The Making of “Inside Out 2”

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Reena Ninan:
Episode 174, The Making of “Inside Out 2”.
So you’ve been keeping this secret from us since 2020. You’ve been advising over at Pixar, Disney on the movie “Inside Out 2”.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s true. I got a really fun phone call in May, 2020 from Kelsey Mann and Meg LaFav, the director and writer of the film to start thinking with them about a story about a 13-year-old girl.
So Riley from the original “Inside Out”, which came out in 2015, was 11 in 2015 and through some funny time warp. She’s now 13 in 2024 and she is a teenager and, you know, teenagers and especially teenage girls. They’re my thing.

Reena Ninan:
Yes.
Beyond your thing. This is no surprise that they adapt you for this. And you’ve also been working with an incredible psychologist who was on the first “Inside Out” movie, Dr. Dacher Keltner. He’s a psychologist at the University of California Berkeley, and he’s known for his groundbreaking research on emotions. Dr. Keltner has extensively studied the science of awe, exploring how experiences of wonder and transcendence affect human behavior and wellbeing. Dr. Keltner played a pivotal role, as I mentioned at the first “Inside Out,” One and its new sequel Inside Out two. Dr. Keltner, thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Oh, it’s wonderful to be here. Can’t wait to talk about the film

Reena Ninan:
And can I say something absolutely inappropriate? You could play Prince Charming on any Disney movie. You are really Dr. Dashing.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Reena that’s totally inappropriate

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Now I’m blushing.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s totally inappropriate. Okay, so let’s start with embarrassment.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah.

Reena Ninan:
Dr. Keltner, I’m just kind of curious, how did you get involved in the first film?

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah, like Lisa, I knew Pete Docter, the director of the film from being on a panel together at a conference where we talked about expressing emotion and animation and he called me up one day and he said, “Hey, I’ve heard your recordings of your class on emotion at Berkeley, and I’m thinking about making a movie about emotions. Come on down and talk to the team.” And I’m not kidding, I thought he wanted to use my voice as a character, which is absurd. They have such great talent for that. And so for the first film, Pete was really working intensively with Ronnie Del Carmen was doing a lot of the drawing as they sketched out the scenes. And I would visit every few months and talk about the science of emotion. What are the emotions? Why do we have them? What is the brain chemistry? What do they do to our minds, our memories? And it was an astonishing experience and one of the great privileges of life.

Reena Ninan:
So the first original film had five emotions, joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. Why those emotions?

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah. It’s so interesting how the two films really are tracking the development of emotion science, which is that they had those film, those emotions, excuse me, because at the time that’s about where the science of emotion was. Paul Ekman had done this famous work and he was a consultant on the first film, on the facial expressions of those emotions. There were studies of the physiology of those emotions and they were really our focus in the field. And so Pete and his team focused on those emotions. But that was the first question he asked me was, well, we’ve got five of them, what else would you add? And we speculated about different emotions as characters. And now the next film, the big news is there’s some new ones, new emotions, and that really tracks how the science of emotion is developing, which is there’s a rich panoply of states that we feel.

Reena Ninan:
And as Lisa mentioned, Riley, Lisa is now 13, a teenager. I can’t imagine Lisa, a better expert on the woman who wrote the books on teen and childhood anxiety to walk us through these emotions. What did you tell Disney, Pixar when they wanted to consult on this film about being age appropriate and conveying what those years are like?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So when I entered the conversation, the anxiety was already in place as the major driver of the plot for the new film

Voice of “Joy” from “Inside Out 2”:
Orange. Who made the console Orange?

Voice of “Anger” from “Inside Out 2”:
Do I look Orange?

Voice of “Fear” from “Inside Out 2”:
I didn’t touch it.

Voice of “Disgust” from “Inside Out 2”:
Orange is not my color.

Voice of “Sadness” from “Inside Out 2”:
Not me.

Voice of “Anxiety” from “Inside Out 2”:
Hello everybody. Oh my gosh. I am just such a huge fan of yours. And now here I am meeting you face to face. Okay, how can I help? I can take notes, get coffee, manage your calendar, walk your dog, carry your things, watch you sleep.

Voice of “Joy” from “Inside Out 2”:
Wow, you have a lot of energy. Maybe you could just stay in one place.

Voice of “Anxiety” from “Inside Out 2”:
Anything, just call my name and I’m here for you.

Voice of “Joy” from “Inside Out 2”:
Okay, love that. And what was your name again?

Voice of “Anxiety” from “Inside Out 2”:
Oh, I’m sorry. I can get ahead of myself. I’m anxiety. I’m one of Riley’s new emotions and we are just super jazzed to be here. Where can I put my stuff?

Voice of “Disgust” from “Inside Out 2”:
What do you mean? “We”?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
We talked about anxiety and it’s healthy and unhealthy forms and I think this is something the movie gets so right that it’s a typical and expectable emotion that has very valuable, actually protective qualities for us, but it can also tip over into being disruptive and unhelpful. We talked about perfectionism and it’s management. That was something that one of the conversations that really sticks with me and it’s fun to see how it played out in the film and we talked about just the destabilization that comes with becoming a teenager. For the teenager themselves and then also captured so beautifully in the film, for the family. One of the things I really love about this film is that there is a moment where Riley gets inexplicably angry just out of nowhere. She gets really mad at her mom. They show the scene and then it cuts to the inside of her mind and all of the emotions turn on anger and they’re like, what are you doing? And he’s like, I barely touched it. And it’s such a perfect capturing of what we know about this sort of amplification of emotion. So it got that, but it also got how strange it is for the parent and I really value that about this film because it’s so true. And Reena, the reason you and I have this podcast is it’s so isolating to be the parent of a teenager and you feel like you’re the only one going through these strange things in your home. And so for this film to take one of the kind of central aspects of adolescence where it feels like your kid has turned on you and just lay it out on the big screen as just a natural if not if unpleasant at times part of raising a teenager.

Reena Ninan:
And Dr. Keltner anxiety as Lisa mentioned, is one of the new emotions. What are the other emotions that are introduced in “Inside Out 2”?

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah, I mean it was so fascinating to get the call from Kelsey and then Meg, they had all these possibilities laid out of like, okay, we can probably add three or four emotions, think about a teenage girl. All the destabilizing changes as Lisa said. And kudos to them for this is an age of anxiety and as the evidence suggests, and they really were bold and going after that and really offering a nuanced view as Lisa said. And then we talked about teen emotions. What would a 13-year-old, what are the defining emotions of shifting into the interests in the peer group and awareness of appearance and so forth. And so they add embarrassment, which is a wonderful emotion. It tracks when we make mistakes in our social lives and we fill up with blood in the cheeks to say we’re sorry. And it brings about more peaceful relationships given just the obsession with status and rank and a person’s place and what people think of us in the early teen years.
They got envy into the mix, which I think is such a deep lesson for young people. It can be toxic, it can drive us to good things. How do we think about envy? And then they were like, there’s this emotion. There are a couple of emotions that teenagers rely on to confront adults who seem passe and boring. They could have had contempt. But contempt is kind of a nasty emotion. I kind of pitched for indignation, like come on, let’s protest. But they went with ennui, which I think was a really wise choice. It has this…

Reena Ninan:
Boredom…

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah, this boredom feeling that has its own point in our mental lives. And so I think it’s going to give teenagers and their families so much just so much to talk about these emotions that we feel skeptical of, but they do have their place in development.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, why these emotions? Why do these suddenly arrive in the teenage landscape?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
What you can say about these in many ways is that they’re self-conscious emotions. Suddenly an awareness of oneself in the world. And that is perfect developmentally for a 13-year-old girl because neurologically, one of the things that happens around 13, 14 is the move into what we technically call sort of abstract thinking, the ability to think about things beyond oneself or to spin things around and see it from many perspectives. Another way to say it is, and I talk about this all the time, right, Reena? Is younger, kids are more concrete, they see things the way they see the things, that’s how they see them. Suddenly in adolescence. There is the But what does that person think of me? Or why does that person have the thing that I want? Right? So the idea that these more sophisticated emotions as they’re talked about in the film arrive maps with the cognitive realities of teenagers.
I was thinking about when Dacher was talking about ennui who is really funny in the movie, one of the findings that I love is on girls and disdain because disdain is sort of what’s going on with ennui. Disdain is the one form of anger or aggression where girls outpace boys all through development and I just like any parent of, I have two daughters, you’re like, oh yeah, that tracks. And so it’s such a perfect capturing of the, oh my god, I’m so over it and you guys are all so boring and I’m rolling my eyes at everything that is spot on, not just teenager, but adolescent girl. The disdain piece is thick. They have a deep bench in that.

Reena Ninan:
This is so fascinating to me. I didn’t know about any of these emotions. I had no idea that these start around the teenage years. So I am really fascinated. Lisa, what actually, what are the major brain shifts that happen? There’s this scene in the movie where there’s this wrecking ball that comes through. Can you walk us through that scene?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s so great. So this wrecking ball comes through the wall of the mind and it’s this very funny, they look kind of like minions construction crew that has showed up to upgrade the console. This is a wonderful representation of the way in which the brain remodels during adolescence driven by puberty becomes faster and more powerful and more efficient. Prunes neurons adds neurons, strengthens connections. There’s also such a wonderful kind of overnight quality in the wrecking ball coming through, which I think is a lot of what it feels like in family life, both for the kid and for the parent and this Reena. This happens over and over and over again in the film where there is something that is entertaining, funny, visually compelling that you’re like, oh, and that is exactly our science. It’s really neat to see it.

Reena Ninan:
I love this. This is one of my favorite things about this movie is the science behind it. And to know that there was such thought put into it, it makes me as a parent feel really good. Dr. Keltner, your most recent work has been focused on studying awe. What exactly is awe? Why is it so important? And tell me a little bit about your research and what you’ve looked into.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
“Inside Out” and “Inside Out 2” are revealing to a very large part of our world that there’s this really rich array of emotions that we can experience. We used to think there are five or six now they’re probably 20 or so that we can portray as characters and study scientifically and awe is one of those emotions. It is a brief state that we feel when we encounter things most typically that are vast and beyond kind of our typical frame of reference and that are mysterious, that we can’t make sense of immediately with our knowledge structure. So colloquially, I like to say that awe is really an emotion we feel in response to vast mysteries. Einstein wrote that the love and feeling for mystery and awe is the fundamental emotion. Rachel Carson, the great environmentalists, that our capacity for wonder is just the most important thing to teach children and to preserve in our lives.
And I agree, it’s just this powerful emotion and what it does for us is it makes us humble when we encounter things that are vast and mysterious, a person’s kindness, a redwood tree, a beautiful sky, a piece of music, it makes us connect to our community and feel like we’re part of a culture or a social network, if you will. It makes us kind. We have a lot of research showing that and then it’s really good for our minds and our bodies. Awe sharpens our reasoning, makes us look at evidence more critically, makes us look at systems in understanding things like music or the stars. And then there’s select evidence that shows that it’s good for our heart, it’s good for our immune system, it’s good for reducing stress and depression and it’s just an emotion for our times. In some ways, young people, as Lisa knows, are so stressed out and working so hard and they don’t wander and meander and pause and wonder. And so it’s been a real delight to publish this book and then just to be in a lot of conversations about how do we get this back? The title is Awe, The New Science Of Everyday Wonder And How It Can Transform Your Life.

Reena Ninan:
That’s fantastic. Well be sure to put that in the show notes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So Dacher, I live in Cleveland where we happen to be in the path of totality for the eclipse and we had four minutes in my backyard of totality. I get goosebumps thinking about it. And just what you’re describing. I mean it was so compelling and just amazing.

Reena Ninan:
How do you teach children, awe?

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
It’s actually really easy because, and there’s mounting empirical evidence that kids can access this state. They have a lot of wonder for the world. A lot is new, a lot is expansive to them and vast. And so you teach them by, and I draw in the book upon this essay by Rachel Carson, the environmentalists get out and wander. Go to places that are mysterious and not scheduled or plan ahead of time. Put away concepts and words. You go into a museum or you go on a hike, don’t try to label everything. Let the experience come to the child. And then there are just all these amazing ways in which in the moment if a child is looking at a lake or a sunset or listening to a piece of music, you can orient their attention. It is almost a mental exercise of listen to how waves unfold from the first sound to the last.
Look at how colors, look at all the different colors you might see at a sunset and notice how they’re changing. Look at the patterns in trees. So it’s easy to do and we’ve just lost sight of it. And that’s part of the work that we’re now doing at Greater Good In Education is we have an awe course for teachers reaching thousands of teachers how to get back to it because it’s pretty easy to do. People feel awe two to three times a week around the world. They find it just, and it doesn’t require a totality. It’s like, I remember this story from Beijing where a student was like, God, Beijing has this horrible pollution and she was walking across the city to school and she’s like, God, I saw these leaves falling and they’re shadows and the mixture of light and shadow and wow, it’s around us. So we’ve got to get back to it.

Reena Ninan:
Lisa, when you’re talking about this movie and portraying emotions like sadness and anxiety, why is it so important in this film to portray them as normal parts of life?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Could not be more important? Reena, I feel really strongly that we are in a place in the culture that we do not want to be in. And by that I mean we are in a place where uncomfortable emotions are treated as inherently problematic.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah.

Voice of “Anxiety” from “Inside Out 2”:
I am truly sorry. I was so looking forward to working with you guys.

Voice of “Joy” from “Inside Out 2”:
What do you think you’re doing?

Voice of “Anxiety” from “Inside Out 2”:
Riley’s life is more complex now. It requires more sophisticated emotions than all of you. You just aren’t what she needs anymore, Joy.

Voice of “Fear” from “Inside Out 2”:
How dare you, madam?

Voice of “Joy” from “Inside Out 2”:
You can’t just bottle us up.

Voice of “Anxiety” from “Inside Out 2”:
Oh, that’s a great idea.
It’s not forever. It’s just until Riley makes varsity or until she turns 18 or maybe forever, I don’t know. We’ll have to see.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
As soon as a kid is uncomfortable, as soon as an adult is uncomfortable, questions start to arise about, is something really wrong? Is there a mental health concern? And there may be, but most of the time it’s the right feeling at the right time. It’s what should be happening and really what matters is how it gets handled.
I am so excited about the level setting this movie can help us do around emotions and so excited that all of these emotions are not particularly comfortable to experience, are treated as part of the team, put on equal footing with more pleasant emotions treated as essential, treated as necessary for Riley’s overall health. This is totally accurate and exactly what we need to be talking about right now. And it is not where we are as a culture and it’s where we need to try to get.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
I just got goosebumps, Lisa said, and she’s a rare scholar and thinker to say that we have to embrace these uncomfortable emotions. Young people today are feeling anxious about racism and sexism and climate crises and the Amazon and etc. And their emotions are really telling us important things about the world that we have to listen to.
And historically, having studied emotions for 35 years, Lisa’s is the rare voice. Most great thinkers, there are a few exceptions historically, have condemned the uncomfortable emotions, suppressed them, pathologize them. Emmanuel Kant, sympathy is always blind and weak when you think about it. Sympathy is one of our greatest strengths.
And you look at our young people and they’re feeling anxious or they’re feeling blue. And if we can reorient and level set as Lisa said, and say, look, these are valid states most of the time, what are they telling you? Listen to your body. And one of the pieces of scientific evidence, Lisa spoke to how the film takes the science. These films take the science so seriously. One piece of evidence that I kept sending their way was work by Iris Moss at Berkeley on acceptance of like, there’s this new regulation strategy alongside reappraisal and suppression and naming and perspective taking acceptance like, Hey, you’re feeling anxious. Just accept it for a moment and listen to what it tells you. I had years of panic attacks as a young man because anxiety runs in my family, and I didn’t know that I was pathologizing and I was going to MDs like what’s wrong with my body? And the minute I said, Hey, it’s okay, you feel this way because you’re 2000 miles away from your parents and your home in California with this new job. It changed everything. And let’s hope voices like Lisa’s, this film, can introduce this idea that these emotions are part of a very human response to our times.

Reena Ninan:
That’s such a great point. And Lisa, there’s actually a point in the film where Riley needs new friends in high school. There’s this concept of changing friendships sometimes when you go from middle school to high school. How does changing friendships impact emotional development?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Oh man, it is so fraught. And the way that I think about these junctures, right, is that the kid is between the shores. They have left the shore of being embedded in the bosom of family life and they’re trying to get to the shore of being closely tied to age mates. And they are scared. They’re scared. They’re between these two things and the plot line, which people will see when they see the movie of Riley trying to figure out who she’s going to hang out with in high school. I don’t think there’s a family who’s going to see this movie where that does not somehow resonate with at least one of their kids, right? I mean, it is so universal. The movie does a beautiful job of just how intense it is, how frightening it is, how ham handed she is sometimes in her attempts to make it happen.
It’s just perfect. And here’s something that Reena, this is so important. What this movie does is it sets up conversations at home, and that’s really where the pull through is on the value of films like this is not just seeing it, but that families are going to want to see this together. And this movie has been made in a way that adults are going to get a total kick out of it. Not an accident, it’s made that way. But it’s the after conversations, it’s going home and saying like, oh yeah, what you were struggling with around friends. That’s like with Riley when she gets to hockey camp and she’s not sure who to hang out with that, the ability to bring it into a neutral shared experience will deepen those conversations.
Envy is really important in the film as a conversation starter for things like how kids feel when they look on social media. When we look at where damage is done on social media, often it’s around the social comparison stuff. So to give families a language where they’re like, oh, you’re feeling envy, right? When you’re looking at that kid’s posts online.
I want to share a wonky little thing that I, just in terms of how well undergirded this film is with the knowledge base that we have as scholars, when we look at what makes educational television educational or educational programming educational, it is the parent’s willingness to watch it with the kids.
And this was research done back on Sesame Street, which I grew up with being born in 1970. And what Sesame Street did so well is they made it that the parent wanted to watch it too. There were jokes for the adults, if the parent watches it too, then later that night the parent is saying, look, oh, what would the count say about these peas? 1, 2, 3? That’s where the rubber hits the road on the educational force of these productions. So the same thing is true in “Inside Out”. It’s funny, adults are going to want to go see this. And one of the tiny little jokes, it’s such a good example of this and it’s in some of the previews, is there’s basically a sexualized joke around sadness and embarrassment.
Embarrassment shows up on the scene and sadness is like, Hey, big fella, so quick and so funny. But I’m like, that is not an accident, right? Because that is saying, adults come see this film too, and once the adults are in the seat next to the kid who’s in the seat, that goes home and that’s where the real change happens.

Reena Ninan:
I do love that about Disney. They make it so that the adults have a little something too as the kids are watching. But what a great point about conversation starters, Lisa. Dr. Keltner, on that point about the cultural importance, movies have a way to really transform culture. What do you hope that parents and kids walk away with from this film?

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Yeah, what a terrific question. I remember after “Inside Out” there was a review, and it may be in The Atlantic, where it was like this movie is almost like Dantes Inferno, which is, it gives us this image of the mind and emotions in the mind. And that is hard work. I was blown away at what Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen did. And it’s the same with “Inside Out 2” and Meg LaFav and Kelsey Mann and team.
I think the central piece of wisdom, I think there are two. One is just embrace the uncomfortable emotions. They are here for a reason. They are not destructive. They’re not going to kill you. They tell us important things. And as you gain wisdom, you have freedom. If you feel envious, you can go the path of hurting other people or you can go the path of really improving yourself.
And there are two forms of envy that fit that. And then the deep reflection, thank goodness people like Lisa will be part of this conversation is anxiety like, alright, a lot of people feel anxious. The percentages are very high right now, it’s risen. What is this state? What are its perils? What does it tell us? How do we sort of look at our minds in a new way, in an accepting way, in a non perfectionist way that can instill the irrational forms of anxiety? And I think it’s going to, like Lisa said, parents are going to come home and just be talking about it with their kids.
I remember this dad coming to me. I was doing yoga after “Inside Out”, and he came to me and he literally teared up and he said, your film changed my relationship with my daughter because, and I want to make sure this is the right way to interpret the film. Sadness is okay. And I was like, sadness is okay. And he’s like, oh my God.

Reena Ninan:
But that is revolutionary.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
It is. No, I know.

Reena Ninan:
It’s revolutionary as a parent to know it’s okay to feel that way.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
Right? And then if you see your child feeling anxious, you can just be close with them. You don’t have to send some pharmaceuticals their way. You can go for a walk and reflect. And so we need this. We really do. Lisa’s right in the thick of these cultural struggles with her bold work, and this will be part of, I hope, a shift.

Reena Ninan:
Absolutely. Lisa, what’s your sense? What do you hope that the audience will walk away from this film?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think everything Dacher said, and then I’ll just add normalizing how destabilizing it is to become a teenager for the kid and for the family. Reducing isolation, making more universal. Well, it’s always been universal, making it known that it’s more universal, that your kid suddenly is very reactive and hard to understand and doesn’t understand themselves and is trying to sort things out. This has always been true of teenagers and somehow we have lost the thread on this. And too often parents are looking at normally developing teenagers wondering what’s wrong with their kid.

Reena Ninan:
Well, I want to thank you both. This has been eyeopening. I’ve learned so much from a psychology standpoint that I didn’t think would come through this film. And kudos to Disney for having the two of you on this because your expertise really shines through in this episode alone. I can’t wait to take the kids. In fact, we’re taking the neighborhood kids. Everyone’s going to watch this film. Dr. Dacher Keltner, I want to thank you so much, Dr. Lisa Damour, our shining light. I want to thank you. It was really fascinating to hear your take on all of this, and definitely check out Dr. Dacher’s book. We’ll be in our show notes. We’ll have more on that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And also, I will just tell you, I have known Dr. Keltner’s work for years and years and years. And to finally actually get to meet him and then get to think with him. No, I mean he’s a big deal. Big deal in my academic world. And so it’s been a really, it’s like meeting Santa Clause. It’s been really fun.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
I think together. Although we were only meeting personally soon, I think we were given parents and kids a good thing.

Reena Ninan:
Absolutely a real gift.
I’m just curious if you guys, now that you know a few people at Disney, could you suggest a sequel talking about a 45-year-old Riley and going through all the issues and emotions that a 45-year-old might.

Dr. Dacher Keltner:
I pitching for the 62-year-old, so.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
We’ll take it up with the team.

Reena Ninan:
I love it. Well, thank you both so much. And Lisa, tell us, what do you have for us for Parenting To Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
For Parenting To Go, go see this movie June 14th. That would be my Parenting To Go, honestly.

Reena Ninan:
What can you say? I agree.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That is where I think we want to be with this.

Reena Ninan:
I agree.
This gorgeous episode is going to wrap it up for us for season four of the Ask Lisa Podcast. We’re going to continue to have encore episodes in your feed every Tuesday morning, and then we’ll be back for our new season on September 3rd, Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Hope you all enjoy your summer and go see the movie.