Latest / Drawn of History / Richard Reeves _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _562(M4A_128K)

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Richard Reeves _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _562(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today's guest is a writer and a social scientist. He's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: also a dual citizen. He's the president of the American
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  Speaker 1: Institute for Boys and Men. I'm grateful that he's here today.
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  Speaker 1: Today's guest is Richard Rees. Richard Reeves, thanks for joining
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  Speaker 1: us today, brother.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really thrilled to be here.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we appreciate it, man. You want to move that
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  Speaker 1: in a little bit for me, if you don't mind? Yeah, sure.
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  Speaker 1: And you are British.
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  Speaker 2: By birth, I'm American now. Okay, you're American now. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I became a U.S. citizen in 2016, so I'm very,
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  Speaker 2: very proud of this country.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, welcome. Nice.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: And you're the president for the American Institute for Boys
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  Speaker 1: and Men. Yep.
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  Speaker 2: New think tank. Okay. God knows we need more think tanks, right?
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  Speaker 2: That's what America is really clamoring for. It's like more
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  Speaker 2: scholars sitting in think tanks producing charts. Honestly, I was
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  Speaker 2: in another think tank for 10 years before that, the
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  Speaker 2: Brookings Institution, a huge think tank in Washington, D.C. Great job.
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  Speaker 2: And I got to tell you, it was not in
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  Speaker 2: my life plan.
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  Speaker 1: To be in a think tank?
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  Speaker 2: To create another one. No, actually, being in a think
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  Speaker 2: tank is great. What that means is you basically just
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  Speaker 2: get paid good money to write stuff and say stuff
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  Speaker 2: that you're interested in.
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  Speaker 1: And what happens to a lot of that information from
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  Speaker 1: think tanks?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that depends who you ask. If you ask the critics,
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  Speaker 2: they say it just gathers dust on people's shelves.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe like two people in Congress read it. One New
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  Speaker 2: York times journalist reads it. And so there is this
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  Speaker 2: whole thing now that think tanks used to like produce
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  Speaker 2: policy papers and then grateful legislators, members of Congress would say,
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  Speaker 2: thank you. We'll go and turn that into a law
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  Speaker 2: and tada.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: That's not how it works anymore. And so the whole
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  Speaker 2: question of how do you influence law, like how do
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  Speaker 2: you influence policy, I think is a really big question now.
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  Speaker 2: And so there's a big question mark against this whole
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  Speaker 2: idea about quotes think tank. I certainly didn't plan to
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  Speaker 2: start a new one, but.
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  Speaker 1: But it seems like this one is important. That's one
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  Speaker 1: of the reasons, yeah, that I wanted to get to
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  Speaker 1: talk to you today because, you know, a lot of
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  Speaker 1: our listeners are men and boys. I know Scott Galloway
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  Speaker 1: was on and he had mentioned that you were kind
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  Speaker 1: of his... godfather of information or somebody that he really
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  Speaker 1: looked up to, you know? And I did also see
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  Speaker 1: you were born on the 4th of July. Is that right?
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  Speaker 2: Correct.
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  Speaker 1: Do they kick you out of Britain if you're on
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  Speaker 1: the- That would be great.
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  Speaker 2: I think you should just have a rule, right? Everyone
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  Speaker 2: who's born on the 4th of July gets automatic US citizenship,
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  Speaker 2: but then gets deported from the UK, right? But it's
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  Speaker 2: kind of weird because I've always had that. And then
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  Speaker 2: I actually came to the US in the 90s for
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  Speaker 2: the Guardian newspaper. I was a journalist for quite a
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  Speaker 2: few years. Uh, I just always loved America ended up
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  Speaker 2: marrying an American.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think it was because of your birthday at
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  Speaker 1: all or no? You know, because it's just interesting.
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  Speaker 2: It would sound weird to say yes. Wouldn't it? But
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  Speaker 2: if you think there's no such thing as a coincidence,
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  Speaker 2: I've always loved the fact that I was born on
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  Speaker 2: the 4th of July and now I'm here.
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  Speaker 1: It's great.
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  Speaker 2: Everyone has a big party for my birthday. Um, and
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  Speaker 2: actually one of the things that I've really thought about as,
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  Speaker 2: as an immigrant, right. And I don't, when you say immigrant,
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  Speaker 2: you probably don't think of someone like me, but I'm
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  Speaker 2: a proud immigrant. is that people who are born here
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  Speaker 2: don't actually appreciate what it means sometimes to be a citizen.
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  Speaker 2: And my citizenship ceremony, which I did in a hurry, actually,
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  Speaker 2: because I wanted to be able to vote and wanted
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  Speaker 2: to get into the, you know, get into the whole
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  Speaker 2: civic life. I was surrounded by people in tears.
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  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: There's people from Iran, there's people from Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever, refugees.
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  Speaker 2: A whole bunch of different people, some people from Mexico
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  Speaker 2: and they're waving their flags and saying the pledge of allegiance.
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  Speaker 2: You're welcomed by the president. And there was, there wasn't
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  Speaker 2: really a dry eye. Wow. By the end of it.
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  Speaker 2: And so I actually now think that every high school
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  Speaker 2: or in the U S should go to a citizenship ceremony.
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  Speaker 1: That's a great idea.
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  Speaker 2: Just experience it because I don't think if you're like,
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  Speaker 2: if you're born here, like you can take it a
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  Speaker 2: bit for granted what it means to be a citizen,
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  Speaker 2: but to go and experience what it's like for people
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  Speaker 2: to become a citizen. I expected it to be more,
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  Speaker 2: I had a green card and I thought, yeah, but
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  Speaker 2: I need, I want to be a citizen as well.
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  Speaker 2: I actually was incredibly moved by the whole experience.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. You don't think about the gift of your own citizenship, right?
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  Speaker 1: And you don't think about what others go through to
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  Speaker 1: get it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And that, yeah, they used to have, I know whenever
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  Speaker 1: I was growing up, you had the Pledge of Allegiance.
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  Speaker 1: There was definitely a lot more, even though the Pledge
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  Speaker 1: of Allegiance was like a small thing, it's one of the,
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  Speaker 1: like those traditional things that made you feel like a
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  Speaker 1: part of something, right? It was like a traditional practice that,
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  Speaker 1: that created a commonality between, you know, between kids, we
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  Speaker 1: kind of thought it was lame sometimes, but sometimes you didn't,
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  Speaker 1: you know, like at certain points of the year, if
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  Speaker 1: certain things were going on in the culture, um, it
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  Speaker 1: meant more to you, but yeah, that's it.
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  Speaker 2: And it's also just a ritual.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And I, we've come to undervalue ritual.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, we're starting, they erode from our society.
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  Speaker 2: The point of a ritual, right? It's not just like
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  Speaker 2: you can overthink what the words mean. You can overthink
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  Speaker 2: exactly what it means, but There's something about just the
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  Speaker 2: ritual of it. So, um, my, my son is at
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  Speaker 2: the university of Tennessee and he, he explains, yeah. Um,
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  Speaker 2: but actually when his friends come down to a Tennessee game,
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  Speaker 2: what's and they're say a Northeastern college or a small
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  Speaker 2: liberal arts college. what really strikes them is less the game.
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  Speaker 2: And it's more the fact that there's the Pledge of Allegiance,
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  Speaker 2: that there's a prayer, that the jets go over, that
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  Speaker 2: there's fireworks, that they come out through the tea. There's
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  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of ritual around it, which is actually
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  Speaker 2: really beautiful. And I think sometimes we overthink the content
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  Speaker 2: of the ritual and don't actually just recognize it's the
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  Speaker 2: fact of the ritual that really, really matters.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, yeah, people start looking at, well, what
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  Speaker 1: are the words of the Pledge of Allegiance? It didn't matter.
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  Speaker 1: It was just that we got up.
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  Speaker 2: Do I mean every word of this, right?
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  Speaker 1: We got up and we did it together. And I
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  Speaker 1: don't think there's anything wrong if you live in a
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  Speaker 1: country and you're a member of it to pledge allegiance
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  Speaker 1: to that country, I feel like.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, correct.
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  Speaker 1: Because otherwise, then what are you? You're just a passerby?
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  Speaker 1: Are you working for another country? What's your real modus
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  Speaker 1: operandi then, I guess?
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  Speaker 2: I have one friend, actually, who's from Israel. And when
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  Speaker 2: he came, he gave up his Israeli citizenship. Because he
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  Speaker 2: believes that you cannot have more than one citizenship. You
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  Speaker 2: cannot have dual citizenship is a contradiction because you can
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  Speaker 2: only be pledging your allegiance to one sovereign nation.
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  Speaker 1: I love that.
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  Speaker 2: I love that too. And I will confess that I
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  Speaker 2: have kept my British passport.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, you have?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So if you had to choose, what do you do then?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, US. No question.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I get it.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a reason why everyone really wants to
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  Speaker 2: come here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, the rock lives here. Right. You know? Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Is that the main reason people come here?
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  Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. But that would be a
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  Speaker 1: great idea if every class had to go watch that,
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  Speaker 1: had to go watch that ceremony.
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  Speaker 2: They always need volunteers of them as well to like
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  Speaker 2: help out with the paperwork and stuff like that. And
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  Speaker 2: so you could just have like some going every time. Like,
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  Speaker 2: I just think it'd be really nice before you graduate
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  Speaker 2: high school, like, and I would just say to anyone
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  Speaker 2: who's listening, right? If you're thinking about a good, cool
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  Speaker 2: thing to do, like volunteer at your local citizenship center
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  Speaker 2: and watch the people go through the process of becoming
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  Speaker 2: a US citizen and And that might make you appreciate
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  Speaker 2: it a bit more.
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  Speaker 1: I can't believe that it's not mandatory, like in classes
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  Speaker 1: or in school, that you have to go see that.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe that's something that one of these think tanks could change,
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  Speaker 1: you know?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I proposed it, but let's see if it will change.
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  Speaker 2: But we can do it ourselves as well.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we could.
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  Speaker 2: There's nothing stopping us.
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  Speaker 1: You're the president for the American Institute for Men and Boys.
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  Speaker 1: So what is that institute?
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  Speaker 2: So it's a research and advocacy organization. So what we're
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  Speaker 2: trying to do is, the basic premise here is, There
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  Speaker 2: are a lot of ways in which boys and men
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  Speaker 2: are struggling in our country right now. And there are
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  Speaker 2: no institutions, there's no organizations whose job it is to
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  Speaker 2: basically wake up every day and draw attention to that
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  Speaker 2: with data, with facts, in a way that will hopefully
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  Speaker 2: raise awareness of it. It's this huge asymmetry. I really
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  Speaker 2: noticed it in the pandemic. So when the pandemic hit,
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  Speaker 2: there were a lot of reports about how it was
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  Speaker 2: going to affect women and girls. There was a lot
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  Speaker 2: of concern about employment, domestic violence, a whole bunch of
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  Speaker 2: real concerns. And a lot of press coverage for that.
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  Speaker 2: And those were perfectly legitimate coming from women's think tanks,
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  Speaker 2: from the UN, from the White House, et cetera. But
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  Speaker 2: I noticed that actually the college enrollment for men had
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  Speaker 2: dropped seven times more than for women in the first
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  Speaker 2: year of the pandemic. Seven times difference in the drop.
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  Speaker 1: Is that true?
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  Speaker 2: It is true. Then the numbers got a little bit revised,
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  Speaker 2: and it's partly because the men were more likely to
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  Speaker 2: be going to trade school and stuff, which you just
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  Speaker 2: couldn't do online. But it wasn't just that. It hit
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  Speaker 2: male education harder than female education, number one. Number two,
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  Speaker 2: men were dying a lot more from COVID. COVID was
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  Speaker 2: killing a lot more men.
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  Speaker 1: You mean the actual disease or just the- like the
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  Speaker 1: loneliness or the disconnection? No, the disease.
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  Speaker 2: Men were much more vulnerable to COVID. Last time I checked,
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  Speaker 2: we'd lost at least a hundred thousand more men than women.
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  Speaker 2: And that's not to be expected because actually it affected
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  Speaker 2: older people, right? COVID killed older people a lot more
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  Speaker 2: and there are more older women. So if anything, you
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  Speaker 2: think you go the other way, right? But it didn't
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  Speaker 2: because actually men were much, much more vulnerable to the disease.
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  Speaker 2: And No one was really researching that. No one was
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  Speaker 2: producing reports on that. No one was writing articles about that.
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  Speaker 2: And it really occurred to me that that was because
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  Speaker 2: it was no one's job. Right. There wasn't an American
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  Speaker 2: Institute for Boys and Men, but I can assure you
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  Speaker 2: that if we'd existed then, we'd have been pushing out
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  Speaker 2: lots of information about how COVID was affecting boys' education
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  Speaker 2: and men's education and also killing men in massively higher numbers.
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  Speaker 1: Well, for sure, because I think also you– I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if ever in my life there's been a lot
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  Speaker 1: of organizations where it's like, hey, men need help. You know,
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  Speaker 1: it's like, everything is that women need help with this children,
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  Speaker 1: you know? And it's certainly, that makes sense. Um, I
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  Speaker 1: always think back to like women and children first, like
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  Speaker 1: when the Titanic was sinking or something, you know, when
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  Speaker 1: something like that, it's like women and children first. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And that's probably what most men would want as well.
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  Speaker 1: But at a certain point you're like, Hey, uh, we exist.
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  Speaker 1: What are we doing here? You know?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Um, What was your first relationship like with your dad
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  Speaker 1: or something? Just so we have some personal attachment to
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  Speaker 1: this conversation as well, what was it like with your
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  Speaker 1: dad when you were a kid? Because that's usually people's
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  Speaker 1: first male role model, yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, my dad was amazing.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
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  Speaker 2: Just amazing. And is an amazing granddad to my sons
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  Speaker 2: as well. And so I was given the greatest gift ever.
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  Speaker 2: that I think anybody can ever get, which is two
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  Speaker 2: parents who both loved me, uh, still together, still loving us.
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  Speaker 2: And that sense of somebody wants, this sounds like a
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  Speaker 2: bit of.
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  Speaker 1: A, it's crazy that I'm shocked to, you know, that it's,
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  Speaker 1: it's crazy that it's become in this world that that's
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  Speaker 1: just shocking thing. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And it's not like, not like they were perfect to
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  Speaker 2: be clear, but, but it's like, like parenting is never
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  Speaker 2: going to be about perfection. It's, it's always going to
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  Speaker 2: be about the arc, right? It's like a, I think
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  Speaker 2: you almost get like a, parental grade point average right
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  Speaker 2: across the whole decades it takes to raise a kid
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  Speaker 2: right you're gonna have bad days and good days and
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  Speaker 2: you're gonna get some days where you get a really
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: bad grade doesn't right that dad got dad got an
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: f today yeah right he like said some stuff he
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: shouldn't have said did some stuff he shouldn't have done
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  Speaker 2: to me but then like you got a b the
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  Speaker 2: next day and an a like what's my overall and
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and they were they were genuinely like amazing and i've
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  Speaker 2: come to realize that that is the most extraordinary gift.
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  Speaker 2: I was going to say, it sounds like a bit
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: of a brag, but I remember someone coming up to
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  Speaker 2: me once after I'd done a talk or something like that.
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  Speaker 1: And there's your dad right there. Get a gander at him.
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  Speaker 2: What's his name?
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  Speaker 1: Phil? David. David, yeah. That's a proper British name as well.
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  Speaker 2: They said like, this guy's dad loved him. You can
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: tell his dad loved him. So I loved you, right?
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  Speaker 2: That's so weird. And I was like, I don't know
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  Speaker 2: that you can just, there's something in people, men, who
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  Speaker 2: were loved by their dads. And you could never quantify that.
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  Speaker 2: There's no chart you could ever make about that. But
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  Speaker 2: I've never doubted my father's love for me. And he
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  Speaker 2: was a coach for us. He taught us to swim.
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  Speaker 2: He taught us to drive. But he was also the breadwinner.
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  Speaker 2: And I had this moment with my dad that made
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  Speaker 2: a huge impression on me. Because of his generation, he
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: had to be the breadwinner. I married very young. And
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: he lost his job. He became unemployed a couple of times.
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  Speaker 2: He worked in manufacturing during the eighties, which was a
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  Speaker 2: tough time, you know, in the UK and the US.
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  Speaker 2: And there was a time he was unemployed for quite
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  Speaker 2: a long time, but every morning he got up and
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  Speaker 2: he shaved and he put on a shirt and a tie.
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  Speaker 2: His concession was he didn't put a jacket on, right?
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  Speaker 2: He didn't fully dress up, right? Because he was trying
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  Speaker 2: to get a white collar job. And he had breakfast
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  Speaker 2: with us. And I asked him one day, I said, dad,
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  Speaker 2: You're going into the spare room to type out like
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  Speaker 2: resumes to try and get a job.
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  Speaker 1: Why?
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  Speaker 2: Why are you shaving? Why are you still putting a
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  Speaker 2: shirt on? You don't have a job. And he looked
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  Speaker 2: at me and he said, I do have a job.
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  Speaker 2: My job is to get another job so that I
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: can take care of you. And he worked as hard
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: at getting a job as he ever had at his
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: job because he knew that we needed him.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And although I think that fatherhood has really changed, it's
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  Speaker 2: been different for me, right? Because the economic relationship between
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: men and women has changed so dramatically, which is a
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  Speaker 2: huge liberation. I think I was able to be a
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  Speaker 2: stay at home dad for a few years in a
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  Speaker 2: way that he would never have been able to do.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: So it's a different world now, but that basic idea
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  Speaker 2: that like, okay, you have this purpose in life now,
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  Speaker 2: which is I have to take care of you. It
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  Speaker 2: just changes you. And I had that directly from my dad.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. And just seeing that example, like, okay, what does
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: a man do every day? He gets up, he takes
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  Speaker 1: care of himself. He closed himself and he moves forward
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: in the world in some process, you know, like, yeah, no,
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  Speaker 1: I think that that's.
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  Speaker 2: It took him months to find a job and I've,
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  Speaker 2: I've never been prouder of him. And I really realized
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  Speaker 2: that in retrospect.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. And he passed away now? No.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, good. My parents are in their eighties now. I
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: live in Wales. I'm half Welsh.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, you are?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: And is that the bad one or what's the bad one?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Bad in what way?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. That's a good point.
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  Speaker 2: I think you'd have to specify.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to look it up more.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, some people would say that the Welsh are bad.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: But I'm not going to say that.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: The Scottish? The Irish?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Well, the Scottish is the easiest. Yeah, everybody's like, the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Scottish are over there eating their own teeth, you know.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: We can agree on that. But it's also, yeah, yeah, okay, good. No,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: I love the UK because everybody just, just rips on
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: the other group, you know, rips on the other part
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of it. It's the best.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: It's true of like almost everywhere. It's like everything. It's
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: like college football. It's like States.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: But nowhere stronger than in the UK. No, no. It
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: goes deeper. Yeah. You go on stage in Ireland, you're like,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: fuck England. And they just, they will cheer for the.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. They cheer for the other side.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: So like if you're in rugby or soccer or something,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: like everybody will. It's like if, if England's playing Germany.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: the Welsh will support the Germans. And we have a
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: history with the Germans, but it's like, even then, it's
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: basically anybody but England.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, so the English and the Welsh are against each
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: other even. Oh, Christ.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Not quite as much as the Scots, probably.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: And also, of course, they have deep histories. I mean,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: it is the United Kingdom. It is four nations.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: And so there is always going to be that difference. Yeah.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it always just seems so
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: much fun over there, just how passionate they are about it.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: That's great. I mean, it's a kind of tribalism can
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: be good or bad. But the issue of– I know
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: you're interested in fatherhood.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And I was going to talk– yeah,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and just so I can– just so I'll relate my own. Yeah,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: my dad was older when I was born. My dad
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: was 70 when I was born, so he was an
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: older guy. So I think I had this like– this
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: almost like fear all the time that my dad was
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: going to be hurt or– die maybe you know because
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it was always just kind of scary you know like
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: you know like he would drive and he would ask
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: us where we were going or if we could turn
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: and I was just a kid I'd be standing on
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the passenger seat and we're standing up and like getting
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: up and like looking at the lights and I'd be
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: like it's good you know it's green or bad or
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: something and And I remember one time I got it
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: wrong and he just drove right out.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: You were literally having to be his eyes while he
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: was driving.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I was helping out, you know, because sometimes he
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: would park too close under the lights or whatever, you know,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: he waited at an intersection in the middle of the intersect.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: You know, he's just old, you know, he was just,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: you know, he was like 80 something at that point. And, um,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: so it was just bizarre. You know, I think it
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: was a very bizarre kind of like probably fatherhood connection.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: And then my parents got divorced. And so then at
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that point, Yeah. You kind of start to, and then
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: my dad didn't live with us. And so my mom
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: didn't want him to live with us. And so, you know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: then you're kind of like in this, you don't even
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: realize it as a kid, you're just a kid, but
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: you're in this starvation space for where do you get, um,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: probably role models and where do you, who do you
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: look to, you know? Um, and I had my brother
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: around for a couple of years and then I was
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: like a huge wrestling fan. Like I really idolized a
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: lot of those guys.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Um, did you do it? Were you a wrestler?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: No, I got into steroids, but I never did the wrestling.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: You did the steroid bit, but.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: So I did. Yes, I guess, you know, but yeah,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, I remember collecting all the figurines and we
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: would watch it. I had a neighbor and his dad
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: was a, his dad was like kind of dialed in.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: And so that was helpful.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: What did he was almost like a. dad to you
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: as well? Like, cause you can share it around. I
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: think that's part of it.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. I think you can get your father,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: you can get your father little pieces from different men, right?
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: You can, I believe that like, um, you had a
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: basketball coach that, you know, showed me like care and
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: affection and, um, included me in things that his family
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: was doing. And then I ended up moving out and
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: living with a different family when I was like 14
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and that family had a stable father in the home.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And so that, uh, that helped a lot, but yeah,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: not trying to like make it about me. I'm just
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: trying to like, um, put both of our stories out there. Yeah.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: And I think it's important. But one of the things
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: my dad also did, he was a coach, like he was,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: he coached rugby and stuff. And I think particularly in
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: the U S I've become really interested in the role
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: of coaches. So my basic view is that coaches, especially
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: for boys, we're actually seeing like sports is going down
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: for boys in the U S now boys are less
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: likely to play sports than in the past. It's going up. Yeah.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: The Aspen Institute has a really good project called project play.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: where they actually track the data. It's going up for
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: girls and down for boys. Now, it's always been higher
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: for boys, but sports participation is going down for boys.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: One reason for that is coaches. You need coaches to
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: do that. And we can maybe get into male teachers
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: because actually one of the things that male teachers do,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: and my son has just become a teacher.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, wonderful.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's teaching fifth grade in Baltimore. And within a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: day of starting, someone heard his accent because he's still
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: got a British accent. Heard his accent. He's a soccer
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: coach now. And he actually is a good soccer player.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: But the point is he's immediately a coach, right? And
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I think that coaches are basically mental health professionals in disguise, right?
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: I think they're doing a lot of the work that
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: you'd otherwise do in terms of mental health. And you
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: can kind of see, like, there'll be a line from
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the Aspen.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, here we go. It says, oh, we have fewer
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: boys are playing sports. In 2013, half of boys aged
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: 6 to 17 participated regularly in sports, according to SFIA data.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Only 41. percent of boys did in 2023 right um
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: girls aged 6 to 12 had 34 percent and 13
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: to 17 age girls were 38 played at higher levels
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: in 2023 than in any recent years so girls is
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: going up like you said boys is going down correct
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: some of that could be attributed to to also a
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: lot more boys are like they choose to become gamers
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, but more sedentary things.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: It could be, which is not necessarily a good thing.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, ideally you'd want to do a bit of both,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: but then the question is like, why are boys playing
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: less sport than in the past? And what is this
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: coaching thing? And you can't get coaches. I'd love to
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: see something like a coach for America program. You know,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: there's this teach for America program, which gets people into
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: teaching because I think there's a lot of men who
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: are struggling to to know how to kind of connect
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: with their community or what they can do. Oh, for sure.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Some of the older institutions, maybe they used to do
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: that through church or the scouts or whatever, have maybe declined.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: They have declined. And so if there was a way
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: to kind of plug those men into a coaching role,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I think that's important because when you, I mean, maybe
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: this is maybe your experience, but I think if you
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: look at the image of a coach sitting on a
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: bench with a student, a boy or a young man
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: sitting next to him, And he's like, how are you doing?
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: How are things at home? How are things with your mom?
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Et cetera. That's counseling. That's therapy. But you're just not
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: calling it that. And the other thing is, critically, you're
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: doing it shoulder to shoulder. Do you know this thing
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: about the difference in communication style between men and women
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: and boys and girls? Men go shoulder to shoulder. Women
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: go face to face. It's interesting how we're set up here. Um,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: once you've seen this, you can't unsee it.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Cause guys don't usually look at
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: each other when they're sharing information that much.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: No, because actually that's a little bit of a threatening.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: That's a threatening stance for men. Like if men go
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: face to face, that's that might indicate something, some aggression
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: or some like you're, it's a bit like you're, you're
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: intimidating each other a little bit. Right. There's a role
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: for that probably.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Uh, when you talk to someone, you rarely stand and
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: look directly. There's always a little bit of an.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Not if you're male. So my, we learned this a
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: hard way, like even before I had any of the
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: data and God, I wish I'd had this data when
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: we were raising our kids.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: But my wife would like, our kids would come home
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: from school, all boys. Uh, and the two that were
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: in high school and middle school at the time, they'd
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: come home and they'd like sit across the breakfast bar
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: from her.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: And she'd be feeding them stuff. Like she'd feeding them protein,
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: have some protein. And then she'd stare at them like
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: this and be like, how was your day? How was
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: your day? And they'd be like, I don't know. Fine.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: They'd look down fine. Did you learn anything? I don't know.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Like what did nothing like just nothing. And then later on,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: we'd be driving with them somewhere or watching a game
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: or video game or just something, something like that, shoulder
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: to shoulder. And they would say, huh, you know, this
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: weird thing happened today, dad or mom. Right. So this
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: girl said this thing at school today. Huh? Interesting. And
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: what we now know is that that's very, very common
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: that actually the communication style. that men are most comfortable
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: with is less face-to-face and it's more shoulder-to-shoulder. Now think
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: about this, fishing, road trips, watching sports, sitting on the bench, shoulder-to-shoulder.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: It is the only explanation I have for the existence
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: of golf. What is golf about? Do you play golf? Okay, good.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I'd be willing to play it, but I just, I
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: can't even calm down right now.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: But it's like, again, men have to be doing something else.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: and they have to be doing it like just, so
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: if you go to a party now, you will not
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: be able to unsee this. Watch how the men stand
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: in relation to each other. And there are people who've
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: done whole PhDs on measuring the angle. We always stand
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: on a bit catty corner, like a little bit of
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: an angle, because to go face to face is threatening. Now,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: women on the other hand, very comfortable face to face.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: Walk into a coffee shop and count up how many
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: people are sitting opposite each other, staring each other in
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: the face, and then see what the gender is of them.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Much more likely to be women. Now, It's not like
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: one is good or bad.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: But what you don't want is a mental health profession,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: like psychology or whatever it is based on the presumption
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: that we're all supposed to sit like this. And so
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: a lot of male therapists now they're taking their male
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: patients out for a walk.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: That's the thing to do.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Walk and talk.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: That's the best.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Walk with them. Don't sit and stare at them.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I've been saying that for years.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: As a man, it's like, we don't want that.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Mike's girlfriend's a therapist now. And she and I,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: whenever we really needed to discuss stuff, we go on
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: a walk. Because you're in motion already, there's a part
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of you that feels like it's moving forward, even if
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you're sharing something that's troubling. Because sometimes you're sitting in
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a sedentary, you're just sitting there in a room somewhere.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, well, you leave, you haven't really gone anywhere.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Nothing's happened, you know? But on a walk, you're making
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: progress no matter what, even by just like staying in motion.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Same as a road trip.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: But they've now got this physiological element to it too,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: which is that just how you're relating to each other physically,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: especially for men. It's just very important that we are.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try that next time I'm with my therapist
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: in a room. It's like, yeah, why don't, yeah, like
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: maybe it's easier if I'm just able to share and
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: have somebody there, right? I remember one time I was
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: talking to my brother and I didn't know that this
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: had been important in my life, but he said, he said,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: hey man, I can just, I was having a tough day, man.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I pulled over. I was like, just, I was kind
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: of like falling apart a little bit. And he's like,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: hey man, I can just sit here on the phone
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: with you. we don't have to say anything. Right. And
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I'd never, he's like, I have some time.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I have an extra 10 minutes. I can just sit
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: here with you. We don't have to say any, we
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: don't have to say anything. And I can just be
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: here with you, you know? And man, I just, I mean,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: it was like a dam inside of me broke, you know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: it was like, literally there was tears coming out of
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: my toenails, you know, like it was just like, You
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: didn't realize all the time you needed someone just to
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: be there. I didn't need to hear them say anything.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't need to hear how they thought I felt.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't need to hear a response to anything, no judgment, nothing.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I just needed somebody there, you know? And it was like,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it like, I remember my hands vibrating. It
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: shook me so much, you know?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: You're very lucky. That idea of being like with somebody,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: not necessarily for them. I think sometimes we think like
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: we've got to be for them. We've got to be
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: telling them what to do. We've got to be advising them.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: We've got to be advocate, like somehow we've got to
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: be doing something. And sometimes it's just being with, and
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: for them to know that you're with I'm with you. Right.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: That's an incredibly powerful statement. And one of the things
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: that I as really motivated my work around boys and men,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: which I didn't ever expect really to be doing. was
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: just this sense that I had that so many boys
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: and men now don't have that feeling that we're with you,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: that we have your back. We've noticed that you're struggling
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: and we're with you. And instead, there's sometimes been a
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: sense a lot of men have felt, which is being
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: neglected or sometimes even blamed for their own problems.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and
• 27:15
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• 27:22
  Speaker 1: you're certainly not alone. Watching pornography has become so commonplace today,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and oftentimes men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety,
• 27:34
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• 27:38
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• 27:41
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• 27:44
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• 27:57
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• 28:01
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• 28:09
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• 28:12
  Speaker 1: have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long-term
• 28:16
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• 28:20
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• 28:26
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• 28:36
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  Speaker 1: I feel Honestly, thankful to be able to have one.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I know they're not in everybody's price range and that's understandable.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I want to support my
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: friend and his amazing company.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: So I think there are these real problems, right? So
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I know you talked to Scott Galloway about some of
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: these issues. Scott's been amazing on this, but the suicide
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: rate among men under the age of 30 has risen
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: by 40% since 2010. Just since 2010, by 40%.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Is that true?
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Bring that up.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, yeah.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: The American Institute for boys and men did a by trends, uh, analysis.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: And if you go down, you can then see the
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: shift in. So up, up until 2010, it was much
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: more older men, um, who, uh, there you go. You
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: got it. So if you go down, um, like there's a.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Let me see if male side rates had been the
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: same as women's from 1999 to 2023 would, would have
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: lost 546,000 fewer men. Yeah. So men are, since 2010,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: suicide rates have.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Risen by 30%. For 25 to 34, but we've updated
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: that since. And for under 20s, it's 40%.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So it was really interesting about the suicide.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: And where do you get this information from?
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: From CDC, from the Centers of Disease Control. This is official.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: So we lose 40,000 men a year to suicide. And
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: since 2010, it's all shifted to being younger men, right?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: So the rise, up until 2010- the rise was middle-aged men, really.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: And that was about deaths of despair. You can see
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: it was partly about the economy. But since 2010, the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: rise has been among younger men. And so that's a
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: very different thing. That's not about the recession. That's something
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: different going on. I think that's more cultural. I think
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: it's more just a lot of these young men feeling lost,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: feeling unseen.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what am I a part of? Yeah, because you
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: have to have purpose, right? And I think... you have
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: to have purpose. We've talked a lot about that on this,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: on this podcast. I learned a lot about it, but yeah,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: we have to have something to feel a part of, man.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I remember there was a guy I went skydiving with
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: and he'd listened to this podcast when it first started out.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And we, he and I kind of connected and, um,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and we connected on like, kind of like some emotional
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: levels talking about life and stuff. And then there were
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: a couple of times he'd messaged me. I didn't get
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: back to him over like, uh, it was like six
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: months or something.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, life, you know, you're busy life.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then he took his own life. Not that
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: I had, you know, nothing I probably could have done,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: but just like, man, it's just like, Oh, I just like,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: sometimes that's that cut, just all that stuff kind of
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: haunts you.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: It's like, but you don't, you don't know it's coming.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that I, that stopped me
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: in my tracks, you know, how sometimes, so I, for
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: a living, like I'm reading research reports and looking at
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: data and stuff, but I've also been racing. you know,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: three boys, but even in the research, sometimes you get
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: a finding that just like stops you and affects you emotionally.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And there's one study that looked at men who'd taken
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: their own lives and then looked at the words they'd
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: used to describe themselves before they'd taken their lives. And
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the two most commonly used words that men were using
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: about themselves before they took their own lives was I'm
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: useless and I'm worthless. And I think that sense of
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: worthlessness of genuinely feeling like maybe my family, my community
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: will be better off without me than with me is
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: what leads to that tragic outcome. And of course, that's
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: just the tip of the, I think that's the tip
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: of the iceberg. If you then look at drugs, you
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: look at substance abuse, you look at what's happening in
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: employment market. I think that sense that a lot of
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: men have is that there isn't really a script anymore.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: to follow to like to manhood right to mature masculinity
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: and i think that that's in one way that's for
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: a good reason but the way i think about this
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: is if you think about like the script that my
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: dad had right about being a breadwinner yes.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say let's look at some previous scripts
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: so we can examine those scripts.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: So like my like my parents are a good example
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: born you know uh born in the 40s had the
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: kids in the in the 1960s and then it was
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: like My mom knew that she was mostly going to
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: be the homemaker and the mom. She worked as well.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: She was a nurse. But my dad knew that he
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: was going to be the breadwinner, right, the provider. There
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: was not a discussion about that. There was no question
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: about that. So they had pretty clear roles. Now, the
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: problem with that, of course, was that the roles depended
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: on the woman, in this case my mom, being economically
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: dependent on my dad.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: That's the problem. And that's the problem that the women's
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: movement successfully– to a large extent, set out to solve, right?
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: But my dad was also quite emotionally dependent on my mom, right?
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: And vice versa. But I do think it was like,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: it's a two-way street that was missing from the analysis. Anyway,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: we tore up these old scripts, right? And we said
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: to women, you don't have to be a housewife and
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: mother anymore, or at least that's not your only option.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: You can be whatever you want to be. You go, girl, right?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Be president, be an astronaut, be whatever, which is amazing.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: totally amazing. That message of empowerment we sent to women.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: So we tore up the old female script, provided a
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: new one about empowerment and independence and you go, go.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: We tore up the old male script, which is you're
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: going to be the provider and the protector.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: We don't really have a new one.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: We didn't replace it. And so we're all improvising now.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: So basically we've gone from having some kind of script
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: to improvisation and that's really that's incredibly difficult to do
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: and so it's hard because the good news here is
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: what's happened to women right like nobody wants to roll
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: back the economic gains of women but I think it's
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: incredibly irresponsible and naive of us to think that that
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: doesn't have consequences for how we think about the role
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: of men we've got to be able to think both
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: of those thoughts at once it's good that women are
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: gaining ground it is bad that men feel lost and
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: purposeless and we have got to solve that problem as
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: well yeah Yeah.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: No, I think that's really cool information. It's good to
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: look at. It's good to like, and it's really, it
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: makes perfect sense, right? And it's like, you want to
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: have a reason, right? And sometimes I think women, yes,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: they didn't have the access to money and in a
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: capitalistic society, money is power, right? But also I think
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: there was a missing respect there, right? There wasn't I
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: think if women had been, if it had been totally respected,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: the sacrifices that they made and the just intrinsic value
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: of who they are as mothers and as caretakers and
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: as bridges of empathy and affection and as homemakers, no
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: matter where they are, whether they're in a home or
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: whether they're in a conversation, just being able to have
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: that ability to create peace, I think if women had,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: if that had been more respected, then maybe they never
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: would have felt as much of a movement or as
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: much of a desire to have so much of a movement.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Because they had the power. Right.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And the money is the power.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: And the women's movement had a huge fight about that
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: because there were some people in the women's movement saying, no, no, no,
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: it's called the wages for housework movement, which was basically
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: what we need to do is pay women to do
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: the traditional women's role.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a cool idea.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: And that lost out.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: That was a real idea? Yeah. Bring that up, the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Wages for Housework movement?
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a big split in the women's movement between
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: the ones who are saying we need to value care
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: and value care work, like Wages for Housework. And then
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: there's another movement which is like, actually, you've got to be, yeah,
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: in the 1970s.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I never knew about this. The Wages for Housework campaign
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: was a 1970s international movement that demanded governments recognize the
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: value of unpaid domestic labor primarily performed by women. Wow.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: The founders were Silvia Federici, Selma James- Marielsa Diacosta and
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Bridget Gaultier. Their goals were to change the dependency of
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: domestic workers, reverse power relations and redistribute wealth.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Dude, that's fascinating. That's another way we could have gone
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: in theory at least, right?
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Right, right. And I'm not saying that women didn't deserve
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: to have all the jobs and whatever they wanted to do.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying if there had been a different level
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: of respect and some, yeah, and this makes perfect sense,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and some financial equality, Maybe they wouldn't have wanted that.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. I'm just thinking.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: No, well, this is a really interesting question because I
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: now think we're at a point where a lot of
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: men and women are feeling like this isn't quite working.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: We're trying to raise kids. We're trying to form families.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: We want to raise our own kids.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Right. Both parents are so stressed out that they can't
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: even have a relationship anymore. Right.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: We want to stay together and be married. We want
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: to raise our own kids by and large.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: And we don't want to die of stress.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: So one of the ways I think about this is
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: like you had this old family system, which was breadwinner father,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: homemaker mother. And it was unfair in many ways, but
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: it was also pretty stable and very clear what everyone's
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: role is. And it was pretty good for kids right
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: because of that stability when it worked right we've replaced
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: that with a different model now where we don't want
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: that economic inequality so we're going to both men and
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: women are going to work that can create all kinds
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: of stress and maybe that relationship is hard to sustain
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: which means it might end up separating which is not
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: good for kids.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Right and the rules aren't super clear you don't know
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: who's going to be doing what you don't know who's
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: getting certain things done. You don't know.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: The division of labor is not clear anymore. And a
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: division of labor, in other words, like being clear, like
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: you do this, I do this.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Like an organized business, really. Yeah.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's like everybody knows that it makes more sense.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Like you're in charge of X, I'm in charge of Y.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: So you get, you know, really good at X and
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I get really good at Y, right?
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: And the....
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: The interesting path we took instead was like, okay, women
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: need to get into the labor market and have labor
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: market power. I think that was almost certainly, I mean,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: that's the right, I don't imagine a world where the
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: wages for housework movement, like huge government subsidies to people
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: who are staying at home was ever likely. And there's
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: all kinds of problems with that idea. But it's an
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: interesting idea, but thought behind it, which is, are we
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: doing enough to support the people who want to raise
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: their own kids? The whole point of the women's movement
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: wasn't to turn women into their father's. it was to
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: give everybody more choice. And we haven't achieved that yet
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: because we haven't done the rest of it, which is
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: to change the way the workplace works, to give more
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: support to families. I know you had JD Vance on, right?
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: And JD Vance has supported like a child tax credit,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: which is seen as a left-wing idea to give more
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: money to people who've got kids in the house. And
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: so that's not wages for housework, but it's in the
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: direction of actually valuing care through government subsidy. But that
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: has not been an idea that's been popular for a
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: pretty long time.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Well, since the 70s, I'll give it.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're saying that. Yeah, that's interesting. Right, so it's
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a similar idea. It's not the same.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it wouldn't be framed as wages for housework anymore.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: And it certainly wouldn't be aimed just at women anymore.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: It would be for families, et cetera. But the idea
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: that another way to go is to actually provide financial support,
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: like most European countries do, to parents who are at
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: home and not just to parents who are in the workplace.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting discussion right now. And I think as
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: long as it doesn't become a call to go back, right,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: we're going to help women stay in the home. Instead,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: it should be to help parents figure out for themselves.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: And I'm a huge believer that actually fathers are doing
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: so much more than they were in the past. Fathers
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: are doing so much more in the home, so much
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: more childcare. And dads are saying they want to do more. Interestingly,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: now men are more likely to say that having children
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: is important to them than women are.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Men are more likely to say that getting married is
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: important to them than women are, right? And so that's
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: a really interesting moment in history where if you've got
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: this stereotype that it's like women who are obsessed with
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: like getting married and having kids, not anymore. It's now
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: men who are saying that's a higher priority for them.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: It's almost like men are coming to bridge the gap
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: there of like making, because there always needs to be some,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: one of the parties has to be, until we can
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: get both of the parties to be aligned has to
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: be the one that wants to bring it back to
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: let's have a family and move. Cause I think you
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: have to do it. It's like, it's how we're built. Yeah. Right.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly. How am I going to get that purpose that
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: you were talking about? I think I've heard you say
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: that you want to have kids at some point.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I would like to have some kids, man.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: I'd started this campaign. Uh, it's called 2020 wife. That
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: means like 2025, but it's like the, this is, this
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: is the year I get a wife. Oh, I see.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: So that is.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: I thought you meant you were going to get 25 wives.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, no. Now, look, I'd be willing to have more
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: than one wife, but.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: We would need a change in the law for that, Theo.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Hey, I could be a dual citizen.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: You'd have to be a dual citizen with, I think, Afghanistan.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe Iran. I'm willing.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I could do it, man.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: You'd also have to convert to Islam.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Well, Christianity doesn't look kindly on multiple wives.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Can you convert to Islam online or not? Bring that up.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: I'm not the right person to ask that.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: How to convert to Islam. Oh, good. And there's a
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: 1-800 number? There is. Scroll up. Scroll down. Oh, it's
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: an 866 number. Damn, that's great.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Does that mean you have to pay for it?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they hit you with something, man. Converting to
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Islam is a very easy process and can be done
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: online in privacy. Okay.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Now, that makes it sound very suspect, the fact that
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: it has to be done.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: We could just tell someone, right? Oh, yeah, no one
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: can know. Yeah.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: It sounds like somebody is recruiting.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: I think a better route for you, if I can
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: offer some advice, is to just have one wife. I
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: think that that stood the test of time as a
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: way of doing things.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: No, actually, look, I should be very recent time. I
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: think most human societies have been polygamous. have actually had.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: It's like 95% of known human societies have been polygamous
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: and almost always, I don't, I'll get the word wrong.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: It's polygynous, I think, which means men are allowed to
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: have multiple wives, but not the other way around.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Wow. Right.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Very rare to find it the other way around. Um,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons why I don't, this
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: is a fact that like blew my mind. I'm going
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: to try on you, see what you think. Um, we
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Okay. Twice as many ancestors. An ancestor means what?
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Across human history.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: An ancestor means somebody that existed. So twice as many
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: females existed as men.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: There are twice as many women in human history as
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: there are men. Twice as many.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: The modern, yes. Modern humans have approximately twice as many
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: female ancestors as male ancestors. This is due to a
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: number of factors.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: I love the fact that you're checking everything I say.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: This makes me feel much more confident about saying it
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: because then you're going to check it.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good. Because we're trying to do a little bit
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: better job. That's one of my goals this year is
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: just to have a better... Because sometimes I just assume
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: everything is true, right? And a lot of this stuff
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: is just helpful information, but I don't understand though. Right.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: So how can you have twice as many females? You're
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: just saying that two thirds of the people that have
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: ever existed have been female. Yeah. Wow. But I guess
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: it makes sense because... you know, there's mother earth, right?
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: So obviously she's going to want more kind of babes
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: around hanging out on her. And then you're going to
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: have like, there's going to be, um, and females are
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the producers. They have like a, they have the womb
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: and they're the makers. They're like the recipe. They're the chefs.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: So you need to like more, you know, life is
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: about creation. So I think it makes sense that you're
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: going to have more women around probably. Does that make
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: any sense, you think? No. Okay. I just think women
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: are the ones who keep things together.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: So I think you're going to need more of that
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: probably to keep the world functioning.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Okay. Actually, the idea- Do you know why they have more, though?
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, sorry. Jesus.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: No, I like- I thought we were guessing. I mean,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: I don't hate your idea. Like the idea that Mother
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Earth wants more mothers around. I think it's kind of
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: a beautiful idea.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it checks out to me.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Why aren't we Googling this?
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: That's a good question. Who wants a bunch of dudes
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: loitering around anyway? Someone's going to call the police.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Every time I say something, you have this guy Googling it, right?
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Whereas you say stuff. Google his stuff.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: There you go right there. Look at that lady right there.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Like, are there more women because Mother Earth likes women better?
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. Well, she's obviously going to have a probably, like, definitely.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe Mother Earth is very jealous and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: she doesn't want women around.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Could be the other way around, yeah. Could be like,
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: wouldn't Mother Earth want lots of men?
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: That's what I would think, too.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: If she was straight.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: But men are just loitering around. They're jerking off in
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: the parking lot or whatever. You don't want that. I
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: don't think that's it. That's not what you want. You
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: want some babes around, I think.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Can I give you an alternative theory as to why?
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Which is that you, because societies have been polygamous, right?
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: You don't need that many men. Oh, yeah. In order
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: to have a lot of children.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: It's like the NBA. It's like NBA players kind of thing.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of those guys have. Who has the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: most kids in the NBA? Bring that up. Wow.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Are they NBA players well-known for having lots of children?
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I think they're promiscuous type of, you know, so it's
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: like Calvin Murphy, there we go, 14 children. So I'm
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: just saying, yeah, these guys can definitely.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Well, you see it on Tinder as well. You see
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: on these apps, it's got like a winner-takes-all type thing.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what Scott Galloway was saying, like the top
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: 1% of men.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: But what's interesting about that is that's basically human history.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: I actually showed that Tinder data to an evolutionary... psychologist,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: someone who studies the whole history of humanity. And he's like, yeah,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: that just looks like human history to me, which is
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: high status men mating with multiple women. And therefore we
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: are kind of reproduced. But 50% of men across human
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: history didn't have kids at all. They didn't reproduce. Now
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: what that meant was, there's all kinds of implications for that.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Like one is, first of all, I'm reading this book
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: by Neil Stevenson now. It's called Seven Eves. And that
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: we basically have to kind of send out a few
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: people to survive. And this is passing comment because the
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: earth's going to be destroyed. The seven eaves, seven eaves.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Um, uh, there's this passing comment there, which is like
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: most of the colonists will have to be female. All right.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: And often the reason for that is the ones we're
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: talking about, which is you need a lot of wounds
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: to keep the human race going, but you don't need
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: as many men, right?
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: There's this guy actually, he's, I can quote him directly.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: This guy, Roy Baumeister, who says we have a penile surplus.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: which is a kind of brutal way of putting it,
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: but it's like, we just don't need that many men, right? Now,
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: one consequence of that is, and this is going to
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: get me back to your skydiving. I'm going to loop this.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: If I'm successful here, if I'm successful, I'm going to
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: loop this back to skydiving.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I have 0% chance of looping things.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, let me try I believe in you, so okay. Yeah,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: so 50% of men have not reproduced in human history.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: So half the men have kids, half of them don't
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: have kids. And it's the lower status men who are
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: not going to have kids, right? Because the higher status
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: men have multiple wives. They're actually, if you like, they're over-consuming.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: And they can afford to do it.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Correct. And so if you're a low status man... There's
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: a good chance that you're just not going to reproduce
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: at all, right? You're going to be an evolutionary dead end.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Your DNA is not going to go anywhere. And under
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: those circumstances, you will risk almost anything to raise your status.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Go to war, go exploring, turn to crime. do anything
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: to try and get yourself up that hierarchy so you
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: have a chance of reproducing. If you stay down there,
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: you ain't going to have kids.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: You're cooked. Right?
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: And so you've got to get up there. So you
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: take risks.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: You risk your life because actually, if you die... Who cares?
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Who cares? You only got a 50-50 chance of having
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: a kid anyway, right?
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: You don't have any kids already.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: And if you're down there, it's not 50-50. It's maybe
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: like you're almost certainly not going to have a kid.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: So you take crazy risks to raise up the hierarchy.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: And one consequence of that is... men on average are
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: more risk-taking than women, even today, which is why they
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: go skydiving. Like, what do you, what do you think
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: about skydiving? Like men are also twice as likely to drown.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: They're twice as likely to drown. Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of ways, like risky behavior, both good
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: and bad is higher among men, right? Good could be
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: like being entrepreneurial, whatever.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know any women that have drowned and I
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: know some men that have drowned. Right.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: And so skydiving is, You know what? I'm going to
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: say something, and I don't know if this is true,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: so you're going to have to get your fact checker
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: in the sky to check, but I bet you more
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: men skydive. But I know for sure that smokejumpers are
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: almost entirely men. Do you know what a smokejumper is?
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. It's not a Native American thing,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: is it?
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: No, you're from the South, right? Where are you from?
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm from Louisiana.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you'd know if you were from
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: out kind of West, right? What does it say about
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: men and women?
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Well, the number of men and women who try tandem
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: skydiving is roughly equal. The sport of skydiving is predominantly male.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Professional skydivers, only about 14% of professional skydivers in the
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: United States are women. Some reasons for the disparity, women
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: may be more risk averse than men, just like you're saying.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's number one.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: And women may be perceived as less interested in taking risks.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: So just from an evolutionary perspective, if you're a woman,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: you are highly incentivized to protect your own body. Right,
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: because you're probably, this is just an evolutionary term.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're the one who's got the future.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, and you're going to have a kid, probably. Most
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: women have reproduced, right? You're quite likely to have a kid.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Whereas if you're a guy, actually, if you've only historically
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: had like a 50-50 chance, right, and you've got to
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: get more status, and your body is kind of less, quotes, valuable.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Right, so who cares if your nuts land out in
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: the desert or whatever because your shoe didn't open.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Or you throw yourself out of a plane. So these
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: smoke jumpers.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Smokejumpers are highly trained firefighters who parachute from airplanes in
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: a remote areas to fight wildfires. Wow. It's almost like, um,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: severe barbecue, like one of those TV shows or whatever.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Smokejumpers are really interesting because these are people who have
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: chosen for a job.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: That they will go up in an airplane, jump out
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: of the airplane, even when there's nothing wrong with the airplane,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: which is what you do apparently. Jump out of the airplane.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: But the difference is they jump out of the airplane
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: into a blazing inferno in the middle of nowhere and
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: stay there for days on end fighting that fire. That's
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: an interesting job choice. And it's almost all men. Now,
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: there are some women. And of course, women should be
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: encouraged to do that job. And that's great if they
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: want to do that job. But I'm just going to
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: go out. I said this to a female friend of mine.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, this profession, I explained to her
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: what it was. And she said, you can keep that one.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: There is no big feminist movement to get more women
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: into smoke jumping.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Smoke is so bad for you anyway.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: I guess the point here is like there are ways
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: in which on average men and women are different. And
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: one of them is that men have this different appetite
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: for risk. And do we think that that's good or
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: bad is the wrong question. It's both good and bad.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: It depends how it's expressed, right? Because there are times
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: when you want people to be willing to take risks,
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: to put themselves on the line. or to kind of
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: try a new venture or something like that. And there
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: are times when it's a really bad idea, right? To
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: try a new drug when it's not a good idea
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: or to jump too high off a bridge or whatever
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: it is. And so there's ways in which those differences
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: between men and women can either become good or bad,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: but we don't get anywhere by denying that they exist.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: What we do is we say there are these differences.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: How do we channel them in productive ways? And so
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: if young men, for example, are a bit more risk-taking...
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: And they're a lot more risk taking when they're young.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: If they're a bit more potential for physical aggression, which
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: is absolutely clear, et cetera. If they're a bit more
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: driven by sex, for example, which is also absolutely true.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: And we see that playing out in all kinds of
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: ways around kind of pornography, et cetera. It doesn't do
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: any good to just say that's not true, right? That
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: those things aren't, they're all socialized. Actually, instead, what we're
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: going to say is they are true. So what do
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: we do about that as a culture and as a society?
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: How do we kind of take those differences responsibly and
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: not fall into the trap of saying one is good
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: or one is bad. We used to think that somehow
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: the male attributes to call them that were better, right?
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: That's a patriarchy. And the female ones may be more caring,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: more nurturing, et cetera. As you said a minute ago, right?
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: We just, we value them less, right? We don't want
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: a society like that, but we also don't want a
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: society where The male, the more male-leaning attributes are seen
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: as intrinsically bad. It's one of the reasons why I
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: hate the term toxic masculinity, by the way.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Well, also, there's no toxic femininity either, which is interesting.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like because you got to have one
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and the other no matter what. I feel like getting
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: your sweat on might seem like hard work, but with
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• 55:16
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• 55:19
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• 55:24
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• 55:28
  Speaker 1: to just fill my own chipped tooth in. Why sauna? Well,
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• 56:13
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• 56:15
  Speaker 1: sauna from Symmetry Sauna at SymmetrySauna.com. Just to kind of
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: circle back to where we were. So there's a lot
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: of men that are suffering, right? That's kind of improved.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: There's a lot more suicide. There's uncertainty is what it
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: means to be a man. Masculinity, this kind of masculinity
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: with this new femininity kind of being defined now. The
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: new masculinity is kind of undefined. Mm-hmm.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: And a lot of men are looking for their place.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: What do you feel like is causing that these days?
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Because it's not women causing it. It's not this equality
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: of women.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: No, it's not. And I think that's a really important
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: thing to say because that sometimes is what feels like
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: might be the case and what some people are saying,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: including kind of online, which is what they do is
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: they take two facts, which is women have risen significantly
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: economically in terms of education now, massively overtaken men, etc.,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: Men are struggling and suffering.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: And there's cul-de-sac of sorts.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So maybe that's because of that, right? Maybe the
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: struggles of men are the result of the rise of women.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: That's completely untrue. They're for different reasons. So the economy
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: has changed, right? So a lot of the jobs that
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: men used to be able to do, especially without maybe
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: that much education in manufacturing and steelworks and mining and stuff,
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: they've largely gone.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Now, are they gone for good or they've just gone
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: away from America?
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: They've gone away from America.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: They've gone away from America. Yeah.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: And there's no serious prospect of those male jobs that
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: required like strong physical labor.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Like Bruce Springsteen type stuff.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: It's not coming back. I mean, we can be nostalgic
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: for them by and large. I mean, I'm not saying
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: there's none, no, none of that.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: Um, but that's a huge shock, right? It's a massive
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: change in, in the workplace. It's just those jobs that
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: men used to be able to do that their dad
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: maybe did just, they're just not there.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that was a lot of the commercials
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid, it was like, I was
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: born in a small town. You know what I'm saying?
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: There was that commercial, like somebody made something. And I
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: remember my grandfather worked at the, um, plant in his
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: town and they made elevators and stuff. They made parts
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: for elevators and it was a small town, but, he
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: worked there and my grandma would take him lunch over
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: there at the weekend during lunchtime. And they had a
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: lunch whistle in town and there was just these little things,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and, and, and you, whenever we drove past there,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: you know, like grandpa works there, you know, it was like,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: so there was, um, it added purpose to everybody's existence.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there was a real structure to it. I mean,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: just think about my own family. I took my three
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: sons to North Wales to a town called Blina Fistinyog
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: in North Wales, that old, that old.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Blinded festiniog is a disease as well, I think. Oh,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: in a few minutes, it'll be a new drug available
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: in America.
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: Okay. This will fool your fact checker. They will not
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: be able to even spell blinded festiniog. But you was
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: the biggest producer of slate for a long time. And
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: generations of my family have worked in that slate mine.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Went there and we found their great, great, great, great,
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: great grandfather's grave and went down into the mine and
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: spent some time that had a big effect on them.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: And it's like, what did you do? You did what
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: your dad did go down the mine. What your granddad
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: did go down the mine, go down the mine, go
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: down the mine. And even when I was growing up
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: and I grew up in Peterborough, an industrial town, my
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: mom was a part-time industrial nurse for a while. And
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: the hooter for the ends of the shifts, we could
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: hear it across the town. And so we knew when
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: she was coming home because we would hear the factory hooter.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Horn.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: Horn, yeah.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Sounder.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Sounder.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Alarm.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. So it's almost like as men, we're out
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: of the minds now.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: A little bit. Like we had that.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Not everybody. Some people are still in there.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: And that's good. It was such a weird experience. So
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: we went down to the bottom of the slate mine.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: And there are these little huts in the bottom of
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: the mine. And they would go in there for like
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes at lunchtime. And they would sing. This is
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: in Welsh, right? So they'd sing. They'd sing. And they'd eat.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: And they'd talk, maybe do a bit of politics, right?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: And then they'd go back up and start coming out
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: of the mine. Very dangerous. Incredibly well paid for the time.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Very dangerous work. And there was something about, I went
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: to those huts and I sat in there like with
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: my boys and we're kind of sitting there and thinking
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: about like seven generations of our family being down there.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: And actually, this is going to sound a bit weird,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: but almost being a little bit envious of what it
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: was like for those men to go down there and
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: be in that little hut. And then of course you
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: catch yourself and you think you're an idiot.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: It was dangerous work. It was hard. What are you
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: talking about?
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: And if you put me in there now, right. I
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: probably wouldn't do great, right? But I think what it
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: was catching for me and with my boys especially was
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: the sense of like male solidarity, right? Just a sense,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: that visceral sense of like it did structure lives, male
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: lives in particular. And in that town, when the men
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: went down into the mines, all the wives would come
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: out and the kind of children and stand silently. It
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: was bad luck for there to be any noise. So
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: they stood silently while the men went down into the mine.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: And hoped that they would come back. And so there's
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: something very beautiful and nostalgic about that. And I get
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: that nostalgia.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a tradition. Right. But. It was a ritual.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Ritual, tradition, purpose, space, clear script.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: What are you going to do? How about you do
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: what your great, great, great, great grandfather did and your
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: great grandfather and your grandfather. How about just doing that? Right.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: And I don't think we couldn't, even if we wanted
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: to reconstruct that kind of world. But I do think
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: we should be honest about the fact that the collapse
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: of that structure and those scripts has really left a
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: lot of men incredibly uncertain about, am I going to
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: be needed by my family? What am I going to do?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: What's my job going to be? So we've had this
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: massive economic change. And then alongside it, we've had this
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: huge social change, which has been the economic rise of women, right?
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: And so it's no longer the case that women are
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: now like looking for a man. Gloria Steinem is a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: very famous feminist, still alive, from the 1970s. I actually
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: had a really cool meeting with her.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Really cool lady or not?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, totally cool.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I got to meet that lady.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: She's amazing. And she said, famously, she said, the point
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: of the women's movement is to make marriage a choice
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: for women, not a necessity.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Right? Because women needed to get married before Right.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: It was the only way, who's going to pay for dinner?
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Right, to eat.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: Not at a fancy restaurant.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: And so the whole point is to make it a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: choice so that women have enough economic power to choose
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: marriage rather than being forced into it. She actually, this
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: is a weird coda, but she actually just got married herself.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: I think she's in her 90s now. She's so cool.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: But she got married partly because same-sex marriage is legal
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: now and because she said we've made enough progress that marriage,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: she used to describe marriage as this patriarchal citadel, et cetera.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: Here's the weird thing. She got married to Christian Bale's father.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: Which I just find a bit random.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: And he's British, isn't he? Interesting. No. Is he? I
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know either.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: David Bale right there. In 2008, 66, the long single
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Steina married for the first time in a Cherokee ceremony
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: in Oklahoma.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: So that was a while ago. It was in 2000, right?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Her husband, entrepreneur and activist David Bale sadly died of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: lymphoma four years later. Wow.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So even in the end, even Gloria Steinem felt
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: like it was okay to get married, right? We'd made
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: enough progress.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: So that actually the women, marriage was no longer this
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: kind of trap for women economically.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: But it was a choice.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: It was a choice. And so, but of course, what
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: that means is when it's a choice, there's a lot
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: of women that might be like, I choose not to
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: marry you. I might or might not have the kids,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: your kids, but we're now in this world where there's
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: a lot more freedom of choice. And of course, that
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: is a great and wonderful thing. But it's also created
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: a huge amount of uncertainty, especially among men. I think
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of men feel now that they've been told
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: a bunch of things that they know they shouldn't be.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Shouldn't be predator. Right, don't do this.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: You can't peep in Tom.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: And quite right too, right? But there's no like, I
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: sometimes think that we have a long list of don'ts
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: for men. Right, right. But not very many do's. where's
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: the list of to-dos for men now?
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: For sure. And it used to be that, yeah, almost
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: every man was, you weren't guaranteed a wife, but everybody's
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: going to need to pair up because the way that
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: the script was put together, you needed each other because
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: you needed someone to be in the home. You needed
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: someone to be the breadwinner. The script was there. You
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: had to partner up. So figure it out and let's
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: move on. Let's move forward in the world.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And what I fear now is that there are
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: some more reactionary, forces, voices saying the way to actually
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: for men to find purpose is to go back. Because
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: it's very recently that there was a world where men
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: felt purpose, which was the world we just escaped from,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: where women were economically dependent on men. And so I
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: could totally understand why this is happening, where people are saying, well,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: we used to know what our role was when women
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: were economically reliant on us. Well, first of all, we
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: ain't going back. There's no switch you could turn that
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: even if you wanted to.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: And we don't want to. But that doesn't mean we
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: shouldn't be doing more to help men move forward. And
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: actually having a bit of empathy for the fact that
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: this is a difficult moment, a difficult transition for men.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: And so rather than kind of pointing fingers at them,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: we should maybe offering them the occasional helping hand. And
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: I think that lack of empathy and understanding and awareness
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: of the genuine suffering of many of our men has
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: created a huge vacuum in our culture and in our society.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: And we need to fill it fast. Otherwise, we're going
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: to lose more and more of our men.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: And we'll be right back. Wow. Very true. So one
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: thing you have to start to look at is then
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: where do men start to, you know, or where do
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: men continue to, uh, find these building blocks, right. To,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: to create the worth inside of themselves. Um, for me,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: one thing has been through other men, right. And, and, um,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: and even like you're saying shoulder to shoulder, like things
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: that experiences that I've had that have been the best, um,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Like even when I used to go to Brazilian jiu-jitsu
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: and take classes there, it was really amazing because you're
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: in this physical space, but also there's so much mutual
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: respect in there. It's not people trying to beat each
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: other up. It's people trying to help each other physically
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: learn how to take care of themselves, right? But with that,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: there's so much camaraderie and love and compassion that comes
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: along with having great instructors. And a lot of times
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: it's just the guy next to you. He's your best
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: instructor for the next moment. Um, recovery meetings, you know,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: I'll go to recovery meetings for, um, intimacy and, um, AA.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: And those meetings for me are really great. Um, especially
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the intimacy ones, like where, you know, they call it
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: like sex and love addiction and stuff, but it's really
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: just like intimacy disorders or connection disorders, or just, it's
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: almost just low self-worth. It's all, it's all of that.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: And sometimes you base it off of your relationship with
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: women or you can look at your relationship with women
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: to see how you're doing on your own.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Are there men and women in those groups or is
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: it just men?
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: A lot of the ones I go to are just men.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: And it's not that I don't want women in them.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: It's just like I want a space where it's just men.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: I can be able to share openly if I'm struggling
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: with a certain thing or how I'm feeling. And it
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: just be other men. And then you're not trying to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: like– slurp on any of the chicks that are in
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: there either. You're not trying to flirt or anything.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: Which would seem bad given the nature of the problems
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: that many of the men have.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, and you'll be shocked.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: It'd be like holding an AA meeting in a bar
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: or something.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: I understand that.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: But you're getting male solidarity from both of those places.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: That's what you're getting. And that's one of the reasons
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: I go. I go to hear other men share. I
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: go to share. And sometimes they'll say something and like,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: my body will just go like that, right? It's like.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: Your shoulders drop. You breathe.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: It's an exhale that I didn't even know I needed
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: to take. It's an exhale that has just been running
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: in the back of my subconscious for sometimes decades, sometimes hours,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: sometimes years, minutes. But it's something that I needed to hear.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: I needed to hear everything was okay. And I needed
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: to hear another man's voice say it. And it helps.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: It helps.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're welcome. But yeah, what spaces are there for men?
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: It's something beautiful about that, I think. And I go
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: back to my story about the hut, like in the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: bottom of the slate mine. It's like, there's something- Oh yeah,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: there's something nice about it.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: It's quite fragile. I think that male friendships take work.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: I think we sometimes don't pay enough attention to them.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: It's actually something like I go on road trips with
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: my best friend. or every year I get together with
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: my male buddies and we go hiking so that we're
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: shoulder to shoulder and just talk and catch up. And that's,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: I think one of the, one of the damaging trends
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: in recent years has been a suspicion of male spaces, right?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: Of like the boys weekend. Or even some of the institutions.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: So if you actually go through the institutions now, like
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: the Boy Scouts is not the Boy Scouts anymore. I'm
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: actually a scout leader. I'm not doing as much now,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: but I used to run a scout group over in
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: the UK and I was a scout. But it's co-ed now.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: Boy Scouts is co-ed? It's scouting for America now.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: And what is Girl Scouts? Are they just joined forces? No.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Girl Scouts are still Girl Scouts.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: No. Yeah. And we can't go over there?
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: The Girl Scouts does not allow boys in.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: But Boy Scouts has become Scouting for America.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Ladies, that's not even cool.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: But there's a pattern here. You've got the YMCA is
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: now co-ed, right? No one really thinks about the M
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: in YMCA anymore.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: That's your point, huh? Right.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: Whereas the YWCA is still very kind of focused on women.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: Boys and girls clubs used to be boys clubs. And
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: so there's one other one I'm thinking of, and it's
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: not that it's not, there's always bad things to be co-ed.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: It's not that you also don't want institutions for girls
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: and women, but what we've got now is a situation
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: where we're actually really very often applauding having these spaces
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: for girls and kind of women to have female solidarity
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: work together, grow together. But we're really suspicious if it's,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: if it's men doing it and I get why, right.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: Because of our history. But I think that as a result,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: we've actually deconstructed a lot of these institutions where actually
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: boys could learn from other boys and from men and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: so on too. And so I, I think that turning
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: the boy scouts into scouting for America and taking not
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: for being, I think we'll, I think we'll look back
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: on that and just say. That was a bad decision.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Kind of emasculating in a way.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: It's just like, why can't, I mean, I just think
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: about my own experience.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Why can't we meet?
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: And it's not like, I went to a co-ed high school,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: but actually the fact that I was able to go
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: to scouts and it would be guys there and we
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: could learn from each other. And I, weirdly, I actually
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: think that male spaces are where you can help men
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: to learn some of the not traditionally male attributes like
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: caring and nurturing and love and expressing that stuff. It's
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: just easier, right? Or the male sports team, right? Like
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: you're learning love, you're learning comradeship, you're learning solidarity. You're learning, exactly.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: And I just think that's a bit, and it probably
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: is true for girls too, that kind of learning some
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: of those skills that maybe go against the stereotype around girls,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: like learning to be more assertive maybe or competitive, et cetera.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Like you generally don't have to encourage a bunch of
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: boys to compete with each other. Right. That just tends
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: to be a bit more baked in.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: It's in the nature. Yeah. Yeah. And there should be
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: spaces where it's like, hey, men can meet up here tonight.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: And they used to have more of them. There was
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: like more American legions. There was more like VFWs, but
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of that was military based type stuff.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: And since we haven't had that large of a war,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I know we have conflicts and we've had
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: some smaller wars, but I know we haven't, since we
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: haven't had such a huge conflict, there hasn't been that
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: big band of brothers type of vibe that's brought men
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: together so much. And then also, even if, and I'll
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: go even as far to say, if you're a white male, right?
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Like there's spaces for black males, Latinos, Middle Eastern clubs,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: there can be all types. But if you're a white guy,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: you just are fucking, you're looked at as, you're pointed
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: at a lot of times, it feels like by the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: media as like a loser, as part of the problem,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: as the creator of the problem. I don't think a
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: lot of that energy is also good in our country.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: When we do, we have white males in our country,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's, you can't like, you can't make
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: also white males feel like they don't exist, you know?
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: Because also a lot of white people didn't have a
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: lot of like, yes, I know there's privilege, but if
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: you grew up with nothing, you didn't fucking feel any
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: privilege sometimes. In fact, being white and having nothing, I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: would get looked at personally as why the fuck don't
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: you have anything? How did you fuck this up so bad?
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: You know, like you must, something really must be wrong
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: with you. If you're not, you have the right color.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: But your family can't even get shit together enough. Wow,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: what a loser. And I'm not speaking against any other group,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: but I'm just saying sometimes, you know, like there's not
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: a rep. There's no one. You're not allowed to speak
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: up for your own group just because of history. And
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: that doesn't feel super fair sometimes, you know. Does that
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: seem crazy or not?
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: I feel so I'm as a new American, I've learned
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: a lot about the history of racism in this country
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: and particularly for black Americans. I feel very strong.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If I start starting slavery shit. Yeah. Gunned me down.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: But it's like civil rights.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: But if I'm just playing fantasy football and trying to
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: take care of a family, let me be somebody.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: Again, I think the way I see this is that
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: it's part of a more general problem, which is to
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: be able to hold two thoughts in your head at
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: the same time, which is, it is true that America
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: has this history of racism. And that there are still
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: some racial issues that we need to deal with.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: And Britain started it. Yeah, we polished it up a little.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: I'll agree. But other people started it too, you know? Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: And the first slave I think was, who was it?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: Who was the first slave ever in the history of time?
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: It was in the Bible, wasn't it?
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: Well, there's lots of slaves in the Bible.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: There you go. So.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: The U.S. has a uniquely terrible history when it comes
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: to slavery.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: In modern history.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: That is true.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: That is absolutely true. And has an issue around race.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely true. Still issues around race.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: Still issues around gender equality. Yes. And if you're a
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: white guy, particularly from a low-income background right now, you're
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: actually at the highest risk of suicide. And your economic
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: prospects compared to your father have seen the biggest drop.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: So two things can be true at once. It can
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: be simultaneously true that we've still got to deal with
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: these issues and that we have this history, and not
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: throw anybody under the bus. No one has to be
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: left behind. We have to rise together. We have to
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: think about a way in which like, and class is
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: a big part of this, I think. Like what's very
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: often missing, it's weird for me as a Brit coming
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: to the US, one of the things I've really noticed
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: is that the US has a class system, which I
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: think is every bit as brutal as the British one.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: The difference is Americans, we pretend that we don't have
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: a class system. Oh, the Brits don't hide it. We
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: have a King now always forget King. We have an aristocracy,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: we have nights, we have all kinds of, we have
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: all kinds of like, we're, we're obsessed with class in
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: the UK where I come from.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons I ran here.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: One is I left America was, it was less of it,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: but like the U S is a class system too.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: And if you look at like trends for men, it's
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: really working class men, right? It's men. I can maybe
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: didn't do so well in school, maybe haven't had college
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: degree from poorer parts of the country, et cetera. those
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: men are the ones who are suffering the most, right?
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: From suicide, from substance problems, mental health problems, family problems,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: employment problems, right? Those men, like they're really struggling. And
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: that includes white men as well as black and Hispanic men.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: That's a class issue, not a race issue. And I
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: think that quite often in the US, people are more
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: comfortable talking about racial inequalities than they are about the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: overlapping class inequalities because most of the people talking about
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: this are at the top of the class.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Well, and a lot of it's to our media.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Our media is usually very well off people. And they're like,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: let me break out the racism drum and beat that
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: when it's on. And of course those things need to
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: be addressed. But if it, if that stuff becomes the
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: only sound you hear, then you guys are going to just,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: then everyone is going to continue to dance the same dance.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: And so I think that that's where we're missing some
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: of the evolution, but I think that that's starting to change.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: It's why people are, um, sick of Hollywood and everything
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: that they've created for a while.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: I feel like that point you just made, if that's
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: the only sound you hear, I think that's the point.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: What I've discovered in my family, my extended family, through
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: my wife, et cetera, we have a lot of political diversity, right?
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: And a lot of huge class diversity. My wife is
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: from a much more working class background than I am.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: In the US, on the Maryland-Pennsylvania borders where she grew up.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: A lot of diversity. And actually, what I've kind of
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: found in talking to a lot of them is that like,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: They actually are significantly more tolerant about a lot of
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: these issues than probably the mainstream media would think. But
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: if that's all they hear, they need to hear the
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: other bit as well. And I think this is kind of,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: if we can move from or to and, right? So
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: on gender, like all this stuff we have to do
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: is still stuff to do for women. I don't think
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: there are enough women in politics in the US. I
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: would love us to have a female president. I think
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: we need to do more around kind of women in
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: certain occupations. Sure, yes.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: And.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: We've got to tackle the male suicide crisis. And we've
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: got to figure out why boys are doing so badly
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: in school. And we've got to figure out why male
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: wages have been flatlining for decades. It's an and, not
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: an or. But there are too many people out there
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: who have a vested interest in making an or. So
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: men are struggling. Why? Because of women. We're going to
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: blame women and blame feminism, blame the progressive.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: No, that's not it.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: Or women are struggling. You know why? Because of the men,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: because of patriarchy and toxic masculinity, et cetera. It has
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: to be or. And that's where the clicks are. That's
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: where the money is. That's where the speaking gigs come from.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: That's where your ratings come from is if you can
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: position it. Find a villain. Find someone to blame. That's
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: where you get drawn. But it's almost never true.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, a lot of times now the lens is
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: the villain. That's the thing that I've started to realize.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, find the villain.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: The lens is the villain. And we didn't realize that
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: we were being forced to look through this lens for
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: so long because our media has just been the same
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: it's been so, uh, commandeered, you know, and so now
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: it's becoming freer and, um, and I think that that's
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: scaring kind of like the powers that be, you know,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the reasons why they don't
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: want TikTok taken over. You know, they want to force
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: a sale of TikTok, you know, they're afraid, um, that,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: it'll share truths that they can't hold, you know, anymore.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: Right. But I've been thinking a bit about this, the
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: role of podcasts like this one and others, and I'd
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: be interested to actually just ask you about this, because
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: one of the things I've been thinking about is the
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: way in which these are very freewheeling conversations, right? They're
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: very like we're talking. So there's a thought you have a,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: we have a theme we're going to talk about, but
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: what you've got is usually two people thinking out loud.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: and trying to learn from each other and trying to
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: say stuff. And sometimes you try and fact check what
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: you're saying, but like, this is a very different kind
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: of environment to like a classical media interview, right? You've
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: got your points, you've got your bullet points. You've got,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: it's much more. And I think a lot of people
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: are really attracted to it. Maybe, especially young men. I
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: think maybe they kind of like that sense of like,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: we're just trying to figure this out, right? We're having
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: a conversation.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: And that feels that sort of, sort of vibe in
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: a way.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: It does.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: It feels more like his, and almost like that overhearing,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: like we're like, we're overhearing a conversation, right? So I
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: know this is a little bit weird to be talking
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: about our conversation, but, but, but I don't know what
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: you do. It's not just like a different media outlet.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: It's like a different way of doing.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Well, because at a certain point you can't hide. It's like,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: I think there has to be some bit of there.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: Enough of you will be revealed. It's like even sometimes
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: I feel like if I don't fact check certain things
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: and I'm learning how to have certain conversations, like people
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: will get an idea of who I am or who
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: you are by listening to us for a certain period
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: of time. And then they can make a fair judgment
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: for themselves. And it doesn't even have to be a
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: good or bad judgment. We're not saying that either one
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: of us is good or bad. We're probably saying that
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: we're both both. We're just trying to have a conversation together.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: And I think as a listener, you get that. You're like, okay.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: I don't maybe vibe with this guy. I'm glad I
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: got to listen to him. You know, it gives you
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: value for your time. Try to put my time in.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: I'm grateful I got to listen to that person. I
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: agree with some of the things they say. Oh, I'd
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: never thought about that. But you also get to see
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: people as more complete. And I think it goes back
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: to what you're saying, like that, you know, a lot
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: of people can– we're not– they– People aren't as simple.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: Both things can be true all the time for a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: lot of people, and they are.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: Usually they are.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: Usually they are.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: Usually two things are true.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: And I think that's what's a lot happened with podcasts
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: is it holds two, three, four, seven things true at
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: the same time while you're having a conversation, which is
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: very normal, as opposed to get this answer, get this clip,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: make it short. We want to get how we feel across,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: and that's what matters.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: It's more like the fullness of it. Right. You know,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: I've thought about this quite a bit in terms of truth.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier the difference between telling the truth and
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: being truthful, like someone who's just trying to call it
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: as they see it, trying to be truthful. When you
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: swear to do jury service or actually to kind of
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: do testimony, what do you swear? You swear to tell
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: the whole truth, the truth, nothing but the truth, the
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: whole truth.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: Sorry, nothing but the truth.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: They make you triple down on it.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: Right. But think about that. Why don't they just say,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: I promise to tell the truth, right? The truth, yes.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: The whole truth and nothing but the truth, right? And actually,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: the middle one is really interesting to me because, of course,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: what you could do is you could go to the
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: stand and say things that are kind of true, right?
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: So you meet the first and the third. But like, yeah,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: but you're missing something out. And I think right now
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: people are hungry for the whole truth. They're actually hungry
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: for people to just look, I'm saying it all. I
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: don't agree. You know, you might disagree with three of
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: the seven things I've said, but there's actually a kind
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: of sense of which these conversations I think are trying
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: to get at something more like the whole truth, which
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: is more just a broader conception of it. And you,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: you have the opportunity in the space to maybe get
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: stuff wrong, to just think out loud, to kind of
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: come back. And that's completely at odds with the old
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: media that which is more about, I'm going to take
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: every word you say literally.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: I'm going to take a clip of it and I'm
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: going to fact check you. And I'm like, that's not
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: how conversations work. And this is a very different kind
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: of environment for conversation. I agree with you that it
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: means you have more authenticity, but the thing I've come
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: to value more than almost anything else when I'm talking
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: to someone is that this person is trying to be truthful.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: They are They're being on it. They're looking stuff up.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: They're trying to figure. And if I say to them,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: that's not right. It's this. They go, oh, interesting. I'm
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: going to choose. And same with me. And I'm just
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: aspiring to try and be truthful in everything that I do.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: And if I get it wrong, I want to be
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: told I'm getting it wrong. But I just want to
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: try and be as honest as possible.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And I think then it makes it not
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: about you. It makes it about this greater presentation of like,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: of let's, yeah, let's just be, let's be as honest
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: as we can.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: And learn from each other. So one of my weird
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: backstories is that I am a massive fan of John
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: Stuart Mill, the 19th century British liberal philosopher, so much
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: so that I end up writing his biography.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: John Stuart Mill? Let's bring up a JPEG of him.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: This is just making my day, I got to tell you.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: He also was the first person to introduce a bill
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: to give women the right to vote in the UK.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: Obviously, he was trying to get laid, too. Undeniable.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: That, in his case, was almost certainly not true. Although
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time- Really enjoyed men? I
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: spent a lot of- No, no. He was just- Well, actually,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: the truth is that he had a woman who he
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: was in love with who was married to somebody else.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: And so it was an unrequited situation, and so I
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: spent quite a bit of time But he had this
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: lovely idea, which is that we learn from each other, right?
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: We share, we said, we share the truth between us.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: And he said that when you're arguing with someone, disagreeing
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: with someone, try to imagine that you're both trying to
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: climb to the top of the same mountain just by
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: different routes. And I love that idea. And when I'm
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: trying to debate with someone now, if I'm disagreeing with someone,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, I think I'm trying to get
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: to this. They probably have got some truth that I
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: don't have, and that's great. But also let's assume. Let's
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: start with the assumption that we're trying to get to
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: the same place, right? And you've got a different view
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: about it. So if I'm arguing with a conservative who
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: says it's all about marriage, right? We've got to get
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: everyone back to marriage. And I'm a bit skeptical about that.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's because that person is a crazy
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: right-wing misogynist who wants to kind of entrap women again.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: I think they want a better life. I think they
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: want better families. I think they want happier children, which
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: is what I want. So we're just arguing about the means.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: It is kind of interesting how you can have two
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: people with the exact same thing, One will say that
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: they're this side, one will say they're that side, and
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: they cannot agree on shit. I don't understand. There's some
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: minutia in there that I can't even figure out. Because
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: they'll want the exact same things. They could even write,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: these are the three things I want. And the other
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: side will write, these are the three things I want.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: But if they don't each say that they're on the
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: same side, then they will almost find a way to disagree.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: Because they want to disagree. Because at that point, that's
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: become kind of a bad form of tribalism. There's this
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: really interesting– one of the things that really has disturbed
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: me about political trends recently is the clustering of ideas now.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: And so actually now if you're on one side or
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: the other, you have to like agree with– I agree.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: And so it used to be more possible to kind
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: of like, well, I agree with that side on this
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: and this side on this and whatever. And everyone was
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: a kind of different mixture, right? The idea that anybody
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: is going to subscribe to all the views on the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: left or all the views on the right is dystopian.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: And no one even knows all of them either. And
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: they're also distorted anyway.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: And then if they're told, by the way, that that
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: policy idea is being proposed by your guy, then they
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: suddenly support it. And if it's being proposed by the
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: other guy, you're suddenly against it. And so what's actually
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: happening now is you're defining your position based as much on, well,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: what does he think? Because I don't like him. And
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: I'll take the other view, right? So you saw this
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: massive swing towards being much more pro-immigration, for example, among
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: Democrats after Donald Trump came to office in 2016, because
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: he was so anti-immigration. Right before that, Democrats were pretty
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: moderate on immigration, but they suddenly became really, really pro-immigration.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: The only explanation why is because he was so anti it.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: And you see it in both directions, right?
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: You can see- Yeah, I mean, well, some people say also, though,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: that they wanted to load states up so that they
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: could Create more voters in certain states, you know.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: I've never understood that argument really? Yeah, because I can't vote.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: Right, but if you legalize them if you just bring
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: them in and then you find quick pass to legalization
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: Then they would be able to vote.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: Well one thing I will say I hope that if
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: that idea is still out there that the results of
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: the last election kill it for good because we saw
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: a massive swing to the Republicans among Hispanic Americans and
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: And given that most of the immigrants that people are
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: worried about are from Mexico and Southern America.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know if they are though. I think a
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: lot of the immigrants that we're getting are also from
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: like we, they were getting like so many Haitians and stuff. Right.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: But they're not reliable Democrat voters is my point.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: So any idea that like the Democrats are trying to
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: do this because they think, well, if we bring them
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: all in and then legalize them, yay. Well, that's not true.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: The idea that those groups are just going to reliably
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: vote Democrat that has gone out of the window.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think if I come in and
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: somebody's feeding me the first hand that feeds me, that's
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: probably the hand that I would think that I'm going
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: to cater to. I don't know if that's a definite
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: thing that they were doing. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: It's hard to say if it is or isn't, but
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: letting 21 million immigrants in, you know, when we had
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: two border patrol agents on and they said it was,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: it was a nightmare for them, you know, it was
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: a nightmare for them and their families, the stress that
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: they went through. Um, the fact that they would just
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: have to get a, an agreement from somebody that they
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: would come and meet the agent, like our, uh, middle person,
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: they would like have like a connection piece to America. Um,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: and they'd have to sign an agreement that they would
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: come back and meet that person at a certain time
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: or place and never show up. And then there's no
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: trail for them. It was a, The plan was not,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: there was no plan, it felt like.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: That's a better explanation than that there was this secret
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: plan to create millions of voters.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if there are or not.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: That's a better, no plan is better. And again, it's
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: an example of like the extremes winning, right? It's like, actually,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: most people have probably got pretty moderate views on immigration
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: or at least used to, which is we should control
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: our borders, which is not a controversial idea in any
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: other country in the world.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: Because you can't know a business unless you know the inventory, right?
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: How can you do anything?
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: It's not like the idea in any European country that
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: like people should only be there legally, like every European
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: country thinks that, right? So it's not, of course, we've
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: now had so many people come in that we've got
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: a different problem, but we should secure our borders. We
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: should actually have pretty good legal immigration systems. I'm biased.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: I'm biased. I'm an immigrant, but like good legal immigration
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: has been great for this country.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: Properly controlled legal, good, right? And so the idea that
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: you're either for or against immigration strikes me as completely dumb.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: You've got to be– what kind of immigration do we
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: need and want?
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got to think a little step further.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: But the trouble is the way that our politics works
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: right now is you've basically either got to be like
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: anti-immigration and anti-immigrants or you've got to be open border.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. That's how it feels. Well, that's another
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: issue that we just have. We don't have enough parties.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: We don't have enough parties and there's not enough– and
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: I think that it's also kept that way. as you
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: know capitalism is just you know there's only so much
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: you can do you know it's like you can't you
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: can only do so much and then there's a lot
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: of darker forces at play i think that just care
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: about finances on no matter what side of things you're
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: on and then i don't even know if america still
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: owns itself anymore to be honest with you i feel
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: like we're just a llc of the middle east sometimes
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: but you know different people think different things.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: I really the thing that i worry most about is
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: that we lose our sense of optimism.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: I agree. That's the next thing to go. And when
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: that goes, it gets, it gets really.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: Bad for any country, but I think it's virtually existential
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: for America because one of the things that people always
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: say about Americans, they're like, oh, they don't think about,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: they don't have no sense of history. You know, whereas
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: like in Europe, like all we think about is history, right?
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: Like in the UK, one thing I ran away from
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: is just like, it's always Winston Churchill and World War
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: II and World War I and the War of the Roads.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: I have relatives who fought in those wars. They're important,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: but we're always looking. Basically, Europe feels like it has
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: been looking in the rearview mirror for centuries, whereas Americans
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: are like, yeah, that happened. That was interesting, but we're
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: going there. We're going to the moon. We're going to wherever.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: We're going to build a better economy. There is this
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: thing about looking forward, which I've always loved about America.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons I wanted to come here.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons I finished raising my kids here.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: It's like that future orientation. And I really, I worry
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: about that on both sides now, right? I don't like
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: you have American carnage, you know, from the right and
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: you have climate catastrophe from the left. Take your pick.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: But that catastrophizing, that sense, for the first time ever,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: we're seeing people now say that they are not confident
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: their kids will be better off than them. That's a
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: huge problem in a country like America. And I think
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: it's based on this problem we were just talking about,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: which is, this kind of zero sum idea that like
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: somehow there's only so much of something to go around,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: money or empathy or whatever. And so if group A
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: is getting more of it, that means group B is
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: getting less of it, right?
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: So- But it's the same with the male-female thing.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's like, well, like we can't, if women are
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: doing better, maybe that's why men are doing worse. And
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: for women to rise, men have got to fall, like
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: crazy stuff. But people think that. Same on immigration, by
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: the way, people think, More immigrants, bad for America, et cetera.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: We're all constantly thinking about zero-sum, whereas America at its
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: best has always been positive-sum. In other words, we can grow.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: We grow the cake and argue less about how to
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: divide it up. We can all be more. We can
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: get better. We can get bigger and all rise. And
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: I think that's been lost, not least on gender.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about some escapes for men. Let's talk
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: about how do men, how do we combat some of
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: this illness? Because men are resilient. Men are warriors, I believe,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: in our hearts. And, um, and in our spirits. And
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: I believe that I've seen enough connectivity amongst men that
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: we want, um, to move forward. Right. And we want
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: to do it together. What are ways that you recommend?
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: Um, well, we've talked about male spaces and having like,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: groups and spaces for men.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: I think starting one of those is good. Yeah.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: And if you're like, and you're seeing that there's this
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: thing called the men's sheds movement. Have you heard of that?
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: It's coming over from Australia. It's just guys who get
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: into it like a shed and start fixing stuff together.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: Really bring it all.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: Shoulder to shoulder. The men's sheds movement. Oh, I love it.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: It's basically about like guys and they get in a
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: shed and they fix stuff. Right. And it's very male
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: because it's about fixing stuff.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: US Men's Sheds Association has partnered with Grouper to offer
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: Eligible members age 65 or older payments for staying healthy
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: and socially active. Okay. So the men's sheds, can you
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: do an image of it? Just U.S. men. Can we
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: just do men's sheds movement images? Oh, there's some fellows
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: right there building a little.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: Because like when men.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: What is that? A birdhouse or something?
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: Men have to be doing something else. while they're being together, right?
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: It's just harder for us to just be together. Like
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: when was the last time a friend of yours said,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: let's just meet for coffee and then sit down and
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: stare at each other for two hours?
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that guy is obviously trying to be like sexy
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: buddies or whatever, I think. And I think, yeah, you
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: got to find something to do together, paint something, look
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: for something. Let's go look for something.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: Be of service.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: Find services. I think that's hugely important.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: Boys and girls, like join your local Boys and Girls
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: Club chapter. You can volunteer there. What's another one? You
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: can be a champion. You can be a big brother. Yeah,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: that was a good one.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: I'm just going through the process for that myself.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Congrats.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: Signing up to do that. Yeah, I want to do that.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: I know you talked to Scott about this, but just
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: being a presence, I think it's hugely important and like
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: raising other people's kids. Like there's this line, it takes
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: a village to raise a child. That's true. But here's
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: the thing. Some of the villages need to be men.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: And like, we are, we're in that village and we're
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: helping to raise those kids, our neighbors, kids, you know,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: it does Jen, that statement that it takes a village
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: is right.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, you don't realize as a parent, if there's a
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: kid hanging out of your house, sometimes one of your kids,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: friends or something, you have a ton of influence on
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: that kid.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: Totally.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I got so much influence from most of
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: my influence.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: You realize how important, how many men there are out
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: there who sometimes just kind of need to be asked.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: There was this example happened in a school. I think
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: it was a predominantly black school. And they had this
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: day where they were going to teach the boys how
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: to tie a tie. And the dads were going to
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: come in with their sons and kind of teach their
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: sons how to tie a tie. But then they realized
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: that half the dads were not there. Half the boys
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: didn't have dads, didn't have fathers. Or their fathers were
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: in prison or they'd gone away or whatever. And so
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: they then really realized this was going to be a
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: huge problem because some of the boys were going to
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: have their dad come in and do it and the
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: others were going to feel left out. So they just
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: did a call out to the community. I don't even
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: know what it was, like a Facebook call out. could
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: we get some volunteers? We just need some men to
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: kind of come in and help these boys. They had
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: something like five times as many men as they needed to.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: These guys just all came. It's really beautiful.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: So men are looking for it.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: Yes. Just need to be somehow asked and called. And
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: the other thing I'll say, because we haven't had a
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: chance to talk about this yet, is that the The
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: fact that male teachers have become so much less common,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: I think is a real problem.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: It's gone from 33% male in the eighties to 23%
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: male now, and it continues to fall. And I think
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: that's a problem for all kinds of reasons. I think
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: that for boys to sort of see men in the classroom,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: to actually have them as role models, also to see
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: the education is a thing that like men care about
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's a great point. Yeah. One of my greatest
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: influences was this guy, Charles Alder. He was my teacher.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: He's missing a finger. And, um, but how did he
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: lose his finger? You know what happened to him? He
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: was at a baseball game cheering on his son. He
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: stood up. His wedding ring got caught on a piece
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: of metal on the bleachers and pulled his finger right off.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: I do know. I wish I hadn't asked now, but
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: God bless him.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: Pretty crazy. And my dad was missing a finger. And
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: so I just related, I was like, oh God wants
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: these men without fingers to love me or whatever. You know,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: that's how I was thinking as a kid. It was
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: just crazy. But that's how you think as a kid. Yeah.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: Okay. So he was a huge influence on you.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: And I had, same for me. I had this teacher, Mr. Wyatt,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: English teacher. And up until that point, we were all like,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: you know, words and poems. Yeah. A bunch of 15,
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: 16 year old boys. And then we had Mr. Wyatt
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: and Mr. Wyatt was a Korean war veteran. He was
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: a bus driver in part-time. He was total curmudgeon. And
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: he had us reading.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: Korean bus driver sounds very risky. No, no, no.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: He was a Korean veteran. He'd fought in the Korean war.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: So he'd fought in the Korean war.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: And he was just like this curmudgeonly guy, but he
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: had us reading this poetry. And he loved it so
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: much that we ended up loving it and getting into it.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: And I was like, huh, maybe this whole writing words thing.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: I used to be in remedial English way back before that.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: But maybe guys can do this too. And it was
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: a huge change for me. And I mentioned before that
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: my son is now teaching in Baltimore City. That's one.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: But we're missing about a million men if we were
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: to get close to gender equality. I'm not saying we'll
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: get to that. But I think that the best answer
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: to sort of some of the problems that a lot
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: of boys have got is real living flesh and blood
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: men in their lives, their dads, their neighbors, their uncles,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: but also their teachers. And the other thing, the other
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: thing male teachers do, they coach. Between 30 and 40
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: percent of male teachers are also coaches, much higher than
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: for women, for all kinds of reasons we could go into.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: But the point is simply that for every male teacher,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: you get like half a coach, right? And so if
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: we want more male coaches to be coaching our boys'
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: sports teams, et cetera, we need more male teachers. And
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: I can't believe that we're just letting the share of
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: male teachers just go down and down and down and down,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: and no one's doing anything about it.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: Especially when we had a great TV show here called
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: Prince Vice Principals or whatever. And that shit, you'd think
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: what helped it was when Danny McBride was in it.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: How long ago was that?
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: It was a couple years ago, so it might help
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: a little bit. But definitely it might have upped the
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: vibes of some of these guys being teachers.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: And also, do you know ABBA Elementary?
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people like that TV show.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: That's got a bunch of male teachers in it too,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: which is like fun.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: So maybe you just need to influence that. Like I
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid, they had Coach was
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: on and stuff like that. But I guess it didn't
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: really resonate that much. But they had like– what was
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: that TV art, uh, dead poet society or whatever. Yeah.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: Robin Williams. Yeah.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: But I guess we, or there was, um, the one with, um,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: they set up a tech amounts. Uh, who's that guy,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: Malcolm L L Jackson or whatever that guy's name was. Uh, no, it's, uh,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: he looks like kind of, uh, older, but still they
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: said it would take a man 600 years to get
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: out of this here prison. You know what I'm talking about?
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: It talks like that. No, he's, um, that was good accent.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks, he's in Shawshank Redemption. You know what his name is?
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman. He played a school teacher. Really? Lean on Me,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: it was called. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: But also there's this new one. Lean on Me. There's
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: this other one, The Holdovers, just a couple of years
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: ago with Paul Giametti. Is that how I'm saying his
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: name right?
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, I saw that.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, it's really good. And what those things
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: have in common is there's this relationship between this kind
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: of older guy this kind of younger man, and they
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: kind of learn from each other and they go through
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: some stuff together. And it's like, it's really beautiful.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: It was, that's a cool point. That's a great movie.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of, I was really pleased to see
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: that because it came up again with this thing. But
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: one of the things that really frustrates me is that
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: people will say, oh, boys need more, you know, we
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: need more positive male role models. And I'm like, we do.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: It's actually, you can't create them out of thin air, right?
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: You can't just like add water and create male role model.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 2: But one thing we could do is make sure we
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: have a lot more men in our schools. That's something
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: we could do. We could have scholarships. We could have
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: outreach programs. We could be incentivizing men. We could also
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: be making it much easier to become a teacher as
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: like a second career. Because one of the things that
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: we know is that men are much more likely to
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: go into teaching later. They do something else first and
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: then go. But it's really hard to do that. It
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: shouldn't be that hard.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: No, I agree. That's a great point.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: So we'll start, instead of lamenting the lack of male
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: role models, how about having more male teachers? And I
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: would love it if more politicians, I actually kept waiting
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: for Tim Walz on the Democrat side.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: We asked him to come on here. We asked him
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: and Kamala to come on here, but I would have
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: loved to have talked with Tim Walz.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: Tim Walz would have been a perfect person to kind
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: of lead that campaign, wouldn't he?
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, his whole interview, he seemed like this cheery kind
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: of guy.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: But he's like high school teacher. So he was the...
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: first actually career public school teacher to run for such
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: high office. He was also a coach. Imagine if he'd
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: done a campaign around, like, we want to recruit more
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: men to teaching. We want more men teaching, coaching, helping,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: like a really positive pro-male campaign. I think he would
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: have been an amazing spokesman for that. And I think
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: it could have been bipartisan. I think he could have
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: found some people on the right that would have agreed
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: with that.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I don't know if he, it felt
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: like all the time, like he was making all of
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: his own choices. That's the only thing about some of
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: these parties. You start to wonder, Too much control. If
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: there's bigger powers, and then you're like, and you can
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: feel that sometimes it feels like, but I don't know.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: Well, it's back to this point about the different media
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: environment now, right? Which is this freewheeling, be authentic, like
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: just go with the flow kind of environment now. I
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: think people. people like watch the politicians in those environments
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: so they can make a judgment about what kind of
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: person they are. It's not scripted.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Right. They get a feel for them.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: They get a feel for them. Exactly.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: And some of them asked, they're like, can we, do
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: we get edit or something? Like Timothy Shallon, they came on,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: they didn't ask for one edit. They didn't ask to
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: look at anything. They didn't ask. I was like, that's wild,
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: you know? I mean, but they didn't. And then we've
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: had other people come on and they're, you know, they're
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: aging or whatever. We get all fucking nitpicky or whatever.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Some little fucking lizards. and uh well ask to edit
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: stuff out or just like say certain things.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: Now I didn't know that was an option if something horrible.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: Happens somebody dies or something we'll edit it out You know,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: it's like, we don't want something horrible or somebody turning blue.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: You don't want to talk about somebody can't breathe or whatever. Like, yeah,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: we're not going to fucking sit there and ask questions
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: to somebody who doesn't have.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: But anything short of that. So if I die.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: O2 to their brain.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: You might, you might edit that out. But anything else
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: I do like.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: But it's just crazy that, you know.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: You can't control it. But actually this is what happened.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: I think this is a great example, right? Before he
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: was selected, like Waltz. he was like famous for being,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: you know, he did the weird thing and he was quite,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: you know, he just, he was like, but no, no,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: he described the Republicans as weird. That's what I mean.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: Like he just had a certain, but actually what happened
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: was that then he was like told to be super
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: careful and you get these politicians. They sometimes remind me like,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: They're like a guy carrying an incredibly precious vase across
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: a polished floor. You know, they're so terrified they're going
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: to slip and say the wrong thing.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: And that kind of, everyone's like, be disciplined. Don't say
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: anything wrong. We don't want to screw up the news cycle.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: Don't have a gaffe. Don't like, don't, don't say something. Exactly.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: Just stand still. Don't say anything.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: And hope for the best. That's crazy.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: But I do think that was the old politics. I
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: think it was all about message discipline. And I think
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: that the waltz before the pick and the waltz after
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: the pick, if you watch them.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: I bet they're totally different.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: They're totally different people.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: I know. I still wish he would come on and
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: talk to us. Maybe he will now.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe he will now.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. I'm going to reach out again.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: We even tried to get Kamala after to see if
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: she would come on and talk to us. Because that's
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: the only thing. I just felt like you don't know
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: who some of these people are. And not even that
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: you do after a conversation. There's still a politician. Right.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: But at a certain point, you just can get a
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: feel for them. And also people at home can just
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: get a feel, you know, just, you want a little
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: bit more feel these days.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: You had Bernie on recently, right?
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was great.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: Have you had him on before?
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: We had so much fun. No, I'd have him on
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: again though, dude. We had a blast. We just have
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: so many things that, you know, we both care about.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: It seems like, um, yes. So, so men, so places
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: that men can get involved, it's like a big brother program. Like,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: do you know this about big brother program? If you're
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: only going to be in town for like a couple
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: of weeks, make sure it's going to be a place
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: where you're going to be able to commit, like Because
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: you're saying to a child or something, I'm going to
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: be there every other week or every two years.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: At least a year. In fact, the evidence is that
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: if you do it for less than a year, it's
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: actually harmful. Better to not do it at all if
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: you can't do it for a year.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: So that's something right there. And even just men getting
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: together to take a walk together, think together, spend time together.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: It's like, how do we start to build those new things?
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: And also some of that is like the cycle has changed.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: A lot of our energy came from uh, wars and stuff,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: you know, and there were a lot more bowling leagues.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: There's a book book. It's called bowling alone. Maybe Robert Putnam. Yeah.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: All about what he calls social capital, which is basically
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: just this connection and community and how important that is
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: for people. And he talks about the decline of bowling leagues,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: which are basically just structures through which to have this solidarity, right?
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's just hiding from your wife for an hour.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: and you and your buddies calling each other fat, right?
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: But that's what men need sometimes, right?
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: But you can't say to your wife, I'm going out
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: to just hang out with the guys and call each
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: other fat. You have to say, I've got bowling tonight, right?
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: It has to be a thing, right? I've got darts tonight.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: I've got kind of whatever.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: It's a thing, right? It's not just, I'm not, we
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: can't just say, I'm just getting, maybe a bit more now,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: but like you needed like a, and I think it's
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: a deeper truth that men do need a reason sometimes
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: to kind of be together. And that's just okay.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, you don't want to tell your wife, yeah,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to hang, you know, it's like, yeah,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do something. That's a man thing too,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: is doing something.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Doing something.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: Like we're creatures that are supposed to be in action, right?
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: It's like the more sedentary I get, you know, like
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: I just notice that. It's like if I do the
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: next right thing I'm supposed to do, everything goes fine.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: The second I stand around and think, it's like things
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: get a little weird.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a bit of forward momentum, right? Do the
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: next thing.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just keep it moving, man. And it does help.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: It helps you. But then, yeah, but what was I
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: thinking of? Oh, I was– I wrote down– was I
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: making a point there or no?
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: I can't remember.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: I wrote down this question because I thought a lot
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: about this, like men and women stuff, right? And I'm
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: glad that we talked a lot about it like just because, yeah,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: women have had this sort of evolution in a way
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: societally and financially. And they had to do that. It
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: felt like to get more respect. And maybe if there
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: had been a different respect in the beginning, things could
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: have been different. But we live in a capitalistic society
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: type of thing. And so I wrote down what I
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: wanted to say because it was too hard for me
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: to remember and say. So I was saying it seems
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: like through the feminist movements and trying to make more
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: gender equality, close the income gap, et cetera, that women
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: were striving to have what men had, such as more income,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: such as more equitable treatment, such as being able to
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: strive in the workforce, having more access to educational opportunities,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: et cetera, that women wanted more power. or what was
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: conceived of as power. And in a capitalistic society, money
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: is power. But is it really power though? I think
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: it is pretty lonely and disconnected when men achieve the
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: status of being powerful, either through a lot of recognition
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: or wealth, or just producing a lot in general. I'm
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: not saying that men could not have this type of
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: power and not be connected to the world around them
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: and people around them. But I think for most men,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: it was basically lonely and disconnected. Is this what women
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: really want when it comes to equitable treatment, et cetera,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: or having the same opportunities for financial success and upward mobility?
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: Do women really want what men have or had? I
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: wonder if women are really the ones that, generally speaking,
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: have it right as far as being connected to others,
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: being able to communicate better generally, and providing more of
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: a home in the sense of a settled space around
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: themselves wherever they go or wherever they are. I think
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: it's interesting that in trying to balance out male and female,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: the female wants to move towards the male. I get it,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: but I just wonder if maybe it made more sense
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: to have the male move towards the female. And I
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: don't mean that men should be women. What I do mean, though,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: is that these attributes that women seem to possess based
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: primarily on their sex and some gender roles seem to
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: be more fulfilling overall. So wouldn't it make more sense
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: that the men would move a little closer to them
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: or the women would tout that what they have is
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: good enough and it is best instead of going ahead
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: and trying to get what the men have? Like I said,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: I get it and I can understand why women want
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: what they perceive men as having. I just wonder if
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: that's really the best direction for women and for children
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: and for men in boys and for people in general
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: do we really want to show our children that women
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: can dominate and produce in the same ways that men
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: can personally I don't really think so I think men
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: have it wrong I think that the men should be
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: masculine and women should be feminine but I think that
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: the expression of masculinity generally speaking in our society has
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: been kind of weak and kind of disconnected and honestly
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes kind of dumb sorry that was so much words
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: but I just did I was trying to like I
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: was like I can't remember this but this is like
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: what I think you know like it's not a clown
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: on women or that their journey or anything. It's just like,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: what are, what are we all really looking for? Yeah.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 2: I think we're at a really important moment for that. I, I,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: I see the movement of the last, let's say 50
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: years as largely being about women trying to get more
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: economic independence. I don't, I don't really like the language
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: of power around this because it tends to presume that
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: it's like power of person A over power of person B.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: It's much more like opportunity, independence, chance to flourish.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: To be you.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: To let yourself be seen, to let you, yes. And
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: to feel equal, to feel like, oh, I can do
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: these things as well.
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: To get equal respect.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: And I feel like we've been, so I think this
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: sense of like, if you think about the more female
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: virtues to use your framing as being more about like
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: care and connection and so on, and the more male
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: ones being around kind of material, money, etc., I do
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: think that it was quite right for women to have
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: more opportunities to acquire more of that economic opportunity, right?
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: And economic independence, quite right. Now, I think that we
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: might see the next 50 years are about some of
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: the movement in the other direction, which is that men
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: also learning that like, it's not actually just getting to
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: the top of the economic ladder. It's like, that's not
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: what life is about. It's important to provide, it's important
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: to bring material resources to your family, to your tribe,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: to your community. but it's also important to have those
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: relationships and that care. And if that's seen as more
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: of a female virtue, then I agree that we might
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: see a little bit more movement now of men towards women.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: But in the end, it's just about creating opportunities for
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: all of us to be able to flourish and to
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: rise and to do that together. And to have equal
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: respect for what we each choose to do.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: That's the biggest.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: Without one set being dependent on the other, without one
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: group having power over the other, Without one group being
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: seen to be better than the other or one set
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: of virtues being better than the other. And instead to
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: just say, look, we're all in the end. I hope
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: that my work focusing on boys and men is partly
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: in the end humanism. It's partly about the end. Like
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: we want to get to a world where we're all
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 2: able to kind of flourish together. And we're not going
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: to get there if we pretend there are no differences
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: between men and women. We're not going to get to
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: equality through androgyny, right? Pretending there are no differences between
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: men and women, right? But we can learn from each other.
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: And isn't that amazing? Isn't that an amazing opportunity? And
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: so I think the opportunities for men now to kind
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: of grow and expand our roles as fathers, as coaches,
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: as mentors, as community leaders in the home, in the community,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: whilst also, I think, building staff and providing, in other words,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: reforming masculinity rather than ditching it. and saying we don't
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: need masculinity anymore, or somehow trying to get the old
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: kind of masculinity back. So I think when I'm feeling optimistic,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: and it's good to be optimistic sometimes, I actually think
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: what we're experiencing now is like the birth pangs of
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: like a different way, right? And I think it's all
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: been about women up until now, and I think that's understandable,
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: but I think the next few decades have got to
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: be about how do we help men as well, how
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: do we help men rise, not instead of women, but
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: with women, and women rise with men. Yeah.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: And how do we even, yeah. How do we just, yeah.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: And evolution takes, it takes pain, you know, it takes
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: discomfort for everyone.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: Change is hard.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. Change is hard. And also I think though, you
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: look at like people having the time to do things
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: in the evenings and stuff. It's like we create, you know,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: like a lot of people live in separate households. I
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: talk about it with the holidays. The holidays are a
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: bummer a lot of times now, cause you got to
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: go visit both your parents have been married two times
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: and divorced. Now you're visiting six people or something on a,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: you're dividing your Christmas up. There's it's, you know, it's
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: like we're dividing up the, the, the comfort we had,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's becoming a nightmare because you're having
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: to drive so many places to see so many people like, um.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: But I, I think the spirit of what you're saying
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: throughout this whole conversation has been about equal empathy and
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: respect for men and women. And I feel like there
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: was probably a time when like, if women complained about
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: stuff and wanted more power, men would be like patronizing
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: or maybe roll their eyes at them a little bit. Like,
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: oh God, you know, off she goes again.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: But I now think the opposite is happening. I think
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: when we talk about some of the problems that men
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: are having and men saying, I'm struggling, I'm trying to
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: figure this out. There's sometimes a tendency for people to
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: roll their eyes and just say, well, get over it.
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: And neither of those responses is good enough. We need
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: to kind of look each other in the eye and
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: just say, look, I'm here for you. Let's figure this
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: out together and not pit us against each other. The
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: thing I really worry about is particularly politically right now,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: that we're somehow going to end up young men and
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: young women seeing each other as somehow not on the
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: same team, as against each other. You see this growing
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: political divide, cultural divide, less dating. I think it will
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: be really bad news if we don't see young men
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: and women seeing that their interests as being more aligned
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: than in antagonism with each other.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, politics is just, it's a societal structure. I
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: know it's at some point, it's something you need for
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: diplomacy and stuff, but I don't even, I feel like
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: it's been so commandeered. I don't think most people even
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: know what it is anymore or don't believe in the
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: sanctity of it. But I do think that in the end, you,
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: that other humans are your real government. You know, your
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: neighbor is your government.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: It's norms. It's the atmosphere. It's the like.
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, your tradition, whatever you're, you know, and I think
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: it is men need to just wake up, shave, put
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: on a clean shirt and be ready for, you know,
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: whatever blessings do come or the things that they create
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: for themselves too. I think some of it is like
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: just showing up for the day in the world. Um,
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: but also we need to, if we could, it would
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: be nice. We need to, what the fuck do I know?
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: But it'd be nice if families were together and that, um,
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: that everybody didn't have all these separate homes to go.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: It was just everything didn't feel so divided. I feel
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: like even managing a life feels very dividing for a
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: kid when one week they're here, one week we're there.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: And then the parents are separate and they probably sit
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: there you know, yeah, maybe they go in there, but
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: they wish maybe they'd have been able to figure, I
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: What do I know?
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: I think I romanticize a lot.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: But it can be like, the key thing is the relationships, right?
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: I found this very interesting study that said that kids
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: whose father is not resident with the mother, doesn't live
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: with the mom anymore, but has a good relationship with them.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: They do better than the kids whose dad is with them,
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: but they have a terrible relationship with. And so it's like,
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: it's in the end, it's the relationship that matters. But
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: your point about like care and nurturing, Sometimes I think
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: we obsess about the structure and we don't actually think
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: that actually what really matters here is the substance. What's
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: the relationship like? And so one of the reasons I
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: feel so strongly about that is because so many kids now,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: like most kids to parents without college degrees are born
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 2: outside marriage. Most like that's the norm outside of the
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: college educated class. And so I don't want to say
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: to those fathers that. oh, well, sorry, you've already failed, right?
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 2: You don't bench the dads, right? And so it's incredibly
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: important that fathers hear the message that they matter in
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: their kids' lives, whether or not they are with the
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 2: kid's mother. And in some ways, if they're not with
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: the kid's mother romantically anymore, the father might be even
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: more important, because there's a good chance that kid's going
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: to be struggling in other ways. And so There is
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: no hall pass for fatherhood. If you become a father,
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how you ended up having that kid.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: You have a moral responsibility to be there for that kid. Period.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: That is not a negotiable. Now you may or may
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: not be married to the mom. And I'm not saying
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: it isn't easier to be married to the mix, but.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: Right. But that doesn't really, that doesn't really make it
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: different always. No.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: And also like, and also don't, don't point at these
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: dads who for whatever reason, they're not married to the
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 2: mom and blame them somehow.
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had, I just have
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: this romantic view, but yeah, I think if, if yeah
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: being a father is just being a father it's like
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: and it also what do I know what the fuck
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: am I even talking.
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: About and it never ends I mean I'll say that
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: it doesn't end with being a father. I mentioned my
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: own father, my dad earlier. And watching him as a
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: grandfather to my sons has also been an extraordinary experience
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: and made me think about, I'm already thinking about what
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: kind of grandfather I'm going to be. My sons are
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: all in their 20s now, from late 20s to early 20s.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: And so that's the next stage for me. And I'll
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: tell you, like my, one of my sons really struggled, uh,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: in high school. He's the one who's now become a teacher. Uh,
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: and he, when he went and went to college, he
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: chose to go to college back to the UK, but
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: not just back to the UK. He went back to
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: Cardiff in Wales where my parents live, because he wanted
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: to be near my parents. And he told me once
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: that on a day when he was really, if he
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: was really struggling, he'd get out and notice some mental
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: health issues, whatever. Uh, he's really struggling. He would look,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: he could look when he was walking to his lectures
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: at college, he could look to the north and a
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: couple of miles north. There's this big tower of a
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: hospital right next to the, where my parents live. And
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: he said to me, even on a really bad day,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: I know that I can look up there and I
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: know that grandpa's there. And if I need him, he'll come.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: I want my grandsons and granddaughters saying that about me
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: one day too. And so the point is like. As parents,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: you do the best you can. And then as grandparents,
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: you help out. And then as uncles and nephews or
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: neighbors or mentors, you kind of help out. But it
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: never ends. And that's not a bad thing. It's a
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: good thing. It's a beautiful thing. And I, as a father,
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: to see my father being such an amazing support for
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: my son.
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. Because you're in the middle.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: I'm in the middle. And guess what? Sometimes maybe granddad
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: is going to be the better person for your son
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: in this moment than you are. And what an amazing
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: blessing that is to have that. I feel so incredibly
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: fortunate that my kids have had that opportunity to have
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: that relationship with their grandparents. So I've gone from thinking, oh, God, really? Grandfather?
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 2: I have to do it all over again? Really? To
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: being like, you know what? Yeah, this could be good.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just appreciate you thinking about stuff, this stuff
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: with Richard. And I know there's a lot of other
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: things we could talk about too, about, um, recovery programs
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: and 12 step. We can save that for another conversation.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: Anytime.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: I feel like we've had, I feel like this has
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: been a nice conversation and, um, just some good food
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: for thought and, and not to harp on man or
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: what's going on. And if you feel uncomfortable, it's like,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: I think there is that there's a sense inside of
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of us of like, what do we do? Where,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: where is my purpose? And, um, and where's that coming from?
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: You know? And, um, And that's okay.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I've really, really enjoyed this.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: Me too, Richard. I appreciate it. Richard Reeves, you have
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: books out, don't you? Yeah.
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: Of boys and men.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: And how do people, um, if people want to get
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: involved with your organization, what, uh, do they just donate?
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: Is there volunteer possibilities or what are the things?
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: Donations would be great, but yeah. So it's AIBM.org AIBM.org. Uh,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: there's a, there is a donate button there. We'd love
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: your support, but also the main thing is just to
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 2: be part of this conversation. Uh, and let's have a
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: positive conversation about boys and men without putting down women
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: and girls and just love the men and boys in
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: your life. I just, that's the mission I'm on. I
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: feel called to this work now and I'm, I'm excited
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: to be part of it.
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: I love hearing about it, man. And I appreciate you
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: just being patient with me too, too today while we
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: just kind of had this conversation. And, um, yeah, this
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: was a great practice for me and just like, uh,
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: learning to talk and think about things together.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: Um, it's amazing that you want to get more into
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: this space. Thank you.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's just so important, man. And I'm going
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: to have a, uh, an ad to at the end
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: of this for a valor recovery. It's a, um, sexual, uh, uh,
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: sex and love addiction, uh, group that we, um, that
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: I associate with. And so, uh, if you're struggling with
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: porn addiction and that sort of thing, you are in
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: intimacy disorders, anything, if you are just struggling with something
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: we can, um, that's a great program right there. And, uh,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: my great friend Steve started it and I've been in
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: recovery with him for years and, Just blessed, man. Blessed
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: to be on this journey and just know that other
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: men are on it too and trying to figure it
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: out and, you know, stay alive. Dude, it kind of
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: gives you some, you know, it's weird. It kind of
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: gives you a little bit of purpose. Yeah. You know
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying?
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no. And that life without purpose is not life.
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: It sure isn't, man. Thank you so much, Richard Reeves.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: You bet. Cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: I'll share this peace of mind I found I can
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: feel it in my bones