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Shrink The Nation
David and Robby
25 episodes
1 day ago
America’s back on the couch. We open with the shutdown-as-family-drama: unpaid essential workers, trust leaking out “in buckets,” and a Congress that swapped governing for purity tests and cable hits. It isn’t politics; it’s low differentiation with triangulation and emotional cutoffs, and the kids (us) feel it first. Then the fun-house mirror: an AI-crowned digital king flinging sludge* on critics while a chunk of the country flirts with strongman fantasies. That isn’t satire; it’s validatio...
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Mental Health
Comedy,
News,
Health & Fitness,
Politics
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All content for Shrink The Nation is the property of David and Robby and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
America’s back on the couch. We open with the shutdown-as-family-drama: unpaid essential workers, trust leaking out “in buckets,” and a Congress that swapped governing for purity tests and cable hits. It isn’t politics; it’s low differentiation with triangulation and emotional cutoffs, and the kids (us) feel it first. Then the fun-house mirror: an AI-crowned digital king flinging sludge* on critics while a chunk of the country flirts with strongman fantasies. That isn’t satire; it’s validatio...
Show more...
Mental Health
Comedy,
News,
Health & Fitness,
Politics
Episodes (20/25)
Shrink The Nation
Daddy Issues, Data Issues and Divine Right Delusions
America’s back on the couch. We open with the shutdown-as-family-drama: unpaid essential workers, trust leaking out “in buckets,” and a Congress that swapped governing for purity tests and cable hits. It isn’t politics; it’s low differentiation with triangulation and emotional cutoffs, and the kids (us) feel it first. Then the fun-house mirror: an AI-crowned digital king flinging sludge* on critics while a chunk of the country flirts with strongman fantasies. That isn’t satire; it’s validatio...
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6 days ago
42 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The Medal, The Martial, and The Meme
Tonight’s clinic isn’t about policy points; it’s about the psychology underneath the headlines. We unpack three stories and the defenses they expose: The medal: a public meltdown over a Nobel snub. Translation: validation hunger meets narcissistic injury and a quick turn to projection when reality doesn’t applaud on cue.The meme: a leaked “young politico” group chat full of racist, sexist, violent jokes. Is it “just humor,” or a window into the shadow and an in-group drifting toward shameless...
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1 week ago
32 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The Shutdown, MGT Defection and Non-Legal Tender: Because You're Not Crazy, This is Nuts!
We’re evolving the show: no lecturing from a leather chair, more real psychology in real time. The country’s back on the couch and we’re putting the headlines through the clinic: identity, projection, shame, power, and why everyone’s nervous system is fried. This week’s case files Shutdown as strategy: what used to be “govern, then win” has turned into purity testing and performance. We map the family-systems version (acting out, emotional cutoffs, triangulation) and the real-world cost...
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2 weeks ago
46 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The American Divorce: When Red and Blue Call It Quits
The “national divorce” fantasy sounds tidy until you run it through family systems: cutoffs, triangulation, custody battles, and a court stuck parenting two furious adults. Translation: America doesn’t need a split; it needs differentiation. Keep your values, lower the reactivity, stop outsourcing maturity to the judiciary. What we do in this episode Put “national divorce” on the couch: why it’s not feasible, not cheap, and not a cureTriangulation 101: how parties use you to fight each other ...
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3 weeks ago
1 hour 1 minute

Shrink The Nation
The Psychology of Political Violence: Fear, Belonging, and the Seduction of Us vs Them
No bourbon this round. We open by defining political violence clearly — threats, doxing, coordinated harassment, assaults, plots, and targeted property destruction tied to political identity or institutions — and set the only scoreboard that matters: fewer credible threats, fewer doxings, fewer plots, slower rumor timelines, fewer injuries per event. Then we map the heat sources. History says the temperature spikes in certain cycles; today’s mix of economic strain plus culture-war ident...
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1 month ago
27 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The American Shadow: Jung, History, and The Stuff We Don’t Talk About
No crystals, no incense. Clinically, the shadow is simple: the traits we refuse to own, exported to somebody else. “We’re the city on a hill; they’re the threat.” When identity feels endangered, denial recruits projection, moral disengagement, and story-bending to keep us “pure.” We trace how those defenses scale from families to a nation: liberty alongside slavery and Jim Crow; “we liberate” beside the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq; rugged individualism blessing violence as patriotic; the...
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1 month ago
46 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The Algorithm Made Me Do It: Curated Realities and the American Experiment
Your feed isn’t a therapist. It’s a slot machine with a PhD in you. We unpack how variable-reward dopamine loops keep you scrolling, why that “next swipe” feels irresistible, and how the feed learns your spikes (anger, fear, validation) to pay you in tiny hits of maybe. Then the psychology: the algorithm doesn’t invent your defenses, it industrializes them. Projection (“they’re the liars”), splitting (good tribe vs bad tribe), and dodging cognitive dissonance scale up into mass delusion...
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1 month ago
1 hour 3 minutes

Shrink The Nation
#GirlBossBurnout: When Empowerment Becomes Another Job (And How to Clock Out)
The “have it all” era told women to hustle harder; the algorithm replied with “soft life” and trad-wife aesthetics. We trace how empowerment got repackaged as performance, why the internet keeps selling extremes, and how to set fair, sane rules inside your own house. Also on the docket: Mr. Mom, Mrs. Doubtfire, Dana Scully, and a cruise ship full of red/blue buttons. Because culture never travels alone. In this episode: How algorithms reward pendulum swings (girlboss → soft life), and w...
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1 month ago
1 hour

Shrink The Nation
Paranoid Nation: Why Conspiracies Feel So Good (and Steal Your Power)
Uncle Sam shows up at 3 a.m., top hat on, eyes red from doomscrolling, convinced the shadows are organized and the neighbors are operatives. We’re not diagnosing a person; we’re reading a national mood. Conspiracies are the crunchy snack for anxious brains, but they don’t make a meal. First, we draw the clinical line: paranoia is a delusion aimed at “me,” while conspiracist ideation is a subclinical, society-wide suspicion that hidden groups run the show. Then we map the defense mechanisms th...
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1 month ago
1 hour 3 minutes

Shrink The Nation
Allison Has Notes: Smurfette, Patriarchy, and the “Male Loneliness” Panic
We invited psychiatrist Allison to finish the round. She arrives with receipts and zero patience, calling out our blind spots and the culture’s. The episode opens with the bourbon roll call (Angel’s Envy, Jim Beam Black Label, and Allison’s lemon seltzer) and a confession: bringing a woman into a conversation about men wasn’t optional; it was overdue. Allison introduces the Smurfette Principle and why tokenism distorts the narrative, then pushes past evo-psych shortcuts to how patriarchy actu...
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2 months ago
1 hour 8 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The Death of Shame
Shame used to be a regulator. Now it’s background noise. In this bourbon-fueled consult, David and Rob put “Uncle Sam” on the couch and sort the difference between shame (“I am bad”) and guilt (“I did a bad thing”) and why only one reliably leads to repair. We unpack Nathanson’s compass of shame (withdrawal, self-attack, avoidance, other-attack) and how those last two blow up our politics and relationships. Then we zoom out: social media’s confessional culture gives a quick hit of valid...
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2 months ago
1 hour 5 minutes

Shrink The Nation
Your Aunt Is the Propagandist Now
Pour a glass of bourbon and settle in: we separate persuasion from propaganda, starting with David’s cold open that lands the thesis—propaganda isn’t posters, it’s the background noise telling you who to fear and what’s “obviously” true. It doesn’t argue; it feels, repeats until it sounds true, and wraps itself in identity and duty. We map the three levers every campaign pulls—repetition, fear/anger, and identity/duty—then trace how they’re working on your brain in real time. From sunk ...
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2 months ago
53 minutes

Shrink The Nation
Tapping Out: Hormones vs. Hype
Pour a glass of bourbon and settle in: Shrink the Nation is back to separate hormones from hype—why “testosterone made me do it” isn’t a clinical defense and why bad behavior is still…bad behavior. We get honest about what’s driving the ultra-masculine aesthetic in Gen Z men, the “death of shame” in public life (yes, including that White House headline), and how to give young men purpose without turning politics into a cage match. We map the real stuff—agency, work, competence, belongin...
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2 months ago
1 hour

Shrink The Nation
Testo-Rage & Tenderness: Empathy for Gen Z Men
Pour a glass of bourbon and settle in: Shrink the Nation returns with a clinically sharp (and frequently ridiculous) take on why so many Gen Z men are gravitating toward a harder-edged identity—where UFC/WWE aesthetics bleed into politics—and why the answer isn’t mockery, it’s empathy. Between Jefferson’s Reserve and a tall pour of Elijah Craig (yes, including the “fish barrel” origin myth), we trace how belonging, agency, and meaning got scrambled for young men—and how to unsnarl it without ...
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2 months ago
1 hour 1 minute

Shrink The Nation
Uncle Sam Back on the Couch: Bourbon, Archetypes, and the American Psyche
Pull up a seat—and maybe a plastic cup—because Uncle Sam is back on the couch, Old Crow Bourbon in hand. Not the fancy small-batch bottle… the gallon jug that once fueled the likes of President Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain, courtesy of Dr. James Crow’s 19th-century chemistry wizardry. David and Rob blend history, psychology, and bourbon-soaked banter to dissect America’s collective unconscious, borrowing from Carl Jung’s big ideas: archetypes, the shadow, and the midlife transition. We tra...
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2 months ago
1 hour 1 minute

Shrink The Nation
America on the Couch: A Psychological Exploration
Shrink the Nation drags America onto the therapist’s couch for a bourbon-fueled, no-bullshit exploration of national identity, collective anxiety, and the messiness of being the world’s aging hero. If the United States walked into therapy—boasting “I’m the greatest country on earth, but I feel divided and lost”—what would its psychological profile look like? The docs break down America’s diffuse identity disorder, hero complex, and midlife crisis, pulling zero punches and pouring plenty of Co...
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2 months ago
55 minutes

Shrink The Nation
Presidents, Projection, and the Madness of Expectations
Pull up a seat on the couch—bourbon not required but highly recommended—as Shrink the Nation tackles the psychological circus of presidential expectations. Why do Americans keep expecting their presidents to be Marvel superheroes (or at least build us flying cars)? Why does disappointment so often turn to scapegoating and hysteria? And what does infantile defense have to do with politics, family fights, or your group chat? Dr. David, Rob, Keith, and Amit dig into the deep end of projection—th...
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3 months ago
1 hour 2 minutes

Shrink The Nation
The Power and Weight of Projection... And Some Other Stuff
Pour a glass of bourbon and settle in: Shrink the Nation is back with a clinical (and irreverent) deep-dive into projection—how we heap our hopes, fears, and disappointments onto presidents, partners, and pretty much anyone who’ll stand still long enough. Dr. David and Rob break down the classic Freudian defense (yes, with jokes about the “coked mind of Sigmund Freud”) and show how projection warps both politics and relationships. Why do Americans keep falling in love with presidential candid...
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3 months ago
58 minutes

Shrink The Nation
Back Into the Void (With Notes this Time!)
Shrink the Nation is back on the couch with America for a special bonus episode—this time with bourbon, Gen Z anxiety, and a full unpacking of nihilism in modern life. David, Rob, and guest psychiatrist Amit pour up (literally—Basil Hayden, Bulleit, and Tin Cup all make cameos) and dive deep into why every generation thinks the next one is hopeless—and why we keep handing them the same script. From the infamous “bicycle man” episode of Different Strokes to Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the...
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3 months ago
1 hour 1 minute

Shrink The Nation
Is Anything Even Real Anymore? (The Nihilism Episode)
Is anything even real anymore? Or have we all just become the meme? In this episode, three psychiatrists pour a drink and psychoanalyze America’s creeping wave of nihilism—from institutional mistrust and generational cynicism, to why so many of us now look for meaning in conspiracy theories, anti-heroes, and online chaos. The crew debates whether cultural nihilism is a symptom or a cause, how Gen Z’s outlook was shaped, why our institutions are crumbling in public trust, and how dopamine, mem...
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3 months ago
57 minutes

Shrink The Nation
America’s back on the couch. We open with the shutdown-as-family-drama: unpaid essential workers, trust leaking out “in buckets,” and a Congress that swapped governing for purity tests and cable hits. It isn’t politics; it’s low differentiation with triangulation and emotional cutoffs, and the kids (us) feel it first. Then the fun-house mirror: an AI-crowned digital king flinging sludge* on critics while a chunk of the country flirts with strongman fantasies. That isn’t satire; it’s validatio...