Before Jemma Sbeg, psychology podcasts for young women mostly sat at two extremes: overly clinical or overly personal. With her own version, The Psychology of Your 20s, she finally filled the gap between the two, making evidence-based conversations around emotions, relationships, and identity feel relevant to a generation growing up online.
Following the Netflix release of her show in January and a live show in Sheffield, England, we got to speak to her via video call. Together, we talked about therapy language, emotional aesthetics, and the performance of vulnerability on the internet.
RUBY STEIN Hi Jemma! Be honest, what do you think of tarot cards?
JEMMA SBEG I really like them. I understand the pseudoscientific doubt, but you read what you want to read, and they offer a confirmation bias for what you already know. There’s this psychological concept called “compensatory control”, which I actually did an episode about yesterday. Basically, when you can’t control everything that’s going on in your life, having something that gives you answers can provide a deep sense of control and help manage anxiety.
RS Staying on the topic of psychology: What originally drew you towards it?
JS Human behaviour is so fascinating to me. I was this nerdy kid without a lot of friends, and psychology became a way to understand people. It just made sense to me. Also, in a way, it was never that hard because it just felt so instinctual. So that’s what drew me to it.
RS Since studying psychology five years ago, a lot has changed. From sitting in the back of your car, recording your episodes, to now going on tour and releasing your own book. Do you feel your life is very different now than it was five years ago?
JS Well, 100%. The trajectory of my life was so set! I really thought that I was just going to climb that ladder and become a management consultant. I was really happy with that idea, but I also felt like there was this instinct in me that always knew that I wanted to work for myself. Not much has changed about me; I’m definitely still the same person and have pretty much all the same core friendships and interests. But my professional life changed: I work more, and there are many incredible opportunities that I could have never imagined.
RS Your podcast is evidence-based. Was that what was missing from conversations you were finding online before?
JS Back in 2021, there were basically two kinds of podcasts you could listen to: self-help podcasts hosted by people in their forties or fifties, or friendship-style podcasts aimed at women in their twenties. There was a real gap for women who wanted science and evidence-based information, delivered by someone they could relate to and feel comfortable with. There were definitely self-help podcasts for younger women, but a lot of them focused on personal experiences and what had worked for the host. I think that’s valuable and credible, but there wasn’t much content explaining the science in a way that felt relevant to people in their twenties.
Looking back, it sounds like I had this whole business plan, but honestly, I just really wanted to do it. I was already having conversations with my friends and thinking, this is actually really interesting.
RS You’ve been really successful in the past years. Still, your work feels very intimate and makes you seem like a trusted friend. How do you hold boundaries when all these people project a certain role onto you?
JS In the early episodes, I would share details about my personal life because I thought nobody was listening, and, to be honest, nobody really was. Now, I still want to give examples, but there’s a chance people who could be involved will hear it, so I don’t. I really love that the content we make feels safe and comforting to people. Sometimes listeners say it’s the first time they’ve heard someone put their feelings into words.
Because of that, some people ask me for personal advice about very difficult situations. That became another important boundary for me. I don’t respond to advice requests in my DMs, especially when people share a lot of personal details. I remember replying once when the podcast first became popular. I naively thought that would be the end of it, but the person kept messaging me. It taught me that these people don’t actually know you, and you can’t form a personal relationship with everyone who reaches out. If I receive a particularly worrying or depressing message, I’ll usually forward helpful resources instead.
RS Nowadays, when you go on social media, it feels like there are so many psychological terms being thrown around. Do you think we’re becoming more emotionally intelligent, or is it more about narrating ourselves?
JS On one hand, something really important has happened in the last few years: people now have language for experiences they previously couldn’t describe. That self-awareness and understanding have genuinely changed people’s relationships with themselves and others. But now we’re also seeing the peak of the trend. Content about psychology and identity is extremely engaging, and some people have realized there’s money to be made from constantly creating new labels and explanations for vulnerable people.
What we’re experiencing is something called “concept shrink”, where terms start being applied to things they don’t actually represent. Words like “gaslighting” or “narcissism” have become so broad online that they’ve lost nuance. I think that can actually reduce understanding, because instead of exploring the complexity of an experience, people attach one flat label to it. My other concern is that psychology language can become a way to intellectualize emotions instead of actually feeling them. People can explain exactly why they feel bad in very clinical terms but never simply say: “This hurt me” or “This is my experience.” Sometimes the language becomes a kind of bubble wrap around the feeling itself.
RS When you are online and you see people using, for example, the word “gaslighting” wrong, does it make you angry, or have you accepted that this is reality?
JS I don’t know if it makes me angry. It probably makes me sad. Especially when I see people in the comments be like, “Oh my God, how did you get me?” And I’m like, this might be your only introduction to this world, and maybe you’re coming in with false information. On the podcast I’ve started a bonus episode series where we take a well-known psychology concept or an idea and break it down into what it actually means.
And that’s kind of been my way of also calling myself out because maybe there are words I’m using incorrectly at times. I want to make sure that I know the history, know where the terms came from and know what they represent. I mind it when somebody presents themselves as an educational voice while spreading wrong information.
Photography by Rebecca Zephyr Thomas.
RS I want to move over to the Aestheticization of emotion. What does it mean to you?
JS I think we’re at this point in society, where we can curate literally anything. It is so easy to create an identity that we think will have a certain reaction in people: using social media, using our clothes, the books we read, the people we hang out with, and what we post. Emotions are the final frontier of that. They are the final thing that we can curate as a way to represent ourselves to other people. Then certain emotions become aesthetics or trends.
The one that’s in right now is that being disinterested is cool. Being detached is mysterious. Being sad makes you interesting. It makes you wonder how much of it is real and how much of it is an identity people are putting on to appear a certain way. It becomes harder to tell because of how everything is done for an audience at the moment.
RS Why do you think that styling our inner selves is becoming a rising trend?
JS I think there’s a sense that there is a right way to feel and think. When it comes to curating our internal lives, there’s this idea that we should only display the “aesthetic” emotions, the emotions that are admired by others. Looking nice, being happy, friendly, bubbly, and interesting becomes something people see as desirable, and if you feel that way all the time, it can seem like you’re doing life correctly.
That leads to what we call a lack of emotional diversity, or “emo diversity”. It’s similar to biodiversity: just like the world needs wetlands, forests, parks, and oceans to function properly, we also need a range of emotions in order to function emotionally. But when we exist in this curated environment where only certain emotions are acceptable and where you either have to seem constantly happy or detached and sad in an “interesting” way, you lose authentic emotional connection.
It creates this final frontier of fakeness, where we no longer know how people actually feel because emotions become something performed for an audience or shaped around what we think others will like. As a result, we become disconnected from ourselves and less aware of our genuine emotions because everything starts to feel like a performance.
RS Do you think people express their identity through emotions the same amount as through fashion, sports, etc.?
JS I do still think the main thing that we do to express our emotion is through appearance and through group belonging. But I also feel like when you look at brands and people that have become brands, you cannot disentangle the emotion that they try and put forward from what they’re trying to achieve.
An example is Nara Smith; when you watch her videos, they have a very calm, serene, and relaxed feeling. That emotional state is part of her brand. On the complete opposite side are Jake Paul and Logan Paul. Their anger, outrage, intensity, exuberance, and cockiness are also emotional states they intentionally put forward as part of their brand. Imagine if you swapped the emotional state of Nara with the emotional state of a Jake or Logan Paul. Their brand would be diluted. It’s gendered, it’s commodified, and it’s at times very deliberate to create that aesthetic or image of how people want to be perceived in a way.
RS Do you think that social media has changed the way we experience the emotions that are put out? Also, because we’re constantly aware of how we’re perceived?
JS Definitely. I think social media creates this sense that our emotions are something to be managed in order to build a curated identity and maintain a coherent narrative. We start to feel like, if I am this kind of person, then I always have to be that person. I have to be the happy person, the funny person, or the disinterested person. It creates pressure to stay emotionally consistent for an audience. I think that also changes the way we respond to other people’s emotions online. We are exposed to intense emotions constantly, videos of people grieving or being heartbroken on camera, and while that can make people feel less alone, it may also desensitise us a little. We see so much vulnerability online that it can become harder to experience genuine empathy in the same way.
RS What would your one piece of advice be for people in their 20s?
JS Dreams that you can’t stop thinking about are the ones that are calling to you. And if there was ever a time to do it, now is the time. Don’t settle first. Plan B is plan B for a reason. The stable corporate job or whatever your Plan B may be is what you want to do, but if there is a bigger calling, you cannot ignore it. And it’s the thing you think about every single day. That is the biggest sign. That’s what you should be doing. You don’t want to regret not doing that later on in your life. That’s my biggest piece of advice.