This week, my guests are Ted and Courtney Balaker, the team behind the documentary The Coddling of the American Mind. The film, as you may have guessed, is inspired by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s book of the same name. But the film isn’t a simple retread of the book. Courtney and Ted talk with Greg and Jonathan, and they also speak with students whose experiences with progressive activism and attempts to abide by progressive dogma left them in dire frames of mind. It’s a grim irony. Progressive activists’ stated concerns about the harms caused by microaggressions are so knotted, variform, and impossible to consistently obey that they can end up truly harming some of those most committed to them.
We begin by discussing Greg Lukianoff’s description of his own mental health struggles, how cognitive behavioral therapy helped him, and how he saw the same mental tendencies that tormented him in campus activists. In Ted and Courtney’s quite reasonable opinion, social media only makes these problems worse, as does the increasingly young age that children are exposed to online discourse. They’re homeschooling their own kid and keeping him away from smartphones until it’s no longer feasible—a wise strategy. They see Trump’s anti-DEI efforts as helpful, but only to a limited extent, as he hasn’t so far demonstrated enough concern about free speech on campus. Like many people, they look to comedy as a kind of model for free speech. When it’s working well, it brings us together, makes us feel good, and allows us to laugh at ourselves, as they show in their earlier documentary, Can We Take a Joke? And we end on a teaser of their next project, a biopic about Rob Henderson, based on his memoir, Troubled. I’ve had Rob on the show, and I found him extremely impressive. I’ll have my ticket on opening weekend.
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0:00 How woke campus culture degrades mental health
5:47 The rise of “microaggressions”
8:21 The harms caused by discourses of harm
13:47 The digital lives of children
19:08 Why Courtney and Ted produced Coddling themselves
24:56 A Nigerian immigrant’s encounter with campus progressivism
32:36 Is Trump’s anti-DEI posture aiding free speech on campus?
37:58 Ted and Courtney’s decision to homeschool their child
41:48 How comedy brings us together
48:26 Ted and Courtney take on the Rob Henderson story
Recorded August 8, 2025
Links and Readings
Ted and Courtney’s documentary, The Coddling of the American Mind
The Coddling of the American Mind Movie Substack
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
The “looking at things a different way” scene from Dead Poet’s Society
Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott’s book, The Canceling of the American Mind
Glenn’s conversation with Greg Lukianoff
Ted and Courtney’s documentary, Can We Take a Joke?
Glenn’s 2024 conversation with Noam Dworman
Rob Henderson’s book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
Glenn’s conversation with Rob Henderson
