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PODCAST

Shrink The Nation

David and Robby

Where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists with deep backgrounds in military leadership, tech and systems thinking, Shrink The Nation blends clinical insight with dark humor to diagnose the psychological dysfunction at the heart of American culture.From grandiosity to cognitive dissonance, narcissism to political tribalism, we explore why the country feels like it’s losing its mind — and what it would actually take to stay sane.Every episode

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All Episodes

00:39:32

Holiday Chaos, Narco-Terror, and the Rush Hour Reboot...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/12/02

The holidays have arrived, and so has the national cortisol spike. David and Rob stumble out of Thanksgiving bloat into a world overtaken by 12-foot Santas, Mariah Carey psy-ops, and a neighborly Christmas-light arms race that probably violates the Geneva Convention. Amid the peppermint mayhem, they tackle the stories actually frying America’s nervous system.First up: The War on Drugs 2.0, now rebranded as a fight against “narco-terrorism.” Defense contractors are thrilled, civil libertarians are

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01:06:46

Identity Crisis Nation: Resignations, Ratings, and...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/11/25

Two psychiatrists. One room. Zero buffer. And a political landscape having a full-blown identity crisis.This week, David and Rob dig into the psychological mess behind Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sudden resignation announcement — a move that looks less like strategy and more like a total collapse of political identity. Once fused to MAGA, she’s now excommunicated, redefining herself in real time on CNN, and describing her role as that of a “battered spouse.” It’s pure identity fallout, and the guys

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51:23

McConaughey for Governor? And Other Signs We’ve Lost...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/11/18

The government has “reopened,” but as David puts it, systems reboot faster than people. The shutdown may be over, but the stress response is still humming under the floorboards. This week, we look at what political instability actually does to a population — especially a middle class already living one bad month from catastrophe. We unpack the Pyrrhic victory both parties insisted on celebrating, the family-systems chaos powering today’s political dynamics, and why entire voting blocs a...

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44:54

Congress: Family Therapy for the Republic

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/11/04

This week, America’s longest-running group therapy session takes the couch: Congress — the branch that was supposed to regulate emotion but now runs entirely on it. Once the nation’s prefrontal cortex, it’s devolved into the limbic system on Twitter, acting out every impulse for the cameras while taxpayers foot the therapy bill. David and Rob break down how we got here: From World War II unity to post–Cold War identity crisisHow Newt Gingrich turned outrage into a business modelThe 90s cultur...

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42:47

Daddy Issues, Data Issues and Divine Right Delusions

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/10/28

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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32:56

The Medal, The Martial, and The Meme

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/10/21

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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46:42

The Shutdown, MGT Defection and Non-Legal Tender:...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/10/14

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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61:13

The American Divorce: When Red and Blue Call It Quits

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/10/07

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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27:52

The Psychology of Political Violence: Fear,...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/10/02

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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46:38

The American Shadow: Jung, History, and The Stuff We...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/09/30

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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63:51

The Algorithm Made Me Do It: Curated Realities and...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/09/23

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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60:53

#GirlBossBurnout: When Empowerment Becomes Another...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/09/16

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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63:36

Paranoid Nation: Why Conspiracies Feel So Good (and...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/09/09

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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68:12

Allison Has Notes: Smurfette, Patriarchy, and the...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/09/04

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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65:04

The Death of Shame

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/09/02

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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53:37

Your Aunt Is the Propagandist Now

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/08/26

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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60:22

Tapping Out: Hormones vs. Hype

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/08/19

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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61:23

Testo-Rage & Tenderness: Empathy for Gen Z Men

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/08/14

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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61:52

Uncle Sam Back on the Couch: Bourbon, Archetypes, and...

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/08/12

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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55:21

America on the Couch: A Psychological Exploration

Shrink The Nation ·

2025/08/07

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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29 results

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