September 19, 2025 • 18 mins
From 2018...
Born out of popular 2015 Atlantic magazine essay, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt have written a new book, called “The Coddling of the American Mind.”
Mr. Lukianoff was kind enough to join Armstrong & Getty for a discussion about the new book...
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Meanwhile, if I might take the conversation to a higher plane,
it's a pleasure to welcome back to the Armstrong and
Getty show after too long and absence. Greg Lukianov, author,
along with Jonathan Height, of The Coddling of the American
Mind and a book length extension examination of their terrific,
groundbreaking Atlantic article of a couple of months ago or
(00:20):
a couple of years ago rather. Greg is also I believe,
one of the founders of fire defending individual rights in
higher education, joins us. Now, Hello, Greg, how are you sir?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
That's great to be back. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
How long ago was that Atlantic article?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
It was a twenty fifteen It was the summer of
twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Wow. Well, you didn't turn things around with that article
because things are worse now than they were.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, hey, hey, hey, you have to slow the ship
before you turn it.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
By the way, we decided to write the boo because
things got so much crazier after we wrote the article.
We were like, oh, okay, I think we have to
go a little.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Deeper in Yeah, okay, a couple of quick notes before
we dive into it in depth. Greg number one, I
am proudly sending my youngest to university that gets a
green light from fire florrific for communication, and I thank
you for furnishing that resource. Secondly, as I was googling
your book and typed simply the cod your book came
(01:13):
up immediately instead of that delicious fish. So the delicious
fish it is, it is getting it is getting some attention,
thank God. So let's talk about the coddling of the
American mind, specifically young minds, and the damage that's being done,
what led us to where we are now.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Well, the whole book is trying to figure out what
exactly happened around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. And my simple
perspective is I started working on campuses back in two
thousand and one, and for my entire career the best
constituency for freedom of speech were the students themselves. And
then sometimes around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, we saw this
sort of uprising of students demanding that people be disinvited.
(01:56):
They're actually demanding new speech codes. Sometimes they were demanding
professor and administrators are fired for what they said, even
if it's clearly protected speech. And this was a really
the shift. The shift seemed to happen overnight. And one
of the reasons why I started talking to John Height
about this was because I was also noticing that it
was kind of like this medicalization of the reasons for
(02:17):
why they were at demanding that speakers not be invited
that talked about, you know, things like PTSD and trauma.
But in a way that I know enough about psychology
just from being kind of a hobbyist to be like,
that doesn't really sound quite right. That is the way
I think the psychologist would actually approach it. So the
original book was the original article was trying to say, listen,
(02:38):
if we're wondering why what was going on on campus,
we should be aware of the fact that we're teaching
a generation the intellectual habits of anxious and depressed people.
And the book really takes that further, goes much deeper
into the data. The data now actually really firmly presents
the fact that we are dealing with a very serious
mental health problem on campus. But we also add to that,
(02:58):
you know, don't teach a generation that habits of depressed
and anxious people, but also don't teach them in the
habits of polarized people.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, and that was the section in the article that
you know, and I've read it several times, that is
stuck so firmly in my mind that we are actually
teaching mental illness for instance, you know, catastrophizing the smallest
of negative incidents, or being sure that everyone's against me,
or I'm sure you have the list of you know,
(03:25):
anxiety provoking tendencies at ready. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, those are called cognitive distortions. And I know about
this from a very personal angle. I actually give some
very personal details in this book that I realized after
i'd written them. I had even told you my wife
and family about some of them. But I used to
go through really bad bouts of depression and I learned
about cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the most
effective non drug interventions you can have for anxiety and depression,
(03:54):
and what it is, and it's kind of amazing. It's
just looking at those kind of crazy voices that we
all have in our heads. That you know, like when
you go on a date and it doesn't go well
and you say to yourself, I'm going to die alone.
Anxious and depressed people do a lot more of that, unsurprisingly,
And what's so amazing about CBT is if you just
get in the habit of talking back to some of
(04:15):
our exaggerated voices in your head, and it worked wonders
for me, you can really help yourself battle back depression
and anxiety. The book You Know talks about how we
seem to be telling and the book opens up with
sort of a story about going to the world's worst
guru and he gives you all sorts of terrible advice.
And the premise has always been that it's almost like
(04:37):
we're taking the worst advice you could possibly give to
young people or any people, and we're giving it to
a generation as if it's good advice.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, that's really interesting because you're right about that that
way to approach it, because I've tried to do that
in my life. Sometimes when I'm really anxious and worried,
I think, is there anything actually bad happening? No, there's
nothing actually bad happening. But our college campuses are telling
kids that there is something very bad happening which is
weird constantly, yeah, constantly.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And that they'll be damaged forever for it. We actually
in one of the chapters we give the sort of
the thought experiment of going into a college psychologist's office
and them asking you you know you're saying you listen, doc,
I feel anxious and depressed, and the doctor just being like,
oh my god, that must mean you're in great danger.
We need to help you figure out a place to hide.
And so instead of like playing trying to get these
(05:28):
sort of anxieties to sort of calm down a little
bit and learn to be sort of like more rational
in our approaches, we're doing a generation. And this is
to be clear, this is something we're doing to a generation.
I'm not blaming the students themselves for this. The point
that we're telling that you need to be much more
frightened than you actually need to be, that you're in
much greater threat than you need to be, and that
(05:48):
people are basically all out to get you.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, that's interesting because it'd be bad advice even if
it were nineteen sixty eight and like things were crazy
and dangerous. It'd be a bad thing to say you
need to focus on these negative things and overcome them,
even if they were bad things. But there are no
bad things. It's never been a more comfortable, safe time
to be on a college campus. And they're convincing them
to be terrified.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well, and that's one thing we really changed in the
book is we started looking at the bigger picture because
we were thinking that that campuses were sort of inculcating
these these bad ideas. But we looked back and we
looked into the research, and it looked more like these
are things that are partially coming, unfortunately from our generation
of parents as well. So two of my favorite chapters
(06:29):
in the whole book are actually about paranoid parenting and
the elimination of free play, which sound like they wouldn't
be at all related to campus free speech issues.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Absolute are Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
We think about this way to make a generation of
students who feel like they don't really have control over
their lives and that they're more vulnerable than they actually are.
And if you believe that, then sure, having this you know,
speaker on campus could to harm you for.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Life, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I do not want to turn this at all political,
because then I think people tend to close their ears
and turn off their minds. But there is undeniably a
political use to it. I mean, hl Makon has some
absolutely wonderful quotes about politics being the art of frightening
the populace with various bugaboos, most of which do not exist,
and I think in such a comfortable and prosperous time, Well, again,
(07:19):
it's politically very useful to frighten people on all sides
of the political all sides. You can't have almost you know,
everywhere along the political spectrum.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Well, i'm reading you of all Harari's new book,
which he had the temerity to come out with his
book the same day that that we did. But he
talks about how this is sort of a tactic for
keeping people sort of under your thumb too, is just
keep everybody scared and you can get away with whatever
you want.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah. Greg Lukianov is the author, along with the John Hight,
of The Coddling of the American Mind.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
On that theme, I kind of wish that was what
was going on, because I think it'd be easier to combat.
But obviously we're not doing that as parents, we're not
trying to scare. There are children for some political and
there's something weird in our culture about some when we're
all going to be immortal or or something.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
That's why we call them problems of progress. I tend
to think that there are some kind of predictable outcomes
that you would see as we have kind of like
more free time, as we have more you know, resources,
and we're less afraid of dying of the plague, we're
able to move on to sort of next level things.
And you know, I'm I have two kids under three,
believe me, and I try to say this on every interview.
I get the instinct to protect the living hell out
(08:32):
of your kids and to do it at a level
that might and that you have to kind of rein
that in. But the problem is, for you know, good
twenty years now, there hasn't been a lot of people saying, listen,
by the way, there can actually be downsides to being
obsessed with both the physical and more particularly the emotional
quote unquote safety of your kids. There can actually be
consequences to that. And finally, people like Julie Lescott Hayms,
(08:54):
who wrote a book called How to Raise an Adult
and we interview in the book, or Lenor Skinesi, the
famous free range mom, are helping bring attention to the
idea that yes, there is a downside to this style
of parently.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I took you know, so it's so in our culture.
I took my son to the playground over the weekend
at his school. He likes it when I take him
to his school so he can play on the monkey
bars the way he wants to. On the weekend, he
can climb up on top of him and stuff. He
can't do that during the school urs because they won't
let him. So I mean that we've got all these
so many different ways we're being attacked for doing anything
(09:27):
the slight bit edgy, starting when we're from when we're
really young, no wonder where, uh, you know, frightened of
the slightest discomfort.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, and that also, unfortunately has to do with my
chosen profession, which tend to ruin everything lawyers. We have
a whole chapter on how at university is sort of
over thereocritization but also rightful and understandable concerns about lawsuits.
He is one of the things that causes us really exaggerated,
Oh my god, wrong, tremendous, dangerous.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Sense of her God, Dan it, this is so complicated
and so danger us for society.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Greg Lukianov, Greg, can we put you on hold for
just a couple of minutes and come back continue the discussion.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
That'd be great, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, I want to ask specifically about administrations on college
campuses and the nature of college education right now and
how it's contributing to the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
The Coddling of the American Mind, a book that needs
to be you know, read and discuss. Incredibly important. It
might be the most important thing we got going, all right,
So stay with us. You're listening to the Armstrong and
Getty Show, The Conscience.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Of the Nation, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's troubling, and I know I'm a part of it.
I know I'm a part of the coddling of the
American mind. We all are. It's a cultural societal thing,
and it plays out on our college campuses in such
bizarre ways. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Continuing the conversation with Greg Lukianoff, the co author with
Jonathan Hyde of The Coddling of the American Mind, how
good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation
for failure. You should know going in. My admiration for
mister lukianof mister Hyde is somewhere between righteous admiration and
they've got to get a restraining order. A very very
(11:29):
big fan of what you fellas are writing about. Just
a question, you know, wisdom and intelligence are practically unrelated.
I mean, you can see a lot of incredibly intelligent
people who just are completely out to see what is
motivating the super charged desire to promote Call it political correctness,
(11:54):
call it, you know, coddling minds, the velcaff syndrome, might
call it. Why is everybody so motivating do this on
college campuses?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Well, you know, we talk about a bunch of different
threads in the book. We give about six different explanatory
threads about why some of these trends have gotten so
much worse. But part of it is that, you know,
there's not a lot of pushback on college campuses. And essentially,
once you create a echo chamber, things tend to get
much more intense, You have more polarization, people get more
(12:22):
radical in their points of view. And unfortunately the fact
is that even those universities have always been tilted more leftward,
they're now in in some departments, are more like eleven
to thirty to one in terms of ratios. Now, if
you don't have to have perfect parody or anything like that,
but now, you know, I know from my own experience
when I was in law school, for example, at Stanford
(12:44):
in California, that if you end up in a group
where everybody's just saying they're not disagreeing with you constructively,
they're just saying yeah. And you don't go far enough
to sort of more show off like how morally virtuous
they are instead of have a real discussion. It can
really spiral out of control quick.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Is there any reversing in this? I know we've pointed
out a couple of universities across the country where somebody
stood up in the administration and said, no where we've
taken this too far, written up eds that sort of thing.
Is there any reversing of this going on right now?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
University of Chicago is definitely one of the schools that's
trying to push back on this, and they issued something
that is now simply noticed, the Chicago Statement, which is
a statement of academic freedom, kind of updated for the
modern age, a lot of like the old academic freedom statements,
the best of the last best ones came out in
like the nineteen seventies. So University of Chicago wrote this
great statement talking about how, you know, like we have
(13:42):
to stand by speech even when it's offensive, and you
don't disinvite someone who's invited because you don't like their
point of view and really trying to prepare students for
the just the fact that, when done correctly, education is
going to be emotional. It's going to be difficult, it's
going to challenge you. It's going to hurt a little bit,
you know, in your head. And so far, the good
(14:02):
news is that about close to forty different schools across
the country have adopted some version of the Chicago statement.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Well, that's good, that's good news. So let's talk. Let's
go back to a point you were making earlier about
illustrating to parents the downside of, you know, turning their
kid into a veal calf, because you know, we all
think of terrible things that could happen. It's a natural
protective impulse, et cetera. I tweeted a couple of things
over the weekend on the theme that, since it's inevitable
(14:31):
that a monopoly on thought or a monopoly on opinion
always results in horror, if you can demonize or make
illegal other points of view. You know, every time we've
tried this in human history, it goes horribly horribly wrong.
You think that would be a fairly easy point to
illustrate to young, bright people attending colleges.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah. Well, but part of the problem is, and this
is something that really brought Height Night together, is that,
you know, Bill Bishop pointed out in a book called
The Big Sort that we increasingly live in more politically
homogeneous not just counties, but even neighborhoods down to the
city block. So a lot of us don't even have,
you know, constructive people to disagree with who live next
to us. Add to that social media, which kind of
(15:14):
pats you on the back for having yourself in the
most effective echo chamber you can put together. And of
course some of these things are getting worse. And my
hope is that you know, it's social media is like
living in a brand new city, like it just it
just popped out of nowhere, and we're all wandering around
and we're you know, we're really messing it up and
really don't know how to live there. My hope is
(15:34):
that we'll get better and smarter about culturally dealing with
living in a society where we where we actually have
to fight to have exposure to ideas that challenge us.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And I like that you've expanded it looking at this
problem not just for the college campuses, even though it's
you know, particularly interesting there since it's the opposite of
what is supposed to happen on a college campus. But
all through life, the coddling of children's bodies and then
their minds in college and now you know, last week
(16:04):
the big story David Remnick disinviting Steve Bannon because it
wasn't people didn't want him to debate. I mean, in
all areas of our life, we're trying to avoid ideas
and feeling uncomfortable in any way. It's weird for a society.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And this is what Underguard is my whole I don't actually,
I don't think it's that weird. I think the situation
normal for most of human history is the way we
treat dissenters is we make them drink hemlock, We kick
them out of our communities, we chop off their heads,
we tie them to stakes and burn them. This is all.
This is history normal as we're tribal and we get
rid of people who disagree. But one of the greatest
(16:43):
inventions we've ever come up with as a species is,
oh my god, what if I actually listen to the
people who I really dislike? What if I actually see
if they have a point, what if I stop listening
just to my you know, neighbor and kin, And it's
it's funny because when you see people you know advocating
on camp for by the way, words are just another
form of violence. Opinions, you know, are inherently violent if
(17:04):
they're really offensive. What I always like to point out
is these aren't new ideas. These are very very old,
bad ideas. And yes, it's an invention to say that
there's a distinction entirely between opinions and violence. But as
I always say, it's also one of the best inventions
we've ever come up with.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, and in the minute we have left, it just
reminds me once again that human nature doesn't change a
lot of the language here is just a variation on
the charges of heresy that some twelfth century pope might
throw around.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That is exactly right. I wrote a piece called we
are All Blasphemers and pointed out how every last one
of us which should be executed in the eye of
someone either currently living in the world right now or
somewhere in history.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Wow, that's a good point right there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah. Indeed, Greg Lukianov, who's the author along with Jonathan
Height of the coddling of the American mind. I suggest
everybody in the world buy five copies and send it
to everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Greg, It's always great to talk to you. Keep up
the good work, and we look for the next time.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Tremendously fun discussion.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Thank you, all right, thanks boy. And he's right. I'm wrong.
I'm right that it's weird for our culture, but it's
not weird for human history. It is the most common
thing for human history that you don't allow any other
point of view of the official one. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Well, weird is in off putting and disturbing. I think
you're right about that.
Meanwhile, if I might take the conversation to a higher plane,
it's a pleasure to welcome back to the Armstrong and
Getty show after too long and absence. Greg Lukianov, author,
along with Jonathan Height, of The Coddling of the American
Mind and a book length extension examination of their terrific,
groundbreaking Atlantic article of a couple of months ago or
(00:20):
a couple of years ago rather. Greg is also I believe,
one of the founders of fire defending individual rights in
higher education, joins us. Now, Hello, Greg, how are you sir?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
That's great to be back. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
How long ago was that Atlantic article?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
It was a twenty fifteen It was the summer of
twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Wow. Well, you didn't turn things around with that article
because things are worse now than they were.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, hey, hey, hey, you have to slow the ship
before you turn it.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
By the way, we decided to write the boo because
things got so much crazier after we wrote the article.
We were like, oh, okay, I think we have to
go a little.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Deeper in Yeah, okay, a couple of quick notes before
we dive into it in depth. Greg number one, I
am proudly sending my youngest to university that gets a
green light from fire florrific for communication, and I thank
you for furnishing that resource. Secondly, as I was googling
your book and typed simply the cod your book came
(01:13):
up immediately instead of that delicious fish. So the delicious
fish it is, it is getting it is getting some attention,
thank God. So let's talk about the coddling of the
American mind, specifically young minds, and the damage that's being done,
what led us to where we are now.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Well, the whole book is trying to figure out what
exactly happened around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. And my simple
perspective is I started working on campuses back in two
thousand and one, and for my entire career the best
constituency for freedom of speech were the students themselves. And
then sometimes around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, we saw this
sort of uprising of students demanding that people be disinvited.
(01:56):
They're actually demanding new speech codes. Sometimes they were demanding
professor and administrators are fired for what they said, even
if it's clearly protected speech. And this was a really
the shift. The shift seemed to happen overnight. And one
of the reasons why I started talking to John Height
about this was because I was also noticing that it
was kind of like this medicalization of the reasons for
(02:17):
why they were at demanding that speakers not be invited
that talked about, you know, things like PTSD and trauma.
But in a way that I know enough about psychology
just from being kind of a hobbyist to be like,
that doesn't really sound quite right. That is the way
I think the psychologist would actually approach it. So the
original book was the original article was trying to say, listen,
(02:38):
if we're wondering why what was going on on campus,
we should be aware of the fact that we're teaching
a generation the intellectual habits of anxious and depressed people.
And the book really takes that further, goes much deeper
into the data. The data now actually really firmly presents
the fact that we are dealing with a very serious
mental health problem on campus. But we also add to that,
(02:58):
you know, don't teach a generation that habits of depressed
and anxious people, but also don't teach them in the
habits of polarized people.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, and that was the section in the article that
you know, and I've read it several times, that is
stuck so firmly in my mind that we are actually
teaching mental illness for instance, you know, catastrophizing the smallest
of negative incidents, or being sure that everyone's against me,
or I'm sure you have the list of you know,
(03:25):
anxiety provoking tendencies at ready. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, those are called cognitive distortions. And I know about
this from a very personal angle. I actually give some
very personal details in this book that I realized after
i'd written them. I had even told you my wife
and family about some of them. But I used to
go through really bad bouts of depression and I learned
about cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the most
effective non drug interventions you can have for anxiety and depression,
(03:54):
and what it is, and it's kind of amazing. It's
just looking at those kind of crazy voices that we
all have in our heads. That you know, like when
you go on a date and it doesn't go well
and you say to yourself, I'm going to die alone.
Anxious and depressed people do a lot more of that, unsurprisingly,
And what's so amazing about CBT is if you just
get in the habit of talking back to some of
(04:15):
our exaggerated voices in your head, and it worked wonders
for me, you can really help yourself battle back depression
and anxiety. The book You Know talks about how we
seem to be telling and the book opens up with
sort of a story about going to the world's worst
guru and he gives you all sorts of terrible advice.
And the premise has always been that it's almost like
(04:37):
we're taking the worst advice you could possibly give to
young people or any people, and we're giving it to
a generation as if it's good advice.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yeah, that's really interesting because you're right about that that
way to approach it, because I've tried to do that
in my life. Sometimes when I'm really anxious and worried,
I think, is there anything actually bad happening? No, there's
nothing actually bad happening. But our college campuses are telling
kids that there is something very bad happening which is
weird constantly, yeah, constantly.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
And that they'll be damaged forever for it. We actually
in one of the chapters we give the sort of
the thought experiment of going into a college psychologist's office
and them asking you you know you're saying you listen, doc,
I feel anxious and depressed, and the doctor just being like,
oh my god, that must mean you're in great danger.
We need to help you figure out a place to hide.
And so instead of like playing trying to get these
(05:28):
sort of anxieties to sort of calm down a little
bit and learn to be sort of like more rational
in our approaches, we're doing a generation. And this is
to be clear, this is something we're doing to a generation.
I'm not blaming the students themselves for this. The point
that we're telling that you need to be much more
frightened than you actually need to be, that you're in
much greater threat than you need to be, and that
(05:48):
people are basically all out to get you.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, that's interesting because it'd be bad advice even if
it were nineteen sixty eight and like things were crazy
and dangerous. It'd be a bad thing to say you
need to focus on these negative things and overcome them,
even if they were bad things. But there are no
bad things. It's never been a more comfortable, safe time
to be on a college campus. And they're convincing them
to be terrified.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well, and that's one thing we really changed in the
book is we started looking at the bigger picture because
we were thinking that that campuses were sort of inculcating
these these bad ideas. But we looked back and we
looked into the research, and it looked more like these
are things that are partially coming, unfortunately from our generation
of parents as well. So two of my favorite chapters
(06:29):
in the whole book are actually about paranoid parenting and
the elimination of free play, which sound like they wouldn't
be at all related to campus free speech issues.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Absolute are Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
We think about this way to make a generation of
students who feel like they don't really have control over
their lives and that they're more vulnerable than they actually are.
And if you believe that, then sure, having this you know,
speaker on campus could to harm you for.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Life, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I do not want to turn this at all political,
because then I think people tend to close their ears
and turn off their minds. But there is undeniably a
political use to it. I mean, hl Makon has some
absolutely wonderful quotes about politics being the art of frightening
the populace with various bugaboos, most of which do not exist,
and I think in such a comfortable and prosperous time, Well, again,
(07:19):
it's politically very useful to frighten people on all sides
of the political all sides. You can't have almost you know,
everywhere along the political spectrum.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Well, i'm reading you of all Harari's new book,
which he had the temerity to come out with his
book the same day that that we did. But he
talks about how this is sort of a tactic for
keeping people sort of under your thumb too, is just
keep everybody scared and you can get away with whatever
you want.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah. Greg Lukianov is the author, along with the John Hight,
of The Coddling of the American Mind.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
On that theme, I kind of wish that was what
was going on, because I think it'd be easier to combat.
But obviously we're not doing that as parents, we're not
trying to scare. There are children for some political and
there's something weird in our culture about some when we're
all going to be immortal or or something.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
That's why we call them problems of progress. I tend
to think that there are some kind of predictable outcomes
that you would see as we have kind of like
more free time, as we have more you know, resources,
and we're less afraid of dying of the plague, we're
able to move on to sort of next level things.
And you know, I'm I have two kids under three,
believe me, and I try to say this on every interview.
I get the instinct to protect the living hell out
(08:32):
of your kids and to do it at a level
that might and that you have to kind of rein
that in. But the problem is, for you know, good
twenty years now, there hasn't been a lot of people saying, listen,
by the way, there can actually be downsides to being
obsessed with both the physical and more particularly the emotional
quote unquote safety of your kids. There can actually be
consequences to that. And finally, people like Julie Lescott Hayms,
(08:54):
who wrote a book called How to Raise an Adult
and we interview in the book, or Lenor Skinesi, the
famous free range mom, are helping bring attention to the
idea that yes, there is a downside to this style
of parently.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I took you know, so it's so in our culture.
I took my son to the playground over the weekend
at his school. He likes it when I take him
to his school so he can play on the monkey
bars the way he wants to. On the weekend, he
can climb up on top of him and stuff. He
can't do that during the school urs because they won't
let him. So I mean that we've got all these
so many different ways we're being attacked for doing anything
(09:27):
the slight bit edgy, starting when we're from when we're
really young, no wonder where, uh, you know, frightened of
the slightest discomfort.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, and that also, unfortunately has to do with my
chosen profession, which tend to ruin everything lawyers. We have
a whole chapter on how at university is sort of
over thereocritization but also rightful and understandable concerns about lawsuits.
He is one of the things that causes us really exaggerated,
Oh my god, wrong, tremendous, dangerous.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Sense of her God, Dan it, this is so complicated
and so danger us for society.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Greg Lukianov, Greg, can we put you on hold for
just a couple of minutes and come back continue the discussion.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
That'd be great, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, I want to ask specifically about administrations on college
campuses and the nature of college education right now and
how it's contributing to the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
The Coddling of the American Mind, a book that needs
to be you know, read and discuss. Incredibly important. It
might be the most important thing we got going, all right,
So stay with us. You're listening to the Armstrong and
Getty Show, The Conscience.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Of the Nation, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's troubling, and I know I'm a part of it.
I know I'm a part of the coddling of the
American mind. We all are. It's a cultural societal thing,
and it plays out on our college campuses in such
bizarre ways. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Continuing the conversation with Greg Lukianoff, the co author with
Jonathan Hyde of The Coddling of the American Mind, how
good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation
for failure. You should know going in. My admiration for
mister lukianof mister Hyde is somewhere between righteous admiration and
they've got to get a restraining order. A very very
(11:29):
big fan of what you fellas are writing about. Just
a question, you know, wisdom and intelligence are practically unrelated.
I mean, you can see a lot of incredibly intelligent
people who just are completely out to see what is
motivating the super charged desire to promote Call it political correctness,
(11:54):
call it, you know, coddling minds, the velcaff syndrome, might
call it. Why is everybody so motivating do this on
college campuses?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Well, you know, we talk about a bunch of different
threads in the book. We give about six different explanatory
threads about why some of these trends have gotten so
much worse. But part of it is that, you know,
there's not a lot of pushback on college campuses. And essentially,
once you create a echo chamber, things tend to get
much more intense, You have more polarization, people get more
(12:22):
radical in their points of view. And unfortunately the fact
is that even those universities have always been tilted more leftward,
they're now in in some departments, are more like eleven
to thirty to one in terms of ratios. Now, if
you don't have to have perfect parody or anything like that,
but now, you know, I know from my own experience
when I was in law school, for example, at Stanford
(12:44):
in California, that if you end up in a group
where everybody's just saying they're not disagreeing with you constructively,
they're just saying yeah. And you don't go far enough
to sort of more show off like how morally virtuous
they are instead of have a real discussion. It can
really spiral out of control quick.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Is there any reversing in this? I know we've pointed
out a couple of universities across the country where somebody
stood up in the administration and said, no where we've
taken this too far, written up eds that sort of thing.
Is there any reversing of this going on right now?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
University of Chicago is definitely one of the schools that's
trying to push back on this, and they issued something
that is now simply noticed, the Chicago Statement, which is
a statement of academic freedom, kind of updated for the
modern age, a lot of like the old academic freedom statements,
the best of the last best ones came out in
like the nineteen seventies. So University of Chicago wrote this
great statement talking about how, you know, like we have
(13:42):
to stand by speech even when it's offensive, and you
don't disinvite someone who's invited because you don't like their
point of view and really trying to prepare students for
the just the fact that, when done correctly, education is
going to be emotional. It's going to be difficult, it's
going to challenge you. It's going to hurt a little bit,
you know, in your head. And so far, the good
(14:02):
news is that about close to forty different schools across
the country have adopted some version of the Chicago statement.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Well, that's good, that's good news. So let's talk. Let's
go back to a point you were making earlier about
illustrating to parents the downside of, you know, turning their
kid into a veal calf, because you know, we all
think of terrible things that could happen. It's a natural
protective impulse, et cetera. I tweeted a couple of things
over the weekend on the theme that, since it's inevitable
(14:31):
that a monopoly on thought or a monopoly on opinion
always results in horror, if you can demonize or make
illegal other points of view. You know, every time we've
tried this in human history, it goes horribly horribly wrong.
You think that would be a fairly easy point to
illustrate to young, bright people attending colleges.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah. Well, but part of the problem is, and this
is something that really brought Height Night together, is that,
you know, Bill Bishop pointed out in a book called
The Big Sort that we increasingly live in more politically
homogeneous not just counties, but even neighborhoods down to the
city block. So a lot of us don't even have,
you know, constructive people to disagree with who live next
to us. Add to that social media, which kind of
(15:14):
pats you on the back for having yourself in the
most effective echo chamber you can put together. And of
course some of these things are getting worse. And my
hope is that you know, it's social media is like
living in a brand new city, like it just it
just popped out of nowhere, and we're all wandering around
and we're you know, we're really messing it up and
really don't know how to live there. My hope is
(15:34):
that we'll get better and smarter about culturally dealing with
living in a society where we where we actually have
to fight to have exposure to ideas that challenge us.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
And I like that you've expanded it looking at this
problem not just for the college campuses, even though it's
you know, particularly interesting there since it's the opposite of
what is supposed to happen on a college campus. But
all through life, the coddling of children's bodies and then
their minds in college and now you know, last week
(16:04):
the big story David Remnick disinviting Steve Bannon because it
wasn't people didn't want him to debate. I mean, in
all areas of our life, we're trying to avoid ideas
and feeling uncomfortable in any way. It's weird for a society.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And this is what Underguard is my whole I don't actually,
I don't think it's that weird. I think the situation
normal for most of human history is the way we
treat dissenters is we make them drink hemlock, We kick
them out of our communities, we chop off their heads,
we tie them to stakes and burn them. This is all.
This is history normal as we're tribal and we get
rid of people who disagree. But one of the greatest
(16:43):
inventions we've ever come up with as a species is,
oh my god, what if I actually listen to the
people who I really dislike? What if I actually see
if they have a point, what if I stop listening
just to my you know, neighbor and kin, And it's
it's funny because when you see people you know advocating
on camp for by the way, words are just another
form of violence. Opinions, you know, are inherently violent if
(17:04):
they're really offensive. What I always like to point out
is these aren't new ideas. These are very very old,
bad ideas. And yes, it's an invention to say that
there's a distinction entirely between opinions and violence. But as
I always say, it's also one of the best inventions
we've ever come up with.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, and in the minute we have left, it just
reminds me once again that human nature doesn't change a
lot of the language here is just a variation on
the charges of heresy that some twelfth century pope might
throw around.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
That is exactly right. I wrote a piece called we
are All Blasphemers and pointed out how every last one
of us which should be executed in the eye of
someone either currently living in the world right now or
somewhere in history.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Wow, that's a good point right there.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah. Indeed, Greg Lukianov, who's the author along with Jonathan
Height of the coddling of the American mind. I suggest
everybody in the world buy five copies and send it
to everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Greg, It's always great to talk to you. Keep up
the good work, and we look for the next time.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Tremendously fun discussion.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Thank you, all right, thanks boy. And he's right. I'm wrong.
I'm right that it's weird for our culture, but it's
not weird for human history. It is the most common
thing for human history that you don't allow any other
point of view of the official one. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Well, weird is in off putting and disturbing. I think
you're right about that.
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