Joe Rogan Experience #2109 - Abigail Shrier
Narrator, Abigail Shrier (guest), Joe Rogan (host), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Abigail Shrier, Joe Rogan Experience #2109 - Abigail Shrier explores abigail Shrier, Rogan Challenge Youth Therapy, Gender Medicine Orthodoxy Joe Rogan and Abigail Shrier revisit the backlash to her 2020 book on youth gender transition, arguing that activists, institutions, and social media companies have suppressed debate and harmed detransitioners while expanding a profitable medical industry around children. Shrier then outlines her new book, *Bad Therapy*, contending that the explosion of therapy, diagnoses, and psych meds for kids is worsening rather than alleviating youth anxiety and depression, especially when given to children who are merely sad, anxious, or struggling with normal life stressors.
Abigail Shrier, Rogan Challenge Youth Therapy, Gender Medicine Orthodoxy
Joe Rogan and Abigail Shrier revisit the backlash to her 2020 book on youth gender transition, arguing that activists, institutions, and social media companies have suppressed debate and harmed detransitioners while expanding a profitable medical industry around children. Shrier then outlines her new book, *Bad Therapy*, contending that the explosion of therapy, diagnoses, and psych meds for kids is worsening rather than alleviating youth anxiety and depression, especially when given to children who are merely sad, anxious, or struggling with normal life stressors.
They criticize affirmative gender-care protocols, overuse of SSRIs and stimulants in children, and a therapeutic culture that pathologizes ordinary distress, promotes rumination, and undermines parental authority. Shrier contrasts American trends with other cultures that offer kids more independence, stronger family networks, and clearer rules, arguing these environments foster resilience and better mental health.
Both suggest that over-monitoring, social media, permissive-but-hovering parenting, and trauma-focused schooling are producing fragile young adults who feel incapable of handling basic challenges or leaving home. They advocate a return to authoritative parenting, limited and targeted therapy for truly serious problems, more real-world responsibility and risk for kids, and a cultural shift from maximizing comfort toward building strength and resilience.
Key Takeaways
Use therapy for serious, impairing problems—not as a default for normal distress.
Shrier argues that when mildly anxious or sad kids are sent to therapy as a first response, it often entrenches problems by encouraging rumination, dependency on therapists, and identity around diagnoses rather than building coping skills through life experience.
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Be highly cautious with psychiatric medications in children.
They highlight that pediatricians and telehealth providers now routinely prescribe SSRIs and stimulants, sometimes after very brief assessments, despite significant side effects (e. ...
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Reinforce parental authority and clear rules while remaining warm and loving.
Citing decades of parenting research, Shrier says “authoritative” parenting—high warmth plus firm rules—produces the best mental health outcomes, whereas permissive, therapy-inflected parenting (constantly negotiating, never saying ‘shake it off’) leaves kids anxious and unsure of their own abilities.
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Give kids real independence and responsibility to grow resilience.
Examples like walking home alone, doing chores, resolving peer conflicts without adult mediation, and holding jobs help children learn ‘I can handle things,’ which counters the external locus of control and fragility now common among young adults.
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Avoid pathologizing ordinary pain and overusing terms like ‘trauma’ and ‘PTSD.’
They argue that labeling typical hardships (breakups, teasing, bad memories of school) as trauma or PTSD encourages emotional hypochondria, magnifies suffering, and can lock people into victim identities instead of framing adversity as survivable and growth-promoting.
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Question the current gender-affirming model for minors.
Rogan and Shrier contend that the affirmative model—puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgeries—has been institutionalized as protocol without adequate skepticism, informed consent, or attention to detransitioners, and is driven partly by profit and ideology rather than long-term outcomes.
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Prioritize low-risk, high-yield interventions like exercise, social connection, and meaningful tasks.
Shrier notes robust evidence that physical activity, dancing, purposeful work, and strong relationships often outperform medication for mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety, without the iatrogenic risks associated with drugs and poorly managed therapy.
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Notable Quotes
“Every time someone wants to stop discussions, they’re wrong.”
— Joe Rogan
“Therapy with kids and teens is totally different from therapy with an adult… and it can introduce new problems.”
— Abigail Shrier
“We’ve spent so much time worrying about trying to make our kids happy, and we don’t spend enough time trying to make them strong.”
— Abigail Shrier
“Thinking about yourself is the same as unhappiness in a certain sense… It is indistinguishable from anxiety and depression.”
— Abigail Shrier
“If you can’t do this, you are gonna be a loser… and it was never true.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can parents practically distinguish between a child who truly needs clinical help and one who is going through normal, albeit painful, developmental challenges?
Joe Rogan and Abigail Shrier revisit the backlash to her 2020 book on youth gender transition, arguing that activists, institutions, and social media companies have suppressed debate and harmed detransitioners while expanding a profitable medical industry around children. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What concrete guardrails should exist around prescribing SSRIs and stimulants to minors, and who should be allowed to prescribe them?
They criticize affirmative gender-care protocols, overuse of SSRIs and stimulants in children, and a therapeutic culture that pathologizes ordinary distress, promotes rumination, and undermines parental authority. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How might schools restructure their day and policies to reduce over-therapizing (SEL blocks, ‘anytime passes’) while still supporting vulnerable students?
Both suggest that over-monitoring, social media, permissive-but-hovering parenting, and trauma-focused schooling are producing fragile young adults who feel incapable of handling basic challenges or leaving home. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What would an ethically robust, evidence-based model of care for gender-dysphoric youth look like, and how should detransitioners be incorporated into that conversation?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
If a family has already gone deep into the therapy-and-medication route with a teen, what steps could they take to safely reassess, taper, or change course without destabilizing the child?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)
Hello.
Hello.
Abigail, good to see you again.
It's great to see you.
Um, what was, uh, what was it like the last time you did the show?
(laughs)
(laughs)
(laughs)
Well, they tried to kick it off Spotify. (laughs)
Yeah, it was a very small, noisy group of people, by the way.
Yeah.
It wasn't the- the head people.
Right.
Th- they tried to make it seem like there was this big movement to get it kicked off Spotify, but when you examine what you were saying, and, you know, many more people are saying what you were saying, this was like, what year was this when you were on?
2020.
2020?
Yeah.
Um, the, it had sort of just started boiling.
Yeah.
You know? And now, four years later, it's- th- there's a lot of people pushing back now.
That's right. And I th- honestly, I thought you were gonna never have me on your show again. (laughs)
Why?
Because, you know, it was very, I mean, they had 10 meetings with the employees demanding that it be removed. I thought, "Joe's gonna be so mad at me." (laughs)
No. No, they're wrong. They're wrong. They're wrong. They're w- every time someone wants to stop discussions, they're wrong.
Yeah.
They're wrong, especially when you wanna try to stop discussions about a very serious and permanent thing that people are advocating to do to children that is also very profitable.
Yeah.
And it's a, it's a dark, weird sort of a scenario that we're in here right now that's unprecedented, that no one's ever experienced before, and they're using terms like life-saving, gender-affirming care-
Yeah.
... instead of castration and- and removing breasts and hormones and, it's- it's a very, very strange time. So, I'm glad we had that podcast, and I would have 100 more of them.
Great.
I- I think it's very important to talk about this, and I think there's too many people that are scared to talk about it. And that's why this stuff is getting so much traction, and it's scary. It's scary. It's scary that people aren't willing to admit that children are very easily influenced.
That's right. I think that's the scariest thing of all, that people are afraid to just say the truth.
Yeah.
And that's not a good world, because we can fix most problems if we can talk about them.
Yeah. Yeah.
Uh-
Exactly, I mean, that's my- my position on anyone trying to stop you from talking about things.
Yeah.
You know, they're- they're wrong. It's not- it's not the way to do it.
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