has, we've been doing this for probably 10 years in our household and it has changed our life.

Speaker 23 There's a lot of research about having just one family dinner a week and how it just impacts your health and your happiness and your connection.

Speaker 24 Almost five days a week.

Speaker 23 Yeah. And we play this game high, low.
It's a camp game. What's the high of the day? What's the low of the game? And at first, you're kids,

Speaker 24 stupid kids.

Speaker 23 Rose and thorn. Yeah.
rose and thorn and bud. Yes.
And so you can do those kinds of things. And now what are you doing? You're building a pocket for your family of peace and connection.

Speaker 23 I also like the Dr. Tama Bryant.
I don't know if you've had her on the, I think she's the current president of the American Psychiatric or Psychology. And she's a professor at Pepperdine.

Speaker 23 She basically.

Speaker 23 had this statement when I interviewed her on our podcast that was like, I really want you to question why you think it's relaxing to watch horror or crime.

Speaker 24 Correct. I don't watch it anymore.
At night. No, I don't watch them.

Speaker 23 She's like, that is an indication of

Speaker 23 age.

Speaker 24 I'm watching guillades and anything like silly. Yeah.

Speaker 24 I will watch. By the way, Hunting Wives.

Speaker 23 If you want to watch it. Hunting Wives? Okay, I'm going to take it.
I live in Vermont. I'm going to take it.

Speaker 24 MAGA Christian Trumpers that suddenly take a turn toward lesbianism. It's fantastic.
Wow.

Speaker 24 Inexplicably, but it works. It's fantastic.

Speaker 24 But besides from that, one of the things I interviewed the guy who's created Adolescence, which was this Netflix special, which is a lot less traumatic than I thought, which I thought was in it because it was so well done.

Speaker 24 And then the woman who did social studies, which was, she followed kids around. They gave her access to all their social media.

Speaker 24 And one of the things both of them took away from was the need for that kids wanted them removed from their lives.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 24 Well, the kids were happier without it, which was.

Speaker 23 Well, part of the problem, and here's the thing is that, so our son, for his senior project in high school, did this big six long six month long research study at his public school for the principal headmaster person

Speaker 23 and

Speaker 23 conclusively what all the students said is they wish everybody weren't on their phones as much but the problem is the social pressure and you know here's another like big switch for me as a parent is that I was super judgy.

Speaker 23 I'm like, you know, what

Speaker 23 you guys are all idiots. You're spending all this time online doing dumb stuff on social media.
The truth is, like when you see the phone with your kids, I want you to see their two closest friends

Speaker 23 because that's what it represents to them. And there's a tremendous amount of social pressure that I didn't understand that our kids are under.

Speaker 23 And again, because I was like missed change and control until I was like, okay, let me be with you. How do you feel about your phone news? What are you actually using it for?

Speaker 23 Why do you feel the need to sleep with this thing, which I don't allow in our house? And that is another boundary, by the way, is do not sleep with your phone.

Speaker 23 Massive study came out, University of Southern Florida, recent study looking at 11 to 13 year olds.

Speaker 23 They did find positives around phone and the ability to connect with friends because from a

Speaker 23 social standpoint and a biological standpoint, that's the age where you separate and you want to. One out of four 11 to 13 year olds are sleeping with the phone in their hand.

Speaker 23 No. It is the single most damaging.

Speaker 23 thing that a child could do because of the disruption to sleep and the the cascading effect that the disruption of sleep has on learning. On everything.
On everything.

Speaker 23 And I completely had a menopause moment and forgot where I was going with this.

Speaker 24 It's fine.

Speaker 23 Oh, oh, so

Speaker 23 our son Oakley did this.

Speaker 24 Is that your next book, Menopause Moment?

Speaker 23 No, I'm not. I don't know that I'll write another book.
Because yeah, yeah. Because when you have something this,

Speaker 23 like,

Speaker 23 this is an unprecedented moment. First of all, I'm so excited that people are excited about a book.
You're not doing the sequel, Let Them Eat Cake, or anything? Nope. Nope.

Speaker 23 Because, you know, I'm excited people are interested in reading.

Speaker 24 You should do a book called Eat Cake and then put them right next to each other.

Speaker 23 Eat cake.

Speaker 24 I'm telling you.

Speaker 23 No, I know. I'm not doing it.
You want to know why? I'm so joyful. I know the paradox of choice, dude.
I know all that research where you overwhelm people with choices. Nope.
That's a cute idea.

Speaker 23 I'm not doing it. I'm not going to fall for the temptation to do more.

Speaker 23 I know that.

Speaker 23 You said your piece. I said my piece.
You said your piece. Yeah, I feel like I feel like this is my legacy.
This is said your piece.

Speaker 24 I like you said your piece. Now you're moving on.

Speaker 23 Oh, back to Oakley. So he did this huge project and basically conclusively,

Speaker 23 all the students were like, I'd love to be off this more, but everybody's on it. Yeah.

Speaker 23 And so the school ended up adopting a policy where they take the phones at the beginning of class and dump them in a basket. Right.

Speaker 23 Because one of the biggest reasons why it's hard for states to legislate this or school districts to is the parents are pains in the ass. That's right.
They are.

Speaker 23 You do not need to be in touch with your children. You do not.
That is a major problem.

Speaker 24 I had a huge argument with a parent about this, and I said, You know what we did before? We went to the office. Yes.
Somehow we didn't die. Yeah.

Speaker 24 And then they brought in school shootings. I'm like, you need to stop.

Speaker 23 You need to stop. Right now.
Right.

Speaker 24 They don't need to text you during a school shooting.

Speaker 23 Well, by the way, if they're in the middle of a school shooting, they should be

Speaker 23 focused on running and hiding. Correct.
Yeah.

Speaker 24 All right. We're going to take a quick break.
When we come back, we'll talk about mankeeping.

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Speaker 24 Mel, we're back. It's time to talk about mankeeping or keeping peace.
And New York Times explores the term coined by postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, Angelica Puzzio Ferrara.

Speaker 24 It refers to a growing emotional burden women feel in relationships because the straight men tend only to open up to their wives or girlfriends.

Speaker 24 It's driven by a topic we tend to talk a lot about on the show. A 2021 survey from the Survey Center of America of American Life found that 15% of men said they didn't have any close friends.

Speaker 24 How would you suggest a woman relationship experiencing man keeping?

Speaker 24 I have Scott Galloway who I have to keep.

Speaker 23 Don't let him.

Speaker 24 Let him.

Speaker 24 Oh, that is the culture. We'll go to this.
You know why the show is popular?

Speaker 23 I let him.

Speaker 24 That is exactly why.

Speaker 23 No, I don't know. I've seen the comments.
Oh, I don't like it. Some of your female listeners are getting tired of it.
Of him.

Speaker 24 I know that, but then they come up to me.

Speaker 23 I know, but people listen to people that irritate them. Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 24 But they do come up to me. They like the struggle.
So would you, I don't read comments ever, speaking of which. I never do.

Speaker 23 I don't know why. It's just one of my I only do it when I'm preparing to come on a show.

Speaker 24 Oh, do you? Okay. So thank you for telling me about it, though, but I'm still going to not.

Speaker 23 Let's let them let them complain in the comments. Because you know what? You can't control what other people think.
That's right.

Speaker 23 Let them. Yeah.

Speaker 24 I have a lot of people do.

Speaker 23 Like, how can you put up with it?

Speaker 24 I'm like, yeah, it's none of your business. It's none of your beeswax.
So talk about this man keep. How do women are experiencing mankeeping?

Speaker 24 And talk about the boundaries around that, because I think dating has definitely, for some reason, become harder.

Speaker 24 And what advice do you have for men?

Speaker 23 Well, I thought that this was a very interesting article because it was very polarizing. All the women were like, finally, like somebody's saying something.
And all the guys were like, excuse me.

Speaker 23 This is a very broad voice. Yes.
You know, like broad, broad voice. Which is reductive.
Yeah. Can't give me a break.

Speaker 23 So, again, I'm one of these people that likes to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Sure.

Speaker 23 And there is a major issue going on when it comes to men and their ability to express and understand their emotions and their ability to connect and their ability to ask for help.

Speaker 23 And, you know, interestingly, just next week, we have this episode airing with Jason Wilson, this New York Times bestselling author who does incredible work in Detroit with young men and emotional resilience.

Speaker 23 He's incredible. And it's the episode's like the reason why boys and men are quietly struggling and how to support them.
So let's just take it for a fact that men are struggling.

Speaker 23 And Jason Wilson's analogy is women

Speaker 23 tend to have

Speaker 23 an emotional depth or at least awareness that is broader than most men.

Speaker 23 And there's a bazillion factors, whether it is the socialization of boys, whether it is gender stereotypes, whether it is the framework of a lot of male friendships, which I'm going to get into because I think this tracks back to the nature of friendship for young boys versus girls and then what changes when you become an adult.

Speaker 23 But he basically says women like have that like 64 crayon box that they're dealing with and dudes have like the eight. Right.

Speaker 23 And that's an issue because if you don't know the deeper issue that you're dealing with, you're going to always reach for anger or sadness.

Speaker 23 And typically if somebody's expressing anger or sadness, there's a lot of other deeper emotions going on that people don't know how to talk about.

Speaker 24 So often shame, but go ahead.

Speaker 23 Yeah, often shame. And, you know, if you don't know the difference between the two,

Speaker 23 guilt is when I did something bad and shame is when you say I'm bad because of what I did. And so blaming men for this doesn't actually solve the bigger problem.

Speaker 23 And I think the bigger problem starts a lot earlier. Like if you look at all the research around friendship, boys tend to create friendships in groups.

Speaker 23 Girls tend to have closer relationships one-on-one. A lot of men tend to make their friends based on teams and based on groups that are organized for them.

Speaker 23 And when they graduate from high school or for college, they end up going to the next team, which is work. And now we're in a situation where we have hybrid work.

Speaker 23 We're in a situation where people are very disconnected. Right.

Speaker 23 And you have a situation where guys have defaulted to needing groups to be organized in order to feel like you have relationships with other people.

Speaker 24 Yep. It's so interesting.
My daughter has individual friends, and my sons have the boys. Yes.
Which is really interesting. He has the boys.

Speaker 23 Yes, exactly. And so when you get into a heterosexual relationship, you are now in a relationship with somebody who is used to connecting one-on-one.
And so you are probably,

Speaker 23 in a lot of cases, training this person for the first time in some of the deeper nuances of your emotional or inner life. And so I don't think it's a bad thing that

Speaker 23 you might be in a relationship with somebody that leans on you and that needs your support. But I do think it is a bad thing if you are not effective in getting.

Speaker 23 your person

Speaker 23 to be more proactive with friendship and to be more proactive. Outside of the relationship.
Oh, hell yes. Hell yes.

Speaker 23 And, you know, I write about this in the let them theory, and it's a really helpful framework that makes you really think about friendship differently.

Speaker 23 Most of us don't understand friendship.

Speaker 23 And friendship, once I explain this to you, you'll, you'll, you'll be like, oh my God. Like so simple, Mel.
Yeah, it's so simple. Like, what the fuck?

Speaker 23 So, so for your whole life, the conditions for friendship from zero to 20 were there

Speaker 23 because you were with people your age all the time. Right.
And you were doing the same things all the time.

Speaker 23 And you had the same milestones, celebrated birthdays, graduations, same vacation schedules, all of it. Right.
When you hit 20, all of a sudden, the great scattering, as I call it, happens.

Speaker 23 And everybody scatters in different directions.

Speaker 23 And then the only thing that's holding your old friends together is a group text chain that gets kind of dwindles to less and less and less as people start to jump into their lives.

Speaker 23 And then we start to say, I have no friends, which is not true. And so let me tell you the three pillars based on research that need to be present to create friendship.

Speaker 23 And I want people to understand this because when you see the pillars, you can support people in your life, whether it's young boys or young men or your partner in understanding what it's going to take to create these relationships that matter.

Speaker 23 So number one, you have to have proximity. Proximity is the single most important.
condition for friendship. There was research at the University of Kansas that was done about friendship.

Speaker 23 And I'm going to probably get the facts or the actual digits wrong, but I'm going to be in the right range. In order to have a casual friend, you need to spend almost 80 hours with somebody.

Speaker 23 In order to have a super close friend, over 200 hours. Right.

Speaker 23 And the proximity creates the condition. So, you know, like whatever.
Yes.

Speaker 24 Other school parents.

Speaker 23 Other school parents, seeing them on the sidelines, in class, sitting next to people. At work, you used to have a lot of friends at work, right? Because you spent so much time with them.

Speaker 23 So that brings me to the second condition that needs to be present for good friendship to happen. And that is timing.

Speaker 23 So timing means are we in the same time of our lives? Are we both raising kids? Are we around the same age? Are we interested in the same things?

Speaker 23 This explains why you can spend 50 to 60 hours a week with people at work and really love them and they're awesome, but you're not best friends. Right.

Speaker 23 Because you may be in your 20s until you go out and get wasted and then you're puking in a garbage can on Sunday night. And then Monday morning, it's like, hey, what'd you do?

Speaker 23 Oh, I went to a soccer game with my kids. You're in different timing of life.
So there's only so much depth. Third condition for friendship, energy.

Speaker 23 Energy is just about whether or not there's a fit or not. And I've come to believe it has a lot more to do about what your priorities are.

Speaker 23 This is why you can be super close friends with people, but if you decide to stop drinking, all of a sudden you're not that close because the energy shifts. Right.

Speaker 23 Now, here's the most important thing.

Speaker 23 The reason why it's important to understand that it's about proximity, it's about timing, and it's about energy is that when friendships naturally come and go,

Speaker 23 it doesn't mean anything's wrong. Right.

Speaker 24 It's actually good. I agree.

Speaker 23 And you got to let them. Let them come and go.
And the mistake that people make is they start to say, I have no friends. That's not true.

Speaker 23 People come and go in your life, and it's a beautiful thing. And at any moment,

Speaker 23 you can decide. that friendship is important to you and make it a priority.
Yes.

Speaker 23 And, you know, every time in your life that you move or you go through a divorce or you have any major job change, you are going to experience a little scattering of friendship because proximity will change.

Speaker 23 And so will the timing and so will energy. Like, for example, my husband and I moved to southern Vermont when we were in our 50s and

Speaker 23 it was shocking to move to a new place and literally go, oh my God, I have no friends here. Right.
I got to start all over.

Speaker 23 And you feel like that first week in college where it feels like everybody has got their group and you're the only idiot sitting alone, you know, in the cafeteria and you don't want to be that cringy person that goes up to other people.

Speaker 23 What did I do? Well, first I cried and stayed alone in my house for six months and literally was like,

Speaker 23 where is this the word saying?

Speaker 23 I've like, you know, this is why I'm so good at giving advice because I fuck up my life all the time.

Speaker 23 And I find myself in these situations where I'm like, okay, well, nobody's going to magically parachute out of the sky and fix my life. No one's coming.

Speaker 23 I'm either going to suffer in misery or I'm going to fucking fix this. And again, let's go back to some of the things we talked about.

Speaker 23 The brain, Dr. K, defaults to what's easy.
Being miserable and crying is easy.

Speaker 23 And at some point, you'll get to a point where you're like, it's actually harder to stay in here and sit with myself than to push my ass out the door and to go to that value coffee shop.

Speaker 24 You have to make a thing. When I moved to California from DC, I had a wonderful social life in DC, friends, everything else.
And I moved to California to cover the nascent internet industry.

Speaker 24 I didn't know anyone. And I just broke up with someone too.
So it was just like, and I spent a couple months like crying

Speaker 24 in a rainy San Francisco house. And I remember when spring came, I go, you know, I'm going to say yes to everything.
Everything I'm going to, even the smallest little thing.

Speaker 24 And it was changed everything. Yeah, it does.

Speaker 23 Like I started honest to God by just going to the coffee shop.

Speaker 23 And then instead of sitting there alone, I forced myself to start. turning and talking to people in a line instead of looking at my phone.
Hey, you know, come here. Oh, I like your socks.

Speaker 23 Like just complimenting somebody is a great way. Love bombing.
Yeah. To just strike up a turn and talk to the people next to you.
Just, it's a way to start to come out of your shell.

Speaker 24 Actually, longevity depends on talking to strangers. It's really interesting.

Speaker 23 Yes. Are you going to talk about the warm like connection? Yeah.
Like the sky. Like, so here's the thing.
We undervalue

Speaker 23 the foundational importance.

Speaker 23 of what they call them something like cold relationships, but it's, I, I like to call them warm relationships. These are the barista at the coffee shop.

Speaker 23 This is the person that you see at the dog park. Stopping and talking to folks, learning their names.
And here's a great hack.

Speaker 23 So for your favorite coffee shop or the place that you go a lot, your restaurants, whatever, the gym, create a contact

Speaker 23 listing. Put in the coffee shop name in the notes section.

Speaker 24 Put their names.

Speaker 23 With a description. Beard and glasses makes a great cup of coffee.
His name is Kevin. And then you're going to learn that his dog is Ollie.
And then before you go into the coffee shop. You look at it.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 23 And then you can walk in and you're like, hey, Kevin, how are you doing? It's Mel.

Speaker 23 And you start to build this framework that actually matters because you start to feel seen and you start to feel like there is a small community. And from there,

Speaker 23 you loosen up and start to. And they don't have to be your friend.
Absolutely not. Absolutely.

Speaker 24 And actually, there's so many studies now. As I told you, I'm working on this longevity series.

Speaker 24 Talking to people you've never, there's a group called, I think, Time Spent that puts together six people. It's got, it's got 100,000 people across the globe doing this.
You've never met.

Speaker 24 You meet six people. They just put you together and you spend the evening with them.
And for every study shows, this is like one of the, everyone's like, what can you do about longevity?

Speaker 24 Should you, you know, do shrimp semen?

Speaker 23 You should do this.

Speaker 24 You should.

Speaker 23 I'm like, shrimp, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? I know, but I'm like, well, like, I'm digging the vein out of the back of that thing before I eat it. Shrimp semen? Apparently.

Speaker 24 Anyway, that said, the biggest thing is community and meeting people you don't know and establishing is fascinating. Well, you know, actual links to longevity with that.

Speaker 23 Of course. Like it's not like in life.

Speaker 23 Yes. It's not about the destination or the journey.
Right.

Speaker 24 It's about the company. Oh, I knew you were going to say that.
So one personal question. How do I learn to let Scott?

Speaker 23 Do you have to? No. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 23 Apparently not.

Speaker 23 What is it about Scott that you need to? No, I don't.

Speaker 24 I do let him.

Speaker 24 I actually, interestingly enough, it's the first relationship often with men like Scott sometimes when they were sort of narcissistic or pushed pushed on things I would try to stop them and I think Scott's been the greatest um success because I do let him like and I think it gives people permission not to fight with people so much to be able to disagree yes and be okay with it and still be not just be civil but be friends with people you disagree with and it gives people permission to laugh a little bit.

Speaker 23 Well, I want you to imagine something.

Speaker 23 So one of the reasons why the let them theory is so important, particularly in in this polarized world, is that we all have a complete intolerance of an opposing point of view.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 23 the only way, and this is again, very research-based, I'll give you kind of a visual to think about, because the only way that you are actually going to influence somebody else's opinion is if you give them the space to first share theirs and to feel understood.

Speaker 23 So I want you to imagine you're

Speaker 23 that you've got two glasses and one glass is filled with red water and one glass is filled with blue water. And these represent two people that have two very different points of view about life.

Speaker 23 What we do in life when somebody starts to go off or act in a way that we don't like is instead of like when they start to go off and act in a way, imagine that red glass is tipping over and they're pouring all of it out of their brain.

Speaker 23 The second you react, respond, like disagree, bitch, bada da da

Speaker 23 like what that is actually is it's as if you've taken your glass of blue water and tried to pour it on top of the red. There's no room in the brain to hear it.

Speaker 23 They have to first feel as though you have listened and heard what they've had to say.

Speaker 23 And so I think a lot about the fact that the let saying let them forces me to stop just getting so pissed off or getting your digs in or getting my digs in and just let them pour it out.

Speaker 23 It's sort of of like somebody puking. Like if somebody's puking, you don't stand in front of them.

Speaker 23 You stand to the side. You stand far away.
Yeah.

Speaker 23 You hold their hair. You're like if they got long hair, right? You rub their back.
Is there anything else? Maybe. Anything else? Yeah.
Yeah. You know, let it come out.
Yeah. And then

Speaker 23 somebody is able to hear you. Right.

Speaker 23 But we have to build this tolerance of being able to let people be who they are and have their opinions and then let me be more effective at understanding what I think I hear

Speaker 23 and then saying something. But I want to give you a framework to use with Scott.
This comes from Charles Dewig, Field Surprise winning. Yeah, Charles is fantastic.
So he has this three-part framework.

Speaker 23 He basically says people are only ever having three different conversations, right? They're having a practical one, which is really like, okay, I have a goal. Let's find a solution.

Speaker 23 They're having an emotional one. where they're venting.
And what's the goal of an emotional conversation? I want empathy. Kara, I want you to validate me.

Speaker 23 Or they're having a social one. They just want acknowledgement.

Speaker 23 And I think often listening to you guys, Scott is having an emotional or social conversation and you're trying to have a practical one.

Speaker 23 And one of the things that have changed my parenting is I've literally adopted this phrase that is, do you want me to listen?

Speaker 23 Or would you like my advice?

Speaker 23 And nine times out of 10, people just want you to listen.

Speaker 23 Another, another thing that you could say to Scott that I love, because I, you know, when he, does things that are just like, oh my God, like when you opened up the show where he was in his apartment, he made that joke about how, like, the last time a woman was here, you know, $60.

Speaker 23 Yes, exactly. You can just say, dude, that is below a standard for my response.

Speaker 23 Or you can also say, could you repeat that? Yeah. Oh, I like that.

Speaker 24 Because then the pause is priggy. The first one is priggy.

Speaker 23 But in the pause,

Speaker 23 could you repeat that? Yeah. He's going to be like,

Speaker 23 I didn't mean that. Yeah.
But the pause and asking somebody to repeat it forces them to reflect

Speaker 23 on what just happened.

Speaker 23 You can also say, did you actually mean to be offensive?

Speaker 24 No, no, that sounds pricky.

Speaker 23 Lesbian. Sample.
See, there you go. You can do it.

Speaker 23 But it depends on the person and how you want to solve it.

Speaker 24 But I love that

Speaker 23 pause and just be like, could you repeat that? What?

Speaker 24 I was just kidding. You know what I do sometimes, though, when people are acting badly?

Speaker 23 I go, is that the wind?

Speaker 24 Like, I pretend I never heard it in the first place

Speaker 24 or just not acknowledge it in any way. It's often very effective.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 24 You know, is that the wind? Is my favorite expression?

Speaker 23 I used to do it with my kids when they were being really bad.

Speaker 24 And they're like, my, my one son. The other day I did it with my three-year-old.
He was being really mean to his sister. And I said, Claire, just say, is that the wind? Is that the wind happening?

Speaker 24 Because he was trying to hurt her.

Speaker 23 See, the only problem with doing that in our family is that that's a cover for a fart.

Speaker 23 All right.

Speaker 24 Now we'll take one more quick break and we'll be, thank you for the advice. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Speaker 57 Sometimes, the difference between success and failure comes down to one chance encounter or following a counterintuitive instinct or ignoring conventional wisdom to make a bold decision.

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Speaker 24 Nel, we're back. Let's hear some wins or fails.
Would you like me to go first?

Speaker 23 You go first. Okay.

Speaker 23 A fail.

Speaker 24 Tim Cook. It's not a fail.
It's a win for him. Apple is trying to stay in Trump's good graces, investing an additional $100 billion in U.S.

Speaker 24 jobs and suppliers, bringing a total of $600 billion over four years. Although, if you look at the last time, they didn't end up spending that.
This is

Speaker 24 basically a press release. And it includes a $2.5 billion Kentucky-based corning, which they're already there.

Speaker 24 So glass in the iPhones and watch what we made in the USA, but not in the iPhones, but they've already been doing that. So they're doing a lot of things for Trump's benefit.

Speaker 24 And in doing so, he was in the Oval Office announcing. the new deal and he presented Trump with this plaque that was a piece of this corning glass along along with a gold stand.

Speaker 24 And I just thought, here's one of the good guys doing this. And he is a decent fella, I have to say.
But everything, it reminds you that everything is for the shareholders, no matter what.

Speaker 23 Profits over people.

Speaker 24 Profits over people. Even someone who's a relatively decent fellow like Tim Cook, you don't have to be an Elon Musk to do something that's a real fail.
And so that's where we are right now.

Speaker 24 If people like this do this, you know where we are. And it works because giving him a little gold statue makes him feel better.

Speaker 24 I think my win is I love South Park. I've done it again.
I just, they're so good. And I, sometimes I don't like some of the stuff they do, but I got to say, really funny.

Speaker 24 They don't, they don't suffer fools. They, uh, they brought the latest episode.

Speaker 24 They had already done the Trump one that got everyone all hot and bothered right in the middle of a deal that they, that the company did something really terrible to, in order to get the deal done.

Speaker 24 But they made J.D. Vance look like tattoo from Fantasy Island.
I'm old enough to remember Fantasy Island.

Speaker 23 The plane, the penegal, I can't do that.

Speaker 24 The penegas.

Speaker 24 Go back and watch it. Some of them stay okay.
That one,

Speaker 24 you're really like, oh my God. The show poked fun at Homeland Security,

Speaker 24 had Christy Noam with a running gag of her face continually melting, and she keeps shooting puppies, obviously. And I just, they went there, and I like when people do that.

Speaker 24 And that's what satire is for. And it can seem mean, but whoever's in power, I really like when you, when, when this is what you use your, your satirical talents for.
I thought it was really great.

Speaker 24 So those are my wins and fails.

Speaker 23 So my fail is this recent case that the federal court handed down in San Francisco.

Speaker 23 Lawyers coming back. Yeah.
Well, no, this really pisses me off, honestly. All right.

Speaker 23 Where they ruled in favor of AI companies having the legal right to upload copyrighted material into large language modeled things. And let me just explain what this means.
If you write a book,

Speaker 23 somebody can go and buy your book for $25 and upload the entire transcript into AI

Speaker 23 and use it with unfettered access or any citation to you or any link out to you or anything to you.

Speaker 23 And this is the single biggest raid, I think, of intellectual property.

Speaker 23 And there are lots of authors that are bringing lawsuits. They brought Tony Robbins.
Yep, Tony Robbins is. And

Speaker 23 what is a huge fail, and again, we're kind of touching on something we already talked about is the lack of regulation.

Speaker 23 To put this in perspective, every single day there are hundreds, if not thousands of AI-generated fake shit of me online.

Speaker 24 I had the same happen in my book come out at Amazon.

Speaker 23 Yes. And here's the problem.

Speaker 23 I, and I'm not whining. This is an occupational hazard.
I am concerned as a lawyer and a citizen

Speaker 23 because I have 38 million followers and one of the largest podcasts in the world. You do.
I cannot get the platforms to take this shit down. Right.

Speaker 23 And if I can't do it,

Speaker 23 how the hell is the average?

Speaker 23 It's not even stealing my stuff. They're stealing my face and my voice and putting it in.
They can fake mouth AI. Oh, they already do.

Speaker 23 They already, there are, there are things with me out there talk saying all kinds of inflammatory stuff about Pakistan, and I can't get it taken down.

Speaker 23 And if I can't do that, what's going to happen to the average person

Speaker 23 who is having their identity stolen, who is having this happen to them?

Speaker 23 What is happening to the independent artists that can't afford a lawyer, who's having their work ripped off? Our podcast, my audiobook got uploaded to

Speaker 23 an AI bot, and they generated a fake version of it with two AI bots reading the audiobook.

Speaker 23 And under this case law, the fair use doctrine and derivative works, they have a claim that it generated by AI with fake AI robot voices, that that is now protected because it's derivative of what I did.

Speaker 23 Now, here's the problem that I have. You can upload it to Spotify, which they did.
It started ranking in the top 10 podcasts in the world, marketed as my audiobook.

Speaker 23 It took me three months to get them to remove it. Three months.
And I have the means to get it removed. Why? Well, because there's no regulation.
And there's no requirement.

Speaker 23 And this is why we're failing.

Speaker 23 There needs to be a requirement that something that is either generated by or spoken by AI is labeled as such. Because I will compete against a robot, but I'd like to know that it's a robot.

Speaker 23 As a consumer, I would like to know if I'm listening to your voice or if I'm listening to something that somewhere in some room overseas created in some den, an AI version.

Speaker 24 They also get money that you do.

Speaker 23 Of course, Savannah Guthrie wrote a book about her religion, and someone, some AI made a workbook that her mother bought it, thinking it was her workbook on how to do this.

Speaker 23 And so the lack of the requirement of labeling,

Speaker 23 I think a lot of consumers will go, well, I don't want to listen. I don't want to read that news if AI wrote it.
I'd rather read the news by this journalist that I trust.

Speaker 23 This is why so many people are going to Substack. So I think it's a huge fail, this litigation.
Like this, this is to me.

Speaker 24 Do you want to create an AI version of yourself?

Speaker 23 There's a lot of, no, no.

Speaker 23 Some people are doing it. Absolutely not.

Speaker 23 One version of me is enough.

Speaker 23 So I would like to stay married. We're going to be married for 29 years this year.
I'd like to stay married.

Speaker 23 I

Speaker 23 feel like this case law is as big of a deal as Citizens United. Wow.
I really do. Like, I believe Citizens United laid the foundation for the unraveling of democracy.
Full stop.

Speaker 23 I believe this case law is 100% setting a precedent that is really going to unravel.

Speaker 23 copyrighted work and artistic work.

Speaker 23 And it's also setting a precedent for a lack of regulation, which from a consumer standpoint, I want to know. Don't you want to know?

Speaker 23 If a person is...

Speaker 23 I've been railing about this forever. So that's that case law for me is a major law.
Here's a huge win. I think at the age of 60 and 56,

Speaker 23 you and I are fucking winning to be competing on a global level.

Speaker 24 I'm 62.

Speaker 23 Yeah, I know you are. So you look incredible.
Thank you. Once again.
Thank you. You're welcome.
I agree. That's the best response I have ever heard.
Everybody, did you hear that?

Speaker 23 I want you to send this, that section right there. Send this to every woman and girl you have.
When you compliment them, teach the women and girls in your life to say, I agree. Thank you.
I agree.

Speaker 23 Thank you. You're right.
That's correct.

Speaker 23 Amazing.

Speaker 24 Some guy came to me with something else. I did a work thing and they're like, that was really good.
I go, no, it was fucking fantastic. And they're like, well, that's egomaniacal.

Speaker 24 I said, you just said I was great. No, it's a fact.

Speaker 23 It's not easy.

Speaker 24 It's a fact. It's facts.
Them's facts.

Speaker 23 But I feel in this day and age, with all of the tech and the fact that in the podcasting space, it's typically about either entertainment or, you know, kind of pop culture or spreading conspiracy theory for us at our age to have built a podcast that people actually turn to and trust, I think that means we are truly winning.

Speaker 23 And I love doing it at our age. Yeah, it's like

Speaker 24 a popularity of Crohn's, you know.

Speaker 23 Remember that word, Crohn. Crohn's.

Speaker 24 It's a word for old ladies. Crohn?

Speaker 23 I've never heard that word. Oh my God, look it up.
Crohn's. Is it because Crohn's disease?

Speaker 24 You get it when you're old? No, C-R-O-N-E-S, Crohn's.

Speaker 23 Isn't that how you spell Crohn's disease? I don't know. I don't know what you're saying.
No, I think I'm not. I'm not as smart as you.
No, I've been.

Speaker 23 You know what? Don't. Mark Twain's, you may not.

Speaker 23 It takes a simple mind to spell a word one way. And half the words, I don't even know what they mean.
Do your simple voice again.

Speaker 23 So sad. That ML Robbins is so simple.
Well, you know, everything she says is really simple. Why didn't you do it? Was that? I'd say, why didn't you do it then? Yeah, then why didn't you do it?

Speaker 24 One time years ago, Bill Gates was in a meeting with me and he was talking about the iPhone, which was the most beautiful, simple thing. iPod, actually, that was before that.
And he goes, what is it?

Speaker 24 Just a hard drive and a white box. It's so trivial.
And I said, if it's so easy, why didn't you do it?

Speaker 23 Well, it only seems simple when somebody does it. Correct.
That is. And that's the genius in it.

Speaker 23 It's very easy to make something complicated.

Speaker 23 It is extraordinarily difficult and takes a lot of rigor to distill

Speaker 23 complicated things into a simple thing that anybody can use and you can remember and share with somebody else.

Speaker 24 And that's what I do. And contrary to that, Steve Jobs said that to me, as he said, it's hard.
It's it's easy to make,

Speaker 24 it's hard to make complex things simple. It's easy to make simple things complex.

Speaker 23 And I was like, oh, I was like,

Speaker 23 Buddha. Like, I didn't know what.

Speaker 24 I was like, oh my God, he's right. Once again, but it's true, which you do.
Mal, you're fantastic.

Speaker 24 Thank you. We love having you on here.
It's really wonderful.

Speaker 24 You deserve all your success.

Speaker 24 At first, when I first heard you, I was like, no. And then I'm like, oh, she's right.

Speaker 23 She's fantastic. I didn't say, oh, she's very interested.
Well, you know what? I don't want to to be right. I'd like to be useful.

Speaker 24 No, that's what I mean. I think

Speaker 24 you hit on something and it's not, it's actually got substance behind it and science, which you cited and stuff like that.

Speaker 24 And that's the key thing for a lot of people who give easy answers or seem like easy answers. You have the backup, which I really appreciate.
And that's all you have to do.

Speaker 24 Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Speaker 24 Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot.
And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'll be back next week with another amazing co-host.
I heard Rachel Maddow's coming.

Speaker 24 David Remnick's coming. We've got so many great people.
But Mel, thank you so much.

Speaker 24 I love Scott Free August because I get to spend time with people like you and I'm had enough of him for a little while. I will read us out.

Speaker 24 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode.
Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 24 Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 24 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 20 Try Odo for free at odoo.com.

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Speaker 59 From deaf and power wheelchair soccer to beach and futsal, Volkswagen is actively supporting all the communities and teams within the U.S.

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Speaker 59 soccer extended national teams and are focused on helping to give these less widely known forms of soccer a platform moving forward. From the pitch to the sand and everything in between,

Speaker 59 welcome to RTU.

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AI Therapy, “Mankeeping,” and Screen Addiction

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