Chapter 1: What sparked the self-esteem movement in America?
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You're listening to Radiolab.
Radiolab. From WNYC.
Hello? Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, we hear you. We're just ignoring you. You were not. I was waiting until it was recording. Hey, I'm Latif Nasser.
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Chapter 2: How did John Vasconcellos influence self-esteem policies?
This is Radiolab. And today... Do you know what this is about at all, Latif? Only vaguely. Only two words. A story from a pair of friends. Producer Matt Kilty and contributing editor Heather Radke. You want to say them? Self-esteem? Yeah. Or maybe this is actually really, in fact, a story about Heather's need for constant validation and praise. Yeah.
Coming in hot.
What is the most sort of like honest explanation of how this came about? You were feeling bad. I think, okay, the most honest answer is sometimes probably like more than I like to an embarrassing degree.
Chapter 3: What were the societal challenges addressed by the self-esteem movement?
I feel bad about myself.
Hmm.
And I am a creative person in a profession where there's lots of ways that you can, if you're so inclined, you can find to feel bad about yourselves. There's always a list you're not on, always a sales number you didn't reach, always a pitch that didn't get accepted. And Matt is here acting like you're an alien from another planet or something. Yeah, totally.
A few days ago, Heather asked me if I was proud that she jumped in Lake Michigan when it was cold. And he was like, nope, not proud, not interested.
It was jumping into a lake.
Wait, Matt, but you don't... Do you feel immune to all of these problems? I maybe like to kind of sit in my self-loathing a little bit more. I've been a party to that in the past one time or another. Yeah, I've witnessed that. I think it's like the seeking out of a sort of affirmation and compliment feels like a means to maybe feeling good. And I don't necessarily believe in...
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Chapter 4: What role did Esalen play in shaping self-esteem concepts?
The kind of project of the sort of goal of trying to feel good. But I mean, I don't think it's like that weird that I want to feel better about myself. No. Like, I think the question of like, how might I feel better about myself is pretty normal, like kind of about as normal as it could be.
like their whole industry is based on this question yeah it's like everywhere like you see it everywhere like it's on reality tv it's on instagram you know it's like everything about instagram is like how instagram is giving us low self-esteem like wait but like what are why are what is this this just matt heather therapy hour what is there a story here what's going on it's a little bit of that throughout
No, no, no, no. We do – okay, no, we have a story that Heather and I spent a long time working on.
Years, years.
Years working on.
Wow.
But it's about the fact that this idea, this thing that Heather's talking about, this pursuit of feeling good about yourself – How sort of weirdly it's not that old of an idea. Yeah, it's not that old. It's kind of all based on a lie. Okay.
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Chapter 5: How did self-esteem become a focus in education?
And how so much of this you can kind of really trace back to this one guy. How do you say his last name? I think it's Vasconcelos. That's how I've always said it. Vasconcelos. I mean, I think. John Vasconcellos or maybe Vasconcellos. You call him Vasco in the book, right? Everyone calls him Vasco. I just feel like I... Interesting. This is a weird thing.
Robert Pattinson, the Hollywood actor, bought the film rights. Did I tell you about this?
No.
He bought the film rights because he wanted to make the film of Vasco.
Chapter 6: What criticisms emerged about the self-esteem movement?
And I had a three-hour meeting with him about it. And he was like, who do you think should play Vasco? And I said, I think it should be the guy, Magnum P.I. And he was like... Tom Selleck?
What?
yeah it was like i said the wrong thing i thought they'd be good i can see it i can actually it's the mustache and the big like bear like thing okay so john actually died back in 2014 and so we ended up talking to the author will store so will wrote a book about the self like how we think of ourselves called selfie selfie all right like it which has a whole chapter on john
And then we also spoke to... Yeah, well, I've got all kinds of curiosities and questions, so... Mitch Saunders. One of John's closest friends. But I think those will emerge as we get going, yeah. And before we get started, I guess I just want to say, in reporting this story, I've always kind of thought of John as like an Icarus figure.
He's a kind of modern-day Icarus where he wanted so much to feel good. He wanted everyone in the whole world to feel good. But he did fly maybe a little too close to the sun. So what drew you to John initially? What I thought was so interesting about John in his early life was that he was born into a very strict Catholic family.
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Chapter 7: How does self-esteem impact personal relationships?
Oh, yeah. A big, big influence was the Catholicism that he grew up in. So if we back up a little bit, John was born in 1932. In San Jose. The oldest of three kids. His father was superintendent of schools in the East Bay. His mom mostly stayed at home. She could be pretty stern. She'd give my wife a hard time about the meal we had prepared, you know. And John as a kid, he was clearly very bright.
Never really got in trouble. And was also... A very strict Catholic. A good Catholic boy. And the kind of good Catholic... That kind of fetishized self-loathing. Because this was a sort of Catholicism that was heavy on.
Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the rise and fall of self-esteem initiatives?
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man. Original sin. And death through sin. The idea that we're all born sinners. And in this way, death came to all people because all sin. He was raised. Behold. Never to think well of himself. I was brought forth in iniquity. To never think about me, the I. And in sin did my mother conceive me. to not show pride, to not show anger.
That you are a horrible person if you touch yourself, if you engage with anybody else in any kind of sex whatsoever outside of marriage. It was this upbringing of being told so many times in so many ways that you're less than, not good enough, fundamentally flawed.
He used to tell a story, who knows whether it's true, because it's such a great story, where he ran for class president in the eighth grade and he lost by one vote. And do you know whose vote it was? His own. His own vote. One vote was his. He voted for the other person. He was so self-hating that he couldn't bring himself to vote for himself. God, the poor guy.
But he believed in himself enough to run, but not enough to... What a puzzle there. Yeah, he's a tangled web. When I was looking through his personal archives, I found a letter from an early girlfriend that actually said to him, the thing I love most about you, John, is your absolute humility. But... You know, this is one of the things that animated him was his own lack of confidence in himself.
He would later become class president. Attended this fancy private school in the Bay. He was valedictorian. He got into Yale and Harvard. But he chose to stay in California. Santa Clara University, went on to Santa Clara Law, was valedictorian everywhere he went. Graduates top of his law class. Becomes this quite successful young man. Working at this law firm in the Bay.
Tall, broad-shouldered, clean-cut. Black suit, black tie, neat hair. And in 1962... He decides to join the re-election campaign of Democratic Governor Pat Brown. And he would say this later in an interview that it was like this moment on this campaign where politics became, quote, etched in his heart. And so in 1966, at the age of 34, he runs for a seat in the California State House.
On November 8th, 1966, he wins. Well, he has this spectacular nervous breakdown. He completely collapses. The way he describes it, he says, I found myself and my identity in my life coming utterly apart. Was there something that precipitated this? Well, at the time, no one knew what precipitated it. Like, he never talked publicly about the details of what happened.
But the way that Mitch would describe it to us was... It was kind of as if John had felt like he'd been handed a script his whole life, like a script from his family, from his church, from society of like, this is how you're supposed to dress. This is how you're supposed to behave. And he was suddenly kind of coming up against the idea that maybe he didn't want to live by that script.
And it left him feeling like he had no place to go.
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