Izzy Kalman: What the Bullying Conversation Gets Wrong

Everything you’ve been taught about bullying might be making it worse.

Izzy Kalman has been a school psychologist and psychotherapist since 1978 — and since the 1999 Columbine shooting, he’s been the anti-bullying movement’s most persistent critic. In this episode, he argues that a generation of “zero tolerance” policies, mandated by law, took the very things that escalate conflict and taught them as the right thing to do — training kids toward an external locus of control, fragility, and a victim mindset that follows them into adulthood, the workplace, and the college campus.

Then he does something rare on this show: he proves it live. Ryan and Izzy run the “insult game” — a real-time demonstration of how the Golden Rule works, not as a moral platitude, but as applied psychology rooted in our biological wiring for reciprocity.

In this conversation:

• Why the post-Columbine approach to bullying backfired
• Internal vs. external locus of control — and why it predicts a happy, successful life
• Resilience, fragility, and how good intentions weakened a generation
• The science of the Golden Rule and why we’re wired for reciprocity
• How to handle insults, cyberbullying, and conflict without anyone’s help
• Why “the bullies aren’t them — they’re us”

Guest: Israel “Izzy” Kalman, MS — director of Bullies to Buddies, creator of the Golden Rule System, author of Bullies to Buddies: How to Turn Your Enemies into Friends, and lead author of the Be Strong Resilience Program. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Good Morning America, and TEDx.

Learn more about Izzy:
Website: https://www.izzykalman.com
Psychology Today (Resilience to Bullying): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resilience-bullying

Connect with Ryan:
COLLIDE newsletter: https://ryanvet.com/collide
Website: https://ryanvet.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ryanvet
Instagram: https://instagram.com/theryanvetshow
Book Ryan to speak: https://ryanvet.com/generational-speaker

Chapters:
00:00 Cold open
00:36 Welcome — challenging the bullying orthodoxy
01:28 Columbine and the birth of the anti-bullying movement
08:28 Progressive philosophy and internal vs. external locus of control
11:55 Resilience vs. fragility: how we weakened a generation
12:48 Victim mindset, lawsuits, and “13 Reasons Why”
17:22 The science of the Golden Rule
21:14 Why we’re wired for reciprocity
22:31 The insult game (live demonstration)
30:10 The two illusions revealed
34:37 Comedy, cancel culture, and “making fun”
37:42 Social media and cyberbullying
41:41 “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
42:47 “The bullies aren’t them — they’re us”
44:37 Where to find Izzy Kalman

About Ryan Vet

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

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Transcript

Izzy Kalman 0:00

On this episode of the Ryan Vet Show. What's happening? We have been promoting for the last 27 years or so an external locus of control. The problem is their fault, it's not your fault. We have to solve the problem for you. How are children going to develop resilience if we try to give them an environment in which nothing bad ever happens to them? How are they going to develop self-confidence and self-esteem when we teach them that uh that you can solve the problems by yourself?

Ryan Vet 0:36

Welcome to another episode of the Ryan Vet Show. I'm excited to have Izzy Kalman with me, who challenges the conventional wisdom on bullying. We have heard the word bullying for many years and even a surge in the recent decade. But Izzy goes back to long before that and challenges bullying. And so, Izzy, welcome to the show.

Izzy Kalman 0:54

Thank you so much.

Ryan Vet 0:56

Pleasure to be here. Absolutely. Now, I want to go back to 1999. This was a tough time in America where the world watched on 24-hour news cycles, one of the first uh issues of this kind covered on 24-hour news cycles, the Columbine shooting in in Colorado. And at that point in time, um, you were already a psychologist and uh psychotherapist, but you were really uh concerned about what happened there, and it kind of set you on a trajectory to where what you've done for almost the last 30 years. Could you share a little bit of your story?

Izzy Kalman 1:27

Yeah. I earned a a master's degree in clinical psychology in 1978. I was 25 at the time, and I wanted to learn how to help people solve their social and emotional problems. And then I moved to Israel. I had wanted to go live there, and I needed a job. So uh a friend of mine, a psychologist, uh, suggested I look into schools. So I did, and it sounded interesting. And I took a job working in schools as a psychologist. It was wonderful. And quickly I discovered that the most common complaint of kids is they're being picked on by other kids. They're being insulted, they're being pushed around. And uh I knew why kids get picked on. It's people have known this forever. If you get upset, kids love picking on you. If you don't get upset, they leave you alone. So I would use role-playing to teach kids why they're being picked on and how to stop being picked on, and I got wonderful results, you know, very quickly. And then I I noticed how when teachers intervene in social complaints between kids, you know, he did this to me, she said that to me. The teachers almost always make it worse. I noticed the same thing happens among parents at home. When they get involved in the conflicts between their kids, you know, he did this to me, she said that to me, it immediately gets worse because each side wants the parents on their side. So it gets worse when the parents start playing judge, finding trying to find out who's right, who's wrong, who has to be punished. The same thing in school. If the school tries to figure out who started, who's right, who's wrong, it immediately escalates. Uh then in 1999, on April 20th, which happened to be Hitler's birthday, uh, two young men at Columbine High School in Colorado made an attempt to destroy their school. They planted bombs that didn't go off, but they brought guns, they killed 12 students, they killed a teacher, they uh injured 24 people, and they at the end were dead. And they had made videos in advance explaining why they're going to do this. And they presented themselves as victims of bullying. They're being picked on, your children are treating us like garbage, this is why we're going to do this. Uh and to me it made sense, you know, k kids who are being picked on want revenge. And I figured, oh, I have and it made bullying, they were calling this bullying, they made it a big mission, and I figured, oh, I have something to offer here. Uh but when I saw what the world is going to do about bullying, I knew it couldn't possibly work. There was a field of psychology called bullying psychology, which I had never heard of before. And they stepped up to the plate after Columbine, claiming they had the solution to bullying. When I saw what it they're proposing to do, I knew it couldn't possibly work. It was the contrary to everything I learned in psychology and psychotherapy. It was contrary to everything I learned in philosophy, religion. It was contrary to what I discovered actually works. They're taking the things that make the problem worse, and they are uh presenting it as the right thing to do. And not only that, they lobbied for anti-bullying laws, requiring this counterproductive approach to be mandated by law. Schools have to take this approach. So I started writing and speaking about this warning it's never going to work. And people hated me for it because people loved the idea that we're going to get rid of bullies. Let's get rid of bullies. And I was presenting an opposite approach. I was shown the way to s to solve the bullying problem is by teaching kids how not to be a victim. You can't make everybody become nice to each other. And even most times when people are mean, then they're not even aware that they're being mean. But everybody knows when they're being victimized. And everybody who comes for help feels like a victim. You know, if if I'm a psychotherapist or a school psychologist or counselor, and you come to me for help complaining that other kids are picking on you, if I go to the other kids and I say, you know, you have to change, Ryan says that you're picking on him, your bullies, you have to change. Are they going to think, oh, wow, we didn't realize that, oh sure, we'll change. Are they going to say that? They're going to say, What are you talking about? I didn't do that to Ryan. Ryan is making this up. Or Ryan started with me. You know, uh, I'm just getting back at him. Uh so it gets worse when the school gets involved uh trying to figure out who started uh, who's the bully, who's the victim, who has to be punished. But this is exactly what schools have to do now. As soon as a kid complains that they're being bullied, which is a very, very broad spectrum of behaviors, the school has to go about investigating. They have to interrogate all of the kids involved, they have to meet with teachers to find out what happened, they have to meet with parents. It takes so much time and all of the hostilities go up as soon as you begin this process. If the school is lucky, they'll end up solving the problem, but in most cases it just goes on and gets worse. Yeah, and anyway, it's 27 years later, bullying is still being considered the crisis, uh, a difficult problem to solve, and it's so easy to solve. It's just that the opposite approach has been mandated by law.

Ryan Vet 7:16

I think that's so interesting. And we see policy take place in a lot of different places to regulate, especially in the United States, to regulate childhood, whether we're now seeing policies about screen time and social media usage, whether it was about bullying. But I think the timing is very fascinating. When you look at generations in particular, you have uh millennials who at the time of the Columbine incident were between two years old and 19 years old. So the vast majority of them were still in school at some level. And then uh you have Gen Z being born about two years before or a year before. So they're they're toddlers. So this really shaped the latter half of the millennial generation in schools and what they were being taught, and Gen Z and onward what they were being taught. But this was before technology or before social media really came out, which introduced a whole nother level of bullying. So, how do you think the formation of these generations beginning, let's say, the early 2000s and onward, was shaped by some of whether it was law and policy or whether uh it was some of this other um these other angles of interpreting bullying? How do you think these generations were shaped in their earliest years in elementary school and middle school?

Izzy Kalman 8:28

For the past few decades, psychology and the social sciences in general have been taking a progressive philosophical approach to life. Either th there are oppressors and there are the oppressed, and we have to be social justice warriors, we have to go uh protect the weak from the strong. And this is what anti-bullying is about. You know, the bully is the strong one, he's the bad one, uh, the victim is the weak one, we have to protect the victim uh you know from the bully. This is really what progr pro progressive philosophy is about. The thing is, it's poor psychology. The this approach to bullying that became popular after Columbine was developed by a psychologist from Norway named Dan Olweus. He defined what bullying is, he did research, and he became the guru of what you know bul bullying is. But before that, psychology was about teaching people how to solve their problems, to take responsibility for their lives, not to blame other people, to control your impulses, to understand your problems, and to solve them. But after Columbine, it became about uh protecting victims from the bad people. We have to tell the victims that the situation has nothing to do with you. Please don't think it has anything to do with you. It's only because of the bullies. Uh, you can't solve the problem by yourself because the bullies are stronger. There's an imbalance of power. You're not able to deal with bullies by yourself. And uh you shouldn't have to because the bully, it's the bully's fault, it's not your fault. And all you need to do is to inform the authorities when people are being mean to you, and the authorities have to make people become nicer to you. This is nonsense. If you go around believing that your interpro personal problems have nothing to do with you, uh it's only because of other people. You know, something that's uh well proven in psychology is to have a successful and happy life, you have to have an internal locus of control. This means that you believe that what happens to you is in your control. It's internal. Internal locus of control, I'm the one in control of my life. Uh the more I feel in control, the more successful I will be. People who tend to be miserable and failures have an external locus of control. They think that what happens to them is caused by outside factors, that misery is caused by other people, not by themselves. So what's happening? We have been promoting for the last 27 years or so an external locus of control. The problem is their fault, it's not your fault. We have to solve the problem for you. How are children going to develop resilience if we try to give them uh environment in which nothing bad ever happens to them? How are they going to develop self-confidence and self-esteem when we teach them that uh that you can solve the problems by yourself? Everybody has to help you. Student, bystanders, teachers, parents, police, everybody has to help you. So we've been weakening children for the past almost three decades since Columbine.

Ryan Vet 11:55

I I think that's so profound. And we we've definitely seen this concept a lot, whether it's the word resiliency, whether it is fragility and anti-fragility. This is a conversation that has really plagued the last two generations because they they have been, as I like to say, bubble wrapped or insulated to be protected from outside outside forces. So I I do want to talk a little bit about what do you think the implications are? And I I was, I believe, in third grade at the time of the shooting. Um and I remember conversations at my school and and active shooter drills that came as a result of that. But then we had the bullying assemblies, and we would have these speakers come in and talk about bullying and you know, run and tell the teacher or um, you know, go kind of more of this victim mindset. How do you think as children, when you hear that, how does that form you as you grow into an adult?

Izzy Kalman 12:47

You grow up believing that you're entitled to a life in which everybody is nice to you, your boss has to provide it for you, your school has to provide it for you. If if you're not being treated the way you like, you inform the authorities. So it's happening more and more often. And also, because of anti-bullying laws, it's making it's made it easier for parents to sue schools for failing to stop their children from being bullied. And usually they fail. The thing is, it's not so easy to win a lawsuit. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money. Uh but more and more parents are suing schools for for failing to stop their child from being bullied, and especially when God forbid a child commits suicide, immediately lawsuit against the school, as though it's the school's fault. Do you know the show uh Thirteen Reasons Why?

Ryan Vet 13:45

I'm aware of the show. I have uh personally not watched it. Okay.

Izzy Kalman 13:48

Excellent series, excellent series, very well done. But what nobody realizes I mean, I I looked at all of the reviews online about this show. I'm the only person who realizes that the real uh uh story in this show is what happens to a community when parents sue their school when their child uh commits suicide over bullying. What happens to a community when parents sue uh uh enact uh take out a lawsuit against a school for failing to stop their child from being bullied. And and it was a suicide. So they treat it like mur like a murder trial.

Ryan Vet 14:39

Interesting.

Izzy Kalman 14:40

The the hero the heroine in the story uh before she took her own life, she made thirteen uh tapes, each one blaming somebody else partially for why she's doing what she's doing. So now thirteen people are being considered uh like the they're murder suspects. I kill myself, and now other people are being uh treated as though they're murder suspects for my committing suicide. You know what that does to a community? It's an amazing show. It's just the hostility grows, the violence grows, uh uh suicides continue. It's really an an amazing uh series, and it should really should serve as a warning against anti-bullying laws.

Ryan Vet 15:29

That yeah, that's powerful. And I I have uh stayed away from watching that because growing up, uh quite a few students each year in my high school and even while I was in middle school took their own life or we had uh many, many incidences of of death or tragic death. Uh I did go to a bigger high school uh in a larger outside of a larger city, so that that's part of the reason. But at the same time, um one of the reasons why I stayed away from from watching that personally. But I do think there is this victim mentality that we carry into adulthood. And you said something really interesting that we expect everyone to do everyone but ourselves to do something for us, whether that's the government, whether it's the teachers, whether it's the police, whether it's our HOA, whatever it might be as we move into adulthood, our bosses is a huge issue at work. If if they're not getting along, you have uh a lot of these younger generations, and and I I am grouping, so I do want to be careful grouping all younger generations, but we have a lot of younger individuals who've been trained that they they are victims, and and so they have to go complain or speak out. How would you talk to, I know you work a lot with schools still, but how would you talk to an adult, someone that is, you know, let's say in their uh teens all the way into maybe their mid-30s, that that got some of this anti-bullying training uh in in rhetoric in their schools. How would you talk to them today? How would you re-help them rewire or rethink or reframe what they've been taught for the last several decades?

Izzy Kalman 16:55

No, I I give seminars and trainings to adults, so I also teach them what's wrong with the popular approach to bullying and what works a lot better.

Ryan Vet 17:05

And one of the things you talk about um a lot in in your work is the the idea of the science of the golden rule. You're one of the first people to actually research the golden rule scientifically and and what that uh how that impacts us. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Izzy Kalman 17:21

You know, philosophers and religious leaders have known for thousands of years that the golden rule is the ultimate rule of morality. Uh for something to be moral, it has to conform with the golden rule. If it violates the golden rule, it's probably not moral. And also, it's well known that if everybody lived by the golden rule, if we treated people the way we want to be treated, if we didn't do to them what we hate them doing to us, everybody would be nice to each other. We'd get along wonderfully. So if we are aware of the golden rule for thousands of years, why is there still bullying? Why is there so much divorce? Why is there so much uh conflict, hostility between people? Uh look at adults on online and social media, they're horrible. And when it comes to politics, my God, you know, the people want to kill each other uh over political differences. So uh it's the golden rule has not made us become very much nicer. Uh and I came to realize that the reason is people don't understand why we need the golden rule. The assumption is the golden rule comes to teach us that it's important to be nice to people and we shouldn't be mean to people. That treat them you the way you want to be treated. Uh don't do to them what's hateful to yourself. But despite all of the preaching of the golden rule, it doesn't help very much because we don't need the golden rule to teach us such an obvious message that it's good to be nice to people, it's bad to be mean to people. It's obvious that it's good to be nice, it's bad to be mean. The problem is what do you do when people are mean to you? Because it happens sometimes. Sometimes people are mean to us, sometimes we're mean to people. Uh, very often when people are mean to each other, it's not even intentional. So the hard part is knowing what to do when somebody is mean to you. Ryan, do you have a hard time knowing what to do when somebody is nice to you? Oh no, they're being nice, how do I handle it? It's so difficult. No, that's easy. Right. It's easy to deal with somebody be being nice to you. The challenge is knowing what to do when they're mean to you. And the answer of the golden rule is to be nice back. Because we're supposed to love them. We're supposed to love them the way we love ourselves, we're supposed to treat them the way we want to be treated. Uh but this is very hard for people to accept because it's contrary to our nature to be nice to people when they're mean to us. And many people think that it's crazy to be nice to somebody when they're mean to us. What a massacre, I'm a loser. Look how they're treating me. I'm not gonna let them get away with it. So people have a hard time being nice to people when they're mean to us, but that's what the whole problem of bullying is, and into personal problems. People are mean to us, we want them to stop, and nothing we're doing is making them stop. So I first explain to people how the golden rule works scientifically, and then I do role-playing to show how it works. Now, this is why the golden rule works. Human beings are social creatures. A social creature is an animal that can only survive as a member of a group. But just about all mammals are social creatures. They live in groups, they can't survive on their own. Social creatures are biologically programmed for reciprocity. This means I am going to treat you the way you treat me. And if you think about it, you'll realize everybody is like that. Ryan, when somebody is nice to you, do you feel like being mean back or nice back?

Ryan Vet 21:12

Nice.

Izzy Kalman 21:13

Somebody's nice, yeah. When somebody is mean to you, do you feel like being nice back or mean back?

Ryan Vet 21:20

Definitely not nice.

Izzy Kalman 21:22

Yeah, but you feel like being mean back immediately. No, we can control it. And the reason we're like that is because we have animal bodies. Our bodies are animal bodies. Our history goes back to prehistory before there was civilization. We were living in nature just like all the other animals. And we're biologically programmed for life in nature. In nature, life is very dangerous. Creatures eat each other for dinner. They don't have supermarkets, they are the supermarkets. There are no laws against violence. Creatures can kill each other and nobody comes to arrest them. So in Civilization I'm sorry, in nature, reciprocity is a good strategy. Because let's say you and I are creatures that live in nature and you're nice to me. It pays to be nice back. We'll cooperate, we'll help each other. We will both survive better in nature if we're nice to each other. But if you're mean to me, you are probably trying to kill me. You want to eat me for dinner. What is going to happen to me if I am nice to you in nature when you're trying to eat me for dinner?

Ryan Vet 22:29

You're gone.

Izzy Kalman 22:31

Yeah, in a second, then there's no resistance. So in nature, if you're mean to me, I better be mean back to you to stop you from killing me. So that's why we're biologically programmed for reciprocity. Today we don't live in nature, we don't eat each other for dinner, there are laws against violence. But we're still biologically programmed for reciprocity. The fact that we live in civilization today with hospitals and schools and police, it doesn't mean that we're not programmed anymore for reciprocity. The problem is today, if I live by reciprocity, I'm gonna have problems with people. Because if you're nice to me, I'll be nice back to you, and you'll be nice to me again, we'll get along and be friends. But if you're mean to me, I'm gonna be mean back to you, and then you want to be mean to me again, and it's gonna go back and forth, we'll be fighting all the time, and we will become enemies. So I tell myself, what am I need enemies for? I want people being my friends. I know that just like me, you are biologically programmed for reciprocity. So even if you're mean to me, I am going to be nice back to you. And before long, you're going to start being nice to me because you're biologically programmed to treat me the way I treat you. So the golden rule is not a recipe for losing, it makes me win. But it creates the win-win situation. Both sides win when you use the golden rule properly. Then I show how it works. And I always do it with uh insults, because insults is the most common way that people upset each other. Not only children, but even adults, the most common way we upset each other is we criticize each other, we insult each other. Uh so let's say you come to me for help because somebody in your life is continuously treating you badly. You don't understand why, you're getting upset, you're getting mad at them. They keep on treating you badly. Why don't they stop? Are they psychopaths who like to upset you? Most people think they are. The other person is a psychopath. But anyway, I'm going to show you why this person or people are treating you badly and how to get them to stop. I'm gonna play a game with you, Ryan, that I played with everybody I work with, and also at my seminars and visual trainings. Your job is to insult me. My job is to stop you. But don't let me stop you because if I can stop you, I win and you lose. Do not worry about hurting my feelings. I want you to do a good job. And don't work hard, don't talk without stopping. Make it like a conversation, give me a chance to answer you. Uh go ahead, Ryan.

Ryan Vet 25:16

All right, this is gonna be challenging. I don't I didn't I I gener generally am a nice person, so. Okay. So, Izzy, you're you're an idiot.

Izzy Kalman 25:28

What are you talking about? I'm not an idiot.

Ryan Vet 25:30

Absolutely you are.

Izzy Kalman 25:32

But are you talking about? Everybody knows me knows that I'm smart.

Ryan Vet 25:36

Well, who knows you? Who do they even matter?

Izzy Kalman 25:39

People there are people know me my whole life that they know that I'm smart. I have accomplishments.

Ryan Vet 25:46

Your family doesn't count. Does anyone that matters count?

Izzy Kalman 25:48

Yes. Lots of smart people know that I'm smart. Stop laughing, it's not funny. You better call me.

Ryan Vet 25:56

I just think you're an idiot.

Izzy Kalman 25:57

I am not an idiot. Why do you think I'm an idiot? Why why do you think I'm an idiot?

Ryan Vet 26:01

Five hours later.

Izzy Kalman 26:03

You better apologize. What do you mean, nowhere? You apologize right now.

Ryan Vet 26:06

Absolutely not. No, you're an idiot.

Izzy Kalman 26:08

I'm not an idiot, stop it already. Okay, good job. Uh Ryan, I give up. Uh, you did a very nice job. I tried really hard to uh stop you from insulting me. Was I able to stop you?

Ryan Vet 26:26

Not really. But it's hard to insult you too, by the way. Hard to insult.

Izzy Kalman 26:30

You you're not the kind of person who likes insulting people, so it was tough for you, but you still did a decent job. You kept on going right to the end. And finally I give up. So if you want to insult me, can I force you to stop?

Ryan Vet 26:43

Uh no, you can't force me unless you use force.

Izzy Kalman 26:46

Yeah, but no, without hitting you, without taping your mouth shut, can I force you to stop insulting me?

Ryan Vet 26:51

No.

Izzy Kalman 26:52

No, because this is words. It's your uh Yeah, it's only words. Uh if you want to insult me, you're going to insult me. You did a very nice job. We're gonna play the we're gonna play the game again. Insult me and don't let me stop you.

Ryan Vet 27:05

Range two. Two one go! You're an idiot.

Izzy Kalman 27:09

Some people think I'm an idiot.

Ryan Vet 27:11

They do?

Izzy Kalman 27:12

Yeah. And the truth is, I I don't think there's a day that goes by in which I haven't done something really stupid.

Ryan Vet 27:18

Huh. Well, at least you know it.

Izzy Kalman 27:21

Oh, yeah, I know. I I think you're smart. You're part of topless and for a younger man. You're very smart. You're welcome.

Ryan Vet 27:28

Well, I appreciate that.

Izzy Kalman 27:29

Uh really impressed by you.

Ryan Vet 27:32

Maybe you're not an idiot after all.

Izzy Kalman 27:34

I I am, believe me. Talk to my wife and kids.

Ryan Vet 27:38

Yeah, don't don't talk to mine.

Izzy Kalman 27:40

Yeah, um, we we tend to act worse at home than any place else.

Ryan Vet 27:45

Three hours later. I I can't insult you anymore.

Izzy Kalman 27:55

Isn't it much harder this way? It's much harder this way, right?

Ryan Vet 28:00

Back and forth.

Izzy Kalman 28:01

In fact, you're thanking me now. You know, you're you're being nice to me. Now we play we played again two times. Uh each time there was an optical illusion. The first time did you see me trying to stop you from insulting me?

Ryan Vet 28:16

No, you just kept going.

Izzy Kalman 28:18

But but did you see me trying to stop you the first time?

Ryan Vet 28:21

Well, yeah, you you tried and effectively. You were just fighting.

Izzy Kalman 28:24

I tried. It wasn't effective, but I tried. Stop it already. Shut your mouth already. This is your last chance. You're gonna be sorry. So it looked like I was trying to stop you. That was an illusion. You know what I was really doing to you the first time?

Ryan Vet 28:38

You're getting me more excited and want to go back at you.

Izzy Kalman 28:41

Exactly. I made you continue. I didn't want you to stop the first time. If you had stopped the first time, it would have ruined my demonstration. But I knew that if I get upset, you're gonna have a great time, you're gonna win, I'm gonna look like a big fool. Why should you stop? You're having such a good time. You know, you were smiling the whole time. Uh and this is what happens if you're being picked on by somebody. They keep on treating you in a way that you don't like, you don't understand why, it doesn't make sense, you keep telling them it's not true, you keep getting upset with them. You're getting upset because you want them to stop. No, they're not stopping. You're not making them stop, you're making them continue. And the reason is we don't live in nature. If we lived in nature and I got angry at you, you better be careful. I can smash your face and nobody arrests me. But we live in civilization, we have the rule of law, and everybody knows that I'm not allowed to hit you no matter how angry I am. You know how you call call the police on me if I hit you. So today you can use my own biological programming against me. I'm programmed to get angry in order to win. I automatically lose when I get angry, and I look like an idiot, and you can sit there insulting me, and I'm getting angrier and angrier because I want you to stop. What I don't realize is my anger is why you keep on insulting me. The second time you played the game, there was also an illusion. The second time did you see me permitting you to insult me?

Ryan Vet 30:10

Yes.

Izzy Kalman 30:11

Yeah, it was clear you can say anything you want to me, it's okay. In fact, I was even insulting myself, it's okay. So it looked like I was letting you insult me, but that was an illusion. You know what I was really doing the second time? Stopping you. The game was for me to stop you, and you were sure I would not be able to stop you. Uh and I stopped you like that, and it was effortless, and it was hard to see what I was really doing. Now, when we played the game the first time, I was doing what a uh pool hustler does. If I'm a pool hustler, I'll I'll go into a pool hall where people don't know me. I'll come across you, I'll say, you know, let's play for ten dollars. And you say, okay, we'll play for ten dollars. And I play mediocre, I make sure I I play less well than you do, and you went win ten dollars. Then we'll do it again for ten dollars, I'll make sure that I I lose. Then I think, nah, what the heck? I have a hundred dollars, let's let's pay for a hundred dollars. And then you think, I'm gonna make it easy hundred dollars this time. The next time I play my best, you don't stand a chance, I walk off with your hundred dollars and you're let's stay there, flabbergasted it. What I did the first time was convince you there's no way I can stop you from insulting me because I tried so hard to stop you, I couldn't do it, so you think it's impossible. Then I stop you like that, and it's effortless. But I was what I was doing was using the golden rule. You were being mean to me, I was being nice back to you. You call me an idiot, I say oh, but I think you're smart, and I say, Oh, thank you. You know, maybe you're not so dumb after all. So the golden rule works. We're all pro one for reciprocity. But if if I uh respond with reciproc reciprocity towards you, I put you in control. You're the one who c who controls the situation. If you're nice to me, I'll be nice back, we'll be friends. But if you're mean to me, I'll be mean back and we'll be enemies. So I don't respond to your reciprocity. I make you respond to my reciprocity. You're mean to me, but I'm nice back to you, and then you feel like being nice back to me because you feel like being nice to those who are nice to you. Uh I just have come across a very nice and obvious way to explain it. I didn't invent this, but I just explained it and I show how it works.

Ryan Vet 32:38

I love that. I think that was one of the most interesting exercises I've done on the show. I'm not naturally an insulter. I think it was so programmed out of me as a child uh that that that was challenging. So I I'll have to go brush up on my my name calling an insult. So if if we meet again, we'll we'll go. I'll I'll last a little bit longer in the round. Should I do one?

Izzy Kalman 32:58

But by the way, w when I work with kids in the last stage of this procedure, I tell you know, I also explain to them what they're to do for a week, and I warn them what to expect, you know, what's going to happen. And then I say, I'm gonna help you practice. I'm going to insult you terribly, and I want you not to get upset no matter what I say. And I have assembled a series of really good insults, uh, so I don't have to think all the time of you know, a good insult. Um, but the kids discover I they can hear me insulting them horribly, and it's no it's no effort not to get upset. And then they win it. I look like a jerk, saying these terrible things to them, and it doesn't bother them, and they're nice back to me. Uh but my favorite insult is you're so ugly when you look in the mirror, the reflection throws up.

Ryan Vet 33:49

That's great. That's great. I grew up in the air of your mom. I've got a lot of those in the background.

Izzy Kalman 33:56

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And where kids will often have your mama contests. They're insulting each other's mothers, and nobody's getting upset. They're enjoying it. They're they're they're making humor. Uh and and this is why insulting people is also called making fun. We're making fun. Now, if you insult me and I get upset, it's foolish. Then you know you really have fun getting me upset, but I look like a loser. But if if you make fun of me and I'm I make fun of myself or make fun of you back without getting upset, then we start having fun. And kids will have insult of your mama, this, your mama, that, they're both laughing.

Ryan Vet 34:36

That's so interesting because I think right now we're seeing um this occur even with adults in in comedy. We're we're having all these comedians who are making fun, as we call it, who are now getting canceled or their shows are being removed because they're going too far. But you look at shows, and I I often talk about the show The Office, the American version of The Office, and how irreverent it was and how even that show, which was popular and acceptable, or as acceptable as a show of that nature is, fast forward 10 or 15 years, it didn't age very well at all because people are saying that that's not okay to say. So have you seen as these generations that went through this anti-bullying uh schooling, if you will, if they went through all these courses, have you seen them become more sensitive with age or be less immune to simply making fun in what would have previously been called comedy?

Izzy Kalman 35:29

No, people have definitely become more sensitive, meaning more vulnerable. You know, uh it was common for people to say that victims are sensitive, you know, like it's a positive thing, they're sensitive. There are two meanings of sensitive. One is I'm sensitive towards you, I see, I understand what you're going through, I take into consideration how you feel. But another form of sensitive is vulnerable. I'm fragile, I'm sensitive. Every little thing bothers me. So it's true that victims of bullying are sensitive, but not necessarily in the good way, it's in the bad way. They're they're fragile. And you had mentioned anti-fragile earlier. Nassim Taleb uh you know, quite that term. Uh it's it's the it's the opposite of fragility. In order and what I do is I make people become resilient. I show them they can handle the worst insults and it doesn't bother them.

Ryan Vet 36:29

Yeah, that that's so interesting. I I love that you bring up um his anti-fragile. I think that's just one of the best phrases that that uh I've used a lot in my writing, and and I think it's just really helpful as we look at today. One last uh big question before we we wrap up our time together. How has social media in particular, not just the internet, but social media, how have you seen that change the the bullying conversation, especially with um the the phrase cyberbullying, which has been been born? I'll share a quick story before uh before you answer. I remember in high school, um I you know I've always been entrepreneurial. I had just made it um pretty big uh news splash when I was in high school, and I started getting threats via Facebook Messenger, um, bullying threats from from a classmate, and it just destroyed me. And this was early on. I mean, I was I was too young to be on Facebook at the time. Um they had just come out of the you know.edu only world. And but cyberbullying is real, and I just got the tail end of it, um, or the tail beginning of it, I guess. And now we're seeing that that term uh a lot. How has that changed the bullying conversation and what hasn't changed because of technology?

Izzy Kalman 37:41

Well, the t the term cyberbullying has been around for uh pretty much since Columbine shortly afterwards, uh, because the people were using social media more, they were having cell phones, so it became more common. Uh but really dynamically it's not very different from face-to-face bullying. Uh, if you insult me to my face or if you insult me online, uh how you end up responding to me, responding to me still depends on me. I I can use the same principles for dealing with face-to-face bullying as to bullying online. And I wrote a long article teaching kids how to handle cyberbullying all by themselves. There's a bigger issue about cyberbullying that uh people don't pay attention to uh uh enough, I believe. You know, we're giving kids cell phones at very young ages, we're giving them uh computers and and um iPads and stuff like that, and they get online, they write to each other, they communicate with no supervision. Would you let's say you have a teenage child, your child never drove a car, never took driving lessons. Would you tell your child, here are the keys to the car, go to the supermarket and get me uh uh a gallon of milk? No, how can you let them drive if they never but we give them these dangerous things, cell phones, the computers, iPads, and we don't prepare them for the dangers uh of using them. How can we give this to them if we don't prepare them? People are gonna be mean to you. What do you do? What do you do if people ignore you, if they get gang up against you, what do you do? How can you give them these devices without preparing them uh how to deal with them? So, in my opinion, if we're going to give kids these devices, we have to prepare them in advance and how to deal with the problems that they are likely to face. You know, you can say something to me, uh horrible on online. Uh, you maybe you'll write something, uh, Izzy, your mother is a hoe. So I don't have to get upset by it. I can say back, oh, you think my mother is a hoe? You should see my dog. You know, I'll make a joke. I don't have to get upset by it. And this way people will laugh and they'll admire me instead of uh my looking like a loser in front of everybody by getting upset. My mother's not a hoe, don't call my mother a hoe, your mother's a hoe. It's foolish to do that. It's natural, but it's foolish.

Ryan Vet 40:17

Yeah, I think we we are in this world in which we go run and and tell somebody else, or we tell the world about who's being mean to us and we don't take responsibility for our part in in that equation. I think it's I always say it's your side, my side, and what actually happened. And I think we we are so quick to be polarized and take a side instead of try to meet somewhere in the middle, which is just sad of where culture has uh allowed us to go today.

Izzy Kalman 40:43

And now, you know, these kids who have gone to elementary school and high school under the anti-bullying philosophy, then they come to college and they want safe spaces and they need trigger warnings and uh and they want to cancel professors because they're saying the wrong thing. They have been prepared ever since preschool for treating college this way. We have to be protected, and nobody's allowed to teach something that offends us. It's it's terrible what's happening today.

Ryan Vet 41:15

Yeah, it's definitely eliminated critical thinking and our ability to just process life. Life is hard. No one said life was easy. And and I think sometimes when we we put some of these protections or bubble wrap, we we're well meaning, right? It's not it's not bad that as a parent or a teacher or a professor we want to protect. That there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But also sometimes in protecting the ramifications or the equal and opposite reaction is more significant long term.

Izzy Kalman 41:40

I think possibly the most brilliant saying that every anybody ever came up with is the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Incredibly profound saying. Nobody has bad intentions, everybody has good intentions, but good intentions alone are not enough to make your actions moral. If what you're doing makes the situation worse, it's immoral no matter how good your intentions are. The intentions of anti-bullyism are wonderful. We're gonna get rid of bullies, we won't have tolerance for bullying, you won't have to experience bullying. But trying to make that happen makes everything worse. There's more bullying as a result.

Ryan Vet 42:22

That's profound. Well, I I think that's just great wisdom, Izzy. And you brought so much good wisdom. And I have to say that was the most interesting interaction I've ever had on this show. So thank you for challenging me to go out of my comfort zone. I need to work on my improv, my poker face. I was laughing too much, insulting you. So maybe that's some dark psychology. Maybe I'll come fly to Israel and lay on your couch and get some uh psychotherapy for for some dark, uh, dark-seated laughing during insulting or something.

Izzy Kalman 42:47

That was very healthy. But and everybody thinks the bully is the other person. The reason we're so eager for anti-bullying policies and laws is we think the bully is the other person. They're gonna get put it punished. What I did with you is I brought out your inner bully. I had you insult me two times. The first time was fun. You were smiling the whole time the first time, and you know, you kept on going. The second time, when I was nice to you, you felt like a jerk being mean to me. You wanted to stop. You had much more fun when I was getting upset. What kind of a good person are you? We're all bullies, we all have the potential of being mean to people and enjoying it under certain circumstances. So what I got out from you was your inner bully. I actually made you were actually enjoying my getting upset. And it made you want to continue insulting me. The bullies are not them, they're us. And all philosophers know this. And by the way, do you know who Jordan Peterson is?

Ryan Vet 43:48

I do. I do.

Izzy Kalman 43:50

Uh uh I mean i he's terribly sick now, but uh he understood this perfectly. There's nothing new in this. He understood that we're all the bad guys, we all have it within us. The bul the bad guys aren't them. The Nazis aren't them. We all have the potential.

Ryan Vet 44:08

That's good. Well, Izzy, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on on the show and uh just going deep on a conversation that is so important and does in many circumstances sadly becomes life or death. And I think this is an important conversation to have. And I'm glad that you're having it frequently with schools, with leaders, with parents. You have tons of great resources. How can people find out more about what you're doing, get in touch with you, and learn more uh uh about how you're you're helping uh curb bullying in our world?

Izzy Kalman 44:36

People can turn to my website, which is izcalman.com or bullies to buddies, bullies the number twobuddies.com that leads to the same place. Um I have tons of information there. I have links to other things. I also have a Psychology Today blog with uh over 170 articles on bullying and related topics. I write things you will not read anyplace else. And uh the Psychology Today blog is resilience to bullying. But if you look for it, you have to put in my name because somebody else wrote an article called Resilience to Bullying. And if you just put in resilience to bullying, you won't get my stuff, you'll get that person's article. So put in my name with Resilience to Bullying, Psychology Today, and you'll find my articles, which uh you won't you'll there are things there you will not need any place else.

Ryan Vet 45:31

Well, Izzy, again, I want to thank you so much for your wisdom, your insight, and sharing that. Izzy has tons of resources, as he mentioned, his website. Uh, the Kalman Bullying Institute has a ton of resources for podcast videos, links to his articles, so definitely check it out. He often speaks around the world on these topics, and so be sure to look up where he is coming near you soon if it's a public opportunity. So, Izzy, thank you so much for being on the show today. And everyone, thank you again for listening to another episode of the Ryan Vet Show. Until next time, inspire forward.

Izzy Kalman 46:00

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