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 clutching their chests, and drones previously meant for battlefields are now circling fishing boats in the Caribbean. The guys break down the psychology of fear-labeling, the financial incentives behind escalation, and the moral whiplash of punishing addiction with counterterror tactics.

Then: Rush Hour 4 is happening — because apparently the nation ran out of ideas and decided to reboot 2007. Jackie Chan is 70, Chris Tucker has lived 17 lives since the last film, and the reboot says more about our nostalgia addiction than the franchise ever did. The guys unpack the temptation to romanticize the past when the present feels like a migraine.

Finally, the episode ends in a sobering place: weaponized justice. The DOJ’s recent attempts at retribution-style prosecutions get tossed by judges, raising big questions about fear conditioning, democratic drift, and whether we’re normalizing behaviors that used to be the red flags of banana republics.

• Holiday season chaos and why everyone’s dissociating
• “Narco-terrorism” — label or legal shortcut?
• Drones, fear, and the monetization of crisis
• Nostalgia as anesthesia for modern life
• Rush Hour 4 and the psychology of reboots
• Retribution politics and the DOJ as a punishment stick
• How fear conditioning shapes public behavior
• Why privacy collapses during moral panics
• Addiction, bias, and why milkshakes are more like heroin than anyone wants to admit

• Fear breaks — mandatory five-minute resets from the panic-industrial complex. Even drones need a smoke break.
• If a law doesn’t require capital punishment, don’t enforce it as one overseas. Basic adulthood.
• Before green-lighting any movie reboot, the government must fix one public service (start with the DMV). Only then may Jackie Chan do another nonsensical stunt.
• Any agency pushing retribution prosecutions must spend 24 hours in a sensory deprivation tank labeled “Think About What You Did.”

Grab a bourbon, loosen the waistband, and embrace the peppermint-flavored nihilism.
It’s holiday season in America — what could possibly go wrong?

Education and entertainment only; not therapy. Contact: [email protected] • More: shrinkthenation.com

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 unpack the cognitive and emotional wreckage. 

From there, the episode swerves into Trump’s approval-ratings-that-can’t-go-down — because when the polls tank, you can always just redefine who counts as “smart people.” It’s a masterclass in cognitive dissonance management, projection, and brand-preservation psychology. 

Then: the wildest development yet — an AI-generated Christian nationalist anthem titled We Are Charlie Kirk, created after the Turning Point founder’s assassination. The conversation hits the uncanny valley of AI-manufactured martyrdom, right-wing MeToo dynamics, trolling-as-religion, and how AI is now writing our political myths faster than we can fact-check them. 

The episode closes on Dick Cheney’s funeral — an unexpectedly poignant reflection on leadership, consistency, and the nostalgia for a political era where you could disagree with a politician and still respect them. Cheney held the line; the country feels like it’s losing it. “I miss old America,” Rob says — and for once, nobody jokes. 

In This Episode:

• MTG’s resignation and the psychological freefall of losing your political self
 • Why identity fusion makes political breakups feel like divorces
 • Trump’s approval polls and the art of redefining reality
 • AI-generated martyr worship and the rise of the algorithmic religion
 • Trauma bonding, out-group exile, and MAGA’s internal fragmentation
 • Dick Cheney’s legacy and the vanished value of authenticity in leadership

Prescriptions

• Politicians who resign: mandatory 6–12 month no-camera detox, no book deal, no podcast. Do one thing for your constituents — and you’re not allowed to tweet about it.
• State funerals: a required segment titled “Here’s What It Cost,” narrated by Morgan Freeman over a slide deck of uncomfortable truths. 

Two psychiatrists. One bottle of Old Forester. America in crisis.
 You’re not crazy — but the country might be.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 are starting to lose trust in the parents they never asked for.
And yes, the breakup heard round the MAGA world: Trump vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a rupture that reveals more about trauma bonding and identity panic than about policy. 

Then there’s the rise of celebrity candidates — Matthew McConaughey included — and what it says about a nation searching for leaders who can survive the projection of a tribe desperate for meaning. In a world where authenticity beats competence and vibes beat credentials, the next governor might just walk in wearing bongos. 

In this episode:

• The shutdown hangover and why your anxiety didn’t “go away,” it just got quiet
 • Why political wins now feel like Pyrrhic victories with no strategic benefit
• Family systems theory: Democrats and Republicans as the parents in a toxic marriage
• Why the middle class is becoming the new political center of gravity
• Celebrity politics and the “projection armor” required to survive leadership
• The Trump–MTG breakup and what it means for trauma-bonded movements
• MAGA’s identity crisis: when the brand shifts but the supporters don’t
• The growing demand for a new political identity that isn’t pure culture war

Prescriptions:

• Congress: 43 days of no pay, all work — the reverse shutdown. Non-essential badge mandatory.
• Voters: emotional differentiation — your identity is not the politician who disappointed you today.
• All of us: tell better stories. As Kierkegaard warns: the crowd is untruth. And as McConaughey reminds: keep livin’ — L-I-V-I-N.

Pour something strong. America’s in therapy again.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 crisis
• How Newt Gingrich turned outrage into a business model
• The 90s culture wars that became today’s shamelessness olympics
• And how Congress went from wise elder to full-on teenager with a C-SPAN account

Then Rob drops the most unsettling pep talk in podcasting history — a detailed walk through the next LISCO (Large-Scale Combat Operations) scenario that explains how a real existential threat could reunify the country. It’s terrifying, logical, and disturbingly hopeful.

Prescriptions (what we actually said):
• Congress: needs a 12-step program for power addiction. Step one — admit you’re powerless over the news cycle.
• C-SPAN Family Therapy: no hearings until every member can say, “I feel frustrated,” instead of, “You’re destroying America.”
• The rest of us: grow up. Do your one job — preferably better than the people you voted for.

Pour something inexpensive, brace yourself for Rob’s war monologue, and try not to Google “LISCO” before bed.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 validation hunger, narcissistic injury, and shame armor dressed up as memes. We talk about why chaos makes “decisive” feel holy, even when it’s unconstitutional later.

Last pour: TikTok’s privacy wobble. The app softens its “we’ll notify you” promise to law enforcement and reminds everyone that surveillance doesn’t start with punishment; it starts with belonging. Younger users shrug (“we’re watched anyway”), which is how norms shift while you’re dancing. Government anxiety plays helicopter parent, and once monitoring expands, it rarely contracts.

Prescriptions
• Label synthetic media on campaign content as parody/propaganda, big enough to read without pausing.
• Chore-chart Congress: no governing, no allowance. Anyone saying “leverage” while people miss rent does a 48-hour unpaid “reality” internship; anyone planning a “shutdown strategy retreat” funds staff groceries first.
• Satire break: try the “government surveillance starter-pack” costume. Salute the cameras.
• Retire royal cosplay. Republics don’t role-play monarchy.

Bourbon roll call makes a cameo, but the diagnosis is sober: we’re normalizing chaos and calling it content. Let’s stop cosplay monarchy, pay people for work already done, and act like adults in a shared house.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 norms through persona splitting, deindividuation, and silence-as-consent?
• The martial: talk of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy troops at home. That’s stress regressing to a punitive-parent stance, scapegoating fellow citizens, and flirting with a tradition the founders deeply distrusted. Rights aren’t threats to order; they’re the test of it. 

Prescriptions
• Treat snubs like adults: no conspiracy, no tantrum; regulate before you public-post.
• In groups, draw the line: “boys will be boys” ends where dehumanization starts; speak up or leave.
• Protect protest, reject force-first fantasies; reward leaders who de-escalate.
• Personal sanity plan: widen inputs, lower reactivity, and keep humor that punches up, not down.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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, especially to military families and readiness. 
• Fight-Fight-Fight coin: a commemorative, non-legal tender Trump coin as transitional object. Souvenir psychology 101: when policy stalls, people reach for teddy bears with ideology stamped on them. 
• MTG breaks ranks: Marjorie Taylor Greene trains fire on GOP leadership while preserving the “untouchable father” fantasy. Low-differentiation party dynamics in the wild. Post-policy politics, now with brand management. 

Prescriptions (usable, not performative)

1. Differentiate: “Here’s what I believe; here’s how I’ll behave with people who don’t.” Lower reactivity without softening values. 
2. Don’t feed triangulation: stop using enemies (or cable hits) to regulate anxiety; address conflict directly. 
3. Quit court-parenting: the judiciary can’t keep mediating fights legislators won’t touch. Demand work, not theater. 
4. Representation upgrades + local engagement: expand voice where outcomes are real; reward leaders who de-escalate. 

Comic relief, because you need it:

• A 15-point stretch before moving the moral goalposts.
• National nap time for Congress until someone uses “I feel” without yelling.
• The Patriots Emotional Support Animal Act: therapy bald eagles, or googly eyes on a rotisserie chicken if logistics get tight. 

Bourbon roll call: Old Crow vs Evan Williams, both bottom-shelf, both discussed with more honesty than Congress brings to a CR vote.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 cure
• Triangulation 101: how parties use you to fight each other and why that keeps us stuck
• Emotional cutoff vs boundaries: preserving self without exiling neighbors
• Why the judicial branch is mediating fights lawmakers won’t touch
• Representation upgrades: expand Congress, shrink districts, increase voice
• A practical playbook for common ground that isn’t code for surrender
• Local first: where influence is real and algorithm drama isn’t

Prescriptions

1. Practice differentiation: “Here’s what I believe; here’s how I’ll behave with people who don’t.”
2. Don’t feed triangulation: stop using enemies to regulate your anxiety.
3. Push for representation reform and show up locally where outcomes change.
4. Choose better “parents”: reward leaders who de-escalate instead of auditioning for cable.

It’s not kumbaya. It’s grown-up conflict skills for a country that keeps threatening to move out.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 identity fights is a nasty amplifier. We break down the psychology that tilts people toward violence: tribalism as a defense when you feel unsafe, projection and splitting that reinforce echo chambers, and cognitive dissonance that often resolves as lashing out instead of rethinking. 

Platforms pour gasoline on all of it: outrage travels fastest, copycat risk is real, and algorithmic rabbit holes move people from grievance to permission. Even naming perpetrators can fuel the contagion. We also distinguish mass-chaos fame-seeking from targeted political violence justified by identity; both are fed by the same pressure cooker. 

Prescriptions (what you can actually do)
• Re-humanize locally. Spend time offline with people you share a town, school, or service with. It gets harder to hate the person you know.
• Widen inputs when certainty spikes. Don’t marinate in one-sided feeds; curiosity is the antidote to fervor.
• Cool the loop. Slow rumor timelines and avoid gratuitous naming that drives copycats.
• Hold speech and norms at once. Defend free speech while refusing dehumanization and tribal score-settling.
• Leadership matters. Reward leaders who turn the thermostat down; ignore those farming fear for clicks. 

Not therapy or medical advice. But it is a sober map back to a country where disagreement isn’t a prelude to violence.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.

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 American Dream on the marquee while inequality and selective memory run backstage. The point isn’t to scold. It’s risk management. Unknown material doesn’t disappear; it organizes behavior. 

Receipts included: Tulsa 1921 and the Greenwood cover-up; the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia; how fast cycles and AI-deniable “evidence” help a community memory forget itself; why violence gets framed as freedom; and how immigration mythology collides with actual history and class mobility. Nuance isn’t optional; it’s psychological hygiene. 

Prescriptions (usable, not performative):
• Teach the whole story. Re-invest in honest civic history for kids; stop whitewashing the record.
• Run the shadow worksheet. Two columns: accusations you make about the out-group vs evidence of the same in you or your side; add one fix you control.
• Language discipline. Strip dehumanization; slow rumor velocity; keep nonviolence as the only acceptable outlet for grievance.
• Reading list: Michael Harriot’s Black AF History and the young readers’ edition of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. 

Exceptional and flawed can both be true. If America wants the former, it has to own the latter.

"Got Thoughts? Outrage? A Diagnosis of Your Own? Send us a text"

Support the show

Shrink The Nation is where America lies on the couch — and we pour the bourbon.
Hosted by board-certified psychiatrists and mental health pros with backgrounds in military, media, and systems thinking, we break down the psychology behind politics, culture, and public dysfunction.
Smart. Funny. Clinically sharp. Slightly buzzed.

Subscribe, rate, and share if you’re part of the exhausted middle looking for sanity in the noise.

For feedback or hate-listening invitations, hit us at [email protected].

Follow us everywhere: @shrinkthenation on X, Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky

Shrink The Nation — On the Couch With America.