Ep 826 ｜ Lost Submarine, Depressed Teens & Two-Tiered Justice
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
174.60466
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Vodhi Bakaman, a conservative commentator, joins Allie and Brie in the studio to talk about the latest in the Trump/Biden saga and the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
a submarine set out to explore the remains of the Titanic, and now it is lost. Also,
00:00:08.840
teens are reporting that they are more depressed than they've ever been. And what is going on with
00:00:15.540
Donald Trump and Hunter Biden? Well, we don't know. This episode of Relatable is brought to
00:00:21.580
you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com, use code Allie at checkout.
00:00:30.000
Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone's having a wonderful week.
00:00:40.580
So we've got something a little bit different for you today because we originally planned to have
00:00:45.500
Dr. Vodhi Bakaman. He's been on my show several times. He's got a new curriculum out based on his
00:00:52.320
book, Fault Lines, helping churches work through the deceitful progressive ideology that is
00:00:59.740
social justice. What does the Bible really say about race, ethnicity, justice, reconciliation? So
00:01:08.300
we were going to have him on to talk about that, but then an emergency happened, and unfortunately,
00:01:14.080
we had to stop our conversation, and we're going to have to reschedule him and have him back on.
00:01:18.760
I know you guys love him a lot and always love when I have him on, so we will reschedule that
00:01:23.800
as soon as possible. So because we weren't able to finish that conversation, we kind of had to
00:01:31.240
figure out what we were going to talk about today. So I had to recruit the help of Brie,
00:01:38.100
producer Brie, and also Victoria. Victoria is very fortunate that she just happened to be in the studio
00:01:43.940
today because she loves being on camera. She's always asking me if she can guest host the show,
00:01:49.560
and I'm like, oh, Victoria, maybe, maybe one day. No, I'm just kidding. They were kind of reluctant,
00:01:55.660
but they are helping. They're helping with the show. So I don't really know exactly what we're
00:02:01.520
going to talk about at the beginning. We are going to get to this crazy ACLU story that I wanted to get
00:02:07.380
to yesterday and didn't have time for. So I just kind of want to riff on a couple things because we
00:02:14.620
were talking about before the episode started, the things that we have not been paying attention to
00:02:19.960
going on in the news that no one in the relatable audience has even asked me to pay attention to,
00:02:26.080
but I know is important. I'm just going to be really honest, and this is not a great thing to
00:02:30.800
say as a conservative commentator, but I am not up to date on what's happening with Donald Trump right
00:02:36.420
now. Are you guys up to date on what's going on with Donald Trump? No. Like, not at all, which is
00:02:43.160
so, it's, I mean, it's supposedly sad. It's not good. I heard just the other day when he got indicted
00:02:49.800
again, someone gasped and told me that, and I was like. Is that even surprising at this point? I know,
00:02:58.760
that's, that's what it is. It's not surprising. Yeah. I wouldn't gasp at that. Yeah. But I've,
00:03:04.640
okay, I felt better because I heard Glenn say this morning that he doesn't even really know what to
00:03:11.340
make of all of this. And he has people that he respects, conservatives that he respects on both
00:03:16.100
sides of the indictment. Some saying, I guess it's justified and some saying it's totally not,
00:03:21.720
or some saying that Trump is going to win. Some saying that he's totally going to lose, whatever.
00:03:25.780
I don't even know, but that makes me feel better that there are people on both sides of this
00:03:33.520
story. And I'm just going to be perfectly honest. For me, it's a little bit like Russiagate,
00:03:39.560
which I knew was a witch hunt and all of that, but I didn't know the minutia. I didn't know the
00:03:44.120
details. And I kind of told myself, all right, when it's all said and done, when the Mueller report
00:03:50.640
comes out, then we'll talk about it and we'll figure out what's really going on. And what was
00:03:57.480
the other one that we said? Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden. Yeah. What's going on? I mean, more laptop
00:04:05.280
stuff. I don't know. I can't even really wrap my head around the whole laptop thing. I can't stop
00:04:12.760
hearing about it. And I know it's important, but it's just a lot. I hear that word a lot. Yes. So I
00:04:20.300
don't know. Maybe someone can break it down. Yeah. I'm not trying to be. I don't want anyone
00:04:23.620
to interpret this as flippancy. Like we don't care or we don't think it's important or we don't think
00:04:28.080
it's consequential. I definitely see how a two tier justice system is consequential that if you are on
00:04:35.580
the progressive side, you get insulated. And if you are not on the progressive side, then you get
00:04:39.680
targeted. Obviously, that's very important. So these stories absolutely have meaning for all of us.
00:04:45.020
It's just that it's such one thing after another that it's hard to keep up with.
00:04:49.020
And usually like I can tell what you guys want me to talk about based on the things that you send me
00:04:54.160
based on my Instagram DMs, mostly sometimes my YouTube comments, but my Instagram DMs,
00:05:00.120
people will say, have you seen this? Can you talk about this? I have not gotten one message,
00:05:03.700
one email. I don't think one comment or tweet saying, hey, Ali, like, why haven't you talked
00:05:09.280
about these stories? Will you please get into Donald Trump and all this stuff? I I haven't I haven't
00:05:15.320
gotten anything in my audience of people curious about that. So I'm guessing that a lot of people
00:05:20.220
listening feel the same way I do. And they're still more interested in the stories that we've
00:05:38.000
Also, no one has asked me about this, but I kind of wanted to talk about it because it's so crazy.
00:05:43.180
Another thing that I don't know that much about, but it's insane, is the submarine thing.
00:05:48.040
Yeah. Is that funny, Brie? Is that funny to you?
00:05:52.680
I'm laughing because I was telling you before that I didn't I hadn't read about the story at all.
00:05:57.880
I just looked up at like a news screen and saw that it was something about a submarine exploring
00:06:03.120
the Titanic remains. And I thought that the news story was people were looking at the Titanic remains.
00:06:10.340
I didn't know something had actually happened. Yeah. And so so people were just like, oh,
00:06:16.300
my you thought people were like a Titanic. It was on the news all day. And I was like,
00:06:21.580
that can't be the biggest news story of today. But you were just like, I do this, too, sometimes
00:06:28.180
where I see a headline. I'm like, that does not sound right. And then I just don't look at it.
00:06:33.760
I didn't even look it up. I was like, that doesn't. Yeah. So I didn't know all day yesterday.
00:06:38.540
I was curious why that was the biggest news story. But OK, let me read a little bit about
00:06:43.640
it, just in case some people don't know, because this sounds like a nightmare, a nightmare.
00:06:49.740
So this is from the independent banging herd in search for missing Titanic tourist submarine
00:06:55.700
with less than 24 hours of oxygen left. Nightmare. Nightmare headline.
00:07:01.120
So this is Ocean Gate Expeditions. This is a submarine that I guess is a tourist submarine
00:07:08.900
that went to go look at the remains of the Titanic, which are pretty close to America,
00:07:15.700
which I didn't realize. So this is what the independent says. There are now less than 24
00:07:22.420
hours of oxygen left in the missing Titan submersible. That's what they call it. Submersible
00:07:27.740
submarine as rescue efforts continue for the five divers. There are five divers in this
00:07:32.200
little capsule type thing. And we'll put up a picture of it. A Canadian aircraft searching
00:07:37.100
for the sub in the Atlantic Ocean detected intermittent intermittent banging noises from
00:07:42.800
the vicinity of its last known location. I don't understand that. So if you hear banging
00:07:48.180
noises and you're like and you're in the I don't under. Can you not follow it? Can you
00:07:56.120
not go there and just be like, OK, we're going to get them out? The crew searching for the
00:08:01.000
missing sub heard banging sounds every 30 minutes on Tuesday and again four hours later after
00:08:05.660
additional sonar devices. Sonar. Is it sonar? Sonar. I think I said sonar. Sonar devices were
00:08:13.980
deployed. However, Rear Admiral John Mogher of the U.S. Coast Guard, who is leading the search,
00:08:21.540
said that we don't know the source of the noise. I just feel like you should go see that you should
00:08:26.440
go investigate. So, OK, CEO and founder of Ocean Gate Expedition Stockton Rush, British billionaire
00:08:34.480
explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul Henri Nargolet and Pakistani businessman
00:08:42.740
Shahzada Daywood and his 19 year old son Suleiman Daywood are on the Ocean Gate Expedition's
00:08:49.860
submarine Titan. So the watercraft submerged on Sunday morning from its support vessel to travel
00:08:55.800
to the Titanic wreckage, which sits at a depth of 12,500 feet. About an hour and 45 minutes later,
00:09:03.240
the Titan lost contact with its mother ship. The polar prince authority said the Titan is equipped
00:09:09.420
with a four day emergency oxygen supply. It is estimated that the five missing passengers have
00:09:14.240
less than 24 hours of oxygen supply left in the vessel. Oh, my goodness. I still don't understand
00:09:22.480
with all of the technology that we have today. I mean, literally like Xi Jinping personally probably
00:09:30.860
knows exactly what we are doing at every minute of every day. Yeah. And we can't we don't have the
00:09:37.660
technology to be able to find these people? How are they even going to the bathroom?
00:09:43.840
That's a good question. A nightmare in itself. Yeah. And you can't open it. I think that I would
00:09:48.880
take the risk and open the submarine. Well, OK. Well, that's a hot take. That is a hot take.
00:09:56.200
I mean, OK, if you're running out of oxygen either way. Well, the problem is the pressure where they're at
00:10:03.740
in the ocean. I was reading something where if like even like one of the windows or like some
00:10:08.800
sort of like pressure valve snapped within the submarine, like they would just be crushed
00:10:13.500
instantly. Yeah. I don't know the science behind it. So you can fact check that, I guess. But
00:10:18.220
yeah, I think opening anything at that depth is not possible, which is why I just read this only
00:10:26.020
like three percent of the ocean has been even explored. The ocean terrifies me. Ocean is terrifying.
00:10:30.600
Why? Why do you I don't know why people want to go to space or go into the ocean. There's a reason
00:10:36.660
like, OK, there's a reason why God made us have to stay on Earth and created gravity. He's like,
00:10:47.240
I literally created a force to keep your feet on the ground. Why are you trying? I didn't give you
00:10:54.460
good gills. I didn't give you the ability to go to Mars. I put you on Earth. Why do people do this?
00:11:02.720
This is going to be like someone's going to clip this and they're going to do the same thing that
00:11:06.380
they did with the dinosaur episode, which people are still mad about. Oh, well, be mad. OK, did you
00:11:13.340
also know the missing Titan submarine has one button? This is according to Twitter is maneuvered using a
00:11:20.140
fake Nintendo controller and was built with bits ordered off the Internet and from Camper World.
00:11:29.220
Two and a half miles under the sea. I don't know what that means, but they someone posted a picture
00:11:34.840
of apparently like the knockoff Nintendo controller that's used to like navigate or to help it help it
00:11:43.800
help the submarine navigate. OK, this is according to complex, which is actually an outlet. The missing
00:11:48.240
Titanic submarine was reportedly piloted by a Logitech controller and previously got lost during
00:11:52.700
a live TV segment promoting the voyage. OK. What? It just gets worse and worse. It really does. I
00:12:01.040
also I'm reading now again. This is just reading for the first time. The CEO of Ocean Gate, which is
00:12:07.560
operating the Titanic tour submarine, explains that the company didn't want to hire any experienced
00:12:12.700
50 year old white guys because they weren't inspirational. Yes, I saw that, too. I saw
00:12:19.280
that, too. There's a video going around that Ian Miles Chong shared and someone else is in it. I don't
00:12:25.240
know who's in the video actually hosting the video. But yeah, apparently, you know, they didn't want to
00:12:30.180
hire the 50 year old white guys. And I'm not saying that that's why this happened. Right. But it's just
00:12:36.220
another example of like priorities, like just hire the people that can do a good job. And they
00:12:43.000
obviously did it. Yeah. The keyword is experienced. Yeah. Right. Crazy, crazy. Well, I guess we should
00:12:51.180
be I mean, we should be praying for them. Let's see when that independent article was published.
00:12:55.240
So that was published only 30 minutes ago. So apparently they still have 24 hours left of oxygen.
00:13:00.000
Still don't know where they are, like going to the bathroom, how they're even functioning. I mean,
00:13:06.520
they must be absolutely terrified. This has got to be one of the worst ways to die. Right.
00:13:13.400
I think just knowing that there's a ticking time bomb. Yeah. And do they have food? Do they have
00:13:19.180
enough water? Surely you're prepared for this, right? If it doesn't sound like it. Yeah, that's the thing.
00:13:26.320
I'm like that based on what I'm hearing about this company, I feel like they wouldn't be prepared
00:13:30.480
for something like this. It sounds like they thought it would just be like such a quick and
00:13:34.540
easy trip. And that they're just they weren't worried about obviously giving a Nintendo controller.
00:13:41.760
Yeah. Worst fear unlocked. Worst fear unlocked. I don't just FYI, I don't want to go see the Titanic.
00:13:48.400
I love the movie. I don't want to go see the actual drag, though. It's like the movie long.
00:13:55.140
Yeah, I liked it, though. It's a classic. Four hours of misery. Oh, my gosh. You don't think
00:14:00.840
it's good? The first part isn't misery, really. It's really good, but it just it takes so long.
00:14:06.960
There's like two hours of them dying. Yeah. And you've seen people debate like there was room on
00:14:12.900
the door. There was. There was room. There was room. There was no reason for that. It's an age-old
00:14:18.340
debate. But really, really good acting, though. Really good acting. Like when Kate Winslet is like
00:14:25.140
doesn't have a voice. She can't even say Jack because it's so cold out there. And then she
00:14:32.100
whistles. That's good. It's a great movie. I love sad movies, though. I love sad long movies. I could
00:14:37.880
sad long. I do. I do. I love Meet Joe Black. That's another sad long movie. I love Gone with the
00:14:45.740
Wind, which is a sad long movie. That's a sad long movie. It's a good one, though.
00:14:50.900
Okay. So I just wanted to note this chart that I saw tweeted by Brad Wilcox. And we've had
00:15:11.600
Dr. Wilcox on the show before. And he is. Oh, I thought I had it right in front of me. Let me pull
00:15:20.540
it up. So he works at the University of Virginia. He is a professor and the director
00:15:28.760
of the National Marriage Project at UVA. We've had him on to talk about the dangers of the family
00:15:37.020
diversity theory. His studies that he has done and that he has been analyzing for the past several
00:15:43.940
years just prove over and over again that kids do best with their mom and their dad, not just any
00:15:49.920
two, any one or any three adults. He talks a lot about the family, talks a lot about different
00:15:55.320
trends, especially when it comes to children. And he posted he posted a study. The source is
00:16:02.580
monitoring the future analyzed by Gene Twinge. And this is data that goes from 91 to 2023. We'll put it
00:16:12.920
up if you're watching on YouTube. And it's depressive symptoms in U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders.
00:16:20.080
Depressive symptoms in U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders. And so they were asked to answer these three
00:16:27.560
questions. And I guess see how much they agreed with these statements. And one is I can't do anything
00:16:34.960
right. Two, my life is not useful. Three, I do not enjoy life. So if you look all the way back at 1991,
00:16:45.480
the kids these ages saying these things, it was low. I mean, it was still kind of high. It was
00:16:52.480
anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of kids were saying that they felt this way. And then it actually dipped
00:16:58.880
really low. Like when we were in high school, there were very few people saying, I don't enjoy
00:17:04.460
life. My life is not useful. I can't do anything right. Or at least when I was in high school. I
00:17:08.780
guess I'm a little bit older than y'all. So that actually dipped in like 2010. And let me just pause
00:17:14.260
and say, I do feel like that was the golden era of America. I think from like 2005 to 2010,
00:17:23.400
we were rocking with it. Like things were going well. Like the movies were good. The music was
00:17:29.160
good. We felt like we were past all of like, you know, no one really cared about race. No one
00:17:35.220
cared about a lot of this divisive political stuff and things like things were going well. I don't
00:17:41.300
remember thinking about politics in this divisive stuff when I was in middle school and high school.
00:17:46.220
Do y'all? No, I've had to ask my parents if because now I'm an adult and then
00:17:53.240
then I wasn't. If it was like this then. And I think social media has made it worse with that
00:18:01.340
being more prominent. But I mean, my parents were like, no, not like this. And that's another thing
00:18:09.240
is that we didn't have social media, but there was no pressure to be an activist either to put your
00:18:15.160
pronouns in your profile or are you for this? Are you against this? Do you have a stance on this?
00:18:21.160
I mean, the Obama election was when I was a junior, senior, junior. And so I remember that,
00:18:30.380
but I also went to like a conservative Christian school. So most people were on the same page,
00:18:36.960
but still it just, they like weren't really topics of conversation. I also think, because if you look
00:18:43.440
at the nineties, it was a little bit higher that these kids were like had depressive symptoms,
00:18:47.860
eighth, 10th and 12th graders. I think it's because of Nirvana and Third Eye Blind. I think
00:18:55.320
it's because of the music that they were listening to. Like, okay, we got Nelly in high school. They
00:19:01.720
got, you know, we had grunge. What? Paramore. That's true. We did. Okay. I actually did listen
00:19:08.600
to depressing music in high school. Goth forever in middle school. That's, you know what? That's so
00:19:14.820
true. Dashboard confessional. You can't be happy and listen to secondhand serenade. No, with a lot
00:19:22.020
of eyeliner too. Eyeliner. Oh yeah. Well, I dyed my hair black. Me too. Your hair is almost. Well, my hair
00:19:28.900
used to not be though. And so I went like jet black, jet black box dye. Yeah. Like you did it
00:19:35.360
yourself at home. One time I did. Yes. And I had a pink streak. Oh, nice. It was the vibe. Did you
00:19:41.320
dye your hair in high school? Yeah. I did black. I did red. Of course. Wow. Yeah. I went through the
00:19:47.660
boxes. Terrible, terrible for our brains, terrible for our health, our hair. Oh my gosh. So anyway,
00:19:56.000
like these were the biggest things that a lot of us were dealing with. Not that people
00:20:00.320
didn't go through really hard times in high school and things like that. But as far as like
00:20:05.680
world problems, we were mostly, I think, focused on our lives and what was going on. And social
00:20:12.160
media puts this unrealistic pressure on people, not just to be perfect, not just the comparison
00:20:16.860
thing, not just the feelings of exclusion, which are natural to adolescents and then exacerbated
00:20:21.880
times 10 when you have social media. But also we didn't carry the weight of news on our shoulders,
00:20:27.100
like the weight of elections. We knew that no one cared what we thought about those things and we
00:20:31.460
didn't want to like bring them forth. So anyway, I wonder if that is part of the reason like for the
00:20:37.200
dip in depressive symptoms when I was in high school. I don't know. But the important part is to
00:20:43.440
note that it's skyrocketed from about 2008, it looks like it hit a low to 2023 and certainly has increased
00:20:53.320
a lot since 91 when they first started gathering this data. Now, 49.5% of 8th, 10th and 12th graders
00:21:01.920
think that they can't do anything right. 10th and 48.9% say I do not enjoy life. How 50% I do not enjoy
00:21:15.580
life. And then 44% say that my life is not useful. I mean, there's, there's so much behind that it has
00:21:26.120
to be. I mean, there's got to be several factors. Obviously, parenting, family, the disintegration of
00:21:32.100
the family. Parents, I think being busier, too busy to parent their kids, to invest in their kids,
00:21:38.540
to discipline their kids. I think that parents also allow their kids, especially up until now,
00:21:43.900
to be on social media, to be on TikTok. That's bad for your brain. I was reading yesterday, ironically,
00:21:49.600
on Instagram, that like the dopamine that is released by the videos that we watch on TikTok and
00:21:55.820
stuff. I forget the terminology that they used, but basically it sets you up to be tired and lazy
00:22:01.540
for the rest of the day. And that makes sense. And if you're tired and lazy and feeling purposeless,
00:22:07.060
because I know how I feel when I spend, say I'm supposed to be doing something and then I
00:22:12.700
end up spending 30 minutes to an hour just scrolling on Instagram instead of doing something that I needed
00:22:19.180
to do. I feel awful after that. I feel like I'm like, I'm a loser for just doing that. I can't
00:22:25.780
believe it. And I'm mad at myself. And you feel totally unproductive and useless and like a waste
00:22:30.920
of space because you've just wasted this precious time. And I don't even know if people always have
00:22:35.880
those conscious thoughts when they're doing it. But I do think that that has an effect on how you
00:22:39.900
feel about yourself constantly spending time on social media. I don't know. I think that's part
00:22:44.620
of it. What do y'all think? It's like a social media hangover. If I'm on Instagram or TikTok for too
00:22:49.520
long, I start to just feel icky and anxious afterwards. And I'm like, what's wrong with me? And then
00:22:54.840
sometimes I'll even go back to Instagram because I'm like, oh, I don't like how that feels. And
00:22:59.840
then I do it again. Yes. And then I just feel like crap the rest of the day. Yeah, I do that. I do
00:23:06.020
that too. I like don't like how I feel when I get off of Instagram and to get rid of that bad feeling
00:23:11.600
to like, you don't even realize that you do it. Sometimes you just like open up the app.
00:23:17.060
That's bad. It's bad. That's bad. That's not good.
00:23:24.840
And I also think part of it is also a social contagion aspect. Dr. McFillan talked about
00:23:39.640
this, that we're not a lot like we can't say anymore that we're just sad or that we're worried
00:23:46.380
about something. It's and I'm not saying this is true of everyone, because obviously some people
00:23:52.700
it's it's different than being sad. They would say that they truly are depressed. But
00:23:57.780
I think today it is so common just to say that you're depressed and to say that you hate yourself
00:24:04.000
or whatever it is and to say that you're anxious rather than, well, you're just like worried about
00:24:10.260
something that is normal to be worried about that. That's fine. I'm so glad I didn't have that language
00:24:16.400
when I was in high school because I think I could have convinced myself that I was depressed.
00:24:23.020
I mean, what teenager doesn't kind of go through that to where they're like, oh, my parents don't
00:24:28.240
like me. I'm mad at this person at school. I got a bad grade. And you do just think I can't do
00:24:34.100
anything right. And if someone told me, you know what, a pill can fix that and you'll never feel bad
00:24:40.780
about yourself. That's enticing. Yeah. You know, well, and it's just the you know, if you're
00:24:48.460
constantly being fed on TikTok, that like that's that's the trendy thing. Yeah. Is not even feeling
00:24:56.600
depressed, but it's like the med culture. Yeah. It's like, don't forget to take your antidepressants
00:25:03.020
in the morning. Like I've seen YouTube videos where people are like and, you know, reminder before you
00:25:07.860
go to bed, take your meds. It's like that's the norm. They're just expecting that people,
00:25:13.800
especially young people, are on some form of medication. And that's been normalized to the
00:25:19.320
point where like that you just need that. You just need it to live. And that's a part of like your
00:25:24.420
healthy routine, like eating your vegetables. Right. You brush your teeth, you take your meds,
00:25:28.480
you go to bed. That's just fed into people. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I think especially as
00:25:35.740
women, especially teenagers, we I mean, there's four, sorry, related rows. There's four different
00:25:42.360
parts to your cycle to to your menstruation cycle. And when you feel a different way in each one,
00:25:48.620
sometimes you can feel more anxious or feel more worried. And then you're like, oh,
00:25:51.900
is something wrong with me? Do I need to get on something? And then even getting on the pill can
00:25:56.580
also mess with you mentally, too. And I think people just aren't aware of that. Teenagers aren't aware.
00:26:01.940
And parents just they don't know either about all the different cycles. Birth control is such a big
00:26:08.760
one that I think has affected so many women. So many people around our age were put on birth
00:26:13.580
control in high school who are not sexually active, who it was just like given to us because,
00:26:19.720
oh, you have acne and you don't want acne. Oh, you missed. Sorry, again, related bros. But oh,
00:26:25.280
you missed one period. And so and you know, you're not pregnant, but like your period is
00:26:32.140
now irregular. Oh, you might have PCOS, which some people really do. But I think that was
00:26:36.820
overdiagnosed again. And people were just put on yes and like put on these. And it was just like
00:26:44.580
something that we would just talk about even in college. Like, oh, yeah, my birth control is making
00:26:48.520
me sad. Or I'm you know, I'm depressed. I'm crying all the time. I'm emotional. And it was just like
00:26:54.180
accepted that you just did that. And again, I don't even think that our parents thought about
00:27:01.800
the consequences to that kind of stuff. No. And we just didn't know. No, that happened to me, too.
00:27:07.320
My doctor said, let's put you on it. Oh, you're cramping. My mom didn't even blink like, OK, this is
00:27:11.920
what the doctor saying. Let's do it. Because you I mean, I was going to say you used to be able to do
00:27:16.860
that. But we used to think that you could do that. I think we didn't realize that we should be
00:27:21.520
even curious about how pharmaceutical companies make make money. But I wanted to read this message
00:27:29.580
that I got because I'm still getting a lot of well, most mostly positive feedback from the
00:27:34.420
Dr. McFillen episodes. Go listen to those if you haven't already. But a lot I mean, a lot of negativity
00:27:40.560
to like a lot of anger in my comments. People get really mad when I tell them to go listen to the
00:27:45.560
full episode. And then they're like, well, why don't you just take the real down? Well,
00:27:49.720
no, I'm putting the real up because I want you to go listen to the full episode. But you're saying
00:27:55.600
things you're accusing him of not saying something or saying something that if you actually listen to
00:28:00.840
the whole episode, you would see that you're wrong about that or that you're wrong in your
00:28:04.740
accusations of him, at least. So people are upset and people are still insisting that the chemical
00:28:10.380
imbalance thing is actually true, which it's actually been debunked several, several times over the
00:28:15.020
years. It's not just him saying that. But anyway, so here's here's a message that I got just about
00:28:21.060
kids being over prescribed this stuff. Like when Dr. McFillen said that he met a girl who called
00:28:26.460
herself Alexa ho instead of like because she's on Alexa pro. And it was, again, like a trendy thing,
00:28:33.380
really sad. So here's what a message that I got. And with her permission, I posted it without her
00:28:39.520
name. And then I got a ton of messages confirming this from other people who who work in high schools
00:28:46.880
and work with young people in different ways. So she said, unpopular social worker opinion. But I'm
00:28:52.720
thankful for this episode, the conversations with Dr. McFillen working with 14, 15 year olds. So many
00:28:58.520
of them have become so numb to emotions that a normal emotional response sends them into a tailspin.
00:29:04.800
That is so worrisome. I don't know how many times I said this year, hon, you're sad. It's okay to be
00:29:10.800
sad in this situation. When they brought me a problem and their solution was to call their psychiatrist
00:29:16.120
for an increase. Definitely not against meds, but think they should only be used in extreme cases. I think
00:29:23.860
I had three out of 75 plus students this year that I thought a psych med would be beneficial to them
00:29:30.940
while they sort through their root issues. And obviously, I can't confirm or deny whether those
00:29:38.980
three people needed psychiatric medication. But I got so many messages from other counselors, mentors,
00:29:46.700
teachers, social workers saying the same thing that yes, the kids that I'm seeing these young teenagers,
00:29:52.620
they are overly medicated. They're on depression medicine. They're on anxiety medicine. One of you who
00:29:58.760
was a doctor said that you had this kid come in and he was so nervous about some kind of like eye
00:30:06.580
procedure that he was having. And he apologized for being nervous and said, Oh, I'm nervous because I
00:30:14.060
have anxiety. And you're thinking, No, you're nervous because you're about to have an eye procedure.
00:30:20.140
And it's okay to be nervous. I think it's so crazy, because I think that the younger generation is a
00:30:26.020
very like feelings driven generation, like they seem to put their emotions first. But at the same
00:30:32.320
time, they're so scared of anything other than numb. They're so scared of anything. I noticed this
00:30:37.720
about them that apathy is so cool to them. They're scared to actually like feel something besides anger,
00:30:43.700
you do see the anger and the activism, but to feel like worried or to feel sad, and then to just
00:30:50.000
connect those to circumstances which are fleeting. That seems like something they're not able to do,
00:30:54.860
or to emotionally regulate, or to distinguish between a mood and a diagnosis. Like, some people
00:31:01.700
are more emotional. Some people are more sensitive. Some people have bigger mood swings. It's just how
00:31:07.540
they are. Some people feel really deeply about things. Some people cry easily. Some people don't.
00:31:13.920
Like I definitely have different, I definitely have different moods, depending on a million things.
00:31:18.840
It could be sleep. It could be what I ate, what I didn't eat. It could be the fact that I'm pregnant.
00:31:25.060
It could be the fact that I'm stressed about something. It could be the fact that, because
00:31:30.240
sometimes I do this, and maybe this is a process we all need to get better at, myself included. But
00:31:35.660
sometimes I'll notice that I have like an underlying sadness or an underlying nervousness about
00:31:40.680
something. And I have to stop and think, wait, why do I have that? Like, because I forgot why I have it.
00:31:47.520
But usually I can trace it back to something like, oh yeah, that hurt my feelings, or that happened,
00:31:53.520
or I'm worried about that happening tomorrow, whatever it is. And sometimes I can't. And when
00:31:57.640
you can't, you just have to kind of be like, that's life, you know?
00:32:02.740
Yeah. When I was overseas, they had us sometimes like check in with counselors every once in a while.
00:32:09.000
Um, and one of them kind of changed how I thought about emotional health, which is talked about a
00:32:14.700
lot. Um, and, and obviously mental health, but she said that having emotional, being emotionally
00:32:21.980
healthy is not, not having emotions. It's not thinking I'm sad that sadness needs to go away.
00:32:28.700
Sadness is a human feeling that is normal and natural. Emotional health is being curious about
00:32:36.320
why you feel the way that you feel. It's not trying to get rid of the feelings that you're
00:32:41.740
feeling. You're healthy when you're asking yourself, why do I feel this way? Um, not when
00:32:46.560
you're not feeling that way. And that just kind of changed how I thought about it because
00:32:50.300
yeah, all the negative stuff, like the, the sadness and the anger, I feel like a lot of times we just
00:32:57.180
want to be like, how do I need to figure out how to not feel that anymore. And sometimes that's like,
00:33:02.620
that's not the answer. You need to figure out why you feel that way. That's, that's the thing you need
00:33:06.720
to address. I do think it's just strange. There's so many extremes in this because, and this is something
00:33:23.760
I talk a lot about in my book, this idea, you hear this over and over again by like the pseudo
00:33:28.220
psychologist on Instagram, which I just like, don't recommend people following, but, um, like all your
00:33:33.820
feelings are valid. I think that's also dangerous. Like suppressing your feelings are dangerous, but also
00:33:39.440
validating all of your feelings. Yeah. Well, you could feel jealousy about someone and okay, it's,
00:33:45.320
it's a real feeling and you could get to the root of why you feel insecure about that, but it, it's not
00:33:51.160
necessarily valid. Not your anger. Isn't always valid because valid means it's true. It's rooted
00:33:55.960
in truth. So something can exist without being valid. And I think that's also, there's like,
00:34:02.220
I don't know, emotional responsibility has to be like acknowledging and understanding your feelings
00:34:06.760
while not focusing so much on them and allowing them to lead you. I think part of being an adult,
00:34:13.020
something that distinguishes us from toddlers as a mom of toddlers is that my toddlers,
00:34:17.300
they cannot separate their emotions really from like what is happening or logic. Like they're two,
00:34:25.560
they're the same things right now. And so what they feel is happening, that might as well just
00:34:31.080
be their reality. They can't move past that. But something that's supposed to distinguish us from
00:34:37.420
toddlers is our ability to say, I feel this way. That's not real, or that's just not the most important
00:34:43.320
thing right now. And so I need to react differently than how I'm feeling. And because I guess that's
00:34:50.020
hard. I think that's one reason why we are over-medicated. That's like a discipline that's
00:34:55.000
difficult. Not being led by emotions. Yeah. Yeah. And I, again, wonder if social media makes that
00:35:01.400
harder because Victoria, I don't know if you feel this way, but if I'm distracted by something,
00:35:06.900
by social media, I am a, I'm not as good at whatever else I'm doing, whether it's talking to
00:35:11.860
my husband or whether it's parenting my kids, I'm less patient. I'm more testy and I'm more snappy
00:35:18.380
because I think it's some kind of thing in your brain, not just being distracted, but something's
00:35:23.800
happening there that is making you more on edge. And you become like really lazy in conversation,
00:35:32.800
in parenting and things like that when you allow yourself to be distracted. So I think that's part
00:35:37.960
of it. They're so used to those quick dopamine hits that the difficulty and discipline that's
00:35:43.300
required. Yeah. It's like a drug. Yeah. It feels like a drug sometimes, even when I'm with my son,
00:35:49.300
sometimes I'll catch myself. Like I won't even, you know how sometimes you're driving and you're like,
00:35:53.280
I don't even know how I got from this point to this point. I do that sometimes on social media. I'm
00:35:57.260
like, I don't even know how long I've been on here. Yeah. And my, my child is just playing by
00:36:01.800
himself and I'm over here on social media. And yeah. Yeah. I also, I think we live in such a
00:36:07.700
godless society and it makes me so sad because I struggle. Like, I feel like I have really,
00:36:12.660
really big emotions. And if I didn't have the Lord, if I wasn't able to lay those emotions at
00:36:18.320
the feet of Jesus and say like, God, I know all these bad feelings are not stemming from you. I lay
00:36:23.980
them at your feet. I don't know what I would do. I would probably want to be medicated too. So it makes
00:36:29.300
me so sad for the people that don't know the Lord and that don't have a relationship with the Lord.
00:36:33.420
Yeah. Because they have all these feelings that they don't know what to do with and they can't
00:36:37.600
separate that from God's truth and what God says. Yeah. And it's pretty incredible that we do have a
00:36:43.620
God who tells us over and over again, Old Testament to New Testament, do not fear, do not worry. So he's
00:36:51.100
recognizing that these are real emotions, but he says it is possible to not, to not do those things.
00:36:57.680
But he doesn't just say like, don't do them because it's bad. He says, do that because I'm in
00:37:03.000
charge. And my dad reminded me of that this morning. I was worried about some situation and
00:37:08.240
he was like, you're picturing this whole scenario playing out without God, like without him being
00:37:14.820
in charge or without him being in control of this. And that's really what worry comes down to
00:37:20.140
is picturing the future or picturing your situation without anyone who really cares about you and is
00:37:24.580
guiding you. Okay. I wish we had more time to talk about all the other things that I wanted
00:37:29.620
to talk about, but we'll say that for tomorrow, we've got a whole episode tomorrow that I can
00:37:32.980
dedicate to talking about the ACLU story that I've been meaning to talk about. I'm glad that we just
00:37:37.740
had this, um, this conversation today. And just to clarify, like I've said this before, I am not
00:37:43.260
anti-modern medicine. I'm not that crunchy. I'm not as crunchy as I want to be. Although I did switch
00:37:50.160
to glass straws, which I'm pretty proud of myself about because I am trying to use plastic less,
00:37:56.140
especially in these hot summer months, it makes me really uncomfy to think about my plastic like
00:38:01.260
melting and then drinking from it. So, but I'm not as crunchy as I want to be. I am definitely for
00:38:07.620
modern medicine and I'm not against that. I also am not invalidating your real experience with
00:38:15.780
depression, real depression, real anxiety, real bipolar disorder. I'm not saying that all of
00:38:20.900
these are in your head or a part of your imagination or that there aren't different perspectives on
00:38:25.360
psychology and psychiatry. I'm not saying that, but I think we should all care again, as I've said a few
00:38:31.000
times now, we should all care about the increased medicalization, especially of young people, the
00:38:37.520
increased testimonials of depression and anxiety and emotional regulation, spiritual health, and how
00:38:45.820
these really can't just be solved by pills. This seems like something that Christians should really
00:38:51.140
care about. A book that's been recommended to me that I just bought because I think it's going to be
00:38:55.800
helpful is by John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift. Apparently, he really talks through depression
00:39:01.860
and even medication from a biblical perspective. So I'm interested in learning more about that. And
00:39:06.580
I'll just go ahead and recommend that book, even though I don't know everything that's in it,
00:39:09.720
because I like John Piper so much. And I think that he'll probably have a lot of things to say.
00:39:13.460
All right, we'll get into all the stuff that I wasn't able to cover today or yesterday in
00:39:17.840
tomorrow's episode. Thanks so much for listening. We will be back here then.