"Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone" was a 2008 newspaper column that turned into a national campaign to help parents raise their children with less anxiety while pushing back against our culture that has become obsessed with kids' fragility.

Our guest, Lenore Skenazy, founded free-range kids in the years after she first described making the decision to let her son, Izzy, take the New York City subway home alone. Her column resulted in a flood of media coverage and mixed reactions from parents— from accusations of child abuse to fond memories of childhood freedom. She hosted a TV series, "World's Worst Mom".

This week, the second edition of her best-selling book, "Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow", is published. In this episode, we discuss how parents and educators can step back so kids step up. We also look at the resilience of children and why the rest of the world is laughing at us scaredy-cat Americans.

Our obsession with what is normal and acceptable is at the heart of how we view mental health. It is also the source of stigma around many forms of mental illness.

In this podcast with anthropology professor, Richard Grinker, we ask how do we fix it? What are successful ways to challenge stigmas, as we help millions of people reach their full potential? Richard discusses the findings in his uplifting new book, "Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness."

Social distancing, remote learning, and disruption of social supports during the COVID pandemic are likely to lead to an even greater crisis of mental illness. But Richard sees hope at this moment. "The pandemic provides us with an opportunity to make progress in destigmatizing mental illness," he tells us.