You are listening to Feeding the Mouth That Bight You with Ashley Parrish and Jessica Pfeiffer.

A weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world.

As always, we are joined by psychologist and author, Dr. Ken Wilgus.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back.

On today's episode, we'll be discussing anime, furries, and other strange things.

Well, I'm glad we're talking about this because I don't understand a lot of it.

And I would like to understand more.

I don't have a whole lot of experience with some of these topics that we're going to talk about today.

And I know that parents might be feeling the same way that, you know, their kid is into something like

anime and they think, is this, is this good? Is this healthy? Is this weird? My kid loves this stuff,

you know, and wonders if it's headed in a good direction or if it's a positive thing or negative.

It's hard to keep up with all the things that our kids are into. Yeah, and it's enough of a thing that it's worth sort of demystifying for parents.

And as like anything else, probably your first step ought to be to ask your teenager,

do you know anything about this stuff? And most of them will tell you, certainly anime,

they'll know about. And furries, you know, they'll probably heard something of it.

So I think the important thing is to be aware.

And it's like we often do in this podcast, to be aware so you can both respond to and not be

overly fearful of some of this stuff.

Because as you know, the press loves to talk about, you know, the craziness of everything. That's the best,

the part they focus on too much. I know you Google it and you see all kinds of horrible things

and you think, oh my gosh. How in the world have I let this in my house? You know, why is this? Yes.

Why is my kid into this? But then you realize maybe not all of it is as bad as it's made out to me.

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