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[soft instrumental music]

[Kimi]
I couldn't function, I could
hardly sleep, I couldn't eat

because at the end of the day,
you're kind of killing yourself.

I was deeply overwhelmed by it,
for all of my freshman year.

I didn't really
have a future in mind.

I, I thought I would
maybe make it to 20.

Mental health.. [chuckles]
among Gen Z is a travesty.

Most of the adults
were worried I would
be in hospitals forever

and not really be
a functioning human.

Almost every other person I know

has some sort
of mental health problem.

I was scared of what the day
was gonna bring me.

It just kind of radiates
outward and outward

until everything
around you is destroyed.

[softly] No.
[in normal voice]
Let me think about this.

[laughs] Um...

Oh. How does this begin?

Kind of went
against my parents will.

And this was like,
"I'm going to California."

And when I came to America,

the very first day
I landed in LAX

and went to, like,
the first gas station.

I remember, like,
the cashier inside the store,

just like waving at us.

And I was so taken aback.

I was like, "Are you,
are you waving at me?"

Because in other cultures,

the level of friendliness
wasn't that sincere
and that deep.

My initial perception of America
was that it was

the friendliest country
I have ever been to.

So first goal
was to go to college.

That was my main immediate goal

and that's what would make
my parents take me seriously.

So I decided to go
to an art school,

uh, the Art Institutes
of California.

I had a lot of potential.
I was very conscious of that.

I seen what my parents
had achieved

in their lifetimes,
in their day and age.

I was full of self-confidence
when I was 18,

but while I was in college,
that disintegrated.

[skate screech, clatters]

[dramatic music]

[music softens]

[Lucy]
On a bad day, it could be, like,
so anxious and overwhelmed

I can't even talk,
not really knowing what's real,

sending my friends
crazy incoherent texts

and they think I'm high,

wandering around
at night with my shoes off.

Those moments are
really terrifying, because...

...I really do feel like
I don't quite know what's real.

I get really paranoid,
but mostly it's just

stressful and exhausting

and I don't understand
what's going on

and I don't know what to do.

I had my first depressive
episode when I was eight

and things sort of kept
getting worse in middle school.

By the time I was
in high school,
I was out for a year of school

and different treatment centers

and then finished
high school somehow,

and then another year in
treatment centers and hospitals.

So it's, it's been a wild ride.

[somber music]

The treatment centers, uh,

probably saved my life,
but were also really hellish.

I ended up being sort of
tossed from place to place

because they couldn't figure out
what was going on with me.

Um, and I had these increasingly
scary and chaotic episodes

of what seemed
sort of like psychosis
or really intense dysregulation.

And eventually
I ended up at a place

where a doctor suggested,
"Maybe you're on the spectrum,"

and gave me a checklist
of autism symptoms,

and I think
I threw it right back at her.

It seemed crazy to me,
and I didn't even want
to think about it.

[soft music]

[Kimi]
I chose audio production.
Creating music, producing music.

I translated the financial

into, like,
the quality of education.

So I thought, "I'm paying a lot.

So they're definitely
teaching me, like,

the golden rules for life."

I really, really believe that

my professors were
like an extension of my parents,

and I took everything
they said to heart,

like almost
to a religious degree.

[Lucy]
When I first got
an autism diagnosis,

I, I rejected
even the possibility
that I might have it,

'cause it just seemed like yet
another thing wrong with me.

And then I saw
that the treatment I was getting

wouldn't have been possible
if I hadn't had the diagnosis.

And so I started to go
from kind of hating

this part of myself
to accepting it.

It finally seemed like being
myself would be acceptable.

[Kimi]
So I believe my focus was
just gonna be on the audio.

All the classes would
just be audio specific.

But not too long
into my college journey,

I was introduced to ideas
such as microaggressions.

[Kimi]
And so, through all of
them teachings,

I was viewing
a lot of interactions

through the lens
of microaggressions.

[female voice reading]

I began to see myself through
the lens of Black and a woman.

It was like everything
that I tried to do

would always
be met with opposition.

[soft tense music]

-I specifically remember
the day.
-[rain pattering]

Gray clouds outside,
it was raining,

-and I remember the moment
I was like, "Is this true?
-[thundering]

Is what they're saying,
like, real?

Is, is this
how the world works?"

And then I was like...
I accepted it.

I was like, "I think this is
real and I need to wake up

and grow up
and just adopt this."

Like, this is how
the world works.

And that day it felt
like something dark,

-like, entered my heart.
-[heart beating]

And it was very vivid
and very real.

And I was like,
"The world's a lot darker than,

than I thought it was."

[muffled screaming]

[Lucy]
Getting into Stanford was
one of the only good things

that happened to me that spring.

And once I had
that concrete goal in mind,

I decided I need to figure out
how to get my life together

so I can actually do this.

And some of the doctors
told me like,

"You're not going...
in two months,
you're not gonna go from, like,

a locked psych ward to Stanford.
That just doesn't happen."

And that made me want
to do it more.

College gave me the motivation
to learn how to live
independently.

It wasn't just
that I hadn't been independent,

it was, I hadn't even been
in a room alone for,
like, ten months.

So it was really terrifying.

But I also finally had
a really compelling reason to be

done with hospitals
and have a somewhat normal life.

I was terrified every day,
but I was also really determined
to make it happen.

[birds chirping]

[upbeat instrumental music]

[Kimi]
I thought that the only way
that I was gonna get... ahead

was by acknowledging
my victim status in society.

And so in order to kind of
compete and get the best grades,

I sort of showed how,
how much of a victim I was

in order to impress
my professors

in order to seem
like I understood
their concepts the best,

because they had,
they had me believing

that the only thing I could turn
to was my skin color and my sex.

[Lucy]
Ableism is discrimination
against disabled people,

and as with most
of these social justice terms,

um, it's a very real phenomenon.

But I think I also use
the term "ableism" to describe

basically things
where I felt personally

misunderstood or, or mistreated.

Ableism almost,
it almost described

any situation
where I felt excluded,

except I felt excluded
by most things at this point.

And there had been a lot
of situations where I was,

essentially, told to shut up

because I didn't belong
to XYZ marginalized group

and, and therefore I couldn't,
I wasn't really entitled

to an opinion on the subject.

And so I now had something

that would make people listen
to what I had to say more and,

and give me a little bit more
authority and give me power.

And I, I don't think of myself
as power hungry
or anything like that.

But I think it is kind of
natural human instin--

instinct, um,
to want more power.

[music continues]

You expect everyone
to think like you.

And if they don't,
you push them away.

When I started to use
the vocabulary of, like,

marginalized, intersectional,
hegemonic, blah, blah, blah,

people just kind of
smiled a little bit more.

You share these religious ideas
about the world.

And I started feeling like, I
was, I was part of an in-group.

You know how the world works

through the virtue
of just being oppressed.

It was just very clear to me
that if I was an activist,

I was going to be accepted more.

It's just really exciting
to think that, like,

this whole world is out to get
you, but you are the hero,

like, you're Katniss Everdeen.

[dramatic music]

She plays in these
evil hunger games

and she takes down
the dystopian republic.

She's, like, really good
with bows and arrows,

and she's also conveniently
very pretty

and, like, why wouldn't
you want to be her?

[Kimi]
My professors, media,

Twitter, I would just
follow their commands.

[Lucy]
I was engaged
in this wild crusade

to save the world
from the scourge of ableism.

Any person who needed
to be canceled,

I was ready to do their bidding.

I was ready for a fight.
Ready to react.

[whimsical music]

[soft music]

[Saeed]
Four hundred other students
come, like, 500

like, they're all coming
to college for the first time.

And first of all,
I think I just overwhelmed,

like, by just the sheer number
of... [whispers] white people.

Like, I just hadn't met any.

I mean, I'm coming
from the biggest
Black nation on Earth.

And then it's just like,
you know, I've met

white people there
and seen a few there,

I was in New York
for a couple days,

so I'd seen a couple.

But this was just, like,

straight white people.

Like everywhere I turn.

And I was like,
"What is going on here?"

"I'm Josh, I'm James,
I'm Jos-- I'm Jake."

I turn around,
I can't recognize any of them.

Like, I can't tell them apart.

It's really bad.
Really, really bad.

Let's put it this way,
you're coming to America

in the fall of 2016
from Nigeria.

Donald Trump is about to be
elected president.

The tension on campus, you can
literally cut it with a knife.

And I'm out here like,
"Who's Donald Trump?

What is left? What is right?

Who is liberal?
What is conservative?"

Like, I'm coming in zero
knowledge of political America.

[music continues]

So I grew up in Abuja.

We weren't poor.

But we were just
right above that not-poor line.

I grew up Muslim,
every morning you know,

the routine was simple,
school in the morning.

You would go to school from,
like, 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.,

leave school,
change clothes in the car,

and then you would go to Islam
e-- in the evening from 4:30

to, like, 6:00 and then
get back home, have dinner,

do your homework
and then rinse and repeat

for, like, 13, 15 years.

So there's this picture
in my mind,
the Oxford University debates.

I now look to the first speaker,
Member of Secretaries Committee,

Sara Dube, Saint Hugh's College,
to open the case
for the proposition.

-[cheers and applause]
-[Saeed] Someone would go up

and then be like,
"This is what I think,
blah, blah, blah, blah."

Today, the opposition
will tell you

that this genetic engineering
will herald

a new improved age for humanity.

You'd be like, "Oh my God,"
you know, like...

So I had this vision
of Western education as a whole,

not just American education
sort of being like,

"Okay, regardless
of how controversial,
sort of, like,

you know,
whatever it was, let's go.
We're gonna argue out.

We're gonna hammer it out."
This is the picture that I have

what American college
is gonna be like.

Lafayette, at this time,
it's not an easy, you know,
place to be at,

one on social media,
but also on campus,

on social media, to start with.

Social media, social media.

[clicks tongue]

If you say this,
it means something.

If you don't say this,
it means something.

Social media

played a large role

in my view of the world.

If you like something
it means something,
if you don't like something,

it also sends a certain signal.

A very, very huge role,
especially Twitter.

Oh, my gosh, Tumblr.

Lafayette is Facebook.

I hopped on to Twitter, um,

in 2009, and I was just using it

to follow my favorite
artists and bands.

[Lucy]
I got into Tumblr

because I just wanted to meet
other autistic people online

and, and hear about
their experiences
and not, like, feel as alone,

and it was really great
in that sense.

But then there was
this really kind of fierce
activist side of things.

[Kimi]
And before I knew it,
it was the only way

I had a grasp on
what's happening in the world.

So liking or not liking.

Checking it every ten minutes.

Or sharing or not sharing

has all these
social implications.

[Kimi]
For a lot of
the friends that I had.

I would analyze,
I would analyze
everything they were doing,

their interests,
people they followed.

Oh, I remember there was
this one guy who was following

Ben Shapiro on Twitter.
That was enough for me.

Your job as an adult is to guide
your child through life,
not to sit around

waiting for your child
to tell you what they think
their gender is.

[Kimi]
And when I saw that,
I couldn't talk to them again

because I knew
if they could f-- do something

as horrible as follow
Ben Shapiro on Twitter.

Like, what more
are they capable of?

[Saeed]
So I think the biggest confusion
that hit me

was just the weird, like,

lack of, you know...

...grinding
intellectual discourse.

It felt as though
all the conversations
that were being had

all the debates
that were being had,

were still very limited

to a certain group
of pre-approved

or pre-agreed upon ideals,

which then tend to lean left.
That was the consensus.

And, you know, debate should
not stray from that consensus.

I became convinced that
if someone used the phrase
"person with autism,"

my brain would
immediately go to,

"They think that autism can
be separated from the person."

Well, that means that they want

autism to be separated
from the person,

which means that they want
autism to be cured,

which means that they want
people with autism not to exist.

And that is eugenics,
which amounts to genocide.

So just three words
"person with autism,"

and I would immediately
be thinking about genocide.

That is not healthy.

I tried to do
whatever I could to...

...curb the existence
of white supremacy and, like,

the roots of,
of white supremacy,

which to me seemed to be coming
from certain Twitter accounts

uh, such as Ben Shapiro,
Ann Colter

and this guy
Mark Dice or whatever.

And I was like...

..."Why are they,
why are they on Twitter?

Like, how have they
not been banned yet?"

And I thought that was
just, just a function

of no one's actually taking
the initiative to report them.

So I would sit down
all the way through the night

trying to look for tweets
where there was, like,
a call to violence.

So like if Ben Shapiro
would tweet something violent,

I would look for that
in his timeline and report that

even if it bounced back
and said it wasn't violent,
I would try again and try again.

[students]
It is right to rebel.
Ben Shapiro go to hell.

[Lucy]
I remember. This was probably
November when Ben Shapiro

was coming to campus,
and it was, like, this big thing

'cause it's Ben Shapiro,
and there were fliers
absolutely everywhere.

And they said Ben Shapiro's
presence threatened the lives

or the safety of marginalized
community members.

And, and I think
my first thought was like,

"This is extreme,
this is ridiculous."

And then I sort of... there was
the, "Well, you're privileged,

you're white,
you're not one of these groups.

You can't tell other people
how they experience the world.

Um, you're probably just drawing
on your implicit racism

and you need to listen
to people's lived experience."

This, this, um,
instant chorus of stuff

that made me feel
like I shouldn't question it.

Not just that
I shouldn't question it,

but that it was morally wrong,

um, for me to disagree
even in my head.

-[students] Safety. Safety...
-[man] Safety. Safety.

[Saeed]
Coming to America
and finding people so defined

by their politics
is absolutely abnormal.

In Nigeria, politics
is very simple, you know.

You don't have left or right.
Everyone is just corrupt.

[laughs]
And then you just decide

which level of corruption
you're go-- you're going
to be on.

-[people arguing]
-[Saeed] I'm coming in,

I, I think a lot
of international students

are coming in
and are like, "Why?

Why are we all so annoyed?
Why? Why are you screaming?"

[people shouting]

[soft music]

[Kimi]
I was at a Bible study

with a lot
of other youth my age,

but of different backgrounds
like white, Hispanic.

However, I was
the only Black person

and... I just remember
sitting there

and taking into account
everything that was happening.

I was conscious
of someone scooting an in--

like, an inch away from me,
and that was like,

a subconscious microaggression.

Or if someone would
say hello to someone else,

I would interpret that
as another microaggression.

You know, how are
they forming their sentences?

Are they walking on eggshells
because there's
a Black person here?

[Kimi]
2016 was the year
that I came to know of BLM

and a lot of the shootings
that had taken place

of unarmed Black men
at the hands of the police.

-[repetitive gunshots]
-[man screaming]

So I was particularly
traumatized

by the shooting
of Philando Castile.

[woman] We got pulled over
for a busted tail-light
in the back.

So I would cry, like,
a lot about that.

At the same time,
Trump was running.

We are going
to win again all the time.

[Kimi]
And I just, in my mind,
I couldn't conceive

-that it was even possible
that he would win.
-[crowd cheering]

I thought Hillary
had it in the bag.

I was like,
"The world's going to be saved."

But then... I went
to my pastor's house

to watch the, uh, election,

and I just remember seeing,
like, all the states turn

and it was, like, so scary.

It was, like,
really, really scary.

And then everyone in the house
was, like, celebrating.

[announcer]
The president elect

of the United States of America,
Donald Trump.

[Kimi]
When Trump got elected,
that's actually

a really traumatic memory
for me.

It really,
it really freaked me out

'cause I was convinced
that I was gonna die.

[interviewer speaking]

Honestly, I didn't know
how I was gonna die.

It was what CNN was saying.
It's what Twitter was saying.

So however wa-- way it came,
through starvation,

through, uh,
lack of opportunities,
it was gonna come.

-[somber music]
-[crickets chirping]

The night Trump was elected.
I, I could not sleep.

I had to stay up
and, and just make sure

that the results were wrong,

'cause I was certain
that there was, like, a glitch

or, like, a, a counting issue.
So I stayed up.

I kept my eye on Twitter,
I kept my eye on the news.

And the next day,
I went to school.

The first people I turned to
were my professors.

I was like, "It's wrong, right?
Like, he, he didn't win.

Like, it was a-- they, they
messed up somewhere, right?"

This one professor was like,
"No, it's, it's done.
Like, he's the president."

And I just remember
beginning a new reality

where the world
was that much more dangerous.

I could hardly sleep,
I couldn't eat,

anxiety attacks,
trembling, tremors,

nervous breakdowns,
sleepless nights, insomnia.

[Saeed]
I, you know, was trying
to be as virtuous as I could.

So I joined all the social
justice groups,

even though, like,
I didn't really understand
this sort of social justice.

We had this protest
and they were inviting
people up to speak.

And, you know, me trying to be
all cool and be all virtuous

and, like, you know, trying
to show support and everything.
So I made this metaphor.

I didn't make it, but I sort of
stole it from my father.

It was like, you know,
"Blackness is not a skin color.

It's an attitude to life.
If you believe in, you know,
fundamental human rights

because Black people
have been so long denied it,

you can, you are Black
in that sense."

I go up there, you know,
feeling all cool with myself.

Da-da-da-da-da. If you're white,
you can be Black.

If you're Black,
you can be purple.

Whatever it is, I'm like,
"Everyone can be Black."

And what happened after that?

A lot of people I thought
I was tight with,

just stopped talking to me.
[clicks tongue]

[soft music]

My battle with, you know,
beg-- like, beginning
to feel depressed

at Lafayette started at the end
of my freshman first semester.

It's a confluence
of a number of factors.

One is, you know,
you're coming from a very,

very different
cultural background,
and you're meeting a culture,

a new culture that's
sort of telling you to change,

like, not change a little,
but change radically.
This is who you have to be.

-[protesters making noise]
-The second was just the nature

of conversation on campus.

You know, no room for debate,
no room for conversation.

You wake up every morning
and it's every--
everyone's screaming at you,

"You're this, you're that."
And I, and it's not like
they're screaming at you,

but you can imagine them
screaming at the version of you

that would have
said certain things.

It felt like I couldn't
live a true life.

What I thought to be true,
I would keep in my head

and then say something else.

I would see that disparity

between the me
that was being presented

and the me that was in my head.

That self-silencing way
put me in my own head.

So I was talking to myself alone
and just really, really, really

getting into a dark space
where, you know, I would wake up

every morning and be like,
"What the hell am I doing here?

What the hell
am I going for here?
Why am I in college?

I might as well just,
you know, peace right now,

'cause what the hell
am I doing?"

I couldn't consistently live

in that culture of,
you know, vitriol and,

you know,
more than anything, um...

...hate.

There's a Wawa convenience
store right across the road.

There's no stop
signs on that road,

So I would just be walking down,
And I would always just wish

that, you know,
a car would just run me over
and I would just graciously die.

Because, you know,
in that sense, if I died,

I wouldn't feel the guilt
of taking my own life

and my parents being
sad about it.

It would just be like,
"No, I left."

[Greg]
I'd gone to the, um...

...the hardware store
right across from my house
to get, you know, um,

to get wire, you know,
to, to tie around a bag, um...

I decided that if I ground up
all my, all my medications

and, um, took them all

and put a piece of wire
around my neck

and with the, um,
with the, uh, the bag, I could,

I could knock myself out
and then when I would--

if I were to wake up
from the drugs,

I, I, I'd, I'd suffocate.

So I could, just wanted
to make it foolproof.

It felt desperately important.

It wasn't something
I could wait on.

It was something
that I needed to do

while I still
had the will to do it.

And it didn't
so much seem like I had

to do it in order
to stop feeling pain.

It was something more like...

...I was bad and I was broken
and I had to go.

It's really crazy
what your brain
can sort of convince you of.

I actually thought, you know,
I thought things like,

"My family would be
happy for me."

I'd gotten so s-- depressed,

but so warped in my thinking

that I actually thought that I--
my sister's a doctor.

that I-- if I'd asked her
to help me kill myself,
she'd help me.

-[birds chirping]
-By the time you're at the stage

where, where you're gonna
kill yourself,

you're not, you're not
in your right mind.

And I was not myself.

It's hard to really
describe how I felt,

um, when I got checked
into the psych hospital, um...

Partially because there's such
a constant feeling of terror.

It smelled really bad,
of course.

Um, and the people were,
were pretty stern.

Um, you know, I, I was kind of
af-- afraid of some of the,

some of the attendants,
and it was funny

'cause you, you'd have
moments in there

where you'd be
watch-- watching TV.

And, um, I remember, like,
changing the channel

and, and having a moment
that felt almost kind of normal.

And then having one of the girls
who was in there come back

and just burst
into hysterical tears
because I'd changed the channel.

[water running]

Even that little
glimmering second

that things
felt slightly normal,

it was a reminder that,
that, um, where I was.

[whimsical music]

[Jonathan]
So I've always been really
partial to, uh, to folk wisdom

and, and quotations
from the ancients

because ideas
from previous generations

get filtered
through the generations.

People a thousand years ago
weren't smarter than us,

but the only things
we get from them
are the really smart things.

So Greg had asked to talk to me,

uh, because years before,
when he was struggling

with his own depression,
he had read my first book,

The Happiness Hypothesis.

And that's a book
about ten ancient ideas.

I read the wisdom literature
from the entire world.

So one day Greg emails me
and asks if we can go to lunch,

and we have this lunch that
really became life-changing.

[Greg]
So I'm recovering from

suicidal depression in 2008,

and the same time I'm learning
about cognitive distortions.

This is when I started doing
cognitive behavioral therapy.

Um, it was recommended
by my sister-in-law, um,

and, uh, it's no stretch
to say it saved my life.

[Jonathan reading]

...depression, anxiety,
and a lot of other,

a, a lot of other disorders
that are related to those.

It was discovered by Aaron Beck
and a few others in the 1960s,

uh, who dis-- they discovered
that their depressed patients

would go in these cycles,
they would, they would ruminate,

they would say these distorted
thoughts over and over again,

like, "This thing went wrong and
it went wrong because I'm stupid

and I'll always be stupid,
and this always happens to me."

And he would try
to argue with them.

Uh, and he found that actually,
uh, if you can get them

to interrupt those thoughts,
then at least temporarily,

the pain goes away.
They get a little bit of relief.

It's deceptively simple.

Uh, what you're supposed to do,

uh, is when you have, like,

a really strong negative
reaction to something,

you're supposed
to sit down and write down

what the initial thought was

and what the evidence was
of that thought,

and then pick
a cognitive distortion.

And cognitive distortions
are, are mental exaggerations,

The-- they're, they're things
that everybody's brain does...

um, that distorts
the way reality looks like.

So, for example, a really
common one is binary thinking.

That either everything's
horrible or everything's great.

There's, there's,
there's no shades of gray.

There is catastrophizing,
of course, which is, you know,

like, a date doesn't go well
and you, you, you think
it's over for you,

that you, you're never
gonna find anybody.

The amazing thing is that
Beck's discovery was actually

widely known in ancient Greece
and Rome and ancient India,

and almost all the wisdom
traditions of the world

recognized that we, we have
these distorted thoughts.

And if you can,
if you can teach yourself to see

reality more clearly
and break those thoughts cycles,

you get relief
from the suffering.

And unless you actually
make a habit of it,
you, you're never gonna reach

the point where your brain
starts talking back to those,

to those negative voices
that you have in your head.

And that's why
it kind of snuck up on me.

I was doing it
several times a day

for months
and months and months,

and at times even wondering,

like, if I was
making real progress.

And I remember sometime
in the fall of 2008,

um, having that,
that little narrative

about being broken,
you know, pop up in my head,

and it just didn't feel
true anymore.

And in a relatively
short period of time,

given how intense it was,
it, it was amazing, like,

how much ground I was
able to gain, gain back

over these things that I'd
struggled with my whole life.

-[traffic humming]
-[soft dramatic music]

I'm the president and CEO
of the Foundation

for Individual Rights
and Expression.

Uh, we defend
free speech and free thought

on campus and off.

Since I, you know,
work in higher ed,

I, I'm on campus all the time,

and I'm looking on campus
and I'm like,

"Wow, it's kind of
like administrators
are telling students

to catastrophize,
to engage in binary thinking,

to do all these things
that I was taught not to do."

They've disinvited
hundreds of speakers

to protect students from ideas
or speech that might upset them.

Even James Franco got canned.

-[laughs]
-Administrators have
cracked down an,

an inappropriately-direct
laughter, harsh text or emails

and lots of other speech crimes.

Colleges provide websites
and phone numbers

so students can report
people who offend them,
even anonymously.

Administrators teach students
that they're fragile

and in constant danger

and can be
permanently harmed by words.

This is not a kind
or compassionate thing
to teach people,

but from 2008 to about 2013,

um, I was like, "Well, you know,
administrators seem to be

selling all
this catastrophizing,
all these cognitive distortions,

but at least students
aren't buying them."

They were, uh, kind of
rolling their eyes

at what administrators
wanted to tell them.

But then,
right at the end of 2013,

but all the way through 2014,
it was like lightning hit.

It was just completely
different on campus.

And suddenly students were ca--
were popping up on campus

who were making arguments
that, frankly, to me,

sounded a lot like, uh,
cognitive distortions

[students]
Racist, sexist, anti-gay.
Charles Murray, go away.

[Greg]
In 2012, there was none of this.

And by 2014, 2015,
there was a lot of it.

[screaming]

It was an extremely rapid
and very troubling shift.

Suddenly, just in the last
few years, Greg says,

students on campuses
around the country

are being taught
to catastrophize,

to overgeneralize, to make
mountains out of molehills.

[Greg]
And if they keep going this way,

this awful worldview is
going to make them depressed.

And it was like, boom,

"Oh my God, this is
what is happening."

I thought Greg's
idea was brilliant.

And so I said to,
you know, I said to him,

"Greg, you've got
to write this up.
You've got to write this up,

like, as an article, like,
for The Atlanticor something

and, and you, you know,
if you want some help,

like, if you want a psychologist
along to help you

with the psychology terms,

I, I'd be glad
to join as the second author."

[Greg]
Are you kidding? I told John
I'd love to work with him.

I was already a huge fan
and that was it,

the beginning
of the collaboration.

[Jonathan]
So, you know,
we write the article

the first draft in late 2014.

We submit it in 2015,
goes through editing

comes out in August.

It gets a lot of attention.

[newscaster reads]

[man]
How good intentions
and bad ideas

are setting up
a generation for failure.

You write about
that adolescent anxiety
and depression

-are unlike anything seen
in modern times.
-[man] Yeah.

I don't agree that,

you, when you become
students at colleges,

have to be coddled and protected
from different points of view.

[Jonathan]
A few months later,
all hell broke loose.

-Beginning at Yale.
-[girl] Who the f#*#*#* hired you?

You should step down
if that is what you think

about being a master
you should step down.

It is not about creating
an intellectual space.
It is not.

[Jonathan]
Things heat up even more
in early 2017.

Violent protests at Berkeley.

-[distant explosion]
-[woman] Mayhem on campus.

[Jonathan]
At Evergreen State College.

What about our protection,
right now?

[students chanting in protest]

[Jonathan]
Basically took the president
of the university hostage.

They wouldn't even
let him go to the bathroom.

[Greg]
So I call up John in 2016

-and say...
-[Jonathan] "The problem
is getting worse.

We have to turn this
into a book."

I realize like,
"Okay, you know what?

This is actually
the problem of our age.

This is a whole generation
going off the rails."

[Greg]
I think it's really important
to have great sympathy

for younger people today,
because they're just doing

what older people
are telling them,

like this idea that they're
always in constant danger,

that words will
permanently harm them,

and that they're much more
fragile than they actually are.

We're taking these
brilliant, hardworking,

amazing kids and teaching them

that they're capable of much
less than they actually are.

[soft suspenseful music]

[Jonathan]
So throughout the early 2000s,

and even as late as 2015, 2016,

we all thought that
our students were millennials.
The millennial generation.

[Greg]
And what we discovered early on

was that this was
a whole different generation
hitting campus,

which is now known
as Generation Z.

People born in 1996 or later.

[Jonathan]
They are really different
from the millennials,

much more depressed,
anxious and fragile.

Interpreting generational
change is a really tricky art.

And, and you look
at almost any indicator,

you see, "Well, you know,
it's going up a little bit here

or no, maybe it's going
down a little bit here.

And where do we cut it off?"

You almost never see elbows.

You almost never
see a hockey stick.

You never see a line like this.

Except in 2012.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere,
teenagers, especially girls,

they start rising very quickly.

Nothing like this has
ever happened before.

[Greg]
An argument that comes up
all the time is just,

"Oh, they're just more open
about anxiety and depression."

Um, and that argument doesn't
really hold up to the data,

because not only has,
um, anxiety and depression

gone way up
among people from Gen Z,

um, hospitalizations
uh, for self-harm,

suicide attempts,
and successful suicides

have gone up, uh,
just the same amount.

So when John and I set out
to write the book,

we faced this huge mystery,

"Why are Gen Zers
so anxious and depressed?"

And the whole book
is trying to figure out

what's so different
about them and why.

[soft suspenseful music]

[music turns upbeat]

[Saeed]
At the end of my freshman year,
I go back home.

I think one of the things
that I just... once I get home,

the first thing
that really hits me

is just...

...freedom.

Like, I wasn't trying
to pretend to say what I thought
or not say what I thought.

It was just, like, while
I was there, I was with me.

I remember food really helped.

I don't know why, but I'd just
found Nigerian food again

and I was like,
"Oh my God, you are me.

We have gotten back
to our element."

I told my parents,
I, I, I didn't tell them,
you know, the full details,

but my parents, you know,
obviously, they know their son.

You know, they could tell
I was, like, deeply sad.

My parents were like,
"Consider going back, you know,
just give it another shot."

You know, it's bad
when, you know,

your dream is
to go to American "school"

and, like, you come back
and you're like, "Uh-uh,

it's not for me.
I'm not going back there."

[soft tense music]

[Lucy]
I found out that George Floyd
died from an email,

was from the student staff
in my dorm.

It came with trigger warnings,
of course.

The tone, tone was very somber.

We're here for you
in this horrific time of,

um, violence, brutality,
racism, everything.

There was this barrage of emails

from it seemed
like almost every department.

Group chats were
overflowing with like,

"These are the bail funds,
these are things you can do."

It was so much pressure
to take all these actions

and, and to have--
and to adopt these perspectives

without asking any questions.

It kind of sent me
into a tailspin.

I was, I was anxious,
I felt guilty constantly.

I couldn't stop thinking about
the whole white privilege thing.

And the only,
the only good thing to do

was to be anti-racist,
which involved

counting my friends and tallying
the number of Black,

white, brown friends I had,
and then, and then making sure

to make enough friends, so that
I had those numbers even.

It meant making sure
I didn't read too many books

by white authors or listen
to the wrong kind of music.

I was really torn on rap
'cause I didn't know if that was
appropriation or appreciation.

Even in my own writing,
because I write fiction,

I couldn't write
about characters of color
'cause that was appropriation.

But I also couldn't write
only about white characters
because that was bad.

I essentially couldn't
write about anyone

whose identity wasn't
exactly the same as mine,

but then I would just
be populating my stories

with many versions of me,
which sounds incredibly boring.

I attended this,
this vigil for George Floyd.

It was a Friday evening.
Usually, I would be going
to Shabbat services,

but this seemed more important.

I guess maybe
that tells you something

that it, it started to seem
almost spiritual, religious.

It started
with the organizers saying

something about how you
might not feel comfortable here,

and if so, you're
probably part of the problem.

And I absorbed that message,

absorbed the idea
that I was part of the problem.

And I, I felt like
attending this vigil

was, was part of this atonement

for what I had done wrong.

And I guess what I had done
wrong was just being white.

[Saeed]
When I came back in my sophomore
year, it didn't go away.

Like, the, the campus culture
being very vitriolic,

and I just slipped right back
into where I was.

One thing that began to help,
I had found, um, Jonathan Haidt,

he, uh, spoke about why people
felt so deeply, you know,

moved and pulled by politics

as a coping mechanism
or whatever it was.

I delve deeply
into Jonathan Haidt's work,

um, watched over like 200 hours
of his videos on YouTube.

Like, you know, I was really
just trying to understand
what the hell was going on.

And, like, this guy seemed
to have it figured out.

[birds chirping]

[Lucy]
I don't wanna say
that COVID had a silver lining,

but I think leaving campus

and being at home

was kind of a turning point

in, in emerging
from the advocacy phase.

In the summer of 2020, I was

at home and surrounded
by my thoughts.

In high school, my friend
and I started the Kindness Club.

It involved a lot
of lollipop distribution.

Her whole thing was always
kindness as a way of, of life.

And with all of this activism,

it was becoming
increasingly clear to me

that I had strayed
from my goals of, of kindness,

compassion, um,
genuine social justice

and that this,
this set of thought processes

was really unhealthy
and was making me miserable.

And I didn't want
to keep going with that.

I wasn't really sure
what the alternative was

until a friend sent me a link.

I was astonished to find that,
like, there were Black thinkers

writing about race
and sharing ideas
that I never heard on campus.

I listened to a lot
of, um, The Glenn Show

with John McWhorter,
Glenn Loury.

That was great. I got
really into Titania McGrath,

the fictional, uh, activist.

I read Coddling
of the American Mind

and was like, "Oh, wow,

this is exactly
what's been happening to me."

It was this whole new world
of, of ideas,

this opened up to me,
and it was so exciting

to feel like I was
thinking for myself again.

[soft music]

[Kimi]
I started these YouTube
skate park reviews

to highlight
the vibe of skate parks

and how safe they would be
for marginalized groups,

anyone who doesn't fit
the traditional, like,
straight white male identity.

Are they going to hate
that a Black woman's
in their territory?

Will they literally pick up
a skateboard and attack me?

Whereas prior,
when I was, like, nine,

that didn't even occur to me
as a possibility.

And now, now, it was
an everyday question.

Is this the day?
Are they going to attack me now?

One day I decide to do a review
of a skate park in Orange County

that I hadn't dared
gon-- gone to.

I was afraid of Orange County
to begin with,

just because it was
notoriously conservative.

So just going into Orange County
was kind of scary for me.

I tried to go in with
as clear of a mind as I could,

in order to really show
how hateful and mean

these people were
without my provocation.

So I go with a friend
of mine who's also woke,

be classified as
a marginalized person as well,

and would also be
someone that I could,

if anything happened to me,
I would have a witness on hand.

We skated our hearts out

and I noticed
that a few pros were there.

I interpreted their fury
and their energy

as like their training.
And I'm done.

My energy is gone and I'm like,
"This was a really great place."

I turned to my friend and like,
"Wasn't that really
cool skate park?"

And to my surprise,
my friend was like, "No,
I had a really scary time."

And then my friend explained
to me that some of the pros

were looking at her funny,

and that was interpreted
as aggressive.

[soft music resumes]

My friend and I went
into the exact same skate park

and we came out
with two completely
different experiences.

That was when I knew there
was a way that I was looking

at the world that wasn't right.

I was the one
inflicting pain on myself

and it was robbing me
of happiness.

[Aryaan]
As I started writing this email,

it was a grueling six,
seven hour process.

Not because I wrote
for six or seven hours

because I reread
everything I wrote.

The reason for that was
I'm not living in oblivion.

I know when I click
that send button,

my life is gonna be
pretty different.

And so I wanted to make sure
if I do this, I do it right.

First thing when you
enter Michigan is

people raising
their hands like this

and trying to point
where in Michigan they live.

And to an immigrant, this was
as if they're taking the oath.

And it was so weird.
You ask, "Where are you from?"

And they just...
their hands go up.

So that was my first, uh,

sort of welcome
to Michigan learning

what this means and where I am.

So Alma College is right here.

I was dead set on getting jobs
and completing the number

of hours I could work to earn
as much money as I could,

because I really needed that.

And even though
I'm on a scholarship,

you need money
to go out or buy books.

And so I applied
to as many jobs as I could,

and I got four jobs on campus
that I was excited to start.

The first job was being an FYG,
which is the First Year Guide,

so I would have basically
trained, not trained,

but being a helping hand
for first-year students.

Um, the second job
was being a biology TA

the third was a biology tutor,

and the fourth was being

a writer
for the school newspaper.

Of the four jobs that I had,

two required you to undergo
a four-hour session

divided into two parts
based on diversity,

inclusion and equity.

The DEI Training Program.

I entered this Zoom meeting,

which had 100
and some employees,

um, student employees
with an open mind,

but it was so... obviously

toxic, it wasn't even subtle.

We were made to play a game.

This website had a game
where a statement popped up

and all of us had
to choose one of the opt--

option A, B, and C, D.

A was sexist, B was ageist,

C was transphobic
and D was racist.

And we had to choose
which of these forms of bigotry

was that statement?

That statement
was a statement in vacuum,

bereft of any context,
and it was gamified.

[Jonathan]
There's a culture
in the corporate world

where legal compliance
is a big issue,

where they have mandatory
trainings. Everyone hates it.

There's no evidence
it does anything, but it's done
for legal compliance.

Well, in the early 2010s,
a lot more of this
comes onto campus.

You have to have mandatory
training about
sexual harassment,

about alcohol use,
about microaggressions.

There's a, an ever-enlarging
campus bureaucracy

around freshman orientation
and around student life.

These campus life staff,
the bureaucratic staff,

their goal is
to shape incoming students

to be warriors for
social justice as they see it.

[sighs]

At the end of the training,
a female student

asked the coordinator
of this event a question,

and the question was...

..."Can you help me
find my trigger?"

First of all, to drive a student
to ask that question...

...is insane.

But we would assume
that the coordinator would say,

"Oh, bravo, you do not have
a trigger. Good for you."

But instead,
the coordinator of that event

went on a three-minute rant
explaining how to actually

find your trigger
and how to find your trauma,

and, essentially,
tell that female student

why you should be triggered.

Instead of, "Great,
you're not triggered
by anything. Don't be."

And that to me, exemplified
what all of this was about.

This was all based in some
pseudoscientific nonsense

which has no basis in any
psychology or any therapy.

After all, the meeting
was being conducted

by a gender studies professor,
not a psychologist.

[Jonathan]
Ideas are powerful, and there
are ideas in psychology

that are right, and there are
ideas that are really wrong.

And if you raise your kids
or you structure an institution

around terrible
psychological ideas,

you'll get terrible results.

[Greg]
We identified the three worst
things young people

are being taught, and we called
them "the three great untruths."

The three great untruths
are just terrible advice
to give to anybody.

They contradict,
uh, ancient wisdom,

modern psychology,
and common sense.

If you practice
the three great untruths,

you can pretty much guarantee
that you're gonna be miserable.

[whimsical music]

[Lucy]
The first week on campus,
the first few days

is New Student Orientation, NSO,

which I found
thoroughly disorienting.

There were some weird vibes

like, I remember they have
this event that's called
Beyond Sex Ed.

And I remember thinking like,

"No one likes sex ed.
Why would we want
to go beyond it?"

It was an, a really,
a really strange setup

because it involved
upperclassmen

sharing some really
personal stories,

sometimes of, like,
healthy experiences,

some of them of, like,
abuse and, and rape.

But I, I didn't really
want to leave

because there were counselors
stationed at all of the doors

in case anyone was upset,
like, like, to counsel them

and I j-- that,
that just struck me as so odd

that we were expected to listen

to these very personal
kind of oversharing,

with all due respect
to, to the students involved,

"But don't worry,
there are counselors
if your feelings are hurt."

Seemed a little strange to me.

I mean, I, I just gotten
out of psych hospitals,

and somehow it, it felt like,

Stanford expected
students to be more fragile

than, than the hospitals
expected of their patients.

[Greg]
Schools, unfortunately,
tend to teach kids

that they are fragile.
They're really not.

[Jonathan]
A wineglass is fragile.

If you give it to kids
to drink out of,

they'll drop it, they'll
play with it, uh, it'll crack,

and, and there's nothing good
about that.

So we don't give them glass,
we give them plastic,

'cause plastic is resilient.

So if they drop it,
it doesn't break,

but it doesn't get better.

So what's the word
for things that get better

when you drop them,
when you challenge them,

when you stress them?

[Greg]
"Antifragility"
is this wonderful name

for something
that we all know is true,

that they're particularly
living things,

they need some amount of stress.

They need something
to react against

to, in order to grow
and grow strong,

Human beings,
your body is antifragile,

that essentially you need
uh, to challenge your muscles.

Um, so, for example,
when people go up into space

and suddenly have no, no gravity
when, when they come back
to Earth,

they find that their muscles
are very weak.

And that's because
we are antifragile.

We need a certain amount
of stressors in order to grow.

[Jonathan]
People are antifragile.
Children are antifragile.

They actually need
constant challenges.

They, they need to sometimes
explore and get lost.
This is the way we grow.

And if you overprotect kids,
if you don't let them have
experiences that are

sometimes even frightening,
in the long run,
you're hurting them.

If you tell them that they'll
be permanently harmed by words,

one, you're doing them
a horrible disservice.

You're really underestimating.

But two, it can become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Aryaan reading]

We were shown
this video on microaggressions.

It was a video
in which microaggressions
are like mosquitoes.

[female voice speaking]

[sighs]

[screaming]

Oh, I can't watch this.

[laughs] I cannot watch it.

I don't know
if I'm gonna make it
through the whole thing.

And so these microaggression
mosquitoes apparently

bite some people more
than they bite others.

-[female voice speaking]
-[mosquitoes buzzing]

And that video
then went on to show how

complimenting somebody
for their English is racist.

[Aryaan reading]

I took it as a compliment.
Of course I would.

I mean, I spent a lifetime
trying to better my English,

and I don't think I have
the best English out there,

but just being reaffirmed
on a skill that you worked

a lot on is a compliment.

And if anything,
it is "racist" to assume

that an international student is
supposed to be good at English.

I think autistic people
are absolutely more likely
to commit microaggressions,

because just--
just because of how autism is,

um, autistics don't pick up
on those subtle signals

and, and don't have
a necessarily innate sense

of what is and isn't
socially acceptable.

I have also noticed that...

...the microaggressions
that I was introduced
to through college

don't really relate
to my interactions
with African Americans.

I know a lot of my friends
themselves don't find

certain things to be offensive

that the woke mentality would
have you think are offensive,

and you can't ever ask that.
You can't ever say that.

[interviewer speaking]

-It's considered
a microaggression?
-[interviewer] Yeah.

-Are you serious?
-[interviewer] Yeah.

Really?

[whimsical music]

It's very hard for me to...

...understand

why anyone would speak
against the idea

that America is
the land of opportunity.

Because that is
my life experience,

is working... to move to America

in order to pursue the--
my, my choice of profession,

which would be to work
in the music industry.

And it does make me wonder

who's writing the script on
what's offensive and what's not.

It's like the people
with the power get to dictate

what we experience,

and then silence
our voices when we say
that we don't experience that.

[melancholic music]

[Lucy]
If you constantly tell students
that they're going to face

countless microaggressions
every day,

well, of course students
are going to be miserable.

It's like saying
your entire well-being

depends on other people
not using particular words.

That's like the exact
opposite of empowerment.

You're teaching these students
to strip naked,

buck naked and run straight

through the wild jungles
of West Africa

and complain when you're
being bit by those mosquitoes.

You're teaching them to be weak.

This is an innocent animation,

but it's actually
really dangerous. Um...

Because that crazy...

That was me.

Right there with the mosquitoes

jumping up in the air
with her eyes all crazy looking.

'Cause of the way
I looked at the world,

I was the one
inflicting injury on myself.

It was actually my choice.

It's your worst nightmare
at your doorstep.

You know, someone's
about to cross your path.

You're walking down the street,

and if they look at you
the wrong way,

that's the first
microaggression of the day.

And it's like, you know,
you kind of just get stabbed

with one knife and the day's
already off to, like,

this very violent start.

So if I see someone, like,
coming up with their dog,

for example,
and the dog's barking at me,

I could interpret that
as a racist microaggression

on the part of both
the dog and the dog walker.

And then you go down the street
and maybe it's another

lone person and they're happy

and they're like, "Hi,"
that could still be seen

as a microaggression because
they're feigning happiness

and they're trying to look
like they care about you.

Before you even reach
the end of the street,

you've got like, three knives
stabbed in your body,

just from these
interpretations of interactions.

It's like playing out
a horror movie every day.

[music increases, softens]

[Jonathan]
We need to fundamentally change
what we're doing to kids

and give them back childhoods,
where they work out conflicts,

have experiences,
and develop their antifragility,

give them back childhoods
where they have huge amounts

of unsupervised free play.

Free play is the main way

that young mammals learn
how to become old mammals.

Kittens, puppies,
squirrels, children.

And if kids don't get
a lot of free play,

their brains don't develop.
They become anxious and fragile.

I was probably five
the first time I was allowed

to leave home by myself.

Um, I could walk down
to the corner store.

I mean, now that I think
about it, it seems very strange.

But I was very independent,
very self-sustaining,

from, probably,
easily fifth grade on,

even probably before then.
Hitchhiking with people
I didn't even know,

I'd just be, like,
I'm on my way to school
someone would stop

by the side of the road,
I get in their car
and they drive me to school.

[Greg]
We used to hop on moving trains.

I probably succeeded in doing it
maybe three or four times tops,

and nearly killed
myself all three times.

I just didn't know any better,
but you learn as you go,

but at the same time,
like as far as failure,

and I think Greg
also f-- would feel this way

is I don't even worry
about failure, because I know

I've bounced back from
so many horrible situations

that are probably worse
than anything
I could possibly encounter.

[Greg]
Whenever anybody asks me
about my own childhood,

I'm-- I al-- I always qualify,
I'm like, "Listen,

I was almost certainly
way too free range."

I would wish for anybody
to have all the upside

that I had as a kid
with, with the independence,

with none of the downside.
[chuckles]

1990s, we just decided,
"No more of that.

At least not
where I can't see you.

You can't go outside
and play in a park.
You might be abducted."

[announcer]
America's Most Wanted has
already captured four fugitives.

[Jonathan]
Parents are paranoid.
They've become paranoid

because what they see
on cable TV and elsewhere,

that if you take your eyes off
a kid for one second,

someone's gonna snatch your kid.

Someone calculated,
if you look at the actual rate

at which people are abducted
by strangers--

Now, they are sometimes abducted
by the non-custodial parent.

But there's only about 100
abductions a year by strangers.

And so... if you were to put
your kid in a car

and leave the car windows down
and leave the car unattended,

how long would you
have to leave it there

before your kid
would be abducted?

And the answer is
something like 50,000 years.

[Anna]
I'm 22 years old.
I have two older siblings.

My sister is 35 now.

My brother is 32.

If I'm not mistaken,
my sister went on her first date
when she was 13,

um, and I went
on my first date when I was 21.

[Jonathan]
And that's really
the story of Gen Z.

So we used to think
that these were basic things

that students did before
they showed up at college,

and now, increasingly,
many students are coming in

having never had a job,

a driver's license,
a date or a drink.

They've not had
the life experiences
of previous generations.

They're not as ready
for independent living.

And you might say,
"Well, what are they doing

-with all their time?"
-And I'm like, "All right,

so Mom doesn't really want me
to have Facebook,

so I doubt she'll want me
to have Instagram...

[inhales] but I'm going
to do it anyways."

So I'm sitting there
and I'm like, "All right,
I'm just going to download it.

Like, she'll never know.
My Apple account is,
like, separate."

And then my older brother
was, like, standing across--

so what was I? How old are you?

You're 12. So he was 22.
He was my age.

He was in the kitchen
and he was like,

"Do you really
think that's a good idea?"

And I was like, "What do you
mean, 'Is it a good idea?'"

He's like, "I don't think
you should do that."

And I was like,
"Well, I have to.

Like, I'm going
to feel so left out if I don't."

Seventh grade, I got Instagram.

Eighth grade, I got Snapchat.

Eighth grade, I got Facebook.

After finally convincing my mom
that I was on Tumblr,

like, it just was one
after the other after the other.

[Jonathan]
So the rate of depression and
anxiety has more than doubled

on campus in recent years.
Why? Why is this happening?

Why is it happening
at the same time
in multiple countries

and with a bigger impact
on girls?

What's been happening
to girls since 2012 or so?

The overprotection is a big part
of it, but the gender difference

especially points us
to social media.

Millennials.
They didn't get social media
until they were in college.

Gen Z is defined by the fact

that they got social media
in middle school.

[Anna]
Mary got social media
when she was in college.

I got it in middle school,
so it's evolved with me.

You've seen me
grow up on social media

as compared
to my brother and sister,
where they were already grown.

You're 13 years old.
You are a sponge.

Every person in front of you,
you are pulling something

from them to create you.

To have access to social media
was like having

hundreds of thousands
of people in front of me

and trying to take little
pieces of them to create myself.

[Jonathan]
So what most people don't
realize about social media

is that it was perfectly
nontoxic when it first came out
around 2004.

Facebook, Myspace, Friendster.

You just put stuff up about who
you are, what bands you like.

Social media changes radically
between 2009 and 2012.

Uh, the companies add the like
button and the retweet button.

Anything you do could go viral,

either because you post it
and people retweet it,

or because somebody reposts it

with a nasty comment,
which goes viral.

And this is very important.

In 2009, teens didn't use
social media that much,

but by 2012,
most teens were using it a lot.

2012 is also the year
when rates of anxiety

and depression start to go
way up, especially for girls.

So the timing and the sex
difference make perfect sense.

All kids
are addicted to devices,

but the boys are
mostly playing video games,

and video games are not actually
as bad as many people think.

What the girls are doing
is putting something out

and then waiting anxiously
as people comment on it.

So it's the social comparison.
It's the fear of missing out.

Also, girls' aggression
is relational
and boys' is physical.

Girls can never get away
if they're getting bullied.

Imagine the worst aspects
of junior high school

in your pocket 24 hours a day
for the rest of your life.

That's terrifying
and exhausting.

[whimsical music]

[Greg]
University of Michigan
said... [reads]

If you think that something
wrong has happened

every time you feel
like a spike of emotion,

um, that's not healthy.

This is setting up students
for paranoia and misery.

The fact that I felt
like I needed to die.

Um... [chuckles]

That wasn't good instructions
for my brain.

You know, sometimes
what you're...

what your brain
and your heart is telling you

is the absolute worst advice,

um, you could possibly ever get.

[Jonathan]
The Buddhists and the Stoics
gave us this wonderful insight.

[reads]

This is the most
widespread piece of wisdom
around the world,

that we don't experience
the world as it is.

We experience the world through
the filters and distortions,

the cognitive distortions
that we impose on it.

[Anna] I used to trust
my feelings to the point
where I wouldn't do things.

I was afraid...

...to wake up because everything

that I was going
to do was going to take

every ounce of energy and every
ounce of fight that I had in me.

Everything.
And I'd obsess over it.

"Okay. When I go
to the dining hall
in the morning, who's going--

am I going to sit with?
It's not the end of the world.

It's just breakfast.
You, you can
eat breakfast by yourself.

You can't eat dinner
by yourself, but you can
eat breakfast by yourself."

On my first day of classes,

I sat in the wrong lecture
for 45 minutes.

I was too nervous to get up,
even though I had another class.

So one, executive functioning,
I can't read a schedule.

Two, my anxiety saying,
"Oh, you're gonna get in trouble
if you stand up right now

in front of all these
new people and the professor."

[sniffles,
clicks tongue, inhales]

Uh, that was a really,
really that was a day.

[Anthony]
She would have
full panic atta-- like,

legitimate panic attacks
in class,

hyperventilating,
having to go out in the hallway,

full legitimate anxiety attacks

that would cripple her for days.

She'd be in my office
all the time and,
and process through things

and sometimes
get mad at me about,
you know, trying to reframe it.

[Anna]
I remember leaving there,
like, mad at him sometimes.

I'm like, "I'm so sad."

Like, "Why is he telling me
I need to do this?"

[Anthony] You give them
reasonable parameters

for their feelings
at that point in time
and you say,

"All right, well, this is,
this part is legitimate.

This part seems very reasonable.

This part seems like,
like, it'll never happen."

I'm an associate professor
at Providence College
in the education department.

So my first year
at Providence College was 2012.

Students were more adult-like.
They could handle
their own situations.

In the past year, I've seen
more acute situations
happening across the board.

They want me to handle
all of their problems for them.

Sure, you know, students
are going through struggles,

but at the same time,
the best way out is, is through.

You train the kid for the road,
not the road for the kid.

Doctor Rodriguez is...

...the teacher
you don't always want,
but the teacher you always need.

Yeah, I could tell I-- I was
not the professor she wanted.

He knows exactly when
to push you, but to the point

where if he knows--
if he pushes you too hard,
he's going to lose you.

She put in a ton of work
on her own. She engaged in CBT.

She basically reminds me a lot
of Greg in the female form,

who actually would have gotten
help earlier than he did.

Even when a situation

continues to come up
the same way it always did,

she reframes it in a completely
different situation,

and she will actually come back
and say, "You know,
two years ago,

this panic attack, this
would have ruined my whole day.

And now, it only took
about an hour out of my day."

Walking into a store
may feel like the end
of the world to me,

and sometimes it does.

But if I listen
to that feeling every time,
I'd never walk into a store.

[soft melancholic music]

[Aryaan]
After reading The Coddling
of the American Mind,

one thing I realized was

these are the first signs

of an ideology,
like, this gripping the college.

If you can cut it off here,

you can prevent your college
from being a victim.

So I had sources
for what I preached.

So I attached a Harvard
Business Reviewstudy showing

why diversity trainings
haven't worked,

showing that if anything,
these trainings do

is make the environment
more tense and more toxic.

I realized
I didn't come to America

to have a job, which allowed me
to say some things

and didn't allow me
to say other things,

and so I decided
to... quit my jobs.

[reading]

"Yours truthfully and sincerely,
Aryaan Misra."

And, uh, then I click
the send button.

And it said, "Are you
sure you want to send this?"

I said "No." [chuckles]
And so I again read parts of it,

just trying to convince myself,
"It's okay, do it.

It's the right thing to do."

Then I send it again
and it goes through.

But you know,
when you send an email on Gmail,
it says "Unsend" or "Undo."

And so I click that,
I undo the email and I'm like,

"Are you sure
you want to send this?"

[chuckles] And I remember
the final time,

the third time I click "Send,"

shut my desktop, and I walked
out of the room I was in.

And all of a sudden, coming out
of this dungeon of a room

into a sprawling bright light
with students walking by.

-And it was this out-of-body,
surreal experience...
-[muffled chatter]

...where you knew
everybody you were seeing

is gonna see you
differently from tomorrow.

[Saeed]
I met this random guy
called Abdul. I, I was like,

"Oh, really nice to meet you."
He's really into Bollywood.

I was like,
"I'm really into Bollywood too."

So we just bonded
over Bollywood at first,

and then I remember I had dinner

with one of his frien--
with, um, with him
and one of his friends,

and the guy just goes,
"You're Muslim. Yeah?

Your prophet is the one
who rapes ten-year-olds."

And I was
so taken aback at first.

But then, like,
I don't know where it came from.

I just wanted
to talk to this guy.

I just wanted to really, like,
you know, one first of all,

I knew he was wrong, obviously.

But then, like,
I didn't feel the... [punches]

..."Let's go,"
I'm-gonna-punch-you type wrong.

I just, you know,
felt this like, "Oh, my God

finally my chance
to talk to someone,

finally an opportunity
to do the debate thing."

And, you know, we started
talking and, um,
you know, we like,

not just that day,
like, you know,
the next day after that,

the next day after that.

And eventually
somewhere along the line,

Abdul then starts
doing this thing
where he's organizing--

creating this Mill Series
along with a professor.

He starts putting
out fliers everywhere.

I missed the first Mill Series
talk when they launch it,

but I attended
the next ones after that.

I think the first one was
"Are-- Safe space is bad
for students."

[upbeat music]

John Stuart Mill
was a, a British philosopher,

um, whose primary argument
is that,

you know, free speech is really
how truth comes about.

It's never the sole
preserve of one side.

It's, it's shared
between both sides.

There's, there's complexity
in truth.

And free speech allows
that to come alive.

[birds chirping]

I would wear
a black hoodie at night

to go put up posters just
so no one would recognize me.

I still wanted friends.
I was still out here like,
"Yo, what's up?"

You know, like,
trying to get everybody
to love me and know me.

The social consequences
and the cost of associating

yourself with The Mill Series
were dire.

[whooshing]

[music continues]

[Jonathan]
Tribalism is human nature.

That doesn't mean
we have to live that way,
but it is our default.

It's very easy to ramp that up,
to get people to think,

"Us versus Them.
We're good. They're bad."

It's often taught in this way.

Let's take 18-year-olds who come
into a college environment,

and rather than looking out and
seeing all the different people,

let's teach them
to see binary dimensions.

Some people are white,
some people are nonwhite,

some people are cisgender,
some people are transgender.

The point is,
this is not just a way

to look at different
dimensions of identity.

It's a moral framework.

Because the people
above the line are bad.

They're privileged,
which means they're oppressors.

They oppress the good people,
the people below the line.

[Lucy]
At Stanford,
anyone who was not white,

straight, Christian,
um, able bodied--

all these things was like--

a better person, somehow,
just morally better.

It really felt like
there w-- there was a lot
of moral status attached to it.

[chuckles] I was talking
to these guys, you know,
uh, meeting new people.

And this, this guy
comes up to me...

...and he starts off
with an apology,

which is a very weird way
to start a conversation.

He starts off saying,
"I have really wanted

to know one thing
for a very long time.

I'm very, very sorry
if this is offensive.

I don't mean to offend you.
I come from a good place--"

And this preface
continues for one minute

and I'm, I'm out looking for,
"What is he gonna ask me?"

And his question is,

"Do cows walk
on the roads in India?"

And I'm like,
"Dude, yeah, they do.

It's a very, very common thing.

And it's not controversial
to ask me something

I have grown up watching.

Yeah, cows walk on streets
in India all the time

and cars bang into them,

and the guy driving the car
is lynched.

But it's not controversial

to try to understand
where I come from.

It's a very meek question."

A culture where you're supposed
to be careful, cautious...

...think a bajillion times
before talking
to a person of color,

it makes it much,
much more difficult

for somebody who's brown
or Black to make white friends,

especially when you're
at, like, a...

[hesitates]
demographically white college,

because the students,
the white students

are afraid they're
gonna get embroiled

in some sort of a controversy.

I send my email
at eight in the morning

and I'm refreshing
my inbox every five minutes.

That's a lie. I'm refreshing it
every two minutes,

hoping for a response.

And the first response
that comes is from a professor
who's taught me,

not gonna name him,
um, in support.

It was responded directly to me.

Then I shared this email

on my Twitter, screenshots
of it, in its entirety.

And that is when it truly began.

When white people...

...were subtweeting me,
retweeting...

...and calling me a xenophobe,

calling me racist,
calling me sexist,

calling me homophobic,
calling me a dumb mother.

And calling me whatnot.

And this continued,
and this continued for a while.

The backlash
that I faced on Twitter

very toxic, um,

very unsurprising
at the same time,

was in juxtaposition

to the support I got,
which was all private.

I got private Twitter
DMs supporting me,

private Insta DM supporting me,
private Snap supporting me,

private emails from
the professors supporting me.

The support was "Reply to."

The backlash was "Reply all."

That hurt me.

[Jonathan]
Someone says, "Well, you know,
here's what I believe."

And someone says,
"No, you're a racist."

And then everybody jumps on them
for being a racist.

Of course,
that's what happens on the left.
On the right, it's different.

The right has
its own crazy dynamics.
And there it's not about racism.

It's about being
a traitor to the country.

So each side uses social media
to, to destroy the reputations

of anyone who dissents,
anyone who challenges them.

And when we suppress dissent,
when we intimidate dissenters,

we make ourselves stupid

because other people
challenging us make us smart.

It's almost like they're
an extension of our brain.

So social media
and cancel culture

is like a way of
shooting yourself in the brain.

[Aryaan]
The fallout made me feel alone.

Not only are you alone,

you are evil.

Good versus evil.
Us versus Them.

Any time you see
the world in this binary,

you skew your vision
and you're unable to understand

the other person
as simply a human.

Students and administrators
do not realize

the mental health toll

of being accused
of bigotry by a mob.

Being accused of racism

when you know, deep down,
you're not racist,

being accused of xenophobia

when you're a brown,
immigrant international
student in America...

...is not easy to process.

[Jonathan]
So American society began
to get much more politically

polarized in the early 2000s.

The clearest evidence of this
is that the percentage

of Americans who say
that they would be upset

if their child married
someone from another race
or religion,

that's been dropping
steadily since the 1960s.

But the percentage who say
they'd be upset if their child

married someone
from the other political party,

that's been rising,
uh, since the 1990s.

And what this means on campus
or in any institution,

that's almost all on the right
or all on the left,

is there's a collective sense
of Us versus Them.

In the past, you know,
20, 30 years ago,

if there was, say,
a Republican who was invited

to give a talk on campus, okay,
maybe you wouldn't go

if you were a Democrat, maybe
you didn't want to hear that.

But in the period
we're talking about here...

[protesters shouting]
Get out! Get out!
Get out! Get...

...where students got
much more into the culture war,

it began to be,
oh my God, we can't let
that group give him a platform.

It wasn't about learning.
It wasn't about exposure
to ideas.

It was about this battle
between good and evil.

[Saeed] Someone posted something
about The Mill Series
and I went to respond,

and someone then called me
a tool of white supremacy.

I think he summarized a lot
of what people were thinking.

I, like, I'm not
a white supremacist.

It's, it's not white supremacy
in any form.

Free speech is just, you know,
a code word for white supremacy.

And, you know,
that's like that's
a very common thought today.

[protestors speaking]

[Greg]
And that's just maddening to me.

You don't need freedom of speech

to defend the powerful
and the rich.

All we say to America is,
"Be true to what you said
on paper."

You only need freedom of speech

to defend the rights
of minority points of view.

Somewhere I read

of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read
of the freedom of speech.

-[crowd] Yeah!
-Somewhere I read
of the freedom of press.

Somewhere I read
that the greatness of America

is the right to protest
for right.

[crowd cheering and applauding]

[Greg]
It's John Lewis, the great
John Lewis would say, that

"If it wasn't for the,
uh, First Amendment,

the civil rights movement would
have been a bird without wings."

And what he meant by that,
it just wasn't possible to have

the kind of demonstrations,
to have the kind of activism

when the government had
the power to shut you down.

-[crowd shouting]
-[Saeed] You're coming in
from Nigeria

or any-- from any country
where primarily--

where free speech is sort of
like a left liberal value.

It's been a week
since Nigeria banned Twitter.

The government says
it blocked the platform

because it was being used
to spread fake news,

and has ordered prosecutors
to arrest anyone
who violates the ban.

It's like, "Free speech.
Yes, for the press. Yes, for--

let's speak our minds,
you know, let's have
free discourse,"

'cause typically the government
is the one trying
to stifle free speech.

And that's why it annoys me
when I come to America

to see a political side

that is usually squashed
in other parts of the world

being the ones
that are doing the squashing.

In India, free speech
has historically been

a liberal value,
there's no doubt about that.

Conservatives, even now,
try to paint it as,

um, "Ban this movie,
it offends us.

Boycott this product,
it's advertising

something that is
against our values."

Besides that, there are
hate speech laws in India,

that governments misuse
according to their benefit.

A small example of this is,
recently, a Muslim comedian

was arrested on the grounds

that he was about to say
a joke about Hindu gods.

Popular comedian Munawar Faruqui
is now in jail for two weeks.

[Aryaan]
He didn't say the joke.
He was about to say a joke.

And on that pretense
that man was arrested.

In America, often,
the consequences
of being canceled

are losing your job,
mental breakdowns, depression,

which are very bad
in and of itself.

But canceling in India is
more of an existential threat,

where being canceled can lead
not only to you being fired

but your house being mobbed,
you being killed,

you being imprisoned
by the government.

All of this has happened,
and all of this is happening
all the time in India

with journalists,
with activists.

Well-known journalist
Gauri Lankesh
has been shot dead.

Reports suggest
that an unidentified men
shot her seven times.

[Kimi]
America... and American youth

have been so protected

from seeing
the ugliness of retaliation

that I think it's very hard
for young people

to conceive that this sort of

bloodbath-type existence
can happen to them.

So realize that you're just

like your fellow humans
across the sea.

You're just like
the Africans in Africa

or the Europeans in Europe,
and you could fall

into the same
revolutionary cycles
that everyone else falls into.

[pensive instrumental music]

[Kimi]
I grew up in Uganda.

I moved to Tanzania
for a little bit,

and then I moved
to South Africa.

[man]
...Madiba. Madiba. Madiba.

[Kimi]
So when I was in South Africa,
during my high school days,

we learned a lot
about Nelson Mandela,

the leader of the armed struggle

against the apartheid
government.

-He was, like, hopeless.
-[crowd shouting]

He didn't know
how to overcome this oppression

that was, like,
blanketed over the country.

And unfortunately,
he was put in prison

for plotting
an insurrection of sorts.

But during that 27 years,

he had a moment of, of turning

where he realized that he could
be released from prison.

But if he didn't let go
of the resentment,
he wouldn't be free.

[crowd shouting]
Mandela...

And once he came
out of prison...

...as apartheid
began to crumble,

retaliation against
the apartheid regime and,

and Afrikaners
had already begun.

People were fighting back
and, and getting
payback through,

through acts of violence.

But Nelson quelled that,

and his presidency
was marked

with just incredible
acts of, of forgiveness.

I cherish the idea
of a new South Africa,

where all South Africans
are equal.

[Kimi]
He let the people who protected
the apartheid president,

the last apartheid president,
protect him as well.

He didn't fire them.
He just showed incredible acts
of mercy like that.

Fast forward, once I moved
to the States and I live in LA
for a while,

I forget about this.

I had reached a point
where I would cry for no reason.

I would just
like black out and cry.

It's this self-inflicting pain

that it just,
like, rips you open.

Just feels like everything
is, like, exposed and fragile.

I realized that, that's

not the way I felt
when I was in high school.

Why is it that when I was 17,
16, I was so happy?

But then I come to America
and I feel horrible
with no reason.

I just feel terrible
all the time.

I will never forget

that my life can never,
ever be that harsh.

So if he can forgive the way
he did, how much more can I?

[crowd cheering]

So I remember this one day.
I was like, "You know what?

Something needs
to be done about this.

I can't function, I can't sleep.

I don't have any friends."

I just prayed to God.
I was like,

"God, show me
what I'm doing wrong."

And he just highlighted to me
something very simple.

I was offended,
and I'm not allowed
to be offended as a Christian.

He was like,
"Forgive them, release them."

And it was
such a simple thought.

But it began...

...to set me free.

And I remember
I just grabbed a journal

and I just started
writing down everything.

All the microaggressions,
every instance

where I was holding on
to an offense,

I just started to write it down.

What someone did,
what someone said,

why I interpreted
their actions as racist

and giving grace
to the people and saying,

"Wait, that might have not
actually been racism.

They might have just been
having, like, a bad day

or, like, indigestion
or something."

So that seemed to begin to work

and I started
to have more peace.

I was a more sane person
then I was like,

"Okay, I'm onto something here."
So I never let up on that.

And eventually, you know,

the worldview
just began to fall apart.

[Lucy]
By the end of the summer, I had
made the definitive decision

to switch from justice
to kindness.

I hadn't even turned 20 yet.

Who said I know
anything about justice?

Um, justice is-- I mean, the,

the humankind has been
debating that for centuries.

Kindness, though, kindness
is a lot more tangible.

I had a pretty good sense
of what was kind
and what wasn't,

and so I resolved
to do more kind things,

to kind of return
to the Kindness Club.

And I found that the more,
the more emphasis
I put on kindness,

the happier I was and,
and the more meaningful
everything felt.

You don't have to be woke
to care about the poor,

the widow, or the orphan.

Now, I'm more effective
at paying attention

to instances of injustice,

because my energy is reserved

for when there
is a real atrocity happening.

So le-- le-- letting go
of wokeness, in my opinion,

actually makes you
more effective

and have a st-- longer endurance

for real activism
and real justice.

Back then, when I was
a, a social justice advocate,

I was tired,
miserable, pessimistic,

fragile, and stressed out,

but about things
that didn't really matter.

And now, I would say,
I'm excited, but also serene.

I'm open to new ideas.
I'm excited to learn.

Um, I seek out
different perspectives

instead of shying away
from them.

And I'm still stressed out,
but I'm stressed

about the things that matter.

Back then, when I was steeped
in woke ideology,

I was full of fear,
full of anxiety.

Now, that I'm out of that
and I'm thinking for myself,

I'm much happier. I'm at peace.

If I had continued
in the woke mindset,

today I probably
would be an alcoholic.

I also most likely
would have become homeless

because I couldn't function.

And I can't stress
how serious that was.

You would have, like,
a thousand daggers in you
by the end of the day.

Just feels like, like,
tiny knives stuck in you.

[interviewer speaks]

Ooh. Oh.

O Lord. [laughs]

It's like I'm not gonna make it.
I'm not gonna make it.

[grunts softly, exhales]

[chuckles]

[emotional music]

It feels really good.
Um, I'm lucky to have,

somehow, found a way to do that.

Taking the knives out is...

...the best thing
that happened to me.

'Cause I feel like I lost
my life for, like, six years.

[sniffling]

And I don't know who I would be

had that not happened.

I-- like, I wouldn't be
a full human that I am today.

[gentle music]

[muted]

[interviewer] What advice
would you give someone
considering going to college?

Phew. Don't go. [laughs]

[whooshing]

[whimsical music]

[music continues]

[music intensifies]

[music softens]