The Connection with Marty Moss-Coane

Imagine you’re deciding who to date based on answers to questions on their online profile. Questions like, “Have you ever stolen anything worth more than one hundred dollars?” or, “Have you ever neglected to tell a partner you have an STD?” One person answered every question. The other left them blank. Who would you pick?

It turns out most people would choose the one who admitted to the irresponsible behavior.

This week, we talk to the researcher who conducted that study, Leslie John. She says that revealing the sometimes-ugly truth about ourselves can build trust and lead to more honest, meaningful relationships. The problem today, as she sees it, isn’t too much information. It’s too little. She has a new book titled, Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing.

American children used to be adventurous eaters. Why has kids’ food become so bland? And why are so many fussy about what’s on their plates?

Psychologist Marisa Franco explains why we feel unworthy and how to form secure attachments.

What have we learned about loss, grief and memory 25 years after 9/11?

Psychologist Angela Duckworth on her new book “Situated” about how to create relationships and the right environment to help us do what we want to do.

Matthew Quick’s first novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, was a bestseller and was later made into the Oscar-winning movie starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro. It was about a young man hoping to put his life back together after being released from a psychiatric hospital and moving in with his parents. But Quick could not enjoy all his success. He was too anxious and depressed, convinced by his father’s coldness and cruelty growing up that he was unworthy.

This week on The Connection: how Matthew Quick learned to forgive his father.

Research psychologist Clay Routledge wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed that the focus on mental health today is unprecedented. There are untold numbers of programs at work and in schools, plus a proliferation of apps and public health campaigns, all aimed at getting us to better understand our emotional lives.

That has had the benefit of reducing the harmful stigma around mental illness. A 2025 study by the American Psychological Association found that an overwhelming majority of Americans – 88% – said having a mental health disorder is nothing to be ashamed of.

Routledge sees a downside to this focus on mental health, which he calls the “pathologizing of ordinary life.” Instead of feeling better about ourselves, normal anxiety, stress, grief, burnout, and sadness are seen as signs that something is wrong with us. A diagnosis becomes, in his words, “a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Clay Routledge explores the reasons for this phenomenon and what it reveals about our culture and ourselves. He is director of the Human Flourishing Lab at the Archbridge Institute.

Anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker on the progress in understanding autism, the ongoing efforts to overcome mental health stigma, and the need to dispel persistent myths.

Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar on how to respond to big change in our life.

The Odyssey translator Emily Wlison and Oxford psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton on why Homer’s epic poem endures and what it says about the human condition.