“I think we need to stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up,” entrepreneur Sinead Bovell told Rahma in the episode.

In “How We Grow Up,” Richtel expands his reporting to take in the experience of contemporary adolescence more generally. His hope, he explains, is to answer a pair of broad questions.

It isn’t just our brains wiring us for fear, it’s also everything we absorb as we grow up. From the moment we’re little, our families, schools, and communities teach us what’s “normal ...