
Most of us spend some part of our lives feeling bad about ourselves and wanting to feel better. But this preoccupation is a surprisingly new one in the history of the world, and can largely be traced back to one man: a rumpled, convertible-driving California state representative named John Vasconcellos who helped spark a movement that took over schools, board rooms, and social-service offices across America in the 1990s. This week, we look at the rise and fall of the self-esteem movement and ask: is it possible to raise your self-esteem? And is trying to do so even a good idea? Special thanks to big thank you to the University of California, Santa Barbara Library for use of audio material from their Humanistic Psychology Archives and to their staff for helping located so many audio recordings. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Heather Radke and Matt Kielty Produced by - Matt KietlyFlute performance and compositions by - Ben BatchelderVoiceover work by - Dann FinkFact-checking by -...
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Latif Nasser
Oh, wait, you're listening.
Matt Kilty
Okay.
Heather Radke
All right.
Latif Nasser
Okay.
Heather Radke
All right.
Matt Kilty
You're listening to Radio Lab.
Michael Pettit
Radio Lab from wny.
Matt Kilty
See?
Latif Nasser
Yep.
Matt Kilty
Hello, can you hear me?
Heather Radke
Yeah, yeah, we hear you. We're just ignoring you.
Matt Kilty
Okay, that's fine.
Latif Nasser
You are not. I was waiting until it was recording. Hey, I'm Latif Nasser, this is Radiolab. And today.
Matt Kilty
Do you know what this is about at all, Latif?
Latif Nasser
Only vaguely. Only two words. A story from a pair of friends, producer Matt Kilty and contributing editor Heather Radke.
Heather Radke
You want to say them?
Latif Nasser
Self esteem.
Heather Radke
Yeah. Or maybe this is actually really, in fact a story about Heather's need for constant validation and praise.
Matt Kilty
Dang, man, coming in hot.
Heather Radke
What is the most sort of like honest explanation of how this came about? You were feeling bad, I think.
Matt Kilty
Okay. The most honest answer sometimes probably like more than I like, to an embarrassing degree. I feel bad about myself. And I am a creative person in a profession where there's lots of ways that you can, if you're so inclined, you can find to feel bad about yourselves. There's always a list you're not on, always a sales number you didn't reach, always a pitch that didn't get accepted.
Latif Nasser
Right. And Matt is here acting like you're an alien from another planet or something.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, total.
Heather Radke
A few days ago, Heather asked me if I was proud that she jumped in Lake Michigan when it was cold.
Matt Kilty
And he was like, nope, not proud, not interested.
Heather Radke
It was jumping into a Lake Michigan.
Latif Nasser
Wait, Matt, but you, you don't. Do you feel immune to all of these problems?
Heather Radke
I maybe like to kind of sit in my self loathing a little bit more.
Latif Nasser
I've been a party to that in the past at one time or another. Yeah, I've witnessed that.
Heather Radke
I think it's like the seeking out of a sort of affirmation and compliment feels like a means to maybe feeling good. And I don't necessarily in the kind of project of the sort of goal of trying to feel good, but I.
Matt Kilty
Mean, I don't think it's like that weird that I want to feel better about myself. No, like, I think the question of like, how might I feel better about myself is pretty normal. Like kind of about as normal as it could be.
Latif Nasser
It's like there are whole industries based on this question.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, it's like everywhere, like you see it everywhere. Like it's on reality tv, it's on Instagram, you know, it's like everything about Instagram is like how Instagram is giving us low self esteem.
Latif Nasser
Like, but like, what are. Why are. What?
Heather Radke
This.
Latif Nasser
This just. Matt, Heather therapy hour. What is there a story here?
Matt Kilty
What's going on?
Heather Radke
It's a little bit of that throughout. No, no, no, no, we do. Okay. No, we have a story that Heather and I spent a long time working on.
Matt Kilty
Years.
Heather Radke
Years working on.
Latif Nasser
Wow.
Heather Radke
But it's about. It's about the fact that this idea, this thing that Heather's talking about, this. This pursuit of feeling good about yourself. How sort of weirdly. It's not that old of an idea.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, it's not that old. It's kind of all based on a lie.
Latif Nasser
Okay.
Heather Radke
And how so much of this you can kind of really trace back to this one guy.
Matt Kilty
How do you say his last name?
Will Storr
I think it's Vasconcellos. That's how I've always said it.
Matt Kilty
Vasconcellos. I mean, I think John Vasconcellos or maybe Vasconcelos.
Heather Radke
You call him Vasco in the book, right?
Matt Kilty
Yeah, everyone calls him Vasco. I just feel like.
Will Storr
Interesting. This is a weird thing. Robert Pattinson, the Hollywood actor.
Heather Radke
Yeah.
Will Storr
The film rights. Did I tell you about this?
Heather Radke
No, I didn't tell people this.
Will Storr
Yeah, he bought the film rights because he wanted to make the film of Vasco. And I had a three hour meeting with him about it. And he was like, who do you think should play Vasco? And I said, I think it should be the guy that Magnum PI and.
Heather Radke
He was like, Tom Selleck. What?
Will Storr
Tom Selleck? Yeah, it was like I said the wrong thing. I thought they'd be good, but like.
Heather Radke
I can see it. Yeah, I can. Actually.
Matt Kilty
It's the mustache.
Will Storr
It's the mustache and the big, like, bear like thing.
John Vasconcellos
Okay.
Matt Kilty
So John actually died back in 2014. And so we ended up talking to the author, Will Storr.
Heather Radke
So Will wrote a book about the self, like how we think of ourselves called Selfie. Selfie.
Latif Nasser
All right. Like it.
Heather Radke
Which has a whole chapter on John.
Matt Kilty
And then we also spoke to.
Mitch Saunders
Yeah, well, I've got all kinds of curiosities and questions.
Michael Pettit
So.
Heather Radke
Mitch Saunders, one of John's closest friends.
Mitch Saunders
But I think those will emerge as we get going.
Latif Nasser
Yeah.
Matt Kilty
And before we get started, I guess I just want to say in reporting the story, I've always kind of thought of John as like an Icarus figure. He's a kind of modern day Icarus, where he wanted so much to feel good. He wanted everyone in the whole world to feel good. But he did fly maybe a little too close to the sun.
Heather Radke
So what drew you To John, initially.
Will Storr
What I thought was so interesting about John in his early life was that he was born into a very strict Catholic family.
Mitch Saunders
Oh yeah. A big, big influence was the Catholicism that he grew up in.
Heather Radke
So if we back up a little bit. John was born in 1932 in San Jose, the oldest of three kids.
Mitch Saunders
His father was superintendent of schools in the East Bay.
Heather Radke
His mom mostly stayed at home.
Matt Kilty
She could be pretty stern.
Mitch Saunders
She'd give my wife a hard time about the meal we had prepared, you know.
Matt Kilty
And John as a kid, he was.
Heather Radke
Clearly very bright, never really got in.
Matt Kilty
Trouble and was also a very strict Catholic, a good Catholic boy. And the kind of good Catholic, that.
Will Storr
Kind of fetishized self loathing.
Matt Kilty
Because this was a sort of Catholicism that was heavy on.
Latif Nasser
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, original sin and death through sin.
Matt Kilty
The idea that we're all born sinners.
Latif Nasser
And in this way death came to.
John Vasconcellos
All people because all sin.
Will Storr
He was raised, behold, never to think well of himself.
Latif Nasser
I was brought forth in iniquity to.
Will Storr
Never think about me. The I.
Latif Nasser
And in sin did my mother conceived.
Heather Radke
Me to not show pride, to not.
Mitch Saunders
Show anger, that you are a horrible person if you touch yourself, if you engage with anybody else in any kind of sex whatsoever outside of marriage. It was this upbringing of being told so many times in so many ways that you're less than not good enough, fundamentally flawed.
Will Storr
He used to tell a story. Who knows whether it's true because it's such a great story where he ran for class president in the eighth grade and he lost by one vote.
Matt Kilty
And do you know whose vote it was?
Latif Nasser
His own.
Matt Kilty
His own vote.
Will Storr
That one vote was his.
Heather Radke
He voted for the other person.
Will Storr
He was so self hating that he could bring himself to vote for himself.
Heather Radke
God, the poor guy.
Latif Nasser
But he believed in himself enough to run, but not enough to. What a puzzle there.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, he's a tangled web.
Will Storr
When I was looking through his personal archives, I found a letter from an early girlfriend that actually said to him, the thing I love most about you, John, is your absolute humility.
Mitch Saunders
But you know, this was one of the things that animated him was his own lack of confidence in himself.
Heather Radke
He would later become class president, attended.
Matt Kilty
This fancy private school in the bay.
Mitch Saunders
He was valedictorian.
Heather Radke
He got into Yale and Harvard, but.
Matt Kilty
He chose to stay in California, Santa.
Mitch Saunders
Clara University, went on to Santa Clara law, was valedictorian everywhere he went.
Heather Radke
Graduates top of his law class, becomes.
Will Storr
This quite successful young man working at.
Heather Radke
This law firm in the bay.
Matt Kilty
Tall Broad shouldered, clean cut, black suit.
Will Storr
Black tie, neat hair.
John Vasconcellos
And in 1962, he needs no introduction to any California.
Heather Radke
He decides to join the reelection campaign of Governor, Democratic Governor Pat Brown.
Matt Kilty
And he would say this later in an interview that it was like this moment on this campaign where politics became, quote, etched in his heart.
Heather Radke
And so in 1966, at the age of 34, he runs for a seat in the California State House.
Matt Kilty
On November 8, 1966, he wins.
Will Storr
And then, well, he has this spectacular nervous breakdown.
Heather Radke
He completely collapses.
Will Storr
The way he describes it, he says, I found myself and my identity and my life coming utterly apart.
Latif Nasser
Was there something that precipitated this or what? Like what?
Matt Kilty
Well, at the time, no one knew what precipitated it.
Heather Radke
Like, he never talked publicly about the details of what happened. But the way that Mitch would describe it to us was it was kind of as if Jon had felt like he'd been handed a script his whole life. Like a script from his family, from his church, from society, of like, this is how you're supposed to dress. This is how you're supposed to behave. And he was suddenly kind of coming up against the idea that maybe he didn't want to live by that script.
Mitch Saunders
And it left him feeling like he had no place to go.
Matt Kilty
And after that, John realizes, he says in his book, that he has to find some help. And so he finds this Catholic priest who's also a therapist, who starts to ask him questions like, tell me how.
Mitch Saunders
You see the world. What matters to you? When that happened? How did you experience that? What's the feeling for you? I'll bet you that was the first time he'd ever had that kind of encounter.
Matt Kilty
The first time someone's relating to him.
Mitch Saunders
With genuine inquiry about who he really is.
Matt Kilty
It was these therapy sessions with this Catholic priest that would kind of crack John open and send him down a new path that would eventually lead him to this place called Esalen, the Esalen Institute.
Latif Nasser
I feel like this is a famous.
Heather Radke
It is, yeah, yeah.
Will Storr
I mean, if you're a fan of Mad Men, that's where Donald Draper ends up at the end of Mad Men.
Heather Radke
Oh, that's where he is.
Latif Nasser
Aha.
Will Storr
That's where the future was born, really. Esalen.
Matt Kilty
So the Esalen Institute is this place.
Mitch Saunders
In Big Sur in California with unbelievable natural beauty.
Matt Kilty
Mitch, like John, spent a lot of time there.
Heather Radke
And if you could just imagine, like this big mid century house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. That's Hesselin.
Mitch Saunders
And there are these amazing hot mineral baths right on the edge of these.
Heather Radke
Cliffs, there were these baths, so you had to get in naked.
Mitch Saunders
Jon said the first time he discovered that we're supposed to go into the tubs with no clothes on, he actually turned around and left.
Heather Radke
He just has so much sort of shame around his body, discomfort around it. Yeah, but Mitch says, like, this was the point of this place of Esalen.
Mitch Saunders
It was a place where you could go to climb out of the. What I think, John, and certainly, I believe was a dark pit of misguided beliefs. You know, there's something. You're fundamentally flawed at birth. There's something wrong with you.
Heather Radke
The promise of Esalen is that it was a place to help you finally kind of realize your true self. And that in doing so, you could find liberation, freedom, maybe even deep happiness.
Matt Kilty
What a promise.
Latif Nasser
Yeah, when you say it like that. I don't know if I want to meet my true self.
John Vasconcellos
I have.
Matt Kilty
Whenever people say that, the find my true self thing, there's a way that it's just sort of confounding. Cause it's like, well, what are you talking about? Like, my.
Heather Radke
How am I not myself?
Matt Kilty
What is this self? That's not.
Latif Nasser
When I was taking out the garbage, was I not my true self?
Heather Radke
Yeah, well, don't worry. We got to the bottom of it.
Matt Kilty
Indeed we did.
Michael Pettit
So. Yeah, so. No, this is.
Matt Kilty
So we ended up talking to this.
Michael Pettit
Guy Michael, Michael Pettit, professor at York University in Toronto, where he stud.
Matt Kilty
Studies the history of psychology.
Michael Pettit
So.
Heather Radke
And Michael told us that what was going on at esalen in the 60s is that it was sort of representative of this huge shift that was happening in psychology.
Matt Kilty
Because up until this point, a lot of what psychology was came from Sigmund Freud. Freud.
Will Storr
And Freud, similar to the Catholics, really.
Michael Pettit
Famously, had a very pessimistic view of.
Mitch Saunders
Human nature, which is the subterranean horrors of the subconscious.
John Vasconcellos
We are primal, inherited, ugly, full of.
Mitch Saunders
Horrible, dark secrets, pestering impulses and compulsions.
Will Storr
That we are covering up from ourselves.
Heather Radke
And that even if you go and seek treatment, you seek help through therapy.
Michael Pettit
You will still be left with everyday.
Matt Kilty
Unhappiness, what he called ordinary unhappiness.
Heather Radke
Ooh, I like that. I like Freud.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, of course you do.
Heather Radke
Oh, shut up, Heather.
Latif Nasser
But, okay, so basically, Freud is like, yeah, we're all suffering here. This is what we're doing together.
Heather Radke
Yeah. And the best we could hope for is contentment, maybe.
Matt Kilty
But, you know, a little bit after Freud and a little bit before Esalen.
Heather Radke
This is around, like, the 40s and.
Matt Kilty
The 50s, there come these new psychologists.
Michael Pettit
Who think we can be happy, who.
Matt Kilty
Think we can be free from our suffering.
Heather Radke
And one of those psychologists was this.
Will Storr
Guy, basically the anti. Freud.
Matt Kilty
Now, Dr. Rogers, something of yourself.
Heather Radke
Carl Rogers.
John Vasconcellos
I'm Carl Rogers.
Will Storr
He's the second most influential psychotherapist ever, after Sigmund Freud.
Heather Radke
And Rogers believe that?
Mitch Saunders
Sure.
John Vasconcellos
Course, we're all of us a little bit crazy, including me.
Heather Radke
People are messy, they're impulsive. But fundamentally, people are good.
Will Storr
And the reason that people suffer, the reason that they feel pain and anxiety.
John Vasconcellos
I found the same yearning theme emerging time after time after time is because person would be saying, I'm not really me.
Heather Radke
People aren't being themselves.
Michael Pettit
Your true authentic self.
Matt Kilty
Instead, people were suffering because they were trying to be.
John Vasconcellos
Here's a rather typical statement who they.
Matt Kilty
Thought they were supposed to be from a young woman.
John Vasconcellos
She says, I think that I began to lose me when I was in high school.
Matt Kilty
There's the young woman who's always trying to please everybody, trying to make people.
John Vasconcellos
Feel at ease around me or to make things go along smoothly.
Heather Radke
Or the young man, why am I afraid of her? Who tries to never disappoint his mom.
John Vasconcellos
This is silly, I know it, but I can't seem to fight it.
Matt Kilty
Or the guy.
John Vasconcellos
I think that I've always loved people.
Matt Kilty
Who always buries his emotions, but I've.
John Vasconcellos
Never dared put it into words.
Heather Radke
Rogers said when he got down to it, patient after patient would tell him.
John Vasconcellos
I feel like I've been just playing a sort of false role.
Heather Radke
And that is what causes our suffering.
John Vasconcellos
This picture you present to the outside world our pain.
Matt Kilty
You can see how this was John. Yeah, Suit and tie, Normie haircut, kind of playing the role of the good Catholic boy.
Heather Radke
And so for people like John, Rogers had developed this way out to leave.
John Vasconcellos
Behind this false role, this type of therapy, and get closer to being one's real self.
Heather Radke
That would become this huge part of Esalen.
Michael Pettit
And that was the encounter group.
Heather Radke
So could you just walk me through, like, what was an encounter group at Esalen?
Will Storr
Yeah.
Michael Pettit
So encounter groups. It would be kind of this break from the everyday.
Heather Radke
You would go to Esalen, you would.
Michael Pettit
Be with a group of strangers, maybe.
Heather Radke
Five people, maybe 15 people who don't know you, who have no expectations of you, so that you can maybe be.
Michael Pettit
As vulnerable as one can be.
John Vasconcellos
The primary ideas in an encounter group are the things I mentioned this morning.
Matt Kilty
So John went to a bunch of these.
Will Storr
I think he went to eight encounter groups at Essalen.
Matt Kilty
And how it worked was be open.
John Vasconcellos
And honest and to Talk about your feelings.
Matt Kilty
This group of strangers would come together.
Will Storr
For hours and hours, sometimes days and days and days on end.
Heather Radke
There would be a group leader, a.
Will Storr
Therapist or kind of a charismatic leader to guide everybody.
Matt Kilty
And what you're hearing now is a document that was filmed in 1972. It was a week long encounter group at Esalen.
Heather Radke
And how it starts is the group.
John Vasconcellos
Leader, things like, I can't do something.
Heather Radke
Lays out these kind of ground rules.
John Vasconcellos
It's usually just a way of not taking responsibility. You try to say, I won't do.
Matt Kilty
It, rather than I can't. Also, don't ask questions.
Heather Radke
Instead, be direct, be honest.
John Vasconcellos
And one other thing is that the.
Matt Kilty
Most important thing you can do here.
John Vasconcellos
I think is the thing you're most afraid of. That's the thing that will help you to grow most.
Matt Kilty
And so these 10 strangers are sitting in a room at Esalen, in a circle on this carpeted floor.
Heather Radke
And they just sit there in silence.
Matt Kilty
Glancing at each other. If we're not supposed to ask questions, I'm not sure what to say.
Heather Radke
And then things shift.
John Vasconcellos
Hit this as hard as you can and keep going and scream at each other.
Matt Kilty
And it is wild.
Heather Radke
Like, the group leader will get some of these people to punch pillows, to.
Matt Kilty
Let out these primal screams.
Heather Radke
If they see conflict, they'll be like, hey, how about the two of you wrestle each other?
Matt Kilty
They'll also do these exercises. Something bothers me about you to try to get these people if you're afraid.
John Vasconcellos
To be real with feeling like, I.
Matt Kilty
Get the idea that how much of you to tell each other?
John Vasconcellos
I get bored when you talk to.
Matt Kilty
Me how they really feel about each other. Yeah, there's just no question I'm fucked up how they feel about themselves.
John Vasconcellos
I'm jealous of them.
Heather Radke
As Will puts it. The whole point of all of this.
Will Storr
Was to create an atmosphere of radical authenticity. And actually what we need to do is sort of dig down deep into the core of who we are.
Matt Kilty
And this is the whole idea behind Roger's philosophy.
John Vasconcellos
I hope you can appreciate the fact.
Matt Kilty
That if you can feel accepted, that.
John Vasconcellos
I feel an acceptance of you as.
Matt Kilty
You are for who you really are, flaws and all. We're born absolutely right, perfect, divine. Then you can find a way.
John Vasconcellos
I pound on a pillow and I.
Matt Kilty
Get it straightened up a little bit. And I found out that what I always thought was true is true. I am good to begin to love yourself. I'm not really sure that I want.
Jennifer Crocker
To be married to the man I'm married to.
Heather Radke
For example, in the Doc, there's this woman, probably in her late 20s, long dark hair.
Matt Kilty
I allow myself to believe everything he tells me about me.
Jennifer Crocker
He says, you're too, you're too heavy, you need to lose weight.
Matt Kilty
And I buy that as being so.
Heather Radke
Who tells the group how she often feels fat, unattractive, I'm pretty.
Matt Kilty
That's very hard for me to say.
Heather Radke
And the group leader, the risk of this reputation.
John Vasconcellos
Would you take your clothes off?
Matt Kilty
Yeah.
Heather Radke
Asks if she would stand in front of the group naked. And so she does.
John Vasconcellos
Would you look at your body and.
Heather Radke
Feel it for a moment totally naked in front of these 10 strangers.
John Vasconcellos
Tell us how you feel about it.
Jennifer Crocker
Feels very soft.
Matt Kilty
I like the curves in my body. I don't feel embarrassed about standing here.
Jennifer Crocker
And I like that.
Heather Radke
And they have her look at herself in this mirror.
Matt Kilty
Take a look. What do you see? What about the.
Heather Radke
I like her.
Jennifer Crocker
Tell her I like you.
Matt Kilty
I love you.
Heather Radke
And what all was John learning about himself back then?
Mitch Saunders
Well, one of the things that, that first happened for him was he realized that there was all this deep seated rage, that he didn't like the way he was raised, that he felt it was, you know, that did him in, that he was dealt a bad deck of cards and he was raging about it.
Heather Radke
And Mitch said that John told him one of the first times he went to an encounter group.
Mitch Saunders
The leader just sat there cross legged for the longest time, didn't say anything. And apparently John's way of dealing with detention was to go over and sort of attack him, attack him.
Matt Kilty
Whoa.
Mitch Saunders
They ended up in a wrestling match or whatever. And you know, John felt fulfilled at the end of whatever that experience was.
Heather Radke
He began to realize that he was angry and that it was okay to feel angry.
Matt Kilty
Mitch says that a lot of what John was going through just kind of.
Mitch Saunders
Came down to just being seen, being heard, being held as he was, as he is.
Heather Radke
And what happened is John went from.
Matt Kilty
Buttoned up, black suit, black tie, neat.
Heather Radke
Hair kind of guy to someone entirely different. Or as Carl Rogers would probably say, he recovered someone who he already was wild and free.
Will Storr
Like he grew his hair, he'd have medallions. He had his shirt half unbuttoned with all his hair coming out of it.
Mitch Saunders
He was always rumpled. People used to say he looked like an unmade bed.
Matt Kilty
He drove around in this like mustard colored convertible with the top down.
Will Storr
Even when it was raining, he'd have the top down.
Heather Radke
He could be brash, blustery, angry, but also very.
Mitch Saunders
People in his office had these stacks of what we Called Vascograms.
Heather Radke
These little handwritten notes from John on, like a newspaper article he read.
Mitch Saunders
I'm just thinking about you.
Heather Radke
Here's something you might find interesting.
Mitch Saunders
Literally hundreds of people would get these Vascograms. My God, I got mountains and mountains of them.
Heather Radke
He was big. He was expressive.
Will Storr
Everything in his being was suddenly liberated. He felt free for the first time in his life.
Mitch Saunders
And there are some crazy people who. When they discover something that has a lot of power and meaning and makes a real difference in one's life, their first and almost natural instinct is to find some way to share it.
Heather Radke
But before we get to that, we'll actually have to leave it here because Heather.
Matt Kilty
I have to go to therapy.
Heather Radke
Is off to therapy where maybe she'll punch some pillows or have some kind.
Latif Nasser
Of breakthrough, you know?
Matt Kilty
Yeah, maybe I'll have some breakthroughs. Yeah.
Heather Radke
I'm sure it's gonna be life changing.
Matt Kilty
I've only been telling you to go for the.
Will Storr
That's fine.
Heather Radke
Okay, well, when we come back, I will still have not gone and we'll pick back up with the story.
Latif Nasser
Okay, great.
Matt Kilty
Straight to the.
Latif Nasser
But then. But there are mysteries that are not to do with murder.
Heather Radke
Okay, I'm done. I'm done with this.
Latif Nasser
Okay.
Matt Kilty
You're the one who was eating a Cliff bar the whole time. We just had to talk about something.
Heather Radke
No, you don't. I can take bites in between this. I did it yesterday.
Latif Nasser
Okay, Both of you.
Heather Radke
Okay.
Latif Nasser
Lythif, Radiolab back with Heather and Matt.
Matt Kilty
Matt's in a spicy mood.
Michael Pettit
Where were we?
Heather Radke
Blow my lid today.
Latif Nasser
Whoa.
Heather Radke
Embracing my true self.
Matt Kilty
You know what? I actually hear you saying, Love me. Love me.
Heather Radke
Okay, so we left off.
Latif Nasser
Yeah.
Heather Radke
John goes through this complete transformation through therapy, through Esalen, through reading books about psychology and.
Latif Nasser
Is he still an elected official?
Heather Radke
He is.
Mitch Saunders
He used to say I was the most therapized politician to ever live. And he's probably right. You know, he probably was the most therapized politician ever.
Heather Radke
And Mitch said it was actually back in 1978 when he first encountered John.
Mitch Saunders
At a conference in Santa Barbara.
Heather Radke
He was the keynote speaker.
Mitch Saunders
This disheveled keynote speaker who got up to speak. John Vasconcellas. He was wearing a sport coat, shirt and tie, but obviously underneath the white shirt was some really funky T shirt that had some strange design on it.
John Vasconcellos
Thanks. Is this broadcasting? Okay, you'll hear me. Okay, thank you.
Heather Radke
This obviously is John.
John Vasconcellos
First, I want to welcome you. I'm the legislator for this district in the California legislature. I want to Say welcome to California. And second, I want to acknowledge the significance of our being here and the.
Mitch Saunders
Stuff that was coming out of his mouth.
John Vasconcellos
Hopefully our being here is meant to be and we carry away with it some sense of meaning that serves to limit our lives.
Mitch Saunders
And that of those around us really surprised me.
John Vasconcellos
The most we could see ever do really is tell each other who we are. And let me tell you who I am.
Matt Kilty
In his speeches, John would talk about.
John Vasconcellos
Growing up Catholic, very steeped in the traditional I'm a sinner Catholic tradition, and was raised or lowered, really more lowered than raised.
Matt Kilty
He would talk about therapy Esalen for.
John Vasconcellos
Encounter groups to figure out my feelings.
Matt Kilty
As a man about Esalen, about Carl.
John Vasconcellos
Rogers odyssey for my own self discovery as a person.
Mitch Saunders
I'd never heard a politician talk that way.
Matt Kilty
And eventually Mitch actually got to meet.
Mitch Saunders
John in his funky little condo in Santa Clara. And I don't remember exactly what we talked about, but towards the end of that conversation, I asked him, I said, would you be willing to be my mentor? I've just not had exposure to anybody as wonderfully strange as you. He agreed. And that became the beginning of quite a partnership over, you know, that was. That must have been 82, I guess, and you know, from then to the time he died in 2014.
Heather Radke
And I guess what exactly was it about what he was saying that made you kind of like want him to be a mentor?
Mitch Saunders
It was his way of articulating the through line from psychology and how we are formed as human beings, you know, through family, religious and, you know, all the various influences that come. Come in to influence who we are and how that plays out in the world. And then the thing that really intrigued me was how he was applying that or extending his philosophy to the world of politics. Because for him, everything began. All policy, if you really unpack it, is based on some really fundamental assumptions.
John Vasconcellos
The politics we do is who we are. That my values and my vision, my sense of myself informs what I do socially and relationally, institutionally and publicly. And that really is at the heart of the struggle in the nation, in the state. Now it's not just about money or privilege or power. It's about those. But it's about visions of human nature.
Mitch Saunders
And John's message was this. The title of his talk at that time was A Liberating Vision.
John Vasconcellos
Our visions of human nature inform our parenting, our politics, our pedagogy, our intimacy, our dying, and all the rest of it.
Mitch Saunders
If we think about human nature differently, if we dare to imagine that old.
John Vasconcellos
Cynical, traditional people are basically evil and ugly and dangerous.
Mitch Saunders
We people creatures aren't ruined by original.
John Vasconcellos
Sin and need to be contained that repressed and ashamed and guilt ridden and locked away.
Mitch Saunders
Then we would approach policy, you know, really important social institutions and how they're run very differently.
John Vasconcellos
That's one view of human nature for John. If we are to have a people first culture and if we are to ask people to grow, we need to.
Mitch Saunders
Orient all our policies, all our efforts.
John Vasconcellos
It must have at their very heart as its very foundation with the beginning.
Mitch Saunders
View that humans are at the root.
John Vasconcellos
That positive, good, hopeful, healthful, growthful visit of human nature and potential. Assume that within us is that spark of life and hope and health and wholeness that ought to be nurtured.
Mitch Saunders
He really embraced Carl Rogers view of humans being like plants, that given the right conditions they'll almost always orient to the sun. That humans will, you know, if they're not screwed up, will orient to what's positive for them and those around them, them.
Matt Kilty
But the problem here is he's espousing.
Mitch Saunders
This liberating vision for everybody.
Matt Kilty
Like what does any of this actually mean in terms of public policy?
Latif Nasser
It's like Harry Fairy, pie in the sky kind of thing. What does this use to anybody?
Heather Radke
He doesn't have anything that he can actually put all of that in that might actually affect policy until something shows up. Can you guess what that might be, Latif?
Matt Kilty
Two little words with a little hyphen.
Latif Nasser
Self esteem.
Heather Radke
There it is. Because it was in the 1980s when self esteem emerges. This phrase, this idea, self esteem, a.
Michael Pettit
Person'S perception of their own worth starts.
Heather Radke
Becoming a part of the public consciousness.
Michael Pettit
Absolutely.
Heather Radke
And I think I want to just kind of talk a little bit about where that phrase comes from.
Latif Nasser
Yeah.
Heather Radke
Because it becomes so important.
Latif Nasser
Yeah, I do question where that came from. Where did that phrase come from?
Heather Radke
So Michael Pettit, our history professor, explained that in psychology, self esteem goes back.
Michael Pettit
To 1890 with a book called the Principles of Psychology, which basically says that.
Matt Kilty
Self esteem is this thing, this self worth that you have based on the things that you do, the things that you care about doing.
Heather Radke
For example, a famous psychologist back then.
Michael Pettit
Wrote, I don't think I'm the best boxer in the world. So if someone's a better boxer than me, eh, no biggie.
Matt Kilty
But instead of boxing, let's say this.
Michael Pettit
Other person is a better, more famous, higher achieving psychologist. That does hurt my self worth. That does hurt my self image.
Heather Radke
And the way that Michael explained it was this was at a time in psychology where the self was not a unified thing. It was just kind of like parts. You had different parts, different aspects of a self, and then you had these different things where you might find worth or value in.
Latif Nasser
It's like you almost stake your territory where your identity and value lie. And it's like. And other places it's like you've ceded that territory, like it's okay, it's fine.
Matt Kilty
But then in the 30s and the 40s, the very idea of the self changes.
Michael Pettit
Exactly.
Heather Radke
Psychologists come up with this idea of a personality which is your unified whole self.
Matt Kilty
And so self esteem becomes a more.
Michael Pettit
Global, basic attribute of the person.
Matt Kilty
It's no longer how you feel about these individual things you're good at.
Heather Radke
Now it's just about how you feel about you.
Michael Pettit
That one either had high self esteem or low self esteem.
Matt Kilty
So for psychologists, it starts to become this really important measure of a person's entire well being, like their whole mental health.
Heather Radke
And one of the things that we found fascinating was that in the pivotal 1954 Brown v. Board segregation case, one of the crucial arguments made by the opponents of segregation was the dolls.
Latif Nasser
Yes, Famous study. Yeah.
Michael Pettit
On how black children prefer a white doll over a black doll. And this shows how they've internalized society's negative attitudes towards themselves.
Heather Radke
The theory being that they'd sort of been given low self esteem by society. So I think, and Michael says, it's also right around here that you get.
Michael Pettit
Maslow and his famous hierarchy.
Latif Nasser
Hierarchy.
Heather Radke
Hierarchy of needs. You got it.
Michael Pettit
Although whether it's actually a hierarchy or not is a bit of a controversy.
Heather Radke
I always see it as a pyramid.
Michael Pettit
It's a pyramid. But Maslow himself never drew it as a pyramid. That comes from a management textbook a couple of decades later that tried to popularize him.
Matt Kilty
But anyway, so Maslow's whole thing is that you have all these different needs and they all need to be fulfilled in order to become the best version of yourself.
Heather Radke
Needs like food, water, sleep, security, stability.
Matt Kilty
Friendship, intimacy, and a positive self esteem.
Michael Pettit
A feeling of self worth.
Heather Radke
And so through the 70s, that positive.
John Vasconcellos
Hopeful, healthful, growthful visit of human nature and potential.
Heather Radke
While John is giving these speeches, self esteem is becoming a bigger part of psychology.
Matt Kilty
And it was in the early 80s that these two things, self esteem and John Vasconcellos, start to circle each other and become this much bigger thing.
Heather Radke
Because what was going on in the.
Matt Kilty
80S was we're coming off the bloodiest year in the history of New York.
Heather Radke
This panic.
Jennifer Crocker
The statistics this year are really grim.
Heather Radke
About rising violence and crime Dramatic evidence.
John Vasconcellos
Tonight that crack use is spreading wider.
Heather Radke
There was the crack epidemic.
Matt Kilty
Look at a very serious matter, the incidents of teenage pregnancy, teen pregnancy.
John Vasconcellos
Prisons are bulging. 90,000 Californians are in prison and the crime rate's still going up.
Matt Kilty
And for John, in California, we keep.
John Vasconcellos
Escalating the drug war.
Matt Kilty
These became the issues of the day.
Heather Radke
And what happened was in the course.
John Vasconcellos
Of about a five week period, some kind of things came together.
Heather Radke
John said one day he was reading.
John Vasconcellos
An article, an article that said education kids who drop out of school or don't make it, a lack of self esteem.
Heather Radke
That self esteem was connected to how well kids do in school.
John Vasconcellos
Then I read folks who get addicted to drugs probably are lacking enough sense of self and reach for something to get high on or get the pain dulled on or get down on softy might be a way to prevent drug abuse.
Matt Kilty
That maybe self esteem was a key component in why people were using drugs.
John Vasconcellos
Then a guy came to San Jose, did a speech on teen pregnancy.
Heather Radke
He was this popular psychologist, sex educator.
John Vasconcellos
And I heard him say teen pregnancy is probably a lack, result of a lack of self esteem.
Matt Kilty
That kids were maybe having sex at an early age so that they could feel better about themselves.
John Vasconcellos
So those three, education, drugs, teen pregnancy, the pattern just kind of loomed up.
Mitch Saunders
And he latches onto self esteem as a focal point.
John Vasconcellos
I thought we ought to look at.
Heather Radke
This because what all of this was telling John, what self esteem was telling.
Mitch Saunders
John was that at the root of most of our social ills were people who didn't believe in their fundamental value. So by 1984 he was the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
Matt Kilty
John controlled the budget of California, the.
Mitch Saunders
Fifth or sixth biggest economy in the world.
Matt Kilty
And he goes to the governor of California and he says, look, I need to spend money on a task force, a task force to promote self esteem.
Heather Radke
Yeah.
Matt Kilty
So what was the initial reaction to this idea?
Will Storr
The initial reaction was massive skepticism to this idea.
Matt Kilty
So writer Will Storr explained that the.
Will Storr
Governor at the time, he was a no nonsense Republican. He had a reputation of being very hard nosed.
John Vasconcellos
Well, why spend taxpayers money? I said, well, look at it this way. If we can save three folks from going to prison for life or 10 folks from dropping out of school or seven drug addicts, that cost a treatment will save taxpayers billions of dollars.
Matt Kilty
Like possibly this is a really cheap.
Will Storr
Way to make society better in all kinds of ways.
Matt Kilty
Certainly a cheaper way than like raising the minimum wage or something, you know.
Latif Nasser
Right, right, right, right.
Heather Radke
But the other thing he tells the governor is that this will also promote personal and social responsibility.
Latif Nasser
Ah, so this is the like kind of 80s part that's coming in.
Heather Radke
Yeah, but the way he thinks about it, he talks about this a lot in speeches, is like, if you pay a lot of money for something you value something, you tend to take care of it, you know? And so he's just applying this basic logic of like, if you value yourself, you'll take care of yourself. And that it actually might lead to all these societal changes because of it.
Latif Nasser
That makes sense. That makes sense.
Heather Radke
And so in 1987, the governor says.
John Vasconcellos
Okay, and Don creates the Self Esteem Task Force.
Matt Kilty
The Task Force to promote self esteem.
Heather Radke
You knew John before you were invited in?
John Vasconcellos
No, I hadn't known him.
Matt Kilty
This is Emmett Miller, former member of the task force.
John Vasconcellos
I'm not sure how he discovered me, except I was widely known locally for having invented the concept of mind body medicine and holistic treatment of my patients.
Heather Radke
And there were people like Emmett, the.
John Vasconcellos
Godmother of family therapy, chicken noodle soup.
Heather Radke
For the soul guy.
Will Storr
Remember that guy?
Latif Nasser
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Matt Kilty
Some other people from Esalen, but also others.
John Vasconcellos
Black, brown, white, straight, gay, Asian cops, therapists, business persons, teachers. This is not a small thing. This is tape number one in the proposal meeting. That's just not a small thing at all.
Heather Radke
So 1987, this big group of people.
John Vasconcellos
Would get together, big round table kind.
Heather Radke
Of setting, like a library or something.
Mitch Saunders
And resources to draw from.
John Vasconcellos
The group would find therapists, psychologists.
Heather Radke
They'd read anything they had published, interview them about their therapy practices, to put.
John Vasconcellos
Together the principles of what we might call healthy self esteem.
Mitch Saunders
The interview is being recorded at Berkeley, California.
Matt Kilty
They even hired researchers at Berkeley to.
John Vasconcellos
Devise studies looking at self esteem in six major areas of social crime and violence.
Heather Radke
Alcohol and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, child.
Matt Kilty
Abuse, welfare dependency, educational failure or success.
Heather Radke
To try to answer this question. Does having high self esteem actually lead.
John Vasconcellos
People to being a better citizen, being more successful?
Matt Kilty
Now, while that's going on, do you know about Doonesbury, Latif?
Latif Nasser
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.
Will Storr
It's hard to understand today how influential.
Matt Kilty
This comic strip was.
Heather Radke
It's huge.
Will Storr
The power that these Doonesbury strips can have.
Matt Kilty
It was in almost every newspaper. Everybody read it.
Latif Nasser
Is that Gary Trudeau?
Heather Radke
Is that his name?
Matt Kilty
It's Gary Trudeau.
John Vasconcellos
Well, Gary Trudeau with his very clever doonesbury cartoon.
Matt Kilty
In 1987, he found out about the.
John Vasconcellos
Task force and decided to make jokes about it.
Will Storr
He created a new character, Barbara Bupsy Ann Bubstein, who was an LA actress and spiritual medium who had been invited onto the task force on the basis of her 20 years of feeling good about myself and out of body experiences.
Matt Kilty
And it's just like joke after joke about this task force and it's woo woo nonsense.
Heather Radke
And this goes on a two week.
Will Storr
Run, day after day, just making fun of the self esteem task force.
John Vasconcellos
Two weeks of satire with me. You know, this California goofy legislator with this California goofy idea, spending goofy money.
Will Storr
And the whole nation absolute ridicule is what happens.
John Vasconcellos
Laughed.
Will Storr
So there's a quote from the Pittsburgh Post Dispatch who said california is the state that produced Jerry Brown, the people's temple sister, boom boom, whatever that is, drive in churches, Charles Manson, the Esalen Institute, and now a governmental task force to promote self esteem. Now there's one more California joke to tell at cocktail parties around the nation.
John Vasconcellos
And John roundly scorned by the press. Editorial writers always need someone to pick upon to make themselves feel esteemed.
Heather Radke
He was hurt, he was angry.
Matt Kilty
But the thing is that Doonesbury strip about the task force, when he did.
John Vasconcellos
That, everybody else paid attention.
Matt Kilty
It's how everyone found out about it.
Will Storr
That is what made it famous.
John Vasconcellos
We spent three years at it. And at the end of the three years, 1990, the results were that when we compared, people who live their lives with real self esteem did so much better.
Heather Radke
People with high self esteem did better in school. They were less welfare dependent, they were less prone to crime and violence, substance abuse.
Matt Kilty
So they put together this report, really.
Will Storr
Fat report, that yes, self esteem does indeed cause all these amazing effects. They publish it and there's a complete 180.
Heather Radke
Next, our call in guest is John Basconcellas.
Matt Kilty
All of a sudden, John Basconcellas.
Will Storr
Nobody's laughing.
Matt Kilty
People want self esteem.
John Vasconcellos
Time magazine, Newsweek, BBC London, Economist talk show in Australia, national CBS Morning out of New York.
Heather Radke
One day John's given speeches nicknamed the.
John Vasconcellos
Johnny Appleseed of self esteem.
Heather Radke
The Johnny Appleseed of self esteem all across the country. Please welcome the distinguished Mr. John Bath.
Matt Kilty
California John Vasconcellas, he's on Oprah.
John Vasconcellos
Has turned self esteem into a virtual crusade.
Matt Kilty
Telling the nation self esteem is a social vaccine, that we have a cure for all that's wrong in society.
Heather Radke
Yes.
Matt Kilty
Assemblyman, I really feel that you are onto something here.
John Vasconcellos
Beautiful.
Matt Kilty
And it's wonderful. And I want to say this about John Vasconcella.
John Vasconcellos
It's a wonderful thing that you're doing.
Matt Kilty
I'm thrilled that we've got a man like that.
Will Storr
The Philadelphia Inquirer said it looks Like John Fastenrose may have had the last laugh. Time magazine, the sneers are turning to cheers.
John Vasconcellos
Really like what you're doing. I think you're right on base.
Matt Kilty
I'm so excited. And this pretty long, very dry task force report.
John Vasconcellos
This report has sold 50,000 copies.
Matt Kilty
Everyone.
John Vasconcellos
It's all over the state, is over.
Matt Kilty
The nation, all over the world psyched about self esteem.
Latif Nasser
Did anything change in the interim, like in those three years that would make them more receptive to the idea?
Matt Kilty
I mean, I guess I feel that.
Will Storr
It was just one of those ideas that the culture was ready for.
Matt Kilty
I think there's a couple ways to understand it.
Will Storr
For me, the economy actually plays a big part in all this.
Matt Kilty
Will says that in the 80s across the west you see anti union politics, increasing privatization, the end of social safety nets and like calls for personal responsibility.
Will Storr
And that had a sort of a huge impact on who we were and how we understood the world as a people. I mean, the best way to sum it up is if you think about who we were in 1965 versus 1985. We went from hippies, collectivist sort of screw the man anti materialistic people to Greed is good and material Girl and Whitney Houston singing the Greatest love of all is yourself.
Matt Kilty
And also right around the same time you have the self help movement See.
John Vasconcellos
You at the top is the program.
Matt Kilty
That gives a checkup from the neck up which is becoming eliminate stakes thinking, thinking and avoid hardening of the attitudes this huge industry.
Mitch Saunders
So what do you really want? Better relationships, financial independence.
Will Storr
So these ideas were already kind of out there in the culture. And I think if you'd have tried to launch the self esteem movement in 1975, it wouldn't have got anywhere. But by the mid-80s, this idea of I'm amazing is the answer to all my problems. I just feel like the culture was ready for it.
Heather Radke
And also I think it's worth realizing.
John Vasconcellos
How many of us have been in counseling and therapy. I read somewhere 16 million Americans have.
Heather Radke
Been in therapy that therapy was also becoming this huge thing. And there's this book from the 80s that basically says that now the modern equivalent to salvation to heaven was mental health.
John Vasconcellos
We've all been in counseling and knowing more about our own identity and sense of self and desire to be authentic and open and whole. At that kind of convergent point in time, our task force came on the scene.
Heather Radke
It's like all of these things came together in this exact right moment for John to step onto the scene and just be like, hey, I have something powerful this social vaccine, self esteem, that could help all of us.
Mitch Saunders
But what does that look like when you translate that into real work in the world? Because he wasn't happy. He was never content with just shooting the shit, as he used to say, just talking. It had to result in something that made a difference.
John Vasconcellos
The challenge that you truly carry yourselves back into your schools.
Matt Kilty
So if you have low self image, you can do something to change it.
John Vasconcellos
As a beacon of self esteem.
Matt Kilty
She has high self esteem.
Children in classroom
Hi.
John Vasconcellos
What beacon of faith?
Matt Kilty
Self esteem. It's the way we feel about ourselves.
Heather Radke
This is a very special day here at Rainbow. When a person feels good about themselves.
Will Storr
Their self esteem is high.
John Vasconcellos
Every kid and everybody in your life, thank you very much.
Mitch Saunders
Let's do it.
Latif Nasser
That's coming up right after this short break. Okay, Latif, Radiolab back with Heather and Matt and self esteem.
Heather Radke
Okay, so John's got a social vaccine, right? Question, of course, is like, well, how do you inoculate society? Like, what do you, how do you actually, how do you do this?
Matt Kilty
Like, how do you teach people to feel good about themselves?
Heather Radke
And for John, for my Latin prep.
John Vasconcellos
School days, education comes to the Latin word educari.
Heather Radke
The answer was it doesn't mean to.
John Vasconcellos
Stuff in or sit still and shut up the schools. Education at UCARI means to draw out, to draw forth, to evoke, to call forth.
Heather Radke
You start with kids. And so in the late 80s, early 90s, there was this huge push to get self esteem into the classroom. And suddenly there were all these like workbooks, textbooks.
Matt Kilty
So like here's one called Esteem, a K through 8 self esteem curriculum, okay.
Heather Radke
Or the best self esteem activities for the elementary grades.
Matt Kilty
Building self esteem in the secondary school, teacher's manual and instructional materials.
Heather Radke
And how this worked was, let's say you got a class of kids, everybody.
John Vasconcellos
Good morning.
Heather Radke
Good morning.
John Vasconcellos
Good morning. Hello back there, everybody.
Latif Nasser
Yeah, bring it down.
Heather Radke
Could be whatever grade. And the teacher would have one of these workbooks which in it would contain these worksheets.
John Vasconcellos
Today we are going to do. Today we're gonna talk about yourself.
Heather Radke
And how a lot of these begin.
Mitch Saunders
Is imagine that you're looking in the.
Heather Radke
Mirror but trying to get the kids to answer this really basic question.
Mitch Saunders
What do you see?
Matt Kilty
Who am I?
Children in classroom
I look like brown hair, brown eyes, a whole nother year. I have long hair, blond hair, dark hair, I think I look beautiful, kind of long brown hair.
Heather Radke
Or there's prompts like three things I.
Children in classroom
Want to say about myself.
Heather Radke
What makes you different? Different from other people?
Children in classroom
My first thing I would tell A new friend.
Heather Radke
What makes you you?
Children in classroom
I love listening to music. I like chemistry.
Matt Kilty
Basically, who is this person that is the self. Okay, good.
Heather Radke
Can't have self esteem without a self.
Mitch Saunders
Now think of some of the things.
John Vasconcellos
That you like about yourself and that.
Mitch Saunders
You wouldn't want to change.
Matt Kilty
And then, of course, there's just a ton of stuff about.
John Vasconcellos
What are those things?
Children in classroom
Um, liking yourself, being confident in who I am. How am I style? Is that my hair is the right.
Heather Radke
Length or something like, now let's imagine.
John Vasconcellos
That every person at the school gets.
Mitch Saunders
A gold medal for something that they are really great at.
Heather Radke
Everybody gets a trophy.
Mitch Saunders
What would your gold medal be for?
Children in classroom
Reading, baseball, Screaming the loudest, or everybody get together?
Matt Kilty
There were things called sharing circles.
Heather Radke
Kind of like encounter groups, but for kids.
Latif Nasser
Oh, that's sweet. So they can all yell at each other.
Heather Radke
No, it'd be like, what makes you.
Matt Kilty
Really tell us about when you felt good?
Heather Radke
What's one of the best things that's ever happened to you?
John Vasconcellos
Okay, now everybody knows what a sparkle statement is, right?
Latif Nasser
Um, what are sparkle statements?
Heather Radke
So this comes from the book Esteem Builders. And they are a long list of statements you can make to a classmate.
Latif Nasser
Yeah.
Heather Radke
So you're cool. I like knowing you. Let's play together.
Matt Kilty
Hope today is super for ya.
Heather Radke
You're my friend.
Latif Nasser
You're a good buddy, Matt. I'm gonna print this out and put it. Stick it next to your desk.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, I know somebody could use a few more sparkle statements in his life.
Heather Radke
Nah, maybe we should be a little bit less sp.
Latif Nasser
Would this have been like. Like, what class does this slot into?
Heather Radke
They work this sort of stuff into, like kind of your regular class.
Latif Nasser
Like homeroom kind of thing.
Heather Radke
Yeah. And it runs through. I mean, this is like programming that is available K through 12.
Will Storr
Yeah.
Matt Kilty
And I will say I had it every year I can remember.
Latif Nasser
What do you remember?
Matt Kilty
I mean, I remember. I remember Duso the dolphin.
Latif Nasser
Never heard of the dolphin.
Matt Kilty
Which is this dolphin puppet who taught us to feel good about ourselves using song nay. Okay, wait, I'm trying my. But I also did this call out on Instagram to see if anyone else remembered similar things. Yeah, well, so I guess. And my friend Leslie Jamison, who grew up in LA in the early 90s, we always called them put ups and put downs.
Heather Radke
That was like the name for, you.
Matt Kilty
Know, saying something nice to somebody or saying something mean. And she said that her teacher, this was like maybe third grade had this policy that if someone received a put down, the thing was that you had to like, go to this little patio, this back patio. And the person who gave you the put down had to give you five put ups.
Latif Nasser
Oh, wow.
Matt Kilty
To like counter the put down.
Latif Nasser
It's like doing push ups or pull ups.
Mitch Saunders
Yeah.
Heather Radke
Punishment through praise.
Matt Kilty
Hey. Oh, hey. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. I also heard from this woman, Peg, Peg Kiner from Chicago, who had this wild story, it was like 1995 is when I was in 8th grade about how there was this teacher who every morning after the pledge of allegiance and the announcements, she had a handwritten sheet of paper that had two stanzas of I have confidence from the sound of Music. And she had the bold gusto. I have confidence in sunshine. To make a whole 8th grade class sing these two stanzas.
Jennifer Crocker
I have confidence that spring will come again.
Matt Kilty
Besides which, you see, I have confidence in me. And sometimes twice. And she's like, that wasn't loud enough. One more time.
Heather Radke
It really. It's like the anthem, the self esteem anthem.
Matt Kilty
We had this thing called star attraction. Another friend of mine, Jane Marchant, she was a 90s kid in Northern California. And I still have this poster which is insanely large. It's this big poster with Jane's second grade picture right in the center. I have these like horrible bangs and all around the picture are these stars where her classmates have had written something. Jane is nice and fair. Jane is loving.
Will Storr
That's funny.
Matt Kilty
Jane is nice, funny, smart and good.
Heather Radke
So there you go. Trifecta.
Matt Kilty
We got take home slips of paper to write home and post. There was Amy Coogler in Wichita, Kansas.
Heather Radke
Other affirmations. Other affirmations to just post around your bedroom.
Matt Kilty
Yep, just post around my bedroom. I am a smart and kind student. I respect all. There's my friend Gina Pensiero.
Heather Radke
I grew up in Verona, New Jersey.
Matt Kilty
Who remember learning about I lack I, A L, A C. I am lovable and capable. I mean, even our writer will store.
Will Storr
I remember being at school, we had to go around in a circle and everybody had to say something good about themselves.
Matt Kilty
He got this stuff over in the.
Heather Radke
UK there's like an Education Week article from 1991 that lays out that at this point, already thousands of schools are starting to participate in the self esteem curriculum. There are over 100 workbooks to promote self esteem in the classroom.
Will Storr
So it just became embraced by the educational system in a major way.
Matt Kilty
Throughout the 90s, self esteem became the dominant language that people in the west were using to talk about themselves. They used self esteem to talk about their childhoods, their successes, their failures. Their ambitions, just how they thought about who they were.
Heather Radke
And for John, this is more than.
John Vasconcellos
Just a personal venture, an odyssey.
Heather Radke
This is like kind of everything he dreamed of.
John Vasconcellos
It's more than just something for the classroom. It seems to me that self esteem is the vision, the heart of a new culture, a new way of being, a new way of living, a new way of educating and politicking and living and working and all the rest. And may you have in your own lives ever more freedom to be esteeming, to be public, to be political, and to have good times for yourselves. Thank you.
Will Storr
Uh, but, but, but should I talk about the. The. The lie a bit?
Heather Radke
This. Yeah, this might have been. So this is the part in the story which we had.
Latif Nasser
We told you promised this was all a fraud. I'm waiting for the fraud.
Heather Radke
Yeah, the lie.
Will Storr
Okay.
Matt Kilty
So, yeah, this is like Will's whole thing is that one of the things he discovered when he was reporting his.
Will Storr
Book is that in the archives, I managed to find an audio cassette recording of the actual meeting where the Cal.
Matt Kilty
Berkeley researcher hired by the task force present. And he told the task force back in 1989 that, yes, they had found some compelling correlations between self esteem and education.
Will Storr
But in other areas, the correlations don't seem to be so great. And we're not quite sure why, and we're not sure when we have correlations, what the causes might be. Let's take, for example, one of the areas where the findings are a little bit loose, which has to do with self esteem and alcoholic abuse. By and large, there are positive correlations here, but what does that mean in terms of cause? Do these people go to drinking because of an earlier history of self doubt, self degradation, worthlessness, and so on, or is it the other way around? Does the involvement in alcohol for years or decades constitute the causal basis for the feelings of worthlessness that we discovered in people who have been involved in that? So he was basically saying to them, we have some, okay, correlational links. And of course, as we all know, correlation isn't causation. And he was saying, but other links are not at all correlational. And we do have correlation. You've got to ask that basic question, what is causing what? And he warns them later in the recording, you know, he says, you've got to be careful about correlation and causation. And he said, you've got to avoid the sin of overselling. He said, nobody can want to do that. You don't want to do that, and certainly we don't want to do that.
Heather Radke
And yet that's exactly what they did.
Latif Nasser
Literally what happened?
Mitch Saunders
Oh yeah, we had many, many conversations.
Heather Radke
And we talked to Mitch, John's friend.
Mitch Saunders
About all this arguments, if you will, like, what's the actual nature of the research that's gonna happen here?
Heather Radke
They'd argue about the research, how John.
Mitch Saunders
Interpreted it, and constantly challenged whatever he was looking at, you know, and how.
Heather Radke
Did he respond to that?
Mitch Saunders
He'd take it in.
Heather Radke
Would he get defensive or would he just kinda like nod along?
Mitch Saunders
He would just kinda nod along, just do his. He'd listen, take it in, but then go ahead and do whatever he wanted to do.
Heather Radke
Mitch said that with John, there are.
Mitch Saunders
Many things that you can't shake loose. And, you know, that was part of John's genius and shadow.
Heather Radke
And so through the 90s, when John was going around saying that self esteem was this social vaccine, he was doing it seemingly knowingly on the basis of nothing.
Matt Kilty
And so what would happen was that in the early 2000s, the very shaky foundation of the self esteem movement started to collapse.
Jennifer Crocker
You know, I was more or less oblivious to the self esteem movement.
Heather Radke
I mean, you're like, you weren't watching tv.
Matt Kilty
So one person that we talked to was this researcher named Jennifer Crocker.
Jennifer Crocker
But I knew that people worried about it. People would say, well, yeah, low self esteem really is a problem because you can't do anything about your situation until your self esteem is high. And I'm like, I don't think the data are consistent with that idea.
Matt Kilty
So Jennifer basically spent her entire academic.
Jennifer Crocker
Career, my first publication on self esteem, studying self esteem, probably 1983, around there.
Heather Radke
And Jennifer told us about how in 2003 there were these psychologists and a bunch of other researchers who pulled together.
Jennifer Crocker
A very long and I think really excellent overview of what is the value, what is the benefit of self esteem.
Heather Radke
They went through decades of whatever research was published, hundreds of studies, to look.
Jennifer Crocker
At what are the differences between high and low self esteem people. And what you see is that, you know, self esteem is correlated with grades.
Heather Radke
In school, it's correlated with how attractive people find you.
Jennifer Crocker
But these are tiny associations.
Matt Kilty
So basically it turned out a lot of what had been claimed in that task force report was just really not true. Like all the claims that they were making about self esteem being a social vaccine, that it was a cure for drug use, alcohol use, crime, violence, teen pregnancy, poor academic performance. This research showed that whether you had high or low self esteem, it wasn't causing these problems.
Jennifer Crocker
Right, right.
Mitch Saunders
Huh.
Matt Kilty
And so like, it's weird cause like.
Latif Nasser
Even though you're telling me the science of this and that it's like the, this, this huge study, like as I'm hearing this, I'm like, like the story logic of it holds so hard.
Heather Radke
It, it makes such intuitive sense.
Latif Nasser
It makes such intuitive sense that it's like, it's like, why wouldn't a kid be better if they, why wouldn't my relationships be better? Like I, I, it's so hard to like dislodge it even when you're literally telling me it's wrong.
Heather Radke
Okay, well, I can tell you one thing that the research showed about a meaningful difference between people with high self esteem and people with low self esteem.
Jennifer Crocker
Which is that high self esteem people think they're smarter, more successful, more attractive, better liked, more popular than low self esteem people think they are in spite of the fact that they're not really any different from low self esteem people in these objective ways.
Heather Radke
So basically for people with high self.
Jennifer Crocker
Esteem, life feels good to them.
Heather Radke
They're generally happier.
Latif Nasser
That seems good. That's like the biggest tuna of all of them. That's like the most important thing of everything.
Heather Radke
Well, okay, what Jennifer would say is.
Jennifer Crocker
Right, I think there's nothing wrong with being happy.
Heather Radke
Yeah, like, of course, sure, being happy, that's meaningful, right.
Jennifer Crocker
Our emotions are central to how we experience our lives. But that's not all there is to the story because there is a downside to high self esteem.
Latif Nasser
Which is what?
Heather Radke
Well, the research shows that people with really high self esteem tend to defend.
Jennifer Crocker
Their positive views of themselves.
Heather Radke
And so you see high self esteem.
Jennifer Crocker
Associated with things like defensiveness, aggression.
Latif Nasser
Okay, that makes sense.
Heather Radke
Yeah, totally. They found that in education, sometimes self esteem programs produce actually like complacency, reduced effort, resistance to any sort of critical negative feedback. And then there's Jennifer's work.
Jennifer Crocker
For, I don't know, 10 or 15 years, I was really interested in what people base their self esteem on. And we found that pretty much everybody based their self esteem on something.
Matt Kilty
So Jennifer did this study at the University of Michigan with students who were.
Jennifer Crocker
Intending to apply to graduate school.
Matt Kilty
And what they found was that for the students who tied their self worth to high academic achievement, when they got rejected from a grad school, their self esteem obviously went down.
Jennifer Crocker
And it would, for some of the students, it would actually stay down for several days until something happened to kind of shake them out of that funk.
Heather Radke
And for many of these students, they were showing more signs of depression, whereas.
Matt Kilty
The kids who weren't tying their self esteem to that academic achievement then when they didn't get into the programs, they like could weather the storm.
Jennifer Crocker
And then the other thing that was really interesting to me is that the students whose self esteem was really based on their academic success, when we asked them, well, what would it mean for you or about you to get into graduate school, they would write things like, oh, it would prove once and for all that I am brilliant, I am great, that I am successful. It would prove something about me.
Heather Radke
And Jennifer. This kind of like shows you the fatal flaw of self esteem.
Jennifer Crocker
Yeah, it's just that if I have earned high self esteem today by having some success in my life, then have I earned low self esteem tomorrow? If I have a failure, like if.
Heather Radke
I don't succeed at something, does that actually mean that I am worthless? That I don't have value?
Latif Nasser
Yeah.
Heather Radke
And, and she told us there was this prominent psychologist in the 90s and 2000s who went so far as to.
Jennifer Crocker
Say self esteem is the worst sickness known to humankind. Because when you succeed you're great, but when you fail, you're shit.
Heather Radke
So in 2004 there's this big New York Times Sunday magazine piece called the Trouble with Self Esteem kind of Tearing Down John in the Task Force and the Promise and Dream of self. In 2005 there's an op ed piece in the LA Times basically doing the same thing. There's also this big Scientific American article called Exploding the Self Esteem Myth.
Matt Kilty
Yeah, this is like when self esteem becomes a joke.
Heather Radke
Yeah, like the sort of every kid gets a trophy, participation, medals.
Latif Nasser
Right.
Matt Kilty
This is when all of that starts to become like very prevalent in how we think about self esteem.
Heather Radke
And there's actually online, there's all these published emails that, that John and some of his friends in the movement were sending to one another in the wake of all of this.
Matt Kilty
It's kind of heartbreaking.
Heather Radke
Yeah, it's like John is sending these emails, they're written in all caps and he's saying there needs to be a point by point rebuttal of the Times piece and that they needed to fight back and quote, take on this enormous historic life saving task.
Latif Nasser
But that just makes John seem like he's really fighting alone on an island. Like he's like the Japanese soldier fighting on the island, like after the war is over kind of thing.
Heather Radke
I think that's fair. I mean he never really.
Matt Kilty
Never stopped fighting.
Heather Radke
Yeah, he never really stops fighting. I mean, there's a 2009 interview with San Jose Inside, which is, you know, his birthplace, San Jose.
Latif Nasser
Right.
Heather Radke
And in it he's Quoted as saying so now all over the world, the role of self esteem is widely recognized and valued. I think it's really proven to be all we thought it was and more. Which feels so like it feels delusional to read that.
Latif Nasser
Yeah, that does sound delusional.
Heather Radke
And I think Heather and I reporting this story and like learning more and more about Jon is the sort of like it almost. It feels sort of desperate in a way. And I think it's because for John, who grew up in this very strict Catholic family whose Catholicism felt like this enormous sort of weight, this constraint, this thing that made him feel fundamentally flawed and broken and bad, like to shed all of that through these ideas of self esteem was like so vital and important to his sense of self, to his sort of well being.
Matt Kilty
I mean, do you feel like you are his good friend? Do you feel like he, like, I don't know, like he was a person very committed to personal growth. Do you feel like he ended up being the man he wanted to be?
Mitch Saunders
I'd say yes and no. I think there was a lot that he was proud of and rightly so, and yet there was a lot they would have said is undone. And I'm pretty sure he was disappointed that he never realize some of the levels that I think he thought he was capable of. I mean he got to hang out with Bobby Kennedy, you know, I think he thought his life should be something like that. You know, that level of influence.
Matt Kilty
Do you think he had high self esteem?
Mitch Saunders
I think his own self esteem and the fragility of it was. That's one of his struggles for his entire life. He's got all this power, all this influence, all this accomplishment under twice valedictorian, just constantly amassing successes and yet there always being more to do than every time. He'd see his mom, she'd treat him the same way. I bet she did when he was 5.
Heather Radke
And he'd come crumbling down.
Mitch Saunders
No, but he'd just be annoyed and you know, frustrated. His most common trigger would be to get angry. Each of us get triggered in different ways and his would boy, he could erupt in no time.
Matt Kilty
How do you think he felt about how he was treating the people around him when he was angry like that?
Mitch Saunders
Oh, big blind spots.
Matt Kilty
Oh really?
Mitch Saunders
Yeah, yeah, he'd feel bad about it, especially if somebody would say something. He was very, very good at cleaning up his messes. But he could be very embarrassing. He'd go out to dinner and kind of post heart attack. He was very concerned about what he was eating and if somebody brought a dish that was full of cream or something like that, he'd rage at the waiter or waitress, you're trying to kill me or something. Just, you know, he'd lose it at times. And again, I think a lot of that was due to him being on this journey of trying to be his real self, but also being in the public eye all the time.
Heather Radke
And Mitch told us about how another thing that John really struggled with throughout his life was just with relationships.
Mitch Saunders
He never really. Don't even need to add the word really. He never developed an intimate one to one relationship that was just his. And every. So once in a while I'd get a call from him that he was just, you know, almost suicidal just because he longed for intimacy, closeness. And the best he could get were these one night stands.
Matt Kilty
That's so sad.
Heather Radke
And Mitch said there was this point in their friendship where Mitch told him.
Mitch Saunders
Like, look, how about you become a member of our family? And that was our contract.
Matt Kilty
Huh? What did that look like?
Mitch Saunders
Oh, you know, my kids grew up with Uncle John around all the time. We did a lot of things together, vacationed. He would be at our house, God, two, if not three weekends a month, especially when the session was out. But even when session was in, he'd prioritize spending time with our family. His experience of being loved and being close to people came from these extended family relations. There were three families that he would sort of cycle through, but he never had his own intimate one on one relationship. There were very few opportunities for him just to be seen and appreciated for just being alive, not being an instrument. When he got sick, he'd come stay with us. Towards the end of his life, he actually stayed in our spare bedroom for several weeks before I could, you know, before I found an appropriate place for him when he was really, really on the way out.
Matt Kilty
Mitch Sundays this was 2014 and it was when John was diagnosed with a really aggressive form of cancer and he.
Mitch Saunders
Wanted to be back home. So we got him back home, got him on hospice.
Heather Radke
And would you go over to his house to see him like often or.
Mitch Saunders
Yeah, every day. I was, I was with him every day, basically.
Heather Radke
And what was that like just to be there every day with him?
Mitch Saunders
Well, I don't know if you've ever been with a person who's dying, but it's.
Heather Radke
I haven't. Not that intimately.
Mitch Saunders
Yeah. He spent most of the time just being there. They're sleeping, you know, not a lot of energy. The last few days of his life, the thing that we worked on together was he let me know that he was afraid. He'd given a lot of thought to the actual dying experience. And he was deathly afraid of dying by asphyxiation. When people take their last breaths, especially if they're conscious, it can be very hard to actually let go and not take another breath. He was terrified. So we'd practice. We'd take like five or 10 minutes of just him practicing how to let there be longer and longer periods before he would take an inhale and to have the sort of. To be, in his words, to stay in charge of his own reactions. So fear didn't take over.
Matt Kilty
And Mitch says it was in late May of 2014.
Mitch Saunders
There were a group of his closest friends who were present around. We all knew it was getting close to the time. And John, he insisted that he, this.
Matt Kilty
Is the guy who, in his 30s, when he went to Esalen, was terrified of being naked when everyone was going into those pools, turned around and left. Because he just felt so ashamed and humiliated about his body.
Mitch Saunders
He wanted to go out finally, everybody seeing and holding and blessing him naked. And so the morning he died, I was right there holding his hands, holding one hand, his friend, Dr. Also friend of mine, holding the other hand. And as he took his last breath, I, you know, reached down into his ear and said, you, you can do it. He took that last breath. And that was. That was.
Matt Kilty
That was May 24, 2014. And I. I have found myself thinking, just sort of thinking about what John did and what parts of it are still with us now.
Michael Pettit
I do think the self esteem movement has had a cultural effect.
Matt Kilty
Right again, Professor Michael Pettit.
Michael Pettit
I definitely think a kind of psychologized self talk is much more prevalent and available now than before. My employer sends emails all the time about my mental well being and offering, you know, here's a meditation class, you know, on campus, this type thing. So the language of mental health and mental wellness is even more prominent than ever before.
Will Storr
Yeah. And I think the deeper idea is that everything you're feeling is valid.
Matt Kilty
Author Will Storr I always sort of.
Will Storr
Think about this stuff, Carl Rogers and Vasco when I'm watching Real. Cause one of my guilty pleasures is reality television. And when you're watching reality tv, like when you're thinking of like a below deck or Big Brother and somebody behaves terribly, their excuse very often is, well, I'm just being myself. I'm just saying what I think. I'm just, you know, living my truth. Yeah, living my truth. And that's still very Powerful idea in our culture in the West.
Matt Kilty
But I think maybe the biggest, maybe even the most important legacy of John's work is actually, we're ready for that.
Heather Radke
Okay.
Matt Kilty
In the schools.
Heather Radke
All right.
Matt Kilty
Good morning, boys and girls. Good morning, miss.
Heather Radke
Finally, last year, Heather and I went to school in Queens. PS229. I feel like I should also say hello to see how psychology gets used in classrooms today.
Matt Kilty
And today, if self esteem is taught in classrooms at all, it's pretty tiny. And instead, are you ready to do some sel? Yes. What's in the classrooms across the country is this thing called sel. Social Emotional Learning. All right, boys and girls, today we're going to be doing a lesson called let's make it Fair. Does anyone know what the word fair means? We were in a class of first graders.
Children in classroom
To be nice.
Matt Kilty
Say it again.
Children in classroom
To be nice.
Matt Kilty
You want to be nice to people? Okay, good.
Children in classroom
What else to share?
Matt Kilty
You want to share with people? Absolutely, yes.
Heather Radke
And so when we were there with.
Matt Kilty
These first graders, so we're going to be looking at all different situations on fair and what it means to be fair.
Heather Radke
They were being asked to answer questions.
Children in classroom
Like, it is not fair because the other kid is not sharing with the.
Heather Radke
When do you feel like something isn't fair?
Children in classroom
I was like, can I have some tips? And then she was like, no. How does it feel being fair to other people?
Heather Radke
When someone's being fair is what.
Matt Kilty
Tell me about it is kind.
Heather Radke
How's it feel when someone's not being fair? How should we talk about these feelings?
Children in classroom
Or like, one time when I was.
Matt Kilty
At the mall, we also visited a classroom of fifth graders.
Children in classroom
I saw people, like, kicking a boy.
Matt Kilty
Who were doing a lesson on bullying.
Heather Radke
How do you recognize bullying? How do you call out bullying? What do you do when you. When you see bullying?
Matt Kilty
You know, there's this thing now they.
Children in classroom
Call, like, an upstander is someone who actually helps the situation.
Matt Kilty
Upstander.
Latif Nasser
Upstand. Oh, my gosh. That's like. They talk about that. I know.
Matt Kilty
They totally invented that since we were kids.
Heather Radke
But I think what this is is a continuation of what John was trying to do by pulling psychology into education.
Latif Nasser
It does feel like a continuation. Yeah.
Heather Radke
But whereas John was focused on the self, like self value, self worth, self esteem, what's happening now is focused on the other.
Matt Kilty
And now this is fair because everyone will be getting what they need.
Heather Radke
It's about understanding other people's needs.
Children in classroom
The things you need, the things you.
Heather Radke
Need, communicating your own needs.
Matt Kilty
What else could he say?
Children in classroom
Stop being mean.
Heather Radke
To him, it's about identifying emotions, communicating.
Children in classroom
Emotions, or just, or just walk away.
Heather Radke
It's group morning meetings. It's conflict resolution. It's learning how to make I statements like I feel blank.
Matt Kilty
It's also like, don't bully. What is fairness? Like, there's a kind of like we're in a community of people element of it.
Latif Nasser
I like that.
Matt Kilty
But so thank you. One of the kind of amazing things about this is how weirdly Jennifer.
Jennifer Crocker
Well, we should be careful about the kind of praise that we give the.
Matt Kilty
Researcher who spent her entire career looking at self esteem kind of wound up in the same place for herself as like the schools have.
Latif Nasser
What do you mean?
Matt Kilty
So then what is. I mean. Well, so I asked Jennifer, I was like, you know, being a kid in the 90s, I still have this question of like, but how do you feel good? It is good to feel good about yourself. How does one find self worth in a way that's healthy?
Jennifer Crocker
I think by not worrying about it.
Heather Radke
What does that look like?
Jennifer Crocker
So am I a person of worth and value? It's not a helpful question. It just doesn't do anything for you to ask that question or for other people. And a much better or more helpful question is how do I want to be right now? How might I support other people, for example? But really what contribution, what thing that's larger than me is important to me.
Matt Kilty
So she told us about one of the studies she did. It was looking at roommates, college roommates, two roommates who didn't know each other.
Jennifer Crocker
Before the start of their first year in college. And we asked each roommate a whole bunch of questions about their relationship over time and their self esteem. And what we found was that when roommates were responsive to the. So I'm gonna call them roommate A and roommate B because they're same sex. It gets confusing. So when roommate A is responsive to roommate B's needs, roommate B notices and is responsive in return.
Matt Kilty
And then roommate A is responsive again to roommate B. And then roommate B is responsive again to roommate A.
Jennifer Crocker
So you can get this virtuous cycle going on in relationships where when people are focused not on their own needs, but on being responsive to other people's needs, other people notice it, they appreciate it, their esteem for the other person goes up and that ends up having, it's not a huge impact, but nonetheless having a significant impact on the self esteem of the person who was responsive in the first place. So the way to boost your self esteem in a way that in my view is sustainable over time and Good for the world is to focus on the well being of other people or to organizations or institutions or things you really care about.
Heather Radke
It's so funny because I think like that's basically what John was after.
Matt Kilty
I know.
Heather Radke
Like if you could get people to understand they had self worth, self value, raise their self esteem, they would do all these things for each other.
Jennifer Crocker
Yeah. It's just that self esteem is the wrong place to focus on because you don't have to have high self esteem to make a difference.
Heather Radke
And with that, I feel that I have clearly been vindicated and validated.
Matt Kilty
No, you haven't, Matt.
Heather Radke
Yeah, the whole point is not to try and feel good about yourself.
Matt Kilty
That's not what she's saying.
Heather Radke
Yeah, she's talking about needs. Seeing needs, that's that other people's needs. Like, well, needing to be told that you did a great job jumping in a cold lake.
Latif Nasser
Wow, we're still here. So you both now have interpreted this Rorschach thing that she said as meaning that you're right and you've been right all along. And what was the point of any of this?
Matt Kilty
I mean, I'm. Jen's convinced me. I just feel like you're being incredibly. You're. You're being very resistant to just sort of a basic level of human kindness.
Heather Radke
Okay, fine. Then I will suggest that we end this episode on a positive note.
Latif Nasser
And what's the positive note?
Heather Radke
Great job, everybody.
Latif Nasser
This episode was reported by Heather Radke and Matt Kilty. It was produced by Matt Kilty with additional sound design by Jeremy Bloom and ed by Pat Walters. Original music by Ben Batchelder, voice acting by David Gable and Dan Fink and fact checking by Angeli Mercado. It was mixed by Jeremy Bloom. Special thanks to Charlotte Engrave, as well as the teachers and students at PS229 in Queens and our self esteem of the 90s kids.
Children in classroom
My name is Noah and I'm five. My name is Fievel and I'm from West Angeles, California. I'm teddy and I'm 10 years old.
Matt Kilty
Gus.
Children in classroom
I am 8 years old. My name is Arlo and I'm 6 years old. My name is Eleanor and I'm 6 years old. My name is Phil and I have. And I'm five years old. My name is Hawk. My age is five. My name is William and I am eight years old.
Jennifer Crocker
Is there anything else you'd get a.
Heather Radke
Gold medal for, Bud? Among your friends, among your classmates and stuff? What else?
Children in classroom
Hiding.
Heather Radke
Hiding?
Jennifer Crocker
Yeah.
Children in classroom
Yeah, I'm like a really good hider and hiding other things.
Latif Nasser
That's it from us. And listening and responding to listeners needs. We are gonna post another episode in this feed next week. Catch you then. Bye bye bye.
Heather Radke
Hi, I'm Alyssa Mahoney from Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nassar. Soren Wheeler is our Executive editor. Sarah Sambach is our Executive Director. Our Managing Editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nanasambandan, Matt Kiel T. Mona Macacre, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Rebecca Rand, Anisa Vitza, Ariane Wack, Molly Webster and Jessica Young. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angeli Mercado, and Sophie Sami. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is.
Matt Kilty
Provided by the Simons foundation foundation and.
Heather Radke
The John Templeton Foundation.
Matt Kilty
Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by.
Heather Radke
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Date: January 23, 2026
Hosts: Lulu Miller & Latif Nasser
Produced by: WNYC Studios
This episode of Radiolab embarks on a deep, dynamic investigation into the origins, rise, and complicated fallout of the self-esteem movement in America. Producers Matt Kilty and Heather Radke trace how the concept went from a niche idea to a public policy crusade—thanks in large part to one fascinating, troubled, and determined state legislator: John Vasconcellos. Along the way, the episode explores why self-esteem became an American obsession, the surprising psychological roots of its rise, and the hard truths about its effectiveness and legacy.
Personal Reflection as Prelude:
The episode begins with Matt and Heather talking candidly about their own struggles with self-worth as creative professionals.
The Ubiquity of 'Self-Esteem' in Culture:
They observe how the pursuit of self-esteem has become everywhere—social media, reality TV, therapy, and entire industries.
Early Life & Influences:
John grows up in a strict Catholic family in San Jose, drilled with messages of original sin and self-loathing.
Academic & Political Success, but Inner Turmoil:
John achieves at the highest levels (multiple valedictorian, law school, rising political star), yet suffers a massive nervous breakdown after winning office.
Therapy & Esalen Institute:
Catapulted by a therapeutic awakening in the 1960s, John gravitates toward Esalen, a mecca for encounter groups and the human potential movement.
From Freud to Carl Rogers:
Psychology moves from Freud's pessimism ("ordinary unhappiness") to Carl Rogers’ radical idea that people are fundamentally good and suffer from not being their "real selves."
Encounter Groups: Radical Authenticity:
Encounter groups encourage direct, emotional expression—sometimes including cathartic acts like punching pillows or standing naked before strangers—to access 'true self.'
From Buttoned-Up Politician to Expressive Crusader:
After his encounters at Esalen, John changes dramatically—dress, manner, openness.
A New Political Philosophy:
John brings his faith in personal growth and inherent goodness into state politics. He insists public policy is rooted in our beliefs about human nature.
Radical Idea:
Self-esteem, John becomes convinced, is the lever for reducing society’s ills—crime, drug use, teen pregnancy.
From Concept to Crusade:
In the 1980s, John (now a powerful legislator) establishes the Task Force to Promote Self Esteem in California—facing first ridicule, then nationwide acclaim.
In Schools:
The 1990s see a tidal wave of self-esteem curricula—workbooks, affirmation posters, “star attraction” bulletin boards, sparkle statements, and even dolphin puppets teaching self-love.
Shaky Science Revealed:
Researchers warn early on (and in confidential tapes) that the data supporting self-esteem as a "social vaccine" are at best correlational, not causal—a nuance John chooses to disregard.
The Collapse:
By the early 2000s, sweeping meta-analyses show self-esteem doesn’t prevent crime, substance abuse, or school failure.
The Downside:
High self-esteem is linked to happiness and positive self-regard, but it can also foster complacency, resistance to feedback, and even aggression.
Falling Out of Fashion:
By the mid-2000s, self-esteem becomes a punchline—“participation trophies,” “everyone’s a winner”—and John is left fighting an increasingly lonely battle.
Personal Toll:
John, despite his public commitment to self-worth, struggled deeply with his own—never able to fully escape inner doubt or build lasting, intimate relationships.
John’s Passing:
In 2014, John dies of cancer—surrounded by friends, finally able to be seen and held, even naked, without shame.
From 'Self' to 'Other':
Schools today have moved from “self-esteem” to “SEL” (Social Emotional Learning), focusing on understanding and managing feelings, fairness, kindness, and being an "upstander"—valuing the social, not just the individual.
What Truly Builds Self-Worth?
Jennifer Crocker shares: pursuing self-esteem directly is less effective than responsiveness to others' needs—supporting them creates a “virtuous cycle” that ultimately builds genuine, resilient self-worth.
On the American Search for Self-Esteem:
"I think the question of 'how might I feel better about myself' is pretty normal. Like kind of about as normal as it could be." — Matt Kilty [02:12]
On Encounter Groups:
"It's wild! The group leader will get some of these people to punch pillows, to let out these primal screams..." — Matt Kilty [15:57]
On the Core Flaw of the Movement:
"If I have earned high self-esteem today by having some success in my life, then have I earned low self-esteem tomorrow, if I have a failure?" — Jennifer Crocker [56:55]
On the Shift in Schools:
"I feel like this is a continuation. Whereas John was focused on the self... what's happening now is focused on the other." — Heather Radke [70:15]
The episode blends Radiolab’s trademark playfulness (“sparkle statements!” “Duso the dolphin!”), moments of humor, deeply personal anecdotes, and philosophical inquiry with poignant, sometimes bittersweet emotional candor. Heather and Matt’s on-air banter mirrors the episode’s broader themes about validation, need, and conflicting desires for both authenticity and social connection.
This episode provides rich history, human drama, skeptical inquiry, and a reckoning with a core American hope (and illusion?): that loving yourself is the answer to everything. It ultimately suggests that real self-worth may be found less in gazing inward, and more in connecting outward—with empathy, responsiveness, and community.
End of summary.