What If It’s a Bunch of Shit? Margaret Rutherford on the Relentless Camouflage of a Perfect Life

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We're having a run on psychology in the last couple of days. Yesterday, we did a show with the Brooklyn based, psychotherapist, Daniel Smith, whose new book, Hard Feelings, Finding the Wisdom in Our Darkest Emotions, is a book about, escaping what he calls perfection. He argues, and I'm quoting him here, perfection is the devil. I don't quite know what the devil is. You may also know Smith from his best selling book, Monkey Mind, the memoir of anxiety. He is what some people call an anxiety memoirist. My guest today is also in the perfection business or perhaps the imperfection business when it comes to therapy. Doctor Margaret Rutherford, is a top TEDx speaker. Her speech on imperfection or perfectionism, has had many millions of views on TEDx. She, is the author back in 2019 of Perfectly Hidden Depression, how to break free from the perfectionism that masks your depression. And Margaret now has a new, companion, a new workbook associated with that book, Perfectly Hidden Depression, ready for our perfectly imperfect times. Margaret, congratulations on the new book.

00:02:07 Margaret Rutherford: Thank you so very much. I I was a little dubious about it at first, and then I got into it. And I was like, oh, this is a I certainly didn't want it to be a repeat of the first book. In fact, I wanted to take a whole different approach and a very approachable one, where people could dig down into the book itself and, really do look into the traits of what's keeping all of that. What what you can tell what what are the traits where you can tell someone actually actually maybe struggling with this kind of destructive perfectionism, but it's how it shows in their life and what they can do about that.

00:02:47 Andrew Keen: So what is destructive perfectionism? As I said, Daniel Smith argues that perfection is the devil, and you therapists are the new priests, so maybe the use of the devil has a particular significance. What's so bad about wanting to be perfect, Margaret?

00:03:03 Margaret Rutherford: Well, the researchers are really the ones too, and I can't wait to read Daniel's book. I'm I'm very interested in doing that. The academic researchers have been screaming this for years that there is constructive perfectionism, which tends to be fueled by generosity and creativity and curiosity and, all those, you know, very positive kinds of things. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do something well if you're going to attend to it, if you're gonna try to do it.

00:03:38 Andrew Keen: I mean, it's the old American, ideology of, of self improvement. It's what

00:03:43 Margaret Rutherford: Exactly.

00:03:44 Andrew Keen: Country, hasn't it, Margaret? You're talking to me from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the heart of America.

00:03:50 Margaret Rutherford: Well, now you have to use a southern accent.

00:03:52 Andrew Keen: I was trying, but you say it.

00:03:54 Margaret Rutherford: Don't Fayetteville. Fayetteville, not Fayetteville. Yeah.

00:03:58 Andrew Keen: And I know that Lucinda Williams is from there, and, you've seen her. I saw her a couple of times. So, she's certainly perfectly imperfect, isn't she? Old Lucinda.

00:04:08 Margaret Rutherford: Yes. Indeed. But there's a real distinction between constructive perfectionism and then what's called, as you have already said, destructive perfectionism, which tends to be fueled instead by fear, by shame, by, really needing to, cover up the things that you don't want anyone to see in yourself or in your life that has caused you pain. You then, develop this persona or camouflage of incredible success, tight emotional control, need to do things very perfectly, to be seen as someone who you know, if I give this to him or her or them to do, that they're the ones that are gonna get it done. And so

00:05:00 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You have this nice term. I like it, Margaret. I might steal it, actually. The

00:05:05 Margaret Rutherford: Please do.

00:05:05 Andrew Keen: Relentless camouflage of performing your life. Are you suggesting that we need, armor? I mean, camouflage is a kind of armor, a defense against incoming weaponry. Do we need armor to perform our lives? Do we need more or less armor? Is the camouflage a good or a bad thing when it comes to performing our life?

00:05:26 Margaret Rutherford: Well, we all certainly I mean, if my dog had died this morning, you know, and I had this interview to do, I would need some kind of armor. I would need somewhere to put my feelings, which which is called in psychology compartmentalization. That's a healthy skill to have. I would need to put those feelings away. As soon as we turned off the camera, I could start crying again. That's compartmentalization. That's not armor. The kind of armor I'm talking about in perfectly hidden depression is something that actually can become its own prison. It is becomes so vital to your sense of worth, to your sense of status, to your sense of competence that you can allow no one to see or even yourself sometimes, Andrew, that you you you don't wanna think of yourself as struggling. You certainly don't want other people to think of you as struggling. You are very invested in being the one that's in control and the great decision maker and successful. And the problem with this is and why I got so interested in it in the first place back, gosh, over a decade ago, is that the academic researchers again are saying, you know, perfectionism rates are going up as are suicide rates. And that I said in my TEDx — which, again, millions of people have watched and responded to, which is even more important — that I said, we it won't be long if it's even not right now, that each one of us either know someone who died by suicide or we know of someone who died by suicide whose life looked like it was just going great. And we have had no clue that they were depressed. It's also, frankly, a challenge to my profession that we have this set of criteria that unless you fit that criteria from the diagnostic and statistical manual of psychiatry, that unless you fit those criteria, you aren't depressed. You you wouldn't if you showed up in a doctor's office, you know, they'd say, well, are you hopeless? No. I'm not hopeless. I've got a great life. Do you do you enjoy doing anything? Yeah. I I've got a lot of energy. I've got all the energy in the world. Do you think you're depressed? No. I I'm here because maybe I'm struggling with some anxiety. I've got to make some decisions or whatever. I don't even know why I'm here. Those people are gonna slip through the cracks. And those people that might tentatively hope that you can see through that armor are going to leave your office with a wave and a smile and say, thanks. You know, I kinda need to talk about this, but I'm just

00:08:19 Andrew Keen: Oh, okay. So, Margaret, we have what you've described and many others describe as this, perhaps, this epidemic of perfectionism. Why? Can we blame it all on FOMO and social media? Is Mark Zuckerberg to blame? Is it this religious world? Is it can we blame mothers and fathers or the absence of mothers and fathers? What's gone wrong? Can we blame the counterculture? We can't blame Donald Trump, can we? Blame him for most things these days.

00:08:47 Margaret Rutherford: Yes. That's the truth. You know, everybody that I've heard talk about this, Andrew, says it's a it's a mixture of all the above that we have become a society that is very comparative. I remember when I first got on social media, and I was I was, you know, I I didn't want my picture on my website. I was like, oh, no. But even as far from wanting to be perfect as I was back then, I would start writing. And I'd start notice how many people liked my liked my, you know, article or how many I mean, it was amazing how seductive that was for me to start noticing. Was I getting noticed? Was my message getting read? Was it being viewed? And, you know, you have to fight this, and I have the maturity, like, I hope of being in my sixties and now seventies as when I was in my late fifties when I started on social media. You know, kids getting into that and all that kind of stuff. So it is, it is about the comparison that is so easy. One of the things, you know, that, my son, when he went on his college, senior college tour said or vacation after graduation. You know, so many of his friends were or he would read online about, you know, some trip to Patagonia or someplace else, and he was —

00:10:17 Andrew Keen: mean the store or the region?

00:10:21 Margaret Rutherford: The region.

00:10:22 Andrew Keen: They wasn't just going to the local Patagonia store at your mall. And do you have a Patagonia in — can I say it? — Fayetteville?

00:10:31 Margaret Rutherford: We have a Whole Foods. We don't have a Trader Joe's yet.

00:10:34 Andrew Keen: Oh. We have

00:10:35 Margaret Rutherford: We have the number one coffee lab in the world in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the Onyx Coffee Lab. Mhmm. So you might be surprised.

00:10:46 Andrew Keen: Anyway, you're gonna you're gonna get a a Patagonia, and then everyone's gonna be envious.

00:10:50 Margaret Rutherford: Well, maybe so. So

00:10:52 Andrew Keen: back to your son, he's getting postcards of Patagonia from all his friends. And is he feeling very envious?

00:11:00 Margaret Rutherford: Well, what he said to me was, you know, I'm excited about this trip, but, you know, is but it's not as big a deal as and I I just looked at him and said, it doesn't matter. It's what you want to do. It's what you love to camp. You love to travel with your friends. You love to this is what you're ready for. And so this is what you have the money to do. So it's been very I mean, you know, people can compare themselves to people all over the world and But

00:11:27 Andrew Keen: why do we you know, I I take your point, Margaret, but why why are people always comparing themselves with other people? There are gonna be people who go to Patagonia. Some will go to the store. Some will go to the actual part of the world. Some are adventurous. Some aren't. Some are more successful than others. Is this new? We can't just blame it entirely on social media. I mean, before social media, there was television. Before television, there were letters and radio. So we always knew about what other people were doing. Are we just by definition, competitive people always wanna beat our friends and neighbors?

00:12:02 Margaret Rutherford: Well, I grew up with the phrase keeping up with the Joneses. I mean, my gosh. You know? So I I think it is just much more, viewable. I remember years ago, I read something that, you know, said it wasn't my quote. It was about, you know, I used to wonder what let's say you love, Matt Damon. And not only can you know now about, you know, that you like Matt Damon, but you can know who he's dating, where he's going to eat, what shoes does he buy, you know. And you can know all these details about these people that are celebrities, and you can want to emulate them. And you can see your own, you know, dinner at Burger King is not as exciting as wherever Matt Damon is is eating. So it's it's that it's just so palatable, I think. It's just so real.

00:12:53 Andrew Keen: Or maybe a better word would be impalatable if you're eating early.

00:12:57 Margaret Rutherford: That's true.

00:12:58 Andrew Keen: Eating. Where's my where's my eating?

00:13:00 Margaret Rutherford: I have no idea.

00:13:02 Andrew Keen: That is some very fancy place. So the more you therapists like, you you and Daniel Smith talk, the more it sounds to me like we just have to go back to traditional religion where people believed in some sort of illogical god, and that's just the nature of things. Because all this is a consequence of our post religious society, and you therapists are our secular priests, and you write your books, which are equivalent to Bibles, whether it's like, this, your your your best selling perfectly hidden depression or the new, or or the new, workbook associated. But it is the problem that we don't believe anymore. We all we're left with in a postcard world is a belief in ourselves, and we're rather imperfect. We're rather pathetic.

00:13:56 Margaret Rutherford: Well, I do have to correct you about one thing you said that you said, you know, I feel like my book should be somebody's Bible. I don't believe that. I do believe that if it's a message that or if it's a rubric or a model or if you if you find yourself pulled toward the idea of hidden depression, that it's something I mean, I wouldn't have spent all these years trying to figure it out myself. You know, I I use in in the workbook, I talk about my mom as being perhaps, you know, we're all therapists are all trying to fix our moms. You know, that I saw her live this kind of life, and she actually became a prescription drug addict because of it, very much due to her need to look perfect. I mean, she was beautiful and smart and talented, and she knew none of those things. She knew that she what she wanted to look like and what she needed to look like, and that's who she became. So, the you know, I I don't think this applies to everybody. It's not a best selling book, by the way. I it has been Yeah.

00:15:06 Andrew Keen: It did very well.

00:15:07 Margaret Rutherford: Good idea.

00:15:08 Andrew Keen: Lots of, lots of, lots of reviews. Got almost 400 views, almost all five stars on Amazon. So don't don't downplay yourself, Margaret. I'm

00:15:19 Margaret Rutherford: not downplaying myself.

00:15:20 Andrew Keen: Otherwise, you may have to go to the therapist.

00:15:23 Margaret Rutherford: Andrew, believe me. No one would think who knows me that I would downplay myself. I have a personal beef about people who email me wanting to be on my podcast that say my person who wrote this best selling book, and I look at it and it's got 17 reviews.

00:15:36 Andrew Keen: And Yeah. They're telling me. Yeah. I have on my show has a best selling book. It's a

00:15:42 Margaret Rutherford: it's a like I said, I don't like it. So I So

00:15:45 Andrew Keen: so but we can call it whether or not it's best selling. You don't want it to be a bible. Is it an anti bible, a workbook, a a manifesto? How would you like to describe both the the new workbook and the original, what I call a bestseller, what you say has done moderately well.

00:16:04 Margaret Rutherford: I think it is a guide. I think there are a lot of people you know, it's interesting when we were trying to sell this book to publishing houses. They they turned it down for two reasons. One, nobody know who knows who I was, and that's one of the reasons why I started the podcast. And two, which is called the Self Work podcast, by the way. And number two, they said people who are dealing with this won't buy a book. They perfectionist won't buy a book on depression. And I that's not true, I don't think. They'd say they were buying it for somebody else, actually. But they the people who have reached out and said how helpful the book was to them was that they can do it in private. It is something that

00:16:52 Andrew Keen: had

00:16:52 Margaret Rutherford: they have so much fear about exposure that for many, they wouldn't consider necessarily going into therapy. And so it is it is a way for them to, I hope, for them to, engage in something where they feel known and they feel like, oh, wait a minute. Somebody gets this and Right.

00:17:18 Andrew Keen: So you've got this phrase. And, again, I have to admit, I'm not convinced you may be digging a deeper hole. You said you deserve to be truly known Mhmm. Which, of course, will encourage a lot of people maybe to get the workbook, read the book, come to you. But does everyone really deserve to be truly known? Why why did you why does you, anyone, Joe or Jackie or Jane, why do they all deserve to be known?

00:17:51 Margaret Rutherford: Because it's I'll give you the answer that a lot of people gave me that I interviewed for the book.

00:17:58 Andrew Keen: Not what your answer. I don't want other people's.

00:18:01 Margaret Rutherford: No. Well, it it it has become my answer because there's tremendous loneliness in the kind of life where you just don't feel like anybody knows you. So that's that phrase is not only truly known by others, at least one person, truly known to yourself.

00:18:20 Andrew Keen: So know thyself. It's the old, Socratic idea.

00:18:25 Margaret Rutherford: Perhaps. Perhaps. I I'd I'd, you know, I don't think of it that way, but as I know what Socratic method is, so I, I've I'm at least I can hang on to that conversation in that way. But I I think that, this kind of life where again, I'll I'll use my my poor mother. No one knew my mother. She didn't allow anybody in.

00:18:50 Andrew Keen: Where was she from, your mother? My

00:18:52 Margaret Rutherford: mother grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where I grew up. And, she she my dad said something happened must have happened to her in college. Now her mother was extremely critical. My mother she she needed to marry the right guy, which she did when she married my dad, but I think she was actually in love with somebody else. But she had to be incredibly thin. She was anorexic. She had to be the perfect hostess. She had I mean, she had to fit these nineteen fifties definitions as, I don't know what kind of language you allow here, but I'm psychiatrist

00:19:33 Andrew Keen: I encourage bad language.

00:19:35 Margaret Rutherford: My psychiatrist friend called it the fucked up fifties women, frankly. And that there was this recipe That's

00:19:42 Andrew Keen: my title, Margaret.

00:19:46 Margaret Rutherford: That there was this recipe, and she had to fit that. She had to fit that demeanor and that that way of looking and being. And and and and she grew more and more, her own feelings grew more and more inaccessible to her.

00:20:00 Andrew Keen: And what about your father? Is this a female? I mean, one of the things, we talked about with, Smith, and this is why I hope everyone will have the opportunity to watch both the Smith and this interview in parallel. Is Smith I I sort of we talked about the idea of perfectionism in men and his anxiety as a male and male anxiety these days. Is your work really focusing on female anxiety? You talk a lot about your women, or is it a a I was gonna say a bicoastal, but a, a a bigendered thing.

00:20:33 Margaret Rutherford: No. It's it's definitely I I have worked with many men as well as women who, have come in because I have written the book and because they're interested in what I have to say about it or what they might could do. I mentioned both in the TEDx, I talk about a woman I saw and I talk about a man I saw.

00:20:50 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You talk about Natasha. You begin. Let me tell you about, no, Natalie. Natalie came into therapy almost apologetically. Everyone comes into therapy apologetically, don't they?

00:21:01 Margaret Rutherford: No. Not necessarily. I wouldn't say. I wouldn't say all people come in with any particular, stance or, but she came in sort of embarrassed. She said, I don't know why I'm here, and she was sort of agitated. She was one of those people that, you know, always has her foot going and Yeah.

00:21:18 Andrew Keen: So let let me historicize this a little bit, Margaret. So you talked about your fucked up mom, a fifties woman. Is there anything different seventy, eighty years later between what your mother went through and what all these young women who come to you, whether the the Natalie's of the world? Has anything changed, or is it just your mom was a anorexic, sort of a a a wife, and she was living up to some perfection ideal in the America of the nineteen fifties? And now in the twenty twenties, both women and men now are living up to a different kind perfectionism, but, basically, it's the same problem.

00:21:59 Margaret Rutherford: I think to a great extent, yes, except that probably, somewhat ironically, your the expectations have changed as to what looks, quote, unquote, perfect. Mhmm. And probably you're gonna have a job. You're well, I like to say you're gonna work for a salary. You're gonna have a social media page. You're gonna have your kids in certain schools. You're going to if you have kids, you're gonna have a you know, your your exercise regime has to be perfect. Your you know? Whereas the the ways you had to be perfect probably in the nineteen fifties from my mom were in some ways much simpler, but they were also extremely painful because they were so limiting.

00:22:44 Andrew Keen: You you write about choosing great careers and all that sort of thing. I mean, we all want a great career. I wish I had one. These days, do we need to tone down the language about greatness, whether it's careers or workout regimes or, how we look or how we relate to others. Do we need to focus on our imperfection, not just our how we look and maybe how we feel, but what we do? I mean, the idea of a great career is in the age of AI seems an increasingly problematic delusion.

00:23:21 Margaret Rutherford: Well, you're quoting, from a, the title of an interview that I did with Ashley. So I actually did that interview quite a while ago, but her whole, idea behind when you need to change careers is that when you are not when you I was a professional musician in my twenties, and I loved music and I loved singing. And singing was my passion, but it was not the way I should live my life. The life of a professional musician was not for me. And I think a lot

00:23:49 Andrew Keen: you as good as Lucinda?

00:23:51 Margaret Rutherford: No. I made I made some money at it. And as a musician, you're very proud if you can say I've No.

00:23:57 Andrew Keen: Well, that's quite an achievement.

00:24:00 Margaret Rutherford: Yeah. You you're actually working as a musician and only a musician. So I did that for eight or nine years. But, point is that I I it it was not a good career for me. It didn't set it didn't my value I was not living my best values as a as a professional musician, and so I switched over to psychology quite it was a nine year journey, by the way. So that's that's Ashley's point is that she you know, you may think, oh, this should be a great career. This really this is exactly what I love to do. But if it is not something that really what she calls your core values, and in that book, she talks about how to how to do it. She's also a TEDx speaker with very popular TEDx's.

00:24:44 Andrew Keen: But I would We seem to live in weird times. On the one hand, as you know, everyone wants to be perfect, and that's that generates a lot of business for you. On the other hand, we live in a perfectly imperfect time. We live in the age of Epstein. You've done some interviews on the crushing ripple effect of the Epstein files. Is one of the curious things about our own age, which maybe even distinguishes it from the period of the fifties when your mom grew up, or didn't grow up perhaps, is on the one hand, we've we've got these ideals of perfectionism, this sort of utopianism of one kind or another. On the other hand, the world looks increasingly dystopian, whether it's Trump or Epstein or foreign wars or big tech or our age of anxiety. It's weird, isn't it?

00:25:40 Margaret Rutherford: Yes. You know, it is it is something, however, Andrew, that what I try to focus on personally and, you know, I can I have some control? I can vote. I can determine what I'm going to scroll about or not gonna scroll about. I can

00:26:01 Andrew Keen: still have voting in Arkansas?

00:26:05 Margaret Rutherford: Well, there's a lot of voting. Yes. It's not always something I would agree about how the majority of people in Arkansas vote. But, anyway, but at the same time, really, you know, trying to focus on what you actually do have some control over creating is to me a much healthier so you can get completely overwhelmed by, as you call it, the dystopia of the world and what's going on in it and how it seems like we're just going to hell in a handbasket as we'd say. And I don't know how they felt during World War one or World War two or how they felt. I grew up, with the with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I can remember practicing as a little girl going in down to the bottom of our house. Now, wow, that would help in a missile crisis. I don't know. But, anyway, it it I'm sure my parents were worried then whether it's really worse or whether we have more communication about it, whether I I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know that.

00:27:18 Andrew Keen: We we I've had these kind of conversations before, Margaret. Is this the moment in our conversation to introduce the a word, agency? The the the idea of, you know, the American dream was self making ourselves, created a platform where we could invent and reinvent ourselves even if Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American life. The whole mythology of America was of second, third, and fourth acts, and a perpetual reinvention, remaking, and all the rest of it. Is agency the issue here? And and I I we don't wanna take all the wisdom out of your notebooks because, your your new workbook because we want people to buy it. It's just out. But is it a workbook giving a realistic take on our agency, what we realistically can and can't do?

00:28:12 Margaret Rutherford: Well, the whole point of the workbook, and I appreciate you you saying you don't want to just care or disparage it, is that I think what my, quote, unquote, advice is is what do you decide you want to keep about the way you're living your life because it actually does bring you some joy, some fulfillment, some sense of meaning, some sense of making a difference, making a dent in the universe, so to speak. And one of it is hindering you, imprisoning you, not fulfilling. It's actually working to, keep you disconnected and stuck. Not known as we'll go back to using that term. I think that it is a, certainly you know, I'm very much an introvert, and I

00:29:08 Andrew Keen: You're a popular introvert, though. I mean, let's remind everybody of your numbers. You've got over 2,000,000 TEDx views, over 5,000,000 podcast downloads, 435 episodes, over 140

00:29:21 Margaret Rutherford: Actually, the real Is it more? Up to 500.

00:29:25 Andrew Keen: Wow. Wow. You're don't be shy, Margaret.

00:29:29 Margaret Rutherford: I'm not shy, but I this is this is harder for me. I actually have some performance anxiety, and it's harder for me to be that's why I didn't wanna put my picture on my very first website. I had to be kind of I didn't I wasn't dragged kicking and screaming, but I sort of crept into this definitely. What I was about to say was, though, that even though I'm introverted, I know that there are at least three people that I could name right now, more than that probably, who know me very well. They know the things I'm ashamed of. They know the things that I feel proud of. They know the things that I struggle to do. They know the things I easy for me to do. And that feels very good. They they and so that is something that I think at least the people who come in to to see me because they go, yeah. This is me, don't have that in their lives to any great extent. And and once they

00:30:25 Andrew Keen: So could we say, Margaret, just sort of taking that, maybe we'd join some dots, is that one of the reasons then for this epidemic of loneliness, which many people have written about and spoken about, and I'm sure you deal with it on a daily basis with your your clients, is this perfectionism. The more perfect we are, the more boundaries and skins we put up, the more we camouflage, to use your word, our lives. And if we can if we can decamouflage, if there's such a word, then we can become intimate with people again, and that's what will make us, happier.

00:31:05 Margaret Rutherford: Yes.

00:31:07 Andrew Keen: So now no one needs to to buy the handbook. You know? They know the answers.

00:31:14 Margaret Rutherford: Well, I I, you know, the Harvard study that, I was lucky enough to to, he came on the podcast. I forgot his name right now. Real nice guy. Robert something. Anyway

00:31:29 Andrew Keen: Not Larry Summers?

00:31:32 Margaret Rutherford: No. Uh-uh. He's a guy out of, Robert. What is his last name? Anyway, I won't remember right now. You know, at the end of this seventy five year old study or, longitudinal study, they have found that it's not the amount of money that you have or whatever. It is literally the people you know, how do you do you feel in relationship? Do you feel in connection with other people? And that is what leads to, quote, unquote, happiness. And we have lost that to a great extent, and transplanting it instead with, you know, how how many followers do I have, how successful am I, how thin I am, how much money I have, whatever it happens to be. And so that that has some inherent sadness to me. And, again, what I've been trying to do over the last seven or eight or however many years is, what I can do, my voice may be important for some people to hear. It's probably not gonna be all that important for other people to hear. But if I can if I can help people understand that, then I've I've I've done what I'm supposed to do at this point. At least what I can figure out what I'm supposed to do.

00:32:51 Andrew Keen: Explain something else to me, Margaret. Last week, there was a very high profile court case about, Facebook and YouTube. Yes. And the jury found that Meta and Google were negligent in their social media harms trial. Afterwards, some of the response from some of the people was immense joy. Could you make sense of that? It's somewhat jarring and odd to see people celebrate as if they just won the World Cup or something.

00:33:23 Margaret Rutherford: I I I haven't been keeping up. I know that it happened.

00:33:27 Andrew Keen: My my my question is, given that everyone uses social media, why and, again, I maybe it's unfair to judge on this photo, but there seems to be a sort of an outpouring of of of happiness, almost a euphoria on the part of many people that these big tech companies like Meta and Google got found guilty. People choose to use these platforms. So how how do we how do we protect ourselves without relying exclusively on the government?

00:34:04 Margaret Rutherford: Well, I the only thing I can say to you about that is I mean, again, I I I think, goodness, I didn't raise my son and when all these things were so strong. I can remember when he told me one time he had a bunch of friends on Facebook, and I thought, what? What was he even talking about? Now I've since I was on social media myself for a while, I realized I have made friends that are virtual friends. I've never met them, but I feel like they're friends, and that's what he was talking about. But at the same time, the pressure has gone up. And I do think that, you know, with it's a whole it's a different issue with children. Although I I I don't see children, so I've not really addressed this. But, certainly, parents are having a harder time maybe or some parents don't give a shit about what their children are doing or getting addicted to and they just don't care. Is it easier to blame Facebook and Snapchat and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. Probably. However, I will say that from what I have read, although I have not been keeping up with this last story, I was on vacation, so I didn't. I do know that the research certainly shows that there are addictive algorithms that they are they are trying to get you to, you know, keep on scrolling. And, actually, there comes when my life, I've had to say, Margaret, stop it. Stop it. You know, do you really need to read this next story about something else about aging or whatever? It can be very addictive, and you have to exert a lot of control. And and, you know, we are an addicted kind of, culture, whether it's work or food or exercise or scrolling or whatever it happens to be. You know, it's it's as if we are and, again, to go back to our what seems to be our centering point here, is that we are looking for trying to create things to make us feel a part of things, to make us feel connected, and and yet we're missing that. I I love what some and and there's a place here in Fayetteville doing it now. You come and you put up your, you don't bring your phone in. You bring a book or you bring a game or you bring your needlepoint or your knitting or whatever, and you come and you sit, and you're with people. And so I love that movement. I think, you know, it's wonderful, and it's it's it points to the idea that we are forgetting how to connect with other I keep using the word connect to, to see each other. I mean, I I try not to Maya Angelou used to say, be someone's rainbow today, and I think about that a lot of days in my lifetime. And I and when I see somebody in the store, I look at them in the eyes, and I say, you know, how are you doing? I I like your whatever. Because, you know, it's just I want that person to feel seen that I've she's not just the person checking me out of the grocery store. I actually see her.

00:37:17 Andrew Keen: Well, let's end, Margaret, with some technology. We've already talked about social media. I asked, Daniel Smith this as well, the author of, Hard Feelings, Finding the Wisdom in Our Darkest Emotions. There's increasing reliance on AI now for therapy. Maybe they can't afford to see Margaret Robinson Rutherford, so they have to do an AI. Are you concerned with the way in which people are using AI now for therapy in terms of addressing a lot of the issues that you deal with? Maybe they can't afford you. Maybe they don't have access to you. I don't mean to personalize you. I mean, you're not alone here. But are you worried that AI has become an increasing tool at for therapy for more and more online people? And what would you suggest as an alternative?

00:38:07 Margaret Rutherford: You know what I noticed when the last time I used AI, and I've been using it because I want to know what it is. I was using it to create a document, and what I noticed right at the beginning was how it always praised me for what I for my ideas. Oh, these are wonderful ideas.

00:38:26 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Actually, Daniel said exactly the same thing. Yeah.

00:38:29 Margaret Rutherford: And, you know, it's, I it was I thought, oh, well, this is good. This is nice. And then I started thinking about it, and I thought, what if it's a bunch of shit? I mean, you know, would would he go would AI say let's see. I called him he. Would AI say, no way this is gonna work? I mean, you know, they start out by being very, very positive and reinforcing and you know, frankly, I don't like having the reputation. People say to me, I you always tell me what you think even though I may not wanna hear it. And I say, well, and I may not be right, but I'm gonna tell you what I think. And I'm going to use my own experience as a therapist, sometimes as a person if it's, if it actually is helpful. And, you know, maybe AI one day will be able to do that. I don't know. But I I think that you cannot replace that human sense of, you know, I'm I'm gonna confront you if I think gently, if I think maybe not so gently sometimes, if I think you're creating chaos for yourself, I'm gonna look at look at what you're doing.

00:39:41 Andrew Keen: So And you've given me, Margaret, you've given me the title for this conversation. What if it's a bunch of shit? That is the best best comment of the day. Margaret, Margaret Robinson Rutherford tells us her view of AI in terms of therapy. A wonderful conversation, Margaret. You're a very good sport to deal with my obnoxious questions. Your let's remind everyone that your new workbook, what you call a companion for the journey, a journey that began with your perfectly hidden depression, a very strong selling book, maybe not a bestseller, but close to a bestseller. It's out now. So congratulations. And, that was a wonderful conversation, Margaret. Thank you so much.

00:40:28 Margaret Rutherford: You remind me a lot of my oldest brother. He and I used to have conversations like this all the time.