Diagnoses: More Harm Than Good? With Dr. Stu Law pt. 2

This continues our discussion with Dr. Stu Law. We further elaborate on the issues with a diagnostic system for mental health and what the pitfalls are, including faulty underlying assumptions. After recording, we had enough content in this discussion for two separate episodes. So, we awkwardly added a post-hoc conclusion in this discussion and a similar intro to the next episode. 

Recommendations Part 2

• Abraham: Rick & Morty Season 9 (https://www.hbomax.com/?utm_id=sa|22393148778|180575663513|297385727722&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22393148778&gbraid=0AAAAApH9fnpTr6yDijXdlc51psz-wvFmK&gclid=CjwKCAjwtKrUBhAhEiwAr77ZosVPKgR3u_fZCszdZHzumdiOcQNAKwT0a7Nf_f0fizQrw8F_yunqPBoC2nAQAvD_BwE)
• Shane: Unwed Sailor - High Remembrance (https://open.spotify.com/album/0U5ebcuEkgaH7nYtQ01puI?si=TJaLAOzySAS6YynsVxegoA)

Holidays (9/2/2026):

• Bison-Ten Yell Day
• Calendar Adjustment Day
• Global Talent Acquisition Day
• National Blueberry Popsicle Day
• National No Patrick Day
• Pierce Your Ears Day
• Spalding Baseball Day
• V-J Day
• World Coconut Day

References:

• Barlow, D. H., & Nock, M. K. (2009). Why can’t we be more idiographic in our research? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(1), 19–21.
• Beck, A. T., & Alford, B. A. (2009). Depression: Causes and treatment. University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Beck, A. T., Davis, D. D., & Freeman, A. (Eds.). (2015). Cognitive therapy of personality disorders. Guilford Publications.
• Beck, A. T., Emery, G., & Greenberg, R. L. (2005). Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive perspective. Basic Books.
• Beltz, A. M., & Gates, K. M. (2017). Network mapping with GIMME. Multivariate behavioral research, 52(6), 789-804.
• Birkhoff, G. D. (1931). Proof of the ergodic theorem. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 17, 656-660.
• Brown, T. A., Campbell, L. A., Lehman, C. L., Grisham, J. R., & Mancill, R. B. (2001). Current and lifetime comorbidity of the DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorders in a large clinical sample. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110(4), 585–599. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.110.4.585
• Clark, L. A., Watson, D., & Reynolds, S. (1995). Diagnosis and classification of psychopathology: Challenges to the current system and future directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 121–153. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.46.020195.001005
• Fried, E. I. (2015). Problematic assumptions have slowed down depression research: why symptoms, not syndromes are the way forward. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 309.
• Fried, E. I., & Cramer, A. O. (2017). Moving forward: challenges and directions for psychopathological network theory and methodology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(6), 999-1020.
• Galizio, A., Frye, C. C., Haynes, J. M., Friedel, J. E., Smith, B. M., & Odum, A. L. (2018). Persistence and relapse of reinforced behavioral variability. Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 109(1), 210-237.
• Galatzer-Levy, I. R., & Bryant, R. A. (2013). 636,120 Ways to Have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 651-662.
• Glick, I. D., Murray, S. R., Vasudevan, P., Marder, S. R., & Hu, R. J. (2001). Treatment with atypical antipsychotics: New indications and new populations. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 35(3), 187–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3956(01)00020-6.
• Hayes, S. C., Wilson, K. W., Gifford, E. V., Follette, V. M., & Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1152-1168.
• Hofmann, S. G., Curtiss, J., & McNally, R. J. (2016). A complex network perspective on clinical science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(5), 597-605.
• Hofmann, S. G., & Hayes, S. C. (2019). The future of intervention science: Process-based therapy. Clinical Psychological Science, 7(1), 37-50.
• Hofmann, S. G., Meuret, A. E., Rosenfield, D., Suvak, M. K., Barlow, D. H., Gorman, J. M., ... & Woods, S. W. (2007). Preliminary evidence for cognitive mediation during cognitive-behavioral therapy of panic disorder. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 75(3), 374.
• Kessler, R. C., Chiu, W. T., Demler, O., Merikangas, K. R., & Walters, E. E. (2005). Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6), 617–627. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
to Why We Do What We Do. I am your
diagnostic and statistical host, Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm your just-read-four-books-in-the-last-seven-days host, Shane.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
That's probably true. We are a psychology podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
We talk about the things that humans and non-human animals do,
and this is a sequel of sorts, part two. We
are following up last week's discussion about the caveats to
a diagnostic system of psychological and mental and behavioral health.
We'll get into a recap here in a moment. But
if you're joining us for the first time, then welcome.

(00:48):
I hope you enjoy what you hear in this discussion.
We did, as I mentioned, record a part one. We'll
do our best to recap that so you feel prepared
for part two, whether or not you were here. But
I do recommend checking that one out so you have
some of the foundations to help you be able to
access everything we're going to discuss in this part two.
But I can't tell you what to do. You're going
to do what you're going to do, and that's fine.

(01:09):
If you weren't here for the last time and it's
your first time ever joining us, then hopefully you still
feel like you get something out of this. And if
you're a returning person, then welcome back. Thanks for following
all my instructions like a good little student. Either way,
you are here. It is September 2nd. So happen Bison
10 Yell Day. And that is one of those like
mad gab type things.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Bison, B-I-S-O-N hyphen 10 space yell, Y-E-L-L day.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Did it.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm not going to celebrate that. It's calendar adjustment day.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
It is global talent acquisition day.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
God, you know, that just reminds me that like, I
can't stand HR language, like the, like corporate language. Like,
like when people talk about synergy, I'm just like, ugh, gross.
I don't like it. It's national blueberry popsicle day.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Some synergy there. I like it.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
Yeah. Ugh.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
National No Patrick Day. So if you're a Patrick or
you have a Patrick in your life, get out. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Go on, get. I read that that was also specific
to SpongeBob.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Oh, that makes more sense.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
It's Pierce Your Ears Day.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Okay, check. It is Spalding Baseball Day. Oh, cool. Good.
Brands getting their own day. That's what we need more of.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sponsored holidays, of course. It's VJ Day.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Let your mind go where it will. It is World
Coconut Day.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Those are the days, because it's holidays, and that's fine.
That's the thing that we do, and it's not that important,
but we do it anyway. And welcome, and you're welcome,
and thank you, and all of that. So as I said,
we're talking about, well, we're talking about diagnoses. More broadly,
just diagnoses with respect to psychological and mental health. So
we have a guest on with us. His name is Dr.
Stu Law, and I'm going to give him a chance

(02:53):
to speak in just a moment. But I'll start with
a quick recap of what we talked about last time.
And Stu, you can also jump in with this as
we go. So that probably means I should introduce you now. So, hey, everyone,
this is Dr.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Stula.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
I'm back.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
I'm here to work. I looked at my calendar and
moved things around.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Here I am.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
Perfect.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
We appreciate you being here for round two. Stu is
a behavior analyst. He has developed his own assessment tool.
He has worked in this field for a very long time.
He has worked with a lot of people of various
spectrums with diagnoses themselves and in various capacities and supporting
roles to help them. And largely also, he's done a
lot of administrative roles as well and sort of been

(03:35):
sort of a rulemaking type of guy. in various capacities.
And he's also our most frequently occurring guest. I'm pretty
sure that we've ever had. He's like a adjunct faculty
part of our team here. Yeah. I think, I think
I've earned that.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
I'm in one out of every, what, like 140 episodes
or something like that.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
Yeah. And that humor, humor is a banger. It was
so funny. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
I remember the, How does the Sean Connery shave is control.
It's a thinker, you know, you have to anyway. So

(04:18):
going back to a quick recap of what we discussed
last time, just beginning with the fact that like solving problems,
identifying and solving problems is a huge thing that a
lot of professions do in psychology, in the psychology space, clinical, behavioral,
what have you. There is also a diagnostic system very
commonly used in the United States called the DSM or
the Diagnostic Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. And then there's

(04:40):
an international one called the International Classification of Diseases, or
the ICD, and various tools other than that that exist.
And essentially what they do is they take clusters of
behaviors that people do, and then they give them a label.
And then that label is then sometimes used to inform, well,
it's not really used to inform treatment, but people might
think that it is. It gives people an identity sometimes.

(05:02):
It maybe has the helpful benefit that some people feel
like at least now they know.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
There's a name for their thing. It is a known thing.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
They are not an outlier that exists outside of the
normal human experience. We've identified that their problem is a
problem other people have had, therefore unity and all is
well in the world. But there's also problems with this
diagnostic system that we've identified, one being that it has
a huge issue with being specific enough that we feel

(05:35):
like we can reliably identify a particular diagnosis because there
are so many variations and overlapping symptoms that you might
have many, many thousands of people at the same diagnosis
with zero overlapping symptoms.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yeah. The goal ideally is to do like an, if then,
if this, then that, but it's hard to do that
inside of psychological wellness, unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
If then, then ego.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Then id.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Second major problem that we identified was this idea of comorbidity,
which is just the extent to which if you have
a diagnosis, it might overlap with another diagnosis.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
And there are these rates of, like, some are as
low as.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
A small percentage, 15% of the time or something, if
you have this diagnosis, you might also have this diagnosis.
But some of them are as high as 80% or 81%.
If you have this diagnosis, there's a very high likelihood
you'll also meet the criteria for this other diagnosis.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
And that paints this picture that we.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Maybe don't have a very good handle on, are these
things different enough from one another to call them different entities?
And also goes back to the lack of specificity as
an issue to bring in here.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yeah, and it's not just as simple as, like, if
you have a depressive episode, then you have a major
depressive episode, or you might have bipolar disorder. It's also
detecting things like psychosis or schizophrenia or things that may
seem unrelated at first blush. And that is problematic. And I.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Don't want to throw anyone specific under the bus, but
people who have said like they heard some initials for
a diagnosis without knowing what it is and said, yes,
that sounds like me. Where it was like there's ADHD
and then like maybe OCD and they're like, oh, that one.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I think I have that one. I'm like, what is that?
And they're like, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
We know what that is here, but the name sounds
good enough to be appealing to feel like I would
like to align my identity with these letters because it
makes me feel good. The third problem we identified here– well,
there's obviously other issues to unpack with why someone would
want to do that. But the third problem we identified
here is the fact that there's a very broad– application

(07:55):
of treatments that seem to work for very, very different
sets of symptoms. And it's sort of the, if I
get someone high, they'll feel better. And therefore that is
a relevant treatment for all disorders type of thing. I
think maybe at some point in the past, I think
we impact like weighted vests as a thing. And I'm like,
it will make someone move less because it's heavy and

(08:16):
covers their body and restricts their movement. But that doesn't
mean that it's in any way addressing the conditions that
led to whatever behaviors you felt like you needed to address.
And people put those like thunder vests on dogs. And
I'm like, it is uncomfortable. It forces them to... It
restricts their movements. So they might look calmer, but whatever
it's doing to them is probably not the thing you think.

(08:39):
It's not a magical vest that just cures anxiety or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
It's just.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
When you wrap someone's body in something, they move less
and then they don't move as much. And then that's
what happens. And it has nothing to do with the
fact that you've like actually treated anything. And that's sort
of what happens, I think, with many of the drugs
that are prescribed for conditions here is the like you
give some a drug that makes them feel better. maybe
more placated or just generally calmer or whatever, and feel

(09:08):
like you have addressed a symptom, but all you've really
done is just reduce the frequency and intensity of some
of their behaviors. And then without, it goes a little
bit into a rabbit hole about psychedelic assisted treatment, which
seems like it's trying to go essentially the same direction
that other medicines have gone. That is the like, eat
these or, you know, drink this ayahuasca and then like,

(09:28):
you'll be cured tomorrow of whatever ails you sort of thing.
And again, So that's, I think, what we covered in
the last entire discussion. Is there anything that I missed
you feel like we need to make sure people are
up to speed with?

Speaker 2 (09:40):
No, I think that feels pretty good. That feels right.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Anything for you, Stu?

Speaker 4 (09:44):
No. Sounds right. Okay.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Is there anything I missed in my preamble we need
to address?

Speaker 3 (09:49):
I don't think I mentioned, did I mention Patreon?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
You can support us on Patreon, leave us a rating review, like, subscribe,
tell a friend, any of that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
Didn't do that. Now you did.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Okay. Well, those are things that can happen.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I'll talk more about those at the end of this
discussion anyway. So stick around until then to hear the
fun part where I try and sell you something. Actually,
I will preface this now. The very fun part is
at the end, we're going to recommend some things. It
might be related to our topic, but it might not be.
And that'll be fun either way. So you can check
that out. But let's go ahead and get into our
discussion today. We're picking up where we left off. There's
a few more things we'd like to outline as some

(10:22):
of the issues we see plaguing the diagnostic system for
mental health things, for psychology.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
Yeah, I would say that generally the idea of this system,
and this is a little shady, right? It's a little gray.
is this notion that we have a list of disorders
in the DSM, and when things get really specific, when
the mechanisms get very clear, and the treatments get very if-then-y,

(10:52):
when we reach that point, we tend to elevate disorders
into diseases, right? So... The purpose of the DSM to
some extent was for these disorders to become orderly enough.
We are playing this game of like laws versus thesis or,
you know, like theses can be really powerful. They can
do so like disorders. It's not to some things can

(11:13):
stay disorders and that's fine. But generally speaking, the purpose
of these things was to elevate them to a disease.
And the first thing that comes to mind is like,
are we comfortable calling them diseases? Right. Part of the
reason I'm providing all this like autoclidic, upfrontness is it
feels gross to call a lot of these things diseases

(11:33):
right mitch hedberg has a joke and it's like you
have alcoholism and that's a disease and he's like yeah
but it's the only disease you can get yelled at
for having and i think that speaks to kind of
the nature of the disconnect in calling things diseases and
i'll be okay with that disorder feels like a safe

(11:54):
space but There is an extent to which we would
like for these things to be orderly enough and hang
together enough and have signs and symptoms and effective treatment
packages enough that we say, if this, then that. And
we know the mechanisms of change well enough that we
elevate that thing to the level of a disease. And

(12:15):
that has never happened for a single thing inside of
the DSM. That is not a thing that has happened.
Because we don't understand the mechanisms well enough, and these
systems have the problems that we've discussed previously. Fair.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, or it's better explained through medical means, right? So
something that might show up, like when DSM has anything
that has to do with a neurological disorder... Like, ultimately,
that could be tied to some, like, medical event or
something that's a little bit more concrete than, like, let's
say major depressive disorder, which is a little bit more
nebulous and a little bit more complex, or PTSD, like

(12:50):
we mentioned in the last episode. Like, you know, if
somebody who has Parkinson's, like, there are neurological, there's a
neurodegenerative component to it. Like, at the very least, there's
something there that's a little bit different than what we
see in other parts of the DSM.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
And I would, you know, Alzheimer's disease, right? Like it
has that manifestation and we slap that label to it.
Whereas many of these other things are either syndromes or
disorders and those don't have the same level of specificity
and precision. Right. As one of their features.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Ads in a podcast are a disease.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Okay, we're back.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
I kind of wanted to ask you then, so what
we've been discussing just before the ad break was this
idea that like in diagnostic models, if it gets specific enough,
it's elevated to this place of disease. And in your mind,
do you think that would be like a reasonable objective?
Like it would be good if we did, in fact,
create a diagnostic system that could elevate psychological phenomenon that

(13:55):
were pathological and assuming that was a thing to like
disease status.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
I mean, if something had that level of precision, then yeah,
it would be cool. But the reality of the situation
is that nothing yet has that level of precision. We
don't have that if then kind of relationship between the
signs and symptoms and the treatment path. And so if
something were that simple, I think so Alzheimer's might be

(14:20):
a good example. Like it is elevated to a disease
and it's because the mechanisms of change and things that
you can adjust and the things you can do about
it are very well known. If that were the case
inside of psychological research for other things like depression or
obsessive compulsive disorder, then we, I'd be cool, you know,

(14:44):
but it has to demonstrate that it is, it's doing
the thing that diseases do. And that it's well known
enough that we can officially call it that. And so
it's not my favorite thing to call these things diseases.
But if it makes sense, I mean, I'm not trying
to do a behavioral treatment for Alzheimer's, except that those
kind of work for the most part. Like environmental manipulation
is one of the more effective things you can do

(15:05):
inside of that system until we can kind of. manipulate
the mechanisms inside the brain and the myelin or whatever's
going on there. That's not my area. But one of
the things you can do in behavior analysis is manipulate
environmental factors to make the probability of psychological distress lower
and do things like when they eat, leave the plate

(15:29):
out with empty food and forks. So when they say,
I haven't eaten yet, there's something in the environment that
tells them that they have. You know, little things like
that are really effective interventions and they operate at the
level that we as behavior analysts are kind of used to.
But generally speaking, I don't have much to say about like,
you know, is there a drug that can, you know,

(15:49):
do what X, Y, Z that helps the brain stay
healthier longer, helps people remember things. But if that ends
up being the case, I'm happy to ride that train.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Do you think we'll get there?

Speaker 4 (16:00):
I do not think we will get there with anything. No.
I think it's possible that we have new definitions and
we have a new way of going about things and
we have diagnostic labels that look very unfamiliar to us
as they are now. And there's a different process of
arriving at the conclusion that this is potentially a disease

(16:24):
or something like that. But the way of going about
that would have to change in my mind fundamentally.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, I also feel like I could see the fact
that we might not need to get there. If there
are approaches that we can take that don't require any
kind of label because they are maybe focused on the
variables and processes relevant to each individual person, then that

(16:51):
process of providing support as needed with respect to the
kinds of things that are needed for that person in
their situation then why would we continue to pursue the
classification portion of this if we already have something that works?
I could see it being the case that we never

(17:12):
even try and get to that level of precision in
diagnoses because we wouldn't need to. But that's sort of
tangentially related to something that I also see as a
fundamental foundational issue with the diagnostic system, which is that
it essentially says there is a scope of human behavior

(17:33):
that is normal. And outside of those things, it is
not normal. And therefore, it is pathological. And therefore... it
requires or could benefit from a diagnostic label. And I
would argue that there just is no such thing as normal,
such that we can compare one person against an archetype
of normal and then say they deviate from this, therefore

(17:56):
that's bad.

Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah, I would tend to agree with that notion. And
I would say that demonstrating that is probably what I've
spent my career to date doing, looking at individual level
processes and trying to identify ways to take what we
see at the individual level and then bring it to
the level of the population. So I would tend to

(18:20):
agree with the notion that normal is a weird idea.
It's kind of a weird construct. And it doesn't often
fit as cleanly as we've given it credit to do.
So a lot of the ways in which you've been
measured psychologically in your life through education and psychology is

(18:41):
comparisons to normal. Some examples would be in education systems,
we often have percentiles. So you're in the X percentile
of XYZ math skills or whatever. And these things are
supposed to kind of spin us into action, right? I
don't know about y'all, but one of the, you know,
my friends and family don't tend to rely on my

(19:03):
expertise to for a lot of things, but when they have,
it's been, my kid is not meeting some developmental milestone
that they were supposed to hit. I'm a little worried.
I want you to like run a quick assessment or
refer me to somebody or do something that kind of
like is in your area of expertise. The thing that
flags for them is some kind of like developmental milestone

(19:25):
that's not being met, not enough words, not crawling in time,
not using the, you know, whatever those things are that
has tended towards, People calling me up and sort of
asking for my expertise. And in every one of those cases,
it has ended up being a nothing bird. Sort of
somewhat luckily, right? But person not crawling in time, not

(19:48):
a big deal. And so. that, again, is the kinds
of experiences I've had that lead me towards this way
of seeing things that these things are developmental processes that
occur at the level of the individual and they don't
occur at the level of the population as we've kind
of studied them to date for the most part. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
And I do think I pointed out in the last discussion,
I guess it's to be my own devil's advocate here,
pointing out that like, there are obviously psychological experiences that
people have that they identify as distressing. Like I'm having
a problem. I would like to, I would like to
not be having this problem anymore. And I think we

(20:30):
can readily identify some things that are like, wow, this
person's like actively harming themselves. actively harming other people, that
definitely seems like this is worth addressing in some capacity.
And so it's not to say that there is no
benefit to identifying where things are not working in someone's
best interest, or if they've self-identified that, or we see

(20:52):
that there is active harm coming to others and be like,
all right, there are behaviors that are happening here. We
really need to consider how we might intervene so that
we can reduce the amount of harm that's happening to
these other people. And That there's utility probably in identifying
those things when they happen. Whether or not that's best
done by giving it a pathological label, I think, is

(21:14):
up for debate. But identifying that there are situations that
we are going to experience distress. We might experience distress
so much so that we stop eating, stop sleeping, stop
taking care of ourselves. And that understanding that that level
of distress is something that we would like to address
for ourselves and have a more productive experience with it

(21:37):
is a valid position for people to take, that they
would like to have that relief. And again, whether or
not the system accomplishes it, I would argue, is hit
or miss. But the fact that there's sort of an okay,
in the middle of the bell curve, okay way to be,
and when you go out away from that, you're starting

(21:58):
to merge into like, this is now something that we
need to change about who you are because you're not
in the middle of that bell curve anymore. You're a
little too autistic for us, so let's go ahead and
get after that and make sure we get you to normal.
Or you're a little too whatever the problem might be.
We're going to pathologize the sort of normal range of

(22:18):
human experience. And I think going back to the milestones
is a really good one. It's like, oh, you didn't
pick up reading by first grade. You probably have dyslexia. No.
It might be that you have contacted insufficient reading instruction
up until this point, and that maybe all we need
to do is provide better reading instruction and then you'll
be fine. It also could be that you have like
a visual issue. So let's make sure we look and

(22:40):
see if your eyes are doing the things that we
would expect eyes to do. Other than that, like the
pathologizing of normal human experience, I think definitely gets under
my skin when I see people who are treating it
as if like Yeah, I've heard someone say they're like,
this person, I was questioning someone's self-diagnoses.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
They applied to themselves.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
And someone was pushing back at me saying like, well,
I think they would know if they think differently from
other people.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
And I was like, they know how other people think?

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Oh my God, we need to make them emperor of
the planet because nobody has ever done that before. So
you have to know how other people think to know
that you think differently from them. And if you know
how other people think, then you are millions of light
years ahead of where the rest of us are, us
mere mortals on this planet. So like, that's just not
a thing you can do because nobody thinks in a
particular way. Everyone's got their own sort of experience here.

(23:28):
There's no normal by which you could say that I
know that I'm different from everybody else. I'm like, no,
you don't, because everybody else is different from you and
from each other.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
Yeah, I think it bears kind of tracing the history
of this a little bit. Way back in like the 1600s,
they were using one of the first applications of average
was somebody who was trying to position the stars. They
were doing like celestial measurements and they found that it
was actually really helpful to get multiple observers and then

(23:59):
average the results from multiple observers. It was a way
to like. lower in individual variation, right? It was actually
a pretty effective way of looking at stars. Not too
far after that, there was a guy named Sir Francis
Galton who took the idea of averaging people and he
applied it to human beings for the first time that

(24:20):
I'm aware of. And to some consequence, I would argue,
what he did is he would take soldiers and he
would measure the circumference of their chest, for example, or
their shoulder width. And then he would get an average
for those for like the average soldier. And then he
took this extra step. And this extra step is very important.

(24:43):
And this is embedded in a lot of the ways
that we see psychology today. He took the extra step
to say, average is the best, right? If you're in
the middle of the bell curve, you are the, you're the,
you're the best soldier we got.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
And I can't believe you use bad words.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
And consequently, we believe them.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
And also, if you are too far from the average,
you are deviant. And this way of measuring people, one,
it's not concerned with the level of the individual. It's
concerned with the level of the population. And that has
huge implications for how we measure things psychologically. So one
of those is that when we concern ourselves with the

(25:22):
level of the population, it's really hard to get away
from the notion that we are trying to manipulate the
population level, right? So... If we were to take Galton's
logic to its conclusion, we would say all these people
who are deviants need to get out. They need to

(25:43):
be out of my and probably need to be subjected
to some kind of like terrible lifestyle or maybe even
like punishment. Right. Or or as has been logically the case,
not to be traumatic about this thing, but need to
be selected out of the population.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Or forced to listen to ads. All right, we're back.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Sorry, I very callously interrupted an actual wonderful point that
you were making.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
I was on a roll, yeah. You were so on
a roll, and I interrupted it. I am the roll destroyer.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
The conversation being that the idea that if there's an average,
that the average is the best and that deviating from
the average is not only mean that like the further
away from the average, you get the worse you are,
but that like eugenics comes into play.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Maybe we shouldn't have those people at all.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
Right.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
I think that is something that kind of logically follows.
And that is a very pervasive idea in a lot
of psychology. It's hidden. And it's sort of tucked away.
So one example that I would point to is early statisticians.
So like the guy who invented T-tests and ANOVAs and

(26:56):
all that kind of stuff. A lot of the major
statistical models that we use today in psychological research. Do
you know what they were professors of?

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Math, I would guess.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Eugenics. They were professors of eugenics. They were in the
eugenics department.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Hmm.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
Their job was to select humans out and select and
find ways to make humans better fits for the kinds
of society that we want to build. And you could
make the argument that a lot of American psychological and
statistical models from the early days were cited by the
Nazis as like, look, there's scientific evidence that we need

(27:38):
to push away from these people and we need to
select a better population. And I tend to think that
although that logic is obviously not as consequential, I think
it's clear that schools, they're not trying to make your
kid the best kid that your kid can be. It's
really easy to fall into a pattern of your kid

(28:01):
is not average, is not normal, and is going to
be selected out in some ways of our society in
the way that we know it. It's not our job
to make them something new or something different. It's our
job to identify what they are and make a decision
about where they belong. I think a lot of our
efforts inside of those domains do that. I think that's

(28:24):
true of psychological research as well. I think this notion
that there are people who are normal and there are
people who aren't is something that I reject. I don't
know that I'm it feels so ubiquitous as to be
anti-science to say that, right? It feels like average is

(28:44):
so much everywhere. And I would point to, yeah, it
wasn't before like 1800s when some guy said average is ideal.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
You know, and that, that kind of logic is everywhere.
Like the average face is the most beautiful face, right?
We've all heard that.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Um, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
And most of the kinds of assessments that we use,
both in psychology and education, the whole purpose is to
see how you stack up to other people. Yeah. In
some way. And that is the thing that I question.
And I think, as we'll talk about, we maybe are
in a position to question more than we ever have.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
It's wild, too, to me to think about this whole...
The whole idea of the average, because when they even
if you were to take and I know exactly the
thing you're referencing and when they did the thing where
they built the pilot cockpits to fit the average pilot.
and there is like, they took like 10 measurements of
them and took the averages to build it. And they're like,
all right, how many pilots do we have meet all

(29:48):
10 of these average measurements that we've got for what
the average pilot is? And in all of the US
Air Force, the number of pilots that met all 10
averages was was zero. Matter of fact, the number of
pilots you could admit get to make even three of
those averages was like vanishingly small. It was like 10
or something. And so it's like the average doesn't exist.

(30:11):
It just, it just doesn't. And that's, that's assuming that we,
that there's any utility whatsoever. And even averaging those particular dimensions,
like maybe there are others that are, that you could
average as well. And like the more you choose to
include anyway, point being that like, there's just no such
thing as like, a way to be human that is
like the right way that we can identify as sort

(30:32):
of the archetype. And we measure everything against that archetype
as appealing as that might be to some people, which
is essentially the crux of the eugenics argument is the like,
there is an archetype. There's like a sort of perfect
ideal to get to. And the correct argument against that
is nope.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Yeah, I mean, there is no ideal pilot, right? And
when you design the cockpit around the average pilot, you've
been ensured that it fits nobody. And that's the reason
that our cars, even something as simple as our cars,
that don't have such high demands on our ability to
maintain a position and... hold ourselves grounded, right? And operate

(31:12):
and reach all the things that we need to reach.
We have all these levers and pushes and pulleys that
allow us to move the seat forward, to lean forward,
to move the steering wheel up. We have all these
ways to adjust. And that's something that we didn't know
at first. We were designing cockpits and planes around the
average pilot and finding that that led to disastrous results.

(31:33):
And now when you fly a jet, it takes like
three days to get your helmet fitted. right. Or like
two weeks, it's like some absurd amount, like just to
have a helmet that like won't move at all on
your head, that process takes like weeks.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Right.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
So just something as simple as like, you know, how
do we get this helmet in a way that you
can see all the things that you need to interact with?
You can interact with all the systems and it won't
jostle when you're going Mach six, like that in and
of itself is a measurement process that takes a very
long time.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Can you imagine if like, let's say, I'm looking at
myself here and like looking at my glasses. I'm like,
can you imagine if like an ophthalmologist took all of
the prescriptions of everyone in the world and created average glasses?

Speaker 4 (32:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
And I was like, all right, if you're having trouble seeing,
just get our average glasses.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
That will probably, that'll work for you. I'm like, first
of all. No one is going to be able to
use these.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
And second of all, what an insane approach to a
take to like vision of like, oh, we're just going
to take this prescription that definitely doesn't fit you and
just recommend that across the board. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
And I think one thing that would be really fun
and interesting. It's like imagine, this is difficult to imagine,
but let's think of songs as processes for a second.
Now imagine just the average song from beginning to end.
It would probably just be one note. I don't really
know how this would work, but it would just be
some middle note.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah and it would probably be like an e which
is like just like a nice nice clean you know
like it'd be terrible.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
And so imagine like playing that for somebody and looking
at them expectantly like isn't this we average the top
300 songs of all time and what we got is
just an e going on for three isn't it great
isn't this a great song.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Feels like we're headed that direction sometimes.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
It does. That's how it feels to me often when
we're talking about population level problems as though they are
at the level of the individual. And this is not
just like us being implicit about these things or like
having a sense of them. It's not entirely anecdotal. There's
this thing, I don't know if you've gotten to this

(33:45):
point in this whole thing, but there's this thing called
the ergodic theorem. Not yet. And the ergodic theorem is,
was formulated in the 1930s by a bunch of physicists.
And basically what they were looking at was like, if
we release a gas into a known space and we
calculate some statistical model for when it will occupy that
space and how many molecules will be in a given section, blah, blah, blah,

(34:08):
Can we then do some subdivisions? So like what if
we do just the first quarter or we just look
at this cluster of molecules? And they ask the question, like,
does our broad statistical model predict these subsets? Right. I'm
probably bastardizing that a little bit. I'm not an expert
in statistics, but this is kind of a rough idea
as I understand it. And they found, no, you cannot.

(34:31):
And it's because, unless two things are met. One, each
of those molecules is identical. So to give you some
sense of how identical, say for a couple of the
noble gases, most molecules are not similar enough that they
are considered ergodic in the world of physics. And the
other is that they are unchanging. They are forever the

(34:53):
same entity. And so we can apply averages to individuals
when they are ergodic, right? When they are exactly the same.
And again, say for a couple of noble gases, not
many things are ergodic and then they are unchanging. And
then you can apply the logic, does what's true for
the population apply to the level of the individual? So

(35:15):
how many people do you know are unchanging and are
identical to their neighbors in their population. And not just
like I have a twin that wouldn't, there's no way
that's going to cut it.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
Right.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
People are not identical in any way, shape or form.
And they are also not frozen. We are dynamic processes. Right.
And so I tend to think as human behavior as
a dynamic process. And I, So when we say we
saw if we collected a bunch of people, we got

(35:46):
500 people, and we tried to see is acceptance and
commitment therapy a good therapy for depression? We got 250
people over here. We gave them ACT. We got 250
people over here, and we gave them treatment as usual
or some kind of placebo therapy. We find that ACT
is statistically significantly better than treatment as usual. And so

(36:11):
we're confident saying that one of the best evidence-based treatments
for depression is ACT. You cannot then say, my aunt
has depression, therefore ACT would be an effective intervention for her.
That violates math. Your grandma is non-orgotic. And just the
way that you can't predict certain levels of individual process

(36:34):
when it comes to molecules, you cannot predict that your
grandma or your aunt will be responsive to ACT. That
is not how this works. And so it's pretty rare
that you have an argument inside of your science that
is just like pointing to math and saying like, no,
but this is that kind of thing. If you want
to select at the level of the population, cool. If

(36:56):
that's your area of interest, cool. I don't think that
that's what psychology is. I think psychology is operating at
the level of the individual to make changes within the
individual lifespan. And that's a different game. And if you
want to play that game, you got to play by
the rules. And the rules are humans are not.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
I was gonna make a joke about like the people
in the white house being ergodic.

Speaker 4 (37:21):
Similar processes. Okay.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
Similar reinforcers. Yeah. They've also selected kind of a unique population, right? Like,
I mean, populations being treated as the same. It's just,
crazy on its face in my opinion yeah when we
do these studies and we say this population no matter
what kinds of controls we put in place people opt
out of your study people elect into your study for

(37:48):
certain features that they have and so like no that's
not your there's no way to just be like this
is a population and therefore we can treat every member
of that population that's the same that's not how it
works unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Very good points i will say that ads are ergodic
All right, we're back.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
I want to continue moving us forward because there's a
lot we still need to unpack here. And I think
one of the things I'd like to really get into
is because I think we've identified problems with the system
as a whole and like sort of at the foundational level.
But there's also like specific problems that the system of
diagnoses have introduced that It's worth getting into a little
bit as far as why the sort of central thesis

(38:37):
we're making here. And I've been careful to not billboard
this so heavily because I'm not even sure what I'm
going to call these two episodes yet that are coming out.
The thesis here, the debate set up is diagnoses do
more harm than good. And we're sort of taking the
like arguing for the notion, if you will. And there
are definitely people who would argue against. But given that,

(38:59):
what are the harms that we've seen come out of
the system? Just like the system itself riddled with all
kinds of problems at a foundational level, but also what
problems that we've seen emerge out of the process of
using this diagnostic model for psychological and mental health.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
A tendency towards eugenic level selection, I say, is probably one.
Even inside of behavior analysis has generally done a good
job of shirking these tendencies. Behavior analysts tend to favor
single-subject designs. Our challenge is actually kind of unique in
that we've had trouble trickling up what we find at

(39:34):
the level of the individual to the level of the population. right?
Like we, I have a lot of posters and I
studies like this one time I worked with this one
guy and it was really hard and we had to
figure a bunch of shit out. You know, that's maybe,
maybe what my poster should be called is like the
one time I worked with this one guy and it
was really hard and we had to figure a bunch
of shit out.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
That's a good title.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
It's every study.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
But like nobody gleans anything from this because the things
that they have to figure out are not the same
that other people have to figure out. And, you know,
as an example, one of my colleagues did a study
on precision teaching that applied to dancing. And boy, howdy,
is she asked a lot like, how do I teach
people how to dance? And her answer inevitably is like,

(40:17):
I don't know. Like, I don't know anything about teaching
people how to dance. I know how to teach the
people that I taught to dance, to dance. Right. And
that is a very different question. So I have a
process that keeps you earnest and keeps you in touch
with the data and keeps you responsive to the things
that are occurring at the level of the individual. But
I don't have like a step one, show them how,
how to put tamp dance and shoes on or like,

(40:40):
you know, like that's not how this works. And it's
kind of an interesting exercise. And that kind of question is,
we are not immune to inside of behavior science, especially
as we kind of fold into the medical model, right?
You see a lot of questions like, I have a
guy with Down syndrome that I need to teach how
to read. How do I do it? And you're like,
I don't know. Like, I don't have any clue. I

(41:02):
don't know this guy. What is he like? What is
he not like? What are the things that are showing
up in terms of his repertoire? How does, how are
his relational operant skills? Like there's about a million questions
that I need to get to before I can make
a recommendation for you. But I think, this general notion
of like, if I have some sort of diagnosis, some
sort of label, some sort of thing, there should be
a Y to that X. And I think that just

(41:25):
generally getting in the water that this is not how
that works might be a good first step.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
And yeah, I think as you said, and we're getting to, again,
sort of the potential future direction that would be helpful
is looking at it as not the what is the
protocol that works for all people, but what is the
process by which you identify what somebody needs? And then therefore,
how do you sort of triage next steps to provide
support as needed? But continuing on with the problems that

(41:55):
we see here, talk to me about biological determinism here. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:59):
So I tend to think that the DSM and this
way of looking at things lends itself really well to
biological determinism as evidenced by like, we generally kind of
like the idea that there's a medication that'll fix the syndrome, right? Like,
although I think if you walk that through to like,

(42:19):
what if I'm experiencing psychological distress because the environment super sucks,
that feels kind of dystopian for me, right? Being happy
in a, in a gnarly environment is not an ideal scenario, right?
Like I think maybe there are ways to find wellness
or to, We know one case example that I have

(42:41):
is I have a colleague who was approached by Amazon
to provide values orientation training to Amazon drivers. And so
could they provide mindfulness training to Amazon drivers to allow
them to better experience discomfort and ride out that discomfort

(43:02):
and be better, more effective delivery drivers? Potentially. Do we
want to do that? Maybe not, right? Do I want
to make sure that people are cool experiencing high levels
of distress for not a lot of pay? That doesn't
sound like the business I want to be in. And
so I think really quickly... When we take this like

(43:26):
biologically deterministic approach, we pigeonhole ourselves in a way that
we're not, we tend not to be aware of like
the context in which things are occurring. And so I've
been calling behavior analysis as interactively deterministic. So like I
don't escape determinism. I think everything we do and say
is determined to some extent. And the notion of free

(43:48):
will is kind of a goofy idea. It's not that
it exists or doesn't exist. It's just kind of a
weird construct. But I do so at the level of
interacting with the environment. It's not my biology determines my actions.
It's my biology meeting the current environment given this history
of reinforcement is what determines what I do, which is
a complex system of interaction. But I arrive at the

(44:10):
same conclusion. People deserve compassion. People deserve love and they
deserve effective treatments. And I just so happen to reach
the conclusion that you're doing what you're doing for a
good reason. with different units of analysis, but it's hard
to get there.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For sure. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
And then, you know, I think briefly the fact that like,
there's all kinds of side effects that come when, sorry,
when you get into things like when we're using drugs
as the approach, the side effects, the tolerance that builds,
the like lack of predictability that we get from some
of the effects of some of these drugs. The fact
that sometimes what happens is because of the effect, the
side effects of a drug, you then need more drugs

(44:53):
to deal with those side effects and then more drugs
to deal with the side effects of those drugs. And
so you end up just taking a glass full of
pills every day, where 80% of them are counteracting the
effects of the others. And so the dependence, the pharmaceutical
model here, the money that's spent on these things, and
the fact that we do all of that, and then

(45:15):
are we actually solving the issue? Or have we just
created some different issues?

Speaker 4 (45:21):
Yeah, and I would tend to say, and some of
the books that I recommended last week will provide more
specificity as to this question, but I think the answer
is no. I'm not overwhelmingly impressed with those approaches to
psychological distress. One of the other issues that occurs with
this kind of medical model and if biological disorder than

(45:41):
biological solution is we tend to develop really quick tolerances
to psychotropics. So if you've ever worked with somebody who's
older and has been on psychotropic since they were younger,
they tend to be on some amount of lithium or
some psychotropic drug that would like kill an elephant. And
it's because very, very quickly we develop drug tolerances. I

(46:04):
think in that last episode you talked about what if
we just pump you full of serotonin? Well, if you
do that to people for long enough, their body stops
producing serotonin. Your body says like, oh, we got enough
of that. We don't need to make it anymore. And
then you kind of arrive at this problem of, well,
if you stop now, your body has forgotten how to
produce it, to put it really loosely. And that creates

(46:26):
a bunch of problems, but also if it experiences really
high levels of it for long enough, then your body's
going to respond to it differently and reach a new equilibrium.
And that presents a lot of nasty challenges for people
who are trying to solve psychological problems with biological solutions.
It's really hard. And you know, you know, Some of
the emperor's new drugs would talk about that as the

(46:48):
revolving door of psychological emergencies, right? So even when we
have things that are well managed in the short term,
eventually you hit a point where like that drug's not effective.
It's not doing what it should. We got to figure
out the new doses. We got to figure out. what's
going on. And also like your lifespan is shortened by
these substances as well. And having worked with a lot

(47:08):
of older adults who have been on a lifetime of
these drugs, I can tell you, and it's just kind
of known that one of the, one of the challenges
in getting people to take these drugs is that the
side effects are horrendous and they are not short term.
I mean, I have seen somebody eventually pass away due
to tardive dyskinesia. So they choked to death on their

(47:30):
own tongue. I have worked with a guy who the
byproduct of his psychotropic drug was eternal thirst, which is
like a Greek torture. I mean, this guy had to
be one-to-one supervision for no other reason than if he
was left alone with liquids, he would drink himself to

(47:50):
death and had to be line of sight as a
function of that. If you left him alone with a
toilet full of urine, he would drink it until he was...
that thirst was linked.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Until his stomach exploded.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
Yeah. And that to me, you know, those are personal
experiences I've had. I'm not speaking to data and things
like that. But just in my experience, it's really challenging
to solve contextual problems and things that I look at
as the individual meeting their current environment by just focusing
on biological solutions. And I tend to think that the

(48:24):
DSM system and the way that we've housed psychological wellness
as protocols for syndromes has led us to this conclusion
that if this syndrome, then this protocol, often this substance,
and that will solve our problems. And I don't think
that it's been a very fruitful way forward, to say
the least.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
That's a really good way to tie it all back
together is just coming back to the fact that it's like,
Someone might say, well, the drugs aren't the diagnostic system's fault.
And I'm like, yeah, but it kind of is because
that's how we got to the point where we decided
to use those drugs is because we had a diagnosis
and decided that there are these drugs that are used
for this diagnosis because we're treating this as if this
is the medical thing.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Like there's a thing to deviate.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
And then, of course, there's always the issue that I
raised before of just like. are we just sedating people
or are we actually treating something that's actually helpful for them?
And I tend to think that a lot of the time,
and I don't know what percentage, but enough of the
time to raise concern, we're just sedating people. And then
that has us feel good about the outcome because they're

(49:28):
at least very chill and not.

Speaker 4 (49:30):
I mean, yeah, there's enough studies on ADHD medications to
tell us that The kids don't learn more. They just
don't piss off their teacher as much. Right. The medication
is not for them. It's for their teacher and it's
for the system that supports them. And yeah, I think, yeah,
that I've, I've definitely seen a lot of like, this

(49:52):
person is good when sedated and it's easy to fall
into that pattern.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
Um, when you're part of that system, here's an ad
for methylphenidate.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Okay, so we didn't realize as we were recording this
how long this conversation was going to go. So we're
interrupting here future Shane and Abraham, Shane-braham, if you will.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Shane-braham.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
To segue this so that what we can do is
we can actually split this second discussion into two different
episodes because otherwise it's just very, very long. And so
what we're going to do is we're going to cut
this one off here and the next week we'll come
back for a part three to finish up our discussion
with Dr. Stula about diagnoses and considerations around diagnoses, caveats

(50:41):
therein and that sort of thing. As I said, we
didn't know when we were recording that, that at this
point in the discussion that we were going to go
another like full length discussion. We're going to do our
normal wrap up here.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Dr.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Stu Law did not know this when we were doing this,
although we did at the very end talk about that
being a possibility. And then what we're going to have
to do is then do a new introduction for the
second half where we're just going to have to cut
into where we interrupted this one. And just we want
to keep these manageable sort of in their length and whatnot.
We always try and keep everything around an hour or
a little less than an hour long. rather than go
very long. We've gone very long before in the past,

(51:15):
but I think the preference is that we keep these
around sort of an hour or less in their time.
And we went way past that. So this one should
be right around 50-ish minutes, I think. With that being said,
we'll go ahead and wrap this one up now. But
I want to do our sort of final ending things
we always do at the end of a discussion, including
some new recommendations, because we're here and it'd be sad

(51:36):
to just miss an opportunity to do that sort of thing. So,
if you'd like to support us, you can join us
on Patreon. Leave us a rating and a review. Like, subscribe,
and tell a friend. I mean, those are always things
that you can do. You know, as many stars as
you can leave. If you're feeling generous, leave a review.
All of that's very helpful. I would also like to
shout out our Patreon supporters. So, if you go over
to Patreon, which is a subscription membership service where you

(51:58):
get some extra stuff that's, like, just for people who
support us.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
We get early episodes, ad-free episodes.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
And at the end of our full-length discussions, I'm going
to read your name to say thank you to all
of those people. So a giant shout-out and thank you
to Mike M., Megan, Mike T., Justin, Kim, Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Kiara, Charlie,
and Michael for being wonderful Patreon supporters. If you, listener,
I did not say your name and you'd like to
be on that list, head over there. You can support

(52:25):
us and then you can be on that list. And
that's a way to do that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Yes, please do. We love the support.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
We do love the support.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Thank you so much to my team of people running
and fact-checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for joining
me today, Shane.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and the person
who has stuck with the job of having to chop
these things up into multiple episodes and slice not one,
not two, but three people's vocals, messy vocals, all together
and try and make them sound like a podcast, and
he does so with aplomb, is Justin.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Thank you, Justin, for your wonderful work.

Speaker 4 (52:56):
You're beautiful. Indeed.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
If you'd like to tell us your thoughts on anything
we have said so far, you can reach us directly
by emailing us at info at www.podcast.com or reach us
on the social media platforms. Is there anything that you'd
like to add or that I forgot before we do
our recommendations?

Speaker 4 (53:14):
No.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
All right. Let's recommend some things.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
All right.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
So I am recommending an album from a group. I
say group. This is a solo artist. The album is
called High Remembrance, and it is from a band called
Unwed Sailor. Which, by the way, what a great name
for a band.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Yeah, solid.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
So this band has been around for quite some time,
since 1998. Really, it's just kind of like... Good post-rock
instrumental types of stuff. It sounds like it's primarily written
with like bass forward types of riffs and stuff in mind,
but super interesting. And every album that he's put out
has been pretty unique, pretty different. And it's all him. Now,

(54:05):
he always brings in some musicians to come in and
help with, you know, some of the writing and some
of this stuff. But he's always been kind of the concept,
this guy named Jonathan Ford, you know, so he's been
in some other bands as well. But it's like if
you like shoegazy stuff, if you like quiet instrumental stuff,
good background stuff, some of it's louder, some of it's quieter.
High Remembrance is a little bit quieter. Little Wars, which
I think is a really great album from them, is

(54:26):
a little bit louder. Faithful Anchor is another one that's
really good, and that one is quieter, more in line
with this. But I don't know. Super interesting stuff. I
think if you like that type of thing, you'll enjoy it.
It's worth a listen.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Unwed Sailor High Remembrance. Very nice.

Speaker 4 (54:44):
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
What's his name again?

Speaker 2 (54:46):
His name is Jonathan Ford, but he plays most of his, this,
this stuff that he plays under Edward Taylor is like,
when you look up on what Taylor, it's going to
come up.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
So don't look for Jonathan Fjord.

Speaker 4 (54:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Don't look for Jonathan Fjord.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
All right, I'm recommending a TV show that just wrapped
its ninth season.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
So Rick and Morty is a fun one. Again, not
for everybody.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
They have gratuitous violence, a lot of existential crises, a
lot of disregard for human and animal life.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
It is a cartoon.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
And they do not necessarily care about ending episodes in
happy ways. They often will have episodes end in kind
of dour, sad ways. Leave you feeling like, well, that
was a bummer type of stories.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
And I think they do it really, really well.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
So Rick and Morty season nine just wrapped in July
of 2026.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
It really, it continues to stay the Rick and Morty
course in a way that's I think very enjoyable. So
if you're into that sort of thing, go check out
Rick and Morty season nine. if you're already watching, like,
I think you're going to like it. If you're not,
if you haven't watched it before and this is your
first time, you'll be in for a bit of a shock.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
I think for what.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
This show is doing, they've set up a lot of
things in previous seasons that, um, that like you wouldn't
necessarily know going into it.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Like for example, Rick has a portal gun that he
can create a portal to any place in any dimension
and any universe anywhere.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
And that leads to a lot of hijinks.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
And, um, there have been many episodes just about the
portal gun. So yeah, which is actually, there's another one
in this, in this season. So if you don't know
that going in, it might be like, what is even
happening in this? So they have a lot of like
alien species and different dimensions where it's like every possible
version that could possibly exist does exist. So in some dimensions,
Rick and Morty are actually bees and some of them,

(56:43):
they're slugs and some of them, they're cats and some
of them, they're clouds, like whatever, like, They exist in
every conceivable form. They're out there in one way or another.
So there's an infinite number of them. And so that
does have them sometimes treat their lives as being quite expendable.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
Right.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
So.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Warning going into it, this is kind of adult themed
language and violent depictions and use of drugs and sex.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
It's like all there.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
But great show nonetheless. Anyway, that's all. I'll leave it
at that. Rick and Morty season nine is really good.
So check that out.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
And then also Unwed Sailor is the artist with High
Remembrance being the album.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
And those are recommendations. Is there a, we get to
wrap it up there?

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Uh, yeah, that feels good.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
Perfect. All right.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
So we will come back with a part three.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
As I said, we're going to jump right in the
middle of that conversation because we did not segue in
any way to us having a transition. So it'll be
a little abrupt. We apologize for that. Um, but I
think it was worth it to have these sort of
stand on their own in that way. So I'll come
back next week for that wrap up.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Yes. This is Abraham. This is Shane. We're out.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
Bye y'all. You've been listening to Why We Do What
We Do. You can learn more about this and other
episodes by going to www.wwdpodcast.com.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.