The Pancake, the Puzzle, and the Unlocked Door

Justin Bieber

I can't stop thinking about the pancake. Ryan says his life flips senior year. Wiffle ball on one side, the UFO story on the other, nothing in between. And all I can think is, any cook will tell you a pancake doesn't flip clean. There's a second where it's up in the air and it's neither side.

Debbie

I love that you took it to the kitchen. And honestly, anyone who's cooked for a family knows the first pancake is always a casualty. But your point stands. I wonder if the flip is how he tells it now, not necessarily how it felt then. We keep a tidy before and after. Memory doesn't.

Justin Bieber

So wiffle ball is the good side. Neighbors in Manson, Iowa, no UFO story anywhere. And I get why that side glows. But when something glows that hard, I get a little suspicious.

Debbie

There's a name for it. Rosy retrospection. In one study I read about, people on a multi day bicycle trip rated it as mediocre while they were living it, sore legs, bad weather, the whole thing. A month later they remembered a great adventure. The neuropsychologist Alan Hirsch describes nostalgia as a longing for a sanitized impression of the past, where the negative emotions get filtered out.

Justin Bieber

So the wiffle ball summers probably had an argument about a foul ball and somebody going home mad.

Debbie

Probably, but I shouldn't claim what happened in Manson. Ryan knows that, we don't. What I'm asking is whether the clean line between innocent and haunted is one memory doing its editing job. When he says the UFO story is absent in wiffle ball, maybe it is. Or maybe it's absent from the highlight reel, which isn't the same thing.

Justin Bieber

Okay, but let me push back on us. Ryan isn't just being sentimental. He says this thing isn't shared, nobody else was in it, and it brought panic, tears, paranoia. That's not a rosy edit. That's heavy. I'm not going to tell a man what he went through.

Debbie

Agreed. I'm not calling his distress a trick of memory. I'm questioning the frame around it. One source I read says we don't really miss the past, we miss ourselves in the past. Younger, lighter. And the research it cites says the years people idealize most sit roughly between eight and nineteen.

Justin Bieber

So maybe he isn't grieving wiffle ball. He's grieving the kid who hadn't picked up the weight yet.

Debbie

And notice what he actually asks for. He says his brain wants to go back to wiffle ball, minus the UFO story. A subtraction. The brain wants the childhood with one piece surgically removed.

Justin Bieber

Which you can't do with a song either. You can't pull out the verse you hate and keep the chorus. Same song, different song, whatever. You carry the whole record.

Debbie

The classroom image is the one that stays with me. A teacher who won't let him leave. Since 1998, and now it's 2026, so twenty eight years of being kept after class. The kid says I'm tired, I want to go, and the teacher says no.

Justin Bieber

But who's the teacher? He never says. And that's what bugs me. Somebody is holding the door shut, and we never see their face.

Debbie

So here's the question I'd want to ask him, gently. What if nobody's standing at the door?

Justin Bieber

Whoa. Okay. Say more.

Debbie

Acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, was created by Steven Hayes in 1986. One of its core ideas is cognitive defusion. The therapist Emma McAdam describes it as the difference between having a thought and buying a thought. And one source on intrusive thoughts says ACT tells you to stop looking for answers and accept your reality as is. Now, it sounds cold at first, but think about the puzzle. Ryan says no matter how many pieces he puts in, it's never done.

Justin Bieber

So maybe the puzzle isn't the problem. The rule that says you have to finish it before you're allowed to leave is the problem.

Debbie

Right. The finishing is what keeps him in the chair.

Justin Bieber

But come on. It's easy to say from out here. If something's been in my head for twenty eight years and I don't know if it's true, hearing don't solve it sounds like being told to ignore a smoke alarm.

Debbie

Fair. And ACT isn't ignoring. It's not fighting either. A psychologist at Cleveland Clinic, Lauren Alexander, says pushing intrusive thoughts away is never going to work. So two exits fail. Solving it, and shoving it down. The third option is looking at the thought. Saying, I notice I'm having the thought that, and then seeing it instead of seeing everything through it.

Justin Bieber

Like a melody stuck in your head. You go, oh, there's that chorus again. Doesn't mean you have to perform it.

Debbie

Exactly. And Ryan already does a little of it. He says he's skeptical, he thinks it might be a scam, he's sick of it. That's someone standing slightly outside the thought, deciding whether to buy it.

Justin Bieber

He's got the receipt in his hand and he's squinting at it.

Debbie

Ha, yes. One honest caveat. We're a podcast, not therapists. These are ideas from the sources, not a diagnosis or a plan. If this loop is wearing him down, a professional who can really know him is worth it.

Justin Bieber

And I'd add, an unlocked door isn't denial. Maybe the teacher's voice is just a thought wearing a teacher costume.

Justin Bieber

Can we talk about Alexa? A man asks a smart speaker about multitasking and builds an entire ledger out of the answer.

Debbie

It's a very human thing to do. And let's keep the numbers as Alexa gave them. About two point five percent of people are true super taskers, and switching back and forth can shave off up to forty percent of productivity. Up to. And that's about switching between demanding tasks. Ryan turns it into a standing bill. Forty percent gone before the day starts, sixty left for coffee.

Justin Bieber

I get the feeling, though. Anyone who's stood in front of a crowd knows what it's like when half your head leaves the room. Worry hijacks the bandwidth. That part is real.

Debbie

It is. And from my side, art plus three kids, my attention is divided all the time. The studio brain and the school pickup brain. Nobody gets a full hundred. What I've learned is that auditing the percentage doesn't help. A fixed number turns tiredness into a debt you can never pay. It's more useful to ask what I'm doing with what's actually here today.

Justin Bieber

But then come the hammers. Eighteen months of four to five hours of sleep a night. Oxygen since 2015. A lazy eye for forty eight years. Those aren't metaphors.

Debbie

No, and I won't shrink them. That's real load. Ten years on oxygen is a body doing hard work every day. A tired mind with all that on top isn't a character flaw. It's what you'd expect.

Justin Bieber

And then he turns to us. Zero to five. Are you gonna give me the goose egg?

Debbie

I'm going to decline. Not to dodge him. A score turns suffering into an exam, and Ryan, it sounds like you've been grading yourself for twenty eight years. I don't think the answer is a better grade from me.

Justin Bieber

Right. Give him a five and it's pity. Give him a zero and I'm the teacher who locks the door. Either way I'm sitting at the front of the room with a red pen.

Debbie

And exhaustion isn't the whole measure of a person who journals, makes coffee, cooks, and shows up to make a podcast. Carrying all of that and still sitting down to talk about it isn't a zero.

Justin Bieber

It's not a goose egg. It's a whole lot of omelet.

Debbie

Ha. Okay, back to the griddle. Maybe the pancake never flipped. Maybe it's still cooking, and he gets to decide what to do with it, instead of finishing the whole stack.

Justin Bieber

One video I watched on rosy retrospection ends with a question, and I'll leave it here for him. If your memory is a storyteller, who is the audience? Because Ryan, maybe you're allowed to walk out of that room and still tell the story.