Jonathan Hill (1:55)

To find out where exactly our manners have gone, I talked to Allie Volpe, who writes about relationships and social health and friendship at Vox.

Allie Volpe (2:03)

Yeah, it seems like we are in a weird time for how we're treating each other. Everywhere you go, it seems like there are people who are acting in ways that are pretty bizarre and are signifying that, like they do not care about other people's comfort. Google searches for quote is it rude? Have steadily climbed over the last 20 years. And even Lizzie Post, who's the great great granddaughter of like the famous etiquette maven Emily Post, gets this question all of the time. And her predecessors have gotten it too, of like, are we ruder now than we were in the past? And so it's almost a comfort to know that each generation seems to be facing the same issue of thinking the one that is following it is more rude.

Jonathan Hill (2:45)

Okay. Have you noticed any of this rudeness yourself? Like, are there examples you have in your day to day life where you're like, oh, that was crazy.

Allie Volpe (2:53)

Oh, definitely. People openly scrolling on their phones in movie theaters, like, not even trying to hide it anymore. I've seen someone, like, smoking a cigarette on the subway like that. To me, seems like really bizarre behavior. Yeah.

Nedra Glover Tawab (3:08)

Yeah.

Jonathan Hill (3:09)

I think the thing that I see the most is people playing music on their phone out loud. And it's not like a crowd is around them and they're trying to, like, you know, ooh, listen to this. But it's just them and their music out loud.

Allie Volpe (3:23)

I know, I know. And, like, I take the boss a lot. I love the bus. And, like, it is every single time I'm on the bus, someone's, like, playing a TikTok full blast, having a FaceTime conversation full out in the open without headphones. And I'm like, this is bizarre. But, like, everyone's in your business now. Like, you do. Do you want everyone to know what's going on?

Jonathan Hill (3:43)

I know as a nosy person, it's good in that way, but don't do that. Okay, so we have this anecdotal evidence, but are people actually ruder now? Right.

Allie Volpe (3:53)

It's, like, kind of hard to measure rudeness because everyone has, like, a slightly different definition of it. One of the experts I spoke to defined rudeness as a behavior, an action or a comment that is meant to be disrespectful or violates a social norm. So everyone has, like, a little bit of a different idea of, like, what they consider disrespectful, you know, but there's some, like, evidence that people are feeling that we are being a little bit rude. There was a recent Pew Research center survey that found that nearly half of the country believes that people's behavior is more rude than it was before the pandemic. And a UNC business professor conducted a worldwide survey in 2022. So sort of like in the midst of pandemic changes. And she found that 73% of respondents said it wasn't unusual for customers to be rude, compared to 61% who said the same in 2012. So, like, that's a pretty significant jump over a decade.

Jonathan Hill (4:52)

Why are we more rude now?

Allie Volpe (4:54)

Right. Like, in that study in particular, the 2022 survey, she found the number one reason for people being rude was feeling stressed or overwhelmed. And I think that is, you know, in part because of the pandemic. The pandemic was a really stressful, crazy time. And it was an inflection point because. Because rude can be defined as, like, a behavior that, like, violates a social norm. And when we think about the pandemic, social norms were being created in real time because we had this virus that nobody knew what to do about. So there's a lot of new social norms cropping up and a lot of ways to defy those. We had a lot of people not wanting to mask, not wanting to stay home. Also, we live in a world that's incredibly polarized, and it's only gotten worse since the pandemic. Inflation, tariffs, stressful news. It makes sense that people are more stressed and have shorter fuses than ever before.

Jonathan Hill (5:52)

Do you think any of this is from a sense of entitlement? You know, we're told to put ourselves first a lot, which is good. For a long time, people haven't been thinking of themselves. But is that almost making us a little less empathetic?

Allie Volpe (6:06)

Yeah, yeah. Like, this pendulum has really swung from like, like, work hard sacrifice to now prioritize your own comfort at all costs. And I understand it like, the world is crazy and it's stressful right now, and everything feels really hard. And so one way of controlling that is to buy, like, to make your world a little safer, a little less chaotic, and to self soothe. And to do that, people are sort of pushing out other people that they see as problematic. And, you know, I think we've taken it a little too far.

Jonathan Hill (6:39)

It can sometimes be hard to confront people on their rudeness, but it's not always clear whether what they're doing is actually rude. How do you know if something is rude or not?

Allie Volpe (6:51)

Yeah, it is so hard because there's a lot of ambiguity recently. Like, I was finishing up a run. I was, like, chatting with a neighbor, and she was like, oh, I said hi to you, like, a couple blocks back. But, like, you didn't say hi back to me. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, because I had headphones on, I had my music. I like, when I run, I'm like, very in the zone. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I just totally did not see you. I'm so sorry. But, like, she kind of called me out on it. But, like, she could have easily been like, oh, Ally was being rude. Like, she Totally ignored me. Like, she saw me. She just wasn't saying hi because, like, there are a lot of times when, like, people are just like not paying attention. Like, you don't know what their intentions are. And so I think it's like a very, very fine line to walk of, like telling someone to like, stop it.

Jonathan Hill (7:36)

Okay. That's. If you encounter something that is rude, how do you keep from being the rude one?

Allie Volpe (7:42)

Yeah, my mom will probably be really happy that I'm quoting her here. But she always says, like, the only thing you can control is yourself and your own behavior. Like, that was something she always tried to instill in us. And that I think is the easiest thing we can do when it comes to rudeness. If we just perpetuate polite, nice behavior that is number one. Modeling it for the people in our life, especially kids, we can remind ourselves that not everybody is being rude. You're like, oh yeah, that guy helped me the door open for me the other day. Like, that was really nice. And like, it just helps you remember, like, this world is not all bad. And like, I can do those little things like that too to sort of, you know, bring some positivity to the world.

Jonathan Hill (8:28)

All right, thanks, Ali. That was a really polite conversation.

Allie Volpe (8:31)

Thank you.

Jonathan Hill (8:35)

So we can control our own behavior, but what about the self help industry making billions of dollars off of our self control? That's up next.

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Jonathan Hill (9:55)

Support for Explain it to Me comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Some questions need more than a quick search. The kind where you want to really understand what's happening, not just get a basic overview. That's where Claude comes in. Claude is an AI thinking partner designed for people who enjoy digging deeper. It lets you upload documents, explore multiple perspectives, and piece together the context that might make complex topics finally make sense. Claude can analyze documents up to 200 pages, search current sources with proper citations, and work through problems step by step. What makes it different is how it explores complexity with you. Rather than rushing to simple answers, it helps you connect scattered information and understand the deeper patterns. Whether you're researching for work, trying to understand current events, or working through personal decisions that matter to you, Claude matches your curiosity and commitment to getting the full picture. You can try Claude for free at Claude AI. Explain it to me and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. We're back. It's Explain it to Me. And we wanted to ask the question, are we doing so much self help that we've ended up actually self helping ourselves into being antisocial? Jessica Lamb Shapiro is the author of a book called Promised Land My Journey Through America's Self Help Culture. She grew up around self help and it left her kind of skeptical of it all.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (11:20)

My dad was a child psychologist and he wrote parenting books. And I later found out that he used me as an example in his parenting books.

Allie Volpe (11:27)

So.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (11:28)

So I'm not gonna say I was being experimented on, but I was a little bit being experimented on. Cause he had theories about child psychology and how to raise kids and then he implemented those theories as a parent, but also as a self help writer. And so in that way, you know, I grew up around self help, but like we all did, you know, because that kind of stuff percolates even if you're not reading self help book. You know, we all see affirmations everywhere. And like if you ever shop at Lululemon, there's like a bunch of affirmations on their bag and there's posters and like, we're just. It's so kind of woven into the fabric of our experience that I kind of think everyone grew up with self help, even if they didn't grow up reading self help books or having a self help book writer for a dad.

Jonathan Hill (12:11)

How long have these books been around?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (12:14)

So the first incarnation of self help, where they actually used the word self help was in the mid-1800s. There was a writer named Samuel Smiles, he wrote for the Leeds Times and there was a society called the Mutual Improvement Society. And they invited him to give a lecture and he told these stories, these anecdotes about working men, you know, rising from poverty into positions of power. And it was hugely successful. People love the stories. So he started doing more and more lectures and then eventually made it into a book. And the book was called Self Help. It came out in 1859, it was immediately a bestseller.

Jonathan Hill (12:55)

The spirit of self help is the.

Allie Volpe (12:57)

Root of all genuine growth in the individual and exhibited in the lives of many. It constitutes the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in.

Jonathan Hill (13:12)

Its effects, but help from within is invariably invigorates.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (13:19)

So it was like popular way before I thought. And then you can also find predecessors in like the Greek Stoics, which is like, you know, 160, 180 AD there was a Roman emperor named Marcus Aurelius who wrote a book called Meditations. And that book is actually sold as a self help book today. Like if you go to your bookstore and you look in the self help section, you can find Marcus Aurelius, self help.

Jonathan Hill (13:46)

Oh my God. Every man I know reads about Stoicism. So yes, I do know the name quite well.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (13:54)

It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any.

Allie Volpe (13:58)

Action should be in due proportion to its worth.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (14:01)

For then you won't tire and give.

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Jessica Lamb Shapiro (14:06)

Lesser things beyond what should be allowed. Like when I was writing the book, I was like, oh, you know, this is don't sweat the small stuff. Do you remember that book? It was like a best selling book. I don't know when I was growing up, so 80s, 90s. And it basically is the same thing with a different, more dire message, like we're all gonna die one day, so who cares? That's the stoic version of don't sweat the small stuff. But repackaged for today's happy America, it is basically the same message. So any self help book you find today, there's always a predecessor of 100 years or earlier that some. Somebody basically wrote the same thing.

Jonathan Hill (14:45)

How big is the self help industry?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (14:48)

I actually had to look this up. The global self help industry is worth between 45 and $59 billion. It's also called personal growth or self improvement. Not always self help. And this isn't just books but it's also like courses and tiktoks and affirmation a day, calendars.

Nedra Glover Tawab (15:07)

Mm.

Jonathan Hill (15:08)

So you did all of this work, and part of it was to find out if self help books are a scam. Are they a scam?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (15:17)

This is a very difficult question. I wouldn't say that they're a scam. And then again, there are so many self help books. There's good ones, there's bad ones. There's bad ones that have some good qualities. So, like, if you kind of don't take everything as gospel, you can kind of pick and choose, like, what's helpful and what's not helpful.

Nedra Glover Tawab (15:37)

We.

Jonathan Hill (15:37)

It seems like we love self help if billions of dollars are being spent on it. I'm looking at my bookshelf as we speak, and I can see a copy of Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Like, I. And that's just one of the many self help books I have. Why are we so drawn to these?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (15:56)

I mean, I think it's a really appealing idea that whatever your life is, it could be better. You know, you could be richer, you could be hotter, you could be smarter, you could be more popular, you could be faster. Like, you know, it's just an idea that's very appealing to us as human beings that we could just be more awesome than we are right now or have more awesome stuff than we have right now. That's, like the whole manifesting thing right at its base. It's actually a very appealing idea. And it appeals to me. I mean, I don't. I'm always trying to do things better. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to be smarter. I'm trying to be more social, leave my house more, you know, be a better dog owner. I have read books about dog training.

Jonathan Hill (16:42)

It's interesting because you started out pretty skeptical of self help going into writing this book. Do you still feel that way, or have you found redeeming things in it?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (16:54)

I've definitely found redeeming things in it. I absolutely think you should always retain a bit of skepticism and a little bit of cynicism when you're encountering self help just to, you know, stave off the weirdest ideas, because there are some really weird ideas out there. But also, you know, I. I was in my 30s when I wrote the book. I'm in my 40s now, and a lot has happened politically, socially. The pandemic happened, and those were, like, some tough times for me and for everybody. So I feel like I have a lot more sympathy for, like, the urge to self help and just sort of the idea of it, even if it doesn't get realized in the books.

Jonathan Hill (17:35)

What's changed about self help in recent years? Anything at all?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (17:39)

One thing I've noticed is that they've kind of become better and more mainstreamed. I'm thinking of like someone like Brene Brown who is an academic researcher and actually has, you know, studies to back up the things she's saying, but also is sometimes seen as a self help writer and certainly her books have helped people.

Jonathan Hill (18:00)

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of.

Allie Volpe (18:05)

Courage to be vulnerable, to let ourselves be seen.

Jonathan Hill (18:08)

To be honest, if we're going to find our way back to each other.

Allie Volpe (18:14)

Vulnerability is going to be that path.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (18:16)

So there's kind of an elevating of the discussion where it's like a little bit more intellectual and I think that appeals to more people. And so they've brought in like a whole new audience to self help. And I think in a way the books have become better as a result and they're certainly better and more interesting reads.

Jonathan Hill (18:34)

Do you think we're overdoing it on self help? Like, are we trying too hard to fully optimize ourselves to be our best selves?

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (18:43)

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I think we're like obsessed with betterment, obsessed with productivity. You know, I don't think that's healthy necessarily. You know, self help books are appealing because like, you're thinking like, oh, well, I'm going to go to therapy for years and I'm going to spend thousands of dollars. I could just buy this book for 20 bucks and feel better immediately and maybe get something out of it. But I think we're really losing the sort of community aspect when you're talking about self help and everything is done by yourself. I think when you do that, you lose the opportunity to have a community and to strengthen your relationships with other people. Because I know that's what it's done for me. When I try to help myself on my own, I'm still by myself. Whereas if I ask for help, you know, I'm strengthening my relationships and I'm getting a lot more out of it than just the help that I was looking for. And I think that that sense of community is really important. And so many people are feeling lonely and alienated and, you know, behind their computer that like, to get out from that and actually make contact with another person or an organization I think is really beneficial, you know, not just to society, because it's definitely beneficial to society to have people invested in the community, but also to the individual to kind of feel like they have community support and they're not just completely isolated and alone.

Jonathan Hill (20:14)

Coming up, how to get that community back?

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Jonathan Hill (22:37)

We're back. It's Explain it to me. So we're more lonely than ever these days, and that's partly because of the ways we are and aren't interacting with each other. In other words, our boundaries I spoke to Nedra Glover Tawab about this. She's a licensed therapist and author of several books, including Set Boundaries, Find Peace. But before we got into that, we needed to establish some boundaries of our own, like what boundaries are in the first place.

Nedra Glover Tawab (23:05)

Needs and expectations in our relationships that make us feel safe and comfortable. The boundary can be verbal. It can be a behavior that you start to exhibit, but it is a way for. For you to show up in your relationships, hopefully save them, keep them well, be better in them.

Jonathan Hill (23:25)

So you write a lot about boundaries. What got you interested in boundaries?

Nedra Glover Tawab (23:30)

Well, when I first became a therapist, so many of my clients were talking about work, life balance, challenges with family, challenges with their partners. And one of the very hard things to do in relationships is to be assertive. And we started to talk about boundaries, not with using the B word of boundaries, but about self advocacy. What would you want them to know? How do we manage this situation, which for me translates to boundary issues.

Jonathan Hill (24:01)

How often does this come up in your clinical practice?

Nedra Glover Tawab (24:05)

I would say all the time, but I don't use the word boundaries. We talk about their situations, and I like to think of it as coming up with solutions. I don't think using terminology is always the best way for us to work through our issues. To say, okay, so you're a people pleaser. Let's do this thing. We can just talk about whatever issue you're talking about. You allowed someone to use your time in a way that you were uncomfortable with. How do we prevent that in the future? We don't have to use the word. You're a people please. I don't have to give you a label. We're really talking about what's presently in front of us.

Jonathan Hill (24:43)

Is it possible we're overdoing this therapy speak, especially, I think, among middle class young people these days. Are we sort of twisting these concepts at all?

Nedra Glover Tawab (24:58)

We are twisting them. I liken it to us using medical terminology in our everyday conversations with people, which you don't typically see people doing. Like, I'm not naming bones when you told me you hurt your knee, right? Like, I don't know all of the parts of the knee. But I find that with therapy, people are saying, like, bipolar. This person has a boundary issue. They have an attachment. This. It's this thing without the clinical skills to actually diagnose and help people troubleshoot in a way that is actually helpful and not just labeling them. So I think that the terminology in. In a. In a way, it boxes it in. It leaves us without nu. And we're not giving people enough flexibility in who they are in saying that you're a people pleaser.

Jonathan Hill (25:52)

Are we meant to apply these things, you know, sort of blanket across the board with everyone we interact with, or is this more about these really personal, closer relationships?

Nedra Glover Tawab (26:04)

Well, I think boundaries can be universal, but they should also be flexible. There are levels to boundaries. You see a lot of people pleasing, you know, when people don't have boundaries, and I would label those as porous boundaries, then we have rigid boundaries, which we're starting to see a lot of. And that's what you're speaking to. Rigid boundaries is where we have these walls, we have these hard rules, and we keep everyone out. Everybody gets the same rule. Well, I'll tell you, because I have so many variety of relationships, everybody doesn't even need the same rule.

Jonathan Hill (26:39)

What's some advice you give your clients about how to set better boundaries? And I mean that both when the boundaries are too porous and when they're too rigid. Like, how do people do better?

Nedra Glover Tawab (26:50)

Yeah. Well, with two rigid boundaries, I often find that they have a lot of discomfort around holding the boundary. And so we explore. Is this a boundary you even want to have, or is this a boundary that you feel like you should have? Is this some sort of punishment you're trying to issue? Is this guilt that you're feeling? So very often with. With folks who come to Thera therapy, they've been tolerating things for a very long time. And so that's why we've seen a lot of overactive boundaries. Right? Because people have been tolerating their uncle, their cousin, their friend, their job for so long that when the boundary comes out, it's a yell, it's a scream, it's aggressive, it's firm. Because we're tired. And so we have to think about what are the boundaries that I can implement here that I can actually live with with what are the boundaries here that would make me feel comfortable in this relationship? If all of your boundaries end in a cutoff? Because I see that sometime the boundary is a cutoff. There is no in between. It's either we're in relationship or we are not. Have there been any things in between that help you all stay in a relationship? In jobs, we call that a performance review plan. Right? So you give somebody some things that they need to do, or you take on some things that you need to do so the relationship can be better. But we are going right from problem of firing.

Jonathan Hill (28:19)

How do you encourage your clients to connect with people if they want to and they're struggling to.

Nedra Glover Tawab (28:28)

We do a lot of scripting. It's September right now. And I'll tell you, this is the time of year, particularly October, where a lot of my clients start talking, talking about their family stuff. And so during this time, because, you know, a lot of my clients, I've seen them for years, so guess what, we can start right now in September and we start talking about, okay, so when you go home for Thanksgiving and you got to sleep on the couch and your sister gets the bedroom, what are we doing different this year? What are we. These are, these are boundary things, right? So the different thing that they might do is they stay in a hotel. They decide to have the conversation before the holiday that perhaps this would be a rotating thing, right? Sometimes they get the couch, sometimes I get the couch. So it's really about being proactive when, you know, situations will occur.

Jonathan Hill (29:21)

We spent this episode, we've talked about, I don't know, just how so much of life is individualistic now. We've talked about self help and all these different things, but it does seem like at the end of the day, the only thing you can control is yourself. So maybe it's just thinking, okay, what are the ways that I control myself in these situations?

Nedra Glover Tawab (29:47)

You know, one of the things that I think about often when I hear people lamenting about relationships is we actually need more community than we have. And that's why we put so much pressure on the one friend or on our parents or the one sibling or the. We just need more people. Many of us, we're hyper focused on very few relationships. So now it's leading to depression and loneliness because we don't have enough people to be kicking people out of our lives.

Jonathan Hill (30:27)

That's therapist and author Nedra Glover Tawab. We're doing an episode on how fatherhood and our idea of a good dad is changing. So if you're a dad, give us your thoughts. Why did you decide to become a dad? And how has fatherhood changed your friendships? We'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or send us a voice memo to ask ask vox vox.com this episode was produced by Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Miranda Kennedy with help from Megan Kanan, fact checking by Melissa Hirsch and Isabel Lichtenstein. And our engineer this week was Matthew Billy. Special thanks to Noel King, the co host of Today Explained, who's very well read. If you want to check out more podcasts from Vox Media, head over to podcast.voxmedia.com I'm your host, Jonathan Hill. Thanks for listening. Bye. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people.

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Jonathan Hill (31:44)

Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

Jessica Lamb Shapiro (31:48)

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Jonathan Hill (31:51)

Cut the camera. They see us.

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