Did Don Draper really buy the world of Coke?

Did Tony Soprano really die or just order more onion rings?

The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue,

make us cry, and make us crazy.

From Spotify and the Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick The Landing, a new

podcast where we'll be telling the story of Modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the Prestige TV feed,

on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today is a conversation I've wanted to have on this show for a while and it's a

conversation that might get me into a little bit of trouble in some quarters but

we're gonna do it anyway.

We've done several shows on America's anxiety crisis,

taking a particularly close look at the record levels of teenagers

in official government surveys by the CDC who say they feel persistently sad,

hopeless, or depressed.

I've talked to the social psychologist John Hight about the causes of the youth anxiety

crisis. I've talked to

psychiatrists and clinical psychologists about how parents in schools and

teens themselves can cope and respond to this. And these episodes have

clearly resonated. I've spoken to so many people, including parents, about these shows.

And several of these listeners had a very interesting, very difficult question for me that I've never really known how to answer to their

satisfaction or to mine. And the question tends to go something like this. They'll say,

Derek, my kids or my friends talk about their anxiety or depression

...