Reproductive Rights and The Handmaid's Tale with Travis Langley and Wind Goodfriend

On this week's episode of TALK by Turner, we're joined by Travis Langley and Wind Goodfriend, co-editors of The Handmaid's Tale Psychology: Seeing Off Red. In this conversation, Travis and Wind dive into important topics ahead of The Handmaid's Tale Season 6, including reproductive rights, feminism, and gender identity.

Dr. Travis Langley is a distinguished professor of psychology at Henderson State University and has been a child abuse investigator, courtroom expert, and Wheel of Fortune game show champion. A popular keynote speaker for the American Psychological Association, Amazon, and other organizations, he speaks regularly on heroism and the power of story in people’s lives. 

Dr. Wind Goodfriend is a professor of psychology at Buena Vista University and the author and editor of over 100 books, chapters, and journal articles. Her research focuses on understanding and preventing relationship violence, sexism, and homophobia.

Check out the full transcript of the episode below, and watch or listen on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts!

Buy The Handmaid's Tale Psychology: Seeing Off Red wherever books are sold!

Amazon: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Handmaids-Tale-Psychology-Popular-Culture/dp/1684420431/ref⁠

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Geoffrey Colon: This week on TALK by Turner, we're joined by Travis Langley and Wind Goodfriend. Dr. Langley is a distinguished professor of psychology at Henderson State University and has been a child abuse investigator, courtroom expert, and Wheel of Fortune game show champion. A popular keynote speaker for the American Psychological Association, Amazon, and other organizations. He speaks regularly on heroism and the power of story in people's lives. Dr. Wind Goodfriend is a professor of psychology at Buena Vista University and the author and editor of over 100 books, chapters, and journal articles. Her research focuses on understanding and preventing relationship violence, sexism, and homophobia.

Travis and Wind are the editors and contributors to the book, The Handmaid's Tale Psychology, which dives into the psychology of the characters and events depicted in Margaret Atwood's epic, both on screen and in print. I'm your host, Jeffrey Cologne, and you're listening to TALK by Turner. TALK by Turner dives deep into intellectual discovery while examining what's happening in our world right here, right now.

Join us each week to hear from industry experts and published authors as they share their knowledge and insight on today's most important topics. Now, let's see who's on this week's episode. Travis and Wind, welcome to TALK by Turner.

Travis Langley: Welcome to you, too. Thank you for having us. 

Wind Goodfriend: Thank you so much.

GC: All right, to start, what is something that you want all the listeners to take away from our conversation surrounding the heavy topic of reproductive rights, feminism, and the application of The Handmaid's Tale to our current political climate? 

TL: Me? Hope. And it can be hard, but I think that's one of the most important reasons to talk about these things. Margaret Atwood, through it all, even with as terrible things are happening throughout the stories, especially with the sequel, but I mean, there's terrible things going on.

It's like you stay with the characters, even when you don't know if it's going to be the happy ending or not, but you stay with them because you feel there is hope, although when June loses her hope, and this fits a lot of people now when they've lost their hope, is to at least hope for hope. To hope you find something, some reason to hope. 

GC: And Wind, how about you? 

WG: For me, I think we all need to remember that ignoring a problem will not make it go away or make it magically get better. Ignoring a problem almost always makes it get worse. So I've heard a lot of people say, oh, you know, maybe our world is getting closer to The Handmaid's Tale, but they've never read the book, they've never seen the show. And so it really is important for people to be paying attention to things, for people to know what's going on, because if people have concerns, now is the time to voice them, now is the time to get involved, because you never know when it's going to be too late.

And I think it's also good to remember what feminism is. I think people often get confused and think feminism is somehow hatred of men or trying to put women or other genders on top. And most feminists just define it as equal opportunities, equal rights.

And in a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion are being disallowed and demonized, it's just simply equality. That's all. And that equality is actually a good thing.

GC: Yes, it is. Let's talk about The Handmaid's Tale for a moment here. It is a dystopian story. So my question for both of you is, let's look at the recent ramifications of legislation surrounding bodily autonomy, especially around women's bodies, and in the wake of the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. So what's both of your take in terms of where things could be headed, but also, to your point, Travis, in regard to hope, where things maybe where we can sort of push back on where things are headed as well?

WG: I'll start this time, Travis, maybe. I don't know if we want to alternate, but for me, it's important for people to know that since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, about one in three women in the United States now live in a place where abortion is not accessible. So we're talking about a third of the country, but also that there is an intersectionality to the changes. So that means that there are certain kinds of women where it's more accessible.

And so that means if you can travel to another state, then you still have more rights than people who cannot travel. So we're talking about people who have high versus low socioeconomic status, maybe people of certain ages, or who have partners who are more or less understanding, right? So we're talking about now, not just sexism, but classism, other issues are going to come into play here. So we also know that women who historically have not had legal access to abortions have still resorted to illegal opportunities

And so that means that we're going to have health problems with people trying to resort to desperate measures. And there are other ramifications that I'm not sure people realize when these laws go into effect. So there are states where people won't want to live in those states.

So people won't necessarily want to send their children to colleges in states where abortions are illegal. There are medical professionals who won't want to live in those states. There are people who simply disagree with the politics who won't want to live in those states.

So I think we'll see this division getting even larger, because there will be sort of red states versus blue states. And the United States, I think, will become less and less united. 

GC: So more of a geographical polarization. Travis, what's your take on this current situation? 

TL:Well, the geographical polarization can also lure people into thinking there are safe places to be. Those talking about leaving Canada. An American dictatorship is a threat to everyone, everywhere. And they want to make those changes everywhere.

So we've got a family member who lives in Texas, who a decade ago was pregnant and, well, the baby died, or the preborn. And the infant heartbeat had stopped. Now, in that state, even though the heartbeat had stopped, she would have had great difficulty getting the necessary procedure to remove her dead fetus.

She might have had to travel a thousand miles. And we're talking about something that technically would still be legal there, but then they'll get into that argument. Your life is not in danger enough yet.

Go wait in the parking lot until you're on the verge of death and come back in, and then we might do the procedure. And this is somebody who works in the medical health field. And so she has seen these things. She knows that they're seriously contemplating moving to another. My thought is that Michigan is still within the United States of America. So even though it's one with the greater liberties in that way, it doesn't mean they're protected tomorrow.

So we've got to look out for what's going on. On those women's issues, there will be the erasure of the supposed DEI, as if every woman who was ever in the military was a DEI hire. And that's the only reason she was in there. As if every non-white person who was ever in the military was just a DEI hire. Okay, it starts with removing links to their graves. The goal obviously is going to be removing all of them from the military.

So the goal for the bad guys is to keep getting things worse. And by shaving off on one layer after another, where the rest of the layer goes, well, that's not me being affected yet. It's like, yeah, but if you don't look out for the outer layer, you're going to be in the one that gets cut eventually, too. Things can get much worse. And they may get much worse before they get better. I am still optimistic that things will get better, that things will improve in a drastic way. They have to. Otherwise, there's no way to keep it from happening again. Yeah.

WG: Also, I'd like to bounce off of that, Travis, and say it's not the ramifications of Roe v. Wade aren't just about reproductive rights. And I think this is kind of what Travis is saying, because we also see the ripple effects of just the idea of like, oh, it's up to the states. So states now are saying what else is up to us, right? And so we see things like, okay, we can no longer have separation of church and state. So let's have all public schools display the Ten Commandments. We can have Idaho pass a law saying we don't even have to recognize same-sex marriage anymore. That happened in Idaho, right? So even though the federal Supreme Court has said same-sex marriage is, in fact, legal, Idaho can say, well, we don't want it in our state, right? So how far can states go now that they've been given this like brand new, fresh look at like, well, everything is now up to the states.

Like, okay, so is interracial marriage now going to be left up to the states? Like, if it's not explicitly in the Constitution, how much stuff can we strip away when it comes to civil rights? I think that's where we seem to be going. 

TL: Now, more of the audience is going to know the TV show The Handmaid's Tale than the book. Although this is a book talk! More of you should be reading the book, especially The Handmaid's Tale Psychology: Seeing Off Red about the book and the TV show and a few references to the movie. But in the TV show, when Emily and her wife are simply told, no, you're not married, just boom, just like that. They're not married. They're told that. And it's like, she still says wife and Chloe, what's-her-face's character still views herself as her wife, even when she's off in Canada. It’s been a legal decision, they just decided that boom, you’re not married. And there are some members of the Supreme Court, two of them in particular, who have expressed interest in revisiting more, even though one of them is in a racially-mixed marriage.

GC: Yeah, that’s a little interestin how that plays in. I don’t know if he’s given much thought to that.

TL: I don’t know. He’s got his. He thinks he's safe. 

GC: That's right. I was just going to say, he feels like, you know, he has his power. So therefore he doesn't have to think about, you know, anyone else's rights in this situation. 

WG: We've had a lot of people recently saying, I didn't think this was going to affect me. 

TL:: And you should care before it only affects you. It's like when I'll hear the person who they’ll fight against gay rights until they find their own child is gay and then they'll support them. Okay.

It's better that they support them than rejecting them. It's absolutely better. But why the hell couldn't they have been considered when it wasn't selfish? It's like, it doesn't have to be the selfish thing for you to care about somebody else, for you to look out for somebody else's rights because that other person's rights, those are your rights.

GV: Yeah. And it's also interesting because it reminds me of all people, the, you know, the late Barry Goldwater who was, you know, very far right, supported, you know, gays in the military back in the seventies. And when people asked him, you know, why do you do this? He basically answered with, well, sort of a weird quote, but it was like, you don't need to be straight in order to shoot straight.

What he basically was saying was like, we should give more opportunity to everyone regardless of their background. I think if you tried to say that to most people now of a particular political affiliation, they would just say, that's all nonsense that was never said, or there's untruths in that. So that leads me to my next question in terms of misinformation. How has misinformation, especially by elected officials, which we seem to be getting much more of in this day and age, you know, how is that affecting people's overall understanding of and stance on women's reproductive rights? Wind, what's your piece? 

WG: I think right now people are purposely using misinformation because increasingly the audience won't fact-check. People get their information from TikTok. My niece and nibbling are 17 and 13 and they have told me they get their news from TikTok. And I know that they don't check. I know that they get their information from social media, and people purposely lie. And even if they get facts checked later, the people who got the information don't necessarily care. They don't really remember later that the facts turned out to be not a fact. And so confirmation bias is going to kick in, right? 

The psychology is that we make a, we decide what we believe, and then we filter everything in that lens, right? So I want to believe this and therefor,e I remember it. I pay attention to it.

Anything that goes against my opinion, I don't notice it. I don't remember it. And so the politicians know that, and they use that for their benefit.

TL: And people don't easily change their positions when they've already publicly committed to them somehow. That cognitive dissonance where they, they will double down and quintuple down. And since it keeps happening by degrees, you know, something that they absolutely would have gone, that is complete nonsense if it had gone straight to that, but going creep by degree, by degree, by degree.

Joseph Goebbels was the expert in propaganda once upon a time. That was his job. And they used that incredibly effectively.

They played on people's fears because of the Great Depression they had just been through and “let's help them demonize somebody” and see someone as the enemy and plenty of distraction. Distract them from this horrible thing we're doing over there by just giving them this mildly disturbing thing to focus on over here that falls within the things that they'll still just go, okay, well, we'll swallow that. But the illusion that you're doing things to protect people, you know, whether it's like, oh, we're doing this to protect the women. We're doing this to protect the children. We're doing this to protect the Jews who are being moved into this ghetto. We're doing this to protect these immigrants. So they'll be in this safe place regardless of what actually happens. 

In the book The Handmaid's Tale, there are only fleeting references to other races. Now the TV show, for being racially mixed, I understand why they do that, but by not wanting an all white cast, they've missed out. They've left out the extreme racism that goes with these kinds of things. And they've just very briefly indicated that the non-whites have been relocated somewhere else. And Offred, as she is only called in the book, wonders what that means.

And then there's a throwaway reference in the sequel to the fact that genocide was involved. 

GC: Staying on that point that you touched on in terms of propaganda and sort of authoritarian control, you know, how to, psychologically speaking, how to tactics like that, you know, how do they affect how citizens behave and respond in their environment? What are, and to draw on that, or to add to that, what are we seeing now from the book that's actually playing out in real life in front of us in 2025? 

WG: I find the topic of propaganda so fascinating, partially because I'm a social psychologist. So these topics are at the heart of social psychology, which really became a popular subfield right after World War II, just as Travis is talking about, you know, with the Holocaust.

And so I'm also interested in these topics, kind of personally, right? I have some Jewish ethnicity, but I also, I got to go to North Korea for a week, and the propaganda in North Korea is just over the top, bananas level propaganda. And it was kind of a propaganda tour of North Korea, where they, I was with a group of United States citizens and Canadians, and they were purposely kind of trying to show us like how great everything in North Korea was. So it was just very bizarre.

But to your question, one of the chapters that I contributed to our book is about how the psychological kind of indoctrination that occurs in this kind of dystopian society, and I think, you know, we can see somewhat in current dystopias, is similar to the research that I do on one-on-one relationships that can be characterized as abusive, psychologically abusive. So gaslighting is a term that most people today are familiar with, but this idea that you're taught to question any doubts that you have, you're taught to blame yourself if there are problems, and that you shouldn't question the leaders, like questioning leaders is disloyal somehow, right? It's like cults of personality, where people are made to be like heroes, and nothing bad is ever allowed, right? And so news outlets, journalists are not allowed to criticize; they're sued if anything bad is ever said, right? We have companies like Meta/Facebook, they're no longer fact-checking, right? So the society that doesn't ever have, you know, the ability to have journalistic integrity and ask questions and criticize, that's bad, like that's historically really bad. And I know that's, you know, not particularly eloquent, but when we stop questioning our leaders, when we stop asking questions, that's a recipe for propagandic disaster. 

TL: Yeah, when I was a kid, I trusted the news. I at least trusted that they were trying to get it right. There were these standards of journalistic integrity, but we only had, well, three main networks and PBS on TV. We had newspapers, you know, we would have multiple newspapers, you'd have a couple of state papers and your local paper, and they're all wanting to be the trusted source.

When Walter Cronkite is the most trusted man in America, it was journalists who broke Watergate, journalists who brought down Nixon over violations we still don't completely understand now, but are nothing on the scale of what's, you know, Nixon in his grave would be, “I resigned over that!” 

GC: Yeah, you think about, yeah, it's interesting how history sort of gives us how heavy things have gotten in the sort of modern era, which leads me to ask me, both of you, this question. Your book has not been banned, at least not yet.

TL: I look forward to it. 

GC: Might get more people to actually want to learn about it. The Handmaid's Tale has been banned, and of course, we know that there's banned book lists that are pretty much everywhere. Going back to our discussion on states, you have them at pretty much the state level. You have certain school districts that outlaw certain books. So what's your advice to people when it comes to, you know, how they can push back against these initiatives to ban books? And, you know, why is it important to read banned books? Curious for your thoughts. Curious for your thoughts there. Wind, why don't you take this one first? 

WG: I think it's really important for people to get involved at the local level first. So you can usually go to local library board meetings and find out what are they talking about at your local library level. Same with education board meetings, right? Are they trying to ban books at your schools? Why are they banning those books, right? And that second question is really important because the question of “why is a book being banned?” tells you what the people in power fear. Why are they threatened by this? And that tells you what their values are and what their prejudices are. So are they banning this just because there's a gay character? Are they banning this because people are having sex? That's going to tell you what their prejudices are. It's going to tell you what their vulnerabilities are. Then, of course, read those books because if they're being banned, right, that tells you that maybe there's something rebellious in that book, right? And in my opinion, the books that are banned are the most interesting and exciting and are telling you, like, that's really the good stuff about society. That's pushing the status quo in a way that probably should be pushed.

TL: Yeah, the person who's arguing for the ban, ask them about the content of the book because odds are they have not read it. And even if the board you're talking before goes ahead and bans it, you at least might have some people in the room who heard that that person didn't even read this and get them more curious about being involved.

GC: So let's take a pivot here. I would love to ask you both on how stories like The Handmaid's Tale, you know, teach us about our evolving understanding of gender. Seems to be a huge battle that's been going on in a lot of different societies. Curious for, you know, how we address that from or how the book addresses it or how reading the book sort of can get us to think about gender as a concept. Travis, your take. 

TL: Oh, I mean, with any of the things that we're talking about, we're repeatedly using the filter of fiction to talk about real human nature. And so that's really important with books, any kind of fiction, but books have a particular power here. They can take you inside the heads of characters who are people who are different, that they get you to think about somebody you wouldn't have thought about otherwise. You're a male reading a book from a female perspective or other perspective. It gets you to think about this individual as a human being and feel for them in ways that you might not have just looking at them on the surface in your everyday life.

There's been a lot of research, brain scan research, showing that when people are engaged in processing fiction, whether viewing a movie or any reading material, that activates empathy areas of the brain, it activates areas of the brain as if these things are happening by mentally rehearsing the feeling with this character. It exercises your brain as if you're feeling for a real person and then helps you expand your ability to feel for people and consider the other point of view. Whereas if you don't ever have reason to go inside the head of somebody else in the way that the fiction gets you to, you might keep dehumanizing them, objectifying them in everyday life.

GC: So it builds the empathy muscle over time. Yeah. Wind, what's your take on this? 

WG: I really like Travis's point. And I imagine that a lot of the people who are upset right now about the concept of maybe there are more than two genders or I'm upset that transgender people are playing sports or that a trans person might want to use a bathroom of their choice. People are upset about these issues. Maybe they have never actually spoken to a trans person, for example. And so I think The Handmaid's Tale teaches us that gender is complicated. Gender is a subjective social construct. Gender is political, but gender is also really personal.

And when you start trying to take people's rights away that really are personal and political and often don't affect anyone else in any real way: Why? Why are you trying to insert yourself into someone else's life when you can just not do that? And it would be okay. Like don't. It's not really your business. And the reason that this is very salient to me right now and should be salient to people is that I live in Iowa and Iowa 11 days ago was the first state to remove gender identity from our Iowa Civil Rights Act. We are the first state to remove a protected class of people from the list of people protected by civil rights. So it is now legal to discriminate against people in our state based on gender. So it's perfectly fine for you to not rent your apartment or to not hire someone or do whatever you want to a trans person. Totally fine. Go ahead. Be transphobic. No, no big deal.

And in the entire history of the world, as far as I believe, looking back on it, it's never been the good guys who take away people's rights. So I think the book tells us, again, have empathy, like Travis is saying, and that when people are pushed to extremes, people's choices dig in, and the people who have power will feel threatened and will try to sort of solidify times when they had power. And the people whose rights are being taken away will also do extreme things.

So we're going to see extreme behaviors. And I don't know how prepared people are for that on either side of what we're potentially setting ourselves up for. 

TL: Yeah, the flashbacks in the novel to when the things were first happening on the news, when America was getting replaced by Gilead, and some people were starting to lose their rights. It's presenting how in Offred's memory, it had been distant. It had been on the news. It wasn't her yet. That's one of the reasons for somebody such as trans individuals to be a target because they're not most people. There's more than enough of them for it to be an issue. It's an excessively easy target because most people will go, well, that's not me.

GC: That's right. And then you slowly expand until it is everyone. And then it's a little too late. Is that correct in sort of the assumption there or my assumption there?

WG: I mean, it's the poem from the Holocaust, right? It's like first they came after these people, and then they came after these people, and then there was no one left when they came after me, right? And you're just hoping that the problem goes away, right? I'm going to pick on people who are weaker than I am. And it's also riddled with prejudice, right? Like saying trans people are hiding in the bathroom to attack me. Now I'm equating trans people with sexual predators, which is a horrible lie, right? I mean, it's just awful on every possible level.

GC: The ACLU's been really busy the last couple of months. They've stated that the right to join with fellow citizens in protest or peaceful assembly is critical to a functioning democracy and at the core of the First Amendment. In fact, they are currently, I think, suing the current administration for a number of different things that are going on. From a psychological perspective, why do people choose to either speak up or remain silent when confronted with injustice? And why are resistance and free speech so important to maintain a functioning democracy? Travis. 

TL: Speaking up takes a risk, but those who do, they have the bravery, and bravery is not fearlessness. Bravery is doing the thing even though you're scared, even though it's dangerous. It's more heroic when you know the risk and you're doing it anyway. And that can be hard. It may be somebody who has that critical thing of empathy for others. That's why they're standing up for somebody. It could be they see the big picture and they know that things will fall apart. If we don't deal with this domino now, they're going to all fall.

There's one way or another, it's some form of perspective taking, whether it's at the emotional level, the long-term series of consequences with hypothetical deductive reasoning and other terms. And that very much figures in as training, it's upbringing. It's what values did you learn? Have you mentally rehearsed to stand up? There's a lot of research showing that mental rehearsal, THAT goes back to the value of the fiction. The fiction has you engage in some of the mental rehearsal, a feeling with the one who does stand up. 

GC: Wind, what's your take? 

WG: I think I can add a couple of additional psychological concepts to what Travis has pointed out, all of which was completely valid. I'll add diffusion of responsibility, which is just, why should I be the one to stand up when there are 100 other people here? Why should I be the one to take the risk? But I also think a really important concept is pluralistic ignorance. If I have doubts, but everyone is silent, then I think I'm the only one who has doubts, right? So, okay, I guess I'm not going to say anything because I don't want to be the only one to stand up and say, I don't like the direction we're heading. But someone has to be the brave one to stand up and say, I have doubts, because probably lots of people have doubts.

And someone has to be the brave one to stand up and say that, because as soon as one person says that, people will be like, oh, I do too, I do too, I do too. And then there can be like this, this wave of allies that you probably have, that we're just waiting for one person to stand up, right? So if you can be that brave, first rebellious person, that first instigator, right, maybe you'll end up being a martyr, but you can be the one to start the revolution.

GC: Yeah, reminds me of a very popular video that tries to teach social psychology in terms of movements, where if you have a person, and they are dancing, and it's not the first person who's dancing that makes the wave, it's actually the second person, because when people see two people doing it, they're more comfortable. And then before you know it, you have like 1000s doing it. So you bring up a good point. It's who's that first and second person that sort of start that movement or that wave. 

WG: Well, there are three of us right here. There we go. 

GC: We can get started right now. Hopefully people are waiting for action after they listen to this. 

WG: Let's start the rebellion. 

GC: Question on one of the of the final chapters in your book, which is about transitioning from a perspective of helplessness, which we talked about, maybe a little too much to, you know, a mentality of hope, hopefulness, which Travis touched on earlier in in the podcast. So for people who are feeling less than hopeful about the future of the country, in whatever way that might be, what would you both say to them to help pivot to optimism and agency rather than pessimism and inaction, Travis? 

TL: Well, there is the history, you can find examples repeatedly throughout history, when the tyrants get brought down. Rome did not stay in power over everybody else. Okay, the Ides of March have passed, but other things happened to bring down those individuals who were lording over others, the ones that succeeded, the ones that failed. There is absolutely the history, and reminding people of the best and the worst, reminding us that here's what happened when these things were allowed to keep getting worse, and here's how it ended. And while, you know, if America and Russia are the big problems, they're not going to come in to help save things like happened with Hitler. And so the question does become, who's going to help stand up to America and Russia? Well, it might be everybody else. And also those of us within. 

The Soviet Union fell. Okay, Russia is a big problem now, but the Soviet Union fell apart. It did happen. And people within that were part of what made things better. You know, there's hope in so many ways. And when I was a kid, we kind of expected a nuclear exchange to happen in our lifetime. And right now, that doesn't seem to be the big worry the same way, but I was telling my son that the other day. He said, “oh, so just we're not going to blow each other up?” I was like, yeah, that's something. It's like, well, this stuff is horrible. We are not expecting to just blow up as much. So we are expecting to still be here, like the scholars who were looking back on Gilead at the end in the afterward, the epilogues of both of the books. 

WG: So I think I can add to that two things. One is that I have experienced a lot of depression over the last few months when I think about the news and what I hoped would be where we are versus where we actually are. And I would encourage people to, of course, all feelings are valid and I think depression is valid, but I would say it's more useful to be angry. Anger is a feeling that motivates us to do something. And again, I still sometimes feel depression, but when I'm angry, I have the energy to fight back. And so I think: feel angry maybe. And then the other piece of that is that it's easy to be overwhelmed and to think I'm not I don't even know where to start. Right. And if and if I'm not going to, you know, take down the whole system, then it's not even worth trying. And I would say even a small action is an action.

And if we could get four million people to do a small action, then that would be amazing. Right. So even if you do a tiny little thing, even if you donate a small amount to a charity or to a politician that you favor, even if you do go to one protest, even if you do one thing each day, that's still one thing that you've done each day. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. It can be a small action that can still matter. Yeah.

TL: When the big picture is so daunting, you know, do the little thing. When, Wind, you're overwhelmed with with your anxiety or your depression. And those can be totally, totally appropriate. But you also don't need to stay stuck in them.

Find a way to interrupt them for the moment. I was discussing this with my students today about what mindfulness means. It's a phrase that gets overused, but it is about being conscious about your environment and then the moment where you are. People who obsess, who dwell heavily on the future tend to have more anxiety. That's right. Dwell heavily on the past, tend to have more depression. The people who find more peace, this is almost Buddhist, but, you know, tend to focus more on the moment. It can be something as simple as stop and take the breath. The in, the out.

An interesting exercise is like, name something in your environment. Think about something in your environment and then stop and take that breath. Stop and feel your heartbeat.

You're feeling yourself being alive in the moment. And when you're thinking about that heartbeat, it's hard to, even if, even if you're feeling the race of it with its anxiety, it tends to slow down while you're doing that. It's hard to think about the thing that you were depressed about or the thing that you're anxious about during that instant when you're feeling your heartbeat.

GC: So small things matter and it's okay to have anger in the current environment rather than hopelessness and despair. 

TL: We need anger. It's an activating emotion.

GC: Where can listeners, viewers find you both online? Well, I was one of the 10 most followed psychologists on Twitter. For what that's worth, I've pretty much nuked my account. I'm going through and deleting all the old tweets. I'm not going to actually delete the account, but I don't want somebody taking the name, but everywhere else you can find me as Dr. Travis Langley. Facebook's the easiest one to have a conversation on, much as I enjoy some of the others. I love Blue Sky, but Facebook's the easiest one to have a conversation.

GC: How about you, Wind? 

WG: Part of my self-care is that I do not use social media or online very much. I only use one type of social media and only for my actual friends and family that I know in real life. I do have a docuseries through the Great Courses on the psychology of cults, brainwashing, and indoctrination. So people can find me on the Great Courses if they want some of my psychology information. But online, I only live for my actual real-life friends and family. 

TL: Yeah, social media is one of the worst things when it comes to that future-past focus. You're reading what somebody just wrote in the past. You're waiting to see what they write in the future. You are never in the moment when you're in social media. 

GC: It might be time for us to delete all of that. The book is The Handmaid's Tale Psychology. The authors are Travis Langley and Wind Goodfriend.

Thanks for joining us here on TALK by Turner. TALK by Turner, hosted by Geoffrey Colon. Watch and listen now wherever you enjoy podcasts.