Jonathan Haidt

We've got to stop that like in the next two or three months.

Yes, in fact, I do.

Oh, sweet.

I do, I do.

You know, I've spoken to him three times.

And, you know, he was gracious to me the first two times.

And then I ran into him recently at a conference where he said that my research is not scientifically rigorous.

So that doesn't quite qualify as hate, but I think it is perhaps a new phase in the evolution of our relationship.

The book is called The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

Well, thanks so much, Neil.

Thanks so much, Chuck and Gary.

If listeners want more information, everything is at anxiousgeneration.com.

And we have a children's version of the book coming out.

So look for that as well.

Kneel right back at you.

The other guys, I'm not so sure.

Neither are we.

Something happened in the early 2010s. And my argument in the book is a tragedy in two acts. The first act is the loss of the play-based childhood. It's what anybody over 40 in this audience had. You were out with your friends after school. There was nobody supervising. You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how to face adversity.

Something happened in the early 2010s. And my argument in the book is a tragedy in two acts. The first act is the loss of the play-based childhood. It's what anybody over 40 in this audience had. You were out with your friends after school. There was nobody supervising. You had to learn how to work out conflicts, how to face adversity.

So that's what kids have had for hundreds of thousands of years. It's part of being a mammal. You play, you develop skills. We began to crack down on that, to lock kids up in the 90s, to not let them out. So we're restricting what they most need, which is play, from the 90s through the 2000s. But mental health doesn't collapse then. It's actually pretty stable.