What 10-Year-Olds Know About Mental Health That the Rest of Us Forgot | Dr. Niobe Way

We’ve been calling it a loneliness epidemic and treating it like a mental health problem. NYU developmental psychologist Niobe Way says that’s the wrong diagnosis, and she has almost 40 years of data on teenage boys to make her case.

Niobe Way has spent nearly four decades running longitudinal studies with teenagers, tracking the same kids from middle school into adulthood. Her research on boys, friendship, and masculinity has made her one of the go-to voices on loneliness, connection, and what’s actually driving rising rates of depression, anxiety, and violence among young men, along with similar struggles with girls. And, these all tend to follow us well into adulthood. Her latest book is Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture.

In this conversation, you’ll explore:

Why mental health is a symptom, not the root problem, and what Way calls “social health” instead The moment, around age 15, when boys start hiding their feelings in public Why boys learn to sacrifice the relationship to protect themselves, and girls learn to sacrifice themselves to protect the relationship The dinner-table questions that build real closeness instead of shutting kids down A simple, almost embarrassingly doable practice Way uses with total strangers to rebuild a sense of belonging

Whether you’re raising a teenager, trying to figure out why your own friendships have gone thin, or just wondering why everyone feels so alone lately, this conversation reframes the whole question.

You can find Niobe at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, it’s just me, flying solo, to talk about the self-care trap: the difference between practices that actually help you thrive, and ones that just help you tolerate a life that no longer fits. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] We have spent years treating the loneliness epidemic like it’s a mental health problem, something to medicate or meditate or treat away. But when NYU psychologist Niobe Way asked a room of 155th graders what actually predicts whether someone feels okay, they answered immediately, without hesitation in a way that most adults have forgotten. In a way that answers this question and speaks to the whole idea of the loneliness epidemic in a very different, much more simple and truthful way. Turns out the fix was never that complicated. We just stopped believing that it could be. They knew what we’ve all forgotten. In this conversation, you’ll discover why the so-called mental health crisis is actually a symptom and not the root cause. The exact age when boys start disowning their own need for friendship mid-sentence. You learn about why girls and boys learn to break connection in almost opposite ways. And then three dinner table questions That build closeness instead of shutting kids and really just anyone that we care about down. And finally, we’ll talk about the one line habit that Niobe uses with total strangers to rebuild a sense of connection and belonging. Niobe way is internationally recognized as an NYU developmental psychologist with over 40 years of research focusing on boys and young men. And she’s the author of rebels With a Cause. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project., and we’ll jump right in after this short break.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:37] You have made the argument that the what often people are labeling as a, quote, loneliness epidemic isn’t really a mental health problem at root, or at least only a mental health problem. Yeah, yeah, there’s something else going on here. Take me into this.

Niobe Way: [00:01:54] So so basically what. And the thing that I always start all interviews with is everything that comes out of my mouth. I learned from listening to young people. So I, you know, I’m not talking about my opinion. I’m not talking about what my son taught me. I’m, you know, I, you know, I’m being a little snarky to, um, some people, uh, I’m talking about I’ve been doing research, uh, with teenagers and young adults since 1987, when I was a doctoral student at Harvard. And I began to listen, interested in social emotional development of teenagers. And, um, basically have been studying all sorts of teenagers with all sorts of identities for almost 40 years now. And, um, the story that I’ve learned from boys and young men in particular, um, is a story we’re still not listening to. Um, and I’ve been hearing it for decades. Um, and it’s not just about boys and young men. And that’s the part that nobody gets whenever I say it, even with my new book rebels, um, they don’t get it. It’s not just about boys and young men. They’re teaching us about something that’s deeper than just about one group, which is that essentially what what we call a mental health crisis is actually mental health is the symptom of the problem. It’s not the problem. So, um, the, the, what they clearly tell us, and this is one of my primary findings since 1988, Jonathan.

Niobe Way: [00:03:16] Um, is that mental health is a consequence of social health problems. So that basically, um, even with a bunch of fifth graders the other day, I mean, they just fifth graders know this. So I said, what’s the predictor of, of mental health? I asked them at the beginning 155th grade boys, fourth and fifth, fifth and sixth grade boys. And I asked them at the beginning of my talk before I talked about my findings, I just said, what’s the predictor of mental health? You know, asked it like that, you know, like a research question. And they said, how your friends treat you immediately. And I started and I started laughing and I said, that’s actually a research finding. I’ve, I’ve, you know, I’ve raised millions of dollars to have that finding. And of course, all the teachers. But the kids started laughing and then the kids said, literally all these fifth graders were had their hands popped up. They said, but it’s so obvious how people treat you. If they don’t treat you well, you feel bad about yourself. And that simple insight, I’m going to repeat it for your listeners. If if people don’t treat you well, right, you feel bad about yourself. And ultimately we are in the new book I’m writing for Harvard, and I’ll give you the title because it says summarize summarizes what I’m saying. The new book I just finished, tomorrow I will be done with tomorrow, um, is called Our Social Nature in an Antisocial Culture, a five part story.

Niobe Way: [00:04:38] And we are such an antisocial culture, meaning we don’t even have social health as part of our public health discussion, with the exception of Vivek Murthy. So we have mental health and physical health. When we talk about public health, we don’t even have social health. But social health is part of the trifecta and social health. Now, in the research across the board, not just my research is a core predictor of mental and physical health and physical health. So if you don’t have if you’re going to solve for mental and physical health and you don’t focus on social health, you’re never going to solve for it. So that explains why we’re not having any dent in mental health problems. We’re still dying of stress related diseases. We’re still I mean, if you understand why our suicide rates are going up, everything’s going up. We’re not having a dent, even though we’re paying attention to these problems because we’re not addressing the root problem. According to boys and young men. But it’s true for everybody, of course, which is we have to pay attention to our social nature. We are social animals. We need each other. We need each other to survive as well as to thrive. And our social health predicts everything else.

Niobe Way: [00:05:46] It even predicts academic achievement. I mean, basically, if we do not feel like other people treat us or like us, or they isolate, or we feel isolated or we’re not, our bodies react, our cortisol goes up, we get inflammation, we get sick, we get flu, we get colds, we heal slower. These are all empirical findings. Um, and we oftentimes can feel depressed and right and engage in bad behavior, self harm, other harm. Right? I mean, we can do all sorts of bad. And at the root cause is right. Our social health because, and I would argue because we live in a culture that clashes with our nature, meaning an antisocial culture that doesn’t even think social health is a thing, right? We don’t even have it in our conversations. And we thought we had it with Vivek Murthy. But I want to add something there, Jonathan. Um, we got sort of obsessed about the concept of loneliness and then wanted to target people who were lonely. And that really misses the boat because a social health problem is in some ways it’s much bigger than loneliness. It’s just treating each other. When we treat each other poorly, we feel bad. You get what I’m saying, Jonathan. You don’t have to be categorized as lonely. Just when people treat you poorly and we’re treating each other poorly, right? Um, we feel bad about ourselves.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:06] Yeah. I mean, a couple of things that I want to tease out a little bit here. Um, you use the phrase social health a number of times. Deconstruct that for me. What are you actually talking about?

Niobe Way: [00:07:14] So social health is, you know, it’s interesting because mental health is easy to define because it’s how you see yourself, right? It’s how you feel about yourself. Physical health is also easy to define. Um, right. How your body is feeling, uh, whether you have sick or not. Social health is a little complicated. Um, so social health is basically feeling connected to other people. So that works on a dyadic level, right? With your friends and your family, but it also works on a collective level. So feeling like you belong, feeling like you’re, you’re part of your community. Um, it also and this is this is the hard part. It’s not just about your feelings because ultimately that goes back. It’s not just an individual construct. Social health also involves we’re trying to define it actually at the state level right now. Jonathan, I can talk about that if we have time. Um, social health is also the extent to which you’re willing to actually listen with curiosity, engage your skills to actually foster social health. So I’ll give you an example that might be helpful. I was speaking to a therapist many years ago, but this made a difference to me. She said she knew when in group therapy, when people were healing, when they started not just being concerned about their own problems, but actually curious about other people.

Niobe Way: [00:08:27] So to me, social health is not just how you how connected you feel, because then it goes back to the individual construct of, you know, I don’t feel connected. Thus I have poor social health. Um, no, social health is actually the extent to which you are able to have enough of a sense of self-love, right? We could speak psychologically so that you can actually be curious about other people and engage and foster social health in your environment. So I would say a very socially healthy person is someone that feels connected, but also is promoting connection in their contexts. So is helping people, you know, get along at work or at school or in their family is being the person that people feel safe to talk to and that they’ll be sort of a bridge or not a divider and someone who could feel very connected to other people, but dividing people and, you know, pitting people against each other. I would still say that was poor social health, right? E even if they felt very connected to their best friend, but they did mean things to all their friends. I would say that’s, that’s not good social health because it has to be. It’s social, right? It’s social. It’s not just about how you feel. It’s how you make other people feel.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:42] So it’s layered also.

Niobe Way: [00:09:43] It’s layered, but it’s also I’m going to use a fancy term, but it’s not really fancy relational. It’s relational. It’s relational. It’s not an individual construct. It’s a relational construct. And that means it’s a slightly it’s slightly harder to define, right, because it’s relational. And so but when I say it, everybody knows what I mean. That person in the room that brings people together, that bridges, divides, that ask people questions that also feels very connected, right to others, feels very loved by others. Right? I mean, it goes it’s a two way street in relational in relationships.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:17] So I mean, that all lands with me. And I think a lot of people have heard data from various places at this point that, that speak to the importance of the depth and quality of your relationships. We had Bob Waldinger on here a couple of years back. You know who a lot of people are familiar with some of the grant study results. Yeah. So that lands, right. So okay, so it makes sense. And the fifth graders were kind of telling us the same thing. Yeah, exactly.

Niobe Way: [00:10:39] The I just want to remind people because I just want fifth graders, like ten years old. So it’s like they’re telling us something that like ten year olds are telling us.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:48] Right? It’s like.

Niobe Way: [00:10:48] This is the stuff still not listening. It’s like, it’s like, that’s, that’s when I get passionate. That’s when I get passionate because it’s like ten year olds know this. So, so why are we still talking about let’s solve the mental health crisis? And by the way, they’re our only solution for mental health is therapy and medication that has nothing that’s not going to help social health, right? I mean, I’m not I’m not dissing therapy and I’m not dissing medication. I’m not at all. But but it can’t be the only solution right around mental health. It has to be actually getting to the root of it. There’s an expression you you must know this. I always forget expressions, but something at a certain point you have to go up the river and find out what’s right, what’s causing the river to be polluted.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:28] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So, so here’s my curiosity around this then. Um, if ten year olds know this, right? What happens between 10 and 15, 16, 20, 25, 30? That makes us forget you’ve coined this phrase. I don’t know if the crisis of connection.

Niobe Way: [00:11:49] I did, it was my that’s my first. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:51] Right. So so what happens? Like walk me through because you’re, you’re the perfect person for this, right? Because the research you’ve done is not just on select groups. In a moment in time, you’ve done longitudinal research, which means you’re tracking people for years. So what happens over years that makes this fall apart now?

Niobe Way: [00:12:08] Now I’m dedicated to your podcast forever because you mentioned that. No, because I’m just telling you that is my secret sauce that nobody has. I’m telling you, Jonathan, I’m not doing some sort of weird self promotion. The reason I tell the story that nobody’s telling is nobody has longitudinal data, right? I’ve been doing longitudinal studies since 1987. I started in 1997 with my first longitudinal study for my dissertation at Harvard. I’m just saying it’s longitudinal data that you start to see the culture. Because what happens is as boys and I’ll talk about boys, but you can also ask me at girls because I know what happens to girls too. In my colleagues with search with girls, um, what happens is boys become men. You hear this in the data. They start off at 12 and 13. So longitudinal, just so your listeners know what that means. It means I’m following the same kids over time. So, you know, it’ll be in a sample that I wrote for Deep Secrets, my book many years ago, um, it was 150 kids. And, uh, basically I followed them when they were in seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th. Uh, right. So I followed the same kids over time. So in middle, early middle adolescence, I mean, it varies. And I hate to be so categorical when I talk about my findings, but basically you hear this very, very clear desire for friendships, sometimes having good friendships, sometimes having good friendships, but definitely that sense of wanting deep secret friendships, wanting guys to talk to guys, uh, to talk to that they can share their feelings, that they can talk about their parents divorce, that they can talk about stuff at home and they don’t want to talk to an adult about it.

Niobe Way: [00:13:40] They want to talk to a guy about it. Um, some of them end up talking to girls about it, but there’s a lot of discussion about wanting to talk to guys about and not being laughed at. So I’ve just gotten that hundreds and hundreds of kids at this point. We’ve done studies around the world. I find the same finding again and again and again. So you hear this strong voice of desire, of wanting friendships and also having the skills to have those friendships. And we can talk about what those skills are, but their cognitive, emotional and social skills. And boys at 11, 12, 13 have them, you know, they have them when they’re born, but you hear them also when they’re 11, 12 that, you know, especially when they’re not talking to their parents, right? They’re talking to someone who feels safer than their parents, um, that, that they have these skills. So this is what they hear in early middle adolescence. You also hear them linking it to their mental health. That’s, that’s when I hear those themes in 13 and 14, if I didn’t have a friend, I would go wacko.

Niobe Way: [00:14:31] I’d want to kill myself. I’d be all alone. I’d want to kill myself. Okay, then. By middle adolescent, middle to adolescence. It’s many years ago. Almost 20 years ago. At this point, it’s a long time ago. I started to hear something change in how they answered the same question. I, my team and I would ask this. It’s huge teams, you know, because it’s a huge number of interviews. So my team started to hear a different pattern. You’d ask about their friendships and they all of a sudden started talking about they started to sound like a stereotype. They started to either there was two patterns as, as boys got older, either they would talk about a sort of sadness that they can’t find the friendship that they want. They’d sound depressed. They’d sound depressed. I mean, they would speak in sort of using sad language. And, you know, it’s frustrating, I hate it, I hate it, I can’t find someone I can relate to them on my on, on, on my, you know, in the way I want to relate to them. Um, or the other theme is you hear that stereotypic boy, it doesn’t matter. Whatever. It’s all good. All my friends are my best friend. They’re all cool. They’re all cool. You know, we hang out, it’s all cool, it’s all cool. And then you have that weird thing going on. And this relates to your question, you start to hear no homo.

Niobe Way: [00:15:40] So all of a sudden at about 15 and 16 and it varies. It’s earlier now because we’re more homophobic, ironically, than we used to be, bizarrely enough. Um, around 15 or 16 we started to hear like, but I’m not gay. And I’d be like, we didn’t ask whether you were gay. You know, like we’re just asking about your friendships. But they interpret the question as right as something that somehow I’m suggesting something about their sexuality. So what does that mean? That means something cultural is going on in the definition of friendships. So what happens is in what I call the crisis of connection, that boys start disconnecting from their friendships as they get older, or giving up on finding a French, a male friendship. I call it a crisis of connection, which, by the way, I want to remind people I don’t mean just a crisis of connection with other people. It’s a crisis of connection with yourself. So the idea is you disconnect from your own desires. Once you disconnect from your own desires, you disconnect from other people. So the crisis of connection. The reason I don’t call it loneliness, I don’t call it social isolation. I call it a crisis of connection because it’s literally it’s literally a disconnect from from self, right, of saying, it’s okay, it’s all good, it’s all good. It’s all I don’t care, you know, I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:51] It’s like you’re not, you’re not, not only no longer acknowledging your need or desire to be connected to other people, you’re, you’re, you’re refusing to acknowledge your own internal desire.

Niobe Way: [00:17:02] Exactly, exactly. So you’re literally, you’re literally you hear, I’m going to say it because we think boys are not as depressed as girls. The reality is you hear the depression because you hear them basically say, literally, it’s so it’s all good, it’s all good, it’s all good, you know, which as any parent knows, that’s defensive and angry. Right? And so the idea and then the thing is, I’m not gay. And that became fascinating because I thought, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, what’s happening, what’s happening? And you get why longitudinal is so important because why it became fascinated is they didn’t say that the year before, right? When they were early adolescents. When I asked about friendships, they didn’t say, I’m not gay. That that language, that homophobic language came in in middle to late adolescence. And then you also started to hear things like this. It’s incredible to me. You started to hear like, well, I’m grown up now. I’m mature now. I don’t need to share my feelings. So it’s not only manhood, Jonathan. Nobody’s listening to this. It’s our definitions of maturity. We actually think feelings and close, intimate emotional friendships is girly, gay, and immature. We think it’s immature. We think what you need when you’re a child, you know, to talk about your feelings. Uh, you know, I mean, it’s incredible what we do. So what, what I, what I call it in rebels with a cause.

Niobe Way: [00:18:22] My last book, I call it boy culture. You know, as they grow up and become part of boy culture, meaning boy in quotations. It’s not a real boy. It’s taught to us by real boys. But it’s not a real boy. It’s a cartoon character of a boy that only has a hard side. Right. It’s a cartoon character that only has a. And boys are the one that that expose the lie, right? That expose the lie, that boy culture that we’re all idealizing because we’re all idealizing our hard sides of our soft sides. We think our soft sides are so lame, right, that we mock them. We laugh at them. We make fun of people we call women overly sensitive. We call overly sensitive guys gay rather than just a guy. We call them gay. They must be gay because they’re so sensitive. And so the idea is we pathologize. We don’t just value our hard sides thinking, autonomy, stoicism, right? Money, money over people, as I always say. Um, but we also pathologize our soft skills. So it’s, it’s a dissing on the, what we’ve deemed feminine. And in such a culture, I call it boy culture. And in my new book, I realized I don’t want to gender it because when I gender it, people misinterpret it as as if I’m blaming boys or something.

Niobe Way: [00:19:31] So I now call boy culture my new term for it. And my new book is An Antisocial culture because fundamentally boy culture is antisocial. It’s about saying that only your me self, you know, privileging me over we I over relationships, autonomy over connection. Right? I could go on and on and on. Um, so the idea is that is antisocial, right? It’s literally a me oriented culture is an antisocial culture. And boys expose it. And this is the way they expose it. They talk about it because they say things like, I’m grown up now. I don’t need to share my feelings. Or another one. It might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn’t have to be emotionless, right? They say that we live in such an antisocial culture, a boy culture, a hard over soft. My daughter calls it an asshole culture, right? And that’s a good term, actually, an asshole culture that we think to be gay, to be a girl and to be a child is lame, right? Because we say, you’re so childish. But children are brilliant. They’re brilliant. They’re more mature than most adults, quite frankly. So the idea that to say that’s so gay, girly and gay and and childish, which is what we call feelings, right? Feelings, um, is lame. And that is achingly antisocial. Right? Shockingly, shockingly antisocial. Part of the hierarchy that is infused in an antisocial culture.

Niobe Way: [00:21:01] It’s the hierarchy of of what I call the hard over, soft human qualities. But it’s also the hierarchy of humans, right? Where we see certain humans as more valuable, worthy of care than other humans. And so girls and gay people and LGBTQ people and people of color and, working class and poor people are all put on the bottom of humans that are less worthy of care than rich white men, essentially. Um, and so the straight guys, so the idea is that implicit in our antisocial culture is a hierarchy of humans and a hierarchy of human qualities. And so the girl that’s so girly and gay, which is a slur. I mean, think about it. Half the population is, is female. Uh, and, you know, and lots of people are gay. Um, that’s a slur, right? Like that’s shocking. That should shock people. That reveals the hierarchy of humans, right? That only certain people are worthy of care and worthy of attention. And so to me, the, that hierarchy that’s infused in our I don’t want to get too political in the talk because but it’s coming from the boys narratives that the hierarchy that’s infused in our ideologies, right? Um, create the loneliness, Create the problems, create the disconnection, the dystopian right, the assholeness. It creates us being assholes to each other.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:25] It’s heartbreaking to hear all of this. No, it’s.

Niobe Way: [00:22:27] I’m just saying. Yeah, I’m just saying that is why I’m passionate. Jonathan. That is why I’m passionate when I do interviews, because it is heartbreaking. And, and, and the fact that it’s heartbreaking and nobody’s listening, you know, nobody’s listening. So they so people are listening to the fact that boys are emotional too, but they’re not getting they’re still singing as a, a problem of, you know, and I’m going to critique something that’s going to surprise you. They’re still thinking it’s a problem of masculinity. It’s not a problem of masculinity. It’s a problem. It’s a cultural problem, an antisocial culture that only values what we’ve deemed masculine and doesn’t value what we’ve deemed feminine, that isn’t masculine or feminine. So thinking is not masculine. Feeling is not feminine, right? I mean, I’m going to repeat that for your listeners. You know, thinking is not masculine. Feeling is not feminine. Thinking and feeling is what we do every single second of the day, right? As humans, we think and feel we want autonomy and connection. We need to be stoic and vulnerable. We need. Right. We need money and people, right? I mean, the point is, is that that’s who we are as humans, but we’re so antisocial that we’ve given one side of who we are a gender identity and then privileged over the other side.

Niobe Way: [00:23:38] And if you’re right, and talk about not being a whole right, WHOLE, you know, I mean, the idea is that boys and this is a powerful thing for me. Jonathan. Boys, teach us this story. When you listen to them as they grow up in a culture, right, that clashes with our nature because an antisocial culture clashes with our social nature, it causes problems. So this is the other way. You hear it from boys, literally. There’s suicide rates and their violence rates, right? You hear it in their words, as I just quoted them, and you hear it in their actions Because ultimately suicide and violence. If you read any manifesto from mass shooters or any suicide note, I’ve read many suicide notes. Um, it’s all saying the exact same thing that the boys in my sample say, who do not die by suicide or commit homicide, which is that they are angry at a culture that doesn’t care, that doesn’t care about them, but doesn’t care about each other, that doesn’t value friendships, that doesn’t value what they want the most, that mocks them for having this, you know, seeming girly and gay because they want friendships. I mean, I’m just telling you, Jonathan, this has been almost 40 years of hearing this theme and we’re still reducing it into a sort of stupid story now, which I’m going to say the stupid story because I’m really tired of the misinterpretation.

Niobe Way: [00:25:02] I am not saying the problem is masculinity because there’s nothing wrong with masculinity. The only time masculine can have a problem when you know in the sort of Andrew Tate version is when it’s only the hard side of us. It’s. And it’s boy in a quotation mark, right? When it’s only the hard sides and no soft sides. Masculinity by itself is a good thing. It’s I mean, in the sense of what we’ve deemed masculine, what we’ve deemed masculine are good things strength, stoicism, you know, being able to speak your mind, even be dominant at times. I mean, those are all good things. Those are all good things. What’s what’s problematic is when in the sort of Andrew Tate version, when it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of anti soft side. So the problem is not masculinity. It’s a culture that only values what we deem masculine and mocks on the other half, which we need, which is what we’ve deemed feminine. So it’s not a masculinity problem. It’s not a man problem. It’s not a woman problem. It’s not a boy problem. It’s not a girl problem. You know what I mean? It’s an entire cultural problem.

Niobe Way: [00:26:01] And I blame everybody over 30. And I’m not just being tongue in cheek when I say that, because ultimately what we have to recognize that everybody over 30 that we have to take individual and collective responsibility, not just collective responsibility. We take individual responsible for perpetuating boy culture and perpetuating an antisocial culture that values getting into Harvard more than having good friendships, right? That defines maturity as being self-sufficient rather than being able to have mutually supportive relationships. I mean, come on, Jonathan. As someone, I don’t know how old you are, but the point is, is that you have a child who’s 25. So you’re about the same age as I am. So the point is, is that I know in raising children, the most important skill to have is a mature person is being able to have mutually supportive relationships. That’s it. Much more important than actually being self-sufficient, quite frankly. You know, I mean, you know what I mean. I mean, that’s just a basic is being able to have healthy relationships. And we don’t define and we don’t we don’t as parents, we don’t raise our children saying, I’m going to focus on you being having healthy relationships. Jonathan. I mean, seriously, isn’t that stunning? We don’t do that. We don’t. That should be our number one priority.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:09] Right? And it isn’t so interesting, right? Because so much of the, quote, American Ideal is like, you raise a good kid, you read a quote, self-sufficient kid, you know, and then the, the mark of success publicly for you having been a good parent is that you’re able to bless your kid on and they live independently in the world and they’re completely self-sustaining. And it’s not that we don’t want them to be able to take care of themselves. But but the thing to sort of say, like the most important thing is that you find a way to be able to live without other people. It’s, it’s like it’s saying to them, the mark of success is for you to be find a way to be unhappy for the rest of your life.

Niobe Way: [00:27:49] Yeah. No, no. Exactly, exactly. And you know, the other thing is it’s, it’s so I have to say, I’m going to I’m going to blame a certain group of people here. Um, it’s so Anglo American, you know, in that sense, that hyper cowboy image of the sort of lone whatever it is, because in a lot of cultures, right? You don’t move out of your family’s home, right? Lots of cultures around the world in Asia and Africa and Europe. I mean, I mean Latin America, um, that’s really the norm. And unfortunately, my data suggests we’re actually becoming the world is becoming more Americanized. But the point is, is most of the world, most of the world and most of its history. And in the United States, most of our history, but not as much as anywhere else. Um, we have, you know, you don’t leave your home, you know, you grow up and you stay in your community and you have kids now, they would love to be able to stay in their community of their parents, you know, in terms of being connected to their cousins and their brothers and sisters that all live in the same city, uh, you know, and they all, you know, I mean, I just think we’re off our rockers. Jonathan. We’re just off our rockers. No, we really are. I mean, that we’re perpetuating an image of maturity and manhood and success and modernity that is isolated, disconnected, non-relational. No soft sides, right? All about money. All about how prestigious your job is. How many, you know, friends follow you on Instagram. I mean, it really is a dystopian place.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:21] You shared earlier in our conversation that you also have access to data. Um, regarding girls is a similar phenomenon.

Niobe Way: [00:29:28] Yeah. So this is girls crisis of connection. It looks different. And I’m going to name names. And if people are interested in the work, I’m going to say the book so people can find it. There’s a very well-known scholar who was my mentor in graduate school, actually at Harvard named Carol Gilligan. And she wrote a very famous book called In a Different Voice, which in 1983, I think, which brought girls into the conversation, girls and women into the conversation of what it means to be human. That was 1983, and it sold like a billion copies. And it was she was nominated as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. She was my mentor in graduate school, and they did a beautiful study of adolescent girls when they followed girls from 8 to 15, 8 to 18, actually. Okay. And they actually are the ones that first used the phrase the crisis of connection. I use it in a slightly different way, but they were the ones that used that originally in 1992 and the crisis of connection for girls, which you still get in the data with girls data, because I also I do research with all sorts of kids. It’s not just boys. Is that girls? So boys, boys, basically, uh, disconnect from disconnect. I’ll try to not be too academic and you can push me so I can do it in layperson language. Boys disconnect from others in the name of protecting the self, right? Boys, disconnect from others in the name of protecting themselves so that they. Right. Because that’s what you’re supposed to. Boys aren’t supposed to be relational. So they. They sacrifice the other for the sake of the self, right? For the sort of self esteem that they’ll say, well, screw you.

Niobe Way: [00:30:57] You know, I’m going to be on my own. I’m going to do it myself. I’m going to do it. Girls, basically, as they reach adolescence, um, they sound just as relationally intelligent, just like boys do in early adolescence. They sound just as intelligent. They speak truth to power. They talk about contradictions in the culture. Why? You know, a classic question from an eight year old is, why do girls catch a baseball in the outfield and say, I think I got it? And boy, say I got it? So they start to wonder about power, structure and all sorts of amazing things. Girls are very, very what I call truth tellers when they’re when they’re late childhood and adolescence, they start to struggle to know what they know and feel what they feel. And so the idea they start to say, say something, which you hear in the data with girls is, I don’t know. So boys start saying, I don’t care, right? And girls start to say, I don’t know, which is you ask them a question, they’d say, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. Um, so the idea is they start to disconnect from what they know. And this is the, this is the thing I want people to listen to. Their crisis of connection is they do the opposite of boys. Boys sacrifice the other for the sake of the self. And you know what I’m about to say. Girls sacrifice the self for the sake of the other, right? And so what happens is that you have girls having relationships with boys in particular, where they have completely sacrificed their own needs for the sake of basically having a boyfriend or right or connecting.

Niobe Way: [00:32:19] But they also oftentimes do that even also with girls. So the idea is that they don’t take seriously their own needs and they sacrifice their needs to hold the relationship. But as Carol always says, there’s no relationship if one side has been sacrificed, right? Like there’s no relationship. You know, relationships need to have neither side. You compromise always in relationships, but neither side is sacrificed, meaning they don’t. It doesn’t matter what what you what you want and feel. So girls sacrifice the self and boys sacrifice the other. And that is the crisis of connection is that I’m. I’ll give it in a language of the adolescence, girls say in their crisis of connection. If I say what I know, nobody will want to be with me, right? If I’m truth telling, nobody will want to be my friend, right? Boys say equivalent. If I say what I feel, nobody will want to be with me, right? And so that is showing a culture that knowing is seen as masculine and feeling is seen as feminine. And that’s my data you get. What I’m saying is that it reveals that knowing if I say what I know, no one will want to be with me if I speak my truth, right, no one will want to be with me. I’m too much of a pain in the ass. And boys say if I say what I. If I say what I feel, nobody will want to be with me because I’m too soft.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:43] And meanwhile you’ve got. Whether. Regardless of how the gender you identify as. You’ve got these kids. It’s like two levels of disconnection. We talked about like one is dissociating from their own inner knowing. Like. Like, even if like, totally. I know this is true, but I’m not even going to acknowledge to myself that what I’m feeling or thinking is true. Yeah. And then even if you do, even if you like, even if you like, flip that switch on the inside, like, no, I know myself like, no, I know what I think, I know what I feel, I know what I need, I know what I want. Then you’re saying, even if that’s you, there’s still this societal thing that compels you to say, but I’m not going to share that.

Niobe Way: [00:34:19] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so to me, that societal thing you’re talking about, that’s what I’m calling antisocial culture, right? That basically a culture that tells essentially boys and girls and definitely non-gender binary kids because we think, you know, I’m quoting in our culture, they’re the pain in the ass. Right. So basically to say that boys and girls and non-gender shut up. Right. Just just basically shut up, shut up, shut shut, don’t tell. We don’t care about your feelings and we don’t care about what you know. Um, and so the idea is that is fundamentally antisocial. I mean, it’s also immoral. It’s also all sorts of negative things. And so the idea is that we have a hard time, we adults, I’m saying when I say we, I mean everybody over 30. Um, and the only reason I pick 30 honestly, is it’s a little arbitrary, but I do think there’s a way in which, um, until you’re about your mid to late 20s and this is sort of my guess because I don’t study kids in their late 20s. Um, you’re still trying to understand something and then you start to socialize it right by, you know, as you go into the world and you become a teacher or whatever it is. Um, so I blame it on, on the adults in that way, but anybody who’s adults in this culture will realize that they, they do the same thing that they do the thing, you know, to somehow suggest that getting an A on your test is more important than being nice to a person.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:41] Right? So let’s focus on these other indicia of success because that’s what culture says. Like this is how you become a fully mature, seasoned grownup. This is how you like. This is what it means to be fully. Fully realized and developed and successful adult.

Speaker 3: [00:35:55] Yeah, a successful adult.

Niobe Way: [00:35:56] And the idea is I always give this example because it’s a very outing example about my own, uh, you know, faults, which I recognize when I wrote rebels with a cause I talk about it in rebels with cause I asked my daughter almost her entire high school two questions, right? Did you do your homework? And how’d you do on the test? I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit, but not really. I mean, I was anxious because she was she had a tough time in high school. I was anxious. And so I was always asking her that goddamn question. And I just think to imagine what it would be like to be a teenager and have come home and have your parents say, which a lot of parents do this. Do you have any homework? And how’d you do on the test? Right. And that’s what are you communicating?

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:44] Yeah, that’s all that matters.

Niobe Way: [00:36:45] Yeah. That’s all that matters. And so all her fights with her friends or her hurt feelings or someone betraying her in the in the lunchroom become irrelevant. Well, how’d you do on the test? And then if she didn’t do well on the test, that becomes the, you know, the focus of the dinner conversation. You know why she didn’t do well on the test? You know, I mean, I just think at some level, you know, I, I did other good things. So, you know, but but but you get what I’m saying. Even someone like me who’s actually sensitive to this issue, who’s been studying this issue, writing about this for decades, I’m still, you know, I’m still part of the same culture. Yeah. And I worried that she wouldn’t get into a good college. You know what I mean? All those things we do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:28] Before we move on from this. Let’s place you in that dinner conversation. What three other questions would you ask as a parent? Like, like if you were sort of like trying to, to shape the conversation differently and shape the way that she was valuing what she was, you know, like what was important to her in life?

Niobe Way: [00:37:45] Right. So, so I always I get that question a lot from parents. So I always say that you have to fill your house with curiosity about everything. So, you know, it wouldn’t be tell me about your friendships because lots of teenagers don’t want to talk to their parents about their friendships. So it’s like, no, you’re.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:03] Getting a lot of eye rolls there.

Niobe Way: [00:38:04] Yeah, no, exactly. So so basically, so you have to sort of join them where they are. So I would say, rather than at the dinner table, which oftentimes is not actually the time, they feel like talking, they’re exhausted. I mean, that’s the other thing we don’t recognize. You just went through a day of seven topics, you know, like, right. And you come home and you crash. And then your mom is.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:22] Saying is just squeezed.

Niobe Way: [00:38:23] Right? And your brain is squeezed and you’re exhausted and you’re like, so what happened today? What happened today? You know, and you’re like, oh my God, just like, no, no, like nothing happened today. So you have to join them where they are. So I would say things like, you know, you have to start this young too. But even if they’re older, you can do it if they’re on Instagram or TikTok. When my daughter was on TikTok with this teenager, there were so many opportunities to say, oh, who are you following? And then not in a judgy, not in a judgy way, but actually asking who they’re following and then why they’re following that person, what they like about that person, not why. Why are you following that person? But just what do you like about her? Or to just say, um, you know what I discovered recently with my daughter, who’s 23 is she listens to a lot of music. So I started to ask her what music she listens to, and I wanted to listen to it. So, you know, and then I would sometimes like what she sent me and sometimes not like as much. But then it became a conversation that we could share, right? Music, music interests. So basically go where your child is and be not and don’t do it, you know, consciously. Just be curious about who your child is, you know, so what are their interests? And then find out what their interests are and why they like something. Even just asking about telling things that happened that were funny at work, you know, that sort of made you laugh. And then I used to also do this other thing. Um, I would give a problem in a friendship. Like when friends didn’t call me back, I would often turn to my son and my daughter, actually. I’d say, so what do you think I should do? And they’d go, what do you mean? I was like, well, I’m really hurt. Like I’m super hurt.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:53] Oh that’s interesting. So you’re like bringing a struggle that you’re having as a, as a grown up with a friend or a colleague or like a social interaction. That’s, that’s fitful and asking your kid like what.

Niobe Way: [00:40:03] They think.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:04] What they say, which also is telling them like, I really value your opinion here.

Niobe Way: [00:40:08] Exactly, exactly. And I discovered that I have to say that was my proudest moment when I discovered they were about my kid. My daughter was 12 and my son was 14. Uh, yeah. 14. And I realized when I did that, their eyes lit up. Mhm. Right. Because I was all of a sudden saying for both kids, the son and my son and my daughter, that I cared, that I cared about their opinion. And then what was incredible is they said great things, you know, like, well, you need to tell her this. And then I would literally, I would just value it so much. I’d say, well, I’m going to try that. Right? And then afterwards I would say, well, this is what I did. You know, it didn’t really work, but it worked in this way. And then I’d say, you know, basically look to them for guidance. And a lot of parents may say, well, I’m not going to do that. But the reality is, is that it shows a kind of respect to your children. And I even think for your seven year old, there is nothing wrong with saying this person hurt my feelings. You know, how should I tell her? Because kids are very smart about this stuff. You know, like, you know, this is why they. And it’s also communicating that friends hurt your feelings sometimes, right? So it’s normalize it. So it’s not. So the questions are not always about tell me something you know. And kids, I think can feel the pressure of like, okay, I don’t want to tell you anything, but if you’re saying, help me on something that they, you know, that they can, you know, I wouldn’t obviously, I set boundaries. I wouldn’t ask about guidance around, you know, with their dad, you know what I mean? Like I said, and I also wouldn’t do things that I thought would be boring for them, like, you know, financial things. Like I, I, I made it always something that I thought they would find interesting. Right. That relatable, relatable.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:47] And also probably, uh, what you’re describing is potentially scenarios where they have their own version of that, like they have their own 12 year old version of that. Exactly. Even though they’re not communicating with you. Yeah. And in, in you asking them, how would you handle this? They’re probably also telegraphing to you. Okay, so this is probably happening. Like I have my version of this and this is what I this is how I’ve thought about it.

Niobe Way: [00:42:09] This is what I thought about it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:10] And this is and maybe that’s even this is how I’ve handled that. But I also want to tease out because there’s something that’s more nuanced here that I want to, I want to make sure I have clear because what you’re saying is don’t you’re not just saying ask the question. That’s half of it. Yes. And that’s a question that’s relevant and resonant to them and boundaried and appropriate. Right?

Niobe Way: [00:42:30] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:30] Yeah. But what you’re also saying is there’s a part two here, which is really important. Yeah. Acknowledge the answer. Not just that it’s been given, but actually consider it.

Niobe Way: [00:42:41] Yeah, totally. Totally. And I, and I have to say sorry. Absolutely. You’re validating them. And, and the idea is when young people feel like you take them seriously, you validate what they have to say. You know, they spend a lot of years saying, you’re not listening to me, which, which is oftentimes based in reality that we’re not listening. Um, and the idea is that by asking for their advice, you’re listening to them and you’re valuing what they have to say. So the thing is, you have to be willing to then really take it seriously, not doing it as a fake. That’s great honey. Okay. You know, but you have to take it seriously. But this is an interesting thing. So it then provokes insights that were not prompted. So I remember I’m going to tell this story. My son has told me, I’ve told this many times, but it’s my favorite story. So I was my son was sort of he was a he was a soccer player until recently. He’s 26. Um, and he always wore soccer jersey and sort of very looked very stereotypic. Boy. And he always did as a child and all growing up as a teenager as well. And I remember him coming back from soccer practice when he was about 17, and he was all sweaty and had his jersey on.

Niobe Way: [00:43:49] Et cetera. Et cetera. And he walked into the bedroom and I was lying down and I was reading or something, and he said, mom, I figured out why. Uh, uh, you know, your, your, uh, your sister always picks on you. And I said, like what? And she said, because basically you’re, they, she sees you as stronger than the rest of the family and that you can deal with it. And I’m just saying, Jonathan, you just have to imagine, like, this was such a deep insight. And the thought that he was like thinking, literally caring and thinking about it. And I really felt it. Jonathan. I was like, whoa, that’s a that’s really helpful because I bet you you’re totally right. You know, she says, yeah. He said, you know, she just knows that you can deal with it. And you’re. I have many siblings and the rest of your siblings, like they just, they’re too, you know, they, she just doesn’t think they can deal with it. Um, and, but I just thought that came, I, I’m convinced it came from that I had asked him questions earlier in his life about what he thought about things.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:58] It shows you the way that he’s been paying attention.

Niobe Way: [00:45:01] Totally, totally.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:04] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So much of what we’re talking about here, then it seems like it’s a big, thorny complex. You know, this is a wicked problem. Um, we we grow up in what you’re describing as an antisocial, um, culture, which tells um, different people to behave in certain ways, but the, but the, the functional impact of that is that we stop. We shapeshift who we really are and what our genuine social needs are in order to conform with the norms that make us feel like we are successful, adult. And in doing that, we suffer. We stifle a part of ourselves we’re hiding, and we never bring who we really are into so many interactions, so many so we can. I mean, this speaks to something that I know you’ve spoken about, which is this notion that you can you can have you can go out to a bar and know everybody in the bar and you walk in like, hey, hey, hey, hey, and still sit down at the bar, order a drink, you know, and feel like the loneliest person in the bar. Because what they’re what everyone who everyone’s high fiving and who everyone has come to know as you, you know, inside is actually not you. So they’re accepting the avatar of you, but you’re still alone behind like the shield of that avatar suffering mightily because of the assumptions that we’ve layered on. This is how to be.

Niobe Way: [00:46:31] Exactly, exactly. And what I want to say to everybody. So because I’m going to say something because it’s not depressing. What I’m saying at all is that we’re not born that way. We become that way. So I’m just saying so that so the reason why everybody should be really excited by my early findings during early adolescence and the childhood findings of children who have all those beautiful relational skills, perspective taking, theory of mind, metacognition, all those things that we have in the first five years of life, um, that allow us to understand other people’s perspective and be, look at each other with a sense of wonder that we do at four and five with all our questions, because we were born that way. It’s easy to tap back into how we were born. So we weren’t were not born alienated. We become alienated living in a culture that doesn’t value right. Our social nature and our social needs. And so the idea is that the bad news is that we grow up in a culture. I once wrote a paper which everybody loves. The title is Growing Up Good for Your Health? Um, and what I, what I concluded, of course, is no. When it’s in an antisocial culture, it’s not good for your health because it makes you sacrifice yourself and the other.

Niobe Way: [00:47:49] Right. I mean, it basically growing up in an antisocial. I’ll say it bluntly. Growing up in an antisocial culture makes you lonely. Right. Because ultimately, you know, just we’re making our culture is the waters in which we swim are making us lonely. But the good news is that because we have that natural capacity for curiosity and for cooperation and for care, the three C’s of our social nature. Um, I write about that in my new book too. Um, we can just tap right back into it. So we do a program in the schools called listening with curiosity. We started a social health institute. People can find it, uh, social, uh, dash health.org. Um, and we train people from around the world in our framework and method of listening with curiosity. Um, and it’s been proven now in our, we, we evaluate all the stuff we do, uh, to foster social skills and emotional skills, but most importantly, um, social health and a sense of connectedness and also Jonathan, a sense of a common humanity. So it bridges, divides it, you know, does all sorts of beautiful things when we tap into those beautiful natural capacities to really. Jonathan, it comes down to this because I know you’ll appreciate this because you think as deeply as I do, um, to just look at each other and say, who are you and what can I learn from you? And what do you know that you can teach me? And what do I know that I can teach you? Right? And then that’s how connection happens, right? That’s how connection happens.

Niobe Way: [00:49:16] And think about how few people have those kind of connections. You know, you give them opportunities to Tunities to express their social nature, to express their curiosity, care and cooperation. You see the impact? I see it with my college students, my doctoral students, my. I teach middle and high school. Because I love kids. I sat in on a kindergarten class for a year. I did it with kindergarten kids. I’m just telling you, if you just offer opportunities, right, to tap into our natural capacities to say, who are you and what can I learn about you that tells me about me? Of course, because you learn about yourself through learning about somebody else. And then how, what can I teach you that you will learn more about yourself. And it’s that mutual learning process with each other, interpersonal curiosity about each other and what you can teach each other that creates connection, right? And that’s what creates connection. And I want everybody as they’re listening. If there’s nobody in your life you’ve connected with that, start now. Just do it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:17] So what’s give me, give me an opening move for that.

Niobe Way: [00:50:20] Okay, so I do that because I teach this a lot. So, so basically, these are the kind of questions people want to be asked. We do big studies in NYU and we ask, what questions do you wish your parents would ask you? Your teachers would ask you, your friends would ask you, these are the questions people want to be asked. First of all, it’s always shockingly deep and then not deep. So the most common question that college students want to be asked is, what do you care about? What do you value? And when you ask them why, they say to be seen the way I see myself, not the way you stereotype me to be so. And it’s such a beautiful, simple question what do you care about? What do you value and why? Like kids, college students are dying for you to ask that question, isn’t it? Doesn’t it make you give you the chills of like, unbelievable how simple that is. When you ask other people, I’ll tell you, there’s hundreds of them, but I’ll tell you a couple other ones. Um, people want to know things like a time in which you felt listened to a time in which you didn’t feel listened to, a time in which you felt you belonged. A time in which you didn’t feel like people want to talk about those moments, not only of not being listened to, but of being listened to.

Niobe Way: [00:51:25] The beautiful experience when someone really listens to you and they’re starving to talk about it, their time to share it. The other one, the simple one. This is a funny one to me. A favorite childhood memory. I’ve had so many couples say when I get them to ask each other about a favorite childhood memory, they didn’t know that about their other partners. And a favorite childhood memory. Remember, is not just a favorite childhood memory. I’m not going to talk like a psychologist. It’s what you remember most from your childhood that made you joyful. Hence, it’s part of your identity. Yeah, because that one memory I have at eight years old, climbing on the top of my house with Michelle Presti, you know, and straddling the roof of the. That’s not my only childhood memory. That’s what I think at my age as my favorite childhood memory, which means it shaped my entire life. So if you don’t know that favorite childhood memory of mine, you don’t know me fully, Right. Because that that childhood memory sticks with me. So a favorite childhood memory and get them to tell you the details of the memory. The other one, which I love because my name’s Niobe.

Niobe Way: [00:52:26] Uh, people are starving to be asked about their first name, even if they have the name of Chuck or Jonathan or whatever it is they want. They, they want someone to tell, they want to be able to tell the story of how they feel about their name, uh, where it comes from. A lot of people don’t like their name. They wish they were named something else or they don’t like the nickname and they, you know, it bothers them when some people use it, but they have feelings about their name. And then what I learned from my college students, but also from high school students. Your name is everything. It’s your name. It’s it’s it’s you are your name, right? Even if it’s a made up name, if it’s a nickname, you are your name. And so for someone to not know about how you feel about your name, what does that mean? So I’m just saying the questions are so easy because they’re not threatening. It’s not like saying it’s not trauma questions. People don’t want to talk about that anymore. People don’t want to talk about like when you suffered and, you know, but, um, we’re inundated with trauma stories. What people want to talk about is basic things.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:25] Yeah. It’s just like the, the, the fundamental questions that let you be known.

Niobe Way: [00:53:29] Exactly. Just fundamental. And so to me, um, where do you feel safe? Where do you feel safe? That’s a, that’s a big one. Even middle school students, by the way, middle school boys, that’s one of the things that they’ll say. Where do you feel safe? They’re curious about where people feel safe, you know, and in what context and why they feel safe. Um, friendships will say between friends, why do you like me? Why do you think, why do you think our friendships work? Why do you think it doesn’t work when we fight? You know, um, why? You know why even simply, you know. It’s amazing. Why did you get mad at me? I didn’t understand why you got mad at me. Right? So that that whole sense of, like, seeing each other of this in tremendous source of knowledge. Right. And it’s your job to come to know each other in that way. And we’re so antisocial. That’s a new insight for most people.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:20] You’re also teasing out something here and tell me if I’m getting this right. Also, because a lot of these questions, they go to the idea of who, who are you underneath everything that you’re showing the world. But along with that, we have become a culture. And tell me if you if you disagree with this, let me know. Yeah. I feel like we’ve become a culture that is increasingly obsessed with not being known, but being liked.

Speaker 4: [00:54:46] Oh, totally.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:47] And that that really can mess. Because if we’re going for the likes and the likes aren’t the likes don’t get validated in the same way that the known gets validated, then we live into the likes and not live into like the, the, the act of being known. And again, we’re pursuing a metric that only leads to suffering. Does that land?

Speaker 4: [00:55:07] Oh, totally.

Niobe Way: [00:55:08] No, but but I’m going to blame. I’m going to blame the antisocial culture because an anti-social culture, right, perpetuates that notion that it’s about having a lot of friends, not the quality of friends. So the idea is that constant obsessive questions that magazines are always addressing, which drives me crazy, is how many friends are enough. How many friends are necessary for health? How many friends are. How many friends are needed? Do you need only one friend or. I mean, there is. Basically, you can find almost nothing and I’m sure you can find something. And if a listener finds something, send it to me about the quality of friendships that people are looking for. And the thing about the boys in the at 12 and 13, remember they talked about deep secret friendships. The boys talked about quality friendships. They didn’t talk about wanting a lot of friends. But we are in a quantity over quality, right? Hard over soft numbers, over quality. Um, and so it’s about how many friends, how many followers, how many likes. Um, and that’s part of our antisocial. It’s not about the quality of our interactions. And what’s sad to me, you know, it’s so interesting. I remember having a with a friend many years ago, I was talking about how even though I do all this work, I had very few people in my life. And it’s, it’s less so now, I think, but it certainly was true at the time that I could really have these kinds of conversations. Jonathan. You know, about really things that matter. And he said, Niobe, the thing is, everybody feels that way. Mhm. And so there was something about almost reassuring initially because I thought, oh, I’m not just a weirdo, you know, I’m not, it’s not, you know what I mean? Uh, but then I also was so deep to me that he said, like, matter of factly, everybody feels that way. And then I thought, because I know all the data on children. What the hell? You know, like, what the hell?

Jonathan Fields: [00:57:00] Yeah.

Niobe Way: [00:57:00] You know, we’re basically just we’re doing it to ourselves.

Jonathan Fields: [00:57:04] And.

Niobe Way: [00:57:05] We’re doing it to ourselves.

Jonathan Fields: [00:57:06] Right. And all these patterns that you shared with kids. If those patterns never get repattern or changed or broken, and you have like new ways of rebuilding different sense of yourself, they travel like they never stop traveling with us. So you can be in your 60s and you’re still dealing with the exact same thing and suffering as much, if not more than you were when you were 16.

Speaker 4: [00:57:26] Totally, totally, totally.

Niobe Way: [00:57:28] And I would say in some ways, um, because we remember, we think these kind of soft relationships are kind of girly and immature. I would say getting older in some ways, people think it would be easier as you got older because, you know, you grow up and you and you get more mature about various things. But I would say getting older, I think it gets harder because I think you’re not supposed to need that anymore. You know, you’re not supposed to need the get, you know, spending, staying up all night and talking. Yeah. You know, and I was just, it’s funny, I’ll have to share something and it’s maybe cut from the interview, but it’s fine. I was my daughter had to go to the hospital and get emergency. She’s fine, but she had to get emergency surgery on something. And it was it was all fine, but we ended up being in the hospital from 11 p.m. until 9 a.m., and it was basically like a ten hour therapy session, you know, where we talked about everything, you know, because she was just we waited, you know, constant waiting. And so, um, it was incredible, you know, like, it was like, it was like staying up all night with your girlfriend. And it was like, we stayed up all night and we talked about literally everything, you know, her childhood, her father, my life, my friends, her friends, her brother. I mean, everything. And I thought, we’re so, so many of us are stubborn. I thought, like, I miss that. So if you think about it, traditional cultures who all live together, it’s just going to naturally happen more often anyway, because you’re all living together and you’re all in a community and you know you’re going to.

Jonathan Fields: [00:59:05] Yeah, there’s just more surface area for the conversation.

Niobe Way: [00:59:07] To get, right? I mean, no, exactly. I mean, there’s just you’re doing things together. And so as you’re cooking, you’re then talking about things and just the whole craziness of these sort of Anglo American middle upper class, you know, nuclear family with two people, two things in the household. And the kids are supposed to be independent and self-sufficient and leave home and then ultimately leave the parents alone. And then if one partner dies, the, you know, the mom is alone. And that’s supposed to be the goal. What? You know, I mean, it’s just, you know, and the kids aren’t supposed to come home and live with the mom or because that’s a pain in the ass. And I mean, it’s so it’s so antisocial. Jonathan. It’s so antisocial.

Jonathan Fields: [00:59:51] And yet it’s accepted as this is just what it means to be grown up.

Speaker 4: [00:59:56] Yeah.

Niobe Way: [00:59:56] To be a grown up. And, and especially, I would say once your kids have left, which is a whole other podcast, is sort of the expectations on adults. Once your kids have graduated from college or even just graduated from high school.

Jonathan Fields: [01:00:09] Okay. So you’ve given us a really good set of beginning moves for an individual who would like to actually start to step into knowing and becoming known more by. So like the people who like matter to them or immediately around them. Yeah, yeah. You’ve also zoomed the lens out and said, okay, similarly, this is a yes on situation. It’s about individual interactions and relationships and skills. And because we are all living in a larger cultural ecosystem that is largely antisocial.

Speaker 4: [01:00:39] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [01:00:39] How do we start like we it seems like we can’t repair one and forget about the other. How do we start to think about repair of the bigger system, too?

Niobe Way: [01:00:47] Thank you for asking the question. So what I’m saying is this conversation, right? What we’re doing right now is disrupting an antisocial culture inherently, right? So I literally say when I go into the coffee shop down the street from my house, which I do every morning, and I engage with someone who’s sitting next to me and I say, what are you writing about? Because they’re writing on their computer and they share what they’re writing about. And then they say to me, because they always do, what are you writing about? And before we know it, we have. It’s not that long. I have a lot of work to do, but we have a ten minute conversation where we’re sharing what we’re both writing about and we share. Oftentimes it’s we share interests that’s disrupting an antisocial culture. So to me, what I want to get everybody out of their head to change the culture is not a big deal. We do it all the time.

Jonathan Fields: [01:01:35] Yeah. It’s grassroots.

Niobe Way: [01:01:36] We we just do it all the time. Come on. We went from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden and then back to Trump. And we had, you know, we have gay marriage now. We don’t want it. I mean, we changed the culture all the time, for good or bad. I’m not saying always for good, but we change the culture all the time. It’s just a matter of doing it, just doing it. So to me, I want all your listeners to close this interview, this gorgeous interview. Um, it’s really literally going out wherever, whatever you’re about to do after you listen this interview, go get on the subway, go into a restaurant, go home to your partner, to your kids, uh, call a friend, whatever it is, and just start engaging in a real way. Just say, hey, I listened to this interview today and they said we should start asking questions. And I’m always curious about what your favorite childhood memory was because she brought that up. And I want to know, right. And then start asking about it. And then they will ask you the same thing and then say, what questions do you have that you’ve always wanted to ask me? You know, I did it yesterday when I was walking with my daughter. I said, I just made up a question that I thought she would like to answer. I said, if, if you could have anything right now, like right this second, what would it be? And so she really thought about it, you know, she really thought about it. And she finally decided it was a really nice bicycle. And so we had a long conversation about what the bicycle would look like, you know? What kind of bike? Where would she keep it? Right. Where did she want to drive? You know, bicycle two. And so it was just like. And then she asked me and I was, I came up with, sorry to say this, I haven’t had a car since 1995. So I said, I really.

Jonathan Fields: [01:03:09] Like.

Niobe Way: [01:03:10] I know, I know, totally New York City. So I said, I’d really like to have a car. And then she asked me the same questions. What kind of car? What color car, you know, where would you want to drive to? It was like a fantastic 45 minute conversation, you know, that delved into sort of desire and freedom and fun. It was a fun conversation, right? Sort of having a fantasy. And it was just easy peasy. I just said, you know, just ask the question. And that’s disrupting. So we have to get out of the model to think that, oh, we have to now disrupt it. No, no, just do it, just do it, just do it. And then, and then what happens is it starts to spread, right? It just starts to spread because then, you know, you model it in a cafe. Then they model it in their communities and they start to do it. Then everybody starts to do it. And that’s how, you know, the social contagion thing. Yeah. You know, that’s how you change a culture and then before you know it. But I think podcasts, by the way, are a big thing because podcasts basically lead the conversation in it. You know what I mean? Because they do special editions or whatever interviews on these topics, and then people listen to them and then they change things. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 4: [01:04:13] So it’s beautiful.

Jonathan Fields: [01:04:15] It’s so great. Um, it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. I always wrap with the same question in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Niobe Way: [01:04:27] Oh, you know what I’m going to say. I just think to be deeply, meaningfully connected to other people. And I don’t just mean in my community. I go into museums and I talk to the guard who stands in the hallway about what he thinks about the painting, that he stands next to, meaning deeply engaged with all sorts of people across walks of life and not just, hey, how you doing? But actually talk to them like real people. So they stand next to a painting all day, right? A set of paintings. Um, ask them what they think about it because they have opinions like anybody else. Uh, engage with people go into when someone’s working in a cafe and they might go into on the subway and you’re just sitting there and you’re the only ones in the car, just say, hey, and you have to think of a fun question. Like, you know, people always ask me, when’s the last time you laughed out loud? A meaningful life in which you are learning from other people, all types of people that helps you understand the meaning of life, right? In the learning, in the ways that you learn with other people.

Niobe Way: [01:05:34] But I just want to get people. The only thing I want to emphasize in that response is don’t just stick with the people you know, because that that limits you. It limits your views. It limits your views. Talk to people who you do not know. Take that step. Talk to people that you do not know. Ask fun questions. I I’m 100% sure that they will appreciate it and they’ll return the question. And quite frankly, if they don’t appreciate it, they don’t have time. Who cares? Go on to the next person. Yeah. You know, it doesn’t matter. So I would say a good life is a deeply connected one where you’re learning from people. You’re learning from people. What a gift. What a gift for us as humans, right? That we that we can learn from each other all throughout life. We have a source of knowledge all around us all the time. You know that. Who knows things that we don’t know. I just love it, I love it.

Jonathan Fields: [01:06:27] Thank you.

Niobe Way: [01:06:28] Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [01:06:29] So let’s talk about some of the big aha’s and maybe some actionable takeaways. One thing that really has stayed with me is how simple Niobe’s fifth graders made this. Ask them what predicts mental health. And they say in one breath, how your friends treat you. Not one of them needed a research grant to know that seems like as adults, we kind of forget that. A few things I want to hold on to. In addition to that, the idea of an antisocial culture that she described, not a masculinity problem, but a culture that ranks the hard over the soft in all of us. The asymmetry that she found between boys and girls, boys sacrificed the other to protect the self. Girls sacrifice the self to protect the relationship and the habit that she has of asking strangers real questions on the subway, at the coffee shop. That’s not small talk. That’s disrupting the whole culture one conversation at a time. So here’s what I’d actually maybe try this week. Pick one relationship where maybe you’ve been asking the same kind of tired question how was your day? How’d the test go and swap something real? What do you care about? What’s your favorite childhood memory? You might be surprised who has been just waiting to answer. And hey, before you leave next week, it’s just me flying solo to talk to you about something I call the self-care trap. The difference between practices that actually help you thrive, and ones that help you tolerate a life that no longer fits. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss that or any upcoming episode. And do me a personal favor. Also, if this episode resonated, share it with somebody who you know it would be helpful for. Also, this episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young, Kris Carter crafted our theme music, and if you haven’t already, go ahead and follow us where you get your podcasts. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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