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Noel King
Hunter Biden's three hour interview with Andrew Callahan started out normally enough. Lore. So you're born here in Delaware or born here in Pennsylvania?
Hunter Biden
In Delaware.
Noel King
Okay. In Delaware. Yeah.
Hunter Biden
Wilmington.
Noel King
Small talk. What are your thoughts on Wilmington, Delaware? Nice place. Oh, yeah. Work, Family. Addiction.
Hunter Biden
Anyway, I don't want to tell people how to make crack cocaine.
Noel King
He did. Then came the crash out.
Hunter Biden
I hear Rahm Emanuel is gonna run for president. Like, oh, boy, there's the answer. There's the fucking answer. You pod save America motherfuckers. Saying, you know, I don't think South Carolina. That's only there because Joe Biden.
Noel King
Joe Biden.
Kendall Cunningham
What the fuck?
Hunter Biden
I mean, are they out of their fucking minds? I don't have to be fucking nice. Number one, I agree with Quentin Tarantino. Fucking George Clooney is not a fucking. I don't know what he is. He's a brand. And by the way, and God bless.
Noel King
Him, we're not picking on him. Keep coming back, Hunter. No. In fact, everybody has been crashing out lately. And today on Today Explained from Vox, we're going to ask what's up?
Maytal Eyal
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Kendall Cunningham
You can Venmo everything. Your favorite band's merch. You can Venmo this or their next show.
You can Venmo that.
Visit Venmo Me debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the.
Noel King
Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license by Mastercard International, Inc. The card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply.
Ryan Reynolds
Brace yourselves. A brand new bombshell is entering today.
Kendall Cunningham
Today explained. My name is Kendall Cunningham and I'm a culture reporter at Vox.
Noel King
Okay, so you recently wrote a piece about crashing out.
Kendall Cunningham
Yes.
Noel King
What does crashing out look like and what does it sound like?
Kendall Cunningham
It's a pretty broad term. It basically means to have a meltdown, to reach your limit emotionally, to lose your cool. You can either do it privately or publicly.
Noel King
What do you mean? I'm the Osborne.
Ryan Reynolds
You shouldn't have any other choice but to give us a roof over our heads, food for our stomachs. And whatever else we need to survive.
Kendall Cunningham
It could look like crying in your room all day, cursing someone out.
Noel King
I got my period today.
Kendall Cunningham
So I look in the mirror, who's that? Who's that big, fat, ugly girl? Like, why is my brain. Why this should not be legal? I cannot remain who I am in an atmosphere like that. And it's so. Ugh. I'm just so. I wanna. You'll often see people talking about crashing out on other people, which can unfortunately mean, like, physically attacking someone. And you're doing all this seemingly without any regard for the consequences of that behavior.
Noel King
Anyways, in conclusion, tomorrow is not promised, so cuss them out today.
Kendall Cunningham
Yeah, yeah.
Noel King
When was the last time you personally crashed out?
Kendall Cunningham
Oh, God. Honestly, probably my second to last experience at an airport where, as everyone knows, there's a lot of delays happening, just terrible experiences coming and going. So I probably had a little crash out in the bathroom.
Noel King
Okay, but you didn't attack anyone. You were just like, let me get in the cell.
Kendall Cunningham
No, it was an internal crash out.
Noel King
Okay, so how did crashing out get on your radar enough for you to write a whole piece about it?
Kendall Cunningham
Well, I've been hearing it for a while now. It's not totally new slang. There have been, like, early uses of it in rap songs and on black Twitter in, like, the mid 2010s.
Noel King
Crash out if I'm nervous.
Kendall Cunningham
But it became very popular recently amongst Gen Z and even some millennials over the past year. Can we normalize crashing out?
I really hate for y' all to.
Noel King
Be having crash out sessions on me. And then you turn off your stitches, girl.
Kendall Cunningham
Turn them back. Specifically on TikTok, it's hard to scroll through your for you page, your explore page, without seeing people talking about crashing out.
Ryan Reynolds
And when you start tripping, don't hold nothing back, trip all the way.
Kendall Cunningham
And there have been some high profile examples over the past few months. Justin Bieber has been posting a lot of bizarre and very emotionally raw content on social media lately and has been accused of crashing out. He also had like this viral run in with the paparazzi where he said.
Ryan Reynolds
I'm a dad, I'm a husband. You're not getting it.
Noel King
It's not clock to you.
Ryan Reynolds
It's not clocking to you that I'm standing on business, is it?
Kendall Cunningham
And so everyone sort of immediately deemed that as like a crash out and sort of like found it relatable, weirdly. And there's also been this season of Love Island.
You are now single and vulnerable, where.
We had a very Polarizing contestant named Huda who was having this very sort of unwarranted reaction to being uncoupled from her very short term boo named Jeremiah on the show. He's talking literally. Nick is trying to convince him to understand that I'm sitting and he's going and having a great day and now he's thinking about being with Iris. You're a bitch. You're a bitch. And she later on went to apologize and admit that she was having a crash out. I'm sorry that I was mean.
Noel King
So good.
Kendall Cunningham
And you know, I know I'm not the nicest to you all the time.
Noel King
But.
Kendall Cunningham
I promise I still care.
Noel King
Did you by any chance see the Hunter Biden video that just came out?
Kendall Cunningham
I did, yeah. He's been crashing out for a while now it seems, so I'm not too surprised. But yeah, I would. I think everyone is sort of labeling that a crash out as well.
Noel King
It's something that, as you note in your piece, we tend to associate with Gen Z. Why is that?
Kendall Cunningham
I think if you just go on TikTok, you'll see that a lot of the people posting their crash outs are younger people. I think we in general just associate a lot of the burgeoning social media trends with that cohort because they are the most online. And I think when it comes to crashing out, Gen Z specifically has been more encouraged to go to public platforms to express their emotions. A big trend on TikTok, before crashing out sort of became a thing was just, you know, going to TikTok to cry and to talk about how bad of a day you had. Talk about a breakup, feeling really defeated by, you know, just day to day stuff makes you feel stupid. I'm trying to go to sleep, but I can't quit crying because I'm thinking of, I'm thinking, oh my God, I can't quit crying. Very sort of private things that Gen Z is very comfortable exposing to a huge audience. And a lot of that has to do with like Covid, the fact that, you know, a lot of the communication they're having is on social media and a lot of people may be seeking sort of the immediate validation that you get when something goes viral and you have people sort of immediately sympathizing with you that you may not get in such large numbers in person if you don't have, you know, a community to talk to or friends to talk to. So yeah, those are just some of the reasons that it's being associated with Gen Z.
Noel King
I guess part of the, the charm of TikTok is that you're supposed to be a little bit messy, right?
Kendall Cunningham
Yeah. I mean, TikTok is definitely less filtered compared to Instagram and YouTube and even Twitter, which everyone says is, like, the messiest app, but it's truly TikTok. It's a lot of, like, spur of the moment content, you know, people filming themselves right after they've gotten to an argument or, like, in the middle of an argument, trying to get, like, the Internet's opinion. It's a lot of, like, very raw, diaristic content.
Noel King
Do you think the people who post themselves crashing out online, do you think they have any worries about how this might affect them? I don't know, like, six months from now, when everything's fine and you're up for a promotion at work?
Kendall Cunningham
Yeah, it unfortunately doesn't seem like it. It's something that I think about all the time. It's so important to realize that, like, your emotions are most of the time very temporary. But I think it sort of speaks to, like, the desperation of, like, just wanting connection, wanting people to validate your emotions, wanting that immediate sort of comfort, whether it's from, you know, a bunch of people that you'll never encounter in real life and don't know you. So I think it really just speaks to, like, this desperate need for wanting to be heard that a lot of people are having right now.
Noel King
Okay. So these kind of trends come and go, and yet we all have emotions, and we all always will, and we will all always have to go to the airport, and we will all always have a meltdown. Where do you think crashing out goes from here?
Kendall Cunningham
Hmm. I mean, I think as humans, we love drama and we love mess, and it seems like we like observing mess less on, like, an entertainment level and more amongst just, like, regular people. I feel like the sort of Coldplay incident that happened last week was an example of that. We love just, like, civilian drama.
Ryan Reynolds
Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.
Kendall Cunningham
I do think that that appetite won't necessarily go away. It may look a little different, but who knows? I mean, generations change. They have different priorities. Maybe we'll see a sort of backlash to this sort of overexposing of our, you know, emotional meltdowns and mental health issues with the next generation, but I think that that appetite for mess will still be around.
Noel King
I love the idea of the little alphas being, like, super buttoned up about their feelings. No one knows what that baby is thinking about.
Kendall Cunningham
Honestly, I wouldn't blame them.
Noel King
Kendall Cunningham covers culture for fox. Coming up next, we're all going to the World's Fair. Jk, jk, jk. We're all going to the psychologist.
Ryan Reynolds
Support for this show comes from the Life Kit Podcast from npr. I think I know the person who started the Life Kit Podcast from npr. She's very nice. You know that the real world doesn't come with a user manual, but every day you're making choices, some big, some small, that shape the direction of your life. No big deal. So how do you navigate it all? That's what the Life Kit Podcast is all about. If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance, Life Kit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change. From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, the Life Kit Podcast from NPR offers real stories, relevant insights and clear takeaways to help you meet those decision making moments with confidence and clarity. You can listen now to the Life Kit Podcast from npr. It's all about understanding how to live a little better. Starting now.
Noel King
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Ryan Reynolds
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch upfront.
Noel King
Payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. Cmintmobile.com.
Kendall Cunningham
Oh, when you come crash.
Noel King
Today explained. I'm Noel King, standing on business with Maytal Eyal. Maital is a psychologist and writer. You ended up writing about emotional outbursts online for the atlant. How'd you get that assignment?
Kendall Cunningham
I actually was on TikTok doing the strange anthropological research I like to do on TikTok and I discovered a phenomenon which I guess we can call it Crying TikTok, but it's Like I have.
So much pent up emotion inside me.
That until I let it go, I.
Cannot even think of a solution.
What is wrong with me?
I'm only crying because I'm so fucking angry right now, because I've never missed a flight in my life. Like, fuck, I'm so mad.
And I found it to be so fascinating and emblematic of a certain cultural moment we're in. And it was about this concept of what I'm calling MC vulnerability or artificial process synthetic vulnerability online.
Noel King
You're a therapist. Why did that stand out to you?
Kendall Cunningham
I see, I see people cry a lot.
Noel King
Yes, I'm.
Kendall Cunningham
It's part of the gig. And, and I think of crying as one of the most vulnerable things you can do. I mean, you take off the mask, you expose yourself and you show what it's like to be at your rawest. But I think crying TikTok is something different. And I think to understand why this phenomenon exists, we have to understand the context we're in right now. I think it's almost become cliche to say we're in a loneliness epidemic. Touch deprivation is a thing that we should be worried about. We're in a time period where the average American man, for every one hour he spends with a person outside the home, he's spending seven hours watching tv. So we are starved for connection. There's a, you know, college type student I work with and they find it really difficult to put themselves out there with other people. It just feels so scary. They're very self conscious, brings up a lot of anxiety. So they fell into a habit where they would eat lunch every day and they would sit at their desk and they would put their lunch in front of them and they would set up their computer and they would open it and they'd put on YouTube and they'd every day put on YouTube with one of their favorite influencers who was also eating lunch.
Noel King
Wow.
Kendall Cunningham
And just opening up about their day to day lives and what's hard and you know, the difficulties they're facing. And that's how my client would spend their lunchtime. And it felt easier to be, you know, getting that sort of like intimacy connection hit from the influencer rather than from a real person. They'd have to, you know, put themselves out to meet.
Noel King
You know, I weirdly see both pros and cons in here. I remember being high school aged and do you remember the old cliche that when you didn't have anyone to sit with, you'd go in the bathroom and kind of just like eat Your lunch in a stall, right? It was, what's the movie?
Kendall Cunningham
Mean Girls.
Noel King
Mean Girls, yeah, yeah. And I don't remember doing that specifically, but I do remember like going outside by myself. So you have a young person here who at least has someone to sit and eat with. That person is just not really there. But at the same time some of what's happening here seems pretty emotionally like dysregulated. We talked in the first half of the show about crashing out, about young people like just exhibiting these huge emotions online. Is something going on with Gen Z where they feel bigger feelings, where they are less regulated in their emotions?
Kendall Cunningham
I think so. I think what's so interesting about technology is it lets you instead of just regulating yourself emotionally and like, you know, if you feel bored or you feel really angry or you feel really sad, the best thing you can do is find ways to soothe yourself so that emotion kind of calms down. But I think what happens if we always have a phone in hand? You know, it's not just Gen Z, it's all of us. If we always have a phone in hand, anytime we feel big emotion, we can just turn straight to our screens. And that doesn't really allow us to go through the process of feeling through an emotion, letting it dissipate, letting us calm down. We almost just sort of short circuit it and distract ourselves and numb out. And then I think we don't actually learn to self regulate because of technology.
Noel King
I think I hear you saying that the emotion is real. We shouldn't assume that because someone is doing this online they're faking it or they're just trying to get attention.
Kendall Cunningham
No, and I think like with crying TikTok, I don't think it's just, you know, a bunch of navel gazing influencers and celebrities pretending to cry so they can get likes. I think they're giving people what they want. I think we want emotionality from our celebrities and from our influencers. It's because we're not getting it in real life as much as we used to.
Noel King
And what are the consequences of that?
Kendall Cunningham
Emotional regulation becomes more difficult to come by. And I think there's a. What I've noticed the most, I think especially with Gen Z is there's a diminishing with this distress tolerance, this ability to kind of sit and endure uncomfortable, human, messy emotion. Sometimes I wonder if they feel more comfortable or what I see is they will feel more comfortable posting about their deepest emotions than they will sitting face to face telling someone behind closed doors, this is how I'm Feeling. I think what has been happening with social media is just priming us for what's next, something much bigger. Oh, I think right, we're, we're really used to like, okay, we get to see an influencer open up about their feelings or a celebrity open up about their feelings. We almost get to like feel this emotional connection that's safe and behind the screen. And I think it's priming us for what's about to happen. And what's about to happen is AI is going to become so deeply embedded into our day to day lives. Not just as, you know, a productivity agent, but as a confidant, as a friend, as a therapist. And I think we've been primed to get used to being vulnerable with a not human. And so I fear that like the more we start relying on AI for, to get our emotional needs met to, for intimacy, our expectations start to change for what we want out of relationships. We start expecting the person who's across from us, listening to us to be more like AI, to never be in a bad mood, to never be hangry, to never be unavailable, to be. Hypervalidating changes the way we understand relationships and intimacy and connectedness.
Noel King
This, this all comes down to, we have a generation that has grown up with technology infancy, right? And so pulling up your chatbot might be as, as second nature as calling a therapist and saying, you know, I'm dealing with a lot of stuff here. Gen Z is, is depending on how you look at the data. And you can tell me if I'm wrong here, but Gen Z seems to have a lot of experience with therapy and with therapeutic talk. But it doesn't sound like that is necessarily leading the generation to greater happiness, greater resiliency. What is, what, what do you think is going on? What is the tension here?
Kendall Cunningham
There was a really interesting study conducted, it was in Australia and it was with Gen Z kids at school and they gave them, I Forgot it was eight or 12 weeks of a something called dialectical behavioral therapy intervention. It's like the gold standard in psychology. It was teaching them mindfulness language about their therapeutic needs, it teaching them skills to manage anxiety and depression. And by the end of the study what they found is the mental health of the teens got worse. And I think what happens is as people become more and more aware of concepts like trauma and concepts like anxiety and depression, they actually, you know, you think, okay, this is going to be so helpful and allow people to deal with it. And sometimes it is helpful, but sometimes what it actually does is it draws more and more attention to what might be wrong. And it actually can sabotage people's mental health. It can cause them to be over aware and over conscious that they might not be doing well. And I think that's the, that's the double edged sword of therapy culture and therapy speak and all these therapy concepts, they can be really helpful but we can also start to drown in them. We can also start to perceive our world through diagnoses and mental health issues and therapeutic concepts actually to our detriment.
Noel King
And so are there better options than therapy for young people?
Kendall Cunningham
So about 70 to 80% roughly of the type of therapy people engage in is individual therapy. So it's sitting alone, one on one with a therapist, turning inward on yourself and just excavating, excavating, excavating who you are, what you want, what you're afraid of, so on and so forth. And then there's about 10%, maybe less of people who do group therapy. And I actually think group therapy, it should be the reverse. We should be doing way more work with group therapy and working on our sort of relational fitness. And instead of just sitting one on one and turning further and further inward, I think it would be really helpful to sit in a group with other people and turn outward and understand how other people are doing and understand our patterns as we relate to other people. I think right now in this like era of loneliness and atomization and everyone is so self turned, we need to turn back outwards. And I think group therapy would be a really good alternative to individual therapy. Foreign.
Noel King
Eyal is a psychologist who wrote for the Atlantic about why everybody's crying online. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Ibarra and Devin Schwartz. It was edited by Aminah El Saadi. Myles Bryan checked the facts today. Andrea, Kristin's daughter, is our only engineer. The rest of our team includes Hadi Mwagdi, Peter Balanon Rosen, Denise Guerra, Patrick Boyd and Gabrielle Burbe. Avishai Artsy is a Labubu. Jolie Myers is our deputy ep. Miranda Kennedy is our executive producer. She has France in her pants. Sean Rama's firm is a different company. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Andrea Christensdotter. Explain it to me. We'll explain it to you on Sunday. This week's episode is about how much you should tip. Will JQ dare give you a straight answer? I hear yes. I also hear she interviews economic historian. I will be there for that. Today Explained is distributed by wnyc. It is part of the Vox Media podcast network. For more award winning podcasts visit podcast voxmedia.com you can listen to this podcast and free. Who wouldn't want that, y'? All. By becoming a member, you can go to vox.commembers to sign up. I'm Noel King. It's today, explained.
Unnamed Child
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Today, Explained: "Crashing Out" Episode Summary
Released on July 25, 2025 | Hosted by Sean Rameswaram and Noel King | Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network
In this episode of Today, Explained, hosts Noel King and Sean Rameswaram delve into the trending phenomenon of "crashing out." Originating from youth vernacular and amplified by social media platforms, "crashing out" refers to emotional meltdowns or reaching one's emotional limit, often expressed publicly.
Kendall Cunningham, Vox's culture reporter, provides a comprehensive definition of "crashing out." She explains it as having a meltdown, emotionally reaching one's limit, or losing control, either privately or publicly.
Kendall Cunningham [02:10]: "It's a pretty broad term. It basically means to have a meltdown, to reach your limit emotionally, to lose your cool. You can either do it privately or publicly."
The discussion highlights several high-profile instances of "crashing out," illustrating its prevalence:
Hunter Biden's Interview: A snippet from Hunter Biden's interview showcases initial small talk that quickly devolves into an emotional outburst.
Hunter Biden [00:22]: "I hear Rahm Emanuel is gonna run for president. Like, oh, boy, there's the answer. There's the fucking answer."
Justin Bieber's Social Media Behavior: Justin Bieber has been noted for his emotionally raw and bizarre posts, deemed as public "crashing out."
Love Island Contestant Huda: On the reality show Love Island, contestant Huda exhibited an unwarranted emotional reaction after being coupled off, later apologizing for her outburst.
Huda [05:07]: "I was having a crash out. I'm sorry that I was mean."
A significant portion of the episode examines how social media, particularly TikTok, has popularized and normalized "crashing out." Gen Z, being the most active demographic on these platforms, is both the primary exhibitor and consumer of such emotional displays.
Kendall Cunningham [06:18]: "Gen Z specifically has been more encouraged to go to public platforms to express their emotions."
Key points include:
Visibility on TikTok: "Crashing out" content is ubiquitous on TikTok's "For You" and "Explore" pages, making it a normalized behavior among younger users.
Kendall Cunningham [04:23]: "It's hard to scroll through your for you page, your explore page, without seeing people talking about crashing out."
Public vs. Private Emotional Expression: While earlier generations might have kept meltdowns private, Gen Z leverages social media to seek immediate validation and connection.
Kendall Cunningham [07:58]: "Spur of the moment content... people filming themselves right after they've gotten to an argument... very raw, diaristic content."
The episode explores the implications of "crashing out" on emotional regulation and overall mental health, particularly among Gen Z.
Kendall Cunningham [17:07]: "We're not getting it in real life as much as we used to."
Key insights include:
Desensitization and Overexposure: Constant exposure to emotional outbursts can desensitize individuals, making genuine emotional regulation more challenging.
Short-Circuiting Emotional Processing: Reliance on digital platforms to express emotions may prevent individuals from developing healthy coping mechanisms.
Kendall Cunningham [17:42]: "We almost just sort of short circuit it and distract ourselves and numb out."
The conversation shifts to the role of therapy in the context of rising emotional displays online.
Kendall Cunningham [23:07]: "Group therapy would be a really good alternative to individual therapy."
Key points discussed:
Increased Awareness vs. Mental Health: While therapy and mental health awareness have risen, studies indicate that increased focus on mental health issues can sometimes exacerbate feelings of anxiety and depression.
Kendall Cunningham [21:18]: "Sometimes what it actually does is it draws more and more attention to what might be wrong."
Individual vs. Group Therapy: Cunningham advocates for more group therapy sessions to foster relational skills and outward-focused emotional processing, countering the inward-turning nature of individual therapy.
Looking ahead, the episode speculates on how advancements in artificial intelligence might further shape emotional expression and regulation.
Kendall Cunningham [23:36]: "AI is going to become so deeply embedded into our day to day lives... as a confidant, as a friend, as a therapist."
Concerns raised include:
Changing Relationship Expectations: Reliance on AI for emotional support may alter how individuals perceive and engage in human relationships, expecting constant validation and hyper-responsiveness.
Erosion of Distress Tolerance: As AI provides immediate comfort, individuals might find it harder to endure and process uncomfortable emotions independently.
The episode concludes by acknowledging the inevitable nature of emotional expressions and meltdowns, emphasizing the need for balanced emotional regulation and human connection in an increasingly digital world.
Noel King [10:50]: "We're all going to the psychologist."
Produced by Rebecca Ibarra and Devin Schwartz. Edited by Aminah El Saadi. Fact-checked by Myles Bryan. Special thanks to the production team, including Hadi Mwagdi, Peter Balanon Rosen, Denise Guerra, Patrick Boyd, Gabrielle Burbe, Avishai Artsy, Jolie Myers, and executive producer Miranda Kennedy.
For more insights and episodes, visit Vox Media Podcasts.